It's risky to say anything negative about Darwin's theories because the creationists folks jump on it like linebackers on a fumble. Evolutionary changes do not occur solely as purposeful adaptations having the effect of increasing species survivability. Clearly the process of natural selection, whereby mates are chosen on the basis of their potential to benefit the species does not apply to humans, or else politicians and lawyers would not be permitted to mate. Difficult as it is to sidestep our compulsive anthropomorphism, I think that while it is evident that we can make choices that positively impact our evolutionary path, I think it equally obvious that some of the evolutionary choices we have made do not bode well for our species. [ The specter of free will lurks around the edges here, which subject I will ignore because I believe it is one of the silliest things we could possibly wonder about.]
One path of evolutionary development that became very different between Westerners and the Polynesian navigators involves the way we process information. For example, take the way we each go about planning and executing a journey from Island A to Island B. Here in the west, our first step is to go to the Chartroom and select the latest version of the Nautical chart that depicts both islands. [I have it on solid authority that the primary difference between a map and a chart is that charts are on boats.] Interestingly enough, the charts are developed by a process of simple arithmetic. The earliest versions might contain little more than drawings that represent the shape of the islands, overlain with the coordinate grid, and an arrow pointing north. As more and more information is documented about that area, the facts that are relevant to navigation are added to the chart: geography, latitude and longitude, depths, hazards, bottom composition, various subdivided scales, conspicuous objects or features visible from on board, Aids to Navigation (ranging from lighthouses to buoys containing signaling technology broadcasting real time data from satellites), and a whole lot more. Using specialized tools as simple as a plastic straight edge or as complex as a new fangled software program, the course is plotted and drawn on the chart along with copious notations. The course gives the intended direction, distance, speed and ETA. Keep in mind that the chart has little real world usefulness, it can't be used as a sail or an oar, it is simply an abstract representation of a computation based on objective data. Once the plotting task is finished, we engage in one of the oddest behaviors we have evolved- - we deify it.
Most of our societal activities follow this methodology. We make a plan, we chart a course, and off we go. The plan guides our actions, it measures our progress. A perfect event is when everything goes according to plan. Every move that matches the plan is a success, every deviation from the plan is a failure. We created the plan, and left to its own devises it will simply lay there on the table forever. But once the plan is made and set in motion, we are not allowed to use our individual judgment to act. Stick with the plan, stay the course. It becomes a disjunctive syllogism; right or wrong, love it or leave it, you can't have your cake and eat it too. We went into Iraq with a plan to destroy Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, our plan called for protective suits to shield us from the poison gas, the plan would make us safer, and the body count goes into the sacrifice for freedom column of the plan.
Here are some ways the Polynesian Navigation system evolved differently. There is not really a process comparable to plotting a course. The nearest thing to the Chartroom would be the Boathouse, and the activities there focus on a single thing, getting the navigator prepared to navigate. He sharpens his memory by recalling over and over what he has learned. He goes through cleansing rituals, adheres to numerous taboos, eats only specially prepared food. He is sheltered from the noticeable elements of everyday life. The success of the journey depends on his being able to do things we long ago began to undervalue, and gradually our ability to use them atrophied. He makes no pretense of the objectivity we value so highly (and trust so foolishly). He guides the canoe in response to (one might even say in cooperation with) the sum total of his perceptions in real time, moment to moment. His is not a plan but an adaptation to the journey he is experiencing. His life and the life of his crew depend on his ability to notice everything the ocean reveals, to adapt, to change course in response to the now--- to change his mind.
The start of the journey is not meticulously calibrated to proceed unerringly toward a tiny island in a vast ocean. Rather, the navigator heads toward a target area that might be two or three hundred miles wide. When the canoe gets in the vicinity he guides the canoe by what he then experiences. He may wander back and forth in the target area until he gets oriented. Perhaps he sees an island he recognizes and remembers the direction to the island he seeks. Here he is guided by different things than in the open ocean, flotsam, birds coming and going, perhaps a helpful dolphin swims alongside and points the way. If the islands are populated, he may do something no western male would ever dream of doing, he stops and asks for directions. This is not magic, this is not a ruse de guerre, this is an extraordinary ability to consciously become a part of the computation of life.
La Synopothesis
We don't often think of patterns of behavior as evolutionary products of our own species, although we make a science of classifying patterns of behavior in other species. At some indecipherable time, for some still unknown reason, some learned patterns of behavior can become a strange attractor, which is simply to say that similar behaviors begin to coalesce, begin to become more similar, eventually become SOP for that species, and are passed on to future generations in hard wired form. Sometime way back there, perhaps as a by product of the development of written language (the Pacific folks did not have a written language when their navigation skills developed) we began to make value judgements about the way ideas were developed and communicated. This valuing process eventually resulted in a concept we call objectivity. Objective evidence good, anecdotal evidence bad. We began to develop mathematics and formulas. We observed that when we put the same numbers into the same formulas the answer always came out the same---- always. Now we were on to something! We began to put more and more trust in processes and descriptions that always produced the same results. We began to organize objective data into various permutations and somehow developed the idea that if we took a body of objective data and organized it into a procedure, or a process, or a plan, then that procedure, or process, or plan would itself be objective, and once activated would produce predictable results. More and more of our social structure became the product of these Procedures, Processes and Plans. Technological growth allowed these tri-ps to operate without our hands on attention. Well, we thought that was way cool and so we said to tri-ps "Go forth. Be fruitful and multiply", and they did.
What happened was that the tri-ps turned our world into an ever escalating slide show of reality sound bites that keeps us on high alert for the crisis de jour. But they each have our attention for only a second and then the next must be noticed byte comes crashing through our noticing gate. Since our noticing capacity remains basically unchanged, more and more of that capacity is occupied by these environmental elements that must be noticed, and our directed awareness noticing ability has atrophied through disuse. One of the current hot topics is the sharp increase of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Well, guess what, ya'll, ADD has become a pandemic unawares. We all got it, and it may kill us.
Our set it and forget it social structure is falling apart at the seams and we can't stay focused on what we are doing long enough to fix anything. One of the things that got my attention about natural navigation is how similar the process seems to the process of analysis described by pioneering theorists. Many of them, including Einstein, have said that they rely more on mental signs and images than words. They journey into a spacial realm beyond the spaces to which travel has been charted. They see patterns and use them to visualize other patterns. They are not looking for numbers or words but a sense of harmony and beauty. Andrè Weil, widely recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, described it in words well beyond those I would dare use.
" Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced ... the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously... this feeling may last for hours at a time, even for days. Once you have experienced it, you are eager to repeat it but unable to do it at will, unless perhaps by dogged work... we do more of it or less of it but we do not try to understand it."
Nainoa Thompson: Navigator
"I was so exhausted that I backed up against the rail to rest. Then something happened that allowed me to understand where the moon was, without seeing it. When I gave up fighting to find the moon with my eyes, I settled down. I suddenly felt this warmth come over me and I knew where the moon was. The sky was so black, I couldn't see the moon, but I could feel where it was.
From the feeling of warmth and the image of the moon came a strong sense of confidence. I knew where to go. I directed the canoe on a new course and then, just for a moment, there was a hole in the clouds and the light of the moon shone through-just where I expected it to be. I can't explain it, but that was one of the most precious moments in all my sailing experience. I realized there was some deep connection I was making, something very deep inside my abilities and my senses that goes beyond the analytical, beyond seeing with my eyes. I cannot explain what this is from a scientific point of view. But it happened. And now I seek out these experiences. I don't always have them. I have to be in the right frame of mind and beyond that, internally, I have to be able to enter into a kind of spiritual realm. I don't want to analyze these experiences too much. I just want to make them happen more often. I don't think there's an explanation for them. There are certain levels of navigation that are realms of the spirit."
Pioneering thought is the highest level of computational sophistication (Wolfram again) possible by our species, and that of Andrè Weil and Nainoa Thompson are computationally equivalent. Somewhere way back there the prospect of pioneering thought began to scare the hell out of our western ancestors. Clearly that fearfulness was already established in our gene pool before we ventured beyond the sight of land. Maps warned of it with the dire notation "Here Be Dragons". Developing an original procedure or process or plan requires a level of computational sophistication that now seems to be restricted only to our brightest scientists. WTF ?? I think the root of the problem lies within the deification status we attach to tri-ps in motion. Once that has begun pioneering thought/computational sophistication/conceptual analysis/complex mathematics is no longer allowed. We can only deal with our newfound deity with simple arithmetic---- we can add a little or subtract a little, but no rethinking the tri-p's basic assumptions. [The only other arithmetical function permitted is multiplication and that applies only to the cost of the tri-p.]
Pioneering thought has been extinct in our governmental and sociological operations for god knows how many years. In your spare time, take a trip down to the Library of Congress. Read the congressional records for the last twenty plus years (or as long as you can stand reading it, whichever comes first). Find anything, anything, that is not a simple case of addition or subtraction. The clogged up noticing capacity of at least the western tribes of our species flits about from one reality sound byte to another like some manic hummingbird, the only difference being that they get sustenance that way, we just go through the motions, accomplishing little. When 9/11 happened our organizational response was a pathetic disaster. When we finally began to admit that the events were not an insane anomaly that no sane person could have foreseen we vowed never to be unprepared again, again. So we began our frenzied ritualistic processes, adding a bit here, subtracting a bit there. We said we were far better prepared. Then Katrina came ashore. And the wheel goes round.
Yet in the clouds of concrete dust billowing out from beneath the towers, and in the chaotic maelstrom flowing over the levees there were signs that our survival genes have not truly abandoned us. Suddenly there was only one perceptible element in those environments that must be noticed. For thousands of people, their world was right here, right now, and they survived. When Mau is standing in the bow of his canoe in the middle of a vast, seemingly empty ocean, his world is right here, right now, and he is happy. When Ed Whitten is sitting quietly in his office staring at the wall, and his eyes begin to glow, his world is right here, right now, and he is happy. We took the wrong evolutionary path and the way we chose to process information has betrayed us. I don't think we can turn around on our own. I don't think we can learn to reduce the number of things that must be noticed in our environment and focus on the things we need to do. But the universe has many ways to get our undivided attention. There's that humongous pot of molten rock bubbling away under Yellowstone, if it blows, it will take out most of the middle of our country. Then there is that huge hunk of island off the coast of Africa teetering over the ocean, if it falls the tsunami will take out the first 10 or 15 miles of our east coast. And don't forget that 50 mile wide meteor heading our way towing a banner that reads Souix City or Bust.
Well, I guess that's everything.
Next up: Money and Mayhem OK, I really meant the Dixie Chicks are next. This is a revision.
One path of evolutionary development that became very different between Westerners and the Polynesian navigators involves the way we process information. For example, take the way we each go about planning and executing a journey from Island A to Island B. Here in the west, our first step is to go to the Chartroom and select the latest version of the Nautical chart that depicts both islands. [I have it on solid authority that the primary difference between a map and a chart is that charts are on boats.] Interestingly enough, the charts are developed by a process of simple arithmetic. The earliest versions might contain little more than drawings that represent the shape of the islands, overlain with the coordinate grid, and an arrow pointing north. As more and more information is documented about that area, the facts that are relevant to navigation are added to the chart: geography, latitude and longitude, depths, hazards, bottom composition, various subdivided scales, conspicuous objects or features visible from on board, Aids to Navigation (ranging from lighthouses to buoys containing signaling technology broadcasting real time data from satellites), and a whole lot more. Using specialized tools as simple as a plastic straight edge or as complex as a new fangled software program, the course is plotted and drawn on the chart along with copious notations. The course gives the intended direction, distance, speed and ETA. Keep in mind that the chart has little real world usefulness, it can't be used as a sail or an oar, it is simply an abstract representation of a computation based on objective data. Once the plotting task is finished, we engage in one of the oddest behaviors we have evolved- - we deify it.
Most of our societal activities follow this methodology. We make a plan, we chart a course, and off we go. The plan guides our actions, it measures our progress. A perfect event is when everything goes according to plan. Every move that matches the plan is a success, every deviation from the plan is a failure. We created the plan, and left to its own devises it will simply lay there on the table forever. But once the plan is made and set in motion, we are not allowed to use our individual judgment to act. Stick with the plan, stay the course. It becomes a disjunctive syllogism; right or wrong, love it or leave it, you can't have your cake and eat it too. We went into Iraq with a plan to destroy Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, our plan called for protective suits to shield us from the poison gas, the plan would make us safer, and the body count goes into the sacrifice for freedom column of the plan.
Here are some ways the Polynesian Navigation system evolved differently. There is not really a process comparable to plotting a course. The nearest thing to the Chartroom would be the Boathouse, and the activities there focus on a single thing, getting the navigator prepared to navigate. He sharpens his memory by recalling over and over what he has learned. He goes through cleansing rituals, adheres to numerous taboos, eats only specially prepared food. He is sheltered from the noticeable elements of everyday life. The success of the journey depends on his being able to do things we long ago began to undervalue, and gradually our ability to use them atrophied. He makes no pretense of the objectivity we value so highly (and trust so foolishly). He guides the canoe in response to (one might even say in cooperation with) the sum total of his perceptions in real time, moment to moment. His is not a plan but an adaptation to the journey he is experiencing. His life and the life of his crew depend on his ability to notice everything the ocean reveals, to adapt, to change course in response to the now--- to change his mind.
The start of the journey is not meticulously calibrated to proceed unerringly toward a tiny island in a vast ocean. Rather, the navigator heads toward a target area that might be two or three hundred miles wide. When the canoe gets in the vicinity he guides the canoe by what he then experiences. He may wander back and forth in the target area until he gets oriented. Perhaps he sees an island he recognizes and remembers the direction to the island he seeks. Here he is guided by different things than in the open ocean, flotsam, birds coming and going, perhaps a helpful dolphin swims alongside and points the way. If the islands are populated, he may do something no western male would ever dream of doing, he stops and asks for directions. This is not magic, this is not a ruse de guerre, this is an extraordinary ability to consciously become a part of the computation of life.
La Synopothesis
We don't often think of patterns of behavior as evolutionary products of our own species, although we make a science of classifying patterns of behavior in other species. At some indecipherable time, for some still unknown reason, some learned patterns of behavior can become a strange attractor, which is simply to say that similar behaviors begin to coalesce, begin to become more similar, eventually become SOP for that species, and are passed on to future generations in hard wired form. Sometime way back there, perhaps as a by product of the development of written language (the Pacific folks did not have a written language when their navigation skills developed) we began to make value judgements about the way ideas were developed and communicated. This valuing process eventually resulted in a concept we call objectivity. Objective evidence good, anecdotal evidence bad. We began to develop mathematics and formulas. We observed that when we put the same numbers into the same formulas the answer always came out the same---- always. Now we were on to something! We began to put more and more trust in processes and descriptions that always produced the same results. We began to organize objective data into various permutations and somehow developed the idea that if we took a body of objective data and organized it into a procedure, or a process, or a plan, then that procedure, or process, or plan would itself be objective, and once activated would produce predictable results. More and more of our social structure became the product of these Procedures, Processes and Plans. Technological growth allowed these tri-ps to operate without our hands on attention. Well, we thought that was way cool and so we said to tri-ps "Go forth. Be fruitful and multiply", and they did.
What happened was that the tri-ps turned our world into an ever escalating slide show of reality sound bites that keeps us on high alert for the crisis de jour. But they each have our attention for only a second and then the next must be noticed byte comes crashing through our noticing gate. Since our noticing capacity remains basically unchanged, more and more of that capacity is occupied by these environmental elements that must be noticed, and our directed awareness noticing ability has atrophied through disuse. One of the current hot topics is the sharp increase of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Well, guess what, ya'll, ADD has become a pandemic unawares. We all got it, and it may kill us.
Our set it and forget it social structure is falling apart at the seams and we can't stay focused on what we are doing long enough to fix anything. One of the things that got my attention about natural navigation is how similar the process seems to the process of analysis described by pioneering theorists. Many of them, including Einstein, have said that they rely more on mental signs and images than words. They journey into a spacial realm beyond the spaces to which travel has been charted. They see patterns and use them to visualize other patterns. They are not looking for numbers or words but a sense of harmony and beauty. Andrè Weil, widely recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, described it in words well beyond those I would dare use.
" Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced ... the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously... this feeling may last for hours at a time, even for days. Once you have experienced it, you are eager to repeat it but unable to do it at will, unless perhaps by dogged work... we do more of it or less of it but we do not try to understand it."
Nainoa Thompson: Navigator
"I was so exhausted that I backed up against the rail to rest. Then something happened that allowed me to understand where the moon was, without seeing it. When I gave up fighting to find the moon with my eyes, I settled down. I suddenly felt this warmth come over me and I knew where the moon was. The sky was so black, I couldn't see the moon, but I could feel where it was.
From the feeling of warmth and the image of the moon came a strong sense of confidence. I knew where to go. I directed the canoe on a new course and then, just for a moment, there was a hole in the clouds and the light of the moon shone through-just where I expected it to be. I can't explain it, but that was one of the most precious moments in all my sailing experience. I realized there was some deep connection I was making, something very deep inside my abilities and my senses that goes beyond the analytical, beyond seeing with my eyes. I cannot explain what this is from a scientific point of view. But it happened. And now I seek out these experiences. I don't always have them. I have to be in the right frame of mind and beyond that, internally, I have to be able to enter into a kind of spiritual realm. I don't want to analyze these experiences too much. I just want to make them happen more often. I don't think there's an explanation for them. There are certain levels of navigation that are realms of the spirit."
Pioneering thought is the highest level of computational sophistication (Wolfram again) possible by our species, and that of Andrè Weil and Nainoa Thompson are computationally equivalent. Somewhere way back there the prospect of pioneering thought began to scare the hell out of our western ancestors. Clearly that fearfulness was already established in our gene pool before we ventured beyond the sight of land. Maps warned of it with the dire notation "Here Be Dragons". Developing an original procedure or process or plan requires a level of computational sophistication that now seems to be restricted only to our brightest scientists. WTF ?? I think the root of the problem lies within the deification status we attach to tri-ps in motion. Once that has begun pioneering thought/computational sophistication/conceptual analysis/complex mathematics is no longer allowed. We can only deal with our newfound deity with simple arithmetic---- we can add a little or subtract a little, but no rethinking the tri-p's basic assumptions. [The only other arithmetical function permitted is multiplication and that applies only to the cost of the tri-p.]
Pioneering thought has been extinct in our governmental and sociological operations for god knows how many years. In your spare time, take a trip down to the Library of Congress. Read the congressional records for the last twenty plus years (or as long as you can stand reading it, whichever comes first). Find anything, anything, that is not a simple case of addition or subtraction. The clogged up noticing capacity of at least the western tribes of our species flits about from one reality sound byte to another like some manic hummingbird, the only difference being that they get sustenance that way, we just go through the motions, accomplishing little. When 9/11 happened our organizational response was a pathetic disaster. When we finally began to admit that the events were not an insane anomaly that no sane person could have foreseen we vowed never to be unprepared again, again. So we began our frenzied ritualistic processes, adding a bit here, subtracting a bit there. We said we were far better prepared. Then Katrina came ashore. And the wheel goes round.
Yet in the clouds of concrete dust billowing out from beneath the towers, and in the chaotic maelstrom flowing over the levees there were signs that our survival genes have not truly abandoned us. Suddenly there was only one perceptible element in those environments that must be noticed. For thousands of people, their world was right here, right now, and they survived. When Mau is standing in the bow of his canoe in the middle of a vast, seemingly empty ocean, his world is right here, right now, and he is happy. When Ed Whitten is sitting quietly in his office staring at the wall, and his eyes begin to glow, his world is right here, right now, and he is happy. We took the wrong evolutionary path and the way we chose to process information has betrayed us. I don't think we can turn around on our own. I don't think we can learn to reduce the number of things that must be noticed in our environment and focus on the things we need to do. But the universe has many ways to get our undivided attention. There's that humongous pot of molten rock bubbling away under Yellowstone, if it blows, it will take out most of the middle of our country. Then there is that huge hunk of island off the coast of Africa teetering over the ocean, if it falls the tsunami will take out the first 10 or 15 miles of our east coast. And don't forget that 50 mile wide meteor heading our way towing a banner that reads Souix City or Bust.
Well, I guess that's everything.
Next up: Money and Mayhem OK, I really meant the Dixie Chicks are next. This is a revision.
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