The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

The world is made of language, and we build it by constructing narratives. Storytelling has always been a feature in humankind, and is older than the technology of writing by a large margin. By narrative, human beings map out individual and collective consciousness. One specific kind of narrative is nowadays derided by our over-rational framework of thought, or sometimes seen as literary affectation: mythical narrative. These stories were - and are - used to make sense of the world before science could see the world through the lens of equations and theories. I propose now a comparative reading of specific points in Greek and Judeo-Christian mythologies; since our current "globalized" world was forged by peoples tributary to those traditions, that should bear a light on present-day societies and allow some speculations.

But first let's have a look on the recent development of so-called Western civilization, specifically the trend of power institutions opposing knowledge. This pattern is a fixture not only of past church-dominated Europe but also of media-intelligentsia-controlled world up to the present, and one cannot help but suspect something must kept hid. Maybe we can surmise what it is. We should start by looking at the heretics. Galileo was persecuted for endorsing Copernicus' challenge of geocentrism, bothering religious views that our planet is at the center of "creation". Darwin is hated by religious fanatics up to today, intriguingly, for showing that our species is not the center of "creation", as a matter of fact, all species evolve in time. Freud caused un uproar in a religious conservative society for attempting to marginalize the concept of soul, and bring human biology upfront; Hannah Arendt observed how the biological process is denied back to Antiquity in Western worldview, while "primitive" cultures not only embrace but sacralize the "thisworldness" of our nature. Marx went beyond in stating this biological process, in the form of labor, is appropriated by the powerful, those with the phyisical means for production, since they can generate much more wealth than what's needed to pay - luckily - a living wage. Needless to say, no greater effort has ever been dedicated to demonize a single writer. If these few ideas bothered Western establishment, it begins to become clear what it is must be kept "secret". But we move ahead.

Or actually back. To comparative mythology as mentioned. The stated aim is to show that while a widespread notion tells us polytheist beliefs are "primitive" or at least "archaic", the complex system of deities and heroes of Antiquity offered a much richer symbolic rendering of reality, at which one may attempt interpretations. In line with Darwin, as discussed above, Greek anthropogony sees not humans as copies of a supreme deity. We are the creation (or at least protegés) of Prometheus, a titan who becomes at odds with the sitting deity, Olympian Zeus, exactly over us: he is punished for stealing the Olympian fire for us, since he thought we seemed so helpless. This fire is obviously that "godlike capability" that despite Hamlet's warnings has basically fusted in us unused ever since: the intellect (well, statistically). His punishment was twofold: his brother Epimetheus, who apparently had left us vulnerable when donning out gifts to the animals, received Pandora as gift, and from her box sprung out all the evils, before the lid was closed leaving only hope inside; then Prometheus himself is bound to a rock in the Caucasus, where vultures would constantly nip at his tasty and ever-regenerating liver. But Prometheus was all-seeing, and he knew his torment, or Zeus's reign, would not last forever; he told the mortal maid Io, desired of Zeus and chased around the world by a gadfly of Hera's sending, that one of her descendants would be the son of Zeus stronger than himself that would defeat him; maybe he meant Hercules by that, he's a descendant of Io and the freer of Prometheus.

In judeo-christian tradition, Zeus becomes basically himself (Latin: Deus) with no jealous wife; the rebellious figure is taken by Lucifer, the castaway angel. His tempting man with knowledge of good and evil is analogous to the stealing of the fire. The promised redemptor is now called a messiah, and there is a moment of truth analogous with Zeus' toppling in the likeness of Armageddon. Apparently, at the inception of monotheism, the belief of being descendants of mythical Io might be attested by linguistical derivation into Yovah, Job, Jesu (later ahead), or even names John and Joseph. Io also settled in Egypt, where hebrews were said to having been kept captive.

Even in cases where there is no possible derivation or contagion, similarities between mythologies are observed. One example is the narrative of a great flood, which is indeed present in both seen above. That must be a simple consequence of the fact all individuals of our species have the same brain, and the same structures and archetypes will be realized by diverse semantic layers, which means: the same story is being told by the same brain. It's as if our genetic memory, the fact that our own genes are part of a gigantic system spreading over millennia, store some kind of "master narrative". One might be reminded that two percent of our genome actually encode proteins, almost all of it seeming "inactive". Besides, this system is entangled with the rest of the universe, that is, it is embedded in a greater system, so by predicting the behavior of the heavenly bodies, and with the aid of some plants and fungi that alter consciousness, and open the "doors of perception" in Huxley's terms, myths and oracles could really foretell the future. In current Physics research, quantum gravitation theory abandons the concept of a time dimension, meaning all there is is a pulsating "quantum machine" or covariant field. It seems only a matter of time to see that physical relations determine chemical phenomena, and thence biological ones, and thence human consciousness, social relations and the flow of History. We are but parts of that "mad machinery" after all.

But let us delve further and examine a few other traits of both Western mythical narratives and the evolution of these societies that might help us recognize or clarify a pattern. What we call "primitive" or, more aptly put, neolithical societies were nomad and matriarchal; maybe that's what was called the Golden Age in Greece and later Paradise. Nomadism helped better manage natural resources, is in line with a natural yearning for novelty, and allowed for greater genetic variance. Sedentary societies are the seed of imperialism and ultimately capitalism, since after established a given people sacks and enslaves its neighbors, inters treasures, alienates labor. Take the difference, for instance, between, highlands empires such as the Incas and lowlands nomadic tribes in what was deemed to be called South America. Then we see the fact that our hierarchic, violent societies are patriarchal or male-dominated; it is speculated at least that primordial societies were matriarchal. The least that can be said is that such form of social organization makes much more biological sense, since we carry in each cell a structure containing matrilineal genetic material, the mitochondrion, which also provides the cell energy. From an evolutionary standpoint, the centrality of the female is expressed in the fact that it is the egg, and then the womb, that allowed animals to thrive out of water. In a free society, women should choose their mates because it's their biological prerogative; in capitalist societies, the control of women is manifest both in the power exerted over them by means of wealth concentration and in controlling their wombs, since endogamic matings led to generational accumulation (if to genetic degeneration also).


Now we go back to the question of the great "secret". At some point in the development of monotheist tradition, new narratives appeared claiming that the messiah had indeed come, and spread a word of peace and equality, of rejecting money (the root of all evil or Pandora's box), being then eliminated by the authorities of the Roman Empire. A gregarious anarchist religion started to develop upon those principles, and as it grows, the authorities of the Roman Empire, this time historically, act to sabotage the movement by adopting Christianity as official imperial credo. From thence, this "church" worked as a leverage for power and hindrance to knowledge, as seen. Very curious. It should be reminded that Socrates was sentenced to death by the powerful, pretty much like the messiah-character, for peddling truth or independent thinking. Or that presently Marxist ideology and ideologues are persecuted for opening people's eyes to the fact that they are being lied to so they go on serving their masters game, when all they have to perpetuate the game is precisely that consent. Curious and curiouser.


It should be clear by now that only one thing is being kept secret: there is no secret whatsoever. All there is is a perennial, if ever transforming, system of mystification that dupes people into accepting power structures as inevitable, so the production game keeps going, war efforts are justified on very flimsy grounds, oppressive relations are reproduced. A very well crafted collective illusion is established, and as in Plato's Cave, those that can see it for what it is are deemed insane by those who choose to believe the shadows are true. So if we see the prediction of a communist society by marxist historic materialism tenet in tandem with this now-proposed unified physical mechanism and also mythical narratives of the end of the reign of Zeus, End of Times and Paradise Regained, it follows that if the meek should stand a chance at inheriting the Earth, all that is needed is dismantling a propaganda system. In more prosaic, economic terms, it suffices that the powerless realize they are falling for a gigantic Ponzi scheme in which they feed their vital energy in trade of bare survival, and maybe some illusion of prosperity. Every Ponzi scheme collapses when people lose faith in it and stop joining at the bottom. From that realization to building new horizontal structures is a matter of consequence. But there is no reason to doubt Prometheus when he foretells the Zeus and all he represents - tyranny, imperialism, oppression, patriarchy, hierarchy, thought control - will come down eventually. If any word must be spread it should be this: QUESTION!

Two-Layered Human Reality

What is reality? That question might sound both deep and nonsensical. Being constantly immersed in what we take reality to be, for most people the answer seems tautological: what's out there, stop daydreaming and face "reality", that is, find a position in society. But how real is this reality?

First of all, we have the universe. If we think that human beings should disappear tomorrow (as sometimes it seems we are trying to), few but postmodern philosophers would disagree that the sun would still be there, earth, moon and so on and so forth; nature would stand a chance and second nature, man-made space, would be a senseless jumble of concrete and steel and plastic and printed circuit.

Then we have the world. The world is not physical, it is made of interactions between humans, and most of all, the world is made of language. We live in a web of interactions which is quite independent from our choice, this web has actually been established historically by powerful people, who have also always, unsurprisingly, benefited from it. Nowadays this web is almost ubiquitous: few individuals escape the same capitalist social structure. Then we have language, which as I have posited, is fed back into the system; unfortunately, while real knowledge follows a "spontaneous" feed-back loop, meaning that it must be sought after by individuals, there is a "forced" loop called indoctrination: a continuous reinforcement of false notions that underprop the aforementioned web of interactions. 

Since the spreading of the web came by means of colonization of virtually the entire dry land surface by Europeans, one institution is obviously a great suspect for that process of indoctrination: the churches. Monotheist Western faith sports all the tenets necessary for a hierarchical unjust society: the inevitability and unquestionability of "God's will", labor as a punishment for seeking knowledge, rebelliousness as a characteristic of the fearful devil, fear of life instead of joy of living.

Of course, after the system was well established, and the supernatural admonitions just did not scare as much anymore, or reach the other hemisphere as effectively, a communications system began to be set in motion, so that the majority of the people are exposed to one version of the facts, making independent interpretation seem extravagant, and justifiably repressed whenever necessary, and consummerist needs are spread. In that sense, conformity replaces faith, and self-satisfaction, or some ideal of comfort, seems to replace fear. Fear is essential to any authoritarian system, but now it is not fear of the otherworldly, but simple fear of dispossession and starvation. So effective is indoctrination that most people participate willingly, if not enthusiatically, in an oppression system, and feel the need to defend it from questioning, even if one of the victims and not of the perpetrators.

Is there any reality in that "reality" we are told to accept, after all?

Eager Information

Recently, after years of almost not recalling my dreams at all, I have been experiencing intense oneiric activity, always related to complicated concepts such as the ones I have adumbrated in previous texts, and sometimes those dreams are not pleasant at all. It almost seems as if some content is trying to express itself, and I am compelled to write it down in some – hopefully – orderly fashion.

Last of such dreams involves exactly that concept, in a wider sense: the idea that not only language exists in potentiality and is trying to be expressed through human cognition, but also the unfolding of the universe is a process of potential information struggling to be expressed or actualized. Think of all heavier atoms that were available as a potentiality developing from the primordial one-proton hydrogen; of stars clustering around a black hole to form a galaxy; of planets and satellites forming from scattered “stardust”. Now think of crystals forming, expressing a specific geometry from amorphous magma in the formation of our lithosphere; of water, that simple and almost magical geometry appearing from two elements only; of an atmosphere developing its layered structure.

With living beings this is particularly striking. First of all, the potentiality of life emerging from the proposed “primordial soup”, which recent reasearch shows might have come as an inevitable consequence of thermodynamic laws. Think now of single-cell organisms as replicating machines, but also as a step towards the eukariotic cell, in which two strains of genetic material, nuclear (combinational) and mitochondrial (matrilineal) allow for variability and evolution. Think of each egg or sperm “hoping” to be lucky enough to form a new organism; of each gene “hoping” not to be silenced and express itself; of each individual “hoping” to pass its genetic information ahead; of complex forms of life “waiting” for its turn to emerge from simpler organisms. Of this thinking animals that humans are or should be already “promised” by the due course of evolution.

I see no reason, to come to an end, to believe that, while the evolution of the universe is deterministic, evolution of life is random and unpredictible. Of course it is way beyond our powers to grasp both the model and enough data to understand and simulate such mechanism, what determines a genetic mutation and which mutations lead to specific differentiation. Let us hope we never do, it could lead to unsettling developments. What I propose is exactly the opposite: human beings should “go with the biological flow”, and not think that thinking makes us a separate entity, least of all the semblance of a supreme creator. We are a image of the universe in that mathematical relations of the cosmos are reflected in our micro- and macroscopical structures: we are an element of this crazy fractal. Evolution will eventually make us stuff for future researchers of another species.      

Semantic Feedback and Holographic Time Machine

In previous texts I have posited the idea of a biological mechanism of History. There is a missing element in that equation, though; an important cog in that mechanism: semantics. We are not only our genetic information, we leave records, unlike any other living organism (unless further research finds that such a feature is not unique to us). That means that human beings that live today have available to them semantic information from the past, beginning with cave paintings up to books, to internet pages and movies and music. Which leads to the corollary that we combine genetic and semantic information. But semantic information comes from individuals that had their own genetic information and were exposed to their semantic information in their times. It should be clear that as genetic information combines and progresses, semantic information is fed back into the system. It should follow naturally that semantic information can display exponential growth. It is clear that this process allows the building of accumulated knowledge through generations, and in an accelerating pace, which is demonstrable, which is also true for information that runs counter to knowledge, meaning obscurantism, a process that also hardly need arguing when religious fundamentalism is rampant at such a stage of our development as a species. It should be added that prior to the advent of writing transmission was oral: linear and not fed back.

That should take us a step further. For that I will briefly expose a concept that, even though it is not needed here, and consists of speculative theoretical Physics, affords at least an apt image for my reasoning. It comes from Rosen's paper "A Neo-Intuitive proposal for Kaluza-Klein Unification": universe is building itself constantly, the very dimensions, or dimensionality, of the universe are being built as it progresses; cosmogony did not take place "at the beginning", it is ever unfolding. By his reasoning, universe starts as a provisional zero-dimension point and a provisional, ever-forming, time dimension; when that point has infinite density, a provisional one-dimensional line begins to form, along with another provisional time dimension; that leads to infinite density in the line, then to a provisional two-dimensional plane that reaches infinite density, and then to a provisional three-dimension space and provisional time, which we experience. Quantum gravitation theory works with the absence of a time dimension and non-continuous space, but maybe those two ideas might be reconciled eventually; all we need here is the idea that space-time is emergent, which is common to both. The conclusion is simple: if three-dimensional space is being built, a past state of the universe, in a definite point in time, is two-dimensional, because only a plane was "complete", or at least it can only be captured in a two-dimensional image. That is clear for a photograph, but is also true for a text (or movie or written music): that goes with Jakobson's theory of the two axis of language (metaphoric and metonymic).

All that complicated stuff leads us to back where we began. If History is an unfolding biological-semantic mechanism, how do we know the past? Can we predict the future? Let the future alone for a while, but knowing the past obviously depends on the amount of information we can grasp (to discuss the Theory of Information as applied to Physics as applied to History is a good hint for further exploration to lie ahead). Here I introduce the concept of a hologram: a two-dimensional image that carries three-dimensional information. In order to build a hologram, one needs several "pictures" from several perspectives. In order to have a hologram of the past, one obviously needs pictures, or texts, from several perspectives. That is why History is told by the victors: controlling the master narrative is tantamount to controlling power. We cannot tell truth about colonization if we listen not to the natives, which should be obvious. But semantic information is not the only one available; genetic information can tell a lot about the past, if only it were not always the white-European "man" researching how "primitive" populations evolved. It should be easy to see how ruling elites in Latin America are of European ascent - no microscope is needed, actually. So maybe Biology and Language and History should hang out more often.

What about the future? Basically the same is true: predictability comes from availability of data, in this case we need a set of holographic pasts to recognize patterns. Just as in meteorology, which deals with "chaotic" processes itself, we need good models and solid data. Of course in a competitive, capitalist, hierarchic society, such calculations would serve perpetuating power (and that process would be fed back too!), but I have stated that an egalitarian society is inevitable, or rather a certain thinker that used this concept of "calculating the future" has stated that; you all know his name. I have also stated elsewhere that prophecies and oracles could be taken serious as symbolic narratives that arise from observation of the celestial bodies and consumption of consciousness-altering substances. It is striking to me that Greek myth predicts the toppling of Zeus, that Old Testament predicts Armageddon, and Maya prophecy predicts some kind of end of the world to take place (and exactly in the period we are living). Nevertheless, after all these digressions, my hope is that we reach this new age of egalitarianism and simply stop being so analytical; that we let life flow. Until then, we live one day at a time and try to enjoy the ride.

How hard is it to interpret reality?

• 
  
• "I've got electric light. And I've got second sight. I've got amazing powers of observation."
• Nobody Home, Pink Floyd

It may seem convenient to some to make reality seem extremely complicated.

That is actually very easy to achieve for those in power.

Say this and that about economy using impenetrable jargon and people will never grasp that well, basically "economy" is a scam and we have been collectively and historically duped into getting the rich ever richer.

Sell the great stage of human affairs as a moral issue. Narratives of good vs. evil have always been at the root of military aggression. Despite being ridiculed in logic theory, this kind of perspective never lost its appeal, since it leads to hate, that is such a manipulative tool that it seems needless to delve further. Here it seems that reality is being made less complex, and that is true in a sense. But actually introducing an external agency called "evil" complexifies unnecessarily, and dishonestly, a simple perspective of contending powers. It is a mystified, diversionist narrative even if it's simplist.

These are but examples of a pattern. Make things look abstruse and have people wondering what's the mystery behind these inexplicable events. That's basically keeping people in awe over the fact that they are kept in awe so the system might work.

When one is concerned about not being misled, that is apparently all that is required do "escape Plato's Cavern", as it were. It is surprisingly simple to share Roger Water's "amazing powers of observation": it starts by not buying the most readily available lies. Obviously, active seeking of reliable information is necessary for any interpretation of phenomena; nevertheless, the proverbial wisdom of the countryman, or Rousseau's concept of "the good savage man", show that being detached from the insanity we call civilized life, realizing life is simple and living accordingly, might suffice regardless of rational endeavors to explain the world.

We need not jettison our reason and go naked into the forest (that's dangerous). But it is possible to escape this predicament in which our rational framework is always seeking solutions for problems our rational framework has created. Instrumental reason in itself is neutral, but in a society that everything is subordinated to amassing profit and power, that instrumental reason should be so comes to no surprise. Establishing a society on egalitarian principles at the same time depends upon and is a condition for the development of a new awareness, in which that instrumental reason will reach so far in explaining the universe, life and society, collapsing all fields of knowledge into one, that the inevitable conclusion must be the same: life is simple and we have been complicating it with taboos and mystifications that serve the same system in which very few exert power to to keep and gain more power. And of course, we can learn a lot from those living heirs of the neolithic, the south-american tribes: we could be cyber-natives.   

The Great Motor

So-called Western Civilization's great rational project has a fundamental flaw: knowledge became so fragmented that it's easy to lose the grasp of a wholeness. Levels of analysis are mistaken for independent levels of reality.

Social sciences or History should not be dissociated from biology, for example, since human societies are composed of human organisms, and it is the aim of this text to propose a relation between them and extrapolate from there.

One tenet of Karl Marx's theory is historical materialism, the concept that History progresses by dialectical oppositions in a sort of deterministic mechanism that, according to him, would lead to a final communist stage. When one thinks that human affairs depend on contingent acts of free will, that proposition seems absurd, since "one cannot predict the future", but if we see the whole trajectory of our species (and all species) as a big biological mechanism, it ceases to be so.

Imagine yourself raised up in the stratosphere, observing human behaviors like building towers or raiding a neighboring land. It is just like one of those computer games of simulated civilizations. Our actual world also unfolds as a "simulation", meaning we act out what is embedded in our genes all along. Human behavior might perhaps be deterministic, only our "mental dimension" having some degree of freedom, but that is beside the current point.

If we consider that in all complex (eukariotic) life matrilineal genetics are inscribed basically in every cell, it is tempting to view the power house of that biological/historical mechanism in the structure called mitochondrion, that not only carries genetic information, but "generates" energy for the cell.

If we look back at our societies, patriarchy, controlling of women and reproduction, has always been fundamental for a system of accumulation. Not only questions of inheritance and legitimacy apply here, but "good (matrilineal) genetics" was always the gate to good opportunities, either by favoritism or racist exclusion. Controlling the uterus was the key to generational accumulation.
 
The problem with that genetic selection is that, as it happens with pedigree dogs, endogamic mating eventually leads to degenerated genetics. It seems the forty-fifth president of the Empire dedicates himself to prove only that, not unlike Andersen's king. It is a medical fact at least that white people are more prone to systemic disease.

As that process progresses, it is almost safe to assume that not only the genetics of the great accumulators degenerate, but also that the whole Ponzi scheme of capitalist accumulation will be revealed and discredited. The point where wealth is most concentrated is likely to be the point when capitalism starts to collapse. That development depends on dismantling a set of mystifications by which the powerful keep the powerless in awe. The system needs that people live in fear, so they can exploit that fear. Monotheist faith plays a big part, but media and academia do their job of making the simple seem complicated. When we say the phrase "to earn a living", we imply that life is not a right, but a privilege, so one must feed his vital energy into the Ponzi scheme in trade of bread crumbs and shut up.

Not only political struggle is needed. A philosophical framework must emerge that takes into account new scientific developments towards the aforementioned wholeness of perception. It might seem a towering task, but in fact it all comes down to eliminating the legacy of a "civilization" that needs to negate the biological process for selfish reasons, and reconciliate with our animality. This time having good rational explanations for all observable phenomena, and applying knowledge for life and not for profit. It could be a "final stage" of development for human society indeed. 

Tom Zé - A Felicidade (Happiness)