A New Reality Emerging

Since I mention “God” so much in each title, I put “God” in quotes because I wish to make a distinction between “God” as a humanly developed concept or ideology, and God which can only be “proven” as consistent with nature and reality. Or perhaps Lao Tzu said it best: “The way that can be named is not the true way”.

At any rate there is a parallel in a statement made by Howard Bloom in Global Brain that seems very similar to a statement attributed to Jesus in the Bible. First the statement by Jesus in Matthew 10:34-38:

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword.
“For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
“And a man’s foes shall be those of his own household”

This is an interesting bit of scripture when we compare it to Bloom’s statement in Global Brain:

“Among the Yanomamo, the biggest clashes are between family members–and between the groups they head. How could evolution favor feuds which current theory says should never be? Creative bickering has been honed by natural selection because, in pitting father against son and brother against brother, it opens up new avenues to genes, clans, cliques, and species. it slices through genetic bonds to generate diversity”.

Whoa! Was Jesus talking evolution? The two statements are very similar. In light of what I’ve already written, it would make very much sense if there was an emissary from a higher power, be it God, UFO, or whatever, who taught us a truth consistent with what we are now learning about genetic diversity!

Go back to the Tower of Babel. What was the problem? The people were capable of excessive organization while ignoring external feedback. “Nothing they imagine will be withheld from them”. (Genesis 11)

The solution therefore, would NOT be to organize them and unify them, because that would create a totalitarian organization that would destroy all possibility of adaptation and change. The solution, while maintaining freedom of choice, would be to create processes that actually forced them into constant adaptation and individual speciation, exactly as Bloom pointed out!

I read Philip Slater’s EarthWalk back in 1974(find it and read it if you can. He has also written a recent book called The Chrysalis Effect, which has some more good stuff in it). You can find an excerpt titled “The Trap Of Purity”
http://philipslater.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/trap-purity/

This excerpt of Slater’s ties into my essays, because it points out that we seek “purity” in our selves and our social systems, when in fact, it is our lack of purity that allows for our adaptation to parts of different systems.

Back to EarthWalk. As I read that book, ‘way back in 1974, I suddenly realized that virtually adaptive systems, from organisms to civilizations, followed that very same pattern! I sat in college Biology class in 1980 and showed it to my professor, who of course rejected it, but it later turned into a science called epigenetics! I was already there in 1980!

Here’s what Slater wrote that so fascinated me:

“A system….needs occasionally to achieve a perception of the universe, including itself, through eyes other than its own, since its sense organs are designed to exclude most information from awareness. The only way to achieve this is to extrude a bit of circuitry which will evolve a perceptual apparatus different from the parent circuit and hence inhale a different vision. But at this point the parent circuit can no longer ‘understand’ the extruded segment except with reference to residual similarities between the segment;s present and original circuitries. In other words, the more information the segment acquires , the less able the parent circuit will be able to absorb it. The process must therefore be repeated. A prophet is extruded into the desert, obtains a vision, and returns. he is then either rejected or his vision absorbed into a new circuitry evolved i n the parent system. A new prophet is extruded, and so on….”

My biology professor in 1980 had stated that he saw no purpose for viruses in evolution, and I suddenly remembered Slater’s words above. Of course there’s a purpose for viruses! They inform evolution directly in the same general fashion as the “prophet’ described above!

Think about this in light of earlier essays. If a system develops, it will tend to look toward exactly the same “solutions” that worked earlier, and if they fail, it will tend to simply apply them with ever greater fervency, greater intensity, until either a new form of equilibrium is reached, or the system simply collapses from the “chaos” created by its inability adapt.

“God” had shown an ability to foresee this problem at the Tower of Babel, by simply confusing their language. They would then be forced to deal with the environment as individuals rather than as a group, but what was needed even more was something that caused them to splinter and “speciate” as they tried harder to find unity.

In biological systems, we now see viruses moving from species to species, “cutting and pasting” DNA from each species and building a “mutant” DNA that infects organisms like humans. The “extruded bits of circuitry” we call viruses actually force us to adapt biologically to external information, causing reactions in our levels of intelligence and our reproductive processes.

But Slater had introduced this as the pattern by which cultures change as well.

Notice the similarity here to what Hoffer wrote in regard to “uniformity” among beliefs:

“What the prophet sees in his vision is of trivial significance–it is how he sees that is important. He is not merely a scout exploring unknown territory–not the experimenter but the experiment. What he innovates is his own internal structure.”

This is basically what happens also with viral DNA. It innovates its own internal structure, the DNA that will affect the replicative operations of the organism’s cells.
Does the organism “plan” this somehow? Not at all. Is it the result of random mutation? NO. The cells themselves, upon infection by a virus, seem to have lost resistance to it, and the virus itself can simply attach to the cell by matching “ports” that “lock” it onto the cell, where the cell then allows its entry, escorting it like a Brinks Truck transporting gold, to the nucleus of the cell.

The nucleus then reveals its own DNA, which then combines with the viral DNA, creating a “mutant” DNA that is a kind of blueprint called RNA, which then begins to manufacture copies of itself, which then causes the cell to rupture, spreading to other cells. Notice that this is all done by the process of copying , or “replicating” as Dawkins pointed out, being the chief process by which life reproduced. In the viral and cellular DNA linking up, a mutation was deliberately created, it appears, and then spreads to other cells until it reaches a threshold where it threatens the organism , which then seeks to “recognize” it and neutralize its effects on the organism. Not random mutation, but specifically orchestrated mutations provided by the virus doing what its was designed to do.

Notice that the “memory’ of the invader is retained, which means the organism has increased its “intelligence” by keeping the antibodies that neutralized the invader. But the viral DNA has now interacted with the cells to alter their replicative process, so the organism has both adapted and increased its intelligence by increased memory for future immunity. The system has been forced to alter ONLY to the degree necessary for adaptation and reproductive purposes.

Notice that both “recognition” and “memory” are increased in the organism by this process.

Here is how Howard Bloom describes the process:

“Viral assaults devastated bacterial colonies–yet they tested bacterial intelligence, tweaked bacterial ingenuity, and amplified bacterial skills. Viruses also pried loose genetic pages from the creatures they attacked and inserted them in the DNA library of those they visited next while on their predatory rounds. Thus they became couriers through which bacteria swapped molecular pamphlets of new tricks and old collective memories”.

From viruses to bacteria to multi-celled organisms to humans, we have been forced to deal with change by recognition and neutralization, in other words, WARFARE.

Not only cultures and civilizations, but cells and bacteria, have traded information by a process of war. As McLuhan said, “All wars are fought with the latest technology”.

“From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”
James 4:1.

The simple fact is, religions and governments, by their strategy for unity and centralization, for agreement and reduction of dissent and disagreement, actually work in opposition to truth.