Response to a question in a F/b discussion group, about the meaning of life

Life exists, here on Earth even if nowhere else, because it can! It is reasonable to assume that Planet Earth being what and where it is, the evolution of life here was basically inevitable. Following that view, the evolution of conscious awareness, given enough time, was also inevitable here on Earth, barring accidents of course. We humans seek meaning because we each and all live within, through, and by means of, a description of the world. For each of us individually one’s mind is the model of our universe which we have learned so far, ie since the day we came, yelling and ignorant, into the world. One’s consciousness, rememberable awareness I call it, is what it is like to be the updating of one’s own model of self in the world, a system which is needed for navigation.

Meaning, in light of this, is one’s gut perception of how things relate to oneself. Of course as social beings our relationships with others are particularly important, indeed vital for survival and sustainable thriving. But also the relationships of us to the rest of the universe are becoming increasingly relevant as our species gains ever more knowledge about the workings of the natural world due to the application of modern scientific method.

The bottom line is you have to decide for yourself what is meaningful to you, because your are who you are, not who I am, As I see it, each one of us is an instance of the universe looking at itself from a particular point of view. To me, the amazing nature of it all is gobsmackingly awesome.

But here is something to ponder:

One essential feature of how human beings originally saw themselves, based on what indigenous Australians tell us about how their people lived before the white man’s holocaust hit them in 1788, was as custodians of the country they lived on. “Looking after country” is the expression that is always used as English translation of their purpose on Earth. And they had been doing that for upwards of 60,000 years!

To put that in a Eurasian mythological (or dreamtime) context, the “Garden of Eden” was surviving and thriving in what we now call Australia right up until 1788 in the east of the continent, and up until 1829 in the west!I think we have to retrieve a big part of that understanding of responsibility for the well being of the land and ocean, ie the ecological communities which we share this planet with and upon whose survival and integrity our own survival depends absolutely!

Hypothesis about the origin of the oldest creation stories

The conjecture is that the oldest details of the creation stories have been transmitted orally from the time of the start of the last ice age.

My reason for thinking this is that the Noongar creation story tells of the sky and earth touching together at the very beginning so there was no space in between and it was very cold. Then, in summary, totem spirits confered and discussed at length about what to do after which the Ancestor spirit beings created what is now country. Each ancestor spirit performed one or more specific tasks including: raising the sky off of the land and the ocean, carving out the river valleys and establishing lakes, rivers and water sources, pushing up mountians, and then becoming the motivating incarnations which created and maintain all the living spieces as well as forming many specific locations.

There is all manner of extra detail in the story of which one of the most important to Australian indigenous peoples has been the explicitly mentioned and culturally assumed principle of looking after country: caring for the land and all the plants, creatures, and people who live on it. This is a core concept of Australian indigenous culture. It is equal to and not really separate from the absolute importance of moort (= family). Unfortunately most wadjela (= non-indigenous people living in, on, at, and near Noongar Boodja = country) simply do not understand this.

But what I am interested in here is the idea of a time when it was very cold and land appeared as the sky separated from the surface of the waters. This was the Nyidiny “Coldness” (NB “ny” is said like the “ni” in English “onion”.) I propose that this description of dry land appearing as the sky lifted away from the ocean surface at a time when it was very cold, sounds just how elders of nations living on regions of continental shelf would describe the distant past as their country became exposed by the retreat of the ocean as the last ice age came upon the world.

(Last glacial maximum (LGM).)

(Quarternary Period)

(Sahul: Greatest terrestrial extent of the Australasian continental shelf )

A very interesting question arises here: Just when did this knowledge arise and/or arrive in Australia?

NB: is it plausible that the very start of the Garden of Eden story indicates a similar “raising of the sky off the waters” to reveal a beautiful land? I believe it is.

There is little reason to doubt that the oldest suviving stories of just about every culture arose when all knowledge was passed from generation to generation through oral tradition, dance, artwork, and careful copying of behaviours. We can also accept that, apart from Australian first nations and some other indigenous peoples around the world, just about all other ancient origin stories have been affected by the stories of victorious clans who became the ruling classes of the neighbouring societies they conquered. I am implying that the Garden of Eden story and similar others have been overlayed with patriarchal rationalisations of the terrible inequalities which resulted from the accumulations and theft of moveable and portable wealth such as accrued to herders and settled farmers after the end of the last ice age.

In the case of indigenous Australian peoples, I am thinking that much of the continental shelf around Australia does not extend far out from the coast except the north where, as the Sahul link above shows there was a vast area stretching from the north west of Australia (the Kimberley) stretching northwards almost to Timor and across to New Guinea and including the whole of the current Gulf of Carpenteria.

(Sea level changes over the last 200,000 years)

There is evidence of human beings living on the Australian continent 65K years ago, which was an intermediate glacial maximum time before the colder, last glacial maximum (LGM), of about 20K years ago. Therefore it is reasonable to accept that people lived for thousands of years on continantal land that became exposed over a period of several thousand years leading up to the LGM. From the LGM to the present the graph shows that global sea level has been rising consistently and a fair bit faster than the sea level had previously fallen to the lowest level of between 120 to 130 metres below current sea level.

The danger of utilitarianism

Intrinsic worth  versus pure self interest –
 the shortcomings of utilitariansim

It seems to me that maybe the assertion of intrinsic worth is the cornerstone for any comprehensive ethical system. Religious value systems posit a single supreme being or community of divine beings as the source of value but in the modern era this is not really open to reasonably sceptical people.

I have my doubts that any purely utilitarian way of thinking will really satisfy all reasonable requirements:

• the apologists for the rich and powerful (eg so called ‘rational economists’) are too strongly tempted to rationalise the greed and excesses of their heroes leading them to support ‘utility monsters’, for example the corporate executive cowboys and bandits who vote themselves millions of dollars in ‘bonuses’ bearing no relation to the value of any services performed; and
• purely utilitarian thinking ultimately makes people into objects because there is nothing to counter balance the alienating efficacy of the rational instrumental approach to relationships entailed in a purely utilitarian worldview.

I agree with the writer Terry Pratchett (of Discworld fame) that ultimately there is only one sin: treating another person as a thing! *** (f1.0) I believe that the assertion of intrinsic worth is very reasonable in the light of evolutionary theory about genes and memes and by observations of human behaviour in situations where people can be held responsible for their actions. The assertion of intrinsic worth is none the less exactly that: an assertion, which must be made as the result of conscious decision making. It involves a personal risk, ie that in being consistent with one’s principles one increases the opportunities for others to cheat on you, but the payoff is in experiencing an affirmation of life and an ever deeper insight into how other people ‘tick’ and how the world works.

***************

*** This means that the bureaucratic ordering and functioning of work organisations is ethical only if sufficient attention is paid to the intrinsic worth and needs of people doing their jobs. That is, the ‘thing’ is the position not the person! It is the role, with its entailed authority and responsibilities. This is true in all cases, ie government and non government.

Two Big Projects which will improve our world

I have many ideas about how we can improve our world.
Two of these are bees which buzz loudly in my “bonnet”.

#1  The conversion of all bureaucracies into sustainable and robust democratic entities.

#2  Double or Triple the Biological Productivity of the Oceans. 

Changing bureaucracies to democracies

In my opinion if we take seriously Karl Popper’s explanation of the relative success of democracy then we need to put its underlying implications clearly, then start working on how to change the world! 

The starkest way to say this is: Any organisation or social structure which is not overtly a democracy is, or will become, entrenched authoritarian and, either overtly or covertly, a dictatorship of some sort. Authoritarian social entities, be they boy scout groups, private or public companies, established churches, organised crime syndicates, armies, or government agencies, all achieve their authoritarian control by disempowering the maximum number of people that have anything to do with them. This means that people – particularly the disempowered – are treated as things rather than equal others and this is the very essence of evil.

I have come to the conclusion that authoritarianism is possibly the single most evil legacy from the pre scientific universe.

The thing is, it implies that bureaucracy per se is evil. Many people will smile and say “Of course! Just look what happens; just look at the way bureaucracies stuff things up all the time!” I would certainly never deny this. Other people will weep however because they have experienced more of the deep frustration and powerlessness that corporate entities can inflict. Many more will neither smile nor weep, they just shrug and say: “Don’t bother, there is no way anybody is going to listen to you; don’t waste your breath, don’t waste your time trying to change things in this place because you can’t beat the system.”

Why is this so?

Karl Popper’s reasoning about forms of government led him to see the fundamental  problem with non democratic social structures is that they cannot deal fairly and effectively with the unforeseen negative consequences of laws or policies. Furthermore, the underlying reason for this is that nobody knows the future. 

I have seen a honcho shake her head at this idea – that nobody knows the future, but I’m sure that being female had nothing to do with it. I think many of our leaders and corporate superstars will want to assert that ‘we *can* make reasonable predictions!’ and this is true, after all that is what they are highly paid for. Popper’s insight though is that, no matter how good the policy, there will always be unforeseen consequences because in any particular situation there will always be more things that can happen then we want to occur, and very often there will be more things that can happen, sooner or later, than we can possibly know about before the event. And as KP pointed out there is as much chance of an unforeseen outcome being negative in effect for some one or more people as there is  of being positive. 

‘So what?’ you ask, and the answer is simple: any unexpected positive outcome is a bonus proudly adopted by the authors of the policy if ever they hear about it, but negative outcomes are not so easily acknowledged by those in charge. This is true not just for those at the top of a command structure but usually applies right down the ladder also because nobody likes to give their boss bad news. Even in the most benign of organisations something not going right with the system means extra work for whoever ‘touched it last’.

Is anyone to blame for this?

It will always be possible to point the finger in particular situations and of course the practise of hanging scapegoats ‘out to dry’ is a time honoured way of shifting the wrathful gaze of the god-like ones onto a sacrificial offering. Popper’s great contribution to our understanding of this though is to point out that unforeseen negative consequences of policies are inevitable. Modern science has the concept of entropy which states that within any closed system the amount of energy not available to do useful work always increases. Not many systems are totally enclosed though. The wider implication is that within any system we have to do with, good order and useful energy can only be maintained or increased if the overall disorder of the environment [ie the rest of the world] is increased.

Luckily for us the universe is a very big place and is expanding  all the time. Even more lucky for us is that we live on a planet near a star we call the Sun which provides a continuous flow of light and heat towards us which is more than enough energy to provide for our needs for the next billion years or so. What this means is that if we act in a reasonably intelligent manner we should pretty much always be able to deal effectively and fairly with the unforeseen negative consequences of our actions and policies.

What this requires though is that we always work together and help each other wherever and whenever this is feasible. Cynics may smirk and call this idealistic but I maintain that it is the fundamental basis of human success. Indeed the very genius of our species, is precisely our ability to work together and help each other. I would give it the status of a natural law!

to be continued …

Radically increasing the biological productivity of the oceans

This can be achieved through the creation of artificial upwellings of deep water at or near whatever locations the increase is required to occur. The reason artificial upwellings can cause the increase of biological productivity in the ocean is because surface water of the deep oceans becomes depleted of nutrients as micro algae, AKA phytoplankton, absorb whatever they can out of the water. Phytoplankton are found mainly in the surface layers of ocean water because, of course, they need sunlight for the photosynthesis which powers their growth. Sunlight however is absorbed by sea water such that 90% of it is removed for each 75 metres it penetrates. This means only 1% of sunlight entering vertically in the tropics can reach 150 metres depth.

A fundamental difference between the deep ocean and dry land, apart from the wetness of the water, is what happens when animals expel wastes from their bodies. In summary: in the ocean shit sinks! So also do any uneaten body parts that don’t float. This is altogether different from dry land where faeces falls to the surface where it can be washed into the soil by rain or rolled into balls by dung beetles, etc.

Of course rivers and creeks carry nutrients from islands and continents into the oceans and also there are submarine volcanoes and mid ocean spreading centres where hot rocks are exposed and water brings out dissolved minerals. But most of the ocean is hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from dry land, and the photic zone – where sufficient light penetrates to support photosynthesis is on average about 4 kilometres above the sea floor.

The natural processes which take nutrient laden deep, cold, water up to the photic zone are upwellings caused by cyclonic wind systems, and by winds interacting with shorelines, and by deep currents impinging on islands and continental shelf. Human beings can fairly easily induce artificial upwellings by making use of natural wave motions and/or the power of the wind. Small and localised upwellings can be produced using a pipe, with a one-way foot valve, hanging down from a buoy on the surface. Wave motion alone will raise and lower the pipe causing a pumping action which brings deep water to the surface. This has been demonstrated to work causing an increase of phytoplankton where the deep water mixes with the warmer surface water.

A much bigger upwelling could be created using wind driven barges, pontoons, or other mechanisms that are driven in convoy around an endless circle. The circulating convoy will create a gyre at the surface resulting in the circulating water moving away from the circle due to its tangential inertia. Water from below will be drawn up to replace the outward flowing surface water and this arrangement could be increased in size to create upwellings of enormous extent. On the other hand many smaller upwellings using this method could be made to create a current of cooler, nutrient rich water such as, for example, could perhaps protect coral reefs from bleaching.

It is also quite feasible that large scale artificial upwellings in the areas of the tropics where tropical cyclones, taiphoons, and hurricanes are born could could reduce the numbers of such storm systems which, otherwise, are increasing around the world both in strength and frequency. IMO there is potential here to save many thousands of lives and reduce the amount of damage which is set to increase greatly this century as a direct consequence of global warming.