(edited feb 8th)
A CFI member recommended that I listen to this interview of Michael Muthukrishna. I’ve listened to it twice and enjoyed the interview, especially the first 50 minutes about how we got here. Some fine observations that sync with my understanding. I made plenty of notes and will save them incase someone shows an interest in discussing the talk. What I want to discuss happened 51 minutes into the discussion.
Sean Carroll’s MIndscape Podcast #255
[Michael Muthukrishna on Developing a Theory of Everyone]
Can we even imagine a “Theory of Everyone,” providing basic organizing principles for society?
Michael Muthukrishna (Ph.D. in psychology) believes we can, and indeed that we can see the outlines of such a theory emerging, based on the relationships of people to each other and to the physical resources available.
Michael Muthukrishna received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of British Columbia. He is currently Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. … His new book is A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going.
“Phase transition in mental ability” - an interesting key concept, I like it. Are human’s capable of such a thing? I ask because reality challenged the entire human race in the 1960s to ‘70s. It came as a realization and warning that people had entered dangerous unchartered existential territory.
Thanks to science we were increasingly taking on Godly powers and our population had entered an exponential population explosion, while Earth’s natural systems and landscapes had limits who’s crossing would start increasingly damaging those complex systems that support human society, and if we were really careless, we could even trigger events leading to our extinction.
The choice was simple, slow down a little, use a little forethought and wisdom before rushing into the unknown. To recognize and learn from our mistakes. Learn more about Earth’s processes. Strive to work with those processes. Instead the powers-that-be decided citizens should hold nature and Earth’s needs in contempt.
While I wondered, why the rush for always too much is never enough and dying with the most toys?
I was thinking rather than facade, wouldn’t it be better spending more time attuned to living one’s own life? Focusing on projects, careers, raising our children into healthy intelligent adults, what not? Why not nurture healthy communities? The endless fascination with flash never made sense. I was breed to believe that working on the substance of who I was, mattered much much more than building facades that would inevitably collapse, leaving me empty. I thought it was a lesson most learned growing up. How wrong I was
So, instead we produced legions of abandoned lost souls we see wondering our streets. Then we act like it’s their fault. Perhaps more attention to refining one’s own talents, skills and knowledge, along with developing a sense of community, along with a slight sense of obligation to others and Earth, would have paid better dividends?
Unfortunately, grotesque over Eating Contests & burning as much gasoline as possible was in, and interest in this miracle planet Earth that created and sustained us was out.
Okay, that was a deliberate choice.
Around 50:45 Dr. Muthukrishna nailed why humanity is in this headlong rush towards our own inevitable self destruction.
Muthukrishna - 50:45 “Gore was absolutely right about the problem, but he’s crazy about the solution.”
“Like are we going to slow the economy to save the planet?
He’s crazy!”
If we do amazing*, I’m happy, I just don’t believe that, because in a world where every country is trying to out compete every other country, etc., etc., and every individual wants more than their neighbors, you’re not going to get this equilibrium sustainable whatever. …”
51:25 “Any theory of society the requires a complete shift in human nature, and not just constraining in some way is broken. It’s broken from the beginning, it’s broken before you got there.” …
- Here he disappoints in that the changes needed to start happening fifty years ago, not wait until after the North Pole lost its ice cap, and America lost its Democracy, etc., etc…
So, okay, that is the human position - But physical facts don’t lie and Earth doesn’t care about the human position.
During the 1960s/’70s there was a world wide ‘scientific wake up call’ broadcast throughout our global society. “Earth was finite !” Only by proceeding with caution could we hope for a healthy prosperous future.
This was not a political or moral or philosophical suggestion, it was a simple physical global reality check. We can look at it as Earth’s Ultimate.
Earth’s resources are limited, her powers of regeneration and repair are also limited, exceed those limits at your own peril. Given our new godlike abilities we now had the key to our own self destruction.
Earlier M.M. says nothing is in equilibrium, but that’s a gross oversimplification - our systems are dependent upon keeping within limits, dynamic equilibrium is the more accurate description of what unfolds in our lives.
About ten thousand years ago Earth entered an amazing plateau, perfect timing for an amazing species.
Had people been more realistic. As in, gaining a bit of wisdom to temper our god-like powers, we could have stretched that plateau for centuries or millennia even.
But that would have required loving this miracle planet Earth enough to learn about nature and actually caring about this Earth that created us. That’s all, nothing about zero growth, simple slowing us down long enough to digest all we were learning, and time to figure out solutions to all the inevitable mistakes and problems our progress was also creating.
Still, we were always on borrowed time. Like with the camp fire wood supply, or stars for that matter, so too with Earth’s resources. The faster and hotter we burn it, the sooner our fuel gets spent and the fire dies out.
Peddle to the metal, is the path we humans collectively choose, now that our collective willful ignorance and disregard is starting to catch up with us, many revert to petty thuggery. Unethical losers always blaming everyone else for the problems we ourselves created for ourselves.
This is the path we’ll need to reconcile ourselves with, because the runway behind us won’t to do us any good, and the runway ahead of us is turning into rubble pretty fast.
At this point we are past “saving the planet” - the game will increasing be about saving one’s own soul, read human sanity, in a world that’s going to continue unhinging. I used to think that the truly ugly days were marching at us, now it feels more like they are racing at us, so such a personal solid foundation will be needed more than ever.
It’s this saving one’s sanity that I find increasingly important, so I share, best I can.
And since I found a key way to get there I’ll continue striving to explain this vision of an appreciation for the biological reality of ourselves as evolved sensing creatures, and with our minds being created from within ourselves, and our Gods born of that same marvelous Mind. The physical reality ~ human mind divide.
————
Muthukrishna - 52:00 “Any effort to constrain human nature is broken from the beginning.”
“Degrowth, sustainability - These dangerous ideas because they will shove us back into a zero sum environment."
Excellent example of putting our mind above honest physical reality.
We’re crossing so many environmental tipping points without giving it a second thought.
That’s what most shocked me, I thought after a couple decades of climate scientists reporting on the evidence of Earth Observations, that people would learn, instead ruthless industry interests, a few billionaires and their “social movers” have guaranteed that honesty and truthful reporting, and respecting real experts, and constructive debates (requiring honesty and good faith behavior) have become obsolete and unwelcome in the halls of power and social media.
Instead the big lies have become publicly accepted political currency. With “honesty” being marginalized to a joke.
We always leave out the other side of our Faustian Bargain - I guess it’s no wonder people can’t bring themselves to discuss it, still it’s also cowardly.
Lip service here and there, but never making the effort to absorb the intellectual reality of what a warming world actually means and will look like for all existing living creatures.
Or that it could be something important enough to try and change for.
That’s why I make clear that my writing is about an Earth Centrist framing, a perspective that appreciates Earth for who she is, our only life giving miracle planet, from beginning to end.
Earth’s processes created us, and it is our body interacting with the world that creates our thoughts & beliefs, along with all our visions of God. It’s about time we absorbed that reality. Or not.
Sure there’s also the fascinating and huge pre-Earth evolutionary story of physical matter and the wonders at the limits of the smallest and largest. But in the end, those are side bar stories - the creation of the building blocks along with space and time.
While everything exciting and of real interest to humanity happened here on this Earthly stage.
That is where we can find answers to our human mysteries and mystical yearning, all built upon a foundation of sober, solid, hard won Earth and biological sciences evidence.
The philological sciences are too slippery and vague for me, and way too vulnerable to human ego’s meddling, in a way that physical sciences aren’t.
Why does it matter?
It does not matter to “saving Earth” or reversing what can’t be reversed.
Why it does matter?
Because we still have our lives to live out, and the striving for a modicum of peace and awareness, something requiring understanding oneself within the context of this Earth that created us.
How do I know?
Because I’ve been through the process.