Hamlet seeks to “end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Hamlet offers a mere thousand; how many have you? To me, almost infinite seem our bodies’ ways to suffer. But, I wonder, is there a number? Is all suffering One?
Our Cosmos starts with One. A Big Bang, nearly 14 billion years ago. A singularity of space-time rides, faster than the speed of light. Another single that presides; perhaps a moral right, if its unique source is Divine.
Humans are mammals. We care for our young; unlike fish where sperm meets egg in the sea, and the parents do little to look after the little ones. Amphibians start the process of moving reproduction inside; at least some of them fertilise the egg inside the body, though many still fertilise in the water, like fish. Reptiles have internal fertilisation, but once fertilised and with the protection of a shell, the egg is laid. Reptile parents will provide some care in how they lay and store their egg, but then have no more to do with their offspring.
Warm-blooded birds and mammals evolve from reptiles. Both look after their young after they are born. Mammals are so-called because of the mammary glands, the breasts that feed infants. The care of our young requires self-sacrifice. Yet, we are driven to do this; for love!
This may be the origin of love, but our love is not limited to our infants, or even to those genetically linked to us. Love can cover many different types of feeling, but love is an emotion. And the biological purpose of emotion is to drive action. The action of love is to do what is good for the other, even when we suffer as a result.
The biological value of love of infant is self-evident. Especially for humans who take so long to grow up, compared to other mammals. Without that love, would we be able to care for our brood? Even with love, it can be so demanding!
Love seems so personal, or should I say inter-personal. A bond between individuals, that has had little place in public discourse or politics. Some of us use the word love freely, others more restricted. But it is the main theme of songs, poetry, and our stories.
Why is there no public policy on love? Perhaps, because one cannot pass a law to make people love; it must come from within, like any other emotion. When we fall in love with a celebrity or a leader, we vote for them – by buying their products or at the election. We know that more attractive people are more likely to win elections; and most people vote for a politician based on their feelings for them, rather than a careful analysis of their policies.
Our biology has been selected to be the way it is because it enhances survival. Love has survival value, and not just for the infant who would not survive without the parental actions driven by love. A child given all their physical needs, but who is not loved will survive but not thrive. Humans need to love and to be loved. Humans are social beings who need to be connected to others, and love is the glue.
What does the politics of love look like? Can you imagine a world where the political priority is not to increase economic activity, but to increase love. Worth thinking about?
The Roman Catholic Church is the oldest branch of Christianity. Catholic means all-embracing or universal – for all people. But why Roman? The Vatican is in Rome, of course: the court of the Pope. The Vatican’s location is legacy of Rome’s history and power: the centre of all power over an ever-increasing empire.
Simon, one of the 12 original disciples, was renamed by Jesus: Peter. Which means rock: the foundation the church will build upon. Peter, not so strong, forsook Jesus three times after his arrest. This is the gospels’ message of strength in weakness: “the meek shall inherit the earth”. This famous phrase, one of the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, is in only one of the four gospels; wonder why not all? It’s such a powerful and strange statement in a world where might is right. Jesus’s words have a strange beauty; his actions mostly of kindness and love.
Back to the question, why did Peter establish his church in Rome? Jesus was born into, and died from, the Roman Empire. Established after centuries of a democratic Roman Republic, Rome had already conquered Britain, much of Europe, as well as most of the lands that bordered the Mediterranean Sea, including Judea, the birthplace of Jesus.
Initially persecuted by the Roman State, Christianity became the State Religion from 313 AD. The Roman Empire fell a century later; (though its Western half continued for another 1,000 years.) The Church survived the fall of Rome and spread through the kingdoms and principalities of Europe. And through the Catholic Church, one feels the legacy of the power of Rome. Challenged in the reformation that enabled the scientific revolution.
Islam spread like wildfire, and the Islamic centres became the most advanced centres of learning. We get algebra, algorithms, and a zero from the Islamic culture. But, then about 1000 years ago, science became satanic and no longer allowed. For similar reasons, science did not develop much in China, where most things were first invented, like paper. There it was Imperial power rather than Religious.
In Europe, science progressed. Science paired with capitalism conquered the world. And continues its expansion into mother Earth, ever greedier. Can we change course before we self-destruct?
Christianity is the religion still most in control of the world; just look at our calendar system. History was marked by the years of the monarch’s birth. Now it is years since Jesus’ birth. And not just in Christian nations.
Was Jesus born in year 0 or year 1? Since the ‘clock’ was not set till several hundred years of his birth, we don’t really know. I was taught that he was likely born in 4 BC, based on stellar configurations that could have shone alight on Bethlehem at his birth. Seems odd to say that Jesus was born in the fourth year before Christ. BC or the Jewish version, BCE for Before the Christian Era is more recent than the traditional counting of years since his death. In 313 AD (Anno Domini – the 313th year of our Lord), the Roman Emperor Constantine legalised the Christian religion and then adopted it as the Empire’s religion.
Every religion tells a story about humans, our world, and its creation. The story helps to create common ideas about the world, shared values and norms, and a common language. In short, social cohesion. In this way, religion can help maintain those in power by creating a story that explains and justifies the social order.
Religion means many things, but like most human things, religion is about stories. A religion enables cohesion in a group by providing a common wold-view or framework through which to see the world, make judgements and take action. All based on the story of who we are, and our relation to others and the gods, under whose influence we willingly bow.
Life is fragile. Belief in supernatural forces can aid survival, and so quite ingrained in humans. And religion creates a community of common belief; and community aids survival. Perhaps for similar reasons, humans have strong biases against ‘the other’; even though we now all belong to one human family; this was not so. Sobering to think that we are here not because our moral qualities, but our ability to kill others. Or at least not getting killed before passing on their DNA; the underlying story of humanity.
Humans descended from apes who stood up. Our ancestors lived off leaves in the rain-forest, but as the ice receded it left open grass-lands; pulses and tubers. And animals. We prospered in the new environment, eating new foods. As bipeds, our hands were free to use tools. The brain circuits developed for tool use; the quadratic equations you may have learned at school, programmed into our circuits to help us hit moving objects. Those same circuits repurposed, enable human language. With it, conquest of the world, and the start of our, human story.
To recap, Space-Time is created by a Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago (BYA). It expands faster than the speed of light, and as it does so the plasma energy cools down and the first atom is formed: hydrogen.
Clumps of hydrogen become solar systems; ours has 4 rocky plants and four gas giants formed from an earlier star’s dying explosion, a supernova, some 5 BYA. In its life, and even more its death, a star creates the progressively larger elements, including Nitrogen, Carbon, Oxygen and Phosphorous. These are the key elements of organic life. And, of course, hydrogen. Both as water and as a central player in molecular machinery or chemistry of life.
It takes about a billion years or the first evidence of life from these elements combining into molecules. Earth is not the gentle planet she is now, but a fierce rock that is only slowly developing an atmosphere. Earth is constantly changing over geological time, including periods when the entire planet was entirely covered by ice: Snowball Earth.
From the first atoms that create a molecule that is able to make a copy of itself, this molecular life becomes more complex leading to cells. Sex, the sharing of genetic matter, is a relatively recent discovery for these cells, but once initiated accelerates cells progress in complexity leading to multi-cellular organisms.
For our line the fish are the first to develop a backbone, a group called vertebrates, meaning to have vertebra – the bones that protect our spinal cord and carry our torso and head.
From fish to reptiles to mammals to primates to apes to humans is our evolutionary history. And our connection to different families of animals, close and distant. We share a basic body plan, but have progressively invested more energy in offspring. Fish create countless embryos, then do little to help then to maturity. Frogs don’t look after their tadpoles, but reptiles start looking after their eggs. Mammals care for their young; called mammals because of breast feeding is needed by infants. Is this the origin of love?
I heard that the Earth has spent 85% of its 4.5 billion year life without any ice caps. But we live in an ice age, when there are polar ice caps. We are currently in a deglaciation period of the ice age, in contrast to some 15 thousand years ago (TYA) when the ice covered most of the earth. The ice has been progressively moving back, and today is doing so at an accelerated thanks to humanity’s contributions.
Unless humanity reduces the amount of energy it is burning, especially that coming from fossil fuel, it seems inevitable that we will soon have no more polar ice caps. What will be the effect of sea levels and shoreline. Literally unimaginable, in that these kinds of predictions are not really included in near-term scenarios.
If we expect a linear continuation of trends, we have plenty of time. Perhaps that explains why our efforts are still just to limit the rate of increase of greenhouse gas emissions; not even to reduce them. It assumes that the reserve of the Earth is infinite; that the oceans, the current store of the excess energy we put into the atmosphere can continue to store increasing amounts. Complex systems exhibit linear change up to a threshold when suddenly a totally different kind of change takes place. This is what some people mean they talk about the catastrophe of runaway climate change.
Positive and negative feedback loops are part of our biology and of the Earth itself. The former accelerates change, the latter prevents it. The emergence of Snowball Earth was driven by the spread of ice. This reflected back more sunlight energy, leading to lower temperature; and thus more ice. Now that the ice is melting, one side-effect is that it aggravates the heat retention, that water does much better than ice. Thus, further increasing the heat on Earth.
Imagine, you’re on the Titanic. You know that it’s heading for an iceberg that will sink it. All it would have taken was a small change of course, and accepting a slower time for the crossing. We have to stop burning fossil fuels or face a catastrophe for Earth. Can you imagine your world when the water is 5 to 10m higher? It could be as much as 60m when all the ice-caps are gone…
It was climate change that took our ancestors from the rain forests to the savannahs of Africa, where standing on two feet became more of an advantage. Climate changes over 100-year cycles in Africa selected for the ability to pass stories that would prepare future generations for the recurring cycles of drought and flood. Thus our brains allowed us to be adapted to more than one environment. And as modern humans emerged, were able to take over every corner of this Earth. No other species has ever done that; different species are selected for in different environments.
Since before the industrial, and even before the agricultural era, humanity has changed the planet. But it is only now that the scale of our capacity, in terms of total human population as well as the power of our technology are we now able to impact on the environment to make the Earth unliveable for humanity. Once the ice caps start melting, it becomes progressively harder to restore. I know they seem so distant; and that Earth will continue to thrive as a source of life; but what will be the fate of the humans?
So, let us first consider our history; and let us start at the first human transition in social organisation: from hunter-gatherer to agriculturist….in the next chapter of the 30. I also find this cartoon from XKCD a great way to quickly understand the change in temperatures, and that we are at the start of an exponential increase, as well human history.
I like James Altucher‘s quirky writing. I know he’s not entirely reliable. He wrote that if you google “I want to die”, the top result is his. Perhaps that was true for him, but not for me. It was on the first page. I am still not entirely sure why he didn’t kill himself; perhaps too much of the Woody Allen in him?
But I drift off the point. I am grateful for his idea of building our idea ‘muscle’, by writing down 10 ideas a day. What kind of ideas?
This a good unit of time for those who don’t have much. By using half the hour, you find more places to fit it in. By daily practice, your brain creates new pathways and habits. Try it for 30 minutes every day for 30 days. Can you commit to that?
Let me tell you a story. I have to start abstractly, but I hope you will forgive that. It’s to remind you of how hard and how easy it is to change – another example of the law of paradoxical truths. We know that it helps if you find the ‘right-sized chunk’ for change.
HappyPeopleTrue_nJust 