We are so accustomed to contrasting the intelligent with the ignorant that it comes as something of a surprise to realize that what we call intelligence is actually an expression of ignorance.
I think I was prepared for this revelation several years ago when one of my college professors commented that people who obtain terminal degrees are experts in ignorance, because they are supposed to be experts in areas of knowledge that no one else had explored. They were now the only expert in the previously unknown.
The desire to know more must be preceded by an appreciation of our own lack of information. Those who believe they know everything have no desire to explore and discover. This reminds me of an old saying I picked up somewhere along my academic journey: If our reach does not exceed our grasp, what is heaven for.
If all the species that preceded us on the planet operated on instinct, why did the universe decide to change our make up? Unless I can be shown evidence to the contrary I must conclude that somebody switched the script. As the next in a long evolutionary chain of species humans should not have arrived on earth devoid of the survival knowledge they needed. Every other species before then had that knowledge. Why didn't we?
One thing is certain. Humans arrived on this planet armed both with a need and a desire to learn and explore. This truism is the foundation of all our scientific endeavors.
A systems level discussion on Organizational Leadership and World Peace written by:
© Darius A. Lecointe, Ph.D., J.D., M.A. Join in the discussion here or through dalecointe@gmail.com
20 comments:
"Every other species before then had that knowledge. Why didn't we?"
I don't know. But I know that if we listen better to those that know what we don't know, we won't have to stay ignorant.
Humans have the option of pretending they're in this alone with a perpetual blank tablet. Alternatively they can tune into what nature has to say.
Through history, some human cultures have done this better than others; all of us could do it more.
I will probably say more about this in a separate blog, but you bring up a few important issues. As we address this issue we have to keep in mind the difference between humans as individuals and humans as a species. If we don't we sill find that the cures were suggest for what ails us as a species actually cause what ails us as a species.
What we need is not instruction, the process by which those who know impart to those who are ignorant, but education, the general advancement and development of the species. If I listen to those who know I can never know more than they know because what they know is restricted by what we know and are as a race. It is sobering to realize that the most intelligent man who lived one thousand years ago believed that the earth was the center of the universe.
You correctly suggest that we must listen to what nature has to say. Of course, we have always been doing that. Everything humans have accomplished has been the result of observations of nature. What we seem to have difficulty understanding that when a body is suffering the effects of a cancer the appropriate treatment is not the same as when the body is being attacked by a virus.
We cannot afford to separate ourselves by cultures. Nature does not separate the other species by cultures. A wolf is a wolf regardless of when it lived. Humans of yesterday are just as responsible for what we are doing to our planet today as we have a right to be proud of what they accomplished years ago.
I agree with you -- the "those who know what we don't know" was a reference to the rest of nature, not to other people.
As for the culture comment, I understand but would like to clarify. If we *couldn't* afford to separate by cultures, we wouldn't. The question is not whether our specialization is a problem but whether we can still recognize our species though we have differentiated. I don't believe differentiation to be problematic in itself; as you say, a wolf in North America recognizes one from the Russian wilderness, and yet their packs and DNA may be "culturally" differentiated. Those differences do not affect their species-level identity, but it does affect some of their pack habits. Of course, as I've mentioned to you before, biologists have found that when isolated animal groups develop new behaviors, others groups in that species either develop the same behaviors spontaneously or find them easier to learn.
We are back to the very title of this blog. Humans are an anomaly.
It is not true that if we could not afford to be something we would not do it, though it is true that we only do what we can do. Nor do I think that is really the point you were attempting to make with your reference to cultures. Only humans engage in suicide and self-destructive behavior. We are attacking ourselves and the ecosystem upon which we depend for survival. Other species don't because it is illogical for an organism to seek its own destruction.
Cultures are great as tools of identification, but fail when we are concerned with ascribing responsibility. The future is not divided and neither is the present. We will live together or die together.
I agree. They say death and taxes are common to all -- but only one of the two can be shortchanged.
I did not mean that we all die. I meant that we cannot think of a future for some that does not include the others, like one of the two popular notions making the rounds. One says that in the future some humans will be be destroyed and the others will live forever. The other notion is that all humans will live forever but some will live in torment while the others will live in the lap of luxury.
Understood. I don't endorse either of those projections...
^^ And that was me. :)
There is a popular cartoon with an equation that someone has written from both ends toward the middle, but not completed. In the middle it simply says "Then a miracle occurs." One character says to the author of the equation, "I think you should be more explicit here."
We can move toward the heavenly or the hellish, but to cut-and-paste a miracle in the equation instead of being "more explicit" is an idea whose time should be long gone.
Avonia
I couldn't agree more, Avonia. That is the purpose of this blog: to be more explicit instead of just saying "sin caused it."
KM said "when isolated animal groups develop new behaviors, others groups in that species either develop the same behaviors spontaneously or find them easier to learn."
A seminar I attended at our local church a year ago discussed this briefly and said it was attributed to the energy emanating from the brain. Chimps on an isolated island learned a behavior and other chimp groups elsewhere then exhibted the same behavior.
This energy appears to have limits, though. I learned last night that a chimp infant raised by humans doesn't instinctively learn how to behave like a chimp. It needs to learn that from other chimps.
We have the ability to alter the development of portions of other species by placing them in artificial environments in order to domesticate, exploit or destroy. We may not harm an entire species but we can definitely alter how the energy flow. What has caused the static or interference in our human wifi?
Jeanette
Yes -- that's a good point. Humans, however, have nobody playing chess with us and pushing us into an environment we weren't designed for.
What environment we have, we've either been fitted for from the get-go, or have made ourselves. And we have no more complex species to be rubbing up against.
So whereas, yes, we have significant impact on the other species, that's not necessarily a bi-directional effect. Especially of late, via massive leaps in technology, we've developed a disproportionate impact on the rest of creation.
Exactly. We don our own aluminum foil hats.
PeacefulBe, I believe you are referring to the 100th monkey story – a story about a Japanese macaque monkey who learned to wash sand off of a sweet potato. And then the learning spontaneously spread to monkeys on other islands through some kind of field effect. Unfortunately, it appears this story is as much myth as historical fact.
This story became widely spread because of the work of Rupert Sheldrake, a Cambridge scholar in the biosciences who has proposed the idea of morphic resonance. In his conceptual model, everything in the world is connected through morphic resonance, or morphic fields. Even to the extent that when one member of a species learns something, all members of the species can learn it more easily. There are many connections between this model and Bohm's model – an implicate and explicate order.
I've had the opportunity to hear Sheldrake on a few occasions. It is my sense that what he is proposing is more true the not.
And I like that you brought this up in the context of DAL's post, because it suggests something intriguing about the human family as a system – not just a line-up of parts.
(If I know my people at all, the Anonymous above is Avonia. Even when you don't sign your posts I can hear ya, lol!)
(KM... I think you are right)
Anonymous, ;),you may be correct that the speakers were invoking Sheldrake's morphic resonance. The story was anectdotal and don't believe a reference was given as to the source, but they did say that recent research seemed to indicate that all sentient beings had the capability to give off such energy. Even in a progressive SDA crowd, one could hear the gasps and feel the wind from eyebrows raising rapidly as they spoke of this, LOL!
The seminar was about the effects of pre- and post-natal rejection on behavior and also delved into how natural and political events altered societies/cultures. The link between the brain's resonant energy and the rejection issue was the idea that the trauma of rejection causes a person to move into a part of the brain one is not born to live in(right frontal/left frontal, etc.), hobbling much of the natural power that was potentially available to the person.
I would suggest that this is the artificial environment that we put ourselves in with generations of dysfunciton and misplaced traditions.
Thanks KM - yes it was me.
Since no one is playing chess with us in this artificial environment we have created we have to accept responsibility for changing it back to what it was or what it should be, whichever is applicable. I am finding that there is a tendency among us to believe that humans cannot change. For example, arms manufacturers tend to resist any effort that would reduce the demand for arms under the false assumption that they only way they can make money is through the arms trade. The truth is that humans have a remarkable ability to adapt to new conditions. The absence of conflict does not have to be feared.
When we understand the generationsl forces that have molded our thought processes/behaviors, we have taken the first step to effect that change.
Our perception of reality must shift away from our comfort zone and fall in line with reality to take step two.
You are absolutely correct, PeacefulBe, yet here is the problem. The perception must not be a conscious perception because then it is a personal perception and only feeds into the divisions that plague us. We need to look for a way to make that perception global rather than individual, not as a collection of individual perception but as a central perception that is exhibited at the individual level. Kinda like the way the organism's DNA is exhibited in each cell.
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