Random musings...humanity's downfall...
Bild von Ulrich B. auf Pixabay
While thinking about society and all it's facets, it dawned on me that we are our greatest enemy.
Let me try to explain.
Let's use evolution for this discussion.
The natural state of any thing is to be absolutely free within the limitations of natural laws. Interesting enough, those natural laws dictate everything in our existence. They dictate, for example, how we look, our brain structure, our thought processes...just everything.
Humans, previously monkeys, begin to walk the earth. Nature dictates how they reproduce, which requires two members of the same species with different reproduction organs, also dictated by nature. With humans, there is a need for the parents to remain together long enough for the child to survive on it's own. This results in the first long lasting virtual entity...the family.
As it turns out, families may not be able to survive without help from other members, or families, of the human species. With that, the next virtual entity is born...the clan, or tribe.
As clans, tribes and what not, begin to fight, they also start to build alliances and unite against other entities. In the end we move from the tribe...to the kingdom...to the nation. Some would even like to have just a one world entity.
In these entities, we humans have built all sorts of virtual institutions and created all sorts of virtual laws to control them and ourselves. It is interesting, though, that the human, born free and only restrained by nature's law, identifies as the virtual entity it has been given. Avatars have been created for us to navigate our virtual entity, for example, our social security number, our driver's licence, and so on. Because we identify with our avatars, we seem to have forgotten our natural state of freedom, which we still have.
The laws of nature dictates our reproductive process, which dictates our development of a virtual family structure. Our avatars are Mom, Dad, Son Daughter. We are forced to expand this virtual structure, due to contact with other members of our species and their virtual entities. Natures law dictates that some humans will acquire power over others and therefore expanding the virtual entity with additional members and institutions. We identify ourselves with our avatars, and do their bidding in the real world as, for example citizen, employee, teacher, driver, etc..
This is what we call society.
Now the really interesting part...
The evolution of our society has led the human element of the structure to create a non human replacement, which we are in the middle of doing right now. Have we finally reached humanity's downfall and the dawn of The Matrix?
Just random musings...
Very nice... And yes: humanity will have only itself to blame for its downfall; of that I am certain.
That said, I don’t find your chain of causality quite as compelling as you do. Sexual reproduction is a characteristic of our species, but that doesn’t make it a law of nature. There are plenty of other species that reproduce in different ways. Nor is there any reason why parents must stay together to ‘raise’ their offspring. There are tribal societies in which there is no social bond whatsoever with the biological parents; instead, the whole village takes care of the children. The formation of clans, hierarchies, communities and states, and the creation of institutions, do not stem from laws of nature. They are one possible development – which, to my regret, we have taken. For the most part.
“The Matrix” presented a disturbing idea, which I, however – even though I cannot of course prove it – consider unlikely: the people in that simulation were so content that they did not question their condition. And now please take a look around at (global) reality...
Very good points. :)
I guess what I'm saying is that there is nothing that is not ruled by nature. What we believe is unnatural, is unnatural because we don't understand the natural laws governing it. For example, if magic exists, say, in the form that Wicca uses, then there must be one or more natural laws which provide for it. The only thing outside of nature is nature itself, which some refer to as God.
So everything which happens in the world, is due to the laws of nature. AI is only artificial because it was created by humans, but it's merely the result of evolution...natural laws. There's nothing unnatural about it.
The laws of nature govern the how, but not the what. We all have similar, if not the exact same brain functionality, but the brain relies on input from outside itself, and it's own past experiences, to fuel it's thoughts. If some of us come to the same conclusion, then we've arrived there from different points of view, but we won't necessarily come to the same future conclusions because of that. The views we share today may not be the views we share tomorrow.
Our global reality is the result of all the above. It's merely evolution at play.