Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision of Our Future Evolution

by Ted Chu

Although malfunctions caused by genetic mutations threaten the individual whose well-being is the primary purpose of the replication mechanism, genetic errors are functional with respect to another purpose (one that we might call a “higher” purpose): without such “errors,” and the inevitable resultant harm to individuals of the species, there could be no evolution.

possible” makes sense to most of us if the subjects are industrial products, books, movies, songs, websites, shops, buildings, or roads—but not if we are the subjects!

If you were a hunter-gatherer, would you support the invention of agriculture, which introduces work (the Greek word for work, ponos, has the same root as the Latin poena, sorrow) for the first time in history (and it was mostly back-breaking labor), provides us with a lower-quality diet, gives rise to wars over the surplus food (it triggered the birth of the professional army), produces deadly infectious diseases (including malaria, probably the single greatest human killer), and institutionalizes slavery and serfdom on a large scale?

plerk history

We can’t “pass on” higher perspectives to our descendants.

this may nit be tue. rewnt epigenetics studies say

Each of us should be proud to say that I live my life not just for the sake of myself, my family, my community, my country, humanity, or even life on Earth. I live for the Cosmic Creation process because I recognize that I am born into that wonderful process and I can make a difference in it.

famous Confucius saying in Analects, “Men without long-term vision always suffer from short-term worries” (人无远虑, 必有近忧), can also be written as “Men without holistic views always suffer from self-centered worries” (人无全虑, 必有自忧). The

Humanity not only needs to have problems solved, but also needs to impose bigger and better problems upon itself as a challenge to its creative powers—for the benefit of the human spirit, our descendants, and the whole Creation.

Charles Murray made a strong conclusion about why a higher perspective pays off: “Human beings have been most magnificently productive and reached their highest cultural peaks in the times and places where humans have thought most deeply about their place in the universe and been most convinced they have one. What does that tell us? It is not a question to be answered with a quip.”44

Higher perspectives provide the stronger motivation, and the transcendental cosmic perspective is the highest possible for humanity. This is especially true when the transcendental ideal is an integrated body of beliefs that can simultaneously satisfy our lower instinctual moral and bodily desires.

on conscious evolution, one of the best strategies to achieve higher goals is to leverage personal motivations rather than running against them.

First, we must face the reality that human-centric drives will remain dominant and almost impossible to escape.

Second, raising personal perspectives will always require heavy lifting. Why should a person be concerned about cosmic trends other than out of leisurely curiosity? The most effective approach to increasing people’s cosmic devotion is to link it to our human drives.

Third, human morality as promoted by popular religions and enforced by laws and social institutions should not be undermined. For the most part, we are here to play the role of human being, not God. We are members of the species we study and try to improve

We cannot really play God as some critics claim we should do (and after all, how can we, with such limited power?), but we can play with our God-endowed gifts and initiate the creation of gods, or what I call Cosmic Beings (CoBe), a new species on the frontier of cosmic evolution that is unimaginably powerful and creative.

conclusions.”

or perhps there is no final conlusion or "higher" better answer

As the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. . . . Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.”

We must be playful and not dogmatic, lest we fall into existential despair. Nothing is guaranteed, since all the cosmic patterns we have discerned so far could turn out to be mere illusions.

the fertility of the universe

Growth in the midst of darkness is not unprecedented: our biological and intellectual ancestors got us here with the same total ignorance about their future. The difference from the historical path is that we will be doing it consciously—we are aware of our ignorance—hence the need for optimism. We can anticipate surprises, but we still have to rely on human resilience, in our ability to live through the most appalling personal and public tragedies and still go on. This is an aspect that many technological optimists have underestimated.

The argument for striving for the highest godlike perspective is not just human hubris. It is what anthropologist Lionel Tiger called big optimism, the faith in a universe that always favors progress despite temporary setbacks. To be fully alive is to believe nothing is impossible. To be a genuine creator is to create something that is greater than ourselves. To be young in spirit is to never stop growing and to have the resilience to outlast all the skeptics.

quotable

The argument for striving for the highest godlike perspective is not just human hubris. It is what anthropologist Lionel Tiger called big optimism, the faith in a universe that always favors progress despite temporary setbacks. To be fully alive is to believe nothing is impossible. To be a genuine creator is to create something that is greater than ourselves. To be young in spirit is to never stop growing and to have the resilience to outlast all the skeptics.

fascinating concept. so what if God created us as greater?

The argument for striving for the highest godlike perspective is not just human hubris. It is what anthropologist Lionel Tiger called big optimism, the faith in a universe that always favors progress despite temporary setbacks. To be fully alive is to believe nothing is impossible. To be a genuine creator is to create something that is greater than ourselves. To be ...

Pronoia

The important aspect of reality is that we can have multiple perspectives on nature and the human condition that can lead to the dream

This may sound arrogant and egotistical, but true hubris lies in the assertion that there is nothing for us to care for other than ourselves. And that blindness to the highest perspective carries the greatest danger for us all.

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As we have discussed, natural evolution is eventful, chaotic, rough, unclean, unbalanced—it is a storm of “creative destruction.” Likewise, conscious evolution will be full of unintended, unpredictable consequences as well, including calamities as well as magnificent, seemingly “miraculous” advances.

In other words, evolution now has a selector: self-aware humans who choose to align with the impulse of evolution. By “conscious” I do not mean just normal human consciousness, in which we are aware of our own thoughts and being, but an awareness of cosmic history, natural laws, and humanity’s place in the ever-changing universe.

These innovations are clearly guided by human consciousness but still should be considered a transitory, or primitive, stage of conscious evolution. The “real deal” of conscious evolution begins when we consciously select what we want to be—and it continues as these consciously selected

i hink h mjght be too binary about the bdfore anf afyer

conscious evolution is an active process led by conscious minds and regulated by structures that conscious minds purposely create to guide the process. Pursuing evolution consciously means there is something we want to achieve, some state we would love to aim for even if we cannot get there ourselves. Such a goal transcends our personal existence or even our existence as a species.

It may eliminate much of the need for physical trial and error, most likely through the coevolution of simulation machines and by using designs that are generated out of the simulated process.

the public debate about the environment tends to focus exclusively on a narrow aspect of nature, a range that covers more or less the time since the beginning of human civilization. It is a range much greater than our individual lifespan, but only an unimaginably thin slice of what has been going on for about 13 billion years. This slice of nature is highly seductive. After all, it is this natural condition that shaped human physiology.

The people of the Middle Ages didn’t think of themselves as being in the “middle” of anything at all.

Recounting how the Sahara abruptly turned from a paradise for animals and human civilization into a desert in very recent history, Lee Silver concludes, “Mother Nature can be a nasty bitch.”15

In this sense, the wisdom of evolution is opportunism. The selection process itself need not follow a single pattern.

Both nature and culture practice William Ernest Hocking’s “negative pragmatism”: That which does not work is not true.25

Despite the risk of serious damage, we badly need single-minded religious zealots, political fanatics, and scientific cranks who can sustain direction even with repeated setbacks and depressing disarray and turmoil. But of course, all the mavericks and eccentrics need to be balanced with humanists, skeptics, and agnostics who can provide an environment of pluralism, tolerance, and flexibility that enables the natural spread of successful ideas through imitation without losing independent judgment. It is the messy, yin-yang environment that proves to be most fruitful and sustainable over the long term.

A healthy heart that is flexible enough to respond to changing physical demands beats with a somewhat chaotic pattern rather than a perfect rhythm.

the importance of conservation is clear, although conservation itself must be at the service of innovation.

While the overall trend is no doubt toward greater complexity, there is danger in chasing progress and advancement single-mindedly, only to end up on a limb. Major mass extinctions and collapses of complex civilizations showed us that complexity has its costs and fragilities. The most complex is usually the first to go when facing environmental change or new competition. In general, organisms can become too well adapted to a particular environment or too advanced in a single direction.

Testing of various ideas certainly requires isolation.

Cultural evolution needs to give room for heretical ideas to escape the tyranny of the majority, the way Buddhism managed to prosper in the Far East after its dismissal in India, and the way Christianity spread to the world after being rejected by mainstream Judaism.

The second order of business in terms of protecting the fountain of creativity is granting privileges to the talented and the motivated.

The third order of business for fostering creativity is what might be called the controlled allowance of behaviors that might be inappropriate or dangerous under certain circumstances—

The fourth order of business is what might be referred to as the occasional “pardon” of the less fit. Paradoxically, one crucial piece of progressive evolution (increase of complexity) is what can be called randomized relaxation of selective pressure—occasions in which defective individuals can linger alongside fitter neighbors.

people don’t change that much—they tend to uniformly pursue self-interest or some singular passion that drives them. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in—that is hard enough.

conscious evolution will be best served if it moves with human motivations rather than against them.

Winston Churchill: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Almost all natural “experiments” fail. Only a single gene survived unchanged in the last billion years—the one that codes for the protein Histone H4.

To a first approximation, all species are destined to become extinct—out of roughly thirty billion species, only thirty million survive today, a 99.9 percent failure rate—and this does not consider all failed mutations at the indi...

This failure rate is comparable to that of cultural evolution. Most fads eventually fade away. Most new styles eventually go out of style. Most new religious sects and cults fail to last beyond the founder’s life. Most start-...