Looking Up at The Stars

When we look up at the stars, often we are filled with a sense of wonder. We think about questions that are deeper than the questions of our day to day lives.

We ponder big ideas; like why are we here? Like is there life out there too? Like what is our purpose?

For the religious, there is a contentment that comes with feeling a fuzzy feeling that you are protected and all part of a plan.

For the scientific, it comes down more to the way that things are built, and their hope is to one day understand the fundamental laws of nature.

But even the scientists have questions in their mind that arise about purpose. About the nature of consciousness. And about what this is all really about.

The human race is evolving on our planet. We know that consciousness has progressed, and technology has progressed.

I can’t help but think that as a species, humans are continuing to head into an inevitable direction that comes with a mixture of technology and evolution.

But what if technology and evolution are one-in-the-same?

What if technology is the extension-evolution process happening to humans and being created, by them?

In this theory, could it be that we are separating out part of our consciousness and placing it into technology, freeing our minds for something grander, or some other order of thinking or spiritual enlightenment?

To turn this conversation into something more practical, I suppose here is what I’m feeling:

That the wisdom we need to solve our biggest problems are not necessarily one of IQ but rather of culture.

Things like community. Things like anxiety. Things like our relationship with technology.

Of course, it takes deep wisdom to answer these questions. But I’m not sure that it takes high-brain-power-intellect to solve.

If that were the case, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and other people with ultra-high IQ’s would be solving these problems for us instead of helping create them.

It’s not that having high IQ is bad, it is a huge advantage.

What I’m saying is that it is only part of the picture.

You could call the other part compassion, empathy, or love, or simply emotions. And the need for that part, seems to be increasing.

Our emotional selves are due for an equivalent upgrade to the global conciseness, one that will catch us up with the intellectual one.

If we continue to view everyone as a number, we will continue to have this material gain but the emotional detriment will be equally painful.

Just like we have now, more material success, but more fear and anxiety. More technological evolution, but less social and communal connection, which leads back to isolation and anxiety.

It’s like we’re missing some larger piece of the puzzle which ritual, ceremony, and religion used to help us with.

It’s like we’ve figured out sustenance of the mind, but not of the soul.

This brings us back to the bigger, wider questions that one asks when they look up at the stars: Why are we here? What is this all for? What am I to do, or to discover in this one life that I have here on earth?

I know it seems silly to bring this question into an email, or a social media communication which promotes shorter term and reactive thinking...But I can’t help but have this deeper question in the back of my mind, setting a new perspective for what my actions should look like today based on my interpretation of this.

I think we are heading towards a greater global awakening, spurred by the negative conditions of our industrialism and intellectual focus. No doubt we have made massive progress in our comfort and living conditions. And no one including myself would want to go backward in time.

But with this progress also came global climate warming, which is decimating species across the globe and shifting our ecosystems out of equilibrium, a rise in drug epidemics, terrorism, and civil unrest.

The counter force I imagine that will come next will help rebalance some of the issues that arose in our cultures alongside the gains. And it will be a waking up to a different part of our brain, one that uses a less logical form of reason, and has a more compassionate understanding of our place in the world or in our solar system.

It’s a type of grace, afforded to us only after our basic material needs are met. A way of living and working in the world which is not built upon taking, but rather creating mutually beneficial value; anon-zero sum path.

Instead of writing criticism to strangers online, we begin to see other people for what they are; other people like us, and these people should not be forgotten about, ignored or go uncared for.

It’s recognizing that all those who are sour, difficult, angry, or rude are really just scared, hurt, depressed and isolated.

We must learn, then, to see past the surface level view of our global culture. To go a step deeper, not intellectually but as a human, to discover what is really here, right in front of us.

Living, breathing, emotional beings who are more similar than us than different.

Who want the same things as us.

And look up at the same stars.

xx David