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A New Perspective
- 1. By Jim Wolfe
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for comingHow many of you think of human beings as separated from nature, from all other living things on Earth and from the physical world in some way?The goal of my presentation today is to have you spend a little more time thinking about whether this is really true and what the implications are if this sentiment is not true?I am not an expert or PHD in any field. I am simply curious about what is reality and what is the truth about the world around us. I want to share some of the things I have learned from other brilliant minds today and have you draw your own conclusions about what they mean.My presentation involves random sampling of current knowledge from a variety of disciplines. Many of these findings may change in the near future and our perspective will have to be adjusted again to reflect those changes. I think this is a good place to start.
- We can all trace our ancestry back to roughly 30,000 individuals in North Africa. All males alive today have the Y chromosome passed down by “Scientific Adam” about 60,000 years agoAll females alive today have the mitochondrial DNA from “Scientific Eve” who lived about 150,000 years ago. – See Documentary - NetflixModern Humans have existed on planet Earth for about 250,000 years, which means we have only lived in cities for about 2% of our existence. 98% of our existence has consisted of hunting and gathering and living in small groups.Scientists can swab your cheek and tell you how your ancestors moved out of Africa; which route they took to get to where you are now. These results are a surprise to many. We cannot detect “race” by using DNA. Some people we call African Americans really had ancestors that came to North America through the central Asian steppe and Europe, and there are many other similar examples.Gorillas are 8% different than chimpanzees, we are only 1.5% different from chimpanzees; we are more similar to chimps than gorillas are to chimps!! - The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond
- We are sure about things we see; but we actually do not see anything as it exists!Photons (particles of light) reflect off of an object or objects. Your eye catches these particles and focuses them. Most of us know that the image created at the back of the eye is upside down, so it was already known that our brains did some interpretive work. However, we now know that up to half of our brains are used for visual processing and it works something like this: once the image has been focused, it is interpreted into neural signals and sent to different parts of the brain for processing. There are specific parts of the brain for the processing of motion, edges, colors, and other vision factors and they are not necessarily close to each other in the brain. Each one of these areas makes a little “movie” and sends it to the back of the brain for editing. The little “movies” are then edited and put together. This product is not perfect and ready for us to “see” yet. There is missing information. For one thing, each eye has a blind spot. The brain fills in any missing information with previous beliefs about what should be part of the image. Once your brain fills in the gaps with information it thinks should be in the image, you see the final product of this process. Obviously, this process happens very quickly, but it shows just how subjective our vision can be!! This is one of the reasons eye witness accounts are not very accurate.The brain literally sees based on past experience and beliefs! It is very unlikely that any two people see the same exact thing at any given time or space due to a vast difference in past experiences and beliefs. See Brain Rules by John J. Medina
- One issue of the New York Times has more information in it than a typical 16th Century European person had access to in their entire lives. – Newt Gingrich, History Channel Episode about President’s Book of SecretsMany think we live in the most violent society in history but we actually live in the least violent human era – it’s not even comparable!! I am less likely to die at the hands of another man than at any other point in human history! - See TED talk about violenceOur bodies and brains have not evolved to handle the amount of information we have access to – this can lead to sensationalism: the cues that we evolved to live in a social group successfully combined with many more inputs of these cues causes us to think in ways that are incorrect.
- This is a beaver dam. Would you say that a Beaver Dam is “natural”
- This is part of a beehive. Would you say that a beehive is natural? Why?
- This is a human shelter. Would you say that it is natural? Why or why not?
- Here we see New York City. Would you say that it is natural? Why or why not?We define natural as anything humans don’t do!!We define ourselves as separate from or mostly separate from, the “natural world”This is conceited because we are part of nature!Anything humans do or make, including our structures, is natural!!! We have no power to create, only rearrange pre-existing structures and energyWe consider our current buildings to be less natural because we separate ourselves from other LIVING organisms with walls and doors and concrete.We also consider our current structures to be unnatural because we have evolved to live in a savannah environment, not one of concrete and steel. If we live this way for another 100,000 years, we may think cities are more natural than the jungle, although I suspect not…
- How many of you wanted to build a tree house growing up?
- This is a beehive up in a tree!What is the difference? Why do we keep insisting we are so different from other life on Earth?
- Happiness is not getting what you want. We all know this one too well, however, what we do not know is that happiness is not actually wanting what you have either!!! Happiness actually comes down to wanting something. Absence of fear is also a factorStress helped us to survive in the environment we evolved in but if we are chronically stressed, it’s effects turn negative.Positive psychology shows that events do not change levels of happiness. Happiness comes from two sources stretching happiness out like a bow and arrow – SINCERE gratitude with emotion attached for what we have now AND on the other end, having something we care about and are striving for. So Gratitude + Goals = Happiness
- Multiverse is term used to describe the place we exist in as one Universe out of many Universes that also exist.100 billion stars make up the Andromeda Galaxy. We know of at least 100 billion galaxies with over 100 billion stars in each!We can be depressed because of how small we are, or we can take pride in the fact that we are made of stardust; the same materials that are found on Earth are found everywhere else in the vast Universe and probably in other Universes as well!! We are part of something bigger than ourselves and this is an amazing thought. The Big Bang Theory is really cool because everything that exists in our current Universe was contained in the space of less than an atom at one point in time. This is an amazing concept to me if true!!
- We are colonies of cells35 to 100 Trillion cells!!Inside each cell there are 100,000 kinesins; which are proteins that move proteins around the cell to where they are needed in a process of movement similar to walking!!! This means even when you are not “doing anything” you are doing a lot! It also means that the person you judged earlier today is a lot more amazing than you may have previously thought.Each Cell has a nucleus with DNA. We are “Survival Machines” that carry our genetic code and are built to make more copies of our genes by reproducing. Everything our bodies do is designed by evolution to make reproduction of our genes more likely. – Richard Dawkins, The Selfish GeneYour brain has roughly 100 billion neurons! This is about the same as the amount of stars in a galaxy!
- The main goal of every organism; plants, animals, humans, bacteria, etc. is to pass on its genes. All living things are actually survival machines for their genetic code. The better the genes are at producing a successful survival machine, the more these genes get copied and thus survive indefinitely.Cake is sweet because we like it, not because it is sweet! - Daniel Dennett TED TalkEvolution does not happen in a straight line – the goal is to survive long enough to pass on genes in the current environment. Human beings share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and other primates. There is no “missing link” in the way people have thought about this in the past, because there is not a straight line of descent. We are one branch on a common line with other primates. What made us modern humans is still up for debate, but currently science has shown that what is now said to be our oldest ancestor that we have proof of lived about 3 million years ago. The fossil skeleton found was nicknamed “Lucy.” It has been said that Lucy was the beginning of man because she began walking upright. This freed the hands for tool making, which would be the next logical step towards the development of modern man. The next ancestor was the tool maker, (FILL IN NAME HERE). Making tools allowed our ancestors to develop smaller jaws because they did not have to open food sources with their teeth. This meant more space in the skull to develop a brain more suited to planning. This gave rise to the next ancestor, (INSERT NAME HERE) who developed a large brain. Modern humans evolved from this ancestor. The end goal of evolution is not intelligence or increasing intelligence.Intelligence is only one way of surviving long enough to pass on genes. It is also a particularly costly adaptation: 20% of calories are used by our brains, women have a less stable walking structure due to the size of human baby heads, we spend a lot of time learning how to use our brains and taking care of children – How the Mind Works by Steven PinkerIntelligence is not an optimal adaptation in all cases! If we still lived up in trees, it would be FAR better to be a monkey than a human!! - Richard Dawkins TV interviewHuman-like intelligence has actually evolved twice on Earth. The Neanderthals existed at the same time as anatomically modern humans. They are not our ansestors. Anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals walked the Earth at the same time!! This raises the question – did Neanderthals go to heaven??
- There are trillions of particles in your fingertip!Everything in the Universe is made up of tiny particles! This includes rocks, planets, humans, celery, water, air and everything else!Even “empty space” is made up of particles. It would not help us to survive long enough to pass on our genes to see everything as it is. We need to see edges and differences between the size of objects that could kill us (i.e. Spiders, Leopards, etc.)We do not see viruses or bacteria with our regular vision, but we have developed an immune system to combat these killers.
- We think we are in charge and the culmination of evolution, but bacteria may actually be in charge and may be better than us in some ways!Bacteria live in almost every conceivable environment on earthExtremophilesA bacteria that eats arsenic and incorporates it into itself has been discovered in a lake in California, according to an article in Yahoo! Bacteria live on every inch of our bodies and are essential to our proper functioningMitochondria themselves may have been simpler organisms that are now located in every one of our 35-100 trillion cells!The human body is composed of 10 times the bacterial cells as human cells. -TED Talk on Bacterial Communication
- What is “Big” or “Small”These are relative terms. When something is big, we have to specify what it is big compared to. There is no general intrinsic “big” or “small” that can be applied to objects. We can look at very big (cosmos) or very small parts (subatomic world) of the world to gain perspective.Both new views can change how we think about the world around us!
- See The Selfish Gene by Richard DawkinsWe care about others because they contain the same genes. We care about others proportionally to how many genes we share. This is only in a genetic sense, not in an actual sense. This baseline of caring can be extended to others.This can actually be a positive way of looking at others because:You should care about your great grandson or your third cousin exactly the same as you care about any other randomly selected person, because the number of genes you actually share with them is about the same!!! All other living humans are EXACTLY LIKE our great grandparents or third cousins, genetically speaking!All other organisms have replicators like we do. This is a link we can use to care more about our animals, plants, insects, bacteria, and all other living organisms who have developed different ways of surviving long enough to pass on copies of their genes!A man from Colorado and a man from China may have more similar DNA than two men from different tribes in Africa that are just a few miles apart! – see Africa Documentary netflix
- Natural selection happens when there is a mistake in copying the genetic code to a new individual – a mutation – and this mistake increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction, thus spreading through the population over time. We are the product of 1000’s of mistakes made from the beginning when replicators started to make copies of themselvesThere is no progress, even in a physical sense, without mistakesMistakes can make us better in every aspect of life!
- In Jared Diamond’s book Guns Germs and Steel, he asked the question, “why did Europeans conquer the Americas and not the other way around?”For a long period of time the answer was simple. It had to do with Europeans being smarter than the people they conquered.Mr. Diamond show this isn’t true in his book. You can take a man from a current hunter gatherer group that is cut off from the rest of what we call the modern world and teach him how to fly an airplane!!Intelligence level is not different among the people on EarthOur DNA is the same as well, i.e. all of the groups of people on Earth right now are “modern humans”Eurasians were able to advance civilization and conquer others due to factors of luck like the number of domesticable animals, similar climate that allowed plants to spread throughout Eurasia, etc. If you gave these advantages to any particular group, civilization would develop. There is nothing in the nature of people who conquered that separates them from those they conquered!!
- We are more related to other living organisms than we thought! To me, this is a great discovery and I personally appreciate plants, bacteria, fungi and also other animal species a lot more.We do not have to think of this as “lowering ourselves” or our status. Rather, we are elevating the rest of the living species and matter to their rightful place beside us!!Vegetarians take note! You are still destroying life when you eat vegetables. Plants are living organisms too! Maybe a better way philosophically speaking would be to appreciate that we are consuming life to continue ours and respect our food sources a lot more whether they be animals, insects, plants, fungi or any other living organism. The Universe is a wonderful place; although it is unimaginably large, we are part of it and everything that exists in it is made up of stuff we have on Earth! We are made up of stardust!We are our own Universes. We are made of trillions of cells and also trillions of particles. The fact that one person ever understands another is a miracle. Two Universes are coming together and having a similar thought – the odds of this occurring are astronomically low!We are related to strangers like third cousins!! We are not separate from other living beings on Earth. We are not separate from the elements in the vast Universe. We are a part of the whole system and the system is part of us! This new awareness should turn our attention from how we are special and different from everything else in existence to an appreciation of the Universe and a hunger to learn what we can discover about ourselves by uncovering the mysteries of the Universe!Some will be disappointed to learn the things mentioned here and I think that this would be a normal reaction. We have been told we are special since we joined the human race on Earth. The lie is not that we are not special; the lie is that we are separate in some way from the rest of life and the rest of the Universe. I struggle with this feeling a little bit myself. However, I believe that thinking about our connectedness to everything else actually colors in our lives more and makes them MORE interesting and meaningful. This way of seeing and being empowers us to answer many of life’s challenging questions and will lead to a better quality of life! At the very least, it should deepen our appreciation for everything around us! I feel lucky to live in a world like the one we have and to have the intelligence to think about my own being and ponder the complexity and awesomeness of the Multiverse! It truly is a gift to be a human being.Let us not devalue human life and what it means to be a human being. Let us raise up the rest of life and all of the elements and reactions around us!! Thank you and I hope you think about how what we talked about today might impact your life. These ideas have changed the way I choose to live in a real way.