The Sum of Parts

2012-02-19T13:08:00.000-08:00

Philosophers tackle a multitude of problems while stepping ever closer to what we want to believe is a rational deterministic world, with hints of indeterminate parts or at least a little wiggling room for freewill and the entropy we crave. The closer we look, the more confusing and irrational reality becomes. Language breaks down, atoms seem to have no set properties, space time becomes more and more enigmatic. One eventual comes to a point that we feel the need to escape belief.

Just how entangled are we with reality? I'm driven to say odd things like; nothingness is impossible. The nature of reality itself is counter-intuitive. The language we need to make a distinction between what exists and what does not, is absurd. We think the greatest part of an atom is nothing. Atoms are a lot more space than elemental particles. Even empty space doesn't seem that empty. String theory leads us to believe that even empty space has an energy level above zero. Lawrence Krauss puts it like this:

“We've got this weird antigravity in the universe, which is making the expansion of the universe accelerate. Now: if you plug in the equations of general relativity, the only thing that can 'anti- gravitate' is the energy of nothing. Now: this has been a problem in physics since I've been a graduate student. It was such a severe problem we never talked about it. When you apply quantum mechanics and special relativity, empty space inevitably has energy. The problem is, way too much energy. It has 120 orders of magnitude more energy than is contained in everything we see!” -Krauss

We occupy the lesser part of reality. Not so empty, empty space play a much greater role on a huge stage that is so grand that it is too large to view.

Nevertheless, that is only a small part of what is confusing. Many philosophers have argued against the notion that we are the sum of our parts. Every single part of the human body is made of atoms, but we are not those atoms. It doesn't matter if cells are dieing, atoms are coming and going, it doesn't change the notion of what a person is. Even more troubling we are not our cells. Cells act and behave like independent organisms. You can take a same of tissue from a person and grow it in a petri dish they go on living and functioning. If that amount of independence isn't disturbing. According to Science Daily human cells in a body are out numbered by bacteria cells by a ratio of 10-1. That means only 10% of our bodies are made of cells that are encoded with human DNA. By mass the human body is somewhere around 70% water. You have to have water to live, but water isn't alive. Now to top off everything the atoms we are made of are 99.99999999% empty space according to Peter Russell. Since we are approaching 0% human, and 100% just plan consciousness, reality itself is approaching zero.

Looking at the numbers nihilism becomes more and more attractive. Maybe if we were to give meaning a value it would be a really small number approaching zero but never getting there. A near nihilistic universe. Since there is very little to reality one can always say, it's almost nothing, but at least it is something. That may mean in string theory terms meaningless has a 120 magnitude more reality than is contained in everything else or maybe consciousness itself is a kind of dark energy.

Thoughts on Tribalism, Inequality, and the Possibilities of a Leaderless Government

2012-01-29T05:14:00.000-08:00

It makes sense in terms of evolution for a person to want to idolize the head of the tribe, after all this is the one that will determine the distribution of food, assigns tasks, approve mating matches, and maintain social order. The hopes of the individual is that they can obtain special positioning with the chief of the tribe in order to have more persuasion.

Tribalism was one of the first types of government and in some ways is the current state of all governments. In a tribe people developed the concept of “us” and “them”, “us” being those in the tribe, and “them” as not belonging to the tribe. This resulted in dividing mankind. The individual looked at the world in terms of membership or kinship. Those that are kin, provide for each others survival, those that are not are foreign and thus lesser people.

In modern governments kinship has been parleyed into nationalism. A good example of this is the United States embargo on Cuba, the Cuban government presented itself as a potential threat by letting the Soviet Union place warheads on their island. America trades with the dissolved Countries of the Soviet Union but has never resumed diplomatic relations with Cuba, many site that Cuba is a communist state and thus we maintain the embargo. The truth is that we have open trade with communist China despite their government. So, why is it that after all danger has passed the embargo endures? Tribalism, Cuban exiles, many whom had their properties ceased by the communist state, now living in Florida lobby politicians to maintain the embargo. Since the Hispanic vote is critical in the swing state of Florida politicians are reluctant to lift the embargo. The will of a few is imposed by a few due to positioning with those that are in control.

Bands of monkey, apes, gorillas, chickens, and countless other social animals make use of sex, food, and force to persuade alpha members. Although the lines of division amongst humans is diminishing, the notion that one can persuade those in charge to better their position is not. When the leader of a church persuades his flock to vote for pro-life candidates, the social pressure is to believe that abortion is wrong. Members of the church donate money in hopes of bettering their social position. They make radical claims in support of the cause, they get worked up, protest outside of clinics, when in reality the issue has no consequences upon their lives except for positioning within their peer group. Persuasion as means for social mobility is an unspoken law that all social animals share.

The question is what would happen if we just stopped electing people into office and the responsibility were divided amongst a community. On a visit to a remote village in Southern Mexico, I encountered a government that functioned by the Cargo System. Every man in the village at some point holds an unpaid office for a year. This seemed to work extraordinarily well for providing for the community and building relationships within. The cargo system tribal in nature eliminated the need for competition for persuasion, because it doesn't make since to bribe or seek social positioning . Over time you would have to fool everyone to get your way, it becomes impossible to put the will of a few over the will of the group. This system isn't leaderless but it is kind of close.

What if America as a whole went by the cargo system. We could have a weekly lotto where x amount of people would go to Washington to function as a representative or senator for the state. One thing is sure respect for the office would increase and more people would pay attention, because next week could be anyone's week. Another positive would be the that corporations would have a hard time buying off senators and representatives, as there would be 10,400 senators and 22,620 representatives a year. This would be a logistical nightmare, but intriguing to think about.

We don't make a system more stable by increasing the entropy of the system, basically occam's razor. Cargo systems work well in small villages, but a large population might destabilize in the complexity of such a system.

Maybe a leaderless government would be a possibility if humanity as a whole could adopt a unified theory of laws. Then governments could just administer laws and not concern themselves with legislating. It seems that there is no reason that war and tyrants just couldn't be banned. Distribution of food could be equal for everyone on the planet. Wages and currency could be universal. Since the direction of evolution of government is increasing in complexity as a whole, the next contingent step could be a one world government. We all share in the human experience. The internet is connecting the world in ways that have never happened before in history. Memes travel at the speed of light in the information age, it only takes one viral meme to unit everyone.

Let us experiment or pretend to. What would one do, if tomorrow there were no governments. Most would be alarmed, but why? Who is going to come and kill everyone in the night? What would be the rationality? Since humans are highly social animals there seems to be an instinct to band together. New groups of people would instantly form micro governments in tribes. I don't think these tribes would necessarily have to have leaders, but I think most would, those that were more able would contribute more, power would become unbalanced and we would be back were we started.

Failed experiment some time tell us more than successful ones. We can find the variables that are fixed and the ones that can be changed. The rational facts are that humans are social creatures that have to function in a way that promotes the individual and the kinship group. Kinship of being human or anthropomorphism is defined by our genetics. The kinship group could be expanded to include everyone, it would only be a matter of humanity needing to do so to survive. A global catastrophe or Alien invasion would be a good catalyst for a meme of global solidarity to take over. Since some event in the future will challenge us as a species, what ever it maybe, it will force humanity to ban together as one or die.

Micro Philosophy

The Sum of Parts

Thoughts on Tribalism, Inequality, and the Possibilities of a Leaderless Government