Bond of Awareness

   

    Empathy and cooperation between species becomes evident as common traits if we focus on the universal similarities of awareness instead of the great diversity in physical forms. Natural Selection has responded to the diverse and ever changing environment in which life must struggle to survive by letting genetic adaptations run free to produce microbes, magpies, minnows, mollusks and mice, but it has been restrained in the creation of adaptive forms of awareness by the limited ways in which a living form can sense and react to its surroundings.

     Life can’t exist, even in its simplest form, without some way to sense and respond to internal conditions and environmental situations. Early awareness may be only simple chemical responses, (the gene being prompted to separate and reproduce), but awareness has evolved in concert with biological complexity to become the eye, the ear, chemically sensitive buds and pressure and temperature sensitive cells. These essential sensory paths can be traced back to single celled life, some possessing primitive eyes some a sensitivity to temperature some to vibration etc. From plants to mammals the natural selection of pathways for awareness and the natural selection of nerve clusters to utilize environmental sensors more effectively, follow a common and narrow trace.

    We are related to all other living things more closely by our common ability to sense and respond than we are by genetic histories of form. Genetics has played a major role in the selection of our common abilities to sense, respond, learn, remember and choose. The limited ways in which we can gather and utilize information from our surroundings has made all life more alike in common pathways to awareness than in any other.

    Recognizing awareness in others, even other species, is the core of our cooperative and empathetic responses. Natural selection is not a formula or directive, it is simply the way in which life persists and adapts. The natural world around us has made us very different and very similar. To appreciate our similarities we need to begin to define our common awareness in more basic terms. My book, “Darwin’s Paw” introduces these ideas in a fictional lecture series. The book “The Other Half of Evolution” (see by blog series with the same title), explores these ideas in a formal non fictional format. When we find life elsewhere in the Universe, classifying it in terms of its level of awareness may make more sense than looking for differences or similarities to earthly forms.  Emphasizing awareness over form may also allow us to dampen the inevitable reactions and religious revolutions the discovery of extraterrestrial life will certainly evoke. Seeing ourselves, (Humanity), as the result of three billion years of naturally selected advances in awareness, (with the ability to usurp natural selection itself), mandates that we think beyond ancient moral precepts. We need not give up our moral foundations, but as humans, (the only life form determining the future of all life on our planet), we need to understand our responsibilities. Nature has empowered us with an advanced state of awareness and three mandates for its use:  Explore and learn; Be of good council; and be a good steward. The future of all life on our planet depends on an understanding of the lessons of adaptation and cooperation taught by evolution.       

How Nature Builds Things

Combinational Directives

To build a concrete block wall we first have to build the concrete blocks, and to build the concrete blocks we first have to make concrete and so on. There is a series of combinational steps required; mix ingredients to make concrete, make a mold and pour in the concrete, let chemical reactions take place to harden the concrete, separate the hardened block of concrete from the mold, transport it to the job site, mix other ingredients to make mortar, stack the blocks in an arranged order and bond them together using the mortar to create the block wall but, if the block wall is to act as a foundation for a house, we’re not finished, and the process of further combinations continues. All of the steps must occur in order. You can’t lay up the block before you remove the mold or before the concrete hardens etc. There must also be an ordered chain of combinational directives, patterns that must be followed at each step. The proper proportions of cement and aggregate must be mixed together, the mold must be of a standard size and shape to allow the combining process to continue. We observe the process of making concrete blocks and concrete block walls without amazement because we see the process all the time, and we create the combinational directives that lead from raw ingredients to a block wall. This is what humans do…. they build things….. but what about Nature?

Nature is filled with combinational directives, and like our block wall they are arranged in an ordered chain from the simple to the complex, and like our block wall result in structures very different from the raw materials that began the process... and here, we should be amazed!

The combinational directives we are discovering in Nature use enormous amounts of energy and raw materials, amounts far beyond our ability to measure or comprehend, and unlike our block wall, they are self assembling. Nature’s combinational directives are innate in energy and matter itself. The assembly directions are a part of the raw material itself. If we humans had the ability to infuse the raw ingredients of concrete with self assembly instructions, we could stand back and watch concrete blocks form themselves and then assemble themselves into a block wall, which would pretty much make us useless and expendable.

Nature’s combinational directives are truly amazing. It starts with an expanding plasma that, (as it occupies a larger space), cools and precipitates basic solid bits of matter, (fermions) and condenses some of its energy into (bosons), including a key energy particle, the Higgs (a graviton). Then Nature continues its self directed assembly by naturally creating composite elementary particles, (hadrons, baryons, and mesons) and further self assembles these into the first atom, (hydrogen).

With the basic ingredients now self assembled, the expansion continues and residual energy abates as the Higgs, in opposition to the expansion directs aggregates of hydrogen to gather into clouds and condense and as gravities grip grows stronger the density of the hydrogen clouds increase and the cooling effect of the initial universal expansion is reversed and billions of small local hydrogen clouds become tiny furnaces each forging in their interior, (following Nature’s combinational directives), atomic composites of hydrogen atoms. Step by self assembling step, hydrogen is mashed into helium, helium into oxygen, oxygen into carbon and silicon and more, and at each step the self assembly releases some of the energy stored in the basic particles from their condensate origins and with the Higgs in opposition, holding these tiny furnaces closed, the process of atomic assembly continues until iron is produced and, acts as a “stop production switch” (iron releases no residual condensate energy when formed), and shuts down the furnace and  Higgs, (gravity), wins the pushing contest, (the same pushing contest it started in the first place). Without the fusion fire burning hot enough to resist gravity collapses the furnace to become either a weird dense ball of matter or an explosion and, (following Nature’s innate combinational directives), produce even more complex atoms like lead, gold, uranium etc.

One would think that after all this self directed expanding, mixing and exploding that the process would be over, but Nature’s combinational self assembly directives have much more in store. Like our concrete block wall being only the beginning of a house, Nature continues to build things. 

As a key player in Nature’s combinational directives, Higgs, (gravity), never gives up, even when it swallows itself to form a black hole. As Higgs continues to gather clouds of hydrogen it also scoops up the results of its winnings from the collapse and explosions of the renegade furnace stars while they try to escape and return to their plasma beginnings. Seemingly at odds with gravities end game, Higgs continues to form new stars, (new furnaces) from the residue of the first round of the contest, which it has already won. As Higgs continues endlessly to collect and condense everything it can reach, it has to contend with another residual element of its efforts. In addition to having to contend with fusion push backs in the stars it creates by mashing hydrogen atoms to form other atomic elements, Higgs also has to contend with spin, the residual effect of being unable to gather a misshaped cloud all at once in straight lines toward a central gathering point. Higgs is initially spread thin reaching out into amorphous hydrogen cloud as far as possible. Like a large randomly organized crowd of bean pickers holding hands while trying to pick beans being drawn into an, as yet unestablished center point. With all the bean pickers pulling their neighboring picker closer a messy rotation results and a lot of beans are left in the field. The pickers eventually swirl around each other faster and faster like an ice skater pulling in their arms. Eventually they are all mashed together, spinning around at a point somewhere in the field locked in a tight embrace. The beans they missed are gathered by other gravitational pickers onto planets, moons, asteroids and comets

Higgs method of collection is messy. As gravity creates a star it creates rotation as a natural by-product and spins off lots of material it can’t collect. When a balance is created between Higgs pull and the rate of rotation keeping the rotating material at the same distance from central gravitational points a stable orbit is created, and orbits are everywhere. Our moon and our man made satellites orbit the earth, the earth orbits the sun, the sun orbits around the center of the galaxy and galaxies orbit each other. Round and round everything goes and orbiting appears to be, like Higgs and star formation, another key combinational directive.       

One would think that after all this additional mixing, exploding, gathering and spinning that the process would be over, but Nature’s combinational self assembly directives have much more in store. Like our concrete block wall being only the beginning of a house, and the house being only the beginning of activity within it, Nature continues. The chain of events that has created atoms is filled with amazing steps, mostly violent, and all take place in such large numbers and in time scales we can’t comprehend, a self actualizing chain of events directed by innate combinational directives far beyond what we can understand but can't deny and they, like a congressional filibuster, go on and on and on 

Beyond atoms, (has anyone ever tried to calculate how many there are in the universe?) are the next combinational directed products; molecules, and from molecules the next combinational directed product; compounds and from them; minerals and from them a really amazing self directed combinational product called life, and from life, awareness, and from awareness a whole new chain of combinational directives as we, and probably other life forms in the universe, take charge of the next level of combinational directives.

Were all these amazing events instilled as combinational directives from the beginning? Was so much randomness needed and were so many missteps necessary? Is an end product programmed into Nature’s combinational directives or are we, and other advanced life forms, the last step in Nature’s built in guidance program, leaving the future of the universe open and in our hands, or tentacles, or whatever.?   

   

Legislate, don't manipulate. A plea to politicians

EXPLOITING DEMOCRACY

By

Vern A. Westfall

      Politicians have always brought special agendas to congress for consideration. It is an essential part of any representative democracy, but it only works if the agendas are open for review by the voting public. Hiding priority agendas from the public during elections, cloaking them in misleading language and burying them in unrelated bills to become a law, are subversive acts that undermine a free and open government. Some closed door negotiations are necessary to coordinate political campaigns and to assemble blocks of votes, but underground campaigns to recruit and finance politicians in order to infiltrate our legislative bodies for narrow personal agendas is a subversion of democracy, not an exercise in democracy.

     After many failures to gather public support for narrow views, extremists have begin to manipulate primary campaigns by sneaking their candidates into the system with carefully coached rhetoric, money from secret donors and very sophisticated gerrymandering. Secret agenda politicians concentrate on primary elections because primaries attract very little public scrutiny have low voter turnouts and are party oriented. With agendas hidden in the only platform available in a following general election, puppet candidates are nearly assured success and take their assigned agendas to the next step.

     This undermining process of rigging the system has resulted in a loss of public trust in the workings of what should be the most effective government system in the world. Strong views have a place in democracy, extreme views do not. Open debate and reasonable compromise are the bedrock of democracy but intolerance, based upon strict ideologies, is quicksand and will swallow all our freedoms. When pledges are signed by our lawmakers that take precedence over their oath of office, they become an appointed surrogate, not an elected official, and should be required to rescind their pledge or leave office.

      “We The People” means all of us, not just the pious or the wealthy or the well educated. There is an innate wisdom in our diversity that needs to be respected by all lawmakers and put before fraternity, region, or religion. Stop preaching, stop blocking debates that might expose a weakness, stop pointing fingers and looking for ways to discredit others with different views, and stop fostering paranoia by demonizing others in order to get votes. If holding office, or your view on any specific subject, is more important than the integrity of our Country, you should not be in office. If you let competition supersede compromise in all debates, you should not be in office. If you love this Country love all of it, not just your close circle of like minded friends. Ask yourself why you are in office, how you got there, if you have the perspective and wisdom to govern well, and most important, ask what or who determines your position on matters before you. Any answer, other than your own best judgment of what is best for the Country, should give you pause. We didn’t elect you to represent Wall Street, your church, big business or labor. We elected you to guide and govern a complex and diverse association of people with divergent ideas struggling in a complex world. You may not be able to understand all of us, but please try. Please--------- put our best interests before your personal ideologies and political aspirations and legislate, don’t manipulate, govern, don’t dictate.