the dawning...
Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow. In other words, one might call these Homo species culturally conservative.
After 50,000 BP, what anthropologists characterize as a Great Leap Forward, human culture apparently started to change at much greater speed: "modern" humans started to bury their dead carefully, made clothing out of hides, developed sophisticated hunting techniques (such as pitfall traps, or driving animals to fall off cliffs), and made cave paintings.
This speed-up of cultural change seems connected with the arrival of modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens. Additionally, human culture began to become more advanced, in that, different populations of humans begin to create novelty in existing technologies. Artifacts such as fish hooks, buttons and bone needles begin to show signs of variation among different population of humans, something that has not been seen in human cultures prior to 50,000 BP.
Theoretically, modern human behaviour is taken to include four ingredient capabilities: abstract thinking (concepts free from specific examples), planning (taking steps to achieve a farther goal), innovation (finding new solutions), and symbolic behaviour (such as images, or rituals).
Among concrete examples of modern human behaviour, anthropologists include specialization of tools, use of jewelry and images (such as cave drawings), organization of living space, rituals (for example, burials with grave gifts), specialized hunting techniques, exploration of less hospitable geographical areas, and barter trade networks.
We began to produce regionally distinctive cultures, using new technologies, more efficient hunting techniques and having a more refined aesthetic sensibility...rapidly.
Now what could facilitate such creative evolution?
We know alcohol, nicotine, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA have a consciousness-changing effect...but we know none of these were present during the paleolithic period...
We know brain chemistry affects human consciousness.
We know brain chemistry affect emotions and I'm going to arrogantly assume the majority of the population is addicted to something, whether it be a substance, emotion or activity, because they don't know what else to do..and yet addictions cloud the consciouness.
It is a vicious cycle.
Human consciousness has evolved by Darwinian selection as an assembly machine of incomplete pieces of sensory information about the situation in the external world. The machine constructs a global picture that may be far from correct. Nevertheless this picture permits responses and actions that are more realistic then without it. This is the survival value of consciousness.
The neuro-psychologist Michael Gazzaniga has called this facility the "central interpreter - storyteller". The emotional puzzle assembler, because the global picture is like a puzzle assembled from pieces. Some are missing, others are made to fit by force. The assembler is "emotional", because the process is under the control of the basic survival will (in the brain stem) that is not rational, but instinctual, and the stories weaved have to have an emotional content, so that they can drive on to forceful action that insures survival.
This machine works according to principles known and well studied in self adapting artificial neural networks. Its working is associated with our inner experience of "being conscious". This experience is not different in principle from being hungry or cold, and as such can never be a subject of physics.
Only the underlaying physiology can be studied by methods of natural science. It will be substantiated that nothing supernatural need to be associated with the existence of consciousness, nor is it necessary to invoke some of the mysteries of modern quantum physics, as some noted physicists presently are doing.
They can only add to the prevailing confusion.
The most basic functional dynamic in all animal brains that have sprouted a neocortex is based on a "dualism" or "antagonism" between brain stem and neocortex.
This is a consequence of the fact that the brain stem was the much older and only organ of central control in early organisms. Here the responses were almost purely genetically determined and hardwired.
They were "instinctual". The neocortex, on the other hand, came into existence as an organ of individual adaptation to the concurrent external world. Thus the center of the "will" remained in the brain stem, "cognition" with its associated memory and adaptive intelligence, mainly happen in the neocortex.
Even though this is an antagonism natural, functional and healthy in all brains that have developed a neocortex, in modern humans the balance has radically tilted in favor of the neocortex, particularly of the left hemisphere consciousness.
This has happened because consciousness has become such an overwhelming success in mastering our physical environment through objective knowledge, tools and technology. We became entrapped by our own success and have lost the ability to properly reconnect to our inherited biological needs, hedonic wishes and instincts of the brain stem. As a result these remain in a state that is unmediated by reason and thus leads to chaos, violence and socio-cultural decline.
In present day cultural evolution this dualism is the most urgent problem of adaptation. It needs to be resolved before any further progress of humanity can begin. It also is the neurological key to an objective psychology of the future, to the understanding of what has driven human history to become that bloody medley of violence and arrogance, and to what drives all religions. Our technology driven, free market civilization is strongly reinforcing that dualism. What often is referred to as an inner void is caused by it, and very likely the frustration over not being able to bridge it, leads to apocalyptic beliefs.
The appearance of extreme religious sects is a direct indicator that the void is rapidly becoming unbridgeable in a significant part of the world's population.
Ever since the political theories of the enlightenment period, the most fundamental assumption about the nature of citizens forming the social contract was this: each individual is an autonomous, self responsible agent, possibly answerable to God only, whose will and pursuit of happiness has to be respected absolutely, as long as it is not harmful to others.
In my opinion this is an ignorant and flawed assumption.
We are far from being autonomous. Even though there is a certain genetically fixed inventory, upon whose fulfillment happiness depends, much of our wants are a result of programming of the neocortex by others, by common beliefs, state doctrines, advertising, technological super stimuli and the like.
Especially in modern technological "media culture" this influence has become excessive and contrary to the desired state of well being. "Pursuing happiness", as it was meant by the founding fathers, today can lead to self destruction.
In the current situation, without a determined and systematic communal pursuit of the cultivation of objective truth, esthetic taste, and an effective hygiene of values, we are condemned to an existence not much above the level of apes, worse: apes that have guns, atom bombs, poison gas, and who thoughtlessly multiply, destroying the planet.
The social contract between government and citizen has to be re-engineered, so as to better insure such systematic pursuit, and thus to protect and foster creative cultural development, positive education, and hence more happiness for all.
Currently in the USA such statements are political anathema. But some European countries have de facto moved in the indicated direction. They have proven to be more pragmatic than the oldest working democracy which continues to proudly suffer from much unexamined deadweight dogmatism, arrogance and corruption, much like Australia.
In spite of this I am sensing a shift in the prevailing paradigm.
The technological revolution of recent times is not without its advantages..information flies round the world at ridiculous speeds, cynical pre teens know they can't trust governments..drug use is rampant in all areas of society, especially the upper-middle classes.
There is a growing worldwide interest in spirituality and an ever increasing sense of people thinking of the 'why' aspect.
I don't have an answer, but I'm not done looking.
Are you?
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