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Think About This

What It Means to Be Human (Think About This #50)

by Tom Huston

These days, everyone is talking about the potentially devastating effects that climate change and the economic crisis may have on society. But according to Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau, whom we interviewed for the upcoming issue of EnlightenNext, there’s an evolutionary X factor that most pundits fail to account for when making their linear predictions about what the future has in store:

I think that there is a third enormous driver of change in addition to the economic crisis and climate crisis, which is the advancement of human enhancement. There is a curve plotting exponential change called Moore’s Law, and the way it is frequently stated is that the amount of computer firepower that you can buy for a dollar will double every eighteen months for as far as the eye can see…. A single iPhone today, for example, has more computer firepower than did the entire North American Air Defense Command back in 1965.

Well, the significance of this, in terms of culture, values and society, is that for the first time our technologies are increasingly aimed inward—at modifying our minds, memories, metabolisms, personalities, and our kids. We’re about to become the first species to genuinely take control of who we are as an organism, to take control of our own evolution, not in some distant science-fiction future but right now, on our watch. And that, I would argue, is going to have a potentially greater impact on society than either the economic crisis or climate change, because we’re talking about fundamentally changing what it means to be human.

To listen to our interview with Garreau, click here (and sign up for a trial version of Unbound, our online audio and video service).

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Apr 01, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

The Evolutionary Impulse (Think About This #49)

by Tom Huston

In this compelling excerpt from his column in the last issue of EnlightenNext magazine, editor in chief Andrew Cohen describes the evolutionary impulse, which he believes has been propelling the cosmic process forward since day one:

I have no doubt that the evolutionary process—from the big bang to the present moment—is not merely a random, meaningless event. If one stands back and takes a good, hard look at the entire sweep of the process, all the way from its earliest beginnings, one can see undeniable direction and even, I dare say, purpose in its majestic unfolding. But who or what initiated that process? What energy or intelligence made the choice to take that first miraculous leap from formlessness to form, from nothing whatsoever to energy and light to matter to life to consciousness to self-reflective awareness? Such an audacious move, that instantaneous leap from nothing to the beginning of everything, could only have been made by a force that was nothing less than Godlike. That impulse, that evolutionary impulse, is what I call God. That same impulse is not separate from the most important part of each and every one of us, from our uniquely human drive to create and innovate and, most significantly, from our will to consciously evolve.

To read the entire column, click here.

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Mar 25, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

Reinventing Capitalism (Think About This #48)

by Tom Huston

In the midst of our current financial crisis, it may seem natural to cast doubt on the entire enterprise of Western capitalism and wonder if its basic tenets of progress and production have led humanity astray. But according to avant-garde cultural theorist Howard Bloom, writing in EnlightenNext back in 2005, such dismissals tend to overlook the true evolutionary significance of our economic system:

The problem does not lie in the turbines of the Western way of life—industrialism, capitalism, pluralism, free speech, and democracy. The problem lies in the lens through which we see. Capitalism works. It works clumsily, awkwardly, sometimes brilliantly, and sometimes savagely. So we need to dig down to find out why. We need to reveal the deeper meaning beneath what we’ve been told is crass materialism and see how profoundly our obsessive making and exchanging of goods and services has upgraded the nature of our species. This is not a mindless consumer culture destroying the planet in an orgy of greed. It is the most creative and potentially idealistic bio-engine this planet has ever seen. We desperately need a reinvention and a re-perception of the system that has given Western civilization its long-term strength and its recent weaknesses. We need to wake up capitalism to its mission—a set of moral imperatives and heroic demands that are implicit in the Western way of life. By reinventing capitalism and injecting our own souls into the machine, you and I can raise the bar of human possibility.

Read the full text of Bloom’s column “Reinventing Capitalism.”

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Mar 18, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

The Goldilocks View (Think About This #47)

by Tom Huston

According to some interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar, the year 2012 may mark the end of the world as we know it. And in the midst of our global economic crisis, many are starting to take such doom and gloom claims seriously. But do things have to fall apart completely before they can get better? In a recent interview with EnlightenNext magazine, cultural historian Gary Lachman offers a more nuanced perspective on our current trajectory:

We’re part of a long process that’s been going on now for a few hundred years. Modernity is an experiment. No one knew in advance what was going to happen. British historian Arnold Toynbee said that all civilizations have a kind of momentum: they move forward and then they hit a kind of plateau. Before long, they’re faced with a challenge. If the challenge is too great, the civilization collapses. If the challenge isn’t great enough, then the civilization overcomes it too easily and becomes weak, soft, and lazy. I take a “Goldilocks” view of history: the challenge has to be “just right.” It has to be just enough for civilization to muster its resources, but not so much that it destroys it. I think that what is happening right now is part of a much larger process. So am I worried about 2012? I’m already looking forward to 2013.

Listen to the full interview with Gary Lachman here.

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Mar 11, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy (Think About This #46)

by Tom Huston

In a recent appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, stand-up comedian Louis C.K. offered a poignant and hilarious wake-up call when he pointed out one of the tremendous ironies of our time: the fact that, in the midst of the most highly evolved and technologically sophisticated civilization in human history, we still often overlook our incredible privilege and manage to feel strangely blasé about it all…

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Mar 04, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
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