A singleton could prevent this unfortunate outcome by promoting eudaemonic types and activities within its own jurisdiction. [23] Since a singleton would lack external competitors, there would be no higher level at which evolutionary selection could gain foothold and start penalizing the singleton’s policy of non-maximization of economic productivity.
A singleton need not be a monolith (except in the trivial sense that has some kind of mechanism or decision procedure that enables it to solve internal coordination problems). There are many possible singleton constitutions: a singleton could be a democratic world government, a benevolent and overwhelmingly powerful superintelligent machine, a world dictatorship, a stable alliance of leading powers, or even something as abstract as a generally diffused moral code that included provisions for ensuring its own stability and enforcement. [24] A singleton could be a rather minimalist structure that could operate without significantly disrupting the lives of its inhabitants. And it need not prohibit novelty and experimentation, since it would retain the capacity to intervene at a later stage to protect its constitution if some developments turned malignant."
Memetic Flourishing (memes are the stuff of culture: ideas, reproducing behaviors, symbols, and perhaps technologies depending on your definition of memes)
Transparency (creates a demand for revealed intentions / whether or not someone is a friend or foe, thus increases means of cooperation)
Richness and Amount of Communication (global argument about what's true and right, gradually leading to a resolution of collective understanding)
Capacity to Learn and Change Behavior (more likely to discover pragmatic truth and means of cooperation)
Refinement of Culture and Consciousness by Justification
The Decline of Violence
Justice and the Moral Arc
Domestication and Pacification
Self-control
Progress towards universal trust enabled by universal understanding.
Dominance of the Leviathan (monopoly on violence)
Commerce, Commodification and perhaps sharing - Increasing Resolution of Exchanged Value
Interconnectivity and transportation
The Escalator of Reason
The Expanding Circle of Compassion
Stratification of the Dominance Hierarchy
Inequality?
ToKers:
A hundred years ago, Oswald Spengler published the first volume of his "Decline of the West" (in German, subtitled "Form and Actuality") and, in many ways, we've all been writing replies to him since (including hereabouts of late) . . . <g>
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_Decline-2DWest-2DActua lity-2DPerspectives-2DWorld- 2DHistory_dp_B0016511PQ&d= DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4 uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1I XYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgj O2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl _ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s= qSvmHi-t8kzIdo8ZyajoqEjj0xur0o bamaQFRopF9JI&e=
Arnold Toynbee picked up the ball on behalf of the West (in particular, the British Empire) and spent his life writing his multi-volume "A Study of History." He was followed by Carroll Quigley (mentor to Bill Clinton at Georgetown, who wrote "Tragedy and Hope" &c) and Sam Huntington (with whom my partner at the Center studied at Harvard.) Henry Kissinger even wrote his undergraduate thesis at Harvard on Spengler and T. Adorno, father of Social Psychology, wrote an important essay on the topic (scans available to anyone who is interested.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_Clash-2DCivilizations- 2DRemaking-2DWorld-2DOrder_dp_ 1451628978&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpn zycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_ 5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP- UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m= dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZW F01AxlpdAYsrw&s=iaQ9RLjjBol5T_ HiAZB98AAUEeoSb3ISr8eZDpiwrRs& e=
What they all recognized, however, is that the West isn't the only game-in-town. In particular, Spengler thought that Russia would overtake Europe and that, ultimately, China would overtake them all. My partner spends half his life in Beijing (and I'll likely be heading there in a few weeks to speak at the World Congress of Philosophy.) For the Chinese, Teilhard's "omega point" and Kevin's "technium" would make no sense -- since they have a fundamentally different understanding of history.
Teilhard was a "renegade" Jesuit priest. His "heresy" is an old one that the Catholic Church has been dealing with for a long time. Just take a look at Joachim de Fiore, if you need a 12th-century refresher. Eric Voegelin called it "immanentizing the Eschaton" in his Walgreen lecture, "The New Science of Politics" (which then led to Marshall McLuhan striking up a correspondence with him on the topic of *gnosticism*). Teilhard was in a hurry-to-get-outta-here, a trait that he shared with many who took LSD -- which is uniquely a drug of psychic death-an-rebirth (for which I am the "alternate" historian.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_New-2DScience-2DPoliti cs-2DIntroduction-2DFoundation _dp_0226861147&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbW YnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_ 5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP- UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m= dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZW F01AxlpdAYsrw&s=Nl1qC4m6KxvqfP Av50NVY-b7wmt8_eTLiYoJDyfSojc& e=
Kevin Kelly is a protege of Stewart Brand, the organizer of the "Trips Festivals" where the Grateful Dead played and which Tom Wolfe (who "discovered" Marshall McLuhan in the mid-1960s) described as "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests." Lots of LSD was involved. Lots of psychic "decline and re-birth." Reminding us that LSD is the *quintessential* Western drug -- tracing its origins back to the Eleusinian Mysteries (c. 700BC-400AD), around which Athenian culture was organized. Yes, that's the "subtext" to everything in Plato, for instance (but not Aristotle.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_Road-2DEleusis-2DUnvei ling-2DSecret-2DMysteries_dp_ 1556437528&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpn zycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_ 5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP- UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m= dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZW F01AxlpdAYsrw&s=c123YQcXkcX1-A n6vS6dzxKU2WEm5f_ATGuEGTwOKS4& e=
Brand -- about whom a friend of mine, John Markoff (ex-New York Times), is now writing the "offical" biography -- brought Kevin in to edit the "Co-Evolution Quarterly" and later "Wired" magazine (for which I tried to provide early financing.) Kevin is a "born-again" Christian who is keen for the 2nd Coming (along with Teilhard) -- who has detailed his views in a fascinating "comic book" titled "The Silver Cord" (in which humans turn into angels to "fight the devil.")
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_Silver-2DCord-2DKevin- 2DKelly_dp_1940689015&d= DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4 uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1I XYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgj O2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl _ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=5da Pt7Alh8EfcRsG8t2c-C_MdfbIoIeCt 2pA5_Imcew&e=
This "linear" view of history -- culminating in the "end of history" and its replacement with "truth" (aka Jesus Christ) -- became the Protestant goal with the invention of the Printing Press. As a *paradigm*, PRINT (or what McLuhan called the "Gutenberg Galaxy") was incredibly "linear." One letter-after-another on the page. Mechanically reproduced. Copy after copy. Onward-and-upward. Marching to the *promised* land (just like the Book of Revelation, which is behind both Teilhard's and Kevin's fantastic stories, told us it would) . . . !!
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_Gutenberg-2DGalaxy-2DM arshall-2DMcLuhan_dp_144261269 X&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7 vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=H Po1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jI YBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9ln uLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw& s=ONoLLFnLtaG5oyuQD5jwszhWpAAb 7Nh-9lMKFSPOTiY&e=
This "linearity" is, some might suggest, the result of an over-development of the brain's *left* hemisphere. While much of the popular material about left/right is overblown (or just wrong), Ian McGilchrist has put what is actually known together in his 20-year effort, "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World." In it he summarized the difference between the two hemispheres as "linear" (left) and "circular" (right) and how (but not why) the "left" dominates in the West.
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_Master-2DHis-2DEmissar y-2DDivided-2DWestern_dp_ 0300188374&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpn zycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_ 5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP- UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m= dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZW F01AxlpdAYsrw&s=MhkTRL-tLu0DD6 Ic6yGOmlVkk-tnK1HVRMb3wPUO4gg& e=
If the West is "linear" (resulting in "omega points" &c), then the East is "circular." We believe that this is largely a result of the different *writing* systems used in the East and West. Ideo/pictographs are "pictures" and learning to use them to communicate is likely a "right-brain" task -- begun at early childhood. On the other hand, the Alphabet (invented by my ancestors in Phoenecian to conduct trade across the Mediterranean) is only phoentics, with no meaning attached to any of the symbols. As a result, the East has a "circular" understanding of history, whereas the West thinks in terms of "end points."
Teilhard de Chardin and Kevin Kelly are both "eschatologists." They point to the "end of history" because that's what their left-brains tell them to do, as a result of the culture in which they live, as a result of the communications technologies that formed that culture. But eschatology makes no sense in "right-brained" China.
Instead, the Chinese think of themselves as riding a 720-year "roller-coaster." Taking their 60-year annual cycle and multiplying it by 12, they get the Chinese "grand cycle" of roughly 700 years and they are convinced that they will reach the next "peak" in the 22nd-century. Going backwards, they believe that the previous peaks were in the Ming (roughly 1500AD), T'ang (roughly 800) and Han (roughly 100) dynasties (and some would go back to C'hu, roughly 600BC and beyond to Shang &c.) One way to get a glimpse of all this would be to study Joseph Needham's multi-volume "Science and Civilization in China" (with particular interest in his focus on the role of Daoism in Chinese history.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama zon.com_Science-2DCivilisation -2DChina-2DIntroductory- 2DOrientations_dp_052105799X& d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vC I4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo 1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYB gjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuL Ml_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=O qadsucKkkOaN7FJqfbkrgiZMaN5Ydu 4GSZrkDNVJzs&e=
As a result of all this, any cultural/psychological "Theory of Everything" must account for the differences between East and West -- while dealing with underlying technologies that have generated these differences. As it turns out, all "cultures" are *not* the same (yes, there are also many others.) Hypothesizing an "omega point" is fine if you are a Westerner under the influence of Christian "revelation" but that's *not* the way most people on earth think nowadays. Yes, the "eschaton" is an answer to Spengler's questions (which, as you recall, were first posed by F. Nietzsche, who was supposed to become a Lutheran minister) but not everyone thinks those are the most important questions for us to answer today . . . !!
Mark
P.S. As best we can tell, the only "elite" who did not take LSD in the 1960s were the Chinese. The Russians did it. The Japanese did it. But not the Chinese. In fact, it appears that the "Great Wall of China" was built to keep central-Asian "shamanic" culture -- based on taking hallucinogenic mushrooms -- out of China and some believe that the Chinese hostility to India is also based on the Indian use of hallucinogens in their "holy books." Instead of wanting to "die" so that you can be "reborn" (into a transformed world), Chinese *alchemy* was dedicated to "elixirs of immortality" which would allow them to stay alive from one cyclical peak to another.
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wiki pedia.org_wiki_Shamanism&d= DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4 uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1I XYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgj O2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl _ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=7DH 7v09kkrNaePvx5IE1I-a8dXg6bkKGO PEovB4dsnY&e=
P.P.S. The Russians supplied most of the world's LSD from c. 1965-75, fueling the "counter-culture" in what they thought of as "chemical warfare" against the "West" in the Cold War. The goal was to "disorient" Western youth and, in the process, strengthen the Soviet Union. Initially, pharmaceutical LSD was manufactured under KGB supervision at Spofa in Prague and then they transitioned to supplying the ergotamine precursor for the "underground" labs. Teilhard was very popular among the "hippies" and I think that I bought my first copy of "The Phenomenon of Man" c. 1967 -- the same year I drove non-stop to Haight Ashbury for the "Summer of Love," where I saw Jim Morrison sing his iconic "This is the End (the West is the best.)" Btw, "blue bus" is a metaphor for Czech LSD, since Spofa put it in a ampule where the liquid was colored blue.
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.you tube.com_watch-3Fv-3DJSUIQgEVD M4&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb 7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r= HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-j IYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9l nuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw& s=nj7XX2WD1VRo3ZVCxB4hz4xG2pic aGAwBcZPdKc7MVQ&e=
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