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I've decided to serialize my book on this website. As an incentive to readers to return to the site, each month I will post at least one Chapter of the book until the entire book is posted. Go into the Archives to "Beyond Animal" for earlier chapters. The book provides context for the blog, clearly explaining the underlying philosophy and identifying critical issues of our time. I believe that Chapter 8 is a pivotal chapter which sets the stage for the remainder of the book.
An Evolutionary Imperative
Scientists have identified the human brain's highly developed right prefrontal cortex as potentially responsible for self awareness, empathic emotion, and significant contribution to conscious thought and decision making. These attributes are among the most highly evolved of life. While apparently a result of the brain's physical evolution, intellect, which includes thought, knowledge, and consciousness, has its own path of development. Intellect also informs emotion contributing to a third area of further evolution. It has led to a higher order of emotions beyond the primitive feelings of fear and aggression. Higher states of emotion include insight into shared circumstance (empathy), recognition of vulnerability to negative events (sympathy), and optimism about future outcomes (hope).
To understand the future potential of life we must look at evolution as the most powerful process guiding its development. Anticipation of future advancements may help us recognize when they occur and position us to contribute to their development. We must admit, however, that we may not be aware of them when we experience them.
For example, the rest of the animal kingdom cannot perceive our development of self awareness nor understand how different it makes us. Consider how recent it was that we learned other animals are also self aware. This should cause us to pause when we encounter life behaviors or characteristics we have never seen before. Since we consider ourselves at the pinnacle of evolution our understanding may be key to future progress. For these reasons we will look further at physical, intellectual, and emotional evolution.
There are at least three forces influencing the progress of physical evolution. The first is random mutation and resulting genetic modification. This occurs when alteration of a DNA sequence results from errors during replication or repair of DNA. Other changes take place through recombination of DNA sequences as a natural result of cell division. They often have no apparent effect until an environmental event selects and favors the change. Even small genetic alterations can have significant impact because they can exist over long periods of time and combine with other unseen mutations until environmental change makes their effect and existence apparent.
The second force shaping evolution is selective breeding. There is an inherent genetic and biological drive within animal species to select breeding mates that exhibit preferred characteristics. This mate selection is based on factors generally specific to the species such as physical stature, dominance, and plumage. Well documented in the animal kingdom, this behavior is also apparent within humans. Mate selection within human kind has a wider set of criteria which can include intelligence, personality, or can be the result from the often inexplicable emotion defined as love. Beyond selective breeding within species, we have practiced selective breeding of agricultural crops, livestock, and pets for centuries. We have done this to produce characteristics we value.
The third force impacting physical evolution came into existence within the last fifty years. This is the human science of genetics, more specifically genetic engineering and its successor synthetic biology. The tools are now in place to alter the genetic code of any life form at will by using the largely cut and paste technology of genetic engineering. This science has led to a multi-billion dollar, worldwide industry seeking to profit from conscious human alteration of the genetic code of numerous existing life forms and new alien life forms it seeks to create.
Random mutations, selective breeding and thoughtful genetic engineering will undoubtedly prove beneficial in a changing environment. To have the widest possibility of beneficial change, broad diversity of species is desirable. When confronting the impending extinction of a living species, most people only consider the utility of the species to human beings. This is a shortsighted view. In the history of life there have been species other than Homo sapiens that have been the dominant life forms of their time. While ours is a privileged present position, evolution and changing circumstance may favor another. Only the right choices and actions will secure our continued leadership of life.
To put human life in perspective, science considers the age of Earth to be about 4.5 billion years. Life is thought to have come into existence some 3.5 billion years ago. The Homo genus or branch of life leading to Homo sapiens is believed to have begun 1.5 to 2.5 million years ago with modern humans first appearing around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. While we egotistically assume our position as dominant species will continue indefinitely, such may not be the case. It is generally thought we can survive catastrophes that have befallen previous dominant life forms. We may not be able to survive our own actions. As the preeminent species of conscious decision making we may make a disastrously wrong decision, wait too long to correct a bad decision or just fail to decide to do the things necessary to insure survival.
As it has been in the past so it may be in the future. We do not know if there will be a future ascendency of another life form as the dominant species. Not knowing what life must do to insure its survival, we should view all species within the collective gene pool as potential contributors to the future sustainability of life. When we balance the value of our actions to preserve a species from extinction against the costs of doing so, we must consider that any loss of diversity will diminish the possibility that life will survive.
A note of caution, diversity as a result of natural processes has been tested and refined over billions of years by natural selection. As will be discussed in Chapter 13 on synthetic biology, entrepreneurs now have the ability to bypass the protections offered by the slow and steady process of natural selection. They have the ambition, if not the present ability, to create entirely alien life forms that would never and could never evolve naturally on our planet. Our knowledge of the potential risks is so limited and their possible effects so extreme, it may be doubtful this diversity is desirable.
The second domain of evolution is intellect or advances in human thought in all of its various forms. Intellect is one of evolution's greatest outcomes. With intellect has come the ability to reason or the power of comprehension, inference, or thought especially in orderly rational ways. With reason has come science and the knowledge humanity now possesses. If we accept Pavlov's view that curiosity is instinctive, curiosity coupled with human intellect has produced all of our scientific breakthroughs. Breakthroughs have been the result of this burgeoning intellect and knowledge base. They give humans extraordinary control over their environment. They also extend their life spans and lessen human suffering.
The power and progress of human thought has been discussed by countless philosophers. Descartes who spoke of it as a proof of existence itself asserted "I think, therefore I am." Hegel with his theory of the dialectic cited a thesis giving rise to its own antithesis and an ultimate synthesis as the way thought advances.
With the evolution of intellect has come abstraction or the ability to see a quality apart from an object. This has led us to define and classify categories that only have existence in thought. An example is the consciousness of self. It gave us recognition of our own existence and the concept of "I". With intellect, this consciousness has been raised to progressively higher orders of thought. From "I" came recognition of "We" as the individual perceived the connectedness and relatedness of other human beings and life forms. This progressive abstraction of relatedness brought concepts of nation, race, species and the aggregation we call life itself. These successive levels of consciousness represent the best evolutionary progress of intellect.
The greatest advance of human thought occurs when it rises to the highest levels of abstraction. This level of abstraction is most productive in reaching for the greatest truth and common good. It was from the higher states of consciousness that founding fathers of the United States wrote the Declaration of Independence. The thoughts and phrases, "all men are created equal" and "unalienable Rights" and "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," continue to have profound effect beyond their nation of origin. From an equal level of abstraction, that of a "Community of nations" came a movement to create the United Nations.
The ability to abstract an idealized state to which we can direct our action is one of our most advanced intellectual capabilities. These are examples of the power of thought to shape the destiny and future of humanity. Others could be identified from the systems of thought developed and refined in the fields of science, philosophy, and religion. This evolution is as important as the physical evolution with which we are most familiar. This intellectual evolution will undoubtedly produce more knowledge, more insights, and higher levels of consciousness. As stated at the outset of this book, we have learned that greater knowledge and understanding increase our ability to shape and impact our surroundings to better support our lives. As it is true for our individual and collective lives, so it is also true for all of life.
As observed, intellect informs emotion which has led to a higher order of emotions beyond primitive feelings such as anger and fear. Higher states of emotion include those based on insight into shared circumstance (empathy), recognition of another's vulnerability (sympathy), and optimism or pessimism about future outcomes (hope or despair). Anyone who has experienced pride at a significant human accomplishment such as our landing on the moon or whose eyes have welled with tears at a wedding or marveled at the sheer beauty of classical music has experienced a higher order emotion. Anyone who has donated to disaster relief in response to catastrophic human hardship or has administered first aid at the site of an accident or has affirmed a relationship "until death do us part" knows the force of a higher order of emotion to commit us to action.
Emotion is the third path of evolutionary development. The behaviors it elicits have long been a source of controversy amongst philosophers and scientists. It has been much maligned, as intellect and its byproduct, reason, have been elevated as the ultimate human capability. Emotion has often been referenced as primitive, inferior, unreliable and something that must be conquered and controlled by reason. Most often viewed as separate capabilities, much research has been devoted to reason and emotion attempting to identify and pinpoint specific sites or regions of the brain responsible for each.
Research involving neurological patients whose social behavior had been altered by various types of brain damage has shown processes in the brain and throughout the body are more complex and interdependent than once believed. It indicates consciousness, decision making and emotion are intertwined.
One significant proponent of this view is Antonio Damasio, the M.W. Van Allen Professor and head of Neurology at the University of Iowa. In his book Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, he observes that brain damaged patients who are unable to process emotion also suffer impairment of their ability to make rational decisions about everyday problems.56 While reasoning and logic skills are shown when patients identify alternatives to be considered in decision making, their ability to resolve an analysis and decide is impaired. Damasio attributes this impairment to the lack of emotional evaluations that provide crucial input to decision-making.
"I propose that human reason depends on several brain systems, working in concert across many levels of neuronal organization, rather than on a single brain center. Both 'high level' and 'low-level' brain regions, from the prefrontal cortices to the hypothalamus and brain stem, cooperate in the making of reason. The lower levels in the neural edifice of reason are the same ones that regulate the processing of emotions and feelings, along with the body functions necessary for an organism's survival. In turn, these lower levels maintain direct and mutual relationships with virtually every bodily organ, thus placing the body directly within the chain of operations that generate the highest reaches of reasoning, decision making, and, by extension, social behavior and creativity. Emotion, feeling, and biological regulation all play a role in human reason."57
Further support for this view is provided by research in cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary approach to investigating the nature of thought, which has increased our understanding of the interaction of various parts of the brain to produce an emotional experience. Joseph LeDoux at the Center for the Neuroscience of Fear and Anxiety at New York University, in The Emotional Brain cites the interaction of subcortical structures, the amygdala, hypothalamus and brainstem, and the cingulated cortex and the prefrontal cortex as the source of an emotional experience.58 These parts of the brain work in concert for example to enable us to feel fear when we see a stranger approaching in a dark alley. Involvement of the cerebral cortex enables us to recall similar circumstances in the past and recognize the danger in the present. Based on our memory of bad past experience, our sub-cortical structures enable us to reflexively experience an increased heart rate, tensing of our muscles and perspiration.
A fundamental question about emotions has been their origin. Are they innate and somehow hardwired as a result of evolution or are they taught and a product of the cultural environment? If a product of evolution and hardwired in the human being, they should be universal across the human species irrespective of culture, language or ethnic background. Paul Ekman, a noted clinical psychologist, focused on observable facial expression looking for commonality across widely diverse cultures.59 His research documents distinctive universal facial expressions for a small list of basic emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and enjoyment. The research results are somewhat less clear for other emotions such as contempt, surprise, and interest.
Ekman observes this list of "universal" emotions is far shorter than lists most theorists identify and is a much smaller number than the various words that describe different emotions. This suggests that beyond basic emotions resulting from evolution, a different phenomenon is taking place to account for the other emotions human beings report they experience. He speculates there may be emotions not related to specific facial expressions or that grouping emotions into families may offer an explanation or that a number of emotions share one facial expression. It seems likely there may be another explanation, that where physical evolution leaves off, intellect, experience and memory take over.
These findings suggest a small number of evolved emotions serve as a foundation for an intellectual, emotional, and experiential feedback loop that expands the variety of our emotions. It defines a common emotional platform within each human being. We can conceive of coequal intellectual and emotional contexts for each of our experiences that we commit to memory as we live our lives.
An example will serve to illustrate this. As a father runs beside a bicycle, he holds the handle bars and seat steady during his daughter's first bike riding experience. Sensing the child is ready, he pushes off launching her on her own. At this moment she takes control of forward motion as all of her faculties concentrate on maintaining balance. Her intellect is engaged as she concentrates on the actions she is performing. Her major physical sensory systems record her instinctive reactions as she steers, pedals and maintains her balance. Her emotions surge with her simultaneous fear of falling and thrill of accomplishment. After the initial awkward and scary moments she proceeds to ride around the parking lot for awhile as her dad says "I knew you could do it" congratulating her on the accomplishment. Fear gives way to happiness as the child experiences pride.
There are intellectual, emotional and sensory memories created by this experience. The point of the example is that multiple dimensions of every experience are committed to memory and exist for future recall and use.60As we gain knowledge and further insight, we refine memories creating additional layers of nuanced information and emotion for future recall.
Damasio sees intuition as a sort of shorthand memory of past circumstances. He writes, "Emotion had a role to play in intuition, the sort of rapid cognitive process in which we come to a particular conclusion without being aware of all the intermediate logical steps. It is not necessarily the case that the knowledge of the intermediate steps is absent, only that emotion delivers the conclusion so directly and rapidly that not much knowledge need come to mind."
He further observes "that the quality of one's intuition depends on how well we have reasoned in the past; on how well we have classified the events of our past experience in relation to the emotions that preceded and followed them; and also on how well we have reflected on the successes and failures of our past intuitions. Intuition is simply rapid cognition with the required knowledge partially swept under the carpet, all courtesy of emotion and much past practice."61
When we began this discussion we stated that intellect informs emotion. Our self awareness and ability to project how we would feel if circumstance that happened to another happened to us creates feelings of empathy and/or sympathy for another. At the core of this emotional reaction, which does not appear in Ekman's universal emotions, is the intellectual recognition that human beings share similar circumstances. While it can be argued empathy and sympathy may be an extension of sadness, the sadness is informed by intellect to represent a higher state of emotion.
Emotions play an integral role in our lives. They have enhanced survival as we have evolved. They are inseparable from experience, intellect, and decision making. They moderate our behavior as they affect our decision making. As our intellect, knowledge, and consciousness evolve so do our emotions. Much of what we know is learned. This is also true of what we feel. Just as the parent congratulated the child on the accomplishment, the parent taught the child to feel pride. We are not as conscious of the need to teach children to experience higher emotions and yet they are as crucial to our continued evolution as the higher states of intellect that enable them.
When exploring human uniqueness we observed our ability to learn vicariously without personal experience is a key human attribute. Experience of art in all its forms contributes to the emotional development of children. Story telling by the written word or in movies provides a vicarious way to experience emotion. It can convey insights that inform emotions and can trigger feeling an emotion not felt before. The beauty of art and music can lift the spirit and raise emotional consciousness.
Parents must recognize that while art can move emotion forward, it can also create regression to more primitive emotional states. While the beauty of art should be sought, gratuitous vicarious violence on television and in movies can move anyone's emotions to a lower evolutionary level. If a child sees violence, it must be understood through a parent's lens of interpretation and explanation.
Above all, we must look for evolutionary progress because it can originate anywhere and from anyone. Evolution after all is blind to the humble origins of a patent clerk who conceived of E=MC2, to the physical infirmity of a Cambridge astrophysicist who enlightened us about black holes and the universe, and to the sexual orientation of a musician who moved the emotions of 33 million people bringing us the biggest selling song in history, Candle in the Wind. We cannot predict the origin of future breakthroughs or who will be responsible. For this reason we must help others achieve their full potential and be open to their contributions to future progress.
Life's Optional Future
Life and its evolution are extraordinary. Up to now we have spent considerable time identifying basic assumptions to be used in the foundation of our new cosmological perspective. Our investigation of the physics of the universe, life, human uniqueness, and evolution will help us reintegrate our knowledge with our beliefs. We can now draw on these basic assumptions and speculate about future possibilities, as we build the next tier of our belief system.
To do this we must move our focus from knowledge to belief and from what has occurred in the past to what is possible in the future. We advance from the more certain to the hypothetical. As with the articulation of any hypothesis, we define an area of future study posing a new question that once asked launches new investigation.
While all knowledge is based on belief, its categorization as knowledge implies a higher justification,62 such as verification through repeated experimentation or corroborated occurrence as reported by multiple observers. For this reason, knowledge has a higher standing than belief which has not necessarily passed all of the tests to which knowledge has been subjected. A belief is more of a hypothesis. While it may be highly supported by logic, reason, and experience, it does not have the same force and credibility as knowledge.
Similarly, documented events that are known to have occurred in the past have a higher level of certainty than those that are predicted to occur in the future even if they are highly probable. While multiple observers can disagree on the description of a past event because of different perspectives or interpretations, the event is still more certain than that which has not yet happened.
Our objective is not to diminish the value of beliefs or possible future events but merely to recognize the transitions we are making. Beliefs are after all often a precursor of knowledge. We previously identified that new knowledge is frequently the answer to a question that has not been asked before or has been posed but not answered over the centuries. When acknowledging the possibility of a future occurrence we stimulate the human consciousness to think about the possible future event and how it might be accomplished. This in turn is often the first step toward realization. Without the belief that human beings could someday fly and the act of imagining that future possibility, there would have been no airlines to dramatically shorten travel to any place on Earth. In this way beliefs and future possibilities are inextricably tied to human progress.
As we work to construct new hypotheses, our tentative conclusions should seek to be logically consistent and answer basic questions of the meaning of life and human purpose. As we attempt to project known physical processes forward in time, we explore possible future states that challenge our sense of normalcy, increase our intrigue with that which is not known, and stimulate our imagination. We must look for inspiration and an individual vision that provides motivation to sustain a new direction.
To borrow a thought from an old riddle, if two galaxies collide and there is no astronomer or physicist to perceive the collision, is it really happening? Scientifically the answer is yes, the galaxies still collide. If there is no life to perceive it however, there is no awe, no majesty, no wonder, no appreciation or interpretation of the event. Beyond life and its animation, we bring meaning and feeling to an inanimate universe.
This is why we are moved emotionally in the classic movie Blade Runner when the Rutger Hauer character, Roy Batty, the combat model and leader of the renegade Nexus 6 Replicants, is dying after having saved Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford, from falling from the roof of a building. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain." He accepts his fate with a sad smile and his final line, "Time to die". Without his witness, experience, and interpretation of those events, they have no meaning. Beyond this movie character, it is our life and witness that brings quantitative and qualitative richness and gives meaning to all that surrounds us.
What if Roy's memories are not lost with his death? What if his memories, and ours for that matter, are indelible, permanently etched on life's matter so they can be recalled after death when Roy's and our matter is once again reintegrated into a living system?
To reiterate briefly, we know life's matter has memory at the person and organism level. The trillions of cells composing each of us have knowledge of us. This cellular knowledge includes the estimated 20,000 individual genes that account for what the Human Genome Project identified as over three billion base pairs.
Beyond genetic information, we remember the knowledge we've learned and our experiences because they are stored or encoded somehow on the matter within us. This includes the thousands of faces and places we remember for many years in our lifetime. Sometimes when people cannot remember the details of a past event hypnosis is used to help them recall those details. This is because the memory is there but is blocked from immediate recall.
We are uncertain about the mechanisms that create memory and how our memory is encoded. We also do not know what levels or layers of our matter participate in the storing of this information. It is generally accepted that memory takes place at the cellular and molecular levels and involves neuron cells which are specialized to pass signals to other cells through chemical and/or electrical synapses or specialized connections between those cells. Both the pre-synaptic and postsynaptic sites contain extensive molecular structure that link the two cellular membranes together and carry out the signaling process.
We know memories are encoded at the cellular and molecular levels in the body. We cannot see individual atoms because they are thousands of times smaller than the light waves we can see using our eyes. Even though we can't see them, with a scanning tunneling microscope we can use an extremely sensitive probe to feel around the outside of solid materials and perceive the bumps that are made by the individual atoms. Computer imaging software can turn these bumps into an image representing the surface of the solid and individual atoms lying there and the patterns they form. Since we cannot see them however, we do not know if and how atoms and/or particles participate in storing our experiences.
It is not reasonable to assume that because we lack the tools for perception at the atomic and particle levels that no storage of memory takes place there. It is reasonable to assume the encoding of memories occurs at the smallest levels of matter in the body and that as with the hologram, the equivalent of interference patterns are etched on atoms and particles. We assume therefore that memory occurs at all manifestation levels of matter; cellular, molecular, atomic, and particle.
Given technological advances and our recent scientific experiences of retrieving information that was once thought lost from living and once living material sources, it is possible our life memories and genetic code are indelibly encoded on our matter. There is a reasonable possibility that when matter is incorporated into a living system the encoding of experience and knowledge is irrevocable. We know our bodies are composed of elements whose atoms are stable, which in turn are composed of stable particles. Stable atoms and particles have lifetimes that last into the billions of years. This would make the knowledge and memory of life endure perhaps forever.
We assume therefore that matter is irrevocably changed by participating in a living system with its knowledge and memory indelibly encoded or etched on its constituent parts. To this assumption we must add our knowledge that genetic material from fossil bone fragments when inserted in the cells of another living organism can be replicated as its cells divide and multiply. In addition, we know that genetic material from the 100 year old remains of the extinct Tasmanian tiger has been shown to perform normally when reintegrated into a living system.
Our assumptions and the facts we know about once living matter being reintegrated into living systems, such as bacteria and mouse embryos, lead us to recognize a very significant possibility. It is possible that all of the life matter retained in the biogenic sphere that surrounds our planet has the opportunity for future reintegration with a living system. One can imagine living organisms ingesting, growing, and incorporating matter from their surroundings into their life system and obtaining a random mix of the once living matter's past life experiences.
We can conceive of a coherent thought or memory being transferred from the past into the present. This is possible if our experience is etched on our matter in a way similar to a piece of a larger hologram. If this were so, each increment of matter retains in miniature a representation of the entire image or in this case memory from a specific perspective.
Without knowledge of how memory is stored a more likely description of what is recalled of past life experience is tiny fragments of unrelated experience or emotions. When one considers all of the many millions of different organisms that are contributing matter and the many different types of living organisms that are receiving matter, it would seem the impact would be minimal. Possibly the memory of an emotion is more easily transferred to the new living system than a coherent thought or complete memory. This might be because it is inherently less complex and more easily translated. In any case, this need not change the reality that the encoded knowledge and experience exists and can be retrieved and utilized by its new life system.
This new thought, that life's indelibly etched knowledge, experience, and memory can be recalled and used by future life forms of which it is a part, becomes a key assumption of our new cosmology. These three assumptions that matter has memory, the life memory is indelibly etched on matter and survives the death of the organism, and that once-living matter can be reintegrated within a living system to "live" again, are key underpinnings of one of the four major imperatives discussed in the second half of this book.
Of course they also raise a number of questions that take us into more speculative areas about what may be possible. The first question that comes to mind is will it someday be possible to recreate living examples of extinct animals? Would a Jurassic Park scenario be possible?
In the example of our mouse embryo reintegrating genetic material from an extinct Tasmanian tiger, it was the existing life system of the mouse embryo that incorporated and enabled the tiger's genetic material. In another example, discussed in the chapter on Synthetic Biology, genetic material that was fabricated in a laboratory was inserted into a living bacterial cell. The cell accepted the new genetic material, changed the cell's fundamental nature, and went on to divide and multiply naturally. In both cases, the existing living organisms were critical to the success of the experiments.
The complexity of a Jurassic Park scenario is daunting. Its biggest barrier is that no one has successfully initiated the beginning of new life in a laboratory. This is not to say it will not be possible some day. We certainly have indications it is or someday will be possible to decode the extinct animal's genetic code and create the necessary genetic material in a laboratory. Spontaneously bringing it to life may remain the hard part. In the nearer term it is more likely the genetic code may be integrated into an existing living system under conditions similar to those of our two examples.
A second question that comes to mind takes us back to Roy Batty, our fictional combat Replicant. If after Roy's death we were able to keep his matter from dispersing into the environment and mixing with other matter or could spontaneously bring it to life in a newly initiated living system, would Roy's consciousness be restored? Would his memories be intact? Would Roy "be there" again? If this were true for Roy, could it be true for us as well? This question takes us into a fundamentally more speculative direction.
Our three assumptions are sufficient to provide a basic level of support for our new cosmological system. The assumption that today's life experiences may survive in matter's memory and have an impact, if only emotionally, on future life gives support to the thought that we should care about the quality of today's life experience because of its potential future influence.
It is not our intention to minimize the importance of caring in the present about the quality of the human condition. We should all be motivated to reduce suffering, increase individual opportunity, and raise the human standard of living in order to provide the greatest good for the greatest number in today's world. This recognition of future effects from our life experience only increases the urgency of working towards creation of a better life today for all living creatures.
For those readers who enjoy pushing the envelope of imaginative thinking, the following material projects life's process forward in time and provides what may at first appear to be an unsettling description of a future evolutionary development that may change life as we know it. This possibility has significant implications for how we live our lives in the present and how we think about life's future.
We have described the process of evolution as a one-to-many-to-one progression. Our simplified view is that one individual has a mutation that creates a new trait that enhances survival under changing circumstances. That individual survives and passes the trait to many individuals through reproduction. In a subsequent generation another of these individuals experiences a new selected mutation which is passed through procreation to many surviving others.
This cyclic path of evolutionary progress contracting to a single individual with a new mutation followed by expansion to many new individuals through reproduction is the way in which life evolves. This process began with a first organism capable of multiplying itself, passing on genetic information with the ability to vary its characteristics over time and evolve into other forms of life. This evolutionary process is repetitive with countless small incremental mutations having occurred over billions of years.
At life's beginning the first life entity had multiple unique characteristics in addition to being the first mover of the only sustainable life process of which we are aware. At its initiation, it contained all of the sustainable life matter in the universe.
While we have described the evolutionary process for advancing mutated change through natural selection at the individual level, it is possible the process is also at work at an aggregate level. Life began with all life matter concentrated in a single organism. It divided and produced countless generations that followed. At an aggregate level, life's future evolution may initiate a contraction back to a singular living organism. It will contract to a form containing all of the life matter of the universe. In this way life's evolution may have a cyclic nature similar to a cyclic universe that some scientists propose, a universe that has undergone a series of implosions or contractions to a point of maximum density and reversals initiating a next sequential big bang.63 Thus, life may expand from a singular organism to many organisms only to again contract to a singular organism.
This possibility of life's future contraction to a singular organism stimulates the imagination. We can conjure up all sorts of thoughts by imagining the physical shape of this future organism. Our tendency is to think about it in the context of what is familiar. But this would be wrong. This type of thought imposes constraints that must be rejected if we are to be open to the full range of possibilities.
For example, we currently perceive and interpret life as a largely physical phenomenon. Intellectually we know life represents both manifestations of existence, matter and energy. But our predominant perception and area of study has been of our material nature. This may change over time. We can conceive of a future developmental path of an expanded intellect and consciousness with a greater emphasis on energy rather than matter. This is not to predict what is unknowable but rather to open our thoughts to a range of possibilities beyond the present reality. As we think about the future we must set aside the familiar and assume a time when a singular life form may be unique to our experience. It will bear little resemblance to the first single life form or anything we have seen since. It may have neither a physical form nor a scale which is familiar.
We have previously explored the possibility and probabilities of events in the universe. We identified a set of tests to use when evaluating future probability. The probability of life's future evolution to a single life form once again involving all of the life matter of the universe can be assessed using the tests previously identified. The first test is one of possibility. We observed that in order for an event to be possible it must be consistent with the physical laws of the universe. The ultimate test of possibility is previous occurrence. The evolution of a future singular life form passes this test since the first living organism contained all of the life matter in the universe.
The second test is one of frequency. If an event happens with great frequency, it will have a greater probability of recurrence. The presence of all life matter in a single life form has to our knowledge only happened once in the past. While this does not detract from its possibility in the future, it does not enhance its probability.
The third test to be considered is time, specifically the time allowed for an event to take place. We have asserted the infinity of the universe. This means that, if we assume life's prolonged survival, there is an unlimited amount of time within which the singular life form can evolve. There is enough time for the evolutionary process to complete a larger aggregate cycle. While this does not insure the future life form will develop, it does increase its probability.
The final test is whether the event is naturally occurring or has an increased likelihood because of human intervention. The evolution of the future singular life form benefits from both possibilities. It can evolve naturally as a result of the evolutionary process and/or it may result from some measure of human intervention. This latter possibility of our intervention may be one of the greatest determinants of future evolutionary development. We are the most unpredictable variable that may affect future events.
For better or worse, we are the wild card that may through our actions determine the ultimate success or failure of life. Our ability to imagine a perfect outcome and then direct our efforts and seize opportunities to realize that outcome is presently unmatched by any other known life form. The probability of a future evolution to a singular life form is significantly increased if we choose it as our ultimate desired outcome.
To extend our speculation should such a life form develop it will be of great significance to every human being since all of life will be a part of it, including each and every one of us. Composed of our aggregate life matter, it will contain the totality of information, knowledge, memory, and experience of each of our individual lives. With the animation and awakening of its consciousness all of us would once again be integrated into a living system and life embodiment. With its awakening, each of us would achieve transcendence beyond the suspended state we call death. Not only would we be integrated into a new single living being that is all of life, we would share its collective identity.
In this sense, the matter of life would be broadly analogous to the material in a magnet. Once magnetized, it has memory of its magnetic state. If one heats a magnet to a high temperature, its magnetism disappears as its individual atoms are so thermally excited that they become randomly oriented and lose the attractive characteristic of magnetism. When the magnetic material cools to below its Curie point however, the atoms spontaneously line up and reestablish their magnetism.
In an analogous way, inanimate matter in the universe becomes involved in the life process. Matter is fundamentally altered by this experience. At death, when the once living matter is no longer a part of a life process and is dispersed into the biogenic sphere, its memory of its participation in life becomes dormant. If this matter is once again incorporated into a living system as was the Tasmanian tiger's DNA into a mouse embryo, its knowledge of itself and memory of its past life experience is restored. Like a magnet restores its fundamental magnetism, reanimation of life matter revitalizes its dormant knowledge, memory, and experience.
If and when this occurs, our reanimation and awakening would for each of us be instantaneous. In the beginning of this book we described death as the cessation of the life embodiment that contains matter and energizes it to animation. We observed that when the embodiment disintegrates, the matter and energy that constitutes physical existence disperses into the universe. Further, we said that with this disintegration and dispersion, individual consciousness of time and awareness of self cease.
At the moment of each death, awareness of self and the passage of time ceases. With the animation of the future single life form, time for each of us, now integrated once again into a life process, would start anew. No matter how long this evolutionary development takes, how many millions or billions of years will have passed since our individual deaths, for each of us the transition from the moment of our death to our reanimated life would be instantaneous. In this sense, if and when it occurs, from our individual and personal perspective we will instantly reawaken from death.
The final significance of this future life form would be that it would represent only the second opportunity for life to experience existence having many of the characteristics formerly defined and reserved for the supernatural existence of God. These characteristics are Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence. The perception and consciousness of time, the acquisition and understanding of knowledge and the willful exercise of power are exclusively life attributes. This life form would have the totality of the life experience. As such it would have all perception and consciousness of time, the totality of life's knowledge, and would be the only entity in the universe to consciously exercise free will and power.
The possibility and potential of such a development raises questions about its initiation and our possible experience of it. There are several things we know. The first is that if it happens it will be in the distant future and we, as living individuals, will not be there to experience its transition. We will however, join its awakening. As it was with the first initiation of life, while it is tempting to imagine the awakening as an event occurring in an instant, it will most likely be the culmination of a long process of development and awakening. Let us remember that self recognition in human infants occurs after 18 months of life. Presumably this future life form will have similar developmental phases it must pass through before it achieves its full self awareness.
As it was the first time, there will be a requirement for a specific set of circumstances with a necessary amount of life material for it to happen. We know the life material necessary for its awakening is growing in the biogenic sphere, that thin layer of living and once living matter that encircles the planet and is imprisoned in its gravitational field. Each succeeding generation of all of life's species contributes its life mass to the aggregate life matter surrounding our planet. We can imagine that the process may be analogous to the initiation of a self sustaining chain reaction that occurs when a critical mass of fissionable material is in place for a nuclear explosion. There may be a threshold critical mass of life matter that must be reached in order for the aggregate evolutionary cycle to complete. We know the evolutionary process is at work. We do not know its stage of development or nearness to completion. Because we will be integrated into this new entity we will know if and when a future single life form achieves consciousness.
We can only speculate about what we individually will experience if and when it comes into existence. It will be a sentient living being. It will obviously benefit from the consciousness contributed by the experience of higher life forms which include human beings. It will represent life's most advanced, evolved state. It will have self awareness and an identity. It will have intellect and personality. It will have feeling and emotion. It will have the total knowledge and memory of each of our individual life experiences.
We must look at how we exist now to gain insight into what it may be like to be a part of this new entity. We know our lives are not static. We have trillions of cells in each of our bodies. These cells are active during each instant of our existence. There are approximately 100 billion neurons or nerve cells in the human brain. These cells and neurons elsewhere in the body are continuously receiving and sending impulses from and to other parts of our bodies and the environment. With the average world life span of a human being at about sixty-six years we have 24,090 days of existence. Each day we record a different set of thoughts and experiences. Each day some of our cells divide and some of them die. It is as if we are a new person each day.
Yet, while we are new each day, we are also the person we have been in all of our previous days. We are a composite of who we have been at each instant of our existence. Just as the person we were yesterday no longer exists but in our consciousness of ourselves today, we as individuals as a part of a future single life form will exist in its consciousness of itself in all of its previous lives. Its memory of us however, may be even more acute and vibrant for while we lose cells and matter from our bodies throughout our lifetime, it will have all of our matter within its embodiment. For this reason it may know us more than we know ourselves.
Every cosmological and philosophical system has implications about what people should and should not do in their lives. Some of these implications assume the force of imperatives in that certain actions are absolutely required by the belief system. Implications and imperatives are about positive outcomes and negative consequences. Action in accordance with beliefs has positive outcomes and failure to act in accordance with them creates negative consequences. A belief system which does not or cannot serve as the basis of behavior loses its justification. In evaluating a belief system, its implications and imperatives are as important as the original beliefs.
The direction and form of evolution in the future by definition involves distant events. At this point these events are nothing more than desirable potentialities. We have limited knowledge of what must take place for them to become a reality. We can, however, define the broad outlines of four major implications for us which assume the stature of imperatives when we decide to accept and pursue the course of evolution we have identified. These four imperatives must be satisfied if our chosen path of evolution is to be fulfilled.
The four imperatives are that:
- life's evolution must continue,
- life's collective experience must have a preponderance of positive experiences,
- life must be protected from threats,
- human beings must intervene in the course of events and insure the achievement of the first three imperatives.
The future developments we've identified will represent significant thresholds of life's evolution. The only future that matters in an inanimate universe is the future of life. Evolution is the most dynamic and important of life's processes. Without life, all that happens in the universe is irrelevant. The first imperative is that life's evolution must continue. As discussed in Chapter 6, life's consciousness must evolve to the highest state of awareness possible.
Future life will have access to the collective life experience that has gone before. Its view of reality will reflect the positive and negative influences of those past life experiences.
The second imperative is that the collective life knowledge and memory must have a preponderance of positive experience to counteract negative influences. This will insure the future single life form will have a positive and optimistic outlook on reality.
Without definitive knowledge of the timing of evolutionary development, our reintegration into a living system could occur at any time in an infinite future. The third imperative is that life must be protected so it has sufficient time for its evolution to continue and complete. If our universal life is allowed to disappear, it is probable that no future evolution will take place.
Life must continue if it is to fulfill its potential. There are a series of threats looming over humanity that must be addressed to assure life's continuance. These include the ozone hole, global climate change, nuclear weapons, and synthetic biology.
The fourth imperative is that the achievement of the first three imperatives requires human intervention and direction. We individually and collectively have a choice to make. We must choose the possible evolution of which we can conceive as our preferred outcome and dedicate our efforts to its achievement, fully accepting responsibility for the other three imperatives.
In the final analysis, those seeking a new cosmological and philosophical alternative have previously been skeptical of earlier belief systems. Their skepticism has driven them to keep looking and yet doing so will also keep them from unconditional acceptance of a new alternative. Understanding that there is always uncertainty associated with potential future events, skepticism is well founded. We cannot ask that anyone believe without reservation in the future evolution of a singular life form. We can ask however that they choose to believe with reservation. While this may seem too fine a distinction and an insignificant caveat, the choice to believe preserves the freedom to be skeptical while allowing action as if certainty has occurred.
A Positive Life Experience Imperative
As time passes, life and its evolution continue to grow the experience and emotion that is available to all manner of future life forms. We have spent considerable time assessing human uniqueness and evolution. As we are the greatest beneficiaries of evolutionary development of intellect, emotion, and consciousness, these traits will provide the greatest human contribution to the attitudes, opinions and sensitivities of a future life form. They will be a key determinant of its intellect, knowledge, emotions – especially higher order emotions informed by intellect – and its consciousness.
Just as life experiences shape our personalities by creating feelings of optimism or pessimism, self confidence or insecurity and hope or despair, so will our experiences affect future life. The question we must then ask is what will be our net contribution? Will we be a net positive or negative influence? Where are we starting from and what must we do in the future? We need to have a way of thinking about positive versus negative contributions and some form of yardstick with which to measure progress.
We find such a measure in the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow who was influential in personality theory. Maslow perceived a Hierarchy of Needs that determined the priorities of behavior in animals and human beings.64
He observed certain needs took precedence over others and only when they were addressed could an individual turn his or her attention to a higher order of need. For example, if a person is hungry and thirsty, satisfying thirst takes precedence over hunger. The reason is basic to life. While we can survive for a few weeks without food, we can only remain alive for a few days without water. By the same token, if something were to cut off our air supply, we would immediately put aside hunger and thirst in order to restore our breathing. In this hierarchy air, water, and food are three essential needs in Maslow's most basic category of needs. He called them the Physiological Needs.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs was broken into five categories depicted in a pyramid structure. He assumed all human beings are born with these needs and that only once they have satisfied the more basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid, can they focus their attention on other needs. The levels of his Hierarchy of Needs are summarized as follows:
Physiological Needs:These are biological needs including needs for oxygen, food, water, and a stable and comfortable body temperature. They come first among all other needs because they are essential to all life. This basic category includes the need for activity, rest, sleep, to avoid pain, and have sex. Physiological needs are the first of four levels he saw as Deficit Needs. He defined these levels as consisting of things that when you do not have enough of them you have a deficit and you feel a need to fill the deficit. Conversely, once you have enough or have satisfied these basic needs they no longer motivate you.
Safety Needs:After physiological needs are met needs for safety become prominent. Adults are generally unaware of security needs except when perceiving threat. Children feel the need to be safe more often than adults. This can include an individual's need for safe and stable circumstances, protection from perceived threats, and structure and order in one's life. It can also be the need to counteract feelings of anxiety and fear by having a good job, savings in the bank, insurance, etc.
Needs of Love, Affection and Belongingness:When needs for safety and physiological well-being are taken care of, needs for love and belonging emerge. Maslow mentions feelings of loneliness and alienation but this category also includes giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging. This need for a sense of belonging is when you feel the need for family, friends, and affectionate relationships in general.
Needs for Esteem: When the previous classes of needs are met, needs for esteem surface. These include self-esteem and the esteem one perceives from others. Maslow cites two tiers. A lower tier is other directed and includes a need for status, recognition, reputation, and fame. A higher tier is self directed and manifests needs for self-respect, confidence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom. The latter needs are in a higher tier because once you have satisfied them, they are harder to lose.
Maslow sees the first four levels of his pyramid of needs as survival needs. In his view even belongingness and esteem are essential to health. According to Maslow all of these needs are built into human beings genetically. He believed the fulfillment of them is instinctive. He used the term homeostasis to describe the state we are seeking in our lives or a stable state of equilibrium and balance where all of the survival needs are reasonably met and we no longer have to think about them. He also recognized that when survival is threatened people can regress to lower level needs. Even successful people feel threatened in periods of economic downturn and they regress and focus on lower level needs.
Needs for Self-Actualization: When all other needs are satisfied needs for self-actualization emerge. Unlike survival needs, Maslow referred to this category as consisting of growth or being needs. He believedthat once these needs are engaged they do not shut off like survival needs. The need for self-actualization continues and even grows stronger as the individual begins to satisfy it. He referred to self-actualization as a person doing what they were "born to do." This is when people are most creative and productive and have a sense they are achieving at their full potential.
For further definition of self-actualization Maslow studied a group of high achieving individuals. He used a qualitative method called biographical analysis to identify characteristics indicative of self-actualization. In addition to 12 unnamed people he knew whom he felt were self-actualizers, he studied John Adams, Albert Einstein, Alduous Huxley, William James, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Schweitzer, and Benedict Spinoza.
He identified a list of qualities that were characteristic of the people studied and offered them as indicative of self-actualized people. These included a need to be reality-centered, problem-centered, to have a perception of difference between ends and means, have a sense of humor that is not hostile, humility and respect for others, strong ethics, human kinship, and creativity. In addition, he identified special driving needs of self-actualizers. These are needs that have a profound effect on behavior. These included a need for truth, goodness, beauty, uniqueness, completion, justice and order, simplicity, playfulness, self-sufficiency, and meaningfulness.
Maslow recognized that in order to be self-actualizing the individual has to have all of their lower needs taken care of to a considerable degree. He reasoned that if you are hungry you will be looking for food. If you feel your safety is threatened you will be on your guard. If you are lonely and isolated you will be trying to make friends. If you have low self-esteem you will be defensive. In other words, if any of the lower needs are not significantly met, you will not be able to be fully self-actualizing or trying to realize your potential.
Maslow felt that given how difficult life is in the modern world only a small percentage of the world's population was truly able to spend most of their time being self-actualizing. Maslow at one time estimated this percentage of the world's population at two percent. This observation serves as a basis on which Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can be useful in our investigation.
We will not take Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs too literally. We recognize that individuals respond to needs as they perceive them and not necessarily in the order in which Maslow identifies them. We will accept his broad premise that lower order needs for survival typically take precedence over every higher order need as well as the more intellectual, being needs. We will use his construct as a way of evaluating whether net positive or net negative experiences contribute to the aggregate human life experience.
If we assume, as Maslow did, that overall success in life will satisfy survival needs along with achieving self-actualization, we can look at selected world economic criteria as indicative of the continuum of the human condition. We will look at per capita income and household wealth of the world's population. We will assume people in poverty and those with limited means spend most of their time trying to fill their survival needs and that those with higher incomes and wealth have a greater likelihood of being self-actualizing. This should give us a broad yardstick to measure our balance of positive and negative life experience. We will further assume that people living exclusively in their survival needs have a net negative life experience and people who are self-actualizing have a net positive life experience.
A study entitled, The World Distribution of Income: Falling Poverty and . . .Convergence, Period*, written by Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and published in the May 2006 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics defines the World poverty line as income that is less than $3 (US$) per day or $1,140 per year.65 This conclusion is supported by Chen and Ravallion (2004) of the World Bank who reconcile the World Bank's use of $1 worth of daily consumption with Sala-I-Martin's $3 of daily income. Shaohua Chen is a Senior Statistician in the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank and works for Martin Ravallion who is the Director of the Development Research Group. All three agree, that of the World's roughly 5.6 billion people in 2000 for which we have data, 1.2 billion, or just over 21% of them had income that fell below the World poverty line.
Another useful measure with which to look at the World's population in terms of freedom from survival needs is household wealth. Household wealth is defined as net worth or the value of physical and financial assets less liabilities. The assumption holds that households with accumulated wealth are less subject to adverse events which may negatively affect income such as ill health or unemployment since they have built up a financial cushion to help them through tough times. Accordingly they are less likely to worry about survival needs and should therefore be more self-actualizing. For this look at the human condition we use data from a paper entitled, The World distribution of Household Wealth published in 2008 by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.66 The findings of this study and the previously mentioned income study are summarized in the previous table.
The report states, "According to our estimates, adults required just $2,138 in order to be among the wealthiest half of the world. But more than $61,000 was needed to belong to the top 10 per cent and more than $510,000 per adult was required for membership of the top 1 per cent. The entrance fee for the top 1 per cent seems surprisingly high given the group has 37 million adult members. Furthermore, the figure refers to the year 2000 and is now likely to be considerably higher, especially when measured in US dollars." The report continued, "The wealth share estimates reveal that the richest 2 per cent of adult individuals own more than half of all global wealth, with the richest 1 per cent alone accounting for 40 per cent of global assets. In contrast, the bottom half of wealth holders together hold barely 1 per cent of global wealth."
These statistics paint a discouraging picture of the world's distribution of income and wealth. More disturbingly, using the Hierarchy of Needs, these statistics imply a majority of the World's population is primarily engaged in satisfying survival needs and has very limited opportunity for self-actualization.
Data from past studies show that even though much progress remains to be made, the trends are encouraging. For example, poverty rates measured by the $3 per day poverty line have declined significantly since 1970 when it was estimated that over 46% of the world's population income fell below this level. The 21% of the adult population with less than $3 of income per day in 2000 is low by comparison and represents better than a 50% reduction of the world poverty level in the last 30 years. Significant progress has been made especially in some of the world's most populous and poorest countries. For example China in the last decade has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese above this poverty line.
While the trend lines are positive and show a steady decrease in the world's poor, we know these positive trends are threatened by economic downturns and the looming specter of climate change. Worldwide food shortages and the forecasted significant rise in the Earth's average temperatures threaten the improving state of well being. The gravest threats posed by global climate change are in the very regions of the world that have the greatest poverty. These regions include Africa, Asia-Pacific (excluding selected wealthy Asian countries), India and Latin America. They all possess the least resources with which to withstand the negative effect of rising world temperatures on agriculture and the availability of fresh water (see Chapter 11 on global climate change).
It is estimated that climate change will put almost 50 million additional people at risk of hunger by the year 2020. By that year agricultural output in developing countries is projected to decline by 20 percent with, for example, land suitable for wheat production becoming almost non-existent in Africa by the year 2080.
While short term trends may be turning positive only to be slowed by a worldwide economic crisis, the long term macro trends offer some hope. Since records have been kept humanity has had a steady march toward a more positive state of the human condition. Poverty rates have declined, medical care has improved, life expectancy has increased and in innumerable ways human beings are better off today than their forebears. The human condition has improved to such an extent that many now believe it is possible for human beings to dramatically reduce world hunger and raise the collective standard of living to reduce poverty to a manageable level.
Of greatest significance is that the steady march towards a higher state of world prosperity is no accident. A conscious movement has emerged among the world's wealthiest countries to attack world problems of hunger, poverty, and disease. That beneficial view is held by the forward thinking citizens of those countries. Representative of this trend is the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of eight Millennium Development Goals in 2000 for world progress by the year 2015.67 These goals, each of which has specific objectives associated with them, are broadly identified as follows:
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Develop a global partnership for development
To underscore their commitment to the achievement of these goals the developed nations of the world pledged .7 percent of their gross national income (GNI) to development aid in support of these Millennium Development Goals. As of 2007 only five of the world's developed governments had met or exceeded the .7 percent GNI donation threshold, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.68 Many of the identified goals will not be achieved. Critics will point to the small amount of money that has been committed, the developed world's failure to fund even at a low level of commitment, and the present worldwide economic downturn. Nevertheless, the identification of these objectives and imagination of a world that has solved these problems is truly historic. It represents one of the highest states of human consciousness and one of the most profound levels of human aspiration.
This aspiration is a landmark in human history. It represents an unprecedented level of optimism about the progress which humanity could achieve. It is important because of the opportunity it presents to ultimately create a net balance of positive over negative life experience. We can now imagine a world where the majority of people have survival needs largely met, poverty, hunger and disease are controlled and most human lives contribute positively to the collective life experience.
In the first chapter of this book we identified questions people ask when thinking about life and death. Those questions included "Do we somehow determine our fate in death with our actions in life? Are different afterlife outcomes dependent on how we live our lives?" We now have the new context of our contribution to future life in which to think about these questions. We perceive a forthcoming life form as a natural culmination of the evolutionary process. It represents for each of us another opportunity to be in a life process where we bring to this future existence all of the experiences and identity of our first life. We know this future existence will be different from the former in that we will all experience it together. This creates a new dependency.
While our first life experience was largely individual and singular, the future will be shared and collective. As a net positive or net negative existence, it will be dependent on the aggregate life experiences that are brought to it. We know in a present human history filled with hunger, poverty and disease, the collective human contribution will be negative. We also know we can change this outcome. We can commit ourselves to the elimination of poverty and hunger, the reduction of disease and can over time create an opportunity for progressively increasing numbers of self actualized lives. With a long term sustained commitment and effort we can insure a future collective existence where net positive experiences overwhelm negative influences.
As humans we must recognize our shared community and the interdependence of our future well being. We must accept individual responsibility for our collective future. An enlightened few amongst us must decide to alter the course of the many to create a world where all people rise above the tyranny of day-to-day survival and experience self-actualization. Only in this world can evolution progress to where each person has an opportunity to contribute to the larger life awareness and where each life makes a positive contribution to the future collective consciousness.


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As featured in FrenchEntrée's 100 French recipes to celebrate 100 issues of FrenchEntrée magazine
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/3 cup sugar, plus extra
- 1 scant teaspoon Grand Marnier or Triple Sec
- 1 tablespoon orange flower water
- Zest of ½ orange
Heat the cream over a medium flame until it is hot, but not boiling. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F, and bring a kettle to boil.
Meanwhile, cream together the egg yolks and sugar in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment on medium speed until the sugar dissolves and the yolks are pale.
Add the orange liqueur, orange flower water, and orange zest to the yolk-sugar mixture. With the mixer on low, slowly stream in the hot cream.
Pour the crème brûlée mixture into 4-6 ramekins, and place into a baking dish. Pour the boiling water from the kettle around the ramekins in the baking dish, so the water comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 35-40 minutes.
Allow the crème brûlée to cool in the water bath, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
Preheat the broiler, or find your crème brûlée torch. Then, sprinkle the top of each crème brûlée with a layer of sugar, about 1 teaspoon per ramekin, and crisp the top until the sugar just bubbles and browns. Under my broiler, this takes about 8 minutes, but you want to be vigilant. Garnish with a candied slice of orange (recipe follows), a piece of candied orange peel, and/or some edible flowers.print this recipe

subset: commoncrawl


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Jacksboro, Campbell County (WVLT) - An Indiana woman charged with premeditated murder after dumping her baby in a rest area trash can has been sent to the Lakeshore Mental Health Institute.
Monday, Carissa Roarus pled not guilty by reason of insanity after undergoing a previous mental evaluation.
Authorities say Roarus dumped her baby girl in the trash at the welcome center in Jellico, not long after giving birth.
A judge ordered her to be in the lakeshore institute by October 16th.


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Article Side
Online Article Directory!
Seinfeld, the World's Sweetheart
Being one of the most watched TV shows ever, Seinfeld is still popular now even it stopped since 1998 and after 9 seasons of being the world's favorite show. Seinfeld is a legend and re-runs are still popular even between teens. The hilarious TV show that was originally created as extinction to its star Jerry Seinfeld sitcom was about the four New York friends living everyday life and trying to find long lasting relationships.
Seinfeld stars were Jerry Seinfeld of course, Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer the neighbor, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes playing Seinfeld ex girlfriend and current good friend role, and Jason Alexander as George Costanza. When Seinfeld started, it wasn't that much of a hit until the fourth season when people stated to pick it and until the sixth season when it became the top watched TV show. Seinfeld aired from 1989 to 1998 for 9 seasons of 180 episodes broadcasted on NBC. Seinfeld finale is the third top watched finale ever till now.
Seinfeld show won 3 Golden Globe awards along with other 58 wins & 121 nominations; it has a rate of 9.2 on IMDB from 57,772 users. To find Seinfeld, you can watch it online or buy DVD's from Amazon.
Some episodes became history themselves like "male bonding", "the Jimmy", and lots more that have videos all over the internet and still watched everyday by Seinfeld loyal fans. There are also the popular quotes of Seinfeld that are published and analyzed online; they are shared by large number of people who are still in love with the successful show.
Seinfeld characters are so alive between all of us till now and who can forget them, people usually mix real names of the stars with their beloved TV show characters' names.
Jerry Seinfeld himself, the popular stand-up comedian who created the show and plays it as himself. Jerry has a fear of commitment to one relationship though he had a variety of relations with women during the show, but he usually breaks up with them for silly reasons.
George Costanza the best friend of Jerry who also has big troubles with meeting women as well as being insecure, complainer, and cheap. Most of the time he find himself lying to women and then he goes to his dear friend looking for help.
Elaine Benes who used to date Seinfeld himself but then turned to be a good friend of him who is always searching for Mr. Right getting herself in very funny situations on the way.
Cosmo Kramer Seinfeld's upstairs neighbor who usually went in Jerry's apartment to use his possessions. Kramer never had any job but he was trying some schemes to make him rich quickly but they didn't seem to be working with him.
No matter how many reviews, articles, and videos about Seinfeld, you should watch the series yourself to enjoy and live very entertaining moments.
Garreth Stover - About Author:
Crackle is the place to experience pure entertainment: watch Seinfeld and other original series from a variety of genres. It's cool, uncut, uncensored, and unbelievably free. For more information please visit: Seinfeld
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Basser Seminar Series
e-Research: Social Challenges in Developing Tools for Distributed Knowledge Production
Ralph Schroeder
James Martin Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute
Wednesday 20 February 2008, 4-5 pm
School of IT Building, Lecture Theatre, Room 123, Level 1
This talk will focus on the social issues surrounding e-Research tools.
e-Research is developing rapidly, but ethical, legal and institutional issues often pose greater challenges than technical ones. A range of e-Research projects will be presented, ranging from astronomy and bio-medicine to literature and social science; and from large-scale sharing of high-performance computing to simple Wikis. An overview of key social issues - intellectual property, trust in collaborations, privacy in datasharing, and open access - will be given. Despite hurdles, there is considerable impetus behind a range of e-Research efforts, and this can be attributed to the role of research technologies in innovation, and the talk will conclude with an outlook on the future of this innovation process.
Speaker's biography
Ralph Schroeder is James Martin Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Before coming to Oxford University he was Professor in the School of Technology Management and Economics at Chalmers University in Gothenburg (Sweden). His publications include Possible Worlds: The Social Dynamic of Virtual Reality Technology (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), and Rethinking Science, Technology and Social Change (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). He has published many articles about social interaction in virtual environments and about the social aspects of e-science. He is currently working on various projects about e-Research.
More information at:


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Are you facing a scandisk on your HDD because there is some bad sectors?
Is it annoying and time-consuming? then you've come to the right place.
HDD Scan And Repair 3.0 is the only one known professional program which can scan HDD over 136 G directly that need not the support of computer mainboard with high speed. It can utmost afford 2000 G HDD in theory.
Notice: If you have recently installed Windows Service Pack 2 (SP2) you would be having problems with your SP2 after using HDD Scan And Repair 3.0 installation program to create the bootable floppy disk.
How does HDD Scan and Repair 3.0 work?
1. A breakthrough of this program is that, without depending on BIOS, it can control read and write to the HDD directly, with high-speed, veracity, friendly interface and simple management; there will be an intuitionistic and intact report for the physical defective sectors created after the scanning. The continual defective sectors can be easily skipped; therefore the defective HDD will not get stuck.?
2. There is a "Restorer" in this program which can restore the usual physical defective sectors by adding them into the G-list.
3. So, after you have this powerful freeware installed, all you have to do is to insert the bootable disk and have your target HDD connected correctly to you IDE slot. In minutes, you could start fixing the defective HDD using this powerful utility by pressing several keys.
CD ROM: HDD Scan And Repair 3.0
Floppy Disk: HDD Scan And Repair 3.0


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Stories for May 29, 2008
Alvin eliminated from NJCAA World Series
9 years, 9 months ago
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - Hagerstown Community College (Md.) scored in every inning but two Wednesday to eliminate Alvin Community College from the NCJAA World Series.
Be wary of the Gulf this time of ...
9 years, 9 months ago
Tomorrow marks the beginning of that most feared annual period on the calendar for Texas coastal residents – hurricane season.
9 years, 9 months ago
VICTORIA - A 22-year-old Victoria woman by deputies Thursday on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance in a drug-free zone.
9 years, 9 months ago
VICTORIA – A 43-year-old Victoria man by officers Tuesday on suspicion of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The man is accused of fighting and ...
Cuero council moving forward on interim city manager ...
9 years, 9 months ago
Candidates for an interim city manager for the city of Cuero will come from the Texas First Group Replacement Service.
Cuero speller out of national competition
9 years, 9 months ago
Madison Simpson's time at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., ended with a deciduous shrub. She was one letter off in spelling "osoberry."
East Bernard rallies for late 2-1 victory
9 years, 9 months ago
AUSTIN - The East Bernard Brahmarettes found themselves in a very unfamiliar situation Thursday, but recovered just in time to continue their history-making season.


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Archive - Aug 1, 2007
British historians hope to crack down on "nighthawking"
Submitted by Milica on Wed, 2007-08-01 09:10
English Heritage and the British Museum are pushing for legislation to curtail the illegal use of metal detectors to discover and remove artifacts from private sites.
Photos from Dub Dub
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Viscountess Elashava bas Riva shares photos and memories from the recent Warriors and Warlords event in the Kingdom of Northshield.
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|Chris Nauroth <cnaur...@hortonworks.com>
|Re: PriorityQueueWritable
|Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:37:40 GMT
I think it would work, but I'm wondering if it would be easier for your application to restructure the keys emitted from the mapper tasks so that you can take advantage of the sorting inherently done during the shuffle. For each reduce task, your reducer code will receive keys emitted from mappers in sorted order. Therefore, if the keys emitted from your mapper contain the item's priority, then the shuffle would provide the sort order that you need. This might lead you down the path of writing a custom WritableComparable to use as the map output key, but this is usually pretty trivial. Also, keep in mind that if you run multiple reduce tasks, then each reducer receives a subset of the keys emitted from the mapper. Depending on your application logic, this may or may not be a problem. Thanks, --Chris On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Aseem Anand <firstname.lastname@example.com> wrote: > Hi Chris, > I had a few PriorityQueue's at the mappers which I wished to send to some > reducers. After this each reducer(receiving PriorityQueues from each > mapper) would perform some operations on these by removing the top and > hence accessing the elements in sorted order(which is very essential to my > application). Even I thought of pushing them in an ArrayWritable but was > wondering if there would be an existing implementation of PriorityQueue. > Would it be advisable to insert elements into ArrayWritable in sorted > order and reconstruction of merged PriorityQueues at the other end now ? > > Thanks, > Aseem > > > On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 11:07 PM, Chris Nauroth <firstname.lastname@example.com>wrote: > >> Hello Aseem, >> >> I'm aware of nothing in Hadoop or related projects that provides a >> PriorityQueueWritable. You could achieve this by taking some existing >> priority queue class and subclassing it or wrapping it to implement the >> Writable.write and Writable.readFields methods. >> >> If you could give us some additional context around what you want to >> solve, then we might be able to offer some other suggestions. For example, >> depending on the problem, maybe you could sort values and wrap them in >> ArrayWritable (which already exists), which would save you the trouble of >> coding your own custom Writable. >> >> Thank you, >> --Chris >> >> On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Aseem Anand <email@example.com>wrote: >> >>> Hi, >>> Is anyone familiar with a PriorityQueueWritable to be used to pass data >>> from mapper to reducers ? >>> >>> Regards, >>> Aseem >>> >> >> >
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5/20/2008 12:59pm, #541Originally Posted by bemused
As for myself, I am so far away from this situation timewise, it would not be in my best interests to try and recover money. However, if any litigation were to award me compensation, I would not touch it, but rather donate it to a non-profit organization that helps victims of abuse. The term "blood money" comes to mind, and also I would not want anything that once had Tae Yun Kim's infamous "enagee" on it.
I wanted to add to Yeoman's post about the Catholic Church pedophile case here. The Bishop, Salvatore Matano, wrote a letter to his parishoners in which he sincerely apologized for the abuses of his church, even though he was not the presiding bishop at the time. Although I am no fan of the church of Rome for many reasons, I feel that he did a noble thing by accepting responsibility for the past errors of his employer. Can we accept any kind of mea culpa from Tae Yun Kim? I think not. In her mind, she is right and lives in her own little world, surrounded by her timorous syncophants who don't have the caillones to tell her the truth about anything. She is so insulated from reality, no unfavorable judgment against her can make her come to her senses. She will go to her grave still believing her way is the right way...either that or she is the worst kind of con artist God ever created.
5/20/2008 2:41pm, #542
While I'm speculating on the possibility that TYK's racket might be dissolved in the future, however likely or unlikely this may be, I should mention that most of those still in COL would not view this as a good thing and would be furious at anyone involved in such a dissolution. This was COL's attitude when a bunch of part-timers defected in 1998 and told their stories to Inside Edition.
To those of you who were never in COL, I'm sure this outcome would make no sense, but it's grounded in psychology. It's like Stockholm Syndrome, except that instead of an armed hostage-taker, the captor is a seductive charmer who knows how to make people feel special.
5/20/2008 3:08pm, #543Originally Posted by bemused
One can get used to anything and accept it as normal. Even the underground people of Austria are being given an environment similar to what they had - small rooms where they can hide themselves away in and feel safe. Sad.
5/20/2008 3:09pm, #544
Another reason I'm not thrilled about the possibility of facing TYK in court is that the court system is designed to protect defendants from the state, not to protect victims from defendants. Former cult members are in a situation much like rape victims: some outside observers tend to think they asked for it. For some people, blaming the victim is easier than acknowledging either the cruelty of the perpetrator or the helplessness of the victim.
5/22/2008 2:33pm, #545
The Texas Court of Appeals ruled today that removing the children from the polygamous Yearning for Zion ranch was too extreme, citing lack of evidence of widespread abuse. The children were instructed not to cooperate, and people from the outside world probably frightened them, so it's likely not much evidence was found. (Personally I think removing only the pregnant teenagers might have been a better decision.)
I'm reminded of when Child Protective Services interviewed the COL kids. All of them defended COL at the time. If they hadn't, there probably would have been enough evidence to prove neglect at least. Chica, Ryan, Clar, and AT probably would have been placed with the parent outside of COL. The L family was about to reunite outside of COL anyway. I'm not sure what might have happened to JP.
Last edited by bemused; 5/22/2008 2:35pm at .
5/28/2008 11:03am, #546
Wow, it's been six days and I still have the last word. I hope folks have stopped posting due to a busy beginning of summer and not out of fear.
I just got back from a nice extended weekend of celebrating my dad's birthday with both of my sisters. I probably will be posting less until mid-July because of an architectural appreciation event that my hubby and I are coordinating. But if anyone wants to reach me they can send me a private message.
5/28/2008 11:34am, #547
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
- Posts
- 622
- Style
- Tae Kwon Do
I know for me, I too have been busy with life. Although, I have been communication privately with others as well. As far as I know October is still on!
5/30/2008 1:27am, #548
- Join Date
- Oct 2007
- Posts
- 20
- Style
- Taekwondo
anybody here from the bay area?? cuz tyk's studio is in fremont. : ) yay !!! cant wait to sign up and learn taekwondo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5/30/2008 1:33am, #549
- Join Date
- Oct 2007
- Posts
- 20
- Style
- Taekwondo
still talking about plastic face???? or just random chat???
5/30/2008 11:54am, #550
The regular posters here are taking a break for a while to tend to their busy summer lives. But stay tuned: in October there will be a suit/countersuit between TYK and the former president of her company, who was also her semi-secret lover for many years. It will take place in a San Jose courthouse and many exers plan on attending.
Many of us exers live in the Bay Area, but most of us don't want to be too specific in case TYK's minions want to find us.


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At this moment I have an artshow going on in a small cafeteria called "Tuomenkukka", in Oulu, Finland. If you happen to be around you are mostly welcome.
Cafeteria is also a greenhouse. I was pleasently suprised how well my painting fitted there.
Here is my lates artwork. It is called the "owl flight".
I started with painting an owl and suddenly a little fairy jumped aboard.
This one has a little autumn feeling... it's been raining lasts two days here... I guess it gives me autumn mood...
Thank you for visiting
and come back soon


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Sometimes home renovation projects can be overwhelming. Many people give up or run out of money. Here's an example.
They decided to let the next owner finish the job.
The photo's caption actually reads, "Open rear."
Bathroom to be.
Kitchen to be.
So why is there so much junk outside?
We featured their green pool a few posts ago. Here it is again.


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ANJUMAN-E-HAIDERI (Regd) Delhi as on 19th October 1997
Name: Name of the Society shall be Anjuma-e-Haideri(Regd) Delhi.
Office: the registered office of the society shall be at Dargah Shah-e-Mardan, Ali Ganj, New Delhi. Branch office may be established at the residence of its General Secretary.
Aims and Objects: The aims and objects of the society shall be as follows:-
Featured Views
Ignaz Goldziher on Imam Husain
(1850-1921) Famous Hungarian orientalist scholar.
q "Ever since the black day of Karbala, the history of this family … has been a continuous series of sufferings and persecutions. These are narrated in poetry and prose, in a richly cultivated literature of martyrologies - a Shi'i specialty - and form the theme of Shi'i gatherings in the first third of the month of Muharram, whose tenth day ('ashura) is kept as the anniversary of the tragedy at Karbala. Scenes of that tragedy are also presented on this day of commemmoration in dramatic form (ta'ziya). 'Our feast days are our assemblies of mourning.' So concludes a poem by a prince of Shi'i disposition recalling the many mihan of the Prophet's family. Weeping and lamentation over the evils and persecutions suffered by the 'Alid family, and mourning for its martyrs: these are things from which loyal supporters of the cause cannot cease. 'More touching than the tears of the Shi'is' has even become an Arabic proverb."
[Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, Princeton, 1981, p. 179]


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We do our best during life. We think we have the priorities right. We are immortal…. Then we find ourselves in the last pages of our last chapter in this book of life. We will think about all the priorities that we held so dear for so long. All those things worried and fretted about… […]
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Thursday, April 07, 2016
Equipment report: priming tool
Along with a lot of other people, as everyone from the Lee site to wherever I found it listed was 'out of stock', on and on. Then I lucked into one about a week ago.
So far, I really like it. Only used it on about a hundred cases(small rifle) so far, need to prime a lot more stuff, including large, to really try it out, but so far it's good.
2 comments:
My wife decided to do something about my whining about my shoulder and other joints hurting when I loaded a bunch of pistol rounds, we both love to plink with pistols and occasionally an AR. Weather permitting we burn about 200 pistol rounds a week, sometimes more so I spent a lot of time at the bench. On her own she researched progressive press types and found that the Dillon 1050 was about the easiest on the operator so she surprised me with one on my last b-day. I love that woman..... Now I can knock out 3 or 4 hundred in a half hour or so if I have clean brass and the best is my arm/shoulder don't need a day or two for recovery afterwards. Long story short, better tools can make life so much better. I still use the two LnL presses but nearly as much, its nice to prep rifle brass on one and load on another. Slowly... it sucks getting old.
- Arthur said...
I still like the Lee auto-prime hand presses - even better now that I don't have to buy bags of replacement handles since on the old style round autoprime the handles would last about 100 rounds for me before cracking.
But on a whim I picked up the Lee ram prime and surprisingly it doesn't suck. I thought getting the primers into the cup one by one would be super fiddly and take forever but I found it actually goes really smoothly. I like it a LOT better than the primer arm that comes with the Lee Classic cast presses. The only downside is way they hold the seating stem in with simple spring tension. It would have been nice if they had added a set screw or something similar. Having the seating stem go flying across the room if the tension isn't right is no fun at all.