Nothing is more descriptive of the human linage than invention. In fact, in the history of the earth, almost 4 billion years of which includes the history of life, there was no invention (either object or process) before the hominids began doing it roughly 2 to 4 million years ago. The changes associated with evolution are not invention, but are the consequence of the “selecting”, storing and re-implementing arrangements of nucleotide bases of DNA. The Living System of Order captures information from reality (what remains in the moment continues) and allows the variations in structure and function that occur as a result of the DNA/protein storage and implementation designs to feedback into the system. New things? Yes. Inventions? No. There have been some truly incredible new things like photosynthetically produced free oxygen, perhaps the most dramatic and significant development in the history of life, but it came from variation in the arrangement of nucleotides.
Invention begins when an information storage tool like a nervous system has the capacity to combine stored experiences that are weakly related by type and that have occurred widely separated in time. This design of function I have called the Consciousness System of Order. When you start to think about it (with it!), the CSO may compete with free oxygen production as a profound new thing.
Progress is the more problematic. First of all, we (hominids) invented ‘progress’ using our new toy, consciousness order. The dictionary says that progress is: “forward or onward movement toward a destination; advance or development toward a better, more complete, or more modern condition.” We, of course, invented this definition; it most likely describes an illusion; a useful one, but, like all illusions, dangerous when misused.
What makes this more interesting and important than playing shuffleboard with words is that we have made certain notions of invention and progress central to our social, economic and political values. The utter horror that can append to the expression, “WHAT! You are opposed to progress?”, is a clue as to how deep and unquestioned is both our dedication to and misunderstanding of this idea.
‘Invention’ is a consequence of a new system of order that presently resides in the human species, and ‘progress’ is an invention of the process of invention (we are trying to invent a way to put this new system of order into our machine inventions. Thoughtful people are rightly concerned since we have not even begun to master this revolutionary capacity in its biological form.) Neither one is an inherently positive value that can justify the uses of our other inventions to subjugate other humans, remove other species or damage the biosphere. We do these things only because we have not yet invented a way not to.
A more difficult, but more accurate, way of looking at these changes is — the changes are certainly real — that our consciousness tool of invention is combining all manner of experiences in novel ways with occasional combinations produced, tested and spread to other humans. These new things can then contribute to new experiences and ultimately to more new inventions. The design of this process in the Consciousness System of Order is inherently geometric and uninhibited. And thus, inherently self-terminating: unless we invent ways to inhibit and govern the process. The first step is to recognize that “progress” is not a natural good; our understanding of progress is a distortion that has taken on political and social value.
The down and dirty political, economic and social consequences are that any different way of doing things offends some group. But first comes the Idea (an invention), it is tested and then possibly spreads. The powerful do not control the invention of idea, but they try to control what we call progress by controlling the spread of ideas. I wrote in an essay on my blog: We lose control “…(u)nless actual leadership has a vision driven by the natural representatives of the people and the people themselves. Labor leaders, academics, writers, community leaders of all sorts are the natural nodes of interest and concern, not political “leaders.” Science and engineering clarify options and possibility. Specialized academics and super-community leaders summarize and suggest. Un-tampered with, such a system will produce, with differing degrees of quality, direction for societies and visions for leaders to lead with. It needs to be noted that these “natural” nodes for the articulation of the pubic interest are exactly those demonized by authoritarian conservatives.”
However, the details of our political reality must not distract us away from the actual functioning of our human process; our actions are a result of those processes. The better we understand how our world functions in biophysical and social-biological terms the less we can be fooled. Progress is only change that someone sees as more or less immediately useful. Invention is the combination of experiences measured against possibility. We humans of this planet have become servant to these behaviors and, along with spin-offs like growth economics, are pressing our biological luck.
We need social dialog, we need regulation, and ultimately we need a social/political mechanism to reject inventions (physical and behavioral) that, while immediately useful, are destructive in the longer term. If we understand that the Consciousness System of Order is not evolution in action, but a new system with its own rules, that invention is a new and powerful process and that Darwinian and Spencerian thinking don’t apply, then it might be possible to find a way to live with this incredible power. Up to now we have only been riding it.
We must use the only tools we have to begin reconstructing our relationship, first personally and then possibly societally (obviously can’t be in the other order), with the biophysical reality (the one and only!). That these tools are the very ones that drove us into this cul-de-sac should not be a damning concern; they would seem to me to be the natural ones, when brought more under our control, to carry us out.
(This is part of a series of essays that look at the primary articles of faith that seem normal and essential to our present cultural life, but that are the underlying forces for damage to the biosphere, destruction of our specieshood and ultimately devastating to the most positive qualities of the cultural life we are trying to sustain.)