Human Being or Human Thinking? Can't we be both?

 

We need to be human.  Not just think we are. 

Our species spent approximal 300,000 years 'being' in nature with our 'thinking' centered around finding food, not being eaten ourselves, and finding a mate for procreation.  These are the two fundamental principles of all higher life forms, survive and thrive.  These are hardwired into our DNA.  But over the last 5,000 to 7,000 years our Pleistocene mind (basically the same we now have) evolved within tribes and started creating mental constructs like religion (struggling to understand things), politics (to maintain group harmony), and economics (bartering methods).  With these emerging concepts our tribes bonded.  Then over the millennia these grew into villages, then cities, then city states, and eventually nations.  The problems we have now are mainly from two sources.  The first is our mind's creation more identities linked to skin color, religion, place of origin...but not related to our DNA. The second remains the powerful nations putting the protection of national sovereignty above the protection of human rights and nature. 

Thus, humanities’ greatest threat now are believing these non genetic identities make us different enough we must compete and kill or die defending them.  Yet, religions, nationalism, and economic strategies are not hardwired into our DNA.  Our need for religion is.  But microbes, still all higher life forms greatest threat, make no dissention between our non-genetic characteristics.  The golden rule as the foundation of every religion and indigenous culture before religion was essential for keeping nature and humankind healthy.   

Surprising to many, this instinct to protect the lives of others is not limited to our species.  It is also hardwired into other social animals like wolves and primates that often help their blood relatives raise their young, sharing caregiving duties like feeding and babysitting. A new study has found that ‘superb starlings’—a species native to eastern Africa—also helps out other birds they are not related to at all. They form reciprocal relationships, checking in on each other’s latest brood of chicks year after year. Researchers looked at DNA data and recordings of birds’ interactions in one flock spanning 20 years. They saw that the birds frequently helped each other with caregiving, providing crucial assistance in an arid region where food can be scarce.  Also, to their surprise they discovered that the assistants were generally not relatives. Those born into the flock helped newcomers feed and protect their chicks and vice versa, and the same individuals tended to take turns helping one another from breeding season to breeding season. “The starlings are consistently investing in the same preferred social partners over their lives,” coauthor Alexis Earl, from Cornell University, tells The New York Times. “To me, that sounds like friendship.”

So without transforming some of the concepts our Pleistocene mind created, like shedding the need for nations to compete to survive- none will thrive.   Note the 50 US states and its territories, may still complete.  Yet they no longer go to war because of the competition (just as Olympic Athletes do).  This may not last, but it could.  But only if everyone's fundamental rights were consistently protected.  Imagine what the world would be like if all humanity had such protections. 

Until people and nations transform this flawed thinking, believing that our differences are enough to kill and die over, progress going forward for humanity (and many other species) will likely never happen.  What's needed most is most of humanity grasping the “self-evident” “Truths” that we are all born with unalienable rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of health. Health for ourselves (mind, body, spirit), and our offspring, communities, and earth's life support systems (nature).  

If not, more hard times will come.  Prepare for them.  Weapons are evolving but our thinking is not. 

Recently an article regarding the accelerating evolution of weaponry (without our minds or or our governments adapting to the human ‘dead-end’ principle of “Peace through Strength”) is still proceeding.  This is simply unsustainable.  We can no longer afford in blood and treasure to continue ignoring the universal wisdoms (fundamental principles) expressed within the Declaration of Independence These are contextualized early in that nearly 250 year old document as “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” – the golden rule - including the “self-evident” “Truths” that all people are born with natural rights.

Partnerships: Silicon Valley’s military ambitions:  Silicon Valley is “finally getting its chance” to sell its vision to the Pentagon, said Paolo Confino in Fortune. Last month, President Trump signed several executive orders to “streamline how the Department of Defense acquires new defense systems,” putting pressure on existing contractors whose creaky systems are overbudget and overdue. Silicon Valley has been the engine of innovation for the United States for decades. But it has long complained that Washington bureaucracy left tech companies “unable to compete with existing military contractors.” In the Trump administration, tech firms have “found a welcome audience” willing to “take a page from their playbook.” The “ongoing geopolitical tensions and AI arms race with China have only added more urgency to the issue.”.

Tech players are rapidly changing the model of warfare, said Lizette Chapman in Bloomberg. “Instead of dozens or even hundreds of soldiers supporting one $100 million system, one soldier using AI software could command dozens of cheap, autonomous weapons.” That, at least, is the promise pitched by Palantir, which recently beat out RTX Corp. for a $178 million mobile military command contract, “the first time a software company” has taken “the lead role on a battlefield system.” Anduril, another California startup, is raising billions of dollars to fuel the manufacturing of “a lengthening list of weapons, wearables, and surveillance systems.” CEO Palmer Luckey is positioning his company as the counter to China’s military, which is rapidly moving from “hypersonic and self-guided missiles to drone swarms that can augment or someday replace manned fighter jets.”

“We are entering a new era where machines go to war,” said Zoë Corbyn in The Guardian. This has produced a need for the innovation that the legacy stalwarts, like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, can’t provide. The U.S. now “has more than 1,000 venture capital backed companies working on ‘smarter, faster, and cheaper’ defense,” like drones that travel underwater, microwave-ray guns, and even self-flying fighter jets. But some experts worry that the money pouring into defense tech— $155 billion between 2021 and 2024—could push the U.S. and these companies toward wanting “to use them in war.”

Just two years ago, said The Economist, Castelion, a company developing hypersonic missiles, “couldn’t open a bank account in Silicon Valley because of the stigma attached to making weapons.” But “defense” is no longer such a dirty word. The war in Ukraine helped change some attitudes. The deployment of “smaller weapons, notably drones,” has created an opening for innovative upstarts. The transformation also reflects a broader cultural shift among tech leaders who have embraced Trump. Gone is the support for environmental and social causes. Patriotism is “the new corporate purpose.”