A former boss of mine was driving home one evening and
observed a dead squirrel by the side of the road and observed, “Today is not a
good day to be a small woodland creature.” He then considered this for a
moment, and expanded, “Really, no day is a good day to be a small woodland
creature. When the source of your survival is to make lots of babies, any individual’s
chances to have a long life are pretty small.”
Consider for a moment that this is true. Creatures do not stress about the future or the risk of being eaten. They are certainly
cautious, but the mouse does not stay up all night, chewing on its fingernails,
fretting over whether tomorrow it would be caught by an owl or hawk. In truth,
the odds are that it will be caught by an owl or a hawk. As such, it’s not
something to stress over. When a deer takes down a deer, the other nearby deer
don’t cry or mourn. They actually relax, because they know that the chase has
ended for the moment. It is accepted, and unquestioned.
A very long time ago, our ancestors could be considered
beasts. Born to procreate before they die, they subsisted on what they could gather
or catch. Then, cooking was discovered.
Several anthropologists suppose that the discovery of
cooking was a turning point for our race. Cooking helps to break down the
fibers that store a lot of the energy inside of meats and vegetables. Taking in
so many extra calories than we were used to, it allowed portions of the body to
expand, like the brain. Smarter brains allowed for better hunters, which
permitted us to step outside of the food chain. No longer was it accepted that
we would be eaten at some point in our lives. Our lives extended into old age
and that became a new normal.
Suddenly, the question of purpose became relevant.
It is often difficult to recognize a situation when you are
in the middle of it. Only by taking a step back and extricating yourself can
you see the forest instead of the trees, and recognize that something much
bigger is taking place. People, no longer a part of the food chain, can see it
for what it is. Instead of participating, they can now observe and become
masters of it.
People start living longer, elders can pass along their
learnings to their children and grandchildren. Trades become more specialized,
as learnings abound and start to require documentation and record keeping.
Smaller groups band together to trade goods and services, as we learn that we
work better together than trying to do everything by ourselves. As energy and
information becomes more abundant, people no longer have to work as hard to
survive. Effectively, the cost of living is going down.
Finally, when learning about how we think and act, someone
asks, “Why? Why do we think and act the way that we do?”
And that is the point that we gained consciousness.
Consciousness is our ability to think about how we think.
Like stepping out of the food chain and observing it objectively, it is our
ability to step outside of the trappings of our minds to consider that a lot of
the natural programming doesn’t necessarily apply in this thing called society.
Our ability to change has outpaced our ability to evolve with it. But, now that
we recognize it, we can be aware of it, and even introduce countermeasures to
guard against it.
This is a wonderful thing. The problem is that we’re still
not very good at it. Current estimates are that we figured out cooking about
10,000 years ago. From an evolutionary perspective, that’s not very long.
Consciousness came even more recently. If so, then it’s not safe to assume that
we are conscious all the time. In fact, that would be really hard, so the brain
often reverts to more primal leanings to get us through a lot of the day to day
events, even if it’s not well suited for such things.
If we accept these things as true, then it opens up a lot of
possibilities to accept about ourselves that are important for us to grow as a
species.
Some examples:
Observation #1: You are racist. You are also sexist, and
homophobic. It doesn’t matter if you are a black lesbian, or a white, straight
male. Consciously, you are none of those things. No one ever believes they are
racist, or sexist, or homophobic. No one ever believes that they are the
villain in their own story. But that is exactly why one ends up being racist,
sexist, and homophobic. By assuming that one is none of those things, one is
never on guard for exhibiting such behaviors or thoughts. When a black man sits next
to you the subway, you don’t pay attention to the fact that you are tightening
your grip on your purse. When a flamboyantly gay man is talking at the next
table, you suddenly find it harder to focus on your own conversation, because
you find his inflections and mannerisms intolerable. Harvard conducted a series of surveys regarding word associations and timed how long it took people to
respond. Even when people respond with non-racist answers to the word
associations, the time required for their conscious mind to take over and
correct a biased answer shows up in the results time and time again. There is undercurrent of bias that is inculcated and, by ignoring it, allow it to influence our thoughts and emotions.
I am a mechanical engineer by training and by trade. I’ve
worked predominantly in the northeast United States for a variety of high
technology startups. These are environments with lots of energy, but not as
much direction. If you are not self-motivated, you will not thrive in a
situation like this. It is a known fact that women are a minority in STEM
careers, but they are present and their presence is not shocking. That’s the
good news. The bad news? Occasionally, the women will get together and have a
women’s lunch. The male engineers do not like this. They grumble that they are
being discriminated against. “Why isn’t there ever a men’s lunch?” they ask.
But there is a men’s lunch. It’s called, “Lunch.”
It is a subtle thing, but an important one. It is an
attitude that belies an opinion of feeling threatened without realizing a
dominance that already exists. Attitudes and behaviors like this manifest all
of the time, but because everyone assumes they are already conscious and
enlightened, they are not looking for it in themselves, and thereby allow
themselves to unconsciously carry out actions learned from previous behaviors
witnessed before people thought about these things. You can deny, but your
actions will speak louder than any words you can say.
Observations #2: Science does not preclude the existence of
God. It simply does not require it. This is a good thing. Those that would deny
the existence of God because science miss out on a great deal of good that
comes from theology. Conversely, those that deny scientific research because
they consider it an affront to God fail to appreciate how much good has come
out of a better understanding of our world and universe. What better example of
someone who gets it than the current Pope, who has a degree in chemistry?
Pure science has no assumptions. It also has no morality. This
understanding is a necessity for knowledge to be gained, but followers of
science often forget that they still have assumptions, and are just as easily
able to fall victim to confirmation bias and the backfire effect as anyone
else.
Theology provides a method of inquiry into morality. Some
might argue that it is not the best, and that may even be true, but it is the
one that perhaps the most widely recognized and accessible. One of the most
important things to have in place for a conversation is a common language and
framework to stage the discussion.
Critics are quick to point out that many immoral things have
happened in the name of God. To be fair, there is no shortage of them. At the
same time, there are a number of examples of immoral scientific research that
exists as well. One could also argue that religion has been around a lot longer
than the current scientific method, so humanity has had a lot more time to
screw things up from a religious perspective.
For any one person, there will always be more
that is unknown than is known. Failing to remain on guard for our unconscious
biases taking over and closing us out of a conversation that might expand our
understanding of reality does a disservice to ourselves and those around us.
Just because human beings have attained consciousness does not mean that we’re
very good at it. Please, keep an open mind.
