Did you know that Neanderthals had bigger brains than we Homo sapiens? They didn’t possess complex symbolic thought however, mainly “intuitiveness,” as paleoanthropologists put it.
More to the point, “The Neanderthals did not live, as we do, in a world of their own making, created in their minds, but in the world as nature presented it to them.”
As humans, we live in worlds constructed (and futilely philosophically deconstructed) in our minds. It’s called reification, from the Latin words res (thing) and facere (to make). It literally translates to “thing-making.”
The interface of thought-made reality with the actuality of nature served our species well as long as myth, ritual and tradition reminded us that we’re part of nature, not separate from it.
But once the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, much less the Digital Revolution took hold, our self-made realities became increasingly divorced from the actualities of nature that we are inextricably embedded within.
The logical end of extreme reification is embodied in the President of the United States, who believes what he wants to believe, irrespective of evidence. Though that’s been an aspect of human nature since time immemorial, until our age of “virtual reality” there was a check, internally or externally, on how far we could depart from actuality.
The universe experiments, and so should we, and not just scientifically. The experiment in consciousness that the Neanderthals epitomized dead-ended about 40,000 years ago in Gibraltar, the last holdout of their species. Will the experiment in consciousness that is Homo sapiens also dead end, despite our numbers, our science and our technology?
Many people now believe so, and many even misanthropically hope so. Others take false refuge in the knowledge that at many junctures of history, people have felt that theirs were the “end times.”
Now that that could actually be so (gauging from the man-made climate/ecological crisis, the driving force of the polycrisis), people are taking false refuge in the fact that “doomers” before us have been wrong. (The ominous irony is that this is the first time people have taken comfort in previous generations being wrong.)
Scientists and most philosophers dismiss the idea that there may be an intrinsic direction in evolution, even with the centrality of randomness. They stamp such considerations with the dreaded word: teleology.
But that’s closed-minded, given the irrefutable evidence of “fine tuning” in the universe for the emergence of life, and presumably consciousness. Many scientists and philosophers have resorted to the intellectually dishonest idea of the multiverse rather than consider the idea that the universe may be imbued with an intrinsic intent to randomly evolve brains such as ours.
I submit that a brain with the capacity for cosmic awareness and self-transcendence matters in the universe.
So if Neanderthals were a dead-end in nature’s experiment in consciousness on Earth, and Homo sapiens threatens to be another dead-end, will other potentially intelligent species after us attain true consciousness, and live in harmony with the Earth?
It’s very unlikely. On this planet, the experiment in consciousness will either end, or there will be a breakthrough within us, the living generations.
So what is the next leap in consciousness, and can we consciously bring it about, non-scientifically and non-technologically?
People anatomically just like us unknowingly brought about the Cognitive Revolution about 100,000 years ago, which allowed, for better and increasingly for worse, “fully modern humans” to emerge.
So can human beings now consciously awaken a higher consciousness? Our survival as individuals and a species depends on it.
With respect to the Cognitive Revolution, a mutation apparently occurred and spread quickly in Homo sapiens, from Africa to Europe and Asia, within a matter of a few generations.
With respect to the essential Insight Revolution, given the complete interconnectedness of human populations, and the meaninglessness of racial differences, national identifications, and geographically distinct cultures, a psychological revolution could spread very quickly.
Igniting insight within oneself — not as a separate dividual but as true in-dividual—is therefore the urgent responsibility of every human being with the capacity, space and time to do so.
So what exactly constitutes the transition from humans to human beings?
Difficult as it is to actually bring about within oneself, it’s contained in this question: Can the brain be anchored, even temporarily on a daily basis, in attention and silence, rather than the symbols, memories and self-centered activities of the prevailing dead consciousness?
Surely that’s the next step in human evolution and consciousness, if we can take and make it. And contrary to what many people believe, we don’t have an unlimited number of chances to change course, as individuals or as a species.
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