Human beings were only able to evolve because of social ties. Trusting others seems to be an evolutionary strategy that served us well for a long time. In that evolutionary struggle, man was opposed to a "natural enemy," the environment and all it contained. All he had was his bigger brain to compensate for his smaller strength and speed; and, of course, his network.
Nowadays, we are no longer opposed to the natural world out there as the sparring partner, we are opposed to a culture that has been slowly infiltrated and taken over by pathologicals. At the same time, this outer world that has been shaped by pathology, also represents a certain pathological state within normal humans - their lack of ability to see pathology in individuals that look like themselves - an intra-species predator. Humanity's failure to perceive this, to adapt, means that our inner world, taken into us from the outside by means of identification, has become an "independent power" which, in its turn, by means of projection, is our own creation. After all, it is normal humans, not pathologicals, who have the real power to "create reality" as a group. Pathologicals only influence us - mostly women - to believe certain things are the norm, and we then act as they pull our strings.
This outer reality which has such a powerful influence on the formation of our character and the focusing of our creativity, has become a power itself and we are being challenged to become "new beings" that can evolutionarily adapt to this changing situation. Either we become fully pathological, in which case there will be no stress (the STS route), or we return to our roots taking with us the knowledge of the new "opponent" that will enable us to rebuild our social bonds and structures and survive through the massive changes that are ahead of us.
Because, realistically, even if no cataclysmic scenario of any external kind manifests, anybody with two neurons firing can see that we are most definitely heading straight into a "clash of civilizations" though it is not at all what is being touted. It is a clash of normal humans with pathologicals and right now, they have all the assets (which they have by trickery, cunning, cheating). Even the mildest scenario of the future is not pleasant to contemplate: Climate Change and its effects on humanity. It's not a pretty picture.
This principle that the inner world is taken in from the outside by means of identification, and then, in its turn, by way of projection, alters the external world so that it corresponds to the inner world even more closely, requires some serious thought. Basically, we have to bootstrap ourselves out of here by reverseing the process: we must create an inner world in the face of the opposition of the outer world, that then becomes strong enough, EN MASSE, to change the outer world.
The creative individual must be able to create and develop his standards beyond the identifications of the external pathological world. This means, in the simplest of terms, connecting with the higher self so that this part consciously guides and rules the creative will even in terms of the personality. The important factor here is that groups of individuals must get from here to there - here being the false personality created in us by the pathological external world, there being the merging with the higher self - by consciously choosing those factors that he will identify with.
This must be a group effort.
But, as we have seen in this thread - and elsewhere - language is all-important to that process. (Keeping in mind also that language is used to "create" the reality and control us.)
Language is another evolutionary thing; you need language to network so we might think that this ability has been wired into us as a consequence of evolutionary pressures and using language in some ways (like telling the truth) was evolutionarily adaptive in our history. But now, language is being used in ways it was not evolved to be used: to conceal truth and to create false images. This is one of the reasons that human beings are so stressed.
As I explained in the audio recording I made over the last couple of days to introduce the teaching of breathing techniques, stress is a worldwide epidemic. The number one disease of adults in the world is depression. Depression is the most extreme form of stress in your nervous system.
But here's the rub: stress response is vital for survival in times of danger. The problem comes when it is turned on too strong, too often.
The very fact that our stress response is doing this tells us that our bodies are telling us something about our world! There is DANGER out there, only it is hiding amongst us in the form of pathologicals! We are constantly in a state of stress because we are in a state of cognitive dissonance. We sense the danger, but we cannot SEE it because we have been programmed NOT to see it by lies and false reality constructs.
Getting back to the language problem: language can shape perception in ways that people are not aware of. Barbara Oakley, in her book "Evil Genes", points out that people who grow up speaking Chinese process mathematics in different areas of the brain than those who grow up speaking English. Both groups use the inferior parietal cortex, but Chinese speakers also use a visual processing areas, while English speakers use a language processing area.
This is important to know because it tells us something about the pathways in the brain that underlie some of the differences between Asians and Westerners in thought patterns. Different languages can cause anatomical differences in our brains. People who speak different languages literally see the world differently from one another.
That is larger scale effect between different languages.
There is a more subtle effect between individuals who speak the same language cause by different understandings of words and meanings. We've seen some examples of this in this very thread.
Language and culture act to structure the neurologically based lens that people use to perceive reality. Within a single language group, differences between people arise from family upbringing, religion, political persuasion, educatioal background, work experience, and so on. These all create different frames of reference.
James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds, suggests that multiple viewpoints from individuals with a wide range of backgrounds, rather than the restricted viewpoints of experts or specialists, are crucial in reaching informed decisions on complex topics. Oakley comments that getting input from a broad variety of people is like getting input from a wide variety of devices such as microscopes, telescopes, litmus paper, tensile testors, ultrasound devices, scales, and so on.
Here, of course, we are not talking about getting a lot of EMOTIONAL viewpoints, but rather perceptions and assessments of the shared, Primary Reality - what is REAL "out there". Even if we are agreeing that there is a real reality and it is what it is, no one of us has the all-encompassing way of perceiving that would give us the understanding of EVERY ASPECT of what is out there.
So, in this sense, the network itself is the Teacher.
But in order for a network to go anywhere and not just fall into entropy, there must be a direction and in that sense there must be a vanguard.
Vanguard: Etymology: Middle English vauntgard, from Anglo-French vantgarde, avantgarde, 1 : the troops moving at the head of an army 2 : the forefront of an action or movement.
It is also reflective of true evolutionary social activities that there are some who are trailblazers and others who support and "watch the back" of the trailblazers. Once the trail is blazed, and the destination is reached, the others not only benefit from the struggles of the trailblazer, they also set about organizing the details of the new environment and stabilizing it. So, everyone plays a role and if the network is tight, they all arrive pretty much together.
The bottom line is this: we are all in this mess together and we sink together, or we get our boat to harbor, but somebody's got to be the one who coordinates or we'll just go endlessly in circles, nobody will be bailing, paddling, or evaluating currents and signs to determine direction. I haven't been doing too bad at it, but I can't do it without data and help and there is no way I could gather all the data by myself, so the network is crucial in that respect also!
As I said, we evolved to trust one another - but that was a world where others were trustworthy. We live in a different world now. The cheaters in our world have evolved ways to induce us to trust them, but we can tell by our stress that we are going in the wrong direction, we are in mortal peril. But still, to get anything done at all, we MUST TRUST. And to figure out who to trust, we need to rely, again, on the network of observations from many observers. Again, we are not talking about getting a lot of EMOTIONAL viewpoints, but rather perceptions and assessments of the shared, Primary Reality - what is REAL "out there" and what really seems to work, to explain things, and has internal consistency over time.
Those who are able to accomplish this task of rebuilding social connections based on the new evolutionary standard of accounting for pathology in the equations, will evolve. Those who do not evolve will perish.
That's what I see from where I sit right now. United we stand, divided we fall. All for One and One for All.
