05.17.09
Conscious evolution and the eonic effect
In reference to previous post on: Conscious evolution??, I think everyone should take a look at the eonic effect and its attendant model where the same issue arises, although it is disguised behind the complicated business of describing the historical transformations involved in the evolution of civilization. The current science/religion battle over evolution is a stale farce and is simply a kind of shouting match to keep the two main propagandists evenly matched. It is an unchanging facade on both sides, and has made the question of evolution more obscure, not less.
The scale of (eonic) evolution is stupendous, almost beyond imagining, and involves multiple aspects operating in a way that doesn’t directly enter our consciousness. And it plays on human consciousness in a dozen ways.
The issue of conscious evolution arises in this context, in a different way. You will notice if you read carefully the place of self-consciousness in that discussion. Actually that discussion is oversimplified, but functional: the point is that evolution in this sense operates directly on human consciousness as self-consciousness to produce eras of innovation and advance. It is hard to avoid this conclusion, which shows that in this case, evolution is not genetic. This is a kind of generic explanation, good as far as it goes, but it needs amplification perhaps (e.g. self-consciousness as a term points to but doesn’t explain ‘creativity’, etc,…)
It is thus possible that we are seeing a kind of evolving consciousness in this context, but it is important not to let this discussion get contaminated by the New Age brand here. It will confuse the issue.
Please note that the emergence of Buddhism is correlated with the eonic sequence, and is one eye-blink in the larger process. There is no likelihood that an ‘enlightened’ Buddha could generate evolution on this stupefying scale of planetary evolution operating over tens of millennia.
I think it is important to realize that ‘evolution’ is much much more complicated than we realize, and that it is a big job to even observe or detect it. A bunch of Darwinian madmen running around saying this is all due to natural selection is a scientific calamity. I hope in the end it won’t prove the end of science. Face it, we are still almost too primitive to grasp the subtler aspects of evolution.
Meanwhile, the design argument has not proven very helpful here, so that’s not what we are talking about. It is really a way to recast the argument over the existence of god in an evolutionary debate or form, and that’s not productive of new information.
James said,
May 17, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I doubt there is much “conscious evolution” going on when the public can be so easily dominated and swayed by con artists like the Darwinists, IDists, Chopra style idiots, Madison Avenue crew, Wall Street aristocracy, etc. The fact that these factions are given the biggest podiums to spew their nonsense should be telling: humans have a long way to go before they are ready for anything like “conscious evolution.”
Jeff Carreira said,
May 18, 2009 at 10:24 am
I have devoted the past 16 years to the pursuit of “conscious evolution” and to me that pursuit involves first and foremost the effort to try to figure out what something like “conscious evolution” could possibly mean. Somewhere between strict mechanical Darwinism on one hand and fanciful New Age ideas on the other there is our effort to understand how evolution works and then put that understanding to use. This is a dangerous undertaking for exactly the reasons you bring up. Our understanding of both consciousness and evolution are probably laughably incomplete and we only need look back a few deecades to see ideas of conscious evoluton resulting in a desire to engage in what amounts to human breeding. Still, the promise that awakens when one finally admits that one is part of an evolving process and could through the use of their own intelligence particpate in the future unfolding of that process is too exciting not to try to realize. I have ordered the book “World History and the Eomic Effect” it looks fascinating and I intend to respond more here once I have read it. Thank you for creating this forum to sharpen our throughts and understanding.
Darwiniana » Confusing ‘evolution’ and ’sadhana’: a modern distortion said,
May 18, 2009 at 4:37 pm
[...] Comment on Conscious Evolution and the Eonic Effect Jeff Carreira said, May 18, 2009 at 10:24 am · I have devoted the past 16 years to the pursuit of “conscious evolution” and to me that pursuit involves first and foremost the effort to try to figure out what something like “conscious evolution” could possibly mean. Somewhere between strict mechanical Darwinism on one hand and fanciful New Age ideas on the other there is our effort to understand how evolution works and then put that understanding to use. This is a dangerous undertaking for exactly the reasons you bring up. Our understanding of both consciousness and evolution are probably laughably incomplete and we only need look back a few deecades to see ideas of conscious evoluton resulting in a desire to engage in what amounts to human breeding. Still, the promise that awakens when one finally admits that one is part of an evolving process and could through the use of their own intelligence particpate in the future unfolding of that process is too exciting not to try to realize. I have ordered the book “World History and the Eomic Effect” it looks fascinating and I intend to respond more here once I have read it. Thank you for creating this forum to sharpen our throughts and understanding. [...]
Garrett Birkel said,
May 19, 2009 at 3:03 am
The example of non-genetic evolution that leapt immediately to my mind upon reading this discussion is the act of a mother cheetah teaching her offspring how to hunt properly.
For the cheetah to be successful, those lessons had to be passed down from one generation to the next in an unbroken chain. In effect, the knowledge required for survival was delivered as part of a package that included the genes necessary to build an organism that could both teach and learn that knowledge. But the knowledge doesn’t derive from the genes so much as ride along top it.
I’ve always thought that a handy analogy for understanding this interaction would be to consider the paths that animals make through forests. Over decades, the routes selected by individual creatures (no doubt leading their young offspring along) through a forest erode pathways that make subsequent path choices easier for similarly equipped animals. The layout of those pathways establishes a reinforcing feedback into the genetic destiny of the animals that tread them, by skewing their environmental survival conditions. In much the same way, the knowledge that offspring gain from imitating their parents and peers constitutes a set of neural pathways.
We all start by dutifully following our elders down the paths. How far back would human “progress” be set if we, for example, instantly and universally erased the paths for agriculture? The books, the tools, the knowledge of the elders, the seed stores? How many successful genetic variations of humans would be extinguished while we floundered to make that pathway again? And yet, this influence is exerted for reasons that genetics is woefully inadequate to explain.
nemo said,
May 19, 2009 at 1:24 pm
The questions raised by Lamarck have never gone away, despite the fact that the actual claims he made are discredited.