Is the Internet causing the whole cohesion of the world to fall apart?

Posted on by Opher

According to the author Harari we made a huge jump forward with a Cognitive Revolution; a change in the brains of Homo sapiens that enabled us to believe in fictions. Those fictions were things such as Gods, Kings, Country and money. Their power only exists in the imagination of men but it enabled us to band together in large numbers, to trade, to work on projects and to be unified in the face of adversity. That simple change enabled us to more from a population 13000 years ago of 4-6 million to a population approaching 8 billion.

It worked very well. People could be pacified and unified around a set of fictional beliefs – God, King, Country and Money. We could join to fight in wars, to built massive temples and cathedrals, to conquer new lands, to evangelically convert the infidel and to trade between nations. Apart from the odd revolution, when people lost faith in a King or two, it all worked very well. People were united by faith and patriotism.

Then came the 1st World War and the onset of industrial slaughter. Bravery and patriotism lost their meaning. People no longer believed in the hierarchy. They thought their leaders were flawed – lions led by donkeys. They lost faith in King and Country. They saw the slaughter and lost faith in God.

As Wilfred Owen summed up:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The old lie; it is sweet and honorable to die for ones country.

With the Vietnam war people were losing faith in their leaders. The war seemed unjust. They rebelled.

There have always been a small number of people who did not believe in the mindless acceptance of God, King and Country. Some even rejected money and tried to live without it in a simple life.

The fictions no longer held true. They saw the hypocrisy and two-faced practice of the elite who paid lip-service to religion and were all pomp and ceremony with no substance; those who fought wars from their safe bunkers.

Now the internet has connected everyone and views are exchanged. The fictions of God/Gods, King, Leaders, Nations and even the Dollar are questioned and found wanting. Is the internet dismembering the cohesion?

People openly talk disparagingly of our leaders in a way that would have been treason a hundred years ago. Religions are castigated and examined but God can’t be found, the atrocities carried out in his name by fundamentalists are considered insane, and it is manifestly obvious that they can’t all be right. The believers of one religion claim they are the chosen and all the others are wrong. There is madness. But will the fiction continue to hold water in the face of such exposure? Even the Dollar is under pressure. Currencies fluctuate and the rich manipulate the system for their own end. Do we go back to gold and Carrie shells? It is a lottery.

The internet is exposing the fictions and myths.

What will happen if the fictions collapse and the cohesion breaks down? What happens when people no longer believe in Gods, Leaders, Nations and money?

Has the internet put us at a turning point? Can we invent new fictions to replace the archaic, outmoded ones?

Can we shift from Gods, Leaders and Nations to other beliefs?

I would suggest that beliefs in maintaining the ecosystem of the planet (nature), looking to a worldwide system of governance, a worldwide currency that does not fluctuate, and a faith in a coalition of leaders might be healthier fictions and more stable and sustaining.

I also thing that mankind needs goals and challenge to unite behind – space is the frontier that might just fulfill that.

The Cognitive Revolution.

Posted on by Opher

The Cognitive Revolution.

70,000 years ago something happened that changed the world – humans underwent a cognitive revolution.
It was a change that led directly to the huge success of Homo sapiens, its dramatic increase in numbers, the extinction of all the world’s megafauna and the extinction of all other species of Homo.
At one time, during the early part of our mere 200,000 year history, we shared the planet with at least three other species of humans. The likelihood is that we wiped them out.
So how is this great success possible? What separated us from both our tool-making, fire-using, intelligent and linguistically dextrous fellow species of humans as well as our direct ancestors?
The answer is the development of cognitive ability – the ability to invent and believe in things that do not exist.
That is our forte.
Whereas Neanderthals, who had bigger brains than us, probably talked about lions, food, water and landscape – things that were real, we sapiens started talking about gods, supreme leaders, nations and money – none of which were real.
The significance of this is that it unified us, enabled us to trust each other and to trade.
The group size for chimps, gorillas and early humans was a maximum of 55. Beyond that size the group disintegrates. Cohesion is brought about through grooming, mating and constant social interaction that maintains a clear hierarchy and social structure. When the group size exceeds 55 the constant interaction necessary to maintain this cohesion breaks down.
But Homo sapiens were able to maintain cohesion in larger groups due to their collective belief in a common fiction.
That fiction might be a belief in gods, with all the associated rituals, a belief in the divine right of a leader, the belief in a supertribe, to which they belong, or the belief in the worth and value of sheels or beads which can be used for trading.
This made us mighty.
We were no longer dependent on grooming and intense social interaction to create our unity. We could now operate in large collective groups. We could hunt with large cooperative groups that could stampede herds over cliffs or into canyons for mass slaughter. We could gang up to hunt megafauna which we rapidly drove to extinction. Other species of humans could not compete. From applied, violent racism and genocide, like the megafauna before them, they were eradicated.
We began our reign. Within the blink of an eye we wiped out the entire range of megafauna and are now working our way through the rest of the species, wiped out all other humans and increased in numbers to 8 Billion.
With our shared fictions of religion, supreme leaders, nations, money, political dogma, corporations and brands, none of which have any basis in reality – we rule the world.
If tomorrow we all stopped believing in the myths, stories and fictions that hold us together Homo sapiens would fall apart, anarchy would result and we would become, once more, the tribal animals we would be without our stories. Our success would disintegrate.
We Homo sapiens are only as powerful as the fictional narratives that bind us. For instance – if Americans stop believing in the dollar, the USA, God and the President, there would be no cohesion and the country would fall apart. If they decided that a dollar bill was merely a piece of paper of no value, that there was no special attachment to one bit of land over another, that they were not doing god’s will, had no allegiance to flags or pledges and thought the President was no more special than their next-door neighbour, the world would end.
Fortunately our newfound cognitive ability enables us to firmly believe in myths, fantasies and things that have no substance.