Vision And Dross

[Legion]

 

"Where there is no vision, the people perish..." - Proverbs 29:18

"When washing and clearing your inner vision, have you purified it of all dross?" - Tao teh Ching 10

 

 

The words of Lao Tzu here are intriguing to me, as they liken a vision unto molten metal. Dross is the solid impurites which float to the surface of a liquid metal. Our purpose here will be to outline the possibility of a natural narrative of terrestrial life, by highlighting a few events of the past. We do this in order to draw forth principles which might suggest a vision for future humanity which is consistent with this natural narrative. We will focus on the evolution of plants and the apex predators in the lineage of humanity, along with a few of the larger extinction events.

 

Earth is now believed to have coalesced roughly 4.5 billion years ago from some of the gases and dust remaining from the sun's formation . The material, being drawn together by gravity from great distances, would have yielded a hot molten planet. When the Earth's surface cooled sufficiently to hold the torrential rains falling on it from the clouds formed from the outgassing of the planet in liquid form, organisms took root, roughly 4 billion years ago. How and why organisms appeared on the Earth is still shrouded in mystery. We don't know if our distant ancestors came to the planet from nonterrestrial places or emerged on the Earth itself. But in any case, organisms came to be here, and through reproduction rapidy spread and made a dwelling in the waters of Earth.

 

Reproduction is poorly understood, but at least one thing is known about it. A reproducing population with access to infinite resources is capable of exponential growth. In practical realization however, population growth is limited by both environmental availability of resources and by the methods or technology of utilizing these resources. This places selective pressures on a reproducing population and evolution ensues. These early terrestrial organisms, just as today, cooperated and competed in utilizing the resources available to them and evolved. And although billions of years passed as they remained, compared to many modern organisms, in relatively unadorned complexity, they were busy. They sorted themselves into Domains and Kingdoms and developed such advantages as symbiosis, multicellularity, sexual reproduction, and photosynthesis. This last development emerged roughly 3 billion years ago, and is notable for several reasons because it marks a transition from being soley dependent on resources made available to organisms by Earth to a utilization of solar power. It also initiated a mass extinction as the oxygen byproducts of photosynthesis was a toxin to the anaerobic organisms which then predominated.

 

The Cambrian explosion, which gave rise to the first vertebrates occurred 600 million years ago. The first fishes appeared 500 million years ago, land plants 470 million years ago. There was a mass extinction 360 million years ago. The first amphibians appeared 350 million years ago, the first reptiles 300 million. Another mass extinction occurred 250 million years ago. The first mammals entered the scene 200 million years ago. The KT mass extinction occurred 65.5 million years and flowering plants came on shortly thereafter at 65 million years ago. Monkeys appeared 40 million years ago, and the first hominids 25 million years ago. The first modern humans appeared 200,000 years ago.

 

The dawn of humanity marks the beginning of new adaptive capabilities of terrestrial organisms. Through cognition we are able to discover and deploy new technologies which allow us to live in environments far beyond that within which we originally evolved. As hunter gatherers using fire and spoken language we rapidly spread across the planet. The first cave paintings appear 35,000 years ago. Dogs were domesticated 15,000 years ago. Agriculture was developed 10,000 years ago. The first written language appears 5,000 years ago. The rest, as they say, is history. And history itself speaks of humanity cooperating and competing to utilize available resources and even discover novel types of resources.

 

At the moment, over 6 billion human beings live all over the planet. The night side of Earth twinkles with the lights from our cities. We are globally interconnected. People and goods traverse the planet in hours, messages at the speed of light. We've sent people to the moon and probes to every planet in the solar system. The Earth itself is festooned with a moving constellation of satellites which have a bewildering number of functions. We have enhanced agriculture through fertilzers, pesticides, and even genetically modified crops and cattle. We have industrial fabrication and the beginnings of automated fabrication. We keep time with atomic clocks. We generate electricity with nuclear power plants and our armies have nuclear weapons.

 

What principles does this natural narrative suggest to you? We've addressed what forces give rise to evolution, but what does evolution itself give rise to? Certainly increasingly complex organisms are produced, and a greater utilization of currently available rescources, a discovery of novel resources, and an exploration of novel environments. Terrestrial life has evolved from feeding on chemicals in the oceans' depths to utilizing nuclear power at the shores of nonterrestrial space and even the ability to more rapidly evolve.

 

If humanity is to embrace a continuing lineage and well being in the future then I think we must not be hampered with either undue environmental concerns nor a nostalgic longing of past cultural realities. We must embrace the cultural changes which arise as a result of novelty and creative thought. And we must embrace our role as Earth's carrier of terrestrial biosphere to non-terrestrial places. As humanity is born from the womb of Earth, bringing our biosphere with us will be critical, for our biospherical environment is encoded into us. We require relations with other terrestrial organisms for our own well-being in numerous ways. As we learn to habitate the Arctic, the moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, and beyond, we will bring the biosphere with us.

 

We've here attempted to outline a vision for humanity which may be in keeping with a natural narrative. I now hope that with your comments and participation, we may discover its dross. Please, share your thoughts with us.