**note. i have begun linking some terms. i only use wikipedia out of laziness. don't use it as a substitute to multiple source researched knowledge. don't rely on it for your bread and butter.**
with the advent of the internet's new social utilities such as myspace and facebook, it has become easier to see a generation come of age. all of the individuals that you had shared one of the biggest rites of passage (adolescence) with all show up on a small webpage with a profile picture as small as your thumb. this is interesting and quite unlike what past generations have experienced. culture is moving faster and at the same rate, it is also able to be perceived faster. as technology grows and information is able to be processed faster and to a more wider scope of people, cultural evolution has no choice but to signal over into the fast lane.
cultural evolution includes literature, music, visual arts, the sciences, mathematics etc. all of these subjects are evolving in such a way that soon, they will all become increasingly interdependent with each other. for example, all proto sciences (astrology ---> astronomy, alchemy --->chemistry) move from a unverifiable form of empiricism to a verifiable scientific method. just as these proto sciences move towards verifiability and out of the field of mere speculation, the next step for them is to be melded with their unlike counterparts such as science--->religion.
this may all sound like a bunch of hogwash, but bear with me. cultural evolution isn't totally parallel with biological evolution. human influence has a very large impact on cultural evolution, obviously. cultural evolution is more like a facade or an effort of human beings to think they can control certain aspects of selection (which they cannot.)
ethical conduct and science have always been closely related. however, ever since the discovery of genetic engineering, it has reached a new paradigm. ethics and science are under most circumstances unrelated. but they will continue to grow more dependent on each other. this is why you are beginning to see more and more 'compound' disciplines such as bio/ethics and cognitive ecology enter our curriculum's.
the most important thing we can take from this could possibly be that what we strive for as a collective in a culture, is also the same thing physicists are looking for in a lab in a more natural sense: a unified theory.
still don't get the point? the more we learn as a species and the more knowledge we rack up, the smaller and smaller our subdivisions of filing and using this information become. a perfect parallel to prove this is how our computers have become so much smaller over the past fifty years. it isn't the point that computers themselves have gotten smaller but that it proves that our thoughts and methods have become slender. hugs,kisses and smiles have even become 1's and 0's (binary). :)
Shouldn't our quality of life be improving since everything is becoming smaller? If things are getting smaller, then shouldn't they be more 'out of our way'? This ever evolving trend towards miniaturization can't all just be for nothing...even einstein was trying to crack this nut with his hopes towards a theory of everything!
as i sit here and enjoy seeing my former schoolmates, friends, ex lovers, foes etc. come of age, i also realize that there is a deeper more unseen process beneath it all. and although we might all be 'looking for ourselves' or trying to 'find meaning' in this absurd universe, it's nice to know we're just part of a larger process of evolution.
in the human lifetime we strive to become one with ourselves and unify all of the ideas, thoughts, and emotions we have in our mind into one meaningful 'life' before we pass on. in the lifetime of 'eternity', humans are present throughout generations to strive to become one large unified something before we pass on as a species. isn't it nice to know that we're all in this together? enjoy your ride on the arrow of time..because once you fall off, the next generation just picks up the ball and runs with it towards tomorrow.
1 comment:
An interesting post on proto science which s the eureka moment. I had not heard of it before then you mention science ad religion and the influences they have on each other. This problem is it seems to do with what is called in theologial circles being the devils doctor. They will they do anything to be against this situation as it not in there interests.
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