The Fermi Misdirection
Recalling attention from an historic lunchtime musing to the more pressing matters at hand…
As a point of order, this article will not be so much about space aliens; except to the extent that we are they. I do suggest a twist, a truth unwittingly spoken by the renowned Mr. Enrico when he famously said “Where is everybody?”
For myself, I have always found his question, as it has been taken up at large, to be one of the more absurd assertions of the materialistic “show me the money” modern mind. On its face, there are just too many unknown variables to unpack in making such a determination. The first assumption is that “they” are not here now, nor have they visited before; this particular point gets more flimsy by the day, and in itself obfuscates the entire supposed paradox. Again, this article is not about unpacking the little green men dimensions of Mr. Fermi’s finger pointing to a very practical but metaphorical moon, so we will not here explore this further.
Never having enjoyed the company of the Nobel laureate, and having only taken in a briefest collection of anecdotal stories about his person, AND the fact that he passed away without further formal comment just a few short years after making the declarative inquiry, I do want to respect that the whole idea of the Fermi Paradox seems an undeserving blemish on an otherwise good name. More of an innocent wondering than assertion of fact; a renowned nuclear physicist, he apparently had the good sense to steer clear of anything more than a casual curiosity for matters in the domains of anthropology and exo-biology.
Our focus (in the bell curve of our collective mind,) and our interpretation of this famous paradox has been, and remains today largely blind to the narrow confines of our way of looking. When we make assertions about “where is everybody,” in that is the hidden assumption that “everybody” is recognizable to us on our terms. I do suppose goldfish have a relatively sophisticated appreciation for other goldfish, and probably other fish for that matter, but I suspect the sense they make of us humans falls innocent, and probably profoundly ignorant of our culture and the nature of our presence. It seems as likely as not that we are considered Noise in the “scientific mind” of Carassius auratus.
As usual, my pen threatens to digress further, but I will persist. The point of this article, if I may be so bold, is to take Mr. Fermi’s question to heart, while returning our gaze to the ground beneath our feet and the house about us as it is on fire.
This brings us to The Great Filter, which also strains beneath the weight and insufficiency of our “linear absolute” ways of conceiving truth from fiction and fundamentalist propositions of reality construction. As conceived, this filter suffers the narrow modes of a linear model hubristically posing modern “civilized” humanity as further along in some great objective truth metric of evolutionary progress than the more “indigenous” humanity that we have been explicitly and implicitly attempting to annihilate for centuries.
Rather than a line “up and to the right,” it seems to me a more fractal imagery is probably the better metaphor. In this sense, the Great Filter is not a series of roadblocks on a journey from imp to God, but rather represents a field of inquiry surrounding boundary conditions for thriving in a variety of complex evolutionary contextual environments.
Seeing the forest for the trees…
Mr. Fermi wondered, where is everybody (in space.) It seems a more pressing question might be, where is everybody on earth?
If human beings have been around for something on the order of a quarter million years (hardly a coffee break from the perspective of the dinosaurs,) and there is apparently less than a handful of human civilized cultures enduring longer than just a few millennia, it seems like we should have some pretty observable Great Filter dynamics on hand to realize today.
While we might date the San People of southern Africa back as far as 100,000 years of contiguous cultural evolution, and our Australian Aboriginal brothers and sisters perhaps half or three quarters of that duration, the next best case for endurance is currently just 12% of that first number. We might grant some here unreferenced assertions that native tribes of the Americas, or other regions globally still hold a contiguous lineage of maybe 20,000 years, but even so the predominance of known civilizations (or shall we say cultures) seem to run out after five or 10,000 years at the most. How many countless others demonstrate even lesser runs?
What age should we give ourselves? Identifying “our” civilization as the predominant mode of humanity having the greatest observable impact on the biosphere today as dating back to what; ancient Greece (3000 years), the Roman Empire (2000 years), the axial age (2500 years), the British Empire (a thousand years), the Industrial Revolution (300 years?) From the lens of great filters, and considering our current metacrisis predicament, things don’t look good.
Some reasonable questions begin to present themselves. What are some of the cultural civilizing constraints observed by those elder African and Australian brethren of our species? What are some of the comparable violations of Law expressed by those countless civilizations that have failed to make the cut? Are we really so intelligent, let alone “advanced,” as we might imagine?
The evolutionary origins of narrow mindedness…
Thanks to our friend Daniel hosting a fascinating inquiry recently at Oxford, I am delighted to have been introduced to the work and insights of Iain McGilchrist, particularly on the subject of brain hemispheric distinctions.
I am excited to discover that hemispheric distinctions seems to be an evolutionary trait dating well back beyond the age of just the human brain. What fascinates me is the observable function that these brain distinctions play in the formation and evolutionary forces driving the nature of collective cultural and civilizational dynamics.
In short, the nature of the two hemispheres, in my current nascent appreciation, is as follows…
Left Hemisphere:
McGilchrist characterizes the left hemisphere as dealing with pieces rather than wholes, details rather than the big picture, and categorization/abstraction rather than context. It prefers certainty, focuses on utility, and works in a more linear, logical fashion. The left hemisphere tends to be more dominant in modern society.
Right Hemisphere:
In contrast, McGilchrist sees the right hemisphere as understanding wholes rather than parts, appreciating the big picture over details, and perceiving things in context rather than categorizing. It is more comfortable with uncertainty, sees the profound rather than utility, and thinks in a nonlinear, intuitive way. McGilchrist argues that the right hemisphere's perspective is equally if not more important for human flourishing.
Of particular interest to me is the way that these two “views” may, and to me quite observably do, tend to compete for priority. The left brain seeks goal and in fact seeks priority itself. It necessarily externalizes infinite data sets (implicit value) in order to focus in on those things it believes necessary for immediate short-term survival (explicit value.) In the meantime, the right brain seeks an open approach, creating as much space as can be imagined to allow a fullness of integration and context to arise. In “conversation” with one another the left brain will easily prefer to externalize (disregard) any concerns of the right brain, while the right brain, in contrast makes room for and allows for its own exclusion.
In an individual organism, over a finite lifespan, this “imbalance,” is just fine, because in terms of its own lifespan existential integrity, there is not necessarily that much breadth of context that really matters beyond food and mate selection and predation avoidance. This individual left brain preference becomes problematic when scaled from an individual life process, to the evolution of cultural rules, norms, and practices with a more open-ended life process duration.
Absent some countervailing force, the natural process of individual worldview construction synergizing in collectives will naturally trend towards social constructs and meaning making defined with increasing exclusivity by the left hemispheric methodologies of understanding, appreciation, and value definition. In short, without the wisdom of a culture-scale right hemispheric context awareness (which naturally sublimates itself to left brain dominance), cultural processes in general tend to create a context blind preference for atomistic short-term pursuits. Again, where an individual can survive a fair amount of contextual friction, on the timescale of culture, this same friction becomes a meaningful existential threat.
So what is it about these long-lived exemplars of ours (remember our evolutionarily durable African and Australian friends above?) What process, practices, or identity allows them to persistently kick the pendulum of cultural hemispheric construction back in the direction of an expansive and indigenous context awareness? How do we, following in this wisdom, recognize ourselves as not-other from our environments, be they social, ecological, grand spatial, temporal, divine or otherwise?
Is it ritual, ceremony, conceptions of the sacred, natural laws of relationship (not just laws of matter), all of these, or something else that allows them to keep this balance on the apparent high wire act of walking together through time?
Our once and future ways of constructing the future.
All of this is incredibly important to me as by some gift or curse I find myself compelled to lean in when it comes to understanding our current metacrisis. My heart longs for what opportunities might await us should we manage to pass the tests of moment of filtration.
To manage this zone of transition or collapse, my yet unmet friend Daniel summarizes that we need to work both on diffusing existing trajectories that diminish our collective structural well-being, while enabling positive feedback loops towards an equitable, viable, and thriving future.
Our existing processes follow a left hemisphere trajectory, and respond not to wisdom, but to desire limited in its appreciation of context. These processes have been largely artifactual in their evolutionary development — meaning that those future states towards which we develop positive feedback loops have been generally constructed of reactionary models of how individuals, or ideological collectives would "like" to see the future unfold; karmic cycles of desire and aversion.
These trajectories are oriented towards an imaginary future and undergo the natural messy evolutionary “moves fast and breaks things” mode of inventing more life patterns through blind hit and miss experimentation. This mode inevitably holds a much greater “miss” than “hit” statistic, but on the scale of kosmos, that works out just fine; individuals, cultures, whole species, orbital bodies even, and more come and go in the widest cycles of time. As a self aware species who desire our own persistence, we do not have this luxury. (Sorry Silicon Valley.)
While toolmaking proves profoundly useful for the individual in the context of spatial concrete phenomenological concern, the life being of a culture is much more subtle and requires not stone hammers, fire, and wheels so much as intelligence in wisdommaking to manage the vast open spaces of long scale temporal evolutionary concern.
“What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.”
While we build rocket ships to approach a future we might imagine, to approach the future we might actually enjoy, we must set aside these childish priorities in favor of something more mature. Observation of such a future requires a different kind or way of looking.
I have struggled with the concern that we as individual humans simply lack the maturity to respond effectively to our current complex of crisis. With its roots deep in our brainstem, countless generations of traumatic experience and psychological response, as has been said: our paleolithic biology, our medieval institutions, and the powers in hand of gods, we enact the Anthropocene and it is our end.
I’m growing out of this husk of a view. The tender seed emerging from within sees not our individual frailty as a weakness, but rather something supple and necessary to allow us to begin to grow into a collective maturity transcendent of individual, familial, and factional struggles for domination of one another and our fanciful fiefdom of the world. This, I think is the WisdomLove perhaps referred to in that verse of Corinthians that speaks so presciently to that re-sublimation of parts (left brain) to the whole (right brain imbalance.)
“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror [the future we imagine]; then we shall see face to face [the future we can live.] Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known [the wisdom of connection to place, indigenous part of the whole home.]”
— Corinthians 13
What are these collectively mature ways of living wholeheartedly on the earth. How do we fully awaken from this dream and turn ourselves back to the present moment, the present place, this home in our bodies, in our communities, as this earth?
I do not think we can return barefoot to the wilds of Africa or the outback of Australia, let alone the American planes. Should we (some substantial portion of 8 billion humans and their descendents) fail this evolutionary sorting hat, I trust our San and Aboriginal relations (and likely some unrecognized others) will continue this sacred life endeavor, and most likely barefoot and content in the wilds. Should we, in contrast not perish in this current crises, I do think we will look very different than we do today.
If not striving for some imaginary future, rushing to externalize costs and challenges along the way in hopes that this friction will simply go away or otherwise resolve itself without some bother, how then do we orient these hungry minds of ours, filled with temptation and desire, towards something more realistic and likely to thrive?
My assertion is that we can look towards a rational assessment of deeper underlying evolutionary patterns (many altitudes of natural law) and rather than creating a future from personal preferences and aversions, begin to imagine what is the thriving trajectory of evolution and wholeheartedly into that.
To be clear, this is not a Salvation endeavor of modern man, the golden icon of self, separated from our “dirty tribal past” and the unclean wilderness of earth. Whatever the endeavor, it must in its very nature the transcendent (NOT colonial) of national, religious, ideological, boundaries as well as those even more delusional thresholds between “indigenous,” and modern.
While I think it a fairly careless term, for now I have not come up on a less offensive descriptor, so “modern,” it is. With that in mind, it is indeed the modern mode that has transgressed, and it is that cultural identity that has the very most to lose (albeit to be sure that ongoing loss continues to be paid dearly by all of humanity and very much of life beyond.) It is we Moderns that must find our way back into offering ourselves as generous participants in the collaboration that is stewardship of all life.
Drawing global flourishing from the quantum field of humanity.
Let us honor the namesake of this article by returning to an inquiry more demonstrably close to Mr. Fermi’s heart.
I, in my sincerest efforts to appreciate from a humble lay perspective, understand quantum field theory to strongly suggest a worldview much more appreciable to the right hemispheric grasp of wholes and open-ended relational processes, then the left brain preference for hard, static, ontologically durable objects. (I begin to notice a difference between wisdom/knowledge and utility…)
The scientific endeavor is, at its heart, a search for the objects of wisdom; the nature of things at their essence, the indivisible insights that elaborate to a wholeness of understanding. The ancient science of Dzogchen might refer to this as “empty yet arising;” David Bohm describes the Implicate Order; modern physics offers QFT; and “indigenous” cultures worldwide invite a recognition of the web of life where “that which we do to the smallest among us, we do to ourselves.” This last point is even evident in the left brain expression where the link between humanity and the sacred begins to break down:
“Whatever you did for the least of these relations, you did for me.” — Matthew 25:40
in essence these various wisdom streams direct our attention not so much to sovereign objects, but to the qualities of existence and life as expressions of a holistic field of relating. Note again this movement from object/tool orientation towards more subtle field/wisdom utilities.
“Love is patient…” Like Jesus, and right hemispheric deference to left, it turns the other cheek. Wisdom will die on the cross again and again, in the vast cosmos of life, willingly surrendering itself to make way for the discovery of Great Filter dynamics to contain and give shape to the underlying freedom of the primordial wisdom of profound timeless and boundless evolutionary curiosity.
To survive, we must see ourselves both in that spacious and willing surrender, as well as in the most sincere, fierce, and determined willingness to live. This is not a small self, living isolated and alone in an unwelcoming universe of uncaring matter. This is a self of divine proportion, a sacred expression of something more wildly total and complete than any bounded ontology could ever hope to capture.
“What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.”
By no means do I mean to argue that we should set aside the values, skills, and capacities of our left brains, nor even its expression as cultural artifact in our social and collective dynamics otherwise. Only that it is, in the words of Iain, not the Master of a materials economy, but the servant of something much more beautiful, a Wisdom Economy inclusive of all our relations.
We must bring to bear this left brain analytical capacity to understand the wholeness of our relational situation. No longer can we behave like children, willfully extracting our desires from the heart of the world, and assuming our descendents, like parents, will continue to invent the solutions to the problems we create.
Undoubtedly, should we survive this initiatory ordeal, there will be a conspiracy of creative response wholly un-orchestrated expressing as unanticipated synergies well found within the mix. At the same time there must also (I so strongly and self assuredly insist ;-) be coherent expressions of understanding at the level of increasing totalities. Again, not dominator totalities, but synergistic wisdom awareness interventions.
We begin to see examples of these evolutionary emergents already coming to bear in the world in places like Sri Lanka (now running for over 65 years), in grassroots neighborhood initiatives, and even at the scale of the United Nations with well-recognized institutional actors like the Harvard Flourishing network.
Like imaginal cells in the chrysalis of the butterfly, these initiatives are coming to life and will, if we are fortunate, begin to weave themselves together in relationship to one another, bearing sovereign autonomy, but a common basic language of flourishing for all of life.
What role can you, can we, take in this most sacred time as we hospice the caterpillar and midwife some bright and colorful future yet unknown and unseen? How can we walk the threshold between distracting temptation, and fearful reactivity, replacing our ignorance with the wisdom of sacred duty?
Won’t you join us to discover
?
This is feeble, wishful thinking:
“Like imaginal cells in the chrysalis of the butterfly, these initiatives are coming to life and will, if we are fortunate, begin to weave themselves together in relationship to one another, bearing sovereign autonomy, but a common basic language of flourishing for all of life.”
Unless you build the ideologic method, a mutualistic, sovereign, decentralized economic social organization, the initiative will not have the FORCE needed to superseded and supplant the existing civilization.