Archive for June 2013

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

June 21, 2013 Consciousness, Evolution No comments

I attended a conference last weekend dedicated to the goal of creating an “immortal” version of a human being by transferring our “mind,” or possibly our brains as well, into an android by 2045. The conference was called GF2045. The GF stands for Global Future. The Russian who created the conference, Dmitry Itskov, did a good job of bringing together a lot of diverse people from the forefront of futurism, brain research, robotics and spirituality/religion, including Peter Diamandis, Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, Dr. Stuart Hameroff, Dr. Roger Penrose, and Dr. George Church, though some appeared via a canned video presentation.

It seems that there is still a wide variance of opinion about what constitutes the mind and what it means to be human? Age-old questions persist. Does consciousness arise from the biological mechanisms of the brain or does it simply reside there while the body is alive? Can we be human with a replacement body?

Some presented research showing that we should be able to repair damaged parts of the brain with replacement circuitry. Others thought that computers would soon be sophisticated enough to mimic human intelligence. Others saw it as a no-brainer (pun intended) that someday an individual’s consciousness could reside in something other than our original human birth bodies.

But nobody, in my opinion, got to the root of what it means to be human—what characteristics of consciousness we all share and what motivates us to make “progress.” Death was the problem that the conference was trying solve. The operative assumption was that we’d be better off if we could all live forever and that we had to take control over our own evolution to get there.

I’m not sure that should be our goal. Where we put our energy determines the results we will get. I’m of the opinion that we have much more pressing issues to solve than human mortality. How about we aspire to not killing each other before we try living forever.

The HumansTogether Focus

June 12, 2013 Communication, Economics, Global Ecosystem, Politics, Values No comments

All of us tend to focus primarily on our own lives and our immediate frame of reference. But most of us are missing the big picture.

We vigorously pursue of our own self-interest in what we believe is a dangerous, competitive world. We take detrimental divisions for granted: race, religion, nationality, class, location and political ideology. This results in clashes rather than commonality.

But despite the absolute uniqueness of each person, we are all human. Being part this remarkable species means that we are all much more alike than different, particularly when it comes to what each of us needs to be secure.

We all know that an infant plucked from its birth environment — say from the slums of Mumbai — and adopted by a family in Beverly Hills, will grow up with the frame of reference of its Beverly Hills family. Perhaps the child will even become a Republican and come to believe that the poor are to blame for their own situation. But wealth won’t save the child from the global effects of climate change or a focused explosion of global hate in the form of a nuclear terrorist attack on LA.

HumansTogether is dedicated to the notion that ideas can change the course of human history. The right of self-determination expressed by the American revolutionaries is an example of a big idea that, over time, created positive global change.

It’s time to focus on big ideas that are expressly global — on beliefs and values that can unite all people and help all humans advance. It’s time to focus on a common new vision of what human advancement should look like. This vision has to be part of our everyday sense of reality. Because unless we develop a common idea of what a positive future for humanity should be and develop a shared sense of responsibility for getting there, every human’s future may be dire.

The first step is coming up with a common goal for humanity and the second step is gaining majority agreement on that goal. Questions need to be raised and answered. What is the purpose of progress? Is there a limit to how wealthy a single individual should be allowed to be? What political system produces the greatest good for the greatest number? Is it time for a truly global set of governing principals?

The HumansTogether focus is on articulating and gaining agreement on a common vision of reality and a set of shared beliefs and values that can help make as many humans as possible free from hunger, fear and physical danger.