Where is the CONSCIOUSNESS in conscious evolution?
I quote here from the “Evolutionary Manifesto” written by John Stewart[i]:
“At the heart of the evolutionary worldview is the fact that evolution has a trajectory — it heads in a particular direction. However, evolution on Earth will not advance beyond a certain point unless it is driven consciously and intentionally. If this transition to conscious evolution does not occur, evolution on this planet will stall, and humanity will not contribute positively to the future evolution of life in the universe — we will be a failed evolutionary experiment.”
In an interesting sci-fi novel by Adrian Tchaikowsky[ii], one of its central themes concerns an egotistical scientist who terraforms a planet and then goes into cryo-storage while it evolves, hoping for a better version of humans in the mistaken belief that there are primates present. When the AI which manages her satellite detects intelligent life, she is woken up to eventually discover a highly advanced, highly intelligent arachnid species. Her experiment has succeeded, yet the result looks nothing at all like what she intended. Evolution did not head in that particular direction. She has to learn how creatures who are advanced in ways that she could not even conceive of think, function and be. What are the risks in Stewart’s view?
In this article, I will assume that you have some belief in consciousness as existing beyond humans. If you have a mechanistic worldview in which consciousness is an artefact of our complex brains, you can click away now. I am not here to persuade you otherwise.
What does it mean to suggest that consciousness is a driver of evolution? Is there something more than a purely random process involved that in some way shaped the development so far and that will shape in in the future?
I would like to explore two flavours of that concept. In the book The Science of Possibility I presented a full perspective of the data that indicates there is an informational substructure to all of existence and that when energy was shaped into matter, the outcomes were shaped by that information. The information field continued to expand as matter adopted more complex forms, became organic and then cellular, and eventually created complex, multi-celled organisms with self-awareness. I invite you to borrow that perspective during the thought experiment that follows.
The implication of such a view is that you (the biological entity reading this) are shaped by the information field. All that you are and do is an interaction with the field. You are a relational being in a relational reality[iii]. Everything that happens to you and every choice that you make takes place within that relationship. You are consciously aware of some aspects, but much of that relationship is not conscious — you are not aware of it, not thinking about it, driven by biological actions like breathing, by habits like taking a shower and by psychological patterns such as the mindsets and constructs that you have embedded in your persona. Once in a while you step beyond that stream of activity to think about a choice. That choice may be as trivial as what TV program to watch, or what to eat for dinner. It may be as significant as deciding to get married or emigrate or take up veganism.
Your active choices are shaped by your awareness. Your choice to marry is affected by your awareness of another human. Your choice to emigrate reflects what you know about your country and the one you might move to. You may become a vegan because of how you perceive the animal kingdom, by how your body feels as a result of consuming meat and dairy, or because of how you interpret data about farming’s contribution to global warming. Your awareness governs how you relate to all that is around you.
How does this relate to evolution and to whether it can be “conscious” in some way?
People rarely define what they mean by that word, as if we can all reliably assume that we know what it is. In the description above, even for you or me as individuals, being conscious takes on an active mode where we are engaging our cognitive function, thinking about our choices and our reasons for making them. This includes choosing what data to pay attention to and what to discard. It sits alongside our passive consciousness, where we thoughtlessly absorb some of what is happening around us and ignore a lot more.
This is only the individual aspect of consciousness. There are wider aspects, such as the shared contexts and perspectives that may characterise a family, an organisation, or a nation. Not only do these larger entities have these elements of consciousness in common, such as the collective family awareness that Great-Uncle Bert has a drink problem. All of those larger entities take an active role in shaping us as individuals, through family expectations, corporate advertising, or government propaganda. The whole world’s perspectives may be shaped by large-scale events such as a moon-landing or a pandemic.
As individuals we stand in relationship with all these externalities, but at each layer of scale we relate to both what is inside the boundary and what is outside. I may be conscious of being tired and, at the same time, that I could get fired for falling asleep at my desk. The company I work for may be conscious of me as a member of its workforce whether as a person (someone whose individual make-up contributes to its success) or as a figure in its cost structure alongside its awareness of the market or the economy. Any of these relationships between various entities may influence whether or not I get laid off.
How does this connect to evolution?
We may seem to have strayed from the consideration of evolution. However, the difference is largely a matter of scale. Evolution is something that we see at the largest scale, that of a species or ecosystem or a planet and it plays out over longer time periods. Just now, we may be aware that certain changes are identifiable over shorter spans. We know that species are subject to extinction; such facts have become part of our awareness as we consider human impact on the climate. In this sense we know that our choices and our consciousness are shaping evolution.
This leads us to be hyper-aware of human impact. This is a mixed blessing. It is essential that humanity changes its relationship to Mother Earth and the last thing I would wish is to undermine the urgency of such actions. At the same time, we reached the position we are in because of a delusion that humans are in control, that we can use our big brains and powerful technologies to shape the future.
Those who present views like John Stewart’s statement above would have us continue with that delusion. They imagine that when we change the way that we think, it will enable us to direct the planet. They have the fantasy that a more conscious humanity can plan the future, as if we now understand the entirety of the planet’s living systems and can manipulate them to be as we conceive they ought to be. This is the thinking that got us into our current mess. More of it we do not need.
The field of information that I described and asked you to adopt for the duration of this thought process does not work in a way that supports that kind of mindset. It is not hierarchical, quite the reverse. Life evolved from the small over periods of time well beyond human prediction. Viruses and bacteria came before amoebas and plankton, invertebrates before vertebrates, lemurs before humans. Ecosystems came about through the interactions of multiple species, widely varying types of organisms that developed, being reshaped over and again through their interactions with all that surrounded them. Trees do not tell the forest floor beetles or fungi how to be. Whales are not in charge of the oceans.
Evolution is a bottom-up process. Life is a bottom-up process. What we see in evolution is the outcome of gazillions of events over several billion years. What we see in life is the outworking of millions of small decisions and choices made by individual agents, human and non-human, based on their interactions with what surrounds them. Each is affected by the other entities that they stand in relation to and, in addition, by how they relate to the flow of information through the field. It is not difficult to see this; you only have to look at the magnitude of the shift brought about by the virus known as Covid-19.
Does consciousness need to evolve?
Nothing I am saying should discourage humanity from learning more about itself or from becoming more conscious, in all meanings of that term. I am certainly not arguing against the notion that we have something to contribute to the healing of a wounded planet. Quite the reverse, in fact. Of course, we can make better, more aware choices. However, I am insistent that the direction, the focus and the status of humanity must be quite different than that put forward by conscious evolutionaries who imagine that we either can or should guide the process. Heaven forbid!
For sure we need to evolve our consciousness, and a major step in doing so is to abandon the arrogant notion that we know what is needed. Instead, our evolutionary task is to get out of the way. We are not running the experiment; we are merely part of it. From the experiment’s point of view, we are entirely dispensable. Evolutionary intelligence will only be present in us when we recognise that the planet has more of it than we do. It will be when humans become participants without superiority, knowing that our role is to harmonise with the field, to listen to it and to embed ourselves in its flow when making our choices. Our brains are just not that big and our ability to project outcomes is rather limited. A little humility would go a long way.
[i] Manifesto — CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION: https://www.consciousevolution.co.uk/full-introduction
[ii] The Children of Time
[iii] For the reasoning behind this statement see https:/medium.com/@jon_25033/what-the-bleep-are-you-f8d6f5bb6bf4
