Key Balances in Our Human Existence
Our complexity is a marvelous balance between chaos and order
If it weren’t for electromagnetic fields, we wouldn’t be here. Alone among physical phenomena, they enable the development of an unlimited variety of stable molecules built from a finite number of chemical elements.
If it weren’t for rocky planets at the triple-point of temperature and pressure for water (at which ice, liquid water, and water vapor can coexist), we wouldn’t be here. They enable the development of complex self-reproducing molecular structures built out of simpler molecules — what we call “life” forms.
If it weren’t for electromagnetic fields, again, we wouldn’t be here. They enable constrained changes in the complex molecular structures that we call neuron networks, which enable our brains to make decisions that control our complex behavior as animals, interacting with our environments.
If it weren’t for neuron networks that specifically enable our language behavior, which in turn enables us to make changes in the neuron networks of other people’s brains, and consequently in their behavior, our unlimited number of collective human accomplishments wouldn’t be here.
We exist in a complex world balanced between fire and ice, chaos and rigidity— too much disorder on the one side and too much order on the other side. Even our group decision-making behavior requires such balance to be effective for long.
Yet we are currently at risk of tipping the balance too far toward environmental chaos, and at the same time too far toward political uniformity, with major decisions made by a single autocratic brain, that is unsuited to dealing with looming environmental catastrophe.
