The Expansion Model of Consciousness
How Structure is Fundamental to the Nature of Consciousness, Behavior, Complex Systems and the Future of Society
Understanding consciousness is the most important human pursuit. As we elevate our comprehension of this phenomenon, we inform every aspect of life and society. The fundamental insights to follow will add significantly to one of the most interesting topics in philosophy, neuroscience, biology, and religion. They will also illuminate key factors that influence the behavior of individuals, organizations and complex systems. Ultimately, we will begin to identify a predictable and healthy path forward for humanity.
Background — What is Consciousness?
Despite serious contemplation by many of the brightest minds in history, the conundrum persists: How does a substrate made of the same elements as rocks and trees, quarks and leptons become aware? This emergent phenomenon is often referred to as the hard problem of consciousness. Understanding how consciousness emerges from some complex configuration of matter, and in turn, creates our experiences, identities and emotions, continues to be a mystery. The concepts surrounding structure, however, will shed new light on this mystery and many other aspects of life and society.
The Study of Thought and its Inherent Conflicts
So, how does a podiatrist, recovered personal development junkie, and online magazine publisher add any clarity to this debate? Beginning with podiatry, the foot is a complex and uniquely human anatomic structure. To teach foot surgery you must be systematic. It requires breaking down complex processes into their minute, individual steps. This approach to learning and teaching has informed every aspect of my life.
Venturing off into the world of personal development (PD) and alternative medicine was a complete departure from training residents. The operating room is an objective world where you always know the rules. Conversely, the world of PD is completely subjective. It is a crazy maze of emotion, laced with fiction, enveloped by some of the worst incentives imaginable. This journey was initially exciting and eventually deflating. The PD industry is great at activating positive thoughts, emotions, dreams and passions. It is abysmal at predictably installing them into someone’s life. This leaves the vast majority of individuals much worse off due to the experience. Ultimately, this industry preys upon our most fundamental need — the desire to expand our lives.
Despite its many failings, the PD industry has at least one advantage: It forces you to think about your thinking. During this process, a fundamental question arose for me: How do you predictably and quantifiably improve your moment-to-moment quality of consciousness? This pursuit should be the ultimate objective of PD and psychology; regrettably, it is not. This is not surprising because the study of thought is inherently perplexing, as Einstein points out:
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”
Ponder this for a moment. If your best thinking is the source of your problems, how can thinking solve them? Is it possible to study thought in a scientific way? Can we achieve a higher level of thinking? The answer is yes, and the solution is simple (not easy). You must begin to watch your thoughts to notice their inherent structural conflicts.
Structure
Why is studying structure important for understanding consciousness? It is central because thoughts are energy and information in a pattern, and structure always determines the flow of energy and information. Structure determines behavior, creates our universe and is a key concept in the understanding of consciousness. This is a bold statement from a former PD junkie and limited-license academician. However, the following axioms lay a solid foundation for this position:
- Energy always flows through the path of least resistance.
- Structure determines the path of least resistance.
3. To predictably change the flow (behavior), you must change the structure.
When you identify the structure, the behavior and/or the flow of energy and information can be accurately predicted.
An excellent example of the application of the path of least resistance is the following:
“Behavior is always determined by the structure of the compensation plan.”
This is true of all human pursuits: business, government, relationships, social media, and religion. For example, a suicide bomber is following the structure of the compensation plan set up by their religious dogma. The unwavering belief in a glorious afterlife consummated by a violent act against nonbelievers is a powerful incentive.
Further examples:
· The 2008 financial crisis was inevitable due to many misaligned incentives.
· Codependent relationships have oscillating, conflicting structures that always lead to intractable conflicts.
· Government for the people by the people will be corrupted when special interests offer perverse incentives.
Evolution has formed a human brain that generates incentives in alignment with survival — negativity bias, for example. All behavior follows the path of least resistance set up by the structures in your environment and your mind.
The True Nature of Reality
“The river cannot rise above its source.”
The wisdom in these words is obvious. We understand that the course of the river is determined by the structure of the riverbed. With a rudimentary understanding of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravity is the path of least resistance. The mass of our planet bends space-time so that everything heavier than air travels toward the center of the earth. This principle permeates the universe and life, including human consciousness.
Human beings are the pinnacle of creation. You may disagree with this philosophically, but this is stated in the context of consciousness. As far as we know, it took 13.7 billion years for the universe to become aware of itself, and it has done so through humanity. Experience is the hallmark of consciousness. Metaphorically speaking, you are the universe’s eyes, ears, taste, touch and smell; you are the universe experiencing itself. This is a brute fact of our existence.
Yet, there are many other dimensions of experience that our limited senses cannot perceive. Organisms with different sense organs will have completely different experiences (umwelt). While animals only sense and react to their environment, we can also observe and experience our thinking. Recursive thought is solely a domain of the human mind. We are capable of metacognition — the awareness and understanding of our own thought processes. The structures in our environment and our mind direct our thinking and create our reality.
How Reality Creates Itself — The Structure of the Creative Process
The following is a brief overview of the structure of the creative process; this is a fascinating study in and of itself. A creative algorithm pervades all of life and works on three dynamics, directing the flow of energy and information. The following are a few examples that illustrate this:
1. Thoughts — feelings — actions = behavior
2. Legislative — judicial — executive = government
3. Knowledge — responsibility — control = leadership
4. Stability during load — mobility during function — distribution of load = joint function
5. Past — present — future = your experience of time
6. Protons — electrons — neutrons = matter
7. Cell growth — cell differentiation — morphogenesis = developmental biology
8. Radiation phase — matter phase — dark energy phase = evolution of the universe
9. Safety — satisfaction — connection = happiness
10. Internal dialogue — mental focus — physiology = states of being
There are hundreds of examples of these creative algorithms. They are useful abstractions that shed light on the structure of our existence and the flow of energy and information in our daily lives. What is humanity’s current creative process? More importantly, what is driving it?
The Structure of Humanity’s Current Creative Story
The current creative process for humanity is as follows:
Two of these three dynamics are obvious, and one is counterintuitive. Human beings are the only species that accumulate knowledge from one generation to the next. We have been scratching pictures on cave walls for at least 40,000 years. Language, communities, writing, books, computers and cloud servers have fueled the knowledge explosion and revolutionized humanity. The easy transfer of information from one generation to the next is a well-known hallmark of human existence.
Intersubjective stories allow humanity to cooperate on a massive scale. This unique ability is how we dominate the physical world. These are the fictions we have developed, disseminated and mutually agreed upon. They unite us and divide us. Credit cards and money are common examples of useful intersubjective stories.
There is a multitude of divisive intersubjective stories: authoritarianism, racism, fascism, nationalism, materialism, and fundamentalism. We have perpetuated many painful and dangerous “isms,” (which is a topic for another day), but there is a new story emerging on our planet: one that is obvious yet counterintuitive and crucial for us to understand in order to move forward in a healthy way.
Humanity’s new story is rising complexity. This is as perplexing as it is obvious. Rising complexity seemingly runs in the face of the great law of physics — entropy. Entropy dictates that a closed system always becomes more disordered in both energy and information.
Earth is not a closed system. We receive approximately 122 petawatts of solar energy daily. Our existence, however, depends on a razor-thin margin of physical laws (fine-tuning), environmental factors (Goldilocks zone) and social probabilities (intersubjective stories). There are many more ways things can go wrong in any given moment. Despite these narrow tolerances, all the evidence points to rising complexity at an accelerating rate. This phenomenon is consistent with the inherent structure of the universe and, in my opinion, informs the fundamental nature of consciousness. The following observations support this hypothesis.
Consciousness and Accelerating Expansion
With our deeper understanding of reality, the structure of the universe informs the structure of consciousness, life, and rising complexity. The following are the theoretical basics. The correlations are abundant; causality must be determined.
A 360 degree view of reality shows that accelerating expansion is fundamental to our physical existence and is exemplified in the picture above, illustrating the accelerating expansion of the universe. This recent discovery flew in the face of conventional wisdom and has spawned the relatively new cosmological theories of dark matter and dark energy. The universe is expanding, and this expansion is accelerating. This is the inherent structure of the universe. The question is: Does this structure inform consciousness, rising complexity, and our rapidly progressing existence? In my opinion, it does. The following are a few examples:
Time Compression/Acceleration
Acceleration has been operating since the Big Bang, but only recently has it become obvious in the human experience due to the compression of the time scales of our existence. The following are a few examples of acceleration and rapidly rising complexity:
1. Geoffrey West, PhD, of the Santa Fe Institute writes, “We are living in an exponentially expanding socioeconomic urbanized world.” (Scale, Chapter 2) When we contemplate this fact, we must ask: “How did this happen?” Was it conscious and deliberate? Did a group of forward thinkers sit in a room and map out this exponential expansion? No, it is an emergent phenomenon flowing through the path of least resistance which is determined by structure.
2. The cosmic calendar — compressing the entire 13.7 billion-year history of the universe into one year — provides useful context. Civilization has existed for the last 11.4 seconds, and modern history has spanned merely the final half-second. In this nanosecond of the universe’s existence, humanity has, by every metric, transformed the world.
3. The Stone Age was 130,000 generations, the Agrarian Age 600, the Industrial Age 15, the Nuclear Era 4, Information Age 2.5 — we are now in the Age of Transformation.
4. Knowledge is doubling every 12–13 months and accelerating.
5. Computing power doubles every 20–24 months — Moore’s Law.
6. Knowledge half-life is rapidly shrinking — 24 months!
7. You can access the entire world’s information in the palm of your hand and disseminate an idea internationally with the touch of a screen.
There are many examples of accelerating progress — sanitation, life expectancy, public safety, food abundance, literacy, the dramatic decrease in violence, etc. This new story is becoming more obvious as it envelops our existence. Automation, digitization, robotics and augmented intelligence (AI) are disrupting lives and society monthly. Everywhere you look this new story is emerging. What is its genesis? Is consciousness causal or a neutral observer? The reality is that humanity continues to create, transform and exponentially expand its existence on this planet. Accelerating expansion is fundamental to the structure of our universe, life, and consciousness.
Innovation and Expanding Consciousness
The computing power nestled in the palm of your hand makes the original main frame super computers seem like an abacus. Technology has rapidly innovated and so have we. Most of the early evolutionary pressures that motivated humanity to this zenith of exponentially expanding creativity are being off-loaded to each other and to augmented intelligence (AI). We have been divesting ourselves of the primal, energy-depleting safety and survival concerns of our not-too-distant ancestors. Contemplate all the mind-consuming things most of us no longer need to think about — predators, your next meal, unpredictable environments, violence, natural disasters, etc. These burdensome tasks and concerns have been distributed to each other, society and technology. Innovation is at the foundation of our biology and evolution. Human consciousness has further accelerated this process by making innovation a conscious, deliberate process as opposed to an organic one. Acceleration of innovation is liberating civilization from the mundane, which is creating an expanding group of long-lived innovators. Innovation is the foundation of accelerating expansion, life and evolution.
Our Future Creative Story:
Accelerating Knowledge — Rapidly Rising Complexity — Exponentially Expanding Innovation
The tension between accelerating knowledge, exponentially expanding innovation, and rapidly rising complexity is propelling the structure of humanity’s future. Acceleration of innovation is how consciousness in concert with augmented intelligence (AI) is paving the way for our continued exponential expansion. We can do more, learn more and achieve more in less time than ever thought possible.
The Hypothesis
The accelerating expansion of the universe is an amazing fact; the structure of the universe is more clearly understood. A new theory of astrophysics had to be developed to explain this phenomenon. Scientists now believe that the “stuff” we know as traditional matter is less than 5% of our universe. The remainder is approximately 70% dark energy and 25% dark matter — 95% of our physical reality is stuff we know little about.
The Expansion Model of Consciousness
Let’s summarize these new insights to determine their impact on the evolution of consciousness, life and society. Earth’s gravity and its reliable orbit around the sun help to create a long-term stable environment for humanity to evolve and for the universe to become aware of itself. We exist on a razor’s edge of physical law, environmental conditions and societal probabilities. Our rising complexity and expanding consciousness seemingly run counter to the great law of physics, entropy. As discussed earlier, Earth is not a closed system. A significant tension exists, however, in the fact that infinitely more can go wrong than right in every moment. In this context, we must strive to identify the source of our continued exponential progress.
Life and consciousness evolved in an exponentially expanding universe. Humanity has organically created an exponentially expanding socioeconomic urbanized world. Innovation is an accelerating and unpredictable process, relentlessly propelling life forward towards an ever expanding set of new possibilities.
Our gravitationally bound system provides the stability and structure necessary for the emergence of complexity. Accelerating expansion controls the evolution of complexity. All sustainable systems — the universe, our socioeconomically urbanized world, information processing, knowledge, etc. — rapidly expand. For complex systems, they either expand or eventually cease to exist; no complex system in our universe is static. Human consciousness is no exception. The rapid expansion of human consciousness is consistent with the universe’s basic structure. With our deeper understanding of structure, the creative process, and the path of least resistance we can more precisely predict the behavior of individuals, society, and complex systems. In this context these systems can be described more succinctly and accurately. The flow of energy and information is determined by structure. Structure creates the boundary conditions that direct the increase in entropy toward rising complexity and the development of exponentially expanding systems.
Speculation Based on the Evidence
We now have a deeper understanding of the structure of the creative process, life and the universe. If we look closely, the evidence points to the probability that accelerating expansion is fundamental to life and to consciousness. The universe is governed by deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. The rapid expansion of the early universe (inflation) fine-tuned the physical constants to select for exponential growth. If inflation did not fine-tune the constants, then we happen to be in the universe where the constants select for accelerating expansion. Either way, it is fundamental to our existence. This is, in my opinion, a missing piece to the understanding of consciousness. The correlations are obvious; our expanding consciousness is a perfect reflection of the structure of the universe. Life and evolution are a series of brilliant innovations. These innovations lead to newer and greater innovations creating a never-ending, unpredictable expansion of adjacent possibilities.
Our universe hit a threshold of evolutionary development and created consciousness to continue its expansion. Consciousness hit a threshold that required augmented intelligence (AI) to continue to expand. Society hit a threshold that required an exponentially expanding socioeconomic urbanized world to continue to expand. A growing group of innovators will continue to drive this process. Consciousness is a logical, perhaps even necessary, destination for an expanding universe.
Our Future and the Most Compelling Argument
We instinctively seek and are attracted to the experience of expansion and dread the opposite. This is perhaps the most compelling argument for the theory that accelerating expansion is a fundamental property of life and of consciousness. This program has been running since the inception of life. Contraction is universally disturbing — there is no altruism in a contracting economy, relationship, organization, religion or society. Expand or die. This is true for life, love, knowledge, organizations, economies, institutions, religions, relationships, and the universe. Expansion is the energy that binds all we hold dear and is the structure that drives life forward. It may be what has driven every civilization in history to create its own unique iteration of a deity.
This essay is about consciousness, not our collective experience. Change over the last 75 years has been so rapid and stratified that most individuals have become uncoupled from this progress. There are many victims of this extraordinary pace of change. Countless evolutionary mismatches are diminishing the experience of life for the majority. Structural conflicts permeate every aspect of life and society. Younger generations are facing alarming trends mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, technologically, economically, and environmentally. Individuals that can adapt to rapid change will define the future.
For the greatest number of people to thrive “we must consciously and deliberately realign the structures in our lives, organizations, governments and societies so that the path of least resistance seamlessly leads us to the highest good for everyone.” We need to understand our new reality and adopt an “expansion mindset.” This is our most effective way forward. There is, in my opinion, no other way.
Currently, there are many oscillating and conflicting structures in our society that are wasting precious resources and steering humanity in unhealthy directions. Incoherent behavior can always be traced back to poorly designed and aligned structure. Structural realignment is essential and urgent on an intra-creative (self), co-creative (relationships), and intercreative (societal) basis. If we do not properly restructure the incentives, most people, if not all of us, will become victims of this expansion.
We must be conscious, deliberate and proactive as we move forward. It is necessary that we properly align the incentives for life, relationships, businesses, governments and society to thrive. The path of least resistance must always lead us toward the greatest good for everyone. Safety and survival needs must continue to be attenuated. We must eliminate the painful, divisive and unhealthy intersubjective stories from the past. Accelerating expansion is fundamental. This insight is essential to the restructuring of any new path forward for humanity. The universe will continue to expand with or without us. These are the challenges and opportunities of this epic transformation in human history.
