Question6.com: We, The People are NOT HAPPY
The CEO and the janitor have the same question. They wonder what will happen to them in a few years. Will they have another job in another city or will they be fighting for their life on a hospital bed? Deep down, they think that something will remain constant. Whatever happens will only be another episode of “their life”. The décor may change but there is a background that will remain the same. They will experience different ways to pursue the same ‘purpose of life’.
This is the first thing we should learn at school but we don’t. Do you remember lectures about “The meaning of the life of the Homo sapiens on earth in the past 300 000 years?” Don’t expect any help from The Evening News. The TV knows that getting attention requires action, colors and noise. The purpose of our life would not sell advertising.
We can decide that our goal is to achieve “success”. We offer a variety to choose from. It could be fame or money or social status. Deep down, we know that it is a lie, but it is the best lie we could find.
We could say that our goal is to find “happiness”. We are now moving from the material world to the non-physical. This is an improvement. Life and happiness do not have a shape, a color, a weight. They don’t belong to the scientific world. We are moving from the body to the soul. This is a step in the right direction. Let’s keep digging!
A stone in a garden was engraved with: “God smiles through the flowers”. Why not? This gardener was searching for happiness in his flowers. You would not blame astronomers for looking for god in the stars - Would you? Philosophers look in philosophy. The best answer should apply to all of us, whether we are CEOs, gardeners, philosophers, astronomers, or janitors.
This is where our problem starts. We like to think that we are going to dominate the universe with our thinking. The earth, the stars and the galaxies are nothing more than raw material at our disposal! This is wishful thinking. Happiness is not made of raw material. It may not be pleasant to feel like an isolated individual facing the vast world. It makes you feel terribly lonely.
10 - Let's be humble
Let’s start with a simple question:
“If Marie’s daughter has a son, what is the relationship
between Marie and the father of this son?”
No mathematics. This is a simple question about relationships in a family! There should not be any problem!
Human thinking is not the only way to think
Slime molds are at the limits of plants, animals, and fungi. They could make us change our idea of ‘intelligence.’ They don’t have a brain. They don’t have a head, and they can solve some problems much faster than we can. We use their ‘intelligence’ to improve our computers. Some day, they could become an important part of our robots. Imagine robots without a brain doing things that we cannot do ourselves. They could tell us in a millisecond that Marie is the mother-in-law of the father of this son.
A slime mold could say: “The human way to solve a problem is to think about it. You pile up ideas upon ideas. You end up needing the most powerful computers to tackle a problem that I can solve very easily without even thinking about it.” We should accept the idea that:
There may be a better way to solve some problems
than using human thinking.
A problem can have more than one solution. The slime has access to one solution. Humans have access to another solution, and that is not always the best one. We could find out, someday, that a virus can do even better.
Your dog may offer you two solutions to a problem. If you throw a ball across its path, your dog will run toward the ball as it sees it. The curve he follows is called ‘the pursuit curve’ – aka the dog’s curve. Human beings would have a better solution. They would predict where the ball is going and get there, waiting for the ball to come to them. What makes the difference is that we have access to better thinking than the dog.
What we learn from the slimes is that we should not associate a problem with only one way of thinking and one solution. There are many ways to handle a problem, depending on your level of thinking.
Throughout the ages, humankind has faced the constant problem of finding food to survive. Thousands of years ago, we collected fruits with our bare hands. Later, we used stones to cut meat. That was our first improvement. After the stones, we used metal and fire to make tools. That was a new solution to an old problem. A significant improvement was the association of ideas with matter and the invention of agriculture. That was followed by associating power with the tools and having a horse pulling the plow. Today, one man using machinery equipped with a powerful motor can produce enough food to feed many people. The farmers account for only 5% of the total population (from 80^). As we evolved, we solved our food problems with better and better solutions.
Humans have a place in the world. They are fulfilling one of the possibilities of nature. The duck, the slime, humans, and the rest of creation have something in common: they underestimate what they are not conscious of.
We made computers. That’s an achievement, and we can be proud of it. Could that be a proof of our superior thinking?
Maybe not!
Different beings at different levels have access to other solutions when they face a problem. Animals are closer to the material world than humans. They are likely to use more ‘labor intensive’ solutions.
If you wish to understand the universe,
think of energy, frequency and vibrations
Tesla
Computers are made of the association of millions of simple ideas coming from millions of different people. That does not mean that the human brain improved the day we started making computers. It only shows that we needed many people to put together many simple ideas.
We search with our brain
but we find with our heart
George Sand
Computers are following the general direction of human evolution. We started by making tools to go hunting. Those tools were simple objects. The next step was to make machines. That requires ideas using objects. With computers we keep moving from the material world to the non-physical world.
With A.I. we are going one more step in the same direction. Humans are distancing themselves from the material world. What could be our next step? The development of our feelings?
Every child is an artist
The problem is how to remain
an artist once he grows up.
Picasso
Children seem to know all that. They don’t need logic. They sing, dance, paint and create shapes with modeling clay. A cardboard can become a racing car. They know that what is most important is not what we see. They decide in which world they want to live and create their own world. They could draw our attention to the importance of some aspects of our life that we are neglecting.
We need schools where parents could go
and learn from the children
how to reactivate their imagination!