There’s a profound wisdom to be found in nature. To call it wisdom might be misleading because we only get to see what works and are blissfully ignorant of what didn’t make it, so we might be mislead into thinking that there’s a conscious mind (in the conventional sense) making good decisions in the natural world around us. There isn’t. (I’ll talk about unorthodox interpretations of consciousness and minds later.)

True wisdom is the ability to make better decisions with minimal trial and error. “Minimal trial and error” is a moving yardstick- what is the bare minimum today might be seen as excessive and wasteful tomorrow, and necessarily so. I believe this is consistent with Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem! So it logically follows that the truly wise are never complacent (“All I know is that I know nothing.” – Socrates) and constantly seeking to be more robust in their thinking (Falsification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability).

The universe supplies us with billions of years worth of information, and it is truly a wondrous thing that our individual and collective minds are capable of interpreting it at all. (“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” – Albert Einstein) But are we? Are we actually capable of comprehending the universe? The inherent limitations of human consciousness means that we have to simplify things in order try to make sense of them. (“Science may be described as the art of systemic over-simplification.” – Karl Popper) We will never be able to escape the raw human need for narratives- a necessity evolving from the of the necessary limitations of the human mind- (“The deepest human desire is that for a narrative.” – Francisco Clemente).

Once we are aware that humanity cannot be separated from its narratives, we are forced to do battle with inferior myths by means of superior narratives. Scientists, artists, musicians- we are all storytellers, salesmen and cartographers- and it is ultimately the best stories that win and define the universe for humanity, and in the process define humanity itself.

A map needs to be imperfect to be useful. There is no use for a map that corresponds perfectly to reality. It would have to be impractically large, and it would be immediately obsolete. A good map manages to squeeze as much information as possible into the simplest and most elegant of lines, shapes and colours. (“Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.”- Wikipedia)

Our senses act as cartographers (map-makers) on our behalf. When we see a beautiful sunset we only perceive the a sliver of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that is visible to us, and when we hear a majestic orchestra we hear a minuscule range of frequencies. Random mutation and natural selection has “wisely” figured out that these are all the lights and sounds we need to make sense of the world around us, and that being able to perceive anything more would only serve to confuse us.

In a way, stories are ways of packaging information, just like maps. So’s DNA. So are your genes and memes.Think about it. We’re all part of a huge, on-going narrative, whether we like it or not. (“All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players,” – Jacques, in Shakespeare’s As You Like It)

Consciousness can be possessed by a larger entity than an individual biological organism. An individual ant, bee or termite, for instance, doesn’t appear to be conscious on its own- but a swarm appears to possess a collective consciousness. It doesn’t seem to make sense when a bee does a suicide attack- if you look at it from the perspective of the bee. But it makes sense from the perspective of the hive. Now, there is no individual brain at the heart of the swarm that gives out instructions to each individual bee- that would be tedious and most probably ineffective.

Now think about it- does it make sense when a mother risks her life to save her child? It doesn’t make sense from the perspective of the mother as an individual life form. But it makes sense from the perspective of the family, the tribe, the herd. There is a consciousness that lives and breathes in any community- the individuals are its neurons and the relationships between them are its synapses. In a sense, a family, a tribe, a herd, a community- all of these are organisms themselves, and each organism possesses its own form of consciousness.

I think we need to make a cultural paradigm shift from thinking about people as individuals without considering their tribes, herds and environments. I think a lot of our leading thinkers have intuitively understood that throughout history, but this central idea is only just beginning to trickle down to the rest of society over the past 30-40 years (and especially so in the past 10 years! I plan to somehow play a role in this process.

So excited.