User blog:HumphreyDumphrey/The Inevitability of Absurdity v1.0

We live in a world: 
 * where intelligent life evolved over billions of years and a significant majority are unaware, or deny it;
 * where technology has advanced to such a level that people can communicate instantly with anyone, and we use it to insult and abuse people for having different opinions;
 * where democracy means power is won by whoever spends the most money making their opponent look awful;
 * where it is possible to watch the mental breakdown of a famous celebrity in real time, and enjoy it;
 * where the world’s luckiest people and the world’s unluckiest people lead lives that are so incredibly different, it is difficult to image they exist at the same time on the same planet;
 * where despite all the knowledge of history, nations still go to war.

 If you can look around at the world around you and think “this all seems perfectly reasonable”, then you are unlikely to buy in to what follows. If, however, you find some or all of those examples at least a little bemusing, then read on.



 Somewhere in a parallel universe, things are much more sensibly organised. The progress of science coincided nicely with the universal progress of human societies. Discovery begat knowledge, knowledge begat insight, insight begat maturity, maturity begat better ways to live, not just for a few, but for everyone.



 That didn’t happen in our version of reality. In ours, the progress of science coincided with the steady, unstoppable increase in absurdity.



 The Decline of Empire Saga is, in essence, an exploration of this absurdity. So it makes sense to share an understanding of why things turned out the way they have.



 The theory proposed here is called “The Inevitability of Absurdity” and should not be confused with some sort of existentialist bemoaning of the meaninglessness of life. This is an exploration of the natural forces which have led, inevitably, to the absurdity of life in first quarter of the 21st Century.



 Life is not necessarily meaningless. It is necessarily absurd. Here’s why…



The Six Natural Forces


<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> There are Six Natural Forces which have driven us to this absurdity: <p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">
 * 1) Evolution
 * 2) Normal Distribution
 * 3) Abnormal Distribution
 * 4) Relativity
 * 5) Belief
 * 6) Acceleration

<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> These forces underlie every aspect of  human existence, and go a long way to explaining why we are capable of such extraordinary ridiculousness.

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Evolution
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> We evolved. Some people don’t like this idea. Some people don’t like the idea that some people don’t like this idea. And some people don’t like the idea that some people don’t like the idea that they don’t like this idea. None of this changes anything.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Humans evolved, one tiny accidental mutation at a time over billions of years. And the end result is pretty awesome, and capable of some incredibly awesome feats. It is also deeply flawed. The human brain is both the most extraordinary outcome of an entirely random process, and a fundamentally unreliable pile of organic matter. The delusion of rationality underlies, and undermines much of human existence.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And in a broader sense of the word, human societies have also evolved. Our legal and social structures have evolved over thousands of years, a bit at a time. Each bit, often with genuine good intent, designed to fix a part of the problem. Something happens, we learn from that, we apply a fix, something else happens, repeat.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Evolution is a series of accidents adding up to something that functions with the appearance of deliberateness. Nothing around us was intelligently designed. And therein lies the problem.

<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> We are the miraculous output of billions of years of accidents, and we live in a society of kludges. We rationalise our irrational behaviours, we create structures that reinforce our biases and prejudices. Every solution is a workaround, which we come to accept as normal. And each one creates a new set of problems.

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Normal Distribution
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Evolution drives variety, not uniformity. So humans have evolved with a variety of abilities, many of which are distributed along a normal distribution curve, with a small number of people at the extreme low end, a small number at the extreme high end, and most in the middle.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And the normal distribution of natural abilities has had a dramatic impact on the evolution of social structures. Height, attractiveness, intelligence, creativity, strength, athleticism, altruism, and so many other characteristics of humans are unevenly distributed with some getting the a whole lot, and most not.

<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> These things are mostly the result of luck of the genetic draw. But they have a massive, often devastating effect on what happens in life. The beautiful, the intelligent, the creative, the athletic, have advantages that do not guarantee, but sure don’t hinder the path to a successful life.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Political inclinations are also distributed along a normal curve, with some holding extremely conservative views, some holding extremely progressive views, and most sitting somewhere in the middle. And yet our entire political debate sits on the assumption that these views are the result of right or wrong thinking. But they are not. your political views are a function of biological, social, and environmental factors that you did not choose. You no more chose your politics than you chose your (natural) hair colour. And yet we argue as though we did. And an entirely absurd political power system has evolved around this assumption.

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Abnormal Distribution​
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The normal distribution of advantages leads to the abnormal distribution of power and money.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;line-height:17.25px;white-space:pre-wrap;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;">And in this situation lies the essence of the absurdity. In the normal distribution of luck, there has to be a small group of people who are extremely lucky. And because they each have a flawed brain that evolved over billions of years and is capable of adapting to, and rationalising their situation as normal, they feel genuinely entitled to it.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And because the having of power and wealth is one of the most effective paths to gaining additional power and wealth, and also one of the most effective ways of stopping others from gaining power and wealth, this tends to be somewhat self-perpetuating. Which is good for some.

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Relativity
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And if the human brain had evolved in such a way that it primarily focussed on “what I have” rather than “what I have not”, then all of this would probably not matter much at all. But it didn’t. The human brain makes comparisons. And those comparisons trigger emotions.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “I have more than you, I am happy.”

<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “I have less than you, I am sad.”

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And this, is really, where it all turns to shit. Because it really doesn’t matter if you are living a life that is a hundred thousand times more luxurious than that of your caveman ancestors. What matters is that your life is not as good as the person down the street, or your boss, or the people you see on TV.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> We are relativists, and just being aware that someone has more triggers off a part of our brain that makes us feel bad. Whether we like it or not. Whether we are aware of it or not. Whether we believe it or not. It still happens.

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Belief
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> It would be nice to believe that we only believe what is true, but that is unbelievable. If you were to add up the total number of things that people alive today believe, and add up the total number of things that people alive today believe that are true, the second number will be much, much small than the first.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And yet we all believe that this does not hold for ourselves. We all believe that what we believe is true, and it’s everyone else who is wrong. This is unlikely. And it is an unfortunate consequence of a brain that evolved by accident, not one that was intelligently designed by an omnipotent creator who presumably would have understood the importance of designing a brain that only believes true things.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And in a beautifully ironic twist, being in the lucky group up the high end of the normal distribution of intelligence actually makes you more likely to believe untrue things, because a highly intelligent brain is better at creating plausible rationalisations of irrational things.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The human capacity to stubbornly, often violently, cling to beliefs is probably the single biggest driver of absurdity. It drives all of the absurdity of religion, and politics, and economics, and history. It causes arguments at home, at work, and on the internet. Belief drives poverty, and war, and climate change. Believing stuff is all our brains can do, and they do it so very, very well. And the consequences are alarming.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Our absurdly evolved brains believe absurd things on a daily basis, and fails to see the irony.

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Acceleration
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;line-height:17.25px;white-space:pre-wrap;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;">And all of the above: the evolving of kludged solutions to problems, the abnormal distribtuion of wealth and power; the ability to find and compare ourselves to someone who has more; the believing of things that are probably not true; is happening at an accelerating pace.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Not much more than 300 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton set off the scientific revolution. For the next 200 years, it was possible for a single person to know every significant conclusion that science had revealed. Today it is impossible to impossible for a person to know the tiniest fraction of the sum of world knowledge.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Population is accelerating, technology is accelerating, information is accelerating. It is impossible to keep up. We are bombarded, we are overloaded, we are overwhelmed. There are more people discovering more things, creating more things, buying more things, writing more words, taking more pictures, shooting more videos, on a daily basis, than at any time in history.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And it is impossible to know, to really know, what is true and what isn’t.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And it all just sort of happened. Not by accident: everything that exists today is the result of something someone thought would be a good idea. And some of them were right. And some were wrong. Some were horribly, horrifically wrong. But we could argue forever about which is which and probably never agree completely.

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And so...
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The natural evolution of intelligent life has created a normal distribution of natural advantages, which in turn results in an abnormal accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of very few, which in turn fuels the natural envy and disatisfaction of many. The natural tendencyto believe what we already believe reinforces views about the fairness of this situation, and the acceleration of technological innovation exaggerates it.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> And so we find ourselves inevitably living in the absurd world where some have very much and many have very little; where power is commodity that is bought and sold by powerful people; where science and superstition coexist on a global computer network that couldn’t exist without science, and couldn’t exist with superstition; where more money is spent on finding better ways to kill than better ways to live; where we have mastered the art of manipulation to such a level that people buy things they never use; where there is so much conflicting information that it is impossible for anyone to know for sure what is true; and where we live in the constant, self-maintained delusion that this is somehow normal.

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<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The absurdity of it all was probably inevitable. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to point it out. Because somewhere in a parallel universe, it’s not like this. And somewhere in another parallel universe, things are even more fucked up.

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