by LJ Frank
Conscience appears to be uniquely human.
Did conscience precede language and belief? Did it exist in the Paleolithic lineage of Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh or “I am that I am”? Language is woven deeply and intricately with belief about each other and that which is external to us. Was there and is there a female and male conscience separate from each other in the early evolution of our cellular structure or genetics? Or are our evolving cells and resulting conscience a matter of mutual adaptation to our environment? In different words, does conscience come from that which was embedded in each of our cells since the beginning of our emergence from stardust?
Approachability with each other and adaptability to our environment helped necessitate man to invent language. Terms such as God are an invention of Man’s mind. But did man invent conscience and based on what factual information and how, and in what context? Man evolves. He learns. He adapts. A religion’s construct such as patriarchy is also an invention of Man but what of the story of conscience?
Man’s technologies transcend the reflection he sees in the mirror.
Are the words human use to describe the characteristics of our life, culture, beliefs and so forth, been made obsolete by our technologies, such as automation and artificial intelligence? The human conscience in order to survive through the centuries, has adapted up to a point. And social structures are subtly altered.
Civilization is experiencing a paradigm shift in conscience. Climate change, war, terrorism, ad infinitum. Supportive structures under advancing technologies are being reshaped. Humans adapt or die. The machine transcends human dignity and moral complexity.
Fortune cookie mentality, astrology, and self-help guides proliferate in the digital and hardcopy landscape. Have we misunderstood “conscience” itself. Conscience is the complexity of ethics that is woven into our cellular evolution of adaptation. In an age of high technologies with a highly questionable future a new form of conscience is called upon for the sake of adaptation to the effects of those technologies. Starvation of the mind and body is lethal.
Even our personality testing models are obsolete if they were ever relevant. I am amused by the Meyers Briggs tests which is no more than that of opening a Fortune Cookie as some psychologists suggest with regurgitative phrases, or the intellectually disturbing test that is geared toward determining priorities with a list of items in which the test taker takes for job or relationship suitability. It appears tests are devised mostly to justify the work of the person(s) designing and administering the test, program, and associated roles.
Gender based role models are obsolete in a world where belief is at odds with actuality. The value structure of the Great Religions are under question. It’s Conscience Adaptation. Patriarchy and matriarchy are symptoms for a non-adaptive conscience and understanding of our cellular adaptation. They are contrivances devised in part by vanity, not perhaps, a moral based conscience. Ethics are overridden by the very thing that we might have hoped to gain through our technologies, other than wealth/power and that is – creating a foundation for the survival of our conscience, which after all is cellar based not electronic based.
Children are carefully taught about the nature of the “carrot stick” mentality and physical or mental superiority. Go along to get along. Keep your head down if you wish to keep your job and home. It’s all manipulation. The desire for control is ancient. Machismo is ever more dangerous in a nuclear age. Roles of men and women have changed as a result of technology including our effort for a deeper understanding of self.
Technology/automation/AI displaces people and creates alternative opportunities and outlooks. Where do the displaced people go? More than half the work forces around the world are made up of women. That number will increase. More men are staying at home to raise children, clean house, cook, run errands or work from home. Depressed or need an erection? Take a pill if needed. The pharmaceutical industry’s profits are unlimited. The pie is viewed as limited for humanity unless you are wealthy. Competition and greed, winning and losing affects attitudes and the reason for existing,
Will an evolving human conscience survive artificial intelligence? Will artificial intelligence be programmed to have a conscience?
The human conscience knows income is not the same as worth but I know of few contented impoverished. The pie gets smaller as I write this essay. The conscience of a poor man is different than a man of wealth. Old paradigms can have a harsh death.
Conscience appears woven into our genetics from the very beginning of out evolution. If a Creator that humans call God exists, will that Creator be found in our conscience? Man’s moral complexity transcends a society that’s retains a gender fixation. Man is captive to genetics and the paradigm shift is seeded in an evolving conscience.
