Now
Biology you might imagine is a fairly
ephemeral recent
Fragile phenomenon it is not the average star in this galaxy
gutters out
After about 700 million years not our star we happen to have the good fortune to be around a very
Stable slow burning star, but there has been
biology on this planet at least
two billion years
Three times the average life of a star so biology is not some johnny-come-lately
Epiphenomena
Biology is a phenomenon more
persistent than the life of the stars
themselves and
Biology is not a static thing
I mean a star evolving now is not greatly different from a star evolving a billion years ago
Biology doesn't work that way biology constantly changes the context in which evolution
occurs
the way I have downloaded this into a phrase is the universe is the
Biological universe at least is a novelty
conserving engine
upon simple molecules are built complex molecules
upon complex molecules are built complex polymers
upon complex polymers comes DNA out of DNA
Comes the whole machinery of the cell out of cells comes
simple
Aggregate colony animals like Hydra and that sort of thing out of that
true animals out of that ever more complex animals organs of locomotion
organs of sight organs of smell
complex
mental machinery for the
coordinating of data in time and space
This is the whole story of the advancement of life and in our species it reaches its culmination
And it crosses over into a new
domain where change no longer occurs in the in the atomic and
Biological machinery of existence it begins to take place in this world which we call mental
It's called
epigenetic change
change which cannot be traced back to
mutation of the arrangements of molecules inside long chain polymers, but change taking place in
syntactical structures that are
linguistically based and people have probably been using language with
considerable facility for probably fifty thousand years possibly more
In our own time we have created ever more elaborate
languages ever more elaborate technologies for transforming storing and retrieving
language so that we are actually on the brain coming of
Being able to give every single one of you the complete cultural
inventory the complete database of human beings experience on this planet
That's what these data highways and networks are all about the nervous system is being hardwired
But what I wanted to draw your attention to about this is it is not only an advanced
Deeper and deeper into novelty, but it's an advanced
Which in which each?
successive stage
occurs more quickly
Than the stage which preceded it, so you know once you get the big bang then
Nothing much happens for a long long time. I mean there's
Plasma streaming through the universe the universe is slowly cooling
But that's the most dramatic complex process in the universe this cooling then after a certain point
more complex
Processes come in
complexification
begins to build and it builds it begins to happen faster and faster and faster and
the great puzzle in the biological
Record is the suddenness of our own
emergence of our emergence human emergence out of primate out of the primate line
It happened with enormous suddenness
Lum halts it calls it the most explosive
reorganization of a major organ of a higher animal in the entire fossil record and
That's you know in great embarrassment to the theory of evolution
Because this is the organ which generated the theory of evolution
We're not talking an appendix or an eyebrow here. We're talking the very organ which generated
I think that we are not that we have taken far too much responsibility
For what is happening and that what we took to be a staircase we were climbing is
actually an up escalator
And if you will stop climbing you will notice that it does not impede your upward progress
Because the ground you're standing on is
moving you toward the goal, and I I think that
This idea which may be the proof that I'm bonkers
requires a fairly radical reorganization
Of consciousness because what I'm saying is
The universe was not born in a fiery explosion
From which has been being blasted outward ever since?
the universe is
Not being pushed like that from behind
The universe is being pulled from the future
Toward a goal that is as inevitable as a ball as a marble
Reaching the bottom of a bowl when you release it up near the rim. You know if you do that the marble will
Down the side of the bowl down down down and eventually it will come to rest in the lowest energy
State which is the bottom of the bowl? That's precisely my
Model of human history and that they now bear in mind. What the
competition is
Peddling the competition is peddling the idea that the universe
Sprang from nothing in a single moment
for no reason
Now whatever you think about that notice that it's the limit case for credulity
Do you understand what I mean? I mean if you believe if you can believe that I it's hard for me to imagine
What you would balk at?
if we were to sit down and say let's see who can think of the most unlikely thing that could possibly happen I
Submit to you nobody could top the Big Bang. It is the improbability of
Improbabilities, it is the improbable it is the mother of all in probabilities right there
So I'm suggesting
Something different. I'm suggesting that the universe is pulled
toward a complex
Attractor that exists ahead of us in time and that our ever
accelerating
speed through
The phenomenal world of connectivity and novelty is based on the fact that we are now very very close
to the attractor all
Western religions have insisted that God would come tangential to history
But they all lose their nerve when you ask Quinn, which is the only interesting question about that?
Hypothesis I mean if it's not now then what the hell difference does it make it's just pissing in the wind
As far as I can see I think that the very real
social crisis that is upon us the crisis of
population of
resource depletion of
atmospheric degradation of
epidemic disease jeez all these crises
Indicate that. We are now down to the short epochs of this process of universal ingression
into novelty and that in fact
It makes no sense whatsoever
To speak of a human future. There is no human future
It's inconceivable given where we are today
That to speak of the human world a thousand years from now or five hundred
years from now
It is literally it either doesn't exist or it's beyond our power of
Imagining it isn't simply going to be
non-polluting cars and
smaller
high
Fires I mean, that's an idiot's notion
Yeah, clearer TV pictures and stit isn't like that at all
I mentioned this this morning now when you look at only one line of
Technological development automobiles or computers it looks like you can rationally anticipate what's going to happen
But when you realize that there are thousands of these lines of development all
Transforming themselves all moving towards some kind of omega point then you realize that
We're in the grip of what I call a concrescence
And I maintain that you don't have to believe me on
This you can see it from here
You just have to climb a high hill there's one. It's called
psilocybin
There's one it's called ayahuasca the view from the tops of these hills is
of the concrescence
You