I sat by the river and watched some ducks approach a white cup floating on the river. Quickly they recognized the item as “non food” and continued. There head was raised giving the impression of purpose, of attention, of relaxed readiness for action.
I wonder if human’s lives are just as driven or pre-programmed as that of animals. People indulde in drives, in food, in sex, in drugs, in power, they indulge in counter-drives, anorexia,…. Civilians get killed, soldiers get maimed, rich people strut their wealth or bullie others, fearful people cower down.
Social organisations work peacefully or not, it depends, on what, who knows. For a while now, people have created beyond their means, chiefs, kings, emperors cohersing people into great buildings, delirious tombs…
And yet beyond this individual madness, beyond this social mallability, a quality has moved forth, survived, recurred, the passing of knowledge. However indiosyncratically this knowledge was acquired, passed on, distributed, there are people out there who know about something, some of that knowledge gets lost, like the knowledge of the medicinal value of plants, or of the plants themselves. Others are aquired in their stead. Take computer technology. Out there there is someone who knows how to use this or that. This knowledge is there because someone somewhere became motivated to learn, humans with their uncomprehensible motivational complexity are acquiring and holding on to bits of information which permeate their world.
I wonder if there is a speed of transmission at which humans will start vibrating in this web of information and become part of an active acting distributed intelligence. Already we have seen the crudest of manifestations, flash visits, terrorist coordination… What if the world of information became so fascinating that people would voluntarily devote themselves to their informational life… millions of people deciding together on this or that action, millions of other collecting information, millions of others processing pain signals.. and together this human distributed intelligence engulfing the lives of humans.
Except it could not reproduce. So how different is that from a rainbow. Perhaps human intelligence is empty. Empty of permanence that is. If that is the case, perhaps it is ok to relax, to look at all I have to learn with a little distance, and to remind myself, it is empty, empty, empty. Lets stop and see what else needs to be done.