The Invisible War

On occasion I get just mildly annoyed by my two daughters insistence that we re-cycle. I am not lazy by nature. My gut is just telling me that It seems like a lot of effort for so little return. Is that really a good characterization of how I feel? Because I believe there is more to it than that. My children are young, early twenties. I am older, mid fifties. We see the world differently perhaps, but how?

If I stop and have a little talk with myself, personally It is the fear of the larger context. It is the thought that my efforts would be misplaced. It is the fear that I don’t always want to acknowledge or attempt to deal with. This fear makes a mockery of small efforts that seem irrelevant or ineffectual towards the larger picture.

Yes we can recycle. Right up to the day the clock they talk about once a year or so, finally hits twelve.

In my world view humanity has greater issues than the garbage piling up and the environment being degraded. Yes, these are important issues. I see them as symptoms though of a much larger problem. A problem that if not solved will eventually destroy us all, regardless of how hard we tried to do the “right” thing, whatever that may be. The real issue is something else and it lies within us, within humanity.

For me after years of living on this planet with all it’s turmoil, I have come to see that peace is always short lived in a historical sense. Good deeds small or large never seem to really set us off the track leading towards the grand finale. The end game of Armageddon or apocalypse that resides in our psyche.

Why is that the state of humanity is that of perpetual conflict? There seems to always be at least two sides to any issue. The question is often, how contentious will the disagreement be? What is the real problem here?

This is what I believe. You often these day hear of artificial intelligence and how great it will be. Before we get carried away in our hopes and enthusiasm for A.I. I believe there is another intelligence that needs to be dealt with. That is human intelligence.

Human intelligence needs to be seen for what it is, intelligence. For a moment consider that our brain functions as a computer. This brain setting there on top functtions as our own personal intelligence. We own it, it is ours.

Let us take this a step further and see how the bond between the person and the computer make up the individual. We all have to make personal decisions, this in a large part determines who we are. We as individuals form conclusions and from these conclusion we develop beliefs. We are all individuals and we function as individual intelligence.

There are others who may give advice, information etc. At the end of the day it is only we who know what information we considered, how we weighted it and why. We may share with someone close, do we share everything though? We are individuals and we represent individual intelligence.

Let us go back to the recycling, It is entirely possible that conflict could occur between my daughters and I over recycling. Who would be right? It that the real issue? No, the real issue is that we see the world from our own individual perspective and interpret it via our own individual intelligence.

More than that we are all living, breathing creatures living in an often harsh environment. We as individuals seek or need food, shelter, sex and power. This greatly ads to an already complex situation. I titled this the invisible war because whether people are dying at that present time or not, humans intellectually and thus personally are in constant conflict. We just don’t always see the immediate results.

You may be saying, so what? Rightly so, If I had been born only fifty years earlier I would not be writing this. I would adapt. I would follow life’s journey to it’s end and make good with what came my way. I would have no alternative.

Today through the miracle of modern technology we do have a real opportunity for a solution to the human conflict we endure endlessly. This Is what I refer to as a collective Intelligence. The conclusions we form through the use of our human intelligence can be brought out into the open so to speak.

Please see my other blog titles for more detailed explanations of what I propose. Thank you.