Blog narration here:
This was a mind-expanding discussion on the telos (innate purpose) of the universe - "The universe *is* evolution."
On the central significance of the beautiful, the true, and the good in the evolutionary process:
“One of the founders of integral philosophy, one of its great founding geniuses was Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead actually defined evolution as an ‘increase in the ability to experience what is intrinsically valuable’. […Or in other words], evolution itself is an increase in our ability to recognize *value*. I think Whitehead really gets to the heart of what evolution is - the gradual perfecting of the finite universe through the evolution of consciousness.”
As someone who has experienced some of the more potently negative aspects of the universe, it can be easy to be drawn into the seductive narrative that the universe is evil, given that the universe is founded upon a principle of entropy which essentially makes it a system that propagates injustices. If the universe is designed in a way that things can only survive by committing violence and causing suffering, then it would seem that the universe is an evil system for forcing such a noxious way of being onto lifeforms. Even the commission of such evil to maintain oneself is futile due to the fact that entropy is slowly deteriorating one's body no matter how much one tries to resist it. It's almost as if entropy is mockingly laughing at life's attempts to thwart its powers. So, Whitehead’s idea that the universe has a good teleology rather than an evil teleology is an important counterargument that deserves dissecting. The following are my attempts to take this counterargument seriously and see if a coherent worldview can be constructed thereby.
The universe spawned energy during the big bang. Universe-level evolution would basically be the survival of energy systems that have enough internal integrity (unity) to maintain themselves. Stars, solar systems, and galaxies evolve out of the energy from the big bang because they have enough unity to do so.
Planets absorb excess energy from their stars, so life attempts to evolve on planets, exploring different systems of internal unity to propagate forward. As life evolves, it is constantly exploring for "value" - or sources of energy. It evolves to take advantage of different energy sources (photosynthesis) in its exploration of genetic code in relationship to the environment.
Eventually life explores into the domain of predation - learning how to find value in the energy contained within competing lifeforms. This leads to valuing violence as a means to consume energy.
From a predator's perspective, the definition of the good, the true, and the beautiful coincide with violence, because that is their means of obtaining value. Yet, violence as a virtue seems counter-intuitive to our modern sensibilities, perhaps because we are a more unique predator.
Perhaps in the “exploration space” of the evolution of life, different game theoretic strategies are being experimented with. Competitive landscapes are naturally harsh in the evolutionary arms race to be the best predator or the most elusive prey.
But out of this evolutionary exploration of "value", a necessary phase shift might have been destined to occur - the recognition of cooperative strategies as superior to competitive strategies, superior because they form a greater level of unity.
Primates evolved in this cooperative landscape slowly becoming humans and finding that this game theoretic strategy of cooperation was superior to even the most lethal apex predator's strategy - collective violence out-competing individual violence. Perhaps if humans never evolved, wolves would evolve greater and greater cooperative strategies until they occupied the status of human-level consciousness and cooperation.
So, this evolutionary exploration of value might have been destined to find a strategy of intelligent cooperation since cooperation is a superpower just waiting to be tapped into. But this cooperation becomes its own weakness, as apes that can cooperate can also wage war and commit genocide.
This internecine competition forces the collective consciousness to evolve greater and greater systems of cooperation to mitigate the downsides of cooperation (beginning integral theory evolution of stages of cooperation). Competition seemed oriented around a value of “self-love” but then cooperation expanded the definition of love to include those outside of you. Love for children evolved. Then love for family. Love for tribe. Love for nation. Love for religion. Love for truth. Love for goodness. Love for all. Love being the driving factor for ever increasing scopes of cooperation.
So, it’s almost like the evolutionary exploration of value was destined to find "love" as the answer because love is naturally the most superior value. And smaller scopes of love (tribal love) would eventually lose out to larger scopes of love (universal love). Because any cooperative species that fails to develop a universal love will experience tribal self-destruction due to their definition of love being too limited in pertaining only to a select group.
If humans self-annihilate, perhaps it would be a failure to fully tap into love. And then the next species (dogs) might take up the evolutionary torch to be the next species to try to evolve greater systems of love.
Perhaps whichever species dominates this principle (love), will be able to grow in power (even technologically), and eventually be able to recast the universe in the image of love. So, the problem of ontologically evil creatures like predators - they must be recast into creatures that cooperate with other species rather than compete with them if love is to prevail. Genetic engineering might give love-oriented creatures the power to recast the lesser creatures around them into love-oriented creatures.
So, perhaps the conclusion of this thought experiment is that the universe is destined to explore values until it finds the highest value (love), and recasts itself into the image of its highest value. Consequently, if man is to perform his role properly, it is the destiny and mission of man to increase in love and technology until he has the power to combat entropy (competition for energy), and recreate the universe without entropy (no need to compete), or die trying.
Under this model, the universe would seem to have an evil baseline, yet simultaneously have a good goal. It’s a strange union of opposites, that has the potential to challenge us on an infinite number of levels and see if we have what it takes to overcome the evil and create the good.
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