Waking Life Page #2

of symbols to communicate...

all the abstract and intangible things

that we're experiencing.

What is, like, frustration?

Or what is anger or love?

When I say "love,"

the sound comes

out of my mouth...

and it hits

the other person's ear,

travels through this

Byzantine conduit in their brain,

you know, through their memories

of love or lack of love,

and they register what I'm saying

and say yes, they understand.

But how do I know they understand?

Because words are inert.

They're just symbols.

They're dead, you know?

And so much of our experience

is intangible.

So much of what we perceive cannot

be expressed. It's unspeakable.

And yet, you know,

when we communicate with one another,

and we...

we feel that we

have connected,

and we think that

we're understood,

I think we have a feeling

of almost spiritual communion.

And that feeling might be transient,

but I think it's what we live for.

If we're looking at the highlights

of human development,

you have to look at

the evolution of the organism...

and then at the development of its

interaction with the environment.

Evolution of the organism will begin

with the evolution of life...

perceived through

the hominid...

coming to the evolution

of mankind.

Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon man.

Now, interestingly, what you're looking

at here are three strings:

biological,

anthropological...

development of the cities,

cultures...

and cultural, which is

human expression.

Now, what you've seen here

is the evolution of populations,

not so much the evolution

of individuals.

And in addition, if you look at

the time scales that's involved here...

two billion years for life,

six million years

for the hominid,

mankind as we know it...

you're beginning to see the telescoping

nature of the evolutionary paradigm.

And then when you

get to agricultural,

when you get to scientific revolution

and industrial revolution,

you're looking at 10,000 years,

You're seeing a further telescoping

of this evolutionary time.

What that means is that as we

go through the new evolution,

it's gonna telescope to the point we

should be able to see it manifest itself...

within our lifetime,

within this generation.

The new evolution

stems from information,

and it stems from two types of

information:
digital and analog.

The digital is

artificial intelligence.

The analog results from molecular

biology, the cloning of the organism.

And you knit the two together

with neurobiology.

Before on the old

evolutionary paradigm,

one would die and the other

would grow and dominate.

But under the new paradigm,

they would exist...

as a mutually supportive,

noncompetitive grouping.

Rate this script:5.0 / 1 vote