Written by Howard Bloom, within the new anthology YOU ARE STILL BEING LIED TO.
Once upon a time, the only libraries of information this planet's creatures passed down from generation to generation were the records of experience encoded in genes. Then, 2.5 million years ago, arose the first humans able to make stone tools — artificial claws and teeth. Roughly 2.4 million years later, those proto-humans invented something else brand-new — artificial memory. Language, sayings, stories, and clichés. The result was a whole new kind of reality — an artificially constructed reality. A man-and-woman-made reality. We call it "culture." And that artificial reality would play a key role in the emergence of a global intelligence — an intelligence whose full story you can read in my book Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the Twenty-first Century.
But there's an irony. If the group-brain's "psyche" were a beach with shifting dunes and hollows, individual perception would be that beach's grains of sand. However, this image has a hidden twist. Individual perception untainted by others' influence does not exist.
A central rule of large-scale organization goes like this: The greater the spryness of a massive enterprise, the more internal communication it takes to support the teamwork of its parts. For example, in all but the simplest plants and animals only 5 percent of DNA is dedicated to DNA's "real job," manufacturing proteins. The remaining 95 percent is preoccupied with organization and administration, supervising the maintenance of bodily procedures, or even merely interpreting the corporate rule book "printed" in a string of genes.
In an effective learning machine, the connections deep inside far outnumber windows to the outside world. Take the cerebral cortex, roughly 80 percent of whose nerves connect with each other, not with input from the eyes or ears. The learning device called human society follows the same rules. Individuals spend most of their time communicating with each other, not exploring ubiquitous elements of their "environment" such as insects and weeds which could potentially make a nourishing dish. This cabling for the group's internal operations has a far greater impact on what we "see" and "hear" than many psychological researchers suspect. For it puts us in the hands of a conformity enforcer whose power and subtlety are almost beyond belief.
Which of your minds decides what to store in memory and what to toss away? Is it the rational you? Or is it the primitive you — the emotional you? If you guessed primitive, you're right. It's the brain's emotional center — the limbic system — that decides which swatches of experience to notice and tuck away in memory. Just how much does emotion's chokehold over memory matter? A whole lot more than you might think. Memory is the core of what we call reality.
Think about it for a second. What do you actually hear and see right now? This page. The walls and furnishings of the room in which you sit. Perhaps some music or some background noise. Yet you know as sure as you were born that out of sight there are other rooms mere steps away — perhaps the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a hall. What makes you so sure that they exist? Nothing but your memory. Nothing else at all. You're also reasonably certain there's a broader world outside. You know that your office, if you are away from it, still awaits your entry. You can picture the roads you use to get to it, visualize the public foyer and the conference rooms, see in your mind's eye the path to your own workspace, and know where most of the things in your desk are placed.
Once upon a time, the only libraries of information this planet's creatures passed down from generation to generation were the records of experience encoded in genes. Then, 2.5 million years ago, arose the first humans able to make stone tools — artificial claws and teeth. Roughly 2.4 million years later, those proto-humans invented something else brand-new — artificial memory. Language, sayings, stories, and clichés. The result was a whole new kind of reality — an artificially constructed reality. A man-and-woman-made reality. We call it "culture." And that artificial reality would play a key role in the emergence of a global intelligence — an intelligence whose full story you can read in my book Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the Twenty-first Century.
But there's an irony. If the group-brain's "psyche" were a beach with shifting dunes and hollows, individual perception would be that beach's grains of sand. However, this image has a hidden twist. Individual perception untainted by others' influence does not exist.
A central rule of large-scale organization goes like this: The greater the spryness of a massive enterprise, the more internal communication it takes to support the teamwork of its parts. For example, in all but the simplest plants and animals only 5 percent of DNA is dedicated to DNA's "real job," manufacturing proteins. The remaining 95 percent is preoccupied with organization and administration, supervising the maintenance of bodily procedures, or even merely interpreting the corporate rule book "printed" in a string of genes.
In an effective learning machine, the connections deep inside far outnumber windows to the outside world. Take the cerebral cortex, roughly 80 percent of whose nerves connect with each other, not with input from the eyes or ears. The learning device called human society follows the same rules. Individuals spend most of their time communicating with each other, not exploring ubiquitous elements of their "environment" such as insects and weeds which could potentially make a nourishing dish. This cabling for the group's internal operations has a far greater impact on what we "see" and "hear" than many psychological researchers suspect. For it puts us in the hands of a conformity enforcer whose power and subtlety are almost beyond belief.
Which of your minds decides what to store in memory and what to toss away? Is it the rational you? Or is it the primitive you — the emotional you? If you guessed primitive, you're right. It's the brain's emotional center — the limbic system — that decides which swatches of experience to notice and tuck away in memory. Just how much does emotion's chokehold over memory matter? A whole lot more than you might think. Memory is the core of what we call reality.
Think about it for a second. What do you actually hear and see right now? This page. The walls and furnishings of the room in which you sit. Perhaps some music or some background noise. Yet you know as sure as you were born that out of sight there are other rooms mere steps away — perhaps the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a hall. What makes you so sure that they exist? Nothing but your memory. Nothing else at all. You're also reasonably certain there's a broader world outside. You know that your office, if you are away from it, still awaits your entry. You can picture the roads you use to get to it, visualize the public foyer and the conference rooms, see in your mind's eye the path to your own workspace, and know where most of the things in your desk are placed.
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