BTZ

We are naked without tech. It is regarded as unnatural and disturbing to appear publicly without tech. It’s illegal.

In case you haven’t noticed, tech’s presence, power and importance grows continually while our biological core remains relatively stable. That means… more about this later. It’s time for the next level of Homo sapiens’ definition.

#6. Homo sapiens are the latest and greatest creation of intelligent living energy, empowered with language, enhanced with technology, and organized in dynamic sociality.

Sociality

Together = to gather; to unite, assemble, join, party. This is the basis of sociality, being social, getting together, gathering in groups, forming a community. The roots of the word social grew in the concept of following, in the sense of following alongside, shoulder to shoulder on a walk or journey together; family, friends, lovers, colleagues, comrades, citizens. The sociality of Homo sapiens characterizes another unique aspect of our species.

Herds, flocks and packs display limited collective action and social behavior. Bees, ants, and termites form greater collective organizations, but nothing compares to the social capabilities of Homo sapiens, who can gather in formations of varied size, type and duration. They get together at different jobs, cultural activities and political enterprises. A handful can get together to eat, discuss or play, and thousands can gather at sports events, concerts or demonstrations. Millions can coordinate their efforts in national endeavors and dozens can mingle at pubs, parties and funerals. Two can get together to make a baby or meet at a divorce court. We form and dissolve social configurations daily. We socialize with such ease that we’re practically blind to the sophistication and dynamics of our social skills. The frontal lobe of the brain is wired to manage our extraordinary sociality, which therefore appears as natural to us as walking, talking or slicing a cucumber.

Our unique social ability to play can be compared with our primate cousins. An ape can be taught to throw an object toward a target such as when pitching horse shoes. They can however never manage to play the game, to throw in turns or keep track of the game’s progress, which is child’s play for us. Apes lack the special frontal lobe of the brain that coordinates the simple, for us, logistics of playing a game, not to mention the complicated daily maneuvers where constantly changing social configurations make demands on the proper behavior for each one.

Society Building Creatures

Homo sapiens are society building creatures. The major societies are made up of communities formed of flexible groupings. Each group interacts through norms and requirements on multiple levels. The social stage cues us to the words, actions and gestures to perform in the play of sociality, and to adjust the performance to match the players we interact with. What to do and don’t do, say and don’t say, to different individuals in different circumstances at different times. Homo sapiens must adopt behavior to the home, school, job, bank, pub, party, bus, match, shop, beach, restaurant, etc. And the circumstances change at each place. Behavior must be altered at school, for example, to match the norms in the classroom, the corridors, the gym, the locker room and the lecture hall. And the variables of behavior must be fine tuned in each place depending on the status and character of individuals involved.

“They say the play of life is a tragedy. We know how it ends, you see.

But there’s no director, script, rehearsals or plot and each actor thinks they play a major slot. That’s a farce to me.” DA

Extraordinarily spectacular

Homo sapiens sociality is at least as extraordinarily spectacular as their technology and language, but it rarely gets to occupy center stage when the drama of Homo sapiens is being viewed. It occurs as a natural and normal function of daily life. We give little thought to this unique phenomenon despite life’s inability to demonstrate anything remotely similar. Even serious contemplation struggles to capture an adequate appreciation of Homo sapiens’ extravagant sociality.

The basic definition of Homo sapiens:

Homo sapiens are the latest and greatest creation of intelligent living energy, enhanced with technology, empowered with language, and organized in dynamic sociality.

That almost sums up the main characteristics of Homo sapiens, but lacks the dot over the i. It doesn’t mention fire. We use fire. Such a simple statement. Is fire technology? An innovation? This external and portable source of energy multiplies the power of intelligent living energy. Mastering fire equipped our species with a sensational ability otherwise unknown in the archives of life. Extra light, heat and energy. Anytime, anywhere. Surely that qualifies for a mention when defining our species.

The sum of the basic definition:

Homo sapiens are the latest and greatest creation of intelligent living energy, enhanced with technology, empowered with language, organized in dynamic sociality, and equipped with fire; an external source of energy.

Summary – Part 1

Homo sapiens possess extraordinary qualities and abilities.None of these—technology, language, dynamic sociality or mastery of fire—can be demonstrated in any other life form. Because these qualities and abilities interact and are dependent on each other, they should be viewed as components of a single system.

This system has the strength to process so much of the resources and energy of the world, that we are changing the conditions to which we have evolved. Can the super intelligence at the core of our system manage the strength it possesses? Why have we progressed and progressed to find ourselves struggling to avoid being classified as an endangered species?

Let’s use our intelligence and find out!

There’s confusion, there are thoughts,

many shoulds, many oughts.

There are desires, there are needs,

a few flourish, many bleed.

There are truths, there are lies,

There are heroes, there are flies.

There are hawks, there are doves.

There is hate, there is love.

There’s a force within us all

It has no voice, but has a call

It has no shape, but it’s a power

It has no time, but now’s the hour

Life’s impatient. Yours or ours?

Alone with tears, or together with smiles,

hugs and flowers?

Da

Part 2 – Civilians

The three Stages of Homo sapiens socioeconomic configuration

Civilians

The standard definition of civilian means non-military. I give a new meaning to the word civilian to denote the structure of our society that replaced farming society. As far as I know, no word has become standard to describe Homo sapiens modern socioeconomic configuration.

The Three Stages of Homo sapiens

Fire

The process of learning to master fire some 1.5 million years ago (the time line is disputed), baked the last advanced ape into the first pre-Homo sapiens. The importance of being able to make and control fire cannot be overestimated.

When Homo sapiens appeared on the scene of life less than 200.000 years ago, they were equipped with all the abilities, qualities and emotions available to the citizens of today. They were hunter-gatherers up until the transition to a farming way of life, which lasted until the present civilian society.

Hunters – Farmers – Civilians

The three stages of Homo sapiens socioeconomic existence differ from each other by how they are organized to struggle for survival; how they gather, produce and distribute resources. The socioeconomic organization determines relationships, beliefs, technology, culture, economics and politics.

“It’s impossible to follow the golden rule while dancing round the golden calf.” DA

Stage 1 – Hunters

The complete Homo sapiens evolved as hunter-gatherers and continued this way of life for approximately 96% of their existence.

Stage 2 – Farmers

While pockets of hunters still exist, their pattern of life was replaced by an agricultural way of life that started some 12.000 years ago. Farming formed the foundation of society for 4% of Homo sapiens existence.

Stage 3 – Civilians

Our present civilian society is less than 200 years old and represents the maturity of Homo sapiens. Despite the spectacular changes that have already taken place, this way of life has barely gotten under way, and accounts for less than 0.001% of Homo sapiens existence.

I draw the three stages of society with broad brush-strokes to capture their essence, and take liberties with percentages and numbers. Like a late Picasso sketch of a bullfight where a few lines capture the essential movements of a great drama, I try to sketch the essentials. Farming society, for instance, encompasses a variety of social orders: herders, nomads, fishermen and companies of thieves; kingdoms no larger than a golf course and empires stretching across thousands of kilometers. Whatever the differences, farming the land and breeding animals formed the foundation of society. Despite princes, priests, prostitutes and potters, the overwhelming majority of the population were occupied with working the land, whether slaves, serfs, workers or free farmers.

A large portion of the world can still be classified as farming societies, but civilian society dominates the course of events while pulling all other people into its sphere.

Hunters

The hunting group was a self-contained unit. They acquired and produced all of their needs and consumed all of their resources themselves. Besides hunting they fished, gathered honey, nuts, vegetables, roots and fruits.

The group was associated with a tribe which in turn was part of a clan or even a nation. The largest grouping rarely amounted to more than a couple of thousand people.

Farmers

A typical unit of a farming society housed between two to ten individuals. More than ten was possible, but not less than two. One person can’t run a farm, not for long in any case. Where hunters had ties as far as the clan, the farmer was part of a village that was part of a kingdom that was part of a nation. Farming produced hundreds of times more than hunting and could therefore support many times more people. A clan might boast of thousands of members, but a nation could sum up to millions.

Actually, the clan could never have boasted of thousands. They couldn’t count. It would take a few thousand years of farming to count past three. But stay with me! I am touching down on a few key facts in a world of information as I rush towards the mature civilians.

“I’m not very good a math,” said he.

“Then count on me,” said she.

DA

Civilians

After 12.000 years of farming society we’ve just started living as civilians. Civilian society has been operational for less than 200 years, a blink in the eye of history. It can seem as though more has happened in this time than in the previous thousands of years. It has! I’ll soon explain why.

A basic unit in a civilian society contains 1 to 5 individuals. The maximum can exceed 5, but less than one is obviously not possible. Production in civilian society is handled by a single individual, who leaves the living quarters to take part in society’s machinery at a job. After completing the job period, the individual returns to the living quarters to consume alone or within a cohabiting group.

Civilian society is open to the limits of all Homo sapiens. Each civilian works at a specialized task in a local community, which is interconnected with communities throughout the world.

The somewhat dated story of the Orange Man can explain the essence of civilian society.

The Orange Man

He offered me a piece of an orange.

“You eat oranges?” the old man asked.

“Of course.”

“How do you get hold of them? Oranges don’t grow here.”

“In a supermarket or kiosk.” How long has the old buzzard been in the apartment?

“Where do the oranges come from that you buy?”

“Algeria, Florida, Italy … lots of places.”

“No matter where they come from, someone must have picked them from a tree. Someone. And what does that someone do when she has picked some oranges from a tree? I’ll tell you. She puts them in a box. How did the box get there? Who cut down the tree that the box is made of? Who drove the tree to the sawmill? What carpenter banged the box together and where did he get his nails from? When the box is full of oranges, it’s loaded onto a truck. A TRUCK! Steel, glass, rubber, copper, plastic, chemicals, petrol, oil. Who went down into the mine to gather the ore to be melted to steel in the great factory? Who cut scares in the trees to gather sap to make the rubber for the tires? Who blended the acid to go into the battery? Who got the material to make the chemicals? Who formed the electric wires?

Barrel Bomb: The Cataclysmic Close of Campaign 2016

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“Surrounded by colorful decadence
and weighed by chilling insolence
a voice of purity
creates clarity
singing of light’s defiance.”
Dartwill Aquila

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