The Neurodivergent Professor

Are you a technologist? Do you think tech is going to solve all of our human problems? Do you see science, health advances, nuclear tech or some other human invention as being our salvation?

Maybe you don't even see problems around us. I find it hard to believe that everyone, in some way, doesn't wonder where we are headed. 

As any follower on KEW will know by now, I think we need to take a few steps backward toward our 'older' and more indigenous nature. I like science and technology, but I think we've gotten ahead of ourselves.

There are so many good things we've figured out - especially in the last couple of hundred years.

-Clean water

-Better health care

-Vaccines

Yes, I like it that I don't have to hunt for my food. Grocery stores are cool.

But do we need 100 kinds of cereal?

For every technological step forward, we take at least one step back. It's a break-even, at best. At the worst, we are destroying the planet. 

Besides, humans are SUPPOSED to suffer. That shit doesn't always work out is a given. It just doesn't. And, like Paul Gadola said, you don't really want a Heaven because we'd all be bored silly. Suffering is good for us. It keeps things in perspective.

Also, how much does tech really cost? We don't SEE the real price. We see that a tech exists because some corporation can sell it for more than it costs THEM to make it, but the actual costs are much, much greater.

This has been called Energy Blindness, and you can learn more about it here. 

As we've 'advanced' forward with all this tech, it has taken a huge toll on our planet, our communities, and our spirit. 

That's a lot of additional suffering.

If you ask me, and this is what most of this episode is about, we have paid too much for the tech we have. As such, I think we need to:

-slow down

-look back at what we USED to do (like, 10,000 years ago)

-appreciate the steps forward that tech has provided us

-relearn how to be connected, despite the disconnect that technology creates.

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I recently came upon a podcast by a fella named Nate Hagens. The podcast, and Nate's piece de resistance is called The Great Simplification and his ideas center around the future of humans on Earth. The idea behind The Great Simplification is that humans will soon run out of energy to power or current levels of consumption and have to drastically simplify our lives to compensate for that loss.

Nate also talks about the concept of Energy Blindness, which is the idea that most humans don't account for the energetic requirements of our lifestyle. This ranges from all the fuel costs of moving goods around to the pathways of fossil fuel consumption that lead to us living in temperature-controlled buildings. Most economic methods ignore the energetic costs, which is an immense error in our thinking.

Nates podcast is worth more than the time you will invest listening. It has simply blown my mind. He and his guests have filled in so many gaps in my thinking that my ecological training missed. There is so much knowledge and so many unique perspectives that you will surely enjoy it.

Most relevant to KEW and the Acid Tests, however, are Nate's guests. In particular, his recent guest Patrick Ophuls who has written books for 50 years under the pseudonym William Ophuls. Dr. Ophuls pretty much beat me to every punch I've pulled on KEW and summarizes incredibly eloquently a lot of what has been rolling around in my head regarding the Acid Tests.

It amazes me that Pat Ophuls is not a household name, and at the same time it makes perfect sense. Ophuls has summarized why humans are poor stewards of the Earth, explained 50 years ago where we would be today, and provides extensive guidance about how we could live better.

I suppose we don't care to listen. But folks like Nate and I are trying to share the knowledge that, for whatever reason, remains hidden.

In this episode, I share many of my key influences that convinced me that a more indigenous, more natural, and more ecological approach to human cooperation is necessary to improve individual human lives and the existence of the human species. The answers are in our past, inherent to our distant ancestry, and likely contained within our DNA. 

I cite Carlos Castaneda and his books about the Toltec warrior, Don Juan Matus. The first book is hard to read but the second, A Separate Reality, and the third, A Journey to Ixtlan will open you up.

I also mention Carl Jung, whose pioneering psychology and philosophy seems to rise to the top for most of my influences and his work makes the most sense to me.

I mention Buddhism and meditation, which should be no surprise to return listeners.

Finally, I conclude that future episodes will likely build on what I am learning from Ophuls and Hagens as I read through their own influences and stand on the shoulders of giants.

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I have been thinking a lot about the popular images of aggressive male competitors. Silverback gorillas. Wrestlemania or UFC fighters. These popular ideas feature 'Alpha males' bullying and pushing around 'weaker' males in order to get mates, habitat, or food. These toxic stereotypes probably spill over into popular culture and contribute to the issues we have among genders today.

My question is, how common are these 'alpha males'? How 'fit' were these gender differences across all the sexually reproducing species that ever lived? Because if natural selection had chosen this to be 'fit', wouldn't we have evolved more slowly? And why the huge leap from aggressive male dominant primates to whatever we are as humans? 

In other words, are male humans supposed to club females over the head and drag them back to our caves?

And I wonder what changed from primates to humans? Our brain size, for sure. The complexity of our nervous systems. The evolution of the MIND as an emergent thing, rather than just a brain and nerves. We became conscious.

So I just can't help but believe, whether or not male aggression was selected for at some point, that it no longer is. I think humans are more vulnerable. I think, rather than exploit each others' vulnerability and take advantage of it, we empathize with it.

This is the gist of my competition episodes. I just don't think competition leads to as much diversity as cooperation. I don't think the solutions to our problems will arise from competition, either. I believe that cooperation is the 'human' thing to do. Whether or not it was good for primates.

If we embrace each others' vulnerabilities and try to understand them we can do far more. The solutions to the Acid Test problems (war, depression, anxiety, fear, climate change, inequality, etc.) can only be solved through cooperative efforts that demand we be vulnerable with each other. We need to let down our guard - we have too much guard.

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Like Competition, the concept of Enough is something I think about a lot. How much is enough?

I think about it often in the context of an annual income. How much money does it take to
be happy? Or satisfied. Or not upset. Or make ends meet plus a have a little fun. How much money do we really need?

And then I think about how some people, maybe not many, but some, make WAY more than enough.

And, of course, how many people make far less.

But the concept of enough has Natural implications beyond money. In fact, money is a very recent human creation and of little relevance in the 'grand scheme of things'.

How much was enough food? Or carbon? How much was enough oxygen? How many caves do we need to house all the humans who lived 50,000 years ago? Or wood for huts?

How much time do we need to live a good life? Do we need medical breakthroughs to allow us to live to be 100? 150? Forever?

Is forever enough?

I get a lot of insight from Nate Hagen's work on his project, The Great Simplification. I highly recommend his podcast: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com

Much of this episode, and future episodes, are inspired by The Great Simplification and the concept of 'Energy Blindness'.

I am also reading Morgan Housels' book, 'The Psychology of Money', https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-lessons-happiness/dp/0857197681

I mention these guys, as well as an older KEW episode, in this Episode.

https://chrisburcher.com/2022/05/16/kew-episode-20-enough/

Here I argue that nature provides enough. Probably the concept of enough doesn't exist in nature because it almost always exists. Hoarding and gluttony don't seem to be common practices in other species, or in any part of Nature. If we look to Nature, vis a vis the Acid Tests, to inform us about enough i would say this is an entirely human construct.

Kind of like Money. Or Status. Or Power. Funny how the concept of enough might be a human-centric idea and only inasmuch as it relates to something also created by humans.

This Episode seems to have spawned a lot of ideas I will develop in the next few Episodes. I hope you enjoy it.

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I really dislike Competition. And it is a touchy subject. In an article I published on Medium, I received several hateful comments defending the importance of competition in business and sports. In KEW Episode 95 I discuss Rugged Individualism vs. Unified Connection to make the point that competition focuses on isolation rather than community. I talk about this topic a lot.

And it is important for me to revisit this in the spirit of the Acid Tests, because Competition is a Natural process. Competition DOES exist in nature and it is critically important. In this episode I share with you research I did during my Master's Thesis which focused on the role of Competition in a small blackwater stream.

In short, competition creates biodiversity. But this doesn't happen the way we typically think of competition. We generally view competition as being a 'fight' or battle between two teams or two individuals. Or armies. Or whatever. Something is fighting something else to 'win' a victory. And the victory means money or power or status or land or some . . . gain. And with that gain - that WIN - there is a loss. A big 'L'. 

Yeah, that isn't how it really works out there in nature. At least not for the billions of years that preceded us getting together in giant stadiums wearing one or the other color jersey.

I'm not sure what caused the shift, but at some point we changed what we thought competition is, and my interest in the subject is to remind us.

Competition in nature is most often avoided. 

Sure, there is the image of the silverback gorilla beating up all the other males to gain and maintain his victory. But that's so atypical it's not even funny. It amazes me how we choose these non-representative examples and believe they are always true. I do it myself, of course. We are only human.

But mostly, in nature, when two individuals or species compete it is because a resource is limiting. 

BUT . . . and this is a really big BUT

Rather than compete, these individuals and species most often AVOID competing. They 'learn' to use another resource. And this learning creates a fitness differential that becomes available to natural selection. And if it's strong enough, over multiple generations the species can become two. This is the primary mechanism by which natural selection creates diversity.

And it's beautiful.

And it should be worshipped. Or maybe just appreciated.

And when I see people instead worship competition it makes my blood boil. Hopefully this episode will explain why.

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It's a good question. Why? Maybe we should always be asking why. When we don't know why we're doing something, what's the point? Whether it's for money. Or for power. Or to get something. Or maybe it's a more altruistic reason. The 'why' we do things is critical and isn't it crazy to think we might not know it?

It seems to me the tools we have traditionally used to answer these questions, like Religion, Philosophy, and many of the Sciences, have come up short. Otherwise, would we still be asking these questions?

It's funny, because I don't know how many people ARE still asking these questions. But I am. And I know there are others. 

This is the main reason I do this blog and podcast. I am curious about whether we are doing things wrong. 

And the best evidence I have that we ARE doing things 'wrong' are our values. We seem to value extrinsic, human-created concepts like money, power, and status over more 'touchy-feely', experimental things like love, relationships, and contentment. Of course, this is entirely subjective, but I also believe there is something like 'global values' that are dictated by our Natural selves and our presence in the middle of Nature. This is what the Acid Tests are - an investigation of what Nature can tell us about our human purpose. 

I guess I just wish we were more vulnerable in our quest. Less individualistic and more communal. More willing to admit we don't know. More willing to share our thoughts and feelings. I think things like money, power, and status reduce relationships and focus too much on the individual.

This, again, is why I am taking a more indigenous 'neo philosophical' approach to asking these questions. 

What if I can maximize my naivety and vulnerability to ask whether Nature has any insight? What if I ask these questions simply because I want to know? What if, rather than resisting the change that is happening - the Natural condition - we ACCEPTED that change is going to happen?

It is the Evolution Paradox revisited. 

Natural systems change. When we pretend change doesn't happen we get into trouble. When we forget we are part of a Natural System, we mess things up. 

But change is hard. Even if we stop resisting, how do WE change?

I don't know, but it is fundamental and we need to stop resisting it. I guess I believe that if we stop resisting it, it will happen on its own.

What we resist, persists.

So not only are the traditional ways of answering these questions NOT providing answers, they are leading us in the opposite direction! We are avoiding, rather than embracing change. 

Some people think we can tech our way out of our problems. This kind of the opposite school of thought. I think we have chosen technology as our savior. Unfortunately, technology's main goal is to avoid change or to artificially reduce the consequences. They don't go away. We just make more shit and burn more oil. We remain in the same place. We don't have satisfactory answers to our most basic questions, but we have all this amazing crap. It's like the late E.O. Wilson said, 

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” 

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Who Am I?

Why Are We Here?

What is My Purpose?

Are We Living 'Right'? 

Questions like this - the 'big questions' have been around since antiquity. It's fun to think about when our brains reached a point in evolution where we started having luxury time.

Because it's a luxury to think. To ask these kinds of questions means we've already met our basic needs. At some point, we could sit down and take a breath. And then our brains started flowing.

We figured out how to not be hungry.

We figured out how to not be cold.

We figured out how to not be harmed.

Then the real human stuff started. The stuff that separated us from the other primates. We started gazing at our navels. We wondered what the stars were. We noticed patterns in things like seasons and animal behavior. 

Scientists will try and tell us when this happened, but I think all we can really say is that it was probably sometime between 200,000 and 15,000 years ago. That doesn't really matter, because we still do it today.

And the whole reason for doing the Acid Tests is because we STILL haven't found a satisfying answer. Or, there are still ways we can inform our question. 

Religion tried to give us a story(s) to explain it away.

Philosophy tried to logic us into an acceptable reason.

All the sciences tried to 'truth' or 'proof' these questions out of our system.

But we still wonder. We are still curious.

And I don't think most of us really want an answer. Or, if we do, we are going to be severely disappointed.

Because I don't think there is a single answer. The fun is in the journey. Thinking about what these questions mean and of all the possible outcomes is what makes life interesting. 

It truly is the journey and not the destination. So the purpose of the Acid Tests is simply to see if Nature and Natural Systems provide any new information. And, of course, they do.

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Before embarking on an investigation any researcher worth their salt will state their assumptions. This lays the groundwork for what is to come and allows the reader to contextualize the investigation. In regular science, this is often ignored. It's a shame we seem to be losing this important piece of the discourse puzzle.

Anyway, when it comes to the Acid Tests, most of my assumptions are 'what we already know' kinds of things. 

-DNA is the building block of life

-The Big Bang probably happened mostly like we think it did

-The laws of thermodynamics are real-ish

-Humans have been around for maybe 200,000 years; hominids for maybe a million

-Lots of things changed in the lives of Homo sapiens around 12,000 years ago

-The historical record started around 5,000 years ago

-The past 500 years have shown massively disproportional changes to human culture

-All of biology is built upon an abiotic template that includes physics, geology, climate, etc.

So the basis for the DNA Acid Tests it to take what we (think we) know about the world and apply it to more metaphysical questions like

-Who Am I?

-What is My Purpose?

-Are Humans Living Well?

Many will argue that what we (think we) know is beyond questioning or absolute. I disagree. What we (think we) know is simply where we are right now. Remember, before Einstein we believed Newton was correct about how gravity worked.

This episode builds on similar themes from earlier episodes including;

-Episode 1: Facts

-Episode 78: Assumptions and Core Principles

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The KEW Acid Tests ask how Nature can inform the big questions humans ask. "Why are we here?", "Who am I?", and "What is our purpose" have puzzled humans for years - perhaps millennia. In the past 4,000 years or so, we have employed philosophy, religion, and science as mechanisms to ask and answer these big questions. While we certainly have learned a lot, the questions are too big to have definitive answers. I don't think they're the kind of questions that require answers. The joy is in the asking. It's not the destination, it's the journey.

My background in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, as integrated with my spiritual journey, experience with therapy and coaching, interactions with psychedelics, and general curiosity have led me to a new model. This model is a combination of all the experiences and disciplines, the authors and speakers, and the intentional and random interactions in the world around me. The title of this article is an attempt to describe the method, but I don't know if it is accurate. This is just the way I think. And I don't see a lot of other people employing a similar approach.

The key difference, I think, in how I approach the big questions is that I am more concerned with the passion, enthusiasm, spirit, and flow elements of the process. I am not 'hung up' following some prescribed method or standard nor am I restricted by obeying laws or norms. I simply follow my curiosity to fill in as many of the holes as I can using whatever resources are available. 

The danger in this type of approach is for it to resemble a 'pulling it out of my ass' approach where I basically just make up whatever sounds good. This is not that. I am influenced by the rigorous scientific training I have been fortunate to experience. I can't help but follow a system that attempts to reduce bias and employ sophisticated analyses to AVOID overlaying my beliefs or opinions. I respect that and necessarily include it in my approach. I believe in accountability.

I also believe in thinking outside the box, for lack of a better term. I don't answer to anyone but myself. I don't have an agenda. I don't want your money. I want to understand more and believe in asking questions in different ways to do so. 

I hope you share your thoughts with me, and subscribe to either the Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom podcast or YouTube channel.

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One of the greatest mistakes made in science, by amateurs and professionals alike, is not knowing what the question is.
What is the question!!!????
Say you are studying the effectiveness of a vaccine against some pathogen. What is the question? Too many times we get wrapped up in the specifics. The details. The minutia. We forget WHY we are doing this in the first place. In this case, I would say the question is, does this vaccine help reduce the problems associated with said pathogen?
Maybe you're interested in climate change. So you gather a bunch of data on historic carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth's atmosphere. The numbers change in the past 75 years. What does that mean?
Well, what was your question???!?!! Was it, how much do humans suck? Or, how bad is the coal industry? Or were you simply asking whether or not the carbon dioxide concentrations have changed through time?

The question frames the conclusions of our investigations. Whether they are scientific in nature or otherwise. The conclusions need to be based on those questions. Making leaps outside the realm of your question is not allowed. For example, maybe the vaccine sort of works in reducing pathogen numbers, but not enough to reduce the number of people getting sick. Can you say it doesn't work, or simply that it might not work for a particular application? Or maybe CO2 concentrations have increased a little, but can you say anything about whether or not this is a good or bad thing? NO.
That's part of why science sucks. It's slow. 
Good thing we have other ways of knowing. Observation. Intuition. Even religious investigations can produce meaningful knowledge. Science isn't the only way to ask or answer questions. But it is one of the best.
A major point of the Great KEW Acid Tests is to employ a different way of thinking and asking questions. I'll call it a noveau-scientific method. It's equal parts creativity, inspiration, and science-like process. I'll follow rules similar to science to reduce bias, but allow myself to draw upon the knowledge I've been inspired by, and assisted by a level of creativity that a jazz musician would bring.

In fact, jazz is a great analogy here. I have put in the hard work to learn the 'music', or the science and knowledge in this case, but I am allowing myself to play outside the notes. I'm allowing myself to be inspired by what I've learned from others, and to use the basic structure of the chords and octaves, but to also nurture my unique creativity to bring a fresh perspective.

Because if there's one thing lacking from our traditional ways of thinking it is fresh perspectives. 

So, first difference: inspired and creative thinking

The first thing I'll do, which is also much different from traditional ways of thinking, is to throw everything I know onto the 'board'. 

Most people begin a project simply spring boarding off of a previous study or another person's ideas. I'm not going to punch down on this approach, it is incredibly viable. But it means the needle moves in tiny increments. And it is also necessitated by the constraints of traditional thinking which include funding, employment, and corporate rules and restrictions.

Because I am a free-agent with zero ties (except to my family), I can safely ignore these constraints and do whatever the hell I damned-well please. So the first thing I will do is throw complexity to the wind and populate my questions with every single variable I can imagine.

So, the second difference is, there are no rules

In this case, the problems are obvious to me: 

War, Famine, Social Justice Issues, Anxiety, Depression, Suicide, Income inequality, General dissatisfaction with 'the way things are'. And the question is, can nature provide insight into how we might improve these problems? I'll talk more specifically about these questions and problems in a future episode.

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