Part of a Process

I agree with the idea that creation and language results from our imperfection, but we do not know for certain whether creation bridges the gap between perfection and imperfection or whether it is simply a byproduct of consciousness. The question is why do people create? Is it because they wish to understand? Is it to communicate? Ultimately, the only reason we create is because we can, and we can because the pieces happened to fall in the right place.

Let’s think about where our ability to be conscious - which essentially is what allows us to create - comes from. The theory of evolution claims that every gene in the gene pool must have had some kind of beneficial purpose to an organism within the tree of life or else it would not exist. In other words, a gene does not exist unless it was necessary for it to exist for the species to survive. Organisms that had genes that were not beneficial ultimately perished, and therefore their genes perished along with them. The fact that we’re aware of our existence right now implies that somewhere down the line natural selection determined that we needed to be more aware of our surroundings (conscious) to survive. There is nothing to suggest that it had to happen that way, but fortunately for us it did. Despite these evolutionary feats that we’ve accomplished, albeit mostly by chance, we are only aware of a small fraction of the information that our brain processes every second; which is to say that there are a lot of aspects of the universe that we are not yet capable of experiencing.

The algorithmic processes of genetic evolution coupled with the evolution of ideas - also known as memetics - might ultimately take us to higher levels of consciousness, but ultimately it’s still a matter of chance. The reason I am saying this is because as scientists learn more about the origins of our existence, the evidence continues to pile up that we are here due to a lot - and I mean a lot - of good luck. We’re lucky to be on a planet whose orbit happens to be in the “Goldylocks zone” of the star that we orbit. We’re lucky that the natural selection of the earth demanded that our common ancestor get smarter or else become extinct; and most of all, we are lucky that our common ancestor was able to meet that demand, since he represents only a small fraction of the 1% of species that still live today.

The truth of the matter is that we live in a different reality than everything else. Reality is fundamentally limited by our capabilities of perceiving it. We live in a different reality than a squirrel because we can perceive more than a squirrel. Our words are a representation of our perceptions of reality; a reality that - as far as we know - only one species in the universe can accept and understand. If one thing is certain about our reality, it’s that everything is part of a process. We are here because of a process called evolution that took simple things and made them more complex over time. You may come across this piece as being pessimistic and existential, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The woman in the video says that creativity is a result of our frustration; I ask that you not be frustrated about your lack of perception, but feel overjoyed that you are able to perceive the small bit of information that you can. Imperfection is part of what we are, and it could perhaps be the reason why life is worth living.