An article by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend.

Self-Awareness—How did that Happen?
         
[thoughts of a   ~burning woman~   by Sha’Tara]


My Teacher/Mentor/Friend from other places, El Issa, was the first to point out to me that we, of the Homo Sapiens variety, are ‘intelligent’ ‘sentient’ and ‘self-aware’ beings.  I won’t push the ‘intelligent’ part, but it’s true .  That is what we are, whether we live it or not.  However we became self-aware—either by superior design or re-designing, or by evolutionary luck of the draw through a few million years of adaptation and mutation mostly centered on brain development, surprise—here we are!

Our recorded history covers only a tiny fragment of that fortuitous or disastrous ‘evolution—mutation—adaptation—creation’ period of time that saw the species become as ‘Homo Sapiens’ from ‘Home Erectus’; as ‘wise man’ from ‘ape man’ as it is put.  Ignoring the reference to ‘wise man’ so we don’t all break out in loud guffaws at once, thus ruining the effects of this potentially ‘pullet surprise’ winner essay, let’s look at what it has meant for us as a species to become ‘self-aware.’  Oh, and before you begin to yawn over the matter of self-awareness let me quote from Alan Alford in ‘Gods of the New Millennium’ on the matter: “It may well be that evolution to the point of self-awareness is so improbable that it has happened only once in our galaxy, and that we are an offshoot (of this event) rather than the primary source.” [p. 26]

There is a famous event that happened long ago so well known (at least in Judaism and Christianism) that everybody has heard of it in one way or the other.  It is generally referred to as ‘the fall of man.’  Briefly, so we were told in Sunday school, our first parents were living in some earthly Eden in complete bliss and innocence when ‘Eve’ defied the commands of God and ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Dummy followed suit and both, Eve and Adam became ‘sinners’ and condemned to death and *eternal damnation in hell (that embellishment being added on much later by organized Religion—it’s not in the original document.*)

So now you’re getting my drift, good.  Let’s rename the event from ‘the fall of man’ to ‘man’s quantum leap to self-awareness.’  But first one question: why would that anger God?  Obvious to those who have considered this matter of enough importance to have done some research and personal homework on it.  Prior to self-awareness these ‘innocent’ creatures could not reason the right or wrong of things.  Like animals they accepted everything without question: they were in fact unable to question their fate.  The ‘adam’ or man (word taken from the Sumerian ‘adamu’ for cloned slave worker) toiled and slaved for ‘God’ like a beast of burden and his basic needs were met as would be those of any necessary and expensive domestic animal.  Although he could understand spoken languages and could talk, he could not, properly said, ‘speak’ for himself.  He could only take orders and do or die unable to reason the why of it.  The ‘eve’ or female slaved for the males, feeding them and washing them.  She also provided ‘amoral’ sexual pleasure to both the ‘adams’ or males she served and the ‘sons of God’ (Biblical term) who owned her.  The ‘eves’ were hybrid humanoids who could not reproduce so no danger of unwanted pregnancies—convenient.  Do I digress?  Sorry.

After their quantum leap to self-awareness these humanoid slaves had their eyes opened.  They ‘saw that they were naked’ and became filled with fear.  They saw their situation, their condition, vis-à-vis their God.  Though still powerless to change their condition, they became aware that they were slaves.  Within ‘moments’ of this spectacular awakening they became empowered to judge right from wrong and the first thing that struck them was how badly abused they were and how terrible the God’s wrath would be when he realized their new status.  They also realized that they could never go back.  I can just hear them say, ‘We’re dead!  … We’re dead!’ as they head for the bushes.

There is much more to this story, of course.  There is the fact that the once infertile ‘eves’ suddenly became able to bear children.  Thus the new species was able to leave the ‘employ’ of ‘God’ and natural evolution in some respect was able to take over again.  Only now, these were not naturally evolved earth creatures but self-aware beings.  Now they knew right from wrong, if not in very practical ways.  They would have to experience life as reasoning beings to discover what worked, what didn’t and decide what to do about it.  Unfortunately their lives were to be so short that whatever practical lessons they learned from it were promptly lost from the next generations… and on to our day.

Be that as it may, what does it mean to be self-aware?  It means primarily that life is no longer just a simple matter of survival of the fittest. It means to know; to have a certain sense of being responsible for what one thinks and does.  It means to feel passion about, and for.  It means to feel guilt for doing wrong and experience the desire to change.  It means the ability to question on moral and philosophical grounds.  It means to be able to feel compassion, to care in instances where mere survival instinct would drive one to ignore a situation, or finish off something, or someone, whose debilitated state threatens your own survival, or enjoyment of life.  Ultimately self-awareness brings us to that terrible place where self-sacrifice becomes necessary in service of others, whether it be an individual or a world.  Self-awareness is a new kind of relationship with everything: one of caring through giving.

What’s the problem with Earthian humanity then, that it cannot, it seems, live by the demands of a self-aware nature?  I have pondered that all of my life.  I’ve experienced the very real struggles within myself to change, to move myself ever closer to the demands of this new self-aware nature.  I know it’s difficult in the extreme.  But why?  Why should it be if we inherited the self-aware nature from the sudden macromutation that changed a humanoid hybrid slave into a self-aware being?  I think I may know the answer to that now.

If man was genetically ‘invented’ to be a bipedal talking creature able to understand orders and communicate needs, then he was taken out of the normal pattern of natural evolution, a process that takes hundreds of millions of years to manifest measurable change.  Suddenly, some 200,000 years ago a new species now called Homo Sapiens appears.  It remains much the same for a very long time, then suddenly at about 40,000 years ago, again, another ‘macromutation’ happens when man suddenly takes on modern behavior.  13,000 years ago he has migrated to every part of the planet.  By 12,000 years ago he has ‘invented’ agriculture.  6000 years ago he has formed great civilizations with advanced astronomy and another 6000 years later, today, he is probing space beyond the depths of the solar system.  Quite an accomplishment.  Or is it?  Something’s wrong with this picture, isn’t it?

Yes, a necessary part of the mutation process failed, pure and simple.  The brain (what I’d rather call the mind) did not develop balanced reasoning and part of it reverted back to the old program of self-preservation and survival.  Because of that it continued to expand its knowledge in the areas of power-seeking and power-wielding through whatever channel it could find: religion, politics, science, business, academia.  It saw itself in an endless struggle to survive, surrounded by competitors (therefore enemies) who had to be conquered and subdued, controlled or killed.  It saw everything as naturally and necessarily exploitable.  It was kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, seldom seeing the other side of this nightmare and when it did it turned the other way.  Life was to be all about success through the crushing application of superior might, through conquest, rape, enslavement and mass murder.  And vice versa.  And so it was.  And so it is. 

Earth man, recipient of perhaps the greatest gift life ever offered anyone, failed to grasp its significance.  Because of that he is about to destroy just about everything that in his eyes made him great.  And it will be several hundred years hence before another ‘macromutation’ changes him again and makes him look up at the stars and see something he has never seen before.  It is hoped that this ‘last chance’ mutation will finally break the bonds to the old program of survival of the fittest, replacing it with empathy and understanding.  Earth man still has a chance to become human.