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by Roger Bourke White Jr., started June 2006
Consider these three very human experiences:
These three phenomena are part of the huge collection of phenomena and experiences that comprise being a human being. I'm going to call this collection of characteristics and experiences The Human Condition. Is The Human Condition simply a collection of random characteristics, or is there some reason or logic connecting them all together?
In this writing I will argue that the collection of phenomena that represent The Human Condition is connected -- there is an underlying logic. The collection represents a suite of interlocking characteristics that solve real world problems that humans face in existing on Earth.
Because the characteristics interlock -- helping each other mostly, but getting in the way in some circumstances -- the underlying logic of the package is delightfully hard to figure out. But I'm going to make an effort to pick apart a few pieces of that logic in this book.
What I will be discussing in this book are the ways that human characteristics help humans cope with our real world. In the process I will also be discussing how we can expect humans to change in the future. This is the purpose of this book: If we understand better what we are now and how we got to be what we are now, we can understand better how we will change in the future.
Mankind faces many problems in his day-to-day existence. This includes such simple things as getting the energy needed for living (by eating food and breathing), maintaining a comfortable environment (by finding shelter when it starts raining), and reproducing (by getting married and having children). It also includes many more complex things such as becoming a good doctor or lawyer.
There are a lot of things people would like to do better than they do. With each generation Mother Nature, Design Engineer (discussed more in the Definitions section) tries a few new things to see if they will help. When Mother comes up with a winner, the change spreads through the population.
In this book I will discuss changes that have made humans human. I will discuss each change in four parts: The problem part, the solution part, the surprises part and the "What can we expect in the future?" part.
Here is what each section will look like:
In this book I will pick one problem at a time. Each problem is one that Mother Nature has found an improvement for.
Example: Mankind wants to communicate over longer distances because it will help in hunting.
Here I will talk about the solution.
I will also talk about how the suitability of that solution changes as Mankind changes from Stone Age Man to Civilized Man (sometimes I will further break down Civilized Man into the sub steps of Agricultural Man, Industrialized Man and Information Age Man)
Example: Females retain "average" voices while males develop deeper voices. Deeper voices carry better, particularly in daytime. (This is because lower frequency sounds are refracted less by the temperature difference between warm ground air and cooler upper air.)
A straightforward secondary effect of this change is that the deep voice becomes a sign of male sexual maturity.
Every new solution to an old problem brings surprises with it. The new solution is a new tool, and every new tool opens up new benefits to it's user and allows the user to become subject to new hazards and new abuses.
Example: As mankind develops politics, the deep voice becomes a decided benefit in the political process. A person who is a better orator can be can be understood by more people at one time, so he or she has an advantage moving their ideas. Men's deeper voices give them an advantage in politics.
Since mankind is a work in progress, we can expect to see changes. Many will be surprises, but some will be predictable.
Example: Industrial Man has access to public address systems, radio, TV and print media. As a result orator skills no longer give as much advantage as they did in the Agriculture Age. Instead of great orator skills, the person who wishes to convince others is aided by great "media skills" of which good speaking is just one. Women can now move ideas as easily as men, and an historic advantage in politics has been erased.
This an example of the format that I will be using for most topics in this book.