Godel's Proof and The Human Condition - The Basic Essays

Evolution, Autonomy and Aristocratization

(Economics Note 1)

Whereas 'lesser' organisms display evolution patterns of generally successive, stable relationship with each other and the resource/environment, evolving man, the organism highest on the food chain, is investing his 'whole-earth space' with little understanding -at least so far, of his 'deliberative capability' affecting those lesser relationships, of consequences affecting that investment.

Except for the influence of hominids, all econiche/environments are 'low-order, strange-attractor stable' in that their mutating organisms are genetically limited to more or less 'mechanical modes of sustenance and procreation', each 'new organism on the block' in effect, being potentially capable of investing only a correspondingly limited space and either dying-off or investing that space thru 'readjustments of viability' in common with other organisms -the econiche 'jiggling into new stability'(*1). Mankind however, by fact of deliberative capability, is potentially capable of a more or less continuous investment of a space of effectively unknowable limits; it is a case, simply, of aristocratization(*2) evolving over 'lesser all others' -but (so far) new-organism-intrinsic 'pecking-ordered survival-of-the-fittest' still. The whole of our anthropology and history then, from prohominid family structures and subsequently diasporating congregationalisms to present-day institutionalizations (international politics included), is only 'progression' along that investment -our 'readjustment' of other organisms in our whole-earth/econiche resource/environment. There are two aspects to this situation. We are, first, individuals investing essentially quotidian, more or less unobtrusive personal spaces which do not generally of themselves hinder 'intrinsic hominid aristocratization' -cultural, political, employment and other relationships, but still pecking-order-based by fact of 'only thus-far human progression'(*5).

More importantly however, that investment is only an element of the more general hierarchization comprising the discrete nations of the world as a whole as evolving organisms themselves, nations which do in fact hinder that aristocratization by fact of 'independence from authority (higher knowledge, essentially) increasing with hierarchy', nations which are therefore also most primitively autonomous in that respect(*3). The thus-far interactions of all autonomies then, are very much those of 'new-animals-on-the-block investing (each its own little econiche) the world-econiche-whole thru dynamics that are essentially survival-of-the-fittest still'(*6). What this suggests regarding overpopulation, pollution and 'what the system can bear' -the nature of continuing mankind, life-style-and-quality- is that some one or other autonomous 'cutting edge of aristocratization' -America most likely, and those of western civilization- will eventually have to assume both setting example and imposing certain criteria regarding that 'overpopulation et cetera' upon other autonomies -notably unlike the democracy widely 'gavaged' today(*4). What this means is that despite the certainty of aristocratization out of its only source of individual human mutation, there is a hierarchy of 'successively higher-pecking-ordered survival-of-the-fittest autonomies' (clans, enclaves, cities, nations et cetera) thru which aristocratization must work: whatever our discoveries correlating (a) the resource/environment, (b) a to-be-heuristically-determined 'nature and constitution of human-being' and (c) 'life-style-and-quality', that inevitable optimization is stuck with having to overcome the countervailing pejoratives of thus-far primitively autonomous hierarchies and economies.

In 'economic' view of this situation then, the whole of 'the human phenomenon and things human' today is manifest thru expression of 'hominid-being (primitive) superiority' among ourselves and over all other organisms -'natural rights and freedoms' and life-style-and-quality, our ethnic, religious, cultural and political institutionalizations and mechanisms of material realization more or less autonomous everywhere. There is, therefore, no 'appurtenance of this new organism on the block' -of either primitive or 'civilized' investment, that was not constituted as some element of pecking-ordered, teeming invasion of the resource/environment on the backs of other organisms and 'lessers than ourselves' -fellow humans included. Understanding this is the basis of 'an inevitably miscegenating mankind of increasingly anoumenal, relatively monocultural ethos', of non-autonomous aristocratization and an inevitable re-evolution of 'appurtenances and their government/economies'.

Back to downloaded Home Page or Download the Home Page or back to Complete list of Essays and Appendices

(feedback? perryb@condition.org)
First posted: October 28, 1996; Last modified: November 15, 2001.3

*1 - 'Low-order, strange-attractor stability of all econiche/environments' et cetera is discussed in The System of Human Experience.
*2- Deliberative capability and aristocratization are initially and more completely discussed in Kernel Properties Of The Hominid Organism; of the latter, further-
aristocratization:
(a) The supercessions of mankind -one genus or strain of hominids by another, false starts and dead branches included, is characterizable as an 'aristocratization' in that each such hominid is 'increasing-potentially capable of manifesting a more phenomenologically knowledgeable viability and idlemind-occupation' ... -a more sophisticated life-style-and-quality ... (-from Kernel Properties of The Hominid Organism)
(b) the evolutionary process by which ... mankind's speciation and continuing progression has generally been manifest as successively higher-orders of deliberative capability -essentially of 'increasing phenomenology and decreasing noumenalism'. (-from Arms Reduction and Global Reconstruction)
*5 - See Pecking Order, Competition, Institution, Government and Economic Policy
*3 - The general nature of national autonomies interacting (politically, economically et cetera) like individuals of a 'primitively apolitical democracy' is discussed in Arms Reduction and Global Reconstruction.
*6 - Consider, for example, how national autonomy itself is effectively sub- and cross-speciated by religion, ethnicity, wealth, natural resources, form of government et cetera.
*4 - American democracy exists, in fact, only as reflective of the de_facto world-democracy of autonomous nations. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia (or Rwanda more recently) for example, were no more than 'people exercising their individual rights in the world-democracy of nations'. America's 'autonomous individuality' (democracy) is not 'better' than others; the United States is, rather, just a RICHER 'individual', able therefore, to 'accommodate and/or override mistakes -forge ahead (and eat) faster than others'. -And such 'democracy' will continue to exist until the autonomous nations of the world bumper against 'what the system can bear' -resource/environment limitations forcing everyone into 'some better reasoned reconstitution of government/economy'.