“Intelligent selection” as strategy for managing relatedness between “self” and the fluctuations of physical reality.

• Within the “human” aspect of reality, this ability to be the producer of it’s own environmental fluctuations (and therefor adaptive pressure) is increasing at an exponential rate. This is facilitated by applying “understanding” to the goal of influencing the flow of reality.

As discussed, understanding is concerned both with influencing the flow of reality, and understanding what the flow of reality is including the place of the “us” aspects within it. This section concerns the former application of understanding.

The “self” is a subset of the physical aspects of reality arranged to interact in a unified cooperative non conflicted manner.

Mind is able to direct that subset of physical reality which is it’s associated body to relate to the rest of reality according to predictable repeatable deterministic cause effect patterns of relatedness, thereby helping it to manage it’s relationship to the rest of reality.

(A mind would have no way to even direct a hand to manipulate an object if the force and lever relationships between an organism’s muscles and bones, was not repeatable and predictable (i.e. deterministic) in nature – It is a quality of relationship between aspects of “physical” reality essential to allow “order” within reality to exist at all, including evolution, evolutionary strategy and even stable communication itself. )

The human mind in conjunction with shared truthful understandings of cause – effect relationship is able to extend this pattern of deterministic control through the body’s appendages into other aspects of reality such as tools and technology.

Physical reality itself is therefor beginning to follow patterns in response to deterministic cause effect relationships understood and directed by mind. The mechanism for this is as follows:

“Natural” selection has two characteristics: It sorts organisms into “life” and “death” categories, and in so doing:

It selects relatively successful methods for managing the relationship between the DNA expressed organism and reality over less successful methods.

Of these, selection of methods for relating to reality is the only characteristic of natural selection which equates to adaptation.

Selections made by mind – “Intelligent” selection – replicate this characteristic, selecting between methods of relationship between the organism and reality.

As with all strategy, it seeks to avoid those particular forms of relatedness between self and environment which result in being sorting into the “dead” category by selecting adaptive methods for relating which preemptively avoid it.

As a result, although intelligent selection is an alternative mode of selection, it nonetheless remains an adaptive response to the “natural” form of selection since it is ultimately a strategy aimed at avoiding it. It is therefor an expression of wider evolutionary processes.

• A precursor to intelligent selection is the ability to use the memory of the “past” in order to predict which events “will” flow through the present “next”.

A precursor to this in turn is the ability to track a moving object in space, since this entails some ability to use prior environmental movement to predict future movement.

Intelligent selection also requires the evolved ability to conceive of “past” and “future” as aspects of time.

These aspects of time however have no existence outside mind, since mind is the only place where they are maintained, and now is the only aspect of time within which mind can maintain them.

The “past” is merely patterns and imprints left by events which “have” flowed through the present. They are left upon all aspects of reality including the mind, but these imprints exist solely in the present.

In reality, the “next” thing only happens in relation to the “last” thing which happened and is preserved as a record branded upon the “now”.

The process of evolution (as with all process), can also only occur “now”.

Intelligence uses the concept of “time” to create a four dimensional model within thought of what will happen “next”, or can be induced to happen “next” based on what has happened “previously”.

Such modeling represents “truthful understanding” regarding the relationship between aspects of reality to the extent that it grows and develops through the sharing and inducing of experiences of non conflicted certainty between aspects of reality (minds), and is itself an expression of the flow of reality.

However, modeling consists of images of reality and relationships which are held in the mind, and are therefor symbolic of something else.

Also “past” and “future” are only useful symbols for tracking and predicting what happens in the “now”, and any thought which utilizes them becomes similarly symbolic.

Because of these two points, such modeling can only represent or point towards truth. Any understanding, or influence over the flow of reality they induce can only “truly” occur as experience “now”.

As B. Alan Wallace points out the nature of this modeling is ubiquitous and subtle, and it can be extraordinarily difficult to recognize that all thought about reality consists of such symbolic modeling.

In this sense experiencing what is, as it is, is the only way to encounter anything that is truly real (and therefore truly true). Only the letting go of thought about reality in the moment moves us closer to this.

In other words, although thought about experience is the very drive to understand truth, by it’s very nature it mutually alienates itself from present experience which is the only “truthfully real” aspect of reality. In this sense therefor it can only act as a pointer.

Thought takes two imaginary aspects of time: past and future, which otherwise have no existence and treat them as if they were real, and then proceeds to get “lost” in them.

The ability to “go to” past and future is however a foundational ability of mind without which relationship between the “separate” fluctuations of reality would be very difficult. This may explain why the mind often appears to find dwelling in the present moment such a fearful activity, since safety is perceived as lying outside it.

The understandings resulting from modeling enable some aspects of reality to be created and directed by mind to follow deterministic cause effect patterns of relatedness, and this is what is known as technology.

As stated, no satisfying boundary between “self” and “environment” can be delineated – only zones of relatedness between aspects of reality.

The organism – technology – reality relationship system is one such example of this blurring of categories.

In many ways, the patterns of connection and relatedness between that aspect of physical reality which is the body, and other aspects of physical reality such as technology is much easier to grasp than the patterns of relationship between the mind and the body which enable mind to direct the body.

In this sense, according to our present understanding, manipulating a tool with a mind via a hand is almost as miraculous as would be manipulating it directly with the mind.

The relationship between a hand and some tool is the relationship between two aspects of one reality. The action of one results in a division-less accommodating response of absolute precision in the other. “As the yin advances, so the yang retreats”.

This is the transmission of relatedness through the “communicating medium” that is reality.

As stated, mind is able to direct that subset of physical reality which is it’s associated body to relate to the rest of reality according to predictable repeatable deterministic cause effect patterns of relatedness, thereby helping it to manage it’s relationship to the fluctuations of the rest of reality.

One of it’s activities is to create technology, which is then placed in a system of relationship between the body, and the rest of reality.

Mind is able to then extend it’s ability to control that subset of physical reality which is the body, through the body and into that aspect of physical reality which is the technology. The technology in turn interacts with the surrounding flow of reality, mediating the body’s relationship to it.

(As with the biological organism, machinery can be designed and arranged and reproduced solely because the communication and relationship between it’s parts is deterministic and predictable.)

Technology then is adaptive strategy directed by aspects of “truthful understanding”. Under the direction of mind, it allows for a rapid exchange and update to strategies of relationship between the body and reality, without necessitating “forced” change via that form of self – environment relatedness expressed as the bodies’ death.

It is a sophisticated example of the generalized adaptive strategy – the strategy of attempting to maintain one aspect of reality in a relatively “fixed” “permanent” configuration by managing it’s strategies for relating to a surrounding reality which is in a constant state of fluctuation.

As a direct extension of evolutionary processes, technological design produces both adaptation and environmental fluctuation aka adaptive pressure, resulting in an extension of the cumulative feedback mechanism present in earlier forms of evolution.

2013 Peter Sillifant