Cloudscape

As machines become more advanced, more and more humans lose their jobs as machines replace them, until only creative jobs will be left, but there will likely also be a time when machines may also become creative. However, as and when our computers become creative, they will become part of ourselves and so of our own species, for either we will already have found a way of uniting them with our own brain, or we would set these computers to the one task of finding a way to do so until they would, since this would be the most important thing we would need at this point.
There might be a chance that by this time, many people who remained unemployed would have become so decadent that they would no longer care to set these computers to any other task than to find better ways of stimulating the pleasure centers of their brain, but, fortunately, they would be in the hands of the scientists that invented them, and they would certainly choose otherwise.
Thus, even if humans and computers will not yet have united by the time that computers become creative, humans will still be needed for creativity until then, and, because creativity gives meaning to life and our need for meaning is so great, then as soon as they are more creative than we are ourselves, they would be fully focussed on the task of enabling us to have their creativity by unifying them with our brain.
As long as computers are not conscious, our own lives as humans could still have meaning, and as soon as they would become conscious, we would become one with them. In a time when the only work that is left is creative, everyone could likely achieve an equal level of creativity through cognotechnology, as the creativity of someone altered through that time's cognotechnology would be vastly greater than that of anyone who has ever lived anyway. This does not mean that everyone would become identical, however, as there are infinitely many ways of being creative; these need not be scientific or artistic, as they can also be social.
By the time when man and machine will become one, both will be quite different from what they are now. Machines will no longer be the contraptions we see today, as their machinery, just as our own, will entirely have advanced to molecular levels, whereas men will no longer be the animals that we are now, as our abilities will have advanced to cosmic levels. Machines will become more like organisms in structure as they achieve nanotechnological levels, as they will then make more use of analogous media like chemistry, rather than relying only on black-and-white digital media as they do now. Meanwhile, men will also become more like machines in power, as they, as well, integrate aspects of their mechanical counterparts into their bodies. Our computers will become subtler and more complex, whereas we will become stronger and more skillful.
It would seem that a unification of man and machine would make society shift further towards the material and away from the spiritual, but the opposite is true. Our spiritual as well as our material world will grow, but they will also grow toward one another. It's just that spiritual evolution comes more subtle than material evolution.
Moreover, when man and machine will become one, we will still have use for our biological aspects as well as of our electronic aspects, as both have their own unique qualities. Both man and machine will keep evolving, and either evolution will help the other, but both evolutions will themselves unify.
The unification of man and machine is only one aspect of a greater unification, that of mind and matter. Our power to change reality becomes so great that reality becomes like a dream, while virtual reality become so immersive as to become like reality.

When communism rose in the previous century, as is now clear, it was much too early for the world to be ready for it, and thus it remains to this day. The failure of communism has shown that people are too self-centered for it to work, and unless people change, it can never work. People work out of necessity or out of greed, but not out of love, at least for now.

Communism is bound either to fall or turn into despotism as long as it is not the choice of the people themselves, and because of this, the communism we have seen so far has little to do with its actual ideals. Nonetheless, it is probable that communism will be the next step in the evolution of society, though in another form than is seen today. However, today, it is still too soon for us to take that step.

Every kind of government has its place in the evolution of society, and when it is time for one to succeed the other, this happens almost spontaneously, not through revolution. There was a time that democracy could not have succeeded, or even republicanism. When a nation tries to get ahead of itself in this evolution, it is bound to turn either into despotism or into anarchy, and so evolution is usually the best way of change.

In the beginning of this evolution, despotism is the only viable government: at this time, republicanism cannot or barely succeed, as there is too little cooperation between people for it to work. At this point, cooperation must be imposed by a despot. It is crude, but the only thing that works at this point. Without a single ruling power, everyone would become a despot. There is, fortunately, the mercy that the worst despots are often the quickest to be overthrown by the people.

Every society begins in anarchy, and, if it lives long enough, it eventually ends in anarchy, in much the same form, but on a larger scale. Anarchy is viable in the beginning of the formation of a society, when people still live in small clans, which are much alike to a large family. Sometimes, these clans are communistic. Superficially, it seems that these clans are more cooperative than most societies, but this is only so because they are so small; so small, in fact, that every or almost every member of the clan usually knows every other. As these groups grow, this level of cooperation is no longer possible, because although they may be cooperative towards people they know, they are quite uncooperative towards strangers. The people of a clan are so little used to strangers that they will often kill them on sight. Wars between neighboring clans are frequent. If the people of ten clans were put into one tribe overnight, most would be dead before long.

There is a lot of cooperation in early societies, but little cooperativeness. The cooperativeness in societies grows as they evolve, until they eventually achieve the level of democracy and eventually (though this has never happened so far) anarcho-communism. So far, however, anarcho-communism is not feasible, as people have yet to achieve the level of unity for it to work.

However, we live in a world were everything is being automatized through robotics and informatics. This is already posing problems in many developed capitalistic countries as more and more people become (or remain) unemployed as they are being replaced by computers. Because of this, many countries already find themselves to be forced into a compromise between capitalism and communism, in which unemployed people receive benefits during the time they are unemployed.

As work in the primary and secondary sector continues to be automatized, and not everyone can or wants to work in the tertiary sector, more and more people will become unemployed. Eventually, the rate of unemployment will become so high that it can no longer be resolved in any sensible way, forcing the government into offering people benefits in order to help them survive.

With the trend of robotization, it is only a matter of time before we achieve a state where our necessities are provided for automatically or largely so, and so become almost free. Eventually, it will be possible to produce anything through software, and since software can be duplicated freely, this will mean that all necessities will be available in sufficient amounts without any work being done. In such a society, it would be nonsensical to still pay for software, as everyone could as well have all software there is if no one asked money for it. In a society where everyone has enough to survive and where software offers so many possibilities, many people will see software (which by then would encompass all art, science, and culture of civilization) as being more important than money. It only takes a certain percentage of the population to believe this before the system collapses, all the more because many of these people would themselves be artists and programmers. The more people would believe spiritual values to be more important than material ones, the more the capitalistic system would be subverted, and software would be hacked and shared illegally. Moreover, artists and programmers who would be of this view would release their works for for free, so that, eventually, those who would still charge for their works would be likely to be ignored, all the more because their work would be motivated purely out of greed, rather than out of love, and therefore be seen as being of lower quality. It is therefore inevitable that, at this stage, software would become free or practically free.

The need for socialism will increase with unemployment, and eventually, artists, scientists and social workers will be the only people left to be employed. Most scientists, many social workers and some artists (in some countries) are already being paid by the state, but in future, all will depend on the state for payment. For now, scientists, artists and social workers are still required to work in order to be paid, but this is only because much of their work is not fully creative and involves routine. However, as the routine component of their work will eventually be done by computers (robot scientists already exist for genetic research, for instance, as do computer programs for educations), only the creative and social components will be left, and neither can be done on demand. Ideas come best when they are not forced, which is the only thing scientists (and, of course, artists) will still be needed for, and the same counts for compassion, which is what social workers will still be needed for. When I say creativity, I'm not talking about the ability to remember the right idea at the right time, but the ability to think of new, unique ideas that have never been used before, as anything less can be done by computers. With compassion, I'm not talking about commitment, patience or politesse, but genuine and heartfelt sympathy, as, again, anything less can be done by computers. Attempting to enforce creativity will lead to loss of inspiration. Attempting to enforce compassion will lead to detachment (as is seen in many psychologists and psychiatrists today). Either how, the best ideas will come from people who seek them because of their passion for the idea, not from people who seek them because they must. The same counts for compassion. The true scientists, social workers and artists of the future will not need money as an incentive to work. Those that would, would be incompetent anyway.

Obviously, the unemployment would also put many people before the problem of finding meaning in their lives, or rather, it would confront them with that problem which was already there, now they could no longer seek distraction in vacuous mind-numbing routine. By and by, people would learn to find meaning either in love or some form of creativity.

Uncreative people who would want to become more creative could be made more creative through cognotechnology (technology applied on cognition). Because of the significance cognotechnology will have on humanity, it is extremely important that everyone be given equal chances, and here, we are once more faced with a need for socialism: the means of cognotechnology should be equally allocated among those who desire it, for if this does not happen, a disastrous technological divide will result which is so great that, over time, humanity itself would actually split up into two separate groups, one being vastly more intelligent than the other. The intelligent group would become more successful, so acquire increased access to cognotechnology, and so forth. Of course, the more intelligent group would eventually realize the necessity to give the other group equal chances.

In the past, communism has failed because the interests of the individual are capitalistic. In future, capitalism will fail because the interests of the individual will be communistic.

It might be that many psychoactive plants, such as coca, used as stimulant, or Saint John's wort, used as an antidepressant, did not evolve their psychoactive substances through mere coincidence. If it was coincidental, it might have occurred in a few plant specimens, but it wouldn't have come to be present in every single specimen of the species. Evolution does not happen without reason. If a mutation occurs and it is useful, then there's a chance that it is passed on onto next generations, but if it has no use at all for the species, then it will disappear.

Obviously, it must have been some use for these substances. Thus, either the psychoactive effect of these substances on animals was useful for the plant, or the psychoactive effect of these substances is a side effect of the substance's real use to the plant. However, as no other use of these substances has been observed, and the plant only wastes energy on producing them, it is obvious that we should assume otherwise.

Moreover, most plants containing psychoactives contain several psychoactives with a similar effect, even though these psychoactives are very different in structure and composition, so that they are unlikely to have been produced in the same chemical pathways. For instance, compare the substances hyperforin and hypericin found in Saint John's wort: hyperforin is aliphatic, whereas hypericin is cyclic. Hyperforin is derived from phloroglucinol, while hypericin is derived from anthraquinone. Either psychopharmaceutical cannot be produced through the combination of the other with other molecules present in the plant, contrary, for instance, to the substances found in Rhodiola rosea, an antidepressant and alleged adaptogen.

Why would a plant produce two different psychoactives with similar effects in entirely different ways? It might therefore be that for some reason, their psychoactive effect increased their odds of survival.

Perhaps these plants, much like the silk worm do today, have always depended upon human cultivation, and developed their psychoactive effect from the artificial selection of humans, much like livestock developed their increased body mass from human selective breeding, or like dogs developed their obedience. As selective breeding shows, human influence can cause evolution to accelerate dramatically, so that it is very well possible for thousands of medical and psychoactive plants to evolve in only tens of thousands of years. What is clear is that herbalism has existed for at least 5.300 years, based on a body found in the Swiss Alps with medicinal herbs among his personal effects.

When some plants of a species developed a mutation causing them to produce psychoactives, someone would have discovered it eventually, especially if their effects were short-term. If the effect was pleasant or interesting, the discoverer might have decided to find more of the plant, and grow some for later. As the plants which were grown were selected according to their potency, they became more and more distinct from their original species generation after generation, so that they eventually formed an altogether separate species.

It is also likely that many medicinal plants evolved in this way. However, it might also be that certain plants containing medicinal substances might themselves have had uses for it, for although plants have no nervous system which might react to psychoactives, they do have a biochemistry, which, though it differs immensely from that of animals, nonetheless also has many things in common with it.

Plants whose effects were long-term were probably only cultivated in later periods, in the Neolithic, since it was unlikely for anyone to discover the effects of long-term working psychoactive or medicinal plants unless they happened to grow amidst the crops. In this case, the plants were likely to be reaped along with the crops, and parts of the plant may have been eaten by accident, or their substances where inhaled during threshing.

While the first Agrarian Revolution happened only 10.000 years ago, a more primitive form of cultivation might have been possible much earlier, since it requires no actual agriculture to grow psychoactive plants for consumption. After all, psychoactive plants can be used at relatively low amounts to have their desired effect, whereas agricultural plants need to be grown in much higher quantities to provide for food. The Amazonians have almost no agriculture, yet they cultivate ayahuasca using cuttings. In fact, despite their lack of agriculture, they call the Amazon a "cultivated forest," that is, a forest that they helped shape. The existence of ayahuasca might be an indicator that to some extent, the Amazon might indeed be called a cultivated forest. It seems that, at the least, they did help one particular plant to come into being, though the liana, as one might expect, is rare.

Among the psychoactive plants, there are two types: some are symbiotic, and some are parasitic. Basically, a psychoactive plant is parasitic if it is addictive, because the cultivators then no longer use the plant out of their own volition, and therefore, it no longer matters whether the plant has any actual benefit to them; whether it benefits them or not, it is already ascertained that they will continue to cultivate it. The cultivators do not base their selection of addictive plants on whether or not it is healthy, but merely on how well it satisfies their addiction. It might therefore be said that, as a rule, addictive psychoactive plants are never healthy.

The symbiotic plants are the kind that are cultivated because they are of benefit to the users, and are invariably not (or barely) addictive. Most of these plants either act on long-term, such as herbal antidepressants. Among the short-term acting varieties, the overwhelming majority are entheogens.

For instance, the Amazonians use ayahuasca as a medicine for physical and mental illness, enabling the user to find the cause of the illness. Similar plants are found to be used by other Native American tribes for the same reason, such as the San Pedro cactus. Because of the medicinal use of these plants, it was, of course, important in their selection that they were healthy, and relatively safe to use. Those who cultivated these plants for medical use or as a means of self-improvement obviously choose those strains that proved to be the least harmful and most beneficial.

One could say that this could be vaguely compared to a clinical trial, except that the guinea pigs were actual humans, usually the shamans or the natives themselves, and without the procedures of scientific method, such as double-blindness or follow-ups. Moreover, the results were only passed on through folklore and were never written down, and because there was never a careful analysis of the users' health, only the significant findings were noticed: in people who lived in such primitive conditions, such petty symptoms as a skin rash were easily overlooked. Despite all these drawbacks, however, I believe that these trials were not without merit, for they were repeated countless times over thousands of years. Because any strain of the plants that proved to be less toxic than the rest, they evolved until they became of the very low toxicity of which they are today.

For instance, cannabis, unlike tobacco, causes no lung cancer, and there even appears to be a negative link between cannabis use and lung cancer, indicating a protective effect. It has been hypothesized that cannabis contains substances which protect the lungs, because any inhalation of smoke would normally cause an increased risk of lung cancer. It seems very unlikely that a plant which is smoked would spontaneously develop substances which negate the damage caused by smoking by pure chance.

Also, it has been found that marihuana contains substances, such as cannabidiol, which are antipsychotic. Heavy use of marihuana can increase the risk of developing psychosis, and the presence of cannabidiol in marihuana could counter this effect. Unfortunately, modern commercial cultivation of dealers, unlike the wiser cultivation of the shamans, has overlooked this danger. Instead of choosing the strains of cannabis based both on safety and potency, they based it solely on potency, ignoring safety altogether. Because of this, the ratio of cannabidiol to the other cannabinoids in marihuana has decreased, which might in part be responsible for the increase of psychosis among seen among heavier users of marihuana today. That this ratio has changed again so quickly because of human cultivation is an indication that the selective breeding of marihuana had once been based on the presence of the cannabidiol, for if it would always have been based solely on the concentration of THC in the thousands of years it had been cultivated, as it is now, the cannabidiol would by now have disappeared or nearly disappeared.

Ironically, another way in which some plants proved to be safer than others was through a bitter taste. Almost any psychedelic plant there is known tastes extremely bitter: kratom, san pedro, peyote, psilocybe, salvia divinorum and ayahuasca are all renowned to be thoroughly disgusting. Marihuana is very bitter when eaten, which might have been how the plant was originally used. Of all psychedelic plants, the most disgusting of all is ayahuasca, and it is accordingly also the most potent. In addition, the psychedelics can also cause vomiting if too much is used, and new users of ayahuasca almost invariably vomit, although more experienced users are able to keep from vomiting the brew. It appears that this bitterness is meant as a warning to those who use it. New users are more likely to be stop eating early, repelled by the taste, while experienced users, being more used to the taste, would be better able to conquer their disgust for it. Aside from this, the bitterness is also an indicator of the plant's potency and the dosage the user takes in. To unprepared users, it can be a foretaste of the suffering it might bring about if they are not ready for the experience.

A German and Dutch proverb actually says that what tastes bitter is healthy: "Was bitter dem Mund, ist dem Herzen gesund," translated in Dutch as "Bitter in de mond maakt het hart gezond." While it is true that many medicines taste bad, this is only an issue in herbal medicines, which need to be eaten or swallowed as a brew, and most of all for psychedelic plants. It is very likely that this bitterness is meant to ensure that the right dosage is used. It seems too coincidental that practically every psychedelic plant there is is bitter in proportion to their potency.

Most psychoactive plants which aren't addictive appear to be harmless or even beneficial. On the other hand, some plants might also use psychoactives as a poison like any other, either to warn animals not to eat them them or to kill those that did. Datura stramonium, for instance, is quite dangerous, and none that were so bold as to try to use it thought the experience so pleasant as to even consider cultivating the plant. Hallucinogens as a warning might be a pretty drastic warning compared to nettle sting, for instance, but may imprint a permanent traumatic memory even on an animal's inefficient memory. It is possible that the Amanite uses this same strategy, as an addition to its physical toxicity.

Aside from those meant either to keep animals from eating the plant or psychoactives meant to coerce the user into cultivating the plant through addiction, however, most psychoactives found in plants seem to be largely beneficial.

The notion that these plants live in symbiosis with humans is reminiscent of the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that all organisms in the biosphere are part of a greater superorganism; and although there is clearly not by far as much union between the organisms of the biosphere and the cells of a single organism, there do seem to many symbiotic relations between different species. In the end, any species depends on countlessly many others, and many depend even on us.

That our society inclines towards yang might be because of our primal ancestry, for the African jungles in which they lived are a very yang environment: basking in sunlight, broiling with heat, brimming with life, whirling with activity and abundant in food. Vivacity, hedonism, sociability, industriousness and materialism are all values characteristic of our species, and they are also all very yang. Scientists have already found that war is something we inherited in common with primates from our evolutionary ancestry, and so are language and community; why then, not materialism? That so much of the earth's surface is covered with our factories might be a direct consequence of the fact that we share our original homes with the primates.

In considering the possibility of life on other planets, we must note that the earth has had far more advantages than just having seas and the right temperature:

1) The protosphere, the nebulous disk from which the solar system arose, formed of matter from a heavier star which contained a wide variety of heavier materials.

2) The Earth was formed of a mass which contained a wide variety of elements

3) The Earth was protected from the impact of heavier asteroids by the proximity of the gas giant Jupiter, the vacuum cleaner of the solar system
4) Meanwhile, smaller asteroids and comets, having less gravitational attraction to Jupiter, were let through into the innermost solar system, providing water, organic materials and minerals.
5) By an amazing stroke of fortune, our planet has a stable moon, which is highly exceptional for terrestrial planets. Usually, natural satellites of planets our size either collide with the planet or rapidly drift away from them. By causing oceanic tides, the moon brings many advantages to the Earth's biology and in particular to its evolution. Without it, it may have taken far longer for life to migrate onto coastal areas and later inland, and for all we know it might never have happened had some of the first sea animals not been swept away to the shore.
6) The Earth has a magnetosphere which repels cosmic radiation and solar mass ejections which would otherwise almost fully sterilize the planet.
7) The Earth has an ozone layer which offers a protection against UV rays. However, as ozone is relatively likely to form in an atmosphere rich in oxygen, this is linked to the probability of high atmospheric oxygen.
8) In addition to having water at all, the Earth has actual oceans,
9) The Earth has plate tectonics, which furthers biodiversification compartmentalizing the earth into many separate as well as non-separate areas, thereby allowing the biosphere to experiment with evolution in different environments; adding to the variety of the terrain will add to the variety of the life-forms inhabiting it.

Evil builds its own hell and so destroys itself, though it builds its hell not only for itself.

Everything strives for its own survival, for it would otherwise not have come to exist.

Many scientists attribute our every quality, be it directly or indirectly, to genetic evolution. Art becomes a means to show off to attract partners, love becomes a means to keep them and others with them.
However, this narrow view of evolution is incomplete; it has already been shown that evolution works through at least two mechanism of selection: natural selection and sexual selection. However, a third mechanism of selection is so absurdly obvious that it it easily overlooked; the third mechanism of selection is our own: choice. "Intelligent selection," as it might be called. The first is unconscious; the second is conscious; the third is self-conscious. The first created the second, the second the third, though the three transition into one another gradually.
Natural selection is the first and most basic mechanism, which depends on survival of the fittest; this mechanism is partly genetic in that it applies to genetics, but also of importance before and beside genetics, as it applies just as well on chemical, atomic and even lower levels, beginning from the very birth of the universe.
Sexual selection is the second mechanism, depending on sexual attraction; this is, arguably, the only of the three mechanisms which is purely genetic, depending on how one interprets "selection." A bacterium does not feel sexual attraction during conjugation, or a virus during insertion, or an oxygen atom during combustion, or a neutron when it collides with a fissile atom, yet these are all examples of reproduction. However, unless matter is conscious, this is not "selection."
Finally, neurological selection is the third and as yet the last we know. One might say that this mechanism is barely genetic at all, but it may be that it is partly epigenetic, though more research would be required. It is known that the activity of certain genes in our brain cells can change over time. It is also known that we may increase certain chemicals in our brain by desiring their effects; what, then, if the latter partly involves the former, and we may change the activity of our genes indirectly by desiring to do so? And what if these epigenetic changes affect the epigenetics of our gametes? This remains speculation.
Be it in part genetic or entirely memetic, neurological selection has dominated our evolution over the past thirty thousand years. For a large part, our sense of beauty is for a large part a mere side effect of our genetic evolution, but this side effect has started to lead a life of its own, and grew more and more sophisticated without any further genetic influence.
The collective unconscious was programmed, mostly genetically, to appreciate certain environments more than others by instinct because they were more favorable, and to appreciate all their aspects: birdsong for instance as a sign of life, flowing streams to lead to fruiting plants, distant views to detect approaching danger, physical appearance to find a successful partner or friend, aromas to find food that is healthy, taste to examine its contents. These are all things that increase likelihood of survival.
But flowing from these simpler perceptions grew something far more complex; the brain took over, and used these perceptions for itself. It improved its enjoyment of beauty not with the purpose to ensure chances of survival, but because it found it pleasurable, and to seek pleasure is simply how the brain is meant to work. The brain started to evolve by itself without much regard of evolution. It is because of this that among humans we see phenomena such as asceticism, celibacy, even masochism, phenomena which from an evolutionary viewpoint are contradictory. This is because the brain has acquired a will of its own, detached from genetic evolution; genetic evolution plays part in neurological evolution as neurological evolution stems from genetic evolution, but it no longer depends entirely on it, just as genetic evolution no longer depends entirely on chemical evolution. The brain has become so complex that it has become like an ecosystem of itself, with its own species.
Thus, aside from viability there came a second selector, and it was enjoyability; today, the latter has become far more prominent in our world than the former, and it no longer has very much to do with viability. Think of the things you do in your free time for enjoyment: how great will their effect be on your chances of survival or those of your offspring? The answer is, very little.
Of course, everything may indirectly alter our chances of survival, but relative to other things you might be doing instead, most leisurely activities will not do so to any significant extent. From a purely evolutionary standpoint, we are wasting the majority of our time, with a things ranging from smalltalk to art. All of these activities have an effect on our chances of survival, but it is so small that relative to those of other species, our activities are utterly irrelevant. If we were to survive rather than live, we would behave as animals. Our average pastimes score extremely low on the evolutionary ladder, though even in an environment as we have, we could do far better.
The memetics of neurological selection may be both collective (through the collective unconscious), but also individual, since the brain, especially in humans, is so complex that it may perhaps undergo such a rapid evolution throughout life that one's sense of beauty is developed through one's own life. How their sense of beauty would develop would depend on their genetics, environment, and a third factor of how the brain would interact with itself, since, as said, the brain has become as complex as an ecosystem.

People, and perhaps even animals, will often seek out partners who are similar to themselves. This is, of course, quite understandable from a psychological viewpoint, but it also happens to have evolutionary implications: if our partners are similar to ourselves and therefore have similar genes or memes, this makes it more likely for them to be preserved in offspring, increasing the chance of these genes' or memes' survival. This is significant because it means that sexual selection does not necessarily favor the fittest specimen, but the fittest most similar specimen.

Since a specimen's genotype is basically a collection of genes, this means that if it is to keep its genotype alive as long as possible, it will also keep its genes alive as long as possible; this doesn't have to be solely in the specimen itself, but can also be in other specimens, especially in social species such as ourselves. This is partly why similar people tend to associate in groups, based on the genes and memes they appear to have in common.