Extrapolating future states of consciousness

It seems unlikely that our current state of consciousness is 'final', rather that it is more likely to be just another evolutionary stepping stone.

How might future consciousness be? it is clearly impossible to experientially know how it might be without actually possessing it (a dog can no more guess at how the reflective consciousness possessed by humans “might be”), although if it is possible to describe future psychic states in some way, perhaps it is possible to plot a course towards them?


Characterizing psychic development in life
A means of describing likely future states of consciousness might be to characterize the process of psychic evolution through time and extrapolate this descriptive function forwards into the future.

A key characteristic of evolution is acceleration. That is to say the more life evolves, the faster it evolves. 4,000 million years ago, basic single celled life appears on earth, it took most of this time between then and now (3,000 million years) just to move from single celled to simple multicellular life. 600 million years ago, platyhelminthe (flatworms) appear - the earliest animals to have a rudimentary brain, only 300 million years later and already complex beings are starting to evolve lungs enabling them to move out of the sea and colonize the land. 180 million years ago, conscious mammals with highly complex behaviors have appeared, 0.5 million years ago self-conscious man is starting to appear, and in the last 0.0001 million years man has moved though the age of enlightenment and fundamentally changed the face of the planet.

When plotted with respect to time, evolutionary rate of change would doubtless look like a smooth exponential curve, 4 billion years ago things barely changed in the space of a million years, this compared with the last 500 years which have seen the face of the planet fundamentally change due to the technological evolution of the human race. However, focusing specifically on our need to characterize the development of consciousness, I think it's possible to look at the evolution of life and find paradigm shifts - points where a distinct step was achieved towards the direction of where we are today, and where the rate of change of evolution can be seen to have stepped up another gear.

The points on the evolutionary curve where psychic paradigm shifts seem to be visibly established are highlighted by examining the following 4 stages of evolution:


Stage 1:
Primitive forms of life including plant life was, (and in the case of plants, still is) at the mercy of the elements. Generally lacking sensory organs and the power of movement, such life forms are unable to meaningfully direct their reaction with their environment. Their "strategy" for finding nutrients and an agreeable environment is almost non-existent, the organism simply has to "be lucky" and have the elements (e.g. wind, rain and water currents) provide them through chance. Despite the fact that the ability to move around and direct their reaction with the environment would offer huge benefits, there appears to be a reason that plant life has never (with few exceptions) evolved this ability. It would seem likely that the issue is simply one of power – for a plant to “pull up it's roots and go for a 30 minute walk” would likely require many months of sitting stationary, collecting solar energy (it's ultimate power source) before it would have accumulated sufficient energy to enable it to do so. Whilst there is nothing theoretically stopping it from doing this every so often, the action of moving would be so expensive for the organism that it is somewhat unlikely that even in an entire lifetime, a situation would arise where such movement would add more survival value than the huge cost of the investment needed to make it take place. This factor alone removes almost all evolutionarily pressure for plant life to develop movement – the rare exceptions to this are generally carnivorous plants such as the Venus fly trap (and where there is obviously a direct energy boost pay-off related to the act of moving).

Stage 2:
Simple animal life with the beginnings of a brain (e.g. platyhelminthe flatworms) no longer require "luck" to locate nutrients and an agreeable environment, they have basic sensory organs with which to analyze their environment, they have the ability to move and therefore the ability to choose and effect their environment. And most importantly, a basic brain is programmed with a set of evolutionary selected strategies for doing so successfully. This evolutionary step, where interaction with the environment becomes directed and driven according to a “likely to be successful” strategy is a huge evolutionary improvement, and has been reached by the fact that the organism has evolved to consume plants for fuel. It's ability to do this gives it ready access to a sufficiently high concentrations of energy that the issue of cost to the organism of movement becomes irrelevant. As a “predator on plants”, an animal's ability to move gives it a huge advantage over them, but in rather the same way as cows are unlikely to ever go extinct due to humans eating them, animal life can never actually over-consume plant resources without threatening it's own survival. This fact protects plant life, and allows them to occupy a secure niche despite very clearly having been “out evolved” by animal life. Returning to the platyhelminthes, the brain of such a basic organism is likely to be "hard wired", meaning that whilst the organism possesses complex behaviors, it is unable to learn new complex behaviors within the lifespan of a single generation. However, the fundamental interaction between the organism and it's environment can now be evolved just by selecting new behaviors – something much easier to arrange than fundamentally changing the physical structure of the organism itself over time (for more simple life-forms, virtually the only means of significantly altering the interaction between the organism and it's environment), and therefore allows a much more adaptable organism. In a sense, what has happened in this evolutionary stage is that processes beneficial to life (such as facilitate the intake of nutrients or perhaps escape from dangerous environments) have been identified through “evolutionary groping” and moved from a fulfillment system of random chance (single celled organism or plant being fed by or moved about by wind or currents in the water) into a directed behavioral system causing movement driven by strategy which increases the chance that it's needs are reliably met.

Stage 3:
Conscious life - it's quite obvious when observing many higher mammals (such as a pet dog) that they are extremely aware of their environment and are analyzing it intently. And, if there is a trick to be learned that might help them find food or advance their chances of survival in some other way, it will very rapidly be picked up and integrated into their survival repertoire. This differs fundamentally from platyhelminthes who are unable to reprogram their complex behaviors within a single generation, and can only identify and incorporate new strategies into themselves by the process of “evolutionary groping” over many generations. To use a computer parallel,the behaviors that are hard wired in the case of the platyhelminthes are in the case of a conscious organism now stored as re programmable "software", with a fixed overriding process engaged in the function of self-programming the organism, thereby allowing the organism to learn. The organism is able to consciously recognize successful outcome (the dog enjoyed the biscuit) and rapidly learn the behavior which lead to it (the dog had done something that pleased it's master). This confers a huge evolutionarily advantage on the animal – any organism that possesses consciousness will almost inevitably be higher up the food chain than more simple forms of life such as the platyhelminthes for the simple reason that there is an extra order of complexity to their behavior which in a 1 on 1 situation will lead to rapid dominance by the conscious organism. Lower forms of life have therefore been completely out-evolved by conscious life, although are protected in a similar manner to the plant kingdom by their place in the food chain. In a sense, what has happened in the evolutionary stage of conscious life is that a higher level process beneficial to survival (the ability to identify and incorporate new behavioral strategies) which had been previously fulfilled by “evolutionary groping” through generations has been identified and implemented within the organism as a directed system, increasing the chance that new beneficial behaviors are reliably identified and rapidly incorporated into the organism's survival repertoire. The process which provides for identification and learning successful strategies gives the organism a subjective experience of consciousness – the top level object for it's psychological analysis has become it's own reaction with it's environment.

Stage 4:
Self-conscious life emerges - human beings have pre-programmed strategies like the platyhelminthes, we have the ability to reprogram our behaviors on the fly like all higher mammals. But we also have a further higher level psychological process which manages and adds strategy to how and when we reprogram our behaviors. Animals such as dogs do not direct their learning, their strategy for picking up useful new behaviors is as random as the strategy used by plant life for finding nutrients – to happen across them by chance. Human beings on the other hand do apply strategy to their learning - I did not accidentally learn electronic engineering and find it to be an improved means of making a living, rather a higher level strategic process identified a desirable skill-set and directed my learning processes towards it. This creates huge evolutionary advantage – despite the fact that the rates of pay for working as an electronic engineer are considerably higher than what may be obtained running around a field rounding up sheep by barking at them, it will never occur to a dog to start the process of learning because it has no conscious visibility of the eventual benefits. Clearly our self-consciousness puts us at the very top of the food chain, all other life below us now depends upon us recognizing some value that it has to ourselves, if none is seen it is rapidly out-competed and forced into extinction. Our higher level strategic management process is to “programmable behaviors” rather like a dog's “programmable behaviors” are to platyhelminthes “fixed behaviors” – they both give drive, direction and strategy to a process that was previously fulfilled by “evolutionary groping”. The human being subjectively experiences the interaction of his top level control process and his second level control process as an awareness of his own consciousness – self consciousness. The top-level object for our psychological analysis has become our own consciousness.


To re-cap and re-frame in terms of a mathematical progression which will allow us to extrapolate future states of consciousness, platyhelminthes are programmed with behaviors – defined here as the ability to identify and select a strategically advantageous state towards which it should move from it's current state. This amounts to a process driving a “change in state versus time” for the purpose of maintaining the identity (existence) of the organism. Expressed mathematically the total effect is called a first order control system.

A dog does this but also has an extra, higher level process – it has the ability to identify and select (learn) strategically advantageous behaviors it should move towards having in the future. This amounts to a process driving a “change in state of change in state versus time” , for the purpose of maintaining the identity (longer-term existence) of the organism. Expressed mathematically the total effect is called a second order control system.

A human does all this, but also has an extra, higher level process - it has the ability to identify and select strategically advantageous learning it should undertake in the future. This amounts to a process driving a “change in state of change in state of change in state versus time” (think about that last statement for a minute!), for the purpose of maintaining the identity (even longer-term existence) of the organism. Expressed mathematically the total effect is called a third order control system.

If you are having difficulty understanding the idea of control systems, try and understand them thus:

You feel your finger burning, so you:

(a) Rapidly move your hand away from the point of heat. Problem solved, but there is still a risk it might happen again – this is called a first order response, and is the kind of way a platyhelminthe will live out it's entire life.

(b) Instead of the above, you become aware of the fact that the burning is due to someone following you around with a cigarette lighter trying to burn your finger! You react by destroying the lighter. Problem solved, and with no more lighters in the room it won't happen again for a while – this is called a second order response, and is the kind of way that a clever dog will live out it's life.

(c) Instead of the (better, but still not optimum) second order response, you decide to speak to the person in order to attempt to understand why they are trying to burn you. You discover that they are irritated at you for something you have done, and therefore a simple apology from yourself is all that is needed to ensure that the problem stops and will likely never occur again. This is a third order response, and clearly generates the most elegant solution to the problem described. Reacting to problems in this way is something only human beings are fully able to do.

Sometimes in life, a simple first order response is all that is needed to resolve the problem, the more complex the problem is however, the higher order of solution will be required to resolve it conclusively.

Returning to the subject of evolution, it seems that each time a paradigm shift is reached where the evolutionary rate of change accelerates, an attribute of the organism(s) who are experiencing evolutionarily acceleration is that they always possess a yet higher order psychic information control system.

Is this higher order control system the root cause of increased evolvability in the organism, or merely a by-product of a deeper reason? There is good reason to believe that it is the former. It is apparent to anyone who cares to study control theory that a correctly designed higher order control system has the potential to react in a far more decisive manner in it's efforts towards preserving system state when compared to a lower order control system (in our case, 'preserved system state' represents the continued existence of the organism in the face of the need to adapt or react in some especially complex way).

Furthermore, a new higher order control system can be created from the previous lower order system through a process of natural evolution and selection.

The conversion of the organism from an Nth order control system to a N+1th order system can be achieved by adding a new top level control process, whose function it is to modify and adapt the previous top level control process. The required function for this new top level control process is identified in the pattern of experience created by successful “evolutionary groping” through time of the current top level psychic control process.

Therefore, as a new order is added to an organism's control systems, evolution is effectively “discovering“ another facet of it's own action on life, and implementing that knowledge into future generations as a new top level active strategic psychic process.

In other words, the new top level process is in a sense a description of an higher order facet of the overall process of evolution. So that “Evolutionarily groping for new behaviors over many generations” in the case of platyhelminthes evolves to “actively learning new behaviors in a single generation” in the case of the dog's higher order control process.

In a dog eat dog world, it is easy to see the evolutionary pressure which guides the construction of higher and higher order psychic control systems, arriving with some inevitably at the human race. Charles Darwin made the following point: "it's not the strongest nor most intelligent of the species that survive; it is the one most adaptable to change". In other words, adaptability is THE key survival trait. By definition, the organism possessing the highest order control system will always be by far the most adaptable, the forces of evolution will therefore provide a continual pressure on life to build higher and higher order psychic control systems as organisms bid to out-compete each other.

As each new order is added, an organism acquires a “strategic vision” that extends further and further into the future. This enables strategies with large (but long term) payoff to be successfully identified and pursued, it enables consequences of behavior which may have a short-term payoff but a long term danger to be avoided.

It is surely clear that by the action of successively embedding itself as an active psychic process within the organism it is causing to evolve, evolution will necessarily accelerate it's own fulfillment in an exponential fashion that appears to match exactly what we see when looking at the time-line of evolution of life on earth.

The above train of thought leads to the following major conclusion:

Evolution inevitably causes higher and higher order psychic control processes to form, thereby accelerating it's own fulfillment. Using evolution versus time as a frame of reference (arguably the ultimate frame of reference of all organic life, including ourselves), evolution can therefore be said to be progressive and have a direction, and crucially a direction which we can now predict.

This argument is visibly supported by a predictable exponential increase in the rate of change of life on earth.

Extrapolating future consciousness
What is the likelihood of life developing a fourth order psychic model? Given that evolution has already successively developed a first, then a second and with humans a third order system, and that there is obvious evolutionary advantage towards continuing the progression, what reason(s) if any do we have to suppose that it won't happen?

In the case of humans, we are by our planetary changes (for better and for worse) increasing the levels of uncertainty which each of us have to deal with in our futures – “future uncertainty” is always grist for the evolutionary mill, tending to generate evolutionary pressures for yet more complex control networks to form, so we ourselves are likely to be increasing the pressure which may drive our own psychological evolution towards a forth order system.

If all of the above does in fact hold water, we now have at least some sort of basis from which to extrapolate the attributes of the next stage of psychic development:

• Humans to eventually develop a fourth order psychological control system
• A new top level psychological process, responsible for managing and directing the development of our current top-level process (the latter is that which currently gives strategy to our learning and discovery)
• The new process brings an increased sense of meaning and purpose, because that which was previously reached unconsciously by “evolutionary groping” is now integrated into the psyche's active manner of operation
• Total psychological structure has become a bigger, more complete reflection of evolution itself, as another facet of evolution is “self-discovered” and added to our psyche
• Psychological structures we currently regard as “fixed and given” instead become programmable within the lifetime of a single generation
• Changes in our being of a magnitude that we currently associate with evolutionary timescales become possible within the lifespan of a single generation
• Evolutionary rate of change dramatically accelerates – those possessing of the new consciousness to become by far the dominant organism on earth perhaps within a few tens of generations

If our current top level psychic process gives strategy to our learning and personal development, it seems that a higher order process would be concerned with giving us top level strategy regarding the actual direction where increased personal development is ultimately taking us, because this is the function which is needed to add a further order of vision and strategy to our overall behavior. We know when we have achieved successful intellectual development mainly because we then notice the benefits of it, although the process by which we uncover these little moments of personal enlightenment tend to be by blind “evolutionary groping”. A higher level psychic process would give us definitive guidance as to the actual direction which we should be trying to develop ourselves.

Just as the acquisition of a third order process allowed our consciousness to perceive 'self', the acquisition of a new top level process directing our self-consciousness must be subjectively experienced as becoming “conscious of our self-consciousness”, implying an awakening to a much larger total reality we currently cannot experientially “know” but must already exist within.

With humans, our current third order system is capable of giving strategy which extends for the duration of the lifetime of an entire generation (e.g. a young man paying in to a pension fund). Because adding further orders to a control system will increase the timescales over which it is developing strategy, it seems likely that an evolved human possessing a fourth order system would feel a strong conscious connection with events that took place far in the past (potentially long before their birth) and with events that might take place far in the future (potentially long after their death).

Because it seems a new higher order control system is always arrived at as an evolutionarily “conclusion” of the pattern visible in blindly acquired “knowledge” built up over time as a function of evolutionary groping by the old top level control process, if we are to look for sign of a new order of psychic processing emerging, we should be looking for a “sense of process that describes our own selves” within the accumulated output of the conclusions reached by blind “evolutionary groping” of our current top-level psychic processing.

Because our top level psychic processing is effectively manifest as our scientific research and philosophical reflections, the discovery of raw knowledge which are output as a result of it in effect represents the very coal-face of evolution itself.

And in fact, there painted in the coal face of emerging human knowledge, we can see just such a picture of a greater process emerging, and one whose integration as an active psychic process would fully fulfill all of the requirements that are outlined above – namely that of the very process of the evolution of life itself.

It seems at least possible therefore, that what we are talking about is nothing less than a shift in the point of “I” in human consciousness away from the individual organism and instead towards a center which includes the entire process of life on earth changing through time. In other words, evolution becoming conscious of itself, amounting to nothing less than the next “I think, therefore I am” moment for organic life here on our planet, as the colossal supra-personal organism we call “earth” finally stumbles into a state of full experiential self-consciousness inside our own collective heads!

This evolutionary psychic transformation that is seeded from our intellectual output, the hard work of our own third order psychic processes, would fully fulfill the criteria of “an awakening into a much larger total reality we currently cannot experientially know but already exist within”, it would also completely fulfill the criteria of adding an extra order of vision and strategy to our movement through time. For where else are we already going, other than exactly where evolution is already taking us? It also gives us a scope of vision that is supra-personal, over durations of time that extend forwards and backwards beyond the lifespan of a single generation. Finally, as we have seen, “consciousness of evolution” also completely fulfills the condition of a bigger overriding process becoming visible within the accumulated knowledge built up by the “evolutionary groping” of our current top level psychological processing.

It is important to point out that “knowing” about evolution (as most of us already do) is not enough. To be a fully conscious fourth order being, a person would have to internalize this knowledge as an active psychic process, allowing them to have experiential consciousness of the fact that they ARE the totality of life on earth, extending back to the very beginning.

How would this actually feel? Because the new top level control process is adding very long term strategy, it would not be subjectively experienced in immediate, intense and compulsive day to day urges (which are always the product of lower order psychological responses). Rather it would be experienced as a slight sense of detachment from the selfish wants, interests and emotions of the merely self-conscious being, combined with a sense of “bigger picture” which makes the trials, tribulations and even death of the self-conscious being feel somewhat less important. Such people would feel less defensive of their third order intellectual positions and much more able to respect differing opinions in others, often preferring to view a difference of opinion as their own “inability to understand” the other's intellectual position as a result of having different third order psychic processes, rather than taking the stance that the other person has “got it wrong”. The experience of a group of fourth order beings who happen to meet each other might be that they are all individually “looking in at” their separate self-consciousness from the exact same shared central point of consciousness, giving them a deep sense of unspoken mutual connection and trust which they would instantly recognize in one other.

It may be a concern to some that what I am talking about here, this “shared common purpose”, amounts to humanity becoming no more than an ant-hill, resulting in a loss of individuality and resultant lack of creativity in society.

This is because the stifling of creativity and individuality as an outcome of a shared common purpose is exactly how my conclusions will appear to anybody attempting to understand my words from the perspective of a third order consciousness.

Sadly, (although completely obviously to a mathematician!) it is not possible to fit the concept of the fourth order model I am trying to describe into a third order consciousness, so unless somehow by wrestling to understand my words, the transformation in the individual is suddenly made from a third order consciousness to an infant fourth order consciousness, they are doomed to re-map the new fourth order I am trying to describe back on to their third order process when attempting to model and predict it's effects.

And in that context, their conclusions are correct - were we all to share the same common third order process, we would indeed be an ant-hill, a community of psychological clones, stripped of any sense of individuality!

But it cannot be stressed enough, individuality at our current highest psychological level (the third order level) is and always will be ESSENTIAL for the evolution of life - without it, evolution itself would stop. Today, “individuality” of our third order psychic processes are the miners at the coal face of evolution, expanding our science and understanding of the universe by an un-directed process of blind evolutionarily groping as we search for new ideas and understandings.

A new fourth order process does not add some new common purpose that smothers our third order psychic processes and turns us all into psychological clones as in some science fiction horror story, for the very simple reason that the “common purpose” I am talking about is actually already there and has always been there, for every one of the 4 billion years of evolution of life on earth. All I am talking about in this paper is becoming psychologically awakened to it.

It is my personal belief that anyone who chooses not to become conscious at this level dramatically increase the risk (with respect to those that do) that their third order process – mere self consciousness - is progressing down an evolutionary blind alley, dooming their psychological processes to future evolutionary irrelevance, because effectively they are choosing to continue perusing a “blind evolutionarily groping” strategy towards developing their third order process even though we now see in this document that man has access to an improved process, and one which has stood the test of time to the scale of 4 billion years of resounding success!

They also risk failing to spot and exalt key individuality and creativity in their colleagues, because they will be unable to recognize the long term evolutionary strategic benefit of some “crazy sounding” idea someone close to them might have, which has no pay off for perhaps several generations but a colossal pay-off when it does finally mature. Far from stifling individuality and creativity as some might think, possessing a fourth order psychic process imbues the owner with the vision and foresight to ensure they are never guilty of stifling genuine creativity in others.



Evolutionarily outcomes
In what ways would humans benefit from this extra order of psychological processing? The benefits could not already be more apparent! In the impossible event that the entire population of earth to acquire it overnight, a fourth order psychological process giving shared strategic vision as to our evolutionary direction would not merely align the entire world's population to a common purpose, it would be a purpose which would also be aligned with the interests of the biosphere at large on which the future of humans so obviously depends:

• Common vision and resultant complete and total collaboration of the entire planet causing a colossal explosion of global economic power and scientific development
• Reduction in dysfunctional destructive personal behavior (crime, violence, addictive drug use etc)
• Reduction the amount of global starvation and suffering wealthy nations would accept
• No wars
• No unsustainable levels of global resource consumption
• No unsustainable levels of environmental pollution

Of course, fourth order consciousness of every person on the planet will not happen overnight, but I believe the current state of earth is a direct symptom, or “premonition” that humanity is in fact poised this very moment to collectively make the jump.

The huge explosion of knowledge and scientific output that we have witnessed in the the last few hundred years since the start of the aptly-named age of enlightenment indicates evidence of our current perfection and mastery of our third order psychological processes.

But if for a moment we view the entire planet as a single organic being, and ask it to lie on the psychiatrist's couch, we can see very clearly a high level of deluded and self destructive behavior present in it's unified action, represented by the sum of our combined actions.

We as individual third order consciousnesses depend upon the integrity of the biosphere for our very existence, and yet we see ourselves degrading and polluting it in an unsustainable manner – this clearly amounts to the deluded behavior of an intravenous drug addict, who in a sense realizes his own self destructive behavior but lacks the long term strategy and vision (e.g. Higher order psychological model) to realize that an action which may give him instant gratification is poisoning his greater being and therefore counter to his long term interests.

The reflective self-consciousness of men on earth is now at it's absolute peak, and the “destructive behavior” we observe is a direct result of the colossal power our third order consciousness gives us (science, engineering) combined with a total lack of the long-term vision that could ensure this immense power is used solely for our collective long term betterment.

As any engineer will know, when a dynamic has become too complex to model and contain with a control system and therefore has become unstable, he needs to move to a higher order of control to solve the problem.



What are direct examples of fourth order strategy in action?
This paper, my own use of a “sense of process” within evolution to extrapolate future states of consciousness that in turn might have strategic significance for mankind is the first example I have seen of myself using it.



Do we have to stop there?
Some time in the distant future when planet earth has become a “fully self-conscious evolutionary process”, it may start to glimpse the sight of an even higher level process in the data that it collects as an output of the “evolutionary groping” of it's top level fourth order process. If such a higher order exists, it would define a bigger overriding process that the evolution of life itself is engaged in fulfilling, so incredibly, it seems as if a fifth order psychic process would in fact be giving strategic vision of what we might call the “ultimate question” regarding the meaning of life. Of course, this answer is only “ultimate” to us because we are only just starting to glimpse the possibility of a fourth order vision. In much the same way that stone age man was not conscious of the process of evolution, it is totally impossible for our current state of consciousness to apprehend what anything further up might possibly mean :)