Ticket to Heaven Daily Dose

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Sustained use in an indoor environment, and even outdoors, despite gleeful emphasis from public health officials, seems to be of questionable benefit given that they stop spray at best. Indeed, studies that have been performed after the fact indicate no benefits accrued from masking, which means that the extreme measures implemented at schools and hospitals disproportionately harmed children and youth who are not at risk for serious or lethal cases of COVID. The speech impediments, psychological torture, and developmental delays that have cascaded from this obsession are another form of child sacrifice that the West adopted, based entirely on ideas derived from thin simplifications and illiteracy.

The most controversial aspect of the pandemic response, without question, has been the vaccines developed by pharmaceutical companies during Operation Warp Speed. These were flatly and loudly refused by about twenty percent of the North American public, and since the introduction of booster rounds, the general population seems to have lost interest as well. While the mainstream has not questioned the safety or efficacy of the warp speed vaccines, serious allegations of crimes against humanity have been levelled by some Western factions, with politicians making reference to the Nuremberg Code, commissioning investigations into the ethicality of the vaccine, and openly condemning Western leaders like Justin Trudeau for heavy-handed responses to vaccine-related protests.

Furthermore, before and during the deployment of the vaccine, doctors and scientists from around the world called its efficacy and safety into question, including one of the original contributors of mRNA technology, one of the world’s most-published cardiologists, and doctors, nurses, embalmers, and other front-line workers concerned with the things they saw following the introduction of the vaccine into the arms of the public.

The parallel realities occupied by people who follow the mainstream guidance and those who are listening to alternative sources has created some of the starkest political divisions in the West. It has also highlighted the hidden role that industrial science, as opposed to traditional science, plays in Western life, as the weight of the institutionalized and government-funded “experts” was set against folkloric and peer-reviewed networks represented by the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, the members of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and the Canadian Covid Care Alliance, and notable dissenters like Dr. Peter McCullogh, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and even the Nobel Laureate Satoshi Ōmura.

Much like Robert Spitzer altered the course of the West’s metaphysics by elegantly defining mental disorder in a way that conveniently excluded homosexuals, and much like sexism and racism were redefined by Marxists to include notions of systemic power, and much like woman was recently redefined to include transgender women who self-identify as such, the word “vaccine” was redefined by the USA’s Center for Disease Control to mean “protection” instead of “immunity” in September 2021 – shortly before the most aggressive mandates began. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 86-87)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

This kind of language game is just one example of thousands of subtle redefinitions, incomplete perspectives, and half-truths that have been sold to the public under the guise of science to justify the injections. Zero sustained debates have taken place between dissenting thinkers and mainstream experts, with one prominent vaccine advocate refusing to speak to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the topic on Joe Rogan’s podcast, even with social media influencers putting up over a million dollars for a charity of his choice.

Unfortunately, the journalists responsible for parsing out these truths to the public were either corrupted by Marxist ideas and unwilling to question their own leaders, or scientifically illiterate and had to rely on systemic experts, or both. The public that relies on them, in turn, received anemic analyses of the conversations surrounding the vaccines and remain unaware of many of the genuine controversies that exist about their implementation. Many of the front-line doctors and nurses, particularly in single-payer systems like Canada where there is no option to enter private practice, were browbeat into compliance without the necessary discussions about ethics and consent that are standard in medical practice.

Although it cannot definitively be said that the vaccine was a population control measure, as some of the hardened conspiracy theorists have suggested, it is not clear that the mRNA project has been a net benefit to the West, nor is it clear that ethical procedures were followed during this very expensive and expansive experiment.

Whistleblowers from the clinical trials of the vaccines, which were accelerated from a decade-long process to three months, have revealed ethical and reporting issues with the approval process. Maddie de Garay, a child who was crippled by her side effects seems to have been listed as having “gastrointestinal distress” by Pfizer, a classic pharmaceutical misdirection. Despite repeated assertions that vaccine side effects are rare and minor, a German insurance company’s data suggests that there are significant reporting issues, and national data from Denmark further suggests that the vaccines may even be a net harm. While professionals sound alarms about their findings and are ignored by journalists in favor of the more “authoritative” Western experts, it is becoming starkly obvious to even the most committed modernists that these new “vaccines” do not confer long-lasting immunity, only limited-time protection, something even admitted by vaccine mogul Bill Gates in a 2023 interview. Most have since declined further boosters.

The levels of systemic aggression that were required to pull off these tremendous measures remain invisible to many Westerners, whose experiences of the pandemic were largely focused on economic, psychological, and even physical survival. However, this author, concerned with the fact that Ontario’s data suggested that the chance of myocarditis in teenaged boys was nearly double the chance of death from COVID-19, found himself answering the door to mental health teams and armed police officers in response to questions to public health authorities on the matter. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 87-88)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

After a hunger strike yielded a meeting with an elusive hospital bioethicist, the author discovered his concerns were “powerful” but that the situation involved tremendous bureaucratic pressures. This, in combination with the dozens of pages of documented failure to provide further information upon request, may well constitute a violation of Ontario’s informed consent legislation as well as established medical ethics in the province. However, the fact that there is only one way to practice medicine in Canada, and that way is through government-backed and government-funded institutions, leaves many professionals caught between their desire to help and the harmful realities of the high modernist policies they comply with.

The high modernist ideas and values that drove the West’s COVID-19 response are outlined in a publicly-available book by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, who enjoys close relationships with many of the most aggressive pandemic bureaucrats – Jacinda Ahern of New Zealand, Justin Trudeau of Canada, and Emmanuel Macron of France. In his book, ominously called The Great Reset, Schwab essentially proposes taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to instantiate a form of techno-communism on a global scale.

Schwab’s ideology, broadly speaking, is predicated on three core pillars. The first is a recognition that industrial society has had many negative impacts on the natural world as well as the socio-economic situations of many countries. The second is a high modernist assumption that a better-managed and more efficient society can overcome its own structural flaws and achieve sustainability. The third, final, and most Machiavellian pillar is a belief that a global emergency like a pandemic represents the perfect opportunity to make large-scale societal changes in service of this vision.

Although this new global system, which is already being assembled before the eyes of a crisis-weary populace, will never be called communism, it will have all the salient features of the modern Chinese iteration. Specifically, this will include strict ideological conformity, extensive government interference in economic affairs, the concentration of wealth and power into a selective elite, and significantly reduced personal freedoms facilitated by surveillance technology. Elements of this can be seen in the differential treatment for legislators and elites, who enjoy private jet flights to environmental conferences where they eat the finest foods and discuss the necessities of introducing crickets and soy into the diet of the masses. The many pictures of politicians enjoying mask-free social lives while their assistants remain muzzled are similar testaments to the kind of caste system that has assembled itself as a result of systemic policies and Marxist ideas. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 89)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

The next step for the World Economic Forum, and for many Western countries, is the curtailment of personal freedoms in the name of environmental sustainability. Now that large sections of Europeans and North Americans have been conditioned into radical compliance on account of one emergency, the thinking seems to be that the new emergency measures, which already include restrictions on farming in Canada and the Netherlands, will be accepted without sufficient protest. Alongside the reduction of agricultural activity – especially meat production – insect matter is now being introduced to children in schools, as supplements in grocery items, and in other food-like settings. Unfortunately, a deeper investigation of the issue of eating bugs reveals that it comes with many health issues and that having a few backyard chickens would be superior.

Most unfortunately, the “far-right” claim that Marxist elites dream of a society with an underclass who lives in pods, eats bugs, and is watched over by sophisticated technological systems is largely coming true. Schwab’s entire endeavor threatens to be a total usurpation of Western metaphysics, with false narratives about environmental sustainability, nutrition, human nature, and public health being wielded as holy scripture against an undereducated and overmanaged population. Without the inquiry skills, the courage, and the mentorship to research these matters for themselves and realize that the truth is more nuanced than longstanding narratives, most people have no chance – and the elites likely know it.

As can be seen, upon a rigorous examination, modern society proves to be every bit as religious as Europe under the Catholic Church. The modern Western mind, colonized beyond belief, has been raised in an educational and home environment marked by emotional neglect, a lack of true critical thinking, and a crushing lack of autonomy. Fed a steady stream of pablum from mainstream news and other official sources, much of it demonstrably false, biased, or epistemically questionable, large swathes of society live in a dream reinforced by priest-like experts and an incomprehensible mountain of academic and pseudo-academic literature backing their claims.

Nietzsche’s predictions, unfortunately, have come true, as have Maslow’s concerns about the lack of values in human-focused fields like psychology. The Christian ideal, flawed as it was, gave way to the pleasure-pain principle writ large across society, with statues and odes to suffering now ubiquitous across leftist-dominated campuses, the pursuit of happiness exploited to justify unscientific notions about gender and sexuality, obesity and drug epidemics across several Western demographics, and general civil unrest marked by unprecedented levels of violence in many North American cities.

Although a Westerner familiar with media ecology and conspiracy theories may point to the unrelenting messages about consumption, credential acquisition, and traditional success as a corruption of what people want, the truth is that the rot in Western values lies much deeper. As might be said by dissident psychiatrist Alone, the correction that must be made is in how the wanting is done, which is a function of human self-conception and public understanding of what makes humans healthy and happy. Rooting the problem in metaphysics will serve to illuminate the true challenges facing Nietzsche’s hypothetical overman, as well as the nihilistic and decadent society “he” is meant to represent. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 89-90)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Aside from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the most famous critics of the Soviet system was Ayn Rand, who emigrated to America in the early twentieth century and became one of the most influential philosophers of her generation. One of the focuses of her work, which she saw as a continuation of the Romantic tradition, emphasized humankind’s free will and our ability to choose values, to work towards them, and to gain satisfaction from achieving those goals. The position that she took in her opus, which seemed bombastic or exaggerated to many until recently, was that anybody who even remotely espoused leftist and collectivist ideals was a villainous looter who refused to take part in the rational process of valuation and productive labor.

The heart of the issue, to Rand, was a metaphysical and ethical one. The looters in her stories wanted to deny reality and expected others to pick up the tab – much like the collectivist neo-Marxists are expecting society to do now. By denying reality, Rand said that they were attempting to steal from other people and exploit their good faith. The righteous person, in Rand’s philosophical framework, can be described as a trader, an inventor, a laborer, an artist, and an intellectual to whatever degree they are able – vocations that are often idealized or featured in her work.

Additionally, Rand’s diagnosis of Marxists remains that they were afraid of being individuals, which caused them to conform radically to outlandish and irresponsible ideas. Indeed, in the overstructured and colonized environment many Western children inhabit, lacking sufficient developmental supports in childhood and the kinds of life coaching only available to wealthy elites, it can be difficult to explore one’s own values, develop a consistent philosophy by which to live life, and develop a plan to work towards those goals and values.

Underlying Rand’s ideas is a belief in a definite and knowable reality, a product of the Enlightenment and scientific project she championed in her work. This stood in stark contrast to the postmodernist position, which holds that reality is socially constructed and nobody can ever know anything objectively. In such a subjective and quicksilver-like world, one’s ability to get their needs met is not based on productive labor, which would implicitly require interactions with reality and a consistent philosophy to support them, but rather one’s ability to manipulate others into meeting their needs.

This is the fundamental mindset behind Marxism, which rejects the outright competition of the free market and replaces it with social competition based on conformity to increasingly complexified values. This is also the key driver behind the continual expansion of the queer demographic to include disturbingly specific sub-identities such as the ampukodo, someone who believes they are a child amputee. Failure to adhere to social conventions when addressing such demographics results in expulsion from the group, akin to the Soviet gulag treatment or the public confessions favored by the Chinese communists. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 91)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Thus, as Rand laid out in Atlas Shrugged in great detail, the honest producers of society are manipulated by shame and Nietzschean slave morality values into complying with people whose only way of providing for themselves is through this manipulation. Her proposed solution, a strike, would force everyone to face reality without the benefit of their privileged delusions. Elements of this can already be seen in Western society, as evidenced by noticeable drops in North American military recruitment, a lack of people willing to work minimum-wage jobs, and the growing popularity of alternative working arrangements, entrepreneurial activity, and homesteading lifestyles.

Although the Hunger Games story has reached hundreds of millions globally, many of whom certainly enjoyed it, the buzz over a female action protagonist seems to have eclipsed the fact that the Capitol, a decadent utopia that exists on the backs of the other districts, and which engages in televised child sacrifice on a regular basis to satisfy their cultural idols, is much more representative of the modern Westerner than it would be of the right-wing fascists many nations fret over.

Indeed, the utopian visions characteristic of the West before the World Wars has been subverted by neo-Marxist intellectuals, maniac psychologists, and power-hungry elites who have corrupted human nature, stunted intellectual development, encouraged the development of decadent value structures, abandoned history, and have proven themselves willing to even mutilate children and force-medicate adults.

Even as the West takes its final steps to emulate China’s dedication to electronic surveillance and population control, a measure of solace can be found in the fact that these ideologies, isms, idols, and other false narratives are inherently unsustainable. For example, a small cadre of scientists and activists have kept track of all relevant publications on homosexuality and kept them compiled on hidden corners of the internet – a single look at this mountain of evidence, or even a chance viewing of a video on YouTube, is enough to collapse the fifty years of false homosexual narratives in minutes.

Even the vaccine narratives that have been relentlessly pushed by all levels of government as well as their willing idiots in the media are proving to be unsustainable, as the majority of people in North America are declining further boosters. This happened within years.

Aside from his attacks on traditional European values, Nietzsche lamented the rational structures of Western society and longed for a return to Dionysian, or intuitive, ways of living. Although this must be weighted against the obvious need to be connected to reality and the value of rational inquiry, the loss of the West’s intuitive capacities is of significant interest. All too often, people are encouraged to “be rational” and to mistrust their intuition, which, as history demonstrates, is often the very capacity they need to be able to escape the high modernist dream. Indeed, the artists and visionaries of Western society have long been the ones to criticize it most thoroughly. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 91-92)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

George Carlin’s social commentary is an example, as is The Matrix, dystopian novels like Brave New World and 1984, and even more contemporary pieces such as Ben Stiller’s surprisingly thoughtful The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

If society were to listen to George Carlin, rather than laugh at him, the end result would likely be a strike or an uprising of some kind. Yet, although his messages and comedy are wildly popular in North America, or at least were at one time, nothing has changed. Why is this the case?

The problem, again, is with metaphysics, which determine values, which in turn determine behavior. If the behavior has not changed, it is because the values have not changed – and if the values have not changed, it means that the person’s understanding of reality has not been sufficiently altered. Given that a great deal of time and energy has been spent by established interests to corrupt the West’s understanding of human nature, it seems most helpful to begin there.

As Abraham Maslow lamented in his 1968 memorandum, too much time has been spent focusing on the negative aspects of the human experience – the Christian original sin, the psychoanalytic trauma – rather than on the positive aspects and the potentialities. Thus, in order to begin to address the damage that has been done by the Western project, it becomes necessary to reconstruct a new psychology from first principles in the hard sciences, expand that understanding to group and social dynamics, and finally investigate some of the fundamental claims made by evolutionary scientists to determine what is true about the species and the universe.

By developing a more correct understanding of human nature and its implications in this way, the West can begin to heal its metaphysical corruption, develop a value system that is not decadent and is finally in line with reality, and begin to develop the behaviors and systems needed to establish a sustainable utopia. As has been suggested throughout popular culture, perhaps most famously Disney’s The Lion King, once we remember who we are, we will be able to step into our full potential and become everything that we could be. Indeed, everything that the sun touches is ours. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 92-93)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

“We are called to become more and more human; we must discover the freedom to go beyond limits imposed on us by our world and seek fulfillment.

In the beginning we are what we are given. By midlife, when we have finally learned to stand on our own two feet, we learn that to complete our lives, we are called to give to others so that when we leave this world, we can be what we have given.

Death, from this perspective, can be made our final gift. We believe it daily, but is it not possible, that by living our lives, we create something fit to add to the store from which we came?

… our whole duty may to clarify and increase what we are, to make our consciousness a finer quality. The effort of one’s entire life would be needed to return laden to our source.”

(Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 96)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

In much the same way that a headstrong teenager might learn tough lessons in a schoolyard brawl, so too will Western civilization’s utopian attempts continue to be frustrated by reality if it does not first develop a robust understanding of human nature. Indeed, hidden beneath the metaphysics of Western societies lies an incomplete and shallow understanding of human psychology, which not only led to the many catastrophic failures of communism in the twentieth century, but have proven to be a demon seed planted just underneath the Declaration of Independence’s pursuit of happiness.

Thankfully, as the result of tremendous advances in physics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and some fields of psychology, it is possible to ground the complexities of human mental activity in the hard sciences, extrapolate those insights to social activity, and therefore develop a comprehensive and robust framework of boundaries to guide the rebirth of Western civilization. Indeed, by understanding human nature through the laws of physics and information flow, it becomes possible to develop insights about how to sustainably optimize an individual human’s life.

From a scientific perspective, beginning with the laws of physics is considered the strongest approach for theoretical work, as these laws are widely accepted to constrain all other branches of science such as chemistry, geology, and biology. This means such an approach is ideal for handling fields like psychology and sociology, which blend subjective and objective methods in a warped social context and become far removed from reality as a result.

“[We must] become who we are - human beings who are new, unique ... who give themselves laws, who create themselves! To that end we must become the best students and discoverers of everything lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order become creators in this sense ... So, long live physics!”

Although a physics-based approach is the strongest, it is also the most unforgiving – for example, a review of the universe’s laws may reveal that some much-loved aspects of Western civilization, such as various freedoms considered sacrosanct by post-Renaissance liberalism, may not be tenable for individuals or sustainable in groups. Indeed, the notion that there might be existential constraints on human power and freedom, despite our incredible technological advances, could be a bitter pill to swallow for many but a necessary medicine if the West is to survive.

It is common in Western thought to proceed directly from metaphysics, or what is, to ethics, or what ought to be done. However, an underappreciated-but-necessary waypoint along this path is the domain of aesthetics, which concerns not just the appreciation of artistic activity, but the subjective choice of values that underlies whether something is good or bad; beautiful or not beautiful. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 97)

[Nachus]

                                                                                                                          

  Kol hakavod on these interesting, well
  thought out posts reflecting a conside-
  arable level of gravitas and “intelligentsia!”
   


 

[Hrvatski Noahid]

                                                                                                                         

  Kol hakavod on these interesting, well
  thought out posts reflecting a conside-
  arable level of gravitas and “intelligentsia!”
   

The book is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Ticket-Heaven-Destruction-Reclamation-Realization/dp/B0CC7H2MNL

[Hrvatski Noahid]

While aesthetic considerations are rarely relevant when discussing the mating habits of jungle frogs or mathematical theory, they do become important in matters of human life.

Although this is something that many modern people fail to fully appreciate, there has long been such a concept of a beautiful life or a life well lived, which lie somewhat outside of the domain of ethics and concerns the subjective aesthetic appreciations of what makes life enjoyable, worthwhile, joyful, and productive. Because opinions on such matters are intensely personal, they can only be understood as aesthetic judgements and not ethical ones.

It could be said that proceeding directly from metaphysics to ethics, as many Western philosophers and arts students might be predisposed to do, is one of the root causes of Vervaeke’s so-called meaning crisis. A high modernist overfocus on what ought to be done neglected the very important discussions of what ought to be valued, with the idols of growth and progress becoming the default Western values following the Industrial Revolution and the fall of Christian metaphysics.

This means that in addition to discovering behavioral constraints that may be yielded by this process, it is also possible that the realities of human nature may imply or necessitate the existence of certain aesthetic values – things that humans ought to value for purposes of survival and flourishing. While such concerns have historically been the domain of philosophy, an evidence-based approach that grounds abstract moral ideas in the realities of human life should identify several important items that contribute to our understanding of these matters.

Getting to the beauty of human life is precisely the kind of work that Abraham Maslow, the founder of third-force psychology, was primarily concerned with. Indeed, it was the kind of research work that he implored his colleagues to support and the topics that he studied most towards the end of his career, most famously leading to the concept of self actualization. The problems with incorporating moral ideas into psychology and the sciences, however, are many, not least of which is the fact that the scientific process is not designed to answer questions about values. This can be seen by the gain-of-function research in Wuhan which seems to have sparked a global health emergency or the systematic destruction of children by the modern medical system.

Indeed, whereas questions of values are rarely relevant in the affairs of chemists or geologists, the intersection of the scientific method, human needs, and human rights has been an extremely problematic area for both researchers and practitioners in psychology. Given the incredible diversity of behaviors, customs, beliefs, thinking patterns, and personalities in homo sapiens, the obvious fact that many different kinds of cultures and societies have achieved success, and tireless activism from certain minorities seeking to legitimize their conditions, the trend has been towards a pluralistic stance of non-judgementalism. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 97-98)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Despite the positions taken by the mainstream, however, Maslow’s passionate advocacy for the inseparability of values and human research can be corroborated by a very simple appeal to the existence of the laws of physics themselves – revealing yet another tremendous oversight in modern psychology. Consider, for example, that the universe exists and is governed by a set of laws, such as gravity and electromagnetism. Further consider that these laws, when applied to biological systems, seem to cause some organisms to thrive and others to perish. This means that in any given situation, a human being is faced with a range of choices that could be ranked by their contribution to the human’s environmental fitness, ability to reproduce, or even ability to survive.

If taken to its logical extreme, this would mean that there are “better” and “worse” courses of action, in terms of acting according to the laws of the universe or against them. It would also imply that there are “superior” ways of living that correspond with natural laws, and moreover that every action a human being takes either corresponds to these ways of living, and therefore reality, or is therefore divorced from them. This would be the case regardless of the desires, wishes, or beliefs of the organism, a conclusion stands in stark contrast to the neo-Marxists who claim that reality is socially constructed and therefore malleable.

Although simple thought experiment does not provide a “proof” for any specific ethical system, it does hint at the possibility for the existence of such a system. This is an early indication that Abraham Maslow’s concern with values was not misplaced, and moreover that a careful analysis of the universe’s functioning could lead to the elucidation of values conducive to human flourishing.

The best-case scenario, of course, is that not only can the metaphysics and aesthetics of human nature be deduced with a consilience-based approach, but that the principles discovered facilitate joy and happiness in addition to mere survival. Indeed, given the last two hundred years of Western history, it would be comforting to look deep into human nature and discover something that is truly beautiful.

Although this approach will be laborious, lengthy, and involves a kaleidoscope of references to different disciplines, events, and theories, as can be seen it yields rapid and powerful insights – such as the potential existence of “superior” behaviors and societal structures. In much the same way, it can yield an understanding of what human nature is like, in the most general sense, and how people grow and develop throughout their lives. Of particular interest will be the fundamental mechanisms that underlie mental activity, as they will dictate the parameters of downstream phenomena like trauma and creativity.

Indeed, by beginning with the most basic and fundamental principles in physics and introducing elements of greater complexity thereafter, it becomes much easier to identify general mechanisms that govern individual psychology and group behavior. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 99)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

As opposed to experimental approaches popular in present times, where psychologists search for trends in data obtained from test subjects, moving from the fundamental principles of physics to known complexities of human behavior facilitates the identification of deeper and more obscure forces that would elude the kinds of hyper-focused studies being funded today.

A tangible example of these kinds of “hidden laws” of the universe, at least pertaining to their expression in human contexts, is economics and free market theory. As opposed to communist systems, where bureaucrats vainly attempt to defy computational limits by controlling every aspect of the economy, Adam Smith’s concept of the “invisible hand” of the free market is the philosophical expression of a distributed computation system where everyone makes their own choices.

The effects of Smith’s invisible hand are said to be the sum of the effects of individual choices, like internet sensations Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black, made famous by millions of independent viewing choices and peer-to-peer sharing actions that added up quickly. Although the teenagers taking part in the elevation of these viral sensations may have never heard of Adam Smith, the concepts, forces, and “laws” at work in social situations apply to not only their group behavior, but the factors driving their individual choices as well.

In a world where science and technology are unimaginably advanced, it can be difficult to imagine that there may be “laws of the universe” that remain undiscovered by scientists. Yet, even physics, the most venerable of the sciences, continues to push the boundaries of knowledge with high-speed particle colliders and high-powered telescopes, the findings from which have driven new discoveries in theoretical physics and cosmology.

This means there is no reason why the rest of the sciences, as well as the social sciences and the humanities, could not make similar strides. Furthermore, it is not inconceivable that the kinds of unorthodox consiliences developed by reconciling these disparate fields are themselves innovations, at least in the sense of settling on laws and principles that could be considered as inviolable as Newton’s laws of motion. When new connections are made in this way, the true value can be found in the newly-appreciated relationships between the disciplines at hand, and not necessarily within any one field.

As it turns out, a definition of life that is grounded in physical laws was a topic of great interest among many physicists before the popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis. Polymathic scientists like Hermann von Helmholtz in the nineteenth century, and later Erwin Schrödinger in the twentieth, sought to ground striking discoveries made in biology within the domain of physics, chemistry, and other more established sciences. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 99-100)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Their efforts, along with the hard work of other researchers like Karl J. Friston and Jordan B. Peterson, will form the foundations of a consilience-based paradigm in the social sciences and the beginning strokes of a sustainable utopian blueprint.

Once the existence of the universe and a set of laws that governs its activities have been accepted, attention can be devoted to one of the most enduring human preoccupations – the passage of time, which was likely the inspiration for tools like the prehistoric Ishango Bone and is still considered one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of physics. Indeed, the time has proven to be one of the most fundamental and indescribable aspects of our universe, and the fact that living creatures only have a limited amount of it has been the cause of great concern and study throughout the ages.

Although many animals will follow seasonal migration patterns and have been generally observed to have some sense of time, only humans have developed mechanisms for tracking time, only humans have developed explicit schedules for how their days will be structured, and only humans take great care in marking beginnings and conclusions. From new year celebrations to elaborate burial and grieving rituals, and from calendars to clocks, humans very much live in a world of time, especially since industrialization. Indeed, the introduction of global time zones around the time of the First World War, and quartz oscillator clocks installed at the United States Bureau of Standards in 1929, proved to be hidden systemic influences that standardized the world.

But what is time? The physicists, and scientists more generally, would describe time as an independent variable by which everything else is measured. Given the unique properties of time, especially its predictable and inexorable progression “forward”, it serves as the perfect foundation by which to measure changes in physical systems on Earth and in the skies. Indeed, there are cause-and-effect relationships between past states of systems and present states – for example, a teacup shatters on a concrete floor because it was dropped by accident, and it was the interaction between the floor and the teacup that caused the shattering – preceded by the gravitational acceleration between the teacup and Earth.

An example of these changes happening in a living context would be the growing seasons in agriculture, where light energy and chemicals are photosynthesized into plant matter – a slow but beautiful process. These mechanisms, although similar in many ways to non-living processes like erosion and gravity, represent a very different kind of cause-and-effect relationship that cascades into new life over time. This general relationship between past organisms and their descendants is rather special in that Earth is the only planet in the known universe to have it, a source of great wonder and speculation since our species gained interstellar awareness. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 100-102)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Before progressing to matters of the mind, a fundamental definition must be developed for this phenomenon known broadly as “life”. Intuitively and rationally, it can be surmised that there is something different between a human being and a table, or a human being and a rock, and that human beings share some similarities with dogs, trees, and shrimp. But what is the common element that differentiates “living” beings from “non-living” or “inanimate” objects?

Put generally, life can be defined as a process that moves something towards sophistication and utility over time. Indeed, the processes we describe as evolution take existing life forms, combine them with environmental inputs, and create new life forms that are better suited to respond to those environmental inputs. One way that scientists describe living beings is by calling them self-organizing, which means that within the living being’s own system, matter and energy are organized in particular ways to further the survival and replication of the organism. Additionally, although individual organisms may stop engaging in these processes – what we call “dying” – they can propagate their genetic code to future generations through reproductive mechanisms. This, notably, is something that rocks, stars, and other objects classified as non-living cannot do.

This seemingly trivial detail is not only one of the greatest mysteries of the sciences, given that the rest of the universe seems to tend towards disorder, but the basis of a more coherent view of psychological phenomena. Indeed, it can be said that in a very general and abstract way, the process we call “life” is involved in selectively propagating certain kinds of matter forward through time and the generations.

While this certainly includes genetic material, the traditional concern of evolutionary biologists, evolution has also come to encompass things like language and culture, which are typically viewed as the concern of the social sciences. However, by reconciling these different types of ordered matter under the singular concept of information, generally defined as ordered matter, it is possible to not only develop a coherent view of life but move towards an understanding of the function and form of human consciousness.

From the perspective of traditional biology, each living creature is said to have a genotype, or a specific set of attributes determined by the genetic information it inherits. Following Darwin’s initial publications, the work of Gregor Mendel and other early geneticists revealed that variation and selection mechanisms provided the “rules” by which this information is passed forward through the generations, which was the focus of biologists for decades until the discovery of DNA.

However, as researchers in other spheres of knowledge began to integrate these new concepts into their own paradigms, the concern of evolutionary biology progressively expanded. In addition to the genotype, or the genetic attributes of an organism, it was understood that organisms also had phenotypes, which encompassed environmental impacts, learned behaviors, and other elements of life relevant to survival and replication but largely independent of genetics. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 102-103)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Without doubt, the most famous addition to the West’s understanding of the role of non-genetic information in evolution is Richard Dawkins’ concept of the meme, a unit of information that is replicated and propagated much like a gene. Whereas genetic information is stored in cells, however, memes are comprised of mental information stored in the brain and are selected for reproduction based on their contribution to the survival of the organism.

A tangible example of a meme would be “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, which is not only a simple rhyme that replicates easily, but an extremely sophisticated piece of dietary advice that support the survival and genetic replication of human life. More complicated memes include belief systems like Christianity, centered around the memes of sin, intercession, and indiscriminate neighbor-love, or the Western notions of “free speech” and “free trade”. All of these memes have both obvious and subtle effects on human social systems and the evolutionary outcomes of the people that are a part of them.

Although Dawkins’ concept of the meme has proven to be extremely useful and helpful when considering human evolutionary contexts, more recent work by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb revisited this concept and more clearly defined the kinds of information at work in evolutionary processes. They proposed that evolution was driven by genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic inheritance processes, which can be understood as different kinds of information stored in genes and brain cells.

Indeed, much like a computer’s hard drive can be said to hold both raw data and software made of that raw data, the human brain is the storehouse for memes like behaviors, language, and culture, all of which support or hinder survival and replication. Additionally, just as physical organisms seem to compete over scarce resources, with the strongest prevailing, the best ideas seem to be propagated to the next generation through childrearing and education. Over several generations, the societies that adopt more workable ideas will tend to prosper, as was the case for much of America’s history. On the other hand, groups that adopt decadent or unrealistic metaphysics, such as Soviet economics or statue worship, tend to crumble and fade away.

Much like an organism requires food to support its metabolic processes, living creatures, especially human beings, require information from their environment as a necessity of survival. The uncertain and changing conditions faced by most people, animals, and plants means that even the most basic of organisms requires a way to detect and avoid unfavorable outcomes while pursuing positive outcomes. Whether this is something as simple as the flagellum on prokaryotes to the sophisticated eyes of eagles, living things are in a constant state of exchange with their environment – not only in terms of nutrients, but also in terms of valuable information. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 104)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Whereas most animals, plants, and other organisms seem to be content with basic perception and communication, human beings have an extraordinary appetite for all kinds of information, from sitcom trivia to the secrets of the universe. However, up until the invention of writing thousands of years ago in the ancient Near East, the sum total of everything human beings knew was almost entirely in the heads of the humans themselves. These storage limitations meant that much of what prehistoric peoples contained within the collective was largely for survival purposes, with many memes like stories, songs, or dramatizations serving both practical and aesthetic needs.

Once writing was invented, first on clay tablets, the information that humans could store, retrieve, and create grew in scope and complexity. Things such as records of transactions or taxes could now be “remembered”, facilitating new kinds of economies and organization. The scroll and codex, and later the book, made it possible to faithfully store entire religious texts like the Jewish Torah or the Buddhist Pali Canon, propagating them through time. Today, the advanced storage technologies available, such as computer hard drives, as well as the proliferation of sensors, have made information as much of a commodity as wheat or barley – and, in some cases, as or more valuable.

Uniquely within Earth’s many biospheres, the phenotype of homo sapiens includes not only genetic information propagated through reproduction and selection, but also memes that exist in the minds of human beings and are propagated through communication and popularity selection. Storing and sharing elements of this phenotype, especially in the age of server warehouses and cryptocurrency mining, has not only become more integral to our functioning as a society, but also occupies a larger share of human effort and energy expenditure than ever before.

Particularly as algorithms and artificial intelligences begin to perform more data processing work on behalf of humans, the phenotype of the species is progressing towards profound complexity very quickly. Instead of being occupied with survival-oriented concerns, which were “simple” enough to be mastered by even an illiterate caveperson, modern humans now spend most of their days swimming in a veritable sea of information, largely on social media and other websites.

This information is processed, regurgitated, remixed, riffed on, and sent back into the sea, where a combination of human signalling activity such as “likes”, as well as algorithms trained to detect patterns in those activities, determines the reach of the idea. To even engage with the information available online requires at least a decade of education in linguistic and digital literacy, a far cry from the cuneiform cattle counts of Mesopotamia or the campfire stories of prehistoric tribes.

It could be very easily argued that much of this activity is useless or wasteful, especially as the electricity requirements of digital communications technology continue to rise. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 105)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

However, recent developments in neuroscience indicate that the human tendency towards inexhaustible curiosity, and therefore the need for information, is not only one of the defining features of the species, but the fundamental process of human consciousness and the reason for our species’ dominance in almost every environment on Earth. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 105-106)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

With the genetic and memetic mechanisms of human reproduction contextualized within physics, it is now possible to further examine the role of information in the processes of life. Consider, as was previously mentioned, that life processes tend towards complexity and specificity, whereas the rest of the universe tends towards disorder. Indeed, proponents of evolutionary theories are known for their expansive view of life on Earth, which scientists think began with simpler life forms and moved towards more sophisticated organisms over millions of years.

Given that neuroscience and psychology are themselves subsets of the more expansive domain of biology, it would stand to reason that not only would we expect to see a trend towards genetic complexity, but also a trend towards psychological sophistication. To some degree, this would seem to be the case given the progression of world history from small tribal groups to international alliances of hundreds of millions of people. However, before moving immediately to issues of meme propagation, one must first consider how the laws of physics might shape the fundamental mechanisms that guide the processes of human thought.

Karl J. Friston is a member of the Royal Society, a recipient of the Golden Brain Award, and hailed by some as the “genius neuroscientist” whose theories may transform artificial intelligence. Among his many achievements is the provocative, insightful, and surprisingly simple Free Energy Principle, which Friston has proposed as a kind of unified brain theory. Despite the exciting potential of his ideas, they are notorious for their complexity, difficult mathematical style, and almost-tautological nature, and are also infamous for being understood only by Friston himself and perhaps some other select few around the world:

“At Columbia’s psychiatry department, I recently led a journal club for 15 PET and fMRI researchers, PhDs and MDs all, with well over $10 million in NIH grants between us, and we tried to understand Friston’s 2010 Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper – for an hour and a half. There was a lot of mathematical knowledge in the room: three statisticians, two physicists, a physical chemist, a nuclear physicist, and a large group of neuroimagers – but apparently we didn’t have what it took. I met with a Princeton physicist, a Stanford neurophysiologist, a Cold Springs Harbor neurobiologist to discuss the paper. Again blanks, one and all.” (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 107)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Although there are many complexities to Friston’s theories, one of his key observations is that biological systems, and neurological systems like the human brain, seem to violate the fluctuation theorem – a physics term for a tendency towards complexity instead of disorder, as would be suggested by entropy, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Precisely how the brain does this, however, is a matter still debated by philosophers, physicists, and neuroscientists.

Much in the same way that Rene Descartes’ cogito ergo sum postulated that the only thing we can be totally sure of is that we think and therefore exist, Friston’s Free Energy Principle begins with the problem that the brain is a separate system from the world – at least to some extent. Put more simply, there is information that exists “out there” in the world, as well as information contained within the brain’s memory, which remain separate from each other. The senses, which provide information about the external world to the brain by way of electrical signals, are the intermediary by which the brain updates its understanding of what is happening “out there”.

Although some lazy philosophers assert that nothing can be known outside of one’s own mind, physicists and mathematicians represent the brain-environment-senses system using a concept called the Markov Blanket. This concept, although considered tautological by some and a sneaky trick by others, is simply a mathematical formulation of the underlying physical realities governing the brain that also reconciles with common sense. The implications of the Markov Blanket, however, suggest that the brain must be involved in some kind of iterative or cyclical process to match its impression of the external world with the information it gets from its senses. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 107-108)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Although this arrangement is theoretically elegant, some difficulties arise when applying it to real-world systems like brains and computers, as they have limited memory and limited time to process information. Even with an estimated processing power of trillions of calculations per second, the human brain faces constraints on its capacities that only allow it to process a fraction of what is actually happening in an environment. Additionally, Friston’s Free Energy Principle would imply that the brain is making vastly complex comparisons between its memory and the world at every second. While this is technically true, this principle faces similar mathematical constraints in real-world scenarios, as there are only so many calories that can be burned at one time.

The brilliance of the Free Energy Principle, and the reason it has proven to be so exciting for neuroscience and psychology, is because several pre-existing constructs in mathematics and physics exist that simplify these computations to such a degree that the proposed computations could be plausibly handled by a human brain. Put simply, instead of having to make calculations across all possible environmental states, including extremely unlikely ones like unexpected meteor strikes or ghost apparitions, the human brain instead makes a series of guesses or hypotheses, and then calculates the amount of surprise generated by its sensory inputs.

Once a level of surprise is ascertained, the mental model can then be progressively revised to fit the incoming sensory data, or action can be taken to change the world to match the model. This can be represented visually by two converging graphs, which represent probability distributions, which in turn correspond to expected and actual states as expressed by the brain’s electrical signals.

With its emphasis on an iterative progression towards a sophisticated and expansive perspective on the world, the general trajectory of development implied by the Free Energy Principle would imply that the human brain begins at a low level of sophistication and grows in response to the sensory information it acquires. The Free Energy Principle would also imply that the more data someone has access to, the more sophisticated and expansive their hypotheses about the world should be – and the less often they will be surprised. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 108-109)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

So far, this seems to map to our reality, where people with more experience in a field, like expert pilots, are less likely to experience surprise or confusion when performing related tasks. But what of the physics involved in these processes, and the information that exists within the system? How might the brain change over time as a result of sensory data and an iterative truth-finding process?

The key to understanding these matters lies in Friston’s mathematical formulation of the Free Energy Principle, which represents the comparison the brain makes between its generative model and the sensory information it receives.

Although the Free Energy Principle only involves a simple subtraction operation, what the symbols in the equation actually represent is a matter of great complexity. For example, the presence of logarithms is due to Friston’s work being founded on the physics of information, discovered and developed by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in the mid-twentieth century.

Mathematically, unlikely events contain more information, while events that are entirely unsurprising provide observers with little to no data. In addition, the concept of information in physics is very similar to the idea of computer binary, with each element of data providing an answer to a question about the world and thus constraining possibilities. How these dynamics manifest within the brain have been a rather complicated matter for many researchers but can be largely explained through a thought experiment that follows a hypothetical human throughout their lifespan.

Consider a newborn baby that is only beginning to acquire information from their environment. At this point in their lifespan, the information contained within the baby’s body and brain is almost entirely of a genetic nature, and the contents of their mind consist solely of the core “programming” that is a consequence of their particular iteration of the human genotype. Mathematically, this corresponds to logarithms of zero across most of the generative model, meaning that from the baby’s perspective, almost everything is entirely possible and most sensory inputs would yield a great deal of surprise.

This would seem to be the case for observable infant behavior, as it is known that babies are easily disturbed, are crying in anguish a great deal of the time for no discernable reason, and can be soothed by predictably rhythmic sensory inputs like rocking or gentle singing. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 110)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

It is also well-known that infant minds are in a state of constant learning, and more neural connections are formed in the early stages of life than at any other time. From the perspective of Friston’s mathematics, the infant’s brain is acquiring information and developing reasonable expectations of the environment based on that information, which would correspond to more information being stored in the brain and used to constrain the generative model.

So far, this makes sense.

Moving from infancy to early childhood, the Free Energy Principle would suggest that the brain in this stage has the beginnings of a generative model but is still reasonably “unconstrained” and lacks a great deal of information about reality. Here, the phenomena of fantasies and imaginary friends in childhood further corroborates Friston’s model, as it is clear from any sustained interaction with a young child that they live in a world of near-unlimited possibilities and extraordinary fantasy.

This was the general trajectory identified by child psychologist Jean Piaget, famous for his observations of the development of logical and “rational” capacities in children as they approached adolescence. Among the findings of Piaget and those that followed him include children’s inabilities to understand logical puzzles until certain stages of development, a movement away from fantasy and whimsy to more coherence in thinking and self, and a steady progression towards full rational capacity by puberty. Piaget’s work can be summarized in four stages, which, as would be expected from the work so far, represent increasing levels of sophistication and a metaphorical “awakening” or “activation” of the mind’s capacities and a loss of propensities towards animism and other whimsies.

Adulthood and old age are typically associated with the acquisition of knowledge, as well as an elusive capacity known generally as wisdom. However, based on the tendency towards complexity dictated by evolutionary dynamics and Friston’s work on generative models and free energy, it should be expected that people in old age would have fairly expansive and well-developed models for what they think should and should not be true.

Also, from a computational perspective, to “rewrite the code” would take an extraordinary amount of time and energy, making it perhaps unattractive. Indeed, this would seem to be the case – things like fluid intelligence, or the ability to solve novel problems, begin to decline noticeably after early middle age. Conversely, crystallized intelligence, or the ability to draw upon what one already knows, is maintained into elderhood for most. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 110-111)

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Researchers have also found that elderly people in the West tend to be perceived as stubborn to the point of riskiness by their adult children, another subtle indication that Friston’s concept of a generative model is accurate. And although these stories are, of course, anecdotal, business and art history are replete with executives who turned down incredible deals and became famous for their commitment to preconceived notions. Examples of so-called “famous rejections” include The Beatles and J.K. Rowling, which sometimes include rejection letters that are clearly based on a well developed and rigid generative model of reality:

“Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups of four guitarists are on the way out.”

On the other hand, the capacity for wisdom, an elusive and ill-defined quality even today, is a feature of elderhood that is widely accepted as being an important pillar for both the survival of individuals and societies:

“I have counsel and sound wisdom; I am understanding; I have might. Kings reign with me, and rulers legislate righteousness. Through me princes govern, and nobles, yea, all judges of righteousness. I will love those who love me, and those who seek me eagerly will find me.”

Researchers studying family dynamics have found that grandparents involved in childcare, something almost unheard of in the animal kingdom, play an important role in the acculturation and development of grandchildren. Indigenous elders such as chiefs, medicine people, shamans, and other leaders are known by researchers to be stores of incredible knowledge and wisdom, carried in their brains and shared with the community as needed:

"When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground." (African Proverb)

Thus, an examination of different aspects of the human lifespan, from Piaget’s model of childhood development to the tribulations of elderhood, reveals a trajectory that supports Friston’s controversial but powerful Free Energy Principle. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 111-112)