Human evolution relies on the precepts of freedom to obliterate the man-made religions of our past, allowing us to adapt to new and improved normalizations of truth. Freedom is much more than an elective one can toss and toy with as part of partisan ideology. Instead, freedom is paramount to the evolution of humanity.
To understand why freedom is essential, we must look at how we, as humans, attempt to understand and influence evolution. We do not know much about our evolution and glean most of our knowledge from carefully tracing our past. We can now estimate how we have evolved from bones and other materials dug up and put through a C-14 radiocarbon dating process and other techniques. With multiple data points and extensive cross-referencing, we managed to create a decent picture of our estimated hundred-thousand-year-long past.
Extrapolation of hindsight is never a reliable prognosticator of foresight that changes the norm. And so, a prediction for a better future cannot be steeped in hindsight cobbled together from data but instead must be derived from our propensity to deliver evolutionary foresight, using an instrument called reason.
The capacity to reason lies at the foundation of a concept we consider innovation. The reason is the imperfect “science” of foresight, guiding us to a new and better discovery of nature’s root cause. Reason cannot provide all evidence needed to prove its claims, but it must refute all reasonable attacks against it. Reason delivers new arguments to subjugate the current situation to a higher-order normalization of the root cause. A further understanding of cause from which a plethora of new consequential and more efficient actions can be derived.
While the concept and value of reason jar some people because of its lack of supporting data, the advancement of science is one of reason’s most prolific users. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was new reasoning at the time of invention that has refuted all then available and since future attacks against it, amidst much dismay from scientists married to prior scientific doctrines. After new consequential evidence, Einstein’s theory survived the test of time and gave us a whole new understanding of the world around us.
Science itself is a relativity theory heavily supported by our best yet highly imperfect understanding of nature. Despite boisterous claims to its absolutism, science has not even unearthed one of the most crucial resources needed for us to survive.
For example, we still do not know what light is, despite it being responsible for the growth of all organisms on earth. We know it has properties that we ascribe to the manmade definition of a wave, and it has some features we attribute to the manmade definition of a particle. Nevertheless, such a lack of absolute truth in science has not prevented us from inventing a mechanism that captures our relative understanding of light through the invention of the camera some hundred years ago. No absolutism is required to reinvent our world anew, as any more accurate proxy of understanding will already improve our society and necessary actions.
The importance of freedom becomes clear when one recognizes the relativity of our understanding of nature, by science or otherwise. The recognition that optimization for a better future relies heavily on a healthy disdain and dissent of the theorems and religions of our past. Freedom is the framework for people to challenge those religions of understanding without fear of retribution, so a new and better normalization of our knowledge of nature can be born.
Freedom is nature’s impetus to allow a species to evolve and adapt. So, it is about time we develop a better proxy of freedom – the freedom of freedom – to have us all participate in human evolution in the best way we know how.
