To think in compliance with nature is to have a conscience. The conscience of thought needed to discover, understand, and align with the principles of nature, determining humanity’s regenerative excellence and longevity. In the words of Goethe:
The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks.
— JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749-1832)
Action without an understanding of and adherence to the first-principles of nature yields the false positive of a country developing in a direction divergent from nature, by nature’s rule, the essence of an underdeveloped country.
Think
Nobody should tell you what to think, which is not in the evolutionary interest of humanity. The ingenuity of humanity expands like a fractal courtesy of the value of our differences, not because of the importance of our coagulating and stifling commonalities. Independent thinkers, colloquially referred to as outliers, using nature’s deep exploration as their source, are responsible for expanding the fractal of human ingenuity to serve all of humanity. So, I will explain how to think. Anyone can.
Nature shows us how to think and what to think about. Her.
The evolution of humanity is solely dependent on our comprehension of and compliance with nature’s gameplay. Our opinions, feelings, and sensitivities do not matter unless they add value to humanity’s evolutionary strengthening. The goals of manmade innovation, capital, and policy practices should be aligned to serve nature’s evolution. They do not today.
Human intelligence, defined and counted by the seventeen billion cognitive neurons in our cerebral cortex, more than any other animal we know, can be used to preempt events before they occur and thus can improve our ability to adapt to the curve balls nature throws our way. Yet, today’s constructs fail to meet any meaningful evolutionary milestones. Worse, our manmade rat race violates nature’s principles and is merely designed to one-up and dominate others in a vile-maxim of evolutionary misplaced dominance.
We are wasting our time with institutionalized solipsism nature does not give a rat’s ass about. Thinking naturally aims to fix that.
Relative Truth
A proxy of truth, correlated to our best understanding of nature’s truth, is the source from which reasoning begins. Truth is not absolute and is relative to the purview of the observer.
When I am on a train moving at a constant speed, I am both at rest and moving. I am at rest because I sit still in my seat and move because the train is moving. Therefore, a version of truth can be assigned to the state of being still and the state of moving. As demonstrated in this example, truth can be true and false simultaneously.
Any debate derived from my state of being is an attempt to tackle either moving or still or hierarchically evaluated as still and moving, moving and still, or both. All combinations formed by the discernible state of motion are grounds for valid debates. Truth is relative to the purview of measurement.
There can be many more levels of the relativity of truth than the ones described here, for the train runs on tracks that appear still while the Earth is rotating and the tracks are moving. If that is not enough, the Earth revolves around the sun on a trajectory that appears fixed (it is not) while few of us realize our galaxy, along with other stellar objects, moves at the speed of light in a corkscrew motion through the universe.
Normalizations of Truth
An agreement on the normalization of truth must precede the relevance of truth.
I do not need to convey the Earth’s rotation, nor the exact location of the planet whizzing through the universe, to welcome visitors to my house. Our shared normalization is that we are both on Earth, by Earth’s rotations moving in the same direction at the same speed, requiring only one level of relativity under GPS satellite triangulation for the visitor to arrive at the destination.
Truth is hierarchically infinite and only limited by our ability to traverse and comprehend the hierarchy of causation. In the above example, the normalization of truth is the (implied) acceptance of a causal truth, even when that truth is not absolute nor the highest normalization of truth. A normalization of truth is merely an accepted starting point of truth for further deliberations of how to, literally, in this case, move people closer.
In science, as Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman describes the study of nature, the quest for new and higher normalizations of truth comes from a closer proxy of nature’s proven truth, offering new and better ways for humans to adapt.
Untruths
The pursuit of truth can easily be derailed by people who do not understand the hierarchical nature of truth, forget truth is relative to the observer’s purview, or do not recognize the expected normalization of truth.
Back to the train mentioned above example, if someone argues I am only sitting still, I would never arrive at my destination. If someone claims I am moving, it may lead them to believe I must have exerted much energy to reach my destination. Any absolutism of truth is an automatic untruth stemming from denying truth’s relativity.
Truth is a multi-level proxy, evolving from causal to consequential truth through a natural phenomenon scientists call entropy. Cause leading to consequence, in that direction only, courtesy of nature’s asymmetry of entropy.
With me on it, the moving train yields the bifurcated status of moving and being still simultaneously. No unique identification of what induced my state of being can be inferred from me being still, moving, or both.
Lies
There is a big difference between untruths and lies. The untruths are generally produced by people unaware of the relativity of truth. People create lies with a vested interest in holding on to expired normalizations of truth. Both can be equally harmful to society.
In the train example, an untruth is when one attempts to reverse entropy and infer I could have only been on a train to be still and to move. There are many other modes of transportation by which I can achieve the same. Correlation, of consequence, not leading to causation.
A lie is a false appraisal of truth unsupported by evidence or produced by an expired proxy of truth, critically invalidated by discovering a new and higher normalization of truth. In the train example, a lie would be that I could have transposed myself to my destination without getting on any other form of manmade transportation.
Proximal Development
As I laid out here, truth is relative and a mere proxy of nature’s truth, as is curiosity and the ability to discern the truth when it exposes itself.
In psychology, proximal development is expanding your purview beyond the things you already know—a term I frequently use to describe the ability to expand the fractal of human understanding. Proximal development requires courage. The courage to challenge and discard past truths to discover new ones. New higher-order truths capable of resetting the outdated normalizations to which humanity has hitched its formidable wagons. Expect vehement resistance.
Proximal development is crucial in expanding the fractal of human ingenuity and improving our understanding of the rule of nature to which we are and always will be subjugated. Proximal development is a trait of courageous people not married to foregone conclusions to make it through another day in life.
People holding on to existing or expired truths, for fear of uprooting their alliances can never be persuaded otherwise. Those people are, in their benign reluctance, the ball-and-chain to human evolution. And in their most egregious form, cancer to the expansion of human ingenuity.
Intelligence
Counter to popular opinion, intelligence is the ability to respond to unforeseen circumstances and adapt.
Take that from the elephant species with an average individual lifespan in the range of humans, having lived fifty-five million years. More than fifty-four times longer than the human species, with less than one-third of our cognitive neurons. Or take it from a bee, having lived sixteen thousand times longer than the human species, with a pinprick brain. Intelligence, the way humanity previously defined and tested it, is highly overrated and evolutionary irrelevant.
Intelligence is relative too, composed of the interworking of cognitive and sensory abilities, honed to the current state of our environment, capable of preempting and avoiding danger needed to improve a species’ life span.
Knowledge
Knowledge is often sold as intelligence in a society resigned to its beliefs. But knowledge is, at best, the memorization of foregone normalizations of truth, quite different from the curiosity and imagination required to establish new and better normalizations of truth. Knowledge is the lazy acquisition and regurgitation of hindsight, the opposite of the daring interest of human foresight to break the norm.
Again, in the words of Goethe:
If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.
— JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749-1832)
Knowledge is knowing the train’s arrival and departure schedule in the train analogy. It is important only to those who value time over effectiveness.
Belief
The sleep of reason and the real showstopper to human development is belief.
Any opinion issued by a believer making extraordinary claims without providing extraordinary evidence merely attempts to deploy unquestionable dominance over the many unsuspecting greater-fools in society. Make-belief tells a lie derived from an invalidated truth, not requiring any smarts. To discover them, you do. That asymmetry of deception spreads lies of make-belief so much faster and farther than nature’s truths, severely damaging humanity’s renewable excellence.
Many versions of make-believe, steadfast yet unfounded beliefs in the private and public sectors, compounded by the more than a hundred manmade theologies, apply their demonic practices to enslave others to their make-believe.
Au Naturelle
Thinking comes naturally to those with a conscience. A conscience for the greater good and well-being of humanity induces the courage to challenge foregone conclusions embedded in the manmade constructs of society.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
— ANAÏS NIN (1903-1977)
Curiosity for a better theory for humanity challenges the foundation of many of our outdated views and, in my case, has spawned close observation and discovery of new and higher-order normalizations of truth gleaned directly from nature.
Our ability to think as described above, differentiating us from our Neanderthal cousins (no longer alive), expands the fractal of human ingenuity required to fight nature’s many curveballs and is directly responsible for improving the excellence and longevity of the human species.
