When we think about the evolution of humanity, we must acknowledge how human excellence is a function of our understanding of the first-principles of nature.
Unfolding Truth
The work of Aristotle made us understand that the planet we live on is an oblate spheroid rather than flat. The computation by a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes estimated the Earth’s circumference. Christopher Columbus proved those assertions by sailing beyond where the dropoff of a flat world would occur, from Europe to America. We use that new normalization of truth to no longer throw our newborns into deep wells to appease the weather gods and make it rain, as the Mayans did. We now know the weather is not an act of god, but the result of many amplitudes of change affecting the workings of a global phenomenon called the hydrologic cycle.
The work of Galileo was equally impressive. For his heresy in claiming that Earth orbits the Sun, instead of solipsistically assuming the Earth God created was at the center of the universe, Galileo was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo’s improvements to the telescope led to significant advances in astronomy. As a result, we now know planet Earth is a relatively meaningless pale blue dot, in the words of Carl Sagan, surrounded by 400 billion galaxies, each with an estimated 100 billion stars like our Sun, some surrounded by planets like ours. Humans are less critical to the universe than the microorganisms that keep us alive. As pointed out by Richard Feynman, we are precariously subject to entropy, the decline of available energy, obliterating any form of sustainability.
Takeaways
Two observations must be made from the examples above.
One, belief of any kind plays a numbing role in discovering new normalizations of truth. While the impact of theologies is thankfully dissipating, other manmade religions have sprung up to take their place. Humans are pattern-seeking animals; we can quickly make them up if none are available. Belief is the sleep of reason, which should have no place in discovering nature’s truth.
Two, discovering a new normalization of truth by a few outliers led to dramatic improvements for humanity. Hence, do not expect discovery or acceptance from the crowd. A new normalization of truth does not come from regurgitating or extrapolating accepted hindsight. Hindsight is a poor prognosticator of foresight that breaks the norm. Since foresight has no precedent, it can not be derived from hindsight, no matter how cunning its computation (AI anyone?).
Few people, as a group or individually, have the proximal development to learn about anything beyond what they believe to be true. They resist learning about new truths to avoid losing their hard-fought position in society. Everybody wants to move up in society, which cannot be achieved without some people, with expired truth in their coffers, moving down (or out). Such is the prerequisite of a meritocracy.
Past Due
The mess humanity has popularized, combined with years of ever-complicating downstream suboptimizations of unproven foregone conclusions, subpar outcomes, and weakened evolutionary renewal while tethered to the strongholds of religion, make-belief, and ignorance, makes almost 8 billion people believe change is impossible. As impossible as the discoveries of Aristotle, Galileo, and many greats may have seemed, yet have survived the test of time.
Nature’s truth prevails. Manmade truth is only relevant and self-effacing when interpreted as an infinitely expanding proxy of nature’s truth. In a universe and on a Planet subject to entropy, the quest and speed of discovering new and higher normalizations of nature’s truth become paramount.
Thankfully, one more significant evolutionary discovery remains on the shelf—a discovery validated and used by scientists every day we have yet to implement in managing ourselves. It is Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. We must deploy a new dimension of everything in nature to debunk the outdated monisms of absolutism holding the goals, performance, merit, and renewal of humanity hostage.
We have built flat-world policy, capital, and innovation constructs where round-world relativity is required. Our house of cards, incongruent with nature’s first-principles, must be replaced with a methodology that aligns the interest of society with nature’s truth. That methodology is called method EVA.
