Blah. You'd think in the span of a month or two I could come up with some thoughts that I feel are worth sharing. Maybe I did... but they were too fleeting for me to record. Limited attention-span and all that.
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I've just finished reading Richard Leakey's _Origin's Reconsidered_. I went in to it with low expectations and was very pleasantly surprised. The whole book is pretty darned interesting. The end, however, is where Leakey really brings it all home. He talks about the origins of conciousness.. and while the theories he puts forth are not exactly flattering they are both plausible and fascinating. More on that in a second...
One other thing Leakey touches on is something he (and perhaps the larger world of anthropology) refers to as the "sixth extinction". Apparently, across the existance of our little planet they believe there to have been five mass extinctions. A mass extinction meaning 90% percent of the planet's biodiversity. One of these extinctions, obviously, would be that of the dinosaurs... just to give you an example.
Apparently some folks, perhaps Leakey, himself, believe that we are on the cusp of a new extinction. The sixth extinction. What separates this latest from those in the past is the cause: namely, us. What makes the fact that humans will be the instruments of destruction this round so different, according to Leakey, is that we won't go away. The past causes of extinctions have, they think, been fleeting but incredibly destructive events like meteor or comet impacts.
Personally, I have my doubts that humanity could survive long beyond the mass destruction of most of the rest of the planet's speciation. Scary thought.
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Leakey's theories about the origin of conciousness are only somewhat cheerier. It seems to me that he believes conciousness to have arisen as the product of deception. I'm oversimplifying here, obviously. Here's how it works: homo erectus is beginning to develop more advanced means of communication... because it has to. As the methods of communication become more advanced bigger brains develop. Alongside these developments it becomes evident that deception is a powerful tool to increase one's success (read: get the chicks, dude!)... In order to deceive, however, it is necessary to have a mental model of those around you so you can predict their behaviors. As this type of mental model advances out fall a few suprises: like the ability to distinguish one's self from others and the world at large, memory, etc. The roots of conciousness.
Now. I hope I'm not butchering Leakey's ideas too badly but I think I've conveyed the basics. I'll have to reread to make sure I've got it. Anyway, fascinating ideas, imo. It would conveniently explain a few of humanity's baser traits.
I'm going to try and think about it a bit more and see what obvious problems I can turn up. If nothing else it will be an interesting diversion. What do you all think?
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Leakey more or less polished off I'm moving on in the reading inbox. I've just started Noreena Hertz's _The Silent Takeover_. Whew! It looks promising in kind of a scare tactics, culture jamming-y type way. In a nutshell: corporations running the world bad. I'm sure there are other ideas but that's as far as I've gotten at the moment.
Hertz seems to be a pretty fascinating woman. I haven't read the jacket bio yet but if I had to guess I'd say she's a tenured prof in econ somewhere. She was one of those enterprising types that went to Russia to bring western economic ideas. She's been a protestor, etc.
The one real comment I will make about the book now is if statistics make your skin crawl STAY AWAY. The first 50 pages of the book have been a statistical deluge. YMMV. The whole Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics thing comes strongly to mind. If I put that aside, however, I can wholeheartedly encourage you to read this book. It's sobering in it's presentation of _one kind of big picture_. I personally feel that she is right, though.
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