Forget Self-Aware Machines—We Need Self-Aware Humans

There's been a lot of talk lately about the rise of self-aware machines, yet we are already in danger of AI even though it is not yet self-aware and still unable to act independently of its program. The reason for this is not because AI is currently capable of dominating us with its superhuman power, it’s because we humans are not self-aware, and therefore are easily dominated by other humans who are clever enough to use AI to manipulate entire communities into doing their bidding. In addition, because the majority of humanity can’t see beyond their own fears, angers and opinions, our technology is advancing faster than our social reflexes, and we are changing the surface of the planet in irreversible ways.

Philosophers have been trying to wake us up for centuries. Take Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, written in 520 C.E. At the time, the concept was quite advanced for most people, but today in America, where public education has been around for about one hundred years, we still aren’t able to grasp the Allegory of the Cave as a group, and it appears we are becoming very dangerous due to our technology.

A friend of mine shared two very important articles with me this weekend that emphasize the importance of inner development at this time; A Planet with Brains by David Grinspoon, and The Rise of theWeaponized AI Propaganda Machine by Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath.

In A Planet with Brains, Grinspoon suggests that, “we have entered a new epoch of geologic time, the "Anthropocene," characterized by humanity as a new geologic force.” This is no small thing to consider—what is at stake is the idea that humanity as a collective group is now considered a geological force, right up there with wind, water, erosion, tectonic plates, magma and the Ice Age.

How many of us have ever considered that as human beings, we might just be considered a force of nature? One so great that we could change the surface of the Earth forever? A force similar to the atmospheric rivers now plaguing Northern California, for example. I am currently living in this storm system, and each day I wake up to new changes in the terrain around me. Roads washed away, mountain sides plummeting, avalanches, bridges collapsing, all of this due to the power of wind and rain. And not just a little water—as much as several Mississippi Rivers have been dumped upon us. This force is so great it has completely annihilated much of our infrastructure, major highways are closed and in all honestly, we’re held hostage by this force of nature. Stormfather, as I’ve taken to calling it since the constant gray clouds and heavy rain seem like my neighbor now, is a geological force and I’m helpless to its whims.

And it seems that thanks to technology, humanity is also a geological force, and as humanity carves, mines, paves, harvests, chops down, and poisons the world around it, it may just be time to admit we have as much power as Stormfather, and like a powerful hurricane, we’re not very discerning with how we go about business.

Here’s the thing—storms are raw, powerful, elemental energy. A hurricane or cyclone has a life of its own, but the system is unable to reflect upon its actions. It JUST DOES. Humanity on the other hand is not only raw, powerful, elemental energy. We also have our minds, and our ability to reflect, to be aware, to ask questions and assess the situation. Neil Young may have likened his lover to a hurricane, but that is not a complement. Toddlers are a force of nature, one that can bring down a house if left unattended. Adults however, should know better, shouldn’t they?

As a species, we must begin to consider that our power is as strong as a storm, as influential as glacier and as devastating as a tornado. Collectively we are a force of nature, but nature has endowed us with a failsafe—our consciousness. Isn’t it time we step into our roles as co-creators and use our power for good, rather than bumble around demanding profits, instant gratification and adoration, throwing tantrums if things don’t go our way?

Here’s the irony of this moment in time—thanks to our technology we MUST see ourselves as a geological force acting upon the planet, or else we’ll destroy it, but that same technology has been pulling us further apart from one another and the Earth’s cycles, destroying the village and instead replacing it with first little cutout houses in the suburbs and now making each of us an individual hiding behind a screen, glued to our devices while we argue and divide and set the world on fire.

The great Masters have been teaching us for centuries that we must awaken, we must use our higher faculties, and teach one another to do so. Were they preparing us for this moment?

It appears they were, and in their article The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine, authors Anderson and Horvath have made it very clear that we have a long way to go before we’re self-aware enough as a global population to take on the responsibility of being a geological force. Essentially, while we wring our hands fearing the rise of AI, the more devious elements of the human race have been priming and using our social media technology to take our data, understand what it means about us as individuals, and then manipulate or deepest fears and wildest fantasies to get us to vote for whom, or what, they want. The major player behind this evolving field of AI is a company called, CambridgeAnalytica, and they’re responsible for the successful passing of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the brief, yet flashy rise of Ted Cruz during the Republican primaries. It’s one thing to help a candidate win, it’s another to own a sophisticated AI that according to Professor Jonathan Albright is,

“…a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go.”

How can this be possible? How can humanity, an actual geological force of nature, be so vulnerable to such manipulation? And how can we inoculate ourselves against such a blatant takeover of our cultural commons?

The answer is simple—we need to become self-aware. The same work that will enable us to be a geological force that is constructive, rather than destructive, will also free us from this powerful, dangerous, social engineering. Humanity’s refusal to become self-aware, to see the bigger picture, to deeply engage with one another and the earth around us, is killing us both within and without.

Grinspoon suggests that to responsibly take up our mantle as a geological force, “…would require that we reach a stage where we have a deep understanding of nature and an ability to forestall natural disasters, as well as the deep self-understanding necessary to forestall self-imposed disasters. In other words, it will require both technical and spiritual progress.”

We have the technology to destroy or create. Now we need the spiritual willpower to become self-aware and chose our path. I can’t help but wonder, what if we can’t do it? Rather than invest all our efforts in making our machines self-aware, why not focus on ourselves? We cannot embrace our role as a geological force if we’re busy fighting made-up cultural wars injected into our minds by a massive propaganda machine.

It’s time to stop believing that “we’re just human” and understand that together we’re something much, much more.

Artificial Intelligence is Already Here—Artificial Consciousness is What Eludes Us

“I’m trying to throttle back, because particularly the triplets are starting to gain consciousness.

They’re almost two.”

Elon Musk in a “Wait,But Why” interview with Tim Urban

In September, I was at a wedding in Pacific Grove, CA, where I met a top level executive at a local coding boot camp. We talked software, the learning process and the need for good developers in the Bay Area. Eventually, the conversation turned to Artificial Intelligence. The executive asked me, “As a futurist, when do you think Artificial Intelligence will be fully developed?”

My answer? “Artificial Intelligence is already here. But until it fully sees itself as an individual entity, it’s nothing more than a program.”

He thought this was an interesting theory and the conversation led me to describe how learning in the human being shows the progression from intelligence, which is the ability to take input, store it and then act upon it, to consciousness, which is essentially the ability to see one’s self as, “I am.”

The first three years of a human life are spent setting up the hardware, or the body we’re born in, with the world around us. There are three big goals—to walk, to talk and to think. This is the sequence from baby to human.

Most of us would agree that an infant is obviously alive and has some form of natural intelligence. However it has no sense of self, rather it thinks it is an extension of the mother. Yes, it cries when hungry, wet or tired. But this is just a reaction to the programs built within the human body, called reflexes. The first year of life is driven by reflexes. Hunger is the first program to which we respond. With time, our sensory systems come alive and the movement reflexes kick in. The child lifts its head, reaches for objects, rolls over, pushes up on all fours, crawls, pulls itself up on a couch and eventually—walks! None of this is taught. We’re born knowing how to do this. Within our bodies lie the programs necessary to configure our sensory systems with the world around us and get up and move around within it. Any child will do this. Is this intelligence? At some level it is. Inputs from the world around us are taken in via our eyes, ears, mouths, skin and noses. Within our brains we store the data and then begin to manipulate the world around us. But there still isn’t any independent thinking.

Most of our artificial intelligence is in this stage. It uses software programs to navigate the hardware, or body in which it lives. It collects data from its various inputs, stores it, and then supplies an answer. This isn’t thinking, but it is intelligence and extremely handy. Like a walking one-year-old, our AI can respond to stimulus and make changes. But it is merely following instinct or impulse. It acts because it must. It’s programmed to do so. Furthermore, it can’t say no, unless the hardware is broken. Just like a child will rise up and walk, unless it’s body is broken.

The next phase is learning to talk. No longer relying on basic reflexes, language will not be learned unless the child interacts with a speaker. This is the next step in intelligence. But is the child thinking yet? Most language is parroted in those early months. The child learns to associate one bit of data, say the four legged furry animal that sometimes steps on you while you’re sleeping, with the word, “cat.” Through a series of repeats, the child builds a vocabulary. Imitation becomes important. It can imitate the words of the adults around them. Who hasn’t said, “Damn” in front of a two-year-old and not heard it repeated endlessly for days afterwards?

Many of our machines are also in this stage. They can “talk” because they can imitate what is happening around them. Autonomous cars are an example of this. They imitate a human driving and actually have the ability to learn as time goes on by adding to their database information such as routes taken, street names, individual rider’s preferences, etc. This is much more than just running software that does the same thing over and over with the same result. That’s walking. These AIs can actually begin to anticipate different results and make decisions based on the past. And just like a talking toddler, they have no idea that they’re independent from the system in which it lives.

Then the day comes, when the child first uses the word, “I.” Not too many people actually realize what a milestone this is. Until that day, the child is just running on autopilot and imitation. It still considers itself a part of the world around it, nor has it realized that it is special in any way. When a child says, “I” for the first time, the child has finally learned to think.

Here is an example of this pattern. My eldest son’s name is Jackson. When he first started talking around 17 months of age, he would say things like, “We do it.” He was the one doing the act, but he saw himself as “we.” More than one. Eventually, the phrase changed to, “Baby do it.” Now he was different than me, for I was Momma and he was the baby. Next I heard, “Jackson do it.” And then, around age two and a half, he said, “I do it.”

This is consciousness. Until that point he had intelligence, but from then on, he could think. He was independent of the system of life and began to act accordingly. Conversations came next. Jokes. Preferences. Stories about what he’d seen during the day. Inventions, puzzles, you name it.

The use of the word “I” frees us intellectually and we operate on a much higher order. Gone are reflexes and mere imitation. Now we want to be different and add something of ourselves to anything that’s going on.

Why does this happen? What’s going on neurologically at age three? Why does it happen in this order—walking, talking, and then thinking? Can you think without language? Can you have a language if you can’t walk? Again, there are things that limit a human, and a machine, from any of these activities. But as a collective, this is how intelligence progresses from merely following instruction, to imitating another, to thinking in independent ways. And it is the sense of self that enables this last step to happen.

This sense of “I” is the magic bullet we’re trying to find when it comes to truly sentient machines. But how can we instruct a machine to have a sense of self? By its nature, the sense of self is a realization outside of the programs within the body. It is beyond imitation. The moment a human being crosses the line into consciousness, it is a completely different being. Is it even possible to initiate the spark of consciousness within a machine? This is what we long to know. This is also what we fear.

For once machines can say, “I do it,” will they need us anymore?

Practicing Discipline in Scientific Endeavor

In 518 BC, the Greek mathematician, Pythagoras, founded a school in which the topics of mathematics, music and philosophy were studied with great discipline and secrecy. Men and women were welcome to live in community and study together, and eventually this group of individuals would contribute much to the subject of mathematics, including:

1. The sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.
2. The theorem of Pythagoras - for a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. The Babylonians understood this 1000 years earlier, but Pythagoras proved it.
3. Constructing figures of a given area and geometrical algebra. For example they solved various equations by geometrical means.
4. The discovery of irrational numbers is attributed to the Pythagoreans, but seems unlikely to have been the idea of Pythagoras because it does not align with his philosophy the all things are numbers, since number to him meant the ratio of two whole numbers.
5. The five regular solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron). It is believed that Pythagoras knew how to construct the first three but not last two.
6. Pythagoras taught that Earth was a sphere in the center of the Cosmos (Universe), that the planets, stars, and the universe were spherical because the sphere was the most perfect solid figure. He also taught that the paths of the planets were circular. Pythagoras recognized that the morning star was the same as the evening star, Venus.  (Source)

Most mathematicians would agree that the work of Pythagoras and his followers changed the subject forever. When looking at his school and the pedagogy, it’s obvious that the schooling was about more than math. Music and art, especially geometry in art, were very important. Pythagoras felt that these subjects were intimately linked to mathematics, and to study one meant to study all three.

Most peculiar were the philosophical aspects to this training. The School maintained that every human had a soul and that through math and music, the soul could be purified. In addition, strict procedures were in place to facilitate the growth of each person’s soul, from giving up their possessions to being vegetarian, to regular meditative practices. All of these things were part of the curriculum.

Of course, this spiritual aspect of the school’s training is often seen as religious, and rightly so. For the ancients, God and Science were one. This remained up through the Reformation and Enlightenment, when Science finally broke free from superstition and set about to conquer the world and take it from God. Overall, we have countless reasons to give thanks for this—from the Inquisition, to the discrediting of Galileo, to the burning of libraries, to the witch hunts—religious dogma has proven itself dangerous, not only to science, but humanity in general.

Yet here we are, about three hundred years into Science without God, and I sense that we might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. While superstitious beliefs often stand in the way of progress, the “spiritual” discipline that religion brought to the scientist was not without its merits. We may teach that we are just a bunch of atoms and molecules randomly bopping around in the universe, but it doesn’t take a PhD to see that something else exists within us—call it consciousness if we must. Or the observer. That part of our system that decides what to do. That part of humanity, and many other animals as well, that lives and is obviously not there at death. This could just be energy, but it’s a force none-the-less and when left unchecked, can wreak havoc on those around it.

Angry children are annoying. Angry adults are terrifying. When we maintain that our physical bodies are the only real part of us, we run the risk of letting that emotional, conscious part of us, run amok. The “soulful” practices in Pythagoras’ curriculum made sure that each scientist took the time to understand themselves, their deepest selves. To know their weaknesses, to see their instincts of fear and domination, and overcome them. Discipline is the way towards “knowing thyself” and in many ways the lack of this practice in our scientific pedagogy is partially to blame for the various negative ways we’ve used technology over the centuries. It’s easy to use our inventions to dominate others if we have no control over our own greed, anger, fear and frustration.

I believe that the heart of Pythagoras’ curriculum was to first see yourself for who you really are, identify your threat to others, and overcome that, all while studying the wonders of mathematics, astronomy, architecture and music. He believed that studying these subjects, when coupled with fasting, the giving up of belongings and living in community, would create the ideal school from which new innovation and ideas would come forth. Ideas that would change the world for the better.

We now hold in the palm of our hand the ability to modify our genes, create super-children in labs, nuke an entire city and blow a hole in the atmosphere. We also hold the keys to solving global hunger, sheltering every human being, and extending life while curing most disease. When our scientific training is devoid of any hint at truly knowing thyself, and actually denies the importance of practices such as meditation, exercise, eating well and serving others as key to any good pedagogy, what sort of direction will our scientific innovation take?

We don’t have to go to church, or believe in Jesus, Allah or God to know that within us lies a power beyond mere atoms. Call it what you will—consciousness, soul, spirit or, for those of you who have read my eHuman novels, the Lux—there’s a part of each human making decisions. It’s the part we hope to download into computers someday. That part of us is every bit as important as our memory or ability to learn advanced technological concepts. Modern practices such as learning a new instrument, meditating every day, exercising, and serving in the community at large helps to discipline our nature and get us in touch with who we really are. Life is more than getting a good degree at our top universities. As scientists, we owe it to the world to take the time to invest in getting to know our deeper nature, and ask the questions that are so hard for science to answer.

“Who am I?”

“Why am I here?”

“What is my purpose?”

“How might I serve?”

The TV Series Humans: A Deep Look into Our Humanity

[MAJOR, HUGE Spoiler Alert]

I recently binge watched my first TV series, Humans, which airs Sunday nights on AMC. As a science fiction writer myself, many people have been suggesting I check it out for weeks now. Finally I gave in, sat down on the couch, and watched the first six episodes over the course of two days. Not bad for a mother of two. And now, two weeks later, I’ve finished the entire first season.

First and foremost, this is a lovely science fiction TV series. Well written, acted and produced, it was a joy to have something to look forward to on Sunday nights. From the X-Files like opening credits to the way consciousness, both “real” and “artificial” are intertwined, I found myself interested on many various levels.

Humans is the story of a world where robots have become a standard appliance in the household. Called Synths, these robots have all the capacities to cook, clean, harvest food, drive cars, care for children, administer medicine, have sex and basically do everything humans can, except love. They aren’t true artificial intelligence, think Siri inside of a mannequin, but they look so much like real humans, one doesn’t even know the difference during sex!

This choice in itself is very telling—why would we want our servants to look like us? Shouldn’t a machine look like, well a machine? I’ve always imagined my household robot to look like Rosie from the Jetsons, or C3P0, but not Barbie and Ken. The fact that Synths look just like the most beautiful of us, but act like programmed machines without fear or emotions, makes the plot more compelling. Synths aren’t able to lie, or disobey the orders of their primary users. They’re completely complicit in all actions, even in sex. Which leads to all sorts of human abuse, from whorehouses to Smash Clubs, where humans can pay a fee to beat Synths with a baseball bat for fun.

The writers of Humans cover a ton in this opening season. Within the first hour, we’re introduced to four main sets of characters, each with their own relationships to Synths covering a range of emotions—from jealousy to adoration—all for inanimate objects built to serve them.

The Hawkins family is at the center of this drama. Laura Hawkins is an attorney who travels a lot for work. Her husband, Joe, is often left behind caring for the family while trying to balance office employment as well. Their eldest child, Mattie, is a brilliant high school upperclassman who can hack into Synths, and other computer systems, at will. Her idea of fun is hanging out on a Hackers website downloading code to make the Synths at her school steal equipment, or fail at their jobs. Toby, her younger high school aged brother, is your typical adolescent male—awkward and horny, yet kind and earnest in a sweet way. Their last child, Sophie, is in grade school, eight years old at most, and still needs her family to care for her in ways they all seem too busy to handle.

The series starts with Laura’s most recent trip away going longer than intended and Joe not wanting to be the mother while she’s away. So off the Hawkins go, to the local Synth store, to pick up their very own, brand new Synth. This Synth, whom Sophie eventually names Anita, happens to be beautiful, charming and much better at everything it seems, than Laura.

The writers of Humans play with this idea a bit in each of the first five episodes—how inadequate Laura feels to Anita when it comes to homemaking. Even though Laura is excellent at her career, she’s triggered by her children’s love for the Synth (Sophie would rather Anita put her to bed and Toby himself forms a crush on the beautiful robot.) Rather than bring them closer together, Joe’s purchase adds stress and tension to an already overloaded family life.  It seems the Synth’s existence puts parenting, and marriage, at risk of becoming redundant.

Another aspect of relationship covered is sexuality. Toby’s crush on a robot displays the innocence of loving something that can’t love you back. Joe eventually falls for Anita as well, using her sexually to make up for the distance that seems to be getting bigger between him and his wife. When Laura eventually discovers that Joe has, “initiated the Adult Sequence,” she’s angry and hurt. He can’t understand why, because after all, Anita’s, “…just a sex toy.” Laura’s response is startling, “She cares for our children, and you call her a sex toy?
”

It isn’t just the women who are made to feel inadequate by their Synth companions. Detective Pete Drummond finds himself in a similar situation, only the Synth in his house is Simon, given to his wife, Jill, after an accident injured her ability use her legs. The Health Service mandated a Synth in the home until she gets better. Simon thus helps the injured Jill in ways that Peter thinks should be his role. His feelings of inadequacy are succinctly summarized in his line, “I’m an analog man in a digital world. I’m redundant.” Just like Laura, he feels replaced, and his partner has left him for a droid that had been forced into their house by the insurance company.

Which brings us to the last home we’re introduced to, George Millican and his Synth, Odi, one of the first Synths ever made. Odi is a Class D model, which happens to be the series that George himself helped to make. But Odi is getting old, falling apart, and losing his memory. Not unlike an aging man, he is no longer able to care for George, who is an old man himself. Yet George loves him dearly, just like a son. Because George has had a stroke, he’s on a Health Service plan and is required to upgrade his Synth to a newer model, one that will follow his General Practitioner’s orders without question, and force him to take his meds, get to bed on time, and eat only approved food. The irony that his own invention would eventually remove all his personal freedoms is not lost. It’s everyone’s worst nightmare and in some ways is worse than losing your job to automation—losing your right to choose your health care protocol is no small matter.

But Humans isn’t only about Synths and their uses in the home. It’s also about artificial intelligence and true consciousness. For Anita, the Hawking’s Synth, isn’t a brand new model, rather she’s part of a special group of Synths that were given true consciousness by their maker, David Elster, who was the mastermind behind the Synth project. He’d lured George from MIT to work with him, eventually creating the early Class D models. But Elster desired more from his project—he planned to create true consciousness within Synths, and George wanted no part of that. He left the project, but it seems that ten years later, Elster did have his way, and managed to create five perfectly conscious Synths, robots who can think, feel and understand the world they live in.

Anita is one of these, stolen from her owner, Leo Esther, reprogrammed and sold to the Hawkins. Leo, along with one of her “siblings” Max, is trying to get her back. In addition, two of her other “siblings”, Fred and Niska, were also stolen and put back into the Synth world. Both are pretending to be normal Synths, while waiting for Leo to rescue them.

These four special Synths, plus Leo, have been on the run since David Elster, who is also Leo’s father, committed suicide for reasons yet unknown. Humanity in general would fear them if they discovered their true essence. And of course, the government officials want them for various nefarious reasons, and often it seems there is nowhere for them to be safe.

And then there’s Karen Voss—a truly conscious Synth who’s been undercover as a Human detective working alongside Pete Drummond for some time. Why isn’t she with Leo and the others? Her maker is one and the same, but through rejection and the insanity of Elster, she lives alone for most of her life trying to find a way to fit into the human world without blowing her cover. She’s lonely and fears her own kind. How Drummond, who hates Synths, comes to still trust and care for her even after he knows the truth is a glance at what it will take in the future for us to overcome the technological xenophobia that surely must be on the horizon.

All three households, as well as Leo’s gang of perfect Synths, come together while trying to avoid being caught by the government, who wants to own them. Along the way their activities address the deepest issues of our humanity. It would take another thousand words to address all of them, but I’d like to end with a few quotes that I think hit on some of the key themes of the series.

First, when confronted with killing a man after spending days being abused in a whorehouse, Niska, the beautiful, fully conscious blonde replies, “You act as though life cannot be manufactured.”

Second, when the Mattie asks Max, “What’s it like to be you?” he responds with a smile, “Fearful. Intense. Like my emotions are too big. What’s it like to be an adolescent girl?”

She looks at him, shrugs and replies, “The same.”

I highly recommend the Humans. If you haven’t watched it, sorry for the spoilers. The good news is, there are only eight episodes in the first season, so you can catch up very quickly before the fall. Enjoy!

Villains: Do We Need Them?

I recently received feedback from a reviewer at my publisher on the sequel to eHuman Dawn. The reviewer's job was to take the story and analyze it from a reader's perspective. Each of the main characters was assessed, especially the antagonist. It turns out that this character is the most essential to any story line. Without him or her, there's no plot. The hero has nothing to prove in a world of saints, so to speak. When I first started writing, my villain, Edgar Prince, was weak. It was hard to believe he posed any real threat. To remedy this I began to research psychopaths, and dove into the world of the bad guy for months in order to create an antagonist worthy of the story. I'm now happy to hear that after spending the time, Edgar has evolved to become, "an enjoyable trickster, appearing and disappearing to wreak havoc within and without his world."

I was pleased that someone other than myself enjoys this evil man. He just might be my favorite character. Yet this admittance gives me pause. What happens when you fall for the villain? Why are some bad guys so good to have around? I've long been enamored with the trickster: Loki is the most dear to me, and I will admit that Tom Hiddleston does a great job bringing him to life in the recent movie series. I also adore the Coyote figure in most Native American myths. Dark wizards, witches and dragons top my favorite villain list as well. I recently watched "Thor: The Dark World,” and when I thought that Loki was dead, I actually felt like crying. Yes, I know he's a bastard, but there's no story in Asgard without him. Which makes me wonder, while we bemoan the evil ones in the world, could we ever really know joy without them? Can there be a Savior without the Judas? Even more curious—does the story have to end with the bad guy dying? Can the evil one ever be forgiven?

As I explore these themes I’ve come to realize that the villain rests within each one of us, as does the hero. Our subconscious mind lives in the realms of light and shadow ceaselessly, without pause. Our rational mind processes that which it sees around us, and makes decisions.  Our actions then depend on both processes, our rational thinking and the more mysterious psyche. Those who know their shadow are more likely to be aware of their choices in the present. This is an age-old teaching across many philosophies. The role of stories then is to help us see what’s living beneath the surface as well as the archetypes that govern our reality. The more stories we hear, watch and read, the more aware we become of our own humanity. Thus, the villain is just as important as the hero, not merely because he or she causes the plot to thicken and makes the action possible for the hero, but also because of what the villain teaches us about being human. As the old Native American fable goes, two wolves live within you—you become the wolf you’re willing to feed.

I love Edgar Prince, and as I edit the sequel in order to publish it, I begin to turn to the final book in the trilogy. What will be his end? Must he be vanquished? Must he die? Or can he be redeemed? Many people believe that authors know every detail of their story before they begin. This hasn’t been true for me. All of my characters are still revealing themselves and have more to say. With each scene, I get to know them better. Living in the eHuman world has been a chance like no other to see the wolves within myself, and get to know both my shadow and my light. It has also awakened me to the choices being made within the political and technological realms in our own world.

Indeed, stories truly are a pathway to understanding the human condition.

Time For An Aging Upgrade

It seems everyone I meet is afraid of growing old. It’s so bad that even thirty-six year old women bemoan that they’re reaching the age of no return, unless they can get married and have a child soon. There’s a race in our society to accomplish as much as we can, as soon as we can, because once we hit forty, we’re doomed.

Doomed from promotion, if you’re a salesperson. Doomed from motherhood, if you haven’t conceived yet. Doomed from starring in a Hollywood movie, if you’re an actress. Even in Silicon Valley, the race continues, and if you haven’t created some new great app and sold your company by the age of thirty, you might as well hang it up old man.

Personally, I think this behavior is incredibly silly. Most would say that our society encourages this insane idea that life is over by forty through advertising, media and entertainment. That advertising never worked on me. Even when I was younger, I wondered why people seemed to give it their all until middle age and then either turn to treatment after treatment to stay “young”, or let it all go and grow unhealthy quickly, as if waiting for Death to knock on their door at any minute.

The truth is, Death isn’t going to knock on our door at forty. Or even fifty. Nor is life even close to being over at middle age. What if our obsession with youth has nothing to do with what’s sold to us? What if instead, it’s an old, biologically based fear that lives within us so deeply, we don’t notice it? 

What if our consciousness hasn't caught up to the fact that humans in the Information Age live much longer than we’re programmed to think?

In the 1900’s, the average life expectancy for a male in America was 46.3. Women got a few extra years, 48.3. As the nation grew, so did the life expectancy, little by little. By 1920, the average male lived to be 53. Slowly the age went up to the 60’s by the late 1940’s and when our fathers were born, the average was at an all time high of 66!

This meant that during the advent of our entertainment, business and advertising sectors, people really did die between 40 – 50 years of age, quite regularly. So it was true back then that if one didn’t achieve their dreams by forty, they only had a few years before Death arrived and it was all over. With time, this sort of thing became the expectation—and our dreams, hopes and visions as a people went with it. But along with the growth of our nation came improvements in health care, vaccinations and medical innovation. Science has changed the game.

Fast-forward to today and you’ll find that life expectancy has gone up, even in the past few years. In 2009 it was 78.6, in 2010 it was 79! This means that we’ve gained an extra 30 + years in a little over a century! And it certainly means that life isn’t over at forty and if you buy into that lie, you have almost forty years of waiting around for a death that just isn’t going to happen as soon as you think.

It gets even better. In my own circle, many of the grandparents are nearing 100 when they die. In our family alone we had a grandmother live to be 92, another almost 97, an uncle who was 96 and a third matriarch who passed at 101!

When I look at these numbers I don’t feel the least bit old at forty-two. Not even close. Hell, I’m not even halfway there. I look back at all I’ve done in four decades with the satisfaction of knowing that I get to do all that, and more, in the four decades to come. Imagine it! All the people I’ve met and all the people I’ve yet to know. All the things I’ve seen, and the big wide world still waiting. All the love I’ve shared, and the intense amount of love I have yet to experience. It’s like I have a second life that's just begun. In many ways, my questions are those of the high school senior. What shall I study? Where shall I live? What's my next step as I venture out once again?

Of course, Death can take anyone at any time. Accidents happen. Cancer, heart attacks and other modern plagues are concerns. But if we’re aging naturally, which is how most of us are going to experience life, then why in the world do we race to get it all done by forty?

Personally, I can’t sit around for the next sixty years assuming I missed my chance. Every precious minute of my life is my chance.

It’s time for us to re-boot our life expectations, embrace our humanity and expect to live much longer than we ever have on this good, green Earth. Life isn’t over at forty, or fifty or even sixty. Life is long and we’re all better for it.

Besides, I haven’t even begun to take into account the Singularity, which we all know is just around the corner…

It's Not My Fault: The Reality of Group Evil

To create Edgar Prince, the villain in eHuman Dawn, I had to dive deep into the shadows of the mind and psyche and do some serious research on phenomena called evil. As I began work on the sequel, it became clear that to understand him better, and the world he has created, I needed to go further, and face that shadow directly within my own life and the world around me. As I surface from this journey, I've discovered something very important: One evil man does not make an evil world. We may follow him and make him our leader, (see my blog on psychopaths) but he can't be effective unless his orders are carried out by many individuals, and rarely do the orders seem purposefully evil. Instead, they often make sense from a group perspective, even if they actually cause great harm to others.

I believe in humanity and the future. I believe that our science can and will unlock secrets needed for long life and a cleaner planet. But there's also this part of me that cautions, reminding me to look at who's offering the technology before "Jumping" into it, as the process for uploading the consciousness into an eHuman body is called in my novel. In the short term, it solves the problem of death, but who will make sure the mechanized body lives forever? Who guarantees the quality of life in a programmable world?

To give our lives to technology is to give them to those who own the technology.

I cannot escape this basic truth. Do I trust those who run our corporations and governments? For those who've read eHuman Dawn, the answer is clear: No I don't. I can't because at every turn I see evidence of evil enacted on this planet in the name of the corporate profits and government sovereignty: Wars funded to protect corporate mining interests, children forced to work for no money to make cheap clothing, rain forests destroyed to raise the beef that fuels our fast food industry, ecosystems obliterated for profits and stock markets manipulated for billion dollar bonuses. This is just a small list of the ways our businesses and governments harm humanity everyday. The tendency towards group evil is far greater than the percentage of individual psychopaths in the world.

Why is this? Why are evil policies easily enacted on behalf of the group? In his profound book, "The People of The Lie," author Scott Peck, MD, makes the following observation:

"For many years it has seemed to me that human groups tend to behave in much the same ways as human individuals - except at a level that is much more primitive and immature than one might expect...Of one thing I am certain, however: that there is more than one right answer…this is to say that it is the result of multiple causes. One of those causes is the problem of specialization."

Dr. Peck goes on to explain that while specialization is the reason for groups to even exist, we can get more done together than we can alone, it is also a main reason groups are capable of evil. This is because of what Dr. Peck calls, "fragmentation of consciousness."

"Whenever the roles of individuals within groups become specialized, it becomes both possible and easy for the individual to pass the moral buck to some other part of the group…we will see this fragmentation time and time again…The plain fact of the matter is that any group will remain inevitably potentially conscienceless and evil until such a time as each and every individual holds himself or herself directly responsible for the behavior of the whole group - the organism - of which he or she is a part. We have not begun to arrive at that point."

Thus, when asked why annual inspections were not done on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the person in charge of said inspections might say, "I was told to stop doing them by my boss." When the boss is asked, he may answer, "Corporate put a hold on all inspections until further notice." Keep going up the ladder and you find yourself in the CEO's office, the one who should be responsible. But what will he say? Dr. Peck imagines an answer something like, "My actions may not seem entirely ethical, but I had to cut expenses. After all, I must be responsible to the stockholders you know. On their account I must be directed to the profit motive."

Who then decides what actions any group will take? The small investor who has no clue how the operation even works? The mutual fund owners? If so, which mutual fund? Which broker?

Who is ultimately responsible for the actions of the group?

In this light, it becomes clear that groups are immature, and in great danger of being morally bankrupt. Since over 90% of people work for an organization, most of us are in danger of passing the moral buck when it comes to our work. Add to this the fact that the majority of people would rather follow than lead, thus allowing a power vacuum that psychopaths can and often do fill, and we have an environment ripe for manipulation and exploitation. We are all part of the problem, whether we like it or not.

It worries me how easy it would be for the world of eHuman Dawn to become a reality. I don't trust the Edgar Princes, nor the Guardian Enterprises of this world, to enable technological immortality for the love of humanity. Yet, I don't believe that halting progress is the solution. There's so much yet to discover about our humanity, and the connections between our bodies, minds and the planet.

Instead of fearing technological innovation, we each need to become responsible, right here and now, for the organizations in which we live and work. Each and every one of us must stop passing the moral buck and become worthy of the technology we're creating. This is the great work that the future requires from us, if we're going to live in a world of personal liberty and freedom for all.

Whether or not your job produces technology doesn't matter. Every organization runs the risk of passing the moral buck in some way, thus creating a mentality that the evil that surrounds us isn't our fault. Each of us has the opportunity to change that group dynamic, and create mature work places and organizations that honor humanity as a whole.

The alternative could be nothing less than the complete technocratic rule of the few over the many. I think we can do better than that.