A failure or success?

Energy is the biggest future problem. We need energy in everything we do, and we use to take from nature. Dirty fuel produces carbon dioxide that heats the planet. We hope that some scientists will miraculously resolve the problem by finding a new and clean energy source that gives us cheap electricity.

Maybe the Keppe Motor is the breakthrough we hope for. The theorist Norberto Keppe is an independent thinker, denying Albert Einstein’s famous Mass-energy equivalence E = mc2. If Keppe is right, then we stand in front of a scientific paradigm shift. At least Dr. Keppe has access to the cleanest form of energy. It is not nuclear or solar energy but the power of thought – ideas.

Ideas are not subject to conservation laws. Ideas can grow over time and defeat the second law of thermodynamics. Good ideas can be copied and used over and over again without being consumed. They can be used to process energy, improve efficiency or concentrate major forces and use them to achieve different aims. Ideas can create new particle accelerators or new civil rights movements. If we can improve the ability to find and distribute new good ideas, then we are safe. To think independently is the way to the future.

For a democratic system – let us call it a Daemon – as for an economic system, growth is desirable. Democratic growth makes the Daemon happy; a state of Eudaimonia.

A democratic Daemon grows if we increase the degree of democracy. It can be done in two ways: Either by increasing the number of voters or the number of ballots every voter cast. Accordingly, a Daemon suffers if one of the two parameters decreases. That’s the reason why I don’t want to restrict immigration.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights from 1948, written with World War II disaster fresh in memory, is the best attempt so far to create good preconditions for the global Daemon to become Eudaimonia. Unfortunately, the UN declaration is not anchored in a global referendum. In the last 60 years, we have made no progress because the UN has not evolved as a democratic institution. An International Referendum to start with would be to vote on the Human Rights Declaration of 1948.

A critical consciousness is awakening. This has happened before, but now the preconditions are better than ever. Internet strengthens our abilities to think. Social media make it easy for us to link together and thanks to the collective wisdom of Wikipedia we can even understand what’s going on.

Why political stability? It is sometimes said that political stability leads to prosperity. The argument goes that instability is an investor’s nightmare, so the market hates instability.  But this is not true. For the contemporary capitalistic system, instability is interesting. It makes it possible to create new markets and earn quick money. Milton Friedman’s research shows that chaos and political changes actually make it easier for investors to do good business, see i.e. the sell-out of Russia, described in Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine.

The animation above shows the factors that lead to economic growth.  The system of economics is much more dynamic than the system of politics. Economic growth implies political stability. If people are better off, they don´t need to change politics, so they give the politicians renewed confidence.

This incentive has been a reason for political leaders to control and try to stimulate economic growth. But the reverse implication is not true. Political stability does not imply higher economic growth. Economic growth comes from innovation, and political stability counteracts innovation. Innovation comes from chaos.

Democracy is the chaotic, dynamic factor in the political system – impossible to control. The excitement a national referendum creates depends on the dynamics of democracy. Political stability is the opposite of democracy.

The easiest and most peaceful way to change the world order is to infect the political systems at all levels with digital direct democracy.

The sentence above might be a powerful meme. Richard Dawkins and Douglas Hofstadter launched the concept of Memetics in the ’80s. They think that ideas are a kind of virtual genes that they call memes. Memes transmit from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word for something imitated. Dawkins and Hofstadter regard memes as culturally equivalent to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.

Memes – i.e. rumors, gossip, and hot news – are like viruses. Under the right circumstances, they spread very fast. Some viruses are very harmful, but there are also good viruses preventing us from sickness and decease. The meme above is a peaceful and purposive attempt to protect The Open Society against Its Enemies by making the political systems more open and transparent.

Charles Darwin has often been misunderstood. He never stated that the fittest will survive, but rather those who benefit from the circumstances. One way to benefit is to cooperate – symbiosis. What Darwin did not realize was that cooperation can make the elements come together into a single organism. It is called endosymbiosis and is the prerequisite for all higher life on earth.

Endosymbiosis is a biological concept that means that one cell is living inside another. American biologist James A. Lake recently discovered that an endosymbiosis caused the Earth’s oxygen atmosphere 2.5 million years ago. Two bacterias went together and got the emergent property to produce oxygen. Unless these two bacterias had joined forces, higher life probably never have evolved on Earth.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection requires an inherited rivalry between individuals without close relationships. Yet we cooperate – it is beneficial and even essential in nature. Endosymbiosis can explain this apparent contradiction with Darwin’s theories. Life is not a game where the fittest survive. The great leap in evolution is because endosymbiosis develops between organisms.

Endosymbiotic theory supplements Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Humans and other living organisms have arisen through cooperation. Organisms work together inside us. They are now included in our system where they take advantage of each other. Each cell comprises organisms that have fused together and given rise to new emergent properties. Even the consciousness might be a product of endosymbiosis.

My feeling is that when endosymbiosis occurs, the joint system gets at least one emergent property. I would say emergent properties are the rewards in the evolution of cooperation. This is also apparent in the world of memes or ideas. All big inventions in the history of mankind are in fact products of merged ideas.

What happens if systems with direct and representative democracy merge into endosymbiosis? What new emergent feature will then occur?