1.5 Evolving is life’s greatest accomplishment and its greatest reward.
It is instinctually that way, which is why most of us feel the pull of it—in other words, we instinctively want to get better at things and have created and evolved technology to help us. History has shown that all species will either go extinct or evolve into other species, though with our limited time window that is hard for us to see. But we do know that what we call mankind was simply the result of DNA evolving into a new form about two hundred thousand years ago, and we know that minkind will certainly either go extinct or evolve into a higher state. I personally believe there is a good chance man will begin to evolve at an accelerating pace with the help of man-made technologies that can analyze vast amounts of data and “think” faster and better than we can. I wonder how many centuries it will take for us to evolve into a higher-level species that will be much closer to omniscience than we are now—if we don’t destroy ourselves first.
One of the great marvels of nature is how the whole system, which is full of individual organisms acting in their own self-interest and without understanding or guiding what’s going on, can create a beautifully operating and evolving whole. While I’m not an expert at this, it seems that it’s because evolution has produced a) incentives and interactions that lead to individuals pursuing their own interests and resulting in the advancement of the whole, b) the natural selection process, and c) rapid experimentatioin and adaptation.
a. The individual’s incentives must be aligned with the group’s goals.
To give you a quick example of nature creating incentives that lead to individuals pursuing their own interests that result in the adancement of the whole, look at sex and natural selection. Nature gave us one hell of an incentive to have sex in the form of the great pleasure it provides, even though the purpose of having sex is to contribute to the advancement of the DNA. That way, we individually get what we want while contributing to the evolution of the whole.
b. Reality is optimizing for the whole—not for you.
Contribute to the whole and you will likely be rewarded. Natural selection leads to better qualities being retained and passed along (e.g., in better genes, better abilites to nurture others, better products, etc.). The result is a constant cycle of improement for the whole.
c. Adaptation through rapid trial and error is invaluable.
Natural selection’s trial-and-error process allows improvement without anyone understanding or guiding it. The same can apply to how we learn. There are at least three kinds of learning that foster evolution: memory-based learning (storing the information that comes in through one’s conscious mind so that we can recall it later); subconscious learning (the knowledge we take away from our experiences that never enters our conscious midns, though it affects our decision making); and “learning” that occurs without thinking at all, such as the changes in DNA that encode a species’ adaptations. I used to think that memory-based, conscious learning was the most powerful, but I’ve since come to understand that it produces less rapid progress than experimentation and adaptation. To give you an example of how nature improves without thinking, just look at the struggle that mankind (with all its thinking) has experienced in trying to outsmart viruses (which don’t even have brains). Viruses are like brilliant chess opponents. By evolving quickly (combining different genetic material across different strains), they keep the smartest minds in the global health community busy thinking up countermoves to hold them off. Understanding that is especially helpful in an era when computers can run large numbers of simulations replicating the evolutionary process to help us see what works and what doesn’t.
In the next chapter I will describe a process that has helped me, and I believe can help you, evolve quickly. But first I want to emphasize how important your perspective is in trying to decide what is important to you and what to go after.
d. Realize that you are simultaneously everything and nothing—and decide what you want to be.
It is a great paradox that individually we are simultaneously everything and nothing. Through our own eyes, we are everything—e.g., when we die, the whole world disappears. So to most people (and to other species) dying is the worst thing possible, and it is of paramount importance that we have the best life possible. However, when we look down on ourselves through the eyes of nature we are of absolutely no significance. It is a reality that each one of us is only one of about seven billion of our species alive today and that our species is only one of about ten million species on our planet. Earth is just one of about 100 billion planets in our galaxy, which is just one of about two trillion galaxies in the universe. And our lifetimes are only about 1/3,000 of humanity’s existence, which itself is only 1/20,000 of the Earth’s existence. In other words, we are unbelievably tiny and short-lived and no matter what we accomplish, our impact will be insignificant. At the same time, we instinctually want to matter and to evolve, and we can matter a tiny bit—and it’s all those tiny bits that add up to drive the evolution of the universe.
The question is how we matter and evolve. Do we matter to others (who also don’t matter in the grand scope of things) or in some greater sense that we will never actually achieve? Or does it not matter if we matter so we should forget about the quetison and just enjoy our lives while they last?
e. What you will be will depend on the perspective you have.
Where you go in life will depend on how you see things and who and what you feel connected to (your family, your comunity, your country, mankind, the whole ecosystem, everything). You will have to decide to what extent you will put the interests of others above your own, and which others you will choose to do so for. That’s because you will regularly encounter situations that will force you to make such choices.
While such decision might seem too erudite for your taste, you will make them either consciously or subliminally, and they will be very important.
For me personally, I now find it thrilling to embrace reality, to look down on myself through nature’s perspective, and to be an infinitesimally small part of the whole. My instinctual and intellectual goal is simply to evolve and contribute to evolution in some tiny way while I’m here and while I am what I am. At the same time, the things I love most—my work and my relationships—are what motivate me. So, I find how reality and nature work, including how I and everything will decompose and recompose, beautiful—though emotionally I find the separation from those I care about difficult to appreciate.
* Source: Principles by Ray Dalio