(K) The Next Step in Human Evolution.

The need to be right is an evolutionary trait common to all organisms, from the simplest bacterium through to us, the most complex life-form we know of. The cruel calculus of evolution, function or die, crafts the biology of the organism in relation to a consistent reality – that in a purely physical sense the organism has to be right in order to survive. This is functional intelligence.

By random mutation, either beneficial or detrimental to survival, limbs and sensory organs developed, giving rise to behaviour – again forced by the function or die algorithm of evolution into intelligent patterns. Acting instinctually in a behaviourally intelligent manner, one branch a broad family apes suddenly developed a new form of intelligence. Functionally ingrained and played out through behaviour, the need to be right led this ape-man to the relation between artefact and artificer – from relating the sounds and footprints of animals with ideas of food and danger.

Whether a footprint in the mud or handprints about a heap of rocks and bloody bones, for any of a number of recurring reasons man was required to ask: ‘Who made this?’ – and one day, click, the light went on. ‘Who made me?’ ‘Who made the world?’ – abstract conceptual intelligence was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s sometimes difficult to see, but whether we are consciously aware of it or not, the need to be right plays a huge part in our mental, social, political and economic lives. It’s often obscure because the terms in which we are right are many and often in conflict.

For example, in 1233 the Church of Rome established the Court of the Inquisition – and conducted a reign of terror across half a millennium. But “punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.”

The Church’s reasons for resisting the works of Aristotle and other ancient philosophies, returned to Europe by the Crusading armies, through the scientific investigations of Galileo and onward, may well have been maintenance of the social order. But even if it were maintenance of the power and wealth of the Church, as Martin Luther believed, then these are the terms in which their actions were directed, and they acted rightly in these terms.

With the benefit of hindsight of course, even given the best of motives, the Church clearly served the wrong right – for ultimately, as we have shown, religious oppression perverted the course of human intellectual, social and political development. This is why the objective validity of scientific knowledge is so significant – because it is valid of a reality that is holistic and consistent in nature, acting rightly in the course of scientific knowledge of A and B, we act rightly in relation to C, D, E…and so on. Acting rightly in terms of the conceptual schemes of religion, nation and capitalist economics, however, while we may adequately reconcile A and B, we cannot account for C, D, E… in these terms.

That so, it is not merely that religiously defined, if secularized nations in political and economic competition have a systematic inability to address problems such as the energy crisis and climate change, but acting rightly in such terms, these problems occur as externalities. It’s difficult and presently pointless to imagine in detail what might have happened had the value of valid knowledge been recognized in 1632, enthusiastically developed and integrated into society, politics and economics on an ongoing basis. That’s not the situation we face. Rather, in the course of religious ideas we are brought to this impasse – where nation states in economic competition cannot secure our continued survival.

While it’s immediately obvious how government bound to valid knowledge would satisfy the criteria for legitimacy: the valid and impartial truth of scientific knowledge is a rightful source of authority, and conceived in these terms, the ends and purposes of government would be rightful – nonetheless, that’s not to say that what’s reconciled in lesser terms has no value.

Outside yesterday, council workers were clearing up huge piles of leaves, quickly before the kids got out of school, and the high street was busy with people getting a few things in for the weekend. These rightful and decent social practices may occur within the context of a fundamentally illegitimate social, political and economic system – but it’s this very need for rightness that entrenches the limited terms which create the externalities now amounting to extinction threats.

We see this most clearly in the case of religious ideas, initially employed by primitive man to forge the social cohesion of hunter-gatherer tribes – later employed as a reason to pay mercenary armies to liberate the holy land, and as a rationale for intellectual oppression. It’s not dissimilar to the nation state – that Hobbes invites his readers to think of as a collective expression of the will, but now clearly subverts the collective will, standing in the way of possible solutions to the energy crisis and climate change for the sake of ideas of sovereignty and national economic interest.

Institutions premised upon limited conceptual schemes must necessarily become self serving, and hungry for power and wealth as they act to protect themselves against that which cannot be reconciled in the terms upon which they claim legitimacy.

Thus we see the Church fomenting war against Muslims, selling indulgences to slum-dwellers, burning books, imprisoning intellectuals, condemning contraception, and up to the present day refuting Evolution in favour of Creationism – against the opinion of scientists who specialize in, and apply great effort and intelligence to discover the facts. Thus we see President Bush blithely favouring the American economy before international efforts to address climate change – which, again, the scientific consensus describes as a real and urgent threat. These realities cannot be reconciled in the terms that uphold the institution – and so the institution dismisses the reality.

Rather, the institution tends to exaggerate that which it serves the institution to address, as Trevor McDonald’s question to President Bush tacitly indicates:

‘But Mr President, if I may, the predictions about global warming are very dire. The UK’s Chief Scientists says it poses a bigger threat than global terrorism. Isn’t it therefore irresponsible of you…’

But it simply doesn’t serve the institution Bush represents to address climate change – whereas the ‘war on terror’ has empowered the institution to silence critics, declare war, award multi-billion dollar contracts, monitor communications, detain without charge or trial – while wrapped up in the flag of patriotism, and championing the cause of freedom. Rather like the Church, acting rightly in terms that served the Church, Bush is certainly responsible to certain interests, and this systematically bars him from responsibility to others.

It’s important to note that it’s not suggested that every conflict between conceptions of right can be resolved by rendering the dilemma into its scientifically conceived elements and balancing them to the complete satisfaction of all. Particularly so, conflicts generated by action in the course of irrational ideas. Certainly a valid basis of analysis provides us with insight that we may choose the lesser evil, but rather it is that in valid terms, many of these conflicts simply do not arise.

That so, it’s difficult and presently pointless to imagine in detail what might have happened had the value of valid knowledge been recognized in 1632, enthusiastically developed and integrated into society, politics and economics on an ongoing basis. That’s not the situation we face. Rather, in the course of religious ideas we are brought to this impasse – where nation states in economic competition cannot secure our continued survival.

Just as it’s easy for Rawls self-interested individuals to choose to centralize scientifically valid knowledge to society and the conduct of human affairs from behind a veil of ignorance, it’s only in theory that a universal, honest and unqualified acceptance of scientific knowledge is the answer to the situation we face. We can in theory consider what it would mean for man to meet upon the level ground of an objective understanding, to employ knowledge, technology and resources rationally – but the discontinuity involved in such a sharp change in direction would do more harm than good.

While recognizing the ideal, we have to look at what can realistically be achieved – without inducing that which we would act to avoid. As humankind is, in scientific terms a single species occupying a single planetary environment, applied politically, honouring science requires the formation of a global government, and because the nation state is epistemologically illegitimate in these terms, a global government with authority over the nation state.

The global government will be constitutionally bound to an honest and unqualified acceptance of scientific knowledge and a commitment to the continued existence of the human species. It will come into existence to solve two related issues: the energy crisis and climate change, and will be therefore tasked with establishing a sustainable energy basis for human civilization.

It would be better if the nation state concept could be dispensed with altogether – but it would be ridiculous to abolish the concept overnight. There would be chaos and people would suffer – much more would be lost than gained. But the task of securing our energy future and climate is such that the concept will gradually lose relevance.

For example, it makes much more sense to produce hydrogen from solar energy at the equator and ship it around the world than it does to damn rivers and estuaries in the Northern hemisphere – to litter the landscape with windmills, or build nuclear power stations, for transport powered by hydrogen will have no environmental cost. Reciprocally, it makes much more sense to farm in the temperate lattitudes – and ship food South, than it does deplete aquifers to scratch out a plot in the desert.

No single nation can reconcile these factors – but required of states by global government as a functional necessity of securing our energy future and climate, such an approach enables the ongoing creation of rationality that will externalize irrational bases of analysis. Unfortunately for many, this means that for the present, the nation state system and capitalism will remain in place – if overseen by an objective authority.