Tag Archives: life

Civilization and Evolution

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Evolution is a slow process. Small changes over thousand and millions of years. I’m not thinking about bacteria becoming antibiotic resistant or moths changing colour over time to match their environment. I’m thinking about modern humans (Homo sapiens) who emerged approximately 300,000 years ago. Sure, certain traits like lactose tolerance evolved approximately 5,000–10,000 years in some populations, but for the most part we are a heck of a lot like our ancestors 100,000 years ago. Taller due to better nutrition, but otherwise pretty much the same.

And when we think about civilization as we know it, we are really talking about the last 2,500-3,000 years… and yet we are the same humans who lived as nomads and hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years before that. In other words we have not evolved to live in the societies we currently live in.

We didn’t evolve to live mostly indoors, away from nature, and out of sunlight for most of our day. We didn’t evolve to use artificial light at night before going to bed at hours well past dark. We don’t evolve to do shift work, or to sit at a desk all day.

We didn’t evolve to work for made up currencies so that we could go to buildings where we buy food that is over-processed, over-sweetened, and filled with empty calories. We didn’t evolve to spend time in front of screens that distract and overstimulate us.

We are simple but very intelligent animals who have not evolved much at all since we lived in small communities where we knew everyone, and knew what to fear, and how to protect ourselves from dangers.

Yet we now live surrounded by people we don’t know, and we are triggered by stresses that we evolutionarily were not designed for. Everything from being in constant debt, to working in stressful environments, to information overload, to time pressures, social comparison, choice overload, conflicting ideologies, environmental noises and hazards, and social disconnection.

We live in a state of overstimulation, stress, and distraction that we have not evolved to cope with. Then we identify diagnoses to tell us how we are broken, how we don’t fit in, and why we struggle. Maybe it’s the societies we have built that are broken? Maybe we evolutionarily do not belong in the social, technological, and societal structures we’ve created?

Maybe, just maybe, we are trying to live our best lives in an environment we were not designed for. Our modern civilizations are not well equipped to meet the needs of our primitive evolution… We have built ‘advanced’ cages and put ourselves in zoos that are nothing like the environment we are supposed to live in. And we don’t realize that all the things we think are broken about us are actually things that are broken about this fake environment we’ve trapped ourselves in.

And so we spend hours exercising, moving around weights that don’t need to be moved, meditating to empty our minds and seek presence and peace. We spend hours playing or cheering on sports teams so that we can have camaraderie with a small community. We spend thousands of dollars on camping equipment so that we can commune with nature. And some people take drugs or alcohol to escape the zoos and cages that we feel trapped in.

Maybe we’ve built our civilizations in ways that have not meaningfully considered our evolutionary needs.

Free will or no free will tug of war

Consciousness and Free Will

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I just finished listening Annaka Harris’ audio documentary, ‘Lights On: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe’. I’ve also listened to her and moreso her husband, Sam Harris, talk about Free Will – or rather that we lack free will. On these concepts I consider this couple two of the brightest minds. They have researched these topics far more than me and their depth of knowledge and understanding far surpasses mine. I look to them for anything they share on these subjects and admire the scope of what they know and understand on the topics. And yet I disagree a fair bit with their conclusions.

I’m not going to detail my thinking completely here. Rather I’m going to do a bit of a mind dump and hopefully expand on my thoughts later. I just feel that these two topics belong together and I often think of how they are connected. I’ll also share some links to the things I’ve already written on the topics. 

1. I don’t think consciousness is fundamental.

I think it is emergent. Consciousness is on a spectrum, but life is an essential necessity before consciousness. If life must come first, consciousness is not fundamental. So a rock does not have consciousness, but the simplest amoeba does. Every living thing has some level of consciousness. However, there is a minimal basic consciousness related to ‘the lights being turned on’. We can argue about where this point is, and while I favour the idea of self-awareness being the ‘lights on’ moment, I think even the idea of what it means to be self-aware is debatable and that a human definition automatically biases greater intelligence than I think is required for an organism to be self-aware. 

2. Consciousness comes from an excess of processing time.

“…life requires consciousness, and it starts with the desire to reproduce. From there, consciousness coincidentally builds with an organism’s complexity and boredom, or idle processing time, when brains do not have to worry about basic survival. Our consciousness is created by the number of connections in our brains, and the amount of freedom we have to think beyond our basic survival.” And from the link in #1, above, “It’s sort of like the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid must be met, (psychological and safety) AND there then needs to be extra, unnecessary processing time, idle time that the processor then uses for what I’m calling desires… interests beyond basic needs.”

3. In this way, free will starts early. The early decision-making might be as simple as moving towards more nutritious food, but somewhere in the development of brains choices move more towards desires… choosing to move towards something we like/desire, not just something better for the organism. The fact that we do not just operate in a way that best serves survival to me is one of the strongest arguments for free will. Free will is ubiquitous in nature. Animals show higher order consciousness and make choices that show value for other life and do not make sense in a universe without free will.  

4. Free will is on a bell curve.

Our hardware and software are imperfect, and our beliefs, our morals, our desires, our wants and wishes are all fed through imperfect systems influenced by outside sources. As a simple example, we know that being hungry can affect our disposition as well as our decision-making. These ‘outside’ influences can be very strong and can keep us low on the free will bell curve, while other choices we make might be a lot freer on the free will bell curve. Hardware issues like our gut biome or a tumour as examples can limit our free will, as can software issues like the brainwashing of beliefs or the societies we live in, which can and do reduce our free will. But as significant as these influences can be, they do not negate free will. 

5. We truly don’t understand consciousness and free will because of our inability to understand the unconscious mind. However, this hardware issue gives us hints. 

 I’ll start by saying we do ourselves a disservice when we separate our conscious and unconscious minds. This is a hardware issue that gets in our way and our software does not have a way around it. The argument that we can ask a person a question while they have sensors on their brain and we can figure out what their answer is before they consciously do is a poor argument that we don’t have choice or that we don’t have free will… Even if our conscious mind makes up after-the-fact reasons for the decision. The reality is that we are of one mind, and our conscious mind not knowing what our unconscious mind knows at the same time is not the separation we think it is. It’s simply that we have poor hardware that makes us think these are two separate minds.

Glimpses of the unconscious, for example with the use of psychedelic drugs, show us extremely metaphoric imagery and not a doorway to logical processes. This might not seem to be a good argument, but I think it’s better than thinking of us as having two minds, the unconscious with no free will and the conscious with just an illusion of free will. If consciousness is built from idle processing time, the idea that organisms start to make any choices at all that veer away from survival inherently suggests that there is choice and so there is free will. 

All this said, and despite thinking we have free will, I really don’t think it’s all that free. I think our basic survival needs, the desire for sustenance, the desire to procreate, the desire to protect our family, the desire for community and attention, these all limit the freeness of our free will. Then there is also the limits of our hardware and software, the influences of other organisms on our bodies… these all flatten the curve of free will to the point that we spend most of our lives not really having much choice… But limited choice and highly influenced choice is still not no choice, and so there is free will even if it’s not completely free. 

So absolutely unique

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I’m listening to some music I enjoy listening to in the background while I write. I have songs on a ‘Writing’ playlist that I’ve heard many, many times. I know the music and it doesn’t interfere with my thought process. The weird thing is, despite hearing these favourite songs of mine hundreds of times, I don’t know the lyrics to any of the songs from start to finish. They really are just a background thing for me.

I think about my use of music in this way as an example of how unique each of our brains are. My daughters would know every lyric by now. My wife would be able to play the piano parts in her mind the way my daughter could replay the lyrics. And even my daughters would appreciate different aspects of the songs from each other.

We actually don’t have a clue what music appreciation really means to another person. We don’t really know how they experience the tone of a note, or for that matter the tone of a colour…. Is my experience of the colour red the same as yours?

What about how we experience pain? Or the way we feel emotions? How unique is my experience of these things compared to yours? How alike are my sense of joy or sadness like yours, or like anyone else’s?

Some of these experiences might be, probably are, similar. But I know my experience of music is drastically different from my family. I know that when some people feel sympathy others feel empathy. For some people going through a similar experience could result in anger, frustration, futility, disappointment, or some other emotion that I would not feel in the same situation. Because my felt experience is not like yours, and yours too is one-of-a-kind.

The great mystery is that we can never truly know another’s felt experience, and they will never know ours. This is it, we each get this one, incomparable, absolutely unique experience. And no one will ever know how ‘this’ experience is experienced.

Take a moment to appreciate your uniqueness, and value the thoughts and lived experience that make you… you!

Stop taking things so seriously.

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I love this quote by Chris Williamson:

Stop taking things so seriously.

No one is getting out of this game alive.

Literally.

In 3 generations, no one will even remember your name.

If that doesn’t give you liberation to just drop your problems and find some joy, I don’t know what will.

Life is inherently ridiculous and guaranteed to end sooner or later.

So you might as well enjoy the ride.

I had a simple reminder of this yesterday. My original Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts blog was down for a while and I finally got around to going into the back end and figuring out what plugin was preventing it from working.

Then my phone got a notification:

“The site’s downtime lasted 4 months. We’re happy to report your site was back online as of 2:37pm on March 16, 2025.”

For 4 months a blog that used to be my baby, that I put thousands of hours into vanished, a white screen followed by an error page… and not even I noticed that it was down for a full 4 months. And anywhere from 1-5 years after I’m gone the DavidTruss.com domain hosting will expire and literally thousands of blog posts will be lost to all but the internet archive. When is the last to you visited that site to find a dead article? For me it had to be at least 5-6 years ago.

The frame to think about this is the one Chris shares above, “In 3 generations, no one will even remember your name. If that doesn’t give you liberation to just drop your problems and find some joy, I don’t know what will.”

Our journey here is short. The things we should worry about should not outshine the things we should be grateful for. The reasons to be frustrated or upset should not compete with or get in the way of things we appreciate and bring joy to us and others. We can all take at least a small dose of not taking ourselves so seriously.

Create experiences

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This is something I’ve thought a bit about over the years. As time passes, and I’m looking ahead at retirement, I think about the time I have left with family and friends. I wonder how do I create experiences rather than just reminiscing? When we meet up, are we doing something together or are we reflecting and sharing stories of the past?

This isn’t to say reminiscing isn’t enjoyable, but simply identifying that this shouldn’t be what we do every time we get together. Are we doing something active? Are we doing something novel? Are we creating opportunities to experience something new? Are we designing our time together or just letting time pass.?

It’s easy to live a life of ‘rinse and repeat’, going through the day-to-day routine and taking both people and time for granted… ‘they will always be there’… ‘there will always be more time’. There is comfort in those beliefs, but also caution. Are we just going through the motions of life with little emotion? Or are we creating experiences that will give us future reasons to reminisce the next time we meet?

A dignified ending

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I had a wonderful chat with a family member yesterday. She has a nursing background and is taking a course to become an end-of-life doula. In her words, we spend a lot of time helping to bring someone into this world, but don’t often give enough thought to that kind of support for people leaving this world. She also said something that stuck with me… we are very thoughtful and compassionate about caring for our pets end of life, more so than we are with humans.

When we see a pet suffering, we want to end that suffering. When a family member is suffering, we want them to hang on, to stay strong, and to endure for just a little longer. It makes me wonder, is this love and kindness or selfishness? Are we holding on for their sake or our own?

It’s one thing to want to end a life unnecessarily early, when counselling, support, and opportunities and potential for better days lay ahead… and yet another for someone with a painful and terminal illness. For the latter, there can be opportunities to make the process dignified and maybe even joyful.

In thinking about diseases of the mind, like Alzheimer’s, I wouldn’t want my family having to care for me while I can’t even remember them. If I had terminal cancer and was in pain every day, I would not want to drag out my end of life simply to prolong my daily suffering.

I can see a lot of value in an end-of-life doula to put the inevitable process of dying into perspective. To help provide not just support to a dying person but also to the family they leave behind. The process is not easy, and having kind and thoughtful support at such a stressful time is probably something many people would benefit from.

Hopefully I won’t be needing one any time soon, but it’s nice to know that there are people out there willing to provide caring palliative support to people in the same loving way we would provide end of life care for the animals we love.

One world, many universes

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There are a lot of theories about alternate realities. One can imagine entire universes, multiverses, and diverging timelines, different from our own. Undiscoverable worlds where a version of us is subtly or even sublimely different… than us, than our world that we know. But recently I’ve come to realize just how different people’s universes are right here on this earth, in this timeline.

We don’t need a multiverse to grasp completely different realities, they exist here and now. There are groups of people who live so drastically different lives, that despite sharing our current reality, their individual realities are so diverse that you could argue that they live in different universes.

A child born to a single parent in a war torn country today will live a drastically different life than a child born to a rural farm family. Who, in turn, would live in a completely different reality as a kid born to billionaire parents, or a kid born in the slums of a shantytown in an underdeveloped country.

Some people live with religious convictions that dictate many facets of their lives. Others follow science and cannot reconcile with the writings of a holy book. Still others find ways to merge the two and live with a faith that inconsistently matches science, but works for that person trying to make sense of the world.

Some people live with severe disabilities, their view of the world completely different due to limitations in perception, perspective or mobility. Some require medication to survive, while others medicate themselves to escape the world they live in. Whether stuck in or creating their own alternate realities, the lives they live are almost incomparable to our own.

Some people live with financial aspirations that rule how they relate to the world. They sacrifice other priorities in pursuit of wealth. Others make sacrifices for love, for family, for safety, and even for happiness. Each person finding their own motivations, but also stuck in their own worlds of status, health, and geography.

Within a 25 kilometre radius of downtown Vancouver there are people simultaneously living: in a tent, uncertain of when the next meal will be; renting an apartment that is less than ideal and yet too expensive compared to income generated; making significant earnings in a job that provides a comfortable life; living in a world of private jets and luxury restaurants. Each of these people live a life almost incomparable to the rest. What makes their existence similar to each other beyond their proximity on a map? Almost nothing.

We don’t need to live in a multiverse to appreciate that people live in completely different universes, right here, right now. While we experience the same planet, rotating around the same sun, in the same universe, our worlds are so drastically different that they are difficult to compare. We need not leave our one world to see the existence of many universes, each a stark contrast from the other. Each a microcosm unto itself.

The right to disconnect

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I’ve already shared my vampire rule for email:

“After 6 PM staff only get emails from me if the email is invited in. In other words, if they have asked me a question and want an answer, then a response has been invited. But if that invitation for a response isn’t there, I delay email delivery until the next morning.

So like a vampire at the front door, I can’t enter (with email) if I have something to share that is not initiated (and therefore invited in) by my staff. New topics are set to be delivered early the next morning.”

Yesterday a parent wanted me to contact one of my online teachers, who is on her last week of summer holidays, to get her son started in a course. I said no. I told the parent that I would send a scheduled message to the teacher the first day back (and I did), but that I was not interrupting my teacher’s holidays.

The Australia government just protected employees “right to disconnect”. According to a CNN report, “As of Monday, people won’t have to answer out of hours calls, texts, or emails.”

Laws are one way to ensure it, but I don’t think we need laws to be thoughtful and respectful about work/life boundaries. I think we can choose thoughtfulness over convenience, and be respectful of people’s time and attention. Like I mentioned to the parent (who was very understanding), if I interrupt a teacher’s holiday for this, there is no specific line I can draw to respect the teacher’s rights to a holiday.

We can all probably draw better boundaries between work and the rest of our lives, but what’s more important is that no matter where we draw our own lines does not allow us to choose for others too. Regardless of where our lines are, we need to be respectful of other people’s rights to unplug and disconnect from work when they are away from work.

Our significance

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Brian Cox is a brilliant scientist. I love this quote:

“There is only one interesting question in philosophy: What does it mean to live a finite, fragile life in an infinite eternal universe?“

@evancarmichael

The most interesting question in philosophy #briancox #philosophy #space #physics #existence #astronomy #foodforthought

♬ Experience (Cover Ludovico Einaudi) – 北昼

On the grand scale of the universe our planet is insignificant. But being the only species on the only planet that can grasp what the universe is… for millions of light years in any direction… makes us perhaps the most significant thing in our part of the universe.

Is something beautiful if no conscious being is around to observe it? Does anything matter if there is no appreciation of significance? Does the universe beyond this third closest rock from our sun understand laughter, love, or happiness? Beyond the life on earth, where is there any meaning? Where is there any significance to the existence of the universe?

I’m sure in a universe with trillions stars there is, has been, and will be other intelligent life ‘out there’. But we are very likely the most intelligent form of life circling around one of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy.

We create the meaning for our galaxy and for the entire universe. We embody an understanding and appreciation for life, time, and existence. It’s compelling to think that our existence on an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy in an insignificant part of the universe might be the most significant existence in that same universe.

“What does it mean to live a finite, fragile life in an infinite eternal universe?“

It means whatever meaning we give it… it’s as significant as we make it. Let’s appreciate that and not take it for granted. Life is beautiful, special, and so fleeting that every moment should be sacred.

Breaking Bland

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I don’t know what I’ll be doing today after work, but it won’t be what I’ve done the past couple days. For two days now I’ve come home, sat on the couch, and only really got up to eat leftovers and go back to the couch… and then to bed.

It’s easy. It’s lazy. It’s unproductive. And ultimately it’s unsatisfying.

It’s ok to do for a couple days, but I can’t let myself just default to this daily. Sometimes it takes intention to change. It takes awareness and also effort. A plan helps too, but honestly I don’t have one right now. That will have to change before I get home. If it doesn’t change I’ll probably choose the bland option of doing nothing much again.

~

Breaking Bland

Breaking a bland routine is to thrive, to feel alive, rather than satisfactorily survive.

It doesn’t need to be profound, exciting, or fun. It just needs to be an evening where I don’t get home from work and think, “I’m done!”

A walk, a talk, a task with a goal will do. A chore or ‘to do’ list item will suffice too. Perhaps a recipe with flavours that are new. A book, a podcast, a meditation, a conversation with you.

The experience need not be perfect, this I understand. I just want to choose something that is more than bland.