I am [...] a weapon of mass destruction?
To say "I am" is to affirm one's existence. It is what is added after "I am" that is currently creating insoluble and dangerous problems.
Let me explain. The first biological life forms appeared on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago. These first cells developed, specialized, complexified, producing in the course of time an extraordinary diversity of aquatic organisms.
One day, a long time ago, a few courageous plants and bugs undertook to leave the ocean to colonize the land. The first attempts must have resulted in a veritable hecatomb, but through stubbornness, more and more organisms learned to use the air and survive on the surface of our planet. Evolution continued underwater as well as on land, until the appearance of a curious biped, Homo Erectus.
On the scale of the evolution of biological life, the human being has only just arrived. If we condensed these 3.5 billion years into 1 year, we would have to wait until December 31st at 23:59 and 59 seconds to finally see the appearance of Homo sapiens.
Even if man is still at this stage only a first draft, it is nevertheless the next important step in evolution: sapience. Sapience comes from the Latin sapiens, wise: we still have a long way to go to deserve the name homo sapiens.
With the human being (and probably some other rare local species), life begins to observe itself, we see the appearance of self-reflexive consciousness. The astonished biped begins to think and says to himself: I am!
And as he does not understand too much what happens to him, he starts to stick attributes to I am, and to all that surrounds him. He gradually moves away from the here and now and lives more and more in his representations, in his ideas of himself and of the world. This is what we call the history of humanity. Me, my territory, my survival, my posterity, my idea of god...
This human capacity to reflect on oneself and to represent reality holds an extraordinary potential. The Intelligence that has orchestrated the development of life now offers this life the opportunity to contribute to imagining the next steps of evolution. Through the human, life is being offered a position in the office of the Great Architect.
This is very generous, but also very risky. Imagination can create worlds, but also destroy them.
In a universe composed of countless galaxies, how many worlds have successfully upgraded to self-reflective consciousness without destroying themselves? And will we succeed in integrating this new potential?
We are just beginning to learn the alphabet of self-reflective consciousness. Like the first organisms emerging from the ocean, our first attempts are clumsy and produce a lot of suffering. The failure rate is high.
Still inexperienced, we humans use our ability to imagine to create chaos. We try to change the image we see in the mirror, without understanding that we are the creators. In doing so, we become slaves of our representations: identity, money, religion... And we go to war to defend our images: the true God, the true democracy, the freedom of expression...
If we want to keep the job we have been offered in the cosmic architect's office (and incidentally keep our chances of survival as a human species), we will have to honor the trust placed in us instead of sowing terror. The only way to use self-reflective consciousness properly is not to identify with the images we produce. In other words, it is to stop pretending to be someone. How can we participate healthily in the elaboration of new forms and organizations of life if we think that our personal life is more important and that we are the only ones who are right?
Today, "I am" looks more like a weapon of mass destruction than the instrument of an artist dedicated to his work of art. And we all suffer from it, deeply. All the wars and horrors of the world are blind expressions of this suffering, they stem from this confusion, from this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of "I am".
Good news: labels come off! The easiest way to get out of the absurdity and suffering that characterizes our world is to stop attaching attributes to "I am". Once women, men, Muslim or Christian Jews, Republicans or Marxists, presidents, consumers and other charlies are unstuck from Being, we will be in a better position to co-compose the next movement of the cosmic symphony.
Let's go! One more effort!
Alain-Yan Mohr
January 15, 2015
