Amerika

It would seem that genetics and spirituality are opposite ends of a spectrum, but they are linked because both converge on organizations in a cyclic pattern: genetics determines ability and organizations route that ability either into rewarding or harmful mental outlooks. A useful rough model to link genetics to spirituality can be seen through the following sequence:

1. Genes affect language
2. Language affects culture and ( Western dualistic thinking )
3. Culture affects safety
4. Safety affects productivity
5. Productivity affects competitiveness
6. Competitiveness affects spirituality

Humans are genetically inclined to express themselves using language in the context of survival. This context changes for example, when the field becomes education, or business. Languages enable humans to perform in these various contexts.

Various languages developed around the world and resulted in various cultures. Initially some commenters thought that culture itself aimed at a universal objective, but because languages adapt and contexts change, we can visualize cultures as horizons that become fused as time progresses.

One interesting opinion was that the Western context exhibited a particular dualistic thinking (and thus dualistic culture) that enhanced binary thinking whereby a signifier such as “woman” is not identified by the meaning of the word, but by all the things that are absent from it. Language effects culture for example by isolating the concept of woman from family, child or social class; it produces a generic category which then forces distinction of layers of meaning by language.

Geert Hofstede demonstrates that culture affects safety. Human participation in war also demonstrated that home-advantage played a significant role, even visible in professional sports today.

Safety affects productivity since it is relatively easy to prove that a sick person cannot work. Safety also has a much wider application in that it is one of the fundamental goals of leadership, as was demonstrated by President Trump when he stated that his first priority is to keep Americans safe from both terrorism and immigrant crime.

Global competitiveness reports describe how productivity affects competitiveness in each country. The safer a country is, the more likely it is to be productive; this makes sense, since the smarter the population — a function of genetics — the more likely the country will be to have advanced leadership, and through that higher degrees of safety, and thus of confidence in the population.

Most people will think that spirituality would rather affect competitiveness, while the opposite is really true. The thinking is that competitiveness is a goal, or has a goal, whereas spirituality cannot propose a goal that relates to competitiveness.  Rather, the idea is to cycle back to language and culture where goalposts shift continuously, requiring regular changes in productive techniques (which has proven to be immensely difficult).

However, not only is “change” difficult, but merely having that “technique” is also prohibitive in the long run. First of all, overcoming the inherent problem of techniques — a calcifying tendency to imitate what has succeeded, without recognizing that the goalposts have shifted — requires spirituality, which will also help with changing of those same techniques later on.

The limitations of “techniques” can only be overcome with spiritual means because those are more abstract and related to principle, so can be used to assess goal, and from that, techniques can be chosen dynamically. Without this cycle, cultural organizations will eventually falter.

Organizations, like organisms, perish when they fail to adapt to changing conditions in the world around them. Spirituality, principles and transcendentals help societies avoid becoming fixated on concrete goals and techniques which then slowly become obsolete, giving entry to an entropy spiral leading to civilizational heat death, which is how all societies perish.

The world does not stand still. To adapt to this, humans bring genes and spirit together through the cycle described above by which genes create culture, culture creates language, language creates organization, and organizations through their handling of safety, create a spiritual presence that keeps the population flexible.

As with so many things in life, the first look — a mile wide, an inch deep — is the enemy of accurate perception. The institutions we think are least necessary and most outdated, like nationalism, religion, literature and hierarchy, may in fact be what saves us from the collapse that the first look would engender.

Tags: genetics, language, organizations, spirituality