@KaiserShep
That's all that you understand, anyway. If you lack the ability to understand, then your options are limited, and that's how you become part of the problem. Instead, you could have greater understanding, and then you are part of the solution. This is the key to our future and the Singularity as a whole: Understanding. Wisdom is simply the ability to grasp greater understanding, to become less small in the grand scheme of things by assimilating alternate perspectives into yourself but separating them from the gestalt of your being. You are you, and you understand. Right now, you are you, but you do not understand.
Not many people are very good at ethics and philosophy, they do not understand. They also do not understand other people, they cannot empathise, they cannot grasp the hopes and dreams of another individual. They see other people as a threat, because they do not understand, and this creates conflict. So long as everything is a threat, you will have conflict, conflict driven by primal, animal fears which are in direct contradiction of the intellectuality which makes us human. If we are driven by primal fear, we are small animals, and nothing more.
Intellectuality leads to understanding, and understanding leads to wisdom. And of wisdom, I have plenty. I look at the world around me and I realise that when one person understands another, the barriers between them diminish, and the fear diminishes as well, thus conflict becomes a non issue. Instead, where once you would have had people tearing at each other's eyes, now you have them collaborating on grand works of art or science, because they understand each other, they admire each other, they respect each other.
Collaboration is the opposite of conflict, and it's collaboration through intellect that's brought us to where we are -- the apex race of our planet. Conflict is old hat, it's something evolution did to get us this far, but now we have to take things into our own hands. It's up to us to stop being small animals, to stop falling prey to the animal fears. To be human is to actually use the ability to think and perceive on levels far beyond other creatures.
Any creature can feel, but it is when feeling is met with intellect that we gain empathy and ethics. When we feel for another, or other groups of people, we turn what once would have been conflict into collaboration. And this is our strength, as human beings. Not as base, mindless barbaric drones who tear at each other's flesh, but as thinking, clever, self-modifying things. To a degree, we are the closest thing to a perfect machine that nature has created, and yet due to our lack of understanding, we are still so flawed.
So we must then create something even more perfect than us so that we might all understand, something that can share understanding with everyone, and put people on equal footing. There have been many examples of this in television, literature, films, and games. But let me use games, as I'm sure they are more common examples. In Fallout Tactics, one merges with the machine in order to bring peace to the wastes. In Deus Ex, one merges with the machine in order to create Helios, to network all of humankind. In Mass Effect 3, one merges with the machine in order to create Synthesis.
The want is there. There is wisdom in the desire. It's subconscious and close to the surface for many humans, but you have to be aware of it. You have to understand it. Conflict is not the way forward, as conflict leads only to extinction. We fear that which takes us away from nature because we don't want to understand, not understanding allows us to be comfortable, small animals, obeying our primal fears. Being good little rabbits and wolves, just being a part of the cycle of nature.
But already we augment ourselves. Whenever you put on a pair of spectacles you're doing something that doesn't exist within the animal kingdom. When you use an iPhone to twitter, you're networking on a level that cannot exist within nature. This is the way forward, this is what we're all progressing toward, and this is what Synthesis is ultimately the symbolism of. Open your mind to this knowledge, understand. Synthesis isn't to be taken literally, Synthesis is symbolism. It's an idealistic crystal ball of what could be.
So it's up to us to decide. Do we kill each other off, or do we put all of our efforts into creating something more perfect than us, something that could help us toward perfection, put all of humanity on equal footing, and help all of us understand each other. Which is the more worthy goal? Ultimately, conflict leads to nothing more than a barren earth, as weapons become more dangerous, and war becomes more frivolous, as reasons to fight become more common as we fall back on our animal fear.
I think, at the moment, we stand on something of a precipice. I hope we choose wisely.
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