(3 of 4) The Brothers

Of evolution and God.

Dimitry watched his brother with a sense of bewilderment. The last time the two spent any notable time in one another's company, the evening resolved in a barroom brawl entirely instigated, against the wishes of Dimitry, by his brother, Ivan. Evidently, still an unabashed boozehound of questionable scruple, Dimitry saw something else in his brother now. In their twenties, the pair was fresh-faced and youthful, if not a bit sophomoric in character. Sitting in scant lighting, Ivan's countenance a decade hence demonstrated untold turmoil in the younger brother. His voice had grown gravely and coarse like sandpaper. Dimitry felt drawn to his brother. Afterall, they were family.

If Ivan had noticed the inquisition in his brother's stare, he was careful to make no indication. Just as likely, the concoction of liquor and preoccupied thought dampened his external awareness. He continued, "Heretofore, I will contextualize and condense this matter of evolution within the mind. We may call it cultural evolution. The concept of culture carries mental baggage to be sure, but it really is the most fitting term to use. When we discuss culture, or cultural evolution, we are examining the larger systems which are comprised of the individual. Exactly the same as the culture shared within a colony of Argentinian ants or a troop of chimpanzees in the Congo. Also shared by these species is a tendency for culture to expand in a Darwinian sense when it becomes too powerful relatively or encounters a vacuum in the cultural ecosystem. Yes, dear brother, culture has a wide tapestry of ecosystems. The mind is just as diverse as the ecosystems of the Earth. As one culture expands and encompasses more and more individuals, new layers of culture form within the larger culture, like rose petals expanding outwardly in bloom.

"Within the western culture there is a subculture, an inner petal, of science. It may be agreeable to say science is the dominant driver currently of cultural growth. It may be said that the petal of science is pushing outwardly upon the outer petals of western culture to promote cultural growth. At another time, it was religion, and at another it was agriculture, but these cultures have already grown to inhabit most of the human species over most of the planet now. Science, as complex and multifaceted as this umbrella term is, continues to expand in a way that appears exponential given the evidence of evolutionary progress."

Ivan took a swig of drink. He peered through bloodshot eyes at the table in front of his brother and his pupils dilated. He began again, "In my mind I see a root, or a branch, or a blood vein. Yes, a vein within the human body, taken for example. At the one end of each vein are the capillaries. Capillaries are feeding the cells of the body, feeding them the oxygen they need to continue operations. And yes, too, the earliest forms of technology all work to serve the same. They feed the people. This is stoneworking and woodworking. This is hunting and gathering. It is fire. We feed the people to keep the system moving.

"We fold inwardly to find the veins, just as I said a moment ago. Is that what I said, in fact? Well I am not sure, but nonetheless, it is the vein next. The veins are early agriculture and animal husbandry, you see. They are religion and commerce, too. In the vein cultural tools come together into larger cultural machines. Within a cultural machine, we find adaptations of the physical world. We find structures made of masonry and wood. We find implements to augment our environment at our will. Implements to tend the field and implements to tame the beast. In addition, we bring to bear tools of the mind, cultural tools. We learned to turn the fields to mitigate loss of crop yield harvest over harvest. We bred animals with favorable attributes to improve the proportion or the degree of such an attribute within the population. We aided biological evolution by removing much of the randomness inherent in mutation. Much of the randomness, mind you; never quite all - remember that fact, brother. Quite often we do evoke our agency without a full comprehension as to the underlying process yielding the desired result. In the veins of culture then, we understood how to manipulate even if we did not grasp (do not today grasp) the entirety of the why behind that how.

"The next tier in our vascular system is the artery. Do keep with me, we are almost complete, and in this I do have a broader point to be made. The arteries in our systems are much the same as bloody superhighways of cells whizzing by. Each cell, there might be ten million of them at a time, is delivering oxygen or rushing back from a recent drop-off. Each is like a scientist rushing headlong toward the truth and delivering some singular morsel to sustain the people - to continue life.

"Something important happens between the second tier and the third, that is, the veins and the arteries of our little analogy. Did you catch it? At a certain point above and beyond sustainment, cultural evolution shifts gears in a sense. When enough oxygen - we may do away with any analogy for now, though I do have a final thought on the matter which I will come to momentarily - when enough culture is disseminated across some number of individuals, dependent on many externalities, the culture grows to exceed what is needed by the human system to sustain itself. Man being a creature of insatiable drive, in the aggregate, but that is giving man too much agency in the whole deal. Rather, man drives toward higher complexity whether cultural or biological because Life drives toward higher complexity. Both systems are the same in that respect, you see. The Universe drives toward higher complexity, and what is Life and in turn Man if not a more complex representation of the universe? Nothing more. That is all He is."

"And there," Demitry interrupts, "why do you say He like that? To whom are we referring?"

Ivan cajoled his brother, "Well it just goes to show brother, you have not been listening to me at all!"

"I have."

"You've heard my words, no doubt in that, brother. But you have not heard me. You have yet to listen. Come now, try. Try to see the deepest meaning in my words.

"Religion is the start of the whole of it. Agriculture and warfare served their part of it as well, but none like religion. For agriculture may satiate a man today, and religion may satiate him for eternity. Religion was the first to look for why. For the first time, Life and the Universe asked the central question of existence. Why? By what underlying means, and to what purpose is it all? Man was the tool.

"It is a question we pursue to this day, and I believe man will pursue until its dying breath. At least, the dying of our cultural complexity. For you see, cultures may become extinct as quickly as biological evolutionary traits by means other than competition from other complex life. All evolution may be exterminated, suddenly and completely exterminated. It is a fact inherent in the randomness of evolution that may never be fully mitigated, however hard we try."

Ivan stopped speaking for a moment. The idea of sudden and complete extermination hung in the air above their heads. Ivan recollected his thoughts and began again, "Religion, philosophy, mysticism and mythology began to feed a spirit within the heart of brutish man. Here I find myself at the cusp of an infinitely deep, infinitely black chasm which demonstrates how fledging our evolution truly is. It is here though, the edge of an incomprehensible fissure that the mind of man made flight for the first time. Not literal flight, mind you. I have slipped into another analogy all together. Forget that bit, rather the cultural evolution of man made a functional shift from pursuing knowledge for sustenance to consuming knowledge for satiation. Is the unyielding pursuit of knowledge driven no less by the senses than an appetite for indulgence or a lust for flesh? We are, all of us, victims of instinct.

"Man has unlocked a higher capability of the mind. We know man unlocked it, because in the individual of man it may not always be found. In a human system, in a culture, you are bound to find the sensual desire for knowledge. In that same individual man, such capability may not exist in one moment and yet exist in the next. Though once it exists, I believe it cannot be undone without first undoing the man - destroying the man, you see. Cultural evolution may begin within the mind of the individual but does not necessarily remain there. In fact, a decidedly beneficial variable in the context of cultural evolution is a single cultural unit's ability to transplant itself from the originating mind to an external mind of another individual in the cultural machine. In this way, the cultural unit, here I will call a meme, pollinates a population and enhances the desired result of aggregate life."

"And what's that," Dimitry interrupted, not without genuine curiosity, but perhaps equally to interject something somewhere for the sake of his own ego. "What is the desired result?" His brother's words caused Dimitry's right leg to rock convulsively under the table.

"Why, haven't I said it before!" Ivan bellowed. "Continuation of life, brother. Con-tin-uation of self."

"Self-preservation," concluded Dimitry.

"No. Well, yes. Yes, that's it exactly," exclaimed Ivan. "It is more than that. Self-preservation prescribes the continuation of the individual; in the context we are accustomed to using it. It is true, what you say, but maybe for reasons other than how you mean.

"Let's go back to the analogy of the vascular system and of evolution. Yes, yes, I will not belabor the point, but I only mean to complete the analogy, as you see, I've left it unfinished. We spoke of capillaries and veins, which exist in a sort of hierarchy all designed for the same goal. The goal is to feed the individuals, whether they be individual cells or human individuals. Capillaries and veins work to feed the individuals to keep the system operating. Higher still are the arteries which connect large regions of the body together and efficiently continue the flow of blood - of oxygen or culture. If one cell of blood is a single unit, and a molecule of oxygen the same, culture's single unit may be called the meme.

"A meme is, very simply put, the smallest component of a culture or cultural concept. As an atom is the building block of the physical world and the cell is the smallest component of life, a meme serves that role for the phenomenon of culture. Memes may be very dense and therefore hold the potential for larger resulting complexity, or they may be like a noble gas, light and very stable.

"These memes, each of them, flow through the modern technologies of science, math, statecraft, and information technology to feed the people and extend our reach to the singular ultimate truth. This thing is the core of the entire phenomenon we, all people and all life, have experienced, and that we call God."

At the final word, Dimitry rose from his seat, his belly jutting the table toward the wall and cornering Ivan. "I will weather the storm for you, brother. I will grin politely and converse with you about any manner of things after an absence of some twelve years, but I will not sit by and listen to you blaspheme. You're a Catholic whether you accept that now or not. And to say otherwise is to torment our mother's soul, God allow her final peace." Dimitry's hand shook with adrenaline as he made the sign of the cross. His breath was short and rapid.

"Brother," Ivan's arm reached across the table and secured Dimitry firmly by his biceps, "I meant no offense against the Good Lord, brother. No, in fact, I honor Him and esteem Him, for, you see, he is in me, dear brother. God lives here." Ivan, now on his feet as well, pounded his chest. "God is in me, brother. And you as well. We are each of us God. But no, please, take a seat Dimitry. Sit, sit. Another whiskey?"