How to Make Money in Business: Natural Laws: Consciousness?, How To Write A Melody To Chords? कैसे व्यापार में पैसा बनाने के लिए: प्राकृतिक कानून: अवचेतना?, सफल व्यापारी कैसे बनें?

 

How to Make Money in Business: Natural Laws: Consciousness

We, and our businesses, are most effective when we understand the physical and psychological laws that define the way the world works and then place ourselves in harmony with those laws.

The first set of laws were derived from evolution which can be found on the blog page on my website.

The next mystery on which our business rests is perhaps the most challenging of all. It is the most difficult to perceive and therefore objective assessment of what it is or how it functions is difficult.

Consciousness 

As discussed in the last section, When life climbed up onto land the deluge of additional information from being able to see further likely accelerated the development of cognitive functions. 

There are three great mysteries of existence; how life began, the disparity between relativity and quantum mechanics and consciousness. It is consciousness that is perhaps the most magnificent. 

They all seem to start with a spark. The big bang where time and matter appears to have begun. The divine touch that turned a soup into life. And the flash of inspiration that turned ape into human.

We can not pinpoint that flash, but with it, we realised we are a thing, we realised we will die and we realised our environment. 

It is almost as if when we glanced at the heavens and our cognitive abilities expanded to fill the space. Similar to the way a fish may grow to the size of its tank.

The leading theory on consciousness is that it is an emergent quality of the chemicals that flood our brain to cause emotions and it only developed in the last couple of hundred thousand years. 

So far as we know, we are the only self-conscious thing in the universe. Intuitively our minds tell us there must be life elsewhere, given the sheer odds. But no life has been found. So just on an empirical basis, we must proceed with the notion that we are alone. Although it seems a lonely and depressing thought it would mean that we are not just special, but perhaps the most special thing in the universe.

Many philosophers have posed the question. Would the universe exist if we were not here to perceive it? Whilst that seems a circular argument. The answer is no, at least not in the same way that it does because we are here.

The Nuts and Bolts

If you look at our brain you can see how it developed. We have the limbic system informed by the thalamus and hippocampus. These are the oldest parts of our minds, often referred to as the lizard brain. They flood our brains with chemicals causing emotions, essentially trying to get its meat vehicle safely through life and to procreate with the greatest chance of sending its genes as far into the future as possible.

They are still figuring out what many parts of our brains do. Like the rings of a tree, one can see the ebb and flow of time evolution on it. 

But the part that we are interested in here is the most recent addition, the cerebral cortex. This is where the magic happened and we developed consciousness. It is this part that the flash of inspiration created. Whilst it is a couple of hundred thousand years old the fire didn’t really catch until about 70,000 years ago when language gave consciousness a very different dimension.

The best analogy I’ve heard is that it’s like a rider on top of a flighty horse who freaks out at the slightest provocation. Normally out of fear or lust. The animal part of our brains veers off and our cerebral cortex has to try and rein it back in.

The Religious View

I’m far more spiritual these days though I look back with sympathy on the angry young atheist I once was. I was born in the post scientific era where Dawkins and Hitchins were going round drop kicking religion with their rapacious logic. 

This blog is not about religion. These days is that all religions are different doors to the same house. Including atheism. My with passage of time and travel I know enough to know that I do not know. My atheism turned into respect for religion and scepticism of the certain.

Religion is, in my opinion, an evolutionary means of dealing with consciousness. Understanding one's own mortality is part of being human and using that thought to do something worthwhile with the time we have rather than buckle under the existential weight is something we all must go through. And when we have, our consciousness is different. More somehow.

I believe that what was called the soul could equally be called consciousness.

An important piece of work here is that of the French philosopher Rene Descartes who posed the question “how do I know I am here and not being controlled by a demon?”. The same idea behind the film ‘The Matrix’ where everyone was plugged into a computer simulation. Descartes settled on a couple of ideas. He coined the phrase, “I think therefore I am”, saying all we can really know is that I am this thinking thing and everything else must be regarded with scepticism. He did also assert that as God exists then we must. But, this was in the time of the Spanish Inquisition when casting doubt over God was a precarious business. How much he meant the latter assertion is unknown.

Many feel that through deep meditation you can get a separate sense of the ego from the self. The ego is that constantly chattering part of the mind reacting to emotions. The self is something different. It is "the other" in Jungian terms. 

Feeling this separation for the first time is disconcerting as it begs the question “if I am not that thinking thing, then what am I?”. On a more practical basis having this separation allows the self to observe the ego, taming it, to a degree. That is why many get increased calmness and focus from meditation. I believe "the other" is our consciousness.

The Collective imagination 

I wish to touch briefly on our collective imagination. It is an emergent quality of consciousness and flows from language.

Religion, money, political ideologies, countries, empires, ethics, ideas, businesses do not exist outside of our collective imagination. Whilst the illusion we have created is so compelling that the surprising thing is that it is not obvious. Indeed, most of us find it difficult to even conceive of it not being the case.

However, the concept is important when considering business strategy. It allows us to objectively see the human urges underlying every figment in the imagination.

Memes 

The original concept of memes is that ideas bond together in a similar way to life. We can see the collective imagination as the primordial soup and ideas as early life.

Ideas in our collective imagination coalesce into concepts in the same way that molecules banded together to make organisms in the primordial soup.

Money, ideologies, technologies and laws band together to make countries that battle it out and some grow into empires. All of these entities rise and fall taking the remnants of the last and building something better. 

Consider anything in the collective imagination. Then consider the ideas that have bonded together and evolved to make them. You will see this law applies to all things.

We can even see it with ideologies. Ideas band together into a movement and evolve in the collective imagination and get crafted by the conflict of debate. Look at capitalism and communism or any political movements and you will see the same dynamic.

Interpretation 

Nature is an emergent quality of the universe. We are an emergent quality of nature. Your business is an emergent quality of you. This is why a book on anthropology is the most gifted among venture capitalists. 

We are led around by the noses in pursuit of imaginary tokens of value. Be that gold, money or bitcoin. We lock up the most mentally damaged in our society or let them rot on the street. The most basic rights of democracy and decency have to be wrenched from the hands of the powerful. It’s fair to say that wherever we are going we are not there yet.

But, in order to determine where we are going, we must look where we have been.

Understanding our deficiencies is the first step in changing them. Humanity is on an undeniable upward trend and despite our tendency to fear the worst, or perhaps because of it, I wouldn’t bet against solving any problem. And that is cause for much optimism.

These tools that we now learn will change the destiny of our species. This knowledge cuts both ways. It can be used to corrupt governments or to algorithmically extract unhealthy engagement from our children. But It can be used for good. It can be used to add exponential value to the world and solve our greatest problems. If we take one lesson from these anthropological laws it ought to be to note that all the negative uses of it belong to the animalistic parts of our minds and all the good to the human.

Our collective imagination serves as another realm of evolution. Your business is a meme in the collective imagination. 

Conflict is the turbine of evolution and is not restricted to the natural realm.

We can see how the memes of laws, capitalism and limited liability companies created the soup out of which our companies emerged. Businesses battle it out in this realm. In it, we have limited the downside and made the upside limitless. We have harnessed the power of the law of evolution.

On the internet, we can see evolution in action with ideas. On any issue, 20% split to the extremes, argue it out and evolve our ideas. As the spiritual ideas of the East meet the capitalistic ideas of the West, many new exciting evolutionary waves beckon. We have again limited the downside and maxi mised the upside, further harnessing the power of the law evolution.

Successful Businesses and products, whether they understand it or not, are wrapped around these natural laws.