StoicGenomism: Ancient wisdom updated Suppose ancient Roman wisdom had grown directly into modern science without Christianity coming along and separating them. We might be a lot wiser. By ancient Roman wisdom I mean Stoicism. Like us, the Stoics of Ancient Rome were materialists. For them a few simple physical elements mixing together could account for everything material. To account for what wasn’t material, that they couldn’t make these elements account for — nature being so well ordered and creative for example — they came up with an extra element that coexisted with and permeated all those others. They called this extra element an “essence” or a “World Spirit.” And to account for what made us humans so special they imagined their World Spirit embedding into each one of us some of its own powers. As a result, for us to know ourselves better and grow in wisdom we had only to learn more about this special element, and we could do that by studying how that element manifested itself within us, and around us in nature. By modern science I mean especially the genome. That’s the molecule or set of molecules in every cell of every living creature’s body that in creatures like us directs our growth from a single cell into an adult, maintains us alive, and makes us reproduce. Think about the Earth and Mars and what makes them so different. Mars is sterile, it’s just physical. Then reflect how different the Earth is. The main difference is life, and what mainly accounts for that difference is the genome. For us, what accounts for nature being so well ordered and creative is the genome. So to modernize ancient Stoicism, in place of the Stoic special element or World Spirit I put the genome. I call this combination “StoicGenomism.” How different is it from how we think today? One way is, it’s neither entirely scientific nor entirely spiritual. But if that’s true, how can we study it? I suggest, we start with the part of it we know best, that each of us comes with, but that science can’t yet account for. For example, we know we’re conscious. We know we can be creative. And, we know we have volition. Let’s take how we know them one by one. Conscious, because we can reflect on what we’re thinking. Creative, because we’re always coming up with new ways of doing things, like robots and novel ways of building bridges. And volition—being able to consciously choose whether to do something or not. Something physical. Take urination. That’s something many animals, such as monkeys, can’t control. But we can. We can decide “of our own volition” whether to urinate now or put it off to a later time. It’s not physics that decides for us, we decide consciously then we consciously make it happen. Don’t philosophize about whether we’re determined by physics or have free will, whether we’re really free to choose. We experience having conscious “volition” over physical things like this all the time. Things move because we consciously decide to move them. Where do we get this consciousness, creativity and volition, from? We can’t make ourselves conscious, creative, and volitional, it all appears in us automatically as we grow. Could we get it from the genome? Well, where else could we get it from? Where else except from what codes for everything else to do with our development, our genome? If that’s so, if that’s where we get our consciousness, creativity and volition from, what does that say about the genome? It tells us that the genome can transact, in some way, in terms of creativity, consciousness and volition. Could the genome itself be conscious, creative, volitional, like us? Well, not exactly like us, but in its own way? Here we run into a basic limitation in our thinking: we’ve no ways of talking about how other kinds of minds might think. I’m simply going to resort to saying that us having evolved to become conscious, creative and volitional means that, over the lifetime of the Earth, genomes had to have become creative, conscious and volitional first before they could figure out how to embed those mental talents in us, to make us creative, conscious and volitional too. Is that even possible? Is it possible for molecules like genomes to be conscious, creative and volitional? I think what we know about ourselves says, yes, they could. We know we get at least some of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors from our genome—in each of us, at puberty, emerge the feelings and urges needed for sex. We don’t have to be taught how to experience those feelings and urges, they develop in us naturally, as a complex and coordinated program, of feelings and behaviors urging us to reproduce ourselves. So, since genomes can carry code for us having those feelings I don’t see how we can deny feelings like those to genomes themselves, as part of what corresponds, in us, to consciousness, creativity and volition. If the genome can embed those abilities in us, I don’t see why it shouldn’t possess them itself? I know at first the idea of a molecule being intelligent, conscious and creative can be hard to accept. But it shouldn’t be. What makes us intelligent, conscious and creative is our brains, yet they consist only of molecules. And the genome is by far the most complex molecule we know of, much more complex than any molecule in our brains. In us the genome is written out in three billion units of code. Translate that into a necklace, strung eight beads to an inch, one bead for each of those three billion units of code, and that necklace, three billion beads long, would stretch from New York to Tokyo. 6000 miles. That’s a vast amount of information. Yet at the same time, it’s alive. Over thousands of millions of years it’s been passed on as part of one living cell to another, without a break. At the same time, as the living creatures it coded for got more complicated, it grew from less than a million units of code to billions. We’ve nothing to compare that to, to help us judge what it could be capable of. That’s the foundation StoicGenomism is built on. Basically it says, we now know of two causes for things happening. There’s physics. And there’s mind—consciousness, creativity and volition, in genomes and in us. Recall my comparison of the Earth and Mars, how different the evolution of living creatures has made the Earth. That difference is because of minds, ours and the genome’s. Now, what can we build on that foundation? First, an entirely new account of how evolution works, how species evolve, how we evolved and what kind of a creature that’s made us. Nowadays, biologists tell species apart by their genes. When one species evolves into another they say, essentially their genes change. So, for it to be genomes that drive evolution, they must be able to make changes in the genes they carry code for, the very same molecules they consist of. How could genomes do that, make changes to the molecules they consist of? I suggest, the same way we do. When we consciously commit something to memory, we do it by making changes to memory cells in our brains, something purely physical. Later, we can consciously draw on those purely physical brain cells to bring that information back into consciousness. Since we can do that, we know that minds can make changes to their material substrate, and later bring those changes back into consciousness. In us, that material substrate is our brain. In the genome that would be the molecules it consists of. So all a genome has to do to drive the evolution of whatever living creature it codes for is just to think about it—draw on code for the genes of that creature to bring it into mind, and then think about it again, which will make that new thought register back as changes to those genes, changes in that code. This embedding of thoughts in matter for later recall in mind may at first, when we apply it to the genome, seem like something supernatural. But remember, it’s something we’re doing all the time. Once you accept that, logically you can’t deny it to the genome. This provides us with a new solution to an old puzzle, what are species? This new solution is, species of living creatures are essentially thoughts in the minds of genomes. Now that we have a new theory of how evolution works, how can that help us think differently about ourselves? It can suggest what mind, thinking, consists of. This new mechanism of evolution says that a genome can make a species of living creatures evolve just by bringing it to mind and thinking about it. So for a genome, thinking and evolving are the same thing. Could that be true of us? Could our thinking be something evolving? Why not our thoughts, one thought evolving into another? That is how StoicGenomism accounts for us being able to think. And what is consciousness? Maybe it’s something that just happens when thoughts evolve. And creativity? Well, how about microbes in less than a billion years evolving into giraffes and elephants? Could there be anything more creative than that? If living creatures can evolve so creatively, then so can our thoughts. Our thoughts evolving makes us creative too. How can StoicGenomism help us find meaning in everyday life? We could start by learning more about Stoic wisdom. I recommend reading the meditations of the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Here are some extracts from “The Emperor’s Handbook,” translated by brothers C. Scott and David V. Hicks, published by Scribner: The creative force is a part of everything it produces. This should cause us to revere nature all the more, as well as to realize that by thinking and acting in accord with nature’s design and will, we tap into the mind of this creative force. The cosmic mind is as much a part of us, then, as it is of the universe, and all the power and knowledge available in the universe are accessible to the man who lives in perfect harmony with nature. We should also pause to consider how charming and graceful are the unexpected effects of nature’s work… the perceptive person, profoundly curious about the workings of nature, will take a peculiar pleasure in everything, even in the humble and ungainly parts that contribute to the making of the whole. The actual jaws of living beasts will delight him as much as their representations by artists and sculptures. With a discerning eye he will warm to an old man’s strength or an old woman’s beauty, while admiring with cool detachment the seductive charms of youth. The world is full of wonders like these that will appeal only to those who study nature closely and develop a real affinity for her works. Thinking like this, updated with what we know about the genome, could transform how we think about anything involving minds, both ours and those of the genome—the biological sciences, most of the social sciences, and the humanities. Here’s one way I can imagine this transformation happening. StoicGenomism says thinking is our thoughts evolving, one thought evolving into another. But thinking itself evolves. We keep coming up with new tools to help us think better, like logic, and mathematics. Sometimes we get new tools from science, such as today’s quantum computers and artificial intelligence. But could there be an even better source of tools for thinking than science? How about genomes, evolving living creatures? When you look at those creatures, it’s obvious genomes have come up with tools for thinking far more advanced than ours. Could we, through the study of evolution, identify those tools and make them part of our own thinking? Sometimes that’s easy, such as modeling radar on how bats use sound to navigate their surroundings. But that’s just one creature’s talent. What tools are genomes using when they come up with entirely new kinds of creatures? For that we’ll need to study the achievements of genomes over millions of years, we’ll need to come to know them as persons, as craftspeople, each with its own toolbox. Trilobites for example during millions of years of evolution changed dramatically in shape, while sharks popped into existence already a highly efficient new form of creature that for millions of years has hardly changed. Eyes like ours popped up in both our kind, the vertebrates, and in mollusks like octopuses. How did one learn about the other? Could we eavesdrop on genomes communicating with one another? And, to probe even further into the future, remember how I said living creatures like us evolved by genomes simply thinking us into existence but, before living creatures could evolve, their genomes had to evolve? Genomes may evolve through an entirely different mechanism, which might involve even more powerful tools. Studying how genomes themselves evolved could help us enrich our own thinking with nature’s ultimate powers. If all it took to come up with StoicGenomism was updating Stoicism with modern genetics, why hasn’t someone else already done it? I think partly because of ideas left behind by Christendom and how science dealt with them. According to the Christian story, our free will and consciousness were special gifts from God. Once science took over and wanted to tell a different story, it dismissed those gifts, along with angels and devils, for being supernatural. So science didn’t need to account for how those gifts evolved. In StoicGenomism, those gifts—consciousness, creativity and volition—do need accounting for. Does that make StoicGenomism a new religion? I say, no. As far as we know genomes have existed for only a few billion years and only here on Earth so they aren’t infinite or eternal. Living creatures keep going extinct so it seems genomes aren’t omnipotent and all-knowing. And they’d make a poor personal god—they seem quite happy for most of the creatures they code for to serve as fodder for other genomes’ creatures. So, not a religion. But a question. Why did the genome equip us with consciousness, creativity and volition? Were they equipping us to dream of travelling through the solar system, carrying them with us? Or something even grander? What does genomes evolving us to become conscious tell us about ourselves, and them? Only further study of genomes can tell. ------------------- Copyright 2022 Shaun Johnston shaunj100@gmail.com BOOKS “Are You Wonderful? Good Science Says Yes.” All books, at Amazon WEB SITES Evolvedself.com. Overview of all my writing. Evolution for the Humanities. 100 articles on what it means we evolved. VIDEOS Youtube.com, channel “evolved self.” ARTICLES “Through a Genome’s Cap” in New English Review “What it Means We Evolved.” Kirkus review