Recently, Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and talked at length about his thoughts on science in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of his energy was spent entertainingly arguing for the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory. However, what caught my attention and made me think Jon really gets why our current new mammalian age is so scary was his assessment of “science” and “scientists.”
As he says, “This is the problem with science. Science is incredible, but they don’t know when to stop. And nobody in the room with those cats ever goes, ‘I don’t know if we should do that.'” As Stephen agrees, “If science can do it, they will do it.”
The shtick concludes with Jon predicting that the world will end with a scientist in a lab saying, “It worked.”
And that, in short, is the risk with allowing the new mammalian mind to run rampant without the compassionate influence of the Human mind.
Knowledge is the domain of the new mammalian mind; wisdom is the domain of the Human mind. The quest for knowledge is not the greatest human good. The greatest good is to reduce suffering and increase healing for all. When the pursuit of knowledge is not mediated by the goal of knowledge in order to improve life for all living creatures, it can have devastating results.
Our age of technology suggests that we have moved into a time dominated on a societal level by the new mammalian mind. In many ways, this is progress, suggesting we are moving out of our old mammalian societal phase of tribalism and nation-state wars. This is a necessary developmental step for us as a society.
Unfortunately, the power of our technology means that we could destroy the human race before we have the chance to develop into a Human-minded society.
It will take a long, long time before our entire society operates from a Human mentality. Quadrune mind is an evolutionary model, after all, and evolution takes lots of time.1 But the more individuals who learn to engage with the world from a Human mindset now, the better able we will be to make it through this scary new mammalian age.
This is the goal of the quadrune mind model: to get at least one person in the room with those scientists “cats” who will say, “Wait–what effect will this have on people, animals, and our environment? If it’s not a positive effect, we should not do it, even if we can.”
- That said, there are ways humanity can accelerate the evolutionary change to a higher Human mentality, as discussed in our blogs QM and the Future of Spiritual Consciousness and QM as a Melioristic Model.