Imagine an intelligent species a million years more advanced than we Homo sapiens are right now. Multiply every year since H. sapiens became an industrial species by 4,000. How many more industrial revolutions could occur in that time? How many generations would be born, discover new things and die over the course of one million years, passing on their intelligence and wisdom to the future?
On the cosmic scale, a million years is like nine-and-half minutes out of a 24-hours day. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago; the Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago; fossil records of the earliest life on Earth go back around 3.5 billion years ago.
Yet for us humans, a million years is ten times longer than the time it took us to reach this point where we are now from the beginnings of behavioural modernity - when we began to show first signs of abstract thought, developing art, music and dance, and the use of blades to kill and butcher animals.
Imagine us a million years from now. Give it a try. Imagine that the human species has managed to pass through the Great Filter. We've not blown ourselves up with nukes, we've not boiled our planet dry, we've not killed ourselves of with an out-of-control biological or physical experiment. Or been smacked into extinction by an asteroid.
What would we be like?
What would any intelligent species one million years more advanced than us be like? Mere survival is not enough. The shark has been around for 320 million years and remains an unsophisticated aquatic apex predator, little changed over a third of a billion years - because it was so successful at what it was doing, it didn't have to. So a jumping-off point is needed - the use of sophisticated tools, the harnessing of fire. Fire led to cooking; cooked meats require less chewing; weaker jaw muscles circling the cranium enabled to the skull to grow; bigger cranial capacity - more intelligence. A virtuous circle. How will that virtuous circle spiral upward to further virtue in future evolution?
My intuition says that we would be more angelic, less barbaric, less prone to anger, less lazy, vastly more intelligent, better able to cooperate (without cooperation we'd not be as technologically advanced as we are). Starting with anger. Reactive violence is far more prevalent among our nearest living relatives, the chimpanzee and bonobo. H. sapiens is less ready to lash out at the drop of a hat; instead of reactive violence, we have developed proactive violence - institutional, cold, premeditated, organised.
I would like to see the propensity to anger squeezed out of the human psyche. We do need to be able, however, to deal with human evil in a firm, resolute way. We have part of the answer - the Prisoner's Dilemma, which teaches us to get along with everyone until the moment someone does the dirty on you - and then you hit them, and keep hitting them until they return to the path of cooperation. This worked on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. The difficulty is in defining a) what constitutes a transgression and b) what the correct and proportional response should be. This is, however, a detail - though an important one. The crucial thing is that the moral arc of future human evolution continues to progress away from evil and towards good. We no longer bait bears or throw cats into fires for our amusement.
So far, I have been writing about the physical and mental development of humans as a species. But I really want to dwell on the future evolution of paranormal abilities.
Sceptics would argue that there are no such things as paranormal abilities. Proponents of the paranormal would say that they are - but can offer no real conclusive proof. Psychic researchers try to find these supernatural powers through experiments; many of us believe that there is something there. An intuitive feeling that mind over matter is real. An untestable hypothesis? My father's rhetorical question posed late in life - "why have I been so lucky" - is the clue - consciously wanting to be lucky is the answer. Not thinking "I want to be lucky" - but having an awareness of that desire.
I am assuming that mind over matter is real. A weak force, too weak to be recognised by the scientific method. But there, nonetheless. Could these evolve into something more powerful over thousands of generations? Genuine paranormal abilities manifesting themselves in greatly more intelligent, wiser, and longer-living beings - our future selves?
We are developing the Internet of Things. Below is a smart price-tag powered by light. Not necessarily solar power - indoor light will do, thanks to the small perovskite cell, manufactured by Saule Technologies of Wrocław. A PKN Orlen petrol station in Piastów - is about to go live with a trial. Every item's price and stock code is stored in the cloud, and with a single keystroke, an operator can change the price on every shelf in every shop across a chain. And because these tags are powered by a renewable energy source, you don't have to change batteries every 18 months. Naturally, demand outstrips supply at this moment, but this (Polish invention) is the future of retail.
"You have the Internet of Things?" asks the Evolved Being. "We already have the Telepathy of Things."
Imagine being able to think price changes across the network instead of entering them via a keyboard connected to a computer linked to the cloud. "Prices? How second-millennium! We mutually intuit the subjective utility value of a product; the transaction occurs mentally." Imagine guiding machines by thought. But we don't have the physics! Give us a few more centuries, our physics will get there. The Ghost in the Machine. Mind-machine interface - wireless. Conscious management of objects.
I am slowly discovering the powers of my consciousness. Belatedly, but even so. They are weak, but they will grow in power from incarnation to incarnation. Biological and spiritual evolution happening together.
This time two years ago:
Goodnight Belarus - may God keep you
This time seven years ago:
Motorbike across Poland to buy fine Polish wine
This time eight years ago:
Eat Polish apples, drink Polish cider
This time nine years ago:
Hottest week ever (37C likely to be beaten this week)
This time ten years ago:
Progress along the second line of the Warsaw Metro (now a normal part of city life)
This time 11 years ago:
Doric arches, ul. Targowa
This time 12 years ago:
A place in the country, everyone's ideal
This time 15 years ago:
I must go down to the sea again
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