This Site is about Science Fiction (and Fantasy and Horror),
Human Nature, Morality, Religion, and Politics,
the Meaning and Purpose of Life,
and How They All Interconnect
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Themes (still drafty):
Each heading will be a link to a separate page or pages.
Discovery
A timeline of what humanity has discovered and when
Size Current understanding of the size of the universe
Age Current understanding of the age of the universe and of Earth
Humanity Age and nature of humanity. Two or three million years old; tribal until just ten or twelve thousand years ago; diaspora since ice ages; agricultural revolution, Enlightenment, scientific revolution, industrial revolution
Human Nature Tribal morality entailed hierarchical relationships, hostility toward other tribes, prioritizing behaviors to expand the tribe, long-range thinking only as needed to anticipate seasonal changes. Tribes bonded via myths and stories, which became religions, invariably ascribing nature events to supernatural beings with the same motivations and protocols as human beings: father/son, master/slave, predator/prey, etc.
Human Morality The expansion of the race across the globe over the past couple millennia has extended the range of human morality, beginning with the ability to cooperate with other tribes. This has led to a bifurcation of modern human nature and morality, which in turn explains much of politics and the “culture wars” [Outline of Morality]
Biases Only in the past half century have we become conscious of the innate biases of the human mind, optimized as it was for life in the ancestral environment, but in ways not always appropriate in the modern one.
Senses Also, the awareness of how limited our senses are, compared to actual Size and Age, and compared to those of other animals in different environments.
Scales Human intuitions extend only to what was familiar in the ancestral environment, and fail to appreciate actual Size and Age or even the scale of the planet Earth, which some people deny to this day.
Realms Similar the cosmos consists of numerous levels or realms that operate at different scales to different rules. Even when we understand these intellectually, we fail to comprehend them intuitively, e.g. quantum mechanics, special relativity. These realms exist through emergent processes only identified in the past century or two: evolution, chaos, recursion, complexity, “information,” entropy. These imply that the entire cosmos, from stars and planets to life to human morality itself, have been inherent in the very structure of reality, and have been inevitable.
Human Cognition Increasingly there are apparent limits to human cognition. These include:
- Superstitions and pseudo-scientific beliefs that place human intuitions above objective evidence of reality, including currently flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and evolution-deniers;
- Tribal stories and myths are prioritized over objective knowledge about Size and Age.
- Humans are inclined to “flatten” ideas that lie outside realm of intuitive human nature and expect explanations that only exist at different Scales and Realms. These include questions about the meaning of life, free will, the existence of God, and why there is something rather than nothing.
Meaning and Purpose Traditional ideas of meaning and purpose (of people, of the human race) can be clarified by recognizing existence of the above Scales and Realms and the limitations of Human Cognition.
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Fantasy is the earliest outgrowth of storytelling that merged tribal histories and hero tales with the perception of agency in the world and the primitive intuitions of how the world works. It indulges in human psychological limitations, accepting everything from demons and ghosts to magic to ESP and telepathy as real, despite their implausibility in light of recent discoveries of how the world actually works. Fantasy directly reflects human nature, and remains in the 21st century far more popular than science fiction.
Horror can be seen as overlapping with science fiction in recognizing a vast inhuman universe but seeing it as an existential threat (e.g. as in Lovecraftian fiction) rather than an opportunity to explore. (See post)
Science fiction emerged as the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution discovered the objective world, how it works, and how it might be manipulated. It explores what exists beyond human nature and human experience, even to the point of speculating about other levels of reality.
