The Global Brain Awakens

 

This is the first of three books which I have read as a series. The other two are Howard Bloom's The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain. I think they are related in so far as they use some of the same concepts and represent the sort of mystical thinking that afflicts some scientists.

Global Brain begins innocently enough, talking about Gaia, evolution and such. About halfway through the book, Mr. Russell makes a leap of faith to the "superorganism." After that, it is all downhill for me, as the book becomes a recruitment tract leading us to Transcendental Meditation and the search for Being. It appears Peter Russell believes everyone doing TM is the world's salvation.

It is not coincidental that he has spent a lot of time with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. For those inclined in that direction, this book may reinforce their beliefs. For those, such as myself, disinclined to become mystics, the book is a disappointment.

Mr. Russell, himself a trained scientist, does not contest the facts of science, such as the Theories of Relativity and Evolution. What he tries to show is that there is an existence, a Being or Consciousness, beyond science. Once entering that realm, he leaves behind science, but he does not acknowledge that fact. In his mind, the transition is seamless, not the crossing of a threshold.

The first part of the book is a light discussion  of evolution, and an affirmation of Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis (which I also endorse). There is a difference in this discussion from scientific works which makes it more and more unscientific as it proceeds: the grading of evolutionary progress. This is already apparent in the chapter titles, and the way he talks about evolution. By page 63, he says tentatively "Perhaps we are some kind of embryonic global brain ...", an expression which tantalizes, and becomes a conclusion further on.  By  page 255, where he displays a chart showing an extrapolation of Consciousness into a "Consciousness Age," there can be no doubt that Mr. Russell attributes directionality to evolution. In his view, Gaia is growing a brain in which each of us humans are just cells. This is not just a way of speaking about human activities; rather, it is to indicate that there is a transcendental consciousness, thus a Being beyond. 'It thinks, therefore it is.'

Mr. Russell's easily read pages are a method of drawing us into his beliefs which, presented more academically, do not stand up. Figure 1 (p. 80) shows "Major stages in the evolution of life," with "Evolution of Consciousness" as the most recent development. This is a remarkable invention, as "consciousness" is not a topic in any biology book I've read, and not a "stage" of evolution in the scientific theories of evolution with which I am familiar. It is a serious topic in Psychology, Cognitive Science (Artificial Intelligence) and Philosophy. All of us would like to know how the brain works, and how we come to be not just conscious, but self-conscious. I don't understand how making consciousness an evolutionary step explains things any better than the usual, simpler view that it is an epi-phenomenom of the cerebral cortex. Right here, on page 80, we can apply Occam's Razor. Unfortunately, doing so would truncate the book by half or more.

Religious books are like that: they sneak up on you rather than confront. They have to do that, because their premises are otherwise not only unproven, but very unlikely. Having indicated consciousness as the most recent step of evolution, Mr. Russell attaches his web to another node: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Catholic priest-philosopher. This casting begins with Table 2 (p. 89) which categorizes "Emergent orders of evolution ..." including "0. Void" to be studied with Mysticism, and "4. Self-reflective Consciousness" to be studied with Sociology and Psychology. (Not for the only time, he tentatively mentions whales and dolphins with humans as self-conscious.) Following presentation of Table 2, he discusses the increasing complexity correlated with ongoing evolution, culminating in Figure 2 (p. 96), "Evolution as a progressive collecting together of units into larger  systems." It takes several more chapters discussing evolution to reach the desired climax, Teilhard's "Omega Point, the culmination of the evolutionary process, the end point toward which we are all converging" (p. 149). So soon, we discover teleology in evolution and History. That must have been the target of the preceding chapters on the increasing complexity and rate of evolution, leading to Chapter 8: "Towards a Global Brain." Global Brain is identified as the "social superorganism" in Chapter 9, which must be a way station in Russell--Teilhard teleology.

The apparent purpose of Part Two is to make evolutionary purpose plausible. Having traversed that ladder, we must make a leap to reach "Part Three: Inner Evolution." Just before that transition, Russell presents the cliché wei-chi, the Chinese word for crisis. The "Danger-Opportunity" story is an important component of Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, and is often repeated in Gore's lectures. Russell's book is near the beginning of an intellectual food chain, as many of its words and phrases are served up endlessly elsewhere. His use of wei-chi is an example of a meme, a term Mr. Bloom throws about in The Lucifer Principle. Memes are also a frequent (= overused) occurrence in recent political blogs, such as DaliyKos.

In Part Three, Mr. Russell is concerned about two sorts of selves: the one defined as the "skin-encapsulated ego," and the other, presumably transcendental, Consciousness. It seems that we find our transcendent self, our Consciousness, through meditation. We must quiet down our lusts, our urgings, in order to get in touch with the inner self. That self, according to Russell and other theologists, is part of, or one with, Being. It is from this Consciousness, contact with Being, that we realize we are part of the Global Brain, the superorganism. This superorganism acts in synchronicity, as a whole, which makes possible supernormal things like ESP. Our collective Consciousness is the Global Brain of Gaia, which, in turn, is seeking to integrate with the all-encompassing Consciousness of the Universe.

I do not wish to get into the details of Part Three, simply because I don't understand them. With Part Three, Russell departs science altogether, and embarks on his variety of religion, superstition or speculation - whichever you prefer. In order to "understand" the subjects Russell passes through in Part Three, one must already have a solid grip on the theology or metaphysics (which?) developed in Part Two. If you grant his theological premises, one could make some sense of the various topics he discusses. But I found myself rejecting the text and increasingly unwilling to read another word. You have to be a believer to swallow ESP and the other stuff, such as a conscious Gaia.

I don't recommend the book. I bought it, and will probably leave it in my library out of inertia. I would not repeat the performance, had I the occasion to do it over. I think Mr. Russell has written a very influential piece of pseudo-science, which unfortunately seems to have a wide following. I guess it is a lot easier to go on a mind trip than muck around with recalcitrant garbage in a laboratory.