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Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands of years and the ecological impact of people was minimal. Then suddenly—bang!—culture exploded, starting in Africa. Why then, why there?

Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead—because ideas are having sex with each other as never before.

To upgrade our thinking patterns is a beginning step to an upgrade in human consciousness, and is necessary if we are to succeed in adapting to our rapidly and inevitably changing world. In other words, if we don’t enact a change, or learn to adapt to the incoming energies of change and transformation, our presence is likely to be no longer required, or needed. It is a sobering thought. The human species has entered a period of profound, fundamental, and unprecedented change. It needs to acquire new skills in order to co-exist with an environment that is itself undergoing profound change within the larger fabric of living systems - planetary, solar, and galactic. We need to upgrade our capacities in order to have the internal resistance to an upgrade in energies. Not to do so may result, quite literally, in us blowing a species-fuse! Whichever way we look at it, we are in need of preparation. If we are not prepared, that which manifests as truth may very well seem like science-fiction. And it needs to be stressed that our future depends to a large degree upon the ability to renew our perceptions about the world. It is a question of how our inner vision can be brought in balance with (and in support to) the impacts of a changing environment. If there is enough ‘critical mass’ of mind-change then there is a better possibility that shifting energies will be experienced less chaotically. Evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Sahtouris expresses the same sentiment when she writes

Thus even though our knowledge is expanding exponentially, our questions are expanding exponentially faster. And as mathematicians will tell you, the widening gap between two exponential curves is itself an exponential curve. That gap between questions and answers is our ignorance, and it is growing exponentialy.  In other words, science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge.

Philippe Verdoux

What I find especially exciting about cognitive enhancement technologies is the possibility of redefining the boundary between mysteries and problems.

To recap