Chapter 4: All Are Welcome and Needed

At the time of the Civil War in the 1860s, the brain power of nearly two thirds of the population of the United States was wasted. The population of the United States as recorded in the 1860 census was about 31 million people. Approximately 50% of that population was female. Four million black people were slaves, comprising 13% of the population. If one adds the female population to the male slave population, it means that approximately 56.5% of the population was disenfranchised by inequality and unable to become knowledge creators. 

Black slaves were prohibited from reading and writing. Today, racism, sexism, and homophobia prevent significant swaths of the population from fully recognizing their knowledge creation potential. And this potential is enormous. Consider Katherine Johnson, an African American math whiz who helped perform the complex calculations that sent Americans into space and eventually the moon in the 1950s and 1960s. Or Percy Julian, another African American who was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids, and birth control pills. How many Katherine Johnsons or Percy Julians never achieved their potential and therefore didn’t benefit the country or the human race?

There is no greater knowledge destroyer than racism and discrimination. Did Adolph Hitler, one of the greatest knowledge destroyers of the modern era, know that Germany lost World War Two the moment he embarked on his racist and genocidal policies? For while he wiped out many of the people he delusionally considered enemies, the survivors and spectators to his carnage used their knowledge to create a weapon (the atomic bomb) that would have leveled Germany had the war continued. Imperial Japan, also a knowledge destroying culture, eventually fell victim to the bomb. A knowledge destroying society will almost always lose to a knowledge creating one.

Look at the poorest countries in the world and you will find cultures that oppress women, that discriminate against those who are different, and that exhibit a lack of desire to learn and develop knowledge. Knowledge can’t be developed in such an environment and backwardness and poverty ensues.

When someone becomes a knowledge creator, consumer, or distributor, this is Ascendance. You are contributing to the health of your country and civilization. There is no higher calling. Almost anyone who holds a job is helping in some way,large or small, although certain fields have higher knowledge potential than others. In general, wealth and power will flow to those in fields that have higher levels of knowledge creation and distribution. The good news is that knowledge creation is unlimited. The ratio of what we don’t know versus what we do is so vast that every person on the planet could make their own discovery and there would still be a vast universe full of mystery. No one can monopolize knowledge creation. If every person in the United States became Ascendant, we would become the most powerful, enlightened country in the history of the world. If every person on the planet became Ascendant, imagine what we could accomplish!? End hunger and poverty; solve our energy problems; send humanity out into space; entertain our minds. Think about what problem you would like solved. As long as it doesn’t violate a law of physics, it can eventually be accomplished.

The Formula of Knowledge Creation

Every person has the potential to become Ascendant. When that happens, something happens to the equation of life. 

Ascendant individuals can create knowledge over the course of their lives which we will call “K.”

This knowledge can be used to create an impact on the world. This impact could be something as simple as knowing how to mop the floor in the school to something as complex as discovering a new fundamental form of matter. We will call this impact “I.” Thus, the impact that someone has on the world is the product of the amount of knowledge attained multiplied by its impact. So, K * I = Impact.

What the world’s history has shown is that since the Enlightenment, the KI of the human population has been greater than the energy expended in gaining that knowledge. That’s why human population and wealth have exploded. The cost to gain knowledge and apply it is a function of:

• The energy required to learn knowledge = L

• The energy required to apply knowledge = A

So, in order for the equation to work and for knowledge and humanity to grow, the following must be true:

KI > L(A)

On average, each individual's impact of knowledge on the world is greater than the energy it takes to learn and apply that knowledge. 

Let’s dive a bit deeper into the energy required to learn knowledge. This includes everything necessary to support the person and help them learn. It’s the food they consume, the car they drive, the heat they use, the light they use to see, the vacations they take, the movies they watch, etc. In general, it is the energy required to support them as a sentient, Ascendant being. 

The energy required to apply that knowledge is also expansive. It’s everything required to take that knowledge and apply it to the world. For the janitor, it’s the energy to manufacture, ship, sell, and unpack the mop and cleaning fluid that will make the floors clean; the floors will be walked upon by the students, who will be gaining their own knowledge and starting on their own equation. It’s also the energy to move the muscles to mop the floor. 

Ascendants maximize their KI and lower their L(A). As an individual, you become more Ascendant the more you maximize that formula. Some people have astounding KI while others have a lower amount. But overall, the human population on average must have a higher KI than LA, or else we would not have made such spectacular progress in the last five hundred years. 

This has profound implications for population growth. If Ascendants produce more in knowledge impact than it costs them to generate that impact, then we want more Ascendants, not less. We want more people, not fewer, because every person can contribute to the growth of knowledge. Attempts to reduce human population and limit human impact on the planet are misguided. They will ultimately result in less knowledge generation, lower standards of living, and a human population more out of balance with its environment.

There’s another reason the equation favors more, not fewer people. We don’t know who the truly spectacular Ascendants will be. They may come from a wealthy family or from the favelas of Rio. Spectacular Ascendance is largely a random process governed by the mixing of our genes and lifetime experiences. But like all odds, the more genes that are being mixed, the more lives being lived, the more spectacular Ascendants who will emerge. 

So, should we be reducing our population or increasing it?

Be fruitful and multiply. Our biblical forebears understood the concept of Ascendance. They understood that humans can only save themselves and the planet if they continue to grow. Our destiny is not to shrink down to a sustainable population number. To maintain the status quo on the planet, live in harmony with the trees (although trees are wonderful and we need more), and reduce our energy consumption is prosaic, but also a dead end. Without more people, more minds, more Ascendants, we will never gain the knowledge needed to expand into the stars and rescue everything on the planet. Yes, right now our knowledge creation is a bit dirty and is straining the planet, but that will change. The knowledge we are gaining outweighs the cost and that net benefit will eventually appear as clean energy, the elimination of disease, and a healthier world. 

But, we need a certain type of person, a knowledge creator, not a knowledge destroyer.

Knowledge Destroyers

Knowledge destroyers work either purposefully or ignorantly to destroy the knowledge creation potential of humanity. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - these are some of the names that immediately come to mind when we think about knowledge destroyers. Think of the cures of cancer, the great symphonies, the solutions to our energy problems that died in the concentration camps, the gulags, and the killing fields. Are you afflicted with an illness? Perhaps it would have already been cured had knowledge destroyers not been stymied.

The 20th century saw phenomenal advances in science and human understanding. One of the most important scientific breakthroughs was Darwin’s Origin of the Species. In it, Charles Darwin lays out his theory of evolution and survival of the fittest. Mentally unstable and narrow minds like Adolph Hitler took this theory and tried to apply it to humans. In Hitler’s view, natural resources were finite and there was only enough for one set of people. Only those with the most might would survive. But this ignores a fundamental point about the concept of survival of the fittest. While it works well as an explanatory theory for animals, it breaks down for humans. Animals live in narrow ecologies and their innate skills are specialized for them to survive. They also must survive on what nature provides. They have no ability to alter nature to their advantage. As a result, only a finite number of any animal species can survive at one time. It truly is survival of the fittest.

But what happens when intelligence enters the picture? Humans can survive in a wide set of environments. We can use our minds to alter the environment, to grow more food, to generate more energy. More people does not mean fewer resources. Consider the fact that there are now exponentially more people on the planet than 1,000 years ago and yet the living conditions of most humans have improved, not declined. And with humans, what is the fittest? The best ability to grow food? The best ability to play sports? The best ability to earn money on Wall Street or sing a song or construct a house or wire a building or program code or write a book or conduct research in a lab? Humans are able to survive and thrive in multiple ecosystems using a wide range of specialized skills. Human ingenuity and brain power can be applied in millions of different ways, each contributing in their own right. The more brain power, the more progress.

Consider a person like Stephen Hawkings who suffered from ALS. Certainly as his disease progressed he was not a hunter or a food provider. He couldn’t build a house or wage war. Yet, despite his physical flaws he had a brilliant scientific mind that allowed him to contribute vast knowledge to the human endeavor. Hitler and his ilk would have viewed him as unworthy to live. What a waste that would have been.

Slavery in the United States is another such knowledge destroying event. De-educating a people, robbing them of free will and the ability to better themselves resulted in not only untold misery, but also the lost knowledge creation potential of millions of individuals. 

So, what will it be? Will we continue to keep some people down in the mistaken belief that the next person’s gain is another person’s loss? Or, will we work together to create a culture where everyone is Ascendant? Will we tap every brain to solve the earthly problems which afflict citizens of the United States and the world? Will we be ready when the next extinction level event occurs? Or will we continue to hold the prejudices and grudges of our ancestors before they became enlightened and Ascendant?