When people say of Universe, “I wonder what is outside its outside?” they are trying to conjure a unitary conception and are asking for a single picture of an infinitely transforming, nonsimultaneous scenario. Therefore, their question is not only unanswerable but unrealistic… You cannot get out of Universe. Universe is not a system. Universe is not a shape. Universe is a scenario. You are always in Universe. You can only get out of systems.

Bucky Fuller, Synergetics, 321.01-02

The ultimate manifestation of nature's coordinate system is “Universe.” Fuller deliberately omits the article, for “the universe” implies the possible existence of more than one — just as we do not say “the God” but rather simply “God.”

Fuller's definition avoids imparting a sense of thingness… Universe is energy and thought all knotted together by incredibly complicated webs of relationships. It is ultimately impossible to separate the physical and metaphysical; both are “experience.”

Amy Edmonson, A Fuller Explanation, Chapter One

According to the currently popular Big Bang model, Scenario Universe sprung into action around 13.7 billion years ago. From nothing, an infinitely dense equally hot something appeared, a “spot” so tiny and compact that there was no room for any kind of difference within it. It existed as one single unified something, but very very quickly differentiated into the beginnings of what we recognise as the four fundamental forces, leading to an incomprehensible exponential expansion not only of matter-energy, but of space-time itself. From a unified submicroscopic pinpoint, the differentiated Universe ripped into existence at a rate far beyond human comprehension, and through a process that does not fit neatly with any known physical laws.

As Universe “stretched out”, mostly in the first millionth of a second, much more space became available. This critically allowed for cooling (more space, less crowding, lower temperature), and thus the beginnings of difference itself. Expanding space and the newly formed fundamental forces allowed the fiery energy of the initial blast to cool down into the first particles: quarks, electrons, photons etc, which in turn smashed into each other to form protons and neutrons.

About 3 seconds in, Universe had sufficiently cooled and expanded to allow newly formed and connection-hungry protons and neutrons to come together and form the first nuclei, although it would take another 300,000 years for electrons to join with the nuclei to create the first stable atoms. Following the first few formative seconds Universe enters the Radiation Era, which lasts for the next 10,000 years. At this point, most energy remains in the form of radiation of varying wavelengths. Continuing expansion and thus more cooling gradually tips the balance at 300,000 years in, as energy is equally distributed through radiation and matter. Finally, electrons enter the game and link up with hydrogen and helium nuclei to form neutral atoms.

The Matter Domination period extending from the genesis of the first stable atoms continues up until 300 millions years into Universe's history. At this point, against the background of a rapidly expanding Universe, gravity brings together gases into higher densities, which in turn attract more matter. This eventually leads to the first stars, groups of which slowly engage to form Universe's first galaxies.

Energy is the potential – the difference – to cool. Energy, like water under gravity, will seep to the lowest, coolest level and not rest until all differential has been eliminated. In the first thousand years after the big bang the temperature difference within the universe was so small that would have reached equilibrium quickly. Had not the universe kept expanding very little interesting would have happened. But the expansion of the universe put a tilt into things. By expanding omni-directionally – every point receding from every point – space provided an empty bottom, a basement of sorts, down which energy could flow. The faster the cosmos enlarged, the bigger the basement it constructed… The effort to maintain difference on the slope of entropy creates the spectacle of nature.

Kevin Kelly, The Cosmic Genesis of Technology

The instant of creation marked the dawn of sociality. A neutron is a particle filled with need. It is unable to sustain itself for longer than ten minutes. To survive, it must find at least one mate, then form a family. The initial three minutes of existence were spent in cosmological courting, as protons paired off with neutrons, then rapidly attracted another couple to wed within their embrace, forming the two-proton, two-neutron quartet of a helium nucleus. Those neutrons which managed this match gained relative immortality [Footnote reads: The staying power of helium atoms is so great that roughly 14 billion years later, the universe remains 25% helium] Those which stayed single simply ceased to be…

Protons, on the other hand, seemed able to survive alone. But even they were endowed with inanimate longing. Flitting electrons were overwhelmed by an electrical charge they needed to share. Protons found these elemental sprites irresistable, and more marriages were made. From the mutual needs of electrons and protons came atoms. Atoms with unfinished outer shells bounced around in need of consorts, and found them in equally bereft counterparts whose extra electrons fit their empty slots.

And so it continued. A physical analogue of unrequited desire was stirred by allures ranging from the strong nuclear force to gravity. These drew molecules into dust, dust into celestial shards, and knitted together asteroids, stars, solar systems, galaxies, and even the megatraceries of multigalatic matrices. Through the connective compulsion “a terrible beauty was born.”

Howard Bloom, Global Brain (p.14-15)

By this time Universe is in full flow, allowing the emergence of diverse patterns of organisation and interaction which give rise to more complex molecules, biological life and eventually mind. Human beings, all life, and all structure are manifestations of this mesmerising "connective compulsion" which has survived, grown and perpetually evolved against the backdrop of dispering energy (entropy) - defined by structure, increasing complexity and intelligence, but at the cost of impermanence and transiency.

Our own Sun begins to take shape around 5 billion years ago, when the rapid collapse of a hydrogen molecular cloud leads to its formation in a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The surface of the Sun consists of hydrogen (about 74% of its mass, or 92% of its volume), helium (about 24% of mass, 7% of volume), and trace quantities of other elements, and hums along at around 5500 degrees centrigrade. The Sun itself orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of approximately 24,000 to 26,000 light years from the galactic center, completing one revolution in about 225–250 million years (one Galactic year).

Further Reading

• Cosmic Evolution - A huge and detailed multimedia website describing evolution from Big Bang up to Humankind.
• Life, Universe and Everything by Paul Hughes.
• How big is our Sun? Biggest Stars to the Biggest Galaxies - Excellent image showing how big our Sun is, and then moving up the scale to bigger stars and huge galaxies.
• Big Bang Timeline Images

Welcome to Spaceship Earth! Our mobile planet is home to somewhere between 10 and 100 million species of life. (We've described only 1.8 million: the rest are yet to be discovered.) Earth's biosphere, including nealy all of its diverse species, rely on the Sun's light, which through the process of photosynthesis is converted into the organic compounds which stitch together the foundation of the Earth's food web. Human beings currently use 40% of the sunlight that hits the Earth's surface for their own activities, resulting in high levels of population growth, which have in turn perpetuated an unrivaled mass extinction and resource exhaustion, amongst other issues.

Earth, whilst maintaining its own rotation that results in our cycles of day and night, is orbiting the Sun at a speed of about 30 kilometres a second. Whilst representing the centre of our solar system, the Sun itself resides within a much larger system known to us as the Milky Way galaxy, which has its own dense centre. Our solar system resides in one of the “arms” of this spiral galaxy (the Orion Arm, should you need to direct visitors), and circles the center at around 200 kilometres per second. And it doesn't quite end there: the Milky Way galaxy itself is hurtling through the Universe (powered by the force of the Big Bang) at an estimated speed of 600 kilometres per second. (Source of these figures.) Are you feeling dizzy yet? Every seemingly solid foundation, from microscopic atoms to celestial bodies, reveal themselves, on closer inspection, as the emergent results of complex webs of high-speed energy-structures hurtling, smashing and bonding with eachother in endless motion. Fortunately, certain laws of motion mean that most of this flux remains imperceptible to us, allowing us to make love and sandwiches on Spaceship Earth without being hurtled across the room.

Home to millions of species, including humans, Earth is the only place in the universe where life is known to exist. The planet formed 4.54 billion years ago and life appeared on its surface within a billion years. Since then, Earth's biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet, enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer which, together with Earth's magnetic field, blocks harmful radiation, permitting life on land. The physical properties of the Earth, as well as its geological history and orbit, allowed life to persist during this period…

Earth's outer surface is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that gradually migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered with salt-water oceans, the remainder consisting of continents and islands; liquid water, necessary for all known life, is not known to exist on any other planet's surface. Earth's interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.

Earth interacts with other objects in outer space, including the Sun and the Moon. At present, Earth orbits the Sun once for every roughly 366.26 times it rotates about its axis. This length of time is a sidereal year, which is equal to 365.26 solar days. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). Earth's only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billion years ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt and gradually slows the planet's rotation. Between approximately 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the surface environment.

Both the mineral resources of the planet, as well as the products of the biosphere, contribute resources that are used to support a global human population. The inhabitants are grouped into about 200 independent sovereign states, which interact through diplomacy, travel, trade and military action. Human cultures have developed many views of the planet, including personification as a deity, a belief in a flat Earth, and a modern perspective of the world as an integrated environment that requires stewardship.

Wikipedia: Earth

For roughly a billion years after its formation, Earth remained lifeless. It is generally accepted that the first living organisms were some form of prokaryotes, emerging 3 or 4 billion years ago from self-replicating RNA molecules in the oceans, or possibly being transported to Earth via meteor impact. Prokaryotes are a group of organisms that lack a cell nucleus, or any other membrane-bound organelles. Prokaryotes are divided into two domains: bacteria and archaea, and are generally simple, unicellular and reproduce asexually. The first instances of photosynthesis are believed to have been carried out by prokaryotes around 3 billion years ago.

These primal cells possessed a very basic environmental awareness that helped them survive by moving away from toxins and moving towards nourishment. But despite their simplicity, some researchers now believe that these prokaryotes were capable of forming communities through utilising cell-to-cell signalling and other communicative co-operative functions. In fact, it is now widely accepted that the "fusing" and co-operation of communities of prokaryotes is what lead to the first eukaryotic cells, around 2 billion years ago.

Eukaryotes are much larger organisms whose cells are organized into complex structures enclosed within membranes. Most living organisms, including all animals, plants, fungi, and protists, are examples of eukaryotes, most being multi-cellular. The defining membrane-bound structure that differentiates eukaryotic cells from prokaryotic cells is the nucleus. The hardware upgrades that separate nucleus-bearing eukaryotes from their simpler prokaryote ancestors eventually allowed sexual reproduction to emerge around 1.2 billion years ago, re-writing the dynamics, multiplying the diversity, and increasing the rate of evolution.

It is around this time that the first multi-cellular organisms are thought to have evolved, leading the way in more complex systems of self-regulation, division of labour, and greater environmental awareness. Multi-cellularity represented a major evolutionary leap, and interestingly appears to have evolved independently on several occasions in plants, animals and fungi.

Around 600 - 500 million years ago, the Cambrian Explosion injected some gusto into biological evolution, leading to the appearance (over a relatively short period of 5 million to 10 million years) of a huge number of complex, multi-celled organisms. This burst of diversity led to most of the major animal groups we know today, and provided all the basic body plans found in nature: bodies with heads, tails, and appendages, all specialized segments performing specialized functions. It is said that all animal evolution for the last half billion years has come from tinkering with these Cambrian body plans. The Cambrian era gave rise to the first shelled animals and animals with exoskeletons (e.g., the trilobites), and increased the size of many animals, moving the evolutionary front-line from individual cells and small cellular communities, to life beginning to resemble the animals and plants we are more familiar with.

The Cambrian period marked a dramatic shift into what is called the Phanerozoic eon, meaning “the period of well-displayed life”, due to the abundant fossil remains left by shell-forming and/or trace-making organisms. The Phanerozoic period is divided in three vast eras which show the evolutionary pathways from early Cambrian life to the modern biosphere: the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, each of which are divided by major mass extinctions.

During the Paleozoic Era (ca. 542-251 million years ago), there was a comparatively rapid evolution of complex life forms including invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants, triggered by the Cambrian explosion. The earliest vertebrates (organisms with backbones or spinal columns), primitive relatives of fish, are estimated to have evolved around the beginning of this period. A few million years later, these primordial fish were crawling out of the sea and into swamps and wetlands to join and eventually feed upon the various plants, insects and fungi that had begun to spread from the edges of the sea. 375 mya saw the first fish evolve into tetrapods; vertebrate animals with four feet, legs or leglike appendages. The first appearance of lungs around 315 mya allowed these early tetrapods to breathe air and spend more time on land, although they hatched in the water and returned there to lay their eggs. These primitive amphibians provided the bridge to reptile evolution, and the structural foundations for all future tetrapods such as dinosaurs, birds, and eventually mammals like ourselves.

Despite intermittent periods of extinction, life continued it’s colonisation of land, greatly accelerated by plants evolving seeds and the emergence of the amniotic egg, which could be laid on land, allowing early reptiles to penetrate further inland. Reptiles went on to develop advanced nervous systems in comparison to their amphibious cousins, eventually branching off into two lineages, one of which gave rise to the first mammal-like reptiles. This biological expansion from the seas inland continued up until 250 mya, when the largest extinction event in the Earth’s history eliminated 95% of the planets lifeforms. (Oops.) Despite being a rather large set-back, it is thought that this “clearing of the slate” may have led to an ensuing diversification.

From this era of reduced diversity emerged the dinosaurs, who became the dominant vertebrates on land during the Mesozoic (ca. 251 - 65 mya) era. Despite dinosaur rule, the small mammals of this time, resembling shrews and mice, managed to branch off and diversify. Mammals differed from the vertebrates before them in a number of important ways: they gave birth to live babies, instead of eggs, developed sweat glands, including the ones human babies still suckle on for milk today, and possessed improved hearing apparatus, body hair, and a special region of the brain called the neocortex, which plays an important role in sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought and, in humans, language.

The Cenozoic period begins around 65 million years ago with another mass extinction which eradicates about half of all animal species, including all dinosaurs except the ancestors of modern birds. With dinosaurs out of the way, more advanced mammals rapidly evolved and became the dominant land vertebrates. The dependence of the young mammals on their mothers for nourishment created unique learning periods, which widened the portal for non-genetic transfer of information between generations. This greatly enhanced adaptability in mammals, affording them a behavioural plasticity not found in any other animals.

Branches of mammals, dating back to flying lemurs and tree shrews, eventually evolved into the first primates, a group of lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans that are now found all over the world. Primates have five fingers, fingernails, and opposing thumbs, all of which allowed them to pioneer tool use. The study of human origins usually begins with a small African ape living around 6 mya, around the time that global cooling saw savannahs replace the tropical forests of sub-Saharan Africa. The appearance of this new environment was in turn matched by an evolutionary pulse that gave rise to new carnivores and omnivores. Among them were the hominines, the ancestors of modern man.

By the time Homo had appeared, 99.9% of earth history had already occurred and most kinds of creatures had become extinct. To get an idea of the timescale and remarkable acceleration of evolution since the Cambrian, not to mention how late we arrived on the scene, see The Evolution of Life in 60 seconds.

Further Reading

• The Tree of Life Web Project - Explore the tree of life through thousands of beautiful images and libraries worth of information.

Examining the archeological record of our Homo ancestors tells us that for millions of years our forebearers lived in conservative times, with infrequent evolutionary jumps. Steven Jay Gould called this stall-jump pattern “punctuated equilibrium”, whilst others wittily labelled it “Evolution by Jerks.” (One of the best examples of this theory is the previously discussed Cambrian Explosion.)

Nevertheless, as Jared Diamond commented, for a great deal of our lineage we remained little more than “glorified chimpanzees” in the ways we made our living. Diamond goes on to suggest two important changes in the last epoch of evolutionary history that began to set us apart from most other animals, laying the foundations for the qualities we now define as “human.” The first of these changes is estimated to have occurred 4 million years ago, as our ape ancestors began to walk where everyone else was crawling. The habitual use of our hind limbs to walk upright freed our fore limbs for a whole new world of exploration, manipulation, and eventually tool use. Loss of body hair also occured around this time.

Bipediality lead to the second change that propelled our ancestors towards Modern Man: the frequent use of stone tools, ushering in the Stone Age around 2.5 million years ago. From here, a very distinct trend in brain and body expansion begins. As brain size increased, babies were born sooner, before their heads grew too large to pass through the pelvis. This early birth made necessary a longer period of dependency, which banked upon a strong mother-child bond, also creating greater learning capacity and plasticity.

Despite these important developments in bipediality, tool use and later the taming of fire, the periods between these evolutionary successes still appeared to be eras of minimal change, lacking the innovation that defines modern thinking man. This static trend continues astonishingly far into our record. Two hundred thousand years ago, emerging from various human ancestors who had lived alongside each other, Homo Sapiens looking just like you and me were walking around Africa. Whilst these people were anatomically modern, with brains and bodies just like ours, evidence suggests that they were still without symbolic thought, writing, art, abstract thinking, and almost certainly without language and religion. Neanderthal populations inhabiting Asia and Europe at this time even possessed brain capacities 10% larger than those of Homo Sapiens! Yet, these brainy brutes also lacked the ability to innovate and create.

To find the birth of who we are, we have to wait right until the last minute in our evolutionary history. Around 50,000 years ago, from an abyss of banality, evidence of art, innovation, and symbolic thought suddenly appear en masse across Europe, as Homo Sapiens spread and Neanderthal populations dissappeared. From a million years of slow physical evolution, careful human burial, clothing, group ritual, sophisticated hunting techniques, improved tools (including the first bone tools), and cave paintings appear within thousands of years. Vitally, artifacts such as fish hooks, buttons and bone needles also begin to show signs of variation among different populations of humans, something that had not been seen in Neanderthals or previous human cultures.

Interestingly, these revolutionary changes do not seem to be the result of simple physical evolution: the archeological record clearly shows that humans one hundred thousand years before what Diamond called the “Great Leap Forward” had the same brains and bodies as you and me. But they weren’t painting, weren’t farming, weren’t innovating and weren’t transmitting knowledge across generations. Prior to the Great Leap, cultural advances paralleled major changes in anatomy. The Leap of 50 thousand years ago seems to have had no such physical correlate, and introduced changes perhaps greater than any other event in human history, ushering in a new realm of cultural evolution, creativity, innovation and communication. Post-Leap humans became super-organisms that could alter their behavior radically, with little if any accompanying physical change; a symbolic being capable of gathering and transmitting information at speeds that conventional physical evolution could never match.

At this time, there is little consensus as to what caused the Great Leap in human evolution. Theories range from genetic mutations to social complexity to the ingestion of psilocybin mushrooms. Some researchers doubt whether there was any leap at all, instead suggesting a more gradual series of advances. In this field of study, there are no certainties and an awful lot of maybe’s. What is sure is that all the leaps in the multi-million year history of Homo pale in comparison to the leap of 50,000 years ago, an event that only happened yesterday in evolutionary terms. Our lineage, our evolutionary record, dates back billions of years, but “we” as thinking, planning, innovative, creative humans are a new fixture in the evolutionary league.

Further reading on the “Great Leap”, also known as the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. This area is still hotly-debated and far from settled:

• Behavioural Modernity - Behavioral modernity is a term used in anthropology, archeology and sociology to refer to a list of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages. It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate a reliance on abstract thought and to express cultural creativity. These developments are often thought to be associated with the origin of language. There are two main theories regarding when modern human behavior emerged. One theory holds that behavioral modernity occurred as a sudden event some 50 kya, possibly as a result of a major genetic mutation or as a result of a biological reorganization of the brain. Proponents of this theory refer to this event as the Great Leap Forward or the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. The second theory holds that there was never any single technological or cognitive revolution. Proponents of this view argue that modern human behavior is basically the result of the gradual accumulation of knowledge, skills and culture occurring over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution.
• Suddenly Smarter by Mitchell Leslie. After living simply for hundreds of thousands of years, early humans burst forth with an explosion of innovation. What set off our cultural big bang? Richard Klein suggests a maverick explanation.
• Mirror neurons and the Great Leap by V.S. Ramachandran. Mirror neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind “the great leap forward” in human evolution.
• Oldest Known Sculpture Is Busty Clue to Brain Boom - From a cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists have unearthed the oldest known piece of figurative art. More than an ancient artistic impulse, it may signify a profound change in modern human brains. Carved from ivory and depicting a woman with exaggerated sexual features, the pinkie-sized sculpture is 36,000 years old, or about 5,000 years older than the next-earliest piece of figurative art.
• The First Human Ritual - A startling discovery of 70,000-year-old artifacts and a python's head carved of stone appears to represent the first known human rituals. Scientists had thought human intelligence had not evolved the capacity to perform group rituals until perhaps 40,000 years ago. But inside a cave in remote hills in Kalahari Desert of Botswana, archeologists found the stone snake [image] that was carved long ago. It is as tall as a man and 20 feet long.
• Cave yeilds 75,000 year old jewellery - Shell beads found in Blombos Cave on the southern tip of the continent are 75,000 years old, scientists say. The pea-sized items all have similar holes which would have allowed them to be strung together into a necklace or bracelet, the researchers believe. Christopher Henshilwood and his team have told Science magazine the find is probably one of the first examples of abstract thought seen in our ancestors.

Regardless of the exact history and development of the modern mind, we know that prior to this time, DNA represented the primary method of information transfer in the biological world. The emergence of the modern mind allowed humans to achieve what Alfred Korzybski called time-binding: The ability to pass information and knowledge between generations at an accelerating rate. Korzybski claimed this to be a unique capacity, separating us from other animals. Animals pass knowledge, but not at an exponential rate, i.e. each generation of animals does things pretty much in the same way as the previous generation.

Modern post-Leap bodyminds allowed all humans to begin experimenting with higher levels of conscious magic: language, art and abstraction. With greater levels of awareness, we attained more and more power; power to manipulate the environment, to create complex tools, to cultivate plants, to make music, to create and transmit myth and story, to control others, to pass on learned experience to infants, to develop settlements, cities, states, writing, technology, science, philosophy, and finally to become aware of ourselves and to consciously direct all of the above. Symbolic thought and language gave humans the ability to time-bind, a force that could advance millions of times faster than the previous pathways of physical evolution. Agriculture developed only 30,000 years after our Leap; a few thousand years later the first city-states and civilisations were being built. Six thousand years on and here we are, driving cars, sending space probes to Mars, reading books, and using the Internet.

Following billions of years of evolution, we’ve been hurtled through fire, walking, talking, religion, farming, surplus, civilisation, wealth, science, clothing, currency, computers, suffragettes, airplanes and internets in the blink of an eye. A few hundred thousand years ago we became magicians capable of great things, but like a child with a new toy, we got our fingers caught and felt frustrated. Recent human evolution has given us un-precedented power, but as with new technology, there’s an extensive trial period. We are deep into our trial period, currently exhausting an outdated reductionist model of understanding. At this point lies the greatest potential and the greatest danger. Harmonious community… or nuclear war?

Far from developing in a strict linear fashion, our chaotic trial period has created wealth, but also a great deal of illth, extending power way beyond empathy, technology beyond humanity, and population far beyond carrying capacity. With the global headcount approaching 7 billion, no corner of the globe has escaped humanity's impact. Overfishing, anthropogenic climate change, industrialization, intensive agriculture, clearance of rain forests and other activities contribute to a dramatically rising extinction rate. If current rates continue, humanity will have seen the eradication of one-half of Earth's biodiversity over the next hundred years.

Today, each of us has a role in the future evolution of humanity.

• Wilber 100 people stats (i.e. 73 are asian etc)
• Rape, ecological, violence stats.

Our task is therefore not to directly attack existing models, but simply to outline and flesh out new exciting models which go beyond what has come before. These new models accord with a modern, elegant, and empowering understanding of the cosmos and its unfolding patterns in matter, life, mind, culture, technology, society and spirit. Exploring and applying these models will help individuals to free themselves from various biases, outdated beliefs and any limited views that they may possess concerning the world and their place in it.

When we look at individual and social issues, and the potential for transformation, we must also understand attention. To truly judge someone, we don't listen to what they say about themselves: we look at what they pay attention to, what they actually spend their time doing. What most people tell others about themselves is just a reflection of their own models, and so to really understand people, we look at what they pay attention to. It is quickly obvious that a large chunk of First World populations direct most of their attention towards status, sex, fashion, TV, newspapers and so on. Unfortunately, as computer programmers say, it's Garbage In Garbage Out: pay attention to crap and you end up talking and thinking crap. This narrow materially-focused attention span shapes a huge portion of the world, and feeds back into modern mass culture, encouraging and perpetuating competition, premature certainty, chronic bitching, short-sightedness and a general numbness to the outside world.

A significantly smaller portion of attention is dedicated to life-affirming creative issues: reading, writing, teaching, self-realisation, healing, helping others, resolving conflicts (the opposite of chronic bitching), promoting sustainability, discovering the principles of matter, life and mind that tug and mould our world, exploring the history of Universe, and so on.

Right now there are hundreds of thousands of life-changing principles, ideas, practices and technologies that if applied today, by even a small portion of the population, could revolutionise the world overnight. Permaculture, basic psychological know-how, mindfulness training, evolutionary fitness, alternative currencies, win-win technologies. Why aren't these things revolutionising the world? Attention: very few people are giving them any time.

Our world reflects this attention balance. Clothes, cars, computers, televisions, toys, films, footballs, superstores, refrigerators, planes and hairstyles are the hard results of our attention and intent shaping the malleable physical world. Scientific reductionism can accurately strip these objects down to “objective” molecular skeletons, but if we want to understand why these things are here, how they got here, and what they mean for us, we look to the attention and intent of the creators; the reality-tunnel and personality that lead you to thinking “I want to buy this”, the reality-tunnel of the person who designed the product, the cultural values that influenced these tunnels, and so on.

The supposedly inert world of matter that we see around us is pulsing to the tune of human attention. As our imagination and attention grow or shrink, so does the physical world that flowers from them. When Nazism penetrated a large portion of the collective German consciousness, the physical result was the loss of millions of lives. When Nazism faded from this consciousness, the physical world re-aligned: Jews stopped being killed, concentration camps stopped being built. As notions of sustainability have leaked into public awareness, so the food markets and superstore shelves have altered their appearance. Human consciousness, whether it is vibrating at an intelligent (self-aware) or primitive (trance) level, is the hidden creator; teasing, coaxing and directing our present and future, more so than any “external” influence.

Just like the landscape we have collectively conjured around ourselves, our personal lives grow and wither according to our awareness of how we define our lives, the realisation that we are each responsible for our own experiences. When an architect stands back and looks at the finished building, he sees the physical result of his conscious magic. When we each accept our identity as free conscious beings, we will stand back and see our whole lives as a manifestation of the conscious and unconscious magic we cast into the world.

Think about it for a few minutes. Look outside, then look at what most people pay attention to. Outside of work, what do people do? What do you pay attention to? Look at the people we recognise as bright, positive, intelligent and inspiring. Look at what they pay attention to. It's no coincidence that they spend a lot of their time paying attention to things that foster these qualities. Our attention routine represents our relationships with the world, and in a very real sense, defines who we are.

Of course there's a twist, as what we pay attention to is often the predictable result of our deeper personality structures, beliefs and reality-models. We're back to those models again. Therefore, it's vital to start with yourself. If you can't understand your own reality-tunnel, it's unlikely that you'll be able to grasp anyone elses. The journeys begins with you! Likewise, if you can't understand and improve your own life, what have you learned? Taking conscious control of your life is a never-ending and infinitely rewarding adventure. Get going!

I hope all the essays, links, resources and brainfood on this wiki help to expand the collective attention horizon of our world towards greater learning and potential.

Welcome to Scenario Universe: You are riding Spaceship Earth. To get the most out of your trip, we offer the following information: