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Have you ever looked up at a tree and notice a bird’s nest placed upon it ever so graciously? It really is amazing and so natural to see the birds use the resources around them to create tools that they can use to give themselves shelter and live a better life.

Bird’s created nests as a technology to increase their probability of their survival, a drive that seems to be shared by all living beings.

Yet it’s so interesting and shocking to me how we can look at something like a smartphone, book or building and claim that those things are “unnatural”. The definition of artificial according to dictionary.com is an adjective meaning, “made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural.”

Think about that for a second, we are basically saying that anything we do is so special that it should have its own category of reality. As if somehow we do not fall into the spectrum of naturally occurring phenomena in the universe, we are somehow “special” in a way that is truly incomprehensible.

Imagine you had a friend that claimed that anything he said, did or created was so special that it should have its own category of reality. Somehow everything he does is so special because of his sheer being that operates outside the bounds of natural reality. It’s almost like he’s claiming to be a supernatural demi-god.

You might be thinking,”My friend makes complete sense, of course, everything he does is special and outside the realms of our perceived reality. He is just different ya know?” OR you may think “Sheesh, this guy is very narcissistic and seems pretty damn delusional.”

Your friend truly believes he operates outside normal reality, but no worries, he seems like a pretty reasonable person…

Odds are you’ll think he’s delusionally egotistical in a way that may makes him do foolish and harmful things out of the cognitive dissonance AKA “justification” of his behaviors since he is, of course, under the absolute belief he is separate from all reality around him. What if I told you that you can’t really judge him because if you believe in the idea of natural vs unnatural you and him share the same belief?

The idea that we are special is something that can feel good even divine because it makes us feel like, no matter what, we hold a special place in the universe but, what if we don’t? What if we are just an advanced form of monkeys on a mass ego trip? Not saying we are, just saying what if…

This is the only tool we had to use in day to day life for over 800,000 years…

With that said, I think it’s important to understand that our philosophies and beliefs as human beings drive all of our actions, behaviors and our “justifications”. What if I told you that observing all things as natural would allow you to open your mind? It is with this frame of thought that one can begin to look at the world with reborn eyes in awe of the thing we are part of and always have been, nature. A cosmic mass we have yet to understand that may very well have multiple dimensions we cannot even perceive. The leading theoretical physicists of our day such as Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the recently deceased Steven Hawking have often pointed out that our understanding of the universe is essentially limited hence their strong desire to understand it more. Once you consider that all thoughts, ideas, and tools humans have created are just as natural as the bird’s nest that lay in a tree you may begin to understand that the development of technology is simply part of our evolutionary process. A computer chip is made out of silicon and quartz which are naturally occurring elements that we learned how to turn into information processing machines over time. We achieved this by compiling shared experience and what I call “legacy knowledge” AKA information & ideas passed down generation over generation that compiles into breakthroughs in human progress. The computer is possibly the greatest breakthrough we’ve ever had as a natural species. Many people make the mistake of thinking that technology is an industry but in reality, it is an age of humanity’s progress. Our earliest known age was the paleolithic age (stone age) in which we lived short lives and struggled to survive in the harsh jungles of Earth. As we progressed we began to retain information, learn and create tools like the first known tool we used, the hand axe, a tool that was our only one for over 800,000 years. Now we have amazing technology that is altering our way of life and giving us access to information, luxuries and services that we’d have never been able to imagine in the past.

This dude hacked 60 million FB accounts to alter their behavior to help our President win, essentially it’s mass concealed propaganda.

So what now? What happens next? I can tell you that by the end of this century there is no way life will ever be the same for us because we’ve broken a threshold of evolution that may allow us to reach superhuman levels of existence, that is if we survive the AI revolution. With the creation of this powerful and new technology we also need philosophies, codes of ethic and considerations that will ensure we do not become corrupt, controlled or worse. In just the past 20 years we’ve seen the genesis of computer technology rock the global economy, culture and standard of life but we’ve also seen scary warnings of what may happen if we don’t act responsibly with these new powers such as Edward Snowden’s proof the government wants access to ALL of our data and that our behaviors and elections can be manipulated as proven via a recently leaked video of the CEO of Cambridge Analytica cheerfully discussing how he uses bribes and blackmail to control. There is also another video of one of his key data scientists admitting they hacked over 60 Million FB accounts to alter the US election of 2016. These are serious implications that can lead to our nation becoming a police state not to mention the potential threat of automation via AI & Robotics which may make most jobs obsolete. What do we do when more than half of the world’s population won’t be able to provide economic value in our new society? We have to figure these things out and as someone who works in the world of innovative technology, I feel an obligation to address these issues and use technology to create a better world. Ideas and information are being democratized; Napster & Spotify democratized music, Netflix democratized film, Kindle democratized books and Meural is democratizing art/photography. Uber has altered transportation, Airbnb has altered housing and computers will soon be in everything around us from our home to our clothing to possibly even our bodies.

These advancements will make or break us but at the end of the day that will be determined by the beliefs and philosophies that drive our actions during this revolutionary age. I encourage you to deeply consider your life, your thoughts and your heart to consider our responsibility to be thoughtful about our actions as individuals and as a connected humanity. So next time you want to judge your environment or things around you that you see as “natural” or “unnnatural”, consider for a moment that you may just be judging yourself. We are the ones who project our reality to the things around us but those things just are what they are, nothing more or less. It is up to us to take the time to open our minds and understand. What will you choose? To believe you know it all or consider we know nothing. The choice is yours.

Question of The Week: Do you believe in the idea of unnatural or artificial? If so why? If not why? Comment below with your thoughts, I’d love to hear ’em.

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The Myth of Natural vs Unnatural: Humanity’s Greatest Delusion