AUGMENTATION AND THE ILLNESSES OF CIVILIZATION

A brief consideration of the idea that human consciousness may be an evolutionary maladaptation that led to greater susceptibility to disease. 

The development of consciousness has historically been celebrated as a mark of superiority—the principal reason why humankind sits atop the evolutionary food chain. However, geologist Mrejeru (Emergence of Modern Brain and the Imaginary Build-up of Civilization, 2019, etc.) considers an alternative hypothesis: that human consciousness was an aberrant adaptation—one that gave rise to civilization, but also generated the conditions that contribute to chronic illness. Due to “geomagnetic excursions” that occurred on the planet some 40,000 years ago, he says, human beings were exposed to secondary radiation “strong and long enough to augment human brain rhythms.” This, he asserts, paved the way for new mutations that led to a left-hemisphere-dominant brain that used language and, eventually, analysis to interpret the world. However, the advent of human consciousness introduced stressful uncertainty, the author says, which led to the experience of “existential perils.” The modern brain developed about 30,000 years ago, according to the author, and it aims to manage the aforementioned crisis by way of “augmentation”—a process that filters out information as a way to reduce uncertainty, but actually introduces more complexity and stress. The author—in dense prose with occasional typographical errors that’s often nearly impenetrable—hypothesizes that human vulnerability to disease and dysfunction, including autism and schizophrenia, is a result of this stress. Mrejeru’s thesis is as provocative as it is ambitious, as he aims, in this book, at nothing less than an articulation of origin stories for consciousness and civilization, as well as appraisals of their impacts on humanity. However, his treatise is unfortunately highly speculative—heavy on hypothesis and assumption, and short on empirical substantiation. Also, the work as a whole lacks philosophical rigor; it never precisely defines the concepts of consciousness and civilization, for example, and its theories regarding the existential encounter with uncertainty seem like brute postulates. 

A stimulating but unconvincing hypothesis, presented in exasperating prose.