One material world exists, of which we are a part of it. This material world is forming and evolving around us, and we change within it as ...
One material world exists, of which we are a part of it. This material world is forming and evolving around us, and we change within it as well. Change takes place along the limits of the imperatives set by the rules that govern our physical world. What is the value of this world, built of existing matter and constrained by fixed rules? What is the real existing value of our world?
What is value in general? A valuable thing is what did not exist before and now exists. Everything that is new is valuable. But how can anything new exist in a world strictly limited in resources and constrained by rules? How can something be created in our limited world that did not exist before?
In our universe, matter is not created, nor do the laws that govern matter change. Yet, we see that new things are being formed in our material world continuously. How? In the way everything that exists, how it can exist, is constantly creating newer and newer arrangements, new and new structures. In our world, the value of what can arise, what is new, are the newly created material structures that conform to the rules of our world. In our world, no new matter is created, nor do the rules that govern matter change, but within these limits, newer and newer structures, complex systems, are constantly being formed.
Complexity, created from existing resources and produced according to the prevailing rules, and its augmentation, is the potential and the real value of our world, from atoms and molecules to living matter and brains, through to intelligent societies. The complex structures made of atoms and the complex social systems made of living beings are also the real existing values of our world, all representing the complexity in workings.
We ourselves can create new values in the world, structures that did not exist before. Human beings, as complex systems, by themselves represent the real value of the world, and it is the value of our world also what human beings create in complexity. Mankind itself is capable of creating something new.
The most complex human-made structure is human society, which apparently becomes more complex over time as human knowledge is accumulated. The evolution of society is founded on increasing complexity. As human society evolves, it can itself increase the complexity of the world and thus make the whole universe more valuable.
The more complex a society is, the more valuable it is and, as a consequence, the more complex systems it is able to create. How can the complexity of human society be increased? By consciously increasing the complexity of the system, that is the origin of the growth of social complexity, the brain.
The complexity of the brain is the origin of the complexity of human society and the systems produced by society. Therefore, to increase the value of society, the complexity of the human brain must be increased. The complexity of the human brain is fundamentally proportional to the amount of the information, the knowledge it carries.
Social leaders who build the development of society on increasing knowledge, on improving education and on the accessibility of the information, lead the development of a society capable of creating ever more complex systems, creating an ever more valuable society (as opposed to those leaders who build the development of society on the possession of material resources and their growth). The value of society is based primarily on the knowledge of the people forming society, which is the product of freely available information and education.
In a human society, freedom of access to information, equal opportunity to education for all, and the motivational methods of learning developed by society for the members of the society are not simply the fundamental tools of maintaining and enhancing a successful society as a complex system, but also a way of adding value to the world.
So, let's make the universe as valuable as possible.
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