The Grand Unification of the Human

Unlike the original and most successful forms of life on Earth, such as single cell organisms, humans have been driven by a strong desire to fragment. From early clans to modern religions, classes and countries, the fundamental driving force of a human has been fragmentation. Society, an invention of simple systems such as bacteria, is a countercultural construct for complex systems. It is possible that a complex system such as a human is a society of various organisms and thus it may reject anything outside as beneficial.

Human society, thus, is an oxymoron. The human does not have a need for a society outside itself and this may be the reason for the fragmentation. Groups of humans are constructs of convenience but not a fundamental building block. Out of Africa, such conveniences broke down when the clan size exceeded 150. Much later, they will construct multi-dimensional fragmentation schemes. For example, they could combine grouping mechanisms such as countries, religions, classes, wealth, body proportions, disabilities, color of external body parts and other attributes to keep micro-blocks to the original 150 even in large macro-blocks such as countries and religions that give a false perception of society.

Nothing has changed for nearly a million years of humanoid progression. This appears to be a harsh constraint on evolutionary design. As organisms progress into higher complexity, they are driven to fragmentation and micro-segmentation. The question is whether a complex organism such as a human can overcome this handicap. Although the odds are stacked against it, there are some favorable signs that may propel humans into real societies. One of the primary reasons is that the threats the planet faces, pandemics, meteors and climatic discontinuities are systemic and cannot be optimized in micro-segments.

Is the grand unification of the human possible? Perhaps.