Humanity’s Chance to Complete the Code of Life

by Tim Cimino

All creatures on Earth except humans have their physical form and behavior almost completely determined by their DNA.  This DNA can be said to contain their instructions for living, their “Code of Life.”  Because they are following the instructions laid down in the DNA, they behave in an orderly fashion.  Humans, the most outstanding exception, need to learn virtually all of their behaviors in order to live.  In other words, they must complete the Code of Life for themselves.  This code includes:

  an ethical code: how to treat others

  personal health and hygiene techniques

  physical safety (around household chemicals, electricity, cars, and strangers)

  economic viability: having some kind of job skill

  home economics: maintaining a livable home and budgeting

  political stabilizing: citizenship duties, political awareness and

  advocacy for keeping the government and community stable

  mate selection skills and standards

  child-rearing practices

  practices that protect or repair the environment

  language and communication skills: for taking in and sharing new information

  social skills: learning who to trust and who not to trust;

  learning how to build and maintain social structures

  learning and critical thinking skills: for drawing correct conclusions in new situations

A full Code of Life is not learned by most people.  Our learning is defective and incomplete for at least seven reasons: It’s disorganized, unfinished, out of date, primitive, de-prioritized, avoided, and compartmentalized.

It’s disorganized because we learn pieces of the code from many sources: parents, teachers, TV shows, religious leaders, advertisements, books, the government, friends, magazines, the Internet and elsewhere.  Sometimes we get two or more versions of the code that conflict with each other.  For instance, your religion may give you one ethical code; your parents may live by another ethical code; and your friends might live by another. 

For most people, learning is incomplete simply because it’s unfinished.  If you study the above list of twelve areas of learning, you’ll probably find many gaps in your learning. Furthermore, those who usually have primary responsible for our educations, i.e., our parents are often amateurs who usually have had incomplete educations themselves.

Some of these gaps in learning are due to the information being out of date.  Our world is rapidly changing.  Medical knowledge is growing, but equally threats to public health are growing as new, resistant strains of diseases emerge.   The amount of information has exploded, but people lack the skills to manage and sift through it.  We become overwhelmed by junk mail, multiple cable channels, unwanted e-mail and clutter.  The pace of life speeds up, and the mechanisms to update adult learning fall behind.

Human learning is primitive because most of it is still done through lecturing and repetitious drilling, rather than with the advanced memory techniques that produce efficient learning.  Experiential learning processes that produce flexible thinking and creativity are lacking in most learning situations.  In other words, people are more often trained like dogs to perform specific actions in specific situations, rather than being educated to create solutions tailored to the situation at hand.

Human learning is often incomplete because it is de-prioritized.  Generally speaking, the poor are trapped in a struggle for survival, so that educating their children cannot be a high priority.  This helps continue the cycle of poverty.   The wealthy invest great energy and time on business and profit-making.  Instead of business being a means to supply people with what they need and want, people become a means to supply businesses with labor to make a profit.  The middle class spends much of their time focused on work and entertainment.  Ultimately, however, human learning is de-prioritized because you and I often put what we want ahead of what others need.

Human learning is also incomplete because adults often avoid it.  Pain is a signal that a change is needed; frequently it is a signal to learn.   If your back or neck is sore, for instance, you might first change your sitting position.  If this doesn’t work, you might learn stretching exercises, yoga, or massage.  People often avoid learning in favor of quick fixes, such as taking a pain reliever.   In the same way, trouble in a relationship, finances, health or career are all signs that learning is needed.  In these situations, people often avoid learning and change in favor of escapist entertainment, blaming others, or resigned acceptance.

Finally, learning is incomplete because it’s too compartmentalized.  As an adult, you may actually want to learn more about finances; be part of a support program for your emotional growth; learn how to repair and maintain your house; and build up your computer skills, but there is not enough time to take a class or join a support group for each of your needs.  

These seven defects in learning, along with people’s limited circles of caring, can explain much of the preventable suffering on Earth.  To the extent that we understand these defects, we have an unprecedented opportunity to better complete the Code of Life—if we care.  But the more basic question is "Why should we care?"  Just before John Donne made his famous statement, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee,” he wrote, “I am involved in mankind.” You and I are involved not only in humankind, but in all life on Earth.  All the other creatures have their Code of Life completed except us.  Because of this incompletion, many people suffer needlessly.   Since our destinies are intertwined, we have a responsibility to each other.

It is this sense of responsibility that has driven me to find solutions.   It has inspired new insights: 

1) That it’s time to update the Golden Rule:
2) That most people’s understanding of peace and security is primitive;
3) That most individuals and organizations on Earth operate on the bottom two rungs of the following Ladder of Empowerment, when they could be operating on the top two as well:

This drawing misleadingly makes the fourth rung seem just four times higher than the first.  But, roughly speaking, teaching how to fish (Rung Two) is 10,000 times more powerful than giving fish (Rung One) imagining the person lives at least 10,000 days (about 30 years).  And teaching how to learn (Rung Three) is at least 100 times more powerful than teaching one skill, since people may learn 100 skills in a lifetime.  And teaching how to learn and then teach others (Rung Four) could be a thousand, a million, or ten billion times more powerful than Rung Three, depending on how far the ripple effect can spread around the Earth.

If we use height to symbolize power and say that the first rung of the ladder is a foot off of the ground, the second rung would be 10,000 feet or about two miles up.  Judging by the ubiquity of the proverb, people are properly awed by this jump in power.  But the third rung would be 100 times higher, putting it above the stratosphere, somewhere in the Earth’s thermosphere, about 200 miles up.  But to find the fourth rung of the ladder, you would draw a line from the Earth through the Sun, past Pluto’s orbit into deep space and then a distance about 100 of our Solar Systems long, assuming the chain reaction could reach three billion people of the world’s more than six billion people.

The message of the Ladder is not that Rung Four actions are best.  Instead, all rungs are needed.  But Rung Four actions, while they take more time and effort than Rung One actions, have an impact hundreds or thousands of times greater than Rung One actions.

My sense of responsibility has also made me seek out and identify what’s missing: ongoing personal support, other key ingredients of learning, and multipurpose structures for adult learning.

It's very useful to think of what we are doings as world surgery.   Surgeons use scalpels and sutures to operate on people.  World surgeons use high leverage strategies and upgrades to operate on the world.  They can do this by using the CLEAR method to operate on their lifestyles and through ongoing personal support structures that pass this method on to others.  Medical surgery is not a philosophy, but a practical set of skills based on science.  Similarly, world surgery is not a philosophy.   It’s a practical set of methods based on arithmetic, consequences and upgrades like those described on this web site.

You’re probably familiar with most of the ideas that make up the upgrades. You may feel you've heard it all before.  But what is new is that together they allow us to operate on both a global scale and individual scale at the same time.   But people naturally have great doubts about actually being able to change the trajectory of human history.

I have two responses to this doubt.  The first is to say that we’ve already done three things that make major and rapid change plausible.  In Scouting we already have a model of all-around education.  In the small groups of Alcoholics Anonymous, we have an example of a chain reaction that grew from two people to over half a million in under 40 years.  Finally, in learning to drive a car, we have a situation in which all kinds of people, young or old, hardworking or lazy, intelligent or not so swift, have learned to drive a car satisfactorily.  What’s impressive is how efficiently hundreds of millions of human beings have learned a set of complex behaviors and rules that are totally unnatural to the way humans have been walking on the planet for a million years. And most people learned to drive in about 20 to 40 hours.  So, I would say yes, a chain reaction is not only plausible, it is quite feasible!

A better way to answer the question about the potential of a chain reaction is to say that you won’t really believe it can work on a large scale until you see it work on a small scale, in your life and the lives of a handful of others who you help and who help you.  When they pass on the upgrades and methods to others, then you will know that it’s only a matter of time, arithmetic, caring and method before the whole world is transformed.  That is, unless the destructive forces overcome us first.

In other words, humanity has a chance.  



Commentary   Glance back at the first list, that of the learning that people need to do to live.  All Around doesn't have materials in all of these areas; but you can find any you need on the Internet.  All Around's role is to provide the structures and methods to help you find, understand and practice the "Code of Life" behaviors you need to both live and prosper.