Organs, Organisations and Wizards
They're not organised, but...
Humans are like individual cells. We have an array of processes and things that we do. We can even become highly adept and specialised in a multitude of operations.
Yet alone we are a little vulnerable and useless.
Organs
A cone cell in the eye has the most amazing ability to detect specific wavelengths of light.
It manages this wonderous feat whilst it converts chemical energy into different actions and processes, builds whatever it needs internally and gets rid of it’s waste.
Yet without the rest of the engineering of an eyeball to focus light the individual cone cell is not an especially illuminating individual. In fact, it would be lost without a transport system for energy and waste, a healthcare system to fight pathogens and a sea of other cells to keep it warm and safe.
It’s much the same for a liver cell, a brain cell, or a heart cell, an individual takes on meaning within the whole organ and the entire being it exists within.
These cells and organs are completely dependent on teamwork.
Organisations
An individual human can’t build a computer or a spaceship. In fact, left alone in a jungle without any assistance, it would struggle to even bake a cookie.
Yet organisations that operate in harmony with other organisations enhance the capacity of human beings with incredible emergent capabilities. We can go to the moon, map the genome, and collectively LOL at cat videos.
Just like an organ has individual functions but benefits from the collective functions of all the other organs in the body that work together. Organisations provide individual services to the rest of the entity within which they exist.
At first this was at a local level with trade within and between tribes. This grew to trade within countries ferrying goods up and down roads and even led to continent-spanning routes like the silk-road.
These arteries of society have only ever grown over time with the advent of technology connecting us globally.
Wizards
We’ve been able to invent all sorts of wizard-like technology. We have these big solid blocky things we can store our worldly belongings in and sleep in safely.
We’ve turned our daily foraging requirement into a radically convenient pick and choose system where turn up at a largely blocky thing somewhere close by that holds everything we need and then we simply grab whatever we feel like eating.
The only difficulty is finding the time to go to it and working out what we actually want.
Now in the modern day, an individual doesn’t need to be part of an organisation with other humans in it to be a functioning organisation. Creators and solopreneurs can operate as adeptly as part of the human entity.
Sitting here in Portugal, I can open an online store with a few clicks utilising servers across the globe. Within minutes I can be selling services to a dentist in Slough, UK or a farmer in Saraoutou on the islands of Vanuatu at the opposite end of the globe.
Even an astronaut in the international space station has an internet connection to buy a service from me! (if they wanted)
The size of human teams needed to make billion-dollar companies has shrunk at a rapid level. With the dawn of AI magic, we might see someone make a billion-dollar business all by themselves.
I’ll call these people wizards.
(There was no real reason to name them wizards other than the title Organs, Organisations and Wizards sounded like a random piece of philosophy on substack I am prone to click on… but sometimes an intriguing title can lead to interesting ideas. Continued)
Connection
Before all these amazingly weird emergent properties started happening due to teamwork, humans still needed each other too simply to stay alive and safe.
Hence connection is hardwired into us.
Another emergent property at a more local level that happens from spending a lot of time with one individual is that you can form a family.
If you are lucky enough to create your own little humans they grow up from defenceless little baby things into competent caring adult things.
Their close connection to you gives the added benefit that you have someone to look after you and bake you cookies and look after you as you grow old.
Skill Acquisition
A developing human will apply vast amounts of energy into learning how basic physics works and operate adept calculations and movements that self-correct a potential trip. (This has taken humanity decades to teach a robot)
A tiny human is also a sponge for language.
The idea of learning Finnish or Mandarin is an overwhelmingly scary task to take on for the average adult. (Let alone without the help of a teacher, app or textbook.)
Yet a 3 year old could learn any language you immerse it in quite fine.
Just as they are hungry to communicate and move they are ravenous to connect.
As they learn all these incredibly complex tasks like walking and talking at a core internal level, they pick up on the slightest nuances of connection with other humans.
These are essential skills it will need to stay alive and safe when it’s older. Being able to operate as a functioning member of a family or organisation will keep it safe from external threats it has no ability to overcome on it’s own.
Being able to connect is as important as being able to walk and talk which is why it is learned at such a rapid rate in our very early years.
Unorganised
An interesting phenomenon is that if you look at any real human organisation (or family) it is quite messy and unorganised.
It is these connecting abilities that act like gravity and keep us together despite the gross dysfunctionality.
A body doesn’t really know what is going on where, but the cells depend on each other through internal signalling molecules to their neighbours keeping everyone friendly and doing stuff.
Likewise, organs send different stuff to each other and the brain has no idea what’s going on internally and is also full of biases as to what is going on externally.
Yet in a completely dysfunctional fashion it operates and stuff happens.
There isn’t a government on the planet that is fully aware of everything going on inside their own government, let alone their country or the planet.
Just like a body gets through the years due to its cell’s abilities to get on with its neighbours. Humanity itself bumbles through the years making progress through sheer individual abilities to be nice to the few people around us.
Magic
It sounds like a fun idea to become a wizard.
It’s worth noting that importantly, there is a simpler strategy to get along in society and contribute in your own small way to the unstoppable progress of human magic.
That is - just be nice to those around you.
