Ok, I have written this book, this one book, in my middle years of obsessively studying, and growing increasingly uncomfortable with, what I saw as the undoing of Natural systems by this “one technological species”; but I was writing also at a time when I was still making my living in building construction and design which required the ecological evisceration of whole forests (whole meaning of “whole” meant here). I was running a 6-12 “man” crew while also doing my part as carpenter, plumber, electrician, and designer in equal measure; and writing a book in the evenings, in my guilty spare moments and on occasional spare days. My suspicion at the time that not only the subject matter, but the writing also, was very difficult for academics to understand, let alone the fellow nerds it was aimed at, has proven true again and again; and now my recent reviewing of the pages as a more literary and academically-exposed elder gives me a little more perspective on the problems inherent to that first writing:
From this more distant perspective the two most obvious challenges for any reader seem to be: 1) the imposter syndrome fear that my first book must not be “too long”, and so too much subject matter was crammed into to few pages; and 2) my attention to detail could not relax into that headspace that a good book needs. (Ok, by definition this would have lead to a more relaxed, i.e. longer, book—so one problem, not two?)
The object of this current post however is in fact two-fold: 1) to tell you not to bother reading existing copies of my book Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice but wait until I’ve finished remediating the aforementioned problems; and 2) to assure you that I know it’s been difficult for you and it’s not your fault if you don’t understand it.
So, as a first test of whether or not an older man’s hopes are at all realistic, let’s see if my book’s most difficult concept— human creativity and evolutionary creativity seen as two autonomous “Intelligences” — resonates with you when you look at my latest deconstruction of the concept as a four-part mapping of creativity’s general components. (Yes, it’ll help if you’ve taken a high-school biology course, but the parallel with something as familiar to you as your own creative intelligence might be just enough to give you the aha! moment I’m looking for.):
HUMAN CREATIVITY
habituation — play and imagination — specifying & compounding language — innovation
EVOLUTIONARY CREATIVITY
ontogenesis — gene pool variation & mixing — speci-fying & diversifying sexual selection — phylogenesis
Ok, then. Prepare to read on if you’re a fellow Humans & Nature nerd!
I’ll take more time to draw out the consequences of this formulation, this one seemingly novel change I’ve made in the academics of Humans & Nature (from the traditional ontogeny-phylogeny natural selection story to the more generalisable and therefore productive “four-phase dynamic”) when I work up the remediated edition of Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile choice. In the meantime, if you’re interested you can find a little more background here: https://www.extremophilechoice.com/2024/12/13/the-wonks-pause-a-last-look-at-how-the-human-intellect-is-a-compromised-remix-of-natures-intelligence/
