During my long absence away from writing and going to college I began doing a lot more heavy research than I had originally done, on anything. What I am about to share with you is the basic core idea of the new book that I am currently working on. In order to get the full details on the entire structure as well as information on how to carry out the necessary tasks you will need to survive you will have to purchase the book.

Not only have I learned a lot in the past two and a half years at the time of this writing but I have actually managed to create what I would consider my first real contribution to the field of psychology, or perhaps many other fields as well. It is called the Long Term Survival Model. And it is the reason why we are alive on this planet.

This is a bold claim to make but let me first point out that what I am really talking about is why we are here in terms of Darwinian evolution. It is obvious to first say that we are actually here for just about any reason we would like to pick. Some theists (or those who are religious believers) have told me that they do not believe there would be a point to our existence if evolution were true. Of course, this will not be a post debating the existence of evolution because as far as I am concerned there is nothing there to debate anyway. This entire model assumes that evolution is true and is constantly in motion.

The two driving forces to Darwinian evolution are 1) natural selection and 2) mutation. Natural selection is the process by where survival of the fittest allows the organisms with the best traits suited to their environment to survive while mutation keeps the traits changing every once and a while. When a mutation is beneficial we could say that it is ‘adaptive.’ Adaptation is the very name for the process in which organisms continue to grow, evolve, and exist throughout time.

Under the assumption of these main two mechanisms it would be safe to assume that we are actually here for more of a reason than just to survive; we are not only here to survive but to replicate. And here in lies a bit of the problem that is sort of philosophical.

If we are only here to survive and replicate then that means that whatever we do to get there does not really matter. Under a traditional viewpoint in much of modern society, there lies a view that evolution is taking place on a wholly individualistic sort of scale. This is actually not the case because everything exists on an entirely interconnected network.

In fact, not only are all people on the planet connected to all other people on the planet but all organisms to organisms and even people to all other environmental factors. On enough of a scaled breakdown we could actually say that on a molecular level everything is fundamentally connected. This is part of the basis for what is known as “chaos theory.”

Chaos theory is irrelevant to the Long Term Survival Model but I will go ahead and just explain briefly what chaos theory states. Chaos theory assumes a number of different properties about the universe but one of its main points, or benefits that is, is to be able to predict very complex events and occurrences such as the flow of water or the stock market trends. Many scientists agree that certain patterns are taking place among seemingly totally unpredictable events but the only reason they cannot make accurate predictions is that the formulae for predicting the events are changing at every moment.

The stock market, for example, creates a brand new set of conditions every single time someone makes a trade. When you change the market, even by a little, it changes the state of what predictions will be made about the future regarding the entire market. The amount of data that you have to put your hands on and interpret all at once is horrendously large.

The entire universe functions this way and we are not living in a state of exception.

At any moment, the constantly shifting state of the universe could cause a giant, deadly meteor to come hurling in the direction of our planet or some cosmic event could destroy us in the blink of an eye that we theoretically would not be able to predict. Our entire existence continues on in this fashion. When we consider how each and every one of us, along with the very way in which everything we say and do affects other conditions on both our planet and inevitably the rest of the universe – we realize that survival and replication is not the only thing we should be doing.

When considering the rest of the big picture, we actually have three goals for the survival of each of ourselves as individuals and it lies with ensuring the survival of our entire species. We must:

1. Survive. And when I say survive, I am referring to it in the traditional sense of the word because by the end of this article I will change the definition of the word ‘survive’ to mean how we survive in the long term over millions, billions, or trillions of years.

2. Replicate. We should replicate but replication lies in more than our DNA. One of the primary driving factors behind DNA replication, or human reproduction, is our ideologies and behaviors. Biologist Richar Dawkins coined a term for these known as “memes” similar to the genetic term “genes.” Replication lies not just in our biology but in our memetics as well.

3. Empower. Empowerment is the third and final step in the basics of the Long Term Survival Model. Essentially, empowerment is the ability to enable others in the population to perform the same tasks in steps 1 and 2 – to survive and replicate. In its most common form, empowerment is teaching.

Empowerment is where things get complicated. Not only must we figure out what empowerment really is but we also have to have a vehicle for getting there. Empowerment, just like surviving and replicating, takes time, energy, and resources. This third step operates under the principle that if we aid the rest of the population then we will increase our chances for long term survival. Without taking into account how we are connected to everything else – we literally have no hope of prevailing as a species.

Take a moment to consider how lucky we are. Not only have 98% or more of the biological organisms that have ever existed on this planet gone extinct, we happen to be among the lucky few that have not. On a broader scale, we also happen to be lucky enough that our planet is tipped at just the right scale and distanced just the right length away from the sun that human life is able to exist at all, for any period of time, on this planet. At our most basic level, we are the universe growing some form of consciousness and asking itself questions like where it came from, where is it going, and where does it lie now?

At the same time, we are doing dumb things every single day. We are flushing toilets that use 10 gallons of water per flush. We are eating fast food that kills us. We have countries constantly going to war over religion and resources. We are killing off species after species with our relentless expansion. In every possible way, countless different members of the homo sapien species are ignoring the first and most important fundamental truth of our being connected to absolutely everything (and by that truth: affecting everything else in existence).

For more information the Long Term Survival Model, sign up to my newsletter. You will get a free eBook, Principles of Social Attraction, as well as videos, audio files, and other resources which will provide you on more information relating to the LTS Model.

I got an interesting comment the other day on my entry which explained why I have begun writing in this blog again after over a year of being away from it. I decided it would be a good idea to, not just respond to the commenter, create a post out of the comment for the benefit of my readers to sort of dive into some interesting ideas that the comment touched base on. The below writings were originally a comment on my entry: What Brought Scott Out of Slumber?

Missi of MissisMusings.com writes:

Hi Scott…just started reading your blog today. Love the way you write and your article on Pavlina. You have a lot of great points in this post but I wanted to point out that science, while very useful, can’t PROVE anything. It serves only to disprove. We can’t know anything for certain. There have been many failures of the scientific method which I won’t go into here, but consider that even though a scientific theory may have several experiments to back it up, it takes only ONE counter example to disprove a theory. The BCS theory of superconductivity was confirmed over and over again for 25 years, but in 1986, just one experiment disproved that theory. Looking forward to reading more.

Missi,

In regard to your point about the scientific method and how one counterexample can disprove an entire theory – I’d argue that in many cases that is correct. That is what is so great about science, in addition to the fact that many times it will also take hundreds of different slight variations to confirm or disprove any theory and one of those slight variations may be the thing that finally breaks it. This is part of the beauty of science and one of the things that I will probably argue a lot throughout this blog in the coming weeks is that society is just not paying enough attention to scientific theory or to the idea of skepticism.

I would love for you to go into the “many failures” of the scientific method because as far as I can tell there are only a few. For example, there is no way that the scientific method can fully account for subjective experience. Other times we might lack instrumentation or instrumentation that is valid and reliable for measuring some particular item or thing. Of course, the scientific method is also responsible for every single technology and set of concepts that has allowed us to advance and progress in our quality of living throughout history. We would not have electric lights, cars, refrigerators, ergonomic chairs and keyboards, indoor plumbing, water heaters, 99.9% effective antibacterial soaps, and loads of other handy accessories in our daily lives if it were not for the scientific method.

Now, obviously if we are going to get into the deepest, simplest, most direct point of the philosophy of sorts behind empiricism we would come to the conclusion that when it comes down to it – we really cannot know anything for certain, as you said. But if I understand you correctly, I assume that what you mean by that statement is that ultimately we cannot know anything, only that we are perceiving our reality and even our perception of that reality may not exist as we know it, or even exist at all. But I think that by taking this approach and leaving that as your final conclusion for the extent to which science can benefit humanity we would probably end up robbing ourselves blind – as we did not consider the better alternative of applying a bit of rationalism to this whole idea.

So what if we cannot know anything for certain in its ultimate, end all finality? Who cares? The point is that we can come to conclusions which can help us determine if we are headed in the right direction with different things by using logical, rational, and even empirical arguments. Perhaps one of the most beneficial fields of science might be biology and the discovery of genetics from people like Gregor Mendel or Elizabeth Blackburn and her discovery of the telomere. If we can understand the very stuff from which we are made, this mysterious stuff that is now not so mysterious known as: deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and how to ensure that we can take care of this fantastic body of ours by catering to the enzymes, proteins, cells, and various other components that run it then perhaps we could live to see another few decades, or, as some are even trying to claim now: another ten decades.

Science is the beginning of possibilities and not only is it a place from which we can draw our inspiration it is also a place through which we can mold and sculpt new dreams. More importantly: science, to me, is a way in which we can actually find practical solutions to make some of those incredibly fantastic dreams come true. Finally, I must say that I would have to disagree that science cannot “prove” anything or that it can only “disprove” things. In fact, it proves through every experiment conducted that when an experiment is performed in a particular way certain events happen. If the experiment can be replicated over and over again with the exact same results then we can usually conclude that it is reasonable to assume that if those same events were to repeat themselves in the same fashion in the future we will be able to predict what will happen! Perhaps you meant something different by proof, maybe relating to theoretical or conceptual constructs.

Thank you so much for writing, Missi! Remember that many of these ideas I may have expanded upon in a bit more detail than might be personally necessary for you – this was to ensure that my readers also got a lucid description of what it was I was actually talking about!

Thanks,
Scott