Meta: A Creation Myth for the Digital Age

By Robert Brennan

All cultures and civilizations have a creation myth, a symbolic narrative which attempts to explain how their world came to be.
META is a creation myth for a world that is just now coming into being, a world that is circumscribed by digital technology, like an external shell, and is at the same time being propelled by that technology toward an unprecedented level of internal interpersonal connection. The story portrays the emergence of this “cyber shell” as an expression of Nature and an integral aspect of the evolution of life on planet Earth as humankind approaches its biological and spiritual destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Brennan
• Release date: Dec 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9780578175355

Book preview

META

A CREATION MYTH FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

Robert Brennan

Copyright 2015 Robert Brennan

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

Table of Contents

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

Evolution as a whole, and the explanation of particular evolutionary events, must be inferred from observations.

—Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr

I.

So there was a big problem.

Or, as Jonah saw it, there was a big solution, just waiting to emerge.

The brain of our closest ancestor—homo erectus—had suddenly exploded in size. In a flash of evolutionary time—a lightning strike that shattered the pace of natural selection’s slow slog— the turbo brain of a new species—homo sapien—was built in a mere three hundred millennia.

But Nature’s most complex creation came up against a glass ceiling: the size of the human skull! The brain’s protective shell could get no larger without jeopardizing the female birth canal, which could expand no further without jeopardizing the life of the female herself, and without reproduction there would be no more turbo brains at all.

As centuries passed, the processing power of the sapien brain continued to increase by means of an intricate origami that tucked new cerebral tissue into an increasing number of convoluted fissures and folds. But, essentially, the brainpower of the species remained confined within its cranial cage.

The intelligence that human beings had accumulated was not scalable.

Or so it seemed for another three hundred millennia, until, encased in plastic instead of bone, a product of the brain appeared at the end of the human arm, in the grasp of the prehensile thumb, and the intelligence of the species began to explode once again: at the tips of our fingers…

II.

Wait…so, did what?

That was my initial response to what I now think of as the prologue to Jonah’s creation myth for the digital age. I was amused. It had a cinematic ring to it. Our brain unleashed from its chains. Of course, that was only the beginning of the story, and not even his most remarkable claim. To say that Jonah took the long view of things is like saying that Galileo was curious or that Mozart had an ear for music. I myself was determined to maintain a reasonably skeptical attitude, as anyone with a science background would. But, to paraphrase a great American poet: I was so well-trained then. I’m smarter than that now.

III.

I didn’t pay much attention to him at first.

Looking out from my sparsely-furnished temporary home I saw him pass by from time to time, leaning on his walking stick, inseparable from the daily ebb-and-flow of a neighborhood I was not quite a part of. On one unexpectedly warm morning I noticed him standing just outside the front gate, in the shade of the broad elm tree whose roots had begun to lift the concrete sidewalk. He seemed to be scrutinizing the property, and I just took him for a curious neighbor, a retiree with an empty to-do list, speculating on how much the house was going to list for, wondering how big a family would move in, how they’d handle the parking.

After my father died—I mean, my stepfather, Roger—my mother decided to move south, to Los Angeles, to live with her sister. Someone needed to take care of the house she and Roger had moved into after I left home for college, to address the minor maintenance issues that eluded Roger’s best intentions over the years and had gathered like dust throughout the property. Not that I’m a great handyman. Or that it really mattered. On short notice, I gave up my cluttered apartment in the East Bay, my desultory plans to resume my graduate work, my uninspiring day job that was actually more of a night job, and made the move across the bay to the foot of Mt. Tamalpais.

One afternoon as I was working in the front yard I noticed him coming my way, dodging a trio of young skateboarders who raced by in their comically over-sized shorts and t-shirts—video-age Dorian Grays whose hip attire had seemingly grown on without them. When he came closer and I got a better look at his face, I realized I’d seen him at the funeral.

Hello, lad! You must be the new guy in charge, he began, extending a hand while gripping the fence to steady himself with the other. He smiled with his whole face, his Kris-Kringle eyes bright against a coppered complexion that suggested a climate far from the North Pole. His hair was a bit tangled, to his collar,