We have identified an expanded string of DNA unique to humanity. I am sure that we will find plenty more before we are finished.
Others are also recognizing the primacy of consciousness even if they have not yet understood the massive increase in information density.
It also reminds us that we have barely begun to gather all the data available to us, Thus it may be better to not so quick to draw conclusions. There is enough gratuitous error out there.
Junk DNA & Human Consciousness
tom Bunzel,
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/10/13/junk-dna-human-consciousness/
Have you thought deeply about the latest discovery in genetics? DUF1220
– “DUF” stands for a (protein) domain of unknown function – presumably
“junk DNA.” But this one seems to be what distinguishes us as “human”
and may correspond to greater brain functionality.
In fact, we possess more than twice the amount of replications
(copies) of this protein as a result of the instructions (code) of our
genome than our nearest genetic relative –the chimp. It seems to be
clearly related to the growth of certain parts of the brain –and
presumably to more sophisticated neural networks.
According to Wikipedia:
“DUF1220 is a protein domain of unknown function that shows a striking human lineage-specific (HLS) increase in copy number and may be important to human brain evolution.[1] The copy number of DUF1220 domains increases generally as a function of a species evolutionary proximity to humans. DUF1220 copy number is highest in human (over 270, with some person-to-person variations).[2] and shows the largest HLS increase in copy number (an additional 160 copies) of any protein coding region in the human genome. DUF1220 copy number is reduced in African great apes (estimated 125 copies in chimpanzees), further reduced in orangutan (92) and Old World monkeys (35), single- or low-copy in non-primate mammals and absent in non-mammals.”
“Unknown function” may be another way of saying “junk DNA”
–DNA that is unaccounted for so that current science disregards it but
clearly if this is the “Software code” that distinguishes us from other
primates in terms of intelligence –it is no Junk.
Wikipedia continues with this nugget:
“DUF1220 domains are approximately 65 amino acids in length and are encoded by a two-exon doublet. In the human genome DUF1220 sequences are located primarily on chromosome 1 in region 1q21.1-q21.2, with several copies also found at 1p36, 1p13.3, and 1p12. Sequences encoding DUF1220 domains show signs of positive selection, especially in primates, and are expressed in several human tissues including the brain, where their expression is restricted to neurons.”
What this seems to mean is that we have identified specific areas of
our DNA code (regions of specific chromosomes) that will express growth
of higher brain functions. Since we are at the threshold of being able
to write our own DNA code, this has immense implications for our future
as a species.
Of course the problem is that this line of inquiry has been hijacked
in the recent past by philosophies that have used it to justify genocide
and Eugenics. Still as this blogger says:
“But at least we are slowly stumbling upon some of the answers to our questions. As long as we do not allow our science to be perverted by a misplaced sense of political correctness, we should eventually obtain a fairly clear picture of how larger and more intelligent brains evolved.”
But there is another largely ignored aspect to this discovery.
Where & Who Did This Come From?
First, how and why did our copies of this particular “line of code”
simply double at one point in our evolution? Can this be attributed to
mutation or chance? And perhaps more important – this is code that no
human originally wrote – not like Microsoft Word or Photoshop – which
was written by human programmers. Obviously this particular bit of
“software” has intention and meaning –it actually created the capacity
of a brain to eventually write the code for Microsoft Word or Photoshop!
There are a number of ways to approach this.
Modern science simply says that this is the result of natural
selection and evolution. But is it reasonable to think that one cell
organisms over eons of time will simply create this level of
functionality without an intervening intelligence?
We now know that genetic code operates as software.
And we KNOW that software we created -programs like Photoshop or Word
–did not “evolve” through chance. They were the result of sessions of
planning, development and conscious effort. For want of a better word,
they were “designed.”
A waterfall will never become intelligent. A cloud of vapor will
never become intelligent. Only a living organism that expresses
Consciousness can ever become intelligent. (This is not an argument for
fundamentalist Intelligent Design theory which is simply another
projection of our own anthropomorphic human thought patterns).
It is simply an acknowledgment of different levels of “being.” Mind
must be seen as what it is –a different “dimension” of being from
matter.
Alien Intervention?
Others would have us make the leap that since there are monuments on
the planet we cannot explain, a higher form of life (alien) deliberately
manipulated our genome, as we are beginning to do with other life
forms, and “upgraded” our intelligence in a quantum leap that took us
from ape to human.
While plausible on many levels, there is no direct evidence for this
at this point. And it begs the question – where and how did these
“aliens” evolve? The ONLY direct evidence that exists is this –we now
KNOW that something akin to the software humans now create is
operational within our organic being.
The Role of Consciousness
If we “flip” the notion that consciousness is “created” by the brain,
and instead become open to the possibility that our brain is a receiver
of consciousness, then we can begin to fathom a completely different
reality – that the entire universe (of which we know only a tiny sliver
through our limited sensory capacity) is immensely intelligent.
Of course this has profound implications for our personal ego, as pointed out by thought leaders like Eckhart Tolle.
Thought itself –its origin and meaning –comes under greater scrutiny
as to its relationship to a reality that is far beyond the capacity of
thought itself to completely comprehend; take only the notion of
Infinity –which is a word we use to describe the unfathomable but which
has no real “meaning” –now the notion of infinity begins to make
sense… Infinity would become connected in some way to the Source of the
level of meaning and intelligence within which we find ourselves.
Our cosmology would also open immensely. With the primacy of
intellect and mind now apparent, we might begin to intuit what
“dimensions” actually represent – levels of mental acuity that open to
us only when a certain level of being (physiologically, psychologically
and chemically) is attained. This would begin to account for experiences
with ESP, drugs, past lives, near death and all kinds of other mental
realities which our material science cannot begin to address.
As Eckhart Tolle
says, death is not the opposite of life, birth is the opposite of
death. Birth and death are both part of an inconceivably intelligent
reality which we experience as Life. Does this mean that we should not,
as a species, follow our discoveries in this area and begin to affect
our own evolution? Let’s face it –the genie is out of the bottle.
I would suggest that we have an imperative to do so –but to do so
consciously with a profound reverence for higher levels of meaning and
intelligence that we will ultimately encounter. This is why the ancients
merged science with a sense of the Sacred –because there needs to be a
profound relationship of surrender and humility in the face of this
recognition. Our entire notion of a “mastery” over Life must be seen as
nonsensical, along with all of the other trappings of our conceptual
“understanding” of a reality that cannot be “explained” in our own human
terms.
We Need To Change The Way We See
Does this mean that we stop building, growing and evolving? Not at
all, that is apparently our nature. But it might mean, for starters,
that we begin to observe reverently that the relationships between
plants, bees, atmosphere and resources that we have tried to “master”
work according to much higher principles and laws.
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More important, those principles are not “personal” – if we go
extinct as a species “nothing went wrong” –the universe in its infinite
intelligence will continue without us. Accordingly we will need to drop
the conceptual conceits, scientific and religious, which have taken us
into a state of disharmony with the intelligent natural order from which
we “evolved.”
Seeing our minds as a “work in progress” and not the be all and end
all of evolution, we might begin to question everything –including the
veracity and even the significance of our own thoughts –which to this
point have been the only Mind we’ve ever known. Instead, upon more
direct examination, we must comprehend that we are merely a tiny
fraction of All that exists, of an Intelligence that encoded our genes,
in the same way that we have encoded our intelligence into computers.
In our current level of being we cannot begin to comprehend this
intelligence – that is why so many of us simply “worship” It. But just
because Life is expressing a level of being and intelligence far beyond
anything we can currently comprehend does not mean we should simply
accept “not knowing” and surrender completely. It means that we need to
study what “knowing” truly means and perhaps as T.S. Elliot said, we can return to the present and begin to truly know it for the very first time.
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