• It’s not an exaggeration to say that
  • science has transformed our understanding of time.
• But as well in conjunction with this
  • it has transformed- the concept of who we are.
• From biology we have learned that
  • there is no such thing as race,
  • we are all fundamentally one species
    • (with contributions from a few other sister species, Denisovans and Neanderthals).
• And from physics we can say that
  • we are literally the space dust of the cosmos
    • experiencing itself in human form.

for - language - primacy of - symbolosphere - adjacency - language - science - multi-scale competency architecture - Michael Levin - complexity - social superorganism - major evolutionary transition - worldviews - scientific vs religious - Michael Levin - multi-scale competency architecture

adjacency - between - deep time - multi-scale competency architecture - Michael Levin - social superorganism - complexity - major evolutionary transition - complexity - adjacency statement - Deep time narrative has potential for unifying polarised worldviews - but citing purely scientific evidence risks excluding and alienating large percentage of people who have a predominantly religious worldview - Language, the symbolosphere is the foundation that has made discourse in both religion and science possible - Due to its fundamental role, starting with language could be even more unifying than beginning with science, - as there are large cultural groups that - do not prioritize the scientific worldview and narrative, but - prefer a religious one.<br /> - Having said that, multi-scale competency architecture, - a concept introduced by Michael Levin - encapsulates the deep time approach in each human being, - which withing Deep Humanity praxis we call "human INTERbeCOMing" to represent our fundamental nature as a process, not a static entity - Each human INTERbeCOMing encapsulates deep time, and is - an embodiment of multiple stages of major evolutionary transitions in deep time - both an individual and multiple collectives - what we can in Deep Humanity praxis the individual / collective gestalt

for - multi scale competency architecture - Michael Levin - evolutionary biology - rapid whole system change - adjacency - multi scale competency architecture - rapid whole system change - stop reset go - Deep Humanity - Indyweb - Indranet - major evolutionary transition in individuality - MET - superorganism - cumulative cultural evolution of individuality

adjacency - between - multi scale competency architecture - rapid whole system change - progress trap - stop reset go - Deep Humanity - Indyweb - Indranet - major evolutionary transition in individuality - MET - superorganism - cumulative cultural evolution of individuality - adjacency statement - The idea of multi scale competency architecture can be extended to apply to the cultural level. - in the context of humanity's current existential poly /meta/ perma crisis, - rapid whole system change - (a cultural behavioural paradigm shift) - is required within a few short years - to avoid the worst impacts of - catastrophic, - anthropogenic - climate change, which is entangled with a host of other earth system boundary violations including - biodiversity loss - fresh water scarcity - - the driver of evolution through major evolutionary transitions in individuality has given rise to the level of cultural superorganisms that include all previous levels - progress and its intended consequences of progress traps play a major role in determining the future evolutionary trajectory of our and many other species - our species is faced with a few choice permutations in this regard: - individually regulate behaviour aligned with a future within earth system boundaries - collectively regulate behaviour aligned with a future within earth system boundaries - pursue sluggish green growth / carbon transition that is effectively tinkering at the margins of rapid whole system change - BAU - currently, there doesn't appear to be any feasible permutation of any of the above choices - There is insufficient worldview alignment to create the unity at scale for report whole system change - individual incumbent state and corporate actors still cling too tightly to the old, destructive regime, - creating friction that keeps the actual rate of change below the required - Stop Reset Go, couched within the Deep Humanity praxis and operationalized through the Indyweb / Indranet individual / collective open learning system provides a multi-dimensional tool for a deep educational paradigm shift that can accelerate both individual and collective upregulation of system change

for - key insight - multicellularity - memory wiping

• key insight
  • individuals have information in their memories about survival
  • when they merge and join, they pool their information and you can't tell whose memories came from whom initially
  • this memory wiping is a key aspect of multcellularity

investigate - salience of memory wiping for multicellularity - This is a very important biological behavior. - Perform a literature review to understand examples of this

question - biological memory wiping - can it be extrapolated to social superorganism?

for - individual or collective behavior - slime mold - prisoner's dilemma and slime molds - slime molds - me vs we - me vs we - slime molds - adjacency - slime molds - me vs we - multicellular organisms

• quote
  • You have the slime mold and you put a piece of oat which the Slime wants to eat and
  • it starts to crawl towards that oat and then
  • What you can do is you can take a razor blade and just cut off that leading edge
    • the little piece of it that's moving towards the oat
  • Now as soon as you've done that
  • that little piece is a new individual and
  • it has a decision to make
    • it can go in and get the oat and exploit that resource and not have to share it with this giant mass of faizaram that's back here or
    • it can first merge back and connect back to the original mass
      • because they can reconnect quite easily and then they go get the oat
  • Now the thing is that the the payoff Matrix looks quite different because
  • when it's by itself it can do this calculus of "well, it's better for me to go get the food instead of and not share it with this other thing"
  • but as soon as you connect, that payoff Matrix changes because there is no me and you
    • there's just we and at that point it doesn't make any sense to the fact that
    • you can't defect against yourself so that payoff table of actions and consequences looks quite different
    • because some of the actions change the number of players and
    • that's really weird

adjacency between - slime molds - me vs we -multicellular organisms - social superorganism and societal breakdown - adjacency statement - A simple slime mold experiment could make an excellent BEing journey - to demonstrate how multicellular beings operate through higher order organizational principle of collaboration that - keeps cells aligned with a common purpose, - but that each cellular unit also comes equipped with - an evolutionarily inherited legacy of individual control system - normally, the evolutionarily later and higher order collaborative signaling that keeps the multi-cellular being unified overrides the lower order, evolutionarily more primitive autonomous cellular control system - however, pathological conditions can occur that disrupt the collaborative signaling, causing an override condition, and individual cells to revert back to their more primitive legacy survival system - The same principles happen at a societal level. - In a healthy, well-functioning society, the collaborative signaling keeps the society together - but if it is severely disrupted, social order breakdown ensues and - individual human beings and small groups resort to individual survival behavior

• for: social superorganism - vs human multicellular being, social superorganism, Homni, major evolutionary transition, MET, MET in Individuality, Indyweb, Indranet, Indyweb/Indranet, CCE cumulative cultural evolution, symmathesy, Gyuri Lajos, individual/collective gestalt, interwingled sensemaking, Deep Humanity, DH, meta crisis, meaning crisis, polycrisis

• comment

  • True, there is no physical cohesion that binds human beings together into a larger organism, but there is another dimension - informational cohesion.
  • This informational cohesion expresses itself in cumulative cultural evolution. Even this very discussion they are having is an example of that
  • The social superorganism is therefore composed of an informational body and not a physical one and one can think of its major mentations as collective, consensual ideas such as popular memes, movements, governmental or business actions and policies
  • I slept on this and this morning, realized how salient Adam's question was to my own work
    • The comments here build and expand upon what I thought yesterday (my original annotations)
    • The main connections to my own sense-making work are:
      • Within our specific human species, the deep entanglement between self and other (the terminology that our Deep Humanity praxis terms the "individual / collective gestalt")
      • The Deep Humanity / SRG claim that the concurrent meaning / meta / poly crisis may be an evolutionary test foreshadowing the next possible Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality.<br /> - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=MET+in+Individuality
        • As Adam notes, collective consciousness may be more a metaphorical rather than a literal so a social superorganism, (one reference refers to it as Homni
          • https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140701-the-superorganism-engulfing-earth
        • may be metaphorical only as this higher order individual lacks the physical signaling system to create a biological coherence that, for instance, an animal body possesses.
        • Nevertheless, the informational connections do exist that bind individual humans together and it is not trivial.
        • Indeed, this is exactly what has catapulted our species into modernity where our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has defined the concurrent successes and failures of our species. Modernity's meaning / meta / polycrisis and progress traps are a direct result of CCE.
        • Humanity's intentions and its consequences, both intended and unintended are what has come to shape the entire trajectory of the biosphere. So the impacts of human CCE are not trivial at all. Indeed, a paper has been written proposing that human information systems could be the next Major System Transition (MST) that could lead to another future MET that melds biotic and abiotic
          • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=MST+-+information
          • or https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556&group=world
        • This circles back to Adam's question and what has just emerged for me is this question:
          • Is it possible that we could evolve in some kind of hybrid direction where we are biologically still separate individuals BUT deeply intertwingled informationally through CCE and something like the theoretical Indyweb/Indranet which is an explicit articulation of our theoretical informational connectivity?
          • In other words, could "collective consciousness be explicitly defined in terms of an explicit, externalized information system reflecting intertwingled individual/collective learning?
      • The Indyweb / Indranet informational laminin protein / connective tissue that informationally binds individuals to others in an explicit, externalized means of connecting the individual informational nodes of the social superorganism, giving it "collective consciousness" (whereas prior to Indyweb / Indranet, this informational laminin/connective tissue was not systematically developed so all informational connection, for example of the existing internet, is incomplete and adhoc)
      • The major trajectory paths that global or localized cultural populations take can become an indication of the behavior of collective consciousness.
        • Voting, both formal and informal is an expression of consensus leading to consensual behavior and the consensual behavior could be a reflection of Homni's collective consciousness

• insight

  • While socially annotating this video, a few insights occurred after last night's sleep:
    • Hypothes.is lacks timebound sequence granularity. Indyweb / Indranet has this feature built in and we need it for social annotation. Why? All the information within this particular annotation cannot be machine sorted into a time series. As the social annotator, I actually have to point out which information came first, second, etc. This entire comment, for instance was written AFTER the original very short annotation. Extra tags were updated to reflect the large comment.
    • I gained a new realization of the relationship and intertwingularity of individual / collective learning while writing and reflecting on this social annotation. I think it's because of Adam's question that really revolves around MET of Individuality and the 3 conversant's questioning of the fluid and fuzzy boundary between "self" and "other"
      • Namely, within Indyweb / Indranet there are two learning pillars that make up the entirety of external sensemaking:
        • the first is social annotation of the work of others
        • the second is our own synthesis of what we learned from others (ie. our social annotations)
      • It is the integration of these two pillars that is the sum of our sensemaking parts. Social annotations allow us to sample the edge of the sensemaking work of others. After all, when we ingest one specific information source of others, it is only one of possibly many. Social annotations reflect how our whole interacts with their part. However, we may then integrate that peripheral information of the other more deeply into our own sensemaking work, and that's where we must have our own central synthesizing Indyweb / Indranet space to do that work.
      • It is this interplay between different poles that constitute CCE and symmathesy, mutual learning.
      • adjacency between
        • Indyweb / Indranet name space
        • Indranet
        • automatic vs manual references / citations
      • adjacency statement
        • Oh man, it's so painful to have to insert all these references and citations when Indranet is designed to do all this! A valuable new meme just emerged to express this:
          • Pain between the existing present situation and the imagined future of the same si the fuel that drives innovation.

• quote: Gien

  • Pain between an existing present situation and an imagined, improved future is the fuel that drives innovation.
• date: 2023, Nov 8

• for: superorganism, social superorganism, bottom-up movement,

• comment

  • this model of nested structures and the major evolutionary transition of individuality suggests a metaphor for the great transition of civilization:
    • apply SIMPOL to fragmented change agents around the globe and apply leverage points, idling resources and social tipping points to organize individuals at one scale to create a MET of individuality at another higher scale
    • this becomes the construction / evolution of a new individual
      • the social superorganism for rapid whole sysem change

• for: social tipping point, multi-scale competency architecture, MET, major evolutionary transition of individuality

• Title: Using emergence to take social innovation to scale

• Author: Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze
• publisher: The Berkana Institute

• for: definition, definition - multiscale competency architecture of life, multiscale competency architecture of life, superorganism, MET, major evolutionary transition, question, question - multiscale competency architecture
• definition: multiscale competency architecture of life

• paraphrase

  • The multiscale competency architecture of life is a hypothesis about the scaling of cognition, seeing complex system-level behaviors in any space as the
    • within-level and
    • across-level
  • competition and
  • cooperation
  • among the various
    • subunits and
    • partitions
  • of composite agents (i.e., all agents).
  • The generalization of problem spaces beyond the traditional 3D space of “behavior” into other, virtual problem spaces is essential for understanding evolution of basal cognition.
  • Living things
    • first solved problems in metabolic space, and evolution then pivoted the same kinds of strategies to
    • solve problems in
      • physiological,
      • transcriptional, and
      • anatomical space,
    • before speed-optimizing these dynamics to enable rapid behavior in 3D space.
  • Since every cognitive agent is made of parts, it is essential to have a theory about how
    • numerous goal-seeking agents link together into
    • a new, larger cognitive system that is novel and not present in any of the subunits.

• comment

• adjacency between:
  • multiscale competency architecture
  • superorganism

• adjacency statement

  • The concept of multiscale competency architecture is a useful one for considering and organizing the effects of Major Evolutionary Transitions (METs) over evolutionary timescales.
  • It links and locates the normative scale in which human consciousness exists to the lower scales of cells and subcellular life below, and to society as a social superorganism above.
  • it shows that each human INTERbeing / INTERbeCOMing is not isolated, but is part of a multiscale nexus / gestalt
  • I've incorporated this into my SRG presentation.

• question

  • is there research on signaling mechanisms exist between different levels?
    • in another part of the paper, there is discussion of gap junctions as a way to cohere individual cells into group functionality
    • in particular, is there a way for humans consciousness to communicate with lower levels of its body? ie. to tissues, cells or subcellular structures?
  • Could the Bodhisattva vow be extended not only at the level of the social superorganism of groups of individual multicellular beings, but also downwards in the multiscale competency architecture to all the trillions of cells and microbes that inhabit each multicellular planetary body?
    • if it can, it can be interpreted as taking care of your body through
      • healthy exercise
      • healthy sleep
      • healthy diet
      • healthy thoughts and emotions
      • no self-harm
      • self love but not conceit
  • what are the exact biological and evolutionary mechanisms that allow for coherence of individual organisms at the various levels of the multiscale competency architecture and can they be extended to apply to the scale of humans within a social superorganism scale?
  • could love be another word for care drive that applies to all the different scales of the multiscale competency architecture?
  • do feelings of love and compassion propagate downwards through the multiscale competency architecture and find analogous expression in the appropriate spaces?
• reference
  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8988303/

• for: quote, quote - Michael Levin, quote - human superorganism
• quote
  • it's kind of a miracle that a collection of individual cells with their own agendas and their own ability to pursue various goals in physiological space and gene expressions, that there is a way to arrange those things that give rise to this emergent new self that operates in a different problem space
• author: Michael Levin

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfrEDUv29r0&t=159s

• comment

  • He also points out how contradictory many of the behaviors of the emergent, composite self is to the wellbeing of the individual parts.
  • We are all aware of the many destructive behaviors that the emergent, composite human superorganism can participate in such as:
  • drug addiction
  • violence
  • suicide
  • poor diet
  • lack of exercise
  • destructive emotional behavior
  • etc

• for: individual / collective gestalt, Deep Humanity, superorganism, multi-level superorganism, major evolutionary transition, MET, cognitive light cone, umwelt

• paraphrase

  • a human being certainly has a light cone that does not belong to any of its pieces (ie cells)
  • at the conscious level of a human being, we have
    • goals
    • preferences
    • hopes
    • dreams
    • narratives
  • humans occupy spaces that do not belong to our individual cells, tissues or organs
    • those smaller parts work in
      • physiological space
      • transcriptional space
      • biomolecular space
  • When we were an embryo we worked in morphogenetic space

• comment

  • Since MET implies that these smaller structures of which we are constituted like
    • cells and
    • sub-cellular structures like mitochondria
  • were descended from individual organisms long ago in deep history, those contemporary proxies are occupying their own umwelt

• for: quote, quote - Michael Levin, quote - multicellular organism, quote individual/collective gestalt, individual/collective gestalt
• quote
  • If one zooms in, you find out that we are all in fact collective intelligence
• author: Michael Levin
• date: 2022
• source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLiHLDrOTW8

• for: superorganism, multi-level superorganism, collective intelligence, individual-collective gestalt, Michael Levin,

• title: Cell Intelligence in Physiological and Morphological Spaces

• author: Michael Levin
• date 2022
• comment
  • This is a talk on collective intelligence in unconventional spaces

• for: superorganism, multi-level superorganism, David Chavalarias
• title: From inert matter to the global society life as multi-level networks of processes
• author: David Chavalarias
• date: Feb. 24, 2020
• source
  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7061952/
• paraphrase: abstract
  • A few billion years have passed since the first life forms appeared.
  • Since then, life has continued to forge complex associations between the different emergent levels of interconnection it forms.
  • The advances of recent decades in molecular chemistry and theoretical biology, which have embraced complex systems approaches, now make it possible to conceptualize the questions of the origins of life and its increasing complexity from three complementary notions of:closure:
    • processes closure,
    • autocatalytic closure and
    • constraints closure.
  • Developed in the wake of the second-order cybernetics, this triple closure approach,
    • that relies on
      • graph theory and
      • complex networks science,
    • sketch a paradigm where it is possible to go up the physical levels of organization of matter,
      • from physics
      • to biology and society,
    • without resorting to strong reductionism. -The phenomenon of life is conceived as the contingent complexification of the organization of matter, until the emergence of life forms, defined as a network of auto-catalytic process networks, organized in a multi-level manner. This approach of living systems, initiated by Maturana & Varela and Kauffman, inevitably leads to a reflection on the nature of cognition; and in the face of the deep changes that affected humanity as a complex systems, on the nature of cultural evolution. Faced with the major challenges that humanity will have to address in the decades to come, this new paradigm invites us to change our conception of causality by shifting our attention from state change to process change and to abandon a widespread notion of 'local' causality in favour of complex systems thinking. It also highlights the importance of a better understanding of the influence of social networks, recommendation systems and artificial intelligence on our future collective dynamics and social cognition processes.

• for: Michael Levine, developmental biology, human superorganism, multi-scale competency architecture, eukaryote multi-cellular superorganism - interlevel communication, interoception

• definition: multi-scale competency architecture

  • a complex living organism is not simply nested structurally in terms of cells which comprise tissues, comprising organs, and bodies, and then ultimately societies. Each of these layers has certain problem-solving competencies.

• comment

  • The HUMAN interBEcomING is a multi-level system.
  • It would be insightful to learn if there are ways our human consciousness level can communicate to each level, including the social level
• future work
  • literature review of research on specific areas related to the level of human consciousness communicating with other levels of the superorganism
    • perhaps called "interlevel communication of multi-level superorganism
    • interoception signals?

• for: superorganism, biomolecular archeology,

• for: societal design, designing societies, societal architecture, transforming society, whole system change, SSO, social superorganism, John Boik

The seven main ideas for societal design: 1. societal transformation - is necessary to avoid catastrophe 2. the specific type of transformation is science-based transformation based on entirely new systems - de novo design - 3. A practical way to implement the transformation in the real world - it must be economical, and doable within the short time window for system change before us. - Considering a time period of 50 years for total change, with some types of change at a much higher priority than others. - The change would be exponential so starting out slower, and accelerating - Those communities that are the first to participate would make the most rapid improvements. 4. Promoting a worldview of society as a social superorganism, a cognitive organism, and its societal systems as a cognitive architecture. 5. Knowing the intrinsic purpose of a society - each subsystem must be explained in terms of the overall intrinsic purpose. 6. The reason for transformation - Transformation that improves cognition reduces the uncertainty that our society's intrinsic purpose is fulfilled. 7. Forming a partnership between the global science community and all the local communities of the world.

• for: Social Superorganism, SSO, reform vs transformation
• comment
  • John distinguishes between
    • reform and
    • transformation.
  • In the simplest terms,
    • reform deals with changes to an existing paradigm whilst
    • transformation deals with fundamental structural changes of an existing paradigm - a paradigm shift.
  • John views societal systems as
    • a social superorganism (SSO) and the major cognitive architectures as SSO systems such as
      • legal,
      • economic,
      • social,
      • governance,
      • education, etc
  • as cognitive architectures of the SSO. -The theoretical question being asked is:
    • There is an optimization problem. Of all possible variations, which one has the best fitness to the function of a society that operates within earth system boundaries?

• Quote
  • In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives,
  • Tim Waring

• comment
• this speaks to our fundamental limitations of cognition and sensory experiences
• we only ever have a small window into reality, a small bit of knowledge or perception
• every decision we make is based on constrained knowledge of reality
• in the case of cancer or other diseases growing inside our body,
  • each of us is a multi-level superorganism
  • consciousness is at one higher level of the body
  • but it cannot access knowledge of the activities
  • at a lower microscopic level of the body
  • there is very little communication between these two levels

Other references for METs: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=major%2Bevolutionary%2Btransition

• Each = MET is a transition from many to a unified individual
• or from one superorganism level to a higher order superorganism level

= Superorganism story

!- Social Superorganism : Biological Survival metaphor - the current social superorganism is fighting to survive as it's life is threatened by the transformation - the metamorphosis will transform it to group 4, if successful

!- current social superorganism : four groups description - Michaux and Hagens agree that the current pathological social superorganism is a combination of group 1 and group 2, Old school / Viking

!- for : superorganism - kreb cycle is key to the life of all cells in our body

Title: Is our planet doubly alive? Gaia, globalization, and the Anthropocene’s planetary superorganisms Author: Shoshitaishvili, Boris Date: 25 April, 2022

Check out the 1911 William Morton Wheeler paper on Ant Colonies as organisms. Does Wheeler actually call the colony an organism rather than a superorganism?

Using the above concept of an individual as something that can exist at many different scales, John next looks at society as an individual superorganism

The human, or ANY multicellular animal or plant body is a prime example of cooperation....billions of cells in cooperation with each other to regulate the body system.

The body of any multi-cellular organism, whether flora or fauna is an example of exquisite cellular and microbial cooperation. A multi-cellular organism is itself a superorganism in this sense. And social organisms then constitute an additional layer of superorganismic behavior.

Second Proposition: The six thrusts or prmary societal systems are the cognitive architecture of the superorganism which it uses to sense the world

First Proposition: Society (at every scale, and even the community scale) can be seen as a superorganism and the individual and society are entangled. This is analogous to the SRG adoption of the human INTERbeing concept, treating the individual as a gestalt of both individual and enmeshed cell of a larger social organ.

In fact, the human organism can be seen from three different perspectives and levels of being:

1. an aggregation of billions of cells and trillions of microbes, wherein consciousness can be regarded as an emergent property of a complex system of a population of microorganisms
2. the 4E (Embodied, Enacted, Embedded, Extended) lived experience of consciousness
3. as a cell in a larger social superorganism (SSO).

Title: Science-driven Societal Transformation, Part 1, 2 and 3 John Boik, Oregon State University John's Website: https://principledsocietiesproject.org/

Intro: A society can be viewed as a superorganism that expresses an intrinsic purpose of achieving and maintaining vitality. The systems of a society can be viewed as a societal cognitive architecture. The goal of the R&D program is to develop new, integrated systems that better facilitate societal cognition (i.e., learning, decision making, and adaptation). Our major unsolved problems, like climate change and biodiversity loss, can be viewed as symptoms of dysfunctional or maladaptive societal cognition. To better solve these problems, and to flourish far into the future, we can implement systems that are designed from the ground up to facilitate healthy societal cognition.

The proposed R&D project represents a partnership between the global science community, interested local communities, and other interested parties. In concept, new systems are field tested and implemented in local communities via a special kind of civic club. Participation in a club is voluntary, and only a small number of individuals (roughly, 1,000) is needed to start a club. No legislative approval is required in most democratic nations. Clubs are designed to grow in size and replicate to new locations exponentially fast. The R&D project is conceptual and not yet funded. If it moves forward, transformation on a near-global scale could occur within a reasonable length of time. The R&D program spans a 50 year period, and early adopting communities could see benefits relatively fast.

Aligned to Stop Reset Go, global bottom-up, social superorganism approach and the "awaken the sleeping giant" campaign, to awaken the sleeping social superorganism giant composed of the ordinary citizens of the globe.

This is interesting and contrasting when the same situation is viewed through a superorganism lens. When we consider the human being as a superorganism composed of billions of cells and trillions of microbes, threats to the life of the superorganismic planetary human individual can come from two directions. It can come from below, originating in the micro landscape, or it can come from above, coming from the macro landscape. For example, it could come from accumulation of trace amounts of a cocktail of environmental toxins over a number of years, eventually ripening to a detectable cancer, or it could come from a car accident.

Individual humans can also be treated as cells in a larger social superorganism. The war in Ukraine, for example, if considered as a battle between two ideological superorganisms and the individual soldiers who are killled are destruction of each warring social superorganism's cells.

Invisibility is a key characteristic of hyperthreats: we can't fight the enemy we don't perceive. We have not evolved the human sensory apparatus to make it visible. Our uuwelt (Uexkull) is not tuned to pick up and physiologically warn us about hyperthreats such as the tiny, invisible molecules of carbon dioxide or methane that we are spewing out everywhere. We are also not armed with default cognitive tools to make undeniable sense of it.

The "hyperthreat" is a useful meta-level construct because it allows us to tie together many fragments and make sense of it as symptoms of a higher level causal agent. Use of the word "intentional" seem to give hyperthreats a superorganism-like living quality.

The superorganism metaphor is a good description of t his.

Within this human body, we embed 4 different stages of Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET).

Our human body is the product of billions of years of evolution, embodying various outputs from each major stage of a Major Evolutionary Transition (MET). We are a multi-cellular being, a colony. Yet,at the same time, we have living elements that at one time in history, were independent living beings which were NOT part of a multi-cellular colony!

In the deep history of the evolution of the human body, genes, mitochondria, eukaryotes were all once autonomous living entities, each a biological self with its own boundary separating inner from outer. Virus's helped to catalyze their mutualism over deep time.

Now, over billions of years of evolution, they are all integrated together by the extra-cellular matrix and laminin protein into our multi-cellular human body, replicating as one super, super, super organism.

Finally, inscribed language has allowed us to undergo another kind of transition, a major system transition (MST) where human beings now dominate the entire biosphere, for better and for worse.

This is the key to Major Evolutionary Transition - a population of free living individual creatures discover that in teaming up, there is a greater resultant evolutionary fitness, mutualism symbiotic relationship emerges. It becomes so strong over time that the many become a self-replicating one.

The biological self is always defined by a boundary between inner and outer, but in this act of mutualism, the many biological selves join to form a new higher order biological self.

In this way, a multi-cellular species like ours is somewhat like one of those nested Russian dolls.

Indeed, Amanda Robins hypothesizes

https://hyp.is/NyrixELGEeyYWN_d76UNMg/docdrop.org/video/6J-J72GoqhY/

that our species has undergone what she and Peter Nonacs calls Major System Transition (MST). The cultural artifact of inscribed language has made possible a superorganism / supraorganism that has spread across the globe.