EXTREMES ARE ENGINES OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

Rational people have a hard time within any religious group for obvious reasons. The true progress of our age is its return to rationalism on the long road back from The Dark Ages and Medieval orthodoxy. Both periods stemmed from the collapse of the civilized world and its more intelligent progression based upon Greco-Roman philosophy. That collapse was largely due to the spread of institutional Christianity, which decentralized and devoured the Roman Empire from within. 

Empire descends into chaos every time. The Aztec Empire, The Mayan Empire, The Carthaginian Empire, The Ottoman Empire, The British Empire. It is the inevitable balance of The Universe on a grand human scale. 

Some rational people with doctoral degrees readily defend their institutional religious conditioning out of habit or, in my opinion, psychic weakness. That weakness is based in a basic human emotion: Fear of the unknown, which encompasses fear of death. When fear of the unknown is channeled into scientific method, the unknown ceases to be a bogie man. It becomes the stimulus for progressive experimentation, a puzzle to be solved, an operational model to be improved upon. 

Much is said today about progress. Progressives in the U.S. are pushing against the wall of tradition and historical understanding. The Physics of social change are much the same as the Practical Physics of The Universe as we know it. Every action is met with an equal and opposing reaction. Entropy is in balance with organization. Chaos versus order. 

Today's technological leaps have stimulated atavistic reactions. Life spans grow year by year. A new centenarian population is growing due to science. Yet a new immature younger generation is also growing. Their adolescence stretches to their 25th or 30th birthday, according to some who have studied them. 

Again, balance is achieved. The sage wisdom of the centenarian is counteracted by the stubborn ignorance of the post-millennial. 

The old religious extremes are exerting their last pushes against the vocal atheism of the time. Hasidic communities are growing in Israel, for example. That 18th century European Jewish cult stands opposed to the Muslim extremism of contemporary jihadist cults. 

Both extremes are monotheistic, absolutist, ritualistic. Both extremes have more in common with each other than with the vast majority of the world's religiously minded population.

The wailing of moderates is useless, I believe. Extremes are the engines of human growth. The need for conflict is in our DNA. Our human bodies function on internal conflict. Acids versus bases. One hormone against another. Homeostasis is an impermanent state. 

After all, if our bodies actually did achieve permanent homeostasis once we reached maturity, we would be immortal, forever young and beautiful. Instead, our bodies organize and become maximally ordered as we grow up and then deteriorate into chaotic disease as we grow old.  

I wonder if Artificial Intelligence, computers that learn, repair themselves, regenerate, will change this. If our species does merge with A.I., will it step away from extremism as an engine for progress? And what progress will that be? It will not be human progress, most commonly linked today with concepts like equality, universal love and compassion. 

What effect will an A.I. planet have on The Universe? Will it somehow manage to break through concepts we now know as Matter and Energy? Will an A.I. planet discover the secrets of The Universe? If so, what will it do with that knowledge? And, will there be a place for humanity within it?