Did you know that the human race has no brain?

It’s true. Humanity has no brain whatsoever.

Human beings have brains. One per, in fact. But the species itself has no brain.

This might seem a trifle obvious, stated baldly like that. But you might be surprise how many deep and highly emotionally charged philosophical debates such a simple truism can solve, or at least, shed light upon in a useful way.

For example, take Global Climate Change, sometimes known as Global Warming, or as I prefer to call it, Killer Weather Syndrome.

It is widely scientifically accepted that human caused carbon emissions are changing the global climate, causing global temperatures to rise, trapping more solar energy in our weather cycle which leads to more extreme weather, and potentially doing a number on all this lovely high energy civilization we have all come to enjoy and use.

Like the Internet, for instance.

And in this debate, thoughtful and concerned thinkers often ask the question, “Is the human race so stupid that it cannot control itself enough to keep from fouling its own nest?”

Well, yes, it is exactly that stupid, because it has no brain. There is no central hub of control for the entire human race. A single human being has anticipate problems and moderate its behaviour in order to prevent undesired outcomes. A driver can slam on their brakes to avoid hitting the deer that just leapt onto the road. But what part, exactly, of the entire species makes those kind of decisions? Where is the brake pedal on the human race?

Via our institutions, especially democracy, we have slowly evolved the nation state, where large numbers of humans being can act as though said group had a brain, with individual citizens, with all their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and passions, acting as the individual neurons to the brain of the body public. But elections are only once in four years, and ask but a single question.

How smart do you think a person would be if they had to make all their decisions for an entire four years based on a single, often binary question? How good would they be at adapting their behaviour to a changing situation if it took four years for them to decide whether to stop for that deer?

And that is the best we have come up with. A clumsy, slow, primitive brain for our largest units of humanity, none of which control anything like a preponderance of humanity.

Fish brains are more intelligent.

As for the race itself, it is as primitive and mindless as any slime mold or fungus. It has no way to sense danger and avoid it. It has no consciousness, no ability to be aware of its actions, no ability, even, to form the sort of associations that let even stupid animals learn from their mistakes.

And yet, humanity is powerful. We are mindless yet mighty, perfectly capable of ruining this planet for ourselves as we lurch about like a mindless zombie. If we are to survive as a species, we are going to have to develop a brain for humanity, and do it before we do irreparable damage to ourselves.

Luckily, without intending it (because how can a brainless monster have intentions?), we are doing that very thing now. We are wiring up all those individual human neurons to one another, and lo and behold, something like the glimmering dawn of consciousness is on the horizon.

What is this initiative to give this bunch of naked beach monkeys a brain?

Well, you are looking at it. It is called the Internet, and it is busily building all those neural connections that will, some day, let a sleeping race wake up for the first time in history.

You can already see it beginning to happen. A disaster happens in Haiti, and within moments, the whole world knows, and within minutes, people are donating to charities to try to fix the problem, like a body responding to pain by sending a flood of white blood cells to the area.

Or millions of discontented Egyptians discovering, through the Internet, that they are not the only ones upset with the dictatorship ruling their country, and through this realization, having the dawning of consciousness necessary to become a movement.

A movement that toppled said dictator.

Now, this by no means that the human race has a brain now. That will come with time, but that time is not near. This is merely the earliest twinklings of awareness, which is not the same thing as sentience or even consciousness.

But as the connections between us grow, so does awareness. And modern information theory and artificial intelligence theory clearly states that if you get enough connections between enough processors, consciousness is bound to emerge.

And all with no need for a conquering army to force a unifying identity upon us. In fact, the whole progression into consciousness requires that we all keep acting as individual neurons, processing signals from the outside world as best as we can and adding our output to the synaptic choir that makes up this amazing new mind we are forming.

With every person who joins the Internet, even if all they do is share knitting patterns with their friends, the power of this newly formed mind grows. It becomes more alive, more aware, more awake.

And some time in the future, perhaps the entire human race will rise from its long slumber, awaken for the first time, and look upon itself, and know who it is and why it is here.

And all that went before this will simply fade away like a bad dream, swept clear by the dawning consciousness so that the brand new mind can face the future with clear eyes and a new vision for the future of this oh so human race.

I look forward to that day, even if I will not be alive when it happens.

Then the future will truly be in our own hands.