Recent articles point to the notion humans as they are will likely evolve. If not, surely science will find enhancements, ways we can meld with the seemingly ideal intellectual capacities of the computers on which we have come to depend so much. All well and good; push it as far as you can. You still won’t escape the prison.
The prison itself is the sort of discrete logic which many hold up as the answer to all man’s needs. Whether inductive or deductive, linear logic, compartmental objectivity, or any other means of pure intellectual analysis can only take you to the limits of the prison. They can’t take you out, because the intellect is the prison.
We are all well aware of our emotions and the threat from brute instincts. Those things serve well enough if you are merely an animal among other animals. When you are a human among other humans, they can be pretty destructive. We acknowledge them, but wisely avoid letting them vote on much because most of our time is in rational space, among rational beings. Even those precious few moments when threats to life and limb push us into animal territory, emotion and instincts are deeply flawed. We can train those instincts, but then you are simply a really fine warrior. There is still a need for working toward a more peaceful life, something instincts do poorly.
While inside the prison, we should realize peace is not an absolute, but a relative condition. We want things to be as good as they can get, because that pulls us up out of the animal existence far enough to give attention to things which make escape possible. So we seek to cultivate the intellect and give it charge over the lower impulses. But if this is all we have, we are in most woeful shape. The prison of intellect can only keep us in the prison. There is surely a way to reach beyond the limits, to enhance our dealings within the prison. We want to draw down into our limited existence some of what makes freedom free.
It is most certainly true humans possess a capacity for something outside the intellect, something above it, not below it as with emotions. This capacity is not simply more of the same. Nor is it simply a better version of intellect. Granted, we hardly tap the capacity of our minds now, such that far greater things are possible. But even those far higher uses of the mind are still within the prison.
This other capacity is of itself a whole other thing. Precious few people believe it exists, which makes keeping us in the prison far easier. Some get just a taste of it with intuition. For this discussion, intuition is the ability to skip some steps in the linear reasoning process and arrive at a conclusion. Without chasing all the paths that could lead to, intuition means dipping into the subconscious, not the emotions. Thus, what we seek for our escape resides there.
