The Core of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology
Saving the Diversity of Life from Mass Extinction
The central purpose of symbiotic existential cosmology is not just to reveal the cosmology of the universe in which we consciously exist, but to save the diversity of life on Earth from a human-induced mass extinction (Leakey & Lewin 1995, Kolbert 2014, Dawson 2016). It sets out a cosmology which shows humanity that our central and sacred purpose in existence is protecting and unfolding the diversity of conscious life.
The Conscious Universe
Symbiotic Existential Cosmology transcends both materialism and theism because it complements quantum cosmology with conscious volition. It has three core cosmological principles, biogenic, panpsychic and symbiotic. Life exists in the universe because the laws of nature arising from cosmic symmetry-breaking are fractal, giving rise to living systems as an interactive climax. It is consistent with empirical neuroscience but says that subjectively conscious physical volition is real, and this implies some matter – our brains – have physically efficacious subjectivity and hence all matter, because brains obey the same laws and forces as other normal matter. Primitive subjectivity thus occurs in quanta and butterfly effect systems which amplify quanta, like storms, and in bacteria and archaea. But a discrete emergent transition occurs with the eucaryote endosymbiosis between archaea and bacteria, with the sequestering of respiration in the mitochondria freeing up the cell membrane for excitable sentience and social signalling, when consciousness arises in the first single-celled amoebo-flagellates, forming societies communicating by neurotransmitter molecules such as serotonin. This evolved into our conscious brains as societies of 1010 tightly coupled amoeboid cells communicating by the same processes.
The inclusion of subjectivity opens up the spectres of panpsychism, animism and the spiritual/religious impulse in the physical universe, because these are all cosmological views, in which conscious volition is fundamental. But life is symbiotic, because natural selection occurs in the biosphere and all species depend on it for survival, so it’s a case of survival of the fittest biospheric symbionts, not species dominance. Instead of going to hell in a basket towards a human extinction, as we are now as a dominant species violating biospheric symbiosis, by regaining symbiosis over evolutionary time scales, humanity ends up inheriting its true cosmological meaning and purpose to protect life immortal, to ensure our own evolutionary survival, regaining the perennially immortal future of our 3.5 billion year tenure in the universe.
This is the Weltanshauung of Immortality, which flips the Copernican principle of science, because the privileged view of the universe is conscious life in paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time, not the Sun-centred cosmos. But it also flips religion inside out because the sacred purpose of existence is to protect the diversity of life throughout our generations forever, so that conscious life can flower to the point where the universe becomes fully conscious of its own existence through the living biota that form its interactive climax.
Humanity and the Biosphere
Humans evolved to be an environmentally destructive dominant species, because of our evolving Machiavellian social intelligence, after a long period of increasingly rich evolution to climax diversity following the Tertiary-Cretaceous extinction. This shaped our minds to be strongly egotistical to succeed against one-another. In the gatherer-hunter phase, this tendency was moderated by two factors: (1) the mating mind – astute female reproductive choice for smart resourceful entertaining and protective males who can do good sex to demonstrate genuine indicators of fitness and sensitivity and (2) original virtue – the evolution of verifiable trust through long-term personal judgment of good character. However, with the growth of large urban societies, this became overthrown by the imposition of patriarchal domination of woman and nature. Humanity is thus still a dominant species wrecking the biosphere through egotistical tragedy of the commons. Moreover gene-culture coevolution, with the emergence of language, religion, commerce and science hasn't resolved this, because cultural evolution is even more rapid than genetic evolution and has produced no stabilising factors. Only a cosmology in which gene-culture-biosphere co-evolution is embraced can resolve this.
Enter the biospheric response. The same climax period gave rise to plant and fungal species 'salting' the Earth with variants of neurotransmitter molecules which tweak key pathways modulating human mood and survival. In particular, the serotonin analogues called psychedelics – “psyche-revealing” – paradoxically cause (1) a sensory flood, in which the brain begins to develop an internal model of its own processing and (2) quantum change experiences in which the default mode goes silent, resulting in ego loss and the experience of either God or "ultimate reality", leading to alleviation of mortal angst in terminal illness and a deep sense of integration with life and nature in the healthy. Hence these are critical to planetary survival, along with other forms of nature meditation and conservation activism.
