All life is problem solving

All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.

We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action of the machine we have created to serve us.

The machine does much of what we used to do. The machine thinks for us. The machine has become, instead of a tool, the replacement of our minds. Use it (our minds) or lose it has become a reality today. And, since we are less inclined to use it, we are most definitely losing it. Our power to think is being rapidly deteriorated.

If the human race develops an electronic nervous system, outside the bodies of individual people, thus giving us all one mind and one global body, this is almost precisely what has happened in the organization of cells which compose our own bodies. We have already done it. [...] If all this ends with the human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a system of electronic patterns, why should that trouble us? For that is exactly what we are now!

Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.

We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the making of ourselves and one another. From this there is no escape. We may collaborate either well or poorly or we may refuse to collaborate, but even to refuse to collaborate is to exert an influence and to affect the quality of the product. This is only a way of saying that by ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity.

Just when it seems too late, the great social collective mind grasps the seriousness of a problem and begins to move dramatically ahead. Because the collective decision is so late, the outcome is always in doubt — the world may still be drowned by overpopulation, we may still die of pollution, we may still see violent racial strife — but at least we are making massive efforts to deal with those issues. It is this knowledge of the past that gives me courage to propose methods for dealing with intercultural, interracial, and international tensions. I believe that if the public becomes truly aware that present-day policies are targeted directly toward the destruction of all of us, then they may decide to look for alternatives. And the person-centered approach offers just such an alternative.

It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.

This is the situation of everyone who feels that life is a problem to be solved. Whether you seek to solve that problem through psychoanalysis, integration, salvation, or buddhahood, you define yourself in a certain way when you see life as a problem to be solved.

Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is a machine which, in right circumstances, and with right treatment, can know that he is a machine, and having fully realized this, he may find the ways to cease to be a machine.
First of all, what man must know is that he is not one; he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable “I” or Ego. He is always different. One moment he is one, another moment he is another, the third moment he is a third, and so on, almost without end.

Thousands of years ago, it was only kings, pharaohs, and emperors who had the ability to solve large-scale problems. Hundreds of years ago, this power expanded to the industrialists who built our transportation systems and financial institutions. But today, the ability to solve such problems has been thoroughly democratized. Right now, and for the first time ever, a passionate and committed individual has access to the technology, minds, and capital required to take on any challenge. Even better, that individual has good reason to take on such challenges. As we will soon see, the world’s biggest problems are now the world’s biggest business opportunities. This means, for exponential entrepreneurs, finding a significant challenge is a meaningful road to wealth. Ultimately, as I teach at Singularity University (much more on this later), the best way to become a billionaire is to solve a billion-person problem.