By John Cryan
September 20, 2023

There has been enormous resistance to the idea that we have to drop our global population by one full order of magnitude in order to have even a chance to continue as civilized human beings. This is only natural. It is our deepest wired-in evolutionary survival strategy: Over-reproduction in the face of the Scythe of Nature. Almost every other semispecies in Nature does this, most at far greater levels of offspring overproduction than ours. This year, I raised over 120 Cecropia Moth caterpillars from one poor female who emerged wing-damaged due to global warming effects (her cocoon became too stiff).

Left to their own devices in the arms of Mother Nature, only 1 or 2 would have made it to pupal stage.

Lately, the emergence of women worldwide out from under the male yoke of ownership, coupled with increasing opportunities for both sexes (and increasingly all genders on that continuum) to create fulfilling individualized lives for themselves, together or separately, has resulted in fairly rapid and sustained human birth declines to below replacement rate in more and more countries as mortal childhood and early adult diseases were brought to heel, and food stability, or at least availability, was achieved, along with at least some of the benefits of the technological boosting of material sustenance.

This trend is by no means guaranteed to continue. The triple threat of the momentum of continued human population growth past eight billion, still rapidly accelerating global warming despite our early and feeble efforts to rein it in, and most importantly, the cascading, compounding collapses of vital elements (physical, chemical and biological) supporting our life-sustaining biosphere going on all around us right now, has sufficiently destabilized human societies, polities and the global order, so that tendencies toward political backsliding are certain to continue and themselves accelerate on many fronts. If the multiplying disruptions are allowed to metastasize into an authoritarian interlocken, all bets are off, and the battle to save not just civilized life, but human life, or even any life, will be lost.

For this reason alone, this imp is the most important I will write. It explains the connection between how evolution actually works and keeps we the people alive and kicking, and why our population explosion has shut this process down and therefore has to be reversed as fast and humanely as we can.

In order to do this properly, deep perspective is required. Let’s therefore go back, not to the beginning of the Universe, but to that of our humble little solar system. It is there we will find the key to our ‘Goldilocks’ planet, which we’ve artificially kicked out of that wonderfully comfortable position.

Our solar system is like a galaxy in miniature. It started as a gas cloud, mixed with exploded stardust.

As explained in several earlier imps, three- to two-dimensional symmetry breaking caused that cloud to collapse into a rotating accretion disc. At its center, the hydrogen and helium, under pressure from all those massed free chaons, or gravity, pushing in, in spiral motion from the outer margins of the disc towards the center, collapsed further, re-forming those atoms into the rotating sphere we call the Sun.

Accretion discs are funny things. Each one has many running continua of properties, composition, and processes, constantly changing, or evolving, going on as they form, condense, and transmute. The ongoing metamorphoses of each one is unique, but together they share common properties.

One of them is segregation of the elements by mass brought on by differential free chaonic pressure, or gravity, triggered by the presence of variability in the bound-chaonic atomic elements present in the free chaonic matrix, or spacetime. This is what caused the accretion and formation of the far smaller rotating spheres we call planets, orbiting the Sun, as well as the many forms of ‘leftovers’ – asteroids, moons, comets, etc., and why the chemical compositions of each solar system member vary so widely.

The Sliding Goldilocks Zone

Venus is now about 67 million miles from the sun, Earth 93, and Mars 142. But that’s just for now. In a completely relativistic Universe, everything is constantly shifting, and with planets, backsliding.

The Goldilocks Zone, where life can happen, now surrounds Earth, but excludes Venus (too hot and bright) and Mars (too cold and dark). Venus has no water to speak of; Mars may have in the past, but lost most of it. Venus has a toxic atmosphere; Mars has almost no atmosphere and not much gravity.

If one looks at the Milky Way galaxy as a giant accretion disc centered on a supermassive black hole which grew so large by being the final destination for much that was pushed by increasing free chaonic forces towards it, that model, in reduced modified form, governs our solar system, too. Just as most of the material in the Milky Way never makes it into the giant black hole, but stays in orbit around it,

moving gradually towards it at increasing rates as one gets closer to the central thing, so too the planets and most of the other stuff merely orbit the sun. There is a reason for this: gravity. Gravity is so much more than a linear push force. Gravity acts in curves, always. The linear models used throughout physics are wrong. There is no straight line in Nature. There may seem to be ones over relatively short distances, but these, too, are illusions. Closer inspection reveals curves. But not just any curves, spiral curves in two dimensions; helical curves in three. All the forces of free chaonic gravity are deployed in these two configurations. What has not been naturally symmetry-broken moves helically; what has, to gain entropic stability, moves spirally. There is, of course, a continuum of metamorphically transformative motions between the two. To see a version of it in action, just play with a Slinky toy.

With this fundamental fact in mind, let’s go on a mock multi-continuum relativistic thought experiment.

Our goal is to suss out the evolution of our solar system, including its narrow Goldilocks Zone, and see how Earth and its neighboring planets have fared so far, and what the future holds.

One of the first questions encountered is why the first four planets are mostly rocky, and the outer four mostly gas (Pluto is a special case). The answer makes a powerful argument for the existence and push action of free chaons, as well as their density increase in and around galaxies over time, due to the ever- compounding production, actions, and ‘waste’ products (more free chaons!) of TTT-propelled photons.

To find that answer, one must first understand the dynamic tension creating semi-stable orbits, like the one we are riding along on now here on Earth without worry Earth will suddenly crash into the Sun.

The classical, Newtonian mechanical, explanation pits the force of pull gravity of a larger object (in this case, the Sun) against the tendency of a moving object (here, the Earth) in a vacuum (in other words, no other forces are at work on the object) to keep right on moving along a straighter path. This is known as centrifugal, or flyaway, force. It is depicted, of course, as an (initially) straight-line vector coming off the curve of the object’s orbit in positive relation to the direction of orbital motion.

But what if there’s a physical solution to Newton’s equations (and for that matter, Einstein’s much more complicated ones that built off Newton’s) that negates pull gravity, and removes the spinning bucket centrifugal force as well, replacing them with a vector hug, consisting of a nested and counterbalanced series of such spirally- and helically-driven, free-chaonic parabolic push forces, that not only conduct the music of the spheres, but insure the relative eternity of their coordinated dances?

That is, in fact, what the push forces generated by the free chaonic matrix of spacetime do. Gravity spins, binds, forms and moves the spheres. Gravity determines the actions of all inanimate objects.

And even the tiniest things we can see in magnification, atoms and molecules, are shaped, formed and moved by free chaons acting as gravity. Other forces derivative of free chaons, like the TTT of photons

and their corresponding phenomena of electricity and magnetism, also organize and propel atoms.

Now we have entered the world of paradox. When the Sun was young and its accretion disc still forming what would become planets, free chaonic density was lower than it is now, Universally, in the Milky Way galaxy, and in our nascent solar system. During the planetary formation process, heavier atoms were progressively concentrated by increasing gravity on a continuum of ever-increasing free chaonic density toward the sun. These heavier elements formed the cores of the four rocky planets.

Lighter elements, like helium and hydrogen, lingered further out. They formed big gaseous matrices around the proportionally smaller cores of the outer four planets. One of them, Jupiter, grew so fat on the lighter gaseous elements that had it grown much more, it would have ignited into a second sun.

As the chaonic spacetime matrix densified due to increasing photonic output, in a positive feedback loop (more chaons per unit of volume means more opportunities for TTT to happen), the increasing gravitational energy enabled the Sun to produce those higher numbers of photons per unit of time. At the same time, those units were losing pure time itself from time inflation, thus enhancing the effects of more photons. In other words, both paradoxical ends of this continuum were strengthening the Sun.

At the same time, those densifying free chaonic matrices were moving themselves, and everything bound by them, faster and faster. The overall increasing energy of the solar system created the paradoxical effect of backsliding orbits. The planets began receding farther and farther from the Sun.

Mars may once have barely been inside the Goldilocks Zone. Whether it ever developed and held life, even for a far more brief period than Earth, is a question right now only for speculation. It would appear from the negative Mars lander and rover sample results and observations so far that it did not.

But here on Earth is a different story. As the planet receded from the Sun, its Goldilocks halo traveled with it. While the planet cooled over time, so much so that the past few million years were punctuated by Ice Ages for the first time in its long history (other than perhaps the initial massive oxygen release period accompanying the emergence of photosynthesis), enough of those extra photons produced over the equally long period of Sun intensification, through solar system free-chaonic densification, managed to reach the Earth to keep it, and its mantle of life, within the backsliding Goldilocks Zone, and therefore, intact, though not unaltered. The Ice Ages and generally cooler weather and climates created through evolution the world that birthed humans, among many other cold-adapted semispecies.

In addition to the simultaneous, shifting, paradoxical effects of opposed gravitational forces operating on bound-chaonic objects big and small to create and sustain the relatively narrow conditions for life to start, evolve, diversify, and complexify on Earth, there are the opposed classes of purely destructive, or chaotic forces. These played an important set of roles as well in the biospheric saga, and continue to.

On a macro, scene-setting scale, the biggest one was large object collisions. Especially in the earliest stages of formation and coagulation of the accretion disk into recognizable planetary and extra-planetary masses, collisions were numerous and determinative of things like composition, density, structure, and internal/external layering and dynamics of the planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and even the space dust among them. We know little of our solar system’s collision history. What little we do know or think we can infer hints at explanations for many anomalous and strange variations in the planetary characteristics we have been able to observe. Chaotic events often leave little record behind.

Maximizing Possibilities: How God Plays Dice [remember: casinos are big to maximize jackpots]

It is not only planets that are backsliding. The Asteroid Belt, that zone of hazards between Mars and Jupiter, has also been slipping away from the Sun along with the planets during the Universe’s long run-up of photonic overproduction. The debris zone is widely speculated to be the remnants of at least one major interplanetary collision, but probably more, during the early solar accretion disc period. Collisions liberate the involved objects from the free-chaonic gravitational ‘hug’ for a time, long enough for the extra energy to propel the debris out of their former orbits and into . . . more collisions.

Some of those collisions reach the Earth. If the Asteroid Belt itself had not backslid along with the planets, however, there would have been so many more consequential meteor events that life on Earth either never would have evolved, or it would have gone completely extinct never to recover. The Goldilocks Zone is also a relatively meteor-free district. As it is, of the five past great extinctions shown in the geologic record, it appears four involved major meteor strikes, and the fifth one may have as well. Only the sixth, the current one induced by humanity, clearly does not.

Life came part and parcel with the cooling and coagulation of the molten Earth into a rocky ‘floating crust’ arrangement, followed by the rapid appearance of large bodies of liquid water precipitated out of the cooling atmosphere. Both inner heat and water richness were crucial to the evolution of larger and more complex hydrocarbon-based molecules that became the structural bases for life processes. Life began when some of these molecules became self-replicating, and quickly developed protective sheathing and additional interior chemical exchange, regulatory metabolic, and development processes.

It is at this point Convolution began. The paradox of ‘directed’ (i. e., the trial-and-error tests of natural selection had begun) versus ‘random’ (i. e., frequent changes induced by the chaotic, disruptive behavior of free chaons, especially at micro scales) evolution now became evident. The lines of self-replication divided for the first time, as one molecule was altered elementally in one spot. There were now two forms of very large single-‘celled’ life, in a relatively hot and fecund environmental matrix.

With the creation of that first little link in the web of life, the paradox of generalist and specialist emerged. The first two life forms were slightly different in their abilities to colonize varying physical and chemical environments. It is most likely these were underwater or on the surface. Most semispecies to this day, of the trillions that have diverged through billions of years of Convolution processes, exhibit generalist and specialist capacities intertwined together, taken in context of their relations to themselves, other semispecies, and the chemical and physical environments they cohabit.

Mutation and genetic transfer are the yin-yang of Convolution. They are also the dice. Each is random

in occurrence, considered over time and space. Both are effectuated through the actions of free chaons:

the first directly, the second indirectly, through the accumulations of naturally selected combinations of the first. But while mutations happen at base or long-term rates grounded in free chaonic density,

the rates of genetic transfer events run on a continuum of life form size and complexity. Small, simple, single-celled asexual organisms freely transfer genes back and forth, even among different structural and genomic forms. As one moves up the scales of size, multicellularity and complexity, out of the various modes of asexual reproduction into those of the sexual, genetic transfer events between dissimilar semispecies become rarer and rarer. This is partially due to the larger and more complex genomes found as one goes up the ladder of the Great Chain of Being, but also to the more effective and sophisticated layered partial reproductive isolating mechanisms developed during the evolution of the larger, more complicated sexually reproducing semispecies; in animals, everything from insects on up to humans. In these highly developed groups, almost all lateral genetic transfers are blocked or fail.

So in such an environment of scarcity, in this case of a vital process event designed to foster necessary new adaptations to ever-changing environmental circumstances, what’s a poor organism to do?

The answer, in all such circumstances, is to maximize possibilities. In systems based primarily on probability, which are ruled by the chaotic actions of free chaons, it’s the only strategy to counter low probabilities. And the only parameters available to maximize are space and time. Spacetime.

The Buck Moth creation story at the heart of Moths of the Past makes it clear how rare whole-genomic, semispecies-producing, Frontdoor Convolution events are, and how much spacetime they take. For just an insect, it took over 100,000 years of movements across an entire continent to create one such event.

But spacetime is constantly expanding and accelerating in its expansion. Inflating in a runaway fashion. So more time is not available to effectuate the necessary changes, or adaptations, in organisms to all the rapidly changing circumstances. Time inflation means less time, not more, is available.

This leaves space. While outer space (free-chaonic spacetime) is a dynamic bubble expanding outward, space on large bound-chaonic objects like Earth is relatively fixed. A scarce, or at least limited, resource. This puts a huge premium on the space required to support life. On Earth, that space is a thin layer at, slightly above, and slightly below the surface of the planet we call our biosphere.

Unfortunately, our Biosphere, here on Earth, is precisely the space we have used and eaten up in our frantic efforts to develop and technologically and politically sustain ever more intricate and complex, and fragile civilized human life for an ever-increasing, and rapidly accelerating, number of people.

To say this is unsustainable on its face is likely the grossest understatement of all time.

We are paying the consequences now of our deliberate ignorance, denial and dismissal of this fact.

And those consequences are rapidly piling up on top of one another. We are out of space, and therefore, time, to dither, engage solely in ‘mitigation’ (there is none), or continue ignoring the problem.

What are we to do? What can we do?

We have stopped Frontdoor Convolution, ultimate driver of multicellular evolution. In order to start it back up, we need to return most of the Biosphere to wilderness. Give it back to the life that built it.

In order to do that, we must halt our human population growth, now, and reverse it quickly. Not so fast that we cause misery and death, but fast enough to save the biosphere that sustains us by exiting most of our presence and activities (i. e., our heavy ‘human footprint’) from it and allowing it to restore itself.

At present, every day, millions of local populations of millions of semispecies are being extirpated. Semispecies extinctions are rapidly accelerating. We are denying our biosphere the living components it desperately needs to recover. It is like dismantling a spaceship in flight. You know the inevitable result. It is only a matter of time, and a short time at that, when we become one of those casualties.

We still have a narrow path to achieving physical and civilizational survival. But every day that passes and we are not following that path through our actions, the path narrows more. It soon will close tight.

The following section presents a framework for escaping the extinction bottleneck and rebuilding our civilization for the long haul. It will not be easy, but this is the only way out.

The Convolution Compact

Acknowledge, nation by nation, individual by individual, that we must revive Convolution.

Set agreed-upon target human population goals for each continent, nation, and extant cultural group.

Set a reasonable number of generations to meet them, based on levels of local restoration needed.

Start with three as a baseline, as that will reduce eight billion worldwide to one in 50 to 100 years.

Set replacement rate to 0.5 for the duration of reduction, then go to 1.1-1.2 for population maintenance.

Use voluntary incentives, including migration, to achieve population reduction and maintenance goals.

Make political default true democracy and economic default equity-achieving regulated capitalism.

Abolish warfare, weapons and weapons-making. Replace them with non-weaponized security.

Make radioactive element extraction, enrichment, creation and use illegal worldwide.

Empower and enable older people to care for more disabled older people during the reduction period.

Tap all extant Indigenous knowledge to learn sustainable interactions with the Biosphere.

Use all available science and technology to invent tools and systems to sustainably support cities.

Choose cities to preserve, and those to return to Nature. Do the same for all non-urban activities.

Choose agricultural lands to be kept and farmed intensively and sustainably. Abandon the rest.

Switch humanity to a plant-based diet.

Maximize recycling; minimize mining, logging, and all one-time extractive activities.

End fossil fuel use immediately.

Expand new economic sectors that promote growth which takes no additional matter or space.

Expand forms of social activities which are creative and connect people.

Encourage people to visit and become familiar with their biosphere and its other inhabitants.

Make energy from strictly renewable sources not destructive to the biosphere.

Support work which builds out the Chaon-Convolution Theory and connects it to the rest of science.

Elevate peace and respect all true limits.

Cultivate virtue. Undergird it with love.