After 8 eventful years in the White House, Bush will concede the presidency to Barak Obama. For any person, such a shift - from a position of ultimate power and visibility to one of… well, much less of both - would have major psychological effects. Paul McCartney admitted to having a breakdown after the Beatles disbanded - a move he himself initiated. But for George W. Bush, the psychological implications are even bigger. One can hardly imagine a more controversial presidency. And psychologists could hardly imagine a more interesting case study in life changes.

What happens to a person after such a remarkable time? I find it interesting anytime someone goes from one extreme situation to another. If he’s not the most powerful man in the world, he’s certainly the most well known and followed. And from one day to the next it will all be over. Because of the level of controversy of his presidency and his personality (I see him as a very emotional and sensitive person), it will be all the more difficult for Bush.

The number of significant and historical events (to put them mildly) which have occurred in the past 8 years have left few people on Bush’s side. Few, at least for now, will make efforts to praise his tenure in Washington, let alone associate with him. Not to bust on him - I understand Churchill had a hard time finding friends at the end of his stay as Prime Minister. Where will these leave George Bush? All the attention, all the power, all the controversy - gone. His own party seems lined up to simply try to forget about him.

As this site hints at. All real change is driven by emotion, by passion. Watching the concert in Washington today, motherfuckers are emotional. Motherfuckers are passionate. No choir of teenage kids would sing like that for George Bush. Step 1 in life, in any endeavor, is to get your emotional drive up. The rest will follow. Intelligence and talent all come second in line to drive and determination. Bush’s presidency was built on fear, not passion. And run on arrogance, not confidence. The result of Bush’s way is pretty obvious, while the results of Obama’s presidency remain to be seen. One thing is unmistakable - there is a real energy around Obama taking office. And that energy will propel and drive whatever measures he takes for the time being. And of course that energy and motivation and passion are so crucial to any initiatives he will take. That’s how it works for individuals and that’s how it works for countries. 

All that energy, all that hope, has largely been created by Bush. Not because he was energetic and positive, but because America has been so out of touch with hope as a result of the last 8 years (not judging it, just calling it as I see it). That seems to be the ultimate jab at Bush as he leaves the White House. As I see it, George Bush has several possible options after he retires from Washington.

1. Get a job.Obviously the best way to avoid sitting around and contemplating what the hell just happened is to bury yourself in work. It’s not the healthy thing to do, but few would accuse Bush of being psychologically healthy. Bush would be a prime candidate for an executive-type position - not one in a corporate environment, but rather one that makes use of his best skill, his likability. His well-known ties with the Saudi Royal Family would be a clear option to liaison between them and American interests. I personally can’t see him going into charitable and activists roles as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore have done. He’ll simply be too much of a liability for such groups who are too often associated with the left. No, his bread lies in the private sector - making money, working out deals between the wealthy and governments and organizations. He can feel useful and wanted without having to dwell on any perceived failures of the last eight years. America will try to forget about him and he’ll do (subconsciously) the same in return. Only on occasion will he think about the events his presidency and possibly never consider that he may have screwed up royally.

2. Retire.If George W spends the next few years clearing shrub and hunting in Texas, it will be his own decision - not for a lack of other options. Being a man of conviction, he may simply choose to relax and continue in his belief that he did what he thought was right. This will be a bit trickier for the president. Quiet and isolation, though gifts to the mentally healthy and guilt-free, may wreak havoc on the vulnerable psyche of George Bush. He’ll have to work hard to push thoughts of self-doubt out of his head. And following the news is inescapable. I can hardly imagine a person who wouldn’t spend a large part of his day reflecting on the time which was so important to so many, so shrouded in various perceptions, yet flew right by.

3. The Book Deal. In these final days of his presidency, you see the media really trying to sink their teeth into Bush one last time. Maybe they subconsciously feel the contrast to the situation after 9-11 when they felt they really couldn’t stand up and be critical without somehow worsening their cause. Now is their chance to make up for lost time and “grill this asshole while it still counts” (I’m not quoting anyone, I’m just imagining what a journalist might be thinking). And sure enough, they’re not letting up, they’re not giving him the slightest acknowledgement that there was something positive in his presidency. And he hates it. You can feel his reluctance to give his final press conference and exit interviews, even for Fox News. He knows that the only issue is “how everything has gone completely wrong” and how most people view his presidency as a complete failure. “Time to set the record straight”. A book deal would normally be a good way to at least formalize your own side of the story in a situation gray with political intricacies and complicated interests of two opposing takes. Rumor is, the book is in the works, and I’m sure it will come out. What I’m also sure of is it will be fired at and quickly passed off just like any other interview these days. A last desperate attempt to present himself as right, if not unlucky.

4. Humanitarian Aid.In an interview I heard a few months back, Bush expressed “interest” in helping the poor and needy in Africa. While other presidents have proved quite effective in the humanitarian arenas, Bush will probably have a different experience. While it seems true that there are African nations which embrace him, most humanitarian organizations who operate there do not. I could see it possible that he simply set up his own humanitarian organization using a few political connections and a few million in donations. Entirely possible. But don’t expect the media, or the rest of the world for that matter, to suddenly like him. Most likely it would be a limited effort with limited real effects. He won’t be doing it for them, but more for himself (subconsciously, of course - that is the only way he knows how to fly). And that’s fine. I can see him feeling a real sense of accomplishment and contentment in this.

Bush’s real agenda: Love
Let us not forget what shaped this man in the first place. Typical of any middle child, and especially one surrounded by such high expectations, this man is only after validation and acceptance, and he’ll do some crazy things to get it. The biggest nightmare for such a person (and maybe any person) is when the whole world hates you in spite of your efforts to be loved. When your strategy isn’t working out, you’ll tend to get angry and rebellious - as he did in his youth and as he seems to be doing of late. Maybe he’ll join a punk band. He could call it The G-Hate Summit. I’d download that. Personally, I feel for the guy. He got in over his head and had the worst of luck for 8 straight years (and yes, getting re-elected was unlucky). He meant well, but missed the mark. Let him go down as the ultimate example of how worthless good intentions are.

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There are some people who would see every element of humanity as a result of natural selection. Currently, I am one of them. If something is unexplicable in terms of natural selection, I will simply assume all that is missing is a good explanation and some supporting data to show that it probably does exists as a result of natural selection. “Opposable thumb?” Good for climbing trees and grasping tools. “Language?” Great way to communicate with members of the group who you are probably working with to help proliferate common genes. “Consciousness?” Ahh, that holiest of human traits. “There’s this being and it can wonder,” my high school ethics teacher would proclaim. “Only humans have consciousness” he would boast. And whether he is right or not is not something I’m prepared to go into at the moment. But what I will attempt here is to tie consciousness with evolutionary theory.

There is much discussion surrounding consciousness. The scientists will address it on a neural level and the New Agers describe it on a metaphysical one. They speak of “higher consciousness”, implying that it is not a black and white state but more a leveled one. Their language remains vague and superficial. Even the evolutionary biologists and psychologists are at a loss to explain consciousness. They have no data to support its existence. “Everything humans do could be done without consciousness”. But I have a hard time believing that.

Why Consciousness?
Why should consciousness grow and evolve? As Dr. Robert Ornstein ponders in his book “The Evolution of Consciousness”, “why should human beings ever have evolved the ability to know what their mental systems are doing, any more than we know what our pancreas is doing?” He believes that we actually do not have the ability to know what our mental systems are doing. But I would content that the clear motivation for consciousness is its ability to improve the workings of your mind. I can’t improve how my pancreas works through thought (aside from the general health benefits of positive thinking). But I can improve how my mind works through thought. Look at how many people are interested in how their mind works. We don’t just think about it: we read about it and take courses on it. Every human has at least an instinctive minimal interest in how his brain works and if the things he is thinking are in line with reality.

Unlike organs like the pancreas, our minds are the only body part involved in cultural evolution. An evolving consciousness allows us to better adapt to our cultural environment. Our brain has stopped evolving on an individual level, but without consciousness, we would not be able to evolve on a group level. Just as the biological world has genetic winners and losers, so does the cultural world. Those best able to succeed on a cultural landscape hold a better chance of passing on their genes. And it is consciousness which is the key adaptation to facilitate this success.

Our brains must have the ability to evolve culturally. And this ability is consciousness. And we have been evolving on a cultural level for some time now. Most scientific accounts will end biological evolution about 10,000 years ago. Cultural evolution, this is: humans learning from each other, passing on information to each other, and working together in social groups, has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. And it is that overlap in which consciousness, as a biological part of the brain, evolved.

If we’ll assume that consciousness is an adaptation, ie a result of evolution, then here we will try to work backwards to the possible cause. Though we like to think of our motives as noble and dignified, especially in light of cultural evolution, let’s not forget that cultural evolution is simply a group-level extension of biological evolution, whose sole purpose is procreation, so we start our thought experiment with sexual strategies. We’ll start with a set of observations and conclusions, and we’ll address men and women separately since their GPSs are so different. (read more on GPS here). And for clarification, when we talk about men and women, we are actually referring to them as they were 10,000 years ago - since this is the time for which their brains and bodies were built.

Men
To generalize, there are several types of men in the world. Please refer to the GPS article to get more details on each. But suffice to say here that while some men play more on the physical level of GPSs, being the dominant male in a group and physically controlling the pool of available females, other men have been forced into less dominant positions and have had to be creative in their pursuit of females to mate with. It is widely agreed that the speed of human evolution, particularly that of our intellect, in the last hundred thousand years or so is largely attributed to intra-species competition (man against man) rather than interspecies competition (man against tiger). In my article “Why Your Girlfriend has Such Bad Taste in Music“, I discuss the predicament weaker males have found themselves in during the course of human development and the options that were made available to them in the form of technology and culture. In this respect consciousness in males can be seen as “thinking outside the box”. The ultimate question to be answered being “how can I get these chicks to sleep with me”? The dominant males don’t need to ask this question. But the weaker males who were best able to step outside their own biological patterns and develop new ways of thinking and doing which helped or united their community were awarded rank and prestige, the cultural equivalent of strength, and thereby were able to acquire mates. One could conclude that these weaker males are born with a higher consciousness than their physically stronger counterparts.

Women
Whereas men use consciousness as a vehicle for status in the group, women have developed consciousness for other reasons. Consciousness in women can perhaps in part be seen as the proverbial “women’s intuition”. Indeed women do have a heightened awareness of their surroundings beyond that of men. My wife may buy a new vase for the living room which will escape my radar for days. Women posses a great attention to detail in their surroundings. Evolutionary psychologists conclude that this mystical sensory perception developed as women needed to know if their suitors were lying to them - falsifying their credentials, as it were. It is no surprise that women choose men who are either of high genetic quality, ie good looking, or who can support them using various resources, such as money or status. The former is hard to fake, while the latter is somewhat easier. Pretending to be a man of wealth and status is a treasured pastime for many men. So is lying about one’s commitment to a woman. Women have hence developed intuitions to help them cut through male BS. Also, while it is more commonly known that men compete with each other, women also compete with each other for the most “attractive” men, but they do so not with aggression but rather with more subtle and social tactics such as gossip, backstabbing, and “mind games”. It takes a sharp wit to play on that field, and evolution has helped women right along by developing their senses for greater awareness of their environment. This seems to be the seed of conciousness in women.

With this logic, you might see consciousness is an adaptation. Everyone has it, but similar to IQ or running speed, not all people are born equal. Some people are born with a greater capacity for consciousness and others with a lesser capacity. If you think of consciousness as any other physical attribute (or mental one for that matter), just as a person may be built with strong arms but does not exercise, he may still be weaker than someone who was built with weaker arms but trains regularly. By the same token, a person may be born with a high capacity for consciousness, but may have less of a conscious life than someone who was born with less capacity for consciousness but who regularly…yes, practices.

Practicing consciousness
You can practice consciousness. Buddhist monks have done it for ages, and now the mainstream public is seeing the mental and physical benefits of meditation and mindfulness. We learn, we reflect, we ponder, and it all raises our level of consciousness. We can step out of the car for a minute and kick the tires, check the oil, etc. This is the great gift to be gotten from therapists and coaches - they are consciousness trainers and, just as a fitness instructor at your local gym, they will pump up your self-awareness muscles. Before you know it, you will have a clearer idea of who you are, what you are doing, and why you are doing it. These being some obvious benefits of consciousness.

The burden of consciousness
But consciousness isn’t all roses. Consciousness for many is experienced as a burden. Think “self-conscious”. Being constantly aware of the world and yourself in it can create a level of fear, insecurity, and alienation in an individual. The head cases in the world are often the most conscious individuals. The ones who seemingly glide through life are often less conscious of their surroundings and of themselves. So, how then is consciousness a benefit worthy of passing through natural selection? Sadly it does not always work out to be a benefit. If consciousness is an adaptation mean to help groups evolve, they why are the most conscious people usually the outcasts of a group? We can understand how a normal degree of consciousness is necessary for minimal creativity and innovation, but are high levels of consciousness worth the added weight? High consciousness can lead to loads of self-doubt and insecurity and those with a very conscious mind often find it hard to relate to others. Indeed high levels of consciousness were probably not favored 10,000 years ago. It was only when art, culture, technology, and innovation became worthy displays of power that highly conscious individuals found their niche. Consciousness is like big stick you have to carry around. If you don’t know how to use it and you may not enjoy your experience with it. But if you know how to use it, understand it, and can take advantage of it, you’ll enjoy the benefits.

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Yes, a new term only a Quanologist could come up with. GPP - Genetic Proliferation Potential. GPP is a variable which obviously denotes an individual’s potential in genetic proliferation. For those of you just joining us, here’s a bit of background.

As nature sees it, we are here to pass on our genes. There are different ways to do this - some men sleep around, some men are loyal fathers, some women seek the support of multiple men, and some women seek out one man for a long-term relationship. It’s all part of the Universe. But in this quest for genetic proliferation, some are better equipped than others. It would be silly to imagine a race involving everyone on the planet and thinking they all have the exact same chance of winning. The fact is, some people are born with a higher potential for genetic proliferation than others, BUT the good news is that people can develop a higher potential within their lifetimes. So, your GPP is not stable but varies from time to time.

What are the factors?
Again, for those of you who are new to Quanology, evolution works on different levels. Biologically we pass on our genes directly through our offspring, and indirectly through our genetic relatives. Culturally we can pass on our genes on a slightly vaguer, those more expansive level, by our thoughts, beliefs, and cultural and technical contributions. Therefore, our ability to breed, to parent, to care for our relatives, and to contribute to society all factor into our GPP. And what attributes are therefore necessary to accomplish these things.

No man is an island. It is often hard to say where one individual ends and another begins. It would be all too simplistic to think we function alone in the world. I’m sitting on a train right now built by someone else and driven by someone else. The laptop I’m typing on was made in some far off land in a factory by a group of workers. But these things are tied to me right now. They are at my disposal and I use them to my own devices. They are not a part of me physically, but they contribute to my effectiveness on this planet, ie my genetic proliferation. We will also use the term “resources” to describe anything which is available to an individual for his/her use.

Resources can be anything. These are all considered resources:

• physical attractiveness
• physical strength
• athleticism
• money
• property
• family
• ideas
• power
• psychological capacity (ie, consciousness, awareness, creativity, rationalization, perspective, positivism, etc)
• intelligence (in the traditional sense)
• talents
• mind set (ie, drive, motivation, confidence, etc)
• knowledge
• skills
• social standing & personal network
• technical ability
• artistic ability

All these things should be seen as resources since all contribute to genetic proliferation. Somethings may help out more in certain environments, so obviously a person can have a higher GPP in one environment than in another environment. In the western world, for instance, artistic ability can get you further than say, in the Middle East. So the weighted sum of your resources in relation to the characteristics of your surroundings adds up to be your GPP. The cool thing is, GPP is passed on and developed over generations, just as genes themselves are. Raising your knowledge on a certain subject should improve your children’s chances of also being knowledgeable on that subject. Making the investment to increase your knowledge is similar to putting money in the bank to let it be passed on down to future generations (and it’s not taxed!). Of course, somehow lowering your resource level in some area will also be passed on. Squander $1 million in your lifetime and it obviously cannot be passed down to future generations. Squandering a good mind set in your lifetime will similarly ensure that a good mind set will not be passed down to your children.

The moral of this story? Realize that resources are all around you and you have many different means to help you be successful. And be conscious of the fact that everything you do is an investment in your resources and as with any investment, there is potential gain and potential loss. Both will be passed down the genetic ladder.

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