What went right?
Do you ever wonder how we got here? Do you ever think about what has changed over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution?
The past few decades have seen exponential growth in technology. Smartphones. Passenger trips to space. Electric vehicles. Lots of crazy new tech. In most of our lifetimes, technological advances have dominated the changes we experience.
Science changed the world. Medical advances like germ theory and surgical techniques have arguably improved our lives.
Fossil fuel use has underwritten most of our ‘advances’ in making things easier to do. Imagine having to walk to the store to get groceries.
What went wrong?
Despite all of these increases in knowledge and efficiency, we are surrounded by problems associated with these advances. We are addicted to our smartphones. We drive too much. The speed with which we live our lives has become dangerously fast. We struggle with anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Wars are fought over the increasing limitations in the fossil fuels that provided all of these comforts.
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature
I can’t help but think about the lack of systems thinking that got us here. Arguably, the ‘advanced thinking’ that got us to the point where we have ‘godlike technology’ has caused at least as many problems as it has solved.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
― Edward O. Wilson
Our creative abilities have outpaced our nature. We abandoned the understanding that all things are interconnected, depend on each other, and work together in a natural system. We thought we could out-do evolution.
Natural selection wins
Despite our ability to outpace selection, the natural world will select the traits that work. I can’t see how arrogance and competition are going to ‘win’ over empathy and cooperation. If we consult the natural world, we will see how this plays out.
Yes, competition exists and even regulates some animals in some populations. Sure, being aggressive, mean, and arrogant has led to world domination by some cultures. Yes, if we allow and tolerate excessive inequality it will persist.
But does that make it right? In a world that is intimately interconnected and interdependent, do we think that is going to work in the long run?
The oversimplification of the world will be our demise
Until we accept that Natural Law governs all things, including arrogant humans, our extinction will continue. I firmly believe Homo sapiens is being selected against. Our inability to consider the long-term consequences of our short-term gains, our insistence on ‘privatizing the gains and socializing the losses’, and our valuation of competition over cooperation are driving nails in our collective coffin.
I say this not as a doomer. I have faith that humans will, eventually, see the errors of our ways. I think I am a small part of a growing movement that is ‘coming to Jesus’ about where we goofed up. I am confident we will get it right. I’m just getting impatient and it is hard to watch.
More like this on Medium, and The Neurodivergent Professor podcast.
Episode 172 streaming audio:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/530563/14864081
YouTube: