If you’re thinking that all the world’s big issues are super-dangerous, you’re an optimist. Never mind the hysteria on any and every subject. To hell with the politics. Game Over is visible.
The University of Stockholm has identified 14 evolutionary traps which could be fatal to humanity. The study also includes a simple table to show how these traps work. It’s a progression from a new development to the subsequent problems that development creates over time.
Read the Royal Society’s version of the study for a rather grim but useful explanation of the process. It needs some thought to see the worldwide patterns of integrated ineptitude.
The global polycrises, that much-loathed ongoing tangle of disasters, fit the model far too well. One of the standouts from the study, as I see it, is a refusal to acknowledge the needs of the future. The Millennials and Gen Z will be broke in a revolting world of human failures at existential levels at this rate.
A lot of the failures can be described as results of a mix of acceptance and ignorance. It’s odd. The current society dates to the postwar era. That’s about 1 or 2% of recorded human history.
Technologies and other superficialities aside, much of the world is mentally living somewhere between the Middle Ages and now. “The Way It Is” may well be the inscription on humanity’s grave. Nobody looks outside the norms.
Human acceptance of insanity isn’t helping. Instead of telling the nutcases to shut up, they’re hardwired into the problems. This culture is dead, and it’s not about to get better any time soon. Social innovation has basically been ultra-repressed. Social reform is looking more like The Handmaid’s Tale than anything modern.
The polycrises are caused as much by antiquated mindsets as anything else. The plodding fossilized logic of worlds long gone just can’t handle the problems. This kind of pin-the-tail-on-the-nuclear-war thinking simply does not look ahead.
That’s no excuse, either. If the house is burning down, you’d think even the most dedicated idiots would stop adding fuel to the fire. That’s not expecting much, and it’s not happening.
One of the primary mechanisms in the 14 dead ends is conflict, and there’s far more conflict than problem-solving. The mystic human ability to create a train wreck out of what should be a cup of tea is doing fine.
Polarization, the source of most conflict, is the most counterproductive and utterly useless of human hobbies, and it’s endemic. Polarization is totally obstructive by definition. It’s a guarantee of slow movement if any on any subject. It’s a disease, not any sort of asset. It prevents problem-solving.
You see what I mean about “fitting the model far too well”. The routine crash-and-burn cycles are obvious. These are the cycles that need to be broken to get out of this mega-mess.
You could write a new hymn called “Nearer Thy Ignorance to Thee”. Because that’s what’s happening. I’m getting tired of saying this: Lose the idiots or lose everything.
