Asking the question, “who am I?”, eventually dissolves into, “who are we?”. Then, what choice is there, other than to investigate BACKWARDS?
As philosopher David Byrne once asked: “How Did I Get Here?“
For what it’s worth- 100s of research hours are behind these bullets (authoritative material linked). This is intentionally succinct, accentuating bits that’ve maximally influenced modern life, and frankly, how chaotic it all is.
Enjoy.
Distilled Human History
- 300k years ago, modern humans on the scene
- “Work” is synonymous with survival
–
- “Work” is synonymous with survival
- 10k years ago, we start farming
- increased work 20ish -> 40ish weekly (farming is hard!)
- emergence of culture/fantasy (for better or worse)
- “Work” becomes abstract (roles & aims)
- population boom 1.0 (more food = more people)
–
- 1700-1900 – fossil fuel and machines
- accelerated culture/fantasy
- we killed God
- population boom 2.0 (more food = more people)
- a chance to work less…
- Hmm! more work/consumerism
–
- 1970 MIT study predicts population constraints
– - 2000 Internet – neato! New cultural trends:
- information generated and shared rapidly
- “traditional” culture uniformity naturally erodes
- hyper-polarized identities / subcultures emerge
–
- 2020 COVID, everyone online, accelerates internet trends
- “public square” increasingly digitalized, more theatrical and polarizing, less objective, optimized for engagement
- institutional sense-making (media) pivots toward atomized sources: podcasts, youtube, renegades
–
- 2022 MIT 1970 population constraints – still on track
- 2023 Internet continues evolving
- information space increasingly warped by machine generated content (ChatGPT, Bing, Deepfake)
- people increasingly directed by algorithms and AI models – (despite obvious flaws)
- (Note: this is just the START of this era)
–
- Today – me 🤔:
- Culture can only get MORE complex – complexity has no inherent objective – it’s simply a phenomenon that earnestly expands and makes our world more unusual
- “Return to normal” is a false concept – logically
- Wild, eh? 🍿
- (to be continued)
In sum: we humans work and grow like mad, mindlessly, even in the face of scarce resources and apparent environmental consequences. Meanwhile, culture (our shared idea space) expands and becomes more complex, aimlessly, which has profound implications on our ability to understand and navigate life. This is not inherently good or bad – it just is – the raw force of humanity, the raw force of life, the raw force of the universe which contains and somehow catalyzed all of it. Wow. While each of us might sit and wonder about various “ideal trajectories” for humanity, we in fact, have minimal control over any of it. (Though, I insist, all the more reason to find peace. In some sense, whatever happens, it’s all us.)
Inevitable Weirdness
[Serendipitously, found this the next day. This is not a claim to overlap fully with Terrence, but, we are certainly alluding to a similar insight – culture complexity and weirdness seems inevitable.]
Yikes. Also, cool.
Is it rational to conclude this is pure chaos? Yes.
Is it rational to worry? Nah.
Suggestions:
Note-to-self: Don’t get swept up in culture’s gnarliest undertoes. It, after all, has no idea where it’s going. While this very short story of humanity unfurls, it is possible to step aside from it and be easy, and not flare its seemingly repugnant bits. Be the change, as they say. Life remains a fascinating mystery – regardless of what humanity-at-large is up to.
As I just mentioned to a friend:
“What I am most grateful for in my life, is the ability to fully recognize how unbelievably beautiful it all us, while not fully in the grips of the interpretations and narratives.”
