Why The World Is Going To Get Better
There’s a very good chance that you’ve read the book “The Lord of the Flies” either in school or just because. It has, since it’s writing, been hailed as a masterpiece of what humanity is actually like. That we’re bestial and we’ll end up killing each other and that is our baseline. It is wrong. There was a real Lord of the Flies instance back in 1965, not long after the book came out. Six boys were stranded on an island for 15 months. None of them died. In fact, they were all pronounced to be in excellent physical health. This is actually how humans are.
Right now, this may seem surreal. Russia’s barbaric and pointless war in Ukraine, democracies under attack from populism and nationalism. Increasing autocracy. Huge racial divisions in America percolating to the top. The fight for equal rights for transgendered people. Insanely high drug prices. Yes, it is a messy time. There are key reasons for this. The internet (and the digital technologies it spins off) and advanced transportation technologies are two of them. But it is far more likely that rather than destroy ourselves, we will actually make a lot more progress in the end. We will come out better.
There are of course, caveats. What we’ve come to term as “Black Swan” events. Like Putin does actually drop a tactical nuke in Ukraine. Though such chances are slim. Yet remain possible. Or a crazy fast virus ravaging the global human population. Or climate change doing far more damage than we could have predicted. Humans are attracted to such scenarios. It’s called a negativity bias. Social media and many news media outlets leverage this bias to get clicks so they can drive ad revenues. That’s an example of capitalism gone bad.
It will get better. But first, let’s look at what is facilitating, not causing, so much turmoil today. Communications, information and transportation technologies.
Two core technologies enabled Europe to shift from feudalism to capitalism. Shipping technology, as in better ships and navigation technology. Capitalism, through the nastiness of Colonialism, then spread around the world. It is a system that has evolved over 500 years. Information traveled faster as well, as ships became faster. Navigation technology such as the sextant, an early form of Information Technology, enabled humans to get to there they wanted more reliably.
Today, we have the internet and related Information Technologies; satellites, smartphones, IoT devices. We can communicate at speed, across time. In fact, we’ve completely changed the paradigm of time. Transportation technology, aided by digital technologies like satellites, has and is, fundamentally changing. With paved roads and larger trucks, we can move products faster. The same with railroads. Planes are bigger and faster. Ships too are bigger and faster and connected to sophisticated land transportation networks. Personal vehicles are more comfortable, reliable and faster as well, facilitated by road infrastructure. We have petrol stations everywhere. As we shift to EVs, we will have charging infrastructure. Vehicles will undergo radical changes. Automated self-driving cars? Much more in the future than you might think. Perhaps over 50+ years away.
All of this has brought us into much closer contact on a daily basis. It has also meant that much of our social dialogue can happen when we are not present, but have contributed. You send a tweet, a conversation happens, you come back to see that hours later. When have so many cultures and societies banging up against each other, collisions are inevitable. I’ve written on this factor before here.
We Are In A Time of Turmoil
Human societies have always gone through periods of intense conflict and turmoil. World wars happened in the 20th century, before that, they weren’t really global because the communication and transportation technologies and populations, weren’t significant enough. We have had a constant ebb and flow of empires for thousands of years. No empire was ever good, but many empires did leave behind some degree of societal progress. Most failed because they stopped being of value to the broader society and so people got rid of them through various means. I am really compressing a lot here into simplistic statements. But you get the drift. Macro-level thinking here.
There are other historical trends here. Entrepreneur Ray Dalio explores them in his new book “The Changing World Order”, which is very insightful, but considers these changes mostly from an economic perspective, but misses sociocultural elements.
But regardless, we are in a period of global turmoil as societies, cultures and capitalism struggle with ideologies, massive bureaucracy in government and business.
As mass communication technologies and improvements in transportation occur, societal volatility follows. This is where we are. It will end up better.
With the rise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, societies are debating a new way of thinking about capitalism and greater equality. Full socialism, ergo total human equity is a utopian ideal that is unlikely to come about. But we will figure something out. We always do. We’re trying to figure out how adapt all these technologies into our sociocultural systems, how we want those systems to change.
When Will Things Get Better?
How and when will “things” get better? That’s impossible to predict and would be ridiculous to set any stakes in the ground upon. All we can say is that change at a massive scale is upon us. If we’re smart enough, we can draw upon the lessons of history and what had happened with technology revolutions and we can shape some approaches and develop ideas. We also have to be careful that we don’t try to rationalize things too much, for we know that when we over-rationalize issues, the outcomes are usually irrational.
