The time between 1945 and 1970 was
one of super-acceleration. Since then, many developments have slowed somewhat.
For example, the economy did not continue to grow, as we had begun to take for
granted that it would. Dominant optimism began to crack. The last stage of this
widespread optimism witnessed the coming of an ‘alternative’ overoptimism, with
hippies and altered styles of living and working. This movement continues today
in the form of holism, transformation management and ‘Aquarian conspiracies’.
In
1980 a ‘World Symposium on Humanity’ was held, proclaiming that the eighties
would bring a ‘universal breakthrough to a spiritual world’. This kind of faith
in the future is hard to beat, whatever it may mean. A California article of
1983 forecast that after only a few more decades war would be banned and people
would be nice to one another, money would no longer exist, and more of such
cloud-seven stuff. This overoptimism still exists, but in a weakened form. The
Coming of the Messiah has again been postponed, according to one Benjamin
Creme.
While
the dominant mood has been one of pessimism and cynicism, cautious economic
optimism, mixed with disappointments over broken dreams, appears to be the
dominant mood in the 90s.
Still,
the acceleration of social and economic developments since roughly 1850 has
been staggering, and its end is nowhere in sight. Most likely we are witnessing
a new stage in the feed-forward character of evolution in general and human
evolution in particular. More and more change occurs in shorter and shorter
periods. The time scale of the palaeontologic eras has grown progressively
shorter. With the presence of greater biomass, and indeed a more varied
biomass, we have more conditions available for new species. Carl Sagan
estimates that the time needed for each new leap forward in evolution becomes
five times shorter than the time needed for the previous leap.
Throughout
the evolution of early humanity, three things reinforced one another. These
three were walking upright, the growth of the brain, and the use of tools. When
our forebears began to walk upright they learned how to use tools, and learning
to use tools, they used their hands less for walking. The use of tools develops
the brain, and the developed brain develops more tools.
All
of this development began inconspicuously. Probably for three million years
different species of humans lived next to one another under roughly the same
conditions, but then development progressed rapidly. After the Stone Age with
its stone tools came bronze tools and the agricultural revolution, then iron
tools, mechanics, and finally the industrial revolution, ever more quickly.
Today we can hardly keep pace with ourselves.
A
similar cycle works within a lifetime. When I was a student I was taught that
all of our nerve cells were present at birth. Now we know that those nerve
cells may develop powerfully during the first three years. The cells move about
and grow either few or many offshoots. How many offshoots they grow and how
long these offshoots become probably depend greatly on stimulation from the
environment. A rich perception and imagination make for more offshoots, and
more offshoots probably enrich the perception and the imagination.
The
roots of our modern acceleration began in the 18th-century Enlightenment with
its idea that we can improve society. James Watt improved the steam engine. The
French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars accelerated social and political
development. Later the First World War and the Russian Revolution strongly
accelerated development. The Second World War carried development still further.
The
ground swell of societal development is the continuous advance of science and
technology, while great investments move roughly according to the Kondratieff cycle,
with corresponding, but lagging, social moods. Weber analyzed the contents of
British Crown speeches between 1775 and 1972. He found a social
psychological long-term cycle of four phases:
1.
Bureaucratic;
2.
Progressive;
3.
Cosmopolitan;
4.
Conservative.
These
stages correlate to the Kondratieff cycle. The most recent bureaucratic stage
corresponds to the phase of economic recovery and beginning of economic prosperity
(50s). The progressive stage corresponds to the late prosperity stage in the
economic cycle (60s). The cosmopolitan stage corresponds to the recession and
depression stage of the long wave (70s). This period is followed by the
conservative stage that has probably been characteristic of the 80s, which
corresponds to late crisis and beginning of recovery. According to this theory,
we have now entered a new bureaucratic stage.
Superimposed
on this model are the spasms of revolution and war that, for all their loss of
life and destruction of goods, appear to liberate energies rather than to drain
them. From the point of ‘societal energy’ - to coin a probably valid, but vague
idea - revolutions and wars appear connected to malfunctions and blocks in this
‘economy of energy’. Rate of change can be too fast, but also too slow. At the
present time we appear to suffer more from a turbulence and a frenzied pace
than from stagnation and boredom. The current rate of change, the acceleration
we now experience, began in 1945. The end of World War II unleashed the technological
potential developed during that war, as well as the political potential of
decolonialization.
We
may yet witness even more rapid changes, more turbulence. Isn’t there a limit
to the rate of change that may be possible? Economically, the rate of change
does reach a critical limit, when so many things change within one lifetime
that people become obsolete during their productive years. Psychologically, the
maximum speed of development is that speed wherein people can still manage
without breaking down or opting out and leaving everything to the next
generation. In knowledge development, the natural sciences are presently close
to the maximum speed, while the social sciences remain far below that limit.
Some people think that science and technology are now so far advanced that for
the time being they will slow down and spiritual development will take their
place. I rather think that science has hardly outgrown the nursery.
In
the end, it is the adaptive capacity of individuals and of society that
determines the maximum speed of development. The gap between people who keep up
with developments, and people who drop out, could presently be widening.
Possibly we are heading for a divided development that takes the form of an
international network of cities that enjoy a high-tech culture, and the
remaining local rural cultures. Bursts of tension might occur between these two
major cultures, but such a quasi separation might enjoy surprising stability.
The
most basic problem may lie in the parable of the talents, wherein talented
people develop ever more quickly and less talented people stay behind. Much of
the historic mix between the two groups has occurred because talented people
used less talented people for chores. That need has decreased with the rise in
automation, and with the arrival of convenience and low-maintenance products.
Many people are dropping out. These dropouts include the obsolete, the simple
and the slow, but also the sensitive and the dreamy.
Available as e-book at http://www.onlineoriginals.com
