The rate of technological change is accelerating because technology begets technology. Meanwhile, the rate of growth in wisdom is linear at best (and occasionally stagnant or in retreat). Frankly, it doesn’t bode all that well.
Holocaust survivors are still with us, but the kind of nationalism that put them through that ordeal is on the rise again and is gaining popularity with teenagers.
Technology could help, but right now it seems to be working the other way.
I don’t have a problem with the kind of nationalism that gave European minority languages pride in their own culture and literature in the 19th century, for example.
I do have a problem with the kind of nationalism exemplified by lots of 20th century European leaders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Milosevic.
The latter kind is sadly on the rise again. And the former isn’t endemic to nationalism. Everyone can have pride in their identity, it doesn’t need a state apparatus.
Well, you'd want to think so. But I wonder if all identities politics doesn't, in the end, trend towards fascism.
If history does teach us anything, the moral ambiguity of technological progress is surely one of the lessons of the 20th century. I think it might be one of those lessons we're forgetting again after a couple generations!
H-bombs as a much more expensive version that is arguable thanks to the somewhat lasting peace they can be argued to have brought through MAD, but if it had turned out world enders were something anyone could easily throw together it would be a very different world, or non-world.
Key to understanding is to work to understand rather than redefine these concepts in the light of the same modernity that gave us domineering technological prowess at all costs.
This seems to imply that we've gained all the wisdom there is to gain. Do you believe that's true?
Pretty universal story that one:
One domineering bully culture claiming to be the one true light in the world intent on snuffing out all others. Like reciprocal trauma on a wide scale. Mirrored in this ongoing revenge of the nerds scenario we have now. A poorly perceived high school experience, with limited historical or cultural context, driving massive political and cultural changes across the planet. Artie Ziff on meth and LSD.
Ponzis and lesser people* at work.
*those who can't score without harmful sabotage
Sparring, cumulative competition, is a thing that drives the evolution of all parties and has the potential to rebalance the scales over and over again, but consumer culture and portfolio capitalism failed to capitalize on that and monetized the opposite instead: envy and sabotage.
Some people were too afraid of natural human convection and ruined the game. It still works, of course, but
> it doesn't bode all that well.