Collapse of the First Global Civilization Part 3
Humans have STONE AGE BRAINS
In Part 1, I introduced the 2 major reasons modern society has started to collapse: over population vs. limited resources, and complexity vs. limited human brain ability. I also introduced the A3 discoveries which provide new tools to understand the collapse. I use them throughout this series to explain in more detail why these problems are causing the collapse and how society can best get through it.
In Part 2, I discussed how our current world population is using resources faster than the earth can replenish them. I also showed that the “storeroom” of critical supplies nature created for us is running out, and explained briefly why humans can’t accept it, even though they see evidence all around them.
In this part, Part 3, I’m going to dig deeper into why humanity is failing to understand the problem: the complexity vs. limited human brain ability problem. This explanation will be NEW territory for you. It’s based on both current research and ancient wisdom. You have not seen it in the mainstream media because the world doesn’t yet understand it.
Our Stone age brains (A2)
The problem of limited natural resources presented in Part 2 is pretty easy to understand in its basic form. So, it is important to understand why most humans still deny that we are running out of them? Why can’t humans understand it? There are TWO major reasons: COMPLEXITY and limitations of THE HUMAN BRAIN. Human brains are NOT UP TO THE CHALLENGE! Let me be very clear about what I’m saying. Most “normal” human brains are not able to adequately deal with the complexity of modern life. To cope, they psychologically cop out. Or, stated more precisely, to allow people to get through everyday life, their brains will continually make up simple but inaccurate rationalizations. If these don’t work for them, they will sink into DENIAL.
The basis for this statement is human evolution. The human brain was continually improved right up to current times from primate brains by evolution for survival on the Savannas of Africa over millions of years.
Even when humans migrated to Europe and Asia around 70,000 years ago, their environment was still one of small bands of hunter gatherers. Only 12,000 years ago did agriculture became common. If we look at “modern” humans even as recently as the creation of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, our everyday living environment had not fundamentally changed from those earlier times.
In 1787, ‘long distance’ communication was done using paper delivered by HORSES. Discussions could take months for a letter to go from Maine to Virginia and a reply to return. At that time, canals and bridges were built using HORSES for power ( just like in Roman times). Travel used coaches pulled by HORSES. Even the most wealthy could only cross the ocean in sailing ships which would take more than 5 weeks round trip travel time.
The average person was a farmer. They were very independent. They produced most of their own food, clothes and many tools. What ever they needed that they couldn’t make themselves, they got from local suppliers. They paid by direct bartering and could observe how the goods were being made. Most important, the TECHNOLOGY of most of the items they interacted with was very simple. It was within the ability of their “stone age brains” to understand it. They could often fix it themselves if something went wrong.
The structure of 1787 society was also very simple. People personally knew most of the people their goods came from. They could VISUALIZE in their mind ALL the processes related to their life. They understood the lives of most of the people around them because they were basically the same as their own. They had rituals that explained the seasons, when the rain came, when to plant, when to harvest etc.. A “stone age brain” was able to understand all of this. That situation persisted in the U.S. until the industrial revolution brought people into cities during the 1800s.
During the industrial revolution, society was introduced to two new paradigms that would radically change human society: POWER TOOLS and the SPECIALIZATION OF LABOR. From the years 1800 through 2000, society completely transformed, first to an industrial revolution culture, then to a TV culture, and then to an automated robotics internet culture. That is, in just 200 years, we went from the HORSE AND CARRIAGE to SPACE CRAFT; from writing letters carried by horses to Skyping with people on the other side of the planet; from pushing plows to automated machines that harvest and process food right in the field, and machines that build almost every gadget in our homes. We went from a barter society to internet purchasing, internet banking and high tech intensive medicine. We have thousands of complex products that people completely don’t understand, ownership of homes with every convenience, automobiles and roadway networks that go everywhere. We watch TV news that shows INSTANT coverage of every possible event going on around the planet. I’m sure you can add a hundred other social changes to this list.
Do you see the problem??? In 1800, most people couldn’t see beyond the trees outlining their land. Today, through TV and Google Earth, all of us have a view like the one in the photo above and can instantly look down on any corner of the world. How can we expect human brains that evolution optimized to hunt Mastodons and survive on the savanna to understand all of this?
Are you thinking, maybe, the answer is we go to school? Sure, we can go to school and have our brains filled with millions of facts and images. Stone Age brains have a huge ability to memorize small details. But that doesn’t actually solve the problem. How do we possibly expect a human brain, optimized for hunting and gathering food in a simple world, to instantly gain the ability to ORGANIZE all of the information and interactions related to modern life? Even if we have large memories for isolated details, what evolved skills equip us to quickly envision how all this stuff works together as a SYSTEM?
Are you thinking, maybe we evolved over those 200 years? Not a chance. Biological changes as big as brain changes in animals typically take many thousands of GENERATIONS to adapt. As William Allman explains in great detail in his book, The Stone Age Present, “modern” human brains in 1800 and 2000 are essentially no different from the brains of our Stone Age ancestors.
The crisis this presents for modern society is that most people are completely unable to accurately ENVISION the complexity of the modern world in their minds.
Or, as I stated it as Discovery 4: HUMAN BRAINS, which have not evolved much since the Stone Age, are NOT CAPABLE of UNDERSTANDING high complexity well enough to keep it from harming them.
Let me give you an example to demonstrate how this mind game works. How do most people react when environmentalists present dozens of graphs or reams of statistics showing how CO2 has drastically increased? RIGHT! They “turn off”. They don’t understand all the numbers or their significance.
WHY? Because the numbers don’t create VISIONS in their mind of their personal human experience showing how the complex variables the numbers describe would affect them. Here’s the latest CO2 graph from CO2Now.org. Look at it. What does it make you think of? Do you sense any feelings?
Now, consider the form of information shown in the photos above that people encounter every day. Instead of graphs and numbers, let’s say someone sees a news report of a mass shooting in a school. Like the photos shown above, they see actual scenes from ongoing terrorism, blood on the floor, ambulances, chalk marks in the street etc. They see parents crying and police everywhere. How does their brain process this? Simple. Most people automatically envision themselves and their families in the same situation. They empathize with the victims. That’s the big difference.
So given just numbers and graphs, or pictures of trees being cut, or pipelines being built, or reservoirs getting low, which are common occurrences in their past, how do they react? They listen to what people say about it. They get very conflicting viewpoints: tragedy — “this is a tragic problem”; nope, routine — “this is just like a lot of problems in the past”; crisis — “we have to act FAST or the WORST will happen”; typical challenge — “DON’T WORRY, technology will fix the problems”. How do they react? They go into denial. They hide. They grab on to ideas that comfort them.
This difficulty envisioning new situations not only applies to the average person. It also applies to most of our elected leaders. Most people don’t realize this. They think that the election process finds and picks out exceptional people. But this isn’t the case. The election process is a personality contest. It selects people who are like the average person because that’s the kind of person a voter is comfortable with. The election process selects people who are quick with answers that sound good to average people. If a genius like Al Gore runs for office, people are afraid of him, because they can’t understand him.
And that’s why the FIRST truly global civilization on this planet is now beginning a major collapse. Neither the people, nor their leaders either understand what is happening to us or what to do about it. The media, whom we used to depend on and trust for “truth”, has now become entertainment. Entertainment is driven by ratings. The mainstream media tells people what those people want to hear. The educators and academics, who we used to depend on and trust for “truth”, have now become competitive corporations. Academic corporations are driven by ratings and funding from the government. They tell people what the people and their government money sources want to hear.
The human race is in a VERY TOUGH PLACE.
Technology complexity
The COMPLEXITY of modern life is a key contributor to the collapse. And we have complexity in the extreme. Let me show you just how bad it really is. First let me talk about technology complexity.
Discovery 3: TECHNOLOGY has introduced extreme COMPLEXITY into society and everyday life.
As an example, let’s look a one very simple case. In cave man days, how did they produce the drawings on cave walls? What did they draw with? Sticks from the fire produced nice black lines. Sharp hard stones could be used on soft rock to cut grooves. Different colored mud could be rubbed on the wall or mixed with animal fats to make paint. Nothing complicated about that.
Now fast forward to today. Your first challenge is to draw a scene from your environment on the wall of your “cave”.
Step one, let’s choose what you’re going to draw on. Paper? Come on! You can do better than that. Click on Utrecht Art Supplies just to help us get started. Hover over the tab labeled paper. The pop down list shows: Sketch pads, sketch books, water color paper, drafting paper, illustration board, note books, craft paper, decorative paper, poster board, inkjet paper, mixed media paper etc. And note. These are not individual items. They are categories! I clicked on drawing paper. I got 275 choices! Again, these weren’t the final items either. These were still subcategories! Coated papers, pastel colors, smooth sheets, vellums, news print, white sulphite and on and on. (I don’t even have a clue what white sulphite is.) Then I got into colors, paper sizes, surface texture, weights etc. Do you want the paper flat, or rolled? Do you even want paper? How about plastic film or metalized polyester? How about canvas, or hard board? Maybe you want to draw on wood, metal, glass, wall board, concrete? How about drawing on fabric?
So, as a cave woman, you had a rock wall and five sticks stuck in pots of different colors. Your “brilliant” Stone Age Brain could manage that easily. How’s that brain feel now thinking about the 10 million combinations of paper we were just given to choose from to get that “perfect” drawing combination? And YES, all your friends will see it and have opinions about it!
Hey! Don’t head for the Ibuprofen yet. We haven’t even started on the drawing tools? 688 kinds of colored pencils, 58 charcoals, 24 mechanical pens, 1182 ink marking pens, fountain pens, ball point pens, Calligraphy points, chisel points.
But pens aren’t the only way to draw. Brushes are available in hundreds of tip shapes, with different materials and sizes of bristle. Then there are the brush handles. You thought handles were just — ugh — handles? No no! Handles come in hundreds of styles, textures, colors, weights. How about “air” brushes and sprayers? How about rollers and pads? NO PROBLEM! We can even get a fully automated machine to cover that cave wall with a photo quality mural in short order. (Add another million options for paint applying equipment. Whoa! Where are you going? We’re just getting started (smiley face ;-))
What material are you going to put on the paper? Paint? Come on! Without even getting into color, we have to choose from water paint, acrylics, oils, Gouache? Encaustic? (Ouch! I’m way over my head now. I never got Gouached or Encausted before.)
So, just for doing something as simple as DRAWING on a wall, the modern brain is confronted with over a HUNDRED MILLION OPTIONS! See the difference? Cave woman — 5 options; 2015 woman — 156,493,778 options! ( I made that up. ;-))
Now, multiply this same EXPLOSION of complexity for every object that is part of your life! Everything you wear, everything you eat, everything you touch in your house. Take a second. Just look around your room. Look at each item. Try to get a feeling for just how many items there are just in your room. Your Stone Age ancestors didn’t have any of these things. They had a fire, a spear, and the clothes on their backs. And their brains were optimized to make very specialized use of that spear for hunting.
Now add the complexity of life outside your room. Each item in your room, like the paint on your walls, has an equally complex world wide structure needed to make it. Paints, for example, have pigments for color, carrier chemicals to hold the coloring agents, volatiles so the paint will dry, additives to make it stick, to flow, to be flexible and to dry. It is shipped in containers, with labels, with shipping boxes and pallets, by trucks and ships. All these components have to be understood in great detail by someone. They also have to be manufactured from resources extracted from the earth. Each of those components have a whole industry behind them.
Now we need to address a number of special “industries” that put special demands on us. Look at a light or electrical wall socket. Where does the electricity come from? Sure. A power plant. That’s a different kettle of fish. The production of electric power, on the scale the world produces it, is very dangerous. It involves coal, oil, and nuclear fuel. Each of these can cause significant harm to the planet and human society.
There are also military “industries” in this category. They conduct ongoing wars all around the globe. They drop thousands of tons of bombs a year. Independent of who’s right or wrong in conflicts, one result is always the destruction of huge amounts of people and the places they live in. When the smoke clears, huge amounts of resources, labor and time will be needed to “rebuild it all”. BUT, in most cases, society won’t ever be able to do it! There is no way to recover the glory of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt, or Babylon, or Syria, or Iraq (the cradle of humanity) etc.
SO! Just using this one drawing example, it is very easy to make my point about the explosion of technical complexity:
NO human is capable of understanding even their small part of the world any more.
Our Stone Age Brain was able to understand the Stone Age world it evolved in. Our Stone Age Brain was still able to understand the world of a farming life on the prairie in 1800 in a budding U.S. agricultural society. Now, only 215 years later, in 2015, that world is GONE. BUT! Our Stone Age brains have not changed. Yet, every day, the citizens and leaders of a 2015 world are called on to make major decisions about organizing all the new options in the world. Many of these decisions are CRITICAL to human survival!
That was the “ah ha” moment of discoveries 3 and 4:
Our human brains, alone, are no longer capable of either understanding or managing the complexity of life in a way that we can AVOID SERIOUSLY HARMING our whole society, or our species.
Social Complexity
Complexity also involves social interactions. When we add that to the technical complexity, we are quickly pushed “out of the pan and into the fire”. Along with the complexity related to all the objects we interact with, the complexity of our SOCIAL STRUCTURE has also exploded. And like a true explosion, all the old parts have been blown apart. Yet, somehow, our human brains convince us that not much has really changed. This is true denial so deep it might as well be called insanity.
To understand this, forget even going back to cave man days. Let’s just start with the “little house on the prairie”. In early America, when you woke up, your social interactions were with your family and the animals. Every once and awhile you could go into town, do some shopping, attend a prayer meeting, talk to some people. But the interactions were pretty simple. You were farmers. They were farmers. The weather was your primary concern. You had kids. They had kids. The kids sometime went to school.
Those days and that society are long gone.
In 2015, when you get up, you turn on TV, or check you iPad or smart phone to see what’s going on. Your social world now includes dozens of nationalities and cultures of people that Americans never even knew existed 200 years ago. You are pulled into their daily lives, but also their wars, their famines, their family problems — every part of their lives. If a school bus crashes in another state, you hear about it while the incident is still going on. You are brought into the tragedy of the lives of the families involved. If forests burn, you see it and the hardship it brings. If there’s a drought, you’re there. If a plane crashes, you’re there. If there are riots somewhere, you’re there. Every day you will see soldiers and civilians dying in front of your eyes.
Every day, elections will be in process. You will be asked to pick political leaders from a group of people you never heard of until a short time ago. They will tell you what they think about all the social connections you were just thrown into this morning. BUT, (and this is very important) they will all have different views! We have been programmed to believe this is “normal”. But how can it be? Don’t we all live in the same world? Don’t we all get up, wash our faces, put on our clothes? Get something to eat? Go out to school or go to our jobs? How can everyone see the exact same world, but, somehow, understand it so differently? Simple! Discoveries 3 and 4 finally start to explain this.
We don’t see the same world. In fact, the world you see is only the smallest fraction of the world I see. The shear complexity of life makes it impossible for any two people to go through life and have even similar experiences any more. The days when you were a shepherd, because your father was a shepherd, and his father was a shepherd, etc. are long gone.
The 2016 U.S. presidential election is coming up. Who are you going to pick? They will refer to the stuff you see on TV. Do you understand it? How will you even begin to make a sound choice?
OK. Let’s get your day going. Grab something to eat. Every food you touch has social messages all over its packaging. How many calories can you eat? Are you a little heavy? A little anorexic? Who is your weight even important to? Your boss? Your customers? The office people who are on some new diet craze? Your Facebook network? Your school mates? Did you pick a cereal with low enough mono and polyunsaturated fats? What about all those vitamins? Did making this food hurt the environment? Is the container recyclable? Is the manufacturer donating profits to a good cause? How do they treat their workers? Are they concerned about your health or your kids health? What are they trying to sell to the kids in the advertising on the box? You do understand all of this, right? ;-))
You finish up your cereal. What are you going to do with the bowl? Throw it in the dish washer? What about the water shortage? What about the additives in your detergent? OK. OK. Let’s get out the door. Kids in the car. Off to day care? Your daughter came home with flea bites yesterday. What social situation will this bring up when you talk to the teacher? This is the first time you’ve seen armed police at the school. Are you going to say anything? Back in the car. Head out to the highway. The highway has turned into a parking lot. Who’s fault is that? A message pops up on your dashboard screen — MAINTENANCE REQUIRED! Oh! Come on! Not now! What did I do to deserve this?
According to Joseph Tainter, in his book Collapse of Complex Societies, as societies become more complex, they face more problems. But attempting to solve the problem, they create more structure and make the social and coordinating parts of the society more complex. When society is thrown into a “problem” such as a job or energy shortage, for example, it responds by creating new committees, new studies, new reporting requirements, new laws. This keeps building new layers of bureaucracy and infrastructure to address the issues. This starts the spiral to collapse.
Tainter, identified examples of the rapid collapse of seventeen major human societies in history, including the Roman Empire. As Roman population increased, agricultural output could not keep up due to resource depletion. The Romans chose to solve this problem through war. They conquered their neighbors and took their resources in the form of wood, minerals, food stocks, slaves etc. But, as the Empire grew, the human and material cost of supporting infrastructure like roads, buildings, aqueducts, communications, armies, government, and the transport of goods over such long distances also grew. Eventually, this overhead cost became so high, and the range of the empire became so great, that any new problems like the invasion of the Huns, or crop failures due to droughts, could no longer be solved by conquering more territory. Essentially, the additional cost to grow exceeded the return they got from the growth.
Foreign armies repeatedly broke through weak outer defenses and attacked Rome directly, primarily through siege. They frequently did this by blockading the aqueducts to deny water to the Roman population. With water cut off, local food collapsed. Many people fled the city. Social unrest grew among those who stayed. Strict, authoritarian rule was implemented to maintain control by emperors like Constantine. But this only led to an ever greater strain on the population. The empire split in half. The western territory, which was poor, fragmented into small units. The eastern half, with its greater wealth, was slowly chipped apart by powerful Arab rivals.
In the 200 year “modern” period during which world complexity has exploded, we have already witnessed multiple collapses and contractions. These include the breakup of the Soviet Union; the contraction of world economic output dominance by India, and China; the relative contraction of western hemisphere economic output by Spain, France, Germany, England, Japan AND the U.S.; and the temporary strangle holds of western society by Germany in WWI and WWII. Each of these transitions was caused by the failure of the lead power to manage its growing complexity. Each failure caused a significant impact on the world. (*1)
How is the U.S. managing today? Tainter developed ways to measure complexity. It includes things like counting the number of different and specialized organizations it takes to provide coordination. I counted 666 U.S. agencies on a wiki list, surely enough to put the U.S. far into the troubled range. (*2)
Automation
Along with technology came AUTOMATION. We were told that automation would make our lives easier. Automation would do all the work and humans could just relax and enjoy life. It hasn’t happened. In fact, the more automation we create, rather than more leisure, the pace and enslavement to work somehow just seems to increase.
This is a tragic outcome because the dream could be true. Automation could have given us a paradise on earth. The reason, even with massive automation, that it hasn’t happened is because the Stone Age Brains of those leading our society are not capable of envisioning the SYSTEM details that could make it work.
What about citizens themselves? Can’t their individual efforts produce such a paradise? NO. Our Stone Age Brains have not evolved to understand large scale cooperation. In fact, most humans can’t even produce peace and happiness in their own families and neighborhoods. It’s not that they don’t want it. Of course they want it. But our brains have not evolved to understand how to do it in more than basic ways.
Failure to use systems methods and computers
Yes, I did say that “automation could have given us a paradise on earth.” What was missing? This is where discovery 5 comes in. Discovery 5: SYSTEM methods exist that can deal with the complexity of life.
By “System Methods” I mean very complex computer based mathematical models that can SIMULATE a portion of the world. These computer programs can estimate in seconds what will happen in the future over relatively long time periods. So, social ideas can be tested before they are put into practice. I’m sure most people reading this article already have experience with such models playing computer games like Sim City, Roller Coaster Tycoon or The SIMS.
There are many cases where use of these tools has produced outstanding results. The rehabilitation of Baltimore in the U.S. is one of them. The other is the computer program that was the basis for the Club of Rome study. In 1968, it was very primitive in relation to what can be done now. Yet, even thought harshly and falsely criticized, and suppressed by special interests and governments over the last part of the 20th century, its projections have yet again been shown to be pretty accurate. The last verification analysis of its projections vs. historical data done by professor Graham Turner at U. Melbourne found that,
“The Limits to Growth “standard run” (or business-as-usual, BAU) scenario produced about forty years ago aligns well with historical data that has been updated in this paper. The BAU scenario results in collapse of the global economy and environment (where standards of living fall at rates faster than they have historically risen due to disruption of normal economic functions), subsequently forcing population down. Although the modeled fall in population occurs after about 2030 — with death rates rising from 2020 onward, reversing contemporary trends — the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline.” (*3,*4,*5)
If such system methods do exist, and have been proven to work, why don’t governments use them? Simple: A. Because the Stone Age brains of our government leaders can not visualize how they work. Since politicians can’t visualize (understand) how they work, they don’t believe they can work, even in the face of many proofs; B. When the system models are run, they produce outcomes that special interests frequently don’t want to see. So the models are rejected to allow the special interests to try to force social outcomes to go their way. Of course, even when the actual outcomes do not go the way the special interests want — i.e. things go badly — because they control the financial institutions, the money can still be steered to increase the wealth of special interest leaders.
There is one more point I want to make related to society’s failure to use systems methods. There are only a small number of humans with the special abilities (A3) needed to design, build and operate the computer programs that model such complex systems. They have this ability just as virtuoso musicians have musical ability. Unfortunately, these A3s are not easily found. Most of the system people I know would be very resistant to scam the public using a system they built to help the public. So they quickly leave positions in organizations that are “ethically challenged”. Most of the companies high on the charts of the modern economy, that could afford to support the development of world system models fall into that category. Also, organizations with sound ethical standards can’t afford to hire system people to build “ethically sound” improved world models because governments and well-off businesses don’t want them — they want to suppress them.
There is another “tragic” side to this. Couldn’t the public force the use of such systems? Yes. Couldn’t the media and the press put pressure on government to use such systems? Yes. So, why don’t they do it? That’s the tragic, and somewhat sinister part of my discoveries.
As stated above, the media and the press are now “entertainment” companies. They are more likely to promote and sensationalize scoundrels like the Sopranos, or Bonny and Clyde, than the honest public servants and whistle blowers working to eliminate crime and corruption.
The public also plays a big role in this as well. Sigmund Freud, long ago, realized that human brains had multiple simultaneously active personalities. That is, in most people, good intentions and malicious intentions both occur. When we are confronted with a situation, both good intentions and malicious intentions will be triggered at the same time. The goal of “morality” has been to teach humans how to pick the “right” one. But making “morality” living and real for humans, has been a challenge since the dawn of humanity.
Our Stone Age brains have strong, “hard wired” inherited biological drives towards self survival that are hard to overcome. And while humans do have many strong positive drives, the struggle between the bright and dark side is always there. All the complexities discussed above make it harder for humans to make “right” decisions, because the principles of “right” and “wrong”, that we have always been told are so obvious and clear, are severely confused by the addition of so many options and complex interactions. (I’ll go into this in depth in the next part of this series.)
So it is not unusual to find many “good” people who have visions about having the wealth and power presented in the Sopranos, even knowing the evils involved. Their brain makes this possible by intermittently suppressing the evil concerns. But the hardships of modern complexity also push many people into desperation so that they overtly strive for the Soprano life style and are oblivious to any moral constraints. If the public was asked to support a major push to require the government to use system tools, they would probably reject it, because they couldn’t understand how it works. They would be afraid of it. Are there ways around this? Yes. And that will be the focus of one of the later parts of the series.
The Legacy Problem
Stone Age brains do not like change. Change brings risk. Sure, they talk about the latest fads, and buy the latest gadgets. But both fads and gadgets are sold with a lot of visualization. The latest clothes are displayed on attractive models, doing exciting things in frequently presented and exciting environments. If people, on the other hand, are asked to envision an economically sustainable “brave new world” based on graphs and numbers, they can’t do it. So they don’t do it.
Here’s a simple example that shows how strong the resistance can be. The U.S. resisted women’s right to vote, in the face of active campaigns for it, for over a hundred years before the authorizing vote occurred in 1920. Only 3 years before the authorization, in 1917, women were still arrested for picketing for voting rights in front of the White House. Almost 100 years has passed since then, but the equal rights amendment that would prohibit discrimination based on sex has still not been approved. Women are still not guaranteed equal pay for equal work.
(As a side note, the Stone Age brain is also a very hypocritical brain. For example despite the 100 year resistance to adopting the equal rights amendment, the U.S. government, and voters, when imposing sanctions on other countries, are hypocritical enough to list shortcomings in women’s rights in those other countries as key issues! (*6))
The LEGACY problem is due to deep human fears of change. These are ancient fears. They were already well understood by Plato. He observed that many prisoners who had been in dungeons a long time, upon being set free, did not want to come out. In essence, though the conditions in the dungeon they lived in were deplorable, they had learned to survive in them. When offered freedom, which they could not envision, they were presented with a dilemma: would this new thing being called “freedom”, be different from past traumas they had endured? Might the new “freedom”, for example, expose them to situations that could put them through severe tortures again? In other words, their conscious memories, and suppressed memories, were trading off the FEAR of repeating known past pain in exchange for trying out some new thing which they couldn’t even envision. All they knew about the new thing was someone else’s word for it.
The Legacy problem in the modern world means whole societies giving up huge investments in past systems, that they know do work, and in familiar forms, mostly in exchange for “promises” of greater things. Here are some examples.
- Give up the tried and true dial phone for a touch tone phone? I mean, you can’t see the dial go around. Phone service is still expensive. All you know is some time you push some buttons, hear some squeaks, and you might get the right number. But it is so easy to hit the wrong buttons and you never know who you’re going to get. Not likely.
- Give up that reliable “touch tone” phone, with a solid wire connection that even works when the power goes out for a portable phone with poor sound? It’s so easy to lose, battery always goes dead, doesn’t even work well in your house, and very expensive? Not likely.
- Give up a reliable horse, who knows how to take you home on its own for an automobile? — a loud machine that always breaks down, cost a lot of money, that you have to steer, don’t understand, and Reverend Brown said was a tool of the devil? Not likely.
- Give up the freedom to work your own farm, be your own boss, set your own hours, do things your own way? What for? A JOB? To slave away in a dark, noisy factory working for someone else? Not likely.
- Give up the religion your ancestors practiced for a thousand years just because you were conquered by some foreign soldiers? Not likely.
- Give up a huge system of paid-for giant computers, that work reliably, that the company has control over, for a rag-tag collection of personal desk top machines that are bug ridden, and always crashing from viruses? Not likely.
- Give up our tried and true communes, where everyone worked together for the same goal and helped each other out? Take our chances in the roulette wheel dog-eat-dog world of U.S. Capitalism where more people are in jail than all the other advanced countries added together? NOT LIKELY!
- Give up our wooden sail boats, which have served humanity since the Egyptians, for boats made of IRON! YOU HAVE TO BE CRAZY! Iron doesn’t even float!
- You want to do what? Revolt from the KING? So, who is supposed to make the decisions? Run the armies? Divide up the land? The world has had Kings, and Emperors and Pharos since the dawn of time. Jesus even came as the King of Kings. We’ve lived in these American colonies for over a hundred and fifty years already since the Pilgrims got here. Who, you say, is going to make the decisions? THE PEOPLE! You have to be out of your mind! You know what the “people” in the tavern down the street are like Friday night? NOT LIKELY!
- You want to do WHAT! Get in a contraption and go flying around in the sky like a bird? And what happens if the engine stops? HEY! Steam is the only way to go!
- WHAT? The earth is going to run out of fresh water? Give me a break. You know how much water there is on this planet?
- WHAT? The sea level is going to rise? I bet all the fish are going to disappear as well! It’s IMPOSSIBLE!
We always hear that the key to the future is “creativity”, exploring the unknown. But history tells us a very different story. Our biggest problem is removing the shackles that tie us to relics of the past — the LEGACY of our past. While new approaches are needed to move forward, there are usually a lot around. Our bigger problem is “being held back more by what we know than what we don’t know.” Mark Twain provided another twist on that old adage, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” These examples and quotes provide practical cases for understanding other tricks our Stone Age brain plays to support its denial of the collapse and the changes occurring that are causing it.
Summary for the conflict between the explosion of complexity and the limits of our Stone Age brains to keep us safe
The primary cause of world wide economic collapse is caused by the clash of high population with limited resources. The primary causes of humanity’s failure to see the collapse coming is the failure of leadership. The failure of leadership on all levels, to see the collapse coming, and to adequately respond to it, is caused by the explosion of complexity under control of a society dominated by Stone Age brains. Our limited brain ability cannot understand what is happening or how to fix it. The cause of the social collapse that will accompany the economic collapse, is not due to the external shocks which seem to batter society, but the inherent flaws that hundreds of years of incompetent leadership have built into almost every institution in society. While resource depletion, crop failure, environmental degradation, the breakdown of democracy, and endless war may be apparent causes of society’s collapse, these are only the symptoms of Stone Age brain limitations.
The next part of the series, Part 4 , The A3 Brain, Human Consciousness and the Crisis of Psychology, goes beyond the simple inability of human brains to understand complexity and discussed deep psychological barriers Stone Age brains have that block people from taking action.
*References
1. Economic strength of countries over time
2. List of U.S. federal agencies
3. New conformation of the Club of Rome study — the collapse is starting
4. 2012 Review of the Club of Rome study — Turner 2
5. Limits to growth predictions borne out
Images courtesy of flickr except Stone Age Man from FreeDigitalPhotos.net
