Overcoming the Great Filter

I’m on the cusp of the Millenial generation, born in 1982. I’m almost part of generation X. In 2008, I graduated into the Great Recession. For me, this was a very challenging time as I had lots of debt. During the past few years I’ve worked off my debt. To do so, I got a public sector job. I found that very few people in my field are under the age of 30. During this time, I’ve thought a lot about today, challenges, and the future.

We are in a once-in-a-lifetime situation. Demographics go in cycles where births increase which create spending waves a few decades later. The Boomers were like a tsunami, very condensed in their births and spending patterns. The Millenials are more like a wide and shallow wave. (This is why it’s not correct to say Millenials are the biggest generation.) We have more in common with our great grandparents and grandparents who lived through the Great Depression. Our once in-a-lifetime-experience is watching the Boomers try to mitigate a natural flux.

We are facing what could be the Great Filter. In combination with elements like climate change, over-population and war; things could turn out badly. We have one chance to overcome our economic problems so that we can change our focus to what really matters. This is why Millenials are so driven by passion. What we do matters than ever before.

The leaders of today, with a few exceptions, are out of ideas. They don’t see the big picture. They don’t have a vision for moving to a new society that can overcome these challenges. We need new ideas, like the ones created during the Enlightenment, to foster a new society.

The solution is to embrace risk in the face of economic uncertainty. By embracing innovation at the cost of traditional job security Millenials are safe from the worst of the bust. The “too big to fail” mentality is holding back the world. We need things to fail so that more innovation can emerge.

To overcome what seems like impossible challenges we will need:

• free, or nearly free energy
• a robotic workforce
• technocracy rather than democracy, or some “future society” model
• simulation-based government policies
• a new legal super-structure that partly dismantles existing structures in the political economy

These are just a few ideas. We must make this happen. We need drastic solutions to greater challenges than ever before.