Next Big Thing is Human Mind
We are witnesses to an unprecedented emergence of problems with human psychology. And yet it has not brought along revaluation of the priorities within the society.
We tend to see the next “Big Thing” concept as an area where investments would improve people’s lives the most. Undoubtedly, at a certain level, such understanding has brought us success. However, while new solutions have benefited people materially, psychological problems are becoming increasingly more acute.
Each such breakthrough, which has been identified as a Big Thing, has revealed and will reveal overlooked aspects in the human mind's depths. Discovery and utilization of the new source of energy — nuclear energy — resulted in the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, in turn, threw a spotlight on the psychological problem of decision-makers: the lack of empathy of the US leadership (and, to some extent, the people) towards the residents of these cities. The source of the problem was not nuclear energy, but the decision to use it for making a nuclear bomb with the sole objective — destruction — in mind. The latter, however, is a topic related to psychology, not technology.
Another good example is the Internet that, in terms of technology, is indeed a Big Thing. Yet it is the internet that has revealed such undercurrents that had thus far stayed hidden in the recesses of the human mind — the subconsciousness. We have started to understand the problem's actual magnitude but often fail to pin down the problem. The problem is not the Internet or the censoring of it. Instead, it lies in users' subconsciousness and has now revealed itself for all to see in blogs, (false) news, social media, and comment sections. It is indeed the uncensored or over-censored Internet that helps us to understand the magnitude of the problem.
The Internet has made us aware that domestic violence, paedophilia, cancel culture, and intolerance is much bigger issues than we thought. We are becoming increasingly aware that what happened in concentration camps or even mass tortures and rapes are not mistakes borne from ignorance but something irrational that requires open-minded investigation of the human psyche to be understood. The cause of our problems is (almost) always in the psyche, and until we keep ignoring it, we seem to be combating a multi-headed dragon. Each time we cut off one head (solve a technical problem), we face two new ones.
One of the gravest problems of humankind is violence. Earlier it used to manifest itself mostly at the physical level, particularly in the form of wars. Thanks to human development, which has mostly occurred by overcoming individual and collective awareness and psychic restrictions, the share of physical violence have dropped and yielded space to psychological (in particular, emotional and mental, but also ideological) violence.
War, crime, alcoholism, suicides, road rage, domestic violence, attention disorders, paranoia, etc. all have their psyche roots. The majority of doctors agree that physical ailments often have psychical causes. Even a bone fracture or a knife wound could be (and often is) has a psychic cause resulting from a person's inappropriate behavior.
The reason why over the last 75 years, wars have become drastically less frequent and smaller in scale, increasing our material well-being, is not so much a consequence of our technological development, but rather the consequence of the psychological development of humans (the humankind). Although humans are biological beings at the physical level, they are rather more psychological beings in terms of life experience. This means that it is only when our material needs have been satisfied that our psychological needs manifest themselves. This is what is illustrated by the Maslow pyramid — the lower needs always overshadow the higher needs — the meaning of life or public recognition loses their actuality when we are about to drown or dying of hunger.
If, in the context of the above, one would want to know what could constitute the next Big Thing, the area where investments could produce the best performance for the society, then, in my opinion, it would be the human mind. For physical health, the once Big Thing was the discovery of bacteria. Without this discovery, the world would not be what it is today, in a good sense.
To use this analogy: it is not incorrect to say that, in the same way that our body is inhabited by a vast number of (biological) bacteria, the human psyche is also polluted by psychological “bacteria”. Obviously, until we ignore this (at the mainstream level), it will be difficult for us to change the situation: we cannot fight an enemy whose existence we do not accept.
However, at the level of society and the state, our spending in this area is so minuscule, one could even say non-existent. The cost of this is a fast pile-up of psychological problems, in western society in particular, because this is where material well-being has been achieved.
There is a real danger that individuals' inability to fully participate in society's life due to psychological limitations could lead to the snowball effect. If a person who is incapable of taking care of themselves becomes a parent, then the problem will grow rapidly because “broken people” produce more people of their own kind. Psychological problems tend to pass from parents to children unless this cycle gets broken. If paedophilia is not unmasked and is given the right to work with children, the consequences for the children and society could be dire. And no technology (except for a psychological kind) can remedy this situation.
When I started writing this text, I searched the Internet for the next big thing. I got the impression that the issue was dominated by creating a quantum computer and the race for it. Investments in this area are already significant — particularly in China. But the motivation is questionable. The focus is on the unlimited decryption power on the Internet. From a paranoid point of view, whoever is the first to obtain this capability can easily break open (encrypted) messages and networks of all others. This is similar to the past nuclear arms race that was won by the United States. The consequences have been discussed above.
I have no idea how this race now ends. Still, it is likely that at some future point in time, one country will obtain the capability to “crash the world,” but after some more time, the arms race in the field of quantum computers will reach a parity level, and the fight will move to the next area.
I offered the last example for the very reason of displaying the pattern — it is indeed important to tackle external problems, but whether the new technology serves or destroys us depends only on our internal parameters — the human mind.
I am writing this piece without any illusions of immediate change. Such changes cannot be achieved merely on command. We need to have public discussions about the fundamental question — whether a human being is more a biological or a psychological being? When we are prepared to accept that our psychology is not, in general, defined by our biology, then we could produce the willingness at the state level to change priorities and invest in areas where productivity could surpass the productivity of earlier infrastructure investments 10 or even 100 times. We all have heard many times that investments in people are generally more cost-effective than investments in things.
And really, while even environmental problems stem from greed generated by the human psyche, would it not be appropriate to ask:
“Why couldn’t the next Big Thing be the human mind?”
Originally published at https://www.argoskracht.com on September 28, 2020.
