I wonder if it's safe to say that we as a species have attained our peak and decline has set in.
This is from a comment (the full comment is linked) on a recent article I wrote on self-improvement and social degradation. Wellbeing has become increasingly important to me of the last decade or so, as I have personally experienced a decline in myself and many of the people I observe around me, whether they be family, friends, or strangers on the street. Across pretty much all the individual areas, I believe we have on average got worse as a whole, which is what spawned the comment above.
I don't think we have reached our peak.
However.....
we might have reached our peak doing what we have been doing, and now doing the same thing is leading to our decline down the other side of the mountain. Because while there have been enormous advances in the last few hundred years of industrialisation that has led to all kinds of improvement tools, processes and conditions, the laws of economics have shifted the focus from human improvement to profit maximisation. This has ramped up significantly in the last fifty years with the debt funding that is lining pockets without consideration of the cost on humanity the products and services are having.
A spider spins its web, sits upon the threads and waits until a hapless insect gets caught somewhere upon it. As the insect struggles, it sends vibrations through the strands that the spider picks up and then hunts down its prey for lunch. What might be interesting for some to consider, is that while the spider sets the trap, it isn't influenced by the insect, it is influenced by the vibrations. Lightly touch the web with a stick, and the spider will respond similarly.
What we have to remember, is that we are like the spider in some way, where we are connected to the strands and even if we don't know it, we are getting influenced by the vibrations of experience. This means that no matter who you are, you too are influenced by other people in some way. Even a hermit living in the forest, is affected by the quality of the air he breathes, and that is influenced by others.
The way most of us live life has changed significantly in the last twenty years, where the somewhat novelty of the internet has turned into a compulsory part of our daily lives. This has changed everything about us as an individual to some degree and all of our behaviours also, with pretty much nothing untouched. The way kids behave, parents behave, teachers, workers, doctors - everyone. It isn't just how we interact with the internet itself, but it is how the internet has influenced the way we think and do, whether we are on social media, or looking up diy content, or using generative-AI to create for us. Everything has changed.
However, what hasn't changed is the economic metric that was once responsible for advancing us, where profit could be made from improvement. In the past, that improvement was for the improvement of humanity, and even though it led to a lot of bad side-effects like pollution that was not well-understood at the time, the general direction was that in order to make money, a company had to help people. But over the last fifty years, the general "money=wellbeing" algorithm shifted to a profit for shareholder model. This meant that as long as a small group of people were benefiting, it doesn't matter what the cost is to the entire group. So on average we can get worse, so a few can profit.
Everyone does the best with what they have.
But give "what they have" to another person with a different mindset, different skills, and different thoughts, and the same collateral could do a lot more. And this is the problem we are facing as a global society now, because while we were advancing humanity, because we haven't shifted our mindset, focus and what we do, the same actions are now costing us wellbeing. Many think that if only their country was wealthier, things would be okay, because they still believe that money = wellbeing. But it does not anymore, because money can be made in ways that are counterproductive to our health and wellbeing.
Social media is a good example, as the uptake has been enormous and it has become a diverse ecosystem of apps and content that grab the attention of users and keep them transfixed. There has been transformation, but it has been in a largely negative direction, with the majority of users worse off for the time they spend scrolling, and even those who financially benefit, struggling with their mental health and social behaviours, many knowingly lying in order to get the attention they need to keep getting paid. With all the potential it may have, we are not better for it in its current form.
And this is the case for most of industry today, where companies are able to make large amounts of money, without having to provide something that is beneficial to our wellbeing. In fact, the things that are beneficial, generally struggle in a market that has been able to position desire satisfaction as the core value of the consumer. And while everyone wants to be strong, healthy individuals, we are hard-wired to desire the path of least resistance, the foods that taste good, and spend our time doing nothing, instead of something.
I don't believe humanity has reached its peak by a long shot, but if we are going to keep doing what we have been doing into the foreseeable future, we are just going to keep degrading as a species, and as individuals. We are going to get worse, instead of better, on average. And even if an individual bucks the trend and is able to make themselves better, just like that spider influenced by the vibrations, they too are going to find themselves shifting to the vibrations of society and the communities in which they live.
We all have to change.
At least, the majority of us have to change, and that change has to be one that breaks the current model of wealth for a few at any cost, because that is what is costing us. Shareholder wealth as a metric is fine, as long as in order to create wealth it means having to do something that improves humanity. Not improves how people feel day to ay, but actually advances us sustainably into the future in ways that matter. Profit shouldn't be able to be made by reducing our capabilities as humans, it should be made by enhancing and empowering them. And to do this, we need to understand what humans actually need to have wellbeing.
Again, looking at my simple model of body, mind, emotion, and social as representative of us as a whole, we have to consider what each component requires in order to function fully and improve over time. Good nutrition and movement. Quality content and opportunity to learn and apply what is known. Emotional maturity and management that understands the difference between need and want, and has the patience to develop. And communities of people who can enable and assist personal growth for the purpose of human advancement, which means social participation.
All of industry should be providing clear, unambiguous products and services with these goals at their core, and any business that offers the things that harm these, should struggle in the market. This is a shift away from the current offering though, which targets our vices instead of improving us. Yet, for most to understand this, they would need to explore the whys all along the supply chain to see how the majority of industry is in service to wealth maximisation at the cost of human advancement.
We have plenty of resources to do better.
It is a fallacy that we are overpopulated or don't have enough resources to improve humanity. It is just that with the way we do things, we are unable to improve. We have to do differently with what we have, not reduce the number of people so we can keep doing what we have been doing up until now. Yet most people seemingly don't recognise this, because most of us have been trained to support what we know, what we do, what we have always done. We are conditioned to support the status quo, which is a process of maximisation of shareholder wealth at any cost to humanity.
We are far from the peak of human existence.
But we are heading down into the valley.
Taraz
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