Somewhere I seem to remember a quote from Einstein to the effect that our technological development has outstripped our emotional maturity. I can't find it, if so, but I did find this by him, which expresses a similar idea assuming that out humanity is something we don't reach to our potential:
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
I thought of this because I have been thinking about the drag on social evolution imposed on us by the conservative mind set, the disinterest in and even fear of novelty and change.
If you read Kurzweil and his theory of coming singularity you will have been presented that the rate of change is accelerating exponentially.
I want to posit a theory that the conservative mind set and the rate of societal change are creating an impending crisis, one that even liberals will be challenged by.
Over the course of human history our cultural evolution, punctuated and at time regressive as it may be, has changed very slowly. Just one example is how long it had taken to change race relations nationally. Still a work in progress, as I see it.
As the rate of the accumulation of information and knowledge doubles more and more rapidly, the capacity to adapt to it becomes more and more pressing.
It is no wonder, I think, that the conservative brains among us as a result are starting to show signs of cracking. They can't stop or slow down the rate of change and they are becoming more and more terrified of an unknown novel future as a result. They have begun to throw themselves under the bus in an attempt to stop it via carnage. And the rate of change has become so rapid that folk who used to be moderately liberal are also feeling the stress.
But the technological advances that result from change bring with them tremendous economic benefits and in many ways increased quality of life, and conservative reaction increasingly threatens it. The conservatives among us are becoming increasingly anti-science and anti-intellectual.
If this is a reasonable explanation of the threat we face from our reluctance to evolve socially to change, what can be done about it.
Is there any way we can provide any sense that the future might be safe? How do you see the future. The situation I have presented here is that if the conservative mind set, the demand for stasis prevails, it will greatly decrease our capacity to deal with what the future will without any doubt bring. The thing that I can also see is another thing Einstein said. He didn't know what weapons world war 111 would be fought with but the one after would be fought with sticks and stones. That might just be a conservatives dream.
