Chapter 9: The Challenges of Constant Becoming – The Exponential Gap

Image credit.

[Intro] [One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five] [Six] [Seven] [Eight]

Constant Becoming creates difficulties for most human beings for two reasons.  First of all, most people are disoriented in time and this brings stress and confusion to their lives. E. O. Wilson famously stated: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”  Did we think the “point of crisis” would never come?  What would it look like when it arrived if not the way the world is right now?

People are disoriented by the lack of a proper sense of time.  Most of us are emotionally paleolithic persons who have invested ourselves in a world we created that largely remains stuck in the middle ages.  As previously noted, psychologically speaking, most of us are living with a very old set of tools with which to address our fears and frustrations.  

Meanwhile, technology stands apart, moving faster than the slower pace of the late middle ages.   The unstoppable advance of technology enframes (see Chapter 7 and additional notes here) us in a future-shifted reality while heretofore all culture and societies have been accustomed to a past-shifted reality; i.e., ensconced in a sense that traditions are venerated and threats to traditions should not be tolerated.

Secondly, people simply have no idea how societal and cultural change works, particularly in the technology-driven world. Historically, change has happened slowly through time, following the physics of the arrow of time.  More recently (and occasionally in our past), change happens exponentially such as the adoption of a new music (the sudden emergence of rock) or fashion style (women wearing pants) which permeates culture over just a few years.  

Technology brings its own pace of change.  The iPhone did not exist in 2006.  Within just the last fifteen years it replaced the camera, the newspaper, and human interaction in social media exploded.  The pace of change today is technologically-driven.  Human beings do not control the pace of change.  Anything that is technologically possible becomes human behavior.  And anything technologically possible will be expressed by technology through time.  This is diametrically the opposite of the historic pace of change.  

As a result of rapid medical innovation, for example, transgenderism became an emergent aspect of human behavior, shattering all past persona psychological traditions.  The growth of transgenderism reflects a semi-exponential change within society.  At first, it is hypothetical and rare, then it becomes more widespread.  As it spreads, hardwired psychological forces are pre-encoded to see it as a threat and resist the spread.  There is a struggle.  Sometimes there are no further breakthroughs and encoded brains win the day.  Other times, for randomly karmic reasons, there is another breakthrough pulse and the spread turns into real growth within culture.  

Slow change usually happens in pulses of change with periods of stability in between.  Within the last 10 – 12 years transgenderism has exploded into the mainstream consciousness like never before.  Now we seem to have reached the limit of the initial pulse and will either have a period of little change or even regression.  If the regression goes back to the previous “norm” (see Wilber in next chapter) the pulse fails and hardbrains prevail.  This is the basic dynamics of cultural change.

If enough successive breakthrough pulses occur through time, the change achieves majority adoption and becomes commonplace.  Transgenderism is merely a recent form of this ancient process.  Consider homosexuality, sexism, racism, or various forms of abuse.  All still meet their challenges today but are, by and large, greatly reduced compared with our past, proving that, through time, brains rewire no matter how hardwired they are due to their inherent neuroplasticity.

Now consider the printing press, steam engines, telephones, automobiles, electricity, airplanes, television, and computers.  All of these caused a transcendental rewiring of everyone's brains because they literally changed the world we were living in.  The accumulation of them through time feed off each other to manifest uniquely symbiotic karma.  The greater the change, the greater the rewiring.  The difference is that these changes are the direct result of technology itself whereas the previous set of changes are the direct result of humanity itself.  

Azeem Azhar calls this difference between historical incremental psychological change based upon medieval institutions and the pace of exponential technological change “the Exponential Gap.”  He tells us that the pace of technological change is being nurtured by a special relationship of three forces.  “Exponential technologies are being driven by three mutually reinforcing factors – the transformative power of learning by doing, the increasing interaction and combination of new technologies, and the emergence of new networks of information and trade.” (2021, pp. 52 – 53)  This is the karma of the Exponential Gap.

Azhar could very well be diagramming how karma works in the human society in this statement:  “We are no longer just living in a period of exponential technologies – but in a time when these technologies and their effects are a defining force in our society.  Like previous eras, the changes to our society are driven by the capabilities of new tech.  But in recent years, these technologies have been developing at an unprecedented rate – more than 10 percent every year.  As they improve, they combine and recombine, creating more and more possibilities.  And they spill over into every area of our lives, rewiring our approach to business, work, politics – even our sense of self.” (page 56)

“On the one hand, there are technologies that develop at an exponential pace – and the companies, institutions, and communities that adapt to or harness those developments.  On the other hand, there are the ideas and norms of the old world.  The companies, institutions, and communities that can only adapt at an incremental pace.  These get left behind – and fast.” (page 60)  “Put these two forces – the inherent difficulty of making predictions in the Exponential Age, and the inherent slowness of institutional change – and you have the makings of the exponential gap.” (page 81)

Azhar believes “putting the brakes on the development of technologies is hard to justify.  A preferable option is to better prepare for a period of accelerating technologies.  We can close the gap by making the lower line rise faster.  That means equipping our social institutions – our government, companies, and cultural norms – to adapt at pace […] we will need radical rethinking to prevent the exponential gap from eroding the fabric of our society.” (page 84)

Unfortunately, Azhar offers few solutions to the prescient problem he so accurately envisions.  It seems we are destined to undergo a destabilizing period that is, in fact, the same crisis E.O. Wilson saw coming.  “Exponential technologies take our apparently flattened two-dimensional world and, like a pop-up map, make valleys and peaks suddenly visible.  And this is the terrain that our current institutional arrangements, from our approach to trade to how we think about local governance, are ill-equipped to deal with. […] tensions mount between urban and rural areas, it seems plausible that wars between and within countries will become more common.” (page 190)

More specifically, Azhar quotes sociologist Zeynep Tufekei: “'YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century.' And she could well be right.  A large-scale study of YouTube analyzed more than 330,000 users consistently migrate from milder to more extreme content.  Users who consume extreme content used to consume milder videos – but eventually found themselves following 'radicalization pathways' that took them to ever more hardcore sections of the internet.  At their most extreme, these pathways can lead people to violence.” (page 237) 

Consider the increase in mass shootings, the recent rise in the ranks of radical groups, both leftist and alt-right. Consider the January 6 riot upon the US Capitol.  The rise in political violence.  In 2022, pro-Life people were 22 times more likely to experience violence in the US than anti-abortionists.  This basic anger happens regardless of your politics.  Those who feel change is being repressed or going backwards are highly likely to be violent in spite of their “liberal” politics.  As I state in Chapter 3, the rage has nothing to do with politics.  On the “conservative” side, the pace of change hastens with no discernible orientation, in absence of not knowing what will come next, many of us feel anxiety and anger at the previously unfathomable reality that emerges.    

The Guardian recently reported: “In January 2022, 34% of Americans surveyed said that it was sometimes OK to use violence against the government. Seven months later, more than 40% said that they believed civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. Two years ago, no one was talking about a second American civil war. Today it is common.”  

Why the sudden build up?  It is the Exponential Gap itself.  Technology is presenting Americans with freaky questions and choices and probably most of them would like that aspect of their lives to stop.  Meanwhile, the rest mostly embrace the strange questions and choice.  They are pioneers of the Modern.

Yuval Noah Harari makes an interesting point when he states that for the first time in human history we have no idea what the employment market will look like in 20 - 30 years.  This uncertainty is both a reflection of the pace of change and the disorientation that enables harmful behavior of those who feel the most threatened by change. 

We are (and have been since the turn of the century) in the beginning stages of more violent times.  Abated by technology as Azhar claims (including semi-automatic gun tech) but also because of the disorientation inherent in the Exponential Gap itself.  In this way, Constant Becoming, for all its liberating brilliance, is an enormous threat to the psychology of most human beings.  

In fact, it poses multiple threats simultaneously.  Because the Being of Constant Becoming is not a singularity like a disease or some new behavior others deem sinful.  Rather, it is a multiplicity of diverse threats.  Those with paleo-emotions and medieval behavioral patterns are right to react strongly toward such becoming.  It is instinctual even if none of them are aware of the precise reasons for their anger and fear.  To expect them to not lash out would be rather naive actually.  

Nevertheless, there is no solution for their anger and fear.  They can lash out but they do not understand their situation.  For them it is all about religion or culture wars or salvation from this evil violent world.  So it is like a blind person punching everywhere in an empty room he believes is filled with objects.  Violence is to be expected but it won't accomplish anything.  Because the violence will be directed at everything except technological change itself.  No one will go to war against the basis for their convenience and consumption.

This is but one side of the violence and disruption that Constant Becoming will cause.  On the other hand, as I mentioned above, there is and will continue to be expressions of anger and aggression exhibited by those who welcome the future but feel repressed or held back by authoritarian traditions.  What was until recently commonplace will become oppressive and induce a aggressive reaction.   

Consider the transgender movement's assertive emergence.  Consider the Iranian revolt led largely by Generation Z against that society's regime in 2022.  These are mere breakthrough moments.  They are probably not, by themselves, transformational, but they take us further down the road to transformation that Azhar sees as necessary to shrink the gap.

Of course, these reactions are not guaranteed to succeed.  It took centuries to end slavery (and it still exists in some parts of the world).  Homosexuality is far from recognized as OK but is more tolerated now than ever before.  Change is not linear.  It is a mix of pulse and push-back.  Generation Z will not transform Iranian society all at once.  But over the next 20 – 30 years Iran will secularize.  The mullah traditions are doomed as are all customs that resist and repress the consequences of the Exponential Age  – the coming of the Modern.

The disruption of Constant Becoming will make many people violent.  It already has because it has already been here longer than we know.  Everything became future-shifted somewhere around the time America dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese civilians.  No one could stop the human use of the atomic bomb once it was technologically possible.  Enframing means that whatever becomes technologically possible intrinsically becomes human behavior.  

Since then we have seen the development of the computer, television, nuclear power, organ transplants, psychology, surveillance, pharmaceuticals, spaceflight, smartphones, nanobots and augmented reality.  All of this happened within a few decades, in the span of a single generation.  An unprecedented pace.  Most human beings do not have the psychological tools with which deal with that much change that fast.  Few of our medieval behaviors and beliefs apply anymore.

The shocking thing is that this is not a choice.  We can't choose to not be in a world of Constant Becoming.  The Modern is just going to keep accelerating with new stuff few people can even conceive of today; stuff that generations Z and Alpha are totally going to absorb but will seem strange to most of the rest of us.  We are already future-shifted.  Constant Becoming is what is inevitably taking place.  The time between the iPhone and metaverse is going to be about 30 years, roughly the same as the iPhone and the PC.  

There was a lot of the future thrown into the past three decades.  There will be even more of it happening in the next 30.  That is just a fact.  Since it is a future fact I have to call it a hypothesis, I suppose.  Those blowing a whistle that we should slow down and look in the rear-view mirror and remember the old ways and use the same solutions we have always relied upon are going to replaced by newborn generations totally okay with everything about the future.  That, too, is a fact (hypothetically).

Generations Z and Alpha are going to be even more illiberal than any recent generation.  They will less tolerant of the beliefs of others that they see as threats.  They don't see multiculturalism and gender fluidity as threatening.  Most embrace these qualities.  Another distinctive quality of how they react toward mass shootings.  They are going to devalue individual rights to the extent that those rights enable the perpetual mass killing of unarmed civilians, especially children.  Ultimately, they will cancel at least some guns.  It is only a matter of them growing and voting the world that way.  They are ready to embrace the pace of change and their (illiberal) frustration and anger will come from those roadblocks previous solutions try to prop up against change.

In other words, if you think we have culture wars now, you ain't seen nothing yet.  One side seeks (re)application of old ways and primitive psychological tools toward the novel circumstances.  The other seeks to bring forth the Modern, though they don't see it that way.  The future pushback will be equal to any challenge brought forth by beliefs and behaviors that are thousands of years old.  And the resulting clash, both ideological and physical, will transform human civilization.  It is the coming of the Ubermensch, the first generation of humans beyond good and evil.