Humanity has been on an unambiguous
upward slope of expanding mind and psyche forever. Although there have been
minor setbacks in the dark ages, humans have always been marching forward. Now
there are good reasons to doubt if this will continue. Half the world
population is now governed by charlatans and autocrats, some fraudulent
and others heartless. There have been telltale signs of a bifurcating world,
based on knowledge and empathy. There are now alternative universes, not the
kind physicists think about, but simultaneous spaces with different
information content existing in the same time coordinate. It appears that we
are fast approaching a fork on the road and the selection of this binary choice
could possibly seal the fate of humanity.
From dynamite to nuclear bombs, the inventors always lamented of their own accomplishments. There are good reasons for it. In a world of peaceful human beings, less than 0.000001% could substantially change the dreams and hopes of the rest. Some use weapons and others words to hurt the rest using the pulpit they have been granted. Humans remain to be in a level 0 society, still lacking a holistic understanding of what connects them together and their own irrelevance in a universe of inexplicable complexity. They seem to be saddled with a badly designed organ with high computing power but little capability in seeing and understanding the big picture. They have not been here before. For most of their history, they basked in uniformity - in color, ignorance, knowledge and capability. In the last few hundred years, they have been forced to intermingle but they still have to use hardware and operating systems designed for the past. Masking this with fancy applications has not been successful for a small percentage of the population.
It looks bleak. Educators may want to take note, millennials seem to have it, but the issue is they that may not have a chance.