Has humanity peaked?

I’ve been considering this for a long time, based on an unusual starting point. I got into Eastern philosophy and religions back in the early 90s, and it wasn’t a part of my interests but that odd subject of “the age of Aquarius” came up, considering if humanity could experience cyclic themes of trending patterns.

There probably isn’t just one set of ideas out there about such long predicted cycles, based on astrology and whatever else. One version I’ve encountered claimed that people would experience technological change, then communication and information related change (in the 20th century), and finally an assimilation phase after, which we are supposed to be in the early start of now. Of course, it feels more like the end of the world now, not as if it’s all coming together, about to make sense.

I focused most on Buddhism, and it’s a bit aggressive to make this claim but I get what it’s about the change in personal perspective it makes possible, and some of the range of practices that enable that. It’s a stretch to say that it’s happening on any scale whatsoever, that I’ve noticed that almost any others have similar experiences. Even in “hippie cultures” or among self-proclaimed guru types true deeper understanding of human experience seems just as universally uncommon as among anyone else. But it wouldn’t take that many people with significantly different experiences to serve as a starting point, and they are out there, just not many of them.

I don’t know how any such long cycles are supposed to work about ending violence from wars, or seemingly catastrophic current influence from the accumulation of wealth by a limited few. Related to that theme of two or three asset holding interests controlling a significant amount of international wealth, Black Rock and Vanguard, it is possible that if that accumulated power became aligned with humanity’s best interest, instead of now seemingly opposing it, things could change quickly. Climate change resolution isn’t happening because of oil interest influence, and world peace isn’t evolving largely related to the monetary benefit from arms manufacturing and the business of war, but those things could change.

I studied cycles of history once in a philosophy graduate class, a subject my professor didn’t want me to look into since it had been “discredited” for drawing on an invalid form of analysis. The most recent “philosophy of history” trend involved only two American proponents at the beginning of the 20th century, if I remember right, with the earlier phase involving 12th-century Islamic thinkers (give or take a century). The idea that the masses will overthrow leaders disconnected from common interest links to this. That certainly did happen in places like France and Russia, but I’m not sure that we can repeat that pattern now.

The problem with the analysis I mentioned wasn’t that the historical patterns weren’t universal or repeating, cycles of ascension and decline in societies, it was that people couldn’t really define what a society even was enough, and in looking for expected patterns in past events they probably extracted what they hoped to find by ignoring a lot more trends and information than they considered. It’s like when you break up with your romantic partner and look back and see that one thing that didn’t work out, one cause when it all related to a set of complex patterns and inputs.

The optimist in me thinks that it’s all just about to turn around. My personal experience in this world points towards the opposite, and it’s hard to miss that things seem to be getting worse instead of better, related to very broad and important issues like distribution of wealth and standards of living. Materialism and economic focus themselves have become mankind’s burdens, instead of the path to universal betterment these were always seen to be. The average American doesn’t need to own to more stuff, or better electronics, or to eat better, and the rest of the world isn’t so different. It’s almost comical how Americans restricting physical activity and labour has been such an important part of widespread health decline; walking more places would be the most positive change most could experience, or maybe even doing laundry by hand could be.

The well-being of all mankind isn’t much of a catchy goal, is it? Even if it would turn out to be possible to uncouple that from people everywhere owning more stuff, eating different kinds of foods, or becoming more sedentary. Some unifying external cause might make the difference (back to that theme of unwarranted optimism). Right on schedule climate change looms as a problem we all need to face, and a pandemic certainly unified the experience of a different significant problem in a novel way. Climate change impact will become dire within this century, which seems like a long time given that we’ve got a human lifespan left in it, but on the historical scale that’s not long.