Understanding the World’s Most Fundamental Problems
The key to a sensible roadmap for navigating the 21st century.
Our story begins about 300 millennia ago when Homo sapiens started roaming the African plains. We roamed, hunted, and gathered diligently for the next 290 millennia before civilization finally dawned with the discovery that agricultural settlements offer a more convenient solution.
By the time our numbers crossed 1 billion in the 19th century, most of us were still toiling away, scraping our existence from the earth with crude tools and animal power. But then, everything changed.
We had discovered the power of fossil fuels — a thermodynamic cheat code that gave us instant access to half a billion years of stored sunlight. Soon, we could replace our horses with machines stronger than scores of horses. Driving these tireless machines before us, we built a world of unimaginable abundance unimaginably quickly. In the last century alone, our numbers quadrupled, and our economic output exploded by a staggering 3300%.
But our meteoric rise came with a serious problem: The rate at which we transformed our environment over the last 0.1% of our existence far exceeds our natural pace of evolutionary adaptation. As a result, we now find ourselves in a brave new world utterly foreign to our evolved natures.
This fundamental mismatch gives rise to three foundational problems that underpin all the trouble our global civilization faces today:
- Counterproductive natural inclinations: Acting on the impulses that served us well over the first 99.9% of human history creates serious problems in our totally transformed modern environment.
- Ill-timed systemic weakening: Sudden material abundance has stripped too many individuals and governments of the critical characteristics of strength necessary to surmount the structural challenges before us.
- Complexity spiraling beyond our control. Our naturally evolved linear thinking keeps introducing greater complexity in its efforts to address the complex non-linear problems of our modern civilization.
Understanding these three fundamental problems is key to successfully navigating the 21st century. Let’s take a closer look.
1. Chasing Instant Pleasure, Dodging Potential Pain
Survival was a massive challenge over the first 99.9% of our existence. Hence, we evolved powerful instincts to motivate us to rise to this challenge day after day.
In today’s environment of material abundance, the hormonal responses behind these instinctive drives have become badly outdated, but their influence over our actions remains as strong as ever. The following subsections will analyze the implications of this unfortunate mismatch.
The perpetual pursuit of endorphins
Over multiple millennia, Homo sapiens evolved many pleasurable hormonal responses to reinforce behaviors that helped us carve out a living in a world of scarcity. The best-known class of these motivating hormones is called endorphins. Here are the three most basic endorphin triggers:
- Energy- and protein-rich food (and the physical exercise previously involved in getting hold of it). Over millennia of hunting, gathering, and primitive farming, securing our daily meal was a truly daunting task that required huge swathes of motivation to complete.
- Procreation and raising children. The average human lifespan languished below 30 years for 99.9% of our history, largely because half of all children died. Thus, the painful process of carrying, delivering, raising, and losing many children had to be incentivized by lavish hormonal rewards.
- Acceptance by the tribe. Humans are some of the most naturally defenseless mammals in existence. Without advanced cooperative behavior, we would never have survived. But communal life demands great individual sacrifice, encouraged by large hormonal incentives.
Our totally transformed modern civilization has eradicated the need for most of these powerful chemical drives, but it will take centuries for evolution to rectify this imbalance. The results are obvious:
- A global obesity epidemic with vast costs in terms of physical/mental health and productivity.
- Massive overpopulation (a 10x population explosion over the last 0.1% of history) and an increasingly dysfunctional relationship with sex.
- An enormously wasteful desire to project our status (keeping up with the Joneses) and a mental-health-destroying pursuit of “likes.”
Far from addressing these fundamental mismatches between our evolved instincts and our modern environment, our economy has evolved to augment them at every opportunity. Companies continuously chase profitability by making foods as addictive as possible (regardless of health), exploiting sex at every turn (regardless of moral decay), aggressively marketing expensive status symbols (regardless of their environmental impact and poor correlation with happiness), and redirecting their ads to exploit the billions of minds chasing likes and other endorphin hits online.
The tiger in the bushes
On the other side of the spectrum, humans experience a strong and uncomfortable fear response to any potential danger (“potential” being the keyword). The evolutionary logic is simple:
- Homo sapiens must undergo a very long and costly developmental cycle before reaching reproductive age and becoming useful to the tribe.
- There are myriad threats (disease, wild animals, other tribes, dissenting tribe members, accidents) that can instantly destroy all this investment.
- Hence, the survival of our species demands that any potentially serious threat, no matter how unlikely, should be avoided if possible.
The “tiger in the bushes” analogy offers a clearer understanding. Picture your hunter-gatherer ancestor walking through the wilderness and hearing a rustling in some nearby bushes. Sure, 99.9% of the time, it will just be something harmless like the wind or a little field mouse, but in the other 0.1% of cases, it will be a saber-toothed tiger waiting to leap out and devour anyone who approaches. Hence, we evolved strong instincts to avoid all rustling bushes on the tiny chance that they could contain tigers.
Which brings us to the core problem: Our complex modern society has vastly decreased the number of tigers but equally vastly increased the number of rustling bushes. Here are the three most damaging effects:
- Human potential is greatly curtailed by irrational fears that keep us in our comfort zone, pampered by frequent endorphin hits offered by the instant pleasure industry (Problem #2).
- Policy and culture get shaped by those with the lowest fear response instead of those with the greatest aptitude (overconfidence, charisma, and narcissism beat competence in leadership).
- The fear-based global mental health crisis is augmented by loneliness and lack of self-actualization caused by the first point and multiple large and diffuse threats beyond individual control caused by the second.
Again, our society reinforces these problems at every turn. Cheap escapes into safe and numbing comfort are ubiquitously and effortlessly available, social media massively increases the reach of the loudest and most reckless while drowning out quiet and sensible voices, and legacy media outlets have long since learned that sensationalized fear sells like hotcakes.
When self-centered beings meet collective problems
The fundamental mismatch between our evolved natures and our current environment not only creates serious problems; it also hampers our ability to solve those problems. Specifically, our instincts promote the survival and welfare of the individual (and their family), whereas today’s major problems require global, collectivist solutions.
We undoubtedly have enough resources, creativity, and skill to solve the world’s biggest problems. The only missing link is the capacity to forget ourselves and act in the best interests of the global collective. Sadly, as the tragic history of communism illustrates, our basic individualistic nature dooms any attempts to force collectivism into the real world.
It’s terribly frustrating. A naturally collectivist nature would make our biggest problems so easy to solve! Take, for example, the world’s single greatest injustice: extreme inequality of opportunity (Problem #1).
Here, a naturally collectivist disposition would drive the top 10%, who control 82% of global wealth, to shift a large part of their investments from catering to the (often) wasteful consumption of their own class to fulfilling the genuine needs of the rest of the global population. The vast human potential unlocked by the economic inclusion of billions of previously excluded minds would send the global economy into overdrive, eradicating poverty in no time and unlocking the creative and productive power necessary to solve all our other major problems.
But our natural collectivist instincts do not extend much beyond those nearest and dearest to us (these days, they may not even reach that far). Images of starving children in Africa may stir some emotion for a few seconds, but our attention soon returns to more pressing matters like the rising interest payments on our 2500 ft2 home that may force us to settle for a lower trim level on that new full-size SUV we desire.
So, how do we solve global collectivist problems as a species of naturally self-centered beings? That’s the trillion-dollar question. As a start, we can acknowledge the Great Weakening making us even more self-centered.
2. A Bad Time to be Weakened by Good Times
There’s a simple maxim that explains a lot about the rise and fall of empires throughout human history:
- Strong people create good times
- Good times create weak people
- Weak people create hard times
- Hard times create strong people
Indeed, history has proven that great empires built by great people often destroy themselves from within. If life becomes too easy, people get complacent and dissipative, wasting limited resources on meaningless and morally degrading excesses while allowing corruption, fracturing, and incompetence to infiltrate the ruling class. Before they know it, they’re in terminal decline with conquering barbarian hordes at the gates.
In the Western world, the last century stands head-and-shoulders above the rest of history as “extreme good times.” Indeed, the average rich-world citizen today enjoys material comfort reserved for royalty in bygone ages (facilitated by a personal entourage of over 100 energy slaves).
We may resent admitting it, but these extremely good times created droves of weak people, and the inevitable societal decay is already underway. To make matters worse, our weakened society now faces several structural problems that can only be solved by the coordinated efforts of millions of admirably strong people. Let’s unpack this situation in more detail.
Weakened citizens, weakened nations
So, how has the sudden onset of an easy life over the last century weakened us? Much like an overprotective and overindulgent parent, it shielded us from the challenging experiences needed to develop several admirable (but uncomfortable) characteristics of strength:
- Fitness: Physical activity (which builds physical strength) correlates well with self-esteem (mental strength). Today, there’s rarely any need for physical effort to build/grow real things or go places, and the body positivity movement protects us from potential social reprimand.
- Courage: Habitually venturing out to shake some bushes and prove them tiger-free. Today, most rich-world citizens can easily get by without ever having to leave the safety of their comfort zones.
- Discipline: Doing what needs to be done, especially when you don’t feel like it. Today, mediocre performance is broadly tolerated, and digital distractions offer instant escape at the first sign of difficulty.
- Patience: An acceptance and appreciation that anything worthwhile takes time. Today, instant gratification is everywhere, and we aspire to emulate the rare overnight millionaire who got extremely lucky or found a loophole to get rich without creating real value.
- Generosity: The confidence that you can create enough surplus to give freely and that your community will reciprocate. Today, we no longer need to generate a surplus or form strong bonds within our local communities because the government will take care of us.
- Openness: Welcoming and considering opposing views with an open mind, ready to challenge and revise your current beliefs. Today, it has become far too easy to select whatever “truth” feels best and have our views affirmed in a digital echo chamber.
- Equanimity: A sense of inner calm that does not take offense or hold back from telling inconvenient truths for fear of offending. Today, there are so many things that trigger our weakened minds that getting offended has become something of an international pastime.
Younger generations, having spent their formative years in a coddling environment that creates a debilitating culture of victimhood, are most affected. And the distorted image of the real world projected by a disproportionately online existence pours further fuel on the fire. As these weakened minds enter the workforce and the last graduates of the old school of hard times retire, the Great Weakening can only accelerate.
A systemic weakening of the workforce must inevitably weaken nations. We can observe this weakening most clearly in the wave of protectionism and xenophobia currently sweeping the globe. After all, a nation of strong citizens and leaders will not fear international competition or doubt its ability to integrate foreigners into its robust social structures. And yes, a world full of weak nations can be as explosive as a room full of triggered culture-war influencers, only with vastly more dangerous consequences.
Tangled in the social safety net
Any well-functioning society should protect its citizens against the vagaries of fate, especially those born into badly disadvantaged circumstances and those hit by random calamities beyond their control.
But the promise of complete and unconditional safety — free healthcare, free education, fully funded retirement, universal basic income — is the perfect example of the road to hell paved with good intentions.
If the government removes the need for personal responsibility, the average citizen (acting under the influence of the outdated primitive drives outlined in Section 1) will inevitably weaken. Far too many rich-world citizens already live out their lives in a meaningless and depressing blur of risk aversion and instant-pleasure comforts, setting themselves up for years of lonely, state-funded pain at the hands of a debilitating lifestyle disease before the merciful arrival of death.
Liberal democracies greatly enhance this danger because most people who consume more public services than they support in taxes will vote for more public services and social welfare spending. These additional benefits must inevitably cause further weakness, creating a vicious cycle that can only end in collapse.
Untimely structural challenges
To make matters worse, the world faces several growing structural challenges that our weakening society is becoming increasingly ill-suited to navigate. Here are the top three:
- Resource depletion and environmental degradation. Mother nature creates double the value we create ourselves. But we have now become so numerous with such ravenous material appetites that nature can no longer keep up. Thus, the burden is gradually shifting onto us.
- Inverted population pyramids. Among other factors, environmental pressures on an overcrowded planet have dropped the birth rate below replacement in many countries. The result is a rapidly rising share of retirees who no longer contribute to the economy and often require costly healthcare services to live with degenerative diseases.
- Deglobalization. Rich-world citizens rarely consider how much of their material welfare comes from (human rights-violating) factories and (heavily polluting) industries in the developing world at a small fraction of domestic production costs. As developing Asia advances and East-West relations deteriorate, these freebies are drying up.
None of these problems are insurmountable, but it is troubling that their rise correlates with the Great Weakening described above. Still, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and we can certainly hope that these challenges will strengthen our society to the point where we can solve them before it is too late.
But the problems before us are complex, diffuse, and interconnected — nothing like the Nazis or barbarian hordes of old that left us no choice but to train ourselves into a strong fighting force or die with everyone we love. If the enemy is fuzzy and ambiguous, it becomes much harder to mobilize effectively. The next section dives deeper into this conundrum.
3. Uncontrollably Escalating Complexity
The human mind is one of nature’s greatest evolutionary achievements, but it is far from perfect. In today’s world, the most important shortcoming is related to complex non-linear thinking, where one must keep several concepts in mind simultaneously while evaluating complex interactions between them. This type of thinking is key to success in our complex modern world, but unfortunately, our brains did not evolve to do this.
During the first 99.9% of our evolutionary history, most of our problems were attractively linear. If there is not enough food, go hunting and gathering. If hunting and gathering yields decline, move on in search of richer lands. If the richer lands are occupied, drive out the occupants.
However, as our societies became more complex, the limitations of linear thinking became increasingly apparent. That is why history is full of cautionary tales about linear-thinking leadership, such as raising taxes in response to a lack of state funds (e.g., medieval England), minting more (diluted) coins in response to a lack of money (e.g., the Roman Empire), and stepping up the oppression when oppressed people became more rebellious (e.g., various slave revolts throughout history).
This type of thinking is still prevalent today, even though our world has become massively more complex (and is getting more complex by the day). Let’s run through the three main mechanisms behind the scourge of uncontrollably escalating complexity:
- Spirals: Complex and unexpected action-reaction sequences.
- Options: The confusion of too many choices and too little time.
- Connection: Polarizing views rushing through a hyperconnected world.
Spirals: Slapping on band-aids
What happens when a world with 8 billion linear-thinking minds reaches a level of complexity where linear thinking becomes an evolutionary disadvantage? We fall into a complexity spiral:
- Unexpected problems keep popping up.
- We apply our customary linear thinking to these problems.
- Our linear-thinking solutions create more unexpected problems.
- We try solving those with more linear thinking.
- Repeat.
When linear thinking meets complex problems, band-aid solutions emerge (treating the symptom rather than the root cause). And there is one type of band-aid we love above all others: technology.
Case in point: the digital revolution. Even though each of us now has something akin to a magic wand in our pockets, developed economies and their quality of life (see Fig. 2.4 here) have languished since these digital devices hit the mainstream around the turn of the century. Only developing Asia managed to continue its rapid progress, but the primary driving force was old-school, coal-steel-cement industrialization, not digitalization.
Why this unexpected stagnation? Well, even though digital advances have created great value by massively boosting computational capacity, knowledge access, and ease of communication, those same advances also created many new problems that offset the gains, e.g., constant distraction, information overload, and cybercrime.
The next great leap, artificial intelligence, recently hit the mainstream in the form of ChatGPT. What will come of this fantastic and frightening new technology is too much for my primitive linear mind to divine. But we can be confident that history will not waver too far from its tendency to echo, meaning that AI will likely create as many problems as it solves. Only this time, the scale will be bigger than anything we’ve seen thus far.
Options: Trapped in perfect liberty
Modern liberalism, here used to imply total freedom of choice, is the second great contributor to uncontrollably escalating global complexity. It can be described in the following three simple steps:
- Start with billions of complex minds in an environment foreign to their naturally evolved instincts.
- Remove traditional barriers designed to promote an orderly society.
- Pressure people into choices counter to their natural biology.
A couple of generations ago, our options were quite limited. Young men generally took up the trade of their fathers, married a local girl, and started a family. Roles were clearly defined, often oppressively so, but life was undeniably simplified by these traditional structures.
Today, our liberal society has flipped to the opposite extreme, insisting that anyone can be anything they like. In fact, people are actively encouraged to charge through doors that were traditionally closed to them. At first glance, this sounds great, but recent history suggests otherwise.
Having all doors open to you is more of a curse than a blessing. Each of us only gets 24 hours each day, meaning that the very nature of being dictates that we can only ever hope to explore a tiny fraction of all those alluring possibilities. The confused frustration this inherent finitude creates in our liberal society is eloquently outlined in Oliver Burkeman’s “4000 Weeks.”
This already troubling situation is worsened by societal pressure to assume roles misaligned with basic biology, particularly regarding gender. For example, the “stay-at-home mom” tradition is scorned despite its perfect alignment with evolutionary biology. Instead, women (naturally more interested in people than things and physically less powerful than men) are actively encouraged to enter STEM jobs best done by those properly obsessed with things and professional sports where speed and power are essential for entertaining the paying spectators. (Note that I am not saying all women should do X and all men should do Y. Instead, my point is that natural sexual dimorphism will make most women gravitate to X and most men to Y. Social pressures fighting this basic biology create a lot of strife.)
These complex dynamics in a diverse cultural melting pot are creating many novel problems our society is ill-equipped to solve. And it does not help that this melting pot is fired by the potent accelerator discussed next.
Hyperconnectivity: The great accelerator
A system containing many intricate moving parts is already highly complex, but this complexity gets launched into an entirely different dimension when links of action-reaction can be established between any of those parts. This is why our modern society is the ultimate non-linear problem: Billions of complex and liberally unconstrained beings are stuck in an environment alien to their evolved natures, and each of them has the ability to impact/influence any of the others.
As an experienced systems modeler, imagining the computing power and the degree of model sophistication necessary to describe such a system makes my head spin. Still, some pragmatism can go a long way in simplifying complex concepts. So let’s condense the problem into two interconnected complexity-enhancing effects of hyperconnectivity:
- Polarization. One of the best ways to retain media users through regular endorphin hits is to affirm their beliefs. That is why algorithms on hyperconnectivity platforms like social media and personalized news feeds tend to create digital echo chambers where people are disproportionately exposed to affirming content. Naturally, this situation pushes people to the extreme ends of various important ideological and political issues, creating a high degree of polarization.
- Overcorrection. Extremist views turn out to be destructive in almost every instance. Hence, serious problems will soon emerge when one side of the polarized debate gains the upper hand and wins executive power. These real-world problems then give those on the opposite extreme powerful ammunition to rapidly diffuse their views through our hyperconnected society, eventually leading to a shift in power. And when their extreme views turn out to be just as destructive as the regime they replaced, we flip to the other extreme once more.
The ongoing shift from left to right in Europe and the US offers an excellent contemporary example. The left has gone too far, particularly regarding over-zealous ESG mandates forcing uneconomical investment in a time of dangerously high inflation and misguided identity politics that only deepen the societal divisions they attempt to address.
As a result, the right is having a field day on social media platforms, and this is now translating to sweeping gains for right-wing candidates across the Western hemisphere. It will probably not be long before I’m back analyzing the real-world effects of the right taking things too far on fronts like protectionism, nationalism, and conservative austerity.
Beacons of Hope
Thus far, this has been a rather gloomy story of three unstoppable negative forces driving civilization to a seemingly inevitable collapse. But it’s not all doom and gloom. In this section, I’d like to balance these three harbingers of doom with three shining beacons of hope.
Resolving the fundamental mismatch
It is distinctly possible for enlightened individuals to reduce and even eliminate the mismatch between our evolved instincts and our current environment. This vital mission can be approached from both sides:
- Intelligent microenvironment design. We may have little influence over the way our cities, countries, and world evolve, but we can exert much greater control over our homes, careers, and close relationships.
- Accelerated evolution. The human mind can be remarkably pliable (if we let it). Thus, it is within our power to reshape our habitual thought patterns and emotional responses for better alignment with the demands of our modern world.
The first point is a simple tactic to minimize the negative effects of our outdated pursuit of instant pleasure and avoidance of potential pain. Those who carefully tailor their microenvironment to align with their evolved instincts can maintain a happy, healthy, wealthy, productive, and sustainable life with relatively little willpower. James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” offers a deep dive into this simple but powerful principle.
I’ve been exploiting intelligent microenvironment design for more than a decade, but the idea of accelerated evolution is much newer to me. The potential of this concept recently struck home when I started feeling an undeniable emotional drive toward actions maximizing global welfare. This drive has been pushing me to decline safe and lucrative opportunities, openly speak unpopular truths, and challenge my weaknesses, all in the hope of one day making a meaningful contribution to establishing a sustainable and equitable global civilization. It’s certainly been an uncomfortable journey, but backing off doesn’t seem to be an option.
Implementing these strategies is far from easy. For someone just struggling to keep up with their confusing and overwhelming modern existence, it can feel downright impossible. But the good news is that only a small fraction (perhaps about 1%) of the global population needs to develop the necessary collective consciousness, microenvironments, and characteristics of strength. Once these strong, efficient, and collective-minded individuals reach critical mass, they will naturally reshape the global environment so that instinctive actions lead the remaining 99% to success instead of failure.
My understanding of what this fundamental reshaping should look like remains quite rudimentary, but the first iteration can be viewed here.
We’re really quite clever (although extraordinarily wasteful)
I’ve previously estimated that only about one-third of global economic activity does anything useful. The rest either destroys value (e.g., wars/crime and self-destructive consumption), wastes resources for no clear benefit (e.g., wasteful consumerism and cities built for cars), or prevents/repairs self-inflicted damages (e.g., military/police and most of the healthcare industry).
At face value, this is deeply depressing, but there is a brilliantly bright silver lining: we really are extraordinarily productive. After all, we’re running an advanced civilization using only one-third of our potential. It is soothing to realize that we already possess all the tools and capacity needed to solve our biggest global problems. All we need is a change in mindset, and that can happen surprisingly quickly in our hyperconnected world.
Hyperconnectivity as a force for good
As discussed earlier, hyperconnectivity can do serious damage in an overly complex world populated by billions of linear-thinking minds acting on primitive instinct. Like most massively scaleable technologies, however, hyperconnectivity is a double-edged sword. If we learn to wield it skillfully, it can become a powerful force for good.
While hyperconnectivity certainly has the power to polarize society, causing violent and deeply inefficient swings between ideological extremes, it also has the power to spread stabilizing, inspiring, and unifying influences. Many of our global problems are quite pressing, and it is good to know that we have the power to diffuse the solutions to these problems through society so rapidly.