Our Fundamental Problem: Adolescence, Mouse Utopia, & Multi-polar Traps
The Counterpoint is a free newsletter that uses both analytic and holistic thinking to examine the wider world. My goal is that you find it ‘worth reading’ rather than it necessarily ‘being right.’ Expect monthly updates and essays on a variety of topics. I appreciate any and all sharing or subscriptions.
Author’s Note: Between a newborn, the farm, and my day job, life is chaos in the best of ways. This is the first newsletter since the end of February. Special thank you to the paid subscribers that stuck with me during the hiatus. As we enter the second half of the year, my current goal is one newsletter per month, perhaps more if I find the time. Here is July’s.
We are in an ecological crisis.
By ecological, I don’t mean just carbon and climate change. Of course, these are a critical part of the dynamic but they are only one element of it. Our ecological crisis includes topsoil loss and runoff-caused dead zones, microplastics and forever chemicals , both light and noise pollution, changes in patterns of precipitation and widespread air pollution from wildfire smoke, the sixth extinction and much more. Several studies (Rockstrom et al., Fanning et al., etc.) find that we have exceeded multiple critical biophysical and ecological boundaries.
People are responding to the ecological crisis in several different ways. Nadia (@nayafia) has an informative breakdown of these various ‘ecological tribes.’
(To put my cards on the table, I don't align exactly with any of these groups and find some value in the thoughts and actions of all of them. I know that isn't helpful as a useful description, but it's the truth.)
The critical insight is that all of these groups are debating the same problem, and it’s not the ecological one. The ecological crisis is an offshoot of the fundamental problem. This problem is one that our species will have to deal with regardless of how we feel about the various specifics. Before being explicit about the fundamental problem, let’s start with three relevant vignettes.
Part 1: Adolescence
We live our lives as if they were the norm, when they are the outliers.
Life began on Earth ~3,500,000,000 years ago. The first humans evolved ~300,000 years ago. The Agricultural Revolution occurred ~10,000 years ago and writing was invented ~5,000 years ago. The Industrial Revolution began ~300 years ago. Public internet began ~30 years ago.
We live within a brief window or very rapid growth: exponential growth in population, exponential growth in wealth, exponential growth in the consumption of energy, land, and material.
What is a period of rapid physical growth and development, an age that carries a certain arrogance as we come into our own and our capabilities, a time of rapid exploration and self-discovery? We have a term for this: adolescence.
But while adolescence is typical thought of as a period of rapid physical growth, it is also the most critical, yet precarious, time period for mental development. Neurological and psychological disorders, substance abuse, and crime all peak during adolescence and young adulthood. It is well understood that the brain continues to develop well into our 20s, especially in areas associated with executive function and impulse control.
What if human society and civilization follows the same trajectory as individual humans, with physical development preceding mental development?
Part 2: Mouse Utopia
In the 1960s, John B. Calhoun performed a series of experiments: he built “utopias” for mice and rats. They were the size of a large room and contained everything mice needed: food, water, plenty of space for exercise, nooks for shelter and nesting, etc. The experiments began when he placed a small number of animals into the utopia and observed what happened.
During the experiment, he acted as 'groundskeeper,' by keeping the food restocked, changing the bedding and removing all waste, and making sure the watering system remained functional. In this way, the mouse utopia continued to have every physical need fulfilled.
With unlimited food, water, and space, the population of each utopia increased dramatically. However, within months, the population within each utopia collapsed to near extinction.
To reiterate: every physical need of the mouse was met. They had plenty of fresh food, clean water, and new bedding. Not only did they not run out of resources, but the population of each utopia peaked well below the calculated 'carrying capacity' of each utopia (e.g. the population would peak at ~2,500 mice even if there was estimated space for ~4,000 mice).
Based on his observations of rapid growth leading to rapid collapse, despite unlimited physical resources, Calhoun postulated the concept of behavioral sinks. Typically, these sinks are referenced narrowly, only to maladaptive behavior that arises from overcrowding. But a broader version is much more valuable, i.e. a behavioral sink occurs when any previously adaptive behavior becomes maladaptive due to a change in external conditions.
Now, there are reasons to doubt the physical set up of Calhoun's mouse utopia. At minimum, humans and mice are different in several obvious and important ways. But the concept of "behavioral sinks" is a valuable one. It's not just external physical constraints that societies are subject too (e.g. resource constraints, neighboring enemy states) but also behavioral and social ones.
The most hyperbolic example of a behavioral sink is Devil Facial Tumor Disease, a transmissible cancer that affects Tasmanian Devils. Being wild dogs, Tasmanian Devils have a propensity to bite each other for various reasons. Biting was an beneficial and adaptive behavior until, for unknown reasons, a lethal cancer that was transmitted through biting spontaneously arose within the population. It spread quickly, as the Tasmanian Devils continued to bite each other. Within a decade, 95% of the population died.
Could a behavioral sink of some type be in humanity’s future?
Part 3: Multipolar Traps
Multipolar traps occur when all individuals or all groups are compelled to act in a certain way because of self-interest, even if that action is against their collective interest, leading to broad detrimental outcomes.
If one country has nuclear weapons, other nations are compelled to have nuclear weapons (or they lose geopolitically). If one company uses AI, other nations are compelled to use AI (or they lose economically). If some children are on social media, all children have to be on social media (or they will be socially isolated).
What is being recognized by several leading thinkers is that, over the long term, technology and growth are both multipolar traps.
Of course, there are extremely good aspects to technology and growth. Exponential reductions in poverty, famine, child mortality, increases in democracy and civil rights, and many other examples that have occurred because of technological and economic development. But like all tools, they have both positive and negative externalities, and we need to accurately assess the reality of both. There is no law of the universe that mandates that all technological development or all economic and energetic growth is marginally good.
In fact, it’s clear that as technologies have become more powerful, more widely available, and more rapidly adopted, they have had more dangerous negative externalities. The edge of the plow can be the edge of the sword. Social media can connect people and spread positive social movements but it also increases political polarization and mental illness. Nuclear fission can provide massive amounts of carbon-free energy; it is also the basis for nuclear weapons. AI can dramatically improve economic productivity; it can also invent 40,000 new potential nerve agents (and beyond that specific example, many people consider it potentially the riskiest technology ever invented).
Growth is also a multi-polar trap. The best example is Jevon’s Paradox, the observation that increasing the efficiency by which a resource is used leads to greater, not less, consumption of that resource. This is illustrated by the global, long-term energy consumption chart. Despite large gains in energy efficiency, we use more of every individual type of energy than we did centuries ago.
This is because as energy extraction or consumption becomes more efficient, its cost necessarily becomes cheaper. But cheap energy allows people to do advantageous things (run more Bitcoin mining rigs, grill more in the summer, turn up the thermostat in the winter, etc.), and if you don’t use that cheap energy, someone else will, so everyone feels compelled to consume more energy.
What if, as multi-polar traps, technological development and growth have placed us on a biophysical and energetic treadmill where we have to keep running faster and faster, growing and consuming more and more, regardless if the growth and consumption is good for ourselves, society, or the Earth?
With those three preludes, we have arrived at the fundamental problem. The scientist in me would describe it as a behavioral or psychological one, but as a human, perhaps the most accurate description is that it’s a spiritual problem.
The fundamental problem is that the psychology and spirit that built modern civilization are in many ways directly opposed to the psychology and spirit that would sustain our species across future centuries and millennia. Just like human adolescence, civilizations develop physically before spiritually. And over the last few centuries, a global system has developed that depends on technological, economic, and energetic growth. But these are multipolar traps, and at some point, they will collapse on themselves. The endpoint of growth, technology, and energy consumption cannot be infinity. Exponentials cannot increase forever. We are currently in that brief period of rapid physical development where it is still possible.
There will come a time when we all, individually and collectively, must realize that if we are to avoid collapse, we need to build a new way of thinking, forge a new human spirit. Previous generations built us out of physical poverty. The ongoing challenge for modernity will be building us out of spiritual poverty by developing the psychology and spirit of a civilization that can sustain itself, one that can navigate and avoid the multiple behavioral sinks that lay before us due to the technological and energetic multipolar traps. We must mature into the responsibility of our limits.
This is not an argument against abundance or innovation. Antibiotics should exist and insulin should be 'free.' Housing, robust education, and nutrient-dense food should be available to every human. The gap between developed and developing nations should be closed. Communities and individuals should be able to flourish everywhere. Innovation should continue in critical areas such as health care and biotechnology.
What this is an argument for is a principle and philosophy that will, to quote Albert Camus, “calm the infinite anguish of free souls.” This is an argument for building and instilling a culture and spirit of stewardship.
We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all. - Albert Camus
Stewardship is the recognition that regenerative stability is the only future for humanity that rejects infinite growth and avoids collapse. It is the acknowledgment that abundance becomes easier to achieve when we all want and consume less. That a life of material simplicity creates room for communal, spiritual, and ecological abundance, where consumption is replaced by community, care, regeneration, and local production. It is the prioritization of quality over quantity, of the local over the global. It is a maturation that realizes humanity is part of, not separate from, the Earth’s ecological system and that, as the global keystone species, we have a responsibility to care for and tend to all aspects of it: plant, animal, and fungal, land, water, and air, both present and future.
Stewardship is the realization that true happiness is not found by running ever faster on the treadmill of continuous material consumption and financial accumulation, but through ordinary, everyday human experience: community, hard work, health, mastery of a useful skill, a meal of quality food shared between family and friends, the care and regeneration of the land and nature.
There is perhaps no better illustration of the Fundamental Problem and the philosophy of stewardship than the parable of the fisherman and the businessman:
“A successful businessman on vacation was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with a lone fisherman docked next to him. Inside the small boat were several large fish. The businessman complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, “Every morning, I go out in my boat for an hour to fish. I’m one of the best fisherman in the village”.
The businessman, perplexed, then asks the fisherman “If you’re the best, why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish? What do you do the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied “I sleep late, read and relax, play with my children, spend quality time with my wife, and every evening we stroll into the village to drink wine and play music and dance with our friends. I have a full and happy life.”
The businessman was perplexed and scoffed, “I am successful CEO and have a talent for spotting business opportunities. I can help you be more successful. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats with many fishermen. Instead of selling your catch to just your friends, you can scale to sell fish to thousands. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to the big city, where you can oversee your growing empire.”
The fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
The businessman replied, “15 – 20 years.”
“But what then?” asked the fisherman.
The businessman laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The businessman said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, read and relax, play with your kids, spend time with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your music and dance with your friends.”
In order for human civilization to continue indefinitely, we must choose the fisherman over the businessman. We must build a culture and spirit of stewardship.
excellent essay