Read full text: https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly24/on-our-own7-24.html?fullweb=1
It is now clear that "Progress" defined as whatever is "new" and "innovative" is in many cases the opposite of actual Progress--what I term anti-Progress--and so this simplistic ideological underpinning of the status quo is crumbling.
The "innovation" may well be highly profitable--financialization, globalization, social media, etc.--but its impact may be disruptive to the point that the system is internally incapable of responding fast enough and decisively enough to correct the resulting run to failure.
We can visualize the system reaching internal limits and the resulting decay of adaptability / run to failure as an S-curve:
Given the internal, structural limits, the entire system has only one pathway: decline to the point that a seemingly modest crisis disrupts the last shreds of coherence in an increasingly nonlinear system and the resulting asymmetric effect collapses the system.
The Ming Dynasty took 57 years to decay and collapse from 1587. Given the nonlinear dynamics and the inherent fragility of the status quo's many dependency chains, this timeline could be reduced by an order of magnitude to 5.7 years. We won't know until a crisis that would have been controllable in decades past generates asymmetric effects the system can no longer control.
The key takeaway here is: don't count on a simplistic ideology or reform or a "supreme leader" to save the status quo from internal failure: we're on our own, and it's far better to face this daunting reality now rather than place our faith--and our passive inaction--on the altar of false gods.
