I’ve read your 3-part series on this topic and it’s excellent and covers very important ground. Not many people are aware of, or understand these issues—or choose to ignore. I would suggest extending this Great Synthesis by considering in more detail the impacts on biology, including evolution. Energy underpins the Great Acceleration (GA) but an omitted parameter in the GA is the acceleration of the evolutionary process, which is best understood by considering the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis framework (including gene-culture coevolution). All interacting components of the framework have been accelerated by surplus energy (from fire, agricultural revolution) but particularly by energy from the recent fossil fuel bonanza. This has led to a runaway situation which is very poorly understood or denied. The results are ever widening evolutionary mismatches leading to trapping; as well as altered evolutionary forces and very complex interactions manifest in such phenomena as the changing prevalence of many traits in human and non-human life—some quite rapid. We are flying blind, in the dark, upside down and backwards. The combination of surplus energy and aspects of our evolutionary psychology and cognition is very powerful—and, as history shows, can be very destructive and dangerous. Humans are too smart for their own future good, with brains that should be regarded as being both impressive but also a critical liability. Our cultural evolution during and after The Great Simplification will need to have this concept front and centre.
D Neil Jones
Karma: 1
Yes, indeed. One can view the accelerated evolutionary engine, operating in modern complex societies, as a “complexity” aspect of modern “Lifestyle” as described in Sabin Roman’s feedback loop diagram (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXViK3jHa1Y) - any associated negative feedback loop arising from this acceleration will contribute to system destabilization as complexity costs increase which include increasingly difficult-to-capture amounts of energy powering increasingly ineffective solutions (diminishing returns) with unintended consequences. Modern interventionist healthcare systems are seen are “rescue” systems in these circumstances but the energy-complexity spiral issues are well covered here (https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-017-0051-4), drawing on the work of Tainter and Odum. The acceleration of the complex, interacting components of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (see https://www.templeton.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EES-Final-Report-1.23.23.pdf) in our modern societies is powered by fossil-fuel energy—for example, niche construction, group level selection, epigenetic modifications, mutation, gene flow, altered patterns of selection and non-random mating. For example, Michael Lynch notes that ”.… few other species willingly expose themselves to environmental mutagens to the extent that humans do” (see https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.115.180471). The same applies to environmental exposures resulting in epigenetic changes. The Great Simplification (https://www.thegreatsimplification.com) can’t come soon enough.