10 ideas on how exponential growth will change human nature in the near future

1. We appear to be halfway through a growth sequence of about 50 billion people. We are 20 billion of the way in, so we are not quite at the halfway mark

2. This present industrial period is a period of expansion and growth. Not a period of collapse.

3. Social collapse in future can in fact be reinterpreted as economic and technological reintegration

4. Our metaphors fail us

The metaphors that we consider wisdom come from the previous era of farming, and the things that we consider magic or spirituality come from the previous era before that of searching for food, the hunter gatherer age

These metaphors, no longer apply to reality and are only vague sketches of how things really are n the industrial age

5. The primary question is regarding large systems cities and nations. The question for cities is What are the hidden consequences of individual action?

The question also calculates individual upsides and downsides and makes microeconomic calculations of personal supply and demand

6. The nation state question is What are hidden consequences for the aggregate?

It regards aggregate policies - inflation. deflation the business cycle - and these questions are much harder to define and answer by an order of magnitude

7. The little we know about the future form of social organisation is that it will occur in non-democratic clans. A very stable similar people. These non-democratic clans will ask different questions

8. Future people's daily questions will be concerned with individual productivity variability, collective stability, and growth of the clan.

9. Because in future forms of organisation, the fear of death is replaced by the fear of mind theft, paranoia will be a much more common mental illness than neuroticism

10. We can know the ends of these clans but not measure them, because while they are natural human ends their velocity and abstraction will not be intelligible to us

Paul Bard