UNIVERS 25: into the labyrinth?

Innovation has a bright side. It also has a dark one, like the two-faced Janus divinity, the god of duality, of beginnings and ends, of creation and destruction.

Where do its flaws lie? Rarely in the technology itself. More frequently in the applications we make of it. But also in our own capacities to handle it. As if we had intrinsic flaws as human beings, making it impossible for us to benefit from a too paradisiacal universe.

In an emblematic scene from the movie The Matrix, Agent Smith reveals to a captured Morpheus that the machines initially created a perfect and paradisiacal virtual world for humans, but it ended up being a complete disaster. This forced the machines to destroy it and rebuild a new one with deep flaws intentionally built into it. With controlled dissidence, a free city of Zion serving as a safety valve for revolts, and a recurring “Neo” prophet called to cyclically emerge when needed to wipe out the accumulated tensions and reset the system, as revealed later. “You’re a virus” adds Agent Smith later. “Human beings are a disease. They are the cancer of this planet. A plague. And, we, the machines, are the cure!”

Indeed, the evolution mechanism has built us as biological machines able to grow and thrive in a mildly adverse environment. We are designed to compete and fight. Paradoxically, too favorable environments seem to endanger us. As if the prolonged absence of challenges ahead completely disrupted our programming and caused major dysfunctions. Ultimately provoking a collective reset, activating a self-destruction mechanism deeply buried within us to stop our collective societies when going amok ⁽¹⁾. And allowing revolutions or competing societies to emerge in the long-term Darwinian historical selection process which has made humanity develop until now.

Do we observe in our modern life the same impossibility to fully enjoy all the benefits of progress? Are we condemned to endure an endless cycle of booms and busts, in spite—and maybe because—of all our advances?

Indeed, we live today in a world that may have been seen as a paradise by the generations that preceded us. From a global perspective, humanity has never had such a high standard of living. Progress has been phenomenal over the last few decades.

Yet, do we collectively benefit from these advances?

Despite progress, signs of decay are observed everywhere in the wealthier parts of societies. In the OECD, the childbirth rate is collapsing well below the replacement level of the population. Blomberg even considers that “Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore’ and Elon Musk that “population collapse is potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilization”. The share of the working population is shrinking, with many people retreating into ‘quiet quitting’ and the ‘great resignation’ or even Otaku ⁽²⁾ mode. Life expectancy is beginning to decrease. From millenarianism to wokeism and communitarianism, the general morale of populations is lowering to worrying proportions, signaling a fallback from the previously well-traced path to a brilliant future, which is perceived as being 'lost'.

As we highlighted in a previous post, “Good times create weak men.”

Could it be that, beyond a certain level, progress reaches a point of diminishing returns?

Strangely, this is reminiscent of a worrying experience in complex societies run by ethologists in the 80s, notably the “Universe 25” experiment.

In the 1970s, ethologists at the US National Institute of Mental Health, led by John B. Calhoun, launched a large-scale experimental project to study the impact of extreme urbanization and abundance on large societies.

For scale and time reasons, they chose to test on the smallest and fastest reproducing mammals, mice, extrapolating that the results might ultimately be reproducible in some way to humans.

For the sake of the experiment, they established several paradise environments for mice: large closed “universes” where food was continuously provided at will and where mice were free from any threat of predators.

Scientists launched a few couples of mice into them. And then they waited.

The results were staggering and similar in all the experiments. At first, mice proliferated, rapidly reaching massive and dynamic populations, overcrowding the closed experimental universes. Then, without any adverse events but overcrowded populations in closed universes, where food still continued to be abundant, things began to get worse.

The aggression rate grew. The birth rate decreased. Females lost interest in their young. Gratuitous violence became endemic. Wars began to develop, in rat societies becoming mad.

Until each experimental universe reached a point of no return. The mouse population not only collapsed but was never able to recover. It was as if a collective madness had struck the whole colony, definitively breaking its capability to live as a collective social organism.

Why this collapse? That an overcrowded population falls into violence and collective madness can be understandable. Even in social animal societies, overpopulation may alter the behavior of individuals and trigger violence for survival. But that this decay persists after the population falls, as if the specter of collective madness hangs over the society long after a collapse and drastic population reduction, is staggering. It shows how fragile collective dynamics are and how they may be subject to dramatic issues. How a 'leitkultur' can regress and definitively fall.

Could discoveries from Calhoun's experiments apply to humans, notably those from his most famous ‘Universe 25’ experiment? The question is yet unanswered, as experimental populations differ and the conditions of the experiment (unlimited resources, closed spaces, experience over several generations…) cannot be applied to humans (even if it were ethical to do so!). Human societies are far more complex. But the “Universes” experiment's insights are staggering.

Worryingly, Universe 25 is not without parallels to some aspects of our modern world. Are the current symptoms we experience in our OECD societies—falling birth rates, quiet quitting, rising endemic violence in megacities, collective hysteria in social movements and media, etc.—signs of a Universe 25 syndrome? It cannot be dismissed as an illegitimate question.

So, may we end up in a dystopian human Universe 25 nightmare?

Throughout history, the periodic collapse of complex societies and their megacities, as raised by authors such as Joseph Tainter ⁽³⁾⁽⁵⁾, demonstrate many of the Universe 25 syndromes: overcrowding and rising violence, loss of collective purpose and moral decay, population dysgenics and falling birth rates. This underlines how the path to progress and abundance is not without hidden dangers.

Yet, one variable may be highly different. Universe 25 colonies benefited from unlimited resources and lived in closed environments. For us, though, nothing is guaranteed. Even if technological progress creates hopes to bypass some of our planet's resource peaks, we still face worrying perspectives on energy and primary materials in the coming decades.

As highlighted by authors such as Jared Diamond ⁽⁴⁾⁽⁵⁾, most collapses in history happened due to resource depletions well before reaching the last steps of collective psychosis, as in Universe 25. These resource crises have always provoked collapses before the collectivity reaches the ultimate level of decay and the point of no return, forcing societies to adapt through restrictions and wars, provoking in turn dramatic demographic declines. These hard times recreate human will to fight back, innovate, and rebound, with ultimately the emergence of competing, younger, more vitalist societies taking over decaying ones after two or three historic cycles, and rejuvenating human dynamics to pursue centuries of progress. Until now, indeed, the diversity of human cultures in our open world has also always helped to overcome the decline of successive civilizations. With leaps and bounds. Sometimes in a cruel way. Through dramatic periods of temporary chaos, such as at the end of the large past empires: Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, Roman. But with a new light ultimately rekindling the flame of progress after decades or centuries of turmoil.

But will this continue?

What if techno-enthusiasts succeed in bringing us the ultimate age of abundance they prophesize with upcoming innovations, debunking the dark predictions of eco-Malthusians?

And what will happen in today’s closed Earth, now that most of the world has been explored and there are no more blank zones on the map from which new civilizations can emerge?

In our fully explored world, ultimately becoming possibly abundant, will we be able to escape the Universe 25 syndromes?

Will we find within ourselves both the energy to rebound and new horizons to explore? Will we be able to conquer new territories, such as oceans, outer space—and their incredible resources—or even virtual worlds, and their endless possibilities? May we find new evolutionary perspectives within ourselves, as genetic and neurotech engineering begins to be within reach, possibly redefining the whole paradigm of life and evolution? Will we find new spiritual dimensions to explore and transcend our human condition?

It's too soon to say. But one thing is sure, as Universe 25 has taught us, openness and the perspective to conquer new frontiers may be the key to avoiding getting lost in the labyrinth.

The next post in this initial 'Global Transition Crisis' series will be published next week. Click here to subscribe >

'UNIVERSE 25' is the tenth post of our 'Global Transition Crisis' series. The previous posts of this series, 'ANTI-PREDICTIONS 2022+", "ESCAPE VELOCITY", "GREAT RESET", "DEJA VU", "HISTORY'S FORMULA", "UNCHARTED TERRITORY", "ESCAPING FROM ZOMBIELAND", "10x MOONSHOTS" and "META HUMANS" can be found here >   

_{(1) "Amok" is a state in which individuals experience intense stress or mental distress, provoking a sudden, irrational, and uncontrollable outburst of violent behavior. The term has been popularized by the eponymous novella from Stefan Zweig.}

_{(2) The "Otaku syndrome" refers in Japan to a growing fringe of young people in modern megacities who retreat into fantasy worlds, particularly video games, neglecting personal responsibilities and real-world relationships.}

_{(3) Joseph Tainter is an American anthropologist and historian known for his work on societal collapse. In his main book, "The Collapse of Complex Societies," Tainter examines the collapse of the Maya, Chacoan, and Western Roman Empires in terms of network theory, energy economics, and complexity theory. He argues that as societies develop, they become increasingly complex to address challenges, leading to higher energy and resource costs. This complexity eventually results in diminishing returns, making the society unsustainable and prone to collapse when the costs outweigh the benefits.} 

_{(4) Jared Diamond, an American geographer and historian, has explored the role of resource crises in historical societal collapses. In his book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”, he recalls the historical fate of several civilizations, such as those of the Easter Islanders, the Maya, and the Norse of Greenland. He analyzes how societies fail or succeed based on their ability to recognize and adapt to environmental challenges, emphasizing the importance of sustainable resource management.}

_{(5) As well as Peter Turchin's seminal research in cliodynamics cycles, Tainter and Diamond’s works are foundational to our thinking on historical trends at Futuremastery. Our perspective is that, while their analyses apply well to societies within each technological stage, disruptive innovation leaps can dramatically change the game, transforming economic infrastructures and social superstructures, possibly solving some ecological challenges, and enabling sustainable complexity levels to grow from era to era. Therefore, the impact analysis of breakthrough innovation is a key parameter in our social, political, environmental, and economic foresight.}