Rugged Transition

Getting to the next level from here is going to be very hard. Our tax supported schools are turning out morons. Our news and popular media are geared to a second grade level of understanding of the world. Our pension plans are financial time bombs guaranteed to destroy our economies within twenty years. We are letting in immigrants who have sworn to destroy our civilisation. A self hating multiculturalism is in control of our universities and most government agencies. When most people think of economics, they think of government spending and redistributing wealth--never about creating wealth in the first place.

Getting to the next level from here is going to be very hard. But not impossible. The reason I say that is that not everybody needs to go on to the next level for the transition to count. It is estimated that one tenth of the population does 95% of the thinking and producing for the other 90% of the population. When it comes to transitioning to next level existence, the ratio may be closer to 5:95, or less. Never mind. Next level humans will be incredibly potent.

Modern welfare state mentality has taken over western civilisation, even the USA. Western people have taken the lazy way, the way of the functionary, the wage slave, the sedentary. Obesity is not a disease, it is a symptom of the disease. Drug addiction is not a disease, it is another symptom of the same disease. Alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, poverty. The disease is being stuck between primitive, subsistence level humanity, and the next level of human existence. The big mistake that most people make is believing that since a few humans are able to design sophisticated machines, medicines, and financial systems, that they themselves by virtue of profiting from the ingenuity of these other people are more than primitive level humans. Even most people with college educations and professional training are little more than primitive level humans. That is exactly where most of them will stay for the rest of their lives until they die.

Ten percent support the other ninety percent. That will continue to work for our modern between level civilisation until it doesn't work anymore. Then the future will depend upon how hard our between level civilisation falls, and how soon it happens. If more than 1% or 2% have made the transition to the next level, it may be enough. Enough of the financial and scientific infrastructure has to survive to let the next levels bootstrap large numbers of between levels up. Already there are thousands of potential next levels, lacking only the biotechnological breakthroughs needed to retard their bodies' aging process. They have already matured mentally, emotionally, and financially. Unfortunately they often do not have time to procreate, or to teach very many others the things they have learned. In other words the line of progress stops with them, in 70 years or less. What a waste.

The next level is not inevitable. Most people cannot even imagine what it would mean. The billionaire Ted Turner thinks that the world would be fine if only he could make nearly six billion people disappear. He and people who think like him think that would cure the world's problems. Cretins.

Extropians talk about the singularity and downloading of consciousness into computers. That type of thinking is basically magical in nature, much like the divine skyhook rescue envisioned by many religious people.

I will be content for a self-sustaining number of humans to achieve the next level in the next 60 or 70 years, in my lifetime.