No point in human history have so many issues reared their ugly faces. Forgetting the troublesome term, “first-world problems,” the issues to be discussed only compound the meta-crisis. Imagine a chessboard, each move setting humanity on a course for destruction or a fast track to Type 1 status, referencing the Kardashev scale. Unfortunately, it seems any move we make, collectively or individually, brings us closer to catastrophe and farther from our goal of galactic colonization. How do we proceed then, if we can’t make a move, and leaving the pieces static brings the game to an end anyway?
The meta-crisis, introduced to me by the complex Daniel Schmachtenberger, fills me with dread, anxiety, and a bit of laughter. Seriously, I chuckle at the state we’ve all brought ourselves to. Talking about how we’re all intelligent creatures, yet we’re destroying the planet at an alarming rate with no backup plan. That’s like lighting a fire in a building without realizing that you’re still in it. Regardless, it doesn’t seem like people are aware of all these issues revolving around the meta-crisis. Schmachtenberger is trying to change that, but here’s a pessimistic take: people won’t care, not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t.
What? You’re saying that people won’t be able to care? Well…yes. Look at all the information we have. Surely, if these information circuits we have to get news around the globe were designed in a civilization-enhancing way, we would be able to communicate the scope of antibiotic resistance, fertilizer shortage, nanotechnology, ocean acidification, and more. Yet, we cannot. There’s simply too much going on. Too many geopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociotechnological issues, which seem overwhelming to begin with. Factoring in the digital void of distraction, entertainment, and arguments, it’s quite clear that people simply won’t be able to, or won’t want to, absorb the meta-crisis and do something about it.
I imagine a single mother of two living in the city, working two jobs and trying to make ends meet. How are we supposed to explain to her about dead zones in the ocean, or the fact that USAID is planning on putting the genomes of pandemic-grade viruses on the Internet for any potential bad actor to acquire and unleash on the world? How do we explain to the millions of poverty-stricken citizens in places like India and China that their hourly wage of mere cents will be taken away through automation, and worse, their food supplies will start dwindling because of supply chain issues?
The meta-crisis seems like a non-starter, that just by being inside of this maelstrom, we’ve lost. Schmachtenberger considers a possible Game B, which feels unrealistic—maybe this feeling resembles my pessimism more than anything else. This blog post was meant to address something that has been on my mind for quite some time. There are many issues at play in this world, though, knowing about all of them is mentally taxing to the point of not doing anything about them. The information overload on our mental circuits may be a direct symptom of the meta-crisis itself.
What I know for sure is that there must be a low-bandwidth way of on-boarding millions of people into solving the meta-crisis. Leaving it up to scientists, engineers, and other highly-specialized but scarce professionals is a waste of human power. Giving students a chance to deal with these problems as they rise up the educational ranks feels promising. Telling the average civilian, outside of multi-hour podcasts, about the meta-crisis is also (or rather, should be) a prime avenue. Of course, there are many drawbacks to these propositions. I’m just trying to figure out how to move the chessboard, without touching the pieces.