I’m so unsure of how the next decade or two will play out. Anyone with a firm degree of certainty on the matter is suspect in my mind.
History is alive and material progress rests on the intelligent coordination of resources. We are in the middle of an explosion of intelligence. Will we rise to the challenge as a species?
I’ve had a wild year. I suspect many others feel similarly. The global year of elections exposed many tensions even as it resolved some questions of who has the power and how it will be used.
I’m more optimistic than I expected to be at the start of the year. We are living inside William Gibson’s Jackpot. As intelligence explodes and my own capacity to coordinate with others improves I am hopeful.
It’s Christmas Eve which puts me in a reflective mood. Changes in human nature are rare. If we change at all, it happens over generations of incorporating cultural change as it is combined with significant changes in technical and material circumstance.
Christ’s birth represents a significant cultural change for humans. From low circumstances arose a new way of living. The mighty see the grace of the meekest among us.
As we meditate on the values our ancestors worked to build into civilization, do we have the capacity to set aside our pride in the face of change? May we humbly seek redemption in the mysteries of time.