It is often said that money buys freedom. But it is rarely mentioned that money also buys stability and reduces uncertainty. This other utility is what people seek more than freedom.
A majority of us will sacrifice our freedom and our youth for the stability and certainty of a steady paycheck. They say money buys happiness...
but in reality, it buys predictability. Because as humans, we value competence in this world and you cannot feel competence if you cannot predict the world.
Children who grow up in a world of instability and unpredictability become risk averse, seeking instead stability and predictability over freedom to create. We are homeostatic beings and always drift to the kind of behavior we are used to.
If we seek a society that innovates, we must ensure that our children grow up in a stable and predictable environment. A world where survival has a lower priority than creativity.
Humans have always accumulated wealth by using other humans. The wealthy gained the stability and predictability of their world by having other human servants insulate them from the harshness of reality. This has been true since the dawn of civilization.
However, the constant progress of technology frees many more humans from the unpredictability of nature. The more time people can spend not think about their survival, the more time they can spend thinking of change and freedom.
Technology, freedom, and creativity are inextricably intertwined. Unfortunately, this growth is exponential and as a consequence, the world becomes less predictable.
The conservative mind seeks stability and certainty while the liberal mind seeks freedom and creativity. But in a technology-driven society wealth is coupled to creativity and not stability. It is inevitable that the conservative mind will become extinct.
The conservative mind is incompatible with exponential growth. These are the dinosaurs of our society that lack the adaptability to survive into the future. The conservative mind knows this and thus will do whatever they can to preserve the stability and the status quo.
The conservative mind knows that wealth is tied to the status quo. The status quo was built over centuries of establishing hierarchies. Hierarchies were essential for the coordination of human civilization. It has always been a feature of human civilization.
The necessity of hierarchies however is constantly being challenged by new technologies of coordination (i.e. computer networks). Technology does not only drive wealth but it also drives toward decentralization and diversity.
Decentralization is abhorred by the hierarchy because the illusion of control is not present in decentralized ecosystems. There is a loss of the perception of predictability and thus a loss of the feeling of stability.
God forbid that we must be constantly on our toes to innovate. It will be hell on earth if we cannot rely on our hierarchies to maintain predictability and stability. Human adults simply have not evolved to be comfortable with change.
The misery that many feel about exponential technology growth is the lack of constancy. Our homeostatic minds are in constant struggle with the constant change in this world.
As parents, we dread when our world drastically changes when all our children have left their nests. What is the new purpose of our lives when we know we've successfully reared a new generation?
But children have always readily adapted to a fast-moving and changing world. They embrace change, novelty and newness are what makes them alive. Thus, to be happy in this world of exponential growth we must become like children.
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