The Fifth Epoch and a New Kind of Human

What Abundance Portends for the Human Journey

My studies over the years have made it clear what kind of lives preindustrial humans led: it was a grim affair.  Not only did half of all children die, but getting enough food to live was a constant preoccupation for all but the richest people, and the daily brutalities of such people’s lives are hard to comprehend for comfortable Westerners. 

Dying violently was a realistic concern for everybody, and it was far worse in the hunter-gatherer phase of human existence.  Children that survived to adulthood virtually all had brain damage from their childhood adversity, with swollen amygdalas and shrunken prefrontal cortexes.  It was no way to live. 

Industrialization led to the biggest event in the human journey so far: the elimination of childhood death.  It had nothing to do with medical interventions, but improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and hygiene. 

In Azar Gat’s masterpiece, he stated it as succinctly as I have seen: the biological compulsion to survive and reproduce in a world of scarcity is at the root of all violence.  But even in our industrial Epoch, the song of scarcity plays constantly, although it is more of a background hum than the oppressive daily reality that preindustrial peoples experienced. 

Gat noted the three primary modes of human interaction:

1.    Cooperation;

2.    Competition;

3.    Conflict.

I was an athlete in college and was steeped in competition from the cradle.  After college, I could tell how competing damaged me, and I have not engaged in competitive anything since college.  My corollary to Gat’s statement on violence is that where there is plenty, there is peace.  This can even be seen with gorillas and chimps.  If there is plenty, there is no need for conflict or competition. 

Bucky Fuller was the professional ancestor that I didn’t know I had until one of his pupils had me read some of Fuller’s work, and suddenly a lot became far clearer to me. Like I have advocated since the 1980s, Fuller’s primary message was that human societies had reached the stage where scarcity could be eliminated.  Fuller wrote that in world of abundance, two men could still fall in love with the same woman, but humans would be primarily concerned with self-realization, not survival.   

What kind of people will be produced in a world of abundance rather than a world of scarcity?  Just as the Fourth Epoch marked the end of childhood death, the Fifth Epoch will mark the end of childhood adversity.  Also, Fuller noted that children are born geniuses, but our societies quickly beat it out of them, as they are turned into cogs in the machinery of their societies.

If no child was raised in adversity and children’s natural genius was allowed to flourish, I think that a new kind of human will appear.  The human potential will begin to be realized in ways that are hardly imaginable today.  Does that seem like a worthwhile goal?  Helping that kind of future manifest has dominated my life’s efforts since the 1980s.  I am not done yet, I seek people who can help, and I know what their qualities will be.  There are not many of them on Earth today, but my approach does not need many, either.  This Substack effort is another way that I am trying to find them.