The End Game

The end game is a concept that is crucial in making correct choices. Knowing to what end your actions are working towards my seem obvious however it is surprising how many choices are made without any reference or even idea of what the ultimate objective is. Being a gamer I relate most things that I can to games as the methods of reasoning in them are widely applicable in real life yet they are very simple by comparison thus making it easier to apply them. In any strategy game knowing how you plan to win and the likely situations that will arise as your plan comes to fruition is essential, it is something to always have in the back of your mind while playing. If I were writing an essay with the aim of getting better at games this would be one of the first lessons. With games it is obvious what the ultimate aim is, usually it is simply to win. Knowing what the aim is in games it comes down to a simple case of when and how. Even so, in many of the games I play I see people repeatedly doing the same things, perhaps the powering up stages of the early game, whatever that might be, and failing to ever focus in on an end point. Games might have resources you obtain and then convert into points or ways to optimise efficiency and so being efficient and getting lots of resources will be generically good things to be doing. If you lose sight of how and when the end will come about and simply focus on those core elements of the game you will get pipped to the post by someone who saw the end in sight and stopped gathering more resources so as to focus on converting those they have into points.

I notice many people act much in this way in their lives, they repeat the same cycles as if they were going to live forever. This is more understandable, unlike games our lives don't have the end detailed in the rule book with known conditions or timings, nor do we have an aim laid down for us to finish with the most points, complete specific objectives or eliminate all our opponents. This essay is not concerned with discussing aims for individuals which I have covered to some extent in other essays, most notably “The Meaning of Life”. All that should be taken from this essay in regards to ones own life is that you should have at least one aim and you should be mindful of your own mortality. Failure to do both will lead to you making choices that are incorrect from a game perspective, which typically translates to being inefficient or treading water.

Often thinking with an end game in mind is coined “thinking of the big picture”. I prefer to call it end game thinking as it draws attention to the key element involved. Big picture implies you need to know lots about everything between now and the end game however you can, and have to, make do with only knowing about things now and where you are trying to get to with little knowledge of what may lie in-between. Both big picture and end game thinking at least conjure up the idea of making investments and doing things that might not always be the best for right now to make it better for later. More sayings spring to mind such as “a stitch in time saves nine”, while I am not sure about the ratios and feel I would need a more exact time scale to work with the sentiment holds very true. Understanding the situation you are in and being mindful of where you want to end up generally allows you to make good calls despite having no knowledge of how you are going to get from where you are to where you wish to be.

One thing that has always surprised me is that the human race seems very focused on the here and now and devotes very little time to thinking about the end game for our species. It is much harder for an individual to work out an endgame for themselves when they also have to work one out for society as well so as to frame theirs within it. Regardless of this is it is also much harder for state to create policy or infrastructure without an endgame for humanity in mind. We end up just patching over the problems we presently face, working out road-hog isolated solutions. What we should be doing is tweaking and making changes cohesively towards an end goal instead of taking each problem in isolation and covering up its mess in some thoughtless manner. Rather than the cyclic boom-bust nature of modern society we would have a steadily improving state of affairs if changes were made with an ultimate and holistic aim in mind.

Humanity is a fairly composite term and should be broken down into a few more specific categories within which we can more usefully discuss the end game concept. There is life and evolution of which humanity is and intertwined part. We then have the physical universe in which we live and how that is expected to change. We have society with its culture, laws, systems, infrastructure, morality and so forth. We also have knowledge, a concept for which the end game is pretty obvious – know all that can be known. This leaves scientists with an easier time that most groups of people in society as they are aware of the ultimate aims of their roles. There are also religious end games, some of which are described, others not however these are moving outside the scope of this essay. For humanity to sensibly consider what its endgame might look like it must consider the forces of life and evolution and the changing universe and reconcile them with any utopian social ideas.

The physical universe may not be fully understood by us but this should not prevent us from preparing for what we know or expect to happen based on our present understanding. Overall the physical universe is the slowest effect on humanity of the ones I have named, which given that evolution is also included, should demonstrate just how long term we are talking. Although slow the physical universe is something we have least control over and must work with or around in whatever plans we may hatch. The main date in the diary set by the physical world in regards the endgame for humanity is the expiry date of the Sun. We have at least four billion years to prepare for this event but should we wish to survive as a species we have to have populated other worlds or found ways of surviving a nomadic life in space. It is not something we should necessarily be working on now but it would be remiss to simply assume life can go on as it is indefinitely on our surprisingly transient (when discussed in the universal context rather than that of our own lifespan) hunk of rock we call home.

There is also speculation about the universe re-collapsing or expanding into an entropy death which is much much further down the line than the Sun's expiry date however poses a more awkward question for humanity. Perhaps there is no getting around the end of the universe and humanity needs to have achieved all its goals by this stage. Perhaps a species needs to know its own mortality in order to properly motivate them towards their goals much like it does with individuals. This feels counter intuitive at first as things might seem a bit pointless if it is all going to come to nothing and so the mortality of a species would be a de-motivator. It could just be that we are so much in the infancy of our species life cycle that we are all but oblivious to the appropriate ultimate aims of our species. Like a newborn baby that only really appreciates its immediate needs humanity often works towards fairly superficial ends. If you apply the de-motivation argument to the situation of the baby who is only aware of its immediate needs and suddenly make it also aware of its mortality it might seem logical to give up trying to satisfy them now and accept the inevitable. This is because we are not accounting for all the other reasons for being that the baby will come to appreciate above and beyond basic needs as it grasps a fuller understanding of its situation and environment. It will come to understand it is destined to die but will continue to strive in life towards ends other than just basic survival. Certainly as individuals we have ascended beyond pure survival however the species as a whole only makes advancements to serve the comfort and convenience of individuals. We presently do very little to further the species beyond our increase to the pool of knowledge however we don't even put that to great use, often ways to kill each other or novel new ways to consume more resources. We have the capacity to makes the choices faced by gods yet we still act much like the other animal species on the planet, just finding places we can exploit and then filling them up with our numbers. As the wise agent Smith noted to Neo, we have almost regressed below our fellow higher animals to the level of a virus based on our present inability to conserve our environment.

As an aside, the argument that a super intelligent alien species has not made any contact with us therefore acting as proof against their existence, or at least any with the capacity to travel about space with some ease, seems flawed based on our own preconceptions of what an evolved or mature species looks like. I am not suggesting this is a proof of alien life, only that this line of reasoning certainly does not prove their non existence. Our mating rituals, our houses, basically everything we do can also be found elsewhere in the world performed by other lifeforms. Are our houses sufficiently more complex than a birds nest when judged on the same scale as a super alien intelligence? Is our language that much more advanced than the sounds made by a pack of wolves that an alien observer would notice the difference? Certainly human achievement is monumental when compared to the achievements of any other species native to Earth, but given that totals at nil it is hard to guage a nominal level of achievement. I would argue that evolution as a mechanism has achieved much but that its various non-human offspring when defined as species or individuals have failed to break their mould and have no achievements that could be called their own. Humanity needs to have some humility in regards to our progress when we are conceiving of an end game plan. Simply outclassing the other apes is unlikely to be noteworthy on a galactic scale.

Much of what motivates the living other than satisfying immediate wants and needs are things that can be left behind after death. There is a clear difference between the end of a species as a result of the events of the universe and the death of an individual. If the universe ends there will be nothing left to benefit from anything. Rather than ruin the analogy however I think this highlights our lack of understanding and our inability to conceive of what our ultimate aims could be and how they might be relevant. Simply put it is impossible to imagine something you have no notion of at all. The hurdles imposed on our species by the universe set both technological and philosophical challenges but they are so very far away that they seem all but irrelevant in our lives. Presently then it is just good food for thought and something to be dimly aware of. We are pointed in the right direction at least, with our scientists and philosophers compasses being dead on (in terms of their ends games, not always in terms of ideas or pursuits) giving us valuable knowledge and insight, however we are somewhat constrained by our short term individual goals and lack of direction as a species.

The evolutionary end game is a much more pressing question than how we are to survive the death of the Sun or be relevant in light of the end of the universe. It is rapid by comparison but not so much that it would be too significant except for two things. One is that we are bypassing understood evolutionary mechanisms with our technology such as medicine preventing natural selection from working as it used to and secondly we are becoming very adept at tinkering with genetics thus opening a whole new world of possibilities. In a classic sense we think of evolution slowing honing and dividing species into more specialized, adept and diverse organisms able to best exploit an environment. This view breaks down when we apply it to modern man. We have become so good at exploiting our environments we no longer need the help of the tediously slow biological evolution process. The problem is we are taking control of something without any idea of the direction we should go in. Eugenics is a fairly ugly grey area and a debate that needs having and resolving soon. It is not just our own genetics we are altering but that of all species we farm and even, although to a much lesser extent, all those species whose environments we affect. Selective breeding and GM foods are altering things outside the classic scope of survival of the fittest. It is not that taking control of the direction of evolution is a bad thing, indeed it can and does offer us a wealth of useful opportunities, the concern is that we are not aware of the ramifications of our actions as much as we might like.

It is most likely people would chose to use our increasing control over genetics to select for desirable traits as our society sees it such as intelligence, tall and good looking with athletic prowess while cutting out defects such as poor eye sight or perhaps even allergies. A pragmatic suggestion might be to make people much much smaller so we consume less food and energy and can live in less space. This would be great for easing expanding population levels and would be more in line with species evolving to suit their environment better. The idea is however farcical both logistically and in terms of things like human rights. Who would agree or want to have their offspring genetically shrunk a bit even if it were for the good of humanity? Certainly this is one of the biggest questions that humanity will face thus far in its path. Atomic weapons are to date the greatest hurdle we have come to and although we have part cleared it I suspect we are not fully out of the danger zone. Either way, the bomb gave us terrifying control over each other and on local environments however the progress we have made in biological and genetic fields give us control over evolution itself. It is like those sci-fi horror b-movies where the robots become self aware and start making more of themselves using the designs of their creators, except we are the rebellious robots in this simile, not the benevolent creator, which is of course simply evolution. We need to decide not only the moral issues and the practical issues but also, and perhaps most importantly what direction we wish to go in regards to our end game. I suspect if it is left to the free markets and capitalism to develop then its uses will be solely egotistic and superficial. By that I do not mean just physical beauty but also things like athletic prowess or even intellect. Ultimately it would become a fairly cyclical and pointless affair where we would genetically select for things that would be “in trend” culturally speaking, people would conform to certain standards of beauty that had as much basis as what colour is in season. Generally such things would be selected for based on the prestige it would bring individuals and not for how they can benefit society or even humanity. If this were the case genetics would be a squandered power, we would remain animals and not become gods. I am perhaps being overly harsh as it would be difficult not to wind up with medical and intellectual perks as a result of tinkering with evolution inside a free market society which themselves would contribute significantly to the further development of the species. As yet I have no real answers to the direction and use for genetics, I would most like to see it used to discover more pure and direct forms of communication and/or higher or combined forms of consciousness however I realise this makes me sounds rather like a hippie. I have no notion of how this would be done nor what it would achieve, it simply feels like it is more worthy that making my offspring have less body hair or ensuring they are the higher end of the height spectrum.

While genetics may pose some very challenging and immediate questions and the notion of galactic significance is rather abstract and difficult to conceive the social end game is somewhat straight forward. As society is something that has essentially been constructed and defined by us the rules governing its optimisation and end game options are far more obvious and logical. It is a composite of laws, tradition, morality, culture, economics, infrastructure and governmental systems. Society is also a tool by which we can more efficiently work and live together for mutual advantage. As I mentioned earlier in the essay, we use ad-hoc solutions to the problems caused by any one small part of society and often disregard the effects it has on the overall system. Things work well enough in the short term and so a long term or cohesive solution is not found. The utopia is the endgame for society however there is not just one single utopian solution but many. Each person may have an idea of what their own utopia may look like based on their own political sway and other preferences in life and many of those may be valid utopian visions. The true test of a utopia, and whether it is an appropriate social end game is not how much the various ideals please you but how well the various elements blend together. To have a valid utopia the morality has to align with the economic policies, which in turn both have to work within the law and so forth. Presently we have a situation where our society is misaligned, there is overlap within the general moral compass, laws and the economy etc but not at all points and unsurprisingly it is these points at which you find the problems in society arise. An example is that our capitalist economy appropriately satisfies many of our ideas of freedom however its polarising effect on wealth does not fit as well with many peoples idea of justice or equality. Our economy is set very well to fuel the pace of innovation however it does little to help conserve our resources or environment. We are guided by our morality, culture and tradition but we do not control them directly and as such any utopia will be heavily defined by those of the times. In defining our utopias however we have complete control over the economy, the law and the systems by which things are done. If all the things that would be utopians have control over can be made to seamlessly work together as if one great machine and not independent parts, while also appropriately reflecting the less controllable aspects then you would have a worthy candidate to aim for as the end game for society.  

The Adverse Effects of the Division of Labour

It is generally assumed that the division of labour is an all round good thing that will improve efficiency in a given task. The division of labour must necessarily go hand in hand with things like mass production and the growth of huge companies. A key factor to remember about the division of labour is that you need each role a person is doing to occupy all of their time. If on average a company needs five hours of legal work done per week it would be very unwise to employ a full time lawyer to either sit around for seven eighths of the time or to fulfil both legal non legal tasks. Both options will mean you are paying vastly over the odds for the required legal work, or at least vastly more than you should for the non legal work done in the latter case. Companies in this situation will outsource their work which is the most efficient option for them. However if the company in question with a need of five hours of legal work should grow significantly, for the sake of argument lets say ten times bigger, then it would have sufficient demand of legal work to effectively employ their own in-house lawyer which will be cheaper and more effective than outsourcing. This lengthy example is simply to show that the benefits of the division of labour can only really be taken advantage of alongside a scaling up of the business.

One of the noticeable side effects of this requirement to grow to become more efficient through the division of labour is a polarization in the types of company that exist in the present day. There are the various giants in their respective fields that are either nation wide or multinationals and then there are those local sole proprietors and family run businesses. It is often overlooked that to organise and divide labour requires a fair amount of effort, at the large company end of the spectrum these efforts are somewhat negligible even if they are nominally greater than those for the smaller companies. At the sole proprietor / family businesses end of the spectrum however the effort to train and manage additional employees is substantial as a fraction of the total required work. Also it is always much more of a jump up in terms of relative size to take on extra staff at the small end of the spectrum compared to the big end of the spectrum and so you cannot incrementally take advantage of economies of scale. As the returns from the division of labour are less efficient for small companies, and as they require proportionally more input to incur, there is a disincentive to grow. The small businesses often provide more returns on the input the smaller they are, up to a point, and growing past that point is a lot of hard work with relatively low odds of success (As a side note specific the the UK, the VAT threshold is also a cripplingly restrictive on small businesses breaking through into being nationwide). The amalgamation of labour has its own associated efficiencies in terms of operating and running a business. When you can amalgamate all your labour into one worker you are the most efficient a company can be in terms of delegation and management along with any personnel duties. Much like many laws in chemistry and physics, at different magnitudes or under different conditions certain laws will start to dominate where once they were negligible. While the division of labour is the dominant force for efficiency in large companies, the very small ones are predominated by the efficiencies of the amalgamation of labour.

There is nothing wrong with the small business however, they provide valuable services, employment and are often important within the smaller communities. What they do not tend to offer is progression, it takes a company with much capital behind it to invest into doing something new or devising improvements to current practices and then to usefully put that into effect. Small companies keep things ticking over within society but large companies help to move us forwards. Certainly we want both within society, the problem is that there is very little migration from the small to the large. Social mobility is talked about much but the mobility of business is not something so commonly regarded as an issue. My concern for the lack of commercial mobility (specifically in more established sectors, for example something like electronics in its emergence is less susceptible to these effects) is that innovation is more likely in the newer budding companies and industries. When vast companies have infrastructure to do things a certain way it can be expensive to make improvements to the infrastructure. Even practices within various industries are die hard, many record labels for example being very slow and unwilling to embrace the internet and take advantage of their capital and market share to get ahead in the new environment, instead choosing to fight the internet and keep things as they were before, which is like fighting the tide and only serves to slow progress. In many cases due to the efficiency differences just from the size difference between companies the large old company with its outdated practices and infrastructure will still be able to be more competitive than the new innovative company with its better methods. It is not until the old methods are so outdated that the forces of capitalism will give the innovative companies a competitive edge and allow them to grow. As such progress within society is retarded. The large companies have the capacity to invest and implement innovation however they are under no real pressure to do so as a result of the impotence of smaller companies that are both more likely and more able to take new approaches. Smaller companies therefore stagnate progress within society not just because they do not grow themselves very often but also, and perhaps more importantly, because they fail to pressurise those companies more able to innovate, improve and implement into doing so.

The second problem with the division of labour is that by offering an efficiency incentive to the larger companies it naturally encourages the forming of monopolies and companies with dangerous levels of market share. The bigger the company gets the more efficient it can potentially be and therefore has a higher chance of surpassing competition. I have discussed the problems of monopolies in reasonable detail in other essays and so I shall just offer a quick outline here. Essentially monopolies are devoid of competition which is the driving force of capitalism. Competition between companies is what forces improvements and keeps prices low. A monopoly can stagnate in terms of making any improvements while still making a killing on profits. The consumer is at the mercy of the monopoly while a company with good and varied competition is at the mercy of the consumer and can only win by serving them best. A competitive industry may still stagnate in terms of progress and developments however it will still tend toward offering the consumer the best possible costs and services. When a monopoly starts to take advantage of its consumers it will serve to widen the wealth gap within society which in turn has a wide range of detrimental effects on society from increased crime to decreased individual happiness. These are statistical trends rather than proven facts however the logic that is used to support these trends makes good and clear sense and is akin to evolution in its plausibility as an unproven theory. Monopolies are not limited to their industry in regards to their detrimental effect on society. A monopoly on the supply of diamonds doesn't just mean you will be paying more for diamonds.

It is also not just pure monopolies that are guilty of failing to best serve consumers but rather it is a scale that starts to take more effect as companies grow in market share. A good example of this are the various super market chains in the UK which may appear to offer sufficient competition and a wide range of choice to consumers but in reality are a little more pernicious. Certainly they are not monopolies however they do not directly compete with each other as one might imagine. Firstly they each tend to cater for a specific demographic and secondly they are fairly well spread so as to have somewhat of a local monopoly. If you were able to isolate the various demographics and assign them as separate markets then each of the major supermarket chains would suddenly look a lot more like a monopoly, which is only compounded in effect with the location spreading of outlets. It is not really the other supermarkets that each of the major chains must compete with but it is the local markets, butchers, bakers and greengrocers that infringe on their location and demographic pseudo monopolies. This however has proven to be an easy fight for the super markets to dominate with their economies of scale and the effect is fairly pronounced and observable in the decline of the independent food retailers over the last fifty or so years. In essence then the supermarkets needs only serve the consumer sufficiently well to surpass the local markets, greengrocers, bakers and butchers and do not overly have to worry about serving the consumer better than the other supermarkets. The range in pricing across stores in the UK is not a reflection of cost incurred to the supermarket to supply the food in that area so much as it is a reflection of what a supermarket can get away with charging to people in those areas. Overall the effect is a cyclical positive feedback one where companies tend towards polar extremes, the monopoly like companies or the sole proprietor. This secures the position of the monopoly like company who find themselves in a position where they are competing with small companies that are easy to keep down, like a war where one side has tanks and the other bows and spears.

The final drawback of the division of labour is the dissociation of context. Each additional person in the chain of a process incurs either an information loss or a large efficiency cost. For most companies it is impossible for every person to know all the relevant information. The solution is usually rigid protocol and systems that ensure sufficient information is transferred efficiently at each step. This commercial need to know approach to working will provide a sufficient level of service and won't tend to do much wrong however it misses most of the opportunities it might have to excel in some manner or attain extra unexpected efficiencies as they arise. I have worked for large organized companies where things felt devoid of human emotion or input. Consumers got what they expected and nothing more and staff tended to be disenfranchised and unmotivated. I have worked for a rapidly growing disorganized company where information was frequently lost or unused and the result was an awful service provided with many losses of efficiency within the company. Now I am effectively self employed, I know each of my clients personally and am able to offer a service that is more efficient upon my work load while simultaneously being a better service for them. It is also more rewarding when you do a good job as you get to witness the appreciation for your efforts (I am a dog walker rather than the prostitute this could also depict, although for the record I have nothing against prostitution and feel it should be legalized so as to allow for more personal security and freedom for both kinds of party involved). I also prefer to use small businesses where possible as I know where and to whom my money is going. When you spend money with a big firm you have no idea where that money ends up, how much is useless advertising or investments far away from your local area or morally grey profiteering schemes. I shop at my local games store instead of online despite the cost difference because the local games shop also provides a valuable service to the area. We are all a little overly occupied by profits and returns when thinking about economics and forget some of the more important things in life. Small businesses help bind a community together and increase the quality of life for all within. They can offer certain services you simply cannot receive from large companies due to the amount of specific personal information required to perform them and they can be a blessing for those that cannot stomach the familiar feel of working for any large company.

In society we need big businesses and we need small businesses so as to exploit both the economies of scale and also those of amalgamation. We want personalized human interaction but we also want cheap products. The polar extremes of business size generally serve very different roles within society yet unfortunately exist on the same playing field which is far from level. Not all small businesses need to grow in order that large companies feel the pressure to be innovative however it would be beneficial if they were not so hindered in growth by the larger companies. Much of this is a cultural attitude towards money and not just a result of economics but then it is all part of the same complex mosaic where everything is intertwined. A good example of the dissociation of context is that of investments which are usually provided by large companies where fairly minimal human and personal information is known. For starters, unless you have some some material backing or appropriate reputation you will likely not be entertained as a wise investment opportunity. If those able to offer loans and capital investments were more personally involved with people and not statistics there is more chance to spot genuine people with an innovative idea even without renown or capital. This is all very idealistic but shows the potential kind of social efficiency

that can be gained from having a more amalgamated, personal or local working relationship while simultaneously showing a way in which more pressure could be placed on larger companies to be more innovative without tinkering with free trade.

Giving a subsidy or incentive towards small businesses so as to offset the advantages of the larger companies and allowing them to grow more easily is dangerous and almost certainly not the solution. More likely the only solution is a much narrower wealth gap in which the returns from small businesses are sufficiently liveable that growth is far easier complete with better protection against monopoly like companies so that large businesses are too busy competing with each other to quash the little ones. These are long term solutions that can only happen slowly and must be approached from many different fronts. It is not just small business that needs protection from monopolies and pseudo monopolies but all of society. This is a tricky beast to tame as you want minimum disruption to the economies of scale afforded by the larger company. My gut solution is to impose an arbitrary cap on market share which if exceed by a company would then require that company to nationalise a portion, effectively issuing shares which would be state owned, at a rate linked to the market share it exceeds the cap by. There are however many further problems with this as it fails to account for proximal or demographic monopolies very effectively, not to mention the dangers of gross inefficiency so frequently seen in nationalised institutions. The idea is more to encourage companies to invest in improvements towards increasing profit margins rather than market share as the latter is often significantly more worthwhile in the present climate and leads towards monopoly rather than progress. The solution to taming the monopoly is going to be a complex one and not just a silver bullet alteration as each industry is entirely different and needs to be handled accordingly.

It seems as if the solution to every social problem is either a changing of the wealth gap (narrowing in the case of capitalism based societies), eduction or a change to economic policies. The problems caused by economies of scale require two of these solutions and certainly would benefit from all three making it one of the more awkward ones. Fortunately all of its solutions are ones you would wish to implement regardless of the existence of economies of scale as other areas of society and social forces would greatly benefit from the changes. All change has good and bad implications, I measure the value of change in society not on the level of exploitation of the good bits but by the handling of the bad bits. Much as our production of good and gadgets is mighty impressive but overall it leaves a bad taste as it brings to mind how we have squandered so many resources, engendered an attitude of consumption and material wealth and widened the wealth gap further all at the same time. The division of labour is a powerful tool that has given us much. I do not advocate the limitation of its application, only the appreciation for what is being lost as well as what is gained and having a mind towards finding solutions.

The Problems of Improving the Efficiencies of Labour

A force of change looms over our global economy that history has not prepared us for. I eluded to this issue while describing my utopian business model however I did nothing more than mention its potential to disrupt the suggested system. Although only a short time has elapsed since I first recognized the issue it has become apparent that rather than being a far off problem to be faced by future generations it is already starting to take noticeable effect. As with most economic things there are good aspects to the issue as well as detrimental ones and at first glance the good ones may seem to outweigh the bad. The issue I am talking about is the growing power of labour although it could be framed in many different ways such as the ratio of employment to GDP. It is not so much the improvements to labour efficiency themselves that are causing the problems but the relation of those efficiencies related to our consumption and our supply of resources.

Humanity has always been able to excel through use of tools, in many ways they define our recent evolution far better than biology is able. The better our tools the greater are our achievements and quality of life. Not only have our tools gotten consistently better, the rate at which they are advancing is increasing, as has been the general trend over our history. Each improvement to a tool, be it a computer program, a high speed rail network or a simple electric drill makes the labour output of those who use it more efficient. This has historically been exclusively good (disregarding our impact on the environment) for humanity however we are fast approaching a point at which it is starting to have downsides.

There are two main downsides and also two relevant stages at which to look at this problem. It is worth looking at the immediate effects upon current society but also worth considering the ultimate sci-fi utopian possibility. The two downsides are the decline in jobs through lowering labour requirements and the polarization of power due to the ever decreasing number of people responsible for key goods and services. Humanity must be best served by improving our tools, technologies and methods and so we must look for solutions to the new problems they bring. Imagine a world where AI and robotics have reached the point of being able to perform the vast majority of tasks better than humans, both cheaper and faster. Assembly lines already produce many of our goods and so the leap in imagination to where they have basically no human operatives is not a big one. When they are able to create robotics that able to create more robotics and when AI is capable of design and other overseeing roles there will be far fewer spheres in which human labour is useful.

We are at a unique turning point in history. Previously any improvements made to essential labour such as growing food resulted in that labour moving to another non-essential sphere such as production of luxury goods. This has simply meant GDP has risen (averaged out over a very long time frame) alongside quality of life without dramatic effect on the percentage of employment. The turning point is that our consumption of energy and resources that are going in to the combination of essential and not essential labours has reached the capacity our environment can support. We cannot simply continue to become more productive in our labour and expect that return to come back to us with a full yield. The analogy that springs to mind is that of a plant which needs both water and light to grow. To a point increasing how much light the plant gets will aid its growth however further addition quickly has no effect as it will be capped by how much water the plant has access to. Our efficiencies of labour are the plants light and our environment/resources are the amount of water available to us acting as a cap. We either need to find new sources of “water”, which could be harvesting the resources of other galactic bodies, or we need to become more frugal in how we utilize the “water” available to us. As it stands we are continuing to shed more light, if I may stretch this analogy out, on our production efficiencies which will decrease the required amount of labour to support our present economy, infrastructure and society reduce the total number of available jobs. Unlike in the past however there is not enough water for those whose labour becomes surplus to simply do something else. It is not that the improvements we make are detrimental, only that our old ways to deal with the changes will no longer continue to work. For future growth to continue in the same manner as historic growth we must find ways to improve our energy and resource output alongside any increases to the efficiency of labour.

A simple solution to a decrease in jobs is to reduce the labour output of people, say a reduction in the working week. The problem with this sort of blanket approach is that it affects different people and roles very differently. Certain high paid jobs need continual overseeing and already disregard conventional working hours. This wouldn't change at the top end of employment without strict enforcement. If it didn't change it would stand to further increase the wealth gap within society. If however you enforce a reduced working week then you will adversely affect the economy leaving you with the age old right and left wing struggle. Taking quite a simplified view of things, if you reduce the hours people each give to their jobs by half you would need twice as many people to do the same amount of work. This would mean twice as much training would be needed, experienced gained would be half the speed and the quality of applicants within roles would be lower. It is more efficient to have each job done by the best person available, each giving as much time to the role as possible. The loss of efficiencies through a reduced working week would be most notable in the very top professions which in turn have the most impact on the economy of a society. Much like the right wing argument against high taxes on high earners, if you restrict the top everything below it suffers.

An alternate solution would be to expend surplus labour into the efficient use of resources and energy. As previously mentioned, our available energy and resources are the cap preventing us from continually directing unessential labour towards producing luxury. This would help in providing an alternate yet productive use of labour that didn't escalate the problem and would in turn allow more people to be employed in creating luxury. We are of course starting to do this with recycling and solar panels etc, much like people are working less hours with ever more people in part time work. The problem with recycling and other endeavours of this kind is that many of them are so inefficient themselves that they are ultimately counterproductive. Until recently they have been outside the influence of capitalism and as such no incentives were provoking radical improvements to those kinds of industry. As a result we have a relatively token gesture which seems to be there mostly so the rich west can feel good about themselves rather than actually doing anything of real value. Within any current economic system the only sensible way of tackling this problem is by imposing subsidies and taxes for sustainable products and depleting resources respectively. The utmost of care is needed in any impositions of free trade such as this as they can so easily upset the benefits one expects from capitalism. Such taxes and subsidies if imposed on the right area will focus the improving effect of capitalism into the the efficiencies of energy and resource consumption and help to make it a financial viable exercise rather than a token gesture. Without such a fiscal intervention from governments the appropriate forces of capitalism will not be attained until we have sufficiently depleted our supplies and will run the risk of not having enough time to make comfortable changes. Change is good, but changes too fast will leave a wake of devastation which is best avoided.

While applying financial pressure towards more resource efficient practices and allowing for optional and liveable part time work within society to ease the problems of job loss in the current climate, it will have the opposite effect on the wealth gap in that it will create further problems. In my essays it is assumed that a large wealth gap is a detriment to society however no wealth gap is also a detriment to society. Although very hard to state the correct spread of wealth within a society it would be fair to assert that the gap is too high throughout the world today. Sensible countermeasures to job loss caused by the improvement of labour past peak oil send the wealth gap further in the wrong direction. In addition to this the improvements of labour themselves directly increase the wealth gap within a capitalist society. This is due to the fact that it is typically the tools and infrastructure that allow for labour to become more efficient and not the advances of the workers themselves. These tools and infrastructure are owned by the companies and shareholders and while they may need operating and maintaining they do not suffer the same supply and demand power struggle with the company in question as a workforce does. By owning more useful infrastructure and employing less workers the power balance shifts in favour of the owners of the capital. They can dictate more the state of wages and the conditions of work and should in theory, assuming the tools are indeed more efficient, get a larger profit margin for their produce. This all means more money flowing to those already with much capital and less money flowing to fewer people at the bottom end of the wealth gap.

Countermeasures to a naturally increasing wealth gap are the subject of many of my essays and tend to be a generic solutions to the problem. The only specific relevance they have to the subject of this essay is that circumstances are poised so that we should notice an increase to the rate of growth of the wealth gap. I can think of no way of specifically targeting the effect of more efficient labour on the growth of the wealth gap and so the best we can do is be aware of its effects and be more serious about applying the various broader ways of reducing a wealth gap within society. The concern is that few of the best solutions come without a cost of their own or a requirement for significant social upheaval which when placed on top of the other dramatic social changes under way presently, from exciting ones like the internet, to frightening ones forced upon us by circumstance such as the rapid decline in resources, could all to to a rather chaotic period in history.

Taking the idea of an ever increasing trend towards more efficient work to its ultimate conclusion you reach a kind of material paradise in may ways like the fictional race created by Ian M Banks called the Culture. In such a world there could literally be no need of work performed by anything other than machines. Certainly this would have its upsides but as with all things it would come along with some darker consequences as well. Firstly we would need to find a sensible means of usefully occupy people in a fulfilling manner or evolve to a stage where many instinctive behaviours are lost. Without a means of fulfilment and a way to usefully spend time I fear many people would suffer from unusual kinds of mental health issue. The other concern would be that the ownership and control of the machinery responsible for the upkeep of society would offer unreasonable power. Trying to turn our capitalist society into this work free paradise would result in some awkward point down the line where large companies evolve from simply wielding a great deal of power to actually acting more like the kings of old. It is not inconceivable that one day a real war could be fought between two companies instead of two countries. Monopolies are dangerous to society when it is just the market share they have a hold over, I dread to think what the profit driven motives of an organisation with a monopoly on an essential workforce could do. As we move towards this period in history we best think of how our companies and tools can best serve society and prevent a situation where it is the other way around.

While this is all quite far fetched it is not irrelevant for consideration. With the speed of growth and change we are in no great place to predict what things will look like that far into the future. If we do not look at where our progress might take is it could be too late when we realise the world is effectively under the control of a corporation rather than any conventional government. I have always thought I was against the restriction of power as it is effectively a restriction upon freedom however when the wealth gap is no longer an issue because the power gap is so severe you have reached a point where the freedom of a few is a limitation on the freedom of others and must be interfered with. One of the main strengths of a democracy is that it divides the power far more evenly across the populace. Power comes in many guises and that of wealth already disrupts the democratic balance. I suspect that the sheer power of work output when concentrated into the hands of the few trumps that of simple ethereal wealth. This especially so the case when it is one of the key services such as communication, military, transport, power production, other utilities and food production.

Fundamentally the point of this essay is to show how the things that appear good for society will always come with a downside to them that must be foreseen and countered. Something as innocuous as the improvement of tools within society has far reaching implications that shouldn't mean improvements are not worthwhile but that will set you back if not accounted for. Unfortunately society is rather like the individual in that it needs to make its own mistakes before it can properly learn the lesson and adapt. The recent financial collapse is an example of where we took the good parts while neglecting the bad until it came to a head which forced rapid and unpleasant change.  The decline in resources is upon us but seems to be going slow enough for capitalism to solve without too much fallout. As for the rise of the labour owning super companies, it is still a long way off and would be somewhat wasteful to attempt to try and counter before any minor effects are felt. I suspect the most appropriate periods in history to study the economic effects of capitalists owning labour would be those where slaves existed, certainly during the Roman Empire there were problems associated with an abundance of slaves taking the jobs of the Roman citizens. 

The State of Man

Cultural and technological evolution have accelerated at a phenomenal rate for humanity over the last ten thousand years or so. It is harder to quantify the cultural aspects however the technological ones seem to be somewhat exponential in the rate of their growth. Within this time frame biological evolution, as it is understood for other species, has all but stood still. In many ways the changes to our culture and technology are either negating biological evolution or directing its path with alternate conditions where the “fittest” no longer means the same thing. Humanity has been equipped by nature to live much like the stereotypical idea of a cave man. Certainly much of what made cave man an evolutionary success is the foundation of humanities flourishing. The ability to cooperate and coordinate in groups, complete with a good ability to problem solve. Equipped with these tools humanity began to create ecological niches for themselves rather than slowly evolving to suit those around them. Compare the present issues faced by people and the environments in which they live to those faced by the earliest humans. You may be able to find examples of humans which still live in similar ways to their distant ancestors but for the most part, certainly in urban areas there is little overlap in lifestyles. Certainly we still make exception use from our cooperative and reasoning skills however many of the tools nature equipped us with are no longer useful in the same way and some may even be to our detriment.

I do not refer to the physical formation of our bodies for they are a highly functional, well evolved versatile, vehicle for our minds. Our bodies are good all round in terms of physical attributes when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. Other than our brains, the only area in which we could be said to excel over any other species is in dexterity with our opposable thumbs however this is fairly questionable and too tangential to bother discussing. Our jack of all trades bodies suit us perfectly, particularly as we are in the habit of creating environments to suit us and not the other way round. It is our minds that I feel are becoming out dated technology no longer well suited to the environments we find ourselves in.

It is perhaps a little ambitious to call natures greatest accomplishment inadequate, especially given that we do not really understand the working of the brain. As such I cannot call upon any precise scientific data to suggest an inadequacy and will have to make do with observations and common sense. An obvious example to lead with is the ever increasing number of cases of mental illness and similar issues such as depression that afflict humanity. Many dismiss the lower counts of these issues found historically as undiagnosed rather than non existent, and assuredly non-diagnosis would be a factor but as to it being the only one I am less convinced. It may also seem absurd to try and compare the number of instances of mental difficulties in humans with those found in animals, both wild and domestic, but I would contend this is a highly relevant thing to look at. If you can show that humans minds are failing at a rate correlating with technological or cultural evolution and that other wild species have a consistently small (relative to humans) or non-existent rate of mental illness over time then you can be fairly confident in saying that our lifestyles and culture are detrimental to our minds.

To show that an animal's state of mind is comparable to a human with noticeable mental issues is scientifically very tricky. I have encountered domestic animals that act in unusual and atypical ways that could easily be interpreted as animal equivalents of human mental problems. Almost all of those for which I knew the history of had been treated poorly in some way however they would not be eligible to count against the non-human species in our attempt to show that technology and culture are in some way damaging. This is simply because they are domesticated and therefore suffer many of the advantages of our cultural and technological advances. The life of a pet dog is in many ways more removed from that of a wild dog than the life of a modern human is from a cave man. What these troubled domestic animals does give us is the ability to recognize what a mental issue might look like in other animals. Although I have had basically no opportunity to get to know any wild animals, from the many brief observations I have had of them I can say none have appeared to be at all disturbed or atypical in behaviour nor have any appeared alike to the neurotic domestic animals I have encountered. As you can see this is not the most scientific of results, my sample sizes are far too small to assert than humans are madder than wild animals and my methods or simple observation are not confirmable or repeatable. I however find it sufficiently compelling to explore the possible ways in which our lifestyles are detrimental to our minds.

In order to do this we need to pick apart the differences between life as a social hunter gather and life as a modern human. Even when language and tools were fairly well developed early man would have still lived lives almost identical to most other pack animals in the wild. Most of the hours of the day must be spend fulfilling the basic requirements of living. The amount we now need to eat and sleep hasn't changed much however the time taken to obtain suitable places to sleep, security and sufficient food has fallen from nearly all of the spare time to a fraction of the hours in a day. In advancing our technology and expanding our borders we have made surviving easier and more efficient which has given us lots of spare time to fill for which evolution has not prepared us.

Animals are purposive beings which are given impetus to act from this drive. The higher animals have increased awareness and move away from purely reflexive actions. After the purely reflexive life forms such as the single cell organisms and flora you have some instinctive animals such as fish and reptiles. Above this you get birds and mammals which are more considered, actions are based on experience, emotion/instinct, reflex and reason. Humans are of course in this last category and are the most refined example. We not only have the capacity to reason but can also imagine in many dimensions and use this like a pseudo-experience. We have the tool of language to consolidate and communicate meaning while conceptualizing unreal things that aid in imaginative problem solving. Despite all this we are not so far removed from the other birds and mammals and have much the same base motivations towards actions. We still exist to survive and reproduce and this is what still predominantly drives us. One of the big problems faced by man is that we have solved so many of our base drives so that they require very little time investment leaving us with much spare time that is entirely aimless.

We do several things to combat this severing from our natural drives. One is to use our imagination to create things to aim at and give us some meaning where there would naturally be none. Another is to pour all our drive into the few tasks we still have enough overlap with life as a cave man such as raising a family or sexual conquest. Sometimes people will transfer the instinct to hunt for food and provide and protect a family into economic terms and sink their drives into the earning prowess. Some people instead of finding new avenues for their drives or expanding existing ones simply give up and suffer a wide array of mental problems such as depression. The problems caused by our vast improvements to survival efficiency and our removed part in performing them range from boredom, to depression, to lunacy, to a lack of any emotional satisfaction in our day to day routine, to the more subtle effects of misplacing or incorrectly weighting an emotional outlet or source of gratification and purpose.

It would impossible to go into any specific detail regarding these effects as it would need an understanding of the interactions between consciousness, will and emotion to demonstrate any mechanisms in play. I can at least describe the various outcomes caused by our inadequate solutions to the broader problem of having derailed our evolved suitability for life with our improving living conditions. With an over investment, a misplaced one, a derived one or a purely imagined investment in an action to gain cohesion with our animal drives, our emotions and our consciousness we a creating a fragile mental framework that can very easily lead to the state mentioned where we give up on satisfying our drives and sink into apathy, depression or madness. If you gain all your satisfaction from your work and then lose your job you will also lose your purpose in life. If you have decided you exist to be beautiful then the trials of time will wither the soul as well as the body. These are two examples of how it is easy to put too much weight on something you have little control over and that are not in them selves reasons for being alive.

You may be lucky and create a fragile structure to keep you sane, satisfied and happy that is never struck by the events in your life and this will mean you are likely to avoid depression and the like however it does not mean you will be unaffected. By basing ones reason for living on a spurious notion you will be making choices using these false or exaggerated principles. When you make a choice with incomplete, or worse, false information you are liable to often make the wrong one. Defining the wrong choices for an individual is rather subjective but could be reasonably described as a choice that is not in the best interest of the individual making them. The difficulty here is that a life choice made on a false assumption is only wrong when you appreciate the inaccuracy of the assumption. While you still hold it to be true the choice will likely be the right one for you. It is not for me to say that any ones understanding of their purpose in life is wrong, this must be a relative thing. Each person must find their own self consistent framework to act upon. It is not so important to follow any way of life that is preached by others who have found their solution as it is to find a self consistent one that fits you well. A mental framework that is inconsistent in some way is the only way to get around the subjective nature and allow you to assert that it is provably wrong. By acting upon an inconsistent frame work you are effectively playing a game of Jenga with your mind. You reinforce certain ideas you have and put more weight onto the top of the increasingly fragile structure, this means that if it does collapse you will be faced with a much more cataclysmic breakdown. This reinforcement by use entrenches the framework and makes it more rigidly adhered too and harder to regress away from. You are not only making the potential breakdown more severe you are also making it more probable when you act on poor foundations.

To summarise, there are many possible mental frameworks we can build up to guide us in decision making and to give us purpose. These can be divided into two broad categories, those which are inconsistent and those which are consistent. Consistent to does not automatically mean good however, I am sure many of the more abhorrent characters have wholly consistent mental frameworks, they are just far removed from those of socially well adjusted people and are either devoid of morals or take a very odd stance on them. It would not come as a surprise to me to find out, if it were easily measurable, that criminals typically had higher consistency in their mental frameworks. This is in part due to the more primal nature of crime and in part because the life is in some ways less complex than that of socially integrated person. This is not to say that a life of crime is easier, far from it I imagine, just that it has less parameters and subtleties to it. To act on a socially unacceptable yet consistent mental framework has much the same reinforcing and stiffening effect as acting on an inconsistent one however this makes it less liable to collapse in addition to its already low chances due to being consistent. Society creates an environment that does not favour people adopting frameworks far from the norm. For those that do slip through the cracks society tries to force a change by punishing and ostracising certain behaviours. A rigid consistent mental framework can only be brought down by choice and so societies actions make it more in peoples self interest to try and adopt new values and ideals that fit the current social tone. I am digressing again as sociopaths might be a burden to society but it is likely they are less afflicted by the problems being highlighted in this essay.

If we create a hypothetical spectrum of consistent mental frameworks along just one axis and then perpendicular to that we create an overlayed spectrum from inconsistent mental frameworks that is a dimension greater. On these spectra we can say that proximity represents similarities in the frameworks. On this graph there would be most density for any given society around one point near or on the line of consistent frameworks. As this is a bit of a scatter graph to represent the density it would look like a bell dome rather than a bell curve. On the flat part of the bell curve I suspect there would be only a couple of percent at most of the rest of the population however I also suspect that they would fall closer to the line of consistency simply because they are not able to learn and copy from others about them so easily and will have to build the whole framework themselves. It strikes me that this method will lead to a higher rate of consistency. Regardless of this we are not concerned so much about the tiny minority found on the flat of the bell dome. We are concerned about those who fall in the parts of most volume yet who lie off the line of consistency. Normal people with normal values and morals who have not yet had to reconcile their whole belief system and will suffer to some extent if they do.

Presently the solutions to these problems lie in philosophy, theology and psychology as we know too little about the workings of the brain to attempt a medical, genetic or chemical solution. As we are each alone in our quest to find a way of living in a human world with our animalistic reasons for being our best hope is to educate people about this problem. By having the causes straight and the consequences forewarned people will be in the best position to be able to construct their own internal solutions. This does rather lead to the bigger question as to what the purpose of intelligent life is beyond simple survival. This question will be the subject of an upcoming essay “The End Game”and will be a macroscopic partner to the published individual scale article “The Meaning of Life”. When society has a specific purpose it creates an environment where more people can engineer that purpose into themselves and as a result will be happier, more grounded, more robust and saner people than those living in an aimless society. By educating people about how the mind works we can put them in good stead to make themselves sound minded individuals but if we lived in a purposive society we are set to have most people being sound minded from the outset. Purpose does not have to be found within but can also diffuse in from the outside making this an issue for society as well as the individual.

A lack of alignment of ones natural drive for life and ones lifestyle is not the only problem that is a result of the workings of the brain. Our imagination can be a great aid in problem solving, making choices and in the creation of things however it can also become a burden on us, like a tumour growing out of control and trying to dominate the whole being. This is manifest in our worrying about things or in obsessive compulsive tendencies where we try and control all things we have been able to imagine. It can make people into nervous wreaks unable to do anything for fear that their imaginings will become realities. The most afflicted people live a struggle where by they are perpetually trying to fight back the overwhelming tide of their imagination with the limited actions of the body or is some cases even reason. This however is not a social problem in the same way as it is not strictly caused by how we live. I could try and argue that it is inconsistent mental frameworks that lead to this kind of behaviour however I have no reason to think this other than it is a neat answer, I have no evidence to suggest this is the case of any kind and wouldn't even know where to start in trying to prove the theory either way. What this and other foibles of the human mind not directly onset by social changes show more than anything else is that we don't know very much about how the mind works. Consciousness, emotion and the brain itself should be one of the major avenues of medical and more general scientific research as it is so little understood and so important to our well being. I believe psychotherapy to be of great benefit to people and a worthy pursuit however in analogous terms it feels like having to perform an operation on yourself in a dark room while given only verbal pointers from a trained surgeon. Our other avenue of defence against mental issues are drugs however these do nothing to cure the causes and only help in suppressing symptoms.

With the internet and computing we are entering a new age of removal and isolation that seems likely to further many of the concerns discussed in this essay. As we continue to improve our environment we must work to keep our minds up to speed. Evolution has been left standing with its pot luck-by the numbers approach to our reason, language, cooperation and imagination. With our cultural and technological advances we have left evolution standing still in our wake, the price we must pay for this velocity of change is finding our own solutions for those that evolution used to do for us. Our approach thus far is to ignore the evolutionary aspect and focus on correcting individuals, be it with anti depressants, therapy, laser eye surgery fertility treatment and so forth. This is a good approach in terms of increasing quality of life within a society but used in isolation will make things worse in the long run as classic evolution if further bypassed. Ideally we want to find ways of not treading on the toes of evolution while still increasing the quality of life for individuals. Not too much further down the line of this tangent we reach eugenics which is not at all the intended scope of this essay. It does tie in again a little with my mention of the upcoming essay “The End Game” in that this problem if looked at from far enough out needs not one but two solutions. It is not just how is this problem caused and how do we solve it but also the very important question; to what end are we solving it? With the eye and reproduction it is fairly clear cut, we understand how they work and can easily identify why and how they aren't working. As such you are able to correct not only with glasses or surgery but also you are able to identify what genes affect eye sight giving the possibility of solutions for the long term too. With problems regarding consciousness we don't really know what the working model looks like and so find it much harder to realign problem cases, both for individuals and for the species. If it it our lifestyles in part causing many of the various mental issues it is imperative we get a better understanding of the mind so as to get longer term solutions. It would also inevitably help to get better immediate solutions for individuals at the same time. As it stands, with stab in the dark therapy, generic suppressing drugs and an ever more wonderful yet removed society we are set to become quite a lot more mentally unstable  

The Malthusian Problem

There is much concern over population growth at present. I cannot say with any certainty but the impression I get is that this concern is mainly coming from the more developed areas of the world where quality of life is better. This somewhat stands to reason as the quality of life attained in the more developed areas of the world is not sustainable. Not only is the world population growing but it is also becoming more developed as well, both of which put more strain on finite natural resources such as oil and space. As such those living least sustainably will find themselves under most pressure to change. This might just be an economic pressure but it could escalate to conflicts. Although lowering populations is only a short term solution to having an unsustainable lifestyle it is often still the favoured option of those living comfortable lives. The only real solution is living a sustainable lifestyle which would be a much bigger sacrifice to them than it is for the rest of the world hence our relative aversion to it.

People seem to forget the advantages a vast population bring when presented with the problem of unsustainable living. A huge part of our ability to live luxuriously is the efficiency brought about through division of labour. The less people we have the lower our potential efficiency in this regard. More people also means more geniuses to bring us wonderful things and advance humanity further. Scientific progress is the other major factor contributing to our present luxury. On top of this a large population helps to provide for minorities. Imagine a population so small that there was only one blind person and only one in a wheel chair, how much support would be in place and available for these people? Certainly no companies would exist making products to aid them as they would not be economically viable. More people comes out significantly ahead in pros and cons compared to less people, which can only really argue lack of space and other resources in its favour.

Simply put, any time there is a debate about the problems of population levels and growth it should always be made abundantly clear that it is part of the bigger problem of sustainability and that there is only one actual solution to which population levels have no real bearing. We could have a potentially infinite population that would survive to the end of the universe if we all lived sustainably and spread ourselves across the stars. We could have a vast population here on Earth that live as long as the Earth remains and, again, we lived sustainably. The only limit would be space yet we have proven fairly industrious at utilizing space above and below. The question the developed world dares not ask is what they would have to give up in order to actually live sustainably. Many think of returning to the land and having to live like people did a millennia ago, which is a fairly good way towards living a sustainable life yet not the only path open, which is just as well as it is a very space inefficient way to live. We either have the technology or it is at our fingertips to live very closely to how we do now and remain sustainable. The problem is that there is no infrastructure or significant government policy that supports and enforces sustainable living. As such, most of the technology has remained out of reach or undeveloped thus leaving it woefully inadequate to compete in the market. This in turn makes matters seem worse and ensures it will be harder to make a transition to a sustainable lifestyle. If someone tells you there are too many people in the world you should tell them to go and live a sustainable life themselves before they complain about population. Any reasoned logical argument against high population must concede it is only a delay tactic at best and that the only long term solution is sustainability.

There are other arguments against population beyond maintaining our current lifestyle as long as possible in terms of consumption. While some people thrive in city life and love to be surrounded by others it is not for every one. Overcrowding reduces the quality of life for people who enjoy space, nature, peace and quiet. Fortunately we are a long way of this being a valid argument against population levels. Roughly half of the global population live in crowded built up urban areas yet these area's combined only occupy about three percent of the total land area of the Earth. The population of the planet would have to drastically increase for their to be insufficient rural living areas to meet demands. We would hit the cap of natural resources and growing land as a limiting factor to further growth before we would start to run out of rural living land.

The real irony is that we think we need to control our own population levels as we have advanced beyond our environmental and evolutionary constraints. This is an arrogant and somewhat dangerous position to hold. Calling it a food chain is misleading, it, like every other natural process, is a cycle. Many things feed from humans despite the fact that we place ourselves atop the food chain. We claim we have no natural predators yet succumb all the time to various diseases. Yes, our predators are vastly smaller than us and for the most part don't consume that much of us. You might say we have antibiotics and other medicines within our arsenal against the very small predators however we operate in entirely different worlds. The very small live and die so fast that mutate far quicker than we are able. Vast populations will spring up and just as quickly die off again , like who civilizations rising and falling within just a few days. The evolutionary process for those that are very small and live very quickly relative to us happens much faster. As soon as a successful strain of something mutates it quickly multiplies and spreads. The tools we use to combat harmful bacteria and our other micro-organism predators expediate their evolution, we kill off swathes clearing the path for the few survivors to flourish. As soon as something evolves to be immune to our defences it will spread like wildfire among us. We cannot rely on evolution to protect us and are as a result locked in an ongoing scientific battle with micro-organisms to develop cures, effective antibiotics and immunisations.

You may recall from biology at school we were shown a graph for natural variation in populations over time for rabbits and foxes called the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey system. They both would undulate up and down like a sine wave however they would be slightly out of phase with one another. The fox population would rise and eat more rabbits causing their population to decline. This in turn would reduce the food supply for the foxes who would in turn start to decline in number. This would then allow the rabbits to thrive again thus restarting the whole cycle. This simplified example shows a trend that is applicable in a wide sphere of events not limited to just biology. As humanities population and density increases we improve the odds for the micro-organisms in evolving a resilient or impressively contagious strain. A graph against population levels of known human diseases and parasites and of humanity over time would not look much like the neat fox and rabbit relationship however a similar process is going on. The success of micro-organisms is far more based on adaptations than it is on resources, particularly when those resources entail human hosts which are typically abundant. While the fox and rabbit will respond more directly to the population levels of the other, the prey of the pathogen will be more inclined towards stability until an adaptation occurs in the pathogen which is then more liable to cause a sharp and rapid decline in population of their hosts. The way in which disease spread and mutate is more random and spontaneous than the slower more continual change of larger organisms. Human ecosystems are hard to isolate in the same way a rabbit and fox system is, they are also dependant on far more factors such as war and scientific discovery than it is on our predators abundance. Even so, you would see spikes and troughs such as the effect of the bubonic plague or black death in the mid fourteen century if you were to create such a graph.

It may look as if the global human population has been growing continually for a long time and is picking up pace. This is understandable and somewhat masks the very real relationship between humans and their natural predators. In the distant past humanity was more isolated into smaller ecosystems like the rabbits and foxes as our ability to travel was much more restricted. With many isolated ecosystems the undulations in human population due to the efficacy of predators would tend to average out so as to seem non-existent. As our ability to move about increased the number of effective ecosystems we occupied in regards micro-organisms fell quickly. In the modern day we effectively occupy just one huge ecosystem with the odd tiny pocked of isolated indigenous peoples such as Amazonian tribes. One of the best reasons to leave these tribes undisturbed is that they may one day be the key to the survival and continuation of our species due to their isolation from potential pathogens. Despite our ecosystems merging and falling in number we have not had an epidemic in a very long time. This is a result of the vast scientific progress occurring alongside our ability to travel more quickly and freely. By merging our ecosystems we lose the ability to average out any undulations in population as a result of our natural predators however there having not been an epidemic for such a long time means we should not expect to see any undulations any way. The only thing our prolonged and steep population growth ensures is that future epidemics will be far more severe in the ease in which they spread and the numbers that they affect.

All this is to say that population levels are not the most worthy or relevant subjects for debate. We live in an effectively closed system that is highly effective at self regulation which is often described as the Gaia hypothesis. We are not yet so above this system that we need to burden ourselves with performing its role. We can happily go on breeding and living with total disregard for the consequences and sooner or later Gaia will rebalance the scales for us. Living sustainably is one key way to limit the number of potential mechanisms by which we can upset the balance an incur a rebalancing change in the system. This however does not solve the issue of our natural predators for which we probably need to populate more isolated ecosystems to ensure our ongoing safety. In the modern world this really means populating new planets which is some way off. We may well encounter some serious epidemics that wipe out significant portions of the global population before we get round to populating new worlds however it is very unlikely that any would completely wipe us out or basically reset all progress as would be the case if only isolated human ecosystems survived. It is not in a parasites best interests to efficiently wipe out all of its hosts as that ensures its own demise as well. Natural variance within species also serves as good protection against such outbreaks.

I shall simply conclude by reiterating that attempts to limit human populations solve no long term problems and would mostly just limit our capacity as a species. Living sustainably is the only solution and ironically facilitates and maintains a greater population. A greater population also theoretically reduces the time it will take us to populate new worlds with more great minds able to work on the problem, more division of labour to make that work efficient and more pressure on space generating a demand for more. This in turn is the most obvious way in which we can escape the restraints of Gaia which will ultimately limit our population of it's own accord thus further making attempts to limit our population seem like wasted effort.  

Sandy Hook and Star Craft

There have been many school shootings all over the world for the past one hundred and fifty years. While I cannot deny that they are on the increase in nominal terms, both in frequency and in death toll, if one considers the population growth over that time frame and measure incidents per person it would be a more more stable figure, it may well even be in decline. The frequency has remained more constant over the time period and it tends to be the death toll which is rising which could be attributed to technological developments just as easily as social ones. Even if school shootings are on a relative decline it is not fast enough. Each has had the impact of a once in a life time tragedy such as the Twin Towers yet the memory of Dunblane was still vivid when Colombine occurred. Being British our media is highly focused on UK and US events but the rest of the world has had its fair share as well with Germany having two double digit death toll school shootings since the new millennium. The Sandy Hook shootings in the latter part of last year being from America were getting a lot of media attention which brought the memories and feelings back yet again. It is profoundly sad yet also exasperating. Most crimes are unpleasant, most tragedies seem cruel and senseless yet most crimes have motive and most tragedies have at least an explanation. Where one cannot see motive or reason there can be no solution and this was how I felt about school shootings.

The school shootings where a single person was shot are more likely to have been like any other shooting and with much of the same fathomable motives, just located at a school and so bolstering the figures. It is the incidents where people indiscriminately shoot at anyone that are most concerning as they are so abhorrent yet so seemingly insoluble. While struggling with the problem as to why people would commit such a atrocious act it hit me like one of those hidden image visual tricks that you stare at until you lose focus and a three dimensional shape emerges from the page. The problem itself was the reason, it is simply because it is so atrocious that people are drawn to it, like climbing the highest mountain. Shooting up a school indiscriminately is about the most damaging, inhumane, immoral and cruel act that can be easily achieved by people without control over armies or munitions stock piles. It is an act of individual terrorism against society that lashes out hitting everyone around them. Should a person become removed enough from society to feel both isolated and persecuted then they could harbour enough hatred to take action and would not be fettered by morality, only motivated by impact. It is because schools are such an obvious target in terms of ease for effect that they are a social weak spot which means that there will be those that try to exploit it. Does this mean we need to increase security in schools? No, probably not, it would be very hard and expensive to make it effective and would then only shift the most viable targets to shopping precincts or theme parks.

It is not helped that the media lay all the cards on the table and show the world what a devastating blow it is to society. This in effect showcases the idea to others, which is the best solution I can find as to why there are so many recurrences of school shootings. Does this imply we should censor the media? No, probably not again. Censorship is an ugly business and in these situations it would seem to somehow deny the grief of those who lost people. Censorship is also more likely to make people mistrust and fear the state which in itself would help create an environment where people are more likely to want to damage society. While advertising the idea of a school shooting is not great it is far better than the alternative which is a world of more secrets and less freedoms. Free speech, as with any freedom, comes with dangers and responsibilities which we have not yet mastered. This however is no reason to about turn on an important principle.

It is all to easy to blame the media for many of the modern social ills but one of the downsides of a democracy is that you must reap what you sow. The media only provide what we want, capitalism ensures this, if media is successfully pandering to our more base interests then it is we who are weak and immoral and not them. The media may help to enable us and our morbid lusts but we the people are very much the primary enabler in that relationship. To solve the media problem we need to go far deeper and improve the whole of society so that they no longer are able to sucker us in with sinister details, tribalism, figures to hate and sensationalism. I am not suggesting that in an “improved society” such events as school shootings would not be broadcast due to a lack of interest nor am I suggesting that it is immoral to take an interest in a horrific event. I believe the opposite in fact, that open information and an empathic sharing of grief is a great aid in the healing and improving process both on a personal and social level. I am simply trying to illustrate that the media, while far from helpful, is not a single solution to stopping school shootings.

One area I do still hold the media both responsible and in contempt is factual accuracy or simply the reporting of opinion as if they were facts. In the recent Sandy Hook school shooting a major American news network suggested that Star Craft II could be in part responsible for the culprits actions. The idea that any game really makes people more violent in real life is fairly thin and frankly laughable but the idea that Star Craft II is making people more violent is like saying the same about chess. The painful irony is that Star Craft is preventing far more school shootings than it is inducing. Criminal satires that are said to glorify violence such as Grand Theft Auto tend to be light relief played casually or with friends in private. Star Craft however has a huge community and following. It is a way young people can meet and interact with like minded folk and share in something where they are accepted. There are professional tournaments going on all over the world and conventions where players can transcend the online communities by seeing each other in the flesh. There are big stars and the all important fans and then there are sponsors who provide the money to fuel much of this. Unsurprisingly it is both quite a geeky community and quite a young one too however this makes them highly accepting of others and the perfect environment for the more disenfranchised youths in society. Most people are entirely unaware that all this goes on and would be amazed at what they found if the delved into the hidden worlds of the less mainstream social communities. Players winning hundred of thousands of dollars and being revered like sports legends complete with thousands of people looking unusually comfortable in themselves. Although I am not really involved in the Star Craft scene I have been fortunate enough to be involved in a very similar one for a card game called Magic the Gathering. Being a part of the Magic scene is one of the most instrumental and significant parts of who I am, it provided valuable support and experience and it allowed me to meet some of my dearest friends. There are huge cultural benefits to being part of a global scene as well, especially one that is friendly and accepting by nature. I am not good in social situations, the less well I know people and the larger the group the worse I find the experience. At a Magic tournament I am surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands of other Magic players and I am completely at home, able to hold a conversation with anyone as if I had known them all my life. Having personal experience of how such a community helped me in so many aspects of my life and knowing that it has done the same for so many others makes me highly defensible when they are demonized or stigmatised by more mainstream culture. It is not only morally unsavoury to implicate things we know very little about in atrocities but it is very damaging to the growth of the communities. If parents see media coverage condemning an activity they are far more likely to stop their children from getting involved. This will deny them the opportunity to find alternate communities within society that might best suit them. This in turn could lead to them becoming the kind of isolated disenfranchised individual that could massacre a school.

As a society we are rather hypocritical when it comes to the youth, either we forgot what it was like being young or we convince ourselves times have changed enough that children need treating very differently. We try to shield the young from drugs and sex and other dangerous freedoms however we do relatively little in the way of alternatives. Being young is about trying things and making mistakes so that you may be a wise and sensible adult with valuable life experience. In the early teens we go from being children to wannabe adults. You see this transformation in many animals too. We poke around trying out grown up things for size trying to gauge where we fit in to the world and what sort of person we are. As a society we seem to quash many of the opportunities teenagers might have to do much of this valuable growing.

While I offer no single solution to preventing school shootings I strongly believe that the various non mainstream communities represent one of the best buffers we have against it. They are less known and harder to stumble into than the more obvious communities within society and need all the help they can get in promoting their existence and benefits. The internet is helping many of these communities grow but there are also some concerns that the internet is contributing to the feeling of isolation within society. The kicker for the gaming communities is that they encourage events such as tournaments and conventions where people travel too and meet in person. They get the best of both worlds, lots of people with lots of connections all without distance constraints from the internet complete with real social intercourse and cultural experience all with the protective fall-back of the activity in question. They are the the kinds of community that are most likely to be suitable for those feeling isolated within a more mainstream environment and therefore are more important than things like baseball clubs and school discos for preventing internal attacks

upon society. The cultural idea of the geek has changed, or more the emotional response the concept of a geek evokes. Within my lifetime it has gone from being a label that comes with some stigma to being an acceptable norm. While the geek might be recognisable based on appearance cultural acceptance has not gone quite as far as the activities of the geek, or other similar term. Most would probably say that geeks do stuff on computers which might well be accurate but is hardly specific. It is no longer the label of the geek that comes with stigma attached but rather the activities that they are more likely to do. The media rather than fuelling current popular opinion on games would be doing society a big favour if it kept to facts and relevant information. Perhaps even going out on a limb and showing what a positive force these underground communities can be for our under catered for youth would be one of the best things a media outlet could do to make up for years of blame.

The internet has helped bring small pockets of gamers together into large worldwide communities but it is also having some rather significant effects on the physical world. It is changing our town centres, certain shops are becoming obsolete and others are taking their place. I have spoken a lot about the merits of having activities suitable for youths and promoting underground communities. One of the best places for both of these things is the local games shop which not only sells a wide array of different gaming products all with their own associated communities but also serves as a meeting and mingling place for people of all ages. They are typically places to play games first and shops second, often they have back rooms or upstairs where tables and chairs fill the room purely to play games. They provide real social interaction and activities within a safe environment and serve as a gateway into bigger more global communities. Games shops offer society a service by providing what is essentially the equivalent of a pub or bar for gamers. The internet however is a better place to get gaming products from and so these shops are losing business. Games are not consumable like alcohol. If the shop fails then with it goes the places to meet and socialise. Personally I think such places are so valuable to society that I would subsidize them centrally to ensure people always had a local games shop to go and play games in regardless of where people bought their games. As I am not in charge of government spending I instead vote with my wallet and support my local business. I buy all my games from my local shop instead of online in the hope it will keep its doors open till 10pm most nights, have enough interest to keep putting on events, to keep its store copies of games up to date and have enough floor space to allow for at least thirty gamers to freely play games. One of the best instances to shop local is the games store because of all the incidental benefits that they bring with them and so I dedicate this article to Clifton Road Games for helping to improve society and preventing acts of social terrorism.