Revolution,tribalism, and the Cheshire cat: Three paths from now

Examination of the time course of the change in numbers of experimental populations of mice, and of the world population of man, reveals abrupt and apparently irreversible phase changes in the processes governing population dynamics. Such phase changes can lead to extinction of the population or to opening up a new era of evolution. For the past 43,000 years each successive doubling of human world population has required only half the time as the prior doubling. Continuation of this process of population increase will shortly lead to extinction of man as a species. This course is the “Cheshire cat” path, during which each individual becomes less aware of less and less as numbers of individuals exceed the upper optimum. Beyond this nonchoice of future direction there are two major options. First, we can intentionally establish a new world tribalism characterized by zero population growth accompanied by a pervading traditionalism that establishes invariant patterns of social, technological, and ideational function. Second, we can choose to design further evolution (Revolution) with emphasis on continuing to expand individual potentiality or capacity. This path will require a continuing decline of world population accompanied by an increase in the effectiveness of technological prostheses for information processing beyond that possible by biological and social brains.