Reply #12: It's the obvious correctness of your comments that's at the root of my pessimism. [View All]

[GliderGuider]

Wisdom might have some survival value in a low-intensity hunting-gathering environment. Maybe in that environment it acted as a surrogate for large-scale scientific knowledge. Cleverness is certainly a big-deal survival trait. but as I've said before, in an intelligent predator at the top of a planetary food chain, one that has systematically eliminated all opposition to its own growth, the previous value of cleverness suddenly morphs into a fatal liability. In the absence of any external limits, and lacking the internal self-restraint that comes from wisdom, we are likely to tinker ourselves right out of the web of life, and take untold other species along for the ride.

Can our culture learn systems thinking to the extent that it embraces voluntary limits to its growth? How much time do we have left before the bell rings?