podcasts

A big-picture theme emerging from Darren Swanson's novel, Towers of Hiva, was that throughout history, society's technological maturity has consistently outpaced its emotional maturity, often leading society down dark paths. Why did society's mastery of the seas with huge multi-deck sailing ships (schooners, galleons, brigs, frigates) lead to a slave trade and genocide? How did sophisticated interconnected financial markets lead to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and global financial chaos of 2008? Extrapolating beyond the novel, why did society's ability to split the atom lead to the atomic bomb, its use, and subsequent nuclear proliferation? Why did our use of fossil fuels have to result in global climate change and more extreme weather? And today, why are so many crises happening at the same time, so much that it now has a name in the term "polycrisis"?

Are we simply a global society of children living on a planet playing with matches? Will our emotional maturity ever catch up with our technological maturity, or is this the inherent dance of human and cultural evolution? How can we work to close the societal maturity gap to avoid collapse in the age of the polycrisis and ensure a peaceful, sustainable, and resilient future for all?