Before I show you my "Mega Pattern" that I think helps us understand where we are right now and where we are going, one more add on to Dave Snowden.
It would appear that every quadrant of this model relies on a mathematical model. These models also evolved over human history. Each new model helped humans solve bigger problems and create more understanding and opportunity.
The key math for the Simple World is Plane Geometry. Once the Greeks cracked this, we could build buildings, we could predict distances and heights. Most of our engineering relies on this. It is the math of a stable world. At a small enough scale - all is stable.
The Key math for the Complicated world is the Calculus. Newton enabled us to explore defined relationships of bodies in motion. We could now go to the moon. We could understand much of the universe. We could build buildings and machines that were complicated. We could solve complicated problems.
But since Einstein and Bohr (Relativity and Quantum) we have not had a set of math that has enables us to cope with the Complex or the Complicated. We have had an insight but we have not had the math tools that has enabled us to translate this insight into value in our daily lives.
So what is the math for the Complex and the Chaotic? There has to be a math. For the pattern of nature tells us that every part of it is governed by math. This discovery drove many of the Greeks wild.
In the 1980's the New Math - the Geometry that could explain Complex and Chaotic itself emerged. One of its father's Pierre Mandelbrot is also the leading intellectual figure in the group who have challenged the idea that we could accurately manage the risk in our financial system.
This math uses very simple equations that cannot be solved by human calculation because instead of producing a defined result, they have to iterate - repeat millions of times in a slightly different way - and then produce a coherent and ever repeating pattern.
We had to wait until the PC to give us the tool to do this math. Only a computer can iterate at the speed required to offer up the Pattern.
Here is a short video that will take you into the Mandelbrot Set - one of the most attractive of the patterns.
So what does this mean?
One of the things it means to me is this. That everything real in nature is fractal. That the next Paradigm will stabilize after much iteration. That the larger pattern will govern how the new emerges and that the Equations that drive the new will be constant.
What does this mean in practice?
Let's look for the equations that drive the Pattern for Human Society. They must be equations that drive relationships. I think that they are these:
- How we get our food - The shift from Hunter Gatherer to Farmer changed everything. The shift to modern agriculture from old agriculture has changed everything as has the shift to Agribusiness. This one "Equation" is I think at the root of our paradigm Shifts. All the relationships in the food system are replicated in all other aspects of society. Including religion and gender. Especially in the power relationships
- Our Prevailing Information Technology - The High Point of the Hunter Gatherer world, when the technology exploded enabling man to go to the ends of the world and to kill off all the big game - was when structured language emerged around 40,000 BC. The Written Word and hence the religions of the Book came with agriculture. The Mass Media with the Modern World and the Web. Again how we communicate affects all relationships and power
- The prevailing source of energy - For Hunter Gatherers it was fire. For early farmers it was water and wind. For modern man it was fossil fuel - the capital of the sun. For the new? I think the income of the sun.
- The main source of wealth - For Hunter Gatherers it was Social Capital. For Early Farmers it was land and for modern man it is financial capital. For the new? I think Social Capital.
- The main source of leverage - For hunter gatherers, human muscle and tools. For early agriculture that but in the context of slaves and domesticated animals. For Modern Man machines and serfs. And the new????
As you will see shortly, I have been able to explain the shifts from one phase of Human Society to another by focusing one a few interacting "equations". Equations that are drive complex social relationships and ultimate drive a Pattern for a Society.
So what then is the Governing Pattern that will give us the shape of all of this? What does this human journey look like and can the shape of our path help us know what to expect?
My regular readers will recognize this. It is the Fibonacci Curve. This is the pattern that Nature uses for all development. Let's be clear again. This is the pattern that nature uses for all development. All development that is healthy, that is based in an ideal environment to reach its potential, will take this shape.
So for individuals, for storms, for plants, for galaxies - so for species.
What this tells me is that development is not along a straight line. It is profoundly circular. It is "Iterative".
What this tells me is that if we are to survive as a species, we have to be turning a corner now. If we are on track to develop to our potential, there has to be a part return to an earlier phase of world view but with a difference. if we are at Figure 8 or 13 or 34, if we don't "return" we fall off the track and we die.
In my next post I will open the Kimono on what I see as being a possible outcome - that the equations drive a return or a turn.
