The Omega Inflection
How culture, technology, economics, government and climate change might all combine to end our global civilisation
Welcome to The Omega Inflection written by me, Geary Johansen. I am a UK-based writer and former manufacturing superuser.
Many readers will be familiar with the concept of inflection points. Beyond a purely mathematical meaning, Investopedia defines an inflection point as follows:
An inflection point is an event that results in a significant change in the progress of a company, industry, sector, economy, or geopolitical situation and can be considered a turning point after which a dramatic change, with either positive or negative results, is expected to result.
The concept of an Omega inflection came to me whilst I was in the process of researching and writing a science fiction novel, as a potential title. The phrase is supposed to convey somewhat religious and apocalyptic undertones, given that Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and the use of “I am the Alpha and the Omega” in Revelations.
My point would be this- normally cultural inflections points come along periodically. Historically, they have tended to occur less frequently than they did in the Twentieth Century, or as is happening now. The problem which should concern us, is what would happen if a number of inflection points were to occur simultaneously, coming from a range of sources from the cultural to the scientific, from the political to the technological, belying a likely future period of chaos, uncertainty, instability and even catastrophe.
The complexity which confronts our global civilisation is bewildering. And our media isn’t helping, because it is in their interest to alarm and misinform, because fear sells. Despite the boon the internet has been for the easy access to highly quality reference material, the advent of social media has been a curse for humanity, especially for children exposed to it too young.
As historian Niall Ferguson has pointed out, the last time we experienced an information revolution of this nature was with the advent of the printing press. This may sound like progress, but as he notes the printing press also caused the burning of innumerable heretics at the stake, as well as being perhaps the proximal cause of the Religious Wars in Europe. The ancestors of some of us were ill-equipped to deal with the amplification this new technology had on the natural polarising forces which occur within human distributed networks, and I dare say the same thing will be said about us.
At the same time the media profits from the contention it sows. As Matt Taibbi has described in his book Hate Inc. there is much money to be made in causing us to have distorted beliefs about the other side of the political spectrum, and we are living in a period ripe for partisan hatred given the disruption caused by globalisation, mass migration, trade deals, and most important of all, automation.
Regardless of what some might think of Andrew Yang’s UBI centrepiece policy, we should all admire his spirit of generosity towards those with whom he may disagree is not only admirable, but essential to our ability to carry on as a functional society. It is also a generosity which is sadly lacking in many of our institutions and cultural mainstays.
It’s not so much that we need to come together or find common ground, but more that we need to relearn the ability to play gracefully with ideas, without feeling the need to demonstrate our emotional hurt when something contradicts our most cherished beliefs. To be sure, finding out we were wrong about something can be painful, but all growth is pain, whether physical, spiritual or intellectual.
The current cultural, technological and economic inflection point we are facing is the motherlode of all inflection points. That’s why I call it the Omega Inflection. It is the proverbial Gordian knot to solve, and I’m not at all sure we have the wisdom to solve it before our global civilisation collapses. The tech billionaires may well have a point, in preparing boltholes for the pending apocalypse.
Some may well welcome the transformational change this era might bring. To those I would issue a warning. At a societal level, transformational change has always courted disaster. Not once in human history has it ever resulted in anything other than calamity and catastrophe. The American Revolution was a success because the Revolutionaries claimed English rights as their birthright. The Civil Rights era was a success because it only expanded rights to those who had not previously held them.
Like all real progress, material or otherwise, real improvement is incremental. With the level of disruption we may well be facing from such a wide array of spheres, I cannot see how the Omega Inflection can be anything other than a cumulative wave of disruptive effects building towards catastrophe.
In my threads I hope to lay out some of the distorted worldviews our culture encourages us to hold, and try to advocate for a heterodox, knowledge-based, empirical and data-driven way of examining the world. My newsletter is currently free to subscribe and free to comment- so feel free to comment whether you vehemently disagree or completely endorse the viewpoints expressed in particular threads.
In the meantime, tell your friends!