We have been living exponentially. It's a big word, and it's a big concept.
What it boils down to is this: nobody alive in any culture of "progress" today knows anything other than bigger. Alternatively, if you like, all participants in democratic free markets have the shared expectation that they will have more tomorrow than they did today. In fact, we can go further and say that anything other than more, bigger, or better represents a failure of our governance that we all battle with equal fear, and vigor.
Previous generations expected that if they left life at the same station that they entered it, life had been a roaring success. Progress allowed that eventually, it was possible to live in such a way that we improved our lives and the lives that followed in some, small, measurable way. The success of our children was our reward for a life well invested. Life got bigger, better, longer. Progress became defined as the slow, deliberate advance along and up the curve. Civilizations and cultures that lived back down the curve behind us were wrenched kicking and screaming along it — for their own protection. In this way, humanity was always just a bit better than it was before; spending capital and adding value one on top of the other, each new advance picking up speed, built as it was on the shoulders of heroes and great men of great deeds that had come before.
That is the exponential nature of civilization, progress, and development — that, because of the compounding nature of all we have accomplished, humanity was destined to not just progress, but also do so at ever-increasing velocity. This is not just irrefutable math, it is common sense and we can see, feel, and touch it in our own lives today, as anybody with Super 8 film of themselves when young, but digital file sharing of their kids can attest.
At the same time, the natural resources that support our growth and development must always keep pace, their use and depletion being exponential in their own right. Progress is built from the resources of the earth, and the speed of their consumption intuitively must in some way match the velocity of their purchase.
So we have been living exponentially, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, or political persuasion. And while history used to take generations to feed out, it now takes but a single sheet to make us bigger, better, and faster. That is a feature of exponential anything: that as the compounding grows, the speed of advance picks up until the long slow line turns quickly and steeply upward on the right. That is also how we now expect that the natural course of events is always and faster upwards, because we measure the velocity of change in our own lifetimes; life in the 21st century changes, minute by minute. All of us alive today know or comprehend it in no other way; progress junkies and speed freaks all.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
Very interesting article. At last we see someone admitting that the overspent culture of consumption that plagues America (and the world) may be a problem and may need correction - in this generation.
End-of-Days prophecy in various varieties all seem to reflect this view as well. I'm not merely talking of my own Jewish traditions. There are the Christian traditions, the Moslem ones (like the rise of a powerful black man in the wast right before judgment day), the talk around Indian campfires of famine and disaster, the end of the Mayan Great Cycle in 2012.
We are seeing a convergence of various religious predictions with a financial collapse in the West.
In other words reality,is being reflected by ancient prophecy. So much for the poo-pooing by militant atheists who dismiss as garbage ancient tomes.
2 - M (a)r {....!...} ¶/ ® k
The appeal to a restoration of balance begs the question and relies on notions about sustainability:
500,000,000 or Bust!
(actual entropic mileage may vary)
3 - Joanne Huspek
Your profile says it all.
I agree with Ruvy, but unfortunately many in this country are partying like it's 1999. I guess someone has to do it while the place burns.