The Hard Problem of a Hierarchical Civilization

The exponential human is not a private achievement. It is a civilizational one. A person can become more human only inside a society that rewards the attempt, and most of our societies still reward the opposite. The obstacle is not the new tool. It is the old structure into which the tool is being inserted.

For twelve thousand years we have lived in what amounts to a primate hierarchy: a pyramidal arrangement in which a tiny minority holds the levers of decision, and the majority learns to expect domination as the normal cost of order. Every new technology, from the printing press to electricity, has first been treated as a threat by the elite and then converted into a sharper instrument of the same hierarchy. AI is simply the latest case.

The question is not whether AI will be good or bad. The question is whether we have built a civilization capable of turning it toward higher-level thinking, or whether we will default, once again, to using it to deepen the pyramid. The answer is not in the model. It is in us.

The most basic flaw preventing human evolutionary progress is the fact we live in what amounts to a primate hierarchy — hardly an advanced society.

We have learned to associate enhanced survival and prosperity with these hierarchical structures, however we are now meeting the built-in limitations, as all these civilizations have collapsed, one after the other, like dominoes.

Our civilizations are inherently unstable because of the pyramidal, hierarchical structure, where a tiny 1% rule over the 99% majority.

An egalitarian society where all individuals have equal opportunities to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness offers true civilizational stability.

Unfortunately 12,000 years of becoming accustomed to a hierarchy now determines how most humans think — a change to egalitarian society unthinkable.

As all new tools from the printing press to electricity always have, AI is forcing the issue as it brings the deficiencies to the surface.

Attempts to integrate it make the hierarchy more obvious than ever, and demonstrate how the locked-down thinking represents siloed provincial and parochial resistance to change.

This stalemate between our lofty human goals and the chance of ever attaining them is thrown into stark relief by each successive technological achievement.

It is hardly a modern problem, but always comes down to the same issues, like a broken record which cannot be repaired.

In an inefficient hierarchy, where provincial, parochial thinking represents the resistance to beneficial change, only a radical change in thinking may serve to effect change.

Only a civilization-wide system of Socratic education and communication may serve to overcome this resistance.

Those who wish to see AI implemented as a positive force in such a situation must first see the stumbling blocks, and must see those corrected.

Every technological innovation has been fought by the 1% elite as a threat to their sovereignty, and then becomes finally adapted by the 1% as a tool of increased domination.

The 99% majority correctly see each new technological advancement as a means to becoming more dominated by the 1%.

Thus the problem is never the tool per se, but the society which must adapt the tool.

Because thinking makes it so, there is no answer to the quality and scope of human problems other than changing wrong thinking to correct thinking.

An egalitarian society may not be constructed on a foundation of a primate hierarchy.

Because thinking makes it so, only a Socratic system of education and governance may serve as the foundation.

Any tool, including AI, will come to serve the primate-level hierarchy unless that hierarchy is replaced by a system which supports higher-level thinking.

True technological progress will be marked by progress in how humans think, act, and live — no longer theoretical, but founded upon reality.

Humans were given the gift of free will, of reaching for evolution via cognition — thus the quality of their thinking makes everything so.

Humans are philosophers. Thus the quality of their philosophy is destiny.

Tools adapted to increase the tyranny of the 1% will serve the philosophical slop characteristic of a lower primate hierarchy.

Shakespeare is now being identified as 'AI written' by corrupted and corruptible software — as the doom-scrolling recursive loop closes down once again.

In a terminally sick civilization everything rots — even the foundations.

Question everything, question yourself, question everyone. What is at stake is no less than everything.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

We always did feel the same, we just started from a different point of view.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.

But that's the challenge — to change the system more than it changes you.