When I began studying cycles back in 2007, the fact that history repeats itself and that every generation experiences its war troubled me so much that I spent an undue amount of time anticipating the timeframe. The prospect of an international war occurring in the 2020s brought back vivid memories of stories I heard as a child about blackened windows, sirens, and lights being turned off in Delhi, a stark reality.
Since it was my destiny, like every generation before me, to live through a war, I decided to embrace this reality and accept that Nature was ruthless, and I was insignificant in the bigger picture. Nuclear obliteration was after all swift and instant.
But as John Rae once said, the closer you get to the window, the more your choices evolve. I had two choices now: either remain insensitive to what is happening in my world, enjoy my leisure, carry on with my engagements as if the burning fires elsewhere were just another streaming story, or consider what I, as an individual, could do to change my world into one that is more civilizationally intelligent, transcending narcissism.
I don't believe in the impossibility of such a world. I don't believe in humanity's inability to resolve the tragedy of the commons. I don't believe that we can never grasp the concept of delayed gratification. I don't believe that humans can't overcome their natural impulses. The herding nature of our impulsive brains doesn't have to bind us. I don't believe that power can't be altruistic. I don't believe that we can't break free from this cycle of war. Nothing is impossible; the probability is never zero.
It all begins with a thought. If AI can create machines for surveillance, warfare, facial recognition, fear, and chaos, it can also develop machines for peace, machines to correct biases, machines to instill confidence, machines to diffuse tension, and machines to restore balance. Nature thrives on disorder because it doesn't depend on us; it encompasses the entire universe. Nature's purpose differs from ours. It provides us with a habitable Earth, an opportunity to lead as a species, and the intelligence to seek out exoplanets. But its primary purpose isn't to grant us civilizational intelligence. We must prove ourselves as deserving as a species to progress. If we fail to exhibit civilizational intelligence, we'll be like the billions of other species that nature has propagated. After all, evolution is an ongoing process.
As we move towards the conceptual age beyond the Information Age, the choice is ours to discover our common purpose, think differently, foster connections, embrace our humanity, comprehend the misuse of extremity, and grasp that just because Nature is chaotic and has granted us complex brains, it shouldn't be the reason we can't overcome our natural instincts.
We live in times of abundance. We can afford to consider our impact, find fair solutions, think in the longer term, and break free from the cycle of short-term gratification. We can simplify our problems and learn from Nature. If it can extract order from disorder, so can we. War doesn't have to be inevitable. It all begins with questioning oneself.