Peter Leyden claims that America undergoes 80-year cycles, which he calls epochs, with peaks of upheaval that last 25 years. The past peak was after World War II, from 1945 to 1970. Leyden claims we’re entering a new peak in 2025 that should last until 2050. He zeroes in on artificial intelligence, clean energy, and bioengineering as the driving forces. I’m not big on predicting the future or seeing patterns in history, but there are ideas in his theory that are worth contemplating. I do believe we’re living through a historic period of change.
David Brooks claims America is moving away from thinking of itself as an idea that inspires the world to a homeland that we should defend. Brooks has moved away from being a traditional conservative to becoming a spiritual guru who teaches morality. I find all his recent speeches to be both uplifting and inspirational. Brooks feels the changes we are experiencing are undermining our individual characters and altering our collective national character.
CBS News asks if we’re moving into a new Gilded Age. But this time, the oligarchs are far richer and much more powerful. There is a synergy between this documentary and the videos of David Brooks and Peter Leyden. Everyone feels a massive paradigm shift coming. In 2025, I believe we’re living through the largest social and political upheaval since 1968.
If history does go through cycles, can we alter their course? The average person does not have much power. But in 2026, we do get to vote, and again in 2028. I believe the Democrats lost in 2024 because they had no clear vision. Being against Trump is not a political plan. In 2024, the Americans voted for Darwinian rule. Let the strong thrive and the weak die. The current administration is enacting laws to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Essentially, civilization on the cheap. They appeal to greed. They appeal to resentment. They believe everyone should be responsible only for themselves.
It’s a very Darwinian philosophy. There’s no way we could call America a Christian Nation anymore. This is what America wanted through a fair and square election. But now that they are seeing what it means, do they want to keep it?
I don’t think we should wait until 2026 or 2028 to decide what we want. The Republicans won by clearly defining their goals in 2024. Democrats need to produce their own version of Project 2025. Project 2028 needs to be specific, and all Democrats need to support it. It can’t be too radical. It will need to be liberal yet practical. It needs to appeal to independents and old-style conservatives.
I have no idea what that plan should be, but I wish it would be something David Brooks would back. It needs a moral foundation because, as much as I accept the scientific theories of Darwin, I don’t think survival-of-the-fittest makes for an appealing political philosophy.
Even if we embrace in a mighty bear hug, we cannot get close enough for our minds to touch. Whatever consciousness might be, each person is alone in their head. Would telepathy soothe that existential solitude?
“I Can Hear Thoughts” by Elizabeth Weil in the latest issue of New York Magazine reports on the viral podcast The Telepathy Tapes. (This article is behind a paywall, but if you haven’t visited the site recently, it might allow a free read. I read it via Apple News+. I find that subscription well worth the monthly $12.99 because it lets me read content behind hundreds of paywalls.)
The story is about a mother and her autistic son who appear to use telepathy. She started a podcast, which turned into a movement. The story is about how parents of nonverbal autistic children are desperate to know what their children think. For some, it goes much deeper than that. They want confirmation that a fully developed and aware human soul is trapped in a body that can’t communicate.
Often, one or more parents will sacrifice their normal lives to find some way to communicate with their nonverbal children. Many have spent years working with facilitated communication, leading to varying degrees of success. Sometimes such efforts produce startling results, results that appear to suggest telepathy.
Most scientists discredit these efforts. Studies show that autistic individuals respond to physical cues, variations on Clever Hans. However, some researchers suggest that something else might be at play. These researchers study consciousness, some with rather far-out theories about consciousness. Some researchers in consciousness want to leave the idea of telepathy open as a possibility, but see The Telepathy Tapes discrediting their research.
One of the most touching parts of the story is when Elizabeth Weil realized her journalistic queries brought doubt to the people she was interviewing. That their hope depended on absolute belief. I believe that issue is one of the fundamental reasons why our country has turned conservative and against liberal thinking. People are desperate to believe things science rejects, so they prefer to jettison science rather than their beliefs.
“I Can Hear Thoughts” is a beautiful piece of journalism about heartbreakingly sad lives. This story touches on many deep philosophical issues. Researching consciousness is at the cutting edge of science, philosophy, and even religion.
People desperate to save religion from science grasp any theory to rationalize their beliefs. The appeal of the Telepathy Tapes is the hope that communicating with profoundly autistic people will lead to proof of undiscovered spiritual dimensions. Dimensions that could be studied by science.
It’s a shame that this article is behind a paywall. I fully understand that New York Magazine needs to finance its publication. If you only consume free journalism on the web or YouTube, you are subsisting on a substandard diet of information. I wish more of my friends subscribed to Apple News+ so I could share articles with them.
I’m trying to wean myself off of crap news. The only way to do that is to pay for quality information. Apple News+ connects you with over 400 publications at a practical price.
I use reality to mean everything in existence. We used to use the term universe to mean everything, but scientists began speculating about multiverses and the word universe meant less than everything. Also, we tend to think of the universe in astronomical terms, and when I mean everything, I want it to encompass all the dimensions of existence everywhere, to whatever is beyond the quantum world to whatever existences lies beyond the multiverses.
The first reality of reality is that our local existence is an infinitely tiny portion of reality. We appear to exist in a three-dimensional domain defined by our sight, which gives us the illusion that we are small creatures in a large world. In reality, we are specks on a speck.
The second thing we need to remember about reality is that our lives have no meaning in relation to reality. Reality is completely indifferent to our existence. That every religion and philosophy we’ve ever created to explain reality are delusions by infinitesimally tiny beings. Think of our thoughts as a bacterium in our body speculating about its existence.
The third thing to remember about reality is that we spend our entire existence imposing order on chaos in our local bit of reality. Subatomic particles create atoms, and atoms create molecules, and molecules create inorganic chemistry, and inorganic chemistry creates biology, and biology creates humans, and humans create civilizations, and civilizations create technology, and technology is creating artificial intelligence. Reality is always evolving into something else.
Everything we do involves creating order out of chaos. We breathe and eat to stay alive. We learn to make sense of reality. We work to own things. We maintain the things we own. Doing the dishes imposes order on the kitchen. Washing clothes imposes order on our wardrobes. Gardening and landscaping impose order on our yard. Writing imposes order on our thoughts. Decluttering imposes order on our desks. Talking to people creates order in our relationships.
How much order we impose depends on how many habits, possessions, and people we want to control. The more we try to control, the more stress we feel. As we age, and our physical and mental abilities decline, we slowly lose control of everything we’ve worked to control. That is the reality of our lives.
We comprehend reality through science, but it’s extremely difficult because reality is hard to understand. At best, science notices repeatable statistical patterns that we can label with terms that we share. Like I said, religions and philosophies are mere delusions we embrace to think we understand reality. We don’t. We spend our lives acting on beliefs, believing we know more than we do.
We are creatures who live on delusions imposed on us by our biological urges and the delusions imposed on us by our culture and society. Except for Zen Buddhists, few people attempt to free themselves of their delusions. Instead, they passionately embrace their delusional beliefs by expending vast efforts to make them a reality.
I think about all of this as I encourage myself to go outside this morning to work at imposing order on the forty-thousand square feet of chaos that is my yard. The weeds are winning. They want to impose their order over my plot of land that I delusionally think I own and control. But it looks like rain, and as I glance around this room, I see three desks piled high with disorder that I need to wrestle into order. And I haven’t done my physical therapy exercises yet. If I don’t do them, my back falls into chaos, and I suffer great pain.
It would be so much easier to veg out in front of YouTube videos and let a little more disorder take over the house and yard.
I suppose because humans have always reproduced like bunnies, we’ve always ignored an essential aspect of sexual reproduction and gender. Statistically, we need every female to have more than two children. Because some women can’t have children, and because some girls die before reaching reproductive age, to keep the population steady during current conditions requires 2,100 babies to be born to every 1,000 women. That number varies depending on the state of medicine and the number of catastrophes.
In 2024, 1,626 babies were born to every 1,000 women in the United States. That’s not enough. If we continued at that rate, we’d eventually become extinct. In many other countries, that number is much smaller than 1,626.
Why aren’t these statistics common knowledge? Why didn’t we learn them when our parents (or peers) taught us about sex? It’s a heavy responsibility to know that we should all have children. My wife and I didn’t have children. Most of my friends didn’t have children. Why did we all start doing our own thing and forget this essential aspect of life?
It’s unfair that the burden of maintaining the species falls on women. To maintain the current population, every woman needs to have two children, and one in ten needs to have three. That’s assuming all women can have children. The practical need is for all women to have three children. Few women want that today.
Males don’t escape responsibility either. The species could get by with fewer males for making babies, but we need males to support the raising of children. I suppose a feminist utopia could get by with an exceedingly small number of males, or even none if women perfected cloning, but the statistics of maintaining the species are the same even if males weren’t needed.
However, we have evolved into a society/culture that doesn’t want enough children. What does that mean? Should we make people have more babies?
I wrote about this yesterday. However, the impact of these numbers didn’t hit me until 3:11 am last night.
For humanity to survive, we must deal with climate change, environmental sustainability, capitalism, inequality in all forms, artificial intelligence, and reproductive stability.
Theoretically, we could solve all these problems, but I doubt we will. The obvious solution is that civilization will collapse, and we’ll fall back into previous kinds of social organizations. It’s a fascinating challenge to imagine a society that can solve all these problems. However, can you imagine any future where all fertile women must have three children, and all men must become dedicated fathers? I can’t.
The human race needs to act radically differently. Is that possible?
Most countries around the world are worried about a population collapse that will destroy their economies and social systems. I’ve been worried about overpopulation since the 1960s, but now economists are warning us that capitalism is doomed if we don’t have more babies. Every country’s economic wellbeing depends on GDP growth. That might be impossible if birthrates continue to shrink.
The replacement birthrate to keep the population the same is around 2.1 children per woman, or 2,100 children per 1,000 women. In the U.S., we had 1,626 births per 1,000 women in 2024. At that rate, if we exclude immigration, the United States will fade away. Here are the U.S. population number by decade for the next 400 years.
Year
Population (in millions)
2025
341.7
2035
330.5
2045
319.8
2055
309.5
2065
299.6
2075
290.0
2085
280.8
2095
271.9
2105
263.3
2115
255.0
2125
247.0
2135
239.3
2145
231.8
2155
224.6
2165
217.6
2175
210.9
2185
204.4
2195
198.1
2205
192.0
2215
186.0
2225
180.2
2235
174.6
2245
169.1
2255
163.8
2265
158.6
2275
153.5
2285
148.6
2295
143.8
2305
139.1
2315
134.5
2325
130.0
2335
125.6
2345
121.3
2355
117.1
2365
113.0
2375
109.0
2385
105.1
2395
101.3
2405
97.5
If we follow the trends of other countries that have even lower replacement birthrates, we’d shrink even faster. If we became like South Korea, we’d shrink to half our population by 2100.
At some point, we’d reach zero population. From an ecological point of view, I’d think the Earth would be better off without so many people. However, capitalism, and our support systems like Social Security depend on growth.
To solve this problem requires women having more babies. Because some women can’t have children, most women would need to have three children. That’s quite burden to put on women. Countries around the world with declining birthrates are trying various incentives to get women to have more children, but so far, those incentives aren’t working.
Can We Have Capitalism Without Growth?
What if it’s time to think about shrinking the population? What would be a sustainable population regarding the environment? Let’s just say the world would be much better without only one billion people. Could we come up with an economic system that didn’t depend on growth?
Humanoid robots are enterting the workforce. Could they take up the GDP slack for fewer people? Are there other methods to generate economic growth without people? The U.S. economy depends on consumerism. Can we create an environmental steady-state economic system that creates abundance?
How Many People Do We Need?
If we allowed ourselves to shrink the population to one billion humans, to keep from continuing to shrink, we’d be back to needing women having 2,100 children per 1,000 women. That means every woman needs to have two children, and one in ten needs to have three.
Since the second wave of feminism and the creation of the birth control pill, women have chosen to have fewer children. We have to assume that’s what they want as individuals. Then is it fair to put the burden of reproduction on one gender? What if we had a society where every individual is responsible for raising their replacement? How would we force males into having kids?
Conservatives and some women are now proposing that women go back to being full-time mothers. What if most women don’t want to become mothers? Could we create a Brave New World type society where children are grown in test tubes and vats? That would allow males to have children.
This is a great idea for science fiction, but I’m not sure if it will ever happen.
What If Some Women Were Willing to Have Lots of Children?
Some women do like having children. If half of women were willing to have four or five children, and maybe a quarter of them have one child, that would allow one quarter of women to have no children.
Curently, in the U.S. 57% of all adults under 50 choose not to have children. That means we wouldn’t have enough women wanting children. Current incentive programs for woman to have more children are failing. Is there anything governments could do to convince women to have more children?
Universal guaranteed incomes are often discussed nowadays because of growing automation. What if women were guaranteed a significant income for having children? Say $75,000 a year for each child.
There is a meme going around where pretty women claim they are too beautiful to work. I don’t know how big this movement is, but it seems some women have decided that careers are not fun and they’d rather be stay-at-home moms. But as critics have pointed out, this plan only works with Mr. Right who makes a lot of money. How many women would choose a career of raising babies if they made $225,000 a year by raising three children, or $450,000 a year for raising six?
Think about how this would change our society? I have no idea if this is a good idea, but it sounds like it could make a fun science fiction story. How would this change society for males? It might make marriage more appealing. However, it would shift the power to women, and males might not like that.
However, with robots taking over everyone’s jobs, raising babies might become a new growth industry.
I’m just speculating here. If population collapse is a real problem, then we need to think of solutions. Conservatives are hell bent to bring back the large traditional family, but I doubt that will fly anymore. I think it’s obvious that many women don’t want to be moms to large broods.
How far are conservatives willing to go to recreate large families? Would they back $75,000 per child incentive? How many men would be willing to stay at home and raise children and let their wives have careers? How many people of either gender want careers? Would such an incentive balance out the responsibility of child raising if the incentive is paid to females and males? Do child raisers need to be married?
I suppose there could be new kinds of marriages, like limited partnerships. Conservatives would probably propose the incentives be payable only to married couples. Would they allow gay couples? What about two older people who are just friends and need to make some money? Maybe we need to redefine marriage as a legal bond to raise children.
Because robots and AIs are taking over everyone’s jobs, raising babies is one job they can’t have. Or could they? I suppose we could create robotic mothers and fathers to raise human babies that have been conceived in test tubes and gestated in vats.
There’s lots to think about.
I’ve thought of one other thing. What if humans are choosing not to have babies but raise robots instead? What if robots are our evolutionary replacements? If that’s the case, then population decline is right on time.
Auxiliary Memory 