Our current world population is “about” 6.8 billion.
Projections are that within 25 years, at the current rates, there will be 10 billion people on the earth.
If we do some ‘back of a napkin’ maths, this means an additional 3.2 billion people in say 25 years, give or take a month or two. 25 years times 365 days times 24 hours times 60 minutes x 60 seconds gives 788 million seconds.
Now without allowing for anyone dying – because the maths is too hard at this time of the morning – that means that on average for the next 25 years, 4.058 people are going to be born every second. The real average will be higher than that because of the death rates, and the number born each second today – will be less than the number per second in 25 yrs. (Exponential growth and all that). There is also the impact of people living for longer – but lets just leave a large margin for error of half a billion people or so.
But – 4 people per second is probably a pretty good average to think about for now. Tick tock – 4 new babies. In the time it took to read this so far – about 30 seconds – 120 babies at that average.
What does that mean for each of us personally? For our businesses? For our societies? For our planet?
One thing it means is that over the next 25 years (and even more dramatically each year after that) – barring horror events like wars, plagues, natural disasters – we are going to need a lot more of everything.
Obviously this assumes that over the next 25 years, that our population is “on average” going to behave just as it has for the last 25 years. Despite the hope of a ‘new age’ of awareness, enlightenment, education, and so – it is sadly a very good bet that humans will continue to do what are programmed to do.
And what are we ‘programmed’ to do?
At the most basic level we are programmed for safety. Our drive is to stay alive, and the next level down is to keep our children (gene pool) alive. There were those fabulous books like “The Selfish Gene” that showed that just about every action we take can be traced back to the purpose of either keeping us alive or ensuring the survival of our DNA.
In this model a clear example is having children. We are programmed to want to have sex. Because sex leads to children, and continues the DNA line. Why else would we need to have a sex drive? And why else would it have been evolved (or created) to feel so nice? Perhaps so that human DNA would flourish – even in times before we understood the reproductive cycle.
Even activities like wealth building, becoming an important person, becoming “more beautiful” or physically attractive might in this model be simply ways of increasing the chance of finding a fertile mate. Do rich, powerful or physically attractive men achieve more DNA propagation? AND do rich, powerful powerful people have a greater chance of living for a longer time?
So – this model implies that the reasons we create for our drive to become wealthy, more healthy, more successful, more sexually attractive, more “whatever” – are just imaginings. And the ‘real’ reason we do these things is to live longer (be safer), and to keep our DNA expanding. Humans will always have a genetically induce “Safety” drive.
At our DNA level this means “Safety in Numbers.” Just as the long term viability of a school of fish is increased by high fertility and individual fish staying as part of the school. This might even explain the “tall poppy” syndrome.
Do you think that a self aware fish that chose to leave the school and go off to explore, thus decreasing the survival chances of other individual fish and the school DNA itself – would be very popular?
As children we model like crazy. We adopt patterns of behaviour that make us just like everyone else. Because this increases our chances of survival to adulthood (and procreative activities). Our generalizations about life (ie beliefs on what is true, how it all works) – are formed by modelling those we perceive at the time to good survival models. And mostly this means people who are bigger than us, and who we perceive has having survival power. We figure their rules, and then we follow them.
Are we then really “self aware” at all?
What if everything from our choice of which football club to support, to how much we like to travel, to our fears of public speaking, to our drive to “learn”, to which ethnic group and skin colour we have – all stem from the “purpose” of our DNA to propagate.
Having a mix of cultures and variety of groups does increase the likelihood of diversity that then increases the survival chances of the entire race. Just as if you were breeding different varieties of wheat – you would create several different types to test, each being a little different. and each difference perhaps creating a benefit that if significant would result in a stronger overall gene pool as it grew more successfully. This benefit would come back to the overall group as the new types DNA moved into the overall pool by cross breeding with other types.
The implication is that not only is there safety in numbers at the DNA level – but that also there is increased safety in diversity and behavioural variation. ie a gene pool that not only has many sub-groups based on genetics, but also great variations in behaviour (seen as preferences) will be more likely to survive than one where all individuals have identical preferences and risk profiles.
We see this at a social level where some people are gregarious and are most comfortable in groups. We could adopt a simple preference profiling tool like DISC to illustrate the variations. In DISC, people are ascribed to have preference toward different mixtures of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness. In this discussion it does not matter too much what the items mean – but simply that having different mixes, lead to different preferences (and consistent long term behaviours) – that produce great variations in risk profiles and the variation in those profiles increases the survival probability of the human DNA pool.
So the more organisms that have a common DNA there are, with the most number of slight variations in the DNA (but who can still be breed successfully with all others with slight variations) AND have the most variations in social and individual behaviours – the greater the diversity and the greater the probability of ongoing survival of human DNA.
This is “overlaid” with our basic need for safety – and what we interpret as “safe” is determined most commonly by our modelling of significant figures in our childhoods. eg a micro level – safety might mean being wealthy, or a preference congregating in larger social groups, or it might appear as being ‘unsafe’ in groups – and preference for being alone or in very small groups.
When this model first occurred to me late last night, I wondered if it was going to leave me feeling sort of powerless – and being a victim of my (and yours’) DNA Game. Where the idea of “free will” was replaced by “genetic variation pressure”.
Instead it makes me feel more calm, and I feel that the clear presence of a “genetic pressure” element to my model of the world has already altered my evolving Life Map. I already knew that my genetics and programming has determined much of me including my height, build, metabolism, and lots of other stuff including maybe even the thinning of my hair. Noticing that it may also affect my sex drive, my preference for not being in large crowds, my desire to live a long, happy and prosperous life, and to see my children grow up to be strong, independent and happy – is not a bad thing.
I can also see streams of related insights appearing, relating to everything from the ecology of the Earth to systems development and marketing. It also rekindles the concept of connectedness with all others who share our big common chunks of DNA – or at least as much connectedness as my current diversifying preferences will allow me.
And it is also nice that this set of beliefs about the (childhood) purpose of beliefs (ie safety and diversity) – allows for beliefs to change. Ie if the beliefs that I gained as a child are giving me rules and generalizations that are not giving me what I want in life – I am allowed to change them.
Please comment below – and if this strikes a chord with you also please subscribe as there are some more insights to come.
Cheers
James