8. | Next Big Thing is Human Being

We are witnesses to an unprecedented emergence of problems with human psychology. And yet it has not brought along revaluation of the priorities within the society.

We tend to see the concept of the next “Big Thing” as an area where investments would improve people’s lives the most. Undoubtedly, at a certain level such understanding has brought us success. However, while new solutions have benefited people materially, psychological problems are becoming increasingly more acute.

Each such breakthrough, which has been identified as a Big Thing, has revealed and will reveal overlooked aspects in the depths of human soul. Discovery and utilization of the new source of energy – nuclear energy – resulted in destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, in turn, threw a spotlight on the psychological problem of decision-makers: the lack of empathy of the US leadership (and, to some extent, the people) towards the residents of these cities. The source of the problem was not nuclear energy, but the decision to use it for making a nuclear bomb with the sole objective – destruction – in mind. The latter, however, is a topic related to psychology, not technology.

Another good example is the Internet that, in terms of technology, is indeed a Big Thing. Yet it is the internet that has revealed such undercurrents that had thus far stayed hidden in the recesses of the human mind – the subconsciousness. We have started to get an understanding of the actual magnitude of the problem, but often fail to accurately pin down the problem. The problem is not the Internet or the censoring of it, instead it lies in the subconsciousness of users, and has now revealed itself for all to see in blogs, (false) news, social media and comment sections. It is indeed the uncensored or over-censored Internet that helps us to understand the magnitude of the problem.

Internet has made us aware that domestic violence, pedophilia, cancel culture, intolerance are much bigger problems than what we thought they are. We are becoming increasingly more aware of the fact that what happened in concentration camps, or even mass tortures and rapes are not mistakes borne from ignorance, but something irrational that requires open-minded investigation of human psyche in order to be understood. The cause of our problems is (almost) always in psyche and until we keep ignoring it, we seem to be combating a multi-headed dragon. Each time we cut off one head (solve a technical problem) we find ourselves facing two new ones.

One of the gravest problems of the humankind is violence. Earlier it used to manifest itself mostly at the physical level, in particular in the form of wars. Thanks to human development, that has mostly occurred by overcoming individual and collective awareness and psychic restrictions, the share of physical violence has dropped and yielded space to psychological (in particular, emotional and mental, but also ideological) violence.

War, crime, alcoholism, suicides, road rage, domestic violence, attention disorders, paranoia, etc. all have their roots in the psyche. The majority of doctors agree that physical ailments often have psychical causes. Even a bone fracture or a knife wound could be (and often is) has a psychic cause – the result of an inappropriate behavior of a person.

The reason why over the last 75 years wars have become drastically less frequent and smaller in scale, resulting in an increase of our material well-being, is not so much a consequence of our technological development, but rather the consequence of psychological development of humans (the humankind). Although, at the physical level humans are biological beings, in terms of life experience they are rather more psychological beings. This means that it is only when our material needs have been satisfied that our psychological needs manifest themselves. This is what is illustrated by the Maslow pyramid – the higher needs are always overshadowed by the lower ones – the meaning of life or public recognition lose their actuality when we are about to drown or dying of hunger.

If, in the context of the above, one would want to know what could constitute the next Big Thing, the area where investments could produce the best performance for the society, then in my opinion it would be the human psyche. From the point of view of physical health, the once Big Thing was the discovery of bacteria. Without this discovery the world would not be what it is today, in the good sense.

To use this analogy: it is not incorrect to say that, in the same way that our body is inhabited by a vast number of (biological) bacteria, the human psyche is also polluted by psychological “bacteria”. It is obvious that until we ignore this (at the mainstream level) it will be difficult for us to change the situation: we cannot fight an enemy the existence of whom we do not accept.

However, at the level of the society and the state our spending in this area is so minuscule, one could even say non-existent. The cost of this is fast pile-up of psychological problems, in the western society in particular, because this is where material well-being has been achieved.

There is a real danger that inability of individuals to fully participate in the life of the society due to psychological restrictions could lead to the snowball effect. If person who is incapable of taking care of them-self becomes a parent, then the problem will grow rapidly because “broken people” produce more people of their own kind. Psychological problems tend to pass from parents to children, unless this cycle gets broken. If a pedophilia is not unmasked and is given the right to work with children, the consequences for the children as well as the society could be dire. And no technology (except for a psychological one) can remedy this situation.

When, before I started writing this text, I searched the Internet for the next big thing, I got the impression that the issue was dominated by the creation of a quantum computer and the race for it. Investments into this area are already significant – in particular in China. But the motivation is questionable. The focus is on the power in the Internet – decryption which, from a paranoid point of view means that whoever is the first to obtain this capability, can easily break open (encrypted) messages and networks of all others. This is similar to the past nuclear arms race that was won by the United States. The consequences have been discussed above.

I have no idea of how this race now ends, but it is likely that at some future point in time one country will obtain the capability to “crash the world”, but after some more time the arms race in the field of quantum computers will reach a parity level, and the fight will move to the next area.

I offered the last example for the very reason of displaying the pattern – it is indeed important to tackle external problems, but whether the new technology serves or destroys us depends only on our internal parameters – the human psyche.

I am writing this piece without any illusions of immediate change. Such changes cannot be achieved merely on command. We need to have public discussions about the fundamental question – whether a human being is more a biological or a psychological being? When we are prepared to accept that our psychology is not, in general, defined by our biology, then we could produce the willingness at the state level to change priorities and invest in areas where productivity could surpass productivity of earlier infrastructure investments 10 or even 100 times. We all have heard many times that investments into people are generally more cost-effective than investments into things.

And really, while even environmental problems stem from greed generated by human psyche, would it not be appropriate to ask:

“Why couldn’t the next Big Thing be the human being?”