My next assumption is that such progress or maturation is driven and motivated by carrot and stick type incentives, with material forces prodding societal development from behind and inspirational forces drawing it forward. Cost-benefit calculus is the stick that drives development from behind, held to account in individual cases through a process of Darwinian variation and selection that allows some institutions to thrive while others die. Because material costs and benefits are generally apparent and often calculable, we are well aware of and accept the power of cost/benefit incentives to produce societal change. By this calculus, as humanity’s population expansion and rising living standards increasingly face environmental limits, societal progress turns increasingly away from such extensive development and toward intensive development, i.e. resource economizing and substitution of information and technology for resource use. As information accumulates and technologies improve, additional developmental opportunities arise and become increasingly cost effective and the intensive progression builds upon itself. All of society’s structural evolutionary changes we see around us – globalization, corporate consolidation and/or reorganization, internal bureaucratic restructuring, improved resource management and sustainable environmental practice, advances in telecommunications, product miniaturization, and nearly every other societal development – obey the cost/benefit calculus of increased benefits and/or reduced costs (both broadly conceived), or they would not endure. The shift from extensive to intensive development occurs across every aspect and at every level of society, because resource constraints arise across all aspects and at all levels.
But is there also an inspirational component that spurs humanity’s progress forward, in search of better governance structures, reduced alienation in the workplace, reduced carbon footprint, all for their own sake? Do idealistic possibilities inspire reformers to seek out ways to improve life on earth, just for its own sake of societal development, rather than to save costs or increase profit? I suggest that such inspirational initiatives abound, spurred by political activists, religious reformers, cultural pioneers and dogooders generally. The material stick of cost-benefit is not the sole motivating force propelling societal development. It may the be easiest to measure, observe and prove effective. And certainly any inspirational forward progressing initiative would have to pay its own way and obey cost benefit calculations. But a cost-benefit calculation is not the chief motivator attracting political and cultural reformers and activists to their work. Nor is it always obvious how to measure the attractiveness of political and cultural reform, for example quantifying the advantages of a more just and less alienating social structure. Idealistic progress inspires development even though the ideals remain allusive. Like the carrot for the donkey, they spur development along its path and give the donkey something to look forward to. Dare I say the donkey is happier for the carrot? Instead of only paying attention to the stick, he/she may dream of carrots. Society needs to see its way forward in a positive direction, and my thesis is an attempt to contribute to this picture of the future.
On the particular subject of humanity’s intensive and extensive development in the presence of environmental limits, Bert de Vries and Johan Goudsblom (eds.), Mappae Mundi[1], examined and wrote of societal development all the way ack to prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. They found that, contrary to my hypothesis, intensive development tended to precede rather than follow extensive development, with intensive development providing the wherewithal for societies to expand extensively. For example, agricultural know-how enabled intensive development of territory compared with hunter-gatherer society and led to population growth, improved living standards and society’s extensive development across continents. Medical discoveries, an intensive development, led to longer life and population growth, and the invention of air conditioning led to migrations and population expansion in tropical and hot desert climates. In each case an intensified use of knowledge and technology led to population expansion. But humanity’s current situation differs from that in past times, and the authors conclude, in sympathy with my hypothesis, that intensive development is society’s only way forward in the face of the looming depletion of resources, i.e. intensive development must follow extensive development in our present case rather than the other way around. This may be a chicken and egg phenomenon, with intensive and extensive development giving rise to each other, perhaps cyclically or dialectically. Regardless, humanity is currently pressing up against the earth’s environmental carrying capacity, population growth is slowing, and technology is becoming increasingly inexpensive relative to natural resources.
Note the remote but fundamental parallel to the carrot and stick mechanism in the forces of gravity and sunlight, which govern all life on earth. Plants and animals may not be prodded and tempted by gravity and sunlight, but they struggle upright against the force of the one and are drawn to the light of the other, the one an earthbound materiality, the other an immaterial (in some sense) radiance from above. A third element enters here. Gravity and sunlight are intermediated by the daily rhythm of the earth’s rotation, and rhythm has a relational, structural, and informational nature, being both intangible and a stable background parameter. The diurnal breathing of the planet intermediates and balances the day and night time processes.
[1] Bert de Vries and Johan Goudsblom (eds.), Mappae Mundi: Humans and their Habitats in a Long-Term Socio-Ecological Perspective; Myths, Maps and Models, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002)