2025 - Global Demographic Transition

We stand at a pivotal moment in human history, not merely facing another crisis but confronting a fundamental shift in our existence. This is not a passing storm but a transformation that demands our attention and understanding.

2025

In my previous blog post "Globalization" I delved into the demographic research of Russian professor Sergey Kapitsa, "PARADOXES OF GROWTH: LAWS OF GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANITY". Kapitsa identified a mathematical model that accurately represents global human population growth, expressed by the differential equation: \begin{equation} \large{}\color{blue}\frac{d N}{d T} = \frac{N^2}{2*10^{11}} \end{equation}Professor Kapitsa presented human population growth not only in form of differential eqation. He also introduced formal formula for calculating human population over time.\begin{equation} \large{}\color{blue}N = \frac{2*10^{11}}{2025-T} \end{equation}where N is number of people over globe and T is year. In picture you can see that line presenting this equation is very close to statistical data over thousands years back.

picture by Sergey Kapitsa

 

 

We can see from equation (and picture) that when it get closer to year 2025 human population is exploding. The growth is so sharp that on picture population has logarithmic scale that it could be somehow visible and not just "right angle". Actually accordingly to equation at year 2025 human population size should become infinite. This implies that the model, which has held true for tens (even hundreds) of thousands of years, is no longer applicable to our current reality. Our days are those years around year 2025 when humanity is in crisis it had never before. Humanity is in huge global crisis because our previous living paradigm brought us to growth rate we cannot handle. Professor Kapitsa called it "Global Demographic Transition". Nothing can prevent this impossible growth except changing this paradigm which was our way of living for thousand and thousands years.

Never "More"

Professor Kapitsa expressed this paradigm with one single word - "MORE". Once it was more children, more slaves, bigger empire. In modern era it's more money, bigger home, more "likes", .... "More" is very deep in us because it is our "animal" part which needed for our ability to survive (at least survive better than other humans). "More" needed to increase our survivability in competitive environment (we can show how this paradigm acting with "Struggle of Informations" model - '"Life", "Death" and "The Winner Takes It All"'). Change of humanity paradigm will definitely require change of human's "mentality". Each of us became very much informationally intensive. Each of us belong to so many different groups of people, so we hardly can find proper words to identify ourselves. Our lives became so multidimensional, so we are not capable to accuire more of something.

We see such change in mentality started to happen in some parts of the world, so called "developed countries" (AKA western world). Growth rate in those countries already became zero (in some countries even negative) for many years ago. So why this bifurcation point is right now, around 2025?

Crisis

Crisis is process when previous way of system existence replaced by new way. Humanity crisis it's not when some king replaced other king after war. Those are local crises. Humanity crisis it's when people start to live differently than before. Mostly such crisis is related to some technological change. Such crisis happen when "wheel" was invented (stone age), when humanity found how to create metal (bronze age), antique, middle age, .... What is interesting that period of next era (period between crises) shorter than before era. After every crisis next crisis comes faster than before. Word "crisis" has more scientific term - bifurcation. One of examples that "time" between bifurcations became shorter is "Feigenbaum constant".

Old era was very long, so there were many human generations that lived same way as their fathers. Humans over those generations adapt themselves for new way of living. But with time each era became shorter so it was smaller number of generations for that era. Modern time is very different. It's not that we have many generations for new era. Now during one generation we have many era. Internet, AI, robots, ... Bifurcations became so close that we hardly have time to adapt ourselves to new way of living.

Professor Kapitsa equations in some (indirect) way reflect that situation where humanity as it exists now cannot handle such intensive "bifurcations rain". There are some relations between number of people and bifurcations intensity. I did not see researches for such relations. I do not even know which science should take that (may be complexity theory).

Welcome to "The New World"

We are on our way to "New World", world that never exist before. We do not even know how it will looks like. But what we know for sure is that old world is ended and we are living in the middle of big bifurcation, bifurcation of bifurcations, meta bifurcation.