ConservaDams

Watch out! Change is coming. Are you comfortable in your little niche? Watch out! Your niche may disappear. In fact, it is probable that all our current, comfortable niches will disappear in the next 10 – 20 years. What will you do? For many who are conservatives, the answer is to build walls and dams that they believe/hope will protect their niches. Some of these walls and dams are literal (the southern border fence) while others are figurative (banning ethnic studies).   But all will ultimately fail. The flood of change that is happening cannot be dammed.

I think many conservatives would like to return to a pre-industrial world that somehow included all the gadgets of the 21st century. Of course, that’s impossible. The reason we have 21st century technology is precisely because of the changes wrought by industrialization, one of the most important of which is massively increased population density.

Back in the distant and conservative past, when change was so slow that your niche seemed to last forever, population density was extremely low. You would have lived in groups of 25 – 50, separated from other such groups by a many-days walk. The stone tools of the Lower Paleolithic showed no change for about one million years: Conservative Heaven.

Then groups became more mobile, meeting up with other groups, exchanging ideas. And tools changed, became more sophisticated. But those changes lasted almost one million years, too. Oh, Happy Conservatives!

During the Middle Paleolithic, human brain size reached its current capacity and tools became more sophisticated yet. These changes lasted around 250,000 years. Joy in the Conservative World!

But then climate change forced groups into smaller regions, requiring that they interact more. New ideas sprang forth and we entered the Upper Paleolithic. Humans weren’t any smarter than they had been, they were just experiencing the benefits of increased population density: more diversity and exchange of ideas leading to new inventions. Of course, compared to the Present, change was still slow, so perhaps conservatives would find this world to their liking.

Yet more climate change pushed more populations closer together, and in some areas led to the development of agriculture and settled populations. In short order, population density increased dramatically, and by 5000 years ago we had the first urban centers. With urban centers came bureaucracy (big government) and taxation: the two evils against which many conservatives rail.

Hmmm…so the world to which these conservatives must wish to return is a pre-agricultural one since urbanization requires and results from the development of agriculture. I don’t know about you, but I can’t quite see those conservatives giving up their current lifestyles to live the life of foragers, even if that is the only lifestyle consistent with an anti-big government, no taxes stance. Even the Amish are reliant on big government to provide roads to market towns and police and fire fighters for protection; all of which are funded by taxes.

The conservatives, who cannot go back and do not want to go forward, are busily building their dams to protect their niches. In Texas, they are trying to build a textbook dam that will keep within its walls only the information they want their children to learn. But the flood of knowledge will breech the walls of that dam.

In Arizona, the dam builders hope to stem the tide of ethnic change that is flooding over the state. One law after another is passed in an attempt to build the dam walls higher and higher. But these dams, too, will fail.

Change will happen no matter how much we might fear it or fight it or build dams against it. And it will happen at a faster pace than ever before. The population of the United States has more than doubled since 1950, the year to which those conservatives hiding behind their dams appear to wish to return. From 1950 to 2010, Arizona’s population increased almost 900%!! No wonder there are furious attempts to put up dams to stem this flood. But just as the New Orleans’ levies were no match for category 5 Katrina, conservadams will be no match for the 21st century’s flood of change.

Population growth is everywhere. From 1950 to the present, the world population has almost tripled. Most of this increase in population (in both the US and the rest of the world) lives in densely-populated urban centers. While this can create many problems, it also has beneficial results.

Higher density populations mean more contacts with more diverse individuals which can lead to an increased exchange of ideas resulting in more creativity and a snowball effect of technological and social change. The globalization of interconnective technologies has accelerated this change. As more of the world’s population becomes better educated, the pace of change will race ahead.

Trying to hold onto the past, to stay safely behind our dams, will not succeed. As the Red Queen states to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

If we refuse to run at all, the future will pass us by and we will be left in our little niche, cowering behind our dam; if the flood of change hasn’t destroyed the dam and swept us away.