03-20-2021, 10:03 AM
(03-20-2021, 05:07 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: The saeculum is a vicious cycle. Civics forget about individuality. Prophets forget about community. Golden mean is never sought. The only way out seems to be biotechnological life extension, leading to a more mature society, lead by centenarians or even supercentenarians with the health of today's 40-year-olds, which will finally achieve the golden mean between civic discipline and prophetic creativity.
I imagine there will be no distinctive generational traits in a world where children born at the same time can have 30-year-old or 70-year-old parents. Other, more long-term trends might appear.
OK, but then you have the problem of permanent stasis. If nothing changes, advancement ceases as well. Eventually the weight of never-ending sameness will trigger something as yet TBD. We can speculate, but it's hard to cross that barrier from where we are today. Arthur C. Clark had it exactly right: "a sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic". That applies to such an advanced culture as well.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.