Entangled in history: Schneewinkel and I

There is my very own personal history of Schneewinkel Lehen, the estate with a full on view of the Gruenstein and the Watzmann, alpine mountains in the Berchtesgadener Land, the County of Berchtesgaden. There was the dirt road winding through the woods, passing by the house of the Brandner's and Dr. Laue whom we called Ruebezahl after a German fairy tale figure.

Then the steel gate which was always open at that time, the curved approach to the main house and the servants house, lower and in a right angle left to the main house. The wooden bridge over the brook. I dammed up the brook occasionally until the meadow flooded. The meadow which Luckei Tauernsteiner mowed with a scythe. Then I helped him to put the hay into a small wagon that we had to pull ourselves. This was a real meadow with wildflowers, bees and all.

Of course, there was grandmother Christa, who I called Apa. That is why I was here in the first place. She lived on the second floor in the apartment on the right, looking from the outside. To the left lived the Bevers. Below the photographer Steger. The Tauernsteiner's servant's house had a dirt floor in the kitchen, the wash was done on a stone sink outside under the roof overhang in front of the kitchen. Luckei had no teeth. He couldn't read or write. In the summer he was a lot on the alm, guarding cows or goats. 

I was only 4, 5 or maybe 9, those were the years I spent summers with the motherly grandmother who she cooked a lot of macaroni with white sauce and ham for me. It was my favorite meal and one of the few she could manage without stress. She didn't grow up cooking, you see. She was a Prussian Noble, she had a cook and a nanny for the children. But then, in WWII her high ranking military husband was pulled out of his retirement and recruited by the Nazis. At the end of the war he was captured and eventually executed for war crimes by a Russian tribunal, while she was a refugee who, after long ordeal, eventually found shelter and a home here in Berchtesgaden. 

 There was a pond and a swamp where I wasn't supposed to go to, according to the rules. There was a secret steel door in the basement that was locked and led to a tunnel, I was told.

The attic had a few rafters with burn marks, the result of a lightning strike which the residents extinguished with a bucket chain, I was told and was impressed. Mr Bever had two dogs, German shepherds, the younger I recall was Gyp, she lived longer, so I would remember. Mr Bever told me how to train a dog and not be afraid. He called me Nebuchadnezzar, I have no clue, why. But I have been trying to rebuild Babylon ever since, first on my train set, then as a student and now in real life.

I know now, and slowly learned then, that Schneewinkel had been Himmler's residence during the war. That wasn't surprising since his boss had even two summer residences near Berchtesgaden. Later when I learned that these figures constituted Germany's original sin. It became clear that Schneewinkel had been a summer residence of the Berliners who lived in Munich. And because they were Jewish, their home was stolen from them and occupied by a Nazi leader since they all loved the Alps. The Berliners had survived the war,  the Bevers were somehow connected and through that connection moved into the estate after it had been returned to the Berliners after the war. And that Apa somehow had known the Bevers from her time when she lived in Kolberg, a city that is now Polish.

But it was only after I unearthed a radio documentary about Schneewinkel that I learned that the estate  had been quite the place in the "roaring twenties", when the Berliners owned it. Sigmund Freud wrote an entire treatise here and the German composer Max Reger had been a guest there, too. I learned that the Bevers were at least half Jews as well, since a Bever had married a Berliner. And that, in spite of my grandfather's involvement with the Nazis they had helped his wife to find a roof over her head after the war. Her husbands transgressions were not minor: He had become the commandant of Belgrade and before that had helped Hitler prepare an invasion of England while in Brussels. Back when I was visiting in Schneewinkel, the grandfather's positions and his fate were not exactly known to us, not even his wife knew about the execution until she received a document from the Red Cross much later. The term my grandmother used was that her husband had been "lost" or "kidnapped" (Verloren oder verschleppt).

I never thought that my post-war generation was unblemished by what a later German chancellor would call "the grace of the late birth." In fact, the German Nazi history has become part of my DNA, hard to shake and influencing much of what i have done and believe. But only now do I see how directly I was entangled with the German/Austrian history, good and bad. My childhood playground in Berchtesgaden was quite the fulcrum.

Klaus Philipsen

There would have to be also, the story of my other grandfather, whom the English pulled from his farm field to make him mayor of his village, since the villagers had vouched for his character and passive resistance against the Nazi regime.

The course of civilization

This article explores in a more philosophical than scientific way if the quest for knowledge drives civilization and what the connection between knowledge science, technology and productivity is and whether those depend on growth population growth. The exploration culminates in the question if knowledge would flatline without growth or if we need to revisit what we call knowledge. 

“The future is open. It is not predetermined and thus cannot be predicted – except by accident. The possibilities that lie in the future are infinite. When I say 'It is our duty to remain optimists”, this includes not only the openness of the future but also that which all of us contribute to it by everything we do: we are all responsible for what the future holds in store. Thus it is our duty, not to prophesy evil, but, rather, to fight for a better world.”

Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework

What drives civilization? 

 Any attempt of trying to describe the course and drivers of civilization is as audacious as it is treacherous. Too much is depending on cultural heritage and perspective to allow the unbiased view that some extraterrestrial observer might have; it is also an open question if there must be any rhyme or reason at all. 
Historically mankind has created many narratives to explain civilization, purpose and objectives, some teleological (steady progress), some cyclical.  Some focus on fate, some on faith, the divine or on science. No explanation can claim to be the truth since even science is influenced by culture, technology, resources and even threats, whether of competing nations, nature or the universe itself. Each aspect provides a different angle from which to analyze civilization. Any attempt of a 360 degree view becomes terribly unwieldy. It has been tried, though. Will and Ariel Durant completed 11 volumes over 40 years containing thousands of pages before both died in 1981, the oeuvre still incomplete. Probably the last attempt before one day artificial intelligence  may give it another try, possibly with the help of quantum computers

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within" (Ariel Durant, volume 3, History of Civilization)

My interest is much simpler. Is there some overarching motif that drives us to get up in the morning to plant vegetables, chop wood or erect some shelter?  Survival seems to be a plausible answer. But humans always excelled beyond that. Are there other reasons why so many are trying so hard to get to work? The extraterrestrial observer would see little purpose in most activities unfolding on our planet and may see us like we see the ants on an ant hill: Chaotic and without a decipherable purpose, but with tangible outcomes, nevertheless. Many of our hectic activities don't even yield money, shelter or food.  Having children, play, reading poetry, romance, singing or playing an instrument? Civilization seems to have bigger drivers than just survival.
 We are so used to the daily cacophony unfolding each morning that we might have given up on trying to make sense of the daily toil. Still, the search for purpose and meaning is as old as mankind. Once in a while, some of us rub our eyes in wonder and puzzlement begging for a bigger explanation, an understanding of the forces that make us all operate as we do? Is it to "find ouselves, God or is it to shape the future? Some took extreme measures, such as Diogenes of Sinope, the ancient philosopher who is said to have lived in a barrel so he could limit his life to contemplation. He defied all the norms and didn't even refrain from insulting Alexander the Great when he asked him coolly to get out of the sun. What would our civilization look like look like from his perspective, or that of the observer in the universe with a view across the millennia, i.e Spinoza's "perspective of the eternal". Is there a force that explains "everything" other than the concept of a timeless god's with a big plan? 

The eternal quest for knowledge?

I will posit the thirst for knowledge and curiosity as one of the engines of civilization. Every small child when it is done eating and sleeping is energetically discovering things. Christian belief gives curiosity and knowledge a high perch for mankind as well. Right there in paradise the serpent is challenging Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

It didn't end well. The expulsion from paradise ripped humans from preordained cycle and sealed humans' fate to fight for knowledge about nature making decisions. Unlike those of our fellow animals our decisions could be be good or evil. We acquire knowledge to make better decisions. In the Quran, the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden is referred to as the "tree of immortality", this, possibly the ultimate quest. Religious belief to this day has a very ambivalent attitude towards knowledge. 

It is no wonder, then that knowledge has been quite stagnant over long periods of history when religion ruled life of what we often call the "dark ages". Not much new was known during the course of generations and knowledge was cloistered, literally, in the libraries of monasteries. Today, knowledge is said to be on an exponential growth trajectory, doubling every year, maybe faster. Whether we agree that mankind is making progress or not, we have to agree that there is more knowledge today than there was yesterday, at least in a strictly quantitative way. The prevailing western explanation puts progress at the feet of science, technology and productivity and explains it with freeing the collective mind from the restrictions of  religion and superstition that happened with enlightenment and the age of reason. The result are a flight to the moon, a vast reduction of diseases, hunger and unprecedented insights into the universe, matter and the workings of nature. 

It is noteworthy, that in spite of these achievements large parts of the world don't celebrate this explosion of knowledge any longer. Even in western societies superstition, conspiracy, and irrationality are gaining ground combined with deep suspicion of technology, science and education alongside cultural misgivings. Was enlightenment only a temporary period? Could knowledge begin to stagnate again? The questioning of technology, science and "progress" comes at a time when the benefits of a global liberal economy have reached some limits and the critique of the relentless growth in resource consumption, production and the resulting pollution and degradation of the natural environment is elevated by the threat of devastating climate change.

 

All this begs the question if science, technology and productivity need growth or whether progress and increased knowledge are possible without growth in population and economic output. It is worth noting tyhat neither the belief in growth nor doubting it are necessarily a matter of "left" and "right" politics. Interestingly Marxism and capitalism share the belief in growth and both systems are guilty of ransacking nature. Marxists call it growing "production forces" and market economists call it Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

Did we experience economic growth because there are ever more people on this planet to conduct science, and develop technology, resulting in productivity to thrive? Or are there more people because growth in productivity allowed to sustain a larger population? It may not be a clear cause and effect question, the two factors could also reinforce each other in a dialectic and initially mutually beneficial way. 

What if this linkage comes to an end either because population stops to grow (Some demographers predict that global population growth will come to an end in a few decades) or because the resources in vital commodities are exhausted and material growth will slow or stop? What if the attempts of managing climate change stifle this quantitative growth that has been the "golden calf" of economists for at least 150 years or so?

Many countries with very high productivity have already reached a point in which population stopped growing or even began to shrink. 

The United Nations Population Division projects that numbers will swell to more than 11 billion by the end of this century, almost 4 billion more than are alive today. Where will they live? How will we feed them? How many more of us can our fragile planet withstand?
But a growing body of opinion believes the UN is wrong. We will not reach 11 billion by 2100. Instead, the human population will top out at somewhere between 8 and 9 billion around the middle of the century, and then begin to decline. The Guardian: What goes up: are predictions of a population crisis wrong?

Is knowledge tied to growth?

 If growth, science, technology and productivity are not only inseparably linked with each other but also to growth, a decline in growth could ultimately mean that knowledge would stagnate or decline. This would be a rather alarming prospect even for those who critique growth, natural degradation and resource depletion.  

To untangle this ball of questions we want to first see if the traditional GDP can grow with a stagnant or sinking population and then investigate if growth could be defined in a more qualitative way than GDP is currently measured. 

Is GDP growth dependent on population growth?

In spite of economists' frequent assertion that a growing GDP) needs a growing population we can see nations with shrinking or stagnating populations  such as Japan and some countries in Europe managed to keep GDP stable or slightly growing and their economy vital.  Historically population growth occasionally resulted in collapsing eco systems that in turn sank entire civilizations, as it is said about the Mayans. If knowledge thrived under the Greek and Roman empires and was followed by counter revolutions, famine repression and stagnation during the "Middle Ages" it has little to do with population size. Today, analyzing GDP, we see that countries experiencing rapidly growing populations can have simultaneously a shrinking GDP, including Pakistan and several nations in sub-Saharan Africa like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Angola where high birth rates contribute to population surges and economic instability. The matter remains in dispute though.  Some scholars maintain that inverse correlation between population growth and a thriving economy exist only locally and for relatively short periods of time.  In Spinoza's global view over eternity, though, the positive correlation between population growth and GDP appears to hold. At least that is what Angus Maddison maintained when he compiled data for population and GDP for all countries in the world from year 1 to 2008 CE and graphed the resulting GDP per capita over time.

A closer look at the Maddison data, however, reveals that over a long period in history neither population nor "GDP" grew very much and essentially flatlined until they shot up in the industrial revolution (the curve known as the hockey-stick). Fluctuations in GDP per capita in the flat period are explained by what economists call the Malthusian trap.  In a zero sum economy in which static metrics such as the amount of fertile soil in a geographic area ("country") or a benign climate control production. When the population drops thanks to calamity, such as the plague, the result is almost automatically a higher per capita income. When and if the riches are not the result of a larger number of people working, a smaller number of people with whom to share the bounty leads to increased wealth. This type of economy pretty much describes the entire flatlining period of history. Only in the Renaissance the GDP took off so that GDP could grow even when the population grew. (Our world in data).

Academicians remain cautious, as Peterson notes in an article that provides an overview of research on productivity and population growth:

The relationship between population growth and economic growth is controversial. [...] The relationship between population growth and growth of economic output has been studied extensively (Heady & Hodge, 2009). Many analysts believe that economic growth in high-income countries is likely to be relatively slow in coming years in part because population growth in these countries is predicted to slow considerably (Baker, Delong, & Krugman, 2005). Others argue that population growth has been and will continue to be problematic as more people inevitably use more of the finite resources available on earth, thereby reducing long-term potential growth (Linden, 2017). Population growth affects many phenomena such as the age structure of a country’s population, international migration, economic inequality, and the size of a country’s work force. These factors both affect and are affected by overall economic growth. [...] 

In spite of extensive literature on these relationships there is little consensus on the actual effects of population on economic growth.  

Some authors offer theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to show that robust population growth enhances economic growth while others find evidence to support the opposite conclusion. Still others find that the effects vary with the level of a country’s development, the source or nature of the population growth, or other factors that lead to nonuniform impacts. "The Role of Population in Economic Growth E. Wesley F. Peterson"

This somewhat inconclusive picture regarding GDP and population begs a closer look at GDP which we used as a proxy for growth in science, productivity and ultimately knowledge. GDP was only introduced in the 1920s, in part because GDP pretends to be "value free" and can't distinguish between "bad" growth from calamity and "good" growth. GDP can't make the critical distinction between good and evil that was so central in the story of the tree of knowledge. The definition of GDP flattens discontinuities, social strife, war, economic collapse and break throughs in productivity. It is a system in which any production accrues as a plus. 

If we replaced GDP with more qualitative metrics, such as green growth or quality of lige growth, couldn't we not only solve the environmental crisis but also guarantee that knowledge would remain on an upward trajectory?

We see, under the hood the population/GDP/knowledge machine it is much more complicated than one would first think. There are long periods when per capita GDP did not increase because population growth and whatever small increases in knowledge, technology and productivity cancelled each each other out, a far different story than the argument that population growth fuels productivity.

Do we need new definitions?

The confusion about the role of population growth in relation to productivity and science and the issue of GDP's growth in relation to knowledge and progress points to the need for better definitions not only for GDP but also for knowledge.

There are plenty of ideas on how the coarse metric of GDP could be refined to better distinguish between good and bad growth. Redefining knowledge is another matter. Between gaining knowledge by sitting in a barrel (Diogenes) or trough thought experiments (Einstein) and the smashing of protons in the large Hadron collider or flying to Venus, gaining knowledge about the essence of matter, the universe, ourselves and the meaning of life take many forms, some using lots of "stuff", some entirely immaterial. The cultural critics would probably say that the prevailing culture has erred too far into building huge gizmos to gain knowledge at the cost of better self awareness and ultimately happiness. 

This would also be a good place to introduce AI. If quantum computers and generative AI could think better and faster than the human brain, the material side of research and science could potentially diminish, even if these devices themselves use huge amounts of energy. Possibly discovery on the very large scale could be linked directly to discovery on the very small, the dream of a unified field theory would become true and gigantic rockets like Space X would become obsolete vehicles of discovery. 

"Better" knowledge vis a vis of just "more" knowledge could potentially resolve the conundrum that technology often has such diminishing benefits especially when it comes to productivity, defined as time spent over output. We usually see less time spent to make something as a benefit in the sense of having more "free" time for other things. However, huge parts of those efficiencies are used up to maintain the complex systems with which we surround ourselves from health care to education, to mobility to name just a few. Yes, in the post Malthusian economy GDP per capita grew exponentially, but benefits may still be elusive if we look at qualitative measures, such as "free time" or fulfilment. For every invention that makes things faster or easier we do just more of it more often until the time advantage disappears, whether it is cooking, washing laundry, traveling, growing food or building stuff. Quicker shopping on Amazon? Let's shop more! Efficiency of e-mail? Multiply the communication events! Easier to keep up with friends: Multiply the number of "relationships". Efficiency from a washing machine? Wash garments daily instead of weekly or monthly. This list could be expanded indefinitely.

“The ‘tempo of life’ has increased, and with it stress, hecticness, and lack of time … In almost every sphere of social life there are enormous gains in time by means of technology, [but] we don’t have any time.” Hartmut Rosa  Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, 

Is that outcome just the result of bad habits or is it a "natural law" that whatever benefits get neutralized? Is it the fate of civilization that "the ants" keep toiling? Surely does it require incredibly complicated and time consuming processes to keep the 8 billion or so people on earth fed, accommodated and connected. In other words, the current complexity is not easily disposable in exchange for the promise of simpler life. But if human ingenuity combined with AI would finally find a way to consistently need less effort to satisfy the basic needs without eating the benefits immediately up through waste, complexity and foolishness would we then finally be in a position to really focus on gaining knowledge instead of stuff? In this scenario people would need to work ever less to sustain themselves. We would, indeed, look at a society beyond work, one in which people don't derive their sense of self from the value of things they make and buy. Automation, robots and artificial intelligence have already triggered such a scenario. That scenario foresees a wealth of resources with little effort to maintain the system. Current day highly developed shrinking nations are a petri dish in which to explore these options. 

A world in which efficiency gains are used to reduce waste, destruction, depletion and increase quality of life for the entire eco-system is a tall order to achieve but it also a great promise that overcomes the simplistic choice between growth and stagnation. Nature teaches us some processes are glacially slow, some are accelerating, possibly exponentially. In nature most processes are not endless, except maybe the expansion of the universe. Nature knows tipping points, phase transitions and other sudden events in which a linear process reverses, ends or transforms. Even in the universe, instead of steady endlessness, there was the big bang, there was "inflation", there continues to be the collapse of entire galaxies, black holes that swallow everything in their reach and a possible ongoing creation of subsystems (The Multiverse).

If we see current disruptions through this lens the entire course of civilization may look less futile and more hopeful.

What decoupling knowledge form growth would mean

Decoupling  growth from knowledge could  be a spectacular reassembly of a the mechanism which has fueled civilization for a long time, if not forever. 

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Two Scenarios:

So we see two options: Population as well as knowledge and productivity would stagnate or decline simultaneously over a long period (longer than the dips mankind has seen before), the trajectory of civilization of the last few thousand years would come to an end. The nexus between population and KTP would be confirmed.  When knowledge, technology and production would shrink proportionally to each other the occidental history and its teleological philosophy would come to an end in a dramatic way. It would be an affirmation of the cyclical concept of the world which is found in eastern philosophy, even though physics and astronomy insist on an "arrow of time"  that knows some type of beginning and many irreversible processes, even though quantum mechanics suggests that it is theoretically possible that the milk could be unmixed from the coffee, even if this is highly unlikely.

The other option is an enduring reversal of population growth in which population decline would not automatically mean a shrinkage of knowledge and technology, even it may mean shrinkage of production. What if good education, a high quality of life and plenty of leisure time would allow knowledge, technology, and productivity to continue to expand?  Aren't there plenty of studies that show that at least creativity and inventiveness require leisure and opportunities of unplanned accidental cross-overs and contacts?

Knowledge growth without growing population

In this scenario, the question would arise what to do with the surplus capacities and with the people who would no longer be needed to cover the basic needs; Where productivity and output clearly exceed what would be needed to sustain the shrinking population and the associated systems the nexus to growth could be smashed. To imagine this scenario, it is helpful to remember that history has many examples in which people did not derive their sense of self from work on sustenance. 

People could ramps up their needs with wants they currently suppress. To imagine this scenario, it is helpful to remember that history has many examples in which people did not derive their sense of self from work on sustenance.  In ancient Greece or Rome the upper class had the luxury of a life of leisure and contemplation thanks to slaves and servants. With robots, automation and AI this model may be less repulsive if the gains of knowledge and productivity benefits  would spread across all segments of the global population so that life for everyone would be defined by pursuit of choice activities rather than activities of necessity..  

One possible outcome could be that more effort goes into areas that do not increase productivity or production, in other words, outcomes would be qualitative in nature. Art and to some extent entertainment, travel, education and other currently seen as "unproductive" activities could belong into such a category.

For all this to be unpacked one has to carefully separate the ethical and moral questions from those that would try to describe the laws under which population growth and shrinkage operate and in which way they could be unlinked from knowledge growth. 

In all, a revolution could be on the horizon, one that shifts quantitative linkages into qualitative ones. A revolution which would finally relieve "man" from the toil of survival and allow the pursuit of happiness and knowledge instead. Even if dystopia from the tipping of natural systems may appear more likely, a Herculean effort of averting collapse and achieve a reconciliation of paradise and knowledge instead is certainly worthwhile. 'It is our duty to remain optimists” as Carl Popper says.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

This is a completely revised version of an earlier article with the same title