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In the midst of a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be asking a lot of readers to consider similarities between this emergency and the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima; the global subprime mortgage banking meltdown; extreme weather events such as super-typhoons, drought, wildfires and flooding; a disturbing spike in worldwide suicides, and the largest migration of humans in the history of mankind.  These events feel separate and distinct in our minds.  Yet, from a thirty-thousand-foot level, they have more in common than previously understood.  They are threads plucked from the same fabric.

The history of modern man is the story of accelerating social progress periodically interrupted by crises.  During their early years, societies emerge victorious over adversity.  Collaboration, ingenuity and will combine to tamper down immediate emergencies.   Until one day, we reach the limits of our capabilities, institutions collapse, and we revert to smaller troupes focused on meeting basic human needs.

Then we begin the climb again.

While a great deal of research has gone into the final event(s) responsible for the sudden collapse of the Roman, Mayan, Khmer, Egyptian and Ming empires, until recently, little attention was given to whether these societies may have behaved in ways that made them vulnerable to a triggering event(s).  Were there early signs they were "primed" for a unilateral failure?  And if so, can we avoid a similar fate?

The answer is yes and yes.

Imagine two clocks.  One clock measures the speed of social progress.  This clock accelerates faster and faster with time as the population, knowledge, abilities and complexity of the society exponentiate. In short order, progress begins moving at speeds no single individual can keep up with, and every aspect of life grows more complex.  From new methods of performing everyday tasks, to new laws, regulations and institutions, to important breakthroughs in science and technology - tick, tick, tick - the clock quickens, making it impossible to master the fundamentals necessary to make informed, fact-based decisions.

The second clock is the clock of evolution.  Think of this in terms of the biological space suit you are trapped inside.  With few exceptions, this clock moves extremely slowly.  The prefrontal cortex - the area or the brain responsible for planning, decision-making, problem-solving, self-control, and long-term goals - took more than three hundred thousand years to occupy a third of the human brain.  And it will take many thousands more for these brains to adapt to the deluge of data and lightning speed changes we navigate on a daily basis today.

As the clock of social progress begins to speed up the systems, procedures and information we must leverage to our individual and collective advantage grows evermore complex. It doesn't take long before this complexity exceeds the capacity our brains have evolved to date.  Every society can be shown to reach a "cognitive threshold" wherein - in spite of having solutions to their threats - they become paralyzed and dangerous threats begin migrating from generation to generation.  As the mass of a problem grows, so does its inertia.  Until trying to stop its momentum is as difficult as stopping a snowball the size of a building rolling downhill at breakneck speed.

The earliest telltale sign a civilization has reached a cognitive threshold is gridlock.  Though the society has both the knowledge and means to circumvent, cure or mitigate a dangerous threat, they fail to act.

The second sign is also an outgrowth of advancing complexity: a mass confusion between what is an empirical fact and what is an unproven belief.  Opinions, theories, interpretations and sensationalisms become indistinguishable from evidence-based information, so unproven beliefs are interchangeable with facts.

The third symptom occurs as empirical facts give way to unproven beliefs.  Looking back on the demise of earlier civilizations we see that governance begins to drift away from forging public policy on the basis of verifiable data.  And as policy grows increasingly ineffective, irrational and erratic, once stalwart institutions begin faltering.

The evidence is clear.  Beyond clear.  Three conditions set the stage long before an unstoppable event triggers collapse.

Though we frequently throw around the term "collapse" when describing the end of a civilization, in truth, it is more accurate to describe this phenomena as a "rapid reversal." When social systems fail, citizens revert to simpler systems - systems which are magnitudes easier to understand and manage from a cognitive point of view.

For example, few people today can explain how currencies are valued, or what a credit-default swap is, or make any real sense out of the accounting systems and financial disclosures of public companies, though all the numbers are all there in plain sight.  Fact is, today's financial markets are so complex, even regulators have trouble keeping up with new instruments, products, accounting methods, etc.  Imagine the difficulty a shopkeeper, a retiree, or parents hoping to invest and send their children to college have navigating this environment!  Were a sudden collapse of global financial markets to occur, the society would revert to an elementary barter economy.  This has been proven to be our natural response when social institutions fail during natural disasters, warfare, or a currency crash.  In a barter economy, transactions are streamlined down to the basics.  A person who has an abundance of eggs negotiates with a person who has an abundance of flour until both feel they have struck the best possible deal.  They then make an exchange.  No supply chain economics, no complex calculations of monetary exchange rates and tariffs, no regulations or oversight, no tax considerations, no nothing.   It's a transaction wherein both parties participate directly and control the outcome.  This is a financial system any human brain can understand without assistance from experts, computers, analytics and so forth.  So, it makes perfect sense we return to this model of commerce again, again and again.

Every civilization reverts to simpler systems once it reaches the cognitive threshold.  It is just a matter of time.  A crisis may light the fuse, but it is not the fuse itself.  The fuse is the growing disparity between the accelerating rate of social complexity and slow rate of physical evolution.  We have come to a point where the rate of social progress is not sustainable by the brains we have thus far evolved.

To illustrate how exponentiating complexity makes societies vulnerable to reversal let us look at the Mayan civilization.  We know that for more than three-thousand years the Mayans had a tenuous relationship with rainfall.  Water was so vital to their expansion that the Mayans grew to become masterful and prolific hydraulic engineers - building massive reservoirs and canals for warehousing and distributing water - systems which were unprecedented for their time.  They designed the first refrigeration systems consisting of a series of large underground cisterns.  The cisterns prevented evaporation and were ideal for preserving food.  In addition to large water storage projects, there is evidence the Mayans practiced many advanced conservation methods, such as water rationing, planting drought-tolerant crops, etc.

During the first two thousand years when the empire was thriving, the Mayans practiced fetishism in parallel with these productive public works.  The society believed that regular sacrifices to the Gods were necessary to insure favorable weather conditions.  There is a great deal of archeological evidence which points to periodic ceremonial sacrifices of captured slaves and enemies.

However, as drought conditions began to worsen, the Mayans ceased building reservoirs and cisterns and engaging in other heretofore effective measures.  The society made a dangerous turn away from factual information, toward complete reliance on unproven beliefs. Not only did the number of sacrifices escalate, they began sacrificing their own people. They started with the old and infirm, but when this failed to produce rainfall moved on to young virgins.  Finally, just prior to the collapse of the Mayan civilization, unspoiled new-born infants were murdered in hopes the Gods would bring rain.

Exponentiating complexity, gridlock, the substitution of facts with unproven beliefs and the forging of public policy based solely on beliefs represent the early hallmarks of demise.  These symptoms have been proven to occur prior to the collapse of every great society.  They set the stage for unilateral failure.  Which begs the question: are we exhibiting any of these signs today? And if so, can we stop the tides?  Since evolution is not going to kick into high gear and close the gap between the increasing social complexity and it doesn't look good for the pace of progress to slow down, are there any measures can we take to circumvent reversal?

For openers, we have now separated the symptoms from the illness, and that is always the first step toward a cure.

Next up, if mounting complexity is the underlying culprit to the extent we simplify processes, regulations, laws, methods, virtually everything - we will be better off.  I'm not suggesting we return to barter economics, but when we reach a point when systems are so complex even experts don't understand them anymore, it's time to bring them back in line with what is understandable and manageable by the person on the street.

Third, gridlock is one of the important early warning signs that social complexity has surpassed our cognitive abilities.  One way to avoid a sudden triggering event is not to allow social problems to migrate from one generation to the next.  Problems such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, immigration, gun violence, suicide, healthcare inequality, political corruption, etc. must not be allowed to multiply in magnitude, danger and urgency.

Fourth, leaders and citizens alike must make every effort to separate proven facts from unproven beliefs.  To this end, AI and a host of background analytic tools make it possible to quickly cross-verify information from multiple sources. Rather than succumb to intellectual laziness, or worse yet, be led astray by false prophets and charismatic personalities, we must resist the tendency to accept opinion and theory as proven.  The current shift toward relying on smart devices and machines for accurate data, rather than trust human intermediaries, may well be our salvation.

Case in point: there has recently been a great deal of talk regarding the quick development of a COVID-19 vaccine.  Estimates ranging from 12-18 months for a commercially viable vaccine have been quoted by leaders and some scientists. This gives everyone a feeling of hope. We look forward to the months ahead when everyone can be vaccinated and life will return to normal.

But in actuality, how close are we?

From an objective point of view, not close at all.

In 1984, as the number of AIDS cases were rapidly spreading, the U.S. Health and Services Director and other leaders made similar announcements regarding an AIDS vaccine.  Based on rapid scientific progress, they claimed an AIDS vaccine would be available within 1-2 years.

That was 36 years ago.  And today there is no AIDS vaccine.

The reason for this is that producing an effective vaccine is extremely difficult.  Less than 5 percent of vaccines that are tested ever become licensed, and among those that do, it takes over a decade to prove they are safe for humans.  Furthermore, with the discovery of eight new COVID-19 mutations, the odds of developing a vaccine that addresses all of the lineages don't look good.

But even if we did speed up the development process, or get lucky, we understand so little about the human immune system that vaccines -such as those created for the flu season -are less than 40 percent effective.  Which means more than half the people who are vaccinated will still be able to contract and transmit the disease.

Vaccines are far not the cure-all they are being described as. In fact, throughout the entire history of modern man, vaccines have only successfully eradicated only one disease. That disease is Smallpox.  All other diseases - from the Bubonic Plague to Typhoid fever continue to periodically flare up somewhere in the world.  So, while there's no question whether the current COVID-19 outbreak will subside, there is almost no scenario under which COVID-19 is completely eliminated. And based on historical fact, a fully effective vaccine in 12-18 months is as unlikely.

What is likely is effective treatments for the disease will become available. Some already show encouraging results.   We may not be able to eradicate the disease from the face of the Earth, or prevent people from getting it, but if we can mitigate their symptoms or, better yet, cure them, that's the next best thing.

These are the facts.  And they differ from the picture many leaders, experts and the media portray.  To this end, the transmission of misinformation is often more dangerous to a society than any virus.

Lastly, technology plays a critical role in our ability to break with the plight of early societies. Ancient civilizations did not have the benefit of AI-based predictive models which allow leaders to leap ahead of dangerous events and outcomes.  We are the first generation of humans to have the ability to foresee the future, and consequently, act prophylactically to avoid, or minimize danger.  For the first time in human history, we need no longer wait to adapt. To sudden change.  We have the unprecedented ability to "pre-dapt" to likely scenarios.  What greater advantage can humankind have than the opportunity to head off dangerous threats at the pass?

If there are any advantages modern societies have over previous civilizations which succumbed to the cognitive threshold, it is that 1) we have identified the behaviors which precede demise and 2) have the knowledge and means to prevent a cataclysmic reversal. Thus, the question for those of us living in modern times is not whether we can break with the past - it is whether we will.