Neo-Luddite, Cliodynamics and Aging

I am a Neo-Luddite, have leanings toward Cliodynamics and I am aging.

Luddites were people in the 19th-century who were opposed to the use of technologies (automation) because they believed it was detrimental to fair remuneration and that it reduced the quality of the (weaving) process. These insightful (in my opinion) folks considered themselves Luddites – followers of Ned Ludd, a more than likely not-so-real machine weaver whose name was appropriated to challenge governments and mill officials. Luddites were not in the purest sense anti-technology, at least not as implied in the derogatory iteration of the term. I am surely no Luddite under such a frame of reference. I own more technologies than is likely healthy; usually within the Apple universe. I often joke that I have the Apple logo branded on my forehead. I do, however, have a very skeptical mindset toward claims that technology will solve all of humanity’s woes, an idea known as ‘technosolutionism’. The Hedgehog Review has a very good article on the matter titled Technosolutionism Isn’t the Fix.

Ask the environment, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the children that perished in Gaza, those violated by revenge porn, the elderly or disadvantaged that struggle to understand the rapid transitions to the DX economy, whether they believe that technology always provide useful solutions. Technosolutionsim is technonsense. A.I. won’t save the environment; we know how we could do that already. We just don’t. QR codes do not make the meal at the restaurant more enjoyable; the company we keep, the chef/s and the service staff might. A DX economy has not made my credit card safer – it was hacked (don’t ask me how or where or why) twice; an analog token added to the DX loop may help reduce credit card fraud. Digital checkout at convenience stores (I refer to the brilliant Japanese convenience stores) do not improve the process or the experience for the customer; understanding and training for omotenashi would bring many rewards. Of course, I am being extreme and cherry-picking cases. There are many more technology-based solutions that have brought myriad positives for humanity and we should be grateful for the technologies. But, we should use our brains! Deferring to the music, the slick visuals, the energy of the crowd, and the idolization of individuals, has been fraught with trouble throughout human history.

I happily associate myself as a Neo-Luddite. No, as just stated, I am not anti-technology – I use it more than I probably should, and probably not as efficiently as the tools enable. I do, however, have a very skeptical and cynical stance on the tech-bro spin. If we have learnt anything since the start of 2025, it would have to be that these tech-bro would sell their mother if they suspected any existential threat to their billions. And, yet, simply because the U.S. has become the most powerful country in the history of human kind, with the desire and willingness to use that influence to bully, curtail and/or manipulate ‘friends’ and foes alike, these tech-bro and their corporations have been left to run amok. Kids in the candy store. Fake it until you make it – unless you fall foul and rip-off your own in the process – Holmes, Freedman and their ilk – at which point you are ceremoniously hung out to dry. How can you not be a Neo-Luddite with that backdrop?

I will for simplicity quote from a nice article on Neo-Luddites in The Guardian on 17th February 2024 (Humanity’s remaining timeline: it looks more like five years than 50: meet the Neo-Luddites warning of an A.I. apocalypse.)

Crabapple, the artist luddite, broadly agrees. “For me, a luddite is someone who looks at technology critically and rejects aspects of it that are meant to disempower, deskill or impoverish them. Technology is not something that’s introduced by some god in heaven who has our best interests at heart. Technological development is shaped by money, it’s shaped by power, and it’s generally targeted towards the interests of those in power as opposed to the interests of those without it. That stereotypical definition of a luddite as some stupid worker who smashes machines because they’re dumb? That was concocted by bosses.”… “Luddism is founded on a politics of refusal, which in reality just means having the right and ability to say no to things that directly impact upon your life,” Sadowski tells me when we speak. “This should not be treated as an extreme stance, and yet in a culture that fetishises technology for its own sake, saying no to technology is unthinkable.”

Of course, what do we mean by ‘technology’? Are we referring to the ability to control fire, the invention of the wheel, the taming of wild beasts to pull our hoes and carry us greater distances, the printing press, the steam engine, distributing electrical currents across vast distances, telescopes and microscopes, huge machines that propel us and matter across vast distances, or the humble paper clip? It is broadly the contemporary tools that are usually, but not always, linked to the digital society.

For example, for all the many conveniences the smart phone has brought, the device has anchored us to a way of living because its power and conveniences have been hijacked by those who have ulterior motives: control, profit, power and addiction (aka cannot live without it). But why is it we cannot choose what tools we use and how we choose to use the tools? Why must a person do online banking or be charged for the pleasure of an in-person transaction or person-to-person interaction? Why should we be forced to self-checkout lanes at the supermarket or be forced to wait in long lines for the only human cashier available? Why should we be conscripted to use social media, email or Teams when a quick chat would easily and more efficiently solve questions? I am not arguing that we should not utilize the technologies, but we should be the masters not the slaves.

I am aware that when I start to rant, adopt my preacher’s evangelical energy and prance back and forth across the raised platform at the front of the room, students – especially those that have grown up in digital societies, like China – think of me as ‘the old person’ in the room. And, I am – at least compared to them. But, I am also the one who has the stories, felt the joy and pain of human interactions, survived the analog experiences, appreciates the value of good company and interesting discussions, and who has also learnt to be mediocre adept with technologies. By engaging with me in-person and as a human, the students go away knowing they have experienced something more than their digital world can provide. Whether I am being hard-nosed on grade negotiations or whether I am trying to empower and have empathy, they have had to negotiate what it means to be a person. There is no invisible valley as is experienced in the digital economies. The city dweller is fearful of the countryside; the country folk unsure of the safety of city neighborhoods. Each fear the invisible cockroaches, snakes, and other spineless creatures. (Some should be feared.) The fear of the unknown holds us back; the joy of the experience is what we miss out on when we only know one world. The technosolutionists want it to be their world. They are the new bureaucracy – in essence the very same entity that DOGE not-really-the-chief-but-is, Elon Musk, wants to dismantle. New wine in old wine skins. These technosolutionists want to control the choices and options available. I want it to be a personal choice.

I want to be able to listen to my own music on my device, not some prescribed list by some algorithm. I don’t want to see annoying commercials when I have already agreed to the screed of conditions and paid for a product or service – especially when the organization has billions, the tech-bro has billions, there is billions in reserve, all the while it is laying off people to cut costs. What is wrong with cutting their own pockets and limiting the greed of shareholders? Because I looked at a certain site some bot has decided that I therefore must be in need of more of the same. Well, maybe I am not, which is more than not most likely given that the digital world menu is rife with complete junk and nonsense. If I need to telephone a company, I want to converse with a person, not a bunch of numbers and FAQs that do not address the issue at hand. I want to be able to find a contact number like one I could do with a telephone book, not scroll endlessly in search of a contact or cancellation button, only to find I end up right back where I started with FAQ. I want to make love to a person and not some android silicone doll – especially not in some meta sphere. I want to be empowered and empower others, have agency and enable agency; I am not seeking for the illusion that it is provided.

I am a Neo-Luddite. But will we learn from history? Or is it just that I am aging?

I guess that nearly anyone reading this blog (the very few of you, if any) would never have heard of Cliodynamics. I first encountered the idea prior to the Covid19 pandemic. A colleague and friend sent me article discussing the idea. My first reaction was one of skepticism. Unless we adopt the Economics approach to much of research and understanding – Ceteris paribus – we cannot accept that all things will remain the same, especially with societies and cultures. Deferring to the common non-scientific application, life tends toward entropy, leading societies to adopt measures to limit the general tendency. How, therefore, could human cultures and civilization be limited to mathematical equations and formula?

What is Cliodynamics, you ask? A good start is an article in The Conversation (18 Feb. 2024) titled ‘Histories crisis detectives: how we’re using maths and data to reveal why societies collapse – and cause about the future’.

Cliodynamics seeks to use “statistical methods, computational simulations and other tools adapted from evolutionary theory, physics and complexity science to understand why things happened the way that they did.”

The goal is to try and understand what caused societies into collapse or crisis and what could therefore be done to avoid similar patterns occurring again. For example, we can in the current global context – a polycrisis context (societal instability, environmental and climate change, loss of biodiversity, breakdown of post-WW2 international laws, a return to colonial might is right behavior, financial greed and meltdowns, aging societies, rapid technological advances, A.I., to name a few) – reduce the impact of the crises or even avoid the end entropic catastrophe by recognizing the past events and the variables that facilitated them. Peter Turchin, the ‘founder’ of Cliodynamics, argues that there are variables that are constant across times that preceded social upheaval, such as the expansive gap between those that have (money, power, access to resources, etc.) and those that do not. Unfortunately, the societal upheavals have tended toward catastrophic outcomes. In our polycrises context, especially with our advanced development of weapons of war, A.I., and the enormous power of Mother Earth, any extreme event may be even more catastrophic. If there is a silver lining to be seen in the scenario, it is that the elite, wealthy and powerful also turn on each other as they seek their own self-interests. Examples are readily across all forms of media almost on a weekly basis.

Turchin argues:

“In addition to admirable research already performed by historians, we need a systematic effort addressed at translating verbal theories into mathematical models, putting together large collections of historical data, and testing model predictions on this empirical material. Contrasting predictions of rival theories with data will allow us to reject some theories in favor of others. This is one of the best measures of scientific progress, but rarely happens in history.”

That is, the traditional approaches and rigor to understanding history are necessary, but they are not sufficient, especially if we are to understand the potential pitfalls that await if history does repeat. What Cliodynamics aims to do is to treat history like science. Cliodynamics, by amassing large swathes of data, uses a systems approach of different sub-elements that interact upon each other, creates mathematical formula to test the explanatory hypotheses, and offer scenarios based on the validity of the models.

It is not difficult to understand why historians that adopt the more traditional methodologies in developing understandings of histories might find Cliodynamics a bit of STEM hype encroaching into a domain that requires meticulous analyses of documents and archeological evidence. An art, of kind. You cannot crunch human existence into equations and spit out truths. And, that was pretty much my reaction when I first read Peter Turchin’s proposal that societies and their cultures and potential futures could be hypothesized through rigorous analysis of past patterns, much the way we can understand patterns in the natural world.

End Times is Peter Turchin’s more recent book. (Google Books provides a few pages for you to read.) The discourse focuses mostly on the United States. Although there are numerous conversations with Peter Turchin on YouTube, the discussion at the Hoover Institute is short and succinct. I admit, that I also lean a little toward the theory being applicable to other societies other than the U.S., as well.

So, back to my transition from skeptic to interested and why I give Cliodynamics serious thought. First, was the arrival of the Covid19 pandemic. This was a catalyst for me to reflect a little. I noticed people were highlighting similarities to the previous 1917/18 (Spanish Flu) pandemic. I was particularly aggrieved that my own country whose passport I hold would not allow me to return. I was also shocked by the parochial nationalism and state-ism (as in state, province, prefecture, not country), and willingness of political leaders to engage autocratic practices on its own citizens, practices that such peoples would quickly criticize if it had been China or North Korea or Syria. (Lessons could have and should be learnt from the Japanese during the pandemic. Sadly, they probably won’t.) And although we avoided the Great Depression thanks to governments using taxpayer money to bail out the banks and the wealthy, we still encountered a financial crisis – and one that could easily reoccur (and likely more bandaids will be applied again with tax revenue); we witnessed a mini insurrection in the US (one that I had mentioned should be a major concern to the US long before it actually happened because it was what US law enforcement agencies had highlighted as a potential threat – and, yes, many American colleagues did not believe it could happen and made light of my comments). I also can see that the data clearly shows the extreme widening of inequality in wealth and power, over production of educated elites (aka degree creep), many of whom also hijacked the ‘morality’ debate, demonstrating that their ‘higher’ morality was as dogmatically intolerant and close-minded as those they accused, thus providing further evidence that NIMBY (not in my back yard) was alive and well even amongst the so-called educated and concerned. There was a growing hypocrisy between and within nation states of their desire for a world based on the rule of law, with an increasing belligerence and conflict between major powers and minor players in developing economies – not to forget the hijacking of terms.

Existential threat: when did a perceived belief justify an action of willful destruction? Could you imagine the world – and individuals in society – willingly being allowed to violently hurt another because they felt the way someone looked at them or spoke about them made them feel uncomfortable or threatened. Good grief! That is why we have progressed – well, most have – from the Wild West shoot first and ask questions later to an ‘educated’ society. At the other extreme, the wishy-washy pathetic refusal to acknowledge crimes against humanity when the evidence is as plain as the nose on your face. As someone who covers the Rwandan genocide in one of my courses, it embarrasses and infuriates me to listen to certain politicians obfuscate the reality with double-talk diatribe that sounds like a recording of past speeches on continual replay but with different voices. And if you speak out, protest or dare to critique the wayward king, you are deported, arrested, or labeled a terrorist or Communist. How can we not consider Cliodynamics? How different are we today than we were under the monarchs and lords that ruled over us plebs and peasants in days gone by?

How can you not stop to think that humanity is racing eyes wide open to a repetition of past events? We are stuck in Looper, Groundhog Days and will likely suffer the 12 Monkeys, Edge of Tomorrow et al fates.

When I was younger, I often said that after mistakes, unless we cross the bridge of recognizing and dealing with the cause (as everyone errs), we are destined to repeat the mistake or practice again. The sins of our fathers will be passed down for seven generations (Exodus 20:5 – although the Book mentions four or so not specifically seven). Perhaps some of the Australian indigenous peoples’ beliefs in the Seven Generation philosophy is also apt as they speak of our actions today affecting peoples that are seven generations into the future, and some groups also suggest toward seven generations past. There is no escape for the white-person: the Europeans had the idea of Cathedral Thinking; simply you build for future generations – even though you know you will not see the fruit of your labor. Hofstede proposed the idea of long-term orientation – simply fostering values, perseverance and thrift (not just financial, but relationships, etc.) toward future rewards – in contrast to short-term orientation that focuses on past and present (and claimed traditions, although I will disagree on this point). Countries in East Asia (Korea, Japan, China) tend to defer to the long-term orientation. Perhaps, as Dr. Wayne Dyer said (I heard whilst jet lagged flipping through American cable): Change the way you view the problem and the problem changes (paraphrased). We need to listen to the data offered in Cliodynamics. We need to change the way we look at life so we can change the way we deal with the challenges. If we don’t, we seem doomed to repeat history – and maybe incur even greater catastrophe.

There is no doubt you would have aged slightly if you have managed to read this far. And, so have I. Whether we are speaking of chronological age (your age in years since birth) or your chromosomal/biological age (how old your cells are) we have aged a little. For some the chronological and biological ages may be the same, for others there are differences. Biological age represents how someone is aging. Some doctors say they can guess how someone is aging by external factors, such as balding (well, that means I should have been cooked more than 25 years ago as my hair went fast but the level that remained has not changed – even hair color has been slow to change), wrinkles (might be ok there), heart rate, BP, etc (might be ok there, too). Although such markers may be useful – like BMI can be useful as a base understanding – they are far from accurate, especially since once very important maker, cognition or cognitive capacity, is rarely included in such visual observations. Of course, the most accurate way to measure one’s biological age is by rigorous tests, such as by blood tests. Notwithstanding, health machines can give us an approximate. Be warned, however, that the machine may cause you much grief as equally as happiness. As at today, one of these machines suggest that my biological age is seven years younger than my chronological age, which is not quite as young as I feel, but it at least confirms my belief that my chronological age is not a good representation of my current capabilities.

There is a (debatable) idea that humanity has added an extra three months of longevity for every year since the mid 1800s. Although this provides a general hypothesis, much depends on the risk of dying at a certain age. For example, in Japan in 1947, on average, males could be expected to live to about 50 at birth and females nearly 54. By 2022, male life expectancy at birth had risen to 81 and females to 87 years. However, if in 1947 males lived to 40 years of age, on average (Ceteris paribus) the survival rate per 100,000 was 68%, and at 65 years, nearly 40%. For females it was 71% and 49% respectively. By 2022 this had changed to a survival rate per 100,000 for males at age 65 to nearly 90% and for females to 94%. However, societal understanding of ‘age’ has remained stagnant, especially the retirement and pension systems. With life expectancy at birth at about 81 years for male and 87 years for females in 2022, we can easily recognize that people are living longer.

Given that very few people would be retiring in 1947 (so close to the end of the war), let me take 1985 as a comparison date (that is, about forty years from the end of WW2). In 1985, there was an 81% chance per 100,000 people that a male would survive at aged 65. The life expectancy at birth was nearly 75. For females it was 90% survival rate and a life expectancy of just over 80 years. Back in 1985, retirement was generally at 60 years of age (chronological). That would mean a male had a reasonable chance to survive another fifteen years (although the survival rates per 100,000 reduces to 60% at 75 for males and 77% for females). In 2022, males at 65 years had a survival rate per 100,000 at nearly 90%, and a life expectancy of 81 years (94% and 87 for females). Retirement is forced upon many full time workers between the ages 60 and 65 years (some are still able to work to 70). That would mean males could statistical expect to live another sixteen years (post-65 years of age) or twenty-one years (post 60-years of age – about 68% of companies in Japan continue to enforce 60 years of age as the mandatory retirement age). For females, they could expect to live another 22 or 27 years depending on retirement age. But, the pension system and retirement age stipulations lag.

The critical question that needs to be answered are the number of years of healthy living. Of course, healthy living should start much earlier than retirement ages, and these include eating a healthy balanced diet, regular exercise, connections with others, and cognitive challenges, such as learning something new. Understanding data about healthy living as we age (especially post retirement) is paramount because it affects the national economy, health systems, and individual and societal well-being. According to Statista, across the EU, on average, Europeans can expect around twelve healthy years beyond aged 63 retirement practices (10 to 16 year range). In Japan, 85% of those post-60 years of age still want to work; but companies and government organizations are the roadblock. [As a side note, companies and organizations may also exacerbate health decline vis-a-vis cognitive engagement. Although Japan has some of the highest literacy and numeracy levels in the world, the people rarely have the opportunities to demonstrate those skills in their work environment (MHLW, 2024)]. There is dearth of data on post-retirement health, but one recent paper by Chen, Wakabayashi and Yuda (2024) outlined that retirement for males “improved oral health [aka dental hygiene] and cognitive function but also makes them more susceptible to lifestyle-related diseases“. [Presently, I need to examine their claims about cognitive function further, but if my side note comment above is the control, then it would not be hard to imagine an improvement.] Without going into the specifics, they show that about 20% of those eligible for a pension opt to take it early and “the preference for an early payment option is a confounding factor that influences their choice of retirement timing and their health and lifestyle habits.” 

Healthy aging, retirement, economics, and Japan is a blog post in itself, and one I will return to soon, as I will give a guest lecture on a similar theme in May 2025.

The one thing humanity has been very successful at achieving is increasing our longevity at birth and at nearly every critical age thereafter. Equally, the success has brought upon us a critical systems failure (or near to it). What is clear from this brief foray into the subject is that we need to rapidly change our mindsets and the systems to match the reality and the science. Until we do, we will be just digging a bigger and bigger hole for our futures. The youth should not ignore the aging scenarios, and nor should they make the older folks invisible because if they do they are literally ignoring their future self.

As I come to the end of this post I imagine that you are probably wondering what the connection is across these three rather distinct themes. A reasonable question to ask. Simply, within each topic I have explained a need to think about how information is being presented and what futures we want – or will choose. We should be critical of what the DX economy should look like, how we allow our leaders to create worlds that are setting us toward outcomes we have witnessed before, and we need to enable science and sense to guide the social and support systems we have in place.

Japan is rushing toward its Society 5.0 with technolsolutionsim zeal to capitalize on and build the DX economy. Although many Japanese citizens have learnt the lessons of conflict and the catastrophic devastation it brings, the government and Japan’s neighbors are planning further deterrence measures that could accidentally become a catalyst for a repeat of historical events. Who will defend the country? Japan has an aging (aged) society that has brought many fiscal and cultural pressures because they ignored the likely scenarios for thirty years. QR codes, digitized health and pension cards on smart phones leave many of the elderly perplexed. Robots are touted as the solution to the age care crisis even though robots do not pay taxes, and when there is a pool of willing and able non Japanese skilled health care workers that could assist. Perhaps Japan can learn little from Cliodynamics for the aging society, but there are many other variables that can be considered to understand future scenarios. Perhaps A.I. and robots and autonomous drones and vehicles will fill the void. Will the people become Neo-Luddites if their livelihood is threatened?

Humanity’s futures and those future generations rely on us; we need our leaders to move beyond their self-seeking complacency and the jargon they spin. The generations before have much they could remind us of if we don’t.