You talk about human developmental accelerations and down slopes. What if there are greater accelerations to follow? What if there is a plateau in there somewhere rather than a down slope? An animal adapts to its ecology. It doesn't need much further development after that, and certainly not rapid development. For humans, once we find an ecology to adapt to and develop in, then we will choose what development we want to pursue.
My job is to figure out how humans can adapt genetically and strategically to the new world we have been creating, since we left the tribal world for the farms and cities of civilization. If you consider progress to be from tribal to feudal to civilization, then those are sustainable plateaus of progress, within which the drama of life and survival occurs. Each plateau is an ecology, so all we have to do is get to the next stable ecology, civilization, and we will have made the progress we need to to survive and develop long term.
You don't seem to see progress except where we have made it in the past. In my study of genetics, I point out that what we have called human progress is the removal of natural selection. No species can survive that, especially because of the de novo mutations that happen every generation, so I wrote Genetics for a New Human Ecology to describe how we can economically and ethically husband our genes. (I'm about to re-write that, but it's at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544900996) There is no greater wealth than our genes , which can be passed on to out children with no further resource requirement and it is a resource that cannot be diminished. We can husband and grow our genetic wealth.
My current work is Strategy for a New Human Ecology. It describes civilization as an ecology (a life support system) and how we can maintain it. There are many potentials for development there, but first we have to fulfill some requirements. One is important and blatant, humans have to develop the will, nature and strategy to survive. Luckily, we have what we need. We just have to understand and use it. WWI demonstrated the power and wealth that comes from science. That was good until STEM crowded out everything else from civics to home economics to P.E. I just spent 18 months writing about another critical lost knowledge that we need in order to survive. That is basic philosophy. Everyone says we need to teach critical thinking, but they don't. Why? Because it is part of philosophy, something that science is hostile to. There is more in philosophy that we need to survive. Science provides knowledge, but does not teach so much critically important understanding and wisdom. We need that to survive. It is even a major reason for the current issue of population decline.
It's about survival. If we solve the problems of how to genetically and strategically adapt to the next ecology where we can survive long term, we will have time to decide what development we want or need moving forward. The potentials in the ecology of civilization are awesome.
