Reducing the Complexity Gap: Expanding the Period of Human Nurturance

Abstract

Socio-techno-cultural reality, in the current historical era, evolves at a faster rate than do human brain or human institutions. This reality creates a “complexity gap” that reduces human and institutional capacities to adapt to the challenges of late modernity. New insights from the neurosciences may help to reduce the complexity gap. This paper argues that an extension of the period of human nurturance is one element that may serve to reduce the complexity gap. The argument herein is a synthesis of a variety of literatures that serve to support the notion of rethinking how long humans must be nurtured and educated.