This essay arises from my Macro-16 Theory, which explores the emergence of a new human subtype I call Homo divergens. The theory proposes that humanity is quietly dividing along sixteen cognitive, social, and moral-spiritual lines—markers of a broader evolutionary shift within our species. What we often interpret as political conflict, cultural fragmentation, or moral confusion may instead reflect this deeper transformation: the gradual branching of two ways of being human, one rooted in the familiar world of Homo sapiens, the other reaching toward new forms of thought, empathy, and complexity.
After many years of practicing psychotherapy, I am becoming increasingly interested in the theory that humanity is not evolving only through biology. I think humans are evolving, perhaps primarily, through cognition and new modes of attention, empathy, and abstraction. The human nervous system is not changing its anatomy, but it appears that it may be changing the way it processes reality. I would date the change as having occurred across the last two centuries, and as accelerating in the last two decades. What if our species has begun to differentiate into distinct cognitive types, shaped not by climate or diet but by information? Are we witnessing the dawn of Homo divergens? Beyond Homo sapiens, which is our current “configuration,” a human being may be emerging who is increasingly optimized for systems, data, and abstraction, perhaps at the cost of emotional immediacy and social intuition.
This cold be the fascinating plot of a great science fiction story. But that’s not the gist of my thoughts. It is an observation drawn from neuroscience, psychology, and cultural history. The rise of what is now called “neurodiversity” is often described as the mere discovery of hidden conditions. Could it be the first glimpse of an evolutionary divergence inside our own species? We are watching cognition evolve under the pressure of digital complexity.