Heading into darkness
After several decades without major wars, two have begun in the last 2 years. The climate crisis seems no nearer to being managed than ever. The threat of mass immigration is increasingly fostering right-wing governments, uninterested in solving problems beyond their own re-elections. Is democracy capable of standing up to fear-stoking tyrants? The West has struggled for sustained economic growth for 15 years, and now China's forecasts are getting less and less positive. The disruptive power of internet communications has evolved beyond the ability of 'good' actors to control it. The shadow of AI is looming large too.
I thought a year or two back that our generation may well be remembered as the lucky ones - the ones to live during 'peak earth'. Now it seems to me clearer than ever. When I look to the future it's in terms of 'battening down the hatches' - self-preservation. (Unless of course some ego-maniac leader pushes the red button and saves us all from a slow death.) The dystopian visions of films like Robocop and Blade Runner seem less and less fantastic.
Any more positive views of the world's future?
I thought a year or two back that our generation may well be remembered as the lucky ones - the ones to live during 'peak earth'. Now it seems to me clearer than ever. When I look to the future it's in terms of 'battening down the hatches' - self-preservation. (Unless of course some ego-maniac leader pushes the red button and saves us all from a slow death.) The dystopian visions of films like Robocop and Blade Runner seem less and less fantastic.
Any more positive views of the world's future?
Comments (58)
After a longish post-collapse dark age, tribal communities will probably establish a new civilization, or many, in different regions, They may be different from this one, if people can remember what mistakes not to repeat.
With large-scale conflict on the horizon, it's becoming painfully obvious how utterly incompetent the western elites have become. After the first round of failures is over, they will likely all be ousted. We'll have to see what comes in their place, and whether it's any better.
When everything goes to hell in a handbasket, the hope is that voters will once again wake up and become engaged, and cause democracy to function better. Politicians will once again have to deal with reality, rather than fantasy.
That is possible. The cyclical nature of politics has become quite clear - swing from left to right and back again as each new hope fails. The problem is the Putin effect. Sooner or later a president decides he doesn't want the problem of elections and scraps them. Then the tradition of democracy can swiftly be forgotten. (Not that Russia's was ever deeply rooted.) But once democracy is seen not to solve problems, the Trumps of the world have an easier job in conning the gullible that it's less effective than vacuous belief in a messiah.
Another negative effect I forgot to mention is that of aging populations. In advanced societies the percentage of productive workers compared to unproductive pensioners is shrinking. And so is the birth-rate, further tipping the balance from young to old.
If there is some global measure of the average standard of living, I wonder if it is flattening off, soon to start declining - for the first time in history(?).
1998 to 2003 - Second Congo War, 3 million dead.
2011 to present - Syrian Civil War, over 300,000 dead civilians
2003 to 2008 - Darfur Conflict - 300,000 dead
2001 to the US withdrawal in 2010 - Iraq War - over 85,000 civilians dead
2001 to 2016 - Afghanistan War - 30,000 Afgans troops, 31,000 Afgan citizens, 30,000 Pakastani forces dead.
2010 to 2016 - Boko Haram in Nigeria, 11,000 citizens dead and 2 million displaced.
2014 to 2021 - Yemeni Civil War - 375,000 estimated dead, 3 million displaced
2022 - present - Russian Ukraine War, 40,000 Ukranian citizens, 100,000 troups, 200,000 Russians killed, and 1.6 Ukrainians forcibly transferred into Russia.
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict wouldn't make this list as a major war.
But anyway, I do think the statistics show there are fewer deaths from war now than historically, but I don't think they support your thesis that there was a war holiday the past couple of decades.
Ok.
So, after thousands of years where there indeed has been improvement, you think we are so special that right now is that time, that this NOW is the peak. Not actually in perhaps the 2080's or the 2130's? I mean we are talking about thousands of years.
Is it really so bad? We just had a global pandemic, that the epidemiologists had feared for a long to hit our globalized World.
It killed 6,9 million people (or more) and now is in the same category as influenzas.
It was the most serious epidemic after AIDS, which has killed about 42 million, but in a far more longer time. But was no way close to the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed multiple times more people when there were far fewer people around. And nothing compared to the Black Death.
So, I think that just shows our society is far more capable handling disasters than people before. Sorry, but I'm still optimistic here.
Just like these statistics... it's going to be more harder to get that nuclear winter now:
Thanks for doing this - saved me the trouble.
Quoting Tim3003
These are challenging times. But times have always been challenging. I remember vividly when a not very bright, former actor was US President and hemorrhaging bellicose cowboy Cold War rhetoric. Many of us thought we were going to be blown up in WW3 back then.
Given (3) accelerating global climate change, (2) persistent proliferation of WMDs and (1) the ascendancy of anti-democratic, reactionary populisms in high-income nations, the near-imminent prospect of 'strong AGI' (capable of automating the strategic infrastructures of global civilization in order to transform the current, unsustainable scarcity economy into a sustainable, post-scarcity circular economy) cannot be realized soon enough.
Quite the opposite. Global inequality has been going down the last decade or so, and at a decent clip. Standard of living and life expectancy might be declining in parts of the developed world, but incomes in the poorest parts of the world have grown significantly. Global access to the internet and literacy has also been booming, and it's hard to discount the benefits that can come from people having access to all that information (although you get risks too).
So it isn't all bad news. Also, wars in general tend to kill a far smaller percentage share of the populations involved than they used to because a collapse in the food supply and disease isn't likely to follow any more.
Untrue.
Conflict in Ukraine has been going on for a long time. Same for the Israel and Palestine conflict. There has also been conflicts in Africa several times. Then there is the break up of Yugoslavia.
Quoting Tim3003
Plenty.
It is just that positive news does not sell anywhere as well as negative news. This has been further exaggerated by AI and people living in little safe bubbles.
You can read quotes from people like Orwell and Russel from last century that ring just as true today as then. The difference now is more people are aware than in the past. We are currently adjusting to universal media exposure so things may seem more off than they actually are.
Why not. It has to be some time. No defunct empire, no lost civilization thought their NOW had come. But it did.
Quoting Janus
Allow what, the collapse of their house of cards? They're not in control: like all psychopaths, money has its own logic. So does technology. The populace cannot unify itself: it's not in control either. Nobody is. And no ethicist is available to throw a convenient fat man in front of this runaway trolley.
I would say the financial elites, whether psychopathic or not, are as in control, given the uncertainty of the future as it is possible to be, and I believe they will do everything in their power to stop the collapse of their "house of cards". How much longer can this collapse be staved off? Who knows?
I agree with you that the populace cannot unify itself or at least that it is very unlikely. I also agree with you that no one is really in control, and that the situation is progressing like a juggernaut. You could throw a million fat men in front of it and it won't slow it down.
Of course they won't allow it. If God's in his heaven and all the stars are aligned correctly, it will just take over without their consent. Probably not.
Quoting Janus
They're building luxury bunkers in preparation for "the event". I don't think they have a whole lot of faith in their power to stave it off.
Ten years? Unless the nukes get here first.
I've heard that they are building such bunkers; I guess we should not be surprised. Your ten years seems a little pessimistic, but who knows?
Quoting Janus
Oh, that. I don't expect "financial elites" will "allow" it any more than junkies & drunks "allow" themselves to become addicts or chimps & tigers "allow" themselves to become well-fed captives in municipal zoos. We cradle-to-grave dependents on 24/7 goods, services & infrastructures already live inside the internet and there's always a mad-scramble race on to monetize 'ANI' (i.e. deep learning/neural-net systems and agents e.g. ChatGPT, OpenAI, face-recognition surveillance CCTV, Siri, etc) in any and every c/overt way possible. Mass culture has been 'amusing us to brain death' (i.e. cognitive obsolescence) for a century, which ubiquitious no "off-switch!" computerization has accelerated the last few decades ... and maybe the computational curve is going vertical 'strong AGI' running the asylum just in time to prevent us from bringing down global civilization on our own heads. Will such caretakers (zookeepers) be "benign"? I expect AGI to be no worse to us than our Haves have been to we Have-nots (or nature) for the last half-millennium.
On the contrary.
The idea of "our society" having come to the climax and we've seen the swan song and from here it's just way down is an extremely popular idea! Very popular in the 1970's. Very popular in the 1980's (nuclear war!). And so on. And remember Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Oswald Spenglers famous book about the decline of the West?
That was published 100 years ago. So I guess we have had this "Winter of a Faustian civilization", fall of the West for a century now.
How long have especially Americans had the idea that now their once so great civilization is coming to an end? How long has every scifi-movie done depicted a future that is bleek, unruly with having the society with it's infrastructure having collapsed? Or collapsing. A wonderful film "Soylent Green" (made in 1974) was to happen in 2022. So, is NY like in that picture? We know, because 2022 was last year.
(In 1974, year 2022 was thought to be like this in NY, at least for those worried about ecology.)
(FYI, the population of New York Metro area is 18,9 million people. In 1974 it was 15,9 million. Here the film writers believed the 1970's very popular population crisis trope.)
Thinking that this is the best it will get and everything is downhill from here is an extremely popular, extremely long-standing idea that has been with us actually for Centuries now, if not longer. People find comfort in it. Ah, the decadent, failing West! Or decadent, failing humanity in general. Before it was because we weren't faithful enough to our religion, now it's a eco-disaster that will wipe out us.
Optimism just looks so naive and silly. And pessimism so deep and full of wisdom. The end is nigh.
I would say that we've had a short time of relative peace in the world from beginning of the 90s until arguably the start of the pandemic. In which threats to the entire world declined and we saw the rise of films like Armageddon and other disaster movies come into popularity showing how the world collaborated against a common threat. "The end" was fictionalized and trivialized and most people started to think that we're all heading into absolute bliss.
Because of this, we have generations like millennials and younger who's grown up in a time without massive global problems that constantly haunt the sanity of people.
So now, the tides have turned with both a pandemic, wars and economic turmoil and we have two and half generations of people up to their 40s believing the world will end because a few minor (compared to earlier times) events stirred up the status quo.
I would say that what is going on right now has a major positive component in that this "peace time" has made people intellectually lazy and unable to listen to reason and events that shake things up like this demands of people to examine their ideals and ideas much closer as there's actual consequences for once and not just fictionalized disasters.
Since people have forgotten how the machine works, we needed a wrench in the machinery so people can relearn how things work and find the problems. Otherwise we will have many generations in power who are totally unfit to handle this world.
So did Rome.
Quoting ssu
It does, rather.
Quoting ssu
It's usually boo'd and jeered.
Quoting ssu
Maybe less nigh, maybe more. Sometime. Whenever it happens, there will be a rearguard of staunch deniers.
Indeed, but that doesn't mean it will never come to pass. My point is that the huge changes of the past 20 years may mean that tipping point has now been reached. Perhaps what has changed now is that man is no longer living within the possible resources of the Earth. That surely is a once-in-history change..
I'm thinking of wars with possible global ramifications - ie involving superpowers. Local struggles and civil wars of course crop up regularly. But how many since the end of the Cold War have had pan-continental effects on economic growth, international relations etc?
The past decade has shown that those elites are quite happy to rush headlong into the dire effects of climate change as long as they preserve their wealth and power. The populace don't have the power to stop their negligence. Their only power is through democratically electing politicians to 'do the right thing', but if democracy simply results in Trump or Bolsanaro surely it too is now powerless.
Yes, 'has been'. I'm talking about the next decades..
As in 1929, they seem to neglect a few salient facts. Like: The effects of climate change and its concomitant population displacements, pandemics, political instability and conflict will topple the financial apparatus and wipe out their wealth. Whereupon they lose control of their household armies* and become completely helpless inside their tin boxes. Like: even if wealth in some form retains its value, there will be no market in which to realize it. In social chaos, the elite lose any power they previously held - but not the long-cherished resentment of their prey.
Like: Quoting Janus
and when social structure is in tatters, demand shifts to bread, shoes, antibiotics, and clean water. Mountains of fancy electronics and luxury cars rust away in containers on stranded ships in the Suez Canal.
What if everyone collectively decided they did not want their money to be in the bank or in the financial and stock markets, and collectively decided to keep their energy consumption to an absolute minimum, grow their own food, only travel when absolutely necessary and so on?
I think the whole edifice would collapse if that happened. No doubt many people are seemingly inextricably entangled with the banks via mortgages, but they could just walk away from their houses. Of course, I don't believe anything like such mass coordination could actually happen. I think most people won't vote for anything that more than marginally affects their accustomed lifestyle. Most people do not seem willing even to forgo their big SUVs, air-conditioning and holiday travel whether in their countries or overseas.
That would be unprecedented, but interesting.
Quoting Janus
Voting has very little effect on the social and economic structure. It fractures due to design flaws, not user input.
Quoting Dr Emmett Brown (1990)
Quoting Vera Mont
Evidently, people can't. :/ Or at least enough people can't.
Quoting Santayana (1905)
Yes, it would...I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
Quoting Vera Mont
I agree, and I think the problem is the two-party system, with effectively little to choose between the two.
That's only the US. Other countries are having problems with the democratic system, as well. Each country's problems can be identified with some factional, ethnic or regional circumstance, or procedural flaws or economic setbacks. What's the common denominator of all struggling democracies?
IMHO, the common denominator is a structural lack of economic democracy (i.e. they are "democracies"-in-name-only).
Is that a nice way of saying corruption?
i.e. mismanagement rationalized by misinformation ...
I think it would be proper to list just what are those tipping points 2000-2020 that haven't been around earlier. And I presume that for what you have in mind there are already lengthy threads on this site. And when we look at them, each one specifically, then it gets difficult really to pinpoint it to now.
So I assume there's a) climate change, b) peak of natural resources and then political developments. (If you have other thoughts, please mention them). Collapse due to population growth has already been proven quite dubious: China's biggest problem is the shrinking workforce, not that it would have problems in feeding it's people. In the West the population size is already decreasing without immigration.
Let's take one example: peak conventional oil production (as it was then defined) peaked globally in 2006. This was quite in line with Hubbert's predictions in 1956, as he had gotten right about US oil production in the 1970's. But then again what wasn't anticipated was technological advances. Hence the real production (in green) is totally different from the foreceast.
And this is one of the crucial errors all assumptions of the evident collapse of societies due to shrinking natural resources don't take into consideration: as prices of scarce resources go higher, then alternative production methods and technologies become competitive and with competition and advances in technology, the prices of these alternatives become lower.
No rule but uncorrupted Reason knew:
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear.
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law, where none opprest:
The law of Man was written in his breast.
[/quote]
And it's been downhill ever since. Thusly, our inheritance tells us to avoid hubris and the pretence of very stable genius. Do not pass Go, do not call Ghostbusters. Just grit your teeth and dig your heels in.
But that can only be an ideal theoretical possibility because, like the air or the clouds, the populace is not actually a permanent existent entity. It's only a Platonic concept. Historically, revolutions that do happen only turned power over to some new (usually worse) elite.
Yes, and what if mankind was a different species? I don't see much to be gained by going down these alleys of conjecture.
Yes you're right, it is impossible to pick one point in time for the tipping point. (And anyway, we haven't even agreed the metric whose value we're watching). If there is one, it will probably only be visible in retrospect after a decade or more. Maybe more likely is a continuation in the slow and uneven reduction in growth we've had since 2008, and then a gradual nosing downwards into contraction. But since the trend-line will be affected by one-off wars, pandemics, climate disasters - whatever - it won't be smooth.
I agree too with what you say about the combination of many factors that affect this overall trend direction. But as there are so many, and they all trend downwards, doesn't that make this overall change seem more likely? Or are there other global indicators looking positive? Maybe investment profit from green tech? But surely that is a mitigation of problems we've already caused. It's just replacing fossil fuel burning (or livestock production or electricity consumption) as a source of growth, it's not an additional source..
Why are you looking to growth? Isn't that - production, distribution, marketing and consumption of goods and services, investment, borrowing, population, construction, increased demand for raw materials, energy, water and food - growth - what brought us to this point?
You don't need the populace to be a "permanent existent entity" you just need everyone, or at least enough people who get the picture, but yes, I don't believe it will happen; the point was just that without the possibility of globally coordinated action then it doesn't look too hopeful. The elites will screw the populace, and the politicians will let them do it.
Without the populace itself, at least some number of people which would constitute a kind of critical mass, refusing to be screwed then it will remain all smoke and mirrors, and we will continue to be screwed, until civilization itself is screwed.
As to "going down these alleys of conjecture" it doesn't seem any more pointless than this whole topic is.
CEO on why giving all employees minimum salary of $70,000 still "works" six years later: "Our turnover rate was cut in half" (CBS · Sep 16, 2021)
The Company Where Every Employee Earns the Same (WIRED · May 30, 2023)
Who really needs 3 cars and 2 houses anyway? Cut down on the excess.
For sure. Some people get it. It would really be good to believe it's enough and in time.
Economy in the West has slowed. But I think here is that our debt-based monetary system is to blame. The problem is that the debt is not used for just investment, but for consumption. More debt simply won't simulate growth. And for example Japan has already gone over the tipping point: it simply cannot have high interest rates. Hence it has (or had to) let the Yen fall, because it cannot make any rate hikes.
Too much debt hinders economic growth and creates the so-called "zombies" and zombie-economy. This is a result of there been no limitations on just how much you can print money as we've been off from the gold standard (or the remnants of it) since the 1970's. In historical terms, this is a very short term, actually. Usually paper money experiments have failed in the past. Let's see how this 50-year old experiment will last.
Quoting Tim3003
First of all: start to look at thing globally and don't concentrate on the US. That's the first thing people don't see.
Let's start from the really important indicators, that tell really something about improvements globally:
The above statistic, especially for Africa, but also for other continents cannot be anything else that extremely positive! It shows how life is actually improving in the poorest nations. This is no sign of a collapse. You simply cannot disregard the improvements that have happened in the last 20 years.
Of course, Americans can look at themselves and be pessimistic. As in the US the life expectancy is falling:
And btw, Americans use THE MOST MONEY on Health Care per Capita in the World per capita. Yes, people not in even in welfare heaven of Norway don't use as much on health care than Americans. But hey, health care companies and insurance companies are making profits!
I think you miss my point. Yes life expectancy is increasing - in the poorer countries this is a triumph of modern medicines over disease, and provides more wealth-creating workers. However, in the developed world, the survival of many into their 80s and 90s and beyond has a negative impact on growth. And in the long term the poorer countries will become rich..
When the average worker retired at 65 and was dead by 75 (often quickly and cheaply in health terms by heart attack, stroke etc), they only needed support from the pensions system for an average of 5 to 10 years. Now pensioners need that support for 20 or 30 years, and that will grow. And they are not living in serene comfortable retirement. The older people get, the more complex, long-term and costly illnesses they get. Our expertise in keeping people alive is now costing billions. This is why nations are scrambling to raise pension ages and pensions themselves are becoming much less generous.
Perhaps I'm being cold-hearted, but I'm not discussing society's triumphs in prolonging life, but whether it can pay for all that in future with proportionately fewer workers.
btw: I hail from the UK, not the US.
Things are getting better and worse, depending on how one looks at it and what one values.
Pinker, Rösling and the like will point at material conditions objectively improving, and present nice charts to illustrate their point. Others will point at climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification,... all kinds of ecological degradation.
Both can be, and are true at the same time. Conditions are getting better for humans overall, while the biosphere deteriorates. What we have been doing essentially is increasing material wealth for humans at a cost to the environment.
The question then is, what is more important? I think ultimately we can't escape the fact that we grew out of and depend on this biosphere we are degrading, and we will have to pay the price eventually. So even if we wouldn't value ecosystems inherently, but only care about say human flourishing narrowly, even then, degrading the biosphere will eventually also have its consequences for that.
If we were on the titanic five minutes before it crashed on that iceberg, pointing at all the material wealth and luxury on the ship to argue that things never have been better objectively would seem rather strange indeed... Where we are heading should be an important factor in this equation.
Of course people will disagree about that too, eventough the science is pretty clear... overall the biosphere is deteriorating rapidly on most metrics. And on the other hand there is little to no evidence that we can actually grow and innovate ourselves out of these problems, which would be the obvious proposed solution... traditionally economic growth has had a strong correlation with overall ecologiocal degradation.
:up: :100:
When looking at the world situation with an eye toward the future, it is natural to measure things, temperatures, markets, etc.
Harder to measure is the inner experience of being a human right now.
What alchemy is going on in the hearts and minds of a humanity pushed to extremes?
What hopes are sprouting despite the dark clouds and sulphuric air?
Why does love and acceptance seem even scarcer than money and gold?
Maybe a new way of thinking about a different way of living is slowly being born.
One naturally imagines signs of spring during a harsh winter blizzard.
:smile: :up: Thanks for sharing that!
I agree, it is how people feel about their lives and how much they can bear of a situation which perhaps all, including those who do not tend to reflect on much, feel to be well out of kilter, not to mention outrageous and unjust, that may bring about a radical shift, when and if things get bad enough.
It does seem to be better, more conducive to better outcomes, to preserve hope than to sink into despair. As the saying goes "prepare for the worst despite hoping and, as much as possible working, for the best".
Undoubtedly.
https://thetinylife.com/what-is-the-tiny-house-movement/
communal living
urban farming
https://ecoshack.com/how-to-live-off-the-grid/
https://www.thesimplicityhabit.com/what-simple-living-is/
small-scale renewable energy systems.
That's all going in the right direction. Unfortunately, there are still far too many of us for everyone to benefit, although that situation could be remedied in a relatively short time, with the will to do so.
Some initiatives are well under way
https://africaclimatesummit.org/
natural farming
green building in Asia
Indigenous peoples and local communities
The question is which kind of endeavour wins. It seems to me the madness of international politics and trade moves faster than the sanity of mitigation.
Whether we like it or not, there will be future impact as well.
Frederick Kempe noted "pay now or pay more later".
Paying my part.
What's the cost of longer-term prosperity, progress, anyway?
:up: Yes.
And though I was referring to spiritual growth that occurs when circumstances are difficult (like a trees roots going deeper in a drought), some people unfortunately get locked in attack/survival mode.
Its a slow panic where stocking up on weapons seems like a good idea at the time.
I get the feeling that advising them to open their heart chakra to release the blockage of energy at lower levels might be ignored.
Maybe gently humming the song Turn on Your Heart Light by Neil Diamond lol?
Yes, good examples thanks! :smile:
I think our instincts and knowledge to survive and even thrive remain, waiting for the opportunity.
We are using these instincts now of course, but the Machine aims to turn us into cogs and grist for its mills, so we are inhibited and controlled.
If people felt they were truly able to work for themselves, their families and communities, the world would bloom into life and color like a desert after a rain storm. :flower:
That's my optimistic version of "after", yes.
I just can't see any way of stopping the juggernaut short of waiting for it to crash, thereby crushing the majority of us. If that crash comes about with a long-drawn-out whimper, the chances of recovery in the foreseeable future is more likely than if it comes about with a nuclear bang. Scenarios to contemplate
:grin: :up: