End of humanity?
Hello everyone!
This is my first post on this forum and I would like to debate about the hypothetical end of humanity and what would be possible scenarios that could happen. I have been debating this in my mind for a while now and would like to make some points on how Global warming is starting to be incredibly noticeable around the globe where Canada is starting to have extreme cold or Turkey slowly getting cooked even in winter or how it looks like its Autmn in the middle of winter in Sweden where it almost snowed everyday. I remember reading about a line that once crossed, you can't come back from in the matter of global warming. I think that we might be about to cross this imaginary line as humanity and there is nothing being done about it as people don't seem to care that much or cannot do that much about it even though it is affecting them. Also, I have noticed that more and more people are becoming seperated from their own self and get locked up in their mind instead of seeing what is infront of them, really slowly driving most individuals into insanity without them even realizing it. This made me think that it could result in a major breakdown of society as we know it. If more people slowly lose their sense of reality and self, while they stop thinking about what they are going through and instead, prefering to get stuck in a sensless state of mind that makes them less and less functional over time. What could be the result of this if it were to spread to the majority of the globe along with the matter of global warming kept in mind?
This is my first post on this forum and I would like to debate about the hypothetical end of humanity and what would be possible scenarios that could happen. I have been debating this in my mind for a while now and would like to make some points on how Global warming is starting to be incredibly noticeable around the globe where Canada is starting to have extreme cold or Turkey slowly getting cooked even in winter or how it looks like its Autmn in the middle of winter in Sweden where it almost snowed everyday. I remember reading about a line that once crossed, you can't come back from in the matter of global warming. I think that we might be about to cross this imaginary line as humanity and there is nothing being done about it as people don't seem to care that much or cannot do that much about it even though it is affecting them. Also, I have noticed that more and more people are becoming seperated from their own self and get locked up in their mind instead of seeing what is infront of them, really slowly driving most individuals into insanity without them even realizing it. This made me think that it could result in a major breakdown of society as we know it. If more people slowly lose their sense of reality and self, while they stop thinking about what they are going through and instead, prefering to get stuck in a sensless state of mind that makes them less and less functional over time. What could be the result of this if it were to spread to the majority of the globe along with the matter of global warming kept in mind?
Comments (64)
Human life may well come to an end one day. And one day, perhaps a person will write something like you have above and finally be right.
I have no idea what the future holds and spend little time thinking about it.
Quoting Ege
Could be. It doesn't much concern me. All we can control is what we do with our own minds and hands. My only principle has been to do what I think is right and read from a wider range of sources.
I'm not entirely sure what you are arguing - are you saying that people are not taking life and their responsibility as citizens seriously enough and, perhaps, not concerned enough with eudaimonia (flourishing) as Aristotle might have it?
I have posted something like this before, elsewhere in the forum.
I am now in my 60's and have lived through many existential threats to humanity.
- All through my childhood the doomsday clock was sitting at 5 minutes to 12 (fears about nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R)
- predictions of worldwide famine in the 1970s and 80s
- Malthusian panic and the population bomb
- the 1973 oil crisis caused by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries
- acid rain
- ozone depletion
- an impending ice age
- Halley's comet
- the Large Hadron Collider
- the Y2K bug
- various pandemics
- Covid
- The Mayan Calendar prediction of 2012
- Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 1990s
- Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 2000
- Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 2010
- Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 2020
- Pending depletion and shortages of Gold, Tin, Oil, Natural Gas, Copper, Aluminum, etc
- Oceans will be dead in a decade (prediction made in 1970)
- etc
My biggest fear now is that humanity and the earth will be decimated by the attempts to "solve" global-warming/climate-change. This is a scenario that you might want to consider.
Rather than crushing each other for a small pay raise or letting our greed get over us by not sharing something we don't need to the people that actually need it and instead deciding to sell it. Sometimes for considerably funny amounts of money.
As a society we should take less responsibility on the part of working extra hard to get a small raise and instead dedicate that time to helping the ones in need,helping each other essentially creating a better world for us and more to come.
Quoting Agree-to-Disagree That is also one of my main concerns.
As more and more media shows signs to a world ending scenario, we fail to realize the "right" way of doing things, ending this type of problems comes through with us as humans coming together, living and working under one society while sharing knowledge,wisdom and emotions that no longer need to be hidden inside.
But nevertheless still interesting how they accurately predicted many solar eclipses at that time.
We've crossed it The permafrost is no longer permanent and the polar ice sheets are calving like demented rabbits. Meanwhile, PM Trudeau is rabidly attacked for a little barely-effectual carbon tax. What's been done by private enterprise is more hype than change.
Quoting Ege
The rich and powerful are having an attack of closing panic - gobble up more of what's still left of power and wealth than the next guy before it all collapses. The middle class is deep inside its own cloaca in denial - if you squeeze your eyes shut and keep saying la-la-la-la loudly enough, the status quo will hold. The plebians take up flags and pitchforks and angry slogans, rushing after one scapegoat or another - if you just kill the witch, the curse will be broken. The very poor migrate hither and yon, displaced, rejected, dammed up behind walls - until there are so many that no wall can contain them.
Quoting Ege
Couple of other factors: the debt-driven capitalist economy is global now and inescapable; resources are running out; interdependent species are extirpated at an accelerating pace; arable lands are increasingly susceptible to drought, flood, tornado, erosion and chemical degradation. The ever-fewer, ever-richer megarich are burying their treasure in luxury vaults and bunkers against the end times, steadily siphoning money out of circulation. Conservative governments cut taxes for business, driving profits up and government revenue down. Meanwhile, the permafrost and environmental degradation are releasing more unknown, unprepared-for pathogens and global connections spread disease faster than ever before, overwhelming already stressed-to-the-limit health care systems. Demagogues with something to prove and little time to do it in rattle bigger and deadlier sabers, hurl bigger and deadlier challenges at one another.
Quoting Ege
It has, and we are about to see.
Our best hope is that the economy will break down first and sweep away the current makers of public policy and public opinion. Possibly, this would also ruin the war industries, depriving those demagogues of their WMD's. It would certainly bring down many bad governments. That leaves only the mobs to do damage - which still means a good deal of burning and bloodshed, but not megadeath.
If the political and monetary system keep deteriorating and survive long enough to start WWIII, relatively small numbers of people will be left alive, in widely separated pockets.
This means that if the grandfather of all pandemics comes before the economic collapse, it will hasten that collapse but leave more people alive. If it comes after the war to end all, it won't be able to spread to all populations and leave more of the people alive.
In either case, the planet will be difficult to live on, and the survivors will have to be very resourceful, indeed - just like our distant ancestors had to be. Odds are, there will be a human race to start over.
Quoting Tom Storm
All those same situations still exist; none have been addressed effectively; most have escalated and magnified and concentrated since the 80's. At that time, the worst catastrophe could possibly still have been averted, had nations taken the decisive actions advised by the people who knew what they were talking about, but didn't wield power - although it was already pretty late. Prolonging the complacent okayhood of a prosperous minority for a few extra decades is not quite the same as "it didn't happen then, so it can't happen now" which is what I've been hearing more and more frequently since the 1960's.
I'm sure the same wisdom was repeated in every great defunct empire.
Everything ends. Not if, but when.
Quoting Agree-to-Disagree
It's kept on ticking.
.
:meh:
And a very cool one.
2012 Doomsday Date May Be Wrong
Recent research shows that the Mayan calendar's doomsday date ("end of days") may be off by 50 to 100 years.
You are correct. The world will actually end on December 21, 2062 at 11:11 UTC.
While this is true there still is time left on the matter and unless we work together as one in this society we won't be able to stop our Inevitable end.
Quoting Vera Mont
There are still some private enterprise doing "good work" but the ones that sell the most usually tend to be the greediest ones for example; Apple, "being sustainable" by removing cables in boxes but in the end creating more plastic waste just for you to buy another box of cables to charge the phone you just bought. The greed of thoose are the ones keeping us on the ground and stopping humanity from reaching its true potential among gods.
Quoting Vera Mont
I do believe that money is just a concept now more than a physical thing, as Most of the global gold reserves don't even exist or don't equate to the money in circulation. Now currencies are being kept by a system that is unfathomable by most. Or just flat-out hidden, But people fail to realise that the problem is within the economic system created where we enable our greeds to take the better of us instead of helping each other create a better environment for ourselves where we can thrive and flourish.
Quoting Vera Mont
I sometimes think that history constantly repeats itself its just a matter of finding the loop point and evading the actions taken by corrupt,greedy people and instead choosing to go on a way of prosperity.
Of course I am not saying that this is something that can be done In a lifetime, but still the foundations can be made for future generations to continue atleast this one good heritage we will leave to them.
Quoting Vera Mont
While I think this is true, I think that Everything stays, right where you left it.
How much money do you need to have to qualify as "megarich".
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, then you are richer than 75 per cent of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, then you are among the top 8 percent of the world's wealthy.
Are you willing to give up most of your wealth and live on the average amount of wealth in the world?
You see any two nations or any two political parties in one nation working together? I don't.
Quoting Ege
It's not about gold reserves - and hasn't been for some time. What I mean is, the super-rich are putting their assets in tangible and intangible forms that can be sequestered, whether in a yacht, vault or data base. That money (shorthand for the resource+energy+labour+transport that resulted in a product that van be exchanged between people) is not going back into the economy (shorthand for goods and services, tax revenue and infrastructure, employment, production and transaction).
Quoting Ege
you're welcome to it.
While we don't have nearly half of the power that they have if the majority decides to unite and simply not get divided in the long run of things the rest will come too.
we can be the ones that get to actually get to choose our own fates as a person.
The breakdown and polarization of society is something seen mostly online. It's part of the extreme ends and not statistically representative of the majority of people. The problem is that these extreme ends are growing, eating away from the majority. But that wouldn't lead to the majority being eroded to nothing, it would simply mean that at some point it will kick everyone into action and standing up against the extreme ends.
Climate change will not end humanity, it will, at most, end some cultures. It will change the state of the world, making some places uninhabitable, which could be as large as whole countries. It will lead to mass exodus of people who simply "can't return to were they came from" and in turn probably lead to massive increases in racism and concentration camps trying to "deal with the situation". We are effectively talking about billions of people that may need relocation.
Combined we will see a massive change to society as a whole. Probably in the form of a massive war, world war about resources and a place called "home" for people leaving uninhabitable places.
The survivors of all of this will reshape how the world looks. Some nations will have effectively "dealt" with the situation of their concentration camps in the worst possible way we can imagine. And subsequent lead to new forms of Nuremberg trials making examples of those who couldn't find their moral compass. Extended from that, the people who fought against the mitigation of climate change will be put into social ostracization. They will be blamed as the cause for the wars and atrocities outside of the ones directly responsible.
Time will then go on and we will have new works of art created as a meditation of the horrors of the past. A collective healing from the wars and polarization. Conservative views who align with past horrors will be shunned.
A new era with laws focusing on ecological balance of technology will be formed and hopefully a new improved democracy that mitigates the risk of putting incompetence in power.
As I see it, all of what's going on will eventually end in some form of large conflict and large form of the worst acts of man. It will get worse before it gets better. The only thing for it not to get worse before it gets better is to radically remove all incompetence in leadership, either by democratic means or by force and for the middle apathetic majority of people to drastically stand up against the extreme ends of polarization - But that will not happen, because it's in human nature to be lazy until shit hits the fan.
And still in no position to reverse the trends or stop the wars or turn off the gas. Meanwhile other 75...76....77...78....79% are coming for your clothes and food. Even in the top 8%, your vote doesn't count.
Quoting Agree-to-Disagree
at least $10 billion in assets
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/list/top-100-richest-people-in-the-world/
Quoting Agree-to-Disagree
It wouldn't help anybody much. It wouldn't change the system that impoverishes and disenfranchises and marginalizes the majority. It wouldn't reduce carbon and methane emissions. It wouldn't provide food and medicine to third world countries. It wouldn't reinstate trustworthy journalism to news media. It wouldn't put the glaciers back.
I agree. Even though there are small examples of this in the real world it is a minor part of whats going on in the internet, yet we still feel the effects of it in some weird way almost as if the internet is slowly becoming part of our real world and inhabiting us within itself.
Quoting Christoffer
The end effects of it might be on a huge scale but on the other hand if we can manage to pull through without crossing the border of global warming I think that its effects can be atleast reduced or slowed down but, If we cannot pull through and end up making a bad decision after another, we may be looking at the end.
The fact that not enough investments have been made for space to leave this place we call "home" and instead all major investments were made in destroying it with building better and better guns to kill each other and the earth.
This place was once beautiful yes, but now If you look at earth from space you can see the amount of destruction man has caused. And unless we pull our things together and find a way to save ourselves or atleast give it a try, I don't think even the richest person alive is getting out of this
that is why I think unionization should happen. Even though one person does not have a voice on their own. When several join together they can be heard more and more as people get together and understand each others problems. We are fighting fire with fire and instead we should put out this fire of hatred in all of us by showing love,kindness and understanding and soon others will follow.
The more a person feels hatred grow within them the more they lose control of themselves and their actions.
Youll find a few climate deniers on here you exist merely to voice their uninformed skepticism about this topic. Ignore them.
Nuclear weapons and climate change are existential problems. The publishers of the Doomsday Clock have an informative website about exactly your concerns: https://thebulletin.org/
Yeh. 'S why workers did it in the 1920's, broken heads 'an' all.
In Europe, they still have trade unions with some clout. In the US, Reagan started union-busting on the large scale
Now, of course, it's widely legislated https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/right-to-work-states/
and conservative candidates are going after the teachers, postal workers and nurses, while private enterprise is trying to dismantle building trades and food service. Quoting Ege
Like they always have. That commie rabble-rouser, Jesus of Nazareth learned his lesson....
Nobody besides flat-earthers deny that the climate is changing. It has been changing since the Earth came to be.
Thanks for proving my point.
@Ege Youll see that this tired, stupid line is the current go-to among the climate denial crowd.
Quoting Lionino
Ok, Ill bite. How much do you think has been caused by us?
There is a philosophical difference between a> Climate Change Denial, and b> Climate Disaster Panic, and c> Stoic acceptance that Sh*t Happens that we don't like. All through history, especially in the Bible, doom-saying prophets have seen portents pointing toward catastrophe, and predicted the immanent end of the world. Their projections of future events are typically limited to the current generation, in order to make the necessity for a course change more scary --- as in the recent slew of Dystopian movies, graphically illustrating what will happen if we (humanity) don't change our evil ways.
Typically. the "End Times" are portrayed as just around the corner. But history is a record of such failed Apocalyptic prophecies*1. So, I wouldn't listen to the self-appointed prophets-of-doom (short-term tacticians), and instead pay attention to the long-term strategists*2, who point to anthropogenic trends that are subject to remediation via Culture Shift : population control, solar power, etc. Cultural change is rapid, compared to climate change, but it has inertia comparable to addictions. Like Democracy, culture change is erratic & messy, but waiting for God to purify the evil world with fire is self-defeating. Humanity may not fix the problem with top-down action, but forward-thinking humans can make incremental changes in the downward trend.
So, why don't short-term downward trends go all the way down to the bottom? That's because nature & culture are affected by countervailing forces. Until recently, human activities had little impact on global climate swings. But as the long-term chart below illustrates, Culture is now a major player in the climate game : Anthropogenic change, both positive & negative. So, if humanity is fouling its own nest, a bit of countervailing house-cleaning is in order. But burning-down the house, and moving to Mars, may not be a viable solution. Instead, let's just do what humans have always done : adapt to unfavorable conditions (e.g. Ice Ages), by changing those conditions over which we have control*3 (learn to make domesticated fire). Meanwhile, be cool. :cool:
*1. List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events :
Predictions of apocalyptic events that would result in the extinction of humanity, a collapse of civilization, or the destruction of the planet have been made since at least the beginning of the Common Era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
*2. A worst-case scenario is the most severe possible outcome that can be projected to occur in a given situation. Conceiving of worst-case scenarios is a common form of strategic planning to prepare for and minimize contingencies that could result in accidents, quality problems, or other issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worst-Case_Scenario_series
*3. Stoic Serenity Prayer : "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." The Stoics grasped the paradox of acceptance, that accepting pain rather than struggling against it often makes it more bearable.
LONG TERM CLIMATE CHANGE
What on earth makes you think they'll follow??
Seriously. Can you explain why you think that "showing love, kindness, and understanding" can somehow overpower hatred and contempt? Where is there any evidence of "showing love, kindness, and understanding" having that kind of power?
How exactly is this line of inquiry helpful? Can you explain?
(Leaving aside how such a calculation should even be possible.)
When would humans be off the hook? If only 10% of global heating is their fault? Where do you draw the line? And why there?
Its purely selfish. Im just trying to make a connection between Lioninos reference to Hunter Binden as a child toucher and his views on climate change.
*sigh*
[i]Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what Ive tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.[/i]
Not yet.
I wonder how many weapons have been invented through human history that were used as a deterrent only and never deployed.
The protesting idiots were unsuccessful in their plea for disarmament; the nuclear arsenals kept on proliferating, spreading to less stable small regimes even while the big ones attained increasingly deranged leadership, casting off pups, such as dirty bombs, gravity bombs, artillery shells, land mines, depth charges, and torpedoes and soon, portable nukes. Now, any old terrorist organization can have them. In a mere 80 years, the threat has grown from a conflict between two superpowers to a free-for-all.
But that's okay, because whatever hasn't happened can't possibly happen, ever....
I nearly got run over by a fire engine once. It didn't happen. Therefore I am immortal.
.... until it does.
:up:
Cool. What is the foundation of your ethical system - how does one determine what the good is? When we say something 'needs to' happen is there more than self-interest at work?
Quoting Vera Mont
Not what I was arguing. I was just pointing out that existential dread for these reasons has been with us for many decades. And we don't really know when it all goes to shit. As no doubt it one day will.
I don't have enough information so I suspend belief. For something, I have the feeling that at least in metropolitan areas, the climate has been noticeably changed, especially due to pollution.
It must have had been some type of Astrological prediction they had. I don't know the details of the methods, but here is the Wiki article on it.
I still haven't figured out what the ethical system could be as It is a bit hard finding a true balance between what we say is "good" or "bad"
Throughout history the perception of beauty was through how inbred royal families looked so maybe our understanding of "good" may not be the best one there is. Yet I still feel like helping each other in a way without harm would be a step towards the right direction, whereas crushing each other in a race that no one truly understands might be one of the "bad" things that we have done/doing in our current day and age.
I feel like a society intertwined with nature might be a way to go for example:
Stockholm wood city
The stockholm wooden city is what I think of a great example. As we do not need and deserve the dull,grey,doomerist and minimalist architecture that we have at most places we need to see colour in our lives yet the places that we live in only have a small color range compared to the wast beauty and color range of our planet.
Quoting Tom Storm
We can only work on prolonging the inevitable, but still who wouldn't want to see and give the resources for the human civilization venture into the stars one day?
Sorry Mikie, but I changed a few words in your statement.
All those idiots protesting and pushing for CO2 reduction for all those decades, screaming about how global warming would be the end of humanity. Did it happen?? No! Just more doomerism/alarmism.
Yeah that was just a joke. Plenty of people actually think this way though. Of course nuclear disarmament was important and the anti-nuclear proliferation treaties were important the entire movement was and is important.
Meanwhile you have evidence of climate catastrophe all over, and your an alarmist if you think its a problem because hey, people thought the world would end in 2012. Its a stupid argument for ignorant people.
Case in point.
Im quite looking forward to climate change. Im not sure what all the doom and gloom is about, but anything that keeps us in the The Holocene is right by my book.
I predict those who are seeking to save us from some impending climate holocaust are going to kill us long before the sun does. My guess is theyll try darken the skies or poison the atmosphere if they dont tax us to death first.
Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!
Putting our present in the widest possible context...
All life will be extinguished on this planet when the sun becomes a white dwarf billions of years from now.
Even IF there were no future threats to our species, we would still evolve and cease to exist as we now do. Into what we might evolve is beyond guessing
In the billions of years since life began on earth there have been five catastrophic extinctions that human beings had nothing to do with. A sixth extinction is in progress, and there will be more in the future, whether we cause them or not.
Hamlet calls humans "the paragon of animals". Shakespeare was as aware as we are how flawed our species is, but sure: in some ways we are paragons, but we are also deeply flawed in our inability to regularly and effectively act in the present to avoid somewhat distant or uncertain harms. What might be clear vision is clouded by emotions, misinformation, missing information, aspirations, hopes, greed, fear, wishful thinking, etc. Even love clouds our vision.
Actually, we are doing fairly well with global warming. Billions of flawed people recognize it and worry about it. Every day millions of individual minute actions are directed toward reducing waste. It is our misfortune that the problem of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere has reached high enough levels that we can't undo the damage by small actions. 99.9% of the world's population are not in a position to enact very big changes, and the 1/10th of 1% that could are greedy bastards, for the most part, that can't let go of opportunities to get even richer.
Will something happen that will persuade even the oil magnates around the globe--the auto manufacturers; the developers and builders; the big food companies, the manufacturers and retailers, etc. to stop driving us ever deeper into crisis? And what would that "something" be?
In any event, this species (us) will in all likelihood survive, barring some added disaster (like nuclear war, a big rock from space...) happening. We might be significantly reduced, we might be living a primitive life style, but we'd still be around.
We do, in fact, suck at running things. We are each individually and all taken together, our own worst enemy.
Maybe if we focused more on being better people, here in our homes, truly, and learned to get along with our immediate neighbors, hope might emerge during discussions between factions and parties over issues impacting the world, and these discussions might actually start to be discussions, leading to something that could actually be done.
Doesn't anyone find it interesting that in discussions like this, we always blame someone else? We talk about capitalists, or politicians, or oil burners, or whomever. Aren't every one of these people our brothers, sisters, mothers - ourselves? When we say people should stop doing X and start doing Y - we should stop ourselves and just say "I'm not doing X, and I'm not doing Y." And be the world we want the world to be.
Fully confess, I'm to blame for the end of humanity. Sorry folks. Working on it.
Don't beat yourself up. Let us.
What about companies putting recycling bins and trash cans next to each other and connect them underneath while the unsuspecting recycler is thinking he/she is saving the world.
We are about to doom ourselves because of the greed we have as humanity.
True, we do suck at running things but maybe its not in our nature to "run things" and we should instead focus on building our structures,ideas,beliefs around the already existant nature that used to, and still tries to run things for us?
Our planet is the one that gives us the resources we need to build and thrive, instead of helping it create more resources we just take more than we need and end up damaging it more in the end.
We are overrun by emotions as a species and sometimes let our emotions get in the way of our actions if we have no self-control. But why would someone be let in charge if that person has no self-control or even worse, can get impulsive and act on it really easily?
There are many examples of this kind of people throughout our history and nearly all of them majorly caused a type of alarmism,doomerism to their own people just because they lack self-control.
The thing Quoting BC
The fact that we can't do anything or just doing minor fixes even when all of us gathered together tells alot about the current system that is in place.
There is a saying that the first leader and creator of Turkey said and it goes like this;
Which with a rough translation means:
"The real owner and master of Turkey is the people, who is the real producer. Therefore, it is the people who is entitled to and deserves more prosperity, happiness and wealth than anyone else."
Nice words, heard in nations the world over, over and over in history.
Heard.... but never seen.
The people "taxing us to death" are doing so to provide more tax cuts, exemptions and deferments for the very, very rich who produce nothing at all.
actually around the time Atatürk was alive he had made many improvements to give power to the people rather than focusing more on power to the government.
He built factories changed, entirety of how education worked so that a middle school graduate could have known alot of things even before going to high school yet it all changed over time as he died and people eventually lost the power they had on their hands.
Sure, so did lots of reformers in lots of countries since then.
But it takes years to make the improvements, and when the other kind of administration comes to power, which it always does, it takes them hardly any time at all to tear it all down again. Ultimately, the wealth and power never stays with the people.
Yeah it's just a matter of keeping the power on the people's hands rather than giving ultimate power to the governments or the ones with the wealth.
Uh-hu
Actually, it's quite simple, and people were able to do it for thousands of years. But when they opted for large, diverse populations (very useful for defence, innovation and productivity), they gave up horizontal social organization for a vertical one, and thus instituted governance, hierarchy, class stratification, specialization and the concentration of wealth and power.
Maybe, after the collapse, whoever is left will reinvent tribes.
Yet people love to hate and despise. Perhaps the strongest emotion there is is contempt, and the most pleasurable one.
We weren't around, so what you and I say about them is a guess. My guess is that they didn't EXCHANGE horizontal organization for a vertical one. Verticality was imposed upon them. We can go one step back, as some writers have, like James C. Scott in "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" and suggest that grain was the bait and exploitation of the farmers by the 'elite' was the trap.
Even so, people have maintained horizontal organization at various levels, because it is just plain necessary for the survival of th species.
Quoting Vera Mont
I can't decide whether you are profoundly pessimistic or deeply realistic.
Perhaps we can say that wealth and power doesn't begin with "the people" in the first place. (and who do we count as "the people" and who are the evil "them"?) What "the people" -- the peasants, the laborers achieve is "enough" plus a little extra. Wealth and power are the province of the accumulators, the far-sighted exploiters, the "creative class" who figure out how to wring that "little extra from "the people" and keep it for themselves.
The peasants aren't free of the stain of cupidity. They too desire to accumulate, and as reported in the Medieval magazine Successful Peasant, some became quite comfortable and moved up quite a few notches in the social order. Most peasants don't end up in the pages of Successful Peasant because making minimal ends meet takes all the time, energy, and heart they have.
Exploitation (to create capital) is probably a necessary step to material progress. Yes, material progress doesn't benefit everyone -- at least, often, not for a long time.
It was guessed by some fairly well-established anthropologists, and is borne out by what Europeans learned about the 'primitive' cultures they conquered.
Quoting BC
In North America, yes. But South American, African and Asian empires existed before the Europens and their superior weapons arrived. In order to impose its organization on other cultures, a people need to be powerful. Some civilization had to be the first to wield that power; other followed suit.
Quoting BC
I can believe that. But persuasion - even manipulation - do not amount to force. Free men can't be trapped by grain or anything else if they don't want the benefits.
Quoting BC
In small numbers of related or interdependent people. Not on the scale of thousands or millions.
Quoting BC
Observant.
Quoting BC
I haven't identified factions, or used the word 'evil' (big can o' worms, that word). I said humans reorganized into new configurations of their own accord, because they perceived an advantage or benefit in doing so. They still do. It doesn't always backfire, but humans are not collectively very far-sighted.
Quoting BC
I disagree with 'necessary', but I'm sure it speeds some forms of material progress.
Imagine it as working out for your body but for your emotions.
Doomerism and alarmism has always been trendy. But note that it's not all exaggeration or nonsense, far from it.
We were just very lucky in that we avoided nuclear war during the Cuban Crisis and in events like in the Able Archer exercise 1983 and others. When it came to few persons that simply didn't believe the surprise nuclear attack was on the way and didn't order a counterstrike which they actually had the ability to do, there indeed truly was a reason for alarmism. Yes, nukes have made us to avoid WW3... that's the paradox.
And there still is the case for alarm, for the matter. As they are still around... and you have strategies like "Escalate to De-escalate". That the real Cold War warriors like McNamara later in their life preached how dangerous nuclear weapons are and how close we got to using them wasn't just a ploy to improve their image. They were actually talking from real experience.
Yeah, my post was satirical. Nuclear weapons and climate change are very much worth being alarmed about assuming one knows anything about them.
Not only because of trolls and trolling, but also because people can just live in their bubble totally separated from reality.
Not at all.
They must be learned.