Prospects of the Collapse of Civilization

[pbrower2a]

(03-04-2019, 06:58 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: The "civilizations" described in the article are in fact socio-political orders. They come and go, but Mankind endures. I see post-1945 West as, in many ways, a different socio-political system than either pre-Enlightenment Thomistic Christendom and high Industrial Age modernism. So, if the average lifespan of such an order is 336 years, the end of the current one should happen in late 23th century.

Duration of a civilization as a political entity is suspect. It may fit, as with the  Romanov dynasty in Russia (304 years), but as I suggested, nobody is going to consider Switzerland a civilization even if it has great durability. Switzerland looks like a political accident more than any design.

The strength of a civilization may be its ability to adapt to changes that come with time, including intellectual ferment. A very old city by American standards, like Boston, can be as modern as any city in America. But this said, part of the charm of Boston is its architectural archaism. A city like Dallas, basically "Bauhaus on the Prairie" seemed utterly lacking in charm when I lived there mostly in the 1980s.

So is a culture amenable to technological change, political challenges, and intellectual experimentation? The Soviet Union was a tired entity in the 1960s at the time in which the Beatles challenged the assumptions of bourgeois societies such as the UK and the United States. The UK and the United States are still around little the worse for wear, and the Soviet Union is gone with few remaining admirers. Putting the Soviet Union back together is about as likely as putting the Austro-Hungarian Empire back together in the aftermath of World War II.

If one is to bet on any political system lasting a thousand years, one of the best bets is clearly on the United States, and for reasons other than having a 171-year head start on so impressive an  entity in scale as the Republic of India. Were one to go in a time machine to New York City in 1789 one might recognize the street plan of lower Manhattan and perhaps Trinity Church (rebuilt in 1788 after a fire) -- but that would be about it. The ethnic mix would obviously be very different. Maybe the United States is not so much one fossilized entity as it is a series of new technological and intellectual orders.

Quote:The basic principles of modernism were individualism and empiricism, resulting in rule of reason established as its core tenet. But the chemical attacks during WW1, and then the Holocaust and the murder of Hiroshima made many intellectuals question the value of rule of reason. Hence the Lost, and later the Boomers adopted a different set of tenets. The Lost were more driven to hard nihilism (fascism), while boomers tended to be attracted to soft nihilism (sex, drugs and rock'n'roll). In the boomer-led Anglosphere individualism went up to eleven, best expressed in Maslow's ethos of self-actualisation adopted by many post-1945 psychologists, and nature started to be viewed more favourably than the modernists ever did. Environmentalism, excessive appreciation of pre-modern cultures (think Avatar) and sexual revolution (think Sex in the City) are the most distinctive traits of this "New Americanism", and were exported all over the world.

The gas warfare in World War I reflects the tendency of war-makers to intensify the lethality of warfare when victory is not at hand. The Holocaust has no rational defense; were people rational they would have never seen the Jews as a conspiratorial menace to gentiles as people on the intellectual fringe did in the 1920s only to achieve power in the aftermath of hurt feelings of a nation shamed in defeat and economically ravaged in hyperinflation that made savings meaningless and a horrible meltdown of the economy that took away such wealth as people created after the end of the Weimar hyperinflation. The detonation of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki reflect that the United States expected Japan to fight to the bitter end -- and I could make the case that a society that makes the Bataan Death March possible is making itself a target for the harshest judgment of its enemies.

The hard nihilism (fascism, but I could also add some references to some post-WWII Commie regimes in eastern Europe) failed in the end due to their economic and moral absurdity. The soft nihilism failed for different manifestations of economic and moral absurdity. One possible response to the soft nihilism of the Boom Awakening is to revert to the idea that nothing matters except class privilege, the profit motive for elites only, and promises of Pie in the Sky When You Die to people obliged to suffer with a smile for alleged betters like Donald Trump. But Trump seems to prove himself just an idol with clay feet.

Environmentalism? It used to be known as conservation. We need to preserve for ourselves and our progeny some connection with the natural world that at once elevates us and humbles us. The alternative is an unending expanse of urban sprawl  and industrial moonscapes.

Quote:Perhaps the last modernists were the neo-cons, other aspects of modernism are also present in the transhumanist movement which is for the time being NOT mainstream. Can modernism become fashionable again when boomers are gone? I suppose it could, "New Americanism" might turn out to be as short-lived as Bolshevism. Apollonian character of the upcoming cycle is a good prognosis for a revival of modernism, an improved form of it could come from China where Confucianism encourages more communitarian values. The Chinese already use the expression "white Leftism" for what I have called New Americanism. They are not attracted to it. But a Chinese-led renaissance will happen only if China starts democratising.

But the neo-cons had serious flaws, and freezing flaws into a system is one of the most effective ways to bring about its demise. The failed civilizations mostly rotted due to vile realities of their systems. Rot has an insidious way of hiding its presence until the very thing that it permeates dies or collapses before its time. If 'making America great again' means giving all economic power and moral authority to economic elites responsible only to themselves, then such implies the 'decline' phase of America.

Quote:I'm not afraid of an actual apocalypse caused by global warming, but I do worry about out-of-control AIs and genetic engineering in hands of dictators. 1950s-style nuclear winter might be a possibility if a non-democracy uses nuclear weapons.

I can imagine few trends more dangerous than global warming. The inundation of the world's greatest cities will be a cultural and likely a commercial calamity in  itself. Even worse will be the disappearance of much of the world's most productive farmland. Think of Bangladesh, to be sure a very poor country, but one that as it is produces much food. It's a country of peasant farmers who mostly have no other way of life readily available to them. That is one of the  most vulnerable countries. Where do the people go?

Inundation of property invalidates property rights as effectively as any Bolshevik commissar could dream of doing. Such will create legal anarchy that will rend such social order as there is. The easiest aspect of global warming to understand will be the inundation of lowlands. What is not so clear will  be how weather patterns change.

It is not clear that tropical zones will not get hotter. If they do, life will be harder for the heat alone. Warmer waters have less oxygen to support fish life. But will deserts appear where we now have marginal or even rich farming? Should the climate belts move poleward, then places that now have Mediterranean climate will get very dry. Can you imagine San Francisco getting less rain in a year than Phoenix gets now? If the winter rains that bring plant-fostering rain as far south as the mountains of northern Baja California retreat to about Eureka, then San Francisco could have some interesting ruins in what begins to resemble the Atacama Desert. The ruins of Lisbon, Madrid (not a Roman city),  Marseilles, Rome, Dubrovnik, Athens, and Istanbul could appear just above the shoreline, testaments to a modern world that no longer has its economic validity.

I saw one projection for Michigan that suggests that much of the state could enjoy a Mediterranean climate instead of its alternation between Russian winters and Dixie summers. Does that look like an improvement? Hardly. Sure, places like Muskegon and Traverse City would be pleasant due to mild winters and summers -- but note well that the rich agriculture of California depends heavily upon snowfalls in the Sierra that dams now impound in valleys in the Sierra. Michigan has no mountains for such purposes.  But that is only one projection. Another simply has the subtropical zone moving north  with the Cfa/Dfa divide in the Köppen climate classification between rainy winters and snowy winters that now divides the eastern United States roughly along Interstate 70 in Indiana and Ohio in turn to about the Indiana Toll Road and Ohio Turnpike, Interstate 94, Michigan 21 (which connects Grand Rapids and Flint), US 10, Michigan 72,  US 2, and finally Michigan 28 before the line crosses Lake Superior. A hint: Indiana and Ohio become cotton country, and alligators start devouring pet dogs and cats in Cincinnati and St. Louis. Tropical diseases also begin appearing in the American Southeast.

So -- does western Texas become simply hotter and drier or does a subtropical monsoon bring lush vegetation to places like Lubbock and Amarillo? Who knows?

AGW is a very bad gamble. We don't know the odds except to know that it is a losing proposition. I'd rather do casino gambling, which I recognize as a rip-off, then let AGW happen.

Societies under economic stress succumb to dictators. AGW is not part of this Crisis Era, but it could be the cornerstone of the Crisis of 2100. Just imagine leaders who have never talked to people who remember the  Second World War and see nothing wrong with killing millions in a nuclear exchange.

Artificial intelligence will create its own economic rules, for better or worse. Genetic engineering? There are plenty of hereditary diseases that I would love to see vanish.