No civilisation is too great to fall.
In an age where the death of a celebrity causes shock around the world, the death of an entire civilisation is a concept many people would not consider. To them, societal collapse is the stuff of ancient history, and can be explained away by some catalyst or other – an invading nation, or a natural disaster.
This is far from being the truth. Not only does the decline of civilisations occur over an extended period of time, the ultimate fall is triggered not from without, but from within, by myriad issues not properly addressed by a governing class that deems itself infallible.
Sounds familiar, right? As selfish governments draft policy relevant to the state of the world next week instead of the next decade, and the rift that is economic inequality broadens with a new report finding just eight of the world’s richest people have as much wealth as half the global population combined, we’re finally starting to accept what experts have been warning for decades: if we don’t act now, western civilisation is destined to ruin.
Last week, the BBC’s Rachel Nuwer wrote an article highlighting two factors that are primary contributors to the decline of society: ecological strain, and economical stratification.
Entitled How Western Civilisation Could Collapse, it is occasionally broad (Nuwer attempts to summarise in one paragraph what it took Edward Gibbons to say in six volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), but makes some pivotal arguments regarding these two concerns.
Chief amongst them is that we are not prepared to deal with the complexity of problems we shall face in the future, especially as we face increased nonlinearities, or sudden and unexpected changes in the global landscape.
To address such concerns when they arise is an unsound strategy. In such cases, finding a solution is far more economically and socially strenuous than researching and developing one before it is actually needed. And yet that is our strategy for how we are currently dealing with everything from Brexit, to climate change, and the future of work.
Concerningly, there are experts who believe that even as we realise these faults, civilisation is not at a stage politically or psychologically where it is capable of making the changes necessary.
“The world will not rise to the occasion of solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep acting as usual,” Jorgen Randers, professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and author of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years told Nuwer.
As we ‘act as usual’, and money remains with the entitled few, two distinct classes will form. The elite will remain as such, while the well-being of the majority will decline. In relatively stable nations like the UK and US, it will be equity that collapses first, warns Thomas Homer-Dixon, chair of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, and author of The Upside of Down.
What will strengthen in response will be other identifiers – race, religion, nationality. As people unite more broadly based on these factors, fear and xenophobia will grow. Border walls will be built. Immigration laws will be tightened. “It’s almost an immunological attempt by countries to sustain a periphery and push pressure back,” Homer-Dixon explains.
Violence will erupt in countries that do not have the means to defend themselves as well as their neighbours. Others will become more populist, more isolationist, and their power will simply fade away over time as it did with the Western Roman Empire, the Mayans, and the Mycenaeans.
But the end is not guaranteed. There are two vital components to a future in which western civilisation flourishes as it once did.
The first is leadership. Leadership that acknowledges the problems we face now and in the future, and turns to overcome them in unity and goodwill with the rest of the world. In the last 12 months we have taken a prominent step in the wrong direction, but we must not despair. Recall the words of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator: “The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”
The second component is science and technology. As with leadership, we have been moving in the wrong direction for too long now, a fact astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson confronted earlier this week:
The future is technology, as it has always been. Technology free from the grasp of lobbyists and the elite. Technology designed to help all of civilisation, and our environment, to ensure we can enjoy and care for this world for as long as we can.
It’s not too late, so long as we act now to define these changes before these changes come to define us.