Slartibartfas

They are not doomed to fail because of fundamental reasons, but because they can't manage and organize themselves responsibly.

Because of that inability to organize it in a way that it can last longer, collapses are inevitable. After the collapse the system of continuous growth can restart again.

For example I guess capitalism is such a system of continuous growth, its eventual collaps is inherent. Capitalism is incapable to handle societies that stop growing economically.

discoman

I feel that capitalism will price gouge itself out of existence, before any external force destroys it. Although the ever increasing populations of the world, and the diminishing natural resources, will eventually lead to some kind of Global conflict between the capitalist west and a Communist,Socialist east,at some point in the not to distant future.

Opinionated_2

The world is ending in 2012, anyway.


Hey, it's what I've been reading - online. Check out predictions. Think about it.. natural disasters have been increasing - one of the many past predictions. It won't matter who becomes President either, due to all the crap that is going to occur - more wars and such - and hey, we're supposed to be visited from space next year, too - FINALLY.



Just thought i'd add a little humor, folks.

Wheeldog

Actually, it may be more fundemental than a failure to organize themselves. Indeed, it may be argued that the more organized and efficient we become the more are prone to collapse. Primitive hunting and gathering cultures and basic subsistence farming societies are relatively inefficient insofar as technology and food productivity are concerned. They have minimal over their environment and are largely at the mercy of nature. Their health system is almost nonexistant. They cannot support large armed forces, build roads, manufacture airplanes, etc. Yet mankind spent over 98% of its existence as subsistence hunter gatherers and subsistence farmer/herders.

Obviously, primitive societies have come and gone throughout history, but archeological evidence suggests they usually moved or merged with other groups when faced with large-scale environmental problems or pressure from others. They also "rolled with the punches" when their environment changed. They usually lived in small, semi isolated bands rarely more than 50 individuals and followed a nomadic or semi nomadic pattern of life. Even is one band succumbed there were almost always others which would survive and fill the void.

Modern industrial civilization is an extremely recent phonomena. At no time in history has the world been so interconnected and interdependent. There has never before been a time when technology played such a large role in human affairs. We have at our fingertips power unimagined by past civilizations. On an individual basis we consume and require more energy than did hundreds of people a mere thousand years ago. This burst of modern civilized power comes with a hidden cost. We must become ever more efficent and have our economy continuously expand. This requires using more and more resources, particularly non-renewable energy.

I have no certain idea how our civilization will look fifty years from now or if it will even survive. However, it seems very likely that the energy intensive system now in place will be replaced by something far more basic and less consumptive. The future may literally belong to those we now call "primitive."

Wheeldog

Seems like the "end of civilization" topic is catching on. Based on this article we have only a very few years to reverse course before it is irreversibly too late.

sirhc

...

as much as i would love to see the world colapse it can't. like you have all said, the global community has never been more interdependet.

like wise people will adapte, in past times a defunct society would just be destroyed but we are to interlocked aka no one to do the destroying. we will most likely change, capitalisum will go (yay) and something new will rise to power. the world has simply come to far to go backwards.

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Ignorance is mans greatest flaw

catawba

I agree there is much about the human race that is worthwhile to preserve. On good days, I am optimistic we can make the changes necessary for that to happen. On most days however, I succumb to reality that there is no evidence to indicate we can change. We still resort to war for dealing with differences, and despite dwindling resources and climate change reaching the tipping point, we have less respect for our environment than our forefathers.

Of course, I welcome any evidence to the contrary!

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"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut

Wheeldog

Undoubtedly, people in every past civilization felt the same way. Each felt that they were more advanced than any before and therefore indistructable. The fact that we happen to be the most recent, technologically advanced and widespread does not exempt us from the same fate. If anything, it makes us more vulnerable, because we are so intensely dependent on what is increasingly a complex and fragile system.

You are right. It is physically impossible to go backwards. We can only go forward. The question is forward to what? The coming years will be interesting.

Ygorl

Every culture/civilization of the past has passed on and become a recorded note in history (when it was recorded).

So shall ours in time.

Yet another recorded note in history.

What might be interesting is to hear theories on why, what and how our current nation (others too of course) will end.

Will ANY survive forever ?

So far China has us beat by a long ways.

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Why do liberals oppose capitalism except when it produces or promotes perversions and/or degeneracy ?

The Lying Dutchman

lol. barbarians hitting the US shores? are you talking about cubans trying to cross to miami?

i dont think the threat for worldwide civilisation will be in the nature of military capacity. the challenge lies more in the fact that the globalized world-economie is becoming more interwoven and events elsewhere are prone to effect our 'civilised' world. think of things like the morgage crisis, oil depletion or environmental catastrophes.

i think we have been quite succesfull to reduce the probability of mass scale conventional wars that are state-based, but the challenges for this centuries are of a different nature, go cross-border and require international cooperation and sacrifice.