Point of no return (revisited)

In the "Bodies..." posting of his Great Adventure, the Maltese Donkey said:

And no doubt with the population requirements, and export, they have to increase efficiency of agriculture like everybody else, which can lead to pollution runoff.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are creating an artificial environment around us, which is too brittle to sustain the continued growth and evolution of our own society / species.

The above quote is a perfect example of this short-sightedness, which will result in the self-stablising evolutionary principle leading to humanity's extinction.

The Point of No Return is upon us, yet as a species we are doing too little too late to avert this.

Where ever you look today you see adverts for Personal Growth courses, Lifestyle Changing seminars, the latest set of DVDs from Life Coach gurus such as Tony Robbins etc.
It would seem that despite our success as a species, our lives have become hollow and meaningless, and we are searching for something with which to connect, to feel whole again.

Again this is evidenced by the growing number of fringe religious movements, and the rise of "pop" spirituality that is so fashionable these days.

While some of these have a valid place (and some are dangerous or misleading "instant fixes"), the problem is more fundamental than that: it is not a "personal" loss of the individuals that comprise the species that is at the heart of this, but a species-wide loss of connection / understanding of our unity with our environment, our origins, and our purpose.

In essence, the species as a whole needs a Lifestyle Change, to allow us to reconnect with Nature and our Role on this planet.

Humanity as a species, has a singular position on this planet, in that we are the only species to combine industry, intelligence and creativity to such a degree that we can either destroy most life on this planet, or save it.

We are unique amongst the millions of species with which we co-habit, in that we are reaching out to the stars, and exploring beyond the confines of our Earthly abode.

Make no mistake, there will be a mass-extinction event soon, in cosmological timescales, either of our own making, or otherwise. The evidence suggests these are regular phenomena, and part of the natural process of evolution, and that we may be on the cusp of one now.

However, currently, Humanity is this planet's last best hope to minimise the effect of these, or to avert them.

But only if we step up to the challenge, by putting aside out petty tribal, xenophobic differences, and act in harmony, in our and the planet's best long-term interests.

It may seem a bizarre segue, but the 90's SciFi series Babylon 5 (probably my all-time favourite SciFi series) dealt with this. Though it only became apparent in the last two series, you can see the seeds of it right from the start. It's a masterpiece rivalled only by The Matrix, in terms of having layers upon layers of hidden meanings and interpretations.

The bottom line is: If we don't step up to the challenge, we are already extinct, and are merely fertilizer for the next species to achieve a similarly unique position during the next round of evolution.

And with us goes the vast richness of our culture and heritage: Mozart, Bach, Van Gogh, Turner, Da Vinci, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dickens etc etc all gone. Forever.
And obviously other species will be wiped out too.

Surely we owe it not only to them, but also to our own ancestors, and for the sake of that which is good and that which we value of our Human culture and heritage to rise up and grasp the Destiny that is offered to us, and protect this fragile Earth for as long as we can?

Where are they now?

There are approximately 6 billion people alive today on the planet.

That is more than have lived and died in total since humanity first evolved.

While that is a worrying thought for the ecological burden we are putting on our planet, to me it inspires a somewhat different line of thought:

Consider all the people throughout history who have made such a mark on the world that we remember their names today (for good or bad): Moses, Alexander the Great, Plato, The Buddha, Julius Ceasar, Nero, Confucius, Genghis Khan, Gallileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Van Gogh, Mozart, Einstein, Ghandi, Hitler, Martin Luther King etc etc.

Unless one believes strongly in pre-destiny or fate, then the occurance of historically noteworthy people is essentially a random event, with a certain statistical probability of happening within a large enough population size.

So based on that, and on the fact that the living population today is greater than the sum of all people who have ever lived, statistically speaking, there should be as many figures of historical significance living today as there have been throughout the whole of history.

So... Where are they now?

Are you sitting next to a Mozart? an Einstein? a Stalin?
Did you drive passed a Rembrandt? a Kepler? a Nero?

And how would you know?

Point of no return?

I've always been fascinated by the evolution of societies and cultures.

In particular I find it intriguing that no complex society seems to survive for more than a few thousand years at most, before it decays or is overthrown and replaced by a younger society / culture, with a huge loss of the body of knowledge and cultural beliefs and drivers of the original society.

You see this pattern repeated from pre-history through to today: Mayans, Incas, Ancient Greeks, Roman, Ancient Egyptians, Native American Indians, various Chinese Dynasties, etc etc.

The parallel between that and evolution of species, emergence of a dominant species or class of species, followed by mass extinction events is also interesting... it's like evolution follows a pattern, whether it is genetic evolution, or social / cultural evolution.

My personal belief is that classical Darwinian evolution is just a facet of an overall evolutionary pattern that manifests at a number of different levels, not just genetic, but also at a more macro level (e.g. evolution of cosmic structures such as galaxies, solar systems, stars etc), and also at a more micro level (e.g. evolution of colonies of animals, societies, cultures), and even at a more individual level (e.g. the learning process and "evolution" of an individual's experience and psyche).
There seem to be common patterns that all of these follow. But I am letting myself get distracted, that is a subject for a future posting.

In terms of social and cultural evolution, I have long wondered if there is a crucial point where a society becomes so dependant on the artefacts of its success that it is no longer able to survive without those artefacts.
i.e. A point of no return, where it has created a “virtual” environment around itself, which so cocoons it from the real environment that it can no longer survive in the real environment; and further, that this virtual environment is itself so brittle that:

a) it cannot support continued growth, expansion and evolution of the society that developed it, and

b) it cannot tolerate significant changes to the real environment without the virtual environment breaking down, resulting in the collapse of the society that depends on it.

Let me explain... or rather let me explain (b), as I think (a) is too complex and worthy of a future posting.

Take Stone Age Man. If you were to remove all stone tools, shelters and other artefacts of Stone Age Man's success away from him, would Stone Age Man die out? Almost certainly not... he would simply craft some more from the raw materials around him, and be back in business before you knew it.

Iron Age Man? Bronze Age Man? Same thing, just it would take them a bit longer to recover.

In fact I suspect that until the middle of the Industrial Age or maybe a little bit later, if you removed all (man-made) artefacts of our existence from the planet, humans could have recovered and returned to the previous level of existence within a few years, maybe one generation at most.

If you look at modern (Western) society though, could the same claim be made?
Definitely not. Chances are that the ensuing chaos would be so great, that we would not survive even one generation- but there could be many factors that cause that.

What if you took a representative cross-section of society, provided them with a library / knowledge base that represented and detailed all of man's discoveries, inventions and understanding of the world, and used them to colonise a new planet?
And let's make it easy, let's say this planet was hospitable and had an abundance of natural resources.

Would they survive? Almost certainly.

Would they rebuild a society of equal sophistication and complexity to the parent society from which they were transplanted?
I would argue not. Or at least not within one generation. And if they don't do so within one generation, then I believe the motivation to rebuild the parent society would be lost, and the new society would eventually develop independently from the parent society.
Eventually, I believe, even the body of knowledge from the parent society would be lost, or become part of some mythical / legendary cultural background of the new society.

Some years back I wrote a short story on this called Re-Genesis. Don't look for it, I never tried to get it published, and it resides somewhere in the pile of other short stories I've written for my own amusement. In any event, it was set in the far future, and was more of a classic Sci-Fi short story than an exploration of the socio-philosophical phenomenon itself, and the last time I came across it, I decided it was way too superficial, and more akin to a collection of hooks for plot-arcs to be expanded in some larger epic story, if I ever get the time.

The odd thing is, we see exactly this kind of situation occurring in human societies today: the Renaissance was perceived as a rediscovery of the wisdom and culture of the ancient pre-Christian and early-Christian societies. There are also those that believe in the existence of advanced civilisations that pre-date early Egyptian culture. It can even be seen in the theories of benign extra-terrestrial visitations since pre-historic times.

Why is this of concern to me?

Well, for one thing, I enjoy this kind of philosophising!

More importantly, we are clearly seeing signs of environmental change, and I wonder whether the virtual environment we have built around ourselves is going to withstand that, or whether it is so brittle that it will collapse and take the human species with it. And more importantly whether there are measures we can take to maximise the chances of our survival.

And finally assuming humanity survives the short- and mid- term threats to its existence, longer term we WILL need to start colonising the rest of the solar system, and beyond. Exploring the dynamics and issues associated with such colonisation efforts will be necessary to its success.