Global civilisation is finished

Global civilisation as we have come to know it over the last few decades is finished. A combination of threats, from pandemic to cultural malaise to war to environmental disaster, are combining to erode the technologies, systems and arrangements necessary to maintain a global civilisation. It might not be obvious for a decade or two, but the great global project is over.

This collapse is not necessarily the end of humanity in the same way that the end of the Roman Empire was not the end of the people who called themselves Romans, but it might be. Some humans may be able to restructure their lives to live in some places if only at a lower level of security, comfort and ease, but most will not.

Global civilisation is only between 300 and 30 years old, depending on how you look at it. Its origins lie in the break out from northern Europe around the beginning of the sixteenth century when European sailors, soldiers, merchants and clergy left Europe in the hi-tech vessels of their day – wooden sailing ships – to discover, conquer and exploit the rest of the world. Around the end of the nineteenth century this growing politico-economic system jumped up to another level as new technologies and new financial innovations galvanised global trade. This system then took a serious knock with the occurrence of two world wars, but then took off anew thanks to technologies developed in the last of these wars, such as jet transport and computers. By the 1980s the digitisation of financial activity resulted in a new burst of activity, which ended in the financial crisis 2007-8. Since then the global economy has sputtered along, mainly kept going by the historically unprecedented rise of China. The globalisation of some other activities, such as culture and travel, continued apace, but there are signs that they are faltering as well.

The theory on big systems collapse suggests that they do not melt down to the lowest possible level but rather to the next level of organisation. Some states, the richest and most stable ones, may be able to exist for a while, mostly depending on how hard climate changes hit them. The poorer countries will feel the pressure immediately (indeed, some already are) and will soon enough collapse with the result of millions of deaths.

A couple of decades ago David Suzuki wrote that Canada and Australia would be the only developed nations to survive intact if global relations broke down because they had enough food resources. Australia has not fared so well since then under short-sighted governments, especially as climate change has hit it hard. Canada, of course shares a border with the US; maybe it will have to build a wall to keep desperate Americans out as things continue to decline. .

Whatever else happens the number of humans on this planet will plummet. Contemporary capitalism, with its goal of maximising immediate profits through ever increasing scale and complexity, has continued the high population growth of previous religious and then nationalist authorities. This rate is in decline, but will still likely peak at around nine billion or less. This growth rate cannot be sustained as the economy crashes, security at local, national and global levels declines, and basic food, water and health resources diminish.

As I write this piece the Corona virus is terrorizing the world and it is unclear how bad it will get. These animal-related diseases are always popping up, usually because some very poor people live too close to farm animals, and they are potentially devastating in their effect. So far we have been lucky, but sooner or later one will appear that combines high levels of lethality with high levels of contagion. The effects of global warming will only increase this exposure to disease as the tropical diseases head into the intermediate climate zones.

And speaking of global warming, this is but one of the environmental threats that might do for humanity. The collapse of species - from insects to fish – around the world is truly ominous, and we might suddenly find that we have wiped out a key species that we depend on.

We have done nothing about global warming since the threat became generally known in 1988. It may already be too late to prevent runaway warming and temperatures going up by four or more degrees by century's end. Now it would take an extraordinary effort to even make a dent in this rise and there are no signs that this is remotely likely.

And almost as dangerous as these catastrophes is the threat of mass violence, in particular the possible use of so-called weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear and biological arms. We survived the first nuclear arms race by the skin of our teeth, and now there is another one underway. Aside from specialised nuclear weapons developed by the Chinese to negate US strengths, such as their anti-carrier missiles, the Russians and the Americans are working on hyper-fast missiles. This is particularly concerning because such weapons erode the time available between launch and detonation. In the past global war was only avoided because there was time enough for humans to consider the apparent threat and make a reasoned decision (that is, not to retaliate). The main reasons the Soviet Union protested the introduction in the early 1980s of intermediate range Pershing missiles based in Europe was because they would eliminate this decision time and promote a shift to 'launch on warning'.

Furthermore, there are now more nuclear powers, some of whom, like India and Pakistan, are traditional enemies. Any nuclear explosion might launch all out war, and even a small war could start a nuclear winter which would kill billions of people through starvation.

There is another problem of an altogether different kind. A civilisation is made up not just from its material constituents – transport systems, communications systems, urban centres, military assets – but also by the way people within it live, in particular what we call its culture. For instance, the US claims to be a culture where individual rights, democracy and free enterprise are given top priority. Here I think the signs are almost all negative. China and Russia have showed how capitalism can thrive under authoritarian rule, while the West is faltering.

For starters, literacy, a core aspect of any modern civilisation, is on a steep decline. The overall quality of books and articles is in marked decline ; mostly this is down to the obsession with profits, leading to cutting costs by sacking journalists or publishing only formulaic fiction, but the growing influence of what has been called 'political correctness' has not helped. In the past well written books on serious subjects by academics ensured a certain level of quality input, but these are increasingly rare. In large part thus is due to the moral and intellectual crisis in academic life because universities are now just another kind of business. They have increasingly ditched academic standards in both teaching and research in search of higher profits.

Other popular culture is also in decline. Popular music is in bad shape, almost entirely dull and formulaic. Popular music has been an important element of Western cultural experience, exemplified by the way youth and black music influenced mainstream society in the 1950s and 60s. Movies are similarly dominated by ever louder and ever more mindless action movies based on comics and toys, or flaccid romcoms set in some fantasy world without politics, economics or an environment. Television, now digitally based, has been a little more creative, but ultimately faces the same problems. As with music the main problem seems to be that movies and TV are dominated by corporate bean-counters after big profits. Decisions are made by committee, or increasingly by computer algorithms, whence any sign of originality or creativity are carefully expunged.

These trends both reflect and intensify a breakdown in confidence This general condition of growing popular fear and hopelessness is fertile ground for the rise of all kinds of social ills, such as mental illness, obesity, and addictions of all kinds.

In addition it has enabled the rise of vicious and incompetent leaders, like Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro and Duterte. These men play on popular fears and generally act to further erode the processes of democracy and rational government. They tend to represent only their minority support base, ignoring any reference to a wider social responsibility, which guarantees ongoing instability. The rise of such populist leaders makes the chances of cooperation on a global level to address climate change, end the new arms race, and do a million other things to improve the chances of humanity, vanishingly small.

In particular, Donald Trump in only three short years has all but wrecked the American political system and any confidence in American leadership. Aided by a now hollow Republican Party and a fractured Democrat Party, confidence within the US and also globally in American leadership has disintegrated. Furthermore, there are no signs of an alternative global arrangement in sight: China, Russia, India and even Europe talk about a new world order, but without the US it can't go far.

The threats of environmental catastrophe, war and runaway digital systems are all ultimately caused by our reliance on increasingly powerful technology to solve age old problems. The Industrial Revolution was supposed to end famine and poverty, and to a degree it did, but it also gave us mass-industrial war and now climate change. The Information Revolution, or digitisation, was supposed to enable us to communicate better to solve our problems, and in a way it has but it has also given us cyber-bullying, online and neo-fascism. We are now utterly dependent on digital systems in almost all aspects of our lives, even though they constantly fail, and usually when we least want them to.

No doubt we will continue to look to new technology to solve our ever greater problems, but in a fundamental way technology is the main problem. We will endeavour to use new digital systems to live more efficiently, and in the process undermine the very bases of a satisfactory human life, such as meaningful work, recreation and even relationships. We will likely eventually try so-called geo-engineering to mitigate climate change, and just as likely make it worse.

And finally, one of the main drivers of post-war globalisation were the financial and industrial corporations from the US that then became transnationals. They pushed for globalisation because they wanted access to resources everywhere and the economies of scale that went with the largest markets. The problems of Boeing, Toyota, Volkswagen and a bunch of others suggests that they may have reached growing problems with complexity, in large part a function of size. Finance, perhaps the most global activity of all, came a cropper in 2007-8 and basically staggers along on the money given to them by governments.

There are some eerie parallels with the aforementioned fall of Rome here. As Rome tottered there were pressures from the borders, erosion of civil life, plague and environmental problems caused by global dimming brought on by a huge volcano explosion. The rich retreated to their huge slave-run farms and left public life, increasingly leaving civil life to foreign-born slaves and war to foreign-born mercenaries. The Roman Empire in decline staggered on for a few centuries before it completely fell apart, and Rome itself, once the biggest city in the world, became almost deserted.

No other great power filled the vacuum, instead the empire broke into many small units which made up the cores of later feudal states. What did also happen was something new, the rise of a completely new kind of society based around the Catholic Church and the belief in one, universal god. The most basic ideas of what life was about totally changed even as material conditions got much harder.

For humanity to survive the current predicament, and hopefully one day thrive again as a species, will require new thinking about how to best live as a human being in society. In particular, it will demand much greater courage on the part of the ordinary person, a new respect for nature, and the discovery, or recovery, of a truly profound set of values that enable us to face hardship, and even oblivion, and still live meaningful lives.