Lessons From A Collapsing World
As Western civilization ends, what lessons can we learn in the hope that future generations may manage things better?
It is a terrible irony that we live in a time when the frontiers of human understanding are being pushed back further and faster and on many more fronts than at any previous time in human history, yet we can do nothing to prevent the collapse of our civilization.
Our primate brains, hardwired to cope with the relatively simple environments of the African savannah and the primordial forests of Eurasia, are utterly unable to grasp, never mind handle, the astonishing complexity of our technological interconnected world.
We live in a world accidentally fashioned by the inventions of a tiny number of clever people and consumed in ignorant folly by the great mass of humankind.
Although we can no more stop the collapse of civilization than we can change the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, we can attempt to learn a few important lessons from our global failure and hope that, at some unknown point far in the future, a few thoughtful people may consider these lessons and attempt to structure more adequate ways of managing themselves.
