Civilization’s Demise

Given seven weeks of surfeit time, what does one do to occupy his time? Lazy evenings spent lounging at my Partner’s desk, listening to the soundtrack of ‘Hackers’ with a glass of port in one hand, whilst the other scribes away on whichever uncanny topic is occupying my thoughts. The issue I was dwelling on today was the eventual demise of society, and the forces that are working both toward and against it.

We commence with the breakneck pace of human development as the most significant force at work. One thousand years ago, we had a feudal system, one hundred years ago, horse drawn carriages, and ten years ago, the most powerful desktop computer was on par with my current MDA. The curvature of development is clearly exponential in nature.

Historically, it has been proven time and again that control systems are almost always instituted retrospectively, leaving open scope for damage. In modern times, the advent of the internet presents one such example. A fairly recent innovation, the development of the internet was unplanned and organic – an uncontrolled diffusion of sorts. Because development followed not a planned path nor pace, it was inevitable that subsequent attempts to control it would be rendered futile lending to enormous complexity. That is exactly why there is no mechanism that can stop spam, fraud, cyber-terrorism and the proliferation of questionable content. The defining features of human control systems are that they are all to often (1) reactive in the sense that they attempt to solve a problem that has already occurred; and (2) retrospective in that they are implemented with a strong bias toward past outcomes and short term issues, but fail to give adequate consideration to the future and long run outcomes.

This analogy of developments being made so quickly that they cannot be controlled and become subject to malicious abuse can be applied almost universally. You need only look at the state of affairs with uranium enrichment and genetic manipulation. The latter is a development which has the potential to immensely enrich the standards of humanity. But of course the technology advanced so rapidly that there is no control. For example, Monsanto now produces and markets genetically engineered crop seeds to second and third world countries that grow better than regular crops. However, these crops are also engineered to be single use (i.e. seeds from the first crop cannot be replanted) which creates recurring revenue for Monsanto because there is dependency on new seeds every season instead of these crops being self-sustaining. The inherent ethical issues are very real – hypothetically, there is little to stop Monsanto ceasing supply and inciting mass starvation if even there was a need to control Earth’s unsustainable population growth. Not a pleasant thought, but this is what happens when a society’s progression occurs faster than its ability to manage it.

What I am attempting to allude to is the disparity between the ‘grand design’ which is gradual evolution via nature and the human race’s modern predilection for controlling its developmental pace autonomously. Therein lies perhaps the most ominous peril that will face civilisation at some point in the future – the critical point where society will likely cease to progress and begin to move backwards because the control systems we have installed are illusory and misguided. A dystopia of ‘Matrix’ proportions becomes a conceivable future.

Due credit to the film, it is most likely that technology will be the cause of civilisation’s demise. Biotechnology and Nanotechnology are the foremost surmised sources. The scenario that is first evoked to mind is the invention of artificial intelligence (AI) which is self-aware and hence capable of acting toward its own purposes (as in the Matrix). This is synonymous with an adjunct to nanotechnology, where the development of AI on a molecular level leads to microscopic, self-replicating machines that breach control limits and eventually consume the environment in a process known as ecophagy. More likely however is medicine accidentally creating a mutated bacteria that is invulnerable to all antibiotics. As new treatments are developed, the anomalies dictated by the law of natural selection give rise to resistant pathogens upon which antibiotics are ineffectual. What we end up with is and endless game of catch-up where medicine develops antibiotics and bacteria becomes immune, creating and vicious cycle which medicine will likely lose at some critical point; resulting in an epidemic potent enough to cause extinction. In a more simplistic context, it’s a variant of Silvermoon’s law, i.e. if you try to idiot-proof something, eventually someone builds a better idiot.

Existential risk is the broad umbrella term which collects concepts such as those aforementioned which are relevant to the downfall of civilisation. Moving onto a slightly different tangent, it is also surmisable that the downfall of humanity will result purely from the fact that we are indeed human and therefore self-serving by nature. Self-serving bias manifests itself in many ways, one of which is the prioritisation of self over others, and on a larger scale, it links directly with the dubious aspirations of so many countries in modern times. Further, such notions of self-serving are not detached from what is perceived as fundamentally evil, because of the facet of greed which is common to both.

The prevalence of what can only be described using the blanket term ‘evil’ in this world is enough to have capitulated civilisation to collapse some time ago. However, it is a source of intrigue that none other than Capitalism should be one of the forces that is actually preventing this collapse.

Don’t get me wrong; personally, I still have this nagging urge to conquer large parts of continental Europe, but not before I buy an M6 and a ‘small’ Gulfstream to emblazon my company logo on. Therein lies the strange effect of capitalism. It is the only man-made force that is sufficient to reckon with, and supersede man’s instinctive lust for power. For this reason, civilisation is set upon an alternate course. If we did not have money nor the luxuries Capitalism affords us, then we would need something to fill the void left. Both history and logic suggest power as being this something.* Needless to say, power is still a major pursuit nowadays, but it plays second fiddle (in many senses) to material wealth.

Noticeably, this trend has prevailed strongly in modern times. An example is perhaps the United States’ invasion of Iraq. The underlying motivation was not the gaining of a power foothold in the Middle East region, but rather more likely financial, in terms of easing geopolitical tension, reducing oil supply volatility and stabilising prices.

What many a feather on the left-wing fail to realise is that the ‘invisible-hand’ effect of Laissez Faire Capitalism purveyed by Adam Smith is vital on a second dimension. Through reasoning, it can be established that the invisible hand not only advances the greater good in a material sense, but also has a very important role in guiding human energy toward the pursuit of wealth and away from the dangerous pursuit of power. In doing so, it is helping to avert a social state where dynamics are skewed to the point where there are billions of oppressed beneath a ruling elite of powerful oppressors.

Admittedly, the pursuit of wealth and power are not clear cut; rather there exist many relationships and correlations between the two. Yet it can be conceivably maintained that on a scale that encompasses broader humanity, material wealth ranks above power as far as objectives go.

The complexity of interrelationships among all the previously discussed concepts mean that along with development reaching a critical point, it will be the convergence of these two (power/wealth) objectives that will ultimately spell civilisation’s impending doom. It is cautiously hoped that our species will eventually come to the realisation that it needs to overhaul its entire paradigm and raison d’etre on a global scale if it is to survive what lies ahead.

P. X. Waterstone

* There is an alternate option, which is pursuing an enveloping and actualised society. The best way to explain this is the type of race that you see in Science Fiction films where the entire civilisation acts as a single organism, and collectively focuses upon the sole end of advancement as a species, for example, the Asgard.

~ by X on July 20, 2006.