Is the Threat Mass Extinction? … Or Just Change?
Aging. Death. Decay. Climate Apocalypse. Entropy. Sometimes, especially lately, everything seems to be going downhill. My last birthday arrived as a negative milestone (I turned 78). I wasn’t exhilarated by having survived another year. I had little new to look forward to. Grandchildren grow more independent, and distant, as they get older. Generally, maintaining the status quo of my health and economic well-being seemed to be the more pressing concern. My future looked grim.
So, how do I now contemplate civilization’s future? American society? The planet itself? Must they follow the same path as my own life? Or will new opportunities blossom for generations yet unborn? It might be worthwhile to explore options across the continuum of history. And these options present themselves in different scales, from bigger to smaller:
- Biggest: the cosmological universe – physics says it’s mortal!
- Next: our planet – environmentally sound, perhaps, but what about its living creatures?
- Species extinction: biodiversity is clearly threatened — will genus Homo become an extinct species as well? When?
- Civilization: exactly what civilization are we talking about? Only the familiar one we, and our immediate ancestors, have always known?
- American society: clearly in decline, but how does it end?
- Political philosophy: otherwise known as ideology or, perhaps, epistemological doctrine. We know it has changed many times with technology, fashion, and economic contingency. Is the end of “liberalism” nigh?
- My tribe: only a subculture at best, smaller than the whole of society. It may be dead already!
- Smallest: my own life, that personal “me” – I know I’m doomed but hopefully can keep expressing myself for a while longer, anyway.
Each of these big world views, while objective realities, deserves a few thoughts. Starting at the top, with the classical law of physics – entropy. Conventional cosmology does assume, based on both astronomical observations and mathematical concept, that the universe is expanding and will eventually dissipate into nothingness. So be it – we’re talking here about a timeline of perhaps hundreds of billions of years. But even this attenuated timeline has caused a vocal minority of physicists to advocate for an alternate theory of the universe. Perhaps, they say, we are living in a multiverse? Quantum mechanics, including entanglement, implies a far less certain fate for the universe – and quantum entanglement is not necessarily a minority view anymore among physicists. Death is always feared – perhaps cosmological death no less so.
Astronomers have observed many deaths of stars, hence star systems, throughout our galaxy, and implied in other galaxies as well. There is no reason to doubt that one day, our solar system will also collapse – old Sol has a lifespan analogous to our own bodies. When the Sun goes, so goes gravity and orbiting planets. Earth itself is thus mortal. Perhaps a few billion years left, at best. And it won’t be because we have destroyed it, either — it’s just the way of the cosmos. Elon Musk and Space X desire to colonize Mars, to avoid an expected planetary collapse on Earth, caused at least in part by our avaricious consumption of resources. The assumption is that some humans, at least, will have survived here on Earth long enough to establish extraterrestrial colonies. Many, however, feel that the imminent death of our own species will precede any successful colonization. Biodiversity is under greater threat than the planet itself. And our own species will likely succumb to the forces already causing mass extinctions of other species. Despite Musk’s well-documented genius for promoting new technologies, few find his Mars colonization a realistic prospect.
We come next in our hierarchy of extinctions to the death of our civilization. The first question to ask here is: Just what constitutes “our civilization?” For sure, many of us lament the loss of things from our past that had great meaning to us – and many believe that forthcoming losses may include things like literacy (disappearance of printed artifacts), maybe also older towns, buildings, former ways of life. New construction, representing a “civilization” in the making, seems more a rejection of old norms than any promising new ones. Yet we know that libraries can preserve digital content as easily as the paper of books, magazines, and newspapers (better, in fact). But do we have any collective enthusiasm for such preservation? Or are we so enmeshed in the quotidian world of digital media, vertical videos and games, that we lose interest in those artifacts of a previous “civilization?” I believe a clear understanding of history, in the long run, leaves us with a more optimistic prognosis for civilization – old ones are merely replaced by new ones. Civilization is the story of continual progress of the species. One is replaced by another … ad infinitum (at least until those cosmological events mentioned above present themselves). Forever evolving.
Related to civilizations, but smaller, are things like “American” society and culture, and even smaller, my own subculture, or tribe. Provincially oriented people tend to see American society as synonymous with Western Civilization – it is not: it is both limited by geography and by history. Only those who have attained citizenship in the USA, we are told, can truly call themselves “American.” In times past, we have been more inclusive in this definition – conferring that same status to documented legal immigrants as well. But then, more than 150 years ago, even those born here, of parents born here, might have been slaves – not citizens. So, we should be careful who we consider Americans. The definition has changed over time – as it did for the Roman Republic 2000 years ago, and its successor Empire, when “barbarians” were eventually welcomed into society as citizens. This is when the Empire fell, we were told. Tribes had their own languages and customs, their own heritage. That heritage, tribal though it was, did not die when the tribe became assimilated into a cosmopolitan empire – only the isolation of the tribe died. The same can be said for Chinese civilization, as it transformed with Mongol invasions, new imperial dynasties, and even Republican revolutions … then communism! Cultures do not die with assimilation. They change. A Lingua Franca does not kill the languages of different tribes – look at the Habsburg Empire of 18th – 19th century central Europe. Those languages and cultures all survived the death of the Empire in the early 20th century. The same can be said for the Ottoman Empire. I am convinced that any “decline” of America in relation to the rest of the world will not signal the end of any culture. Perhaps certain symbols of hegemony will become obsolete, like our currency or our Navy, and certainly some modes of thinking about politics and the rights of individuals vis-a-vis the state may be subject to change (look at China). But that is different – the end of liberalism is not the death of a civilization, but of an intellectual construct not more than 400 years old (at most). And as we develop in the future, our civilization, as well as the thriving of our species, is bound to come up with new paradigms – not repetitions of older models.
I know that I am mortal – don’t know how mortal, of course. Ultimately, I must live each day as it comes, as we all do, and keep writing and relating my thoughts as I think them – so long as I am able. I believe history supports this position for those larger constructs as much as for my own biological existence. The body dies and decays, its thoughts (consciousness?) do not necessarily perish with it.
— William Sundwick
Warp and Woof 