7 August 2008
Introduction: Waking from Humanity’s Sleepwalk, p. 4
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback .
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 4
First, let us be clear about the two principal theses of this book: (1) Within the lifetimes of most of us alive today, there will likely be a drastic dieback of the human population. Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people will die through starvation, lack of water and related diseases. (2) Much of the world’s civilization will collapse.
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Although the scope of the collapse and the numbers of people affected will be unprecedented, collapse, itself, is not new to the human experience. History is littered with the collapses of societies, simple and complex . From a cosmic perspective, history can be read as the book of stories chronicling the birth, life and death of humanity’s many societies, states and civilizations. One account after the next in which a group of people became more populous, more diverse and more prosperous. Initially, greater complexity tended to be adaptive, and the societies became stronger. They grew more food, bred effective leaders, built powerful armies. And then eventually, whether it took decades or millennia, the society disintegrated. The people became too many or the soil too exhausted. The neighbors grew too powerful or suffered their own calamities which ended the trade of crucial goods. Or the climate changed. Or the society became too complicated and inflexible to negotiate a world that is always changing .
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The list of those now in the dustbin of history reads like a who’s who of the great civilizations, empires, dynasties and of the small societies, as well: the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Mayan, Hindu, Chou, Han, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Hittite, Harrapan, Khmer, Anasazi, Honakum, Easter Island . These are but some of the most well-known civilizations and societies that have emerged from the background of humanity, flourished and then faded away. Once filled with the lives of people who felt the same mix of emotions, expectations and hopes as you and I do today, they are now but the eroded remains of stone and rubble, inscribed with epic tales in languages long forgotten. They are food for vine and tree or tiny rubble islands drowning in seas of desert sands. And surely the peoples of these now extinct societies expected their lives to continue on much as it had before and for their cities and cultures to live beyond them.