A new Dark Age

[Callaecus]

Now what will the world look like in 4006? Imagine a "new" Dark Age will come, how will archaeologists assess (and misinterpret) the 20th century? Thanks to endless stacks of books, digital archives etc.. Work might be easier then for scholars, or maybe not (we don`t know if in 4006, people will understand how to use a MP3 file, maybe because it is so backward, or maybe because it is so advanced)...

 

so, hows life for an archaeologist in 4006?

 

Paper wouldn't survive all that time and in order to see the digital archives you would need the computers (which wouldn't be working).

 

All that would remain from our society to be seen in 2000 years would be remains of our skyscrapers. It's impossible, however, to say what sort of meaning would be given to them. Maybe they would just look to the material and call our society the "Age of Cement" or, if they were more religious, they might say the same thing that the Jews said when they saw the Babel tower in Babylon: humanity tried to reach the heavens and God punished them.

[Northern Neil]

'Dark Ages' are characterised by dramatic and sudden economic and population collapse, accompanied by the loss or transformation of political structures many hundreds of years old. They often occur when a society is supposedly flourishing, and often take the people involved utterly by surprise. They are also characterised by several concurrent factors, political and environmental, which if addressed even partially could have prevented collapse.

 

In hindsight there are often blatant signs that these things are about to happen, which are ignored by the vast majority of society, and acknowledged but swept under the carpet by others, who care only about short term gain.

 

I believe we are about to enter such a phase again, brought about by a combination of global warming, cold war 2 (with the islamic world), dramatic overpopulation and an insistance on the part of us westerners to live lives of blatant waste and luxury. The migrating 'hordes' are already there, knocking at the door of our 'frontiers', wanting to share in the prosperity of the west, whilst simultaneously regarding us with envy and sometimes hatred. And who can blame them? Coastal cities are already starting to experience the combination of adverse weather and rising sealevels. We know these things already. What are we going to do about it? Limit our motor vehicles to one per household? get rid of gas guzzling vehicles? Dramatically reduce the luxuriousness of our consumer lifestyles? Enable third world countries to flourish instead of exploiting them? I think not. I give it between thirty and seventy years.

Edited December 17, 2006 by Northern Neil

[WotWotius]

This sounds all too familiar; the above post have an air of Cold War appocalipticism about it. People have been crowing that 'the end is nigh' since the dawn of mankind. Are they ever right? In some cases, yes, but with the vast majority of cases they are mainly wrong.

 

This prediction of immediate and painful doom was present in more recent time: as mentioned earlier, during the 1950s people were convinced that nuclear war would obliterate mankind; this mentality was further mirrored by films (the skin of History always flakes off as cinema). And did this obliteration happen?

 

I think the main problem today is that the media has a tendency to exacerbate situations – MRSA and bird flu are just two examples of this – and this most definitely fueled the collective ideas of these oracles of doom.

 

Additionally the view that history is cyclical helps support the idea of a neo-dark age: i.e. dark ages have happened in the past, so another one is just around the corner. Although we can detect certain patterns within History, the past is not a blueprint of the future; though scholars that try to justify the study of the past will make one think otherwise, not every situation is the same as another.

 

Finally, I believe that due to the current status of our global society, a new dark age will be a highly improbable event. I hardly believe immigration can be compared to the ‘migrating “hordes”’ responsible for the destruction of Rome. However, I have been known to be wrong – if society crumbles in the next thirty and seventy years, I will owe NN a pint!

Edited December 18, 2006 by WotWotius

[Northern Neil]

I don't think that the 'end is nigh' - I do believe, however, that the bubble of prosperity (western) and population (global) growth evident since the industrial revolution will burst soon, with a commensurate economical decline and sharp downturn in population. The near certainty of sea levels rising plus poor countries becoming unviable as areas to live will see to that, as well as a multiplicity of political factors. I do not regard the current trends in immigration to be part of this - indeed, the Eastern European influx is merely a shift from a slightly poorer part of our world to a slightly richer one. I am on about the build up of peoples fleeing countries which are becoming less and less viable to live in as the world heats. This will intensify in the next few decades.

 

If - and when - this happens, old political structures will alter and change, and societies with less investment in our global economy will survive and provide the new order. This will be seen, in successive centuries, as a 'decline' with a following 'Dark Age'. We should not be complacent and believe that our society and culture will do what every other one in history has failed to do - survive indefinitely. As Voltaire said, 'The Roman Empire fell because empires fall'.

 

When that happens, assuming I am not either dead, drooling in a wingback chair or our country has become Islamic, I will claim my pint from WotWotius!!

Edited December 18, 2006 by Northern Neil

[Kosmo]

Let's create a Foundation to gather all significant information of today's world in an Enciclopedia to shorten the span of the New Dark Age.

 

I think that the world today has unprecedented levels of prosperity and peace. This is not only in the West, but also in Asia as the dragons (Japan, S. Coreea, Taiwan) were folowed by those in the SE (Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia etc) and now the big ones are growing (India and China)

S. America it's both democratic and steadily growing.

Only subsaharan Africa lags behind with constant warfare, desrtification and epidemics, but not even there the situation it is not as bad as the media makes it look.

The number of humans always depended on the food available so this nothing new.

Climate change it's a recent problem because it was recently noticed that climate fluctuates. But Earth it's a thermodinamic machine even without human activity. Remember the Ice Age? either it had nothing to do with humans or the activities of the Neanderthalians and Erectus were causing it.

I don't say that it is impossible for something bad to happen, I say that is very unlikely or beyond our capacity to solve it. So, no dooms day worries for me.

[Pantagathus]

Let's create a Foundation to gather all significant information of today's world in an Enciclopedia to shorten the span of the New Dark Age.

Asimov fan huh Kosmo...?