Author Eliade Muldovan asks several interesting questions. Give it a read, and then feel free to make your own comments
Where is humankind heading?
First question: Did human consciousness change along centuries and millennia?
Disrespect for our environment, religious intolerance, greed, selfishness… I did my reading, history and religious texts and books.
My conclusion? Not much. Add to all this the unstoppable population growth, the overpopulation and the insane resource consumption.
Second question: Did our life standards improve along centuries?
My take? A lot. For some of us. I would dare say that the average individual in western world lives better than kings few hundred years back. I remember a chronicle about the life during King Louis XIV, the Sun King; the cold and ugly smelling palaces (no toilets), sticks to scratch under the wigs for head lice, health problems…
So, we do better today. All this done because of human technology advances: internet, cars, airplanes, medical assistance, you name it…
So, what is wrong?
Technologies advanced much faster than human consciousness; and technology out of control generates disasters.
Discoveries and innovation based on research in chemistry, biology, quantum physics, information technology, transportation… make our life better, but could be used for destruction in the worse imaginable ways.
Third question: Can our society fix itself, and avoid self-destruction?
Answer: NO.
Why? There are mathematical theories that a system cannot fix itself from inside. The mechanisms to fix the system will alter it, and so, it is different than when the project started, it is a catch 22 situation.
Fourth question: What can be done?
If humankind deserved being saved, it will happen, help from above. Aliens? or gods?
But does indeed human society deserve saving?
My book The World Ends Tomorrow describes such a scenario.
Fracony, a supercivilization that visited Earth periodically, built models forecasting that an apocalypse generated by humans themselves is inevitable.
They discovered a baby girl, Clara, with very special qualities, a research accident from a lab that tried to match man and women for best offspring. Clara was raised and trained all her life to take over the world leadership and prevent or diminish the consequences of an apocalypse.
And the disaster came as a biological apocalypse from a virus escaping from a research lab.
Clara can communicate with Fracony, but her training could not foresee everything, and Fracony might have their plans about what really means saving humanity, or the price to pay.
What is good and bad have different definitions in normal times versus crisis situations, and when the human race was at stake that line between right or wrong was blurry and shifting until became non-existent. Principles transformed into self preservation, fear in divine punishment transformed into anger. Who could rule such a world?
The action is four hundred years into the future, and only two countries sharing the planet, Gaia and Esperanto. Clara was ruling Esperanto as its Secretary. She had to navigate among centrifuge interests and ideas and take bold and heartbreaking decisions. Will she succeed or collapse before reaching the end of the tunnel?
The World Ends Tomorrow
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BXK259K
Please leave a comment. Thanks.
I don’t buy your premise as a generality, that human consciousness does not change significantly, over long periods of time. It can and it does. Example, for roughly 2500 years slavery was an accepted aspect of civilization, virtually universal in all that time and who knows how long before then. The abolition of legal slavery took time, effort and bloodshed, but that marked improvement in human consciousness has happened, stipulating that illegal slavery remains far too widespread.
Furthermore, awarenesses and actions in favor of the environment have increased significantly in recent decades in the west, and bid fair to continue on that path. In the east, progress has been noted since the Soviet Union fell. Conclusion: there is hope.
But mostly, you fail to credit human ingenuity. Two points. Influential occurrences are capricious and cannot be foreseen. But they do happen, and sometimes with startling results. Example: microelectronics was mostly invented in the late 1950’s, and in sixty years has produced astonishing if often derided results, which themselves have significantly benefitted the environment among other things.
Second point: the results of what we people do, comparing negative to positive consequences, often remain unknown or at least incompletely known, for decades to come if not longer. Thus, it’s not possible to know for sure what is to come as results from one or another human activity. Example: people of Rome during its imperial period, roughly after Christ, essentially clear-cut the southern slopes of the western Alps, and the arboreal covering has never regrown since then. HOWEVER, as a result the climate of the Mediterranean basin, chilly and damp in the time of Christ, has acquired the delightful characteristics that it has now. Centuries later, we know that “environmental degradation” can improve the environment over time.
Finally, as to such large subjects as we are discussing, general conclusions are to be regarded as error-prone at best, and must be doubted at least as much as they are insisted upon.
Thank you for blogging about my book, The World Ends Tomorrow.
The World Ends Tomorrow certainly grabbed my attention. People have been predicting the end of the word for hundreds of years but Ms. Moldovan has lined up some supporting facts that are happening today that will bring about the end of life as we know it. I just ordered her book and look forward to reading it.