Do Civilisations Survive?
BY GWYNNE DYER ⋅ SEPTEMBER 26, 2018
"He doesn’t need to know anything specific about those unknown exo-civilisations. He only need to know that all civilisations use large amounts of energy, and that there is a strictly limited number of ways that a technologically ‘young’ civilisation like ours can access energy."
Dyer was focusing on the pollution and environmental damage as being the limiting threshold for technological civilizations, but I think there is another aspect to consider.
We are genetically descended from what is essentially our most rapacious and Machiavellian ancestors. As comic Colin Quinn once put it, "We didn't descend from the group that starved to death waiting for their place at the dinner table." While there are remarkably wondrous and laudable examples of human progress, they're still largely within the framework of a dog-eat-dog rat race.
In a materialistic universe, with the emergence of life itself always advancing as a variation of eat or be eaten, it serves to reason that life universally has been distilled through this crucible of measures and countermeasures that is life in the foodchain. At what point does a civilization gain a consciousness of the oneness of life and existence when their evolution was also exclusively a product of the winners and losers of species roulette?
The point Dyer makes on societies choosing in time to change course seems to presume that the dynamic of the strong preying on the weak has been suitably altered or constrained. The top of the heap rarely if ever accepts their own power and opulence being diminished for any reason. Such a world in their minds is too alien to contemplate. Dyer did mention a 70% die off likely when the runaway conditions peaked. Maybe a variable element to be added to the Drake equation is that the 30% remaining are the distilled Machiavellians too self centered to give a shit about the rest of the cosmos, particularly as they sit as king of the hill on their wounded planet. Stats have already shown that that so much can be mechanized as far as manufacturing and the like, that it will be a much smaller workforce needed to service the powerful.
Interesting but for us to assume just how many planets in the universe that maintain human life would be the same as asking a 5 year who’s blind to describe the bottom of the ocean.
So until we can get past our own moon I’ll have to believe that our universe is filled other like beings who are most likely wandering the same thing.
Unless Earth is swallowed by a rouge black hole... I don't see any way that our civilization completely ever dies out. We will have natural and man made bottlenecks that wipe out up to 90% (which is what we need now!) but, like cockroaches.... Humans will survive in some form.
EDIT - Or evolve into something else!
Unless we head for the stars, assuming we don't expire sooner, we will die off when the sun dies, a given. If we survive all that, the universe will end, collapsing in upon itself.
P.S. a recent study claims the end of humans will kill off most cockroaches as they have linked their species' survival so tightly to us. Something to smile about.
Before he died, Stephen Hawking predicted that within 100 years global warming will reach the point of no return and Earth's atmosphere will become as hot as Venus...600+ degrees Fahrenheit...hot enough to melt Lead. If that be true, no more humans (or cockroaches) in any form. But, it you disagree, I would like to hear your counter-argument.
@dahermit I'd seriously like to see a link where that exact statement is attributed to Stephen Hawking. We aren't doing anything to the Earth that hasn't been done before by nature. We are just facilitating the event. I agree global warming will cause some dire things to happen to human kind... But it won't get to 600 degrees on Earth until the sun starts to go nova.