{"id":61528,"date":"2022-01-17T20:06:59","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T01:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61528"},"modified":"2022-01-17T20:06:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T01:06:59","slug":"four-reasons-civilization-wont-decline-it-will-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61528","title":{"rendered":"Four Reasons Civilization Won\u2019t Decline: It Will Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four Reasons Civilization Won\u2019t Decline: It Will Collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photograph Source: Studio Incendo \u2013\u00a0https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As modern civilization\u2019s shelf life expires, more scholars have turned their attention to the decline and fall of civilizations past. \u00a0Their studies have generated rival explanations of why societies collapse and civilizations die.\u00a0 Meanwhile, a lucrative market has emerged for post-apocalyptic novels, movies, TV shows, and video games for those who enjoy the vicarious thrill of dark, futuristic disaster and mayhem from the comfort of their cozy couch.\u00a0 Of course, surviving the real thing will become a much different story.<\/p>\n

The latent fear that civilization is living on borrowed time has also spawned a counter-market of \u201chappily ever after\u201d optimists who desperately cling to their belief in endless progress. \u00a0Popular Pollyannas, like cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, provide this anxious crowd with soothing assurances that the titanic ship of progress is unsinkable.\u00a0 Pinker\u2019s publications have made him the high priest of progress.[1]<\/a>\u00a0While civilization circles the drain, his ardent audiences find comfort in lectures and books brimming with cherry-picked evidence to prove that life is better than ever, and will surely keep improving.\u00a0 Yet, when questioned, Pinker himself admits,\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s incorrect to extrapolate that the fact that we\u2019ve made progress is a prediction that we\u2019re guaranteed to make progress.\u201d[2]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Pinker\u2019s rosy statistics cleverly disguise the fatal flaw in his argument.\u00a0 The progress of the past was built by sacrificing the future\u2014and the future is upon us.\u00a0 All the happy facts he cites about living standards, life expectancy, and economic growth are the product of an industrial civilization that has pillaged and polluted the planet to produce temporary progress for a growing middle class\u2014and enormous profits and power for a tiny elite.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four Reasons Civilization Won\u2019t Decline: It Will Collapse Photograph Source: Studio Incendo \u2013\u00a0https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/ As modern civilization\u2019s shelf life expires, more scholars have turned their attention to the decline and fall of civilizations past. \u00a0Their studies have generated rival explanations of why societies collapse and civilizations die.\u00a0 Meanwhile, a lucrative market has emerged for post-apocalyptic novels, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[139,150,5493,21552,196,1825],"class_list":["post-61528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-civilization","tag-collapse","tag-counterpunch","tag-craig-collins","tag-decline","tag-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61529,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61528\/revisions\/61529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}