I think it’s fairly obvious that this species isn’t going anywhere.
At the moment, you have Western civilization essentially dominating the rest of the world, at least in terms of standards of living. Any other species that had managed to rope in damn near the entire resource and production capacity of the planet would probably be reaching the stars right about now. But that’s not what we’ve done, is it?
No, we have merely eaten it.
We have cheap electronic gizmos, all the fattening food we can choke on, and - this is significant - “mobility assistance devices” are now a booming market. There is a lot of money to be made helping the morbidly obese get to WalMart for more munchies.
Think of resources as investment capital. There’s a finite amount, and the sane thing to do, from a species-survival point of view, is to use a good fraction of those resources to gain more resources. The solar system is stuffed full of metals, trace elements, hydrocarbons, and living space. Sanity dictates that we go after them while we still can. Our sense of entitlement says we sit here and stuff our faces, frittering away our investment capital until there’s nothing left.
Then, of course, the lights go out and the fun stops.
I don’t think I have to explain the world-wide catastrophe that looms before us, as this collapse gets closer and closer. Anyone who thinks that this collapse would be an improvement is either a brain-dead hippie, a right wing survivalist nutcase, or an utter misanthrope (Me, for example). This will not mean a return to “rugged individualism”. This will mean cannibalism.
I expect that in a few thousand years, once we climb back out of the tribal stage, we’ll do it all over again. Anyone who thinks the tribal stage is ideal has granola poisoning, and should probably go stand over a settling pond and inhale deeply, just to get a notion of how things will be for a few centuries.
There is no way to avoid this fate, incidentally. Crazy Eddie - or rather, a whole raft of them - is on the case, and any attempts to actually make constructive changes will be torn down by Crazy Eddie and his followers. In this particular case, Crazy Eddie is primarily the guy who supports the very people who have brought us to this pass...The idiots who say that the problem with our banking system, for example, is too much regulation.
There are other examples, but you get my point. So enjoy your descent into the dark ages, and try not to get eaten. Time is broken, and we’re going to go from the 21st century to the paleolithic era in a startlingly short amount of time.
And you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Okay for now,
Dok
