30 thoughts on “Reflections on the (Real Possibility) of the End of the World”

1. First, the biosphere will be just fine. Sure, we’ll kick it in the pants, but it works on a long time scale, and in 50 million years it’ll be in great shape regardless of what we do.

   I don’t think that Homo sapiens will go extinct; the species does work quite well in the lifestyle that it evolved to handle: hunter-gatherers. In fact, I think that, even after we’ve nuked ourselves, we’ll still have a few million survivors wandering around the planet, eking out enough food the same way they did a hundred thousand years ago. That’s our natural place in the biosphere and this whole civilization thing was a fascinating excursion, nothing more.

   The environment won’t kill us; we’ll handle that task ourselves. My guess is that we’ll get into lots of finger-pointing over global warming, and different nations will try different geo-engineering projects that will conflict with each other, and they’ll eventually nuke each other.

   Karma is a bitch.

2. Now you are getting to the heart of it; this article sums up what you’ve been writing in the last two. Nothing you are saying in the three articles is mistaken yet there’s slightly more to be added.

   “[…] not the “Jesus is coming back” end of the world—which is obviously nonsense—but the end of human life brought about human activity.”

   The books of Revelation, Daniel, and a few others (not to neglect mention of the Quran) do state that human activity will bring about The End; but the eschatology involved is, as everyone here knows, more complex. And complicated: part symbolism, part ‘reality’. One could write an article on the topic albeit it would be chasing eschatological phantasms.

   Nailing Jello to the wall.

   Fantastic, but not inconsistent, are the Biblical prophecies. The most probable outcome is not extinction, the evidence is for mass reduction of the population. As the Black Death less than seven centuries ago.

   Say if 99 percent of the population were to die, the survivors could very well band together in different parts of the world. Since Christians are so aggressively determined, they might possibly survive the longest. The irony of un-Christlike aggression is how such enables Christians to be fruitful and multiply.

   The self-fulfilling prophecy factor does not negate my theory on this. Eschatologists don’t deny that the culpability (sins) of all of humanity is the cause. But when philosophy delves into cause, it becomes angels dancing on the head of a pin.

   Which segues into the bulk of your article. It would be for someone who knows more about philosophy than I do. After having been a futurist for 45 years, it now appears as vague as astrology. “Take advantage of opportunities that arise, don’t be afraid to change.” Futurism is secular clairvoyance. When someone writes a Big glossy Book about the Future, they have many pages to fill, thus they have to pad the book out with preachy fatuousness worthy of a priest.
   —————————–
   Is it hopeless? No. But we have to start by removing dick-taters everywhere. Trump
   has to be removed from the picture one way or another. So does Putin; so do they all: otherwise our chances of survival are reduced from 51% to zero.

   If it takes general strikes and general civil disobedience, so be it. One prediction can be confidently made: Occupy will return.

3. “ How Great is mortal sovereignty say some
   Others how good the Paradise to come
   Oh take the cash in hand and waive the rest
   Ah the sad music of the distant drum”

   I sometimes think Omar Khayyam had a point and together with the Lord Buddha’s reminder that everything is impermanent I am inclined to take Omar Khayyam’s advice

   “Come fill the cup
   It boots it to repeat
   How time is slipping
   Underneath our feet
   Dead yesterday unborn tomorrow
   Why fret about them
   If today be sweet?”

4. I like Khayyam’s poetry and used some in the preface of my meaning of life book. His advice here is similar to what I was suggesting. JGM

5. Don’t agree that good futurism is just like astrology. Prediction is very hard given chaos theory but it tries to do so using reason and evidence. But again, very very hard to do.

   Trump is a “dick-taters.” Very clever. And yes, the situation is grave. JGM

6. You are right about the biosphere on long time scales. As for humans, you may be right too about some surviving an all out nuclear war, although some dispute this. Carl Sagan thought a nuclear winter would kill everyone and Jonathan Schell wrote back in the 1980s about the possibility that the survivors might be sterile. Moreover, there are a lot of existential risks like a large enough asteroid that would do the trick too. JGM

7. I do not believe the world will come to a catastrophic end due to man’s activities. It is still possible to change course now or later.

   The world now is mostly governed by people whose minds are dominated by cleverness, desire for material pleasures, greed, hatred, violence and cognitive biases of all sorts. These people are driving the world into destruction. This is the racist mind which enabled our ancestors’ groups to fight nature’s scarcity and each other for survival and is taken to its extreme capability with the help of modern technology. Let’s call this sort of mind the mundane mind.

   What we see in the world now is a result of such a mind which is dominating the world.

   In the 19th century a British officer introduced some wild rabbits which were imported from England into Australia for the purpose of enjoying sport hunting. There were no natural predators for rabbits such as foxes in Australia. As a result, the rabbit population spread throughout Australia like wildfire destroying in its wake many farmlands and ecosystems until the rabbit was declared a pest and was fought openly by man. Thus, the man who was aware of the destructiveness of rabbits became the artificial predator that kept them in check.

   The mundane mind armed with high technology has become the new animal on earth who had no natural predators. And it is only logical to expect that it would tip the natural balance in its own favour to the point of possibly destroying its habitat and itself if left unchecked. Thus, the need to create an artificial predator (i.e. has not arisen naturally by natural selection). Fortunately, this artificial predator has been in existence since a few thousand years but has not been encouraged and nurtured as the mundane mind. It is the mind, which is driven by rationality and wisdom, love, generosity, empathy the search for peace and is alert to its cognitive biases. This is the stoic and spiritual mind which strives for eudemonic wellbeing and not for power and material gains. Let’s call this mind the super-mundane mind.

   There are many ways of dying. But broadly speaking we can say there are ways that take too short a time to do anything about it and those that are extended, slow and take time for something to be done about it.

   Now, the super-mundane mind is weaker and not as widespread as the mundane mind because the negative effects arising from the domination of the mundane mind in the world is not impactful enough to awaken the super-mundane mind on a wide scale.

   The way I see it is that the world will not collapse suddenly and die. The world will gradually get sicker and sicker over at least many decades. During this period, the folly of the mundane mind’s worldview will be seen for what it is. The efficacy of the super-mundane mind’s ways of thinking will be gradually appreciated and adopted by more and more people and the culture associated with it will spread more and more in communities, schools, universities, pressure groups and political parties. Positive remedial actions will arise everywhere and at all levels in the world and thus enabling the planet’s health to gradually improve until complete recovery.

8. “Don’t agree that good futurism is just like astrology. Prediction is very hard given chaos theory but it tries to do so using reason and evidence. But again, very very hard to do.”

   Alright. But futurists are so often selling their self-referential future:
   take Newt Gingrich (please). He gets his ego puffed up to Gargantuan proportions and writes a book called ‘Building A New Civilization’. He meant to title it Building A Newt Civilization– he looked in the mirror to see a Newt Future.
   Then he hears ‘Hail To The Chief’ playing in his ears, and thinks he can be elected president. Why not? If a supreme egotist such as Trump can be president, why not some other Gargantua?

   At any rate, next year will see a return of Occupy or something similar. Trump said he wont accept not being elected; even if he is bluffing, a bluff can get out of control.

9. Newt Gingrich is a horrific person.

10. I hope you are right, and that the mind armed with “rationality and wisdom, love, generosity, empathy the search for peace and is alert to its cognitive biases” will prevail.

11. Gingrich and Trump have a shared goal: to build monuments to themselves– though not necessarily physical monuments. Trump’s dynastic ambitions are monumental alone.

    Their goal is to be in some way immortal; via descendants; being remembered by the public; their recorded thoughts; and, yes, physical monuments as well. Monuments can be statues or buildings with a large names written in steel. Such as say,
    *Trump*. Or maybe, *Gingrich*.

    Gingrich can have a library named after him when he dies, containing his Papers. Or an office complex in DC could be named ‘Gingrich Plaza’. Paid for by taxpayers.

    These sort of people don’t care much what you say about them as long as you spell their names correctly. After all, when they are dead what does it matter? What matters to them is posterity. Surviving dynasties, buildings, papers, video archives, storage rooms filled with mementoes, biographies written about them, their gravestones.

12. they are both quintessential narcissists.

13. This is encouraging: “The way I see it is that the world will not collapse suddenly and die. The world will gradually get sicker and sicker over at least many decades. During this period, the folly of the mundane mind’s worldview will be seen for what it is. The efficacy of the super-mundane mind’s ways of thinking will be gradually appreciated and adopted by more and more people and the culture associated with it will spread more and more in communities, schools, universities, pressure groups and political parties. Positive remedial actions will arise everywhere and at all levels in the world and thus enabling the planet’s health to gradually improve until complete recovery”– Alhazen.

    The key is at the beginning,

    “… over many decades at least.”

    Watching the debates last night, could see the problem with progressives– they say they can telescope decades of progress into years. They themselves might not believe their own rhetoric; what they are doing is making their audience feel better.

14. Hi A. Brooks

    I did not understand what you wanted to say in your comment. Please clarify a bit more.

    Thank you

15. Alhazen presents a refreshingly optimistic view of the future, where “the super-mundane mind’s ways of thinking will be gradually appreciated and adopted by more and more people”. However, the mechanism by which this will happen is unclear unless humanity resets completely into small technologically unsophisticated groups as described by Mr. Crawford.

    The cultural transmission of information is now so rapid and chaotic due to the internet that good and truthful ideas are often lost in an ocean of digital garbage. If we do not reset as described by Mr. Crawford, then Alhazen’s “super-mundane” mind needs to use high technology to prevail over the forces of the “mundane mind”. The battleground of the future for the hearts and minds of humans will be between AIs created by the “mundane mind” and those created by the “super-mundane mind”. Perhaps that battle has already started.

16. Hope is a precious thing. I do think there is reason for hope, though hope should not be confused with optimism. There is reason for hope if 1) it is logically possible that we can still manage this crisis; and 2) it is empirically possible. We know that it is logically possible. We know that it is empirically possible to stop the worst. That said, the time is running on this, and we are seeing some damage from our human activity already — with increased extinctions, increasingly severe storms, displacements of human and animal groups and costs because of sea level rise, etc. In this situation there is a question of what we can hope for. Unfortunately, I think the only kind of justifiable hope is for a situation similar to that described by Alhazen. We may come through the crisis somehow more rational, more empathetic, wiser. Clearly, there is no guarantee that we will manage this well. We might simply enter a new age of barbarism, not enlarging our moral sentiments, not becoming more generous, not becoming wiser.

    In any case, for those with hope — or maybe for those without it — there is not much that can be done but the kinds of things that you suggest, John. We can — I’ll say paraphrasing, you — love our families, stay healthy, enjoy the beauty that surrounds us, and do what little we can… I would add to the list that we can and must vote, be civically engaged, and do what we can to create responsible communities. As you said, John, “that may not be much, but for now, it’s the best [we] can do.” If we are to achieve the kind of world that Alhazen imagines, it won’t come from nowhere. It will be based on the work we do now, developing our rationality and empathy, striving for peace, and learning to live within sensible environmental limits with respect for the natural world upon which we are dependent.

17. I hint at a similar transhuman solution in my forthcoming post. JGM

18. Darrell, thanks for this contribution. I too distinguish carefully between hope and optimism here. Perhaps we’ll become wiser after war and destruction like Germany did. But as you know I really think we need more high-tech solutions. I’ll mention that in my forthcoming post.

19. Thank you PL and Darrell for seeing what I mean and suggesting how the flow of positive change may take place. Here is more thought on this.

    The gradual damage to the environment will coax man to gradually adopt the super-mundane mind’s worldview and it will be whatever it takes to save our world from dying. But if you ask me where the greatest coaxing should be made, I would say it needs to happen in the United States first, because it is the most powerful country in terms of its ability to influence the rest of the world. The great change needs not to happen everywhere in the world which would be extremely difficult to bring about and manage. It really just needs to happen in the US with its enormous traction power and it needs to happen in the minds of the American citizens.

    Here is an allegorical story for inspiration;

    Rebuilding The World

    A father was trying to read the newspaper, but his little son kept pestering him. Finally, the father grew tired of this and, tearing a page from the newspaper – one that bore a map of the world – he cut it into several pieces and handed them to his son. ‘Right, now you’ve got something to do. I’ve given you a map of the world and I want to see if you can put it back together correctly.’ He resumed his reading, knowing that the task would keep the child occupied for the rest of the day. However, a quarter of an hour later, the boy returned with the map. ‘Has your mother been teaching you geography?’ asked his father in astonishment. ‘I don’t even know what that is,’ replied the boy. ‘But there was a photo of a man on the other side of the page, so I put the man back together and found I’d put the world back together too.’
    End of story from “Stories for Parents, Children and Grandchildren Vol1” by Paulo Coelho.

    The US voters need to find the man who belongs to a free and enlightened party which is not one of the major two who in essence represent consumerist interests groups and political pressure groups of dubious goals or in general represent whoever can exert enough financial influence to make the party lead the next government.

20. To me, the sooner humanity comes to an end, the better. But still, it would have been better had it ended long before I was born (I was born in 1999). I totally agree with Mr. Benatar: who, as a rational agent, would ever like to be born?

21. Here’s a statement by philosopher Bryan Magee taking just the opposite view of Benatar’s ultra pessimistic position:

    “If it could be revealed to me for certain that life is meaningless, and that my lot when I die will be timeless oblivion, and were then asked: ‘Knowing these things, would you, if given the choice, still choose to have been born?’, my answer would be ‘Yes!’ I have loved living. Even if the worst-case scenario is the true one, what I have had has been infinitely better than nothing. In spite of what has been wrong with my life, and in spite of what has been wrong with me, I am inexpressibly grateful to have lived. It is terrible and terrifying to have to die, but even the prospect of eternal annihilation is a price worth paying for being alive.”

    Perhaps the issue has less to do with fact than point of view. There is no solution to the problem of MOL–only how we cope with it.

22. Sylvia is exactly right and the quote she provides from Bryan Magee is very appropriate.

    On a sad note, Bryan Magee passed away recently (July 26) at the age of 89. Having read one of his books and a little bit about his accomplishments and passion for philosophy, I have no doubt that he lived a very meaningful life.

23. Thanks for this info Jim.

24. Alhazen: “Hi A. Brooks
    I did not understand what you wanted to say in your comment. Please clarify a bit more.”

    Progressives rightly want to usher in the necessary changes in order to save the biosphere– or at least a great part of the biosphere. Unfortunately, the majority of people as you write live for short term self-interested gain and dynastic ambitions. The Mundane mind. Russia attempted to go from the 12th century to the 20th, with bad results. Progressives want universal health care however it has succeeds only in civilized nations.
    So far, progressives (genuine progressives) have been frustrated by self-interested short term gain and dynastic ambition and now we reap the poisonous fruit in Putin, Trump, et al. Thus as you write, the changes necessarily merely for survival have to be instituted over the course of decades– that is to say, this entire century– and not merely years.

25. To Alberto

    I have responded to Benatar’s philosophy at this previous post https://reasonandmeaning.com/2018/11/14/summary-of-david-benatars-the-human-predicament/

    I want to add the following to the above response;

    I remember death several times during the day. Not in a morbid sad way, but just as a fact of life so that conceit will not creep in unnoticed. It also makes me less attached to things; attached just enough for living practically but really free deep down. You will not bow to anyone for anything. I learnt this practice from my religious upbringing, but you don’t need a religion to practice it.

    Sometimes I reflect; my childhood had died, my boyhood had died, my youth had died, my middle age had died, and my old age shall also die. Many people I knew, some of whom were very dear to me had died and more are continually dying. Phenomena are dying all the time.

    You see, there was no single entity called childhood or boyhood or youth or whatever. There is really nothing that dies there. There are just phenomena that arise and pass away. There is nothing there to hold to as you. Everything is slipping away in a beautiful seamless flow.

    Please don’t be caught in the way language is used to explain what I mean and think there is an ‘I’ which uses language to explain an idea. However, there is the action of using language and the awareness of the action but no actor or an observer of the act.

    Here is an allegorical story. It is called “The Subjugation of a Ghost”;

    A young wife fell sick and was about to die. ‘I love you so much,’ she told her husband, ‘I do not want to leave you. Do not go from me to any other woman. If you do, I will return as a ghost and cause you endless trouble.’

    Soon the wife passed away. The husband respected her last wish for the first three months but then he met another woman and fell in love with her. They became engaged to be married.

    Immediately after the engagement a ghost appeared every night to the man blaming him for not keeping his promise. The ghost was clever too. She told him exactly what had transpired between himself and his new sweetheart. Whenever he gave his fiancée a present the ghost would describe it in detail. She would even repeat conversations, and it so annoyed the man that he could not sleep. Someone advised him to take his problem to a Zen master who lived close to the village.

    At length, in despair, the poor man went to the Zen master for help. ‘Your former wife became a ghost and knows everything you do,’ commented the master. ‘Whatever you do or say, whatever you give your beloved she knows. She must be a very wise ghost. Really you should admire such a ghost. The next time she appears, bargain with her. Tell her she knows so much you can hide nothing from her, and that if she will answer you one question, you promise to break your engagement and remain single.’

    ‘What is the question I must ask her?’ inquired the man.

    The master replied: Take a large handful of soybeans and ask her exactly how many beans you hold in your hand. If she cannot tell you, you will know she is only figment of your imagination and will trouble you no longer.’

    The next night, when the ghost appeared the man flattered her and told her that she knew everything. ‘Indeed,’ replied the ghost, ‘and I know you went to see that Zen master today.’

    ‘And since you know so much,’ demanded the man, ‘tell me how many beans I hold in this hand?’

    There was no longer any ghost to answer the question.

    End of story. From the book, “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones” – Compiled by Paul Reps.

    Next time you meet the ‘I’ or ‘me’ ghost in an angst session of seeing the pointlessness of life because you will die and be nothing for eternity ask this ‘I’; where are you located I? And if you are lucky it will just disappear because when you look for it you will not find it anywhere. But, unlike the ghost in the story, it will not disappear for ever because your habitual pattern of thinking, the way language is structured and the people with whom you interact daily continue to force it back on you. You need vigilance and sustained mindfulness practice to gradually cast it away.

    You will not find the ‘I’ anywhere. It is just a concept that is useful sometimes but completely false if carried beyond its sphere of application. It is useful for communication and cooperation in a society, but completely wrong to think that there is a separate entity other than the compounded system of body and mind. Its existence is only a convention that is useful for social interaction.

    It is like money. If it was not conventionally agreed that it can buy goods and services, it will not have any more value other than the paper it is. You will not find the value and purchasing power it represents anywhere in the paper. You probably read and saw on video what happened to the German Mark and the Italian Lira as they began to lose in the Second World War.

    Take another example from physics. The concept of the centre of mass of a body in physics. It is assumed that all the mass of a body, no matter what shape it has, is concentrated at a point somewhere in the body. It is a useful concept for studying the linear motion of that body. But if you use this concept to study some complicated rotational motion of the body your answers will come out wrong. In the same way, the concept of ‘I’ is useful for referring to the body and mind for social interactions, but wrong for searching for the meaning of life because, to start with, there is really no ‘I’ for it to have a meaning! And you will not die in the way you think because you were never born in fact! All there are, are just sensations and the knowing of sensations (no one is sensing and no knower), thinking and the knowing of thinking (no one is thinking and no knower), feeling and the knowing of feeling (no one is feeling and no knower).

    Here is another example. In economics it is useful to think of a population as being made of individuals who are just consumers and providers of goods and services. But this concept is wrong to use when you want to understand people’s psycho-social interactions.

    Now back to David Benatar. Despite his extremely pessimistic outlook on life he has not committed suicide and is still active in the literary sphere trying to convince people to be depressed and to opt out of life. Yet, at the same time, it appears that he has managed to find some sort of redemption and continuity for his ego by identifying with his Jewish descent which he sustains perhaps by adhering to some sort of tradition. This is amazing in the light of the fact that he is rejecting his lineage to life.

26. “it will not have any more value other than the paper it is.”

    Today money is not paper, not even precious metals– it is more/less electronic. Agreed with what you write above; what ‘I’ wrote penultimately was an explanation of what goes on in the US. (One can only know one’s own nation– ‘the World’ is an abstraction.)

    To keep it brief: first we need some semblance of civilization; afterwards we go to super-mundane mindfulness. We still live in a state of controlled barbarity::
    the horse of civilization comes before the cart of progress. That’s all for now.

27. To Alan Brooks

    You say; “We still live in a state of controlled barbarity”.

    On average, 22 veterans commit suicide every day in the US according to 2000-2010 statistics. These are people who have been suffering moral injuries after active service, especially in the Iraqi war. What does this indicate? In my view, it indicates that American culture is very strongly founded on morality. But, in a so-called democratic country, where the desire and culture of the majority should rule, this strong moral foundation is not manifested by the different governments that have been ruling the people. This means that some other powerful bodies or organizations must have hijacked your democracy to serve other purposes.

    This reminds me of a parasite with the name Toxoplasma gondii which reproduces inside the intestine of a cat, which sheds the parasite in its feces. Rats then ingest the parasite when they consume food or water contaminated with cat feces. The parasite takes up residence in the rat’s brain which makes it lose its natural response to cat urine and no longer fears the smell. The parasite settles in the rat’s amygdala, the part of the brain that processes fear and emotions and when male rats infected with Toxoplasma smell cat urine, they have altered activity in the fear part of the brain as well as increased activity in the part of the brain that is responsible for sexual behavior and normally activates after exposure to a female rat. The double messages of “you smell a cat but he’s not dangerous” and “that cat is a potential mate” lure the rat into the kitty’s deadly territory for it to be eaten which is just what the parasite needs to reproduce.

    What ‘parasites’ have infected the US decision making ‘brain’ and is making it see dangers and opportunities where there are none?

    For more peace and justice in the world, as people of America, the most powerful country in the world, it is incumbent upon you to find the parasites which have infected your democracy and are using American power and wealth for serving their own selfish purposes that are contrary to your moral foundation upon which the country was declared free and just.

28. so you can see the flaws not in progressivism but, rather, in the timeframes envisaged thereof.
    A broad to say the least subject here; yet by having a discrete illustration, it can be comprehended. Just say next year Bernie or Elizabeth Warren or some other sincere progressive is elected president; the simple, obvious, sad question is:
    what can they do with such a violent country?

    Our technologies are 21st century; our lives are Stone Age with a veneer of civilization. What good is anti-racism if the Stone Age dominates our lives? When men dominate women like apes in the jungle, what good is feminism? An open question. Nothing against progressivism save for the bagel-on-Saturn factor:
    what comes afterwards, What Next?

    Personally, do not mind at all if progressives take over the US. Then what? What about China, Russia– many other nations? What are we going to do about Mexico? Encourage regime change there and in all of Latin America? Probably not.
    Frankly, don’t even want to think about Russia, China, and the rest of the world. Nations armed to the teeth, babbling-on about truth, justice, oppression.

    While everyone in reality seeks power. Will vote straight progressive next year and for the rest of my life– but if evolution were quicker, would not have to.

29. As to where things are headed and and causal forces….I’ve been a long time admirer of Nikos Kazantzakis. Recently I had occasion to read your fine treatise on his Saviours of God, which I believe is one of the greatest works of literature. In your comments thereon you made a passing reference to an analogy re process thought. I would opine it would be quite edifying to see your thoughts on elaboration of the commonality, especially If you weave in some of Philip Clayton’s contemporary perspective. Forgive my boldness, but I am getting along in years and explications such as yours are music to my mind’s earm

30. I appreciate your kind words Bill. However, I don’t know Clayton’s work and not sure what you mean by “elaboration of the commonality.” Thanks again. JGM

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