109
29 August 2021: In the previous installment of Advancing Humanity, we discussed how complications within our understanding of reality have led to the continuous rise & fall of civilizations under anthropocentric, centralized governing bodies, and why decentralization was a key step in breaking free of this repeating pattern. In this week's paper, we will define anthropocentrism, collapse, & ecological overshoot. Using these terms, this paper will then demonstrate how they all correlate with the observable cyclical lifespan of civilizations.
Support our content through CoinTr.ee
Terms & Definitions
To introduce this week's paper, first a few terms need to be defined and explained. Common misconceptions about the vocabulary used in research such as this paper can lead to misunderstandings about the studies themselves. The three terms that will be used in correspondence with this paper are anthropocentrism, collapse, & ecological overshoot. For the purposes of these papers, the definitions and explanations offered below will set up the fundamental basis of the underlying research.
Anthropocentrism - philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world (1)
An extremely common philosophical notion found mostly within western cultures & ideologies, anthropocentrism classifies human beings as superior or above the natural world. This philosophy holds the fundamental belief that human life is the only existing thing in the universe with intrinsic value. All other entities in the universe, including that of plants, animals, resources, and so on, do not share this intrinsic value and can be freely exploited by humanity for the sole benefit of humanity.
Collapse - a process of systemic failures and/or a build up of simultaneous stresses resulting in an abrupt contraction or breakdown (2)
A common misconception, collapse is a process that begins more subtly and eventually leads to a point of failure in which a breakdown or contraction is abrupt and sudden. In light of civilizations and societies, collapses happen over time, generally from a multitude of factors that, when combined together, put stresses on the civilization in which it cannot cope effectively. This leads to a sloping decline eventually ending in an accelerating, abrupt breakdown.
Ecological Overshoot - a crossing over of the carrying capacity of one's environment resulting in a contraction in the overall capacity due to an unsustainable diminishment of vital resources (3,4)
Overshoot occurs when a population's demands grow beyond the carrying capacity in which the population is located. As the needs of this population exceed carrying capacity, resources are diminished faster than they can be replaced. This results in a contraction of the carrying capacity itself. Once this contraction occurs, the population is left with diminishing resources, generally resulting in the contraction or collapse of said population.
The Cyclical Nature of Civilizations
Through an understanding of the terms above, a deeper inquiry can be made into the past civilizations of human history. With centralization and anthropocentrism at the core of human civilizations, this has generally been followed by a disconnection between humanity and nature, resulting in negligible management of the resources in which that civilization relies upon and a dismissal of high impact low probability events over time.
To begin, we will start with history of the Anthropocene, the period of geological time in which we live today (i.e. the Common Era/AD), and the Holocene, the period of geological time beginning with the Holocene glacial retreat in 10,000 BCE. The combination of these two different periods include all of modern, written human history (of which we know about to date). During this period, there have been dozens of examples of civilization collapse. Consider the graphic below, per University of Cambridge's Luke Kemp (reported by BBC Future) (5,6,7,8):
Based on the mapping of dozens of past civilizations, including the likes of the Egyptians, Carthage, Greeks, Romans, and so on, the average lifespan of a human civilization is only 336 years. The turnover of human civilization is rapid in terms of geological time scales. The continuous rise and fall of civilizations is a constant within written human history. While the underlying factors of the collapse of each of these civilizations differ from each, the premise of centralization and disconnect remains a constant that is still echoed in today's modern society, as was covered in Paper 1.
Now consider today's civilization. While the precise beginnings of globalization remains a subject of debate, this paper will utilize the introduction & implementation of the Gold Standard in the 1800s as the beginning of the current modern, global civilization (9). This puts the age of our current civilization at just over 200 years. In that time, we have seen the rapid rise of industrialization, the explosion of the global human population, and a rapid deterioration of the Earth's natural resources. Evidence of the collapse of our current civilization is overwhelmingly evident. When considering this, human society begins to mirror that of a sine function on large time scales:
Over time, when accounting for the overall progress of humanity since the dawn of modern agricultural civilization at Gobekli Tepe, the same pattern can be applied to the whole of written human history. Hundreds of civilizations rising & falling plant the seeds of progress to continue up the growth ladder, leading to globalization. If this progression is done so based on unsustainable or false beliefs, eventually the whole of humanity would pass the carrying capacity of the planet, leading to irreversible collapse, just as we are faced with today. Thus, the sine function of human progress cannot be broken without a change in our perception and beliefs.
This cyclical pattern of humanity can be based on novel research about the Younger Dryas period, new inquiries into the true age of archeological sites such as the Great Pyramid & Sphinx, and an acknowledgement of past human legends of which have been documented through scholars over the course of history. While specifics are out of scope for the purposes of this paper, an introduction into this theory is given in the next sub-section.
The Younger Dryas & Large Scale Cyclical Lifespans of Humanity
Based on a vast collection of novel research, curtesy of hundreds of researchers, scientists, and scholars, there is unequivocal evidence that the planet was struck by numerous cosmic objects during the Younger Dryas period, resulting in the catastrophic extinction of megafauna (including that of wooly mammoths and other species), the rapid melting of glaciers resulting in sea level rise of over 400 feet, and evidence of a major human population crash (10,11,12,13,14).
While the subject is far too complicated for the purposes of this paper, the development of this theory is of the utmost importance for assisting in the correction humanity's understanding of the past and provides the evidence for the importance of acknowledging low probability, high impact events and their roles in shaping human history.
To offer a brief summary, during the Younger Dryas it is understood that the Earth was struck by multiple comet impacts along the North American and European ice sheets, leading to a rapid warming of the planet and the sudden melting of those very same ice sheets, causing a catastrophic flood.
Though still controversial in modern archeology, without a proper theory detailing the construction of monuments like the Great Pyramid, combined with the historical clues left with human legends of past "biblical floods" and the destruction of a previous civilization (consider the story of Atlantis being destroyed during this same specified time period per Plato), the development of such a theory and the scientific evidence directly supporting such a flood leads us to the conclusion that these impacts that occurred during the Younger Dryas wiped out a previous civilization of which we have no modern knowledge of.
The comets are thought to have originated from the Taurid Meteor Stream, a stream of meteors, comets, and other objects that the Earth passes through twice a year. The most recent object to have come in direct contact with the Earth from this stream is known as the Tunguska Event. A little over 100 years ago, an object exploded in the atmosphere over Siberia and instantly wiped out 80 million trees. Had this object exploded over a human population at the time, it would have resulted in the instant evisceration of hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives, subsequently changing the course of human history forever (15). This is an example of low probability, high impact events that, over time, become certainties of which humanity has no plan of action for due to our anthropocentric view of the world.
The Implications of Cyclical Humanity
Essentially the takeaway here is that over periods of time, humanity progresses and regresses. This is evident on shorter time scales with the civilizations graphed above (per BBC Future), and it is also evident from the Younger Dryas theory on larger time scales. Currently, as a global society faced with collapse, we are at the edge of yet another major regression - similar to that of the Younger Dryas. Through an understanding of the variables that coincide with this continuous pattern, humanity can lessen the regression to ensure the knowledge and progress obtained over the past 12,000 years is not lost.
Using the terms defined above, we can now address symptoms of our previously outlined disconnected, centralized worldview from the first paper in an attempt to provide a baseline for mitigating this regression. One of these symptoms is the dominance of anthropocentrism. Holding the belief that humanity is seemingly above that of the rest of the natural world leads directly to socioeconomic systems seen today (most notably western capitalism). The evidence against this belief is abundant and all around us in the form of abrupt global climate change and evidence of comet impacts that wiped out the Clovis culture (and potentially a highly advanced civilization per Plato & Solon) during the Younger Dryas.
Since the industrial revolution, the human population has exploded to nearly 8 billion people as of 2021. Our modern civilization is rapidly burning through available ecological resources and is now faced with a significantly warming planet, sea level rise, biodiversity collapse & mass extinction, worsening climatic variability, and coming agriculture collapse (16,17).
Per multiple studies, our current civilization had already crossed the carrying capacity of the biosphere back in the 1980s due to the rapid expansion of consumerism and exploitation of natural resources (18,19). With the onset of abrupt climate change and mass extinction already being observed today, it can be understood that we are on the declining side of the following graphic, similar to the process of collapse in civilizations:
In other words, thousands of years of progress can lead to a mere few decades of abrupt collapse due to the fundamentals of human ideology being based on a false understanding of humanity's anthropocentric view of the world. This means that because of the threat we currently face, our current civilization (meaning population, productive capabilities, culture, research, knowledge, and so on) will all enter a period of accelerating decline & loss. Most notably, the digitization of the vast majority of current knowledge puts humanity at imminent risk of losing hundreds upon hundreds of years of progress.
A successful mitigation in the loss of knowledge and protection of history would help us avoid a Younger Dryas level regression or even a worst case scenario of human extinction (should warming be allowed to continue untampered). While we cannot stop the collapse of our current globalized civilization, we can mitigate the losses, establish a new transformational civilization in its place, and help the generations of human beings that come after us learn from the mistakes made over the last several thousand years, helping to avoid this becoming a continuing cyclical process.
While a switch towards decentralization and a connected worldview may reverse the trend of continuous civilization collapse, the goal of each civilization should be to best prepare the one that comes after it to always ensure longevity. In doing so, the lifespans of each civilization should increase over time regardless of whether decentralization works, helping to establish a progression of humanity that accounts for the obvious connections to each other & the Earth, black swan events such as cosmic impacts, and an understanding of the ecological limitations of our planet to ensure growth is done so in a way that is sustainable.
Now that we understand the existing similarities between civilization collapses, the cyclical nature of human history, and the current process of collapse our current civilization faces due to abrupt global climate change, the question now moves to what we can do to mitigate the regression of our current society.
In the next few papers, the workings of a new societal theory will be introduced that will assist humanity in preparing for this exact mitigation.
If you enjoyed this paper, check out our other content, send a tip/donation, and follow our social media through CoinTr.ee! Be sure to follow this page to be notified of our weekly postings.
For collaborations, questions, or inquiries please DM the author on Twitter using the link below:
Support our content through CoinTr.ee
