Civilizations come and go. History recorded the rise and fall of dozens of peoples and their societies, among others Ancient Egypt, Old Greece, the Roman Empire, and more recently, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. So, we, at the height, have to wonder: Is the modern world immune to collapse? The possibility that it might not be spells worry. In his book The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), among dozens of examples, professor Joseph Tainter describes the decline of a Mesoamerican civilization centered around the city of Teotihuacan:
“The city leaders had the ability to mobilize labor at an unprecedented level. For 600 years or more, 85 to 90 percent of the population of the eastern and northern Valley of Mexico lived in or near the city. About 700 A.D. Teotihuacan abruptly collapsed. The population dropped within 50 years to no more than a fourth of its peak level. A period of political fragmentation followed.”1
This sounds eerily similar to modern times. Today, globalization mobilizes a historically unprecedented level of labor. In developed nations, over 50 to 70% of their populations now live in cities. As hundreds of millions of people struggle each day to find housing in densely crowded cities, futurist dreams of space colonization signal a desperate need to expand mankind’s living space. But if we fail to accommodate this fast-growing world population — whether on Mars or at the bottom of the ocean — I predict nothing will stand in the way of bursting the human bubble.
“We, at the height, are ready to decline.” — Shakespeare
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