Dark Age Two

The peaks and valleys attributed to the averaged ‘quality’ of a civilization or society can be difficult to define. Though some factors assess the ebb and flow of overarching concerns (e.g. health, happiness, and socioeconomic security), gauging those factors as “worse or better” relies on the weight given to any underlying data.

While examining complex, dynamic, interrelated fields to predict various longitudinal outcomes, the use of the word “dark” should be an invitation to skepticism. To characterize questions about the next “age” as “dark” is to exercise contempt prior to investigation as connotations held by the word “dark” create bias. This could fuel the kinds of contagious uncertainty and unfounded speculation that suggest humanity’s future will be “worse” than its present. A better question: What will the quality of societies and civilization be in the near and distant futures? The question seems more vague at first glance and is.

Choosing which underlying factors to examine can seem subjective – different scales and studies produce different results due to different measures and weights. If one study chose to include economic growth and self-reported happiness while excluding health and longevity, conclusions will differ wildly from a study that minimizes economics and maximizes the importance of health. A declaration made by a group of critics regarding a golden age in entertainment does not free a society from the scourges of disease. Access to pristine sources of food and water cannot surmount the presence of paralytic economic crises or alleviate poverty. Having access to free healthcare, longevity treatments, and weight loss drugs does not supersede the presence of wide scale wars or an environmental crisis.

Using Robert Pirsig’s metric of an innate presence of “Quality” might be a better option. The pitfalls of subjectivity that plague social psychology must similarly be accepted in futurology.  The rapidly scaling evolution of technology, acting in concert with the sum total impact of all other variables (e.g. climate, economics, education, policy, resources, health) will contribute to overall quality humanity’s future. From such a comprehensive perspective, correlations and trends are indeed a difficult set of working tools.

Noam Chomsky’s “Requiem for the American Dream” also provides perspective as to how the overall quality of a society can be interpreted. Many of the included theories are significant and can readily be superimposed upon other societies and scenarios.

Nearly any rational assessment of the present state of humanity will conclude there is much work that can be done despite the vast progresses made globally in just the last twenty or thirty years. Improving lives and alleviating suffering meet at the crux of many human concerns. Paradigm shifts and a new appropriation of resources are linked to favorable outcomes, globalization carries the interconnection which stabilizes international relations towards peace through the benefits rendered by each international state through this form of cooperation. In terms of globes, however, the element of the Earth itself must first be considered as a baseline upon which all known life continues to live.

Gaia

Historical Climates in Context

An opinionated blog by Matt Samberg helps to interface the interrelationships between the biosphere and civilizations. Samberg writes about the underpinnings of shifting climates in terms of the fall of the Roman Empire and extends the discussion through the Middle Ages into modernity. Economics and political theories that can be used as lenses, though the prescient light of climate change is the star the article called The Coming Dark Age.

The Middle Ages of Europe are thought to have featured a warming period of weather from the turn of the first millennium to roughly 1250. This fact is sometimes disputed, as historical records of weather were not common. Most historical weather data from this period is inferred from sources like archeological evidence or written communications. Historical climate conditions are reconstructed and simulated from those sources. Independent of Middle Age Europe’s actual weather conditions, surpluses of food are known to have been abundant. The Little Ice Age, a cooling period that is thought to have affected North America and Europe from roughly 1300 to the 1850s, has also been linked to societal shifts which incrementally and cumulatively acted as influences upon those cultures or those centuries. This may seem difficult to reconcile, yet imagine huge planetary regions producing slightly less food or having slightly more snow over centuries. Even small percentage shifts in core variables over centuries act like interest on an account – amplified when compounded over time. Small variations seem innocuous, large variations compounding quickly are more palpable to a human lifetime.

Present Climates in Context

Interesting parallels to the present are the current glaring shifts in global climates. Arguing that humanity has or has not altered the biosphere is as irrelevant as it is obvious to anyone who can operate simple equipment and perform basic maths. Arguing that technology or the irresponsible use of technology has affected the biosphere could be used to portray the character of humanity itself. This does not determine the future behaviors of humans nor predict future weather conditions accurately, yet can indicate trends that might fuel biases. Accepting that global climates are behaving in new ways is the essential takeaway of a concern to factor into any given future.

The Biosphere

An article from the World Wildlife Foundation regarding The Sixth Extinction helps to summarize a Pulitzer Prize winning book The Sixth Extinction. The book evidences its contents well: the biosphere is fundamentally changing. Massive changes within societies will certainly result from this factor alone. Systems formed over hundreds of millions of years with quadrillions of organic, meteorological, biological, chemical, and geologic components to factor in over epochs, are having their strings snipped as if they have angered the fates. As biomes are snuffed, maintaining human food supply and deliberate terraforming will become essential as life-support systems for those organisms selected by humankind to be, in one way or another, conserved. Adapting to these changes will become a major industry. Regulating waste-producing industries properly will act to prevent the same mistake being made twice, as a lack of regulation of human activities is the root cause. In bright utopian dreams, fully cyclical manufacturing eliminates all wastes and hopes to alleviate a fraction of the damage done. This is the bad news for future generations to remedy and remark of their barbaric ancestors who polluted their own house due the cost effectiveness.

The Bedrock

The declaration of the The Anthropocene age is seminal. There is some debate regarding the demarcations of Anthropocene vs. Holocene, yet these seem to hinge on which components of the geologic record are given the most gravity. Many geologists can be heard decrying the use of the term’s popularization, mostly due to their field’s unique nomenclature, yet even if the new era or new epoch is misattributed through the schemas used for defining the phenomenon by all related fields, they seem in agreement that several new synthetic coatings cover Earth. Humankind’s splitting of the atom (atomic bombs, the Chernobyl disaster), the presence of persisting environmental toxins (PETs or various acronyms which denote the concept of “toxic forever chemicals”), and a microscopic film of microplastics are the talking points of the geologic record’s thin yet permanent and global additions. New Minerals are being uncovered that consists partially of plastics. Plastic Rain is readily found due to microplastics passively invading the hydrologic cycle. News of such minerals, plastic in the geologic record, and plastic hydrologic systems are easily found and validated.

Plastic vocat ad conscientiam

The invisible concern of plastics in our blood is one of uncountable scholarly articles which raise an alarm regarding one very specific form of pollution. Some plastics are implicated with precocious puberty in girls (Bisphenol A – BPA), rising rates of cancer in younger generations, and may serve to impact global health in a cascading manner. Anecdotally, I suspect such pollutions drive the silent epidemic of skyrocketing rates of autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disorders. Pollution is the one variable that has become ubiquitous. Such pollutions were largely absent in Europes dark age. Lead pipes, tainted water supplies, lack of germ theory or modern hygiene and modern medicine, these are terrible factors endured yet are not really comparable to pollution and microplastics aside from also being bad for health. Severely (or permanently) polluted oceans and soils denote that food resources gathered therefrom can act as vectors to introduce plastics into the food chain. It follows that if the food chain itself is corrupted, even apex predators like humans will have trouble coping with a food chain that consists of the weakened links of poisoned foods and water. This phenomenon is not limited to plastics. Dioxins are a popular reference in the broader discussion, illustrating the persisting organic pollutants (POPs) that cannot feasibly be removed from the natural settings that they contaminate.

An example of how this is not a localized phenomenon helps. In Vietnam, water from rain dissolves and carries POPs out of the soil. These streams of runoff eventually reach rivers, spreading deeper into the coastal watersheds. Some of this water is collected in artificial reservoirs or diverted portions of rivers to commercially farm fish. These fish are often banned from being exported to foreign nations; the fish raised in these polluted waters are viewed as a threat to the health of their countrymen. There is an unfortunate workaround for some of these fish farms, valuing their bottom line over the health of others. The contaminated fish, deemed a health threat, are harvested and ground into fishmeal. Since there are fewer health regulations involving in the manufacture of fishmeal, or less oversight and more corruption, the contaminated byproduct can be sold to fish farms overseas to be fed to still other fish. Those fish, despite having been fed POPs via contaminated fishmeal, eventually make their way to dinner plates, globally. Even transparent operations can always break bad to cash incentives, fudge truths or omit to promote total sales. Without deep investigative journalism and constant check ins, its impossible to know the which fish is which. This is a single example of an unknowable number of such vectors that contaminate the food supply – and why I avoid farm-raised fish.

The Food

If you’re new to exactly why cold water deep ocean fish are promoted as the healthiest, it isn’t merely because they might feature an optimal omega-3 ratio or a melt in your mouth with delicate flakey textures when prepared properly. These fish are the healthiest because at those depths and temperatures, the wild-caught fish encounter, absorb, and carry the least amount of oceanic pollutants of any relevant kind into your stomach when eaten.

The convenience and destructive nature of shelf-stable foods, in the center of it all, filled with preservatives, synthetic chemicals, known carcinogens, teratogens, and numerous other alarming ingredients are a second example of the war of attrition that humanity’s food supply is waging upon its inventor. Most major causes of death can be linked to the food supply – cancer, heart disease, diabtetes, dementias…reading the top ten list in light of this is eye-opening. Even sepsis, the often overlooked top-ten-list cause of human death, can feature a component of malnutrition which contributes to the condition. If we are what we eat, contamination and high-calorie pseud-food comprises much of humanity’s soup du jour.

The Gates Foundation has programs which focus on food, the foundation being a major philanthropic force. Global Growth and Opportunity – Nutrition spells out some the needs and plans of attack that can solve many issues regarding food supplies and food insecurity. Access to healthful foods is an element of any pyramid or hierarchy of needs.

Genetically modified food, hybrids, synthetic species, invasive species, shifts in weather patterns, shifts in arable land, are each notable factors are to be considered in terms of the food supply. Proper delegation of resources could easily solve food insecurity, managing and improving the global environment in the process. We must remember that prepackaged foods were engineered to seem palatable and provide a huge bang for the buck in terms of life-sustaining calories. It is possible, however, to optimize the manufacturing process and shift their ingredients towards sustainable, healthy, whole, and otherwise real forms. Highly-processed food has an analog in shelf-stable real food. Bright utopias feature manufacturing processes which produce no true wastes, are cyclical, environmentally neutral, and currently possible with humanity’s present quiver of technology. Again, this is far less cost effective, hence the current plight.

The Water

Considering the entirety of the Earth’s hydrologic cycle is affected, the consideration of clean water is important. A precursor to theorized widespread conflicts have formed over the subject of accessing and controlling supplies of clean fresh water. Fighting over fresh water, the source of life, is valuable for perspective. Water Wars may be a sensational title, yet these are a fear, concern, and projected task that many professionals accept as a vital caveat to our present and future realities. Controversy falls upon international conglomerates, MNCs harvest and sell bottled water. This is an early seed of the phenomenon that is feared, or perhaps present to some degree, and has a different undertone.

Nestle is often in the center of that news and public outcry, though Mashable is not an ideal source of information, this is the kind of information that is consumed by internet users en masse. The wide distribution of such news also illustrates how the journalists provide an opinion for audience to consume and adopt. While Nestle is blamed for taking advantage of poor regions to steal water without royalties, The United Nations counters that depressing yet deceptive headline. The UN has many sustainable development goals, the sixth being to ensure access to water and sanitation for all. The Gates Foundation is known to have sponsored a competition for a mobile toilet that produces clean water and fertilizer instead of sewage.

If “water wars” seem like a dark dream speeding out of Hollywood, international conflict regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Damn grows possible as tensions heighten in the late summer of the northern hemisphere in 2024. Saudi Arabia spends a huge portion of it’s energy – and thus a huge chunk of its GDP – on desalination facilities to provide drinking water. Without these facilities and without clean water, or better still, without the massive energy reserves, Saudi Arabia would be a very different place. Since they will eventually run out of fossil fuel reserves, their government invests heavily to capitalize profits into sustainable sources of energy so as to support domestic desalination plants at that the future of their nation will depend upon. Australia has a similar plight, though due to droughts of changing weather patterns and a predicted deficit in the fresh water required by the population. Vast solar fields are likely in either scenario until the harvesting of renewables matures as a practice and industry.

Upon The Stage

The social determinants of mental health are a vital perspective to include. This line of thought can be extended to include the physical health of individuals and communities. Healthy and food secure populations are more likely to become and remain affluent. Intelligent, rational, and happy populations consist of individuals who embody a surplus of such traits. Affluent societies are more literate, educated, feature complex economies, infrastructures, systems of modern hygiene and healthcare, etc… Access to something so essential to survival  – clean water – is taken for granted. The shelter provided by a stable and caring community is an additional kind of contributing factor to consider, as is the presence of peace.

In systems so complex, it is difficult to wager predictions. What can be remarked upon is the setting in which we live. There appear to be drastic shifts in weather patterns on the horizon of time. The environment itself is contaminated, meaning humanity itself is subject to ingesting contaminated food and water. There are drastic social shifts at play as well.  Alone Together helps to provide some context, though cannot stand as a point to speculate about the character of societies of the future. It seems that disconnection could be a common thread worth following.

Processing Direction

I had initially thought I’d only need to gloss over climate change and shifting weather patterns. Instead, I decided that “undefining” the age or ages of the future would clarifying a path of inquiry while asking the question – “What might human civilization look like in the distant future of 50-500 years.”

After categorically removing the de facto ‘flavor text’ of the word “dark” from the last “dark age,” asking what the next ‘age’ of humanity then reveals a clearer question. Dystopias and Utopias are just qualifiers for good vs. bad, so including that ‘logic’ about how these judgements are loaded or biased are necessary for understanding but are not useful to retain. The goal shifts away from judgement or connotation and toward a form an evidence-based foundations from which the reader can independently induce some trajectories of civilization and thus of humanity.

The history of climate warming/change over the Middle Ages and The Little Ice Age also act as reminder for using a bottom-up approach: at the base, there is the Earth, the biosphere, and the water that instills through it the phenomenon of life, aptly enough. If water and biosphere are contaminated and fundamentally changed, all else is affected. This is an important framework to include and is the perfect place from which to build – so to speak.