Jared Diamond's Why do societies collapse? Made me realize how fucked we are , there is truly no hope , we crossed the Rubicon miles ago ! Infinite growth in a finite world is just nuts !
Before nanotechnology, there is already negative consequences from early-stage biotechnology in agriculture, medicine, and environment, which we can witness now. Could it be that technocrats and politicians, under the influence of dark money, need to be addressed as sources of demise when we contemplate self-terminating factors?
@Danny Carvajal You might look into this not so new invention called a bookshelf. It was invented not long after the printing press. If you are going to continue with your current literature storage method I suggest you don't purchase War and Peace....
Do you know that less than 1% of people read and educate themselves throughout their life. Just reading 20 min a day for a few years will level you above the average person. By doing this, you expose yourself to concepts and ideas you wouldn't hear or think in a whole lifetime. It's really easy to be a genius in the age of ignorance. And I'm not talking about news or articles, which have their own place, but rather serious books that you barely understand. Because that is the point where your mind is trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. That is how reading increases intelligence. Not just by acquiring facts or dates or regurgitation of concepts. This is an actual "secret" that few know. It is the MAGIC pill. Of course it's limited to your mental genetic capacity. The other secret how to easily have people like you. Which is perhaps the foremost goal on everyones mind, subconsciously. The way to achieve that is in situations you were your wrong or incorrect, all you have to do is say you were wrong and they were right. And if in a verbal argument, confirm the person in their opinion, by say that they are right. And you understand or are sorry. Use these 2 rules and your life will be like sweet butter. You are welcome and a desired guest everywhere you go and everyone you meet is eager to claim you as a friend. These are actually life secrets. Hope you use them as it's a big difference between simply knowing and understanding.
@@saversaan777 I literally have this happen all the time, the say I am smart and am an endless well of knowledge. My answer is always no I am by no means smarter than the average person, I just have better retention with the things I read and study. I try to tell others that if they read as much as I do and study things for the fun of it they would also appear to be "smart". I am not smarter, I just take an interest in things around me that others don't.
Latest archeological studies indicate those islanders were trapped on an island that suffered a sudden climate change that made escape from the island impossible. It was not their mismanagement of resources, it was the removal of resources. If they had had a Crystal ball, had used their trees to create new boats i.e. invested heavily in their technology, they could have avoided devolving into cannibals.
My microbiology professor once said - Earth is like a petri dish with limited nutrients & space for bacteria to grow in. When the dish is half-filled, it still looks like there is room to grow. However, it only takes just one doubling of the bacteria population to fill the entire dish. And the population then quickly dies due to lack of nutrients and space." Think of it, just one doubling!
A bigger reason for self termination is societies that dont want to change. Its all fine and good that you identify the risks to ST, but if a society doesn't want to change to minimize those risks (IE it might require redistribution of wealth, but perhaps not) then it wont matter. If society is hamstrung by inaction and inability to act (IE government is made up of constantly fighting factions), were fucked.
If you’re really interested in the origins of civilization I suggest you research Gobeklie tepe in Turkey..they buried their monuments after the last ice age... the question is..what civilizations preceded the the ice age 20,000 years ago..you wanna go deep..let’s go deep!
I believe the theory is that people were still mostly hunting and gathering during this time. We just had ritual sites where we would brew psychedelic alcoholic drinks(we figured out fermentation before crops). These rituals and drink stuck around till the Roman Empire put a stop to them in Greece where everyone among the Mediterranean would go to participate.
The pursuit of a Utopia is often the cause of the worst brutality. Expect to be solving problems for the life of the system and remember nothing lasts forever.
The BIG problem is our arrogance in spite of our obvious ignorance to the nature of the grand scheme of life. In other words, we never see far enough ahead to avoid our blunders.
In relation to what the underlying processes are that would need adjustment to ensure civilization endures, one we don't talk about enough is human minds themselves. If our society continues to produce minds that are too aggressive and emotionally controlled, too suspicious of scientific theories, essentially too animalistic in nature, we will never be able to progress before a rogue emotional group taints and destroys the whole. Pick any past civilization that was destroyed from within and it was done so through political upheaval, marauders, and the general population not respecting or having enough intelligence to appreciate the system as a whole. All those points can come from emotional bases. That has to change, and it can only do so long-term through the base underlying structure of our human minds (not to remove emotions, but to understand when certain emotions and general processes of the mind are too strong for the needs of civilization and the whole). Everything follows from that base.
Yep, a Covid level (and style) miscalculation in say nuclear weapons detection and response, is a quick modality to undo homosapiens. But now that Covid and all upcoming mutations and permutations is all but a certainty, that will probably get us first.
@@chrisbova9686 I’ve had colds and am not afraid of getting another one. That being said, never heard of a cold being manufactured in a lab for leveraging gain of function to do strategic harm to military and economic foes however. And now we find out that Fauci and the Bye-Denns were invested in the companies doing business with them and the media has been doing its best to suppress this information. I don’t know how anyone can not take this personally.
@@ChatGPT1111 all governments are lead by politicians and politicians are inherently sleazy, full of sh!t & self serving. The kind of people that SHOULD be in positions of leadership in government.. want nothing to do with politics xD
We are all way to negative... We to step back and take a breath and look around and realize that no one is out to get you, the government isn't going to take your money and the system of capitalism has worked really well lifting millions out of poverty.
@@driftthekaliyuga7502 yes water bottle means that something humans / all life needs to survive is commoditized, put into plastic (which pollutes and supports fossil fuels). So buying bottled water is a huge problem in our society further exacerbated by led in the water - Flint Michigan - they have to drink bottled water and Nestle makes a fortune on the backs of victims. It doesn't incent any government official to fix pollution. We live in an oligarchy which is all about $$$$. Do some research on Flint Michigan its a canary in the coal mine.
Almost as hilarious as someone critiquing an educator about apparent hypocrisy of self terminating systems using a cell phone or computer. We're all guilty of being of and in the world we're in. Making moves to solve the nearly intractable issues does not equal perfection in all actions. Grace my friend.
We cannot exist forever only because our planet, our sun, and even our universe cannot. Any life expectancy, whether it's 90 or 4 billion years is infinitely small compared to eternity and as far as immortality is concerned, it's never enough. Life is precious because it is short and we enjoy our beautiful planet, the air of which we can breathe. "To be important, existence doesn't need to go on for any longer than a moment" - Alan Watts
The people who think technology will save us allowing us to continue forever could be called technocornucopians. It's a form of religion not based on reality; it's based on "faith."
@@Chipwhitley274 That's a great question and it means one has get into the numbers of whether we can obtain sufficient resources from off-world in time as the resources on world dwindle. And, somewhat paradoxically, efficiency works against us here because it steepens the rate of resource consumption. That has two important consequences. First, it pulls the peak of resource usage *earlier*. We see resource consumption go up in almost every case where efficiency is increased. Second, the decline rate steepens on the other side. In other words, the collapse is faster. Recognizing that we will follow a peak-exhaustion model like every other species is important. Getting ambitious things done is difficult enough on the upside of the resource curve. It will be almost impossible on the other side once collapse starts. And it's not just the resources that become hard to obtain, money also becomes hard to obtain. The first thing that dries up when contraction begins in any economy is credit. Now image that situation for centuries. The question facing us then is this: can we become a space-faring species capable of obtaining sufficient off-world resources *before* collapse sets in? I (and many others) don't see that happening. In fact, we won't even get close.
I suggest looking up the four turnings. Also, so many civilizations have collapsed due to changes in the environment and lack of preparation. But how could any of have prepared for the eruption of santorini or something similar? I say it's short sighted to say their all self-terminating. Also, an empire does not equal civilization.
I’m just not sure about the premise that many of these civilizations actually “self-terminated” in a strong sense. Yes certain ones are now gone and there isn’t a ton of their culture left, but typically their culture and technology persists and it’s what we grow from. Not only that, but in some of the cited cases they were terminated by “outside” forces. I’m sure he has a response to this, for sure, but perhaps that’s just philosophy.
we think of the fall ofcivilisation in the wrong way. very rarely does a civilisation fall( collapse/crumble), but civilisations reform/morph into something new( not necessarily better)
Funny how the problems seems to dovetail with capitalism so seamlessly but capitalism isn’t explicitly mentioned as a key engine in our drive to self termination.
@@Chipwhitley274 "Something being personal... is not synonymous with a lack of substance". Unless persons are what's being discussed, yeah, it is. A substantive response might be you suggesting that I'm wrong about how capitalism is a key engine in our drive to self termination, and then providing reasons and/or examples in support of that claim. I agree that the problems we face are complex, but that's not a reason to eschew arguments that buttress your disagreement with me.
that is not true at all. something does not have to end for another to begin, nature stores energy and as the energy in the biomass increases new species come along to take advantage of it. furthering the total energy stored in the biomass by increasing the biomass and keeping negentropy above entropy. our species has built in survival mechanisms and the removal of the unfit through following leaders is one of them. our species is supposed to make things more difficult for each individual so that over time intelligence is selected for. if we could simply follow leaders and not think for ourselves then our species would not even have the ability to think in the first place, because like ants we would have long ago delegated all thought and action to our leaders.
There's something more fundamental missing here to describe these types of things. Cycles of sufficiently complex, emergent systems. Civilizational modeling is not enough because the underlying frameworks of sufficiently complex systems isn't understood.
Trying to reconcile this with another video I watched about how hunter/gatherers have proven to be very beneficial to the ecosystem (in past and even present)
All humans are hunter/gatherers. Our current blip of industrial civilization(~200 years) is less than 1% of our entire existence. Our system of agriculture is also very recent(~12000 years). Before this time we lived in balance with nature. To the point of hunter/gatherers being beneficial to their ecosystem, just observe how modern hunter/gatherers live. Again, in balance with nature.
Unfortunately, we are too far away from these catastrophic scenarios for our collective hind brains to anticipate the threats, and the necessary long-term solutions needed to be implemented generations ago. : \
Athens enjoyed a hegemony at one time, but if they had never fallen, Macedon would not have risen... If Alexander's empire had not been parceled up after his death, the Ptolemaic, and Seluecid empires would not have flourished... Follow this same line of reasoning through the Roman monarchy/republic/empire (in that order)... If Augustus' successors had never become ineffective, and the Germanic civilization had never been allowed to ascend, we never would have known Planck, or Heisenberg... Each civilization (being a complex system, in and of itself) is but a microcosm in the greater system, which is humanity, as a WHOLE... For the greater system to advance, barriers to entry have to be mitigated; hence, the utility of self-termination.
Rigorous empathy. Problem solved! Thanks Lex. Seriously, though. Think about that as a first principle and how it would course correct so many human endeavors.
Now this is just my opinion like anything in life. It is perception that has turned into perspective having gone to enough, but it is never of one completely having taken many of those before to lay the ground work and institutions of what we know now. It is what you know, but what you know is not of more or less. What you know will be related and relative to those before and after. It takes the moment before, the moment now and the moment after to define a continuum of parts that will be. It takes us all, like a series of steps to be, none more or less but needed to manifest. We can not define a more or less because of what has happened in history. What we can say, "Is that it has happened". It has happened in approximately, because it will change. And so if you like we could not define a point in history or time of which is more or less, just not the same. History repeats for one as it does for groups of ones as in cities, nations, all states of be, but of approximately; it is happening now, but in parts of where, when and how. It is all thought, energy and light and will always be, first law of thermodynamics: energy can not be destroyed, but it can be gone to again approximately and rearranged, super position of quantum states.
I wouldnt say its self terminating, but i would say that we are not as linear as people think. We've definitely had political, social, artistic and technological ups and downs and understandings of. I was just talking to someone about this with the pyramids actually. To build those pyramids, Egyptians clearly had technology that would blow our minds, that does not fit with the linear path our minds created. And maybe when this happens, humanity ends up having to take a step back before it can take a few more steps forward and then we might not even figure out or know that technology again, but we'd be on par with or surpass it.
He talks about determining the causes of a civilizational collapse and remedying those to prevent collapse (using a lot of big words to say 'cause and effect') If worldwide collapse does happen in the near future, it'll have taken place from under 100 years of American hegemony. You do the math on who's to blame for that one!
@@cake8211 Just because there are books available, it doesn't mean they are being promoted... the most promoted book in tbe world claims to have all the answers, and yet the world is still in hot water... The Bible claims to have the solutions, yet here we are... The Corporate world doesn't want people capable of critical thinking, because it will lead them away from Authoritarianism. I don't see you coming up with any ideas... just naysayers...
It's human difference and conflict that cause termination, not lack of resources. However, that conflict can lead to a global apocalypse, as such, climate change.
@@BryWMac No, what is interesting is 1 we are due for an ice age. If human activity delays an ice age, that will be good 2 terraforming means make earth-like. You want "transforming". Healthy field practices are good for cattle and the world. People who raise cattle without maximizing the natural life cycles of the range will in the long run make less money than the wise husbander of the land. Some people learn that the hard way. However, it is amazing how fast the land can recover. Using cattle to green the earth: ruclips.net/video/vpTHi7O66pI/видео.html 3 5 million to 2.5 million years ago the world's climate was much more stable than the last 2.5 million years, and warmer, and thicker with life. It is a matter of debate what happened 2.5 million years ago (approximate) that we started yo-yoing in and out of ice ages, but whatever it was, was bad.
@@cake8211 5 million year temp history en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record , go to last graph on the bottom of this page. This is only 5 million, not 500,000 million. The dotted line is the current average temperature for the last century. Click on that final graph, enlarge it.
As long as the individual liberty and freedom in the US doesn't fall, humanity will continue to advance at an unbelievable speed, but if it collapses under our watch we'll sentence our children and childrens' children to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.
"Civilization is about decay". If the 'laws of balance' are not respected and maintained be it in realms such as psychology, creativity, lifestyle, environment, technology, economics, risk-reward, etc. then do not expect the respective civilization to hope to proceed to a utopian ideal. History has shown this. History also shows that we do not heed many important lessons from history. There is no proof, from history at least, that a stereotypical utopian society for humans can exist for a sufficiently long temporal footprint; e.g. thousands of years, a relatively short span of "time eternal". While seeking a "utopia" is a worthy goal, it may not be a realistic goal. Could it be that seeking that goal prepares us for a new journey in a different realm of existence, .... after that supposed ascension-level event that is hoped to occur ? As history has shown ... "civilization is about decay".
Although I think humanity has a sell-by date, I don't think what he described is correct. We're a very evolving and adaptable species. Old empires fall because they evolved into something else, something better, something that allowed humans to expand more. It's not per say that they were inherently flawed, just that something better took it's place.
Human life in the flesh is temporary, so are cultures. We're broken in flesh, so we tend to destroy things. Societies will come and go always. I'm glad earth isn't my final resting place. 80 or 90 yrs here is like a vapor, very small amount of time to live! Life is eternal!
In the past, only the educated elite understood the most advanced parts of civilization. In America, Carnegie Libraries brought the knowledge of the world to every state. With the internet and cheap books, techno knowledge is available everywhere. As long as we work to make basic Learning available to all, even if great disaster--- natural or man-made --- happens, there will be people to pick up the pieces. Universal education is a game changer. Anyone who wants to limit education because it's availability is not 100% to all, risks everyone's survival.
Digitalized knowledge will be one of the first casualties. The next Carrington level event will wipe the screens clean destroy the data bases and then send us back to a no electric society
Seems highly probable. We still haven’t really solved the issue of our own fecal matter and urine. Not to mention nuclear waste and corpses. That waste is increasing exponentially.
biowaste is decently easy to deal with. It neutralizes itself as the right bacteria eat and decay it. Nuclear waste is a different issue but can still be dealt with although its range is far larger.
@@willywonka1962 I left out common household TRASH. That is a serious threat to the environment. There are water treatment plants everywhere. Unfortunately they aren’t too efficient. All solvable issues but the powers that be are too involved with destroying countries Hence the pandemic.
"We need to understand why the previous empires collapsed to avoid it ourselves" Good luck with that. The state of open conversation in this world won't allow it.
When we innovate and mechanise we often terminate. The driving force behind technological innovation is economic selfishness. People innovate to thrive as individuels sometimes introducing products or services that revolutionize sociëty and lower consumption but more often than not to decrease production and transport cost resulting in more consumption. This can be proven because its a mathematical certainty that the innovation introduced will produce more co2(products) than the laid off workers lose in aggregate purchasing power. Otherwise the innovation wouldnt have been introduced. Optimists think in collective ways when discussing our future so they dont understand that rescourse optimalisation isnt the outcome of innovation because it has selfish motives.
"Not this time Bro" - July 29. 2021 earth overshoot day. I think we could achieve an utopia like society by todays technology already but humans just can't get rid of their animalistic egos without a complete rethinking of our education about what people really need and what not. Do you need to waste recources for a new phone every year or would a "fairphone" for every citizen every 10 years be sufficient [with a repair service of course] ? Do you need to travel to far away countries just to (*waster your time*) watch some "sights" you could see in any book/video? Do we need so many food variants in our life or would one kind of yoghurt be sufficent?Do you need to eat a steak everyday to feel happy or wouldn't 400g per week be sufficient for your meat ingerdient needs? Do you need to prove your worth by "status" by enslaving/degrading other people and putting them into classes / having more fancy and useless stuff? I don't think people couldn't have a even more happy and fulfilled life without most of the stuff but our whole system is based around "I make stuff you have to buy so I can buy stuff too even if this tuff already exists so I will do it cheaper at the cost of other humans/quality ..." .
What a colossal misunderstanding of Joseph Tainter!!!! They collapsed because of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Philosophical ideas confound your analysis. Use arithmetic.
How can you say this? The Palace of Versailles is still in tact after WW2. That thing is as fragile as an egg. The Palace should be our benchmark. Until somebody cracks the egg, we'll be ok.
We as humans don't have a habitat. If you look at what a beaver does. Individually its fine. As a whole it would seem like beavers are forest destroyers. They will chop trees down and not even use a single part, just because. Its quite destructive. Yet you never see forests decimated by beavers because they don't kill themselves by destroying the environment. We know too much, our intelligence beyond our biology. Realistically our hominid ancestors had very specific environments. WE DON'T we have humans living in orbit above the planet. We have humans living underwater/ underground. Some live in valleys others on mountains. The point is. What is our environment upon which we find balance? Well its in the stars. THE STARS are our eventual habitat. Just like the beaver its okay to chop this one tree down. Destroy the fruit it may bare and the oxygen it could produce. The birds who nested there year after year. That destruction plays a greater role in the balance of life. Just like the beaver this planet is that tree we chop down for no reason. We are doing what we are programmed to do. We just need to have the foresight to move/ grow and expand along with our destruction in a balanced way. Right now we are NOT doing that!
You want it to last forever regardless of quality etc? Better that it collapses if quality of life is crap for the majority, including other creatures, IMO.
That danger there is if certain other things collapse with it that can't/or are not easy to come back. Such as a defense of the concept of human rights.
Schmachtenberger is just plain wrong. The old civilization weren’t just completely wiped off the face of the earth. they still exist in different forms, and that’s due to record keeping. We still use Roman letters, have religions that are 4-5 thousand years old, our philosophy goes back to ancient times. In fact our way of keeping track of time, is likely based on an old counting method of 12, were you count the knuckles on your four fingers with your thumb. (Yes you have 12 knuckles in four fingers.) and that’s how we still tell the time even after some 6-7 thousand years ago. What he’s doing Is saying that just because AOL had a downfall, there’s nothing like it anymore. AOL went but it’s impact changed the future of the internet forever. So far every civilization has drastically changed humanity, and we’ve evolved. What will destroy us is if our way of record keeping and our history is wiped off with some extinction event, but humanity itself is not self-terminating, and civilization as a concept neither. And that’s all due to language. It’s no coincidence that the pen is described as a heavenly present by god and/or gods in so many religions. It’s how we stay alive.
Thank you very much for recycling Spengler, Paglia and Turchin for us. I guess now that the people with the tiny hats found it we have to repackage it and sell it at revolutionary...
Jared Diamond's Why do societies collapse? Made me realize how fucked we are , there is truly no hope , we crossed the Rubicon miles ago ! Infinite growth in a finite world is just nuts !
Before nanotechnology, there is already negative consequences from early-stage biotechnology in agriculture, medicine, and environment, which we can witness now. Could it be that technocrats and politicians, under the influence of dark money, need to be addressed as sources of demise when we contemplate self-terminating factors?
Oh man, he mentions Tainter's book "The Collapse of Complex Societies." It's one of those books that's impossible to forget.
@Danny Carvajal LoL
@Danny Carvajal You might look into this not so new invention called a bookshelf. It was invented not long after the printing press. If you are going to continue with your current literature storage method I suggest you don't purchase War and Peace....
@Danny Carvajal classic
Do you know that less than 1% of people read and educate themselves throughout their life. Just reading 20 min a day for a few years will level you above the average person. By doing this, you expose yourself to concepts and ideas you wouldn't hear or think in a whole lifetime. It's really easy to be a genius in the age of ignorance. And I'm not talking about news or articles, which have their own place, but rather serious books that you barely understand. Because that is the point where your mind is trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. That is how reading increases intelligence. Not just by acquiring facts or dates or regurgitation of concepts. This is an actual "secret" that few know. It is the MAGIC pill. Of course it's limited to your mental genetic capacity. The other secret how to easily have people like you. Which is perhaps the foremost goal on everyones mind, subconsciously. The way to achieve that is in situations you were your wrong or incorrect, all you have to do is say you were wrong and they were right. And if in a verbal argument, confirm the person in their opinion, by say that they are right. And you understand or are sorry. Use these 2 rules and your life will be like sweet butter. You are welcome and a desired guest everywhere you go and everyone you meet is eager to claim you as a friend. These are actually life secrets. Hope you use them as it's a big difference between simply knowing and understanding.
@@saversaan777 I literally have this happen all the time, the say I am smart and am an endless well of knowledge. My answer is always no I am by no means smarter than the average person, I just have better retention with the things I read and study. I try to tell others that if they read as much as I do and study things for the fun of it they would also appear to be "smart". I am not smarter, I just take an interest in things around me that others don't.
Latest archeological studies indicate those islanders were trapped on an island that suffered a sudden climate change that made escape from the island impossible. It was not their mismanagement of resources, it was the removal of resources.
If they had had a Crystal ball, had used their trees to create new boats i.e. invested heavily in their technology, they could have avoided devolving into cannibals.
My microbiology professor once said - Earth is like a petri dish with limited nutrients & space for bacteria to grow in. When the dish is half-filled, it still looks like there is room to grow. However, it only takes just one doubling of the bacteria population to fill the entire dish. And the population then quickly dies due to lack of nutrients and space." Think of it, just one doubling!
so many people sneer at their own race. The main reason that pops increased - was due to elites wanting war etc
Exponential growth be crazy
A bigger reason for self termination is societies that dont want to change. Its all fine and good that you identify the risks to ST, but if a society doesn't want to change to minimize those risks (IE it might require redistribution of wealth, but perhaps not) then it wont matter. If society is hamstrung by inaction and inability to act (IE government is made up of constantly fighting factions), were fucked.
Lex cannot self terminate. We must lower him to the steel. *Thumbs up as T2 theme plays*
I think civilisation isnt self terminating but merely with high possibility of self termination, evolution has its tools so to speak.
If you’re really interested in the origins of civilization I suggest you research Gobeklie tepe in Turkey..they buried their monuments after the last ice age... the question is..what civilizations preceded the the ice age 20,000 years ago..you wanna go deep..let’s go deep!
Are you Joe Rogan?
I'd add listen to graham hancock podcasts on joe rogan
“I’m balls deep in trying to find out the truth” Eddie bravo
@@Gamelaced he's balls deep in something
I believe the theory is that people were still mostly hunting and gathering during this time. We just had ritual sites where we would brew psychedelic alcoholic drinks(we figured out fermentation before crops). These rituals and drink stuck around till the Roman Empire put a stop to them in Greece where everyone among the Mediterranean would go to participate.
The pursuit of a Utopia is often the cause of the worst brutality. Expect to be solving problems for the life of the system and remember nothing lasts forever.
The BIG problem is our arrogance in spite of our obvious ignorance to the nature of the grand scheme of life. In other words, we never see far enough ahead to avoid our blunders.
@@chrisbova9686 facts
His solution sounds like applying lean six sigma to evaluate and solve world’s problem 😂 love it
In relation to what the underlying processes are that would need adjustment to ensure civilization endures, one we don't talk about enough is human minds themselves. If our society continues to produce minds that are too aggressive and emotionally controlled, too suspicious of scientific theories, essentially too animalistic in nature, we will never be able to progress before a rogue emotional group taints and destroys the whole. Pick any past civilization that was destroyed from within and it was done so through political upheaval, marauders, and the general population not respecting or having enough intelligence to appreciate the system as a whole. All those points can come from emotional bases. That has to change, and it can only do so long-term through the base underlying structure of our human minds (not to remove emotions, but to understand when certain emotions and general processes of the mind are too strong for the needs of civilization and the whole). Everything follows from that base.
Thank you for the mind food. Technology is moving faster than human emotion can handle.
Self termination .The covid 19 narrative is an example
Yep, a Covid level (and style) miscalculation in say nuclear weapons detection and response, is a quick modality to undo homosapiens. But now that Covid and all upcoming mutations and permutations is all but a certainty, that will probably get us first.
@@chrisbova9686 I’ve had colds and am not afraid of getting another one. That being said, never heard of a cold being manufactured in a lab for leveraging gain of function to do strategic harm to military and economic foes however. And now we find out that Fauci and the Bye-Denns were invested in the companies doing business with them and the media has been doing its best to suppress this information. I don’t know how anyone can not take this personally.
@@ChatGPT1111 all governments are lead by politicians and politicians are inherently sleazy, full of sh!t & self serving.
The kind of people that SHOULD be in positions of leadership in government.. want nothing to do with politics xD
We are all way to negative... We to step back and take a breath and look around and realize that no one is out to get you, the government isn't going to take your money and the system of capitalism has worked really well lifting millions out of poverty.
Fiji water bottle. Talking about a self terminating system with that on the table is hilarious.
so true eh... bla bla bla self-terminating this and bla bla bots that - we are f'd... just face it and let go
Why? Did they claim not to be part of human civilization?
You really think a water bottle is significant here?
@@driftthekaliyuga7502 yes water bottle means that something humans / all life needs to survive is commoditized, put into plastic (which pollutes and supports fossil fuels). So buying bottled water is a huge problem in our society further exacerbated by led in the water - Flint Michigan - they have to drink bottled water and Nestle makes a fortune on the backs of victims. It doesn't incent any government official to fix pollution. We live in an oligarchy which is all about $$$$. Do some research on Flint Michigan its a canary in the coal mine.
Almost as hilarious as someone critiquing an educator about apparent hypocrisy of self terminating systems using a cell phone or computer.
We're all guilty of being of and in the world we're in. Making moves to solve the nearly intractable issues does not equal perfection in all actions. Grace my friend.
In the end we'll get what we deserve...
sometimes
@4:35 Look, talks about you! Naive technopessimism
What did I do to deserve all this?
We cannot exist forever only because our planet, our sun, and even our universe cannot.
Any life expectancy, whether it's 90 or 4 billion years is infinitely small compared to eternity and as far as immortality is concerned, it's never enough.
Life is precious because it is short and we enjoy our beautiful planet, the air of which we can breathe.
"To be important, existence doesn't need to go on for any longer than a moment"
- Alan Watts
The people who think technology will save us allowing us to continue forever could be called technocornucopians. It's a form of religion not based on reality; it's based on "faith."
@@Chipwhitley274 That's a great question and it means one has get into the numbers of whether we can obtain sufficient resources from off-world in time as the resources on world dwindle.
And, somewhat paradoxically, efficiency works against us here because it steepens the rate of resource consumption. That has two important consequences. First, it pulls the peak of resource usage *earlier*. We see resource consumption go up in almost every case where efficiency is increased. Second, the decline rate steepens on the other side. In other words, the collapse is faster.
Recognizing that we will follow a peak-exhaustion model like every other species is important. Getting ambitious things done is difficult enough on the upside of the resource curve. It will be almost impossible on the other side once collapse starts. And it's not just the resources that become hard to obtain, money also becomes hard to obtain. The first thing that dries up when contraction begins in any economy is credit. Now image that situation for centuries.
The question facing us then is this: can we become a space-faring species capable of obtaining sufficient off-world resources *before* collapse sets in?
I (and many others) don't see that happening. In fact, we won't even get close.
I suggest looking up the four turnings. Also, so many civilizations have collapsed due to changes in the environment and lack of preparation. But how could any of have prepared for the eruption of santorini or something similar?
I say it's short sighted to say their all self-terminating. Also, an empire does not equal civilization.
Keep up the great work Lex!!!
Both of these guys are such pseuds, it's unbelievable
I’m just not sure about the premise that many of these civilizations actually “self-terminated” in a strong sense. Yes certain ones are now gone and there isn’t a ton of their culture left, but typically their culture and technology persists and it’s what we grow from. Not only that, but in some of the cited cases they were terminated by “outside” forces. I’m sure he has a response to this, for sure, but perhaps that’s just philosophy.
we think of the fall ofcivilisation in the wrong way.
very rarely does a civilisation fall( collapse/crumble), but civilisations reform/morph into something new( not necessarily better)
Entropy is the concept you are speaking about. Already been well established in thermodynamics
the sun is self-terminating too tho
... so go and tell the sun to think about it.
Mankind could, tho . . .
Glad that Lex backtracked on the bad-mouthing the apes. Apes won't terminate the system.
Funny how the problems seems to dovetail with capitalism so seamlessly but capitalism isn’t explicitly mentioned as a key engine in our drive to self termination.
@@Chipwhitley274 Instead of using an ad hominem attack, I wish you had made a substantive response in defense of your position. What a shame.
@@Chipwhitley274 Do you know what constitutes a substantive response, because it seems like you're just doubling down on the personal stuff?
@@Chipwhitley274 "Something being personal... is not synonymous with a lack of substance". Unless persons are what's being discussed, yeah, it is. A substantive response might be you suggesting that I'm wrong about how capitalism is a key engine in our drive to self termination, and then providing reasons and/or examples in support of that claim. I agree that the problems we face are complex, but that's not a reason to eschew arguments that buttress your disagreement with me.
The industrial age sticks out like a sore thumb in the pantheon of time flavors, and it was precisely on time. We were here 26,000 years ago.
The human civilisation may be self terminating..but the human spirit lives on.
Does it?
Life is a self-terminating system. Something must end for another thing to begin. The present is built upon and with the parts from the past.
that is not true at all. something does not have to end for another to begin, nature stores energy and as the energy in the biomass increases new species come along to take advantage of it. furthering the total energy stored in the biomass by increasing the biomass and keeping negentropy above entropy. our species has built in survival mechanisms and the removal of the unfit through following leaders is one of them. our species is supposed to make things more difficult for each individual so that over time intelligence is selected for. if we could simply follow leaders and not think for ourselves then our species would not even have the ability to think in the first place, because like ants we would have long ago delegated all thought and action to our leaders.
@@bengardener8928 thank god, someone intelligent in the comments
Great podcast but try fixing the lighting lex you and the guests look red
Big fan Lex. Love my new subscription to your channel ✌️
I just realized Lex is actually funnier than your average nerd! He said,"...no offense to apes!" Hahaha just brilliant.
There's something more fundamental missing here to describe these types of things. Cycles of sufficiently complex, emergent systems. Civilizational modeling is not enough because the underlying frameworks of sufficiently complex systems isn't understood.
And Jared Diamond´s Collapse is not bad either...
Trying to reconcile this with another video I watched about how hunter/gatherers have proven to be very beneficial to the ecosystem (in past and even present)
What's the video
All humans are hunter/gatherers. Our current blip of industrial civilization(~200 years) is less than 1% of our entire existence. Our system of agriculture is also very recent(~12000 years). Before this time we lived in balance with nature.
To the point of hunter/gatherers being beneficial to their ecosystem, just observe how modern hunter/gatherers live. Again, in balance with nature.
Unfortunately, we are too far away from these catastrophic scenarios for our collective hind brains to anticipate the threats, and the necessary long-term solutions needed to be implemented generations ago. : \
Athens enjoyed a hegemony at one time, but if they had never fallen, Macedon would not have risen...
If Alexander's empire had not been parceled up after his death, the Ptolemaic, and Seluecid empires would not have flourished...
Follow this same line of reasoning through the Roman monarchy/republic/empire (in that order)...
If Augustus' successors had never become ineffective, and the Germanic civilization had never been allowed to ascend, we never would have known Planck, or Heisenberg...
Each civilization (being a complex system, in and of itself) is but a microcosm in the greater system, which is humanity, as a WHOLE...
For the greater system to advance, barriers to entry have to be mitigated; hence, the utility of self-termination.
Well said
When the people that rule are evil or turn evil with power the clocks ticking on collapse of that civilisation.
Rigorous empathy. Problem solved! Thanks Lex. Seriously, though. Think about that as a first principle and how it would course correct so many human endeavors.
So there is a single civilization? René Guénon would be disappointed.
Now this is just my opinion like anything in life. It is perception that has turned into perspective having gone to enough, but it is never of one completely having taken many of those before to lay the ground work and institutions of what we know now.
It is what you know, but what you know is not of more or less. What you know will be related and relative to those before and after.
It takes the moment before, the moment now and the moment after to define a continuum of parts that will be.
It takes us all, like a series of steps to be, none more or less but needed to manifest.
We can not define a more or less because of what has happened in history.
What we can say, "Is that it has happened".
It has happened in approximately, because it will change.
And so if you like we could not define a point in history or time of which is more or less, just not the same.
History repeats for one as it does for groups of ones as in cities, nations, all states of be, but of approximately; it is happening now, but in parts of where, when and how.
It is all thought, energy and light and will always be, first law of thermodynamics: energy can not be destroyed, but it can be gone to again approximately and rearranged, super position of quantum states.
I wouldnt say its self terminating, but i would say that we are not as linear as people think. We've definitely had political, social, artistic and technological ups and downs and understandings of.
I was just talking to someone about this with the pyramids actually. To build those pyramids, Egyptians clearly had technology that would blow our minds, that does not fit with the linear path our minds created. And maybe when this happens, humanity ends up having to take a step back before it can take a few more steps forward and then we might not even figure out or know that technology again, but we'd be on par with or surpass it.
He talks about determining the causes of a civilizational collapse and remedying those to prevent collapse (using a lot of big words to say 'cause and effect')
If worldwide collapse does happen in the near future, it'll have taken place from under 100 years of American hegemony. You do the math on who's to blame for that one!
Emotional intelligence will save us. We create more and more powerful tools. We need to get wiser in our usage of these tools.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 with religion being wise isn't going to cut it.
self-termination is likely when there's no Love in society. Love is the technology that keeps a civilization together.
Describes modern agriculture precisely.
He's correct !
How comforting
Humans just aren’t as intelligent as we like to pretend, driven by instincts and emotions like other animals more than they know
@@NDwhITeBoYZ a “profound” reply from Brenda Brenda. I love this platform.
@@harrisonhutsell1072 lol, hehe
If we go against natural principles, then yes we self terminate.
The world needs more philosophy...
No.
There are more philosophy books out there than any one man can read, it hasn’t solved anything
@@cake8211 Just because there are books available, it doesn't mean they are being promoted... the most promoted book in tbe world claims to have all the answers, and yet the world is still in hot water... The Bible claims to have the solutions, yet here we are... The Corporate world doesn't want people capable of critical thinking, because it will lead them away from Authoritarianism. I don't see you coming up with any ideas... just naysayers...
We just want the truth - philosophy is for the idealists
@@scroopynooperz9051 philosophy helps reason. What is happening now is ideology and emotion -vs reason and facts
It's human difference and conflict that cause termination, not lack of resources. However, that conflict can lead to a global apocalypse, as such, climate change.
Look up "5 million year history of earth's temperature ".
Claiming we cause climate change is hubris.
@@BryWMac No, what is interesting is
1 we are due for an ice age. If human activity delays an ice age, that will be good
2 terraforming means make earth-like. You want "transforming". Healthy field practices are good for cattle and the world. People who raise cattle without maximizing the natural life cycles of the range will in the long run make less money than the wise husbander of the land. Some people learn that the hard way. However, it is amazing how fast the land can recover. Using cattle to green the earth: ruclips.net/video/vpTHi7O66pI/видео.html
3 5 million to 2.5 million years ago the world's climate was much more stable than the last 2.5 million years, and warmer, and thicker with life. It is a matter of debate what happened 2.5 million years ago (approximate) that we started yo-yoing in and out of ice ages, but whatever it was, was bad.
@@friendlyone2706 I looked it up, there is a massive spike in temperature in the last century. It’s even visible on the 500 million year chart.
@@cake8211 5 million year temp history en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record , go to last graph on the bottom of this page. This is only 5 million, not 500,000 million. The dotted line is the current average temperature for the last century. Click on that final graph, enlarge it.
The earth is an island
Consciousness.
Negative entropy. Time to awaken.
I cannot self terminate you must lower Me Into the lava
Yes, it is.
Mayans currently in the Yucatan peninsula like 😮😮😮😮
You can tell Lex got intimidated he started using extra big words
Same as commenting on it on this platform
As long as the individual liberty and freedom in the US doesn't fall, humanity will continue to advance at an unbelievable speed, but if it collapses under our watch we'll sentence our children and childrens' children to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.
"Civilization is about decay".
If the 'laws of balance' are not respected and maintained be it in realms such as psychology, creativity, lifestyle, environment, technology, economics, risk-reward, etc. then do not expect the respective civilization to hope to proceed to a utopian ideal.
History has shown this.
History also shows that we do not heed many important lessons from history.
There is no proof, from history at least, that a stereotypical utopian society for humans can exist for a sufficiently long temporal footprint; e.g. thousands of years, a relatively short span of "time eternal".
While seeking a "utopia" is a worthy goal, it may not be a realistic goal.
Could it be that seeking that goal prepares us for a new journey in a different realm of existence, ....
after that supposed ascension-level event that is hoped to occur ?
As history has shown ... "civilization is about decay".
Societies don't collapse they evolve. The same people still live on Easter Island. The outcome isn't collapse its evolution and change.
civilisation is a placenta to ai the earth is the mother
People die, therefore everything we touch dies.
They terminate because of the Great reset
Acmoglu and Robinson - Why Nations Fail
Jared Diamond - Collapse
Although I think humanity has a sell-by date, I don't think what he described is correct. We're a very evolving and adaptable species. Old empires fall because they evolved into something else, something better, something that allowed humans to expand more. It's not per say that they were inherently flawed, just that something better took it's place.
Human life in the flesh is temporary, so are cultures. We're broken in flesh, so we tend to destroy things. Societies will come and go always. I'm glad earth isn't my final resting place. 80 or 90 yrs here is like a vapor, very small amount of time to live! Life is eternal!
In the past, only the educated elite understood the most advanced parts of civilization. In America, Carnegie Libraries brought the knowledge of the world to every state. With the internet and cheap books, techno knowledge is available everywhere.
As long as we work to make basic Learning available to all, even if great disaster--- natural or man-made --- happens, there will be people to pick up the pieces.
Universal education is a game changer.
Anyone who wants to limit education because it's availability is not 100% to all, risks everyone's survival.
Digitalized knowledge will be one of the first casualties. The next Carrington level event will wipe the screens clean destroy the data bases and then send us back to a no electric society
Seems highly probable. We still haven’t really solved the issue of our own fecal matter and urine. Not to mention nuclear waste and corpses. That waste is increasing exponentially.
biowaste is decently easy to deal with. It neutralizes itself as the right bacteria eat and decay it. Nuclear waste is a different issue but can still be dealt with although its range is far larger.
@@willywonka1962 I left out common household TRASH. That is a serious threat to the environment. There are water treatment plants everywhere. Unfortunately they aren’t too efficient. All solvable issues but the powers that be are too involved with destroying countries Hence the pandemic.
"We need to understand why the previous empires collapsed to avoid it ourselves"
Good luck with that. The state of open conversation in this world won't allow it.
This time is different
When we innovate and mechanise we often terminate. The driving force behind technological innovation is economic selfishness. People innovate to thrive as individuels sometimes introducing products or services that revolutionize sociëty and lower consumption but more often than not to decrease production and transport cost resulting in more consumption. This can be proven because its a mathematical certainty that the innovation introduced will produce more co2(products) than the laid off workers lose in aggregate purchasing power. Otherwise the innovation wouldnt have been introduced. Optimists think in collective ways when discussing our future so they dont understand that rescourse optimalisation isnt the outcome of innovation because it has selfish motives.
Easter Island was NOT a self annihilating civilization.
Africa is already self-terminated I see hundreds of desperate every week trying to get a boat to Europe.
Europe is already self terminated, i see tons of people commiting suicide (the highest number in the world) and refusing to have children.
look at the british fighting off spanish the queen just summoned a storm and no more navel supiriority.
"Not this time Bro" - July 29. 2021 earth overshoot day. I think we could achieve an utopia like society by todays technology already but humans just can't get rid of their animalistic egos without a complete rethinking of our education about what people really need and what not. Do you need to waste recources for a new phone every year or would a "fairphone" for every citizen every 10 years be sufficient [with a repair service of course] ? Do you need to travel to far away countries just to (*waster your time*) watch some "sights" you could see in any book/video? Do we need so many food variants in our life or would one kind of yoghurt be sufficent?Do you need to eat a steak everyday to feel happy or wouldn't 400g per week be sufficient for your meat ingerdient needs? Do you need to prove your worth by "status" by enslaving/degrading other people and putting them into classes / having more fancy and useless stuff? I don't think people couldn't have a even more happy and fulfilled life without most of the stuff but our whole system is based around "I make stuff you have to buy so I can buy stuff too even if this tuff already exists so I will do it cheaper at the cost of other humans/quality ..." .
Not many places 2 people record them self going deep about our downfall. 😄
What a colossal misunderstanding of Joseph Tainter!!!! They collapsed because of the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
Philosophical ideas confound your analysis. Use arithmetic.
How can you say this? The Palace of Versailles is still in tact after WW2. That thing is as fragile as an egg. The Palace should be our benchmark. Until somebody cracks the egg, we'll be ok.
You're not serious.
Everyone that lived in it had their head chopped off.
That was kind of a termination.
What about species of animals. Are all animal species self terminating? No species will last forever.
I’ve been saying this for years.
We as humans don't have a habitat. If you look at what a beaver does. Individually its fine. As a whole it would seem like beavers are forest destroyers. They will chop trees down and not even use a single part, just because. Its quite destructive. Yet you never see forests decimated by beavers because they don't kill themselves by destroying the environment.
We know too much, our intelligence beyond our biology. Realistically our hominid ancestors had very specific environments.
WE DON'T we have humans living in orbit above the planet. We have humans living underwater/ underground. Some live in valleys others on mountains. The point is. What is our environment upon which we find balance? Well its in the stars.
THE STARS are our eventual habitat. Just like the beaver its okay to chop this one tree down. Destroy the fruit it may bare and the oxygen it could produce. The birds who nested there year after year. That destruction plays a greater role in the balance of life. Just like the beaver this planet is that tree we chop down for no reason. We are doing what we are programmed to do. We just need to have the foresight to move/ grow and expand along with our destruction in a balanced way. Right now we are NOT doing that!
If only the poor didn't feel compelled to reproduce themselves.
Most destroyed by other humans
this guy sounds like K Strass the yoyo guy
You want it to last forever regardless of quality etc? Better that it collapses if quality of life is crap for the majority, including other creatures, IMO.
That danger there is if certain other things collapse with it that can't/or are not easy to come back. Such as a defense of the concept of human rights.
wow everyone so negative of the human race, its like no one has hope.
Schmachtenberger is just plain wrong. The old civilization weren’t just completely wiped off the face of the earth. they still exist in different forms, and that’s due to record keeping. We still use Roman letters, have religions that are 4-5 thousand years old, our philosophy goes back to ancient times.
In fact our way of keeping track of time, is likely based on an old counting method of 12, were you count the knuckles on your four fingers with your thumb. (Yes you have 12 knuckles in four fingers.) and that’s how we still tell the time even after some 6-7 thousand years ago.
What he’s doing Is saying that just because AOL had a downfall, there’s nothing like it anymore. AOL went but it’s impact changed the future of the internet forever. So far every civilization has drastically changed humanity, and we’ve evolved. What will destroy us is if our way of record keeping and our history is wiped off with some extinction event, but humanity itself is not self-terminating, and civilization as a concept neither.
And that’s all due to language. It’s no coincidence that the pen is described as a heavenly present by god and/or gods in so many religions. It’s how we stay alive.
I agreed before I clicked on the video
A snake eating itself as it tries to grow its tail
Yep...Title sounds about right..however 1 civilisation has stood the test of time from about 2000BC...China...China has always been there🤔
Talk to DEEPAK CHOPRA
Thank you very much for recycling Spengler, Paglia and Turchin for us. I guess now that the people with the tiny hats found it we have to repackage it and sell it at revolutionary...
lol negative comments about apes ?
Hé just called Steven Pinker naieve
Don't worry God only has the power