Almost a year and a half ago I mused about the ongoing tension between our desire to build and our apparently only slightly less pronounced need to destroy:
Its the End of the World as We Know It
Since the first homo sapiens sharpened a stick and set a fire, the tension between our ability to build and our ability to destroy has ratcheted ever upward. For millenia, people have looked for a Messiah and feared the Apocalypse; some merge the two into a desire for the Apocalypse as a way, or a sign, of the impending triumph of Paradise on Earth. Others take grim pleasure in imagining the triumph of a final dystopia. Many wonder if, since August 6, 1945, we have finally achieved the ability to cause the Apocalypse without the need or hope of divine intervention.
The utility of the concepts of libido and thanatos as core motivators of human behavior has been eclipsed in Psychoanalysis by more modern concepts that are closer to the observational data. At the same time such concepts can serve as shorthands for the all too human conflict between building and destroying. When an imbalance occurs between the two impulses/desires, danger ensues. It can be argued that over the last twenty years, after Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher unleashed our "animal spirits" via less regulated capitalism, the ensuing "irrational exuberance" led us to the straits we are in today. Yet, just as the Bipolar patient tends to swing into an irrational depression after the euphoria of their manic phase dissipates, we are in danger of falling not only into a depression of the economy, but of ht spirit as well. Unfortunately, it does not appear as if those who are determined "not to let this crisis go to waste" understand that they are dealing with emotional states that are not amenable to reasoned argument.
Beyond the perhaps innate tendencies toward libido and thanatos, however, there is a third element that has a powerful influence on the balance and the direction of the conflict, and this third element may well be crucial at this point.
Mark Safranski, at Zenpundit, offers a review of Tom Barnett's Great Powers(which I have not yet read but have in my queue) and in the midst of an excellent discussion of the book notes one of Tom Barnett's key premises:
Book review: With Great Powers comes Great Responsibilities….
... Barnett is enunciating a theory of historical evolution heavily influenced by economic determinism but not only economic determinism. Very few reviewers have picked up on this element ( John Robb was a notable exception) but Tom has revived and synthesized the “Frontier Thesis” of Frederick Jackson Turnerinto postmodern, 21st century, transnational terms. “The frontier” is not just an economic margin but a verge for deep but decisive conflicts of personal identity and cultural renewal. Frontiers are dynamic and psychological, not fixed entities and the momentum is usually running toward civilizational expansion or collapse. We can find the fronier at home in “feral” neighborhoods mere miles from our houses or thousands of miles distant in far off Pushtunistan and the Fergana valley. There is no maginot line we can build, no place to “bring the boys home” to when the frontier exists as much in cyberspace as on the ground.
The American idea was formed from, and is inescapably intertwined with, the idea of a frontier. Our freedoms emerged from and were dependent on the recognition that once the rulers reach became too egregious, the subjects, henceforth known as free men, could leave and find a place where the ruler's writ could not extend.
Note again, Mark Safranski's comment: Frontiers are dynamic and psychological, not fixed entities and the momentum is usually running toward civilizational expansion or collapse.
The frontier that once existed in physical space has of necessity been replaced by the frontier that primarily exists in mental space. For a while, outer space provided the necessary conditions for a mental frontier to exist; although few would ever get to space and no one would live there for long, in our imaginations we could all soar. It is no coincidence that so many libertarians support space exploration. Now we are bumping up against the limits of civilizational expansion. Our current leaders quite overtly imagine themselves to be presiding over a relative decline in America's place int he world. While they do not consciously believe that our best days are behind us, their commitment to notions of environmental exhaustion and limitations define a future that is less dynamic than the present.
As opposed to Tom Barnett's optimism about the future of limitations (where we find ways to essentially share the difficult task of managing globalization) John Robb is more pessimistic; note his QUOTES: Kevin Kelly on Collapsitarians. After first offering the quotes:
No one wants to live in the future.
The jet packs don't work, and the Daily Me is full of spam. Nobody finds the Future attractive any longer.
The only thing left to believe in is collapse. That's not boring!
The end of civilization would be terribly exciting, and unlike any future we could imagine, probably more likely. Dystopias are a favorite science fiction destination now. We all are collapsitarians these days.
John Robb then offers:
This is a conclusion that I think Nietzsche would concur with. In short: it implies that without a real challenge that tests the limits of our creativity as individuals or as a species-civilization, we wither. It that light, the growing doom is a violent psychological reaction to the terrible soul-draining ennui of Fukuyama's "end of history."
It is clear that our previous model of progress, where Americans borrow money to buy cheap goods from China, which then buys our debt so that we can then refinance our debt and borrow more money in order to buy more cheap goods frm China, was never indefinitely sustainable. We are adrift at the moment, waiting for the bottom , uncertain if there is any bottom in sight, and vaguely worried that our future could be unimaginably bleak. America's time may have passed, and that is only the beginning of the worry over our dystopian near future. A planet with a dispirited America, and where the other powerful players on the scene are even more frightened, though less constrained than we are, is a world that can easily fall into turmoil. A China fearful of internal turmoil could easily turn to the stock answer of frightened tyrants of every era and start a conflict with their neighbors. A North Korea run by isolated and paranoid rulers, frightened of their own people and with no other assets, will be increasingly tempted to use their tried and true methods of extortion to wrest more largess frm the civilized world. The possibility of nuclear weapons and ICBMs in the hands of those for whom the Apocalypse is a welcome and desired part of their ideology should frighten all thoughtful people. This does not even scratch the surface of the turmoil that can accompany our economic distress. (Mexico, Pakistan, the list of troubles is long and apparently inexhaustible.)
In order to combat such existential despair, there is now more than ever the need for a frontier to identity and conquer. If Space was, to quote an archaic TV series form the pre-internet days, "the final frontier", we had better hope we can find a new frontier quickly. There is no chance we will be getting off the planet any time soon. The worlds of virtual reality remain too schematic to achieve the texture necessary to sustain the fantasy of a frontier.
We have (as a culture, not necessarily as individuals) given up the Deity to give our lives meaning and direction. A frontier is the next best possibility to fill the mental space He once inhabited.
I started this post with a quote from Its the End of the World as We Know It and it is fitting that I end the same way. I am concerned that if our leadership cannot or will not offer a new frontier, we will only be left with our dystopian fears:
Paradigm shifts are coming at an accelerating pace and such shifts are always experienced with a combination of fear and hope. Those of us who are comfortable with cutting edge (or close to cutting edge) technology approach the coming Singularity with more hope than fear, but we are probably outliers. Our technological civilization has become so complex and interdependent that modern man can no longer survive without it and, in point of fact, a rather substantial proportion of the world's population would not survive a significant technological crash, whether caused by the failure of our energy supplies, runaway nanotechnology, or hostile sentient computers.
...
The world's population has expanded incredibly rapidly in the last century and it is only our technology that has enabled us to so far exceed the nutritional demands of the burgeoning human population. Today the greater threat to health is from over-eating rather than malnutrition, and the malnutrition that exists is almost all caused by political conflicts. I suppose a neo-Malthusian creed would amount to "Singularity or Bust!"
We will remain transfixed by disasters, mini-apocalypses that appeal to our voyeuristic tendencies and offer us the deep and guilty relief that we are not the victims, and will continually find new disaster scenarios with which to scare young children and vulnerable adults. The more fanciful and global the disaster, the more it is able to offer a way to avoid more immediate and real dangers.
Which is more likely to introduce paradigm shifts that will affect each of us in the next decade:
1) Global Warming;
2) An Iranian nuclear bomb;
3) Pakistan descending into chaos;
5) Or, everyone's favorite address for the Apocalypse, the Middle-East and its next meltdown post-Annapolis?
Perhaps, if our species' past performance is at all predictive, we should join in with REM:
Its the end of the world as we know it,
Its the end of the world as we know it,
Its the end of the world as we know it,
And I feel fine....
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