Der kommende Zusammenbruch und sogenannte 'Non-Problems'
Geschrieben von Andreas am 03. Oktober 2003 14:27:54:
Etwas provokante Thesen von Widdowson: (http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/HistorySociety.htm#Causes)
Ich verstehe Widdowson so, dass diese Faktoren Auslöser sein können, wenn bestimmte Bedingungen (Integration, Organisation, Cohesion) schlecht sind - als Beispiel führt er den Ressourcenmangel an. Für sich alleine können die folgenden Probleme jedoch keine Gesellschaft zum Zusammenbruch führen. Ich frage mich gerade, ob eine solche Argumentation tautologisch ist oder immun gegen Falsifizierung.
Some of these concerns are quite ancient. They appear to have an obvious logic and they are readily believed in by ordinary people. Yet appearances can be deceptive. No historical society has ever declined solely from such causes, even if they have been relevant at all.Bevölkerungsexplosion
People speak of the 'population explosion' as a disaster in the making. Yet population growth has always been associated with improvements in the human condition. Societies have always been capable of limiting their numbers and have only allowed them to grow when it has become possible to support a higher population. For example, the first population explosion occurred around the time of adoption of agriculture, when human numbers took off on the basis of a more assured food supply. Population growth means that there are more people enjoying life expectancies. It can only be regarded, other than by misanthropists, as a fundamental good. The latest population explosion is the legacy of the industrial revolution. It is the fact that population growth is now tailing off that shows that the present round of human achievement is exhausting its potential. When, in a new era, humans conquer the other planets, problems of living space will become irrelevant.
Ressourcenmangel
It seems obvious that if you keep taking stuff out of the ground, you will eventually run out. Yet, as the economist Julian Simon has pointed out, the cost of every natural resource has decreased over recorded history, showing that resources tend to become less scarce--affront to common sense though that may be. Simon points out the role of what he calls the ultimate resource, i.e. human ingenuity, which allows people to exploit new materials or find new ways of exploiting old materials. R Buckminster Fuller also pointed out the phenomenon of ephemeralisation, whereby new technologies tend to reduce the pressure on resources--for example, today's mobile phone is less demanding of energy and raw materials than its bulky predecessor, while being vastly more capable. In any case, humanity has just scratched the surface of part of one planet in the solar system. The supposed problem of running out of resources is a pure myth and fantasy.
Arbeitsmangel als Folge des technischen Fortschritts
It seems obvious that labour-saving technologies must put people out of work, especially the less capable people who are capable of doing only manual labour. On these grounds, many people opposed the introduction of the motor car as threatened all those whose living relied on horse drawn carriages (from stablemen to those who scooped up horse droppings from the street). Yet the motor car has created far more jobs than it ever took away. The problem is a static view of the world, seeing only the harm that is done to the existing order and not the benefits of doing things in a different way. Technological improvements have always been associated with growth in human numbers. Despite all the hyperbolic claims for artificial intelligence, we are still a long way from creating a machine as flexible as a human being--even the least capable of them.
Umweltprobleme
People readily believe in the notion of environmental determinism, i.e. that a society's fortunes depend on the climate. Westerners for example are easily convinced that the heat and humidity of the world's tropical zones is responsible for the laziness and underachievement of the people who live there. This is despite the underachievement of the temperate zones for the first 4000 years of recorded history and the fact that the west owes all its basic knowledge to people who once lived in those hot and humid places. Modern Singapore has become a prosperous society despite heat, humidity and the need to import every vital resource, including water. To be sure, climate has an effect on social phenomena--droughts cause hardship and damage the economy--but there is no straightforward correlation. People can overcome climatic problems and do not necessarily succumb to them in a feeble manner. As for worries about climate change, the fact is that climate has been changing, often dramatically, since time immemorial. The thing is to adapt to it, not try and prevent it--which would be impossible. Historically, periods of cooling have been regarded as the problem and warming as a desirable amelioration. The current environmentalist perception of warming as a problem is simply perverse. Europe was extensively deforested in early modern times and there is very little natural about the landscape whatsoever. Yet the planet has not suffered any obvious adverse consequences and Europe is a perfectly pleasant environment in which to live. It may also be noticed that there has been a great improvement in the environment over the last few decades, with fish returning to once poisoned rivers and city smogs a thing of the past. People can solve the problems of pollution by moving forward with new inventions, successfully exploiting what environmentalists disparagingly call the technological fix. As recent history shows, technological fixes work.