Freaking out:
Many years ago, mind altering drugs were new and trendy. Some such drugs caused hallucinations and some produced agitation. The combination of an irrational person who was agitated was distressing to those around and very distressing to the subject, who was caught in a disagreeable and incomprehensible world. We called that state “freaking out.” Of course it does not have to be caused by drugs; environmental clues can be sufficient.
At the beginning of this year, 2017, my life had fallen into a routine that included lunch once a week with each of two friends, one a liberal and one a conservative. I never introduced them to each other; I feared they would not strike it off. Then this past January they both dumped me. I had explained all about the phenomenon whereby one must marry fairly close kin or have a fall in fertility, and if this strategy persists for a few generations fertility falls to zero.
Let me define two kinds of society. A closed society insists on marrying kin and had high fertility. An open society is the opposite. Joseph Conrad in his book Heart of Darkness describes the plight of the crew of a steamboat on a river in Africa. Things are not going well, but they dare not jump ship because they know that as homeless wanderers they will be killed in the first village they enter. I saw the same logic described in the late twentieth century. This would be a closed society. An open society would be one in which people deliberately marry outside their ethnic group in the hopes of creating a unified and peaceful world. Of course that just kills all their babies in the long run. Children want to fit in with their peers, but by and large they will adopt parental values, including favoring one type of socialization or the other. Hence the open society is inherently doomed.
So when Donald Trump, a populist, was elected, most people were surprised. But I explained to my friends that although I was surprised at how soon it happened it was simply inevitable. The high water mark of the open society may have been reached with the election of Barrack Obama. He got a Nobel peace prize. I interpret that to mean that the prize was for the people of the United States and he was simply our designated representative.
But the demographic pressure was on. Those favoring an open society had been believing their own words and were and are dying out faster than those leaning toward a closed society. So with both men I uttered the friendship shattering words, “It will get worse.” They freaked out and, quite understandably, will not see me again.
So what would two intelligent men, regardless of political persuasion, make of it? Let me try to sort it out, more or less as a timeline. Mind you, despite my pronouncement I do not like to talk about the future. I’ve never been there. This is how it might play out. Permit me an error of give or take ten years.
1976
Parents marry of the last Swedish woman who will ever have a baby.
1986
Last Swedish woman who will ever have a baby is born.
2016
Last couple in the middle income world who will ever have a grandchild marry. Populist revolution gathers strength gobally.
2026
Last woman in Sweden who will ever have a baby has her last baby. This also holds for the productive middle class globally. Last Baby that will ever have children in middle income world is born. Global racism makes itself felt.
2036
Global racism gives way to police states in all major powers. Police states are based on some principle like an enforced religion, racial control, xenophobia or whatever.
2041
Last couple who will ever have grandchildren in the low income world – or anywhere – marry.
2046
Police states give way to opportunistic bandit states on a large scale. It is just old people clutching at their privileges without even a rationale or a principle.
2056
Last middle class person reaches age 3o. Global society collapses. Middle income societies take power. Whether the embers of the middle class die of natural causes or are put up against the wall is not clear, but history is not comforting. The society is racist.
2066
High tech civilization collapses. Last baby that will ever be born to the middle income world is born. Police states take over again. High tech civilization folds up.
2076
Absent technology the world can feed two billion under the best of circumstances. Circumstances are not the best. Maybe half a billion can be fed out of seven billion. World population falls to .15 of what it is now. With so many hungry and so little food, the market will not clear. It will be impossible to buy food at any price. Governments take a monopoly on food. The pressure will fall hardest on the countries that are poorest and weakest. The poorest – in 2017 about a billion – drop to .05 of present numbers or maybe 50 million.
2086
Although technology is ruined, there are still lots of weapons, including nukes. War breaks out, the ruthless Roman kind with people being hunted down and shot like animals. Poorest drop to 5 million.
2091
Last child that will ever be born to the remnant of the poorest is born. Plague reduces them to a million.
2096
Youngest people in middle income countries reach thirty. Those societies collapse, and if the poorest of the poor do not put them up against the wall it’s not because they don’t richly deserve it.
2101
Last human born is now 10. The remnant populations live in very closed societies of about 700 each. Women are slaves. War and radiation have devastated the environment. All domestic animals have been eaten, all edible wild animals have been eaten. Pollution is rampant. The soil has been exhausted. The forests have been burned to drive out animals that can be eaten. There are no recoverable minerals with available technology, and besides, anything suggesting high technology freaks people out.
I can’t blame my friends from dumping me, really. But I hope somebody out there will at least acknowledge that there is a problem.
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