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Deep Futures Our Prospects for Survival Doug Cocks DEEPFUTURES1.DOC file:///C:/HTM files/htm files/DEEPFUTURES11 (FINAL).htm DEEP FUTURES OUR PROSPECTS FOR SURVIVAL DOUG COCKS 1 of 229 30/01/2012 14:42 DEEPFUTURES1.DOC file:///C:/HTM files/htm files/DEEPFUTURES11 (FINAL).htm Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny to a very distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped shows that the greater number of species in each genus, and all the species in many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be the common and widely spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups within each class, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection...There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; ......from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. Charles Darwin, 1859, From the Conclusion to The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle For Life , The Modern Library, New York, pp. 373-4. *** Certainly we must be able to project our contemplation ahead a short time, say a hundred million years. By that time our particular species, and all other currently extant mammalian species, will exist only as fossil records. All indications of man's tenure on earth will have vanished from the surface. Man's occupation of the earth's surface leaves no permanent scars, although it certainly upsets local ecological conditions to the extreme. The conditions that will eventually prevail, after man's inevitable extinction, will be very different in detail than they would have been without him. The scars of human occupation persist for centuries, perhaps for millennia, depending upon climate conditions and the vigour of the replacing biota. But it is probable that in most areas the passage of a few millennia will eradicate the obvious scars. In time a region will resume its suitable ecological aspect again, even though the component organisms may occur in different proportions or indeed may actually be different. The effect of man's existence for a few million years, in the last analysis, will not be of any intrinsic consequence. AC Smith, 1969 Systematics and Appreciation of Reality, Taxon , 18: 5-19. *** If you don’t know where you are going, it doesn't matter which bus you catch. Anon *** 2 of 229 30/01/2012 14:42 DEEPFUTURES1.DOC file:///C:/HTM files/htm files/DEEPFUTURES11 (FINAL).htm CONTENTS PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION Contents by chapter Acknowledgments PART 1: Futures we have glimpsed CH 1 21C ---A DIFFICULT CENTURY Introduction Global springboard to the future Hobsbawm’s coming problems Geopolitical futures Geoeconomic futures World-shaping technologies A growing world population Geosocial futures Global environmental futures Global resource futures Summary: Change in the 21st century CH 2 DEEP FUTURES M3, the world of the third millennium The next glacial age Beyond the next glacial age Overview: Dungeons and dragons Part 2: Understanding the task CH 3 WHAT IS THE QUESTION? Why do people think about the future? What do people want of their own futures? What sort of society do people want? Can societies have goals? The process of setting social goals Quality survival as a goal for world society 3 of 229 30/01/2012 14:42 DEEPFUTURES1.DOC file:///C:/HTM files/htm files/DEEPFUTURES11 (FINAL).htm From goals to objectives Can we shape the future? Recapitulation CH 4 UNDERSTANDING HOW SOCIETIES CHANGE OVER TIME Introduction Ideas from history Some social psychology Sociology and societal change Systems theory and societal change Ecological theory and societal change Evolutionary theory and societal change Overview: A plurality of frameworks PART 3: TAKING charge CH 5 A STRATEGY FOR MANAGING THE DEEP FUTURE Picking a metaphor for the deep futures problem Wicked problems Accepting that rationality is bounded A strategy of responding to priority issues Four priority issues CH 6 GUIDELINES I: NURSING THE WORLD THROUGH ENDLESS CHANGE Managing the change rate Managing trends Managing fragility and senescence Managing unpredictability A Sisyphean task CH 7 GUIDELINES II: LEARNING FOREVER Introduction Four pillars of social learning Nurturing social learning Boosting social learning Managing science and technology Managing stocks and flows of knowledge 4 of 229 30/01/2012 14:42 DEEPFUTURES1.DOC file:///C:/HTM files/htm files/DEEPFUTURES11 (FINAL).htm Recapitulation CH 8 GUIDELINES III: WORKING ON PERENNIAL ISSUES Introduction Managing social relations Managing global governance Managing production and distribution Managing the global ecosystem Chapter overview CH 9 STORIES TO LIVE BY Backtracking Style, attitude and role REFERENCES APPENDIX: BASIC PROPERTIES OF DISSIPATIVE (ENERGY-DEGRADING) SYSTEMS INDEX 5 of 229 30/01/2012 14:42 DEEPFUTURES1.DOC file:///C:/HTM files/htm files/DEEPFUTURES11 (FINAL).htm PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION I am very curious about how our species will fare over coming ages. Will the human lineage survive, reasonably happily, into the distant future? Indeed, will we survive another millennium in reasonably good shape? Will the next thousand years be particularly difficult or just ordinarily difficult? Supposing we survive the next thousand years, will we eventually go extinct as most species do or will we evolve into a new species with which one might empathise? And, supposing we continue to evolve, will that new species or its descendants survive the death of the Sun as an energy and light source in five billion or so years? Beyond that, there is the ultimate question as to if, when and how the universe will end and whether, in some sense, life might best that challenge. A question which is almost as big is whether we ourselves can take steps to significantly improve our chances of being part of a long-lasting lineage. It may just be that, given such a choice, we would perhaps not take it? I will ask that question too. I will of course die with my curiosities unsatisfied and, thereafter, I don't expect to be watching the story unfold from some heavenly vantage point. My only practicable option, in the absence of revelation, is to collect and construct some plausible well-informed stories---optimistic, pessimistic and realistic---about what might happen to the Earth and its inhabitants. In this book I am presenting some of those stories along with the ideas and facts that make them plausible in my eyes. Remember that ‘plausible’ does not mean ‘true’. It means that if things turned out that way, one would not be too surprised. Philosophically, I am a naturalist, meaning that I do not find stories which invoke the supernatural to be plausible. For example, when I find a gap, a lack of causal specificity, at some point in the evolutionary story---eg what happened before the big bang, the rise of life, the rise of consciousness---I prefer to ‘wait and see’ rather than attribute events to a Creator, a vital principle etc. As an act of faith (and that is precisely what it is), I assume there is always a natural (causal) explanation for what has happened even if it cannot be accessed. For example, it is not evident that the scientific methodology we are using today (limited to electromagnetic and gravity signatures) is capable of providing a full explanation of the universe. I am also a meliorist. Meliorism is the doctrine, somewhere between optimism and pessimism, that purposive human action can often improve outcomes over what would otherwise be in the absence of such action. Without such a belief, I could not write a book originally sub-titled A guide to surviving well. Not that I quite have the confidence this sub-title implies. I am certainly not a fatalist who believes there is nothing we can do to change the future. My pessimism extends to observing that the deep future may be a shit of a place which we can do little to avoid (I don’t know) but, if we try to make it better, it is unlikely to be worse than if we had not tried. Put naturalism and meliorism together and you get (to use a term of Julian Huxley’s (1953| 1963) which is now probably dated) a scientific humanist , someone who wants the best for people and thinks that science, dangerous as it often is, offers one of the better prospects of that. Happily, we have reached an era where science and history have produced a truckload of exciting and plausible, and sometimes contradictory, stories of how things got to be the way they are. Anyone who takes the trouble to read and try to understand a sample of these stories will be rewarded with a sense of the past which is not unlike one’s own memories, albeit ‘false’ memories because one wasn’t really there when it happened.
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