Easy Go

Collapse is an uncomfortable notion for adults. They passed from the security of childhood through the manic-depressive pressures of puberty, coped with the emergencies of young adulthood, and finally established themselves in a relatively certain life. (This is a common pattern in almost every mammalian species, not just humans.) People prefer their habitual, complacent lives. Almost everyone shuts out the notion that it ends someday. They are infrequently reminded of that possibility until they reach old age. So to be told, after that struggle for survival and identity, that things are as ferociously uncertain as ever is not welcome news.

I've never been very welcome in society, partly because I am often the bearer of bad news. Despite the rejection and shunning, I managed to live into old age. That was possible because people called on me when they got stuck: I'm the guy who makes or fixes things others cannot. There is a reason I can perform those tasks in my areas of expertise: I always pay a great deal of attention to what can go wrong. For example, in my earliest computer programs, I was frustrated by the possibility that the results of certain mathematical operations might be wrong. That foolish concern led me to study how the computer did the arithmetic, and to begin developing methods of error checking. While I did not break new ground, later on the same concerns led other computer designers to adopt error-correcting codes. Today, every packet transmitted over the Internet (and other digital networks) incorporates error checking codes, which makes the network incredibly accurate and reliable (but still not foolproof).

It may seem contradictory that something so utterly predictable as a computer needs error checking. In principle, it doesn't. In principle every calculation (operation) is exact. Alan Turing's machine is ultimately Platonic, but the material world is subject to the Third Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy degrades principle to erratic practice. The world is full of noise, so, even if a machine operation is done exactly, communication of the result is uncertain. Those familiar with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle will see that there is a problem in correlating the result of an operation and when it occurred. Philosophically, it means there is an inevitable "slippage" in the world, even in predictable computer operations. In the world of our living, we have to worry about things like the printer running out of ink, or not marking the paper in just the right place. Thus, computer people, who expect their machines to do exactly what they are programmed to do, are more sensitive - even paranoid - about error than other people. Ironically, increased exactness engenders a greater (sense of) risk in inexactness.

All this reduces to the common knowledge that nothing is certain, even if we go about our lives as if everything is predictable and certain. That we go about our lives as if, ignoring the underlying uncertainties, is based on a strong emotional predilection, a desire for security. We are invested in things as they are, the status quo, in proportion to the extent of benefitting from those arrangements. We try to keep things working in our favor, and quickly put down any revolts against the established order. We are strongly programmed to continue doing whatever we have been doing, because it got us here in the first place. Even most of the poor, of whom Marx said "Workers arise, you have nothing to lose but your chains," are reluctant to protest and struggle against the way things are, for fear that things will only get worse. So, as a result of learning from personal experience and the effort expended in hard won gains, people refuse to bring into their lives the common knowledge that nothing is certain. All of that makes people prejudiced against social change, and doubly prejudiced against considering the possibility of collapse.

Nonetheless, we all know that nothing is forever. Horrific as it was, the collapse of the World Trade Towers was characteristic. The towers did not fall over or burn down after being struck a near fatal blow. Instead, it was the weakening of the steel core due to intense heating that eventually allowed the collapse. When the collapse came, it only took a few seconds for the implosion to destroy each of the towers. (I watched this on TV as it happened.) The implosion was a chain reaction: the top portion of each building served as a hammer to knock down the next few floors. Those floors added weight to the falling mass, which hammered the floors below them, etc. By the time the falling masses reached ground level, the forces were enormous, pulverizing concrete and steel into dust and shrapnel in less than a second. Exactly the same sort of chain reaction happens in the core of a nuclear bomb. Once the chain reaction gets going, it is nearly impossible to stop. In the case of atomic bombs, the reaction is mainly limited by the speed of light (E=mc²).

Everyday examples of collapse are legion. We are not surprised when the house of cards falls over. The organized parade of thousands of dominos falling is always inspiring. The tortured end of the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge seems awful, but not unusual given our modern understanding of engineering. It is easy to provide your own examples, if you are inclined to observe the goings-on in the world around you. No matter how much work went into constructing something, there is always a weakness, or a mode of attack which reveals a weakness, that is its undoing. If this were not so, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon would be a major, present-day tourist attraction south of Baghdad. Instead, the Iraqi civil war is being fought in the midst of ruins.

I am spending these words to make a seemingly trivial point, something so common that surely everyone is screaming "So What?!" I agree it is trivial and commonplace that things come to end, very often a sudden end. What is not trivial is the human refusal to accept one's own demise, or the demise of one's society, despite those everyday experiences. Collapse seems unthinkable, even to people near the end. Most Japanese were profoundly shocked when Emperor Hirohito announced the unconditional surrender of Japan 60 years ago. The submission of Japanese people to a foreign power had never happened in the thousands of years of their history; it was unthinkable. Possibly because it was unthinkable, in the end Japanese civilization survived the American occupation. The same sort of mechanism seems to have worked in favor of the Southern American (Confederate ) culture, which guided its adherents to refuse defeat at the hands of Yankees. Massive resistance and cultural resistance give a society the feel of indestructible permanence. Yet, the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans vanished. There are thousands of endangered minor cultures in the process of disappearing today, undermined by the onslaught of modern technical civilizations; e.g., the far North American Eskimos and tribal peoples in Indonesia, Africa and South America. In the Americas, our most recent experience with disappearing civilizations are the Inca, Maya, Aztecs and Pueblo peoples, as well as hundreds of tribes of North American and Caribbean Indians. Despite the best efforts of European invaders, physical descendants of those destroyed civilizations and tribes are still alive today, but they are not communicants in the old ways. In many cases, the old language and culture disappeared so completely that anthropologists and linguists have to speculate on their existence, extent and content. However insulting it may be, only a very few human beings are remembered beyond the grave. Most of the billions of us pass without notice on this planet.

For those who don't think this happens, consider: what do you know about people living or dead in Lhasa, Tibet? How about Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, an important source of American well-being? Should we try Corpus Christi, Texas? Maybe we feel more certain about Crawford, Texas? Now, turn it around: what does anyone in Lhasa know about you or me? Do those in Crawford, Texas know I exist? Do they care?

Almost all of us believe oneself to be the central figure in the Universe. Who could be more important? Who could be more worthy? Yet, I think it is probably true that almost all Americans are unknown to everyone in Lhasa, and unknown to those in Crawford as well. Like it or not, we are insignificant. (In case you suspect otherwise, I am not an exception to any of these statements. I am just like you.) It is exactly our insignificance that allows the Laws of Nature to work their way, for societies to grow or die according to the action of "forces" larger than oneself and even greater than most social combinations. Those "forces" are described in the Darwinian explanation of evolution. I place the word "forces" in quotes, because they are not in any way "Newtonian;" they are chaotic. "Forces" need not be gods, demons, cause and effect, or mechanistic actions. I take the word as a euphemism for the happenings in Nature which appear to be regular, because they are an integration of underlying Quantum Mechanical probabilities. I think Plato was right that ours is a world of appearances, but the implication is not a metaphysics of "real" forms. Rather, at bottom, I think the appearances cancel each other out, so there is nothing. This suggests one of the earliest Greek philosophers, Heraclitus, had an understanding closest to us moderns.

Why go through this song and dance? Because the "forces" of expansion and collapse go on irrespective of our personal and social wishes. While our historical and scientific understanding is far from perfect, it's pretty clear that societies will fall apart based on some obvious factors. As Jared Diamond points out in Collapse, three of the five major reasons for civilizations ending are related to the environment. Those reasons are perfectly sensible; e.g., if a society is unable to grow food for its people, the people die. Lack of food is always fatal for Earth's organisms, even bacteria that can lie dormant for thousands of years. It doesn't really matter whether the famine happens because of Global Climate Change, Asteroidal Impact or plain human stupidity and mismanagement; the results are always the same. The only thing different about the evolution of the human species is the recent development of choice. As Prof Diamond has it, societies choose to succeed or fail. It is this power of choice that offers the only way out of the natural evolution of civilizations (societies, cultures, etc). Nonetheless, choice is rarely exercised, perhaps because it is such a new and unfamiliar development, so Nature goes its way.

I've written a lot about collapse for a simple reason: I believe the society around me - the United States - is headed that way. I wish I weren't part of it, but I don't have the means of escape. I feel like those on the Titanic who knew they were doomed as soon as the ship struck ice, even while most of the passengers went on dancing and the crew went about its business. The Titanic's Captain, in my opinion, contributed significantly to the disaster, and should have been sentenced to a tortured life imprisonment. He refused to believe the ship would sink until it was too late. He had a limited understanding of the ship's design and little knowledge of its failure modes. He was narrowly focussed on beating Atlantic crossing records, making money for his employers, and pleasing the upper class inhabitants in his charge. (For example, he refused to let those in steerage out, arrogantly condemning many of them to drown.) Is anything different on the bridge in Washington, D.C. today?

All of the marks that we know about in historical cases are on the United States. Its people dance well into the night, ignoring the dangers about them. They are unconcerned about the less fortunate among them. They have been living well beyond their means for decades. The oil shortage is only the tip of the iceberg.

Collapse comes suddenly, because it is the result of winding a spring too much. Springs work because they are made of a material that stores energy in the compression, but resists structural change. Materials like sand and soft rubber make poor springs because they are easily deformed, thus absorbing applied energy. Cushions are not springs, but springs become hard cushions when their internal structural energy cannot resist applied forces. The difference betwen cushions and springs is that springs deform suddenly; they break. In most cases, societies that overreach are like springs because they haven't provided any cushion for their fall.

To date, humans appear to be unique among Earth's inhabitants in having the power of conscious choice. Ants and many other non-human species produce engineering wonders, so "technical" knowledge is widespread. But, we think ants and bees are compelled to build their cities, guided by a genetic program. We believe humans are different in having the choice between building Hanging Gardens or hanging around the garden. We could prove our ability by making choices that avoid the abyss just beyond our next step.