Aldous Huxley has given us an equally famous and equally dystopian vision of the future, but in Huxley’s Brave New World<\/em>, the\u00a0 enslaved peoples gladly accept their slavery in exchange for the mood-elevating narcotic, \u201csoma\u201d.<\/p>\n Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em> and Brave New World<\/em> in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death<\/em>. He wrote:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in <\/em>Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny `failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In <\/em>Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here are some of the serious linked problems which human civilization is facing today:<\/p>\n THREATS TO THE ENVIRONMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n The global environment is being destroyed by excessive consumption in the industrialized countries, combined with rapid population growth in developing nations.\u00a0 Climate change threatens to melt glaciers and polar ice.\u00a0 Complete melting of Greenland’s inland ice would result in a 7 meter rise in sea level.\u00a0 Complete melting of the Antarctic ice cap would produce an additional 5 \u00a0meters of rise. Ultimately, if not avoided, catastrophic climate change could make most of the earth’s surface uninhabitable, and the global population of humans would be correspondingly reduced.<\/p>\n GROWING\u00a0 POPULATION,\u00a0 VANISHING\u00a0 RESOURCES<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0 fossil fuel era is ending.\u00a0 By 2050,\u00a0 oil and natural gas will be prohibitively expensive.\u00a0 They will no longer be used as fuels, but will be reserved as feedstocks for chemical synthesis.\u00a0 Within a hundred years, the same will be true of coal.\u00a0 The reserve indices for many metals are between 10 and 100 years.\u00a0 Reserve indices are defined as the size of the known reserves of metals divided by the current annual rates of production.<\/p>\n THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS<\/strong><\/p>\n It is predicted that by 2050, the world’s population of humans will reach 9 billion. This is just the moment when the oil and natural gas, on which modern energy-intensive agriculture depend,\u00a0 will\u00a0 become\u00a0 so\u00a0 expensive\u00a0 that\u00a0 they\u00a0 will\u00a0 no\u00a0 longer\u00a0 be\u00a0 used as fuels.\u00a0 Climate change may also contribute to a global food crisis. Melting of Himalayan glaciers threatens the summer water supplies of both India and China.\u00a0 Rising sea levels threaten to inundate low-lying agricultural land, and aridity will be produced by climate change.\u00a0 Overdrawn, water\u00a0 tables\u00a0 are\u00a0 falling.\u00a0\u00a0 Topsoil\u00a0 is\u00a0 also\u00a0 being\u00a0 lost. These elements combine to produce a threat of widespread famine by the middle of the 21st century, involving billions of people rather than millions.<\/p>\n INTOLERABLE ECONOMIC INEQUALITY<\/strong><\/p>\n Today 2.7 billion people\u00a0 live\u00a0 on\u00a0 less\u00a0 than\u00a0 $2\u00a0 a\u00a0 day\u00a0 –\u00a0 1.1\u00a0 billion\u00a0 on\u00a0 less\u00a0 than\u00a0 $1\u00a0 per\u00a0 day. 18\u00a0 million\u00a0 of\u00a0 our\u00a0 fellow\u00a0 humans\u00a0 die\u00a0 each\u00a0 year\u00a0 from\u00a0 poverty-related causes.\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile,\u00a0 obesity\u00a0 is\u00a0 becoming\u00a0 a\u00a0 serious\u00a0 health\u00a0 problem\u00a0 in the rich part of the world.\u00a0 In 2006, 1.1 billion people lacked safe drinking\u00a0 water,\u00a0 and\u00a0 waterborne\u00a0 diseases\u00a0 killed\u00a0 an\u00a0 estimated\u00a0 1.8\u00a0 million people.\u00a0 The developing countries are also the scene of a resurgence of other\u00a0 infectious\u00a0 diseases,\u00a0 such\u00a0 as\u00a0 malaria,\u00a0 drug-resistant\u00a0 tuberculosis and HIV\/AIDS. Economic inequality, both within nations and between nations, also undermines democracy. Powerful oligarchies control many governments.<\/p>\n THREAT\u00a0 OF\u00a0 NUCLEAR\u00a0 WAR<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite\u00a0 the\u00a0 end\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 Cold War,\u00a0 the threat of a nuclear catastrophe remains severe.\u00a0 During the Cold War, the number and power of nuclear weapons reached insane heights – 50,000 nuclear weapons with a total explosive power equivalent to roughly a million Hiroshima bombs.\u00a0 Expressed differently, the total explosive power was equivalent to 20 billion tons of TNT, 4 tons for each person on earth.\u00a0 Today the total number of these weapons has been cut approximately in half,\u00a0 but there are still enough to destroy human civilization many times over.\u00a0 The danger of accidental nuclear war remains severe, since many nuclear missiles are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired within minutes of a warning being received.\u00a0 Continued over a long period of time,\u00a0 the threat of accident will grow to a near certainty.\u00a0 Meanwhile,\u00a0 the number of nations possessing nuclear weapons\u00a0 is\u00a0 growing,\u00a0 and\u00a0 there\u00a0 is\u00a0 a\u00a0 danger\u00a0 that\u00a0 if\u00a0 an\u00a0 unstable\u00a0 government is overthrown (for example, Pakistan’s), the country’s nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of sub-national groups.\u00a0 Against nuclear terrorism there is no effective defense.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX<\/strong><\/p>\n In 2020, world military budgets reached a total of roughly two trillion dollars (i.e.\u00a0 two million million dollars).\u00a0\u00a0 This\u00a0 amount\u00a0 of\u00a0 money\u00a0 is\u00a0 almost\u00a0 too\u00a0 large\u00a0 to\u00a0 be\u00a0 imagined. The fact that it is being spent means that many people are making a living from the institution of war.\u00a0 Wealthy and powerful lobbies from the military-industrial complex are able to influence mass media and governments.\u00a0 Thus the institution of war persists, although we know very well that it is a threat to civilization and that it is responsible for much of the suffering that humans experience.<\/p>\n LIMITS TO GROWTH<\/strong><\/p>\n A \u201chealthy\u201d economic growth rate of 4% per year\u00a0 corresponds\u00a0 to\u00a0 an\u00a0 increase\u00a0 by\u00a0 a\u00a0 factor\u00a0 of\u00a0 50\u00a0 in\u00a0 a\u00a0 century,\u00a0 by\u00a0 a factor of 2,500 in two centuries and 125,000 in three centuries.\u00a0 No one can maintain that resource-using, waste-producing economic activities can continue to grow except by refusing to look more than a certain distance into the future. In other words, perpetual economic growth on a finite planet is impossible. Growth-worshiping economists avoid facing this impossibility by refusing to look more than one or two decades into the future.<\/p>\n It seems likely that the boundaries for economic growth will be reached by the middle of the 21st century. (Culture can of course continue to grow.)\u00a0 We face a difficult period of transition from an economy that depends on growth for its health to a new economic system:\u00a0 steady-state economics.<\/p>\n How well did H.G. Wells, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley predict these current dangers to human civilization and the biosphere? George Orwell and Aldous Huxley both foresaw that science and technology might not always be beneficial to society.\u00a0 In both Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em> and Brave New World<\/em>, technology is used to enforce conformity.<\/p>\n Remarkably, H.G. Wells’ 1913 novel, The World Set Free<\/em>, predicted the development of an enormously powerful bomb using uranium. He correctly concluded that such a bomb would make war prohibitively dangerous, and that only an effective world government could make the world safe again. But this is not the situation today. We do not have a world government with the powers needed to make the world safe; and we have the much more powerful thermonuclear bombs, possessed by many nations, and the constant threat that human civilization and much of the biosphere will be destroyed in a thermonuclear war, started by technical or human failure, or by the insanity of a person in power. To ensure the safety of the world, the United Nations must be reformed and greatly strengthened. I believe that it should be converted\u00a0 into a federation, with the power to make laws that are binding on individuals, and a greatly-increased budget.<\/p>\n One thing which all the authors seem to have missed completely is the relationship between industrial society and fossil fuels. The Industrial Revolution marked the start of massive human use\u00a0 of\u00a0 fossil\u00a0 fuels.\u00a0 The\u00a0 stored\u00a0 energy\u00a0 from\u00a0 several hundred\u00a0 million\u00a0 years\u00a0 of\u00a0 plant\u00a0 growth\u00a0 began\u00a0 to\u00a0 be\u00a0 used at\u00a0 roughly\u00a0 a\u00a0 million\u00a0 times\u00a0 the\u00a0 rate\u00a0 at\u00a0 which\u00a0 it\u00a0 had\u00a0 been formed.\u00a0 The effect on human society was like that of a narcotic. There was a euphoric (and totally unsustainable) surge of\u00a0 growth\u00a0 of\u00a0 both\u00a0 population\u00a0 and\u00a0 industrial\u00a0 production. Meanwhile, the carbon released into the\u00a0 atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels began to duplicate the conditions which led to the 5 geologically-observed mass extinctions, during each of which more than half of all living species disappeared forever.<\/p>\n In Huxley’s Brave New World<\/em>, the availability of fossil fuels and other resources is not considered at all. In fact the use of resources is encouraged by such slogans as \u201cEnding is better than mending\u201d. Energy-using helicopters are universally used for transportation. Games, such as Centrifugal Bumblepuppy, require much energy use. We should remember, however, that Huxley’s novel is a satire on Fordian society, and that Henry Ford and his contemporaries did not worry about the end of the fossil fuel era or about catastrophic\u00a0 climate change. As a criticism of folly, the novel is certainly valid.<\/p>\n __________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n LIMITS TO GROWTH: A \u201chealthy\u201d economic growth rate of 4% per year\u00a0 corresponds\u00a0 to\u00a0 an\u00a0 increase\u00a0 by\u00a0 a\u00a0 factor\u00a0 of\u00a0 50\u00a0 in\u00a0 a\u00a0 century,\u00a0 by\u00a0 a factor of 2,500 in two centuries and 125,000 in three centuries.\u00a0 No one can maintain that resource-using, waste-producing economic activities can continue to grow except by refusing to look more than a certain distance into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[2022,2108,855,2128,1426],"class_list":["post-188976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-aldous-huxley","tag-future-studies","tag-george-orwell","tag-h-g-wells","tag-predictions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Crisis of Civilization<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/John-Scales-Avery.jpg\")
<\/a><\/em>John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995<\/strong><\/em> Nobel Peace Prize<\/strong> for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. \u00d8rsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and<\/em> received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent books are <\/em>Information Theory and Evolution and <\/em>Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century<\/a> (pdf). Website: https:\/\/www.johnavery.info\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"