Decline and fall

from time.com

There’s one perplexing issue that floats* across my mind fairly regularly and that’s the issue of decline. I don’t mean personal decline, although that's scary enough, but social, political and possibly economic decline. History suggests civilisations don’t go on forever. They are either conquered by outside forces or enter a period of decline usually ending in some kind of collapse and a new regime. So how to view our own civilisation? Optimistically or pessimistically?

*Floats in what though?

Optimistic examples.

We have a number of well-known issues such as more international competition for fossil fuels and raw materials, but new resources such as shale gas could sort that out. After all, we can do anything if we have reliable sources of energy. Gene therapies, new materials and communications may all be set to change our lives for the better. 

Pessimistic examples.

Democratic accountability has all but disappeared from the EU. What little elbow room there is left is taken up by vested interests. Climate change is an obvious global fraud where ordinary citizens don’t count except as a resource to be controlled and subdued. The nuclear family is disintegrating and corruption and dishonesty are rife among the global elite. 

So pessimist or optimist?

I think one could look at our own times from many angles, either optimistically or pessimistically. In line with the principle of having at least two competing theories, I opt for both. However, I do have a leaning towards pessimism, mainly because of the problem of complexity.

To handle complexity, we don’t need complexity managers in Whitehall, we need flexibility and the freedom to succeed or fail. I don’t think we have that and far too many people seem not to want it. 

Allow me to float just one obvious indicator for a society in decline, because certain simple indicators can be more compelling that the super-complex nuances of social and political analysis .

Take a walk through any town centre on a Saturday morning and check out how many people have failed to control their calorie intake to the point of serious obesity. Why has this happened? I don’t know and really it's none of my business, but I suspect it happens whether people want it to or not. To my mind this is the social indicator - the likelihood that obesity is usually involuntary. 

I see this as a warning flag that people are not in control of their own bodies, let alone their personal destiny. Something is seriously wrong. Widespread obesity is only one issue and anyone may ignore it if they so choose, but for me it’s important. I see it as evidence that things are going wrong with what we usually call personal responsibility. 

It isn’t a problem for governments to resolve though, because that simply takes away one more bit of personal responsibility. It's a logical bind that governments cannot deal with by more of the same. Having taken away personal responsibility, they have to allow it to reinstate itself. Which it will if we are allowed to run our own lives.

Otherwise the monumental complexity of trying to manage our lives centrally will simply defeat them. Both the UK government and the EU have taken on a hopelessly one-sided battle against complexity where they stupidly try to defeat the symptoms by more complexity.

So complexity will win.

The only outstanding question is the scale of the defeat. In order to mitigate it we need a society where social support for the afflicted does not snuff out personal responsibility. In that way we learn to live with complexity and adapt ourselves to its unending vicissitudes.  

So pessimism prevails with me, although I’m always prepared to hold optimism in reserve. I don't think I'll need it though.