Some Doom and Gloom

As we watch the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, I cannot help but think we might be looking at a microcosm of the collapse of western civilization. Is this the way the world ends, not with a bang but in chaos?

We know that all empires fall eventually. Sooner or later the barbarians seething at the gates manage to force an entrance and destroy and pillage until a new dark age is begun.

Even though the age of empires has passed into history, we have created a new form of empire, enormous spheres of influence that we define by talking of western civilization, the moslem nations or the third world. Up until recently, it seemed that the battle was between the competing ideologies of democracy and communism, and now we think in terms of the struggle between democracy and fundamental Islamics. Yet I wonder if we are missing the real war, the invasion of the barbarians.

In ancient times it was easy to identify the enemies of civilization; the Roman Empire lay within its boundaries and anything beyond could be classed as barbarian (the Romans certainly did!). The battle lines were clear and we can name the peoples that brought the empire down: the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the Franks, the Vandals, the Huns and even a little-known Germanic tribe called the Allens (a superior bunch, no doubt).

The situation today is rather different. It would be wrong for us in the west to think of the barbarians as the Islamic world; that is much more a case of competing empires striving for supremacy. The modern barbarians are not so easily identified and yet they threaten civilization just as seriously as the Huns did the Roman Empire.

If we look at the empires we have built, it becomes more evident from where the real threat comes. Our civilization is the most complex and scientifically advanced the world has ever seen. We have developed structures that bind us all together in a common dependency upon our control of the environment. Our populations are now so huge that any collapse of even one of those systems would lead to a general disintegration of our society into a competition for survival.

Just as an instance, consider what would happen if supplies of oil dried up tomorrow. The whole structure of civilization would start to come apart as we found ourselves unable to get to work, the power plants unable to deliver electricity, distribution of foodstuffs impossible, even production of food drastically curtailed as the farmer became reduced to the horse and plow again. It would be chaos on a far greater scale than we witness in New Orleans.

But, of course, fossil fuels are not going to dry up tomorrow or even the next day and we prepare for their gradual replacement by looking at other sources of power. So why am I so pessimistic about the future for our civilization?

The answer lies amongst the hordes of the barbarians. This time they will not come on horseback, swooping down from the plains of central Asia, destroying all resistance in their path. Today they are already amongst us and their numbers increase every day, unnoticed yet ever present, for they are an inevitable by-product of the systems we have built. Those systems require constant tending by an army of highly-trained and educated technicians and that army becomes ever larger as the systems grow in size and complexity.

Unfortunately, the very philosophies and ideals that have led to our ability to create these systems have dictated also that our education system become more and more ineffective in producing new generations of technicians to tend the machine. It is not apparent yet, but the time will come when there are not enough qualified and capable people being produced to keep our systems running as they should. And that will result in a long and disheartening rearguard action to prevent the slow decay back into chaos.

The signs have been there for us to see for a long time. We know that literacy levels have declined to the point that schools are accepting essays that are barely comprehensible. The art galleries are filled with junk that no-one has the courage to denounce as worthless. Our political debate descends to the depths of name-calling and dirt-digging. The publishing houses resort in desperation to printing any tripe that they think the masses will buy. It is all symptomatic of a degeneration in our culture that will ultimately destroy it.

So the barbarians are amongst us already. They are our children and grandchildren and generations yet to be born.

It is easy to forget that the Roman Empire did not end suddenly on the day the Huns took Rome. It was much more a long process of gradual decay as their systems were beaten down by the waves of barbarians entering the empire. Even while the Vandals rampaged through the Italian peninsula, St Augustine was writing his learned tracts in North Africa. Civilization dies slowly, almost unnoticeably.

As T.S. Eliot said in his poem, The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.