(July 29, 2017 at 8:20 pm)Minimalist Wrote:(July 29, 2017 at 12:09 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Do you guys really think the earth/humanity will be basically destroyed in 1000 years?
Modern humanity has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. I don't know that in only 1000 years from now it'll all have come to an end.
There may be some scattered groups of survivors living in caves licking the moss off of rocks. What we call civilization will be gone because we are not as civilized as we think we are.
I imagine someone in 475 AD leaning against one of the archways of the Roman Colosseum saying " this will last forever... "
And 2/3 of those arches are still standing. The main lasting influence of fall of the western Roman Empire appears to be that it made the heirs of the western empire so permanently provincial in their outlook that even now they do not see the richest, most powerful and most inflential part of that very world was thriving near the beginning of its own 1000 year arc at that very moment in Constantinople, while other comparably rich, powerful and influential parts of the world in hardly noticed, if at all, so important an event as the notional end of Roman Empire.
I suspect if the current structure of the world economics is to be put under severe strain, the global system of trade will fail across large parts of the world, and the world would as a result become poorer, less productive and more emiserated than before, sure. Some of the Leading centers of the current structure may suffer acute strain that they lack robustness or flexibility to endure, and their influence may fall like the Soviet Union. But that would not result in total collapse of civilization. The power of technological civilization is so great the need to maintain technological parity and strive for technological superiority would from now forever be a dominant driver of geopolitical concerns for all successful players. Under strain some centers of civilization would do better in this than others, but wealth, influence and power will continue to flow to and reside with those that do adaquately well in this.
