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September 7, 2001 Posted Sept 4.01 End Times: More Psychological Than Logical [Original headline: It’s long awaited – but it never arrives] Within the next century, a huge 300-foot-high tsunami triggered by the collapse of the western side of La Palma island in the Canaries into the Atlantic Ocean is likely to drown everybody on the east coast of the United States and devastate Britain — but by then it won’t really matter. The environment will already be wrecked, democracy will have fallen to globalised corporate power, biotechnology will have turned our children into Frankensteins who eat Frankenstein foods, and all our familiar human institutions and values will have been perverted or destroyed by the twin solvents of rampant capitalism and post-modern relativism. If you think that the world is falling apart, that you are living closer to the bitter end of the story than the bright beginnings — then you are in good company. Most people have always thought that. But they were usually wrong, and you may be too. Take the High Renaissance, generally seen now as the time and place (Italy 1450-1550) when the foundations were laid for all that is good about the modern world: Individual freedom, scientific inquiry, and an extraordinary flowering of art and literature. What was the average Italian’s view of the world in the midst of so much promise? That the world was falling apart, of course. Constantinople had just fallen to the Turks and Italians were terrified that Islam was going to overrun all of Europe. Italy was ravaged by constant wars between petty city-states, and the mercenaries who fought them had a nasty habit of robbing, raping and murdering the citizens of both sides. Go out and you risk being mugged. Stay in and you may be poisoned by your servants or your spouse. The next bout of the Plague will be along any year now. As for all these disgusting free-thinkers and decadent artists, that’s why we need the Holy Inquisition — but we are still probably nearing the End of Days. Viewed from the present, the future always seems dark to most people. Why? The reason, suggests Oliver Bennett in his new book Cultural Pessimism, is not so much logical as psychological. Bennett does not deny that terrible things will happen in the future. What he questions is the great weight that we give to negative news about both the present and the future, despite the fact that never before has such a high proportion of the human race lived in freedom, security and dignity. The dystopias are often mutually exclusive — you cannot have the universal triumph of ruthless capitalism and total environmental collapse (though you could perhaps have them one after the other). So one of Bennett’s real achievements is to provide a clear view of these rival versions of pessimism about the future. Then there are all the theories of environmental collapse. They may be proved right, but what is striking is how popular these views are with people who do not actually understand their arguments about bio-diversity or climate change or population growth. The same goes for the growing loss of faith in the ability of science to create a better world. This world is clearly vastly better in material terms than the world of 1500 for most of the people in it, and it is mostly the application of scientific principles that made the difference, but science is now viewed by a large part of the public as more likely to bring doom than development. And so on. There are those who predict the imminent collapse of the global economy (both old Marxists, and radical capitalists such as George Soros), and those who believe that business is taking over the world, leaving only a facade of democracy and free media, and those who fear that modernisation equals rampant individualism and social disintegration. There are elements of truth in all these ideas, and maybe one of them will really come true. But none of them has the tangible reality of the global nuclear war we lived on the brink of for much of the 20th century. Yet these fuzzier disasters command a much wider audience of enthusiasts. What makes the current disaster scenarios so popular? Bad news is more exciting, and it feeds people’s self-im-portance to believe that something extra-special is going to happen in their own era. But Oliver Bennett perceptively suggests it’s because many people are mildly dep-ressed. Turning their anxieties outwards lets them cheer up. The happy environmentalist ought to be a contradiction in terms, but many activists are amazingly optimistic about their private lives. They are worthy of respect, and they may be right. But it is remarkable how pessimistic we all manage to be about a world where the risk of large-scale war is lower than at any time in history, where freedom and democracy are spreading into the most unlikely places, and where a vast majority of people live better, longer lives than their grandparents. It’s human nature to worry. There will almost certainly be a 25th century that’s fit to live in. But you may be sure that the people who are alive then will be deeply worried about the 26th century. • Story originally published by: Western Daily Press, Bristol / England | Gwynne Dyer - Sept 03.01 |
