So, our technology today causes ideas to be spread too fast to be properly tested. Is that really so bad? Perhaps the spreading of false information causes people to make bad decisions, such as whether or not one should get vaccinated during a pandemic or which president to vote for. But does that really threaten the survival of humanity? We seemed to be getting through this pandemic and although a large number of people died, it is still a tiny fraction of the total human population. Even bad presidents are eventually voted out of office. Although the next president has a lot of things that needs fixing, humanity still goes on.
So, what is really the issue with us losing the cultural mechanism? Granted. It may not be that humanity as a whole would become extinct as a result of the loss of the cultural mechanism, but there are some very seriously unpleasant states of existence before we get to extinction.
Perhaps the most important thing that is being maintained by the cultural mechanism is civilization. What do I mean by the term civilization? Basically, it is ability to live and work together with other people. Often civilization is seen as all the accomplishments such as art works of scientific achievements. However, these accomplishment are merely the symptoms of civilization. These accomplishments would not have been possible if people did not cooperate to achieve them. A single person could not have built the rocket with the capsule to land on the moon. The bigger the achievement, the larger the number of people that needed to be involved. It implies that all these people had to work together. That is only possible thanks to their level of civilization.
People are different. They have different views and convictions. If these people want to work together, they have to tolerate one another’s views, even if those views are very different. In a culture, the views and ideas may to a large extent be correlated. However, as the population of a culture increases the diversity in ideas will also increase. Therefore, the people in that culture can only maintain their cooperation if their level of civilization – the extent to which they can tolerate different views – also increases.
So, what happens when people do not tolerate different views anymore? Does it not simply mean that they cannot work together to achieve those accomplishments anymore? Yes, that is one inevitable consequence, but there are several much more severe things that can happen. The break down of civilization effectively implies a fragmentation of the culture into several lesser subcultures. It may sound like a scenario for civil war, but there are many other ways that the fragmentation can manifest. The fragmentation may happen along class separation lines. The lower classes would them reorganize themselves into gangs, living by stealing their resources. If the government of the day can muster enough cooperation to keep these gangs in check, some form of normality can be maintain. On the other hand, if the fragmentation implies that such cooperation cannot be maintained, the gangs would become ever more powerful. The gang leaders would eventually emerge as warlords. The point where these warlords become more powerful than the government would indicate the stage where the civilization has effectively fallen.
OK so that is bad. When civilizations fall, life as we know it changes drastically. It would generally mean that life expectancy decreases. The human population would dwindle. Although it does not necessarily imply that humanity becomes extinct, it is a close second.
But why would the fast spreading of information lead to such an apocalyptic state of affairs? The reason is that there is a concomitant breakdown in cooperation. Why this is happening, I don’t know, but there is a clear increase in animosity observable in social media. Somehow, the fast spreading of information puts pressure on basic civilization. In some parts of the world there is also an observable increase in criminal activity. These observations are all pointing to an imminent fall of civilization.
That is why the spaceship is called Imminency.
Flippiefanus 