The collapse of the “HUMANITY” project: The Would in 2050

Social-political essays with comments by Andrey Stolyarov








Эволюция. Разум. Антропология



СТРАТА Санкт-Петербург 2019

CONTENTS


Preface .......................................... 4
Prologue ......................................... 7

CHAPTER 1.    THE LIMITS TO GROWTH .............. 12
What the modernity started from...................12
Why there is always not enough everything for everyone . . 14
We are the creators of our unhappiness........... 18
Ecological Zugzwang.............................. 20
      The problem of precipice .................. 24

CHAPTER 2.    THIRST.............................. 26
“Take everything and divide!” .................... 27
Let’s try to count once again ................... 29
“Take everything and divide” — variant two....... 32
      The clock of the era has already struck..... 37

CHAPTER 3.    A MIGRANT AS A VOLUNTEER OF
THE APOCALYPSE .................................. 39
The international of fools ....................... 41
The origin of ethnic groups and nations ......... 42
Geopathogenic and geofavourable areas............. 43
A neighbour is good when a fence is high ........ 45
      Underground fire ........................... 51


CHAPTER 4.    THE PHENOMENON
OF INTELLIGENCE ................................. 54
What is intelligence? ........................... 56
What is a human being? .......................... 59
Crows, dolphins, ants and other brothers in mind. 61
      Intelligence as the ideal ................. 66


CHAPTER 5.     “WHAT IS PROGRESS?” ................ 68
So, what is progress? ............................. 69
A human is not “the crown of creation” ............ 71
“Ugly swans”, “lyudens”, “artins”...................73
“We live in hell.”..................................75
Prince gautama as the hero of our times ........... 77
      The myth of progress ........................ 85

CHAPTER 6.   THE SILENCE OF SPACE .......... 87
Are we alone in the universe? .............. 88
Evolutional dead-end........................ 90
      The problem of galactic scales ........92

CHAPTER 7.   THE PHENOMENON OF WOMAN. . . 95
      Woman as a phenomenon.................100

CHAPTER 8.   THE APOCALYPSE WAS YESTERDAY               103
The 15-hundred-year cycle...................105
So, what is the meaning of all of it? ..... 107
The end of history ........................ 113
Is a war to be expected? .................. 114
Freedom is more important than survival.............................. 117
      The crisis of the future ..............121

CHAPTER 9.   THE EUROPEAN RACE’S DISAPPEARANCE ............................. 123
Is culture possible without its carriers? . 124
The world without europeans ............... 125
      The decline of europe? ................128

CHAPTER 10.   BEHAVIOURAL OPTIONS
IN THE ENVIRONMENT OF CRISIS
IN THE FACE OF UNSURMOUNTABLE CIRCUMSTANCES ............................. 132
Every day can become the last one for us ....................... 133
Meneh, meneh, tekel, upharsin (numbered, weighted, divided).............. 134
“There is no future” ...................... 136
Conclusion one, moral ..................... 138
Conclusion two, practical: how everything will take place ............ 145

THE COLLAPSE OF THE “HUMANITY” PROJECT





                PREFACE




        Igor Shuvalov,
        North-West Social & Conservative Policy Center, coordinator

The book contains a lot of information about the issues of environmental impact on the life of modern people and environmental prospects. Without laying claims to deep analysis of certain aspects of the challenge, the book is written imaginatively, it is full of unexpected allusions and offers the readers such plot twists that make you look at well-known things differently.
    In my opinion, a lot is argumentative and requires the readers to be prepared ideologically to a certain extent and have an established worldview not to be swept up by the whirlwind of unexpected conclusions. At the same time, there is no doubt that the author’s attempt «to look into the eyes of truth» wins you over. Such courage always expands the reader’s horizons to this or that extent. But, I repeat, it’s important to be ready to look at all that from your own point of view, without going to extremes of perception.
    The book’s structure, as it can be seen from chapter titles, is lyrical to a certain extent, and that makes the familiarizing process more captivating.
    The range of knowledge the author addresses is impressive: from historical information to modern achievements in chemistry, physics and other sciences. Attention is paid to psychology, comparative analysis of human behaviour and fauna representatives’ behaviour.
    At the same time, if we take the author’s attitude, the moral imperative goes through a whole dialectical cycle: from skeptical attitude in the beginning of the book to invincible and irresistible triumph in the end.
    I think that the book will be interesting for all those who are looking for new ideas on the ways of further humanity’s movement and those who are not indifferent to the meaning of their existence.

Preface

        Sergey Achildiev, writer

The main author’s message is: humanity is mortal. And not in some mysterious, far-off future, but very soon. All the causes of humanity’s death presented by Yuri Shevchuk can be summed up in three groups.
    First: space-related — a big asteroid falling on the planet Earth or change of solar luminosity that may happen already tomorrow.
    Second: brought about by the nature of our planet as such — eruption of one or several big volcanoes, fluctuations of the Earth’s magnetic field, return of glaciation, rapid increase of juvenile waters in the World Ocean... All that may take place at any moment.
    Third: anthropogenic — exhaustion (because of the population growth) of areas suitable for life (including suitable for cultivation soils) and fresh water, coming to the limits of the human immunity system’s capabilities as well as lack of adequate and quick people’s reaction to such changes.
    The above-said and other factors (for example, fighting for fresh water, regularly increasing and unruly migration flows) may lead to never-ending fierce wars, one of which, one never knows, may turn into a nuclear war. Such scenarios are already probable in the next decades.
    On the whole, prospects are not joyful. As they say, every avenue comes to a dead-end. After such forecasts there is a wish to make a rope for hanging without waiting for a global catastrophe.
    However, the series of articles by Yuri Shevchuk is not a forecast. These thoughts and deliberations are a warning for all of us living without thinking about the consequences.
    We have turned our planet into a garbage pit. We live in gas-polluted cities close to stinking refuse dumps. No matter what we use — water, food, household electronic appliances and other

THE COLLAPSE OF THE “HUMANITY” PROJECT

household articles — each of us can’t be sure that all of them are not harmful for health. We call ourselves homo sapiens — an intelligent human, the master of the Earth, the crown of creation. But really we just want to be better than we are. Our behaviour too often certifies the opposite: we really live on our Earth unreasonably, only conquerors, temporary rulers behave like that. And if we use the construction terms, we’re the ground-sill in wooden houses that quickly rots and requires replacement.
    We’re homocentric, we suffer from extreme forms of egoism, greed, oversaturation and comfort.
    And our leaders behave respectively. No matter what they head — either a tribe or a superpower — the overwhelming majority of them have linear and binary mentality: “cause — consequence”, “problem — solution”. However, in giant and complex systems this is similar to an attempt to repair a computer with a hammer and chisel. And if something happens, such thinkers immediately recollect the most radical way of treating international issues — war. Hundreds, thousands, millions of compatriots will die! So what? Ambitions are more important, especially if these ambitions are supported by the said compatriots, still alive.
    There is another danger of humanity’s self-elimination hidden here. It is in the main contradiction of our age — the steadily growing gap between practical actions of humans and their technology-related abilities. We are not ready to live in this century either morally or intellectually. Even fear that always served as the means of self-preservation for people, betrayed us. We’re so conceited, so self-assured that our stupidity obstructs our view when there is a threat of death in front.
    The today’s civilization is a giant canvas titled “The Blind Leading the Blind”. We think that we are deeply civilized, highly spiritual and developed in all respects. We’re proud of our achievements in arts and sciences. But we are really modernly dressed savages sprinkled with eau-de-cologne in fashion. Our neighbours on the planet are our enemies. And like a prehistoric tribe, we courageously beat our patriotic breasts by our hands, swinging a nuclear club and frightening enemies by unbridled strength of our fists.
    We still have not managed to comprehend a simple maxim: strength is not in fists, it’s in kindness, intelligence and ability to help.

            PROLOGUE



    We offer you to ponder over the topic that may be the most interesting for humans — the Future. We’ve tried not only to reliably present the most possible version of the planet Earth’s and its population’s condition by 2050 but also to answer the eternal questions: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
    We tell you beforehand — the result will be unexpected.
    The ecological approach to a social research subject is rather rarely used in social and political journalism. In short, this approach is characterized by taking into account the environment of the place where the society lives and its impact on human life.
    After mastering the environmental worldview, an individual sees relations between phenomena that seem absolutely independent from one another to most people. After looking at a landscape, he at the same time sees not only it as such but also the past and the future of the area. Judging by a larva, he understands what trees will grow here in half a century; the water level changes in wells help him to forecast agriculture development and the condition of the present-day settlements, he uses the increase of the number of hot sunny days to predict increase of the number of crimes in cities.
    The human behaviour being determined by the natural environment was usually beyond the social and political journalism’s comprehension as some constant with which nothing can be done in any case. But this is a false idea, for example, some city development concepts are not taking into account the radical change of the ethnic composition of their population in the next twenty years, consequently, they are not taking into account the changing demands to the urban culture either. We can also mention forecasts for development of countries

THE COLLAPSE OF THE “HUMANITY” PROJECT

not taking into account today’s fertile soils turning into deserts again in the next twenty years...
    Another mistake is to think that the end of humanity will surely come — but not now and not in the next millennium. People are used to think that changes on the globe are slow. Though everyone knows that the ethnic composition of the Roman Empire during the Great Resettlement changed radically in 15 years. And everyone saw, at least in newsreels, mammoths with green grass in their mouths that had been frozen alive just in several minutes. Really, catastrophes are only prepared slowly. But they take place quickly.
    Let’s take a pond being overgrown with water lilies as an example. The number of water lilies increases in a geometric progression, and this does not frighten anyone in the first days of the catastrophe. So what? One water lily, then two, then four, then eight. But this means that if today only one half of the pond is covered by water lilies, we won’t see the clear water tomorrow.
    The humanitarian approach to humanity overestimates the role of upbringing, as a result rolling down to “humanitarian Lamarckism”. In the broad sense, various evolutional theories (mostly those that originated in the 19th century — the first 30 years of the 20th century) are referred to Lamarckian with as if internal, inherent to organisms striving for perfection looked upon as the main driving force of evolution (change in the characteristics of species). As a rule, the impact of “exercise” and “non-exercise” of organs on their evolutional fate is also considered very significant in such theories as it is supposed that the consequences of exercise and non-exercise can be inherited. We can see a similar approach to meditation as a tool for karma cleansing in religion.
    Lamarckism was long ago rejected by August Weismann’s experiments — he cut mouse tails, generation after generation. But he did not manage to breed tailless mice. In the same way, it’s impossible to change the ethnos national character by upbringing or meditations, especially in case of future, still not born generations. Changes in culture of the leaders may not correlate with the behavioural model of an average ethnos representative in any way.
    There is another wrong idea — if there is some phenomenon on the Earth related to the natural environment, for

example, some eco-type, then nature “needs” it. Really, nature does not need anything, it has neither aim, nor wishes, nor morals, nor pity. This is confirmed by hundreds of thousands extinct species — “blind branches” of evolution. As we have no grounds to consider that evolution of live creatures has stopped, we can say with assurance that practically all species of creatures that are alive today, including humans, are “deadend species”.
    The only thing “needed” by nature is to occupy all possible environmental niches, including at the expense of species’ pathological changes that take place in them when they occupy a new natural niche. It does not follow from it that we should treat with respect all the consequences of such expansion, no matter if it refers to invasive species or to eco-types of humans as such. There are no grounds to respectfully treat a process and its involuntary participants when humanity mastered previously useless for life territories, thus reducing quality of life though acquiring a set of internal structure’s pathologies as well as the outside look and mentality pathologies.
    Changes in life around us are taking place quicker than people manage to comprehend them. The environmental worldview allows to at least understand the reasons of what is taking place.
    Who, besides ecologists, foresaw twenty years ago that currently half of the people of Russia won’t have access to drinking water that is clean according to the approved standards and will have to breathe in the air that is 10 times more polluted than according to the World Health Organization standards?
    But this book is not only about the collapsing world. It is also about going on living in this world, how and what for to live in it. About the issues more important than survival and about what the said issues are.
    And this book is a kind of warning. A warning about new global Fascism, based on the aspiration to survive at any price and to sacrifice for it everything the modern civilization values, everything that makes up the meaning of human life, the life of an individual with self-respect and honour.
    We’re beginning our talk about the future from description of human development limits set for us by nature as such. People believing that there are no limits for civilization, forget that infinite growth in a physically limited space is impossible.

Prologue

THE COLLAPSE OF THE “HUMANITY” PROJECT

    There are five main limits for humanity (or, if we use the academic language, factors limiting development directions) on the globe:
•   Areas available for life, including soils that can be cultivated;
•   The speed of fresh water resources replenishment;
•   The limit of energy produced under the atmospheric layer;
•   The limits of the human immunity system’s abilities to resist
    growing inflow of technology-related pollutions into the body;
•   The speed of humanity’s adequate reaction to changes expressed in time calculation units.
    Many others follow from these limits: for example, the production limits of the glove. The limit is achieved when the population and material capital growth make humanity spend on the solution of environmental impact problems as much as the manufactured products may cost.
    We’ll dedicate a whole chapter to the main and closest for our development limit — availability of usable fresh water. After that we’ll review ethnic groups as a part of eco-types, the impact of area on nations’ formation, analyze the consequences of crossbreeding and will try to forecast the consequences of peoples’ migration by 2050.
    We’ll also speak about intelligence and other, nonhuman intelligent species on the Earth as well as the progress. We’ll ponder over the progress’ presence in culture, the society and morals. We’ll deliberate over a possibility of conscious suicide of intelligent life, about which Teilhard de Chardin spoke when introducing the term of “strikes in noosphere”. And then we’ll smoothly move to thinking over the paradox of “silence of space”, theoretically inhabited by infinite numbers of intelligent communities.
    Our work would have been incomplete had we not discussed other views on human development. There is a chapter about the works by Toynbee, Fukuyama, Huntington.
    One of the first consequences of humanity’s achieving development limits is the European race’s leaving the historical stage. It was predicted mathematically but still has not been appraised in social and political papers. We’ll try to fill in this gap.
    The future is not foreordained but we can only choose from what is really possible. In the end of the book, we’ll review some

scenarios of the future and imagine WHAT will most likely 11 take place in the world in the next twenty or twenty-five years.
    And finally, in the last chapter we’ll ponder over various possible options of individual behaviour in the face of the future.
    We’re inclined to review the main human development way as the way to the maximum freedom and maximum variety. We see that humans first liberated from the dominance of religious and philosophical systems, then from national and state identity; liberation from being determined by the innate gender is on the agenda and after that from the very fact of identity with humanity, getting an opportunity to change one’s body and turn into nonhuman forms of life if you wish it.
    But we also see that infinite variety of ethnic groups and behavioural models brought about by special features of the environment in the place of their formation, provided the basis for practically infinite variety for approaches to the surrounding world (worldviews), and that entailed the danger of a moral catastrophe when the human race stops to tell apart the good and the evil.
    So, is what’s happening around us progress or not? Or is it a way to the evolutional dead-end? We hope that we’ll get the answer to this question in the end of the book...
    To be maximally objective, I invited writer Andrey Stolyarov to take part in this work. He was kind enough to agree to write comments to each chapter autonomously. Dear readers, it’s for you to judge how it turned out in the end.
    So, forward!

Prologue

                CHAPTER 1.      THE LIMITS TO GROWTH Allegro




Exposition
   In spring, there was soil rain in one of the towns in Western Georgia. Black rain fell from the skies and turned into dirty streams on pavements and roads, earthy deposits appeared on cars, disgusting spots were left on clothes... Somewhere far, possibly in Iran, the storm lifted several centimeters of soil into the air and hopes of farmers for harvest with it as well as food in winter, next land mortgage payments and payments for children’s education. This would not have happened had there been forest wind-protection belts left on the fields that had amounted to 20% of the cultivated soil. But the owners of the land decided to take a risk in pursuit of bigger harvests. The “developed” Kazakhstan virgin lands flew into the air as black storms approximately in the same way.
   We have already lost more lands than cultivated now. And we’ll lose the rest very soon.

Research and development


            WHAT THE MODERNITY STARTED FROM...


   The Limits to Growth was the book based on the report to the Club of Rome under the same title, the one that staged