The Last Civilization

Is Western civilization just the last civilization so far? In light of present world problems, it is perhaps time to at least consider the possibility that civilization itself might not be able to recover. World population keeps growing, with a leveling off not expected until after 2050. Meanwhile, the thirty-year-old “green revolution” is falling behind, climate is heating, and in large areas we are running low on available fresh water. World wide, energy supplies lag as we have to use ever more energy to extract energy. Species loss is accelerating, and topsoil thickness has been declining. The threat of terrorism increases, world shipping is plagued by pirates, and the US infrastructure is crumbling. Worst of all, for decades the number of nuclear armed nations has been increasing. With all that in mind, we may have some cause to believe our civilization is in decline, possibly even approaching its end. If so, could we reverse its course or, possibly, build a new one instead? In our universities, social theorists have been unable to explain what needs to happen to cause a civilization to change from its decline course or for a new society and civilization to arise. If conditions grow worse, we need to know what would have to be done in order to avoid an approaching collapse. If we are to replace our declining civilization with a new and more advanced one, wouldn't we need to know what are civilizations and what causes them to “rise and fall?” Are our problems really caused by such things as pestilence, urbanization, memes, bad leadership, climate change, the “Divine,” or “mankind's troubling nature?” Since we are, after all, just one race, the human race, it is surely more likely that what divides us into tribes, nations, ethnic groups, and cultures always has to be ultimately caused or abetted by our ideology. Clearly, the ideological systems people now use to think with determine how well or poorly they deal with world problems. The so-called causes above are only convenient excuses used to avoid admitting the real cause, that is that the ideological systems of the present world are unable to unite us. But why is what we believe failing us? The only logical way to find out is to treat leading religious faiths with unaccustomed and brutally frank objectivity. It also means subjecting our secular belief system to the same treatment. The old religious systems are now grossly unscientific, but our secular ideology has, even so, failed to replace them. They still cut and divide our now crowded world. They not only survive, but even flourish. Our secular system has been unable to do more then merely replace the old faith's world leadership, and the growing list of world problems indicates the secular system is losing its ability to do even that. Human ideologies function by shaping the way people think and hence, the way they cause their society and civilization to function. The ideologies, in turn, are shaped by human nature and need. The complex inter-relationship is dealt with in this text by isolating the natural selection processes involved. It becomes possible to explain how ideology-based societies evolve through natural selection and, thus to explain history and even our present world affairs. All this is social theory, the process of interpreting the data of the social and natural sciences in order to build the most accurate possible picture of the whole human story. The presence now of so many world problems and lack of effective solutions indicate that the most accurate possible social theory picture is not what we have been getting. A good reason for that would be that consensus social theory has not been objective. Since most social theorists even consider objectivity to be impossible, they have turned social theory into social philosophy. And their social philosophy consensus has become everyone's secular view of the world, including that of scientists in all the other fields. Their secular philosophy consensus is simplified, fitted to the various age groups, and taught from grammar school through the universities to become the secular ideals that supplement the way the whole world thinks. It is called “a liberal education.”