While long an important part of some New Age eschatologies, this idea has become common among ordinary cynics, especially in America.
This could have something to do with the unprecedented national debt, and the sense that American hegemony, mostly based on illusions, will someday collapse. The comparison is usually the collapse of the Roman Empire, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, both of which we discuss further down.
Now while it is certain that the period of the unipolar world of American hegemony we have seen over the past 60 years will eventually pass away, the notion that civilization (here meaning technology) could ever collapse on the earth is an un-thought-through delusion.
Here's why.
The earth is made up of nations that, while they do interact economically and socially, they don't all interact at the same level. This has a great deal to do with the American penchant for sanctions. Sanctions on nations like Russia and Iran force those nations to become much more independent, and to produce domestic versions of nearly everything, and learn how to do everything.
Today Russia can produce nearly anything that can be produced, using its own raw materials.
These nations are less and less dependent on the world economy, or a global civilization as Americans see it. They are fully capable of being separate parallel societies.
There are many such independent nations or groups of nations. The point is that the whole world is not so interdependent as nations like America and countries in Europe are, that rely on Chinese-made goods and foreign oil for instance.
So, now imagine that the world economic markets collapsed. This would not effect nations that could go it alone.
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The only way that a nation could give up making electricity and maintaining a modern infrastructure is if it chose to do so. Or after some tragic war or series of cataclysms chose not to rebuild them.
Building them was a choice, and not building them would be a choice. Now it is perfectly imaginable that some Western countries could reach such a low level of morale, and be so socially sick, that they would lose their will to live. But this would not happen everywhere.
Now look at this. Imagine that 9/10 of the entire earth lost its desire to have electricity, communications, advanced weapons, and transportation. That's absurd, but let's go with it. Now immediately the 1/10 of the world that chose to keep and maintain those technologies would rule the whole world.
In fact that is largely what the early 20th century was. A tiny number of countries had advanced technology, while 90% of South America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Soviet Union, and Asia had little to none. This made those technologically advanced nations very powerful, and this essentially forced the other nations (like India, Iran, etc) to catch up, and some (like Saudi Arabia) to purchase the technology.
From what I know about Russia today, if the US chose to go back to the stone age, Russia would let them but not follow. They would be more than happy to be remain the sole modern nation. What's it to them? And they have everything they need to do so.
So this fantasy of a world without technology is a peculiarly American and Western European fantasy, which requires some psychological explanation. In short it's not a real thing.
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The 'collapse' of the Roman Empire (usually said to be about 530 AD) is largely a myth, created by historians beginning with Edward Gibbon in the late 18th century.
In truth the Roman Empire continued in the East, where its main center of power and wealth had already migrated by 530 AD. This continuation included its aqueducts, straight roads, its form of government, and so forth. Knowledge of the Eastern Roman Empire is largely unknown to Americans today. See Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a collapse of a system and a regime, but not civilization. After a decade of confusion and poverty, the new Russia Federation has surpassed the previous state in all areas. And the advanced technology it enjoys in nearly all sectors is simply built upon systems in place in the old regime. Russia is ahead of the West in numerous fields including rocketry, nuclear medicine, grain exports, and civility. This would be a big topic in and of itself.
Empires rarely collapse. They change. The exceptions might be the Inca and Mayan civilizations. But that is impertinent to our discussion of lost technology, as these pre-Columbian civilizations didn't even have the wheel, let alone gun powder, phonetic writing, printing, or any advances of the Industrial Revolution for that matter. This was a collapse of Civilization, but not of technology. They were effectively stone-age civilizations.
No machine-age technology has ever actually been lost. Some will debate this, but if they look into it they will see it is true.
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Now let us take a worst case scenario of modern technological know-how being lost in most of the world. As I said, the only way that anything can be 'lost' is that a civilization loses interest in preserving something.
An example is the change of interest toward the spiritual in the Early Middle Ages, and loss of interest in the material sciences, in Europe. Few pagan books on philosophy were not preserved (copied), in the West, for about 500 years (from about 500-1000). But these books were preserved in other places, namely the Eastern Roman Empire and, beginning in the 7th century, in the Middle East, namely the capitals of the Arab world in Baghdad and later Spain.
Hence just because one section of the world turns its back on advances made in the past, other sections preserve and continue to develop it.
Colonialism is made possible by a more politically and technologically advanced society dominating a more primitive one.
So imagine a world where only one place maintained technology. This would immediately be the dominant capital of the world. It would dominate the whole world militarily and economically. The idea that no nation in the world would have any desire to maintain transportation and communication is absurd. And economies can be self sufficient. Consider Iceland, which due to its geothermal resources, produces electricity independent of oil. Why in the world would Iceland decide to give up electricity? It is cold and, for large parts of the year, dark. That would be an absurd decision. It would require a literal mandate to go about turning off the geothermal electrical plants, and throwing out the light bulbs. Why? It would never happen.
So just like Latin reading and writing were kept alive by monks in Ireland through the darkest period of the Dark Ages, electrical know-how would be kept alive somewhere — if not many places — and those would be the most powerful nations in the world.
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Finally there is the mental image of a nuclear holocaust that 'wipes out' most of mankind, and we fall into a stone age. This image is distorted. Since 1945, a total of 2,053 above-ground nuclear tests have been conducted before they were banned in 1998. In this video you can actually watch them all. This includes hydrogen bomb detonations.
The Earth survived. Here we are. Now if an all-out nuclear war were to happen, it would be be nuclear nations, such as the United States and the Russian Republic, and be on heavily populated cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Washington, NY, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Obviously neither nation would bomb Siberia or the Rocky Mountains. Why would they? But these combined metropolitan areas are tiny as a ratio of the Earth's surface. And even their total destruction assumes that both nations have made a conscious choice to bring down the temple on themselves to harm the other. Let's say they did. Still that leaves 99% of the habitable regions of the Earth unharmed.
Nuclear winter? Many have questioned this scenario. But nuclear winter is not permanent. It is largely a publicity maneuver to make nuclear war unthinkable. Remember, 2,053 bombs were dropped on the surface of the Earth already.
People would survive a nuclear winter, at least in places. Note that it only takes a single organized nation, like Iceland, to preserve technology. Take a look at a map and you'll see that most of the world would be untouched by such a war.
People seem to have an attachment to believing in the end of civilization. The late 20th century saw a turn toward Medieval games, starting with Dungeons and Dragons. Here are the top 15.
While many in the West seem to be sick of their technological achievements, other nations don't share their disgust.
If I were to psychoanalyze this 'desire' for the world to blow up, expressed as faux fear, I would say that underlying it is what Baba called the disillusionment with the promise of materialism. At one time Western people bought the false hype that technology alone could bring happiness, and that God was no longer necessary. Secular society was pushed. And it is leading to more strife and anxiety and a sense of absence. Identity confusion, a loss of sense of purpose and design, and so forth, are at the heart of this desire for it all to be 'blown-up.' But it isn't necessary. Baba said that materialism and spirituality can live side-by-side. Each can have its place. And science can even be in service to the spiritual life.
I am supremely optimistic. I don't think technology will collapse. It never has in the past. It will flourish somewhere even as some societies feign giving it up. And it will forever enrich lives.
Conversely, I do believe that one day a time may come where a true destruction may come that man will not survive. But I don't think it is for a very long time. And then we will incarnate on another planet. Baba said as much.
If this world is destroyed today, evolution will start in another. Evolution consists of a fixed process of ages – stone age, vegetable age, worm age, and so forth. If this world is destroyed today, an interval will remain, but by natural processes new life in a new world will take millions of years to materialize. Millions of years are required for another world to come into being. (Lord Meher 4203)_________
There is a fact that people don't (for some reason) like to admit. People survive things.
Think of poverty. Americans act like if our economy topples people are going to die. But look at Bangladesh, a nation that has survived decades of extreme poverty. Today they have 160 million people.
Name a place where poverty devastated the population? You can't do it.
Next there is disease. The discovery of germs as a cause of disease, and the development of sewage systems, has virtually eliminated mass-death from disease. This hasn't stopped people from fantasizing pandemics. But all such books and movies haven't changed the fact that they don't occur.
There are places in the world with dense urban populations where the conditions are almost unimaginable horrible. In fact, population-wise, these places mysteriously thrive. It's just one of those facts of life you have to face.Currently the economy of Venezuela is in collapse. But the population does not budge.
The Post-World War II hyperinflation of Hungary held the record for the most extreme monthly inflation rate ever – 41,900,000,000,000,000% Yet the population remained stable.People just barter until things get better.
And what of war? Nope. Doesn't touch population if you figure births in other places. Over 60 million people were killed in WWII, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population. But with births over the course of the war, the population actually rose.
Sorry, we're not that easy to get rid of. People survive.
What about birth rates? Europeans have managed to lower their birth-rates to beneath sustaining levels. However, the birth rates of immigrants more than make up for it. People survive.
What about having just about nothing. There is an Island off Burma that is cut off from civilization for thousands of years, the inhabitants known as the Sentinelese. They have no domesticated animals, have not discovered the wheel, and don't even know how to make fire. Yet they are hanging in there just fine.
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| Sentinelese people as photographed from a ship |
People survive.
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The following is the only way that technology could be 'lost' to mankind, sending us all back to the level of the Sentinelese.
At the base of technology is electricity. To go back to the stone age, man (all people in total cooperation) would have to give up not only electricity, but any documentation of how to produce it or what it is.
Obviously all of man on Earth would also have to agree to give up all knowledge of the internal combustion engine, and so forth, plus all records, and all records of all the science involved.
There are 195 countries in the world. Now it is hard to get even a few nations to agree on anything, and stick to their agreement. But for this to work all nations would have to agree to destroy their infrastructure and their books and records. This would involve literally going about blowing everything up, factories, laboratories, libraries, Universities, mines, airports, power plants, railroads, etc. Then they would have to disarm and destroy all their bombs and weapons and transportation and communication equipment, plus all the records of how to make them.
Now the problem would soon arise that the compliant nations, once they had done this, would have no way to verify that the other countries were going along with this project, because, of course, they would have no communication or transportation. Thus there is a very good chance that some would 'cheat.'
Now any citizen that did not comply with this, and say stored books and gadgets, could not be arrested. After all there would be no guns to arrest them with, or paddy wagons to take them to jail.
Anyway, after the big 'revolution' against technology and all the people who didn't like the idea were clubbed to death, those naughty nations that cheated, keeping their technology, would then instantly rule the world. Those nations could communicate and fly back and forth between each other, and have the only guns and bombs and things.
That nations that had complied with the new mandate and destroyed all their records would of course immediately be subjugated by the cheating nations as colonies.
Having deliberately destroyed all their Universities, books, and records, they of course would not really know what had happened. They might come up with some myths to tell their children through 'oral tradition,' to the delight of the cheating now empowered nations.
But let's be practical. Even this would not be achievable. For whole regions within nations would not comply. In essence only the people who really wanted to be stone-age actually would be. For it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of trust that others are doing so, which would require quite a feat of the will.
In truth the cheating nations would be the smart nations, and stand in rapt amazement as the stupid people went about committing technological and intellectual suicide. Hey, but weirder things have happened. So they'd likely just watch and accept the new power and authority handed to them.
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