The work is scholarly, but the straight-talking Australian can also be direct, such as when setting out how a global collapse could be avoided. “Don’t be a dick” is one of the solutions proposed,

Well, we do keep electing those that would make it worse, so perhaps we're as "guilty" as they are ?

The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.

Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

I'd agree with that, inequality is just another toxic symptom of our current civilization, like pollution, climate change, environmental degredation etc.

We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

“I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.”

I'd clarify my postion as, surely it's obvious civilisation can't last but humans will, what comes after ? Interesting qiestion but entirely irrelevant

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25526068

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

I'd agree with that, inequality is just another toxic symptom of our current civilization, like pollution, climate change, environmental degredation etc.

We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

“I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.”

I'd clarify my postion as, surely it's obvious civilisation can't last but humans will, what comes after ? Interesting qiestion but entirely irrelevant

His first step was to ditch the word civilisation, a term he argues is really propaganda by rulers. “When you look at the near east, China, Mesoamerica or the Andes, where the first kingdoms and empires arose, you don’t see civilised conduct, you see war, patriarchy and human sacrifice,” he says. This was a form of evolutionary backsliding from the egalitarian and mobile hunter-gatherer societies which shared tools and culture widely and survived for hundreds of thousands of years. “Instead, we started to resemble the hierarchies of chimpanzees and the harems of gorillas.”

Instead Kemp uses the term Goliaths to describe kingdoms and empires, meaning a society built on domination, such as the Roman empire: state over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave and men over women. He says that, like the biblical warrior slain by David’s slingshot, Goliaths began in the bronze age, were steeped in violence and often surprisingly fragile.

Pretty shallow view of what is hitting limits of a finite planet.