‘Olds,’ Not ‘News’ And Our Fate As Humans
Great piece on the bioneers blog today lamenting the fact that important issues get overlooked in favor of the latest news cycle. They call these important issues “Olds,” in contrast to the “News” in the headlines each day.
And they point out that our Olds are not getting addressed very often in the News — issues like overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and decreasing energy supply, among others. They go on to point out that these are the issues that have led to the collapse of several previously great societies, like the Anazazi, May, Norse and more — a point they adopted from Jared Diamond’s book Collapse.
I can summarize it any better than they could:
His list and the list of things that aren’t in the News are disturbingly similar. The truly disturbing part is that while the civilizations Mr. Diamond described were peak civilizations rivaling any now in existence, they were all relatively contained in their own geographic region. Their collapse was a loss to humanity, but there were plenty of people around to rebuild and continue the species. Now we find a civilization that has become global and that is facing the same kinds of problems the led to the demise of all the great civilizations from the past. These are not new problems, but the situation for humanity is more tenuous. When this civilization collapses who will survive and where will they go?