I assumed that I would spend the latter part of my life listening to Bach, sipping scotch and watching western civilization slowly decline through a pleasant silver age. However, stories such as J.G. Ballard’s “The Garden of Time” (pdf) and Gene Wolfe’s “And When They Appear” often come to mind these days. It’s possible I’ve been too optimistic:
Paradoxically, the key strengths of civilizations are also their central weaknesses. You can see that from the fact that the golden ages of civilizations are very often right before the collapse.
The Renaissance in Italy was very much like the Classic Maya. The apogee was the collapse. The Renaissance status rivalry between cities through art and science and warfare and architecture was a beautiful disaster, and it only lasted about 150 years. The Golden Age of Greece was the same thing: status rivalry with architecture, literature, and all these wonderful things—along with warfare—at the end of which Greece was conquered by Macedonia and remained under the control of foreign powers for 2,300 years.
We see this pattern repeated continuously, and it is one that should make us nervous. I just heard Bill Gates say that we are living in the greatest time in history. Now you can understand why Bill Gates would think that, but even if he is right, that is an ominous thing to say.
(Via Isegoria.)