Hanna (Year 11 student)
Editor’s note: Year 11 student Hanna submitted this excellent essay to the prestigious John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize 2024. In a strong field of entries from all over the world, Hanna’s entry was recognised as ‘Very Highly Commended‘. The essay demonstrates excellent independent research, skilled synthesis of a range of academic resources, and effective written communication in an academic style. Hanna makes a range of strong arguments, well supported by evidence. CPD
In ‘The Mountain People’ Turnbull details the Ik tribe in Uganda – devastated by drought and hunger, they became an extremely individualised society.1 Adults would reject their children, steal their food, and those children would let each other starve – the family unit was discarded and sharing ‘virtually non-existent’. Villages existed but had no organisation or significance.2 Turnbull himself regarded that ‘there was no goodness left for the Ik, only a full stomach’. The society underwent rapid simplification, otherwise known as ‘collapse’.1
This example raises the question of what ‘complexity’ in a society means: many diverse specialised roles and distinct personalities, and a mechanism for organising these roles to function cohesively such as social stratifications based on social class. High complexity typically manifests in states, built up of social units that were previously separate and stable based on an ideological basis.2 This is contemporarily best described as a single ‘political and economic paradigm’ rather than religion and its culture.3 For instance, present-day ‘civilisations’ are often categorised to be ‘Western’ and ‘Islamic’ by mainstream media to explain the ‘clash of cultures’4 – yet this is erroneous in the fact that regardless of differing religious’/philosophies’ influence within the ‘civilisations’, the 200 sovereign states in the world still have the same diplomatic protocols (e.g. representative bodies, political parties), common international laws and operate under the same variants of one economic system – capitalism.3 This is the modern-day ‘global civilisation’ the epitome of which is seen in the UN. A sovereign state in the 21st century must buy into this ‘global civilisation’ to survive, no less be prosperous. 3
The Ik society in the 1970s mirrors the longstanding fear of collapse in our modern world. Moreover, the fear of the loss of the structural values that are the basis of our ‘complex society’. Collapse features in ‘greater’ civilisations e.g. Roman, Mayan, Sumerian etc. This abundance implies that something goes fundamentally wrong in these civilisations to induce a collapse regardless of their geographical location – and the nature of them suggests that these factors are shared. In this essay, I argue that our global civilization, being the most complex society in human history, is indeed at risk of collapse. While it is impossible to predict exactly how this collapse might occur. The foundational elements of our possible collapse are the same as those of past civilisations. These are:
Resource Depletion2
Civilisations require increasing amounts of energy to become more complex and hereby sustain a certain level of complexity. These energy sources can be valuable metals, wood, manpower, etc. Resource depletion is when the availability of these energy sources falls below the minimum supply needed by that civilization, moreover, when that energy source is not replaceable within the time the base supply is consumed.
Be it be by environmental degradation, loss of trade networks or simply climatological fluctuations, the universality of resource depletion is determined by the hypothesis that all societies i.e. Causes are both external and internal, often intermingling – towards the end of (insert which) roman empire a decline in pollens of arable plants and increase in tree pollen engendering a reclamation of farmland by trees – ergo, less energy for sustaining the population. This had been brought about by the internal cause of overproduction and increasing demand during the Pax Romana. Soils were barren, and the attempt to reclaim land through deforestation led to erosion – further fuelling this cycle. Despite the universality of this factor, a society as complex as the Roman Empire is naturally equipped with centralised administration and decision making and high information circulation – the fundamental characteristics of complexity that make it resistant to the causes of resource depletion in the first place.2 Ergo, it must be considered this makes it inalienable from the other factors in this essay and its concatenation with them and other elements is what causes collapse.
What are these other elements? There is no doubt that sociopolitical factors can cause collapse – and these are internal, and when concatenating with resource depletion, can prevent societies from replacing energy sources e.g. following Ramesses III victory against the ‘Sea Peoples’ during the Bronze Age, complete as Egypt had been reduced to ash, and the advances of further enemies meant that Egypt’s treasury was also depleted, resulting in a lack of rations and then, labour strikes amongst the elite artisans constructing the King’s tomb in Deir el-Medina complaining: ‘We’re hungry’…there is no more clothing no more oil, no more fish,’. This downward spiral of resource depletion from the loss of agriculture to manpower, concatenating with war, civil unrest and corruption after the murder of the Pharaoh by his own family members led to the diminishing of the Egyptian Empire, only 80 years after Ramesses III reign.5 It is important to recall that this diminishing occurred through multiple fractures in the Empire – shows the rapid simplification into less complex parts with less connections.
The situation in our ‘global civilisation’ is arguably similar. The complexity of our modern civilisation has been built on industrial development – powered primarily by ‘fossil fuels’. In the last 10 years, the buzzword has generally evoked unease and disgust. Historically, the converse was true – fossil fuels were welcomed as an alternative to scarce and inflating biomass such as wood in 20th century England.8 Now, fossil fuels face a like fate. Resource depletion is a dilemma plaguing all from young children to World Leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference. Despite predictions that fossil fuels will run out by 2060 (that date may be later due to more mining discovering more deposits),9 increased usage of renewable alternatives is on the horizon – and we are already at it. Plights for this argument concern not the availability of renewables (technological advancement keeps this field growing), but rather whether this is accessible to most in our economically globalised civilisation. Economic Inequality has been a dilemma for our civilisation to solve – and through mechanisms such as welfare systems which increase bureaucracy, we become more complex – staving off collapse. Today, LEDCs and MICs being at risk of high deficit, and lack of expertise to be able to access renewables puts us at risk of collapse as global economic links between HICs and LEDCs rely on energy sources in factories to be able to produce goods for global distribution to sustain our complexity. Work towards mitigation is under action, such as MASEN in Morocco helping the country to transition to cleaner energy, but still the threat remains.6
Impracticality of Complexity caused by economic issues
It should be noted that the complexity of a civilization’s problems escalates more rapidly than the civilization’s own complexity. This gap drives societies to become increasingly complex as they continuously solve problems by adding complexity, which in turn generates even more problems. But at what point does this gap between problems and their solutions (to increase in complexity) become unfeasible for a civilisation?
In the 16th century Ottomans faced the diminishing marginal returns of social complexity. The policy of expansion reached its geographical limit in the face of Western Imperialism and consequently became cut off from its trade routes. Finally, the introduction of Spanish-American gold into the economy, the shortage of Sultani coins was dealt with it through devaluation, coin- clipping and debasement. This inflationary policy misbalanced with wages of civil, religious and the military, unable to lean on the crutches on increasing the number of cavalrymen being paid with fiefs in lieu of money due to the ‘gunpowder revolution’. The agrarian system collapsed combined with struggling workers. Fiefs were acquired by ‘absent landlords’ and tax farmers employed to increase the circulation of money were rendered ineffectual through corruption.
This dilemma could have been solved through less reliance on agriculture to support the Ottoman economy but ideological rigidity on changing complexity, such as the fact that businessmen were often non-Muslims. They were generally subject to harsher taxes and different restrictions – second class citizens – it was harder for them to fundamentally change the Ottoman economy. This is a case of insufficient responses to circumstances.2
Turning this back to today garners the need for a different angle. Following the hypothesis that complexity requires energy to be sustained – therefore in a complex society, there must be investment in sociopolitical complexities to attain that energy eg. Scientific research, education, military, government workforce etc. The diminishing marginal return in many of these areas simply stems from simpler problems being solved first in early complexity as they had less cost and as the civilisation becomes more complex, more difficult problems, requiring more investment, but less productivity eg. Developing penicillin to finding treatments for AIDS. As for resources – issues of demand and depletion arise. Civilisations naturally face problems, and it is by them that they change in levels of complexity – the strategy for dealing with stressors such as drought, epidemics, recessions are to maintain or increase that complexity typically through more bureaucracy. Issues arise when these stressors disappear and that complexity with the increased cost remains.2 A simple example of this is the rise of Zoom subscriptions fuelled by the COVID-19 epidemic. Even though the threat of pandemic remains small11, the prominence of the video-calling app has yet to decline completely, even with more alternatives arising12. As costs cumulate, the maintaining of complexity becomes increasingly disadvantageous and inflationary policies ensue as taxes rise all combined with resource depletion and more unsurmountable costs. Insecurity fuels unrest among the workforce as well and in a last attempt to pinch pockets, control is put on the consumption and investment in complexity – collapse.2 To determine whether the modern ‘global civilisation’ is at risk from this, it is important to consider where we are in terms of complexity – which is very high, comparing historically. This innately gives us a much higher rate of diminishing returns as reflected by GNP growth slowing down, resource depletion, and increasing bureaucracy (UN, BRIC, G7). Ultimately, it is crude to decide now whether this means we will inevitably collapse as this is the most industrially developed and large scale a human civilisation has ever been. Being vigilant to this risk is crucial to navigating our complex future.
Unfortunately, vigilance alone is insufficient to eliminate this aspect of our potential collapse. Arguments vary widely, from pessimistic views predicting that issues such as inequality, disease, and industrialization will snowball into a dystopia, to optimists saying that humans will endure they the tests of increasing complexity as they have for millennia. I argue that our future depends on making decisions that lead to sustainable increases in complexity—one where we stay just behind emerging issues, rather than falling miles behind.
We must do everything possible to mitigate the compounding problems of complexity seen in past civilizations, as well as the specific challenges in our own as written in this essay. The good news is that we have control over these factors. We can change the amount and type of resources used, which is intrinsically linked to how we address economic issues. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) declared as world guidelines for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provide framework for control. The SDG Progress report released yearly declares fluctuating progress towards each. Despite not yet being sufficient for complete change, new legislation in many countries incorporates these SDGs, and progress is being made towards achieving them.10
In conclusion, while it is impossible to definitively predict whether our civilization will collapse, our distinctive position does put us at risk. Acknowledging this risk is crucial to navigating our complex future.
References
- Turnbull, C. 1972. The Mountain People
- Tainter, J. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies
- Harari, Y. 2018. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
- Huntington, S. 1996. Clash of Civilsations
- Cooper, P. 2024. Fall of Civilisations
- (May 16, 2023) Breaking down barriers to Clean Energy Transition retrieved June 2024 https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2023/05/16/breaking-down-barriers-to- clean-energy-transition
- (Jan 18, 2024) How can we get growth back on track? retrieved June 2024
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/growth-slowdown-productivity/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20International%20Monetary,achieved - %20between%202000%20and%202019.
- Samantha Cross. (June 2020) Why are fossil fuels so hard to quit? retrieved June 2024 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-are-fossil-fuels-so-hard-to-quit/
- (n.d)When Will Fossil Fuels Run Out? retrieved June 2024
https://infinity-renewables.com/162- 2/#:~:text=It’s%20estimated%20that%20known%20oil,depths%20will%20become%20e conomically%20unviable. - (2015) The 17 Goals. retrieved June 2024
https://sdgs.un.org/goals - (Feb 2024) The Changing Threat of COVID-19. Retrieved June 2024 https://www.cdc.gov/ncird/whats-new/changing-threat-covid- 19.html#:~:text=While%20outcomes%20are%20improving%2C%20COVID,the%20risk
%20of%20severe%20disease - (Jun 23, 2024) ZOOM USER STATISTICS: HOW MANY PEOPLE USE ZOOM IN
2024? Retrieved Jun 2024
https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/zoom-user-statistics/
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