STREET DOGS

HUMAN development thus far has been fuelled and guided by the feeling that things could be, and are probably going to be, better. The world was rich compared to its human population; there were new lands to conquer, new thoughts to nurture, and new resources to fuel it all. The great migrations grew from the feeling that there was a better place, and the institutions of civilisation grew out of the feeling that checks on pure individual selfishness would produce a better world for everyone involved in the long term.

What if this feeling changes? What if it comes to feel like there isn’t a long term — or not one to look forward to? What if, instead of feeling that we are standing at the edge of a wild new continent full of promise and hazard, we start to feel that we’re on an overcrowded lifeboat in hostile waters, fighting to stay on board, prepared to kill for the last scraps of food and water? Suppose people start to anticipate the future as a nightmare of desperation, fear and suspicion … what happens then?

Humans fragment into tighter, more selfish bands. Big institutions, because they operate on longer time-scales and require structures of social trust, don’t cohere. Long-term projects are abandoned — their payoffs are too remote. Resources that are already scarce will be rapidly exhausted.… Any kind of social or global mobility is seen as a threat and resisted. Freeloaders and brigands and pirates and cheats will take control. Survivalism rules.

This is a dark thought, but one to keep an eye on. Feelings are more dangerous than ideas, because they aren’t susceptible to rational evaluation. If our world becomes gripped by this feeling, everything it presupposes could become true. Brian Eno at edge.org Michel Pireu — E-mail: pireum@streetdogs.co.za