The Shape of Things to Come
Real life consequences versus fiction
Thank you for reading The Honest Sorcerer, and special thanks to those who already support my work: without you this site could not exist. If you are new here and would like to see more in depth analysis of our predicament, please subscribe for free, perhaps consider a paid subscription. You can also support my work by virtually inviting me for a coffee, or sharing this article with a friend. Thank you in advance!
British writer, H. G. Wells, published a science fiction novel in 1933 with the same title: The Shape of Things to Come. The book is more like a memoir written by a diplomat, than a classic novel; a history of world affairs from the vantage point of 2106 if you like. According to this imagined history (again, it was written in 1933!) a long economic slump had caused a major war during the middle of the twentieth century and the world descended into chaos as governments collapsed and various diseases decimated the population. The day is finally saved with the emergence of a small cadre of highly disciplined leaders, who managed to gain control over world transport and food production.
As usual with such novels in the utopian genre, technological civilization is then rebuilt around this small nucleus, resulting in the emergence of a new age of reason. The Dictatorship of the Air, that previously took control of all airports and the means of manufacturing planes and other forms of transportation, then gradually evolves into a World Council, achieving peace by abolishing greed and usury, together with all remaining national divisions and religions. English language becomes standard worldwide, and scientific learning uplifts even the humblest to become a creative contributor to society. The thus enlightened world-citizens then depose the world council peacefully and go on to breed a new race of super-intelligent humans, able to maintain a permanent utopia. (And now tell me that Wells was not a transhumanist.)
Needless to say, a gazillion other pieces of fiction were created building on the success of this novel, all praising the victory of human ingenuity over any calamity. Thanks to the many movies spewed out by Hollywood, Wells’ themes and his vision of the future have become so deeply ingrained in Western culture that we almost forgot where did they originally come from. Generations of scientists, politicians and corporate managers grew up indoctrinated that there is a technofix solution to every problem imaginable and that people cannot wait to see the arrival of a technocratic utopia led by a wise and benevolent world government. So, if any of the ‘accomplishments’ achieved by Wells’ Dictatorship of the Air happen to ring a bell (especially when it comes to European politics), now at least you know where the idea of transnationalism together with the widespread use of English language, or promoting science and outlawing religions might came from.
There are several flies in this ointment though. One, for all this utopia to come along humans must be all successfully conditioned to think and feel the same way (good luck with that), and all of them must sign up to this plan without any personal ambitions for power and wealth (an even greater luck with that). Most importantly, however, the proposed technofix solution to the world’s problems must also function as intended, lest we slide back to chaos. Since one of the core theses of this blog is that culture is downstream to material reality (in other words: without this insane level of raw material and energy consumption we would not be discussing the colonization of Mars or bringing about ‘singularity’), allow me to focus solely on the technofix part. Let others more professed in the area of culture address the humane side of things to come.
So, what’s wrong with the solutions proposed to end Europe’s (and by the way the rest of the West’s) long economic slump, which is now threatening the world with a major war? Well, that it is predicated on an unfettered access to cheap, easy-to-get raw materials and having prodigious quantities of similarly cheap and easy-to-get fossil fuels. You see, all that much vaunted GDP growth, re-industrialization, “renewable” energy expansion (or oil and gas boom if you live in the States) requires millions of tons of metals and untold amounts of oil and gas to realize. (Yes, it takes a lot of oil and gas to get even more oil and gas.) Problem is that the easy-to-get (low cost) part of those necessary resources have now been consumed, and what remains would require an exponential increase in energy and material expenditures to get… A rather big and nasty fly in the ointment indeed.
After the West’s failure to conjure real (material) economic growth from thin air throughout the 2010's — zero interest rates and shale revolution or not — all what remained is to get other people’s stuff. (Ever wondered, how did our oil and ‘rare earth’ end up underneath their feet?) The approach so far was soft power, i.e.: coercing other nations behind the scenes to comply with trade agreements solely benefiting Western states, and pulling a thin veneer of humanitarian aid over the whole deal as a cover up. As more and more countries said ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ and joined the BRICS alliance of nations instead, soft power slowly became less and less effective and thus had to be ended — together with the rampant corruption running through the entire system. Now, that this gravy train has been stopped dead in its tracks, a more direct approach can be expected. No mining rights granted to our companies in your beautiful country? Tariffs. Our ships cannot pass free of charge through the wonderful canal we built? Invasion. Your country has hopelessly become dependent on exports to the US and now runs a trade surplus? More tariffs. Plan your economy better next time.
Welcome to the world of negative sum games: where we lose, but you lose bigger.
Problem is, that there will be no next time. The cheap and easy-to-get part of Earth’s vast resource base is running dangerously low in non-western states as well. You see, this entire modern civilization with its supermarkets, cars, planes, computers, solar panels, 24/7 electricity and running water was all built on the extraction of non-renewable resources. All mined, transported and processed with fossil fuels — another set of non-renewable resources. And now that crude oil extraction, the key source of liquid fuels powering it all, is on a bumpy plateau since 2015 (with an absolute peak in daily output reached in 2018 already), there is not much hope for a return to real economic growth either. Considering that world population has increased by 540 million since that peak, and that the energy cost of getting the same amount of oil just keeps rising with every passing year, today’s crude oil production figures actually means much less petroleum products per capita than in 2018. Yes, there might be plenty more stuff underground… But who cares, when extracting all of it turns out to be totally uneconomic? Why? How could the world beset by a rapidly shrinking per capita consumption, increasing indebtedness and rising inflation be able to afford more fuel at a much higher cost?
We’ve returned to the same historic turning point foreseen by H.G. Wells in his 1933 novel, The Shape of Things to Come. Europe is already in a deep economic malaise, and the US is really not that far behind. The proxy war these two fought with Europe’s biggest supplier of cheap fuels is also coming to its logical conclusion. So what comes next? An even bigger war pushing us Europeans back to the Middle Ages? How does the story really end, without all that transhumanism, and technutopian wizardry? As things stand today, we are definitely not headed towards a benevolent dictatorship achieving world peace on the back of industrial power and ushering in a new age of reason… That’s for sure. So what shall it be? Chaos? Or a slide back to the Middle Ages?
Again, let’s look at things how they are, and not how they supposed to be or how we would like them to be. As I, and many others keep saying for years now (well before the war broke out) we were already headed towards a permanent decline since 2019 at least, no matter who sat at the helm. Yes, things could have been much more gentle, the decline could have arrived less abruptly, a lot less people would had to die in a senseless war, and so on. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that, as Tim Morgan put it, we were on an “arc of inevitability” dictated by a steady increase in the energy cost of energy, basically since the dawn of the industrial revolution (1).
Why, what else did you expect? That high grade resources would last forever and we could grow our economy into infinity and beyond? We have already used up all of our growth-enabling, easy-to-get minerals and fossil fuels creating all that prodigious amounts of wealth and prosperity in Europe, and the US is on the exact same trajectory… With or without ‘drill, baby, drill’ or proclamations of an ‘energy emergency’. Technofix non-solutions, such as solar panels and wind turbines, are not working either: they (too) have failed to provide the low cost, reliable energy needed for a prosperous economy. No wonder, these non-renewable technologies require a hundredfold increase in upfront material and energy investment and thus make an already worsening energy return on investment case even worse.
And this is where tariffs come into the picture. As I explained elsewhere, steel is a vital input to all forms of energy extraction and conversion, be it oil and gas or wind, solar and nuclear. Since roughly a quarter of all steel used in the US comes from imports, slapping a tariff on it directly translates into higher costs. Building new LNG facilities, drilling more wells (both requiring hundreds if not thousands of tons of steel), or building just about any kind of infrastructure has just become more expensive — ruining previous return on investment calculations and potentially leading to project cancellations. So much for an energy ‘revolution’.
In this living/material world money, politics, culture, even belief systems are nothing but narratives politicians tell themselves so that they feel more secure. In fact geology, physics and ecology is, was and always will be in charge, not us. This world is an immensely complex self adaptive system, with countless interconnections, emergent features and feedback loops. This means, that no one is in control or have leverage over how world events unfold or what turn the economy takes. Yes, things can be easily made worse by stupid decisions, but we cannot avoid the consequences of past actions, no matter the intent. Burning fossil fuels, depleting natural and mineral resources or decimating ecosystems in the name of progress has created many predicaments (hence the term polycrisis). This is what economists, politicians and other utopists fail to take into account: such an abusive economic system based entirely on the exploitation of ecosystems and the extraction of non-renewable resources cannot be in equilibrium with its environment. This setup is inherently unstable eventually ruining the very conditions what made it’s existence possible in the first place.
Take pollution for example. Birth rates continue to fall, thanks to the colossal amount of endocrine disrupting chemicals found in plastics and in the many pesticides, herbicides we have so carelessly released into the wild while we were busy progressing towards utopia. While other factors such as contraception, cultural shifts, obesity and smoking are likely to be contributing factors, there are also biological reasons. Chemicals such as bisphenol A and phthalates interfere with normal hormonal function even in small doses, and it would take three generations of humans living completely chemical free to get rid of their side effects. “Problem” is, that there is no way pushing this genie back into the bottle: these chemicals are now freely circulating the entire globe and are here to stay. The amount of so called ‘forever chemicals’ (PFAS) in rainwater have exceeded safe levels in 2022 already, which means that is no place left on Earth to avoid them. As a result soils (and consequently plants) have become similarly contaminated, affecting not just human but animal health and fertility, too, across the entire world.
I don’t mean to sound like an alarmist, but if there is a real extinction level threat to humanity, then this is it. Fertility rates staying consistently below 2.1 children per woman (which is what we have across much of the world for decades now) sooner or later leads to complete depopulation. Considering that pollution levels are still rising — and will be rising as we begin to burn all that accumulated plastic for heating en masse — this trend cannot expected to reverse anytime soon. If the resulting decline in sperm counts continues, as studies suggest, most males will become sterile by 2045 no matter where they live on the planet. Draw your own conclusions.
Children of men, anyone?
Even if human population manages to stabilize at a much lower level (against all odds), a massive reduction in our numbers is already baked in due to a lack of childbirth. The working and actively consuming slice of the population is already shrinking across all industrial nations, which is actually quite good news, considering the grim prospects of wars waged over the last remaining bits of easy-to-get resources. So how does the story end? What is the shape of things to come based on all this? Well, that’s going to be the topic of next week’s essay. Stay tuned.
Until next time,
B
The Honest Sorcerer is a reader-supported publication. Please consider a subscription or perhaps buying a virtual coffee… Thanks in advance!
Notes:
(1) While the general direction of travel can be determined more or less accurately, forecasting exact events or how things will eventually unfold is nigh on impossible. The world is too complex, with too many actors and interrelated parts producing too many emergent phenomena, resulting in sometimes unexpected, sometimes chaotic responses. Take thus what’s written here (and elsewhere) on the future as a best guess based on data available to the author, also considering his limitations grasping complexity.
Have you read Charles Galton Darwin's The Next Million Years? As I vaguely recall, it struck a similar pessimistic note...
And do these facts explain the seeming eagerness of Western governments to murder their infirm and/or elderly residents?
On a slightly more positive note, nothing is forever including "forever" chemicals..Nature breaks down everything....
Hi. I kind of agree with a lot of things you write. But not always. People should be careful and detect partisan intentions among (hidden among?) very valid propositions.
The belief that human ingenuosity will always produce solutions to any problem we face or create is way older than G.H. Wells. This belief is closely linked to the philosophical human-centric worldview weary of, or despising nature, which totally underpins our tecnological civilization (West, East, North and South). You can find this belief in the Epic of Gilgamesh already and in the Bible. And of course the Moderns (among them the most influential one, Francis Bacon) set the stage in the same way for all the scientific ideology to come. It is also a predicate to the current myth of the eternal growth taught everywhere (West, East, North and South) in all economic universities and professed by every politician in the world (West, East, North and South).
And sometimes I can read such whoopers in your articles that they cannot be random mistakes. Europe’s (and by the way the rest of the West’s) long economic slump, which is now threatening the world with a major war... REALLY? Are you REALLY so simple-minded? Europe is threatening the world with a major war? What esle than the iron-clad Russian propaganda would care to utter such an absurdity? Europe, including the UK, is quite weak on its own for many reasons (and clearly is on its own now with Trump in charge of the U.S.A.) and has a lot to fear in the new ruthless world order that Trump, Putin and Xi are redrawing. More than ever Europe must unite and create its own army with a nuclear capability, getting somewhat close to the Russians'. It is now a matter of survival for Europe's independence. But I'm afraid European leaders still haven't learnt the lesson.