This novel, one of my favorites in the science-fiction genre, belongs to the catastrophic subgenre, also called post-apocalyptic. This is its summarized argument:
An atomic war has destroyed our civilization. After the catastrophe, the surviving masses hate science and books, considering them responsible for the tragedy. In the same way as after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church collects the remains of knowledge and preserve them for posterity, so they can be used by a new civilization, capable of understanding them, if one day it would arise. But when this happens, history repeats and man self-destructs again.
Walter M. Miller Jr. wrote this novel
during the 1950s. He first published a short story, which was very successful;
then he expanded it, divided into three parts and six times longer, and
published it in 1959. At that time, we were in the middle of the cold war, and
the threats of atomic war between the West and the USSR were continuous.
Shortly after, in 1961, we had the Berlin crisis and the construction of the
wall. A year later came the Cuban Missile Crisis, possibly the moment when both
military blocks were closest to World War III.
In the history of humanity, catastrophism
or alarmism has been as frequent as unreasonably
optimistic forecasts. Apparently, human beings are extremists in one way or
another, and we find it difficult to stay in the middle ground, where, as
Aristotle pointed out, is virtue. But sometimes catastrophes happen, and
sometimes significant breakthroughs happen, too, so both extremes can cite
examples in their favor.
Let's look at a few of the catastrophic
and alarmist theories that have appeared in recent centuries, several of which
have been disproved by the passage of time, while a few others, more credible, continue to threaten us.
- In
1798, Thomas
Robert Malthus published his An Essay on the Principle of
Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society. This
essay contains the famous quote:
…the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the
Earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in
a geometric ratio. Subsistence increases only in arithmetical ratio. A slight
acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison
with the second.
Malthus's
analysis was opposed in 1838 by Pierre François Verhoult, who argued that the
population, like most natural systems, does not increase in geometric
progression, but rather following the logistic
curve, as I have often pointed out in the posts of
this blog.
- 1918 was the year of the publication of the first part of The
Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, where this German philosopher
predicted the end of our civilization, although his arguments were not based
on ideas about socio-economic development, but were purely historical and
philosophical. His theory was followed a few years later by that of the
historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who also predicted the decline, though for
reasons somewhat different from Spengler's. Other important authors who
did not believe in indefinite progress and affirmed the possibility of our
civilization coming to an end, were the anthropologist A.L. Kroeber
(father of Ursula Le Guin, famous science fiction author) and the
sociologist Pitirim Sorokin.
- In
the decade of the 70s, the first report of the Club of Rome (The
limits to growth, 1972) once again struck the note of catastrophism by
maintaining Malthus' forecasts of exponential
population growth, without taking into account the Verhoult’s
work. According to this study, the world situation would become
catastrophic by 2020.
- Shortly
thereafter, in the late 1980s, and possibly influenced by the report of
the Club of Rome, Richard C. Duncan proposed the Olduvai theory, which
predicts the collapse of our civilization by the year 2030, followed in
the longer term by a
return to the Stone Age (hence the reference to Olduvai). As the target
date approaches, Duncan, who is still active, has successively updated his
predictions, as it becomes clear that they are not coming true.
 |
| Walter M. Miller Jr. |
What conclusions can we draw from all this? My personal opinion is that our civilization is condemned to disappear not too far in the future, but not for the reasons exposed by the Malthusians and their descendants, but because it has already collapsed, it has lost its roots, its artistic production has disintegrated and the scientist production is about to follow. The political situation of recent times, with the return of the cold war and the Russian threats to unleash a third world war using nuclear weapons, could accelerate that destruction, making it apocalyptic and raising the probability of an outcome as described in A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Thematic Thread on Futurology: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
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