[Serial_Worrier]

Look at Apple. They are speeding towards $1 trillion market cap and have no problem making tons of cash. Surely that's a sign that all is well.

[dolanbaker]

The only thing that can be said is that there is a greater divergence between a small elite and everyone else, in ancient times that was how it was as well, a small elite who owned 99% of everything including many of the remaining population.

[Keith_McClary]

Look at Apple. They are speeding towards $1 trillion market cap and have no problem making tons of cash. Surely that's a sign that all is well.

$1 trillion market cap implies the "market" thinks Apple can make that much profits in the next few years. How long will the Steve Jobs "Reality distortion field" last?

[JohnRM]

The US Government is insolvent. It intends to print its way out of debt, regardless of the risk for hyperinflation and negative real interest rates. The US economy will take until 2017 just to replace the jobs lost during the recession, and then it will have to make up for population growth, on top of it all. It will NEVER replace all 6 million manufacturing jobs lost. The ride is over. Expensive resources will prevent any meaningful recovery.

[radon]

What does this thoughtful discussion have to do with civilization and its decline? Or is it a US-specific view?

[dorlomin]

'Civilisation' declining?

There is a joke I tend to share with myself that when many people find out that peak oil means that in the future they will need to commute with a bus or even a bike their minds get blown and they can only invisage a mad max scenario if they are not allowed to use their car. Only half in jest mind.

When you can define what you think civilisation is then we can start thinking about whether that is in decline.

[Pablo2079]

Peak Civilization?

But yes, one must define it first and then set the paramaters. Are we looking at 1st world only? Global mean? From a third world perspective, we certainly have not peaked.

[eXpat]

Look at Apple. They are speeding towards $1 trillion market cap and have no problem making tons of cash. Surely that's a sign that all is well.

Soooo, Apple´s account book looks good, civilization is rising, ok then, silly me...

[AgentR11]

The sc-fi dream of projected holographic 3-D imagery ain't going to happend.

Hatsune Miku objects to this slander!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI

[ian807]

The whole "decline" or "ascent" idea as applied to civilization is a bit misleading.

Civilizations change. They use more energy, or less. They have more organization, or less. There are winners, losers and trade offs in any scenario. When the Maya civilizations ran out of water, the victims were the elites and the government. The common folk are still happily carrying on today. They're just repairing cars and making hammocks instead of building pyramids and fighting each other.

[Oneaboveall]

Civilization's dying And no one's realizing
The position of hate stuck inside the gun
Civilization's crying And I won't try to deny it
We got a problem son, Something's gotta be done

{Chorus} With the Pope
And the president And the big rockstar who made alot of money
All got one thing in common
They know it ain't no fun to get shot with a gun {End of Chorus}

Civilization's dying And no one's realizing
The position of hate stuck inside the gun Civilization's crying
And I won't try to deny it
We got a problem son,
Something's gotta be done
{Chorus}

Civilization's dying And no one's realizing
The position of hate stuck inside the gun
Civilization's crying
And I won't try to deny it
We got a problem son,
Something's gotta be done

With the Pope,
and the president,
and the big rockstar who made alot of money (x4)
Made alot of money, made alot of money, made alot of money Yeah!

[ralfy]

It's best not to look at cash as an indicator of progress.

[Revi]

Western civilization would be a good idea.

We have been in decline a while now.

Just like in Rome it took a while to sink in.

[dorlomin]

Just like in Rome it took a while to sink in.

1453.

[Pops]

Yeah, accumulating money using unlucky 14 year old girls at $2 a day to build iphones so lucky 14 year old girls on the other side of the world can text the minutia of their lives via $2 a day data plans is surely the height of civilization.

The Romanovs had access to lots of cash, so did Nero I suppose – King Lois (the whatever-th) too, and innumerable others whose "civilizations" were based on slavery by any other name.

Resorting to counting accumulations of money as an indicator of "civilization" is about the best argument for civilization's decline I can think of.

[Beery1]

I don't class our current enslavement to oil as a 'civilization'. Wage slavery for the 99% is hardly more civilized than real slavery. Civilization is hardly in decline - for there to be a decline, there would need to be a rise first, and I see no evidence that a truly civilized society has arisen anywhere in the world. If anything, we are at the end of a long dark age, and we are set to experience civilization's true dawn.

[dorlomin]

I don't class our current enslavement to oil as a 'civilization'. Wage slavery for the 99% is hardly more civilized than real slavery.

When the first passenger train pulled into Manchester station it was met by a protest by weavers. The train (Stephensons Rocket) had bricks hurled at it and a demostration about working conditions. It was not the train but the pressense of the Duke of Wellington who was part of the aristocracy that had helped destroy their trade as independent skilled workers and turned them into waged labourers in apalling conditions.

Progess has massively benefitted me, but it has not benefitted those who came before me.