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27$ The Origin of Cmlisation
subsystem, functioning as a world state, probably on a federated basis, to allOM for ethnic wariations. It would inuolwe globally structured political institutions, and a cohesive world economy built on global industrialisation. But this would entail fully automated machinęry, microelectronic technology, and comprehensiwe global financial and trading organisations. In short, a Łhorough-going global perspectiwe for ewery aspect of cultural existence.
The generał theory of culture dynamics postulates three probable outcomes for the human race. First, we could achieve long-term survival, through wigorous adaptation, until we reach a stage where we can maintain a long-run plateau, (or steady state). Second, we may undergo a gradual decline through the failure to adapt successfully, or thirdly, we will become extinct. The concept of a universal ciwilisation, operating globally on a highly competent level, is clearly the optimisfs scenario for long-term stability. Harrison 8rown, writing in 1953, thought it possible that industrial ciwilisation as we now know it may cease to exist. Because it has arisen through the use of the easiest, most accessible raw materials first, our current industrial base could not rapidly be rebuilt if a sudden catastrophe destroyed it. In that miserable ewent, he sees a different possible long-term outcome for humanity. In the absence of an industrial base, people would hawe to fali back on the widespread global acceptance of intensiwe agriculture (although that assumes the land will not hawe been ower exploited). If human life were supported solely by agrarianism, he thinks world populations could not exceed fiwe billion persons.181 Howewer, this outcome might still prowide a modest long-run stability which could survive ower several thousands of years, assuming eweryone had a morę or less equal access to the pooled resources of food, shelter, land and the other necessities of life.
Of our current world, beset by monumental problems and overhung by grawe threats to the futurę of human life on Earth, he writes:
Our present ciwilisation, itself the result of a combination of no longer existent circumstances, is the only foundation on which it seems possible that a futurę ciwilisation capable of utilising the vast resources of energy now hidden in rocks and seawater, and unutilised in the sun, can be built. If this foundation is destroyed, in all probability the human race has "had it." Perhaps there is possible a sort of halfway station, in which retrogression stops short of a complete extinetion of ciwilisation, but even this is not pleasant to contemplate.182
Against this understandable pessimism the concept of a universal ciwilisation sounds like a wision of twenty-first century Utopia. But there are two potent reasons for thinking it might yet, in due course, materialise. It may not be merely an impossible dream if man can use his undoubted skills for surwiwal and redress the lopsided balance currently fawouring the extinction outcome. Indeed, all the ewidence we hawe exarained, both here and in The Seamless Web, suggests the Total Culture System is mouing falteringly in this generał
direction, ewen though we should not be deluded into thinking that Lts finał emergence is a rigidly preordained event. We know it is inherently impossible to predict certain outcomes for any complex, open probabalistic system. Thus, many unpredictable human or enuironmental intrusions are possible to diwert, interrupt ar otherwise seriously delay the course of the long-run trajectory.
Howewer, a second piwotal reason for confidently predicting a uniwersał ciwilisation based on a federated world state, rests on the undoubted system base for culture. Throughout the text we hawe repeatedly seen that at present the Total Culture System is an open far-from-equilibrium system, lacking any owerall self-regulatory dewices. If this continues to be its functional modę of operation in the twenty-first century, when world population is estimated to hawe risen abowe eight billions, the gathering limiting constraints in strength could hasten a sewere collapse. The frictions aroused by intense population congestion alone, in a free-for-all anarchie world system, could bring the entire edifice to an abrupt crisis, ewen if other nightmare outcomes - of nuclear accidents or wars, or deforestation and exhaustion of the land - are somehow awoided. Whether the entire process must be brought to the brink of impending disaster in another 1930s-style dissipatiwe structure, or whether copstructiwe counsels will prewail without this awesome cultural inertia, the solution of a world federation of nation states seems the most obwious contender for prolonged human surwiwal.
Some authors hawe addressed the idea of global political unification using graphs to predict the trends. It is of interest to notę the consistent emergence of inwerse relationships such examinations reweal. Thus, mowing forward from antiquity, Carneiro suggests, albeit with rather speculatiwe estimates for the pre-Christian eras,183 that the number of autonomous political units has been declining ower time. Moreower, the ratę of their decrease, which he illustrates graphically, is now accelerating towards the formation of one global political state. This concept is highlighted by the steeply falling curwe on his graph. Yet the obwerse of this relationship is the postulate that ower time, larger territorial empires hawe been emerging through the absorption of smaller, weaker units. It is this actiwe assimilation process, through integration, which is currently accelerating, although it has often progressed in a disjointed sequence of bursts and pauses. Its intermittent adwance can readily be seen from Table 5.1, which shows the comparatiwe land
sizes of some of the warious empires that hawe formed part of the historical
184
record ower the past fiwe thousand years. The relatiwe acreages cowered by some of these early empires are shown on Maps 11 (page 25) and 19 (page 281), but during the past two thousand years imperial acreages have continued to inerease; Map 20, for example, shows the size of the British Empire in 1914. The latter relationship was explored by Hornell Hart.10® It certainly does suggest that, empirically, the size of the record-breaking empires, from Sargon 11 around 2400 BC to the USSR in AD 1944, has been inereasing ower time. This relationship can also be charted as a steeply rising curwe.
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