The State is Doomed! 20

20. The most rapid technologic advances are in those fields devoted to killing. Some, like Nobel and the inventor of the machine gun, even believed their inventions would make war impossible by virtue of destructive power. The same logic was applied during the same cold war arms race, but it appeared to actually succeed. Or did it? History is still being written. Obliteration may be a lesser possibility, but death can come slower to the world. Civilization sometimes seems hardly worth the effort. Its by-products are poison in all meanings. Perhaps technology enables the wrong kinds of culling? After all, if you can’t exterminate your own, then who can you exterminate? Like often prefers to prey upon like. Revenge is sweeter closer to home. A thousand dark thoughts, unexpressed and buried, might explode and unleash a plague or nasty “nanobugs.” A million Columbines and Oklahoma City bombings could explode at once. Western Civilization does have a knack for decline. Will humanity survive the next dark age? Perhaps the next renaissance will lead to something different . . .