Looking Ahead: The Long View

James A. Yunker

Chapter Chapter 1 in The Grand Convergence, 2010, pp 1-30 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract As the third millennium of human history gets under way, the position of global human civilization is at once quite promising—but also highly precarious. On one side of the path we are now on lie the “broad, sunlit uplands” of Churchillian rhetoric;1 on the other side lies a terrifying abyss of death and destruction. In a thousand years’ time, as the fourth millennium begins, what will be the condition of global human civilization? Will the great majority of human beings be living full, prosperous, secure lives? Or, as a result of ecological catastrophe or nuclear disaster, will the small number of survivors be living lives best described (in Thomas Hobbes’s phrase) as “nasty, brutish, and short”?2 As we look ahead, both of these outcomes seem well within the boundaries of possibility. As far as the human race as a whole is concerned, the future may hold either triumph or tragedy.

Keywords: Nuclear Weapon; Modern History; Random Shock; Poor Nation; Member Nation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-11264-3_1

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230112643_1

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