Lessons From 5,000 Years of Civilizational Collapse

In the Middle Ages, prophecies of a coming global collapse proliferated across Europe. Conditions were ripe for a powerful strain of apocalypticism to take hold: Population growth, the rise of industry, increasing inequality, and an onslaught of natural disasters and plagues had made life feel more difficult and precarious than it had ever been. The poor and itinerant classes bore the brunt of these developments, while the wealthy were more insulated from their assault. Self-styled messiahs appeared in towns and cities promising healing and redemption to the oppressed. During this period, the historian Norman Cohn has written, parts of Western Europe witnessed the emergence of what he called “messianic movements of the poor.” In almost every instance, he argued, “a collective sense of impotence and anxiety and envy suddenly discharged itself in a frantic urge to smite the ungodly”—to seize wealth and power, and hold it for “all eternity.”

Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a number of scholars and political figures have warned of a coming collapse, by which they tend to mean the destruction of the basic elements of society. The philosopher Toby Ord has claimed that humanity has a one-in-six chance of being wiped out this century, and the author Jared Diamond has argued that there is a 49 percent chance of doomsday arriving by 2050. Commentators discern strong “end of the world vibes” in many domains of politics and culture.