Is society caught up in a Death Spiral? Modeling societal demise and its reversal
The ants go marching one by one…
Are we headed for something disastrous due to our misplaced faith in the security and policy decisions of our government? Are we so apathetic or even worse, intellectually and emotionally reliant on tired old octogenarian politicians that we can’t accept nor even realize we are in a Death Spiral.
In an interesting article by a team of authors; Michaela Schippers, John Ioannidis and Matthias Luijks, they propose several possible outcomes of the “Death Spiral Effect”.
“Just like an army of ants caught in an ant mill, individuals, groups and even whole societies are sometimes caught up in a Death Spiral, a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing dysfunctional behavior characterized by continuous flawed decision making, myopic single-minded focus on one (set of) solution(s), denial, distrust, micromanagement, dogmatic thinking and learned helplessness.”
While this is a long article and many insights are proposed that require an understanding of human nature and history (we’ll worth your time to read the entire article) the summary is this:
“Societal demise and collapse are part of the cyclical nature of civilizations, that have historically seen a rise and fall over time. The Death Spiral Effect entails rising inequalities and rising authoritarianism, creating an elite that controls access to resources more tightly, and making decisions that may set humanity on a path to famine, war and disease. If the trend of decline is not reversed, the aftermath of a possible collapse will become evident, and society may be unable to achieve post-collapse recovery.”