Lifecycles - PostScript

(Where we look into a crystal ball and find it empty.)

I've seen the Future baby, it is murder.
- Leonard Cohen

Civilization is burning down! Burning down!
- Red Crayola

As we face the 21^st Century, we see a crowded dying planet. For the near term, our numbers will likely grow, but these numbers are not sustainable, and will, by necessity, go down. A lot. If we act as rational thinking beings, we will reduce our numbers consciously by voluntarily limiting our family sizes, and continue to do so until a sustainable number, perhaps 500 million or less, is reached. At that point, the demographics for sustaining the style index will disappear, and commodity culture will give way to a gentler and more profitable condition of automated labor and cathected objects of trade. The interim is likely to be noisy, crowded and brutal, as wars over vanishing resources come to the fore under a multipolar geopolitic of regional political domination laboring under a global capitalist system. The stylistic syncretism that will obtain from the mix of cultures, fueled by economic development and population growth in southern economies will certainly push Rock to the global periphery, especially as the baby boom demographic dies off in the next 40 years. Even so, Rock will cast a long shadow in its absence.

The result for those who follow us in the next several hundred years will be tragic but valuable. Population control will be a major feature of every culture, forever, and will require a continuous level of global awareness that is presently only a nascent movement for some and a nice idea for most. Just as slavery, dictatorship, and cruelty are seen as universal sins unworthy of a civilized nation, so too, reproductive responsibility will need to be seen as a normal order in life. Difficulties will abound, one obvious one being how to maintain profitability with a dwindling population. Also, most of the planet's basic resources will be depleted. The earth will be spent, hot, and empty. People will stumble through the garbage of a plundered world. On the other hand, they will have an enormous cultural heritage digitally preserved. Gigabyte drives will give way to terabyte drives will give way to petabyte drives within decades from this writing. Sorting will be automated and nearly instantaneous. Machines won't become 'intelligent' as we understand it, but they will certainly be a lot 'smarter'. At that point, with 12 billion people on earth, all trying to tell their story, an entire new economy could be built as the people of 2050 struggle to understand their crowded stressful lives and the recently wasteful past of their great grand parents. They will find our music to be loud and quaintly industrial.

The end of commodity culture is not that far off - the population levels required to sustain it won't be there - the 12 billion will necessarily disappear. These are our grandchildren and great grand children who will see this and make the hardest decisions. But they will make these decisions, or die of disease, or starvation, or warfare. In any case, our numbers will go down. Perhaps in 500 years, after some research into ancient music, someone will find Elvis's gyrations and hiccups worthwhile, and the Muse will speak to them and they will make vital new music of their time that will gyrate and hiccup. The kids will love it - and the King Will Live Again, at some other dance, in some other club, in some other language, in some other state, in another green world...

Henry Warwick (hw@creativesynth.com)
If you would like to purchase a copy of Keraunograph, Henry's CD on Kether Records, you can get it at the CreativeSynth Store.