My last post raised the future-as-stone-age dystopian vision, which at least amongst those condemned to live outside Short Attention Span Theatre, a more common view than you might think.
I mean, given the current biogeophysical realities, taking past and present human behavior as a guide, it is actually a conservative view of the future. It is at least one of a group of the probable world lines.
We tend to forget that during our rise to our current prominence, most of our time was in a "stone age". If you count our hominid ancestors, That stone age (using stone tools) was close to 2 million years long. We forget that the gather-scavenger, then gather-hunter strategies are a very solid niche. That is illustrated very well in the book Pandora's Seed, by Spencer Wells.
I think the "stone age" I mean, is the Neolithic. This time, if we do simplify to that point, it won't be our first trip to the rodeo, and agriculture and other stuff would make it through the difficulties.
With a drastically reduced population a neolitic style life could go on for a very long time. To quote from the article linked in my last post, "...because we've already stripped away the surface copper and the surface iron. If we knock ourselves out of the first world, we're not going to be able to rebuild a first world."
It is uncomfortable for those of us that have become accustomed to "modern", 1st world lifestyles, to think about this at all. It seems so strange and horrific, that you get mind-freeze then get out of that by dismissing the idea.
For the folks on the cusp, during the later stages of the slide down the slope of complexity, it would be rather unpleasant of an experience. But for later generations, a "neo-neolithic" (or Neolithic II the sequel) would simply be normality. Our emotions are still on that landscape anyway. After a few centuries, the times and lifestyles we have now would be some sort of mythic past.
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