There are lots of, many, some ways the world could end, from nuclear explosions to meteors and global pandemics.
But when and when Armageddon comes, there are three men you may probably blame, an authority has revealed.
US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, are ‘a walking version of the dark triad’, said Dr Luke Kemp, of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk on the University of Cambridge.
The trinity consists of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism, a word for the cunning of the Italian leader Niccoló Machiavelli.
These toxic traits have long been present in the ruling classes behind civilisations that now lie in spoil, Dr Kemp found.
He told The Guardian: ‘Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a chilly psychopath and Xi Jinping got here to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.’
He added: ‘We are able to’t put a date on Doomsday, but by taking a look at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we will understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most probably.’
The educational combed through the histories of 400 societies for his latest book, Goliath’s Curse, lots of which ended the identical way: The demise of civilisation by power-hungry elites.
In our case, a robust but small ‘oligarchy’ is working against our interests by ignoring threats like climate change and nuclear weapons, Dr Kemp said.
Food shortages, mass extinctions, insufferable heat and droughts are only among the consequences of rising global temperatures, scientists say.
Dr Kemp added: ‘All of the threats we face today are far worse than prior to now.’
To the educational, any of our ancestors reading this wouldn’t be too surprised to learn we’re poised for global collapse.
‘History is best told as a story of organised crime,’ he said. ‘It’s one group making a monopoly on resources through using violence over a certain territory and population.’
Over time, inequality throws a spanner into these uneven kingdoms and empires, resembling the Romans or the Han dynasty, as elites gobble up wealth and land and make societies fragile and riddled by infighting.
Dr Kemp prefers to call these fallen civilisations ‘Goliaths’, which have three ingredients – grain, weapons which can be controlled by one group and ‘caged land’, areas where people cannot flee to.
Cahokia, the Native American ‘Manhattan’ of early America, was dominated by priests after the appearance of maize. While the primary Goliaths of Mesopotamia were ruled using bronze swords and axes.
In Egypt, the Red Sea and Nile meant people had little selection but to be ruled over by tyrannical pharaohs.
When these Goliaths collapse, what follows isn’t Armageddon but often prosperity for the common people.
‘After the autumn of Rome, people actually got taller and healthier,’ Dr Kemp said.
If the fashionable world crumbles, nonetheless, things may not be as favourable. The ruling classes may attempt to regain their control with nuclear weapons, reasonably than swords or muskets, as they did centuries ago.
Fears around nuclear warfare have been high this 12 months, between multiple World War Three scares and growing authoritarianism.
Such fears are an enormous reason why the Doomsday Clock, which tracks how close humanity is to annihilation, is barely 90 seconds to midnight.
Yet, if humanity creates ‘real democratic societies to level all of the types of power that result in Goliaths’, the top of the world could possibly be avoided.
‘Today, people find it easier to assume that we will construct intelligence on silicon than we will do democracy at scale, or that we will escape arms races. It’s complete bulls**t,’ Dr Kemp said.
‘After all, we will do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and all of us have an anti-dominance intuition. That is what we’re built for.’
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