Collapse 2020 Vol. 1: Fall of the First Global Civilization

By Bruce Nappi

• Why “Athenian democracy” can no longer work
• A radically new democracy that inherently eliminates the tyranny of the majority and gives every citizen personal control of their lives
• A new cooperative leadership structure that maintains competition but inherently eliminates corruption and discrimination
• Why “capitalism” has never delivered on its primary promises
• How machines will surpass humans. The “Singularity” has already passed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Nappi
• Release date: Mar 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463068267

Bruce Nappi

In 1964, two Eagle Scouts were selected by national competition to accompany U.S. Navy explorers on an expedition to the North Pole. Bruce was one of them. He graduated from MIT in 1969 after 4 years with both BS and MS degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics – yes, a true MIT rocket scientist. His 40 year career included: 7 years in government labs - 4 years weapon systems, 3 years fusion power systems; 14 years as a small business engineering executive developing robots, computer systems, and medical instruments; 8 years in the hospital environment developing advanced medical systems; 6 years consulting for small businesses; and 5 years as director of the medical education simulation center at U. Florida, College of Medicine in Jacksonville. While there he co-founded the first all medical middle-high school in the U.S.Like the Journey of Discovery that Darwin made on the Beagle and Einstein made into the cosmos, his 40 year very diverse career at the “bleeding edge” of technology led to many major discoveries. But, unlike the joys of exploring flora, fauna and the mysteries of the cosmos, his journey took him through a quagmire of lies, corruption and incompetence. He looked for wisdom; but found mostly superstition. He kept asking himself, “how could society even function with so much misinformation?” He came to realize that the real frontier for society’s passage into a just and beautiful world wasn’t in some far off frozen place. It was here, surrounding us - like a fog - holding our society hostage. Searching to understand this fog took him to the fundamentals of knowledge. And like Darwin and Einstein, he uncovered some very profound insights which could allow society to finally answer some of the greatest unanswered questions of the ages.Bruce lives in Massachusetts and continues to focus on his life long pursuit to understand the meaning of life. Others can join that effort by participating in the work of the A3 Society (A3society.org) and the A3 Research Institute (A3RI.org). You can contact him directly through those organizations.

Book preview

Collapse 2020

Volume 1

Fall of the First Global Civilization

by

Bruce Nappi

Additional information about purchasing copies of this book:

Collapse 2020 Vol. 1: Fall of the First Global Civilization

or its companion,

Collapse 2020 Vol. :2 Birth of Personalized Democracy

in both print and e-book format, can be found at

A3society.org/books

Copyright © 2020 by Bruce Nappi

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

Published by The A3 Society at Smashwords

First Edition: March 2020

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the pioneers of sustainability thinking:

Thomas More 1516, John Evelyn 1662, Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762, Adam Smith 1776, Thomas Malthus 1798, Henry David Thoreau 1862, Hugh Cleghorn 1895, Theodore Roosevelt 1906, Gifford Pinchot 1910, John Muir 1914, Rachel Carson 1962, Paul Ehrlich 1971, Donella and Dennis Meadows 1972, E. O. Wilson 1975, Joseph Tainter 1988, Bill McKibben 1989, Naomi Klein 2007, Greta Thunberg 2018

and many others like them who have continued to add knowledge and exposure for this endeavor against major resistance.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part One – The Real Problems

Ch 1: Overview – Why the Collapse?

Ch 2: Resource Limits and Population

Ch 3: Our Stone Age Brains

Ch 4: The A3 Brain and Human Consciousness

Ch 5: Language - Breakdown of World Communications

Ch 6: The Failure of Democracy

Ch 7: The Failure of Capitalism

Part Two – Solutions

Ch 8: The Transition

Ch 9: The Machines

Ch 10: Preview of Volume 2

References

Appendix 1 Glossary

Appendix 2 Personalized Democracy

Appendix 3 The A3 Society and A3 Research Institute

Index

About the Author

PREFACE

55 years ago, I was a young impetuous Eagle Scout selected through national competition to accompany the U.S. Navy’s 1964 North Pole expedition. It was promised to be another ‘Journey of Discovery’ - a Lewis and Clark adventure across the Northwest Passage. A Journey of Discovery it was, but not the one of progress and wonder that was promised. The natural wonders of the Arctic were breathtaking. What the non-native humans were doing there, however, was a tragedy of lies, corruption and incompetence. After two failed attempts, a year apart, the expedition, in fact, never occurred. The great Eagle Scout explorer became an Arctic Research Lab rat. The incompetence, negligence and deceit I encountered I would never forget.

I returned to the lower 48 during the peak years of the Vietnam war and began technical studies in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Everywhere in life there were problems to solve. My energy knew no bounds. Inventions poured out of my head like acorns from an oak tree in the fall. Finally, believing I had access to the best world class technology at MIT, I also believed I could fix ALL the problems!

It quickly became clear, however, that what the public was being told, based on what I believed to be true about technology and world events, was as deceitful as the arctic screwups and coverups. For example, consider the day U.S. newspapers announced, Oil discovered in Alaska! A full year before, I personally walked through long closed up oil camps spread across the tundra with oil and gas wells already drilled and capped! The news reports were clearly false.

In 1969, I graduated - yes, a true MIT rocket scientist - and immediately entered the U.S. nuclear weapons program. From that priveleged vantage point, I watched the U.S. government and academic institutions continually feed propaganda to the press! Sure, the U.S. was first to put a man on the moon. But in almost every other space achievement, the Russians led the way, including the first space station right after the moon landing, military aircraft and nuclear ballistic missiles. I kept asking, how could society even function with so much misinformation?

This started me on a dual path life long journey. One path was to achieve breakthrough discoveries in science and technology. For 40 years, I chased an elusive professional career. I rode the high tech wave at the cutting edge: nuclear weapons, fusion power, robots, computers, medicine and psychology. I developed artificial heart pumps, DNA sequencing machines, and invented many medical devices like a non-prick diabetes blood test. None of these ever saw the light of day. Working for 17 companies, both government and private, I experienced the same levels of incompetence, negligence and unethical behavior everywhere I turned.

The other path – a personal quest - was to understand the breakdown of communications in human society that supported such ubiquitous unethical behaviors. Like the Journey of Discovery that Darwin made on the Beagle and Einstein made into the cosmos, my career continually exposed me to major discoveries. But, unlike the joys of exploring flora, fauna and the mysteries of the cosmos, my career journey, like my experience in the Arctic, showed me that humans had created a civilization founded on lies, corruption and incompetence. I looked everywhere for wisdom. I found mostly deceit and superstition. I came to realize that the real frontier for society’s passage into a just and beautiful world wasn’t in some far off frozen place like Alaska, or Mars. It was right here, surrounding us like a strangling fog. The search to understand this took me to the fundamentals of knowledge. I created books full of notes along the way!

Being thrown into a stalled employment situation by the 2000 dot com crash, I decided to pull together all the notes from my journey. I was totally unprepared for what would emerge. Reviewing my employment through my sporadic journals, there were the repeated notes of despair about many solutions found and proven, but companies and institutions unwilling or unable to do anything with them. It was also clear that the unremitting rejection had personally changed me from 30 years before. None of my employment was fulfilling my destiny to help mankind. It had become a challenge just to survive and save for retirement.

On the other hand, what happened with my search for knowledge was mind blowing! The synergy of all the foundational information I collected, as it did for Darwin, led me to profound scientific and philosophical discoveries. These are the basis for the insights in this book series.

In short, any reader truly looking to understand the chaos of current society, can find new and significant answers here. Not only do the discoveries explain everyday confusion, they finally provide logical answers for some of the greatest unanswered questions of the ages and great riddles of our time.

There is a LOT in this book. If you read it quickly, it will probably provide more discoveries and wisdom than you’ve come across in a long time. If you read it slowly, trying to understand each principle, you could get lost for a month in a single chapter. In either case, it should change you deeply, which I hope was the reason you bought it.

WELCOME !

INTRODUCTION

Hindsight, they say, gives us 20/20 vision. Don’t believe it. Without a sound understanding of fundamental ideas that accurately explain what happened, hindsight is no better than a fairy tale. Collapse 2020 Vol.1 digs into the major chaos of today’s world: climate change, liberal-conservative polarization, gridlock in governments and massive social injustice. It provides a new under-

standing of what has and is happening. Unlike many books and articles that just rehash conventional ideas, this book presents major new perspectives based on discoveries from over 30 years of unpublished research. The result is that Collapse 2020 creates an entirely new logical foundation for society to understand the fundamentals of today’s problems.

Anyone interested is social activism will find explanations for the stagnation of current groups and the barriers they face. People in government, social institutions and business will find explanations for the seemingly endless corruption and confusion we encounter every day. Having a new understanding of the problems I hope will suggest new approaches and solutions to you.

The companion book Collapse 2020 Vol. 2: Birth of Personalized Democracy digs into designing a new sustainable social structure to build a new world. That book describes an entirely novel social structure that, for the first time, can enable the entire world to achieve the goals of a true democracy for ALL people in an egalitarian world of peace and harmony.

This book describes the causes for the already underway major world collapse. Yes, humans have gotten themselves into such a bad situation that civilization, as we know it, can no longer continue. This is not a prediction for some far off future event. The unfolding tragedy is now underway across the world stage.

Part One focuses on causes.

Chapter 1 briefly summarizes multiple hidden problems that are really driving the unfolding collapse. Descriptions of these problems are framed in a context that exposes the media’s use, and abuse, of climate change, through a disinformation campaign to create a smokescreen that hides other problems of even greater seriousness.

Climate change, of course, is itself deadly serious. It is leading to rising sea levels and extreme droughts, both leading to major population die-offs. But climate is actually only one of multiple larger problems. Climate has been reluctantly but maliciously allowed to take center stage by those in power because it is hard to cover up: its effects are very easy to see and very scary when they occur.

What world and industry leaders want to hide, however, to avoid major rebellion, is the exposure of much less visible impending collapses. These are due to depletion of life critical natural resources, poisoning pollution, and the growing awareness of pervasive social manipulation.

The natural resource depletion collapse was the focus of a study by the Club of Rome in 1970. The conclusion of that study was described in the book Limits to Growth(1-1). It listed the elements of collapse, along with a time table for when they might occur. Those estimates now show that the collapse is already well underway and will fully unfold over the next few generations. The book was suppressed world-wide by both governments and industry. The overarching collapse driver that appeared in their study was, of course, world overpopulation. World leaders have suppressed this by making public discussion of population a social taboo.

In addition to natural resource limits, which are tangible and easily measurable, society has long been aware that the human brain has significant limitations. The amazing capabilities of the human brain, unfortunately, evolved to optimize survival in a technically primitive environment. When facing the huge complexity introduced by modern technology, and the human social structures that have evolved to regulate their use and distribution, humanity runs right into a wall of major brain limitations. That wall is what causes human brains to create corruption and greed, which are primarily driven by fear and ignorance. The first chapter frames this limit in a larger world context. Understanding this, in even basic forms, is also suppressed by society through rigid taboos.

12 labeled problems are listed in ch. 1 to summarize the hidden problems. Only the first 10 are explored in depth in this book. The other two are addressed in Vol. 2, which examines how our society has failed to understand how to structure governance, commerce and industry for social equity. The tools to deal with these new structures, Systems Analysis, are also expanded in that volume.

Chapter 2 expands on the concepts of overpopulation versus limited resources, focusing on four categories: land, water, air and minerals. It illustrates key issues of sustainability. It discusses how we have exhausted all of the low-hanging fruit – the easily accessed resources - and now find ourselves in a situation where we must expend greatly increased energy and cause more environmental disruption to continue to harvest the resources upon which our civilization operates.

Chapter 3 presents profound new discoveries about human thinking. I’m sorry to say, based on the new discoveries, achieving a future gentle place will not be easy. The discoveries tell us that, current human brains are not much different from those of our Stone Age Neanderthal ancestors. Ironically, there is some good news in this relationship. The more we learn about Neanderthals, the smarter we believe they were. So, the good news is, being compared to them may not be that bad. On the other hand, observing human thinking right up to current society, it is clear that Stone Age thinking is insufficient to achieve human survival under modern conditions. The primary reason for this is that an animal brain which evolved to survive in a hostile hunter-gatherer environment, is very poorly adapted to deal with the extreme complexity and destructive weapons produced during the last two centuries of technology proliferation. The human brain’s primal instincts developed based on hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution during which most behavioral brain structures evolved as hard wired survival skills. Unfortunately, these were primarily based on survival through aggression and physical power. The primary learned social structure was herding where a dominant male gathered and defended a small group of females. As this structure was captured into primate brain development, the smarter brains evolved a more complex group of deceit behaviors to support the physical aggression. In humans, all of these negative traits appear as behaviors we call the Seven Deadly Sins. (Note, this use of the term Seven Deadly Sins is not that of modern religious usage, which will be explained later.)

Chapter 4 digs a little deeper into human brain structure to explain how evolution introduced two major brain changes that produced today’s world. The first, around 300,000 years ago, produced the human brain, which first exhibited the ability we call "human consciousness or self awareness". And, note well, the discussion in chapter 4 explains, for the first time in human history, the discovery of what human consciousness is and how it is produced in the brain. The second brain change, which occurred around 20,000 years ago, introduced, in a small number of humans, the creative ability to design cities, nations, agriculture, architecture, fine arts, transportation, etc. The second brain change, however, also created a social environment that expanded the primitive Seven Deadly Sins psychology of our Stone Age brains. This expansion yoked humanity to authoritarian governments, slavery and war. This psychology, in the minds of autocratic leaders and industrialists, has subjugated human existence in a way that has ultimately brought the first global human civilization to collapse.

Chapter 5 builds on the new brain model to finally provide answers for the failure of communications that started my journey 50 years ago. When human brains made the jump to human self-awareness around 300,000 years ago, they also developed the mental tools to produce language and organize themselves in purpose directed efforts. But these abilities did not come without the baggage of the Seven Deadly Sins. The bulk of human thinking is still fine-tuned for aggression, power, and deceit. Another big discovery was how human behavior was tied to language through the way humans learn language. It is emotion based, not a logical process like the one we associate with adult learning. Once this connection fell into place, answers became clear that explained the concepts of absolutes and truth. The answers also explain fake news, and the liberal-conservative polarization that is causing government gridlock and social breakdown.

With an understanding of the logic flaws built into language, it became possible to identify flaws in the processes which define most major social institutions. These institutions are unworkable in modern society. This is due primarily to three reasons.

The first is simply the use of flawed word definitions. When words are claimed to mean different things by different institutions, breakdowns occur when the institutions interact. The second is that our major social institutions, law and justice for example, evolved by slow refinement of ancient social practices, each defending its professional position of power in isolation, like the ivory towers of a university. The differences of terminology, process, and pace, when these institutions have to interact, tie humanity to the inefficiencies of Renaissance culture. The third is the demand of modern technology for precision in communications. This comes with the extreme pace of modern communications, the overlap of world cultures, and the shear complexity of new social services and activities.

Chapters 6 and 7 provide two critical examples of these combined problems. They show how democracy and capitalism, both foundations of modern western society, are built, throughout, on concepts that are not viable in a modern society. The basic concepts for these principles, though fundamentally logically flawed from the beginning, slipped by as passable centuries ago in low population, simple technology, religiously homogeneous, agricultural communities. They are totally unworkable in modern society and can never achieve a sustainable culture. As they collapse, current civilization will collapse with them because their ubiquitous hold on existing institutions and inherent flaws block any transition to viable alternatives.

Part Two turns to solutions.

Chapter 8 turns to interim solutions. While Collapse 2020 Vol. 2, is entirely focused on a comprehensive solution, chapter 8 of this book addresses, in basic form, a few novel critical actions readers can do now, if they want to help prepare society to move toward a sustainable future. In light of the earlier chapters of this book, it should be clear to readers why so many current activist’s efforts are not working. This chapter talks about key flaws in current activism, and alternative actions they can take to improve their success.

Chapter 9 introduces a new perspective about machines: robots, and specifically artificial intelligence. The chapter addresses the widespread fear, created by Hollywood, that haunts humans about robots taking over the planet. The legions of robot warriors that we see in movies is not going to happen. That doesn’t mean, however, that humans will still be in control of the planet’s future or even be the dominant life form any more. By the time humans can reach the conditions for a sustainable society on a sustainable world, as described in Collapse 2020 Vol. 2, machines will have become the dominant life form with full self awareness and human consciousness. But that doesn’t mean they will get rid of or enslave humans. They will be much too smart to want that to happen. Having an understanding of this new world is critical for humanity’s transition to that new world.

PART ONE

THE REAL PROBLEMS

Chapter 1: Overview – Why the Collapse?

Framing the discoveries

A Fall of the First Global Civilization is a pretty scary prospect. Sadly, this statement is not an exaggeration just to get attention. While climate change captures current social discussion, human civilization has now, already gone over multiple critical tipping points. In addition to runaway climate, civilization has started into the natural resource crash and overwhelming pollution kill anticipated by the 1970 Club of Rome study. The latest 2004 update of that study anticipated that by around 2050, with a business as usual industry and world population growth, over 70% of humanity could perish. Everyone left on the planet would be severely impacted.

These warnings were not made in isolation or without precedent. The threat from atmospheric carbon pollution was first made by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. In 1962, Rachel Carson warned us about harm from pesticide chemicals. Adam Smith sounded the alarm against weak controls on industry in 1776. Thomas Malthus in 1798 and Paul Ehrlich in 1968 described the threat of over population. Society’s response to all of these was not one of seeking understanding. Led by the greed for wealth and power among industrialists and corrupt politicians, society was misled into a world of confusion. It was an intentional effort through a corrupted media to hide these warnings by discrediting knowledge and redirection of social responsibility toward authoritarianism.

Most sobering, for a reader around the time this book is first being published, the unfolding climate and resource crises are no longer something predicted for a far distant future. They are now well underway and will unfold in full force over the next few generations.

One purpose of this book is to briefly summarize the current state of these known problems– i.e. why the collapse. The greater purpose, however, is to discuss multiple discoveries that shed light on additional problems. The discoveries can be categorized or framed into two general groups:

1. Natural Resource Limits

The population of the planet has become too large for natural processes to support. That is, we are using natural resources faster than the planet’s natural processes can replace them.

We have already used up large portions of the world’s easily available natural resources.

We have deluged the planet with pollution that is destroying critically needed resources.

Carbon pollution is so great it has upset the climate and will further decimate food production.

2. Human Brain Intellectual and Social Limits

We have created social and technical complexity that exceeds the ability of human brains to comprehend and manage.

The human brain is dominated by inherited behaviors that evolved for conditions radically different from those in a high density, high complexity, fast communication civilization.

Current social institutions like government, commerce, and education developed in the context of ancient social structures as authoritarian structures. These are no longer compatible with a peaceful, integrated, egalitarian, high-technology, democratic world.

Society’s extensive existing infrastructure and culture are a legacy problem that locks society to the past while technology demands new approaches.

Each of these will be further put into context in this chapter and then explained in more detail in the following chapters. Remember, however, this book is still only a summary. Every one of the issues presented is much too complex to be fully addressed here.

The Club of Rome

By the mid 60s, it was already clear to some industry leaders that humans had created serious problems. These were not so much climate problems as they were natural resource problems. In 1968, a small group of leaders of large European industrial firms were concerned because of alarming internal corporate reports. The reports warned that their production output would soon be limited due to shortages of natural resources.

In 1970, these leaders, who informally called themselves the Club of Rome, because they frequently met at the Academy dei Lincei in Rome, brought together a group of economists and social scientists to look at the problems on a world scale. The initial discussion concluded such a study would not be feasible. There was, however, an unusual guest at the meetings: Dr. Jay Forester from MIT. He proposed that he could get a first estimate of the results they were looking for by developing a computer model based on new work he was doing. The system model would estimate the future progression of worldwide natural resources and economic trends based on a wide range of assumptions that the economists would provide.

With funding from the participants, primarily Volkswagen, the study was completed in two years. The outcome was profound and startling! The model projections were devastating for humanity. Furthermore, they were expected to occur soon, not far off in the future. The study results were published in the 1972 book Limits to Growth. (1-1) The book stated, unless all of human society quickly, aggressively, and simultaneously addressed population control, resource conservation, and pollution management, major collapses would occur drastically affecting human society beginning around the middle of the 21st century.

The study team, led by Donella and Dennis Meadows at MIT, anticipated they would get many challenges to their findings. There were too many powerful, wealthy, but selfish people in the world who would attack the report to defend their wealth. To defend the report, the MIT team had to plan for attacks like those used to defend the abuses of the tobacco and asbestos industries, which claimed the report data was incomplete and inaccurate.

The report team came up with a novel creative strategy. For some of their models, they would not use currently estimated world-wide data, but would use greatly exaggerated quantities for available resources which could not be dismissed. To take that approach one step further, they even assumed that some natural resources would have no limits.

For example, for some model runs, the study didn’t assume that society would run out of coal, oil or natural gas. They didn’t try to figure out if new crops could be found to feed the hungry. In those models, they assumed that, somehow, technology would provide solutions to produce 2 or 3 times the highest levels of carbon fuels and food that could ever be expected.

Again, they were stunned by the results! Even using those extreme assumptions, each outcome eventually ended in a collapse of society from some limiting side effects. No matter what level of each variable was used, due to their interactions, society as we know it would crash sometime in the mid to late twenty first century – only about 80 years from the study.

In another example, for the population focused model, a trial analysis was made where the level of anticipated food production was very high. From previous analyses of the causes of pollution, the program calculated the amount of pollution that would be generated producing the extra food. To counter the additional pollution, a greatly exaggerated solution was also assumed that some new technology would decrease pollution by a factor of 4. The result was still a massive population die-off due to pollution for the following reasons. The large increase in food initially resulted in a large increase in people. They in turn produced more food and more people. Industrial production rapidly increased (which would make everyone on Wall Street happy) until a growing world pollution crisis occurred around 2010, melting the polar ice caps and changing the weather. That caused a fast major sea level rise that devastated the food supply and led to mass starvations. (This scenario is ironically playing out today.)

In another variation, they assumed technology could achieve perfect birth control by 1975. That, alone, would surely reduce the population growth rate. But improved farming technology would also force people to move into cities, become wealthier and become mass consumers. They would eat more food. The entire