Happy Winter Solstice

The Day I Look Forward To the Most

At least during this time of year.

I finished grading exams and programming projects, recorded my grades, etc. and then just sat back to catch my breath and relax. Almost immediately my mind went to thoughts about this day, the shortest day of the year, and then to the whole idea of cycles. Humanity has been on the up swing of the cycle of growth and wealth. We have reached the summer solstice of this cycle. The peak of oil extraction is essentially the peak of human progress in material wealth and population. From here on the days get shorter. Wealth gets slimmer. Growth goes negative. And the population will diminish.

I don't really know how this will play out, only that it will play out. We might be in for a long slow decline, as suggested by John Michael Greer (The Archdruid Report) or we could be in for a cataclysmic collapse as suggested by William R. Catton, Jr. (Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse, book review by me). But I have grown increasingly certain that a decline of some kind is surely coming. We are headed for the winter solstice for the human race. In many ways this isn't a cheery thought, right up there with the sorrow we feel to see summer end. The days will get progressively shorter, the temperatures colder, and, in my part of the world, the days gloomier.

But then I think about the Winter Solstice. Today. This is the shortest day of the calendar year. But it isn't zero length (outside of the Arctic or Antarctic circles, that is)! And it is just part of a continuing cycle of renewal, maturation, decline, decay, and back to renewal.

It will take weeks before there is any perceptible lengthening of the days after the Winter Solstice. It will take a months before we rise out of the winter gloom. But we will do so. Spring will come again and then Summer. The cycle will repeat itself. And, so it is, too, with humanity.

The decline of high power energy from fossil fuels is already on us. We are already feeling the effects in a contracting economy. The fall season of the human species has arrived. Yes we will have a few sunny days yet, here and there. The sentiment that we are slowly recovering from this last recession is growing, and we might yet see some more ‘happy’ news (recovery to most means a growing GDP and back to consumption, so I don't really see it as happy news). But the long term trend can be nothing but downward. We are headed toward the Winter Solstice of our kind.

But, just like the real Winter Solstice, the day length will not fall to zero. Humans will survive and there will be another rise in some distant time. My own expectation is that evolution will continue to work its magic and those distant humans, entering a new spring season, will be quite different from us, Homo sapiens. Evolution will have selected for traits for survival in whatever kind of world the spring will bring.

Someone once noted that I am a short-term pessimist but a long-term optimist. They are correct. The fall and winter are unavoidable. We simply have to hunker down and adapt. But I really do believe there will eventually come a spring and a Summer Solstice for human kind. As that spring develops, humanity in its new form will flower again, though hopefully, not in the same profligate manner our current species did.

The Universe can be seen as cycles within cycles within cycles. Winter Solstice is just the beginning of the next cycle at a meaningful scale for us, the phase in which renewal begins.

Comments

[Sudeep Bhaumick]

Being a long term optimist (there are days when the dark side becomes all to irresistible, but generally I am one too) is also the only way to get up each morning and go about the daily wage slavery and finding the time and energy to put into getting prepared for what is going to be one long dark and dreary winter...

A Happy Winter Solstice, to you to prof...

[Scott Nesler]

Seasons Greeting Professor Mobus. Please allow me to share some thoughts of tangency.

The Humanity of Problem Solving
by Scott Nesler

Why take the time to methodically describe a problem? Why seek the advice of others to clarify a working solution? The answer is within the human spirit to be heard and understood.

Life expectancy is 67.2 years in a humanity of 6.8 billion. Let's say within one's lifetime 3 problems fester for resolution. Let's then cut a little off life expectancy for maturity and degradation to come up with 51 years to express knowledge. 51 divided by 3 is 17. 17 years to describe a coherent solution to a perplexing problem. If everyone did their part 400 million coherent points of view would be described on a yearly basis.

"What a crazy notion, you could only hope to get a small percentage of participation!" I disagree, but .25% still leaves 1 million points of view per year.

"A fraction of the populace can produce an intelligent point of view!" I agree, but suggest the fraction approaches 1. Even if the remaining 1/2 percent is capable, that leaves 5,000 quality solutions added to a repository of knowledge on a yearly basis. That's 13 refined expressions of intelligence, from a humanity of thought, to read on a daily basis. 13 intelligent opinions is the daily equivalent of the number absorbed from a media of a few thousand privileged individuals.

6.8 billion people! 67.2 years per existence! Oh, the potential for knowledge, understanding, and humanity!

[John Baez]

Can one be a 'long term optimist' and still believe in the second law of thermodynamics and an eternally expanding universe, which combine - or so it seems - to predict a 'heat death' for the universe?

See this webpage for some more on what the long-term future holds in store:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/end.html

Personally I'm a 'present-moment optimist', meaning that no matter what things are like now or what the future holds in store, I think the present moment is worth savoring. Given the physics we know now, this seems more tenable than 'long-term optimism' or a belief in eternally recurring cycles.

On the other hand, there is surely more to physics than what we know now.

[George Mobus]

Sudeep,

Hang in there! And study/practice permaculture.

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Scott,

Working through your numbers it strikes me as that is generally what the science community produces! In other words the volume production is already under way. The only problem is that there are so many grades of quality and applicability being produced. How do we filter through them to arrive at useful solutions.

Since you characterized problems as having solutions I am curious if you subscribe to John Michael Greer's conceptualization of "predicaments" as non-soluble problems that require adaptation or work arounds?

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John,

OK, touche. Depends on how long term long term is. Can't argue with the idea of savoring the moment, but there is nothing about being a pessimist that counters that idea. You can savor the moment and still think things are going to get a lot more challenging in the near future.

I'm guessing the Earth has a few billion years yet to play with biological evolution. My "long-term" optimism extends to speculation about what a more sapient version of humans might become in, say, one million years. Speculating on the heat death or ultimate demise of the universe is interesting, but far more long term than I am thinking about.
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George

[John Baez]

George wrote:

I'm guessing the Earth has a few billion years yet to play with biological evolution.

I like to think about this stuff. Here's what I've heard:

In 1.1 billion years the Sun will become 10% brighter than it is today. Apparently that will raise the average global surface temperature to 47 °C, which is enough to start a runaway greenhouse house effect: the hotter it gets, the more water evaporates, and the more water vapor is in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets. This process will lead to the complete evaporation of the oceans.

Water molecules in the upper atmosphere will then slowly be broken down via photodissociation by solar ultraviolet radiation, and the hydrogen will escape to outer space. The final result will be a complete loss of the world's oceans.

Of course, a sufficiently advanced civilization could avoid extinction even when the Sun gets brighter, either by moving away or taking measures to keep the Earth cool. But I think we - in a very broad sense of 'we', namely life on Earth - have about 1.1 billion years to get our act together.

[George Mobus]

John,

Well then, we'd better not waste any time!

I guess I was rounding up ;^)

George