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Perhaps that “time traveler” from the year 2027 who claims to be the last person on Earth isn’t just a big hoax?
Because a new book, End Times, by social scientist Peter Turchin, Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, suggests that our “end times” could be happening right now.
“I was trained as a theoretical biologist. I worked at the interface between mathematical models and the population dynamics of animals. I started with insects, voles, and lemmings and things like that,” Turchin told IFLScience.
“Then I decided to switch to studying humans. I’m using pretty much the same mathematical and analytical apparatus, but applying it to different questions.”
From his book’s website…
Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.
The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it’s very hard to exit.
The description adds, “Our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.”
Turchin and his team base their hypotheses on their studies of over 200 examples of societies collapsing.
He does admit that he isn’t trying to predict the future, he’s just looking for trends by applying mathematical analysis to human societies that could signify we are closing in on our “end times.”
“Human societies are very complex. You have to understand economics, sociology, anthropology, climatology, and many other things. It’s the sheer complexity of the subject [that] has prevented simple approaches and that’s why it took a while. We are still at the beginning of this path in understanding human societies using mathematical tools,” he told IFLScience.