Is Our Civilization Going to Be a Blip In History?

We Need to Go to the Deep Past to Find a Way Back to the Future

There’s a question that echoes in my head these days. Maybe in yours, too. Surveying the mess we seem to have made of things, I can’t help but wonder: is our civilisation just a blip in history?

Now, the way we tell the story of “civilization” — not just ours, but the idea of one — goes like this. Civilization is the natural destiny of human beings, and …