There are many, many, many ways the world could end, from nuclear explosions to meteors and global pandemics.
But if and when Armageddon comes, there are three men you could probably blame, an expert 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 at 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 found in the ruling classes behind civilisations that now lie in ruin, Dr Kemp found.
He told The Guardian: ‘Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.’
He added: ‘We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely.’
The academic combed through the histories of 400 societies for his new book, Goliath’s Curse, many of which ended the same way, he said.
The demise of civilisation by power-hungry elites. In our case, a powerful but small ‘oligarchy’ is working against our interests by ignoring threats like climate change and nuclear weapons.
Food shortages, mass extinctions, insufferable heat and droughts are just some of the consequences of rising global temperatures, scientists say.
Dr Kemp added: ‘All the threats we face today are far worse than in the past.’
To the academic, 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 is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.’
Over time, inequality throws a spanner into these uneven kingdoms and empires, such as 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 that are controlled by one group and ‘caged land’, areas where people cannot flee to.
Dr Kemp pointed to Cahokia, the Native American ‘Manhattan’ of early America, dominated by priests after the advent of maize. Or the first Goliaths of Mesopotamia, who ruled using bronze swords and axes.
While in Egypt, the Red Sea and Nile meant people had little choice but to be ruled over by tyrannical pharaohs.
When these Goliaths collapse, what follows isn’t Armageddon but prosperity for the common people.
‘After the fall of Rome, people actually got taller and healthier,’ he said.
If the modern world crumbles, however, things might not be as favourable. The ruling classes may try to regain their control with nuclear weapons, rather than swords or muskets, as they did centuries ago.
Fears around nuclear warfare have been high this year, between multiple World War Three scares and growing authoritarianism.
Such fears are a big reason why the Doomsday Clock, which tracks how close humanity is to annihilation, is only 90 seconds to midnight.
Yet, if humanity creates ‘genuine democratic societies to level all the forms of power that lead to Goliaths’, the end of the world could be avoided.
‘Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bulls**t,’ Dr Kemp said.
‘Of course, we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we’re built for.’
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