The Christians have done it for 20 centuries now, as one example.
During my life, it has always been a common expectation, though the expected cause has shifted a few times.
My hunch is that maybe we're hard wired to expect the world to end, for some undiscovered reason.
Again, I remind you of my amateur status!
The pressure we are putting on other species and flora is immense but humanity’s future has never been so certain.
The only way to claim civilization collapse is to move the goal posts to a population decimation. But even that would still only put us where we were less than 200 years ago.
With the exception that all easily accessible resources are gone. Might be a net positive - we will see.
The current shortage give us a glimpse of how fragile it is though. I don't see how we could handle a more serious disruption.
This isn’t shit compared to things like the gas rations in the oil crisis.
But it is dangerous to extrapolate that this means our FUTURE is so certain, especially given that we have irreversibly destroyed the environment and conditions which gave us our current prosperity.
By the way, is there any sort of memoirs from ordinary people before WW2? Like did people at the time see it coming 1 years, 5 years etc. before?
For the Europe, probably.
Worldwide wise, not even close.
Some are not exposed to this, so they may think nothing can ever go wrong. Or they processed the New Testament or focused on that in their upbringing. Everyone else is just getting second hand panic or second hand calm.
I was exposed to both perceptions of reality growing up. That means I take loads of psychiatric medications and am still prone to meltdowns.
The fall of the Roman and Aztec empires would be the benchmarks. Would we also consider the more recent Nazi Germany or Ottoman Empire falls as collapses?
Oh and don’t forget the French Empire fell in the 1700’s.
But does that count or did thet just evolve into a new form?
> Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade.
Arguably a social structure is a prerequisite for a civilization. For example, you can have a village of 50 intact and trading with another village and that's not a proper civilization. There has to be the idea of a state, governance, someone entrusted to pay taxes to and perhaps some form of currency.
There is a really interesting talk on this: https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/feb/13/social-collapse-be...
The expectation that civilization will collapse nowadays comes from scientific knowledge based on verifiable data. We are witnessing:
- a massive decline in biodiversity
- a massive decline in biomass
- fragmentation of ecosystems
- collapse of ecosystems
These are already observable and documented facts. These by themselves present a real and urgent danger to our global human civilization. Then there are the probable consequences from the climate crisis:
- massive population migrations
- destabilization of countries and federations
- civil wars
- actual wars between countries in order to fight for resources (i.e. water).
We are headed for calamity. Let's not be delusional about that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof
This has four potential archetypes: 1 The Amniotic Universe; 2 Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit; 3 The Death-Rebirth Struggle; 4 The Death-Rebirth Experience
Number 3 can be characterized as the valiant heroic struggle against huge odds which leads to a peaceful new age. (i.e. vaginal birth, which is extremely challenging for the child as well as mother).
Since most of us were at one time in a womb and then left it, this idea that our current state might end is indeed, as you said, hard-wired into the human brain.
I can't say that the reason has been discovered, but Grof's theories cannot be immediately discarded.