The Trifecta of Truth
An Overview
In the beginning...
There was the universe.
From the universe, animals and people (somehow) came about.
To survive and make life easier for ourselves, we used the natural resources we encountered. Ate stuff. Drank stuff. Made tools. Made clothes. Made shelter. We applied ourselves to our environment and transformed it.
The (Ian) Morris Theorem:
Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things.
And that is how progress happens in our universe (for the most part).
Here's a fun chart of one (1) of the four (4) metrics this anthropologist used to index social development across human history/evolution.
The others were urbanization, military capacity, and information technology.
He ultimately concluded that it was "maps, not chaps" which drives a civilizations' competitive advantage, that is to say geographical disadvantages which later become advantages (e.g. topographical features for defense or trade, discovery of a new natural resource, etc.) are what tip the scales in favor of new contenders.
And as a British real estate tycoon may have said a century ago...
Location, location, location!
What are some indicators of a civilizations' impending demise?
climate change, famine, state failure, migration and disease
So these days, it sounds like global weirding, supply chain issues, World War III, Martian settlement, and superviruses!
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