Map Thread XVII

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Which Sea map is more realistic for a terraforming project??
 
Map looks excellent, but Wuhan is absolutely an anachronism, as the portmanteau of Hankou and Wuchang didn’t become common until the 19th century and wasn’t official until the 20th. Otherwise impressive. I was actually forced to look up some of the other names I thought were similarly modern only to find that many have been in use for 900 years or more.


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TRADITION!
 
Crossposting from Oneshot Scenarios.

More of the Same
This was a massive collaboration between @Transparent Blue and myself. It was originally brainstormed as the application of The Lindy Effect, explained below, to future history. It grew to become such a great idea that we had planned to make a full timeline of it. Unfortunately, that never panned out, but here is what we have managed to cobble together. This is a long one, so enjoy.

The Lindy Effect

In 1984, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot popularized a now-famous principle known as the Lindy Effect. He posited that the longer a non-perishable phenomenon (e.g. a technology, institution or idea) has survived, the longer we can expect it to last. Inversely, recent innovations may be sudden trends that will fizzle out. Simple example: Shakespeare’s classics are still in circulation after 400 years so they have clearly done something right and are more likely to be remembered in another 400 years than last year’s best-seller, which has not had time to prove itself and may be forgotten just as quickly as it arose. For every year that something lasts, we can add another year to its life expectancy. The beauty of this principle is that it allows us to gauge probability of survival without needing to know the unknowable complexities of time and what truly causes things to catch on or fail.

Can we apply this to future history? I’m sure we have all scoffed at imagery of romanticized futures and possibilities which became hilariously dated in hindsight. Electricity was once feared as an unnatural resurrector or acclaimed as a panacea, nuclear optimism was once so assured that nuclear cars were supposedly around the corner, and in this year we are missing the space colonies we were promised during the heyday of the Space Age. It’s easy for us to recognize that these technologies couldn’t follow the contemporary obsessions and short-lived trends forever. However, it’s not so easy to directly equate this with current trends that we take for granted. We must be sitting on some embarrassing “nuclear car” level ideas without even realizing it — we ask “how” or “when” it will arrive but never if it will.

Every now and again we implicitly see this thinking for particular questions like whether 3D movies will last (no) or whether Catholicism will survive the current decline in religiosity (yes). But what if we went further? As a thought experiment, what if we consistently took the Lindy Effect to its logical conclusion as the basis of an alternative future scenario?


More of the Same

“The 20th Century has put down the shallowest roots” — Robert Booth

If there was a key theme that characterized the 21st Century, it would be the plateau and breakdown of the systems and progress traps that characterized the “modern” world. The significant and unprecedented challenges left by the unsustainable runaway growth of population, climate change, deforestation, mass extinction and resource depletion since the Great Acceleration proved to be insurmountable, despite humanity’s best efforts to soften the impact. Meaningful remedies were stymied by entrenched interests and ways of life, the Jevons Paradox, tragedy of the commons and the inertia of vicious positive feedback loops, simply prolonging the inevitable.

To be clear, there was no single collapse or single cause. Myriads of inescapable, relentless crises (past, present and future) simply chipped away at the current globalized status quo until it was well disintegrated. Permanent disruptions to climactic conditions, ecosystems, water, food security, transportation, communication, supply chains, mass migration and political stability reached an undeniable tipping point in the 2020s and only got worse from there. This decline prompted an embarrassing period of political radicalism as the world struggled to get a grasp on the rug being pulled from underneath them, containing such gems as “build the wall”, “retake Constantinople” and a nuclear war between Iran and Israel.

Although there was no true epoch dividing the “now” from the “future”, the “Big Crises” of this time period come close.

In North America, an earthquake and subsequent submarine landslide in the Gulf of Mexico triggered an unexpected tsunami that devastated the coasts of Mexico and the United States. Even worse, many of the oil rigs were wiped out, sending spills up the Mississippi River to Arkansas and beyond (think Deepwater Horizon times a hundred) and the federal response was not only ineffectual but openly deemed some areas as more worthy of saving given finite resources, leading to local resentment that lasts to this day.

In Europe, the assassination of the British monarch by a radicalized bodyguard, combined with thoroughly xenophobic public pressure, led the government to decide to “humanely resettle” (i.e. expel) its Muslim population, ostensibly to protect both populations from each other. The European Court of Justice declared this to be wildly illegal and the core members of the European Federation (Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy) attempted to arrest British leaders and police officers involved, leading to a prolonged war over either human rights or states’ rights (depends whom you ask). In a watershed moment, the USA decided that they had their own issues to deal with and would not be able to get involved.

Those expecting a nuclear holocaust were surprised when defenses prove to be good enough to negate MAD completely. Information warfare isn't tried as computer networks have already been removed from critical infrastructure decades ago. Drones have not been used for a while either, due to many hacking incidents long ago. Other new exotic weapons are just too expensive, inconvenient, unreliable or rare. Instead, what war does happen primarily relies on tried and tested land and naval forces.

In the Middle East, the Saudis went whole hog and declared the Kaaba to be idolatry, unleashing a coalition of both Sunni and Shia nations to intervene before it could be bulldozed. After overcoming an odd incident in which a desperate Saudi general attempted to halt the invasion by using a nuclear weapon to hold Mecca itself hostage, the coalition prevailed and spent some time bickering over what to establish in the remaining power vacuum.

In Eastern Asia, declining workforces, rising unemployment, inequality and remorseless working conditions prompted a workers’ revolution that started in China and burned through the Koreas, Japan and Vietnam.

In Southeastern Asia, the South China Sea dispute settled into a frozen conflict in which state-sponsored pirates would claim islands and hijack oil and gas shipments on their nations’ behalf. This proxy arrangement was (relatively) fine and averted direct conflict until the pirates amassed enough resources of their own to wonder why they had to take orders and used their leverage to carve out rival fiefdoms in the process. However, most notable is the West’s retreat from the region. The world sees that now the once dominant West cannot protect its interests overseas. Neither can the other powers, although they can certainly dominate their "natural" region.

Worldwide, the rise of global transportation and shipping networks made the prospect of global pandemic an inevitable disaster waiting to happen. While earlier threats like SARS and Swine Flu were averted, we were not so lucky when confronted with the waterborne disease ARC (Antibiotic-Resistant Clostridium, or Dutch Botulism), which especially showed no mercy to northern India and Subsaharan Africa. In the midst of this calamity, panicked governments and publics closed themselves off to foreign connections, people, animals and food products, and many blamed traditional enemies for the outbreaks, unfortunately leading to the largest massacres in human history between religious groups on the Ganges.

Other regions like Latin American and Russia were lucky enough to “only” undergo the standard regional conflicts, ecological collapses and famines.

The common theme of the Big Crises is that they had far-reaching impacts throughout the world, yet only regional responses were possible. Leading figures at the time tried to conceptualize all of these conflicts and catastrophes into facets of a single event, the “Crisis of the 21st Century,” a “World War III” or “Great Fall” which would neatly explain a shift in the world order, yet it became clear that these were disparate events and that there was no longer any single “world” to speak of. In hindsight, the crises were all seen as the straw that broke the camel’s back, signs of deeper systemic roots, rather than causes in themselves (those lay much further back). Globalization, even by its most benign definition as an inevitable historical trend, could no longer be relied upon as a source of progress and opportunities. As resources (including population) peaked and declined, as infrastructure crumbled, as natural disasters would not stop, each region had to adapt in their own way.

The Crisis leads to the breakdown of the foundations of the current world order, the Globalist-Capitalist-Industrialist economy. With the West and its values no longer able to fulfil its promises of freedom and wealth, Civilizationism catches on in the mainstream. It always claimed some scientific legitimacy as "just the way things are" regardless of whether you agreed with it. However, it was restricted to the few passionate about political theory, as the wider public just cared more about paying their bills. But now it all became painfully clear to the public, since there is just no alternative, leading to a whole lot of "I told you so" and mass movements. The metaphorical damn bursts and geographical and cultural realities catch up. We all know the dissatisfied few who complain that "you're a slave to money, then you die" and try to get away from soulless modern life, but now that modern life is no longer viable at all, we get several billion of these who have lost meaning in their lives and find it again in the already existing traditional culture, religions and communities.

None of this is to say that human civilisation or technology has collapsed, it is still healthy and growing; it has only undergone a shift as radical as the Europeanisation of the world since 1492 - namely, the end of it. In fact, some would say that this is not the end of Modernism, but rather the start of many Modernisms. Global institutions and consensus dissolves into regional spheres, each able to survive on their own, and the UN ends with no relevant purpose. The global spread of wealth and multipolarism (some would say polypolarism) meant that the civilizations of the world have long had the ability to completely remake themselves as they desire (ISIS is cited as a proto-example), but only now have they regained their own territory and got the push to actually do so, without needing to explain themselves or attract intervention. No sham of even pretending that they buy into democracy, human rights or raising incomes; "progress" had always been Westernisation the whole time, and now the invisible cage and unnoticed mental constraints were shattered.

The Clash of Civilizations, the natural state of affairs since their unnatural clash 500 years ago, became finally resolved; not because any of them "won", but because they are now truly free to each choose their own fate.

In many ways, the old world ended with a whimper, not a bang.

The New World Orders

The prevailing ideology of 2100 is Civilizationism, the belief that human societies can and ought to be organized around separate and equal “civilizations”. It has its primary roots in the decline of Western global capitalism as the default hegemony, postmodernism, pluralism, anti-globalization, the “Asian Values” debate and Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, though there are key differences that set it apart from the “Clash of Civilizations”. One is the less loaded definition of a “civilization” in Civilizationism, “the largest clusters of humanity in which interpersonal, communication, migratory, economic, political and historical interactions are greater within each cluster than between the clusters”. Civilizations are defined as bottom-up “ecosystems” or “networks” rather than “units” and may not necessarily have any single defining traits like language, religion or ethnicity. The idea of large monolithic units with uniform traits is seen as a fallacy of the old nationalist worldview that required constant enforcement to sustain in reality; civilizations are seen as self-evident, diverse networks that still occur in reality in the absence of any enforcement or awareness.

As a formal paradigm in social sciences, Civilizationism arose from theories in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries that applied new scientific techniques and millennia-spanning data sets to explain humanity on a grander scale than ever before. Starting from individual interactions, groups of people the size of Dunbar’s number are treated as the most natural and basic level of society, which the human brain can innately deal with.

Above that, layers of formal traditions and regulation are required. From the growing body of studies showing e.g. that languages, art styles and mythologies follow predictable phylogenetic trees, or that tonal languages arose in humid climates due to effects on the elasticity of vocal folds, or that differing levels of social interdependence in Chinese provinces can be explained by the levels of collectivism required for wheat vs. rice agriculture, this development of complex society is seen as not just modeled by evolutionary processes but is ultimately one and the same. Groups adapt to local environments and niches along the lines of speciation, and each in the way that suits them best. Interactions between these societies lead to increasingly complex layers of adaptive self-regulation, from tribes up to civilizations, in order to find some equilibrium in an ever-changing world.

A few corollaries follow. “Appeal to tradition” is no longer seen as a fallacy, as the longevity and entrenchment of a practice is seen as justification for itself, just as biological traits are assumed to be adaptive by default rather than maladaptive – if a tradition seems pointless, you just haven’t discovered its purpose yet. All regulatory social structures are seen as just as valid as each other and should be viewed as the same thing, so the difference in legitimacy between a state society, the Sicilian Mafia and xeer is simply a matter of prejudice, as each is just a tool that fulfills some sort of social purpose in its own context. Adaptations are inherently bound to the societies and environments in which they arose, so what works for some people may not necessarily work for others, and may even be destructive – a commonly cited example is the exportation of European style nation-states to Subsaharan Africa which clashed with the realities of fragmented and diverse populations and led to intergroup oppression, sadly culminating in incidents like the Rwandan Genocide.

Ultimately, there is no true “good” or “bad”, just “adaptive” and “maladaptive” in each social context (thus also distinguishing it from Social Darwinism). Unlike in the traditional Clash of Civilizations thesis, conflicts do not occur when bordering civilizations “clash” in some imaginary constant free-for-all, only when they unduly influence each others’ practices, disrupting the equilibria that each one sustained, analogous to invasive species. While social change does happen and civilizations do borrow from each other, there is a natural and sustainable rate at which this can occur. One of the greatest tragedies of the modern era was the acceleration of this process beyond natural limits, smashing the world flat in the name of cookie-cutter universalism.

As a political ideology, Civilizationism is the status quo for most of the world, usually forced by circumstances. The breakdown of transportation and communication, the failure of modernity to live up to its promises and the inability of large states to flexibly adapt to catastrophic circumstances (especially the collapses of the resources and economies that sustained their revenues) led to the proliferation of decentralized polities that could only rely on nearby regional links for what they needed.

The rise of widespread developing economies and technological proliferation in the early 21st Century did not result in multipolarism, where many new powers competed on the world stage, but rather a kind of “polypolarism” where many places exercised their own capabilities within regional playing fields. Each of these regions, settling into the familiar “civilizations” predicted by the theory, moved past the crises, picked up the pieces of the old world and figured out how to fulfill their own wants and needs by themselves. Think breadbaskets and Hollywoods on every continent; unlike the current case of North Korea, they shut themselves off after developing these capabilities rather than before, part of what made Civilizationism practical and not just desirable. With no single world order or need to co-operate abroad, the modern standard of Westphalian centralized nation-states with hard borders gave way to a level of political dynamism and pluralism not seen since the 19th Century.

For example, in Eastern Asia, sovereignty is based on ethnicity; there is no Emperor of China but there is an Emperor of the Chinese, who holds power over and taxes ethnic Chinese regardless of location. People of foreign ethnicities in China are under their own sovereigns (don’t ask how those of mixed ancestry are considered). In the Caliphates, parallel regimes separately deal with members of each Abrahamic faith.

Despite these differences, the circumstances and ideology of the time period has encouraged a set of political traits that could be said to be held in common. Civilizationism itself entails cultural conservatism, anti-nationalism in favor of both localism (single national cultures were always delusions) and multi-ethnic states (“I don’t care if my ruler looks like me, as long as I have bread on my plate”; conversely “I don’t care what language my subjects speak, as long as they pay taxes”), anti-globalization (“can you believe our ancestors used to ship toys all the way from China? What next, breakfast cereal from Mars?” and some degree of xenophobia (“foreigners are okay as long as they’re our foreigners”), while resource scarcity and climate change resulted in environmentalism to avoid the mistakes of the past, and chronically insufficient fiscal solvency forced many states to reconsider what are now inessential luxuries like the welfare state, hard border controls, language standardization and seat-belt enforcement.

It is important to establish that Civilizationism holds to an idea of “oligoculturalism.” The idea is that multiculturalism is a destructive mixing of cultures, but monoculturalism is an unnatural aberration of modern nation-states. Association of cultures is fine, even beneficial, as long as they’re the nearby ones.

Moreover, the failure of any particular ideology or set of values to truly “win” in the world without horrific bloodshed has led to an extreme degree of cultural and moral relativism where other Civilizations’ practices are always fine as long as they happens “over there”. “We have our nation, you have yours, and while we can deal with each other at arm’s length, mixing cultures just leads to pain for everyone.” The Average Joe of New York will see, say, Islamic culture in ambivalent terms: it has its good and bad, just like his own culture, but it should stay far away from him, and he knows that the man in Tehran agrees. Each Civilization is now free to pursue its own character and its own fate.

Nevertheless, Civilizationism is not always an explicit ideology; it has no flag or symbols, it is often “just there” like air or gravity rather than being named and enforced, and in many places you’ll just get a blank stare if you ask a passerby to name which Civilization Japan is in.

The lesson the 22nd century has drawn from the Crisis is not necessarily a denial that cultures change and interact, but this only happened properly over centuries and on smaller, more manageable scales. And there was a reason for particular traditions in particular places even if we don't know it. Whereas the post-Columbus contact was an unprecedented gallavanting that was too fast for human nature to adapt to, destroying the social benefits and cohesion of the traditions we had sustained, and put the whole world into a shock. This manifests in ways that are sometimes small and obvious (e.g. British giving their Muslim Indian soldiers the bullets with pig fat), and others that are macro-scale and indirect (e.g. applying Western-style borders in Indian partition), but all must be recognised and dealt with just as thoroughly.

Unfortunately, as politics is often a conflict of interest disguised as a conflict of principles, Civilizationism has also been invoked for the most abhorrent of prejudices – the Jews are rejected as an alien Western people by the Middle Easterners yet also rejected an alien Middle Eastern people by the Europeans, snide references to West African adaptations are inevitable whenever African-American family sizes are mentioned, and ethnic Chinese throughout Southeastern Asia underwent mass expropriation on the grounds that they were an invading “other” civilization.

The Civilizations as they coalesced by 2100 are:
  • Anglosphere – In its core definition, containing just the places where many people are born and die knowing only English as a native language, or where the vaguely defined “Anglo-Saxon Model” has been applied (UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Guyana, some Caribbean Islands). Gobbled up half of the Papuan coast and most of Polynesia in a desperate bid for resources and to reduce the tyranny of distance.
  • Europe – Also contains the UK, even if they don’t want to admit it. Yes, civilizations can overlap. Full of ever-shifting alliances with a lot of bitterness since the wars. Great powers include France, the Višegrad Union and, surprisingly, Ukraine.
  • Ibero-America – Corresponds mainly to “Latin America” but also covers much of the United States from Seattle to Miami, where Hispanic-Americans are now considered as foreign as Irish-Americans. Probably the Civilization that survived the 21st Century the best, but did devolve into military dictatorships with regional rivalries over left-leaning and traditionalist Catholicism.
  • The Caliphates – Note the plural. The Sunni caliphate in Cairo, lorded over by a syncretic union of the Hashemites and the successors of the Muslim Brotherhood, avoids conflict with the Shia caliphate in Tehran by simply ignoring their existence. They rule along religious lines with heavily sectarian regions ruled village-by-village according to allegiance. For some reason, Oman wants no part in the system.
  • Bharat – Might have had the largest economy or population if only its early 21st Century crises weren’t so severe that they left Hyderabad as the most populated city in the subcontinent. India is in no position to challenge China, not that it would want to; what do the Chinese have to do with any of India’s problems?
  • Tianxia – The Chinese Workers’ Empire (every worker is his own emperor, but there is also the actual emperor) reintegrated after spending most of the century split into Northern and Southern empires. Whatever ideals the revolution started with, it devolved into technocratic autocracy once again and is trying to export this model to its vassals.
  • Polynesia – What’s not underwater went the way of Hawaii in terms of language and cultural endangerment.
  • Eurasian Steppe – Continuing the legacy of the Mongols and Turks, the Russians have not let go of the yoke. Currently in a Eurasian state of mind with
  • West Africa – Unlike Huntington’s theory, which consigned all of Sub-Saharan Africa into a single wastebasket for the purposes of sweeping generalizations, Africa coalesced into many diverse Civilizations. This one consists of multi-ethnic empires with fluid borders where people vote with their feet. Rather a mess of tribal and religious identities and loyalties.
  • Spine of Africa – Named analogously to the Horn of Africa, this region starts in Khartoum and winds down through Ethiopia, to the Swahili Coast, encompassing also the Great Lakes and finally to the Cape of Good Hope. Relies on legacy railroads for its existence.
  • Madagascar – The smallest and most cohesive of the Civilizations. Famous for using a real life version of Schrödinger’s Cat as an execution method – the idea is that if you are truly innocent, the spirits of your ancestors can intervene in the otherwise indeterminable wave collapse function and set you free. A "trial by ordeal" of sorts.
  • Mekong – Mainland Southeastern Asia. Not too fussed with interacting with Alam Melayu, which some consider to be one and the same Civilization due to their many overlapping mandalas.
  • Alam Melayu – Maritime Southeastern Asian thalassocracy. Gobbled up the other half of the Papuan coast for sweet, sweet copper.
Beyond these traditional regions, there are also the “Papuan” Civilizations which are named after the conditions in the interior of New Guinea – Many small, fragmented societies who fluidly move around and interact, resulting in incredible geographic mixing and overlapping so that the relationship between tribes and land is unfixed and indescribable. Because of this fragmentation and dynamism, they seem to be ungovernable in the conventional sense, but they were fine for centuries without states, and they actually seem to get on better without them – so why pressure them? Misleadingly shown as featureless blobs on the world map only out of the limitations of state-society-oriented-map-styles; these regions are equally as complex as the other Civilizations and they do sometimes sustain cities and contemporary levels of technology.
  • Papua
  • Arctic
  • Amazonia
  • Interior Africa
  • Sahara
Finally, there are regions that don’t fit into any particular Civilization but instead act as “crossroads” between them:
  • The Philippines
  • Central Asia
  • Anatolia

As with all ideologies, there are no shortage of critics of Civilizationism. Despite its worldwide dominance, it has not had a full ideological hegemony since the mid-century and many questions abound. Isn’t the application of evolutionary science to politics a case of the is-ought fallacy? Are the Civilizations really “self-evident” or “natural” considering that many of them were born through state violence and the conquest of previously existing civilizations? Is its glorification of social tradition as evolutionary adaptation a case of circular logic? Is the whole thing just thinly veiled racism? The younger generations are starting to view Civilizationism’s true origins not in the sciences but simply in their grandparents’ need to rationalize the necessities of administration in a suddenly resource-scarce world and to soften the sense of profound loss and anger that was felt at the end of the modern world. A new contender has arisen in the form of Municipalism, the idea that humans are more separated by the urban-rural divide than “civilizations”, and that city-states are and always have been the optimal units of human social and political organization. Like Civilizationism, this line of thinking independently arose according to common conditions around the world and not as a formal movement. For some, it was a pragmatic solution to heavily fragmented and sectarian regions by decentralizing as much as possible with a “live and let live” policy between each municipality. For some, it was a way to ensure environmental sustainability by organizing in self-sufficient communes, along the lines of Murray Bookchin’s ideas. For some, it is a way of asserting regional interests without conflicting with centralized governments (so goes their mantra, “a nation is an empire by another name”). An example is the Cascadian Municipal Association which officially has no power on its own but whose members have unofficially agreed to uniformly adopt common decisions in their own cities.

The Arts

The age of “Blockbusterization” is over. While some works are bigger than others, the business model of “THE BIG THING THIS SUMMER! BRING THE WHOLE FAMILY!” was unsustainable. The future media environment is a bit more leveled, where many small works abound and grain traction through word of mouth.

More experimental means of entertainment (live concerts, stage plays, board games, sports, paintball) continue, sometimes due to conscious resistance of a technological lifestyle (think current hipsters), but often just due to social significance and on its own merits.

Music in the Western world continues its safe trends of the chorus-verse pop song structure, catchy hooks and love lyrics. After over-saturation in the 2030s, hip-hop and rap die out as a distinct genres and are absorbed into the mainstream; African-American musical expression tends more to R&B, blues and soul (closest current example is Don’t Wanna Fight). Other popular genres sound like slow ballads (e.g. Yellow), folk (e.g. Home), country (e.g. Hurt), classic rock (e.g. November Rain) and funk-rock (e.g. Under the Bridge). Electronic music is deader than disco and equally treated as a punchline.

Movies continue the traditional Hollywood style—two hours, three-act structure, heroic characters, happy endings. The most popular genres are drama, history, comedy, romance, action and documentary. Science fiction and fantasy thrive only for a niche market. In particular, science fiction is more overtly fantastical like Back to the Future, since there isn’t enough contemporary progress to really comment on.

The Environment

Lots of places underwater but not as many as feared. Catastrophic global warming struck in the early 21st Century but waned as population declined.

In wake of Holocene mass extinction, there is the proliferation of new species, symbiotic with human cities. Adaptation of dogs, cockroaches, foxes and many other small insects, mammals and birds. These adaptations are selected for small size and agility, perfect for living in the concrete jungle.

Climates are generally screwed up. The American South has climate of current day India. The Amazon is turning into a savanna. The Sahara has almost doubled in size. Many places have novel climates that we do not currently have terms for.

Historiography

Looking back, their view of history is that of an unbroken chain with nothing truly unprecedented, revolutionary or “modern” except for speed and scale. Imperialism never ended – the USA rules over the lands it gained in Manifest Destiny, China’s Han majority still lord over their western frontier, and the Philippines is just Imperial Manila. Slavery never ended, it was just renamed to human trafficking and debt bondage. Aristocracy never ended, it just shifted its membership to political dynasties, celebrities and commercial elites. The Communist republic in China was never a revolutionary new phase, just an interregnum, and guided by “China with socialist characteristics” rather than “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. The European colonial empires weren’t unprecedented globalized superstates, they were just the Mongols of the sea.

“Forward” and “backwards” have no meaning in the sense of historiography. Whig history and the Marxist dialectic have both been thrown out as bunk. Of course, this is not to say that a cyclical or chaotic view of history has taken hold; rather, the idea is that things will no longer change, or even “regress” in some ways.

Through a Civilizationist lens, much of the modern era is seen as a sad and destructive period of history. Disparate events like the Columbus Exchange, Boxer Rebellion and Iraq War are seen as parts of the same thread where the scale of imperialism and globalization disrupted separate Civilizations to their core. Apparently, all the woes and conflicts of this era, were caused in some way or another by powers overstepping their own regions and attempting to enforce or spread their “way of being” onto another Civilization, intentionally or not.

Even the anti-imperialism of the Soviets or the decolonial ideologies of postcolonial African states are seen as toothless rhetoric since they still took place within the same centralized nation-state order and did not truly achieve any deep structural change. From an environmental standpoint, viewpoints of the past combine a “what goes up must come down” fatalism where everything was destined to fall from its very beginning, with an admonishment of our failure to do anything about the rising tide until it was too late.

Globalism and international capitalism, along with the white man’s burden and colonialism, will be pointed to reasons why multiculturalism is a bad idea. The European Union was a failure, and parties like UKIP are seen as the canaries in the coalmine. Political globalization will be seen as the prime cause of the first two World Wars, the Cold War, the early 21st century “clash of civilizations,” culminating in the disaster that is the Third World War. To the man of 2110, there is no difference between Bush’s idea of spreading peace in the Middle East by the sword, and the modern progressive idea of history moving toward some enlightened utopia. Westerners will hang their heads in shame at believing that their ancestors believed that institutions like the UN could spread Western ideas of human rights, just as the modern Sunni in Syria thinks that those ISIS fellows were utter nuts for believing that Islam would dominate the world and the Muscovite thinks that those Soviets were pie-in-the-sky tyrants. And both of them would agree that Western liberalism, communism, jihadism and all of these other–isms are just the product of the same universalist “one size fits all” nonsense that is responsible for hundreds of millions of corpses. No, let’s just live and let live.

In the cultural evolution aspect of Civilizationism, the waves of cultural, linguistic and political extinctions during the modern globalized period is akin to a single mass extinction event caused by sudden contact and external imposition, like the extinction of South American megafauna during the Great American Interchange.

The man of the 22nd century hates the man of the 21st century. Generational differences have always been around, but the general consensus on the 21st century world is that the old world is evil. When the 21st century thought of historical acts that they considered by their own, often thought that it was fair by their own standards, or they didn't know any better. The 21st century itself gets no pass: with their science, they all knew resources were finite, they knew growing consumerism was unsustainable and they knew that a crash would be catastrophic. And yet they still built entire lifestyles and economies on materialism and waste. If colonialism was churning prosperity for Europeans at the expense of natives, and neo-colonialism is churning prosperity for the First World at the expense of quasi-slave labor in the Third, then consumerism is churning prosperity for our time's people at the expense of those in the future ("eh, what problems, they'll deal with it when it comes"). Historiographically, it's personal. To some, the contrast between the luxury of the "golden era" and the relative poverty of 2110 strikes them deep as "This was the plan all long. You paid for that life of theirs.” The Millennials are Rhodesia: a remnant of a dying order on its last legs, stubbornly refusing to give up our inherited life of luxury until the bitter end.

Likewise, the 21st century’s universalist attitudes are condemned. As the 21st century saw the most humanitarian of the Victorians as racist deep down no matter how much they helped the natives. In the same way, to the people of the 22nd century, those like Amnesty International may have had helpful intentions but deep down they are just another willing arm of the Western Supremacy machine.

Science and Technology

Planned obsolescence is over. Cars, computers and mobile phones are like fridges or microwaves. There is no “it” model, fancy naming, flashy ads or new features, it’s just a mundane utilitarian device you replace when the last one stops working. The Motorola RAZR is a perfect exhibit of what's "wrong" with the 21st century, the "Victorian human zoo" of the future, an iconic depiction of our widespread flaws. Buying a new mobile phone while you already have a good one, just because the new one is trendy, is like the Roman vomitorium (in its urban legend form). And all companies forced everybody into this business model by making them break quickly? Absolutely abhorrent. If there's anything that all cultures agree on, it's that waste is evil.

What, then, is the Next Big Thing™? The opposite of flashiness: efficiency. With energy resources becoming much scarcer and expensive, more focus is given to making machines more energy efficient. Things are more advanced, but they are decidedly subdued. Wasteful things, such as fossil fuel engines, petroleum-based plastics, meat from actual animals are phased out, but those things that are more or less fine (nuclear power, metals) aren’t changed much. There is even a “regression” in some places. The smartphone of the future isn’t much more advanced than ours with regard to software or flashy features, but it’s tough as nails and the battery lasts a month. The people of 2110 think it’s silly that we buy protective cases for our phones; who would buy a phone that couldn’t be dropped from five stories and survive? People in the past were stupid.

It’s not Mad Max, technology has moved on, but at linear pace rather than geometric. Mostly private funding. Diffusion of ideas is horrifically slow due to lack of contact. Often “reinventing the wheel” because researchers have no idea what has been done elsewhere, so they inadvertently repeat it instead of building upon it. But the changes are subtle, even imperceptible, but to expect otherwise would be like demanding flying cars and jetpacks.

Computers were not the future. In the 21st century, nobody actually needs to justify why household virtual reality, self-driving cars or brain implants could catch on; the possibility is just an unspoken assumption and we only discuss how or when it will manifest. In the future, digital technology survived but all trends stopped and actually went backwards until we accepted it only within a mundane core domain, just as nuclear and space technology settled into restricted roles in the 20th Century. Exponential development of digital technology actually plateaued in the 2020s as silicon chips reached physical limits, fragile global supply chains proved unreliable, and it became clear that very few people demanded anything more powerful. While many uses remain, people in the future find it odd how anyone would have ever trusted the internet for something as secure as banking, or let it utterly consume their lives – “they probably would have downloaded an app to wipe their ass if there was one!”

The 2010s’ doe-eyed conception of an Arab Spring social media revolution is as plausible to the future public as Frankenstein’s zapping a corpse back to life is to us – a laughably fervorous case study of a new technology being conceptualized as magic. Quantum computers do exist but they are rare cathedral-sized beasts hired out for only the weightiest applications like weather forecasting, traffic simulations and encryption. The superior timelessness and resilience of analog media formats, such as printed books and analogue film, led to the complete abandonment of digital formats for archival purposes. In the realm of state security, typewriters are back in fashion to stave off dissemination. Any sensitive digital data is transmitted via tiny memory cards carried by carrier pigeons, bypassing electronic networks entirely. Speaking of networks, the extensive cyber-warfare of the early 21st Century, isolationism and breakdown of undersea cable infrastructure (sharks find them quite tasty) has led to the independent development of new, more secure, incompatible electronics and internets (note the plural) that rival the number of disparate power socket standards worldwide. The isolationism is not quite North Korea style, so nobody will stop you from trying to access another internet, but the vast technical expertise and effort required puts this out of reach of all but governments, researchers and the most dedicated enthusiasts and criminals.

Nanotech proved to be a bust. Its progress just sat in the background as a boring science that makes pre-existing things more efficient. Nanomaterials do exist, to make things more durable and lighter, but not much else was done. Nor fusion power or space travel, which had constant investment but never reaped any good results or profits.

Instead it would be a field around for millennia in the primitive form of agriculture, medicine and selective breeding – biotechnology. Something infinitely more applicable and useful than the 21st century’s stupid obsessions, apparently. After all, you can't regrow a busted eye or cure AIDS with a smartphone. Examples include effortless genetic screening (basic health history and risks laid out from birth), and better understanding of current ailments. Biotechnology allows people to regrow limbs or eyes or cure cancer but only for the elites. Usually biotech used for “biological engines,” e.g. bacteria that efficiently converts cellulosic material (plant waste) to isobutanol fuel, or that breaks down polyurethane, or that “grows” carbon fiber. This tech is low yield and very slow but very efficient. Gene therapy can prevent most severe hereditary diseases. Genetically engineered crops, larger and using less water, resilient to climate change, often grown in vertical agriculture in cities; think tomatoes the size of your head.

Designer babies are not controversial: we have the ability to destroy genetic diseases as we destroyed smallpox, so we did. Eugenics is no longer a dirty word; yes, it’s evil to kill children already born with a defect, but if you can edit that out before they are born, it’s immoral to let them be born with a defect. It does lead occasionally to “ambitious” efforts like the Cairo Caliphate’s research into preventing homosexuality in the womb or Australia’s foray into getting rid of antisocial behavior.

With regard to power, solar, hydroelectric and geothermal have become cheaper, but not too much more efficient. The technology didn’t progress enough to avert crisis but softened the blow for some. The energy crisis was instead solved by a reduction of energy consumption, rather than an increase in production.

There are other, minor improvements that would not seem that it is worth a century of progress: electrical conductors with low resistance for less transmission losses, and ship hulls with very little drag. But to the 22nd century, this efficiency is definitely worth it.

Transport becomes more public. Trains and trams are simply more efficient than cars; yes, they’re more environmentally friendly, but more importantly, they are cheaper per trip per capita. A few enthusiasts still have old fossil fuel cars, and pay hundreds of dollars for a gallon of gas, but those few cars that are on the road are powered by still-inefficient and expensive batteries and hydrogen cells. Ethnaol was going to be the “next fuel,” but when the famines started hitting and water shortages drove the price of corn through the roof, then it was shelved. Transportation by sea becomes common again, air travel being prohibitively expensive. Ships have sails again, to save on fuel.

The primary weapon of war remains the standard gun, using gunpowder and firing bullets. Conventional firearms will always be more useful than any hypothetical, science fiction alternative, because of certain physical factors like cheapness, lightness, ease of manufacture and convenience; and people cite their established ubiquity and success as proof of their superiority. The physics and power requirements are far simpler railguns or the even more fantastical directed-energy weapons. In fact, some AK-47s are still in use, being passed down through generations. Even crossbows are in use in some places. Mutually assured destruction is no longer an issue, as “perfect” ICBM detection and interception is in place.

Orbital infrastructure is breaking down. A lot of satellites have known finite shelf lives and deorbit after a while. Those that don't may get struck by micrometeorites and just break down. As people lost interest in orbital infrastructure, or simply did not have the resources for it, it was just abandoned while the world went for more reliable, easier to fix, terrestrial infrastructure.

Culture and Society

The average denizen of 2100 is poorer than his counterpart in 2000, at least in the West. Living standards for state societies are approximately within the range of 2010 Latin America; the worst is equivalent to Haiti and the best is equivalent to Chile. The average is equivalent to Papua New Guinea. Economically, the entire 21st Century was an L-shaped depression. Economic inequality is also similar to current day Latin America. In terms of economic malaise and breakdown, the closest analogy is Central Asia in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union. At worst, it can be like Grande Hotel Beira. Some cities like Nouakchott are mostly just ruins.

One of the universal cultural trends is that austerity is a virtue, and waste is a vice. This isn’t because the West told everyone it was so (and saying so looks like “I think blackface is funny” to us), but because resource depletion is universal. The “Crisis of the 21st century,” that series of events that shook the world out of the “decadence” of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and culminated in WWIII, have taught the entire world the price of irresponsible extravagance, and that price was paid in millions of corpses.

The other major, universal cultural force is technology, particularly agriculture. In this resource-deprived world, priority returns to answering that age-old question: what do we eat tomorrow? The wasteful methods of today will be done away with, and in their place we’ll see the rise of new techniques. Genetically modified foods are necessary to keep everyone fed; the very idea of opposing them is equated to standing by to watch children starve. Large livestock farms will be limited to those catering to the rich; who would raise cattle, when soybeans are so much more efficient? No large culture will reject this new technology, now that rumbling stomachs demand their implementation.

Food culture has changed worldwide. Portions have been reduced, and the buffet went the way of the dodo. The American of the future looks at American portions today and ask how anyone could eat that much, and then look at the obesity epidemic with wonder and disgust: a culture so rich that people get sick from eating too much! It’s both awe-inspiring and abhorrent. What people eat also changed: less meat and sugar, more vegetables. Many people are practical vegetarians, eating meat sparingly. This isn’t the result of there being an “enlightenment” in attitudes towards treatment of animals (even if there is some post-hoc rationalization; vegan circles grew and multiplied) but simple economics: livestock is expensive to maintain, and wasteful. People get more of their protein from soy, and soy and almond milk have replaced cow’s milk. This does not mean that meat disappears, but for most people, it changes form.

Most meat consumed is vat-grown, because that’s more efficient than growing and slaughtering an animal. This meat tastes indistinguishable from the “real” stuff when ground up, but science has yet to perfect growing cuts of meat. Things like steaks will still come from livestock, and will be extremely expensive. Nobody but the 22nd century’s Hiltons and Trumps have an actual Thanksgiving turkey. Luxury foods now include real cocoa, vanilla, beef and rice (outside Asia), though there are cheap substitutes for everything along the lines of margarine or synthetic vanillin. The stereotypical "rich asshole" food in the US is not lobster, but steak sushi. This isn’t a bad thing, because cuisine adapts with the times, and there is some crazy delicious food that has no meat at all. And of course, it leads to a somewhat healthier society, although notably the future has traded obesity for malnutrition. On that note, workout culture has pretty much died; who has the time, money and energy for that nonsense?

People, overall, are not as concerned with “pushing boundaries” or philosophizing. People will be more concerned about whether the economic system is sustainable, than they are with “the next civil rights issue.” Culture is more traditional; multiculturalism was a failure, and why bother coming up with something new and edgy when your ancestors did the work for you? The idea of “cultural appropriation” fused with the idea of national and cultural pride; it is common for, say, a Chinese man to refuse to wear “Western” clothing, and neo-traditional clothing is a major fashion trend.

LGBT and other 21st century social justice issues are about as relevant as slavery. Homosexuals could get married, and most religious sects accept this nowadays, and nobody cares; suggesting that gays shouldn’t get married is like ranting about “race mixing” in the 21st century. Of course, no real moral judgments are being made towards the past generations; nobody cares that grandpa may have opposed this when he was a kid, that’s peanuts compared to his decadent lifestyle which has impoverished future generations. A form of high-tech surgical modification can be used to make transsexuals practically indistinguishable from the opposite sex. It’s gotten so good that the term “transsexual” isn’t even used much; they’re simply men and women, and only census takers and medical professionals have any interest in that stuff.

Mike Rowe has won the higher education debate, and the idea that everyone should go to college is seen as absurd as the idea that everyone should be a millionaire. The education bubble popped long ago, and the massive unemployment in the West is but one aspect of the Crisis of the 21st century. Faced with a massive group of people with no practical skills, the West underwent a lot of social upheaval, eventually contributing to the general violence over resources that led to WWIII. It doesn’t help that a lot of unemployed college grads were the most ardent defenders of the “old order” while others wanted to burn it down; WWIII had a lot of young fanatics fighting on all sides.

When the dust settled, it was clear to everyone that higher education is only for the few and truly capable; everyone else should go into a trade. Those who go into trades are not looked down upon as uneducated rubes; indeed, they are seen as people who do what is necessary, and wise for choosing a path that makes them useful. And with information being practically free on the Internet, these tradesmen are not idiots; a good number of them have a comprehensive knowledge on various odd topics. This is also good for those that could afford higher education, as their skills become scarce once again, so their degrees pay off. Of course, admissions and the courses themselves are more difficult, as they specifically cater to the cream of the crop; education isn’t a one-way ticket to riches, nor should it be. Naturally, they encourage the idea that higher education is for the elite few, and that most people shouldn’t bother, because otherwise they’d be throwing their money away. We may see this as elitist and unfair, but they’d counter that you can’t have all chiefs and no Indians.

Contraceptives and abortions are accepted as a matter of course; this is the great cultural battle Western Christianity fought during the Crisis, and it eventually accedes to the idea that contraceptives and abortions are necessary. Some sects broke away and refused contraceptives completely, but nowadays they’re seen like those Christian sects who refuse to take blood transfusions: loony but ultimately harmless to nobody but their own followers. But the great contraceptive battle is not won by the women’s rights argument (the future doesn’t disagree, but it’s a silly side argument to them), but rather the cold, hard fact that the world has too many people to maintain. Look at the famines of the Middle East and India! We ourselves are at the brink of starvation; do you want to bring a child into a world like this?

A good number of people choose to be sterilized, simply because it’s expensive to have children, so Western birth rates continue to decline. In fact, it’s declined pretty much everywhere. Artificial wombs exist, but they’re expensive and are only used by rich professional women who have no time to get pregnant (and rich gay couples). This hasn’t actually led to the catastrophic labor shortage predicted in the past, because demand has also declined as part of the general sense of austerity.

Marriage has made a comeback. However, marriage returns not to start families, but because pooling resources helps both parties. Modern marriage far more “equal,” with both partners expected to work and help around the house in equal measure. Again, this is more a product of austerity than it is of any “enlightened attitudes;” nobody’s going to marry someone who doesn’t work, and what sort of parasite would do that anyway? Divorces become less common, if only because that’s expensive. Weddings are also toned down considerably, because of money.

World population had peaked at nine billion; in 2100 it is about to breach five billion again. Younger population had higher birth rates, but these ultimately collapsed. Some temporary migration trends - such as Arabs going to Europe and South Asians going to Gulf States - are shortlived, and ended with the fall of globalism. Long-term trends (often slow but sure shifts) are derived from old language family expansions that are still continuing in the 21st century due to migration, or historical presence. Jews spread across Middle East and Mediterranean, especially southern Italy. More Turks and Slavs are spread all across Europe. Polynesians in New Zealand, Australia, Chile and US, Malays in Moluccas and western New Guinea, Mexicans in American Southwest. Chinese have moved more into Southeast Asia, despite having been kicked out several times. Arabs have moved across the Sahara and into West Africa, while West Africa moved into the interior of Africa; Nigeria was interested in resources there.

As knowledge, power, wealth and technology disseminate worldwide and countries no longer rely on or look up to the West, local cultures begin to question the underpinnings of the world system. They equate Modernism entirely with Western domination that was an accident of history. The West isn't bad, but every civilization has its own unique character that cannot be mixed; Western civilization is suited for the West, ours are for us, and these spheres must leave each other alone. Instant trade, communication and imagery since 1500 didn't lead to mixing and peaceful awareness between civilizations, it just made painfully aware how different and unbridgeable they were, since they connected far too fast to adapt. Not content with the simple tenets of Anti-globalism, Anti-imperialism or Anti-western thought, they seek to overturn the deep assumptions of civilization that past generations didn't "realize" were part of this Western hegemony.

Personal finance is defined by austerity. The idea that people should take loans to pay for things they cannot afford is seen as the height of stupidity and irresponsibility. Don’t they remember how their grandfathers and grandmothers became slaves to their debt? Who needs all of that useless crap, anyway? People will only take out loans if they are in truly dire straits, and they will avoid it for as long as possible. This leads to an overall more austere lifestyle. Single-family homes will be much smaller, but those large homes will have several generations live under one roof, because buying new homes every generation and paying nursing homes is a stupid waste of money. Cars, clothes, computers, furniture and the like are passed down from generation to generation, and will be repaired until they can no longer function. Hoarding becomes an unfortunate side effect of the austerity mindset, and it’s the worst among the generation that lived through the Crisis and remembered when a marauding army could show up tomorrow and steal everything. Living beyond one’s means is seldom done, and 2110 sees the early 21st century as an age when everyone did this, because it’s the past and people in the past are idiots.

Healthcare is much cheaper and better, and it’s accepted that the government has some role in providing healthcare, but equally accepted that it should not be completely free for everyone. The collapse of old systems led to a lot of problems in this regard; both Medicare and the National Health Service died ugly deaths. The most interesting side effect of cheaper, better healthcare is that people are now living to their 110s, so many people born in the 1990s are still alive. This isn’t necessarily a good thing: there’s still some resentment against the Millennial generation for being “decadent,” and as a practical matter, they are expensive to keep alive. The Millennial generation does still live with their family, with the whole “nursing home” system dead. Ironically, another source of resentment that the newer generations have against Millennials is that they are being treated far better than they treated their own parents, the Baby Boomers.

While China remains #1 for population and GDP, and Russia remains the largest in size, other rankings have shifted. Argentina now has the best overall living standards, Sardinia has the highest life expectancy and Canada has the most suicides per capita.

English has evolved into several different, mutually unintelligible dialects. However, they are still largely considered the same language.

Most people don't venture far from their hometown in their life. Life is harder but less stressful as it's less uncertain. The average person can't tell you that the capital of China is New Nanjing but they can tell you their neighbors' birthdays.

Politics

The world of 2110 thinks that the green parties foresaw the problems of the future, but took the wrong angle of addressing them. Nobody gives a damn about (now-extinct) polar bears. Hitching on to other left-wing political and social issues was also dumb, as it alienated some people who would otherwise be on board with austerity.

Around the world, polities tend to fall on the extremes of liberal democracies or autocracies with very little in between (no Putinism here). Monarchism took hold again, often in a diluted form in which ostensible republics have a president-for-life title passed down a family (c.f. North Korea, Syria). Often loosely organized, where individual provinces and regions have considerable administrative autonomy.

The Anglosphere is more "right-wing" and Europe more "left-wing," but there is broad consensus on what we'd consider Western values, sans the universality and the moral imperative to "help all men." More importantly, there is the idea that Western values are for Western peoples. Sure, individual immigrants may be able to integrate into Western society, but entire cultures "coming around" to Western ideals is not only foolish, it is arrogant.

In the United States, the political spectrum ranges from what we would call “Christian Democracy” (law and order, religious conservatism, social justice, welfare state, regulated capitalism) to “Paleolibertarianism” or “Paleoconservatism” (individualist, Nativist, free trade, small government, racist). Both sides share a strong overlap of religion, agrarianism, traditionalism, moralism, subsidiarity, legalized drugs and environmentalism. Green parties are a thing of the past; everyone agrees that the environment is important, they only differ on what to do about it. The issues of the day include the rising tooth decay epidemic and whether it was appropriate for the new president to give his acceptance speech in both English and Spanish.

The trend in the Anglosphere has been political decentralization. From the Magna Carta to the American Revolution, there has been a growing trend that power should reside more closely with the common people as opposed to aristocrats or elites of some stripe. This trend has reversed itself in the 20th century, at least in the United States, but I contend that this is a direct result of industrialization. As the Anglosphere cultures de-industrialize, we see a return to regionalism and political decentralization. National governments are drastically reduced in power, as are the global corporations they coexist with (the corporations also die off or are reduced by the death of globalization). Local governments gain more power and importance. As people return to the countryside, issues on the other side of the continent are no longer as important.

Internationally, the world sees the death of the "American Empire," but maintenance of (relative) naval hegemony. Within the United States particularly, there has been a historical animosity toward global intervention. This reemerged in the 21st century, with elements of both the political left and right oppose America's role as a "global policeman." The British have a similar tradition of "splendid isolation," albeit this isolation applied to the European continent and did not prevent the British from creating the world's largest empire. With the decline of globalization and industrialization, the current American military juggernaut was significantly cut down, by necessity if not by will. However, the Americans will still maintain the world's largest navy, although in this post-industrial world this does not mean much. Tianxia, for example, turns back inward and has a Ming-esque attitude to naval affairs.

America also sees the rise of "rural politics." Jefferson's vision of the United States as an agrarian country returns. This form of agrarian political thinking defies and transcends the left/right divide those in the early 21st century were familiar with. There is a definite "class warfare" aspect in the ever-present skepticism of big business and banking, but there is an equal skepticism of big government programs and centralized power that we'd associate with the modern Western political right. There's also a definite protectionist angle. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders proved to be the future of American politics. Most political differences between candidates are over local issues: should the State of Iowa subsidize X program over Y?

The ignominious fall of the European Federation led to the return of the nation-state system. Regional power blocs have risen, but these are far more culturally and economically similar to one another. European politics is more “right-wing” than someone in the 21st century may have anticipated, given the widespread acceptance of strong border security and national pride. However, economically, the European Federation was seen as a monster of international capitalism, so the return of pseudo-mercantilism in the form of strong trade restrictions and guarantees for workers’ rights is the order of the day.

Of course, some trends have continued. The British have once again enter a period of splendid isolation, only occasionally intervening in continental affairs when their commercial interests are threatened. Sinn Fein continued its centuries old tradition of insisting on a reunification referendum. France has once again become a continental power, having been one of the powers which turned against the European Federation in the end. France dominates Western Europe, which critics and fans consider a new Rome. Germany, the center of the European Federation, has been shattered into a gaggle of bickering republics. Italy suffered the same fate, the political unity of Germany and Italy ultimately proving temporary. Poland and Ukraine rose in the East.

In the former Yugoslavia is the "Council of Free Municipalities," the name a neutered acronym like the USSR. With all the dotty patchwork of shifting ultra-allegiances in the Balkans, and no arrangements of borders and states able to satisfy everybody, civil disorder breaks the region down into sovereign Commune-Municipalities (as per Communalism). The idea is that if there's no way to lump Balkan areas together without extensive distrust, conflict and bloodshed, maybe just don't lump them, and leave populations to manage their affairs at the smallest communities that they feel kinship at. Social Ecology provides a neat and resonant explanation for why the crises are going on and what to do about it. These form a loose consensus democratic confederation (as per Libertarian Municipalism). This seems plausible under the Lindy Effect because confederations of small towns, each self-regulated, with their own militias, strong sense of community, common ownership and small-scale ecologically sound economies, sounds like a rather ancient way of living.

Thus, the one system in the region, if it could be called it, is Bookchinism or National Anarchism. Supposedly this system eliminates the ethnic and religious hatred that plagued the region for so long, by allowing them to separate into their own self-determined communities, and no national government/army to promote one over the other. Except this just allows larger commune militias to go on crusades to convert smaller ones, coerce leaders, flood them with settlers, etc. to get more influence in the confederation. This encourages small communes to curry the favor of large communes that are nearby and have the same ethnic/religious affiliation for protection. This forms into voting blocs, military alliances and tribute systems (i.e. protection racket). Escalating competition means that large communes also start banding together against crusaders and raiders, and perform revenge.

It is, in many ways, the logical extreme of Civilizationism. It's decentralized to the level of the municipality, environmentalist to the point of being an absolutely self-sufficient ecological communes, non-interventionist to the point of North Korea-like isolation, traditionalist to the point of racism/sexism, and "oligocultural" (not the delusional and unachievable “monoculturalism”) to the point of violent xenophobia.

If the Americans are paleoconservatives, and the Western Europeans Christian democrats, the Russians are traditional conservatives. They believe strongly in the idea of an orderly, Christian society governed from the top by a divinely ordained autocrat. The east/west divide in Europe is back, with the individualistic West set against the “orderly” East. Russia is pretty much a “modern” Tsarist empire, with a lot of Soviet imagery mixed in for good measure. Geopolitically, it more or less acts like pre-WWI Russia: it sees itself as the protector of the “Slavic world.” This Orthodox system has a love-hate relationship with the West, and they’ll point to events as far back as the First Crusade as antecedents for this trend. Russia has reverted back to a form of autocracy. After all, Russia's history has been marked by autocratic regimes of one flavor or another. This time, however, the sham of democratic republicanism is done away with entirely. The Tsars will return, the only difference being this new Tsarist Russia can count Stalin among its venerated figures.

There are similarities with the Chinese system, and this does not go unnoticed; some Russians propose that Russia is an Asian culture. However, while the Sinosphere makes no distinction between their emperor’s authority over state affairs and “personal” affairs (spiritual, cultural; things that the Western concept of state and law has little to do with), the Russians have an emperor who rules the Westphalian state, and a church that rules the spiritual realm. Both church and state have authority over the lives of those in this Slavic bloc, and a “true” Russian, Romanian, Greek, etc. is a member of the Orthodox Church. Certainly, there are nonbelievers living in these countries, and the Westphalian state has control over them, but by being nonbelievers they will always be an “other.” And who would give them moral guidance? It is a medieval concept of church and state, a far cry from the Enlightenment division enshrined in the American constitution and other Western governments. Naturally, the West views this system with considerable skepticism, but they just shrug and say “If it’s good for the Russians, good for them.”

The caudillo form of government was the most popular form of government in Latin America since independence. The democratic/socialist trend of the early 21st century proved to be a dud. By 2100, the populist military dictators are back, with even better hats this time. They’ve also returned to the tradition of frequent military coups, this time without American intervention; the Latin Americans are perfectly capable of overthrowing their own governments, thank you very much. It's not a complex cycle: the government is run by corrupt elites, an ambitious group of generals take advantage of popular discontent to get support for their coup, and they become the new elites. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the 21st century, and well into the 22nd. Regional rivalries persist, particularly over those left-leaning “Franciscan” (as in, Pope Francis) states and the conservative-traditionalist bloc that is the wellspring of most “reactionary” Catholicism in the world.

Bolivia demanded its coastline back again. It did not get it back.

After the fall of the PRC, China has gone back to the “Middle Kingdom rules, we have nothing to prove” attitudes of past Chinese dynasties. China is no longer the workshop of the world, instead it caters exclusively to its still-massive population and its vassal states.

China, too, has become an explicit autocracy. The post-communist leadership of China claimed the Mandate of Heaven. China is strong, but it cut itself off from the "corrupt" West, and the dragon sleeps once again. Japan, rather than being a powerful rival, once again submits to China as the superior culture, just as it had in centuries past.

There is no one “Islamic world,” and the people peddling this idea are seen as neo-jihadis. Even pan-Arabism is seen as ridiculous as European integration; do these idiots really think that the businessman in Cairo is the same as the goat herder in Algeria, or the imam in Medina? Of course, Iran is doing its own thing, still leading the “Shia” world, but as the force of moderate, “let’s stop poking the Western hornet’s nest and they’ll stop bombing our children” version of Islam, it’s a far cry from the Great Satan stuff the ayatollahs were peddling.

As for the Arab world, its influence has significantly declined as oil (both black and blue) has come into short supply. Saudi Arabia, once a regional power, is a shadow of its former self (the “new Ottomans” of the Cairo Caliphate are centered in Egypt, which has weathered the storm). Former Soviet Central Asia is doing its own thing, taking a “you’re nothing but trouble” attitude to the Orthodox, Sinic, and Islamic worlds. Significantly, the Islamic world as a whole (with some exceptions, like those nutters in Yemen) has made peace with the existence of Israel and looks back at the attempts to destroy it with considerable shame.

Africa and much of the “Paupuan World” is a post-Westphalian mess of tribal and religious identities and loyalties. The concept of “nation” being restricted to European-drawn imaginary lines is ridiculous. Bush wars are still depressingly commonplace between African tribes, and a form of neo-neo-colonialism (that wasn’t a typo) is starting up as the outside world scrambles to fill in the resource gaps that austerity cannot account for. For the record, neo-neo-colonialism (there has to be a better name for this) is the hot-button geopolitical issue in the West, as it’s seen by its opponents as a gateway to destructive globalism.

Africa's post-colonial system ended in blood, and tribalism will once again be the de jure means of governance. Foreign commercial interests will buy up the port cities, and defend them, but otherwise we see the return of Darkest Africa.

Outro

In our current understanding, the modern era is qualitatively different from the historical past, and the future will be completely different yet again. This leads to such notions as 2014 being tagged “the year that time went backwards” when Russia annexed Crimea. In speculations about future morality we sometimes ask if they will be more forward-thinking than us or possibly somehow more backwards. But time never went forward to begin with. We’re all still stuck in the same eternal phase of history that we’ve always been in. There is nothing truly exceptional or progressive about the time we live in. And there will be nothing truly exception or progressive about the future either. There is no backwards or forwards, just “different”.

For those who believe in universalism, progress and the modern period as having enlightened morals, this future is sublimely disenchanting. There is no system or technology that can improve the entire world. It is a world where the hope for a better tomorrow is gone, and while it isn’t a hellish world, it’s one that has lost its spark. There is no new frontier, no salvation and no singularity — and there are no villains or an apocalypse to “explain” any of it to us. It’s just the nature of humanity itself. It’s a mediocre future, and that mediocrity is inherent to the human condition.

In fact, it doesn’t seem like a proper future at all. To someone in Ancient Egypt, a "future" is "I wonder what my kids will be doing." For someone in the year 1000, a "future" is "I wonder how the religious conquests will end up." To us, a “future” has high technology, world integration and continuation of current trends. Predictions of future history implicitly operate within the constraints, or must offer some particular excuse (an event or technology) for why it goes off course. Yet this scenario is outside our implied definitions of "future," and it doesn’t follow the typical course because it just doesn't.

The futuristic-sounding "2100" implies nothing and guarantees nothing.

Sometimes a year is just a number.

View attachment 391498

MOTS23.png
 
An impressive thought experiment, although I suspect the ol' nation-state still has a lot of life in it.
Mhm, it's been around about as long as civilisation after all. (Ancient Egypt seemed to have the concept pretty down for thousands of years, the same with ancient Rome or China?)
 
Mhm, it's been around about as long as civilisation after all. (Ancient Egypt seemed to have the concept pretty down for thousands of years, the same with ancient Rome or China?)
China probably, but Rome, well...

Anyway, islamized British-Empire-in-exile/EIC, inspired by Peshawar lancers, discussions of parallel between Rome and Britain here and finally by idea of evil EIC as substitution for warhammer dark eldars (guess for what serve those territories in central Africa...)
Im still not sure how far they should go, especially in central Asia... Herat? Fergana? Samarkand? Kashgar? The same for Burma...

Exiled Brit - demo.png
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Crossposting from Oneshot Scenarios.

This is absolutely stunning. You've taken a lot of the premises I actually consider to be accurate (e.g. history isn't an unending upward march; our modern world may just be a brief exception rather than 'the final station'; long-established attitudes will have much more staying power than new-fangled trends) -- but you've put a completely different soin on it than I would have. Truly exceptional!

@Crying may think it's depressing, but I think we should be rather lucky to arrive upon a future that overcomes a lot of the oncoming troubles so capably. We could do far, far worse than this.

(The talk of rather conservative sentiments ruling across the board may be misleading here: after all, the write-up indicates that pretty much everyone is on board with reproductive rights, marriage freedom, drug legalisation, green politics, transgender rights etc. etc. ...so how bad are these conservatives, really? It seems to me that this whole scenario describes a world that has finallt dismissed the notion of "progress for the sake of progress", and has instead settled into a mindset stressing localism and continuity. That strikes me as the healthiest possible response to the crises and problems described in the write-up.)
 
Since there are several Kaiserreich maps posted before mine, I don't feel so hesitant to post this cliche again. I made it before using non-standard base map, this time it's WordA.

P/S: A mix of TL-191 and HOI Kaiserreich with some Talleyrand flavors. Also inspired by EdT's Fight and be Right.

Talleyrand's Kaiserreich 1917.png
 
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the Great Freeze
I guess it is based on Frostpunk?.

btw, here's a doodle of the most holiest Chirstian-Fascist nation of Brazil, made last night. As you can see, i dunno how to draw a colony. Darker shade are colonies and territories that are administered like that. Paraguay is great god-fearing "ally" and Venezuela has being finally brought before the light of god (it doesn't matter if they want it or not).
kKYszfO.png

i guess the POD could be Brazil getting independence sooner, Gran Colombia keeping itself together and Paraguay focusing against Argentina, everything to shit in 1890's.
 
An impressive thought experiment, although I suspect the ol' nation-state still has a lot of life in it. What happened with Inner Mongolia? All the Han Chinese leave for, er, greener pastures millet fields? :biggrin:

I suspect Inner Mongolia suffered from a demographic crisis sometime in the 21st century so a lot of Han Chinese moved out.

This is absolutely stunning. You've taken a lot of the premises I actually consider to be accurate (e.g. history isn't an unending upward march; our modern world may just be a brief exception rather than 'the final station'; long-established attitudes will have much more staying power than new-fangled trends) -- but you've put a completely different soin on it than I would have. Truly exceptional!

Thanks! Personally, I disagree with the idea that history moves ever forward with “progress,” but I don’t think stagnation on this level is plausible. Rather, trends will halt, reverse, and new ones will take their place.

I’d love to see your take on a future that obeys “your rules” on historiography.

@Crying may think it's depressing, but I think we should be rather lucky to arrive upon a future that overcomes a lot of the oncoming troubles so capably. We could do far, far worse than this.

I actually think it’s rather depressing, if only because nuclear wars and Mad Maxery is at the very least more interesting and cinematic. :p

(The talk of rather conservative sentiments ruling across the board may be misleading here: after all, the write-up indicates that pretty much everyone is on board with reproductive rights, marriage freedom, drug legalisation, green politics, transgender rights etc. etc. ...so how bad are these conservatives, really? It seems to me that this whole scenario describes a world that has finallt dismissed the notion of "progress for the sake of progress", and has instead settled into a mindset stressing localism and continuity. That strikes me as the healthiest possible response to the crises and problems described in the write-up.)

They’re “conservative” in the most literal sense: they want to conserve what they have, whether that be material resources or existing cultural practices. Part of the exercise is a (counter?)revolution of political norms: 22nd century politics does not line up neatly with 21st century politics because the concerns and their entire philosophical viewpoint is different.
 
I guess it is based on Frostpunk?.
While I am aware of Frostpunk, it had no part in the creation of this map. It was actually based on a video I saw a long time ago about what would happen if the Earth was pulled away from the Sun. Hence why humans live in pockets near geothermal hotspots or fault lines. It's completely ASB, but it was extremely fun to make.
 

Deleted member 108228

No river through Sahara is possible - unless you dig some big ass canals, the water from lake Chad would eventually fill up the basin and it would flow back out into the Niger

Well this is for an alien state, so they could, but which one is more realistic?
 
Cross-post from MotF 178:
This is a joint entry between myself and @Implied , the following text is courtesy of him:

The Fourth Shore:

- 1830: King George-Leopold I of Greece
- 1832: Establishment of the ruling Triumvirate comprised of King Leopold, First Minister Kapodistrias, and General-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Kolokotronis
- 1843: End of the Triumvirate with the death of Kolokotronis
- 1856: Expansion into the Thessaly region and purchase of the Ionian Islands following the Crimean War; Cyprus is also leased to the United Kingdom at this time
- 1861: Establishment of the Greco-Italian Friendship following Italian unification

- 1865: King Leonidas I of the Hellenes
- 1868: Prince Umberto of Piedmont, the future King of Italy is wed to Princess Maria of Greece, sister to King Leonidas of Greece
- 1878: Expansion into the Epirus region following the Russo-Turkish War, and establishment of an autonomous Cretan State within the Ottoman Empire
- 1880: Establishment of Italian Tunisia
- 1885: Berlin Conference guarantees recognition of Greek colonies in Africa if a de facto Hellenic presence exists, in line with the conference's establishment of "The Principle of Effective Occupation."
- 1890: Expansion into Western Macedonia following an outbreak of hostilities against the Ottoman Empire; the Cretan State's status is revised to vassalhood under Ottoman suzerainty with a Greek High Commissioner overseeing the island's administration
- 1900: Crown Prince Constantine of Greece is wed to Princess Sofia of Serbia
- 1904: King Constantine I of the Hellenes. A secret agreement between Greece and Italy trades recognition a hypothetical eventual annexation of the port of Vlorë and the island of Sazan in return for granting Greece sole rights to the region of Cyrenaica
- 1905: Establishment of the Principality of Crete in personal union with the Kingdom of Greece; Joint Greco-Italian invasion of Libya
- 1906: Establishment of Greek Cyrenaica
- 1907: Establishment of the Balkan League, Bosnian Crisis breaks out in response
- 1908: Bosnian Crisis is peacefully resolved

- 1910: Outbreak of the Balkan War
- 1911: Expansion into Central and Eastern Macedonia + Western and parts of Eastern Thrace, purchase of Dodecanese Islands from Italy, and unification with Crete following the end of the Balkan War. Establishment of the Italian-controlled Principality of Albania
- 1914: Outbreak of the First Great War
- 1915: War declaration against Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria "in defense of Serbia" after extensive negotiations with the Allies for compensation in the forms of the cession of Cyprus by the United Kingdom, as well as unspecified areas of Anatolia, including but not limited to the Holy City of Constantinople and the Anatolian Straits
- 1918: In order to enforce Greek claims in Asia Minor and against the Holy City of Constantinople, King Constantine I is declared King and Autocrat of the Hellenes; First Great War comes to an end
- 1919: Greco-Turkish War breaks out
- 1920: Successful coup carried out in Constantinople by an Orthodox paramilitary group sees the Holy City finally ceded to the Kingdom of Greece
- 1923: Wave of migrations from the defeated Whites faction in the former Russian Empire to the newly-liberated Orthodox Capital of Constantinople following their defeat in the Russian Civil War
- 1924: The Asia Minor Campaign is disastrously mishandled, resulting in a full retreat and subsequent armistice, accompanied by a population exchange; the Asia Minor refugees are largely resettled in Macedonia, Thrace, and Greek Cyrenaica. Greece is granted inland extension to her Cyrenaican colony at the expense of British Egypt, as compensation for Asia Minor losses and because Greece has previously protested on numerous occasions against Britain's perceived lack of interest in putting down the Senussi Insurgency operating out of the area
- 1925: The Asia Minor Disaster and the failure of the Megali Idea leads to an attempted scapegoating of the King by anti-monarchist factions, resulting in rising internal tensions that ultimately culminate in a national schism which erupts into a brief civil war
In its aftermath, an authoritarian, nationalist, monarchist regime is established

- 1937: Alexander I, King and Autocrat of the Hellenes
- 1939: Outbreak of the Second Great War
- 1941: Axis Occupation of Greece starts following a joint Bulgarian-German-Turkish invasion
- 1944: Axis Occupation of Greece ends following a joint Greco-Italian counter-invasion
- 1946: End of the "Long War" with Turkey when the Allied Powers pressure her into finally signing a Peace Treaty with Greece. Meanwhile, a civil war breaks out between pro- and anti-Communist factions following the nation's liberation from the Axis Occupation
- 1948: Civil War ends, authoritarian, nationalist, monarchist, anti-Communist regime is re-established; the colony of Greek Cyrenaica is turned into a full region within the Kingdom of Greece
- 1952: Expulsion of Egyptian Greeks following the Egyptian Revolution in light of standing Arab Nationalists resentment towards the perceived ongoing "colonisation" efforts being undertaken in Cyrenaica
- 1961: Cyrenaican Oil Fields discovered, prompting the first of a new set of migration waves to Greek Cyrenaica
- 1965: Establishment of Hellenic Repatriation Program; using oil funds, ethnic Greeks are welcomed back to their ancestral homeland, where the economy is beginning to experience an unprecedented boom due to the exploitation of Greek Cyrenaica's massive oil reserves
- 1974: OPEC oil embargo

- 1986: Ioannis I, King and Autocrat of the Hellenes

The full timeline can be found here.


motf_178_preview_by_reagentah-dce3mqm.png


Due to imagehost / server issues, full sized map can be found here: https://reagentah.deviantart.com/art/The-Fourth-Shore-749278333
 
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