Regarding the “long term stagnation”—to me this suggests you seem to be thinking of the current epoch of history as showcasing the inevitable. Yet stagnation in this sense was the norm for 200,000+ years of modern Homo sapiens existing on Earth. Hence, there is real question whether this period represents a continued given, a blip, the last hurrah before the end, or perhaps the start of a much more complex trajectory of history—perhaps involving multiple periods of rapid technological flourishing, then periods of stagnation or even decline, in various patterns and ways and not to mention also geographically.
One thing to note about history or culture is that there are no inherent drivers to “greater complexity”—indeed, from an anthropological point of view one can question just what that means. It is, in this regard, much like biological evolution outside the human realm. In both biology and anthropology, there is and should be a strong skepticism toward any claim of a teleology or a linear narrative.
That said, I would still support that there is a distinction between a long term stagnation and extinction even if the former is definitely not something one should rule out—and that’s that in the latter case, there is absolutely no recovery: while it’s possible another intelligent toolmaking species could evolve, looking at the future of geological history which is potentially much more regular, the gradual heating of the Sun suggests that we could potentially be Earth’s only shot. It’s like the difference between life imprisonment, and the death penalty. The former is not fun at all, but there’s a reason there’s so much resistance to the latter, and it’s that key point of irreversibility.
Regarding the “long term stagnation”—to me this suggests you seem to be thinking of the current epoch of history as showcasing the inevitable. Yet stagnation in this sense was the norm for 200,000+ years of modern Homo sapiens existing on Earth. Hence, there is real question whether this period represents a continued given, a blip, the last hurrah before the end, or perhaps the start of a much more complex trajectory of history—perhaps involving multiple periods of rapid technological flourishing, then periods of stagnation or even decline, in various patterns and ways and not to mention also geographically.
One thing to note about history or culture is that there are no inherent drivers to “greater complexity”—indeed, from an anthropological point of view one can question just what that means. It is, in this regard, much like biological evolution outside the human realm. In both biology and anthropology, there is and should be a strong skepticism toward any claim of a teleology or a linear narrative.
That said, I would still support that there is a distinction between a long term stagnation and extinction even if the former is definitely not something one should rule out—and that’s that in the latter case, there is absolutely no recovery: while it’s possible another intelligent toolmaking species could evolve, looking at the future of geological history which is potentially much more regular, the gradual heating of the Sun suggests that we could potentially be Earth’s only shot. It’s like the difference between life imprisonment, and the death penalty. The former is not fun at all, but there’s a reason there’s so much resistance to the latter, and it’s that key point of irreversibility.