philosophy
"This is Earth. Not the eternal and only home of mankind, but only a starting point of an infinite adventure. All you need do is make the decision [to end your static society]. It is yours to make. [With that decision] came the end, the final end of Eternity. – And the beginning of Infinity.""
Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity (1955)
Error Correction - essential for the creation of knowledge
Static societies eventually fail because their characteristic inability to create knowledge rapidly must eventually turn some problem into a catastrophe. Analogies between such societies and the technological civilization of the West today are therefore fallacies. Marx, Engels and Diamonds 'ultimate explanation' of the different histories of different societies is false: history is the history of ideas, not of the mechanical effects of biogeography. Strategies to prevent foreseeable disasters are bound to fail eventually, and cannot even address the unforeseeable. To prepare for those, we need rapid progress in science and technology and as much wealth as possible (where 'wealth' is: the repertoire of physical transformations that the society would be capable of causing).
