Rebecca Costa

The study of early civilizations suggests that two telltale signs occur prior to the specific incident(s) blamed for their collapse.

The first sign is gridlock.

Gridlock occurs when civilizations become unable to comprehend or resolve large, complex problems, despite acknowledging beforehand that these issues may lead to their demise.

For example, we now know that the Mayans lived with drought conditions, civil war, and growing food shortages for thousands of years prior to collapse. However, foreseeing all these problems in advance was of little use. The Mayans lacked the ability to discern the complexity of their circumstances and, therefore, had little possibility of rectifying deteriorating conditions. Instead, they did what every great civilization does when it reaches a cognitive threshold: They simply passed their dangerous problems from one generation to the next as these problems continued to grow in magnitude and peril.

In this way, a cognitive threshold behaves much like a powerful undertow.

Undertows are invisible, so the only way to know we are trapped in a fatal current is when we stop moving forward. No matter how much effort we expend, we are unable to progress.

Today, we face the same cognitive threshold that the Mayans, Romans, Khmer, and other advanced civilizations once encountered. The most dangerous problems we must now solve have been with us for multiple generations. But rather than calling upon our collective resources, intelligence, and technologies to stop them, we are falling into the trap of ameliorating a few bothersome symptoms instead of implementing permanent cures. And in so doing, we dutifully pass our problems on to subsequent generations. Put another way, when it comes to climate change, terrorism, government debt, and other widespread threats, we are simply dogpaddling against the powerful undertow of our cognitive limitations.

Then, as conditions grow more desperate, the second symptom appears: the substitution of beliefs for knowledge and fact.

When we are trapped in an undertow, we believe that if we simply step up our efforts and swim harder toward the shore, we will prevail against the current. Despite empirical evidence that this isn't working, we refuse to abandon our belief and persist in swimming in a direct path toward land as we grow increasingly exhausted and panic ensues. No data, information, or facts will deter us from our conviction – not even the threat of death.

This excerpt is from Rebecca's book The Watchman's Rattle - for more information, click here