3 Subtle Signs That Human Civilization Will End Sooner Than Later

Isn't it about that time?

People have been forecasting the end of humanity for generations. Their failure to guess right might give you some comfort, but remember that the end of the world is inevitable. As we move along the timeline the odds of someone guessing correctly only increase. Taking comfort in past failures to predict the end of times would be like taking comfort in guessing wrong about needing to take a crap. You might have survived a few close calls earlier in the day, but eventually you’re going to need to find a toilet FAST and there are signs to notice. When you’re about to crap your pants your farts are going to smell more and more like shit. Just like crapping your pants, the end of human civilization is leaving signs as well and here are three subtle hints you might have missed:

1. We’ve reached a cultural and technological peak.

Culturally, humanity has maxed out. Everyone knows all the best movies and songs have already been made. That’s a bad sign. Does anyone really expect for a new song to come out tomorrow and blow everyone out of the water and be considered the greatest song of all time? No. That’s actually nearly impossible because all the best most pleasurable lyrics and note arrangements have already been composed. If someone were to somehow recreate a few and have a massive hit song we’d point to how it was a ripoff of the older, superior songs. The key here is that once we max out in every other field not just music and movies, but literature, dance, etc. Humanity will have nearly nothing new or better to offer ourselves and our own history will make us obsolete. Life cannot continue much longer once that happens. We will destroy ourselves out of sheer boredom.

And while technological advances are made every day now, new technologies these days tend to be more in the fields of medicine and entertainment. While these are fun and shiny and help us live longer, they don’t really solve any of our pressing issues. No one’s inventing the things we need to effectively combat climate change. We should be building Jetsons houses to avoid tsunami flooding not curved TVs.

There aren't any new Mozarts, or Einsteins, or even Richard Pryors.

2. We have no clear vision of the future.

Remember how people used to think of the future as a time featuring flying cars and teleporters? Well now we’re living that time and none of that shit is real. The disturbing thing is we’ve just abandoned those concepts altogether. It’s not like now we think we’ll have flying cars and teleporters in the year 2040 or something. No, no one thinks that. We all know it’s impossible and we’ve accepted that. However, that shouldn’t stop us from continuing to picture a brighter utopian future. Why don’t we have a vision for 2040 the way people in the 60’s viewed the year 2000? That’s a sign something is wrong. It’s a sign we know we probably won’t be around for much longer and without a nice utopian future to strive for that may become a self fulfilling prophecy. Look at how far we missed when we dreamed of flying cars. Where will we be when we miss hitting the mark again especially when that mark is NOTHING?

Yeah, this probably won't ever happen.

3. In around 50 years, a lot of people will have grandparents named Skyler.

The names that parents give kids these days is a huge sign that they will not live to old age. Here are a few of the most popular names that people give to their babies today: Gavin, Ethan, Caden, Zoe, Brooklyn, Brayden, Aiden, and of course Skyler or Skylar. I’m not saying these names are dumb or silly, I’m just saying you can’t picture a 60 or 70-year-old with these names. No child in 2060 is going to say “Thanks for the Christmas presents, Grandpa Caden!” That just doesn’t sound right. Something about that just doesn’t seem very likely. You know what babies were named back in the 60’s? George, Paul, and Rachel. The same things people were named for centuries. Either today’s kids are not going to grow up to have grandchildren OR the future is going to be very absurd and ridiculous with elderly people named Brevin and Skylar. Maybe that’s why we have such a hard time envisioning our future.  

How much do you want to bet all these kids had grandparent names?

The future used to be an amazing fantasy of a world we believed our children would live in splendor. These days the future is a hazy, nebulous void that we passively shuffle our offspring into wishing for it not to be impending doom. We used to believe and now we wish. That’s not a good sign.