Lessons from Foundation: Decline, fall... and comeback?

They know the world order is going to collapse. They see that inexorable forces are tearing down the dynastic empire that has held civilization together for millennia. They accept that a dark age is coming and dedicate themselves to building a foundation on which humanity can rebuild after the crash.

I am talking about the protagonists in Foundation, of course—the famous Isaac Asimov sci-fi novels and the Apple TV series. It’s fascinating to enter the world of Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, and the rest as they strive to reduce the coming “interregnum” from 30 millennia to one. The show is set in a far-off future, in a world of intergalactic civilization, amazing technologies, and a strangely intriguing robot named Demerzel. 

But while watching the series’ recently concluded third season, I could not help but notice the parallels between them and then, on one hand, and us and now, on the other. And to realize that we today have our own foundation to build.

Psychohistory

One of Asimov’s most creative devices in Foundation is “psychohistory,” a social science that uses mathematical analysis to foresee broad social developments in the future, including the highly consequential fall of the empire. 

The end of a decadent, unjust ruling dynasty—how could that be bad? But in Asimov’s world, the empire, for all its faults, has served as a social glue and preserver of knowledge and culture. It’s held fast for so long that people scarcely know what to do without it. Chaos is sure to follow its collapse.

Here on Earth a quarter of the way through the 21st century, humans don’t have psychohistory. But we don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. We are not under the heel of a dynastic empire, per se, but we have a governing paradigm that accomplishes much the same: an economic system driven by profit and running on fossil fuels. For all it’s done to generate economic growth and raise standards of living, its benefits are unequally shared and it’s taxing our habitat closer to the breaking point.

Meaning, essentially, that our days of our “empire” are numbered, regardless of what the present powers are doing to pretend climate change isn’t real or no big deal if it is. Hide the data all you want. Earth’s processes guarantee that if we don’t change the paradigm ourselves, the planet will do it for us. 

Then what?

Breakdown and recovery

Social breakdown is one more-than-plausible scenario. For a sense of what that might look like, take a deep look at the world conjured by Octavia Butler in The Parable of the Sower.

The story begins in a suburban area outside of Los Angeles. Economic and environmental meltdowns have left society in shambles. Desperate hordes roam the streets, short on food, water, and shelter. Drug-hyped criminals pillage and burn whatever walled-off neighborhoods they can find and breach. Police protect only the wealthy and privileged who have the means and willingness to pay.

I don’t mean to be overly alarmist about our own situation. Worst-case scenarios are not locked-in certainties like those foreseen by Asimov’s psychohistory. Note, too, that social breakdown does not mean extinction. In Butler’s conjuring, life goes on for many, albeit in degraded forms. And some quickly get to work to build something better in the ashes of the old world.

After invaders destroy her neighborhood and kill her family, Butler’s teenage protagonist abandons L.A. and embarks on a dangerous journey to northern California. In addition to relative safety, Lauren seeks fertile ground to build “Earthseed.” That’s the new religion—the new paradigm—taking shape in her mind. It radically reimagines the nature of God and the destiny of humanity, envisioning a future in which we live sustainably on the Earth as we prepare to spread our “seeds” to the stars.

Our takeaway? Every end (short of the end) creates an opening for something new and presumably better. If we make it so.

‘Pinpoints of light’

If people today focus only on the headlines and day-to-day political dramas, hope and agency are hard to find. For Americans with liberal and progressive values, each day brings new losses. Religious nationalism, anti-environmentalism, and authoritarian government are on the march in tandem with related strivings to push the world farther away from the flourishing future we envision.

All that is real, but it is far from the complete picture. The United States is one country among many, albeit an especially large and powerful one. Extend your view and you see places where politicians, policymakers, and everyday people are building sustainable futures imbued with respect for the Earth and the dignity of all life.

In countries around the world, governments, NGOs, companies, and people are living into the vision. They’re doing things like cutting carbon emissions, tearing down dams, treating and re-using wastewater, eschewing pesticides and deploying insect predators to protect their crops, and building international collaborations to combat the climate crisis.

If you can get under current federal policy and rhetoric, you see a lot going on in this country, too. Thanks to our entrepreneurs and research centers, the United States has been a leader in clean-energy science and development. As recently as a year ago, we had a presidential administration that accepted the reality of the climate threat and passed the biggest pro-climate legislation in the country’s history.

Regime change or not, people in this country are buying electric vehicles, installing solar panels and shingles, and jumping into activism at all levels—local, state, federal—among other actions to wean our communities from carbon-intensive fuels while restoring and protecting the natural world. The place where I work, Yale Divinity School, has opened a zero-carbon residence hall for students that gets all its power from the sun and is made of environmentally benign building materials. 

"I've really noticed, over the last 20 years, that although we are deeply worried about climate change—and it doesn't seem to be getting better at the moment—that across the world, there are just hundreds of pinpoints of light, of little projects of re-wilding, of all kinds of biological movements that are really very hopeful," says author Ian McEwan, whose new book What We Can Know imagines a world in 2119  that has been damaged but not doomed by climate change.

Long game

When it feels like we’re sunk, we must remind each other and ourselves that all is not lost. The knowledge and practices of the past few decades, and many of the gains, did not go “poof” like the Democrats’ hold on power in Washington. (And it’s not as though the Democrats were behaving like committed visionaries.) These can be the stones of a new foundation, however long and deep the chaos period proves to be, should it come to pass. 

It’s important to remember that the span of a presidential administration is barely a fraction of a fraction of a second when considered in the light of cosmic or geologic time. We can be certain that change is coming, but the exact contours are unpredictable. The future could be grim. It could be less bad than many of us fear at present. The world could endure a painfully slow turnaround. Or it could happen rapidly. It is not inconceivable that the over-reach and ridiculousness of those in charge today could become so blatantly obvious and repellant that many people wake up fast, catalyzing a dramatic change in direction.

Regardless of the trouncing being administered by the federal government in this blip of time, our efforts are not futile. Except in the unlikely event of extinction—there’s no coming back from that—we want to have built up a storehouse of ideas, know-how, and resources for a more propitious moment. Even though our crude forms of “psychohistory” paint a bleak picture of the world in a few decades’ time, we must minimize the severity and duration of the dark period and continue laying the groundwork for whatever kind of comeback is possible. Even if our principles and practices aren't gaining satisfactory traction now, we want them known and available for a time when the world is ready.

Reflecting on the Season Three finale of Foundation, critic Sean T. Collins reminds the show’s fans of the decidedly non-grandiose mission of the show’s heroes. They knew it was too late to forestall the collapse. “All Hari Seldon ever aimed to do,” Collins writes, “was to shorten the inevitable reign of evil, ignorance, and barbarity from 30,000 years to a mere millennium.” 

“This isn’t an easy message to hear, especially right now,” Collins adds. “Everyone’s looking for the quick fix or magic bullet that will restore the world we once knew, or better yet create a new and healthier one. … But the message is necessary. The fight is on to preserve the light of freedom, science, and truth as rat-bastard tyrants attempt to stamp them all out. Everyone can play a part to make the future just a bit brighter than it would be without them. The moral arc of (psychohistory) is long, and only we can bend it towards justice.”

Even if we don’t see the fruits of our labors in our own lifetimes, we die knowing that we did our part to build a foundation for the future. It’s hard to imagine anything more worthy of our time and energy.