Are we doomed? Why did the Egyptians build pyramids?
James Lovelock isn’t very optimistic. The problem is he might be right, simply because in any situation where you are faced with unknowns, your best course of action is to assume the worst, anything less leaves you wide open to nasty surprises.
Now if he is right and 100 years isn’t that long in terms of history, what are the implications? Well peace isn’t really on the cards is it? Other niceties such as personal freedom and democracy will probably be casualties as well. The current threats to those institutions are on display pretty much everywhere with big money married to the IT and armament industries. So for the masses, we better hope that a few of the owners of all the wealth in the world have some altruistic intentions.
So why pyramids? They have survived for thousands of years. They were made from common materials and build by human hands. The structure of pyramids is obviously immensely stable and their symbolism in relation to other man made creations is striking, in particular the evolution of wealth and kingdoms. Did the good people of Egypt all those thousands of years ago guess that their monuments to humanity would survive for so long? Will they survive the next hundred years?