People will still be living here in 100 years-if we start living in a new way soon.

Otherwise, not.

But how would we get there, and what would it look like? Utopians can't let go of the ideal of sweeter, gentler, more loving people taking over. I prefer to look at what worked for millions of years for people as they are. Sainthood was not required.

To project into the future: as people begin going over the wall in the early decades of the new millennium, our societal guardians are at first alarmed, seeing it as portending the end of civilization as we know it. They try heightening the wall with social and economic barbed wire but soon realize the futility of this. People will keep dragging stones, if they’re convinced there’s no other way to go. But once another way opens up, nothing can stop them from defecting. Initially, the defectors derive their living from the pyramid builders. As time goes on, however, they begin to be less dependent on the pyramid builders. They interact more and more with each other, building their own inter-tribal economy.

After a hundred years civilization is still hanging on at about half its present size. Half the world’s population still belongs to the culture of maximum harm, but the other half, living tribally, enjoys a more modest lifestyle, directed towards getting more of what people want (as opposed to just getting more).


200 Years beyond Civilization .

Gradually, the economic balance of power shifts between “civilization” and the surrounding “beyond civilization.” More and more people are seeing that they can trade off a plenitude of things they don’t deeply want (power, social status, and supposed conveniences, amenities, and luxuries) for things they really do deeply want (security, meaningful work, more leisure, and social equality-all products of the tribal way of life). “The economy” no longer tied to an ever expanding market, has become an increasingly local affair, as global and national corporations gradually lose their reason for being.

200 years out, the thing we call civilization has been left behind and seems as plainly obsolete as Oliver Cromwell’s theocracy. The cities still are there-where would they go?-as are the arts, the sciences, and technology, but they are no longer instruments and embodiments of the culture of maximum harm..

 

Daniel Quinn, "Beyond Civilization"

 

The Age of Capital will largely be over. Most Americans will earn roughly the same amount, though some may earn more by a factor of two or three, and a very few may still have great wealth. Wind, solar, and tidal energy (thermonuclear fusion was never perfected as an energy source and nuclear power wasn't practical) and sophisticated conservation, recycling, and resource replenishment techniques will allow a relatively high quality of life for almost all Americans (though not by the standards of the upper middle and upper classes of the early 21st century).

 

Technology will be largely "invisible". There will be few large cities but many smaller cities and small towns and villages. From the air, the landscape will appear to be largely rustic. Miniaturization and minimalization will have been carried to great extremes.

Though the population will be substantially smaller due to a variety of factors, there will be a great revival of spiritual values. Possessions will be cherished only if they are finely crafted and have some deeper personal meaning. People will adopt many of the surface customs and mores, including types of dress and furnishings of their ancestors, as a way of making a connection with their past.

 

So-called "hi-tech" items will not be valued highly since it will be fashionable to disguise technology. There will also have been
a revulsion against the sophisticated virtual reality set-ups of the mid 21st Century as well against synthetic memory and brain
enhancing drugs.

There will be much less disparity of wealth between the countries of the Western Hemisphere and the old Third World countries.
Developments in educational technology, communications, and psychology will insure virtually equal levels of education for
all.

Most former national governments will have disappeared, replaced by loose national confederations with more powerful local
governments. These will be run on a cooperative, Town Meeting style.

 

Mark Pomerantz, "Coping with the Future"