Age of Prosperity; Age of Stagnation: the setting of Childhood’s End
Arthur C. Clarke’s classic Childhood’s End poses an interesting question: would world peace end science?
The technologically advanced Overlords in the novel have come to Earth to bring peace to the human race. In a little over 50 years, they have ended wars, hunger, and diseases, creating an era of prosperity unlike any we’ve ever seen. Everyone is happy, having everything they’d ever wanted. It has an upsetting side effect: people stopped pursuing sciences and arts, plunging humanity into an Age of Stagnation.
Prosperity as the killer of the curiosity that drives artistic endeavours (which includes science) is one particular take of the Paradox of Plenty hypothesis, also known as Resource Curse: the idea that abundant natural resources would lead to lower economic growth, a rise in inequalities, a tendency towards authoritarianism, and overall poorer development—a disputed thesis in real life.
The Resource Curse is a fairly common trope within science fiction, with notable examples being H.G. Well’s classic The Time Machine, with the Eloi species effectively becoming childlike due to overabundance, and The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin, with two opposite (ambiguous) Utopian worlds: the resourceless anarchist Anarres and the wealthy capitalist Urras.
The Age of Stagnation trope is the hypothesis that satisfaction with life (with the abundant “resource” being happiness) would lead to lower curiosity, superfluous tendencies, and overall torpor. Here, conflict is considered the catalyst of progress.
Let’s put some perspective into this trope.
The Age of Prosperity
More than peace, the Overlords brought to Earth infinite wisdom and information. Their science was miles ahead of ours, and their art was sufficient to have humans occupied for the rest of their lives. This plethora of content, Clarke argued, would kill our desire to create.
“The world’s now placid, featureless, and culturally dead: nothing really new has been created since the Overlords came. The reason’s obvious. There’s nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments.”
The idea that struggle is the fuel of creativity is an old one. The figure of the bohemian poet or the tortured philosopher has become a caricature at this point. Looking superficially, we can see why this hypothesis gained legs. If all our troubles disappeared, if all science was solved, there would be nothing left to discover; nothing to mull over about. Right?
Well, not really. Even if it was possible for science to be all figured out, people would still want to understand it. And, unless the Overlords managed to evolve the whole of humanity into an emotion-free post-human form, people’s feelings would be an endless source of angst.
The resource used to create art is an emotional one, not a material one. Emotional prosperity, if we consider it in the same sense as material prosperity, would be to live in nirvana. To give one example of how it would be hard to achieve this, at least half of the population of the world goes through a well-defined emotional cycle every 28 days or so.
However, in Clarke’s story, it is not a state of bliss that comes out of the Overlord’s generosity. It’s boredom.
“Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias—boredom.”
Boredom, in itself, is an emotion that inspires trouble. In The Matrix, for example, it is the catalyst for a simulation failure. The first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, but people rejected it. Happiness is not a permanent state. It is not convincing as a permanent state.
Indeed, boredom CAN be a source of struggles. Unless…
The Age of Stagnation
Aside from the lack of challenges, there is another subtle reason why science and arts stagnated after the arrival of the Overlords in Childhood’s End. To amend boredom, humans turn to passive distraction over active creation.
“Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that’s available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges—absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won’t be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!”
‘Distraction over reaction’ is a recurrent theme in science fiction, explored in classics like Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and the movie Wall-E (on this last one, I wrote a whole blog post analyzing this exact theme.)
Isn’t it funny that it is portrayed as an Utopia in Childhood’s End when these other examples are clear Dystopias? The difference between them is that the Overlords, of all people, are benevolent toward humans (those who know, know. I won’t spoil it!)
The question of stagnation in Clarke’s world is a combination of lack of struggles and distraction. As a scientist, the thought that resolving conflicts is science’s goal is a bit funny, maybe put forward by an engineer (no offence. I like engineers; I’m married to one! XD). I say this because it is a very pragmatic way to think about science. For me, science is exploration of the natural world.
However, the ‘fast entertainment to deal with boredom’ part is one that worries me.
If we rewrite the question posed by Clarke in a slightly different way, it becomes really relevant in today’s context: if all information we need is at the palm of our hands, why would we continue studying? Would we keep creating?
As a professor, I worry that my students are passively delegating their demands to generative tools and effectively hampering their own learning. Would someone want to learn if they never experience the process? Maybe this is the point in Childhood’s End; cognitive impairment is what causes the Age of Stagnation.
War and Peace
Outside of the Paradox of Plenty, the idea that peaceful times would bring stagnation to science is also a distorted interpretation of recent historical events. When I say recent, I mean the last 200 years or so.
Sadly, we have weaponized science since the days of Napoleon. Napoleon integrated engineering into his war strategy to great results. A century later, the development and subsequent use of chemical weapons in battles were so atrocious that they were banned after World War I. When the Second World War started, those in power understood that science could be decisive to the end result, and a race to develop a nuclear weapon began, to horrifying consequences, as we all know it.
But it was during the Cold War that science was institutionalized as a powerful military weapon.
The Cold War received this name because it did not escalate to nuclear war between the major players. It didn’t ignite. Still, the Soviet Union and the United States measured their power against each other with technological and scientific achievements. And thus a myth is born: if war can impel science and technology, then peace stagnates it. Can you spot the fallacy?
Weaponizing science does not mean that science would not be pursued in peaceful times. I hope you never believe otherwise. Without a hostile context, science is a tool of life, not of death.
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That’s it for today, folks!
Have you read Childhood’s End? Notice I did not issue a spoiler warning here, because we discussed a scenario revealed earlier in the story. So, even if you have not read it, nothing is ruined and you can enjoy its twists and turns all right.
What other stories do you know that feature this trope? Let me know in the comments.
See you next post,
Ra
Carla Ra is a scientist by day, sci-fi writer by night.
You can check out her flash fiction collectio SCI-FI WEEKATHON for FREE here.
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