demogra-fate hypothesis

"Nguyen Ba Thanh wonders if death by old age is civilisation's destiny." - Philosophy Now

"... a fascinating analysis that's unflinching and perceptive." - Kirkus Reviews

If all else-your body and memories, stars, the universe itself-has a birth-death life cycle, can species like ours exist forever? As they modernize, birthrates in 100+ countries have fallen below the replacement minimum of 2.1 births/woman. Sustained sub-2.1 fertility will make societies older and smaller. With India, South Africa, Mexico... crossing below the 2.1 threshold, will the entire species follow fast-aging and shrinking Japan, whose median age may top 60 well before 2100?

Enter our demogra-fate hypothesis: does demographic aging conclude the natural life cycle of all intelligent species in the universe?

How, actually, can cosmic civilizations grow old and die naturally? Is population aging on Earth the final stage of a natural life cycle for intelligent species? What if evolution reaches its endpoint everywhere when the smartest wild species masters reproduction? No longer compelled by nature, it then proceeds to party itself out of existence, consciously and merrily? Does an inevitable fate of demographic aging and death banally await all civilizations that survive accidents or ecological suicide in their younger years? Although galaxies apart, are those enlightened species all helpless against nature's birth-death law?

Given no say in their date/place of birth, technological civilizations are just randomly evolved wildflowers of the great cosmic desert. While sentient life may have arisen separately in lonely oases far across the cosmos, are aliens and humans that different in nature or destiny? Due to the unfathomable vastness of space, there should be quite a few of us. Even if only 01 civilization existed for every 10 galaxies, there would still be around 20 billion civilizations concurrently alive within our 200-billion-galaxy universe. Can 0.3-million-year-old humankind survive until the death of this Big Bang-started universe in tens of billions of years, in a Big Crunch/Chill/Rip scenario? Or do intelligent species-brainier but always part of wild nature-just blindly and purposelessly bloom and die, here one million years and gone the next? With no real say in their own death, like true desert wildflowers?

In deciphering intelligent life's (wild?) nature and (fleeting?) destiny in the universe, the demogra-fate hypothesis is empirically based. Population aging has been widely spotted and measured in the very first alien civilization ever studied: our own. Until refuted by other cases of sentient life, shouldn't this most factually verifiable hypothesis be prioritized?

Cosmic civilizations are epic wildlife spectacles that run their own course over millions of years, and you-a fluky nanosecond of consciousness and curiosity-can do nothing but play tourist and enjoy your part in the action. Your dear species having an inexorable life cycle is hardcore fatalism, but so is your ephemeral alien body dying against the mind's wish. Make peace with the relentless, unfeeling nature in and around you. Face up to your fleeting moment.

The demogra-fate hypothesis was first introduced in a "Philosophy Now" Oct/Nov 2016 article. Nguyen Ba Thanh runs the blog Demographic Fate which chronicles and tries to make sense of worldwide population aging and decline. A full-time trend analyst, he lives in Hanoi, Vietnam.