Back in the late 80’s, in more innocent times, I wrote a song based on a common minor key blues progression called The Rise of Unreason; this charted the rise of Christian fundamentalism and the religious right in America, and elsewhere. Over the years I have revised and added to this song, both lyrically and musically, in response to changing times; but after 9/11 it acquired a new resonance and urgency as Islamic Fundamentalism cast a growing shadow over both the West and the Muslim world.

The song is now in its fifth or sixth iteration, and has never seemed more relevant…

But, I think we’ve gone beyond the relatively well thought out irrationality of the religious fundamentalists (which at least has some basis in belief, scripture, and ideology, however extreme and archaic!), to something deeper.

The rise of narcissistic populists in the political sphere seems to have coincided with (or maybe unleashed!) a more general outbreak of irrational behaviour on the part of ordinary people not linked to any particular belief system. Everybody seems to be angry, but why should this be so at this point in our history?

Outbreaks of delusional behaviour are not new, and characterised much of the Mediaeval period, persisting into the early Modern Age. But the Enlightenment and the triumph of rational economic systems was supposed to have put paid to them. So what’s happening to bring them back to the fore?

Well, there are a number of suspects…

It’s worth revisiting Clarke’s dictum that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and apply it to our own societies. Technological change has been so rapid and so remarkable in recent years, that ordinary people are being left behind; marveling at what their new handheld devices can do, but not understanding the science that lies behind the tech. Not so long ago any reasonably well-read lay person could be expected to comprehend in broad terms the technological and scientific principles that underpin his or her civilisation; this is no longer the case! And irrationality has a habit of rushing in to fill such lacunae in our understanding…

And then there are the various existential threats our civilisation now confronts…

Some of the more improbable; the asteroid strike or the erupting supervolcano, are essentially beyond our current power to mitigate, and thus not worth considering, but others are clear and present dangers. Climate change, resource depletion, pollution and the potential impact of AI on employment are all things that human activity is responsible for, but rather than address the issues, large sections of the populace seem to want to deny they are happening altogether, or slip into a kind of helpless apathy.

Reaching for the irrational belief system is a symptom of all this…

Demagogues and despots have always known the emotional appeal of the irrational when times are tough and the solutions demanding and difficult, hence the election of right wing populists.

In our cultural life the appeal of the supernatural and of the superhero is strong at the moment; fantasy worlds to visit and fantasy heroes to rescue us.

Fundamentalist religion, I’ve mentioned, but there is also the growing popularity of pseudoscience, which rather than offering solutions re-frames the threat in mythic terms; the oft-promised arrival of Nibiru functions almost like a giant metaphor for the real dangers that we face. The next global extinction event has already started according to many scientists, and there’s plenty of evidence to support this view. The old chestnut of finding a new home for the human race has leapt off the pages of science fiction and into popular discourse, something I have referenced in previous blogs.

So what’s all this got to with your SF saga, I hear you ask?   

Well, Lights in the sky anticipates the coming ecological cataclysm, but I’m thinking that my fictional doom is (in the best traditions of British SF), a rather cosy catastrophe! By the end of the series Gaia and her allies have staged a successful counterattack, and the biosphere is recovering nicely.

In the real world ‘the civilisation of the world as we know it’ would appear to be coming sooner than expected, and the cavalry doesn’t appear to be about to ride to the rescue…

C.E. Stevens   October 2017