I love predictions of the coming of the "Apocalypse" or "dark times" especially when they are well formulated as it is this by Chris Hedges:
We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.
My analysis comes close to the analysis of many anarchists. But there is a crucial difference. The anarchists do not understand the nature of violence. They grasp the extent of the rot in our cultural and political institutions, they know they must sever the tentacles of consumerism, but they naïvely believe that it can be countered with physical forms of resistance and acts of violence. There are debates within the anarchist movement – such as those on the destruction of property – but once you start using plastic explosives, innocent people get killed. And when anarchic violence begins to disrupt the mechanisms of governance, the power elite will use these acts, however minor, as an excuse to employ disproportionate and ruthless amounts of force against real and suspected agitators, only fueling the rage of the dispossessed.
The problem with Chris Hedges is that he is too "religious" and therefore, my intent here is not to be demeaning, he believes in the greater purpose, in the grand design and that the future has to be bleak if the present looks a certain way because catastrophes are predetermined by the existence of certain elements/factors. I don't believe that. I'm a constant pessimistically optimist. I don't believe that the Dark ages are coming back or that barbarity is the future, I believe that the future doesn't look good, but I don't believe that we ever go back in times, which isn't a comfort for what may be coming might be worse for it is true that progressive isn't continuous. The interesting answer is of course, what happens when it stops. In short, my point is that all points of history are potentially point zero, a period when the unimaginable can happen and it can all end. The good news is that since everything is permissible (yes, God is dead) even though that does not mean that nothing is forbidden as always added Camus, everything, including the best and the worst, is still possible.
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