Scenarios After A Decline

Like most world-systemites, I have talked often about the decline of US hegemony. For instance, the structural problem of the decline of economic and moral position --><-- the continued military weight.

I must say though, I've never quite expected the downfall of the "system" of US-centered global capitalism to be quite as grotesque, sad, laughable and pitiful as it looks now.

The question what follows is very much open. What does the spectacle of the two octogenerians bickering at each other, completely, fully locked in their respective tiny mousehole-size imaginary worlds, mean for the rest of us?

Purely on a speculative basis, here are a few possibilities:

Scenario 1: yet another global hegemon, following in the footsteps of the USA, emerges . . . in this case, there's only one realistic candidate--the PRC--which will make for a rather odd kind of of capitalism, for two reasons . . .

• 1A capitalism will be run by a public authority based in a society racialized as non-"White", a major novelty in the history of capitalism, to say the least, and
• 1B specifically, it will be run by the Standing Political Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Interesting.

Scenario 2: A socialist world government (this is what Wallerstein--who clearly predicted the downfall of the US--thought would follow). . . I can't rule that out but, let's just say, a few crucial details are not yet worked out, nor do I see the collective subjectivity that would be able / willing to bring it about.

Scenario 3: An as-yet unknown, un-imagined, un-invented new kind of post-capitalism will emerge. I am open to that possibility but can't figure out where to look for it. A global compact based on a power-sharing fascist international (kind of what the EU is on its way to becoming)? Or, a globally un-integrated Planet Earth with local gardening-self-sufficiency-based little communities of bliss?

Scenario 4: A new, as-yet unimagined global war destroys most of humankind outside the north America and western Europe. If that is to happen, that is the certain doom of the "west," as it has no idea how to survive without the subsidies it has been reaping from the "rest".

Scenario 5: A technological innovation will "save" the "west" and the "rest" . . . as well as, perhaps, even capitalism. Kind of like a last minute goal in soccer. Hardly on my horizon but such innovations are nonlinear, near-random events.

Scenario 6: All of humanity is reduced to rubble. A long and painful death for all. Cormac McCarthy situation--without his pseudo-Christian salvation theme, a solution that solves nothing.

Scenario 7: All of humanity is destroyed in one fell scoop but the rest of the flora and fauna on Planet Earth is preserved. Seems unlikely: if humankind is wiped out, a lot of the biosphere will also be gone. But I do root for the biosphere.

Scenario 8: All of the fauna also goes with humanity into one violent extension.

Scenario 9: The entire biosphere is destroyed.

Scenario 10: Extraterrestrial intelligence vaporizes Planet Earth, wiping it out as a celestial object.

Scenario 11: Extraterrestrial intelligence only destroys political and business authorities on Planet Earth, inadvertently increasing humankind's social efficiency. An optimistic scenario.

Scenario 12: Extraterrestrial intelligence takes over Planet Earth, making it part of a colonial system. Speciesism--pervasive ideologies concerning the inferiority of humans to extraterrestrials--, wild extraction of all resources from Earth, experimentation on human bodies, enslavement, the whole "nine yards".

Scenario 13: Extraterrestrial intelligence scans human "civilization" and decides to cease and desist all contact for its own good.

Scenario 14: Something else--I dunno.

Feel free to add yours, I'm just trying to see what's coming.

See also this.