There have been countless predictions that the 'end is near' from insane cults and bible fanatics calling the return of the anti-Christ. So far, the world hasn't ended yet and the media and people endorsing these ideas are always called crazy. We must think we’re invincible. However, what if one of these people happened to be right. Well then they would be a geniuses. Right now there are a lot of people that are pointing out all the bad things and problems of our society. All of these huge, detrimental problems, would give someone a lot of reasons to think that society is going to collapse.      
     

First of all, societal collapse is the fall or disintegration of human societies. This has happened many times before. Just look at history, the Aztecs, the Roman Empire, feudal Japan, ancient Egypt, all of these are societies that have collapsed. They fell for a number of reasons; social, political, economical, environmental. Now look at the nations today. The oldest government today is the federal government of the United States, founded in 1789, only 226 years ago. Obviously change is happening rapidly. Politics is changing, society is changing, economy is changing, cultures are changing, even the environment is changing. These changes are happening more rapidly and on a larger scale than anywhere in history. We are in a whole generation of problems we can't find anywhere in the past; terrorism, revolutionary science, pollution, population, etc. While change is good, we have to be able to tackle the consequences. Now look at the world today. Who is going to be able to fix these problems?
    

It really doesn’t take much to find a problem with our society. Right here in the U.S. you can just flip on the news, look on the internet, listen to someone complain. There's always something wrong. The federal debt now is about 18.5 trillion. In the United States 40.3 million people lived in poverty in 2013.  The abuse of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs costs the U.S. over $700 billion annually in costs related to crime, lost work productivity, and health care. Even in recent news we hear about racism and police brutality. Black people make up 37.5% and hispanics make up 34.2% of inmates, while only making up 30% of the U.S. population. This is but a few of the many large problems we hear of. Yet the U.S. is a world superpower and has a huge influence on world affairs. Every single day we continue to see problems arise quicker than their solved when problems around the world still remain.
    

The greatest problem I have found was the increase in technology. It is pretty obvious our technology is increasing over time. We get more intelligent and use previous technology to make smarter, faster, better technology. How is that a bad thing? Well just look at the nuclear bomb, developed over 70 years ago. The biggest threat today is actually that information technology is growing exponentially. For example, the computer, the TRS-80 released in 1977 came out with 4 KB of memory, computers didn’t keep growing 4 KB every year it grew exponentially. Now 40 years later we have terabyte hard drives one million times bigger than a kilobyte, this is also known as Moore's law. However it's not just memory, the speed, size, and and overall power are getting better and better. Ray Kurzweil, futurist, and director of engineering at Google, predicts that in 20 years our technology will be a million times more powerful.

Greater technology has huge effects on the world. The most important that our generation has been experiencing is globalization. Globalization is a process of interaction among people and governments in the world, a process driven by trade and aided by information technology. Pretty much globalization is taking away the ‘wall’ that is your location on the Earth, for example, almost anyone can get in contact with most places on the planet in a second with a cell phone. This makes independence in today's world an impossibility. Even North Korea is a member of the United Nations. Globalization has bad effects on the environment, cultures, political systems, economic development, health, and societies worldwide. Greedy businessmen can exploit undeveloped countries for cheap labor, or use corrupt practices and bribes to have immunity. There are even wars starting over the world economy. Conflicting cultures and no longer just remain isolated.

There are still many cultural differences the world has yet to overcome. Half the world lives on $2.50 a day and over 80% of countries in the world have the income gap widening. In high income countries 7 of 10 deaths are people over 70. In low income countries 4 of 10 deaths are people under 15. Countries like China have exceedingly low wages and exceedingly high productivity, causing them to dominate the global market (made in china). There have been over 9 million refugees and internally displaced people from the conflicts in Africa. The amount of terrorist attacks worldwide have gone from less than 2,000 in 2004, to 12,000 in 2013. Currently there is a lot of political reforms happening around the world. People can’t change their beliefs in one generation, obviously by the amount of people willing to fight and give up their lives. There are a huge amount of differences between people around the world and to change that without conflict nearly impossible.
    

Most of the aforementioned is the human problems with our society. However natural problems have an extreme impact on the world. About 56 million people die annually. Noncommunicable disease makes up 68% of that (up from 60% in 2000), communal disease makes up 23%, and injuries make just 9% of that. Clearly disease is currently the largest threat to human health, and it’s going to get worse. For the last 70 years antibiotics have been used against infections disease. Over this time bacteria evolved, the stronger ones that live antibiotics continue to make stronger more resistant bacteria. Each year in the U.S. at least 2 million people are infected with bacteria immune to antibiotics. 23,000 people die each year as a result and this number is growing. Natural threats dont only affect human health, but our society. On average over the last decade we have had 388 natural disasters with 96.5 million victims annually. We spend $156.7 billion globally every year on reverting the damage caused by natural disasters. Another problem that will affect everyone on the globe, there is 1.3~ trillion barrels of proven oil reserve left. This will only last about 40 more years and nations are fighting for more right now. Imagine if nothing changes and it gets lower and lower, people will not remain peaceful.

     However you might be thinking that the world is making huge improvements, which it is. Compared to 75 years ago when blacks were segregated in the U.S., many countries were at war in WWII, people were less educated, etc. The world has changed a lot for the better, that’s almost undeniable, but in that time nobody has found a cure for the causes of the recurring problems in the world. Has anyone found out how to get rid of corruption, extremism, hate? Has anyone found the correct way to govern a nation? There are many problems that are no closer to being solved that 10,000 years ago. Since civilization began humans have always been improving, in beliefs and technology, now is no different. Yet until these unsolvable problems are fixed there will always be conflict, the only difference is the means to these conflicts on a greater scale than ever possible.
    

Well with the world ending in this generation, should we be scared? Should we care? If these problems are unsolvable and society is certain to collapse what's the point? Well it doesn't mean that everyone is going to die, it just means that sometime in our life the world is going to have to change. Depending on how prepared we are for it, the world that we create could be one worth living for.