Excavating a modern society

This is based on the assumption, that one day our consumerist-oil-based culture will eventually collapse and end.

Is your life important? Is it meaningful? Or is our society and our culture; and the way we live, the most important? When you as an individual are gone, your society is what is left behind. Your societies culture, its way of life, and its “footprints” will be left for the next generations and the next society.

What will be left of the current modern society that we are living? Will we be traceable? The ancient civilizations carved writings and stories in stones and painted inside pyramids protected from the outside elements. We preserved our kings and built giant tombs for them. We hid our treasures and other memories that we felt dear to us.

Presently, I feel that the society and culture that we live is biodegradable. There’s not much that would be left for the centuries to come. We have built a superficial and consumerist culture…which inevitably will biodegrade. Our day to day life revolves around throwing things in the trash. We use paper for our coffee on the go, and throw it in the trash knowing that it will eventually decompose. We also write everything culture based on paper and in books. We live and breathe a “throw away” culture. Almost everything we buy ends up in the trash.

So you have to ask yourself, when our society depletes and finally collapses what will be left? What special impact will we leave for the generations to come? Will we be a sad lesson learned or be left in the dirt unnoticed? Fast forward 5000 years from now to year 7011 (keep in mind the ancient Egyptian society we dug up is just over 4000 years old). A future, highly evolved and intelligent civilization finds remains of our previous extinct society and starts excavating. How exciting!

What will these future archaeologist dig up? There will be no paper, no books, no photos, no CDs, no DVDs, no music, no electronics, no TVs. But there will be plastic bottles, glass bottles, Styrofoam and remains of our buildings. They will have no evidence of the Lady Gagas and Madonna’s of the world. They won’t know about Tivo or the newest form of Apple technology. All technology will be irrelevant or so decomposed it won’t be useable. (Who’s to say that the Egyptian’s didn’t have IPods?) What story will this tell for them?

So will they find these bottles and cups and think that we were rationing our food and water to preserve ourselves? Will they think we were intelligent for doing this? I believe yes, they would think that we were a smart society that was rationing its resources, until they uncover trillions upon trillions of cups and bottles. Over 25 billion Styrofoam cups are thrown into the trash every year. And over 50 billion glass bottles are thrown into landfills every year. Styrofoam never decomposes and glass takes 1000’s of years.

So they may think…why all this excess stuff? There is no way that the earth could sustain trillions and trillions of people…so why did this society have enough products to assume that it could? Why was this extinct civilization using things (and throwing them away) that would outlive their actual culture or society?

Next they dig up buildings like the CN Tower, the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, arenas and other big stadiums. Will they be impressed by our architecture or feel that we were phallic and yonic obsessed? Many skyscrapers and buildings resembling phallic parts and stadiums that open and close in a yonic way. Will they assume that we were a sex driven over indulgent culture? Would they be wrong?

Examine your life and try to find something that will still be here in 5000 years.
I am not saying to go run around and carve your life story into a rock so it lasts for centuries to come; but I am asking to analyze the current biodegradable consumerist culture and realize that one day it will all be gone without a trace (other than the mass amounts of garbage left over). How does it make you feel?