Somewhere in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago, an unknown group of intrepid individuals—in an attempt to improve their survival prospects—abandoned their traditional nomadic foraging subsistence strategy and adopted a sedentary one based on agriculture.

In so doing, they inadvertently crossed a threshold between primitive and civilized existences—and committed all future generations to an increasing reliance on progressive technologies—a commitment that we have wholeheartedly embraced.

When they crossed that threshold, they also committed all future generations to adopting progressive social behavior commensurate with those emerging technologies—unfortunately, we have failed, almost completely, to meet that commitment.

In other words, over the last 10,000 years, we have become materially progressive—but remain socially conservative.

This is an untenable situation because nearly every problem that threatens civilization today, from suicide bombings and wars—to pollution and overpopulation, can be traced directly or indirectly back to the disparity that exists between progressive technological development and conservative social behavior.

In order to resolve this problem, we must either regress technologically—or progress socially. Regressing technologically is not a realistic option, so we really have no choice but to progress socially.

If we fail to do this, our irresponsible use of technology will inevitably lead to chronic overpopulation, the overconsumption of Earth's resources, a population crash, and the collapse of civilization.

The requisite conditions for a crash already exist. Developing technologies are enabling us to forestall it by establishing increasingly clever methods of harvesting Earth's dwindling resources. However, even the most-clever methods will not enable us to harvest completely depleted resources.

This is not alarmist speculation—collapse is the inevitable consequence of employing progressive technologies without adopting progressive social behavior commensurate with those technologies.

11:58 is an objective guide for averting collapse and saving civilization