THE COMING DARK AGE

by Roberto Vacca ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 1973

Sometime in the 1980's the advanced sector, beginning with the U.S., will collapse into a new Dark Age -- perhaps in a matter of weeks -- after breakdowns in energy, transit and communications systems intensify each other. The population will be halved, decentralized, exposed to a new barbarism. Vacca's vision is accompanied by diatribes against ""large"" systems, a rhetoric which begs solid economic analysis (he asserts, for instance, that the Pennsylvania Railroad collapsed because it was too big!). He also suggests that a continued recession could stave off the Dark Age catastrophe, which seems contradictory, since current cutbacks in maintenance and investment are a major reason why breakdowns do and will occur. A revival of morality and professional rigor (a sort of Opus Dei ethic) might redeem society, Vacca thinks, but it won't happen; the most he hopes for are ""monastic community"" islands in the new wilderness. Vacca has the decency to term the advocacy of a return to primitivism and natural ignorance disasters, not positive goals as some people claim. But his Spenglerian gloom, combined with praise of the zealous austerity promoters, adds up to another kind of nihilism. For the extreme opposite vision, see silly Prof. Farmer's utopian fantasy, The Real World of 1984, above.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION