Perhaps with that attitude. There's a lot of amazing things humans have accomplished that were once thought impossible. We are likely very, very early on in the anthropocene. Thousands of years from now I'm optimistic that the world will be a better place and that they'll look back on us as barbaric environment destroyers.

Either that, or the one-eyed cannibal mutants will keep our descendants in fattening pens.

Kumbaya, m-fer.

judging by recent political events in the UK and the US combined with the level of obesity and overconsumption in these nations I'd say we're already there

I don't buy that history is a good guide for the future here. All but the most recent history was in an era where we couldn't talk to eachother without physically travelling for weeks/months. The nature of diplomacy, politics, countries, and war have all fundamentally changed. The world has not "settled into" a new steady-state since those changes have been made (partially because significant changes are still happening).

You could reasonably extrapolate from bodies like the EU and think there is a chance we end up with a single global order that doesn't include war in the future.

That said I think you can look at the current and say with some confidence that there are at least a few wars left - there are too many current armed conflicts, and too many threats of armed conflict, to seriously believe otherwise.

> You could reasonably extrapolate from bodies like the EU and think there is a chance we end up with a single global order that doesn't include war in the future.

How, precisely, does one extrapolate from the EU (of all places) to a one world government? The variation across the world in everything from cultural and religious norms to even technical approaches to solving problems is extreme, and it has been like this since forever. The genesis of the EU seems, in my view, an evolution of American dominance of the continent after WWII. Is that what you mean? Further American influence tends to encourage (or coerce) countries into further integration?

I’d put the odds of any of that happening on a global scale at approximately zero, because there actually have been globe spanning empires in the past (multiple iterations, in point of fact), and they all collapsed or shed their empires when it became clear ruling it was no longer in the interest of the Sovereign or the Subjects.

Who said anything about an empire? That is obviously not going to work and is not what the EU is.

The EU is far from perfect but is an early iteration of a workable model. I can’t see this happening even in somewhere with a pretty similar societal model as the US currently as the political siuation is so polarised.