Let’s do a nutshell of the British Empire a hundred years ago:

And so on.

If you think I’m headed into another diatribe about the "American Empire" (which certainly fits the old British model nicely), you’ve got another think coming. Political, religious, and economic empires ("hegemons" in the jargon of the day) rise and fall, their success as much a result of the luck of circumstance as of any particular economic-political system.

What should be of greater concern to us is the "empire" in which we all exist and which is so widespread, so completely dominant that it, like water for fish, is almost completely invisible to us. We live in it, are shaped by it, become tools for extending and confirming its reach. Living well off its abundant fruits, we have little reason to question its assumptions or examine its shaky foundation.

It works. More and more people benefit from its structural outfitting (where of course "benefit" is self-defined in the self-supporting terms of the empire).

Problems? Sure, but so self-assured is the present imperial system that it beneficently recognizes the problems and undertakes adjustments to deal with them.

If this all sounds vague and irrelevant, too intellectual and abstract for the transient web surfer, well, q.e.d.

The empire I'm talking about, if you haven’t guessed, is that way of knowledge, that method of being in and interacting with the world and other people that we call "science."

As an antidote to the cruder forms of superstition and politically tainted versions of organized religion, science, with its reliance on reason (logical symbol manipulation) and proof (reproducible results), has given us a lot.

In addition to the ease of multiplying and amplifying our physical and mental labors (a tiny pressure on the accelerator and you go really fast; a few keystrokes and I’m in the Louvre--sort of), science has mostly given us the Big Seed that all successful empires produce: stability.

Given human cleverness and willingness to work hard, every time the world enters a period of stability we also enjoy a spread of prosperity and with that, more full stomachs, better health, safety, and sounder sleep.

The problem, with empires as with individual lives, is that success, especially great success, leads to myopia, blinders. The Greeks, unaware of their own shortcomings, ignored until it was too late the uppity primitives with great management skills over on the Italian peninsula. The Romans in turn failed to take seriously a little religious cult that spoke powerfully to fear and hope. The Chinese in their splendid and vast geographical isolation saw no reason to pay much attention to anybody else for 5,000 years.

Now, here we are, the well-trained products and happy beneficiaries of the latest empire, scientifically manipulating the hell out of the world (so to speak) to the greater good of, well, our capitalist funding sources most of all but also, in the well-known trickle-down effect, of the rest of us too.

The money people love it. The non-moneyed rest of us get along better and better. So what’s to complain?

Flash forward a hundred years and imagine the world. Given the vicissitudes of history and the impermanence of empires past, we can safely predict that this imperial world of which we are so proud will be no more. The glory that was Greece, etc. Sic transit, etc. But that’s not my point.

My point is: for all their successes, every empire is deficient, failing finally to meet this or that critically important human need. In our own case: our bellies are full, our diseases treated, our minds are entertained, but but but.

Our hearts are starving.

Fallow hearts are fertile ground for all sorts of nonsense (talk radio, expedient theology, homeland jingoism). Fast words do as little for the heart as fast food does for the stomach.

Apocalypse, then? With our poor historical record in times of crisis, it’s possible. When will the 20,000 atomic dragons in their dark caves stir? When will the deadly germs and chemicals be freed from their laboratory lairs? When will Gaia strike back at our noisome and treasonous occupation?

Bad may come to worse, and worse then to worst.

But probably not, for a whole mess of messy reasons we don’t need to go into here.

If we dismiss all the hellish visions of our future, what are we left with if in fact the current dominion of the Empire of Science is to fade?

One word: community.

Tolerant bonding, growing from educated awareness of our human commonality.

If science fiction at its best is visionary, the great science fiction novel of the 20^th century may well turn out to be Iris Murdoch’s The Philosopher’s Pupil. In a small, fully realized fictitious city built atop a large geo-thermal spring, Murdoch paints a picture of us—disputative, self-centered as ever—struggling to be the good creatures that we hope we are.

The little town relies on, indeed literally sits on, technology. At various times in the past, massive pipe works and valves and holding tanks and pools and fountains have been created beneath the town to tame and use the geo-thermal resource.

The spring is in fact the social center of life in the town. But the technology that makes it possible is invisible, hidden below the ground, and everybody takes it for granted.

The unseen technology makes it possible for the people to get on with the proper task of living, which is, well, living. NOT ravenously consuming the latest news of technological conquests, NOT greedily acquiring the latest gadgets large and small.