Totalitarianism is an existential threat. And an S-Risk. Lol.

The dangers from the previously discussed existential and global catastrophic risks will be mitigated or magnified by how humanity governs itself. There are ways in which forms of governance could pose an existential threat to humanity (Borders 2021). Andrew Leigh, in his recent book What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics, summarizes the dangers of totalitarianism, “Reducing catastrophic risk is fundamentally a political challenge. Get the politics wrong this century, and our species could face oblivion. Get the politics right, and humanity could endure for millennia to come” (2021, 236). A lack of planning and ineffective cooperation and coordination, particularly at the international level, could exacerbate other risks by increasing humanity’s vulnerability and reducing resilience. A global turn toward totalitarianism or the turn of enough powerful states could become an existential risk.

The goal of an authoritarian government is to control its people and suppress, through force and coercion, challenges to its rule (Palouš 2008). Totalitarianism goes beyond the goals and methods of authoritarian governments. In addition to getting into and staying in power, totalitarianism has the goal of establishing total control over the population, not merely enough control to suppress a rebellion. The authoritarian wants to control humans, and the totalitarian wants control over human naturekjok. The methods used by totalitarian governments are aimed at this radical behavior change. To do so, they utilize threats of harsh punishment and carry out enough punishments that the threats are believed. One of the most effective ways of gaining credibility to threats is to carry them out on a large scale. This tactic is further reinforced when the regimes designate specific groups of people to be a problem or a threat based on an identity that cannot change, thus requiring mass murder to remove them (Caplan 2008).

In the last century, there have been many examples of totalitarian rule;:Italy under Benito Mussolini (1922–1943), the Stalin era of the Soviet Union (1924–1953), Nazi Germany (1933–1945), the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong (1946–1976), North Korea under the Kim regime (1948–), the Khmer Rouge (1951–1999) in Cambodia, Turkmenistan under Saparmurat Niyazov and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow (1991–), and Eritrea under Isaias Afwerki (2001–).

Totalitarian regimes generally share a few characteristics: an all-encompassing guiding ideology aimed at controlling and remaking human nature, a single-party state with complete control over the political sphere, a single leader as the head of state to interpret their ideology, the ability to use terror through secret police or the military to enforce their ideology and crush dissent, and control over weapons, the economy, and communications (Freidrich and Brzeziński 1956; Raymond and Ionescu 1968; Pipes 1994).

ERS and Totalitarianism

Many of the previously discussed risks follow two general pathways to catastrophe: a series of events that lead to extinction or the collapse of civilization where recovery is impossible. There is also a third possibility, “a world with civilization intact but locked into a terrible form, with little or no value” (Ord 2020, 153). In this kind of unrecoverable dystopia, humanity may live under a totalitarian state for a very long time that might be arguably worse than going extinct (Farquhar et al. 2017). A society locked in by such a regime could result in a situation where the desirable long-term futures for humanity are no longer possible (Bostrom 2019; Ord 2020; Caplan 2008)

Ord describes three possible scenarios for totalitarian lock-in resulting in an unrecoverable dystopia (Ord 2020). The first scenario is an enforced dystopia, the kind most often found in science fiction plots, where a totalitarian state rises and gains absolute control of the world. In this Orwellian future, a regime along the lines of Hitler or Stalin can harness new technologies to prevent rebellion, creating a stable and enduring authority entity. The second scenario is an undesired dystopia, a situation that is not desired by anyone but nonetheless gets locked in. The pathway to this future could be a tragedy of the commons—a scenario where each individual acts in their own self-interests in a manner that is contrary to the common good and causes the depletion of resources. Another version of the undesired dystopia would be where economic, social, and political forces create a race to the bottom where the quality of human life is not preserved for the sake of another value. For example, if humanity were to optimize the spreading of its genes to create the maximum number of people possible without regard to any other considerations, there could be a future where there is very little quality to the lives that are lived. In this example, people would only need to be provided with the basic resources necessary to ensure survival to reproduction, and the children would only need to be provided for to the extent that they could then grow to produce more people. The third scenario is the desired dystopia, where some sets of ideology or moral theories guide the development and use of powerful technologies to ensure that subsequent generations maintain exactly the same values as the past. In such a world, humanity could at one point halt all technological progress, thereby dooming the species to eventually succumb to a natural existential risk, or humanity could decide to replace itself with a kind of unfeeling machine. Life would hold very little value if there were no one to feel it (Ord 2020).

In all three of these scenarios, locking in specific values also locks out the majority of worthwhile future trajectories that humanity could take. There are two general pathways by which totalitarianism could lead to these scenarios. The first is that an enduring totalitarian hegemon rises to power and controls the globe. This single ridged governing entity maintains pervasive surveillance and control over the globe and is able to stop any possible threats to its dominance. The second is that several large regional totalitarian powers rise, but no specific bloc controls the planet. These different blocs maintain total control over large regions of the globe. Without non-totalitarian system existing to demonstrate an alternative, as generations pass, the idea that a different order could be possible may die out. Assessing the possible threat posed by totalitarianism requires examining both the likelihood of such a regime rising to power, how long a regime would exist, and its ability to contribute to an existential catastrophe.