[HN Gopher] A Compass for the Politics of Collapse
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A Compass for the Politics of Collapse
Author : chobeat
Score : 164 points
Date : 2021-08-30 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| CorruptedArc wrote:
| This misses whole primary subsets of ideologies and doomers,
| glosses most Libertarian groups which are probably the most
| paranoid about such events. Seeming to focus too hard at the near
| non-existant extremes like EcoFash & EcoCommies and really never
| adjusts back towards a realistic middle which comes in any
| crisis.
| narrator wrote:
| One should really read "Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joe A.
| Tainter. He's an archeologist who has a very timeless view of
| collapse based on diminishing marginal returns on societal
| complexity. A lot of the collapse theories that get a lot of ink
| are written from the conclusion backwards. As in here's my plan
| for the total restructuring of society and a long justification
| with cherrypicked examples for why everyone needs to get on board
| or we're going to be in Road Warrior territory next year.
|
| Collapse is a very subtle process that needs to be understood as
| a set of dynamic interacting forces not a dialectical materialism
| like process that proceeds inevitably from an invented mythology
| of historical forces.
| skillpass wrote:
| Personally I feel like the Collapse movement is full of
| histrionics and hysteria, and for a while I was ignoring it. But
| the movement seems to have a psychological pull. Most of the
| people I talk to in the US who are tuned into the news cycle or
| culture war on both the right and the left have started to accept
| parts of the Collapse narrative (rampant crime leading to
| breakdown of social order, climate change induced disasters
| leading to mass displacement of populations, etc.).
|
| It worries me to see so many people accept Collapse as
| inevitable. I think such pessimistic attitudes will lead more
| people towards radicalization as they see revolutionary change as
| the only means to preventing collapse.
|
| There must be some part of the human psyche which is attracted to
| the idea of world ending disasters. Ideas of apocalypse are found
| in many religions throughout the world.
|
| Perhaps the Collapse movement is the new eschatology for a post-
| religion world.
| chobeat wrote:
| For sure there are eschatological traits, it's discussed quite
| commonly in the literature on the topic. We are exiting the
| linear, flat time of our parents and entering again in a
| cyclical time and we need ruptures: Collapse is one,
| Singularity is another but there are more on the horizon (like
| escape to space and so on).
| ben_w wrote:
| While I listen when, e.g. Stross compared the Singularity to
| an Atheist take on Christian theology, I don't think our
| parents lived in anything like a linear time:
|
| My dad was born in '39; the first fission bomb was '45; first
| transistor was demonstrated in '47; first fusion bomb '51;
| NTSC TV color standard was '53; first artificial satellite
| was '58; the laser and the pill in '60; measles vaccine in
| '63; the 60s was civil rights, anti-war, free love, gay
| rights and second-wave feminism in the west, decolonisation
| in Africa, the green revolution, and the majority of the
| space race; 8-track, compact cassette, PDP-8, BASIC were all
| '64; first ATM and first human-to-human heart transplant was
| '67; the Mother of All Demos was '68.
|
| Then the 70s happened and made the 60s seem languid -- the
| mainframes became home computers, the women became national
| leaders, space became more relevant, DNA sequencing first
| invented and then used to fully sequence a virus, first test
| tube baby and first genetically modified human insulin from
| E. coli, X-ray tomography and MRIs invented, smallpox
| eliminated first from the Americas and then worldwide, public
| key encryption, cochlear implants successfully implanted,
| first demo of an audio CD, polio eliminated in the USA, ...
|
| And the 80s surpassed the 70s like the 70s surpassed the 60s.
|
| So much has changed so fast; these days you can only even
| keep track of how much has changed because of the
| crowdsourced efforts of other people.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| My grandfather near the end of his life had a rant about
| WhatsApp. "I grew up sending telegrams to my friends and
| family, learned to listen to the radio, started watching
| television, called neighbors on my home telephone, got my
| first mobile phone, and now you want me to do this WhatsApp
| thing? What's the point?" The sheer amount of change his
| generation saw was staggering.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I think the allure is escapism: life is boring and unfulfilling
| for many people, so they are attracted to the notion that some
| spectacular event is going to suddenly upend their lives and
| make life more interesting.
|
| One of the other patterns I see is justification of apathy.
| People rationalize lack of desire to work or apply themselves
| with the justification that the world is going to end
| relatively soon, so why bother.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > life is boring and unfulfilling for many people, so they
| are attracted to the notion that some spectacular event is
| going to suddenly upend their lives and make life more
| interesting
|
| Mainly agree. As I was watching the Taliban take over region
| by region I wondered how many people were watching it in
| their comfortable home with nice things and climate control
| and couldn't help but feel envy in that these people (Taliban
| fighters) are doing something impactful and meaningful in
| their lives; creating the change they wanted. That while
| living in poverty relative to the person watching at home,
| they have real purpose.
|
| Would the unfulfilled and bored person ever be able to put it
| all on the line for something they are certain is theirs and
| do their part in a collective of idealists with the same
| courage of their convictions? That the work to get there
| doesn't happen in a day or a month or a year but over
| decades, much like building a meaningful career and family
| that gives you fulfillment.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| If you feel this way, I encourage you to go volunteer in
| one of the many poverty and conflict-stricken regions of
| this world. The US Peace Corps does a lot of this kind of
| work. It's needed and fulfilling work.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Would love to in another life, but have too many
| responsibilities and obligations (e.g. things I love and
| cherish) here to do anything like that in good faith at
| this point. I have a friend who did when he was young
| (probably best time to do these types of things) and it's
| a thing that has a lot of meaning to him to this day and
| rightfully so I imagine.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| If you're at the point where you envy Taliban soldiers
| for having a purpose in life, it might be good for the
| people you cherish to have you go figure some stuff out.
| nemo44x wrote:
| When did I say I envy them? Or that those that may envy
| their purposeful lives would agree with their politics
| and beliefs they fight for. Only that I could imagine a
| person with feelings of no purpose could look at them and
| envy that particular attribute.
| derbOac wrote:
| I agree it's probably escapism, maybe due to life being
| unfulfilling, but I'm not sure boredom is driving it. I
| suspect a lot of people of different political inclinations
| are deeply dissatisfied, and feel helpless. So they turn to
| collapse theories of different sorts.
|
| I really wish there was a good way of tracking actual
| sentiment about collapse, and indicators of societal
| upheaval, to better understand how things really are, or what
| people really feel in general. There's many such things but
| they're all imperfect and point in different directions for
| different groups. Maybe this says something about the
| complexity of society -- if we could predict collapse, we'd
| probably be able to avoid it -- but it seems like it deserves
| more attention. I feel like it's a topic of increasing
| salience, but I'm not sure I have much to base that on other
| than people say it is. It _is_ a pandemic, so there 's that,
| but there's been similar things in my lifetime that didn't
| lead to quite so much collapse narrative.
|
| Maybe things were so good or stable-seeming before that
| returning to some kind of historical norm with regard to
| instability factors is bringing things back to a baseline
| with collapse narrative? End-of-world beliefs are a classic
| thing; maybe they just disappeared (relatively speaking) for
| awhile.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > It is a pandemic, so there's that, but there's been
| similar things in my lifetime that didn't lead to quite so
| much collapse narrative.
|
| Yet despite all of the rhetoric around the pandemic
| throughout the entire world, very little has functionally
| changed politically. While the pandemic most certainly
| exposed many problems throughout world governments, the
| fact that no major change (e.g. revolution, energy
| collapse, etc) has actually happened is a testament to the
| world's current status quo.
|
| > Maybe things were so good or stable-seeming before that
| returning to some kind of historical norm with regard to
| instability factors is bringing things back to a baseline
| with collapse narrative?
|
| The world was a lot less connected before. Now we see the
| pain around us instantly through shared photos, Twitter,
| and the 24 hour news cycle. In the past you could go months
| without realizing that a major conflict was occurring,
| especially in less connected parts of the world.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The era of Mutually Assured Destruction inspired tons of post-
| nuclear-fallout fiction. I'm pretty sure Collapse is just the
| modern version of the same thing.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| I think the problem is that collapse _is actually inevitable_
| if we don't solve climate change, and if you don't think
| humanity is capable of the coordination and sacrifice necessary
| to solve it, you are left with one conclusion.
| goatlover wrote:
| Where in the IPCC report does it say that collapse is
| inevitable? Why would that be the only conclusion? One can
| imagine global civilization adapting and doing what it can to
| mitigate the effects of climate change. Soldiering on might
| be one way to put it. If modern civilization and the
| biosphere overall are more resilient than some assume, then
| adaptation is a possibility.
|
| One can also imagine cleaner technologies and carbon capture
| rapidly replacing fossil fuels in the next two decades,
| reducing the riskier scenarios. At any rate, there's no
| certainty since none of us has a time machine, and climate
| models are models of the climate, not human civilization or
| future technologies.
| jnurmine wrote:
| An interesting article, it made me think.
|
| I doubt there is one global model or form of a collapse scenario
| which would happen everywhere. It's likely that some places,
| already hanging on the edge of chaos, would enter this state in a
| very short time whereas some would persist over a longer time,
| and some would perhaps even adapt to the changing circumstances.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| The best we can hope for is something like Kim Stanley Robinson's
| new book "The Ministry For the Future". A hodgepodge of
| technocratic reforms against a background of anthropogenic
| natural disasters eventually produces a solarpunk degrowth world
| that's post-capitalist without an an abrupt anti-capitalist
| revolution. Capitalist powers-that-be go along with it because
| it's being led by the central banks, and at every step the most
| profitable option is to go along with it.
|
| I don't think we'll get that, though; I expect something more
| like William Gibson's "Jackpot" (from "The Peripheral" and
| "Agency"). There's no single collapse, just ongoing failures to
| solve coordination problems from hundreds of climate-change-
| spawned disasters, shortages, wars, pandemics, crises, and a
| century-long excess death toll around 6 billion. When the global
| kleptocrats pick up the pieces, it ultimately shakes out to
| cyberpunk ecofascism.
|
| The political question of the early 21st century is what can we
| salvage? And are we able to work together to do so? The tea
| leaves aren't looking good.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I once encountered a reddit user vocally insisting in a regional
| subreddit that industrialized society would collapse in the next
| 10-20 years. I poked around his comment history and it was non-
| stop commenting in /r/collapse pondering the kind of collapse
| that would happen, theories as to what would trigger it, and
| plans for how they would somehow survive and turn it into a
| utopian society for themselves. Like 9 months of this kind of
| commenting. The kicker was a wall of text, a dozen paragraphs
| long, about how he'd emerge from his bunker and become the
| patriarch of the local group of survivors - ultimately leading to
| him having several wives, of course.
|
| While there are pressing challenges like climate change, aging
| populations, inequality, and more, I find that the substantial
| majority of people who devote large amounts of energy towards
| pondering and preparing for the collapse of civilization are
| using it as an escapist fantasy. I see lots of parallels with
| people preparing for Judgement Day: some unprecedented event is
| going to kill off the majority of the population leaving a chosen
| few to inherit the new world. These collapse predictions are
| often rooted in serious issues, but I find that this kind of
| escapism makes the average person more skeptical of serious
| activism.
| apsec112 wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree with you, but I'm curious how serious
| these plans were. Did anyone really try hiding in bunkers and
| organizing an independent community, or was that just armchair
| Redditing?
| prewett wrote:
| I met a guy who sold his lawncare? business and bought one of
| the RV's that is basically a bus, and his family of five
| lived in it, to be prepared for the collapse. (I'm not sure
| how he was planning on getting gasoline if the collapse was
| that serious...) After a while of interacting with some more
| normal people he decided he had been deceived, but I heard
| some time later that he had bought a house in the woods to
| prepare. I have no idea if he was on Reddit, though.
| paraph1n wrote:
| Not sure if you read the article, but both you and the redditor
| you are describing fit archetypes explicitly called out by the
| author.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Which one? "Partial Deniers" I guess? I think that's the
| overwhelming majority of people, those that recognize that
| emerging problems exist but do not predict they will cause a
| global collapse of society. Although it's often difficult to
| judge, exactly, since collapse evangelists tend to be rather
| evasive and ambiguous about what exactly will trigger the
| collapse.
| [deleted]
| mistermann wrote:
| > While there are pressing challenges like climate change,
| aging populations, inequality, and more, I find that the
| substantial majority of people who devote large amounts of
| energy towards pondering and preparing for the collapse of
| civilization are using it as an escapist fantasy.
|
| To be fair, something fairly similar could be said of most any
| internet conversation on such topics.
| papito wrote:
| Oh, this is nice. While the mortals are talking about surviving a
| self-inflicted societal collapse, the trillionaires are busy
| building penis rockets, fighting taxes tooth and nail, and
| building doomsday bunkers. Ironically - in New Zealand, a place
| where society will most like be one of the last ones to fold.
|
| Good bye, and thanks for all the fish!
| gspr wrote:
| How is it ironic to be building doomsday bunkers in the society
| most likely to be one of the last to fold? It seems like
| exactly the place to build one, if one were looking to.
| [deleted]
| papito wrote:
| It's ironic because these people have no problem shitting
| where they eat, moving on to a place that has not been
| defiled yet but their riches and absolute lack of moral
| compass.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-
| val...
|
| Supplemental reading:
|
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-
| trump...
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I feel pretty sure that if the rest of the world collapses, New
| Zealand will send their army and appropriate whatever resources
| these chuckleheads have hoarded. Anyways if the rest of the
| world goes sideways what value do stocks and bonds and American
| dollars have? The value of those kind of contractually enforced
| intangibles is socially constructed and would be the first
| thing to go. Land would be the thing with the most value, and
| again if New Zealanders are starving the government will
| probably just take the land by eminent domain in order to plant
| crops. The power of money only matters to the extent that the
| state backs it up.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not sure which buckets I fit into. Maybe a pessimist bucket that
| isn't listed. Maybe a matrix of longterm near linear decline with
| localized event driven rapid declines. Probably a degrowth
| variant since I do believe there's a minimum level of consumption
| tied to each person and that incremental cost has a ceiling when
| talking about _sustainable_ population levels. Probably a
| combination of apocalyptic and cottage for aesthetics, but the
| possibilities are probably extremely variable based on many
| demographic and resource qualities of a given locality as well as
| what type of collapse.
|
| So, what was the purpose of these categories?
|
| Edit: why downvote?
| chobeat wrote:
| It's a compass, it's a tool. You give it a purpose
| giantg2 wrote:
| And what purpose have you given it? Do you have any
| theoretical uses?
| chobeat wrote:
| well I wrote it lol. But it helps me navigate the politics
| of it and try to build better communication and praxis in
| my own politics.
| throwaway34241 wrote:
| I've found Ray Dalio to have some of the most interesting takes
| on this subject. [1] [2] [3] He's the (retired) founder of the
| world's largest hedge fund and he tries to examine these topics
| through economic and historical lenses, which seems like as good
| an approach as any.
|
| He also explains a lot of macroeconomic material in a way that
| isn't very jargon heavy (which can sometimes be hard to find, at
| least for the schools of thought popular among people who do it
| professionally).
|
| [1] https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/
|
| [2] https://economicprinciples.org/downloads/bw-populism-the-
| phe...
|
| [3] generally anything at his site economicprinciples.org, or his
| book on historical debt crises at https://www.principles.com/big-
| debt-crises/
| Hokusai wrote:
| It's interesting but not insightful. Anyway, I would find more
| conducive to stop talking nonsense about collapses and focus on
| the many technologies that are being developed.
|
| We got a million times better at creating vaccines. AIDS vaccine
| is on the way. Clean technologies are growing exponentially and a
| future of clean-air cities is approaching fast. Working from home
| thru video conferences, I saw that in sci-fi when I was a kid, is
| a day to day reality.
|
| We should be building a better future instead of focusing on
| extremist views of the world. It was fun to read, it would make
| no sense to give it too much weight.
| seandoe wrote:
| Yes, I'm with you. The focus and obsession with doom and
| collapse needs to end. It's like porn. We're biologically
| programmed to direct our attention to it. While the various
| media fuel this neverending stream of negativity, we have to
| realize that our primal selves yearn for it. Regardless of how
| likely any of these scenarios are, obsessing over them does not
| help our situation. How can we break this cycle of addiction? I
| guess the first step is recognition.
| titzer wrote:
| The irony is that the people who see collapse the most clearly
| are not actually the ones who spend all day inside looking at
| computer screens. Spend some time down at your local waterway,
| pick up some garbage, and behold just a small sliver of the
| millions of tons, perhaps billions of tons, of shit that this
| economy has produced and just dumped or discarded right into
| the ecosystem.
|
| The little squares that you gaze into are just one massive
| distortion field. If you see whizbang video conferencing and
| techno hopium, then that's your lens.
|
| If you want to build a better future, please take a stark look
| at what's actually going down on this planet, and it's not just
| better Zoom calls.
| CalRobert wrote:
| If you find the collapse of human civilisation interesting, you
| might enjoy:
|
| It Could Happen Here - podcast by Robert Evans exploring a US
| decaying in to warring states and dissolving
| https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-307...
|
| Dark Mountain, a twice-yearly collection of short stories and
| poetry on themes of collapse and ecocide. https://dark-
| mountain.net/
| cbHXBY1D wrote:
| I've listened to a few of them and don't recommend the new
| daily episodes. They're unscripted and not as polished as the
| old series.
|
| And don't forget Evan's State Department/intelligence ties:
| Bellingcat plus being embedded in US military units in Iraq. We
| don't know to what extent COINTELPRO-like programs ever ended.
| Evans fearmongers and overinflates groups like the Proud Boys
| which are really just marginal organizations without any
| popular support.
|
| Note: I've been involved in the activist scene in the PNW for
| years and have known people who know him. Most activists here
| are highly skeptical of Evans for the reasons above, viewing
| his work as a mix of LARPing and political voyeurism.
| edrxty wrote:
| It Could Happen Here was pretty haunting. Some of it was hand
| wavy but a lot felt borderline prophetic.
|
| I should caution people here though. Going down this rabbit
| hole is not at all good for your mental health and in parallel,
| much like a particular Big Short scene, glorifying any of the
| potential scenarios here is glorifying death and suffering on a
| level never seen before.
|
| We have a lot of problems to solve over the coming years but
| resisting this train of thought becoming mainstream in the
| algorithmic feeds that define our future is one of them. This
| can only have strictly negative consequences of the "self
| fulfilling prophecy" variety.
| CalRobert wrote:
| It's horrifying, but then, the more time goes on the more
| IPCC forecasts trend towards what was previously labeled as
| histrionics and doomerism. Anyway, action is the antidote to
| despair and it's what has worked for me. We're far past the
| point where losing a few coastal cities is our biggest worry.
| edrxty wrote:
| This is a good point. My focus above was more the
| artificial disasters (ie. political unrest for the sake of
| political unrest) which to me feel like the most imminent
| given all the people sitting on their ai feeds and seething
| in message boards. It does bear mentioning that the real
| issues, most importantly climate change followed by
| economic inequality, are very real and absolutely will
| destroy just about everyone's way of life.
| [deleted]
| evil-olive wrote:
| It Could Happen Here recently restarted as a daily podcast,
| after its limited run a few years ago. it's been fascinating
| listening.
|
| Evans has been careful to avoid Doomerism and focus on some of
| the potential for hope and resiliency, such as in local mutual
| aid networks.
|
| he's also been using "the crumbles" rather than "collapse",
| which is a terminology shift I like a lot. "collapse" seems to
| suggest a singular event, whereas what we are more likely to
| see (and are currently already experiencing, I think) is a more
| gradual crumbling of societal institutions.
|
| to paraphrase William Gibson - the collapse is already here,
| it's just unevenly distributed
| CalRobert wrote:
| "crumbles" works well, and seems a lot closer to what we're
| feeling. Personally, I prefer the phrase "collapse is a
| process, not an event".
| alpineidyll3 wrote:
| This is actually fun
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| For me it was quite a disturbing read.
| closeparen wrote:
| It seems surprising that so many collapse ideologies are focused
| on local production and self reliance. I would naively read
| environmental trends as tending to _require_ more
| interdependence: we're going to have significant population
| centers with no arable land and no fresh water. Maybe they'll
| find ways to cooperate and trade for what they need. Maybe
| they'll migrate en masse to better resourced areas. Maybe they'll
| resort to war and plunder. But at any rate there is going to be
| an interaction.
| yann2 wrote:
| Not even one reference to history. Why do that when mindless
| mental masturbation gets upvotes. Misguided people are surrounded
| by misguided people and they are all reinforcing their bullshit.
| wilburTheDog wrote:
| I think, no matter how hard you try, you can't produce something
| like this without it being biased toward your own opinions on the
| topic. And those of us with different opinions would phrase
| things differently. I suppose I would fit in his
| Pessimist/Defeatist category, though I wouldn't call it that.
| (And I guess deniers wouldn't call themselves deniers either.) I
| would probably refer to my own take on collapse as depressive
| realism rooted in observations of climate change. As one
| observation, take the latest IPCC report. U.N.
| Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres described the latest IPCC
| report as "a code red for humanity." "The alarm bells are
| deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas
| emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking
| our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,"
| Guterres said. [1] The more you look the worse it
| gets. We aren't going to be able to reduce atmospheric CO2
| without some sort of drastic uncomfortable change. The lockdowns
| during the pandemic reduced emissions by about 17% at one point.
| But despite that, CO2 in the atmosphere continued to increase.
| Whatever we do has to be more drastic than the pandemic
| lockdowns, and permanent, or it will keep getting worse. I just
| don't see people being willing to go along with that, especially
| those of us in comfortable Western societies. I don't know, is
| that pessimism, defeatism, or realism?
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/09/ipcc-report-un-climate-
| repor...
| FooHentai wrote:
| All good points. Another clear lesson from the pandemic:
| Achieving optimum outcomes is severely bounded by practical
| political realities - Consider if every single country had hard
| locked down, everywhere, for 6+ weeks. Perhaps complete
| elimination could have been achieved. But politically,
| impossible.
|
| That equally applies to climate change as a similar tragedy of
| the commons played out on a longer timescale. So there are some
| learnings to be applied if you're looking, as I think many
| people now are, to identify how things might play out and then
| make your own life choices accordingly.
|
| Something I'm increasingly certain of is that the future will
| be _boring_. By which I mean trends are likely correct but will
| play out over longer timescales than expected. Visions of
| sudden collapse and apocalypse are mostly anxiety-fuelled
| inventions of the mind aimed at spurring action in the present
| day. Reality is more like economic stagnation, decreasing
| freedoms, and continual smaller crises that gradually bring us
| to the predicted future state. Nothing that can be ridden out
| in a bunker with a few years supply of oats.
| ReadEvalPost wrote:
| Notably missing Doomer Optimists who accept the reality and
| inevitability of collapse, while viewing it as an opportunity for
| localist, agrarian communities to rise in the wake.
| some-guy wrote:
| Is this not addressed by the "Right-wing Accelerationists/Dark
| Enlightenment" section?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| No, because that group tends to want a "libertarian"
| pseudofascist capitalist society, not an agrarian one.
| Hokusai wrote:
| "Cottage-core: the fetishization of bucolic and isolated life
| is once again proposed by cottage-core as an escape from
| declining modernity. "
|
| From the article perspective they are in the pessimist section.
| As they are pessimist avoid improving the current state.
| blix wrote:
| But Cottage-core is in the aesthetic section, not the
| pessimist section. I also know quite a few people with this
| general perspective and I don't think any of them would use
| that label. (To reference another comment; this seems like a
| Very Online label)
|
| Ultimately this perspective doesn't neatly fit into any of
| the pidgeonholes the author has created. This is a problem
| with trying to categorize large numbers of humans into
| sequential, unrelated categories.
| danjac wrote:
| Reminds me of the term "cosy catastrophe" (coined by British
| SF author Brian Aldiss):
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CosyCatastrophe
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Anarcho-communism long predates the Doomers and has always had
| similar framing. It was real popular in the late 60s / early
| 70s; the world collapsing is something we've known about for a
| very long time but people have to get fantastically wealthy
| somehow so we keep doing the old thing.
| jhbadger wrote:
| It's popular whenever society seems to be changing too fast
| and people think "going back to the simple life" is the
| solution. Not only was it popular now and in the 1960s, but
| also in the 19th century when people were weirded out by the
| Industrial Revolution. People like Henry David Thoreau in the
| US and William Morris in the UK.
| goatlover wrote:
| Also popular among the Qumran community in ancient
| Palestine. They viewed civilization as fundamentally
| corrupt, and were eagerly anticipating an apocalyptic end
| to it and the coming kingdom of God to restore things to
| their rightful place. Which included a more agrarian
| lifestyle, and less of the modern trappings (for the time).
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This is a Very Online taxonomy; I don't think it incorporates the
| vast majority of normal, not particularly Online people who are
| aware of these problems but aren't spending most of their energy
| on them. The vast majority of people are fundamentally outside of
| this taxonomy because even if they are thinking about ideas
| related to "collapse", it's as a problem someone else is going to
| solve for them. The biggest challenge in climate change (for
| example) is that it's simply happening on too long a timescale
| for the average person to pay much attention to it. That will
| change in the coming decades, but by the time it does, it'll
| probably be too late to avoid the biggest harms.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Do you have sources supporting your statements? They may sound
| common sense to you, but there is considerable ongoing
| scientific inquiry into people's attitudes today, their sense
| of responsibility, and their sense of agency. Maybe you're
| right, but I would go to the effort of reviewing the research
| and giving links before making assertions.
| exolymph wrote:
| This is a casual discussion website, comments often relate
| personal opinions.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Honestly, if the position of the original author is that this
| is representative of everybody, not just Internet People, I
| think it'd be on them to justify that view. They don't quite
| make that claim, though, and so I am not trying to formally
| refute it - I am just making what seems to be a logical note
| given the content as it stands.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I've always found Collapse believers to be composed of mostly
| people from highly developed Western nations. From what I've
| read online, many of these folks cannot visualize a world where
| their society/nation may backslide in a couple aspects (e.g.
| government corruption or infrastructure standards), but still
| continue to function mostly normally. Most of these folks have
| never seen rampant political corruption, low hygiene standards,
| political instability, broken/lacking infrastructure, or
| general unsafety that often comes up in developing nations. The
| West _is_ going through a lot of change/political soul
| searching right now, so it's understandable, but I highly
| suggest visiting developing nations to see how everyday people
| live, succeed, and thrive despite many problems around them.
|
| Even the historic concept of "collapse" is ill-defined. It's
| widely accepted today that the Western Roman Empire (probably
| the most written-about "collapse" event) didn't really collapse
| at once as much as it slowly changed from within and without.
| Is this "linear collapse"? I mean maybe, but it may just be the
| process of change itself.
| michaelpb wrote:
| > Even the historic concept of "collapse" is ill-defined.
| It's widely accepted today that the Western Roman Empire
| (probably the most written-about "collapse" event) didn't
| really collapse at once as much as it slowly changed from
| within and without. Is this "linear collapse"? I mean maybe,
| but it may just be the process of change itself.
|
| I love to point out how the symbolism of many modern
| governments is the result of a sort of cargo cult of Roman
| Republican culture. Government buildings to this day copy the
| dull gray ruins of Roman buildings, just as many 18th/19th
| century governments declared popular authority from a Latin-
| imitating "Senate", filled to the brim with Roman symbolism.
|
| With that in mind, it's not surprising that many today
| believe the 18th/19th century's "fall of Rome" and "barbarian
| invasion" myths as a sort of predictive weak-spot of
| modernity. If you view civilization as a linear path, a story
| of how the intrinsically superior empires of the
| Greek/Macedonians and Romans successively lifted the world
| out of its natural, primitive barbarian state, and the
| shifting power centers of the 3rd-8th century as a "turning
| back of time to the Dark Ages" or linear regression along the
| same path, then the "collapse" narrative is as plain as day.
| This view on history is pure fantasy, of course, which is why
| the collapse narratives set in modern days seem so fantastic
| as well.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I think the only real instance of a widespread collapse of
| civilization was the Late Bronze Age collapse:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
|
| This entailed most urban centers in the Eastern mediterranean
| (besides Egypt and Mesopotamia) being violently destroyed,
| and writing completely disappearing in large regions. And all
| this happening over the course of maybe 50-100 years.
|
| Arguments can be made for the declining Western Roman Empire,
| and collapse of some of the Chinese dynastic states. But as
| you point out, one can rather easily counter argue that this
| wasn't collapse of civilization but rather the collapse of a
| specific hegemonic state and its replacement by several
| smaller competing powers. Civilization still remained: urban
| center and writing didn't disappear. These were collapses of
| _states_ not of civilization.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What about the sudden abandonment of cities in Mesoamerica
| at different periods?
| sk2020 wrote:
| Detroit? It's still here; just a bit dusty.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| That states fell is not disputed. States and
| civilizations fell all the time in the Ancient world.
| This is distinct from the narrative that humanity as a
| whole would collapse simultaneously. As the parent
| comment says, the Late Bronze Age collapse is the closest
| we have to a simultaneous civilization ending event as we
| know in modern history, and it is very much under active
| research.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Agreed. I didn't talk about the Late Bronze Age collapse
| because it's still very much an ongoing topic of research,
| but I definitely agree. You can also draw similar parallels
| to the transition between the Heian court period in Japan
| to the Sengoku Warring States eras as well, as far as the
| collapse/change dichotomy is concerned.
| int_19h wrote:
| This may be true if you restrict yourself to English-speaking
| communities, but there's no shortage of survivalist talk in
| other countries. E.g. Russia has plenty.
| chobeat wrote:
| well, they are already living it, westeners have the
| privilege to believe it's not something that is happening but
| something that will happen in the future and take distance
| from it framing it as a collapse after peak prosperity. Third
| world never had peak prosperity or at least it didn't look
| particularly different from their past. But they are gonna
| starve and migrate too even if they don't call it collapse.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > Third world never had peak prosperity or at least it
| didn't look particularly different from their past
|
| If that's what you legitimately think of the developing
| world, then no wonder you believe in collapse so strongly
| (almost like the inverse of the "noble savage"; a fear of
| letting go of the "Western enlightenment" even if it comes
| from critics of modern Western regimes). Please, go outside
| and experience the world. Life has fundamentally changed
| for most of humanity, except for the occasional isolated
| remote community, over the last 50 years. I urge you to
| define what "peak prosperity" is and how developing nations
| lack it before we discuss what "collapse" is and the loss
| of "peak prosperity".
|
| I have lots of family in developing nations and their lives
| have absolutely, fundamentally changed. It's borderline
| insulting to imply that developing nations still live like
| they did in the past.
| chobeat wrote:
| My mother grew up in southern Europe in conditions that
| were bordering middle-age conditions and now life there
| is completely different.
|
| Prosperity is always relative to the system you're
| immersed in and in a globalist world, your prosperity is
| defined by the prosperity of how people on the other side
| of the world live. Americans can believe they have the
| best living conditions in the world and same can do
| northern Europeans and maybe Japanese too. Let's throw in
| urbanized chinese middle class too. But in developing
| countries they don't have the privilege to believe they
| are in that competition. They are always a province of
| the empire and living in scarcity.
|
| This says nothing about the enormous changes that went on
| pretty much everywhere in the rural parts of every
| country with very few, isolated exceptions.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think you're discussing a very different thing to the
| parent and grandparent comments. Yes, by the standard that
| counts the end of the Roman Empire as a collapse, any given
| nation or union of nations may still collapse and those
| within may starve or migrate; this still won't look like
| any of the post-apocalyptic narratives that represent the
| loudest and most obvious examples of this topic.
|
| I expect that, much like every other community, the loudest
| "collapsers" are merely an embarrassing minority, and
| certainly I hear that the people who stockpile food and
| maintain a strong relationship with their neighbours roll
| their eyes at those who stockpile ammunition and do nothing
| else.
| scottrogowski wrote:
| Yes. This is a "Very Online taxonomy".
|
| While I think it's useful to think about mechanisms of
| collapse, the author seems to have a clear bias towards the
| belief that collapse will happen which feels very non-
| objective.
|
| In my experience, the vast majority of people I interact with
| (maybe 90%+) fall into the author's categorization of "radical
| denier" or "partial denier".
|
| I don't think there's anything "radical" about the belief that
| while things will change, society will go on. But calling the
| belief radical and suggesting that this is a belief only shared
| by Very Evil People (e.g. Koch Brothers) is a disingenuous
| straw man.
|
| For the record, if I had to put myself into this unscientific
| taxonomy, I might be somewhere between a technological and
| economic optimist.
| elihu wrote:
| I suppose it's largely a problem of naming. "Denier" has
| negative connotations, but it's also the most obvious name to
| use. What would be a better, non-pejorative name? Life-will-
| go-on-ists?
|
| The article later refers to an ideology of "eco-fascism"
| which is even more problematic. That seems like a name that
| detractors would apply to a group, not a label that someone
| would self-apply. I don't know what a neutral name would be,
| though.
| lostandbored wrote:
| Yeaahhh, as interesting (and mildly funny) as it is, this a
| very online taxonomy.
|
| Don't really care much for it.
| tharne wrote:
| > The biggest challenge in climate change (for example) is that
| it's simply happening on too long a timescale for the average
| person to pay much attention to it.
|
| I disagree. This may be a problem, but I think the bigger
| problem is one that was described in a post on HN a few weeks
| back. Namely, that most of the folks advocating for action and
| sacrifice on climate change are themselves unwilling to lead by
| example, e.g. stop using air travel, give up or very sharply
| reduce automobile usage, etc.
|
| This leads a lot of people to either 1) Write the whole thing
| off as some BS cooked up by elites or; 2) conclude that no one,
| including those who claim to care most about the issue is
| actually going to do anything about the problem.
|
| You can't have Congressmen and Senators calling climate change
| an "existential threat" while they're hopping on a commercial
| airliner every week to fly back home from DC. While these folks
| may be correct in their assessment of climate change, their own
| behavior completely destroys any credibility they may have had
| on the issue.
| mden wrote:
| I don't buy into the argument that if those people limited
| their travel and consumption then all of the sudden the non-
| believers will start believing. There's just no evidence
| that's an effective way to have societal impact. Not an exact
| parallel but just because people talk about wanting higher
| overall taxes and at the same time don't want to pay more
| than what is required doesn't mean they are hypocritical and
| it doesn't mean that if they did pay more others would
| follow.
| tharne wrote:
| > I don't buy into the argument that if those people
| limited their travel and consumption then all of the sudden
| the non-believers will start believing.
|
| Maybe it would convince folks, maybe it wouldn't, but you'd
| have a chance. By contrast, any effort that involves "Do as
| I say, not as I do", is pretty much _guaranteed_ to fail,
| and rightfully so. Trying to force others to do something
| that you yourself are unwilling to do voluntarily is the
| exact opposite of leadership.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Anyone even vaguely familiar with the science understands
| that we need to cut emissions on a wide scale, and that air
| travel by a few hundred politicians is a meaninglessly small
| fraction of the actual problem. This is essentially a bad
| faith attack on the few people in congress trying to do
| something about climate change. Where is your ire for the
| dozens of Republican congressmen who _don 't believe climate
| change is real_ or _believe the Christian end times will
| happen first_? Please, be serious and don 't engage in
| contrarian purity tests that only serve to set back our
| attempts at mitigation.
| equality_1138 wrote:
| Many would say our political economy is built on insatiable
| consumption, and is therefore incapable of cutting
| emissions to such a scale to materially impact climate
| change. It makes no sense to blame 'Republicans' and/or
| 'Christians' for not trusting every proposed solution to
| these massively complex problems.
| NationalPark wrote:
| It's not that they "don't trust every proposed solution".
| It's that they do not believe the problem is real, and
| therefore do not trust _any_ solution.
| equality_1138 wrote:
| It could be that when someone doesn't trust your
| solution, you call them out for not believing in the
| problem. Logical fallacy.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Or it could be that they say "climate change isn't real"
| in exactly those words.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > Anyone even vaguely familiar with the science understands
| that we need to cut emissions on a wide scale, and that air
| travel by a few hundred politicians is a meaninglessly
| small fraction of the actual problem. This is essentially a
| bad faith attack on the few people in congress trying to do
| something about climate change.
|
| The post you replied to isn't talking about the science,
| but rather the politics. Humans tend to respond badly to
| authority figures saying but not doing, and this is a real
| problem that we need to fix (by electing/creating better
| leaders) in order to meet the requirements of the moment.
|
| So yeah, the total Congress emissions are tiny
| scientifically, but they're rather large politically.
|
| Also, someone I once read highlighted that political
| polarisation increased when Reps could fly back home every
| weekend. Maybe one should require that Senators maintain
| their primary residence in D.C.?
| tharne wrote:
| > Where is your ire for the dozens of Republican
| congressmen who don't believe climate change is real or
| believe the Christian end times will happen first?
|
| Oh, it's there, believe me. Just wasn't part of that
| particular post.
| [deleted]
| kbelder wrote:
| How about your and mine air travel? Meaninglessly small
| fraction of the actual problem?
| NationalPark wrote:
| Indeed, commercial aviation is only something like 3% of
| overall carbon dioxide emissions globally. If you want to
| make a personal difference you would be an order of
| magnitude more effective if you stop commuting in a non-
| electric car or gave up consuming meat when dining in
| restaurants. Expecting individual action to fix this (or
| worse, blaming individual actions for it) isn't going to
| work though. Individual consumption is not the majority
| source of emissions, and it's a bit of a classic
| prisoners dilemma problem anyway, and we know how much
| Americans trust each other these days.
| chobeat wrote:
| I don't know about you, but most of the things in the article
| shape my real world: XR blocks my street, Exxon pollutes my
| air, cyberpunk shapes the aesthetic of art around me, corporate
| advertisements determine what is consumed by people I meet
| with. How is it online? And even if it were online, why do you
| treat as less real? Now most of the societal interactions
| happen online
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| It's a taxonomy of political discourse regarding collapse. It's
| not surprising that it has little to say about people who have
| no political investment in ideas related to collapse.
| cratermoon wrote:
| "Notably, the concept has yet to be claimed by a specific
| political party."
|
| That's not true. The GOP has adopted the both the Christian
| Dominionist apocalyptic rhetoric and the methods of Disaster
| Capitalism. They're doing things like using the pandemic-driven
| spike in crime to push all kinds of anti-democratic policies.
|
| Edit: the article specifically mentions that here: "Right-wing
| Accelerationists/Dark Enlightenment: the collapse of humanity
| will happen, but it is a necessary evolutionary step to free
| Capitalism from the need to support the human community."
| JPKab wrote:
| Your partisan lens is showing here, rather blatantly, along
| with a heavily US-centric tilt.
|
| Do you think the spike in crime is driven by the pandemic? A
| GLOBAL pandemic? Do you think there is a spike in crime in
| other nations as well? Or do you think that maybe, just maybe,
| a radical political movement casting all law enforcement
| officers as bigoted predators may have more to do with it?
|
| I vote Democratic, have my whole life, so I can bash the GOP
| all day long, but acting as if the incredibly massive, and
| corporate sponsored "Defund the Police" movement hasn't had an
| impact on crime is simply irrational and not supported by data.
| The spike in crime in US cities has not been universal, and the
| data clearly shows the cities which cut police budgets and
| predictably lost officers were the worst hit.
| margalabargala wrote:
| What spike in crime? All data I've seen has shown marked,
| consistent decreases in crime. Could you link the data you
| refer to?
| abduhl wrote:
| I think it's currently understood that crime rates in
| aggregate are down because people stayed home during the
| pandemic. So, burglary/mugging/drug dealing and other
| crimes that mostly take place when people are out have
| fallen. On the flip side, crimes driven by annoyances (for
| lack of a better term) or "fun" have gone up: murders,
| domestic violence, car jackings, commercial theft below the
| local prosecution limit, etc.
|
| While drug related crimes have gone down, it's likely that
| criminalized drug behavior has actually gone up but just
| moved off the streets into homes. Along with decreased
| enforcement in light of the current cop hatred, this all
| means that reported crimes are down but criminal behavior
| may actually be up.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Where I live, the murders are about social media and "the
| rap game". It used to be about drugs but weed is legal
| now and there are enough junkies to go around.
|
| The entire criminalization of drugs was invented by the
| Nixon White House as a pretext to oppress black people
| and "hippies". There are official tapes and transcripts
| where it's all described in great detail so this isn't a
| conspiracy theory.
|
| The war on drugs had the side effect of obliterating the
| credibility of the police. Because its motivations were
| so blatant and its punishments so harsh, the greater
| public (yes this includes white people) see the police as
| causing more problems than they solve. In my city, murder
| clearance rates are well below 50% because nobody talks
| to the cops. They're not going to solve any more of them
| by having more cops on the street; we have to think about
| policing differently because the war on drugs has
| distorted it beyond recognition.
| thisiszilff wrote:
| > The entire criminalization of drugs was invented by the
| Nixon White House as a pretext to oppress black people
| and "hippies". There are official tapes and transcripts
| where it's all described in great detail so this isn't a
| conspiracy theory.
|
| When I've looked into this in the past, almost everything
| points to an alleged quote from John Ehrlichman, one of
| Nixon's advisors, with Dan Baum in 1994. The alleged
| quote wasn't published in Baum's 1996 book and only later
| appeared in 2016 for an article in Harper's Bazaar, 16
| years after Ehrlichman's death. On its own it never
| seemed like compelling evidence, especially as Ehrlichman
| was dead when the quote was first published.
|
| Are there any other sources you are familiar with?
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Here's some data from Chicago:
| https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-
| content/uploads/1_PDFsam_D... Murder in particular is way
| up.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Nice cherry. Where'd you pick it? Oh, the police say that
| violent crime is up and we need more policing?
| Whodathunkit.
| nosianu wrote:
| That is one city with its own very specific problems in a
| large country. Are we picking only the data that fit our
| narrative now? What about all the _other_ big cities?
|
| Starting point for an example: "Reported violent crime
| rate in the United States from 1990 to 2019" --
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-
| violent-...
| cratermoon wrote:
| If you really want to compare the so-called violent crime
| crisis with historical data, look back to the 70s and
| 80s, when crime was _really_ bad. There 's a ton of stuff
| out there looking back only two or three decades, which
| is like looking at global temperatures since the 90s and
| saying global warming is fake.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > What spike in crime?
|
| Well, see, that's the subtle part. Is there really a
| crisis-level crime wave (in the US)? There was a sharp
| decrease in crime in the initial months after lockdowns
| went into affect, but a spike in gun purchases. As such,
| homicides, which in the US are overwhelmingly committed
| with guns, are definitely up.
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/us-crime-
| rat...
|
| But it's not anywhere near the historic rates of the '70s.
| You won't know that from reading the "violent crime
| collapse porn", which likes to point to absolute numbers
| (Most murders in 25 years!) while ignoring population and
| other factors.
|
| So my contention is that the collapse has been embraced by
| the reactionary Law and Order types to sow fear and
| uncertainty. This is partly has a pushback against the
| attempts to reform police and partly as a way to push for
| economic austerity as well as a return to racist criminal
| justice policies of the 80s.
| JPKab wrote:
| How about ignoring the fact that a far higher percentage
| of shooting victims survive gunshot wounds now than they
| did in the 70's, which has a significant impact on
| lowering the number of gun deaths, while increasing the
| number of victims with lifelong impairments from their
| wounds.
|
| Or the correlation/causation fallacy of assuming that new
| gun purchases (primarily in the suburbs) drove the spike
| in murders because it's politically inconvenient to
| assume significant departures of police officers in
| cities like Minneapolis might be a more potent
| correlating event to investigate?
|
| 50% of the gun murder victims in the USA are Black, and
| the vast majority of these murders (like all murders in
| the US) involve a perpetrator matching the ethnicity of
| the victim. The human beings who live in these
| neighborhoods feel like their safety has "collapsed", and
| they certainly aren't right wing reactionaries. They just
| don't want every summer holiday weekend to involve kids
| getting shot in crossfire between rival gangs. The
| polling data reveals this rather markedly.
|
| Here's a Gallup poll (a few months after George Floyd's
| murder by Derek Chauvin) which shows that 81% of Black
| Americans want the police presence in their community to
| remain the same or be increased.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-
| police-r...
|
| It's almost as if the ivory tower, academic egghead
| activists who CLAIM to represent Black Americans weren't
| elected and shouldn't be viewed as if they were.
| abduhl wrote:
| The ivory tower, academic egghead activists were elected
| by their own kind (ivory tower, egghead activists) via
| social media and mass media. Like most things related to
| minorities, it doesn't matter what the actual minorities
| want (they're brainwashed and have "internalized" their
| status or whatever) but rather what the majority can get
| using the minority group as a tool. In this case, it's
| budgetary control via so-called police reform/defunding.
| majormajor wrote:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/instead
| -of...
|
| We ALSO shouldn't ignore that behind the black murder
| rate is a pre-defund-the-police failure of the police, as
| a whole, to prioritize crimes against black victims in
| the same way they do against white victims.
|
| "Get rid of police" can be a naive reaction to the newly-
| enabled broader exposure of police racism (violently
| racist cops are no new surprise to minorities!) at the
| same time as "actually, the police are good" can be a
| naive counter-reaction.
|
| (And there are some very good ideas in the details of the
| general "defund" proposals - sending non-lethally-armed
| responders to handle non-violent interactions or traffic
| stops, say, is a good way to avoid needless escalation
| into someone's death, while in no way requiring us to get
| rid of cops that would investigate shootings.)
| majormajor wrote:
| It's so hard to find good data on this in one place. On
| one hand there's a pandemic, on the other hand there's
| police protests, etc. Year by year numbers will be so
| lumpy that you could support tons of narratives, I bet.
|
| I couldn't find month-by-month numbers quickly for some
| of the cities in that article like Chicago or NYC, but
| Baltimore has some:
| https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2020
|
| Interestingly there, the biggest spike during 2020
| happened in May 2020, so generally _before_ the George
| Floyd killing and protests and "defund the police"
| movement.
| cratermoon wrote:
| That's a pretty cherry you've picked.
| majormajor wrote:
| Please be my guest, if you can find month-by-month
| shooting and/or homicide numbers for NYC/Chicago/LA/other
| cities that have seen big 2019->2021 homicide spikes. I
| spent a few minutes trying, but this one the only one I
| could find nicely broken down.
|
| The coarse yearly numbers tell us these crimes have
| increased, they don't let us see how they play out with
| regard to the different things that changed in 2020.
| cratermoon wrote:
| looking at just 2019-2021 _is_ cherry picking. Look back
| to the 70s and 80s if you really want to see that our
| current "crime wave" is nothing more than a made-up
| crisis for pushing a law-and-order agenda.
| majormajor wrote:
| Looking at a potential inflection point where a trend
| reversed, to try to understand it (blip? new trend?
| change caused by change in underlying conditions?) is not
| cherry-picking. It's being responsible.
|
| "It was worse in the 70s" is "the climate is always
| changing"-level deflection.
|
| "It was worse in the 70s" is not a compelling argument
| for a political platform - having nothing meaningful to
| say in response to new events is exactly what would help
| "tough on crime" un-nuanced crackdown politicians
| elected.
| chobeat wrote:
| that's not claiming the collapse for themselves: it's using it
| in conflict with other political and social forces
| cratermoon wrote:
| > using it in conflict
|
| Yes they do claim it for that purpose. Look at the rhetoric
| around the preppers, the bitcoin scammers, the gold buyers,
| and all those zerohedge types: The collapse is coming, we are
| going to use it to take control.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I guess I fall into Accelerated/non-linear collapse pessimism,
| with a hint of eco-fascism as the only option out of the Road
| Warrior post-apocalptic aesthetic. Even as people cheerily
| mention that they expect the population to peak at ten billion, I
| think that's at least an order of magnitude beyond the carrying
| capacity. Plus, those ten billion people? Yeah, the U.S.A. has
| been exporting its lifestyle via movies for a long time -- those
| ten billion people are all going to want American lifestyles.
| They'll want steak, they'll want SUVs and fast fashion. They want
| their own McMansions, not just running water.
| throw0101a wrote:
| For those that would like to know how to rebuild civilization,
| the book _The Knowledge_ by Lewis Dartnell is a handy reference
| on things to know and do. General bibliography:
|
| * http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/bibliography/
|
| Deep dives on particular topics of agriculture, food and
| clothing, substances (charcoal, lime), materials (wood, cement,
| furnaces, glass), medicine, etc:
|
| * http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/further-reading-by-chapter/
|
| See also the more light-hearted _How to Invent Everything: A
| Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler_ by Ryan North:
|
| * https://www.howtoinventeverything.com
|
| Which starts with inventing language (spoken and written), before
| moving to "non-sucky" numbers, the scientific method, and calorie
| surplus.
| pW9GLKxm9taFEhz wrote:
| Also relevant is Long Now's "Manual for Civilization"
|
| https://blog.longnow.org/02014/02/06/manual-for-civilization...
| codeulike wrote:
| Also
|
| _The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY,
| low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy
| fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it
| takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern
| comfort_
|
| https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/
| csbartus wrote:
| Just to put in context, Collapse is one of the three possible
| post-crisis trajectories, beside Recovery and Continuing
| Instability; and it must be triggered first by a Revolutionary
| Situation.
|
| Before worrying about a collapse, we should check if we are in a
| revolutionary situation. And perhaps we are not yet there.
|
| https://peterturchin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/MPF2019....
| vharuck wrote:
| I wish the article provided links or references for each major
| philosophy. I've avoided diving down this rabbit hole for a while
| because I'm already afraid I'm slipping at its edge. But it'd be
| nice to read books or essays explaining the positions.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| The idea of collapse is just fear porn for people that are online
| too much. Kinda sad to see it on a forum like this, a forum
| otherwise devoted to rationality and using words that meaning.
| j_m_b wrote:
| The language of this article is biased and portrays viewpoints
| using various leftist tropes such as use of "deniers", "right
| wing", "alt-right". The article is little more than summary of
| fictional portrayals of future society. Absolute drivel.
| slumpt_ wrote:
| Right wing, alt-right, and "deniers" are all real constructs.
|
| The article is undoubtedly flawed but do at least get your
| ducks in a row.
| JPKab wrote:
| I agree with you on "Right Wing", and with "denier" in the
| sense of climate change, but alt-right has devolved into a
| meaningless label for anyone to the right of Mao. I was
| called "alt-right" by an AI ethics researcher because I asked
| her if she had looked at the actual data on police
| shootings/crime and argued with her response that the data
| released by the FBI UCR (victim reported crime data) was
| fabricated/fraudulent.
|
| I was also called a "denier" on a trip to Orange County,
| California last year because I wasn't wearing a mask while
| walking outside on a boardwalk, by a person who assumed I was
| an anti-masker. (I simply don't wear them outdoors)
| chobeat wrote:
| if people misuse of a specific term in a casual context
| made the term meaningless, we wouldn't be able to speak of
| politics, science or any other specific field. Alt-right
| has a very specific meaning in politics and political
| analysis, regardless of how it's used in a casual context
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| "Alt-right" isn't any sort of established term of art; it
| was first coined in a casual context less than a decade
| ago. I've seen some researchers use it as a kind of
| synonym for "white identity politics", but it seems to me
| that they're doing so specifically because of the casual
| usage, not because the term is particularly useful to
| them.
| JPKab wrote:
| I noticed this as well, and as I said in another comment, I've
| voted Democratic my entire life.
|
| The "Reformist" category, if following the same logic as the
| "Right Wing Accelerationist" category, should have identified
| this group as being "Left Wing Reformist", because literally
| every single group listed as an example is a radical
| leftist/collectivist political movement.
|
| I'm a center-left liberal, so my own biases (and dislike of
| radical leftists who have hijacked my political party) are
| likely influencing my judgement of this.
| grive wrote:
| You are talking of "leftist tropes" such as the "right wing"? I
| mean, that's just the pot calling the kettle black, at a
| minimum right?
|
| There are climate derniers. There is a right political wing in
| America. There is an alt-right. They are all engaging in talks
| and rhetoric about climate change. It's not "leftist trope" to
| describe their position.
|
| > The article is little more than summary of fictional
| portrayals of future society.
|
| The article describes several types of collapses as envisioned
| by several ideologies. It seems useful to map those ideologies
| and their responses toward what they perceive as a threat to
| our civilisation.
|
| You seem extremely biased yourself so of course you won't be
| open to these views.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| There is no "alt-right"; they're just the far right. "Alt-
| right" was just cool new branding for the same
| ethnonationalist crap that's always been around.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| It is somewhat vacuous but not for that reason.
| thriftwy wrote:
| How about Soft Landing expectation?
|
| Neither optimistic nor pessimistic, there will be a lot of issues
| in many countries, a lot of people will have to live with worse
| life quality (as they already do since 1970s in many places), but
| the life will generally go on as usual. Expect a rebound in 2nd
| half of XXI century.
|
| Collapse will not likely happen, but even if it did, there's the
| experience of collapse of USSR which offers a lot of insights.
| The chief of which, humans can take a lot of beating before they
| actually start to die.
| cryonics wrote:
| Very not-nuanced. This article doesn't seem to be based in any
| kind of factual reality. It relegates the idea that rapid climate
| collapse is inevitable to lobbyist groups, when anyone who's read
| any of IPCC's reports would agree with their own conclusions that
| the collapse is gradual and somewhat arbitrary in its
| checkpoints. It restricts the "future" to a Malthusian dichotomy
| where we either have perfection or some kind of post-apocaplyptic
| agrarian society.
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