It made me wonder though, who here legitimately thinks their society is nearing collapse? Which society? By which measures are you evaluating the situation?
Do you feel you have any control over the collapse, or a participation mandate at any level? How much does it seem to parallel your current personal life situation? Are things similarly chaotic, or do you find yourself at peace?
Just curious.
He sees echos of behavior patterns like a fractal, so tiny patterns of behaviors in mice emerge as patterns in larger human society. He has said that he thinks human societies are just another organism that lives, ages, and dies. He doesn't really prep or anything, just expects he and most people he knows to die in food riots sometime in his life. He doesn't even bother prepping (so he says) because such a collapse likely would come from a way that he can't expect and wouldn't likely survive anyway. He realizes there isn't enough ammo to hold off millions of starving people, and the people who survive likely would do so accidentally or through freak luck, but a new society would emerge again in a few generations to repeat the cycle again. Fun guy, my friend.
It took me a long time to realize that this is how America works: things that didn't work or that nobody wants are allowed to fail, and this clearing out of the underbrush is what allows new things to come forth. Contrast this with Europe, where things like unprofitable state enterprises are propped up essentially forever, sucking away capital and people that could be doing something useful instead.
But this was a long, long time ago. These days I don't hold out much hope for the US or for Europe: humanity's future is in Asia.
Some mechanisms that seem obvious to me are overpopulation and laws restricting personal freedom (e.g. laws on sexuality or laws on drug use). The 1 child policy is an example of a (failed?) attempt at addressing the 1st issue.
The policies pf cause vary by country (developed, developing), for example for GDP:
Japan's "annual forecast is +3.6% in 2021, and +2.2% in 2022". [0]
The UN's Sustainable Development Goal [1] sets "For the least developed countries, the economic target is to attain at least a 7 percent annual growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP)."
Long time ago I remember watching a video by a prof, who asked a local council what would be the desirable growth (in range 1%-10%). The council agreed that 5% is reasonable. Here I found the video [2].
[0] https://www.ubs.com/global/en/investment-bank/in-focus/2020/...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_8
(Honesty and kindness are very important, as are the principles underlying the US Constitution. And more.)
But the caveat here is, as with the ants, you must have a goto list of things to do. When I was younger I had no idea what I wanted to do so the mantra worked terribly. But the older I have gotten the list of things to do has grown. So like the ant no matter what happens theres always something to do.
Since you ask:
* https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/
The more pratically-minded lean more towards:
* https://old.reddit.com/r/preppers/
There's a certain minimum effort that most people should probably do (even if you don't live in a earthquake zone or hurricane area)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/us/crime-poverty-pandemic...
Indeed, it seems passive-aggressive to just post this link without any further commentary.
Not exactly, but I can completely see why some people think so.
What's happening fundamentally is that the boomers are on the verge of retirement. The worker shortage of 2030 is set in stone and the only way to mitigate the damage is very large amounts of immigration.
the problem is that housing is limited, worker shortage means housing wont be built to required capacity, and our top industries are becoming parasitic at best. This creates political pressure.
Then add in the consequences, women entering the workforce has been wonderful but not for the average worker. Supply increased by demand decreased because political policy of globalism shipped jobs out of the country. Thus we have income inequality that's out of control. We also have historic lows of marriage and births.
The blame is 100% in the hands of the government. you then look at the government's failure and it's a disaster. So many federal governments are functionally bankrupt and the debt is higher than ever. the government cant afford to fix their mistakes.
What's the point of society? It's the humans. We have failed in this regard. Will it be collapse?
Nope, but I know what's coming to prevent the collapse. the governments know how to do this each time.
Imagine the pandemic government response as a large scale societal immune response. Inner city violence as a form of inflammation...
For that matter, every tinpot dictator and would be terrorist in the world could easily get their hands on this virus, store it for a few years until immunity has worn off and we don't have huge stockpiles of a vaccine, then purposefully release it in a dozen major cities at once, it would spread for a couple of weeks before being noticed.
A civilization is generally started by great people that put grand ideals into its foundation. A sign of such founders is their borderline unbelievable holiness, that makes them a legend. During its lifespan, great minds get replaced by small minds. The typical lifespan is about a million years, but maybe this time things move a lot quicker. The latter are attracted not to the ideals, but to the earthly things, such as shiny metals and power over others. I believe we are here now. In all cases, such people eventually discover the secret of black magic (I know, many would cough here) and the dark age begins. A sign of that phase is cyclopic brutalistic architecture that worships human body (that's an important detail). We've had a glimpse into that already: nazism. We seem to be moving rapidly in that direction: powerful dictatorships are plenty, while democracies are few. Another sign of that phase is abandoning liberty and reason, because the evil (the dark side of every human) has neither, and embracing chaos and fatalism. Example: the idea that voting doesn't matter, whether it's technically true or not. The terminal stage of every big civilization is a collapse into a sort of a black hole: people are paralyzed by fear and hate, the dominating ideology is a dark cult. There's no coming back from that stage, as that kind of dark cult has real power. At this point, the civilization always gets an external "help" that wipes everything out, so the few survivors could start it over, but now at the next level.