Let’s Talk Collapse
letstalkthis.com
letstalkthis.com
If we start taking collapse as inevitable, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
https://davidgalbraith.org/trivia/graph-of-the-population-of...
The etymology of Zhongguo IIRC is "central city". Was this the actual name of an actual city that then became the name for the concept of a central city/state as dynasties and rules changed? Is it analogous as if the word Roma had become a generic term for state in european languages and now you'd just call the United Romas of America?
中国 (Zhōngguó) is middle country/state/nation, not city.
I don't think Chinese is that flexible. The only thing I can think of is Chengdu (which is not really related): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu#Name
In the 1960's, China had the Great Famine followed by the purges of the Cultural Revolution. So arguably the current period of stability has not even been that long.
This. This is the biggest issue I have with r/collapse and similar crowds. If collapse isn't inevitable, then they aren't helping, and they sure as all heck aren't able to prove that it is inevitable.
This mindset reminds me of certain videos I've seen on YouTube where some people have been proposing just letting society collapse due to global warming and founding an anarchist society in the ashes. Spoiler alert: If everyone thought like this, society in the first world probably would continue, but you'd kill millions upon millions of people in the third world.
We give things names, we build frames around things to better organize the knowledge, and for a good reason! But oftentimes the reality, as lived through in the moment, is far more blurred and messy.
Civilizations exist in the consensual system of abstractions we have created to define our reality, structure our thinking and guide our evolution. We can and should reason about that system, since we operate bound by its constraints, and not Out in the formless void.
Imagine a stripe colored in white which after at some point transitions gradually into black. Let's also say that when it's white it's 100% white and when it's black it's 100% black.
It's hard to say when it started transitioning and when it ended, but if you your probe points are far enough from the transition you can say a transition actually occurred.
Of course it is not inevitable. I remember reading Elie Wiesel, and particularly one remark "this thing can't happen in the middle of the 20th century". Almost a century later, and we feel a bit detached: there's nothing special about the middle of the 20th century. Well, guess what, there's nothing special about the middle of the 21st century either. Atrocities similar to what happened 100 or 200 years ago are still possible. Weird social dynamics are still possible. 6th of January '21 is just such an example.
I'm personally thankful that in my lifetime there was no world war, but I don't take it for granted that a worldwide calamity is impossible in the next few decades.
I have one friend who's a prepper. His basement is full of ammo, weapons and food, and he maintains it (rotates supplies etc). He doesn't talk about it (good opsec!) and is otherwise perfectly normal and rational and a very nice person. If you visited his house you'd never know.
His wife thinks it's crazy and laughs about it, but otherwise their relationship is great so who knows...perhaps she agrees but is embarrassed to admit it?
He lives in the middle of the suburbs, not out in the boonies. I'd bet several dozen HNers know him personally.
It is an opportunity cost though. What else would you rather do with the time and resources it takes to set that up and maintain it? Everybody is free to pick their hobby though!
1. Having enough supplies to get through a few months of uncertainty w/o needing the outside world. This makes sense to me: natural disaster, a bigger-badder pandemic, etc.
2. Ammo, weapons, and food isn't rational to me simply because if things get so bad you need that stuff, you're screwed anyway. Nothing in your house is going to help you when the people who also need that stuff find out you have it. Any violent unrest is going to outgun you very quickly.
Ideally we all work towards a world where that isn't a fear for people. Not to be naive but there are real questions that we face regularly (e.g. at the ballot box) that have a bearing on this that is much bigger than trying to insulate yourself or your family from a broad-based slip into chaos.
If things are so bad that you need six months' of supplies....well presumably the crisis will be longer than six months.
As for guns, as I said my buddy has good opsec -- he never talks about this, so unless you're the kind of friend who would end up in his basement for some reason you'd never know. But the preppers I casually run into (mostly at shooting ranges) always seem to be the types whose homes would be worth invading if there were a crisis and you needed firearms!
In his case the motivation was he had a degenerative disease. So, I can understand that for him the inevitable end was very real. I still think of him as a reasonable person in unreasonable circumstances.
I eventually realized I can't change anything about it my worrying about it doesn't do anything, and realistically there is nothing I can really do to prepare for the total collapse of civilization so I try and just have 2-3 months of food and water on hand, grow a garden, try and find a way to get solar and a diesel backup generator, try and stockpile medicine when I can, etc. My goal is just 2-3 months of each thing in case there was a natural disaster or I lost my job and I put the rest of it in the hands of God.
If civilizations burns to the ground then I'll do my best to survive while also doing my best to help other people. After all to quote Brandon Sanderson "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination."I'll die one way or another, so why stress about all the ways that can happen, especially when I can't do anything about it. I just live my life the best I can and hope things work out.
What I like about this description is that it mentions "over a considerable area". Collapse has happened historically over a limited part of the world at a time. It is this "collapses" that allow neighboring civilizations to thrive. The Ottoman Empire would have not existed without the "collapse" of Rome.
When we think about culture we get into the Theseus ship problem. When the Roman civilization ended and the next one started. What happens if we stop classifying civilizations as something named and concrete and instead we see it as a fluid movement of power between regions and ideologies?
Collapse is possible, ask the dinosaurs. But, when I read articles like this one where the stages from 1 to 4 are about money and power I get suspicious that it can be more about a change of rulers, a collapse of a ruling class, more than what we usually refer as collapse.
> Collapse can occur at different times for different people. You may never quite know that collapse has happened, but you will know that it has happened to you personally, or to your family, or to your town. The big picture may not come together until much later, thanks to the efforts of historians.
I think that this part goes a little on that direction. The "collapse" is more an label for a period that a personal experience for most people in the period.
> Collapse is certainly inevitable if we continue down our default path.
I cannot agree on this as stated. "our default path" means the current leadership priorities and mindset. But part of humanity "default path" is adaptation. In any society you have followers, you have nonconformists, cheaters and heroes. If "everything continues likes it is today" that will be the biggest change in human history, as it never does.
> How do I talk to others about collapse?
You don't. Collapse wants to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you do is you talk with others about the challenges of the future and how to solve them, we are good at that. Let's leave "Collapse" for science fiction movies were it belongs.
I think we're seeing a glimpse of that with the supply chain crisis the world is having right now. "Shortages that cause shortages that cause shortages"
Supply chains are adjusting... for now.
But overall, the most notable thing is that when the fragility and/or decay of a system is revealed, nothing fundamentally changes. The giant ship that got stuck in the Suez? No indication measures are being taken to make the world economy more resilient. California's fire problem is still being met with piecemeal measures, etc.
The Tainter reference in the article is especially. Fundamentally fragility comes when elites based their power on particular social forms and social forms gradually become maladaptive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Area_Development_Pr...
Ships can and did take alternate routes when the canal was blocked. That increases time and cost but not catastrophically so.
The alternative viewpoint is that it was demonstrated it is resilient (enough). The worst case scenario was shown to be some incremental cost added to shipping by going the long way, not everybody starving to death, or even a recession.
I'm not too worried about it. Most collapses are slow and drawn out.
You'd enjoy this then
You can have productivist communism (marxism of sort) where the mean of production are owned by those who use them. Worker-owned companies and in fact small startups without VC money (those exist) are marxist in nature as long as every new worker is offered a share.
I saw an increase in worker-owned companies in my country, and i think it's the same in the US, is this what you mean by communist incursions in the west?
Or are you talking about another form of communism (anarchism maybe?)
(edit): to be transparent, i'm for a form of communism where the workers own a percentage of a company. whether it's 25%, 49% or 51% is up for debate and i don't care if the percentage is low.
No idea why people are so fucking afraid of being handled more humanly by their governments. Which is what most modern communist parties in Europe are trying to do.
So, the comment above emphasizes the dangers of... fascism (at least some mysterious sort of it, since fascism requires industrial workers).
> another form of communism (anarchism maybe?)
There is no such thing, communist system necessitates a totalitarian state.
Man, i just typed "communism definition" for the first sentence, and i've read Marx (And Hegel, and Adam Smith) for my interpretation of Marxism. And that's true that i pass over the revolutionnary talking points, class war, and violence against property as a mean of expression. I do think they are good points, even if i disagree with Marx interpretation of the French revolution in particular (he constructed is opinion on an already constructed, "false" history), and more generally Marx vision of revolutions is romantic and written within his time. I don't think someone deconstructed Marx yet, but he should be.
> neither of them turned workers into shareholders
So how to you read "the workers should own their means of production" in the modern time? Do you think it is Fascism?
Fascism: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism
Nothing to do with workers. "Far-right" ideologies in the 19th/20th century all worked around the same set of idea:
* Our nation/ our folks are better than the others (more clever, more hardworking, better history...) * But we're not the best nation/folks in the world * Hence, there is a cabal against us, lead by (the Jews, the French, the colonials powers... ) * To fight them, we need a strong man/leadership.
Difference between them are how they are organized. Fascism believe in a strong, central power and a strong hierarchy, strong and hard judiciary system, whereas nazism have a more decentralized vision and liked competition between actors, with less rigid rules. Japan had a bit of both, or rather, was a fascist nation with a stronger separation between civil and military power.
Also, you can be fascist and have productive communism.
> There is no such thing, communist system necessitates a totalitarian state.
Yeah, no. Read Proudhon first, then Bakounine maybe? I think Kropotkin have strong words against Bolcheviks, and someone told me it was a great critic of Bakounine (did not read him yet, i'm into the 1730-1850, especially now that university historians are published and easily accessible)
Forgive me if I'm a little sceptical about any prediction beyond 5 years...