Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

write.as

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 176 posts

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#81

Post by [deleted] »

NationalPark wrote: post #68
tharne wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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…

[deleted]

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#82

Post by kbelder »

NationalPark wrote: post #68
tharne wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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…

How about your and mine air travel? Meaninglessly small fraction of the actual problem?

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#83

Post by vharuck »

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#84

Post by fallingfrog »

papito wrote: post #30

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!

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#85

Post by fallingfrog »

j_m_b wrote: post #4

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.

It is somewhat vacuous but not for that reason.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#86

Post by Manuel_D »

paraph1n wrote: post #75
Manuel_D wrote: post #69

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 month…

Not sure if you read the article, but both you and the redditor you are describing fit archetypes explicitly called out by the author.

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#87

Post by nemo44x »

Manuel_D wrote: post #74
skillpass wrote: post #66

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…

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 both…

> 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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#88

Post by Manuel_D »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #57
ivraatiems wrote: post #23

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 chall…

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 hy…

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#89

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

NationalPark wrote: post #68
tharne wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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…

> 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.?

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#90

Post by tharne »

NationalPark wrote: post #68
tharne wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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…

> 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.

Post reply on HN