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A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

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Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#121

Post by Karrot_Kream »

ben_w wrote: post #106
chobeat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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…

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#122

Post by edrxty »

CalRobert wrote: post #117
edrxty wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#123

Post by i_haz_rabies »

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 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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#124

Post by lazyasciiart »

equality_1138 wrote: post #113
NationalPark wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It could be that when someone doesn't trust your solution, you call them out for not believing in the problem. Logical fallacy.

Or it could be that they say "climate change isn't real" in exactly those words.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#125

Post by lazyasciiart »

nemo44x wrote: post #98
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#126

Post by cbHXBY1D »

CalRobert wrote: post #10

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/

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#127

Post by Karrot_Kream »

chobeat wrote: post #60
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#128

Post by nemo44x »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #125
nemo44x wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#129

Post by int_19h »

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…

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#130

Post by prewett »

apsec112 wrote: post #115
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…

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?

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.
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