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A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

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Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#151

Post by cyberbanjo »

codeulike wrote: post #58
throw0101a wrote: post #26

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-readi…

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/

Only four of fifty or something machines are finished designed and build able today.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#152

Post by thr0wawayaway »

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 that you're lumping together two kinds of collapse "believers" together - one for which "collapse" means the collapse of civilization, and the other for which that word means the collapse of their country/state. The latter is much more likely, and I think that fretters of that kind are more prevalent than you think - I probably have six friends who are of the latter kind, and only one of the former.

> The West _is_ going through a lot of change/political soul searching right now

I believe that you're understating the situation a bit - at least, here in the United States, we're beginning to see markers of the kind of "cultural revolution" that happened in Russia in the 1910's and China in the 1960's - and while neither of those states have collapsed, exactly, tens of millions of innocent people were killed and rather unpleasant governments installed as a result.

While categorically different from total civilization collapse, I don't blame my fellow Americans for starting to get nervous and start prepping like a high-school senior.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#153

Post by jdkee »

narrator wrote: post #105

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 everyo…

Relevant as well:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-his...

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#154

Post by nemo44x »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #142
nemo44x wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where you responded to someone who said "if you feel this way do it" not with "I wasn't talking about myself!!" but with "I can't"

I mean, I guess you missed the point of my original comment. I juxtaposed Taliban fighters in an impoverished and apparently hopeless place with wealthy and prosperous western civilization and how the man sitting in his home with creature comforts but yet feeling without purpose actually has it right in front of him if only he’s willing to work at it for decades and dedicate himself to something meaningful. That it must fill them with envy that these fighters managed to find a way to make their life meaningful within the context of their situation but yet the man who is in a far more prosperous and peaceful place somehow can’t and spends his days in a fantasy about the collapse of civilization much like the situation in Afghanistan actually has been for 40 years.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#155

Post by mbrodersen »

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…

Completely agree. It is actually very hard to collapse a modern Western society. It is too large, too complex, and have millions of people working to stabilise/fix problems.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#156

Post by monkeycantype »

I grew up on a farm, my dad was a remote developer when that meant tapes in the mail and a mainframe in the shed. When my naivety and I emerged from this insulated cocoon into the the mess of the world, I couldn’t believe that something as reckless and corrupted and chaotic as our civilization could possibly continue beyond a year or two. Because our genius exists at the individual level, we are horribly unsophisticated in our collective behaviour, and terrible at even comprehending our collective behaviour. I think /r/collapse may not be factually rigorous, but accurately represents sublime horror of individuals being shattered by staring into the incomprehensible abyss of of mass human activity

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#157

Post by inglor_cz »

Manuel_D wrote: post #88
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…

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…

Decline of the Western Roman Empire was, in fact, at least regional collapse of civilization. Cities almost disappeared or at least shrunk considerably, including Rome, which peaked at 1 million people under Augustus, but had only 20-30 thousand people in the Early Middle Ages; other cities of the WRE fared even worse.

Literate secular class, including Roman state bureaucracy, disappeared as well, and with it large scale planning, monetary economy, large construction projects or most of long distance trade. Only the Church still maintained reading and writing, but that was a very small group of people.

All of this may not fulfill your definition of collapse of civilization, but I believe that a Roman citizen of 2nd century AD, suddenly transported to the 8th century, would be aghast seeing what became of his former home. Even cattle shrunk to half its former size and crop yields diminished, as agricultural best practices were forgotten.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#158

Post by inglor_cz »

ben_w wrote: post #79
chobeat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

The city of Rome went from 1 million people to 20-30 thousand. Literally 97-98 % shrinkage.

If the same happened to New York, with the subway abandoned, whole neighbourhoods overgrown by poison ivy and the skyscrapers collapsing from lack of maintenance, "post-apocalyptic" would probably be a fitting word.

I am not sure how you can call such a massive loss of complexity and population something else than a collapse.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#159

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#160

Post by inglor_cz »

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…

"Do as I say, not as I do" is terrible politics. Politics is about leading other humans, in this case leading them to make less comfortable choices.
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