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

111–120 of 176 posts

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#111

Post by NationalPark »

equality_1138 wrote: post #94
NationalPark wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many would say our political economy is built on insatiable consumption, and is therefore incapable of cutting emissions to such a scale to materially impact climate change. It makes no sense to blame 'Republicans' and/or 'Christians' for not trusting every proposed solution to these massively complex problems.

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#112

Post by csbartus »

Just to put in context, Collapse is one of the three possible post-crisis trajectories, beside Recovery and Continuing Instability; and it must be triggered first by a Revolutionary Situation.

Before worrying about a collapse, we should check if we are in a revolutionary situation. And perhaps we are not yet there.

https://peterturchin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/MPF2019....

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#113

Post by equality_1138 »

NationalPark wrote: post #111
equality_1138 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many would say our political economy is built on insatiable consumption, and is therefore incapable of cutting emissions to such a scale to materially impact climate change. It makes no sense to blame 'Republicans' and/or 'Christians' for not trusting every proposed solution to these massively complex problems.

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#114

Post by CalRobert »

evil-olive wrote: post #104
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/

It Could Happen Here recently restarted as a daily podcast, after its limited run a few years ago. it's been fascinating listening. Evans has been careful to avoid Doomerism and focus on some of the potential for hope and resiliency, such as in local mutual aid networks. he's also been using "the crumbles" rather than "collapse", which is a terminology shift I like a lot. "collapse" seems to suggest a singular event,…

"crumbles" works well, and seems a lot closer to what we're feeling. Personally, I prefer the phrase "collapse is a process, not an event".

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#115

Post by apsec112 »

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?

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#116

Post by closeparen »

It seems surprising that so many collapse ideologies are focused on local production and self reliance. I would naively read environmental trends as tending to require more interdependence: we’re going to have significant population centers with no arable land and no fresh water. Maybe they’ll find ways to cooperate and trade for what they need. Maybe they’ll migrate en masse to better resourced areas. Maybe they’ll resort to war and plunder. But at any rate there is going to be an interaction.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#117

Post by CalRobert »

edrxty wrote: post #33
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/

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.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#118

Post by papito »

gspr wrote: post #50
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!

How is it ironic to be building doomsday bunkers in the society most likely to be one of the last to fold? It seems like exactly the place to build one, if one were looking to.

It's ironic because these people have no problem shitting where they eat, moving on to a place that has not been defiled yet but their riches and absolute lack of moral compass.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...

Supplemental reading:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-trump...

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#119

Post by Karrot_Kream »

derbOac wrote: post #103
Manuel_D wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree it's probably escapism, maybe due to life being unfulfilling, but I'm not sure boredom is driving it. I suspect a lot of people of different political inclinations are deeply dissatisfied, and feel helpless. So they turn to collapse theories of different sorts. I really wish there was a good way of tracking actual sentiment about collapse, and indicators of societal upheaval, to better understand how things r…

> It is a pandemic, so there's that, but there's been similar things in my lifetime that didn't lead to quite so much collapse narrative.

Yet despite all of the rhetoric around the pandemic throughout the entire world, very little has functionally changed politically. While the pandemic most certainly exposed many problems throughout world governments, the fact that no major change (e.g. revolution, energy collapse, etc) has actually happened is a testament to the world's current status quo.

> Maybe things were so good or stable-seeming before that returning to some kind of historical norm with regard to instability factors is bringing things back to a baseline with collapse narrative?

The world was a lot less connected before. Now we see the pain around us instantly through shared photos, Twitter, and the 24 hour news cycle. In the past you could go months without realizing that a major conflict was occurring, especially in less connected parts of the world.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#120

Post by CorruptedArc »

This misses whole primary subsets of ideologies and doomers, glosses most Libertarian groups which are probably the most paranoid about such events. Seeming to focus too hard at the near non-existant extremes like EcoFash & EcoCommies and really never adjusts back towards a realistic middle which comes in any crisis.
Post reply on HN