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Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

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Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#111

Post by nebula8804 »

enriquto wrote: post #103
eplanit wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US citizen, I've been wondering for almost 10 years now if we're edging towards a new civil war. In the past 5 or so, I've been worrying almost equally about the state of global affairs setting the stage for potential world war. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have been in a relatively stable world (9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan notwithstanding -- none of them world war scale), but it now feels ever les…

> My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war, whereby they win WWIII without ever firing a shot. How is this a conspiracy theory and how is this a bad thing? The so-called Cold War (i.e., WWIII) was won by the USA "without ever firing a shot", by exactly the same method: sowing division within the socialist bloc. Do you think that the U.S.-influenced divisi…

Some would argue the actions of the US in Afghanistan during the Cold War led to 9/11 as blowback. That one event permanently altered the US's path and helped to show that the empire is declining.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#112

Post by smnplk »

Swizec wrote: post #67
muzani wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic is the end of a civilization, not the world. Plenty of civilizations have collapsed in the last 20 centuries, but it depends on how you define a collapse. The fall of the Roman and Aztec empires would be the benchmarks. Would we also consider the more recent Nazi Germany or Ottoman Empire falls as collapses?

The Habsburg Empire also fell in 1918. British Empire collapsed over the 20th century, and what happened to the Holy Roman Empire? Oh and don’t forget the French Empire fell in the 1700’s. But does that count or did thet just evolve into a new form?

That's just the collapse of social structures, not civilizations.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#113

Post by Aunche »

kortilla wrote: post #77
dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea that's not a conspiracy theory at all. CCP/Russia most definitely have heavily targeted campaigns to sow disunity via the whole "USA is a dumpster fire" and "we're so divided" nonsense all over social media sites like FB/Twitter and Reddit. Of course Reddit being Reddit and so forth you get regular Americans gobbling it up and amplifying. Even worse when late-night hosts with big audiences do it. The strength of…

> To be honest I sometimes wonder why the US gov't doesn't put CCP/Russia on blast and make Americans more aware of this. Because CCP/Russia have already incorporated this into their disinformation campaigns. Anything anti-china is attacked as racist/nationalist. It got so radioactive that the government had to change the pattern they used to name pandemics.

I'm with you that Chinese/Russian propaganda is a real thing, but your example is ridiculous.

> Anything anti-china is attacked as racist/nationalist.

This response always comes up when someone tries to point out racist and nationalist anti-china motivations, so clearly this argument is propaganda as well /s.

> It got so radioactive that the government had to change the pattern they used to name pandemics.

The Spanish Flu was named that way precisely so everyone would blame Spain. The participants of WWI censored any mention of the pandemic until the war was over, so Spain served as a convenient scapegoat.

This paper published by Harvard is an analysis of actual CCP propaganda tactics [1]. Arguing with people online about an issue you dislike just brings more attention to it. Instead, propaganda generally serves to distract. The average Redditor has no direct impact foreign policy in China, but they can riled up enough to cause politicians to focus on placating them rather than geopolitics. Indeed, if you observe the Russian propaganda ads on Facebook, they have nothing to do with Russia [2]. They're simply meant to sow discord.

[1] https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf

[2] https://cbsnews.com/media/russian-ads-on-facebook-a-gallery/

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#115

Post by ralph84 »

dane-pgp wrote: post #94
kortilla wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest I sometimes wonder why the US gov't doesn't put CCP/Russia on blast and make Americans more aware of this. Because CCP/Russia have already incorporated this into their disinformation campaigns. Anything anti-china is attacked as racist/nationalist. It got so radioactive that the government had to change the pattern they used to name pandemics.

> the pattern they used to name pandemics. What pattern is that, exactly? Looking at the Wikipedia list of worldwide pandemics with more than 1 million deaths[0], only two were named after places, and one of those ("Spanish flu") was the result of wartime misinformation and/or racism. Admittedly the other example on that list is "Hong Kong flu" from 1968–1969, but there are other recent outbreaks which are not includ…

Here are the viruses targeted by this year's flu vaccine. Since the flu hasn't been politicized yet they're still using places in the names.

A/Victoria/2570/2019 or A/Wisconsin/588/2019

A/Cambodia/e0826360/2020

B/Washington/02/2019

B/Phuket/3073/2013

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#116

Post by djleni »

thestu wrote: post #49
BurningFrog wrote: post #26

I'm an amateur historian at best, but I'm not aware of any era that has not expected the world to end soon. The Christians have done it for 20 centuries now, as one example. During my life, it has always been a common expectation, though the expected cause has shifted a few times. My hunch is that maybe we're hard wired to expect the world to end, for some undiscovered reason. Again, I remind you of my amateur status…

This is my general feeling as well. People enjoy catastrophizing, and also fail to appreciate that we as a species are actually fairly good at solving problems.

I think that’s a fair argument about the past, but the last 200 years are so incredibly different than the 6000 before them I don’t know that it will hold.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#117

Post by furyg3 »

TheBlight wrote: post #10
mikewarot wrote: post #6

Of course we are, this too shall pass. There is a constant struggle to keep things afloat, people seem to forget that at times, especially the rent seeking class who place little to no value on infrastructure, both physical and societal. If we get another FDR style reset, things should be good for a generation or two, if not... the horrors of history will rhyme once again. Edit/Update: The New Deal provided a social…

FDR's initiative didn't provide any reset. WW2 was responsible for that.

Yes, the 'great levelers' which seriously reduced income inequality were the Plague, the Black Death, and the two World Wars.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/19/histo... https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B01M34NBLZ&preview=new...

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#118

Post by 99_00 »

fractalb wrote: post #79
99_00 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough What does it mean for the "working population" to "crash"? In the West and the rest of the world, those with the lowest income have the highest birth rate. So it can't mean a decrease in population due to low birth rate.

But they don't have better health, education, and life expectancy. So they can't make the rich any richer. And at the same time, they will continue to become poorer.

Why do they need better anything to avoid civilizations collapse? Why do the rich need to get richer to avoid civilizations collapse?

If the status quo was maintained civilization would not be in danger.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#119

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

dane-pgp wrote: post #94
kortilla wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest I sometimes wonder why the US gov't doesn't put CCP/Russia on blast and make Americans more aware of this. Because CCP/Russia have already incorporated this into their disinformation campaigns. Anything anti-china is attacked as racist/nationalist. It got so radioactive that the government had to change the pattern they used to name pandemics.

> the pattern they used to name pandemics. What pattern is that, exactly? Looking at the Wikipedia list of worldwide pandemics with more than 1 million deaths[0], only two were named after places, and one of those ("Spanish flu") was the result of wartime misinformation and/or racism. Admittedly the other example on that list is "Hong Kong flu" from 1968–1969, but there are other recent outbreaks which are not includ…

> What pattern is that, exactly?

That pattern used now (e.g. for COVID-19) is this:

World Health Organization Best Practices for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases (2015)

https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/163636/WHO_...

This is an improvement, as they note, on names that "provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities". The world has moved on since the "Spanish Flu" was named.

But I think that saying "the government had to change the pattern they used to name pandemics [because of China specifically]" is likely a misattribution and oversimplification of these guidelines.

The idea that "the government names pandemics" is both too general - a government is a huge diverse structure, if this was a governmental role, some named health body within it would have this responsibility; and also too specific - "the" government? which country's government would take on that role?

And it's not accurate - this is not any one country's government's role. Point of fact, COVID-19 was named by WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#120

Post by bob_roberts »

torstenvl wrote: post #86
eplanit wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US citizen, I've been wondering for almost 10 years now if we're edging towards a new civil war. In the past 5 or so, I've been worrying almost equally about the state of global affairs setting the stage for potential world war. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have been in a relatively stable world (9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan notwithstanding -- none of them world war scale), but it now feels ever les…

In my view, the primary reason we are edging toward a new civil war is that politicians have decided to wield the law as a weapon in the growing urban/rural cultural divide. Classical liberalism is a necessity for pluralism, and pluralism is necessary for a country as diverse as the United States to survive. As soon as you drop "live and let live" as a fundamental principle and start trying to micromanage personal ch…

> traditional pronouns

Nobody is banning traditional pronouns.

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