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On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

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Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#121

Post by _heimdall »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #102
_heimdall wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion these types of problems always boil down to fear. When a person or people are afraid they act erratically. At a large scale it often leads to the wrong type of leader stepping up to use that fear for their own gain, in many cases they pull the majority together by pointing at a smaller group and claiming they're the cause of all the problems. The only reliable solution I know to that is for people to be…

You stopped too soon in your analysis. Why is there so much fear? Why is there more than, say, the 1980s? The 1970s? (Or was there this much fear then, too, and we just don't remember it that way?) Is it basically economic? We had this amazing economic ride from 1945 through the early 1970s, and that gave a view of what life could be like that permeated society and gave hope, and the hope continued long past the grow…

I'm not claiming why people or afraid today, whether its manufactured, or by whom. Honestly those are interesting details to the story but not fundamentally important in the middle of the fear crisis.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#122

Post by anal_reactor »

laffOr wrote: post #97
cycomanic wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than t…

Not German so I can only talk about how it is going in another country: - Massive change in the average household size: way fewer people live together now (delayed couple & family formation, divorce, etc.). If you go from 4 people per household to 2 people per household, now you need twice as many homes. - Massive internal migration: declining population in a lot of rural areas and increasing in cities & their suburb…

Makes me think of the typical example where building more wider highways increases congestion because more people travel by car.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#123

Post by 1970-01-01 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #120
1970-01-01 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wife does not like when I solve problems instead of just acknowledge the problem ? I'll say it. That's a bad wife.

You, sir, need an education in some stereotypes. More seriously, I think GP was commenting on the stereotypical response that when a "wife" brings up a "problem" they often want "emotional support" rather than "discussion of solutions". Not that wife literally gets mad when he solves a problem, unless his problem solving is yet another "engineer system solution" (vs manual labor) which I know from experience, try the…

I'm not looking to get into a whole thing here, but I disagree. There are such things as people that will simply need emotional supportz and then there are those that cannot disagree and commit.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#124

Post by throwaway_5633 »

cycomanic wrote: post #70
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than t…

Excellent question, what happened is there are less people in a household than there used to be and households consume more m2 per household member. In reply to your second point, percentagewise there has been less building, in absolute terms there is more because of population growth since the 60s. This translates to ‘seeing more building projects’.

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/private-haushalte-konsu...

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#125

Post by abraxas »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #4

I think its a pessimistic outlook and I agree with the sentiment, but then I switch back to objectively how humanity has been historically and how far we have come, I can't stop thinking, "wow". Being in my 30s I remember Y2K, OZone layer diminishing and a rogue comet coming to wipe out humanity, but it didn't. This is survivor bias just like the examples in the lecture around wildfires and Covid are surely survivor…

> The apocalypse is delayed, permanently

That is your survivorship bias. There are societies that collapsed never to rebuild or became mere shadows of themselves. I'm not just talking complete collapses like the Easter Island or the Mayan civilization. In very recent past we witnessed the cultural collapse of Japan after their bubbles of the 1980s burst and derailed their economy. But the most spectacular collapse has been that of the Soviet Union. The moral and cultural sickness of that society is now on full display. It's a potemkin village of a society. On surface things look like they still hang together - they still have electicity, internet and even their iCrap. But the will to live, the idea that there is a better tomorrow is all gone from that society. It's a nation of ghosts who don't live but merely exist in a post collapse stupor. Things still function just enough to not spark a revolution but almost nobody finds it fulfilling to live.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#126

Post by e40 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #123
jvanderbot wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, sir, need an education in some stereotypes. More seriously, I think GP was commenting on the stereotypical response that when a "wife" brings up a "problem" they often want "emotional support" rather than "discussion of solutions". Not that wife literally gets mad when he solves a problem, unless his problem solving is yet another "engineer system solution" (vs manual labor) which I know from experience, try the…

I'm not looking to get into a whole thing here, but I disagree. There are such things as people that will simply need emotional supportz and then there are those that cannot disagree and commit.

Double down, it is.

When someone brings a problem to you, it’s quite presumptuous to think they want you to solve it.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#127

Post by 1970-01-01 »

e40 wrote: post #126
1970-01-01 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not looking to get into a whole thing here, but I disagree. There are such things as people that will simply need emotional supportz and then there are those that cannot disagree and commit.

Double down, it is. When someone brings a problem to you, it’s quite presumptuous to think they want you to solve it.

Thank you for replying. You're providing an excellent example of someone that can't disagree and commit and must have emotional support to validate their feelings.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#128

Post by mikkupikku »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #102
_heimdall wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion these types of problems always boil down to fear. When a person or people are afraid they act erratically. At a large scale it often leads to the wrong type of leader stepping up to use that fear for their own gain, in many cases they pull the majority together by pointing at a smaller group and claiming they're the cause of all the problems. The only reliable solution I know to that is for people to be…

You stopped too soon in your analysis. Why is there so much fear? Why is there more than, say, the 1980s? The 1970s? (Or was there this much fear then, too, and we just don't remember it that way?) Is it basically economic? We had this amazing economic ride from 1945 through the early 1970s, and that gave a view of what life could be like that permeated society and gave hope, and the hope continued long past the grow…

Emergent phenomenon, from the intrinsic dynamics of cable news. The medium is the message, and this medium requires around the clock 24/7 attention getting, which changes the way stories are reported, regardless of what the stories are. Internet news inherited much of this, and newspapers too then adapted for constant rather than daily/weekly updates.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#129

Post by fc417fc802 »

Atreiden wrote: post #104
fc417fc802 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, we could do that while still abolishing first past the post. Requirements for holding a previous position could be added while simultaneously reforming the federal (and hopefully also state) systems to be compatible with multiple parties. I imagine it would be sufficient for each level to require a single term served at the previous level - city or county, state, and federal. The downside is encouraging care…

I think this take highlights one of the core problems our democracy faces - winning elections and governing effectively are entirely different skill sets. These things may even be, in part, antithetical.

I merely intended it as a reasonably general proxy for relevant experience whose ruleset would be difficult to weaponize. I agree that in theory there almost certainly must be better methods than elections by which to select legislators, leaders, and other official positions. However I'm not aware of any in practice, particularly when the inevitability of bad faith attempts to abuse the system are taken into account.
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