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A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

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Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#131

Post by FooHentai »

wilburTheDog wrote: post #100

I think, no matter how hard you try, you can't produce something like this without it being biased toward your own opinions on the topic. And those of us with different opinions would phrase things differently. I suppose I would fit in his Pessimist/Defeatist category, though I wouldn't call it that. (And I guess deniers wouldn't call themselves deniers either.) I would probably refer to my own take on collapse as de…

All good points. Another clear lesson from the pandemic: Achieving optimum outcomes is severely bounded by practical political realities - Consider if every single country had hard locked down, everywhere, for 6+ weeks. Perhaps complete elimination could have been achieved. But politically, impossible.

That equally applies to climate change as a similar tragedy of the commons played out on a longer timescale. So there are some learnings to be applied if you're looking, as I think many people now are, to identify how things might play out and then make your own life choices accordingly.

Something I'm increasingly certain of is that the future will be boring. By which I mean trends are likely correct but will play out over longer timescales than expected. Visions of sudden collapse and apocalypse are mostly anxiety-fuelled inventions of the mind aimed at spurring action in the present day. Reality is more like economic stagnation, decreasing freedoms, and continual smaller crises that gradually bring us to the predicted future state. Nothing that can be ridden out in a bunker with a few years supply of oats.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#132

Post by chobeat »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #127
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.

> 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 worl…

My mother grew up in southern Europe in conditions that were bordering middle-age conditions and now life there is completely different.

Prosperity is always relative to the system you're immersed in and in a globalist world, your prosperity is defined by the prosperity of how people on the other side of the world live. Americans can believe they have the best living conditions in the world and same can do northern Europeans and maybe Japanese too. Let's throw in urbanized chinese middle class too. But in developing countries they don't have the privilege to believe they are in that competition. They are always a province of the empire and living in scarcity.

This says nothing about the enormous changes that went on pretty much everywhere in the rural parts of every country with very few, isolated exceptions.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#133

Post by goatlover »

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #123
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.

Where in the IPCC report does it say that collapse is inevitable? Why would that be the only conclusion? One can imagine global civilization adapting and doing what it can to mitigate the effects of climate change. Soldiering on might be one way to put it. If modern civilization and the biosphere overall are more resilient than some assume, then adaptation is a possibility.

One can also imagine cleaner technologies and carbon capture rapidly replacing fossil fuels in the next two decades, reducing the riskier scenarios. At any rate, there's no certainty since none of us has a time machine, and climate models are models of the climate, not human civilization or future technologies.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#134

Post by elihu »

scottrogowski wrote: post #99
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…

Yes. This is a "Very Online taxonomy". While I think it's useful to think about mechanisms of collapse, the author seems to have a clear bias towards the belief that collapse will happen which feels very non-objective. In my experience, the vast majority of people I interact with (maybe 90%+) fall into the author's categorization of "radical denier" or "partial denier". I don't think there's anything "radical" about…

I suppose it's largely a problem of naming. "Denier" has negative connotations, but it's also the most obvious name to use. What would be a better, non-pejorative name? Life-will-go-on-ists?

The article later refers to an ideology of "eco-fascism" which is even more problematic. That seems like a name that detractors would apply to a group, not a label that someone would self-apply. I don't know what a neutral name would be, though.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#135

Post by goatlover »

jhbadger wrote: post #71
wayoutthere wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarcho-communism long predates the Doomers and has always had similar framing. It was real popular in the late 60s / early 70s; the world collapsing is something we’ve known about for a very long time but people have to get fantastically wealthy somehow so we keep doing the old thing.

It's popular whenever society seems to be changing too fast and people think "going back to the simple life" is the solution. Not only was it popular now and in the 1960s, but also in the 19th century when people were weirded out by the Industrial Revolution. People like Henry David Thoreau in the US and William Morris in the UK.

Also popular among the Qumran community in ancient Palestine. They viewed civilization as fundamentally corrupt, and were eagerly anticipating an apocalyptic end to it and the coming kingdom of God to restore things to their rightful place. Which included a more agrarian lifestyle, and less of the modern trappings (for the time).

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#136

Post by mistermann »

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…

> While there are pressing challenges like climate change, aging populations, inequality, and more, I find that the substantial majority of people who devote large amounts of energy towards pondering and preparing for the collapse of civilization are using it as an escapist fantasy.

To be fair, something fairly similar could be said of most any internet conversation on such topics.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#137

Post by equality_1138 »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #124
equality_1138 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Another problem is when so many people take a politician's words at face value. It simply doesn't work like that.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#138

Post by mistermann »

NationalPark wrote: post #109
kbelder wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about your and mine air travel? Meaninglessly small fraction of the actual problem?

Indeed, commercial aviation is only something like 3% of overall carbon dioxide emissions globally. If you want to make a personal difference you would be an order of magnitude more effective if you stop commuting in a non-electric car or gave up consuming meat when dining in restaurants. Expecting individual action to fix this (or worse, blaming individual actions for it) isn't going to work though. Individual consu…

Are you taking the human/mass psychology apect (which underlies human actions) of the problem into consideration?

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#139

Post by mistermann »

mden wrote: post #64
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.…

I don't buy into the argument that if those people limited their travel and consumption then all of the sudden the non-believers will start believing. There's just no evidence that's an effective way to have societal impact. Not an exact parallel but just because people talk about wanting higher overall taxes and at the same time don't want to pay more than what is required doesn't mean they are hypocritical and it d…

> I don't buy into the argument that if those people limited their travel and consumption then all of the sudden the non-believers will start believing.

"All of a sudden" was not claimed.

> There's just no evidence that's an effective way to have societal impact.

No evidence, or none that you are aware of? Also, evidence is not required for something to be true.

> and it doesn't mean that if they did pay more others would follow.

It could be achieved via legislation, which is to some degree influenced by public sentiment, which is to some degree influenced by the manner in which we discuss and conceptualize reality.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#140

Post by FooHentai »

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #123
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.

Energy descent is another interesting angle - We know for a fact that the rate of replacement of fossil fuels is orders of magnitude below the rate at which we've been consuming it, and that there is no equal which will allow our energy-rich lifestyles to continue.

This implies at a certain point we descend to a less energy-rich lifestyle because we have no alternatives. What that descent looks like, graceful or painful, is an open question. As is exactly when it would happen - Folks were convinced peak oil was just around the corner but reality is a bit less simple.

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