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

bbc.com

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

#71

Post by CryptoPunk »

We've come unacceptably close to a nuclear war, multiple times. The danger still exists, with China's blatantly illegal colonization project in the South China Sea.

Beyond that, the interconnectedness mentioned in the article allows hysterias to spread globally at an alarming rate. By some estimates, the reaction to covid did 100X more damage to society than it mitigated:

http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf

We saw childhood obesity rates skyrocket:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2783690

Education attainment levels plummet:

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/coronavirus-leadi...

But the hysteria surrounding covid has made any kind of rational discussion on the costs of covid mitigation strategies impossible.

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

#72

Post by tartoran »

kortilla wrote: post #68
tartoran wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that in the last two centuries we’ve grown and expanded more or less exponentially. The destruction to the environment was proportional to it. Not saying we are going to self destruct, I don’t have a crystal ball to predict that, but it seems to me that right now we’re right on track towards it and the trainwreck is becoming harder and harder to avoid. Global warming and climate change is becoming more a…

But the risk to individual humans has dropped substantially as technology advanced. People were much more likely to just starve to death 100 years ago or die from simple medical ailments. The pressure we are putting on other species and flora is immense but humanity’s future has never been so certain. The only way to claim civilization collapse is to move the goal posts to a population decimation. But even that would…

Yes, the individual risk has decreased but that is only if things stay the same and that doesn’t seem to me as very likely. Maybe we’ll colonize other solar systems and evolve further into something else if we manage to keep it together.

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

#73

Post by ttonkytonk »

Civilization requires trust and fairness. Saying someone theoretically has a fair shake therefore an unfair outcome is fair won't keep getting it.

There's also this strange idea that government itself is a bad thing (from Thomas Payne's Common Sense?), when the problem would be bad government. Someone has to make the big decisions, so if it's not the government, then presumably it's whoever has the most power?

Then there is the general abandonment of spiritual values in the west? (If you think the U. S. is a religious country, just try getting Sundays off - I probably didn't get hired at a grocery store once because of this - in the Carolinas.)

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

#74

Post by kortilla »

no_wizard wrote: post #8

Perhaps not entire civilization collapse, pending nuclear arsenals unleashed, but I think we are edging ever closer to massive social upheaval, what shape of this I am unsure about. To quote an adjacent article that was mentioned in this one: How Western Civilization Could Collapse > Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the e…

> crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough,

This is an absolutely moronic premise to start with. The portion doesn’t matter as long as the purchasing power stays static or is increasing.

The population doesn’t collapse when people are still getting abundant food, shelter, etc regardless of how well the rich are doing. The focus on the income of the rich instead of poverty is a distraction to pull people into a power struggle they otherwise wouldn’t care about.

It’s better to have obscenely wealthy + a high earning middle class than poverty across the board. However, the reframing of everything into income inequality makes the latter sound somehow better.

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

#75

Post by kafkaIncarnate »

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…

I think those exposed to the Bible and heavy handed religion at a young age are predisposed to doomsday like tendencies due to the brutality of the old testament, and how it is frequently taught in American churches.

Some are not exposed to this, so they may think nothing can ever go wrong. Or they processed the New Testament or focused on that in their upbringing. Everyone else is just getting second hand panic or second hand calm.

I was exposed to both perceptions of reality growing up. That means I take loads of psychiatric medications and am still prone to meltdowns.

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

#76

Post by kortilla »

korantu wrote: post #38
noahtallen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do really like that video and the book Factfulness. However, income inequality is definitely one of the things getting worse with time. And it’s scary for everyone, because if you don’t have money, your ability to survive is reduced, and if you do have money… look back to what happened only a handful of centuries ago or even less when the proletariat revolted. Sure, we aren’t there currently, but the trajectory is…

Is income inequality even good measure in the forst place? More and more people of this world are rising out of poverty, and getting education, why specifically does uphieval would occur?

No, it’s not a good measure, but it is a useful tool for people to build support for political upheaval that wouldn’t otherwise be justified.

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

#77

Post by kortilla »

dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #56
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…

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.

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

#78

Post by huijzer »

bluejekyll wrote: post #11

“By 476, the empire’s reach was zero.” I stopped reading right here. The Western Empire fell in 476 (for many reasons). The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) lasted until 1453. Even that isn’t a perfect way of articulating it, given the continued influence of the Catholic Church had well into the 1500’s (Luther). In some ways one could argue civilization has never ended, but paused in different areas of the wor…

So, the general rule of thumb still holds: whenever a news article’s title poses a question, the answer is probably no.

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

#79

Post by fractalb »

99_00 wrote: post #20
no_wizard wrote: post #8

Perhaps not entire civilization collapse, pending nuclear arsenals unleashed, but I think we are edging ever closer to massive social upheaval, what shape of this I am unsure about. To quote an adjacent article that was mentioned in this one: How Western Civilization Could Collapse > Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the e…

>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.

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

#80

Post by runarberg »

kortilla wrote: post #74
no_wizard wrote: post #8

Perhaps not entire civilization collapse, pending nuclear arsenals unleashed, but I think we are edging ever closer to massive social upheaval, what shape of this I am unsure about. To quote an adjacent article that was mentioned in this one: How Western Civilization Could Collapse > Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the e…

> crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, This is an absolutely moronic premise to start with. The portion doesn’t matter as long as the purchasing power stays static or is increasing. The population doesn’t collapse when people are still getting abundant food, shelter, etc regardless of how well the rich are doing. The focus on the income of the rich instead of poverty is a distraction…

But an ever growing population isn’t getting shelter (or very poor shelter), and as the climate crisis gets worse (and the wars of the world worsen) I would expect that on the global scale an ever growing population would also go hungry. These people will start migrating to the places that don’t have famines and wars. And if the current border policies persist, these people won’t be welcomed by the government. This means that you will have people rebelling against a government which is denying them food and shelter.
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