6 ms·

Let’s Talk Collapse

TeeMassive 5y ago
> A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity. The term ‘established level’ is important. To qualify as an instance of collapse a society must have been at, or developing toward, a level of complexity for more than one or two generations. I think we're seeing a glimpse of that with the supply chain crisis the world is having right now. "Shortages that cause shortages that cause shortages"
- perl4ever 5y ago
  "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" covered very nearly 1500 years.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Well, Supply chains are adjusting... for now. But overall, the most notable thing is that when the fragility and/or decay of a system is revealed, nothing fundamentally changes. The giant ship that got stuck in the Suez? No indication measures are being taken to make the world economy more resilient. California's fire problem is still being met with piecemeal measures, etc. The Tainter reference in the article is especially. Fundamentally fragility comes when elites based their power on particular social forms and social forms gradually become maladaptive.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The Suez canal is being expanded. They've been working on it for several years and making progress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Area_Development_Project?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Area_Development_Pr... Ships can and did take alternate routes when the canal was blocked. That increases time and cost but not catastrophically so.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >No indication measures are being taken to make the world economy more resilient The alternative viewpoint is that it was demonstrated it is resilient (enough). The worst case scenario was shown to be some incremental cost added to shipping by going the long way, not everybody starving to death, or even a recession.
- swader999 5y ago
  South Africa right now is unfortunately a better example.
hpoe 5y ago
You know I used to really freak out and have panic attacks about the possible world ending catastrophes from the collapse of the Eurozone to missing Soviet Smallpox. I eventually realized I can't change anything about it my worrying about it doesn't do anything, and realistically there is nothing I can really do to prepare for the total collapse of civilization so I try and just have 2-3 months of food and water on hand, grow a garden, try and find a way to get solar and a diesel backup generator, try and stockpile medicine when I can, etc. My goal is just 2-3 months of each thing in case there was a natural disaster or I lost my job and I put the rest of it in the hands of God. If civilizations burns to the ground then I'll do my best to survive while also doing my best to help other people. After all to quote Brandon Sanderson "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination."I'll die one way or another, so why stress about all the ways that can happen, especially when I can't do anything about it. I just live my life the best I can and hope things work out.
dvh 5y ago
I used to have prepper mentality until one day I realized it wasn't about survival, I just wanted to live in a world without consequences.
- gumby 5y ago
  That's an interesting self insight. I have one friend who's a prepper. His basement is full of ammo, weapons and food, and he maintains it (rotates supplies etc). He doesn't talk about it (good opsec!) and is otherwise perfectly normal and rational and a very nice person. If you visited his house you'd never know. His wife thinks it's crazy and laughs about it, but otherwise their relationship is great so who knows...perhaps she agrees but is embarrassed to admit it? He lives in the middle of the suburbs, not out in the boonies. I'd bet several dozen HNers know him personally.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    It's not utterly irrational to do it. It is an opportunity cost though. What else would you rather do with the time and resources it takes to set that up and maintain it? Everybody is free to pick their hobby though!
  - shawnb576 5y ago
    I totally get the draw here but I think it is irrational depending on your goals: 1. Having enough supplies to get through a few months of uncertainty w/o needing the outside world. This makes sense to me: natural disaster, a bigger-badder pandemic, etc. 2. Ammo, weapons, and food isn't rational to me simply because if things get so bad you need that stuff, you're screwed anyway. Nothing in your house is going to help you when the people who also need that stuff find out you have it. Any violent unrest is going to outgun you very quickly. Ideally we all work towards a world where that isn't a fear for people. Not to be naive but there are real questions that we face regularly (e.g. at the ballot box) that have a bearing on this that is much bigger than trying to insulate yourself or your family from a broad-based slip into chaos.
    - gumby 5y ago
gccsdfhb 5y ago
This community just eats up the most melodramatic catastrophizing, my Lord, bunch of Chicken Littles
leptoniscool 5y ago
Collapse is not inevitable. People use the Roman empire as an example, but that's just one of many short lived civilizations. Egyptian civilization lasted thousands of years, and Chinese civilization is still going after thousands of years. If we start taking collapse as inevitable, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
- borismus 5y ago
  Agree with sentiment but want to nitpick a bit. It’s unclear that the Roman Empire collapsed at all. Many Roman institutions lived on well past the 5th century and were assimilated into gothic Frankish Visigoth etc societies.
  - bookofsand 5y ago
    Rome collapsed. Population crashed in the V century from 1M to under 100k. Roman institutions survived in Constantinopole for another thousand years, until XV century when that city population collapsed under Ottoman pressure https://davidgalbraith.org/trivia/graph-of-the-population-of-rome-through-history/2189 https://davidgalbraith.org/trivia/graph-of-the-population-of... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Istanbul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Istanbul
    - ithkuil 5y ago
      I assume that various Chinese capitals went through similar population crashes. It's true though that Roman civilization had a particular emphasis on the name of The City, but that didn't prevent the Greek speaking citizens of the estern Roman empire to call themselves Ῥωμαῖοι. The etymology of Zhongguo IIRC is "central city". Was this the actual name of an actual city that then became the name for the concept of a central city/state as dynasties and rules changed? Is it analogous as if the word Roma had become a generic term for state in european languages and now you'd just call the United Romas of America?
      - _hao 5y ago
cheesecake_luvr 5y ago
I never used to subscribe to all this pessimism until the resurgence of fascism in the West and COVID-19.
- justshowpost 5y ago
  How about communist incursion to the West? 100M deaths already caused is much more dangerous than fascism is any its form.
  - orwin 5y ago
    Communism: a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs. You can have productivist communism (marxism of sort) where the mean of production are owned by those who use them. Worker-owned companies and in fact small startups without VC money (those exist) are marxist in nature as long as every new worker is offered a share. I saw an increase in worker-owned companies in my country, and i think it's the same in the US, is this what you mean by communist incursions in the west? Or are you talking about another form of communism (anarchism maybe?) (edit): to be transparent, i'm for a form of communism where the workers own a percentage of a company. whether it's 25%, 49% or 51% is up for debate and i don't care if the percentage is low.
    - herbst 5y ago
      It's likely just a blanket term to avoid saying 'the evil (Satanist) left' No idea why people are so fucking afraid of being handled more humanly by their governments. Which is what most modern communist parties in Europe are trying to do.
    - justshowpost 5y ago
      I've noticed the attempt to shift the focus to some nice-sounding ideas [of real communism]. Yet, I was talking about the exact tens of communist regimes we've already seen in XX century – neither of them turned workers into shareholders (which itself, ironically, is more specific to fascism than to socialism or communism), but all of them caused oppression, poverty, famines and A LOT of politically motivated killings. So, the comment above emphasizes the dangers of... fascism (at least some mysterious sort of it, since fascism requires industrial workers). > another form of communism (anarchism maybe?) There is no such thing, communist system necessitates a totalitarian state.
voidfunc 5y ago
If Civilization collapses hard and fast I'm just going to go to a bar (or my liquor cabinet) have a drink and then put a bullet in my head. Maybe work in a round of golf too if it isn't crazy dangerous. Maybe one of the looters/revolutionaries/whatever they want to brand themselves as will save me the trouble and execute me on the golf course for being too bourgeois. I'm not too worried about it. Most collapses are slow and drawn out.
- hedberg10 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(2000_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(2000_film) You'd enjoy this then
redis_mlc 5y ago
You could argue that when the largest superpower loses the will to mine or process rare earths, or stops making pharmaceuticals and precursor chemicals, that a collapse is in progress.
Hokusai 5y ago
> “By collapse, I mean a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity over a considerable area, for an extended time.” What I like about this description is that it mentions "over a considerable area". Collapse has happened historically over a limited part of the world at a time. It is this "collapses" that allow neighboring civilizations to thrive. The Ottoman Empire would have not existed without the "collapse" of Rome. When we think about culture we get into the Theseus ship problem. When the Roman civilization ended and the next one started. What happens if we stop classifying civilizations as something named and concrete and instead we see it as a fluid movement of power between regions and ideologies? Collapse is possible, ask the dinosaurs. But, when I read articles like this one where the stages from 1 to 4 are about money and power I get suspicious that it can be more about a change of rulers, a collapse of a ruling class, more than what we usually refer as collapse. > Collapse can occur at different times for different people. You may never quite know that collapse has happened, but you will know that it has happened to you personally, or to your family, or to your town. The big picture may not come together until much later, thanks to the efforts of historians. I think that this part goes a little on that direction. The "collapse" is more an label for a period that a personal experience for most people in the period. > Collapse is certainly inevitable if we continue down our default path. I cannot agree on this as stated. "our default path" means the current leadership priorities and mindset. But part of humanity "default path" is adaptation. In any society you have followers, you have nonconformists, cheaters and heroes. If "everything continues likes it is today" that will be the biggest change in human history, as it never does. > How do I talk to others about collapse? You don't. Collapse wants to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you do is you talk with others about the challenges of the future and how to solve them, we are good at that. Let's leave "Collapse" for science fiction movies were it belongs.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
During WW2, a good percentage of the developed nations were at war with each other. Nazi Germany declared "total war" when Hitler realised they were losing. Japan refused to quit until they were shown the true power of nuclear weapons. Countless lives were lost and resources consumed. But despite this, 70 years later we are still here and most people in developed nations live very comfortable lives. Forgive me if I'm a little sceptical about any prediction beyond 5 years...
playguardin 5y ago
As an accelerationist the only thing that depresses me is the thought of no collapse. The idea that neo-liberal capitalism and it's liberal global homogenization program succeeds. Could be a cope. My worst case scenario is everything goes fine.

> A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity. The term ‘established level’ is important. To qualify as an instance of collapse a society must have been at, or developing toward, a level of complexity for more than one or two generations. I think we're seeing a glimpse of that with the supply chain crisis the world is having right now. "Shortages that cause shortages that cause shortages"

perl4ever 5y ago
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" covered very nearly 1500 years.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Well, Supply chains are adjusting... for now. But overall, the most notable thing is that when the fragility and/or decay of a system is revealed, nothing fundamentally changes. The giant ship that got stuck in the Suez? No indication measures are being taken to make the world economy more resilient. California's fire problem is still being met with piecemeal measures, etc. The Tainter reference in the article is especially. Fundamentally fragility comes when elites based their power on particular social forms and social forms gradually become maladaptive.
- nradov 5y ago
  The Suez canal is being expanded. They've been working on it for several years and making progress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Area_Development_Project?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Area_Development_Pr... Ships can and did take alternate routes when the canal was blocked. That increases time and cost but not catastrophically so.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >No indication measures are being taken to make the world economy more resilient The alternative viewpoint is that it was demonstrated it is resilient (enough). The worst case scenario was shown to be some incremental cost added to shipping by going the long way, not everybody starving to death, or even a recession.
swader999 5y ago
South Africa right now is unfortunately a better example.

hpoe 5y ago

You know I used to really freak out and have panic attacks about the possible world ending catastrophes from the collapse of the Eurozone to missing Soviet Smallpox. I eventually realized I can't change anything about it my worrying about it doesn't do anything, and realistically there is nothing I can really do to prepare for the total collapse of civilization so I try and just have 2-3 months of food and water on hand, grow a garden, try and find a way to get solar and a diesel backup generator, try and stockpile medicine when I can, etc. My goal is just 2-3 months of each thing in case there was a natural disaster or I lost my job and I put the rest of it in the hands of God. If civilizations burns to the ground then I'll do my best to survive while also doing my best to help other people. After all to quote Brandon Sanderson "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination."I'll die one way or another, so why stress about all the ways that can happen, especially when I can't do anything about it. I just live my life the best I can and hope things work out.

dvh 5y ago

I used to have prepper mentality until one day I realized it wasn't about survival, I just wanted to live in a world without consequences.

gumby 5y ago
That's an interesting self insight. I have one friend who's a prepper. His basement is full of ammo, weapons and food, and he maintains it (rotates supplies etc). He doesn't talk about it (good opsec!) and is otherwise perfectly normal and rational and a very nice person. If you visited his house you'd never know. His wife thinks it's crazy and laughs about it, but otherwise their relationship is great so who knows...perhaps she agrees but is embarrassed to admit it? He lives in the middle of the suburbs, not out in the boonies. I'd bet several dozen HNers know him personally.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  It's not utterly irrational to do it. It is an opportunity cost though. What else would you rather do with the time and resources it takes to set that up and maintain it? Everybody is free to pick their hobby though!
- shawnb576 5y ago
  I totally get the draw here but I think it is irrational depending on your goals: 1. Having enough supplies to get through a few months of uncertainty w/o needing the outside world. This makes sense to me: natural disaster, a bigger-badder pandemic, etc. 2. Ammo, weapons, and food isn't rational to me simply because if things get so bad you need that stuff, you're screwed anyway. Nothing in your house is going to help you when the people who also need that stuff find out you have it. Any violent unrest is going to outgun you very quickly. Ideally we all work towards a world where that isn't a fear for people. Not to be naive but there are real questions that we face regularly (e.g. at the ballot box) that have a bearing on this that is much bigger than trying to insulate yourself or your family from a broad-based slip into chaos.
  - gumby 5y ago

gccsdfhb 5y ago

This community just eats up the most melodramatic catastrophizing, my Lord, bunch of Chicken Littles

leptoniscool 5y ago

Collapse is not inevitable. People use the Roman empire as an example, but that's just one of many short lived civilizations. Egyptian civilization lasted thousands of years, and Chinese civilization is still going after thousands of years. If we start taking collapse as inevitable, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.

borismus 5y ago
Agree with sentiment but want to nitpick a bit. It’s unclear that the Roman Empire collapsed at all. Many Roman institutions lived on well past the 5th century and were assimilated into gothic Frankish Visigoth etc societies.
- bookofsand 5y ago
  Rome collapsed. Population crashed in the V century from 1M to under 100k. Roman institutions survived in Constantinopole for another thousand years, until XV century when that city population collapsed under Ottoman pressure https://davidgalbraith.org/trivia/graph-of-the-population-of-rome-through-history/2189 https://davidgalbraith.org/trivia/graph-of-the-population-of... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Istanbul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Istanbul
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    I assume that various Chinese capitals went through similar population crashes. It's true though that Roman civilization had a particular emphasis on the name of The City, but that didn't prevent the Greek speaking citizens of the estern Roman empire to call themselves Ῥωμαῖοι. The etymology of Zhongguo IIRC is "central city". Was this the actual name of an actual city that then became the name for the concept of a central city/state as dynasties and rules changed? Is it analogous as if the word Roma had become a generic term for state in european languages and now you'd just call the United Romas of America?
    - _hao 5y ago

cheesecake_luvr 5y ago

I never used to subscribe to all this pessimism until the resurgence of fascism in the West and COVID-19.

justshowpost 5y ago
How about communist incursion to the West? 100M deaths already caused is much more dangerous than fascism is any its form.
- orwin 5y ago
  Communism: a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs. You can have productivist communism (marxism of sort) where the mean of production are owned by those who use them. Worker-owned companies and in fact small startups without VC money (those exist) are marxist in nature as long as every new worker is offered a share. I saw an increase in worker-owned companies in my country, and i think it's the same in the US, is this what you mean by communist incursions in the west? Or are you talking about another form of communism (anarchism maybe?) (edit): to be transparent, i'm for a form of communism where the workers own a percentage of a company. whether it's 25%, 49% or 51% is up for debate and i don't care if the percentage is low.
  - herbst 5y ago
    It's likely just a blanket term to avoid saying 'the evil (Satanist) left' No idea why people are so fucking afraid of being handled more humanly by their governments. Which is what most modern communist parties in Europe are trying to do.
  - justshowpost 5y ago
    I've noticed the attempt to shift the focus to some nice-sounding ideas [of real communism]. Yet, I was talking about the exact tens of communist regimes we've already seen in XX century – neither of them turned workers into shareholders (which itself, ironically, is more specific to fascism than to socialism or communism), but all of them caused oppression, poverty, famines and A LOT of politically motivated killings. So, the comment above emphasizes the dangers of... fascism (at least some mysterious sort of it, since fascism requires industrial workers). > another form of communism (anarchism maybe?) There is no such thing, communist system necessitates a totalitarian state.

voidfunc 5y ago

If Civilization collapses hard and fast I'm just going to go to a bar (or my liquor cabinet) have a drink and then put a bullet in my head. Maybe work in a round of golf too if it isn't crazy dangerous. Maybe one of the looters/revolutionaries/whatever they want to brand themselves as will save me the trouble and execute me on the golf course for being too bourgeois. I'm not too worried about it. Most collapses are slow and drawn out.

hedberg10 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(2000_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(2000_film) You'd enjoy this then

redis_mlc 5y ago

You could argue that when the largest superpower loses the will to mine or process rare earths, or stops making pharmaceuticals and precursor chemicals, that a collapse is in progress.

Hokusai 5y ago

> “By collapse, I mean a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity over a considerable area, for an extended time.” What I like about this description is that it mentions "over a considerable area". Collapse has happened historically over a limited part of the world at a time. It is this "collapses" that allow neighboring civilizations to thrive. The Ottoman Empire would have not existed without the "collapse" of Rome. When we think about culture we get into the Theseus ship problem. When the Roman civilization ended and the next one started. What happens if we stop classifying civilizations as something named and concrete and instead we see it as a fluid movement of power between regions and ideologies? Collapse is possible, ask the dinosaurs. But, when I read articles like this one where the stages from 1 to 4 are about money and power I get suspicious that it can be more about a change of rulers, a collapse of a ruling class, more than what we usually refer as collapse. > Collapse can occur at different times for different people. You may never quite know that collapse has happened, but you will know that it has happened to you personally, or to your family, or to your town. The big picture may not come together until much later, thanks to the efforts of historians. I think that this part goes a little on that direction. The "collapse" is more an label for a period that a personal experience for most people in the period. > Collapse is certainly inevitable if we continue down our default path. I cannot agree on this as stated. "our default path" means the current leadership priorities and mindset. But part of humanity "default path" is adaptation. In any society you have followers, you have nonconformists, cheaters and heroes. If "everything continues likes it is today" that will be the biggest change in human history, as it never does. > How do I talk to others about collapse? You don't. Collapse wants to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you do is you talk with others about the challenges of the future and how to solve them, we are good at that. Let's leave "Collapse" for science fiction movies were it belongs.

CodeGlitch 5y ago

During WW2, a good percentage of the developed nations were at war with each other. Nazi Germany declared "total war" when Hitler realised they were losing. Japan refused to quit until they were shown the true power of nuclear weapons. Countless lives were lost and resources consumed. But despite this, 70 years later we are still here and most people in developed nations live very comfortable lives. Forgive me if I'm a little sceptical about any prediction beyond 5 years...

playguardin 5y ago

As an accelerationist the only thing that depresses me is the thought of no collapse. The idea that neo-liberal capitalism and it's liberal global homogenization program succeeds. Could be a cope. My worst case scenario is everything goes fine.