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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 thous

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
      > 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? 中国 (Zhōngguó) is middle country/state/nation, not city.
    - HKH2 5y ago
      'Zhongguo' means 'middle kingdom'. I don't think Chinese is that flexible. The only thing I can think of is Chengdu (which is not really related): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu#Name https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu#Name
vore 5y ago
While I agree that we need to not consider collapse a self-fulfilling prophecy, I have to object to that characterization of Chinese civilization: modern Chinese civilization (as in the People's Republic of China) has only been going on since around the 1940s. Chinese civilization over the years has not been one big monolithic entity, and there's been many examples of it taking many unrecognizable forms compared to today's Chinese civilization and even different forms of it during the long imperial period of its history: e.g. the three kingdoms, the Northern and Southern dynasties, and so on.
- rvense 5y ago
  The entire concept of "a civilization" as a monolith is extremely weird. There are no monoliths, neither in time nor space.
- gary_0 5y ago
  > has only been going on since around the 1940s In the 1960's, China had the Great Famine followed by the purges of the Cultural Revolution. So arguably the current period of stability has not even been that long.
sfRattan 5y ago
This is an apples to oranges comparison. Roman civilization lasted a good deal longer than the Roman Empire: ~2,200 years of civilization (753 B.C. to A.D. 1453) versus ~500 years of Empire (27 B.C. to A.D. 476). And that's if you don't count, as other commenters have, the Roman institutions (including the Catholic Church) surviving the Western Empire's political collapse as the continuation of a broader Western civilization.
mathlover2 5y ago
> If we start taking collapse as inevitable, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy. This. This is the biggest issue I have with r/collapse and similar crowds. If collapse isn't inevitable, then they aren't helping, and they sure as all heck aren't able to prove that it is inevitable. This mindset reminds me of certain videos I've seen on YouTube where some people have been proposing just letting society collapse due to global warming and founding an anarchist society in the ashes. Spoiler alert: If everyone thought like this, society in the first world probably would continue, but you'd kill millions upon millions of people in the third world.
ithkuil 5y ago
To complicate things further, it's hard to put an end date on things. Take Egypt for example. Even after it got conquered by Alexander it still remained an important Civilization. Yes the ruling class spoke Greek, but important legacies that Egypt gave to the world come from this era (the great lighthouse of Alexandria comes to mind). Was this still Egypt? Technically historians count the Ptolemaic as the last dynasty. We give things names, we build frames around things to better organize the knowledge, and for a good reason! But oftentimes the reality, as lived through in the moment, is far more blurred and messy.
- taylodl 5y ago
  Reading your comment got me thinking about evolution and speciation - when are two different specimens different species? That's when you realize Nature knows nothing about species, those are labels applied by man and those labels require a discrete set. Nature doesn't work in discrete sets but works in gradual changes. Based off your comment it would seem to me that civilizations are much the same. Civilizations don't typically "collapse" in a dramatic, extinction-level fashion, they gradually morph and change and keep going. It's our desire for labels that gets in the way.
  - creamytaco 5y ago
    Using this line of reasoning, nothing really collapses, it just gradually morphs into something else and keeps going. But looking at everything through an entropic POV, isn’t very helpful. Civilizations exist in the consensual system of abstractions we have created to define our reality, structure our thinking and guide our evolution. We can and should reason about that system, since we operate bound by its constraints, and not Out in the formless void.
    - ithkuil 5y ago
      > Using this line of reasoning, nothing really collapses, it just gradually morphs into something else and keeps going Imagine a stripe colored in white which after at some point transitions gradually into black. Let's also say that when it's white it's 100% white and when it's black it's 100% black. It's hard to say when it started transitioning and when it ended, but if you your probe points are far enough from the transition you can say a transition actually occurred.
HKH2 5y ago
Chinese civilization? Seems like the Ship of Theseus; convenient, but mostly a modern construction.
credit_guy 5y ago
> Collapse is not inevitable Of course it is not inevitable. I remember reading Elie Wiesel, and particularly one remark "this thing can't happen in the middle of the 20th century". Almost a century later, and we feel a bit detached: there's nothing special about the middle of the 20th century. Well, guess what, there's nothing special about the middle of the 21st century either. Atrocities similar to what happened 100 or 200 years ago are still possible. Weird social dynamics are still possible. 6th of January '21 is just such an example. I'm personally thankful that in my lifetime there was no world war, but I don't take it for granted that a worldwide calamity is impossible in the next few decades.

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
    > 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? 中国 (Zhōngguó) is middle country/state/nation, not city.
  - HKH2 5y ago
    'Zhongguo' means 'middle kingdom'. I don't think Chinese is that flexible. The only thing I can think of is Chengdu (which is not really related): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu#Name https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu#Name

vore 5y ago

While I agree that we need to not consider collapse a self-fulfilling prophecy, I have to object to that characterization of Chinese civilization: modern Chinese civilization (as in the People's Republic of China) has only been going on since around the 1940s. Chinese civilization over the years has not been one big monolithic entity, and there's been many examples of it taking many unrecognizable forms compared to today's Chinese civilization and even different forms of it during the long imperial period of its history: e.g. the three kingdoms, the Northern and Southern dynasties, and so on.

rvense 5y ago
The entire concept of "a civilization" as a monolith is extremely weird. There are no monoliths, neither in time nor space.
gary_0 5y ago
> has only been going on since around the 1940s In the 1960's, China had the Great Famine followed by the purges of the Cultural Revolution. So arguably the current period of stability has not even been that long.

sfRattan 5y ago

This is an apples to oranges comparison. Roman civilization lasted a good deal longer than the Roman Empire: ~2,200 years of civilization (753 B.C. to A.D. 1453) versus ~500 years of Empire (27 B.C. to A.D. 476). And that's if you don't count, as other commenters have, the Roman institutions (including the Catholic Church) surviving the Western Empire's political collapse as the continuation of a broader Western civilization.

mathlover2 5y ago

> If we start taking collapse as inevitable, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy. This. This is the biggest issue I have with r/collapse and similar crowds. If collapse isn't inevitable, then they aren't helping, and they sure as all heck aren't able to prove that it is inevitable. This mindset reminds me of certain videos I've seen on YouTube where some people have been proposing just letting society collapse due to global warming and founding an anarchist society in the ashes. Spoiler alert: If everyone thought like this, society in the first world probably would continue, but you'd kill millions upon millions of people in the third world.

ithkuil 5y ago

To complicate things further, it's hard to put an end date on things. Take Egypt for example. Even after it got conquered by Alexander it still remained an important Civilization. Yes the ruling class spoke Greek, but important legacies that Egypt gave to the world come from this era (the great lighthouse of Alexandria comes to mind). Was this still Egypt? Technically historians count the Ptolemaic as the last dynasty. We give things names, we build frames around things to better organize the knowledge, and for a good reason! But oftentimes the reality, as lived through in the moment, is far more blurred and messy.

taylodl 5y ago
Reading your comment got me thinking about evolution and speciation - when are two different specimens different species? That's when you realize Nature knows nothing about species, those are labels applied by man and those labels require a discrete set. Nature doesn't work in discrete sets but works in gradual changes. Based off your comment it would seem to me that civilizations are much the same. Civilizations don't typically "collapse" in a dramatic, extinction-level fashion, they gradually morph and change and keep going. It's our desire for labels that gets in the way.
- creamytaco 5y ago
  Using this line of reasoning, nothing really collapses, it just gradually morphs into something else and keeps going. But looking at everything through an entropic POV, isn’t very helpful. Civilizations exist in the consensual system of abstractions we have created to define our reality, structure our thinking and guide our evolution. We can and should reason about that system, since we operate bound by its constraints, and not Out in the formless void.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    > Using this line of reasoning, nothing really collapses, it just gradually morphs into something else and keeps going Imagine a stripe colored in white which after at some point transitions gradually into black. Let's also say that when it's white it's 100% white and when it's black it's 100% black. It's hard to say when it started transitioning and when it ended, but if you your probe points are far enough from the transition you can say a transition actually occurred.

HKH2 5y ago

Chinese civilization? Seems like the Ship of Theseus; convenient, but mostly a modern construction.

credit_guy 5y ago

> Collapse is not inevitable Of course it is not inevitable. I remember reading Elie Wiesel, and particularly one remark "this thing can't happen in the middle of the 20th century". Almost a century later, and we feel a bit detached: there's nothing special about the middle of the 20th century. Well, guess what, there's nothing special about the middle of the 21st century either. Atrocities similar to what happened 100 or 200 years ago are still possible. Weird social dynamics are still possible. 6th of January '21 is just such an example. I'm personally thankful that in my lifetime there was no world war, but I don't take it for granted that a worldwide calamity is impossible in the next few decades.