5 ms·

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, a

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!

quickthrower2 5y ago
I feel it’s the opposite - everyone expects things to go on as they are. At least in stable countries. We are hard wired not to expect the world to end.
- thrdbndndn 5y ago
  Agreed. By the way, is there any sort of memoirs from ordinary people before WW2? Like did people at the time see it coming 1 years, 5 years etc. before?
  - hindsightbias 5y ago
    Roosevelt and Churchill certainly saw it coming.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - NL807 5y ago
    Interesting question. Would be good to study such data.
  - mellavora 5y ago
    The bond market famously did not see WWI coming. And WWI was arguably much more catastrophic that WWII.
    - thrdbndndn 5y ago
      >WWI was arguably much more catastrophic that WWII. For the Europe, probably. Worldwide wise, not even close.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
I think many people can see a kind of broken-ness to the world, and long for a world that isn't broken. I think that might be the basis for your observation - people kind of hope for an end, in the hope that what follows will be better.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Unfortunately what comes after a fall is almost always worse. Human societies seem to fix themselves best through slow improvement, revolutions create power vacuums and people that fill those vacuums are usually bad news.
tartoran 5y ago
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 acute as years pass by and yet there are still people who think it is a hoax. If half the people around the took it seriously the other half would easily thwart their efforts by noncomplying.
- kortilla 5y ago
  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 still only put us where we were less than 200 years ago.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    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.
  - eCa 5y ago
    > But even that would still only put us where we were less than 200 years ago. With the exception that all easily accessible resources are gone. Might be a net positive - we will see.
  - tarsinge 5y ago
    > as technology advanced The current shortage give us a glimpse of how fragile it is though. I don't see how we could handle a more serious disruption.
thestu 5y ago
This is my general feeling as well. People enjoy catastrophizing, and also fail to appreciate that we as a species are actually fairly good at solving problems.
- tartoran 5y ago
  I agree but we’re also very good at making new problems and destroying the nature around us. I wonder how many species dissapeared due to modern humans’ way of life and needs. We’re so good at it that we won’t stop till there’s nothing else left to destroy.
- djleni 5y ago
  I think that’s a fair argument about the past, but the last 200 years are so incredibly different than the 6000 before them I don’t know that it will hold.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
While your point is a valid one, even from as detached a view as I can manage, the state of America doesn't seem very stable, or likely to improve. Arguably it has been on an ever-more-rapid decline since the 70s.
ravenstine 5y ago
You aren't wrong, but I'm not sure civilization collapse or decline is the same thing as doomsday. The article does conflate the two ideas through climate change.
muzani 5y ago
The topic is the end of a civilization, not the world. Plenty of civilizations have collapsed in the last 20 centuries, but it depends on how you define a collapse. The fall of the Roman and Aztec empires would be the benchmarks. Would we also consider the more recent Nazi Germany or Ottoman Empire falls as collapses?
- Swizec 5y ago
  The Habsburg Empire also fell in 1918. British Empire collapsed over the 20th century, and what happened to the Holy Roman Empire? Oh and don’t forget the French Empire fell in the 1700’s. But does that count or did thet just evolve into a new form?
  - smnplk 5y ago
    That's just the collapse of social structures, not civilizations.
    - muzani 5y ago
      To quote from Wikipedia, > Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Arguably a social structure is a prerequisite for a civilization. For example, you can have a village of 50 intact and trading with another village and that's not a proper civilization. There has to be the idea of a state, governance, someone entrusted to pay taxes to and perhaps some form of currency.
- mellavora 5y ago
  Or the collapse of Russia in the 1990s? Anyone remember that? There is a really interesting talk on this: https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/feb/13/social-collapse-best-practices/ https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/feb/13/social-collapse-be...
uuddlrlr 5y ago
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not after me.
kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
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.
mellavora 5y ago
There is some really interesting psychological literature which assumes that the foundational wiring of personality is laid in the womb, see Stanislav Grofs writings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof This has four potential archetypes: 1 The Amniotic Universe; 2 Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit; 3 The Death-Rebirth Struggle; 4 The Death-Rebirth Experience Number 3 can be characterized as the valiant heroic struggle against huge odds which leads to a peaceful new age. (i.e. vaginal birth, which is extremely challenging for the child as well as mother). Since most of us were at one time in a womb and then left it, this idea that our current state might end is indeed, as you said, hard-wired into the human brain. I can't say that the reason has been discovered, but Grof's theories cannot be immediately discarded.
asdff 5y ago
What is scary about these days isn't that we follow some book that says the world will end, but that we can measure the world ending empirically.
esarbe 5y ago
Well, the Christians' have been doing it for 20 centuries on the basis of spiritual interpretation of religious texts. The expectation that civilization will collapse nowadays comes from scientific knowledge based on verifiable data. We are witnessing: - a massive decline in biodiversity - a massive decline in biomass - fragmentation of ecosystems - collapse of ecosystems These are already observable and documented facts. These by themselves present a real and urgent danger to our global human civilization. Then there are the probable consequences from the climate crisis: - massive population migrations - destabilization of countries and federations - civil wars - actual wars between countries in order to fight for resources (i.e. water). We are headed for calamity. Let's not be delusional about that.

quickthrower2 5y ago

I feel it’s the opposite - everyone expects things to go on as they are. At least in stable countries. We are hard wired not to expect the world to end.

thrdbndndn 5y ago
Agreed. By the way, is there any sort of memoirs from ordinary people before WW2? Like did people at the time see it coming 1 years, 5 years etc. before?
- hindsightbias 5y ago
  Roosevelt and Churchill certainly saw it coming.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- NL807 5y ago
  Interesting question. Would be good to study such data.
- mellavora 5y ago
  The bond market famously did not see WWI coming. And WWI was arguably much more catastrophic that WWII.
  - thrdbndndn 5y ago
    >WWI was arguably much more catastrophic that WWII. For the Europe, probably. Worldwide wise, not even close.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

I think many people can see a kind of broken-ness to the world, and long for a world that isn't broken. I think that might be the basis for your observation - people kind of hope for an end, in the hope that what follows will be better.

Nursie 5y ago
Unfortunately what comes after a fall is almost always worse. Human societies seem to fix themselves best through slow improvement, revolutions create power vacuums and people that fill those vacuums are usually bad news.

tartoran 5y ago

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 acute as years pass by and yet there are still people who think it is a hoax. If half the people around the took it seriously the other half would easily thwart their efforts by noncomplying.

kortilla 5y ago
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 still only put us where we were less than 200 years ago.
- tartoran 5y ago
  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.
- eCa 5y ago
  > But even that would still only put us where we were less than 200 years ago. With the exception that all easily accessible resources are gone. Might be a net positive - we will see.
- tarsinge 5y ago
  > as technology advanced The current shortage give us a glimpse of how fragile it is though. I don't see how we could handle a more serious disruption.

thestu 5y ago

This is my general feeling as well. People enjoy catastrophizing, and also fail to appreciate that we as a species are actually fairly good at solving problems.

tartoran 5y ago
I agree but we’re also very good at making new problems and destroying the nature around us. I wonder how many species dissapeared due to modern humans’ way of life and needs. We’re so good at it that we won’t stop till there’s nothing else left to destroy.
djleni 5y ago
I think that’s a fair argument about the past, but the last 200 years are so incredibly different than the 6000 before them I don’t know that it will hold.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

While your point is a valid one, even from as detached a view as I can manage, the state of America doesn't seem very stable, or likely to improve. Arguably it has been on an ever-more-rapid decline since the 70s.

ravenstine 5y ago

You aren't wrong, but I'm not sure civilization collapse or decline is the same thing as doomsday. The article does conflate the two ideas through climate change.

muzani 5y ago

The topic is the end of a civilization, not the world. Plenty of civilizations have collapsed in the last 20 centuries, but it depends on how you define a collapse. The fall of the Roman and Aztec empires would be the benchmarks. Would we also consider the more recent Nazi Germany or Ottoman Empire falls as collapses?

Swizec 5y ago
The Habsburg Empire also fell in 1918. British Empire collapsed over the 20th century, and what happened to the Holy Roman Empire? Oh and don’t forget the French Empire fell in the 1700’s. But does that count or did thet just evolve into a new form?
- smnplk 5y ago
  That's just the collapse of social structures, not civilizations.
  - muzani 5y ago
    To quote from Wikipedia, > Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Arguably a social structure is a prerequisite for a civilization. For example, you can have a village of 50 intact and trading with another village and that's not a proper civilization. There has to be the idea of a state, governance, someone entrusted to pay taxes to and perhaps some form of currency.
mellavora 5y ago
Or the collapse of Russia in the 1990s? Anyone remember that? There is a really interesting talk on this: https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/feb/13/social-collapse-best-practices/ https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/feb/13/social-collapse-be...

uuddlrlr 5y ago

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not after me.

kafkaIncarnate 5y ago

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.

mellavora 5y ago

There is some really interesting psychological literature which assumes that the foundational wiring of personality is laid in the womb, see Stanislav Grofs writings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof This has four potential archetypes: 1 The Amniotic Universe; 2 Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit; 3 The Death-Rebirth Struggle; 4 The Death-Rebirth Experience Number 3 can be characterized as the valiant heroic struggle against huge odds which leads to a peaceful new age. (i.e. vaginal birth, which is extremely challenging for the child as well as mother). Since most of us were at one time in a womb and then left it, this idea that our current state might end is indeed, as you said, hard-wired into the human brain. I can't say that the reason has been discovered, but Grof's theories cannot be immediately discarded.

asdff 5y ago

What is scary about these days isn't that we follow some book that says the world will end, but that we can measure the world ending empirically.

esarbe 5y ago

Well, the Christians' have been doing it for 20 centuries on the basis of spiritual interpretation of religious texts. The expectation that civilization will collapse nowadays comes from scientific knowledge based on verifiable data. We are witnessing: - a massive decline in biodiversity - a massive decline in biomass - fragmentation of ecosystems - collapse of ecosystems These are already observable and documented facts. These by themselves present a real and urgent danger to our global human civilization. Then there are the probable consequences from the climate crisis: - massive population migrations - destabilization of countries and federations - civil wars - actual wars between countries in order to fight for resources (i.e. water). We are headed for calamity. Let's not be delusional about that.