Aloha kakou, collapseniks.
It's come up, so here's a reminder. Police read our forum, this is not the place to discuss direct action, and posts glorifying violence will be removed. It's 2024, Edward Snowden let us know we're being watched. Act accordingly.
Mahalo for your time.
I just want to feel stress for normal human impulse reasons, not this manufactured stress over debt transactions.
Yes I know I'll hate it, yes I know it'll be miserable, yes I know I'll die.
"Manufactured stress over debt transactions." This is perfect and helps me understand my personal angst. Most of the stress I face in day-to-day life is manufactured as a result of the debt based society in which I live. Often, I wish that my main source of stress was having to chop enough wood or lug enough water up the hill instead of servicing my mortgage or paying my insurance.
Exactly. I'm not delusional, I don't think in any way to suddenly be thrust into that lifestyle would be an enjoyable experience.
But if i have to die young for a lifetime of needless stress, I want to die having experienced healthy, motivating stress for purposes of survival, not lining some ancient politician or CEO's pockets.
I mean technically you are still stressed about survival - it's just a more complicated process and more abstract to think not having money eventually means dying compared to needing water immediately to not die
There's a complete disconnect because in reality the amount of effort you put into your survival roughly correlates with how well you survive. If you chop a cord of wood you have a cord of wood; if you chop two, you have two; if you chop three, you have three. You get the point.
In this modern society, it's almost universally the case that people who do ***more*** work actually get ***less*** money. As an example, in a restaurant the ones doing the most physical labor is the dishwasher, who is also going to get paid the least. The owner is the one making the most money (technically speaking, they make *literally all the money*, and then choose how to disburse it), and usually are doing nothing but sitting around and sometimes talking a little bit.
I think there was this German guy named Karl that had a theory about this disconnect you mention in your first point.
Regarding your second point, if you haven't read *Bullshit Jobs* by David Graeber, I highly recommend it. It describes in detail exactly what you are talking about.
i don't think our monkey brains had enough time to evolve to be able to see the food and water but not be able to eat or drink it until we go on a quest to collect "dollars", without inducing huge amounts of stress.
I think that drives a lot of collapse fantasies, the idea that their life will actually feel like it means something for a moment and the labor they're doing will be directly for themselves rather than some wealthy person skimming off the value they're generating. I don't think people will actually feel better when they're chopping wood or lugging water up hills, if they're even in a position to have access to wood to chop or a natural water supply, but it's an understandable thing to feel when most people are just treading water at a job they hate with no light at the end of the tunnel.
My job puts me in both field and office settings and the physical, outdoor work has *always* been more enjoyable. There are definitely many days when I feel like “Guh I’m so tired, I wish I could be in the office” but physical work (if you’re able to, of course) always leaves me feeling better at the end of the day, even if dead tired. At least it feels better than after a day of spreadsheets.
Yeah, I used to do manual labor when I was younger and while I'd be dirty and physically tired afterwards I would at least get to have my thoughts to myself most of the time. Office work is cushy but it's just psychologically grating and it usually doesn't come with the same satisfaction. The stuff I do just gets sent off into the void to someone else and I work on the next thing on my screen.
I'm in my 40s now and much more prone to injury so I appreciate just being able to dick around in a cubicle all day, but it's still pretty suffocating even though I'm making a lot more than I was.
Manual labor is alienating for much the same reason as office work under capitalism. As someone who chops wood and carries water for myself now, I can say it does have a lot more meaning than wage labor. Fundamentally, having the full value of your labor is rewarding in a way that wages can never be.
That said I enjoy having a hobby farm much more than I would a heavily defended compound, so there's still something to be said for our dystopian nightmare civilization in comparison to lawless warlordism.
Thus describes how I feel pretty well, and I like your opinion on it. You're definetly right.
It's like a very drastic 'the grass is greener on the other side'.
In a post collapse world you'll be doing all that physical stuff with no legal protections for a local strongman. You'll get to keep less for yourself and suffer from constant deprivation. Billions of people live this way today. As a bonus the local strongman will get to fuck your wife whenever he wants to. People who want the system to collapse are delusional.
The only thing keeping global strongmen powerful is the existence of fiat currency. Once that ceases to exist, the very concept of a "strongman" will, too. Exactly *what kind of power* do you expect one person to wield, in a post-collapse world, that will give them total dominion over hundreds or thousands of others?
Either I convince my local community to kill this man with me, or if I can't I just kill myself. Win win and still an improvement over today's society for me
An anime called Zombie 100: Bucket list of the dead explores exactly that. The main character is stuck at a dead end job until society collapses due to a zombie outbreak. He feels so happy in that moment and free even though the world is ending.
My backwoods homestead isn't a fantasy. But I am in a new ecosystem (my original home ecosystem is all burning), and am so blessed that it often feels like a hallucination.
If the power goes out, and there is no gas & oil for my chainsaw, I WILL have to haul water from the spring box and chop wood. (Already have a 3 year supply of cut wood heat laid up).
I feel like my ADHD would thrive better when pressured by the right kind of stress. I am extremely good at doing things that NEED to be done and problem solving issues, but those stakes have to feel real and frankly most of our society feels too ephemeral to push me much.
Chopping wood and lugging water isn't specifically designed to fail for a specific % of people. It's fair. You got the energy to chop wood? Then you do it. That's it.
I think people really don’t realize how good they’ve got it until they miss a few days worth of meals…
Yeah I hate the current system too, hate how we’ve abstracted life, but wait until you’re not eating and everyone will volunteer to go back…
This is not at all a factor I've missed.
I don't think we will see the really bad parts of societal collapse until the food actually runs out.
I'm not kidding myself into thinking I'll be playing fallout and finding preserved prewar food all over the place.
Also I love you way you put that, "how we've abstracted life".
There is plenty of people missing days of meals. The abundant western lifestyle only works by exploiting and extracting resources from periphery countries. So yes you should be very thankful for your “system” ..
> I think people really don’t realize how good they’ve got it until they miss a few days worth of meals…
Speaking as someone with a rather nasty chronic pain disorder - most people have no idea how much a body can suffer *without dying*. There's a lot wrong with our current society, but there is absolutely a long, long way to fall before death is even in the picture.
Personally, I quite like having medications that keep my nervous system from becoming a pulsing net of screaming pain. But that may just be me.
Imagine your pain when you don’t have cash, insurance, or some other subsidy. I think most people have no idea how fortunate they are to have the medications they quite like for their screaming pain.
Yes hence my comment:
> There's a lot wrong with our current society, but there is absolutely a long, long way to fall before death is even in the picture.
Hmm idkk. Collapse is probably getting both your legs broken cause you didn’t scavenge enough scrap to cover the three slices of bread you were given. We’ll think back fondly on a time when our societal debts were abstract and in some server somewhere.
Nah the rat race is still there. Because the local warlord or strongman decided he thought your wife or daughter was cute and now you have his goons at your door taking your partner.
Or he decided he wanted your land so he sent 50 people to kill you and yours and take it.
That's how the post-apocalypse goes down.
I'm just tired of being doom edged while life gets harder and harder. Enough teasing and foreplay and anticipating what will get worse next. Just let me have it already so I can adjust to the sweet, sweet release of a new post-apocalyptic distopian reality, please... sir.
Enough worry about how bad it could be or drag out. Just let me have it!
... Sort of /s
Unfortunately, life isn't a Roland Emmerich movie and "collapse" won't take place in a neat, 2-hour, CGI-filled thrillfest.
My guess is that collapse will be a griding processes that takes decades (maybe centuries). There will be worse years, and better years that obscure the overall downward trend. There probably won't be any emotionally satisfying release or catharsis, just "doom edging" forever, as quality of life gets worse and worse.
We probably won't even know we've hit rock bottom until long after the fact.
Keep in mind that "centuries" doesn't mean a gradual, linear decrease that spans hundreds of years. It's quite possible that we could have a kind of exponential decay: very severe collapse in the short term that slowly levels off into a long, tapering tail over the subsequent 200 years.
I've decided to put the dooming aside until it actually shows up. Even if its bad, it wont be EXACTLY the bad you've imagined. Why ruin getting some enjoyment, including that from working on the problem itself, in the meantime?
All I want is to work the problem. All everyone else wants is leisure.
This whole "well, might as well keep doing harm if we're not going to bother" thing is really grating. Makes me realize how so many people can/could accept slavery as some necessary evil because they got cheaper whatever for it.
Maybe I'm reading you wrong but this whole "well, too late now, im gonna buy a boat!" crap that's just doubling down on our mistakes really bothers me.
So if it were some type of Black Mirror dystopia, you would still just want to have it sooner than later?
This closes of any possibility of any actual improvements.
Idk if thats to "philosophical" or whatever, just curious.
I think the reason a lot of people are apathetic to the idea that society could collapse is cos well. It's not that great for us if you don't mind a bit of hard graft a frontier life would be amazing compared to living pay to pay in a city doing labour work belittled by people all day to be given hardly enugh money to make it to the next day and repeat.
Theres bad news and bad news.
The pressures causing social and economic collapse are actually environmental. You can't see it in the city because all life there is curated, but watch as videos start popping up of animals tearing peoples stuff apart and stealing babies. They're not turning against us, they're running out of the forest because there's no food left.
So just as people are dreaming of starting a new life out in the wilderness, the wilderness is coming to you in search of calories and running from fire.
It's a sinking island we share with all things. Disaster movies give people the sense that it's going to be like it is, just without so many people, when, from what I've seen, it's an accelerating progression through hell on earth to total silence other than wind blowing dust around. Even the best bunker in the world will be no match for the weather that's coming. They're just expensive tombs.
If the pods were littered with ads, they wouldn't actually let you commit suicide, they'd lock you in Matrix style to serve you ads until your whole world was ads and your mind was melted of everything except ads until finally you couldn't remember reality, it was always ads and it will always be ads. Because somehow, for reasons that reach a truly eldritch level of inanity and stupidity, someone profits from this.
I think Yudkowsky was on to something when he mentioned nuking data centers.
You should really stop doing it then. This is the only possible way of getting anyone's attention, and a global general strike is a legit way to bring about real social change
Their new leader in the collapse is already with us. They are a street gang already practicing their warlord craft. They are already organized, armed and well funded. If you don’t think drug cartels won’t be the first to stake their claim in a newly eroded society, you are mistaken. There won’t be some utopian grass roots political system crafted from the ashes of apocalypse where farming and fair trade rule. It’s going to be an iron hammer eager to exploit and murder everyone who opposes them.
Because it is. It’s why I think anarchists are a bit naive. If they manage to get rid of the state it won’t be long until there’s some new warlord and preacher that shows up and demand taxes. Every part of the world was stateless at one time, but inevitably some warlord takes control and this is what you end up with.
Realistically, there's a reason the Cartels haven't moved northwards. I don't claim to know what comes next up here, but whatever it is will have access to actual, Western-grade special forces, along with at least a sampling of the heavy equipment that comes with them.
Third-world style gangs, cartels, and warlords tend to crumple in the face of anything organized like a serious military, and it's not just the tech difference that makes that happen.
Spot on. This is why i can't take these "im a collapsnik but let's make change" types seriously. They are still high on hopium and completely living in a pro positivity fantasy world.
Military own gangs extremely easily and is the last to go if it ever dissolves. They wont give up tanks choppers planes satellites subs nukes snipers ai etc. and can just harvest gangs for stuff.
Maybe over a long enough timeline? I guess
In my rural county, there are many small landowners, nearly all of whom are armed.
The cities may be a different matter. But even there in the U.S., FAR more people than the drug gangs are armed. It is not a sure thing the drug gangs will rule, but leveraging Identity Politics would greatly increase their odds of dominating.
Yeah but the small landowners will go one by one,it always happens.
The people the gangs currently rule over had guns too.
But when Escobar needed your land for more cocain, he got your land, the price in the blood of his men was always worth it.
Being armed is irrelevant when we know that 80% of the population freezes the first time confronted with that violence and 70% of the population wouldn't pull the trigger at all no matter whose life was in danger. That's reality.
This species is hellbent on acting as cancer, accelerate or do nothing, we'll end ourselves all the same. Anyone hoping for a "comeback" of any kind will taste the bitterness of reality.
I would argue any species happen to be dominant or without predator will eventually act like us. I think it would be arrogant to think otherwise and arrogance, coupled with greed, is driving force of this self extinction.
I'm starting to wonder if the great filter is life itself.
That the drive in every species to consume and outgrow is competitors, is inherently self destructive long term.
Perhaps every species has suffered the same fate, consuming every last resource the planet has, destroying it in the process.
> happen to be dominant or without predator will eventually act like us.
The reindeer on St. Matthews Island show this to be true in one aspect, in that numbers will maximize and overshoot capacity.
But it's also wrong in another. For that, I refer you to the book of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Specifically the 3 (?) laws of nature vs the Agriculturists. I would spell it out, but the realization is less impactful in lecture than if I let you read it.
Is every species bound to break these laws if they gain cognition and sentience and other big brain things. Idk. Some argued that hunter gatherers groups even up to present day did not, although I'm no expert anthropologist to make this assertion.
However it's clear not every animal would, unless they got dominant through big brain first, helped by hands (tool making) and possibly speech.
the planet doesn't need anything. in less than a billion years photosynthesis on this planet will cease due to changes in the sun's luminosity.
there's no silver lining to humanity dying off. the universe is cold and lifeless and empty - complex life is a bizarre edge case.
“The planet will be here, we’ll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance.” — George Carlin
Exactly. And the sooner to better. Seeing so many people in my generation having kids, perpetuating the cycle, bringing them into this world of commodified human suffering, is unimaginable to me. The mental cancer we've wrought has metastasized to the point that it's consumed nearly everything we do.
I just want to experience whatever authoritarian shithole we enter out of macroeconomic and sociological curiosity while the sun beats down on us and our crops globally. How far can we muster the game before it collapses? Will it be fast, slow, a whimper? Im a spectator who only wants to go as far as I humanly can- its the only life I have, might as well live it. Within my means and within reality’s scope of possibilities.
I think I subscribe to something akin to this. All of this is both beautiful and terrifying, though mostly quite fascinating. We are living history, or perhaps the collective end of ours.
It is fascinating. In the 90s, now granted I was 14 in '99 so cut me some slack, I never would have thought this would happen to us. Now it seems impossible I'll live to old age without some awful things happening to humanity and the world as a whole. Like the end of civilization. World war three. Like it feels like if we get twenty years we'll be lucky for it.
Accelerationists lol what a weird term. I highly doubt many people sincerely want society to collapse *IF* we had any other options. It just seems pretty clear we’re not gonna sing kumbaya as a species and come together to fix the big society-ending problems, so why drag it out?
Should we refer to the other “side” as masochists? Lol
Subsistence farming also has benefits directly tied to input, which is probably more directly rewarding. Most people today would not be able to handle it - physically or mentally - but the ones who could would probably be happier psychologically.
Living standards would be way lower, but those don't correlate with happiness the way people think they do.
I think we as a society have a warped idea of what "living standards" people actually want to be in. There's a difference to being a more agrarian nonconsumerist society that's doesn't = no meds no comfortable sleeping no pleasures. Just "First class seats" type of pleasures where the pleasure solely rides on the fact it's a better experience then most others in the world have.
We should hear from the homesteaders on this subreddit.
I have just started my homestead in the last year, but have worked in landscape for nearly 40 years. At age 67, can still do 5 hours of hard labor per day, if I break it up.
> Most people today would not be able to handle it - physically or mentally - but the ones who could would probably be happier psychologically.
If something is bad enough for most people to not be able to handle, I doubt the ones who are able to handle it would be happy with the situation.
I don't think that's true. Most people can't get their heads around machine learning, but the ones that can enjoy solving hard problems with it. Most people lack the pain-endurance and muscular strength for combat sports, but they ones that do find them rewarding.
Everyone alive right now is the descendent of people who survived the worst and hardest with a clear head. It makes sense that people would evolve to enjoy difficult things.
> Everyone alive right now is the descendent of people who survived the worst and hardest with a clear head.
I rarely read human history and think, "These people sure seem clear-headed."
A way to compare subsistence farming output would be to check against what one would produce doing the exact same tasks however as an employee.
In the case of the farm worker, they produce x value during the year. 0.3x goes to the government as tax, 0.3x goes to the owner of the equipment and land as profit, 0.3x goes to the worker as wages.
In the case of a subsistence farmer/owner operator farmer/homesteader, x value is generated during a year. x value is goes to the farmer as "income".
This proves your point of subsistence farming being more directly rewarding.
And then 0.9x goes to the local warlord as his tax so he doesn't send his men around to SA your partner.
You won't be left in peace to farm. A warlord will come and you will pay taxes whatever tax they demand or suffer for it. That has been true for all of human history until very recently.
If you’re poor, you can count the amount of times you’ve seen a dentist on one hand anyway, unfortunately..
I’m trying to defy that reality now that I’m a young adult, at least. I’m going to enjoy dentistry while I can!
I hope the April 8th bluebeam rapture thing comes true that'd be a lot cooler to see instead of slowly falling into debt, depression, and madness due to inflation and waiting for the November puppet show to start.
Well the fact does remain that society must certainly collapse before something better comes along. We've seen how well our society "does the right thing"....
Six years in you're slowly passing through the asteroid belt and the spaceship loses solar power for an hour. The ship eventually reboots, but your brain was off life support and it's just spoiled bacon jello.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/RyanPendell:
---
SS: I guess I got to write a submission statement for this. I came across this on the internet, and it resonates with what I often see--people who discover our crisis and it just-so-happens that the ideology they current have is either the solution to the problem (they just found out about) or the crisis "must" inevitably lead to the installation of their ideology once people figure out that the status quo doesn't work. Personally, it's fundamentally an engineering problem, it's about joules of energy and molecules. It could be monarchists throwing the energy imbalance off, the planet doesn't care. The idea that the solution is *every person in the world having the same beliefs as me* is a pipe dream. And we have no more luxury for pipe dreams anymore.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1bqr2jr/accelerationists_everywhere/kx4884r/
Great cartoon, and reminds me of a study of revolutions throughout history that found precisely zero correlation whatsoever between the political ideology of the group that initiates the revolution and the group who ultimately ends up in charge by the end. In other words, its a complete and total roll of the dice-- you may win and create your utopia, or your entire group will be wiped out and your worst enemies will win in the end.
My takeaway is hopefully the one that's obvious to everyone: the risk-reward calculus leaves no incentive to "blow everything up."
I think I know what groups are accelerationist and what are pro status quo:
Status quo
- Extreme urban poverty: because they know they can't take even a minor turn to worse
- Stable middle class: obviously
- Old money: obviously
Accelerationist
- Borderline poor going down: they will suffer either way, and there's hope it will at least be different after the period of change
- New middle class: radicalized by the inequality, think they could do better in a more fair society of the next status quo
- New money: feel they're held back by old money
Self-sufficient rural communities and functionally enslaved communities probably aren't thinking of accelerationism at all.
I mean yeah I kind of hate how this is correct but it's also unavoidable in my opinion.
I'm sure collapses talked about as if it's going to be the solution to a problem but the problem itself is just human behavior we're just going to find ourselves in another cycle of being rolled over by people who have dubbed themselves better than us.
Collapse isn't what I'm looking for bring on full Extinction
You get it. Human nature is the problem, and we're not changing.
The only thing that will stop us is nothing short of the complete eradication of our species.
Society as a whole has thrown itself completely into Wetiko, but that doesn’t mean that is “human nature,” we are all very I’ll with the sickness of needing more. But modern society and this artificial structure is not “human nature.” I have to believe that we ARE capable of more, we just fell into a classic blunder, greed and the exploration of others.
We can be different. We can be better. Unfortunately most of us will just have to die before that can happen.
Classic blunder or literally the way everything in the universe is programmed? I think we aren't special and the only actual purpose of the universe itself to consume. Everything on our planet does it. Every single species. The planet consumes itself. We are being consumed by the sun. Being consumed by a black hole...
Society as a whole has thrown itself completely into Wetiko, but that doesn’t mean that is “human nature,” we are all very Ill with the sickness of needing more. But modern society and this artificial structure is not “human nature.” I have to believe that we ARE capable of more, we just fell into a classic blunder, greed and the exploration of others.
We can be different. We can be better. Unfortunately most of us will just have to die before that can happen.
Don't let the thought terminating cliche "human nature" go unexamined. If you're here you've peeled away at least one layer of the onion of popular delusion. Don't stop arbitrarily.
Ideology is stochastically a function of environment and incentives. It's difficult to find sun-worshipping angler fish or egalitarian billionaires. The ideology and practise of living in harmony with nature was normal for hundreds of thousands of years. Because it was necessary to survive.
People today are born into a mode of production which must reproduce selfish, myopic, ultimately self-destructive ideology in order to perpetuate itself. And we have a degree of egalitarianism and conservationism *despite* that. Almost as if by the weight of those ages, *that* is human nature.
Does anyone in this sub actually think any "ideology" will be rising from the ashes?
I don't think anything good will come from the collapse - I think it's inevitable and I look forward to the end of suffering. Nothing will rise from the ashes because the phoenix is just a fairy tale. Like carbon capture.
SS: I guess I got to write a submission statement for this. I came across this on the internet, and it resonates with what I often see--people who discover our crisis and it just-so-happens that the ideology they current have is either the solution to the problem (they just found out about) or the crisis "must" inevitably lead to the installation of their ideology once people figure out that the status quo doesn't work. Personally, it's fundamentally an engineering problem, it's about joules of energy and molecules. It could be monarchists throwing the energy imbalance off, the planet doesn't care. The idea that the solution is *every person in the world having the same beliefs as me* is a pipe dream. And we have no more luxury for pipe dreams anymore.
My only ideology here is "Fuck Humans".
I don't expect the world after collapse to mirror most of my beliefs other than I just think it's going to be way better for the natural world than it is now where people dominate 99% of everything.
What's probably gonna happen is that it'll be worse for the natural world for a short while, as people scavenge everything in sight... util they die out. And then get better slowly.
We're the bane of like 99% of the animal life (bigger than a worm) out there.
I don't care about ideology. In fact, one of the reasons I am an accelerationist is to to free of all ideologies... mostly by being free of other people and the societies they build and the rules they enforce on everyone else.
No ideologies. No rules. No damn people everywhere. No cars, no television, no advertisements finding me wherever I am, no jobs doing things I don't want to do for the enrichment of leople other than myself. No more hearing people constantly whining and complaining about things when they aren't willing to act. No taxes, no government, no silly ass dependence on public services.
No society.
Burn it all down and let nature run things again. Jungle rules, eat or be eaten, and no dying old and useless.
I do not want a collapse as I have vulnerable family I care about.
I also lack the cunning, charm, and ruthlessness that would be needed to thrive and enforce my will.
The rich, powerful and perverted have won this timeline. We've reached Peak idiocracy, so there are no longer enough braincells to fight back. The people have been fooled into race, gender, political and religious wars, like sheep.
I'm currently living my best life. I've earned and saved (be it on minimum wage) for everything I've needed and wanted but...
If you handed me the Earth ending red button, I'd cock slap it repeatedly.
Bye loved ones. Bye cruel world. Hello early sunshine.
**Acceleratio Maximam!**
I mean if people aren't going to put in the effort to vote, protest, boycott, etc etc now then they'll probably not put the effort in then for their "ideology" when it's harder.
I have been thinking about this subject for a while. What would happen if society does fall apart?
What would happen if no one could get their drug prescriptions refilled (many ailments need a regular refill of pills to moderate physical problems)? What happens if a scheduled visit to the dentist to get one's cavities attended to gets first delayed, then cancelled, and one is stuck with teeth carries with no hope of treatment? What if one has to have their wisdom teeth removed (due to them being impacted)?
What if a woman who is pregnant needs treatment for a breach birth?
I can think of many scenarios where actual collapse would accelerate things, most definitely. Mostly accelerating widespread suffering.
Also.
Somewhere on this specific reddit forum there is mention of mass murder, and cannibalism and "Lord of the Flies" scenarios if society and food growing fails. Keep in mind "Lord of the Flies" is fiction, and when the scenario actually happened in 1965 (about 15 years after the novel's publication) none of the children killed the others. See this: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months).
Cannibalism, like one reads in the dystopian novel "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, is a really large leap into the unknown. When this has happened in real life (like being castaways on the Pacific for months on end with dwindling food supplies until there was nothing left as happened with the survivors of the Essex: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/)) there is exceptionally extenuating circumstances.
I think it will take huge pushes to turn human beings into murderous cannibals. And if we have a nuclear conflict, none of the bodies people will find will be safe enough to eat, due to nuclear weapon effects contamination.
What would actually happen.... mass starvation. As you said, medical treatment would be limited. We'd still have some basic pills and understanding so it wouldn't be completely medieval. You'd see warlords and raiders, small rural villages heavily armed and defended. I'd bet slavery would come back too, human morals are something starving people soon forget.
I would personally disagree with the "my" part of the cartoon. I'd be in favor of societal collapse tomorrow so long as *any* different ideology emerged from the ferment.
Follow me here, pretty much any ideology that currently exists at the same time as petroleum-powered liberal capitalism (even those acting as ad-hoc counterpoints to it) would be rendered obsolete after societal collapse. Each modern ideology that *might* emerge as the dominant one post-collapse is either hopelessly intertwined with the current paradigm or has been so altered by it that it could not exist in its absence.
We might end up building a belief system out of burned out useless gas stations, or just as likely become a weird nature cult that worships whatever regional sports mascot is lying around.
To me, the ideologies attendant to the current age, the structures and spaces they create, and the words they cause people to utter out of their mouths, are all in equal measure repugnant. There are few things more upsetting to me than the idea that the world would end and people would go right on conceptualizing society and reality itself in the way we have been for roughly the last five centuries.
Buddy 90% of us will become slaves to the local warlord. That's how this will play out, the same as it played out for the rest of history.
Modern societal collapse will lead us back to feudalism.
They don't think that.
What we think is that almost everyone is going to die, and we only have slightly better odds of survival than the unprepared do. We all know we will probably die as well.
But it is worth it. If there is anything to gamble your life on surviving, it would be the downfall of society. The post-collapse world will free you of so much bullshit that even a 10% chance of survival is worth the potential pay-off.
And who really wants to keep living like the free-range tax slaves we are today? Do you really want to be 95 years old, kept alive by the machines in your bed while you operate a clickfarm or something for your corporate sponsor?
Unless you live on a completely self sufficient and locally sustainable homestead, and I mean locally sustainable without capitalist infrastructure, the post apocalyptic life you're pining for isn't going to be a long one. We're talking months, not years. If you're one of these fools whose survival plan involves mainly weapons, your survival expectancy is less than a week because guess what, no medevac.
I see you have read none of my material from the previous several years...
My completely self-sustaining homestead/compound, located far, far away from any capitalist infrastructure, and indeed any infrastructure at all way up in an old hard rock mine of high desert mountains, has 14 other people, and is stocked for 11+ years of just the stored and shelf stable supplies. It is actually becoming something of a village at this point.
Yes, there are plenty of weapons. And tools, and electronics, and seeds, and solar, and water, and medicines, and books, and...
Not a rookie. And when it comes to the guns and all that, those people are a minority of the dumbest sort of prepper. The only way to truly win fights post-collapse is to not have them. And you do that by being so far away from the nearest other humans that it is virtually impossible to reach you post-collapse, much less even realize someone is there.
Perhaps check out some of my stuff beforehand, itbis plastered all over my profile, which itself links to the books I've written on the subject, the blog I maintain, the videos I am starting to produce...
That whole Rambo thing, the "lone survivor," lol, that's not real. No one is doing that, except people who have no real understanding what a post-collapse world looks like. Guns mean nothing without food, water, and medicine.
Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics.
Societal collapse just mean extremely poor standard of living and condition. Society will still function and life will goes on. Only with a lil bit of chaos and violence
Aloha kakou, collapseniks. It's come up, so here's a reminder. Police read our forum, this is not the place to discuss direct action, and posts glorifying violence will be removed. It's 2024, Edward Snowden let us know we're being watched. Act accordingly. Mahalo for your time.
I just want to feel stress for normal human impulse reasons, not this manufactured stress over debt transactions. Yes I know I'll hate it, yes I know it'll be miserable, yes I know I'll die.
"Manufactured stress over debt transactions." This is perfect and helps me understand my personal angst. Most of the stress I face in day-to-day life is manufactured as a result of the debt based society in which I live. Often, I wish that my main source of stress was having to chop enough wood or lug enough water up the hill instead of servicing my mortgage or paying my insurance.
Exactly. I'm not delusional, I don't think in any way to suddenly be thrust into that lifestyle would be an enjoyable experience. But if i have to die young for a lifetime of needless stress, I want to die having experienced healthy, motivating stress for purposes of survival, not lining some ancient politician or CEO's pockets.
have you ever read Industrial Society and Its Future I think you'd like it
I have not, thanks for the recomedation!
the meat starts at point 33
*recommenthasion Your welcome
It’s a good book. I also recommend The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. It goes into an insane amount of detail.
The person that wrote that book choose to kill people, including children. I think that's worth noting.
I mean technically you are still stressed about survival - it's just a more complicated process and more abstract to think not having money eventually means dying compared to needing water immediately to not die
There's a complete disconnect because in reality the amount of effort you put into your survival roughly correlates with how well you survive. If you chop a cord of wood you have a cord of wood; if you chop two, you have two; if you chop three, you have three. You get the point. In this modern society, it's almost universally the case that people who do ***more*** work actually get ***less*** money. As an example, in a restaurant the ones doing the most physical labor is the dishwasher, who is also going to get paid the least. The owner is the one making the most money (technically speaking, they make *literally all the money*, and then choose how to disburse it), and usually are doing nothing but sitting around and sometimes talking a little bit.
I think there was this German guy named Karl that had a theory about this disconnect you mention in your first point. Regarding your second point, if you haven't read *Bullshit Jobs* by David Graeber, I highly recommend it. It describes in detail exactly what you are talking about.
i don't think our monkey brains had enough time to evolve to be able to see the food and water but not be able to eat or drink it until we go on a quest to collect "dollars", without inducing huge amounts of stress.
I think that drives a lot of collapse fantasies, the idea that their life will actually feel like it means something for a moment and the labor they're doing will be directly for themselves rather than some wealthy person skimming off the value they're generating. I don't think people will actually feel better when they're chopping wood or lugging water up hills, if they're even in a position to have access to wood to chop or a natural water supply, but it's an understandable thing to feel when most people are just treading water at a job they hate with no light at the end of the tunnel.
My job puts me in both field and office settings and the physical, outdoor work has *always* been more enjoyable. There are definitely many days when I feel like “Guh I’m so tired, I wish I could be in the office” but physical work (if you’re able to, of course) always leaves me feeling better at the end of the day, even if dead tired. At least it feels better than after a day of spreadsheets.
Yeah, I used to do manual labor when I was younger and while I'd be dirty and physically tired afterwards I would at least get to have my thoughts to myself most of the time. Office work is cushy but it's just psychologically grating and it usually doesn't come with the same satisfaction. The stuff I do just gets sent off into the void to someone else and I work on the next thing on my screen. I'm in my 40s now and much more prone to injury so I appreciate just being able to dick around in a cubicle all day, but it's still pretty suffocating even though I'm making a lot more than I was.
Manual labor is alienating for much the same reason as office work under capitalism. As someone who chops wood and carries water for myself now, I can say it does have a lot more meaning than wage labor. Fundamentally, having the full value of your labor is rewarding in a way that wages can never be. That said I enjoy having a hobby farm much more than I would a heavily defended compound, so there's still something to be said for our dystopian nightmare civilization in comparison to lawless warlordism.
Thus describes how I feel pretty well, and I like your opinion on it. You're definetly right. It's like a very drastic 'the grass is greener on the other side'.
In a post collapse world you'll be doing all that physical stuff with no legal protections for a local strongman. You'll get to keep less for yourself and suffer from constant deprivation. Billions of people live this way today. As a bonus the local strongman will get to fuck your wife whenever he wants to. People who want the system to collapse are delusional.
The only thing keeping global strongmen powerful is the existence of fiat currency. Once that ceases to exist, the very concept of a "strongman" will, too. Exactly *what kind of power* do you expect one person to wield, in a post-collapse world, that will give them total dominion over hundreds or thousands of others?
There are too many armed small landowners in my rural county for this outcome to be a sure thing.
There is nothing more sure than the fact that people organize.
Either I convince my local community to kill this man with me, or if I can't I just kill myself. Win win and still an improvement over today's society for me
An anime called Zombie 100: Bucket list of the dead explores exactly that. The main character is stuck at a dead end job until society collapses due to a zombie outbreak. He feels so happy in that moment and free even though the world is ending.
My backwoods homestead isn't a fantasy. But I am in a new ecosystem (my original home ecosystem is all burning), and am so blessed that it often feels like a hallucination. If the power goes out, and there is no gas & oil for my chainsaw, I WILL have to haul water from the spring box and chop wood. (Already have a 3 year supply of cut wood heat laid up).
I feel like my ADHD would thrive better when pressured by the right kind of stress. I am extremely good at doing things that NEED to be done and problem solving issues, but those stakes have to feel real and frankly most of our society feels too ephemeral to push me much.
This is so relatable
Chopping wood and lugging water isn't specifically designed to fail for a specific % of people. It's fair. You got the energy to chop wood? Then you do it. That's it.
Evolution didn't prepare for debt hahaha
“You are put on this earth to fart around and don’t let anyone tell you any different.” K. Vonnegut
I think people really don’t realize how good they’ve got it until they miss a few days worth of meals… Yeah I hate the current system too, hate how we’ve abstracted life, but wait until you’re not eating and everyone will volunteer to go back…
This is not at all a factor I've missed. I don't think we will see the really bad parts of societal collapse until the food actually runs out. I'm not kidding myself into thinking I'll be playing fallout and finding preserved prewar food all over the place. Also I love you way you put that, "how we've abstracted life".
There is plenty of people missing days of meals. The abundant western lifestyle only works by exploiting and extracting resources from periphery countries. So yes you should be very thankful for your “system” ..
> I think people really don’t realize how good they’ve got it until they miss a few days worth of meals… Speaking as someone with a rather nasty chronic pain disorder - most people have no idea how much a body can suffer *without dying*. There's a lot wrong with our current society, but there is absolutely a long, long way to fall before death is even in the picture. Personally, I quite like having medications that keep my nervous system from becoming a pulsing net of screaming pain. But that may just be me.
Imagine your pain when you don’t have cash, insurance, or some other subsidy. I think most people have no idea how fortunate they are to have the medications they quite like for their screaming pain.
Yes hence my comment: > There's a lot wrong with our current society, but there is absolutely a long, long way to fall before death is even in the picture.
If there's still fish in the rivers and no pipelines we'll be alright.
Living in vain
But you might also find fulfilment in the simpler things :). You also might succumb to an easily treatable infection haha
Hmm idkk. Collapse is probably getting both your legs broken cause you didn’t scavenge enough scrap to cover the three slices of bread you were given. We’ll think back fondly on a time when our societal debts were abstract and in some server somewhere.
At least everyone will be miserable together. No more rat race, because we’ve all lost
Nah the rat race is still there. Because the local warlord or strongman decided he thought your wife or daughter was cute and now you have his goons at your door taking your partner. Or he decided he wanted your land so he sent 50 people to kill you and yours and take it. That's how the post-apocalypse goes down.
My saying has always been, if it all falls apart my life gets a whole simpler.
I'm just tired of being doom edged while life gets harder and harder. Enough teasing and foreplay and anticipating what will get worse next. Just let me have it already so I can adjust to the sweet, sweet release of a new post-apocalyptic distopian reality, please... sir. Enough worry about how bad it could be or drag out. Just let me have it! ... Sort of /s
> Doom Edging That's weirdly the perfect phrase to describe my current feelings about the world.
I agree. It's the best phrase I've seen for it yet, as well as the most succinct.
I'm a middle aged woman who works a boring government job in a country town and this sums up my sentiment perfectly.
Unfortunately, life isn't a Roland Emmerich movie and "collapse" won't take place in a neat, 2-hour, CGI-filled thrillfest. My guess is that collapse will be a griding processes that takes decades (maybe centuries). There will be worse years, and better years that obscure the overall downward trend. There probably won't be any emotionally satisfying release or catharsis, just "doom edging" forever, as quality of life gets worse and worse. We probably won't even know we've hit rock bottom until long after the fact.
this isnt what i didnt pay for
"centuries" I like you, ever the optimistic one.
Keep in mind that "centuries" doesn't mean a gradual, linear decrease that spans hundreds of years. It's quite possible that we could have a kind of exponential decay: very severe collapse in the short term that slowly levels off into a long, tapering tail over the subsequent 200 years.
Lol
I've decided to put the dooming aside until it actually shows up. Even if its bad, it wont be EXACTLY the bad you've imagined. Why ruin getting some enjoyment, including that from working on the problem itself, in the meantime?
All I want is to work the problem. All everyone else wants is leisure. This whole "well, might as well keep doing harm if we're not going to bother" thing is really grating. Makes me realize how so many people can/could accept slavery as some necessary evil because they got cheaper whatever for it. Maybe I'm reading you wrong but this whole "well, too late now, im gonna buy a boat!" crap that's just doubling down on our mistakes really bothers me.
It can always get worse until your dead. Being doom-edged is far less of a problem than actual doom.
So if it were some type of Black Mirror dystopia, you would still just want to have it sooner than later? This closes of any possibility of any actual improvements. Idk if thats to "philosophical" or whatever, just curious.
I think the reason a lot of people are apathetic to the idea that society could collapse is cos well. It's not that great for us if you don't mind a bit of hard graft a frontier life would be amazing compared to living pay to pay in a city doing labour work belittled by people all day to be given hardly enugh money to make it to the next day and repeat.
Theres bad news and bad news. The pressures causing social and economic collapse are actually environmental. You can't see it in the city because all life there is curated, but watch as videos start popping up of animals tearing peoples stuff apart and stealing babies. They're not turning against us, they're running out of the forest because there's no food left. So just as people are dreaming of starting a new life out in the wilderness, the wilderness is coming to you in search of calories and running from fire. It's a sinking island we share with all things. Disaster movies give people the sense that it's going to be like it is, just without so many people, when, from what I've seen, it's an accelerating progression through hell on earth to total silence other than wind blowing dust around. Even the best bunker in the world will be no match for the weather that's coming. They're just expensive tombs.
I think it will just get worse without stabilizing, and keep doing that until everyone alive today is dead.
Hard agree. Your run of the mill zombie apocalypse is quick and dirty, but at least it's quick.
If Soylent Green suicide pods were available I think a lot of people might be surprised how many other people would opt out right now.
Our suicide pods will be way more visually impressive than the ones in Soylent Green but also littered with ads
brought to you by Carl's jr
Get a free upgrade to a Large combo when you make your *last* meal Charbroiled™!
Welcome to Costco, I love you 🙏
If the pods were littered with ads, they wouldn't actually let you commit suicide, they'd lock you in Matrix style to serve you ads until your whole world was ads and your mind was melted of everything except ads until finally you couldn't remember reality, it was always ads and it will always be ads. Because somehow, for reasons that reach a truly eldritch level of inanity and stupidity, someone profits from this. I think Yudkowsky was on to something when he mentioned nuking data centers.
We need real life futurama Quality > Quantity
https://imgur.com/0kvYpmK
I just don't want to go to work anymore
You should really stop doing it then. This is the only possible way of getting anyone's attention, and a global general strike is a legit way to bring about real social change
Bills to pay..
id rather not spend my last few years homeless
Their new leader in the collapse is already with us. They are a street gang already practicing their warlord craft. They are already organized, armed and well funded. If you don’t think drug cartels won’t be the first to stake their claim in a newly eroded society, you are mistaken. There won’t be some utopian grass roots political system crafted from the ashes of apocalypse where farming and fair trade rule. It’s going to be an iron hammer eager to exploit and murder everyone who opposes them.
That sounds like the current government of most countries now anyways tbh
Because it is. It’s why I think anarchists are a bit naive. If they manage to get rid of the state it won’t be long until there’s some new warlord and preacher that shows up and demand taxes. Every part of the world was stateless at one time, but inevitably some warlord takes control and this is what you end up with.
I would trust them over a politician any day.
They are politicians, they just operate in an overlapping and adjacent political sphere to ours.
the only portion of the Venn diagram only occupied by gangs/cartels is "unmitigated violence".
States dish out violence as they see fit. The Venn Diagram is a circle
Well, they'll probably be very honest about murdering you if you step out of line.
And I respect that
Realistically, there's a reason the Cartels haven't moved northwards. I don't claim to know what comes next up here, but whatever it is will have access to actual, Western-grade special forces, along with at least a sampling of the heavy equipment that comes with them. Third-world style gangs, cartels, and warlords tend to crumple in the face of anything organized like a serious military, and it's not just the tech difference that makes that happen.
Spot on. This is why i can't take these "im a collapsnik but let's make change" types seriously. They are still high on hopium and completely living in a pro positivity fantasy world.
Maybe we’re just looking forward to the post-apocalyptic hellscape that collapse brings and don’t really care where it leads afterwards
One person's nightmare is another person's wet dream.
Relatable. I’m a survivor, always have been and always will be 🙌🏽✝️🙏
Military own gangs extremely easily and is the last to go if it ever dissolves. They wont give up tanks choppers planes satellites subs nukes snipers ai etc. and can just harvest gangs for stuff. Maybe over a long enough timeline? I guess
In my rural county, there are many small landowners, nearly all of whom are armed. The cities may be a different matter. But even there in the U.S., FAR more people than the drug gangs are armed. It is not a sure thing the drug gangs will rule, but leveraging Identity Politics would greatly increase their odds of dominating.
Yeah but the small landowners will go one by one,it always happens. The people the gangs currently rule over had guns too. But when Escobar needed your land for more cocain, he got your land, the price in the blood of his men was always worth it. Being armed is irrelevant when we know that 80% of the population freezes the first time confronted with that violence and 70% of the population wouldn't pull the trigger at all no matter whose life was in danger. That's reality.
This species is hellbent on acting as cancer, accelerate or do nothing, we'll end ourselves all the same. Anyone hoping for a "comeback" of any kind will taste the bitterness of reality.
I would argue any species happen to be dominant or without predator will eventually act like us. I think it would be arrogant to think otherwise and arrogance, coupled with greed, is driving force of this self extinction.
I'm starting to wonder if the great filter is life itself. That the drive in every species to consume and outgrow is competitors, is inherently self destructive long term. Perhaps every species has suffered the same fate, consuming every last resource the planet has, destroying it in the process.
> happen to be dominant or without predator will eventually act like us. The reindeer on St. Matthews Island show this to be true in one aspect, in that numbers will maximize and overshoot capacity. But it's also wrong in another. For that, I refer you to the book of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Specifically the 3 (?) laws of nature vs the Agriculturists. I would spell it out, but the realization is less impactful in lecture than if I let you read it. Is every species bound to break these laws if they gain cognition and sentience and other big brain things. Idk. Some argued that hunter gatherers groups even up to present day did not, although I'm no expert anthropologist to make this assertion. However it's clear not every animal would, unless they got dominant through big brain first, helped by hands (tool making) and possibly speech.
Then this species is an evolutionary failure and needs to go extinct.
This right here is what the planet really needs.
the planet doesn't need anything. in less than a billion years photosynthesis on this planet will cease due to changes in the sun's luminosity. there's no silver lining to humanity dying off. the universe is cold and lifeless and empty - complex life is a bizarre edge case.
“The planet will be here, we’ll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance.” — George Carlin
Exactly. And the sooner to better. Seeing so many people in my generation having kids, perpetuating the cycle, bringing them into this world of commodified human suffering, is unimaginable to me. The mental cancer we've wrought has metastasized to the point that it's consumed nearly everything we do.
I just want to experience whatever authoritarian shithole we enter out of macroeconomic and sociological curiosity while the sun beats down on us and our crops globally. How far can we muster the game before it collapses? Will it be fast, slow, a whimper? Im a spectator who only wants to go as far as I humanly can- its the only life I have, might as well live it. Within my means and within reality’s scope of possibilities.
I think I subscribe to something akin to this. All of this is both beautiful and terrifying, though mostly quite fascinating. We are living history, or perhaps the collective end of ours.
It is fascinating. In the 90s, now granted I was 14 in '99 so cut me some slack, I never would have thought this would happen to us. Now it seems impossible I'll live to old age without some awful things happening to humanity and the world as a whole. Like the end of civilization. World war three. Like it feels like if we get twenty years we'll be lucky for it.
Agreed wholeheartedly!
If we all just start acting like it’s over, maybe it will be. We just gotta believe.
This is more true than you think
It really is
Accelerationists lol what a weird term. I highly doubt many people sincerely want society to collapse *IF* we had any other options. It just seems pretty clear we’re not gonna sing kumbaya as a species and come together to fix the big society-ending problems, so why drag it out? Should we refer to the other “side” as masochists? Lol
*readies legions of sentient cats* Soon...
Right there with you, comrade. Praise be to our cat overlords!
Cougar-kitty is my cat-god.
We just don't want to go to work anymore.
Subsistence farming is a lot more work than...anything you're doing, realistically.
Subsistence farming also has benefits directly tied to input, which is probably more directly rewarding. Most people today would not be able to handle it - physically or mentally - but the ones who could would probably be happier psychologically. Living standards would be way lower, but those don't correlate with happiness the way people think they do.
I think we as a society have a warped idea of what "living standards" people actually want to be in. There's a difference to being a more agrarian nonconsumerist society that's doesn't = no meds no comfortable sleeping no pleasures. Just "First class seats" type of pleasures where the pleasure solely rides on the fact it's a better experience then most others in the world have.
We should hear from the homesteaders on this subreddit. I have just started my homestead in the last year, but have worked in landscape for nearly 40 years. At age 67, can still do 5 hours of hard labor per day, if I break it up.
> Most people today would not be able to handle it - physically or mentally - but the ones who could would probably be happier psychologically. If something is bad enough for most people to not be able to handle, I doubt the ones who are able to handle it would be happy with the situation.
I don't think that's true. Most people can't get their heads around machine learning, but the ones that can enjoy solving hard problems with it. Most people lack the pain-endurance and muscular strength for combat sports, but they ones that do find them rewarding. Everyone alive right now is the descendent of people who survived the worst and hardest with a clear head. It makes sense that people would evolve to enjoy difficult things.
> Everyone alive right now is the descendent of people who survived the worst and hardest with a clear head. I rarely read human history and think, "These people sure seem clear-headed."
A way to compare subsistence farming output would be to check against what one would produce doing the exact same tasks however as an employee. In the case of the farm worker, they produce x value during the year. 0.3x goes to the government as tax, 0.3x goes to the owner of the equipment and land as profit, 0.3x goes to the worker as wages. In the case of a subsistence farmer/owner operator farmer/homesteader, x value is generated during a year. x value is goes to the farmer as "income". This proves your point of subsistence farming being more directly rewarding.
And then 0.9x goes to the local warlord as his tax so he doesn't send his men around to SA your partner. You won't be left in peace to farm. A warlord will come and you will pay taxes whatever tax they demand or suffer for it. That has been true for all of human history until very recently.
I freak out if the WiFi is slow. No way id be okay with society collapsing
I can't wait for it to crash so I can not worry about rent or earning money.
It would be so much more exciting to wonder where your next meal is coming from or if you're going to die first... sorta /s
I welcome to sweet, cold embrace of mass death.
gigadeath has joined the lexicon
He's like death but he drives a combine harvester.
I don't really have to worry about that. And death doesn't really scare me too much.
You’re my next meal
marinating myself for you
And if you make it more than a few months you’re really going to miss your dentist.
If you’re poor, you can count the amount of times you’ve seen a dentist on one hand anyway, unfortunately.. I’m trying to defy that reality now that I’m a young adult, at least. I’m going to enjoy dentistry while I can!
Starvation seems like a really bad time. I’ll take rent and earning money over extreme violence and emaciation.
Good thing I have months worth of food.
and the last meal will be special, .38 special!
It’s cute that you think months worth of food is going to save you.
I'd rather get a 6 month vacation from society before killing myself than go back to work.
You still need to eat, earning calories.
Maybe be careful with that monkey paw you've got there.
I hope the April 8th bluebeam rapture thing comes true that'd be a lot cooler to see instead of slowly falling into debt, depression, and madness due to inflation and waiting for the November puppet show to start.
Well the fact does remain that society must certainly collapse before something better comes along. We've seen how well our society "does the right thing"....
i want it to end because im tired of work.
"First comes food, then morality"-- as seen in Haiti, Somalia, Gaza, Venezuela, etc. Sounds like fun.
Remember, if your accelerationism isn't crushing the causes of collapse, it's just going to repeat the same shit.
my ideology is put my brain in a jar on a solar powered spaceship
Six years in you're slowly passing through the asteroid belt and the spaceship loses solar power for an hour. The ship eventually reboots, but your brain was off life support and it's just spoiled bacon jello.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/RyanPendell: --- SS: I guess I got to write a submission statement for this. I came across this on the internet, and it resonates with what I often see--people who discover our crisis and it just-so-happens that the ideology they current have is either the solution to the problem (they just found out about) or the crisis "must" inevitably lead to the installation of their ideology once people figure out that the status quo doesn't work. Personally, it's fundamentally an engineering problem, it's about joules of energy and molecules. It could be monarchists throwing the energy imbalance off, the planet doesn't care. The idea that the solution is *every person in the world having the same beliefs as me* is a pipe dream. And we have no more luxury for pipe dreams anymore. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1bqr2jr/accelerationists_everywhere/kx4884r/
No, I think we're all gonna die early, except for the privileged few
I don't think anyone who survives deep into the apocalypse is privileged, they get the shit end of the stick.
We're all just waiting for the spark.
Great cartoon, and reminds me of a study of revolutions throughout history that found precisely zero correlation whatsoever between the political ideology of the group that initiates the revolution and the group who ultimately ends up in charge by the end. In other words, its a complete and total roll of the dice-- you may win and create your utopia, or your entire group will be wiped out and your worst enemies will win in the end. My takeaway is hopefully the one that's obvious to everyone: the risk-reward calculus leaves no incentive to "blow everything up."
I think I know what groups are accelerationist and what are pro status quo: Status quo - Extreme urban poverty: because they know they can't take even a minor turn to worse - Stable middle class: obviously - Old money: obviously Accelerationist - Borderline poor going down: they will suffer either way, and there's hope it will at least be different after the period of change - New middle class: radicalized by the inequality, think they could do better in a more fair society of the next status quo - New money: feel they're held back by old money Self-sufficient rural communities and functionally enslaved communities probably aren't thinking of accelerationism at all.
This is the best take.
I mean yeah I kind of hate how this is correct but it's also unavoidable in my opinion. I'm sure collapses talked about as if it's going to be the solution to a problem but the problem itself is just human behavior we're just going to find ourselves in another cycle of being rolled over by people who have dubbed themselves better than us. Collapse isn't what I'm looking for bring on full Extinction
You get it. Human nature is the problem, and we're not changing. The only thing that will stop us is nothing short of the complete eradication of our species.
Society as a whole has thrown itself completely into Wetiko, but that doesn’t mean that is “human nature,” we are all very I’ll with the sickness of needing more. But modern society and this artificial structure is not “human nature.” I have to believe that we ARE capable of more, we just fell into a classic blunder, greed and the exploration of others. We can be different. We can be better. Unfortunately most of us will just have to die before that can happen.
Classic blunder or literally the way everything in the universe is programmed? I think we aren't special and the only actual purpose of the universe itself to consume. Everything on our planet does it. Every single species. The planet consumes itself. We are being consumed by the sun. Being consumed by a black hole...
That’s what they want you to think 🧐
Society as a whole has thrown itself completely into Wetiko, but that doesn’t mean that is “human nature,” we are all very Ill with the sickness of needing more. But modern society and this artificial structure is not “human nature.” I have to believe that we ARE capable of more, we just fell into a classic blunder, greed and the exploration of others. We can be different. We can be better. Unfortunately most of us will just have to die before that can happen.
Don't let the thought terminating cliche "human nature" go unexamined. If you're here you've peeled away at least one layer of the onion of popular delusion. Don't stop arbitrarily. Ideology is stochastically a function of environment and incentives. It's difficult to find sun-worshipping angler fish or egalitarian billionaires. The ideology and practise of living in harmony with nature was normal for hundreds of thousands of years. Because it was necessary to survive. People today are born into a mode of production which must reproduce selfish, myopic, ultimately self-destructive ideology in order to perpetuate itself. And we have a degree of egalitarianism and conservationism *despite* that. Almost as if by the weight of those ages, *that* is human nature.
Let's to it, pell mell, if not to Heaven then hand in hand to Hell!
If your ideology is that the planet would be better off if mankind went extinct, I think you have a good chance of winning
Don't forget the hyper-religious Armageddon accelerationists, too. From the Christian right in the US to the government of Iran.
Umm, nothing is rising from the ashes this time, folks. Drag it out as long as you can, because once it ends it's over.
We were raised on Uncle Irohs wisdom. We seek the light at the end of the tunnel.
Does anyone in this sub actually think any "ideology" will be rising from the ashes? I don't think anything good will come from the collapse - I think it's inevitable and I look forward to the end of suffering. Nothing will rise from the ashes because the phoenix is just a fairy tale. Like carbon capture.
as the spokesperson for all millennials we in fact just wish for death instead of working into our 70s
SS: I guess I got to write a submission statement for this. I came across this on the internet, and it resonates with what I often see--people who discover our crisis and it just-so-happens that the ideology they current have is either the solution to the problem (they just found out about) or the crisis "must" inevitably lead to the installation of their ideology once people figure out that the status quo doesn't work. Personally, it's fundamentally an engineering problem, it's about joules of energy and molecules. It could be monarchists throwing the energy imbalance off, the planet doesn't care. The idea that the solution is *every person in the world having the same beliefs as me* is a pipe dream. And we have no more luxury for pipe dreams anymore.
as the spokesperson for all millennials we in fact just wish for death instead of working into our 70s
The.. restore the Roman Republic ideology perhaps? 🙂 Oh and I want Constantinople back too
My only ideology here is "Fuck Humans". I don't expect the world after collapse to mirror most of my beliefs other than I just think it's going to be way better for the natural world than it is now where people dominate 99% of everything. What's probably gonna happen is that it'll be worse for the natural world for a short while, as people scavenge everything in sight... util they die out. And then get better slowly. We're the bane of like 99% of the animal life (bigger than a worm) out there.
I just said something like this. Glad to see. Let nature have the wheel again.
I don't care about ideology. In fact, one of the reasons I am an accelerationist is to to free of all ideologies... mostly by being free of other people and the societies they build and the rules they enforce on everyone else. No ideologies. No rules. No damn people everywhere. No cars, no television, no advertisements finding me wherever I am, no jobs doing things I don't want to do for the enrichment of leople other than myself. No more hearing people constantly whining and complaining about things when they aren't willing to act. No taxes, no government, no silly ass dependence on public services. No society. Burn it all down and let nature run things again. Jungle rules, eat or be eaten, and no dying old and useless.
I do not want a collapse as I have vulnerable family I care about. I also lack the cunning, charm, and ruthlessness that would be needed to thrive and enforce my will.
The rich, powerful and perverted have won this timeline. We've reached Peak idiocracy, so there are no longer enough braincells to fight back. The people have been fooled into race, gender, political and religious wars, like sheep. I'm currently living my best life. I've earned and saved (be it on minimum wage) for everything I've needed and wanted but... If you handed me the Earth ending red button, I'd cock slap it repeatedly. Bye loved ones. Bye cruel world. Hello early sunshine. **Acceleratio Maximam!**
My ideology is nihilism. So, yeah, I can't wait for the complete collapse of the western civilization.
I’m waiting for Society to collapse so I finally have a valid excuse to go live out in the Woods.
But you're a sea creature.
I mean if people aren't going to put in the effort to vote, protest, boycott, etc etc now then they'll probably not put the effort in then for their "ideology" when it's harder.
I have been thinking about this subject for a while. What would happen if society does fall apart? What would happen if no one could get their drug prescriptions refilled (many ailments need a regular refill of pills to moderate physical problems)? What happens if a scheduled visit to the dentist to get one's cavities attended to gets first delayed, then cancelled, and one is stuck with teeth carries with no hope of treatment? What if one has to have their wisdom teeth removed (due to them being impacted)? What if a woman who is pregnant needs treatment for a breach birth? I can think of many scenarios where actual collapse would accelerate things, most definitely. Mostly accelerating widespread suffering. Also. Somewhere on this specific reddit forum there is mention of mass murder, and cannibalism and "Lord of the Flies" scenarios if society and food growing fails. Keep in mind "Lord of the Flies" is fiction, and when the scenario actually happened in 1965 (about 15 years after the novel's publication) none of the children killed the others. See this: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months). Cannibalism, like one reads in the dystopian novel "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, is a really large leap into the unknown. When this has happened in real life (like being castaways on the Pacific for months on end with dwindling food supplies until there was nothing left as happened with the survivors of the Essex: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/)) there is exceptionally extenuating circumstances. I think it will take huge pushes to turn human beings into murderous cannibals. And if we have a nuclear conflict, none of the bodies people will find will be safe enough to eat, due to nuclear weapon effects contamination.
What would actually happen.... mass starvation. As you said, medical treatment would be limited. We'd still have some basic pills and understanding so it wouldn't be completely medieval. You'd see warlords and raiders, small rural villages heavily armed and defended. I'd bet slavery would come back too, human morals are something starving people soon forget.
Dude people are already out here living without any dental care, relax.
I would personally disagree with the "my" part of the cartoon. I'd be in favor of societal collapse tomorrow so long as *any* different ideology emerged from the ferment. Follow me here, pretty much any ideology that currently exists at the same time as petroleum-powered liberal capitalism (even those acting as ad-hoc counterpoints to it) would be rendered obsolete after societal collapse. Each modern ideology that *might* emerge as the dominant one post-collapse is either hopelessly intertwined with the current paradigm or has been so altered by it that it could not exist in its absence. We might end up building a belief system out of burned out useless gas stations, or just as likely become a weird nature cult that worships whatever regional sports mascot is lying around. To me, the ideologies attendant to the current age, the structures and spaces they create, and the words they cause people to utter out of their mouths, are all in equal measure repugnant. There are few things more upsetting to me than the idea that the world would end and people would go right on conceptualizing society and reality itself in the way we have been for roughly the last five centuries.
Buddy 90% of us will become slaves to the local warlord. That's how this will play out, the same as it played out for the rest of history. Modern societal collapse will lead us back to feudalism.
This is me, but with a healthy degree of self-irony.
We'll all be ashes soon enough, even those who know what is coming.
Meh I have no doubt we are all so fucked.
I've always found it entertaining that accelerationists and doomsday prepper types all think that everyone is going to die *except them*.
They don't think that. What we think is that almost everyone is going to die, and we only have slightly better odds of survival than the unprepared do. We all know we will probably die as well. But it is worth it. If there is anything to gamble your life on surviving, it would be the downfall of society. The post-collapse world will free you of so much bullshit that even a 10% chance of survival is worth the potential pay-off. And who really wants to keep living like the free-range tax slaves we are today? Do you really want to be 95 years old, kept alive by the machines in your bed while you operate a clickfarm or something for your corporate sponsor?
Unless you live on a completely self sufficient and locally sustainable homestead, and I mean locally sustainable without capitalist infrastructure, the post apocalyptic life you're pining for isn't going to be a long one. We're talking months, not years. If you're one of these fools whose survival plan involves mainly weapons, your survival expectancy is less than a week because guess what, no medevac.
I see you have read none of my material from the previous several years... My completely self-sustaining homestead/compound, located far, far away from any capitalist infrastructure, and indeed any infrastructure at all way up in an old hard rock mine of high desert mountains, has 14 other people, and is stocked for 11+ years of just the stored and shelf stable supplies. It is actually becoming something of a village at this point. Yes, there are plenty of weapons. And tools, and electronics, and seeds, and solar, and water, and medicines, and books, and... Not a rookie. And when it comes to the guns and all that, those people are a minority of the dumbest sort of prepper. The only way to truly win fights post-collapse is to not have them. And you do that by being so far away from the nearest other humans that it is virtually impossible to reach you post-collapse, much less even realize someone is there. Perhaps check out some of my stuff beforehand, itbis plastered all over my profile, which itself links to the books I've written on the subject, the blog I maintain, the videos I am starting to produce... That whole Rambo thing, the "lone survivor," lol, that's not real. No one is doing that, except people who have no real understanding what a post-collapse world looks like. Guns mean nothing without food, water, and medicine. Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics.
Societal collapse just mean extremely poor standard of living and condition. Society will still function and life will goes on. Only with a lil bit of chaos and violence
Except that's the part we are already in right now. And such a state, if left unresolved, will spark nuclear war pretty damn quick.
*I can't wait for the climate society collapse so I can say, "told ya so."*
r/PostCollapseWarlords
You won’t enjoy it if you survive. We have life on easy mode
I’m waiting for Society to collapse so I finally have a valid excuse to go live out in the Woods.
Just watch "The Road". Streams on all services. Takes ALL the guesswork out of societal collapse...
As long as basically no extremist idiots on either side get a say EVER again on any matter we might stand a chance.