Are we heading towards collapse?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Are we heading towards collapse?

Willie Tomg: Feb 2, 2006

Blue Star posted:

From the sarcastic comments I take it that you all feel the topic of discussion is beenath you. Is it because its not true? I;m acvtuallly being serious right now. Are we running out of resources? Are there no ways we can become more sustainable?

D&D's primary problem is roundly recognized to be unfunny cliques lashing out from and retreating into the comfort of their mod-pet megathreads making the forum painful to read unless you really like cliques of vaguely-center-left dweebs, and it gets really obvious when people attempt to post topics more granular than "middle east war thread" or "eastern europe thread" or "climate change thread"

Incidentally, because of the areas of expertise involved, the climate change thread is probably the best venue for this. Which is dumb, because resource scarcity in an economic model entirely loving predicated upon the mathematical constant of infinite growth is a different problem from anthropogenic climate change and you have no reasonable way of knowing that. But that is, generally, where you'll get the best responses to your questions/concerns.

I'll let you return to getting tepidly "owned" (leased?) because you admitted to reading reddit like a normal person and not one of the cool and admirable folks who post in chat threads and their reregs.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2017 03:43

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Willie Tomg: Feb 2, 2006

bad posting is, unfortunately, an infinitely renewable resource. which is kinda the problem, really.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2017 03:52

Willie Tomg: Feb 2, 2006

Blue Star posted:

Okay, now correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're saying--and I don't want to jump the gun here or put words in your mouth--, but it sounds like you're saying that D&D posters are...dumb? Am I reading you right?

There is no D&D poster. There are a few SA posters who post in as many as "a few" D&D megathreads, however. They're okay, but generally really bad at improv.

Squalid posted:

While i'd love if we posted more threads there's also not much to discuss here, as the subject of civilizational "collapse" is necessarily purely speculative and most perspectives on the subject are based more on genre fiction rather than anything real that can be debated.

Films like Mad Max put this picture in our head of anarchic devastation in the aftermath of some cataclysm, but rarely is the process of getting from our highly organized and structured civilization ever explained. The requisite series of events is so implausible as to render any attempt to elaborate absurd.

Institutions like the state and government exist first and foremost in the mind and as tradition, and therefore it is only when we choose to break with them that they can collapse. Real collapses look less like the Road Warrior than they do the French Revolution or end of the Soviet Union.

The basic framework of most governments existed long before fossil fuels or capitalism and barring the literal extermination of their residents their future governments will probably remain relatively similar.

I mean let's look at the most complete example of state failure from the recent past, the fall of the Somali Federal government in 1991. Although state institutions like the civil courts, schools and police ceased to function, the conflict can also be seen as the reassertion of authority by traditional Somali tribal society. Civil courts were replaced with Xeer and Islamic courts, order is kept with blood feuds instead of police, and the warlords relied on the ancient tribal networks to raise militias and control territory. The anarchy of Somali is highly structured and reflective of the old traditions and natural conceptions of power and governance held by Somali people. Any collapse in a place like the United States will also be so constrained, and not even famine and war should be expected to break society from established patterns.

I think also "collapse" is a really lovely term which connotates a suddenness that will simply not happen on a societal scale, though it may occur on an interpersonal level. Just because The Age Of Trump has ushered in an era of $4 avocados to the detriment of my Texas restaurant doesn't mean that suddenly people won't be able to go out to eat in the state anymore, or the economics of the industry suddenly don't make sense. Just that it'll suck and will necessitate a period of navel-gazing whereupon if we're successful we realize we've been putting good avocados on mediocre food because avocados were cheap and doing a good job is hard, and if we're smart we make better food and if we're not the restaurant folds and we're a sad story in a world full of 'em and in either case life goes on. Until the next Trump Tariff.

"Collapse" will be like that, on a macroeconomic scale, I think. Maybe "slump" is more evocative and accurate. Or "pachinko machine." Bouncing around and taking a while at it, making a lot of noise and light doing so, but ultimately travelling down.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2017 04:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Are we heading towards collapse?