Systemic Collapse: The Basics

[elbows]

Why not? If we do not suffer civilisational collapse, we can expect to see medical science advance in leaps and bounds.

Why should we expect to see medical science advance in leaps and bounds?

This goes back to what I was saying about scientific progress in general. I think there is a real danger of people confusing the very clever progress we have made in some areas in recent decades, with the more basic but essential foundations that were laid far earlier, and have not been rendered obsolete by fancy new things, but are as essential as ever.

For example antibiotics made so much possible, and I see few signs of any comparable alternatives having been created in recent decades. So when we see our antibiotics losing the battle on certain fronts, it becomes sensible to stop taking all these foundations for granted, to stop assuming that the only way is up. Sometimes we will find new solutions but to presume that we always will does not seem sensible, it seems like complacency.

The same sort of concepts can be applied to a variety of basic infrastructure, problems solved long ago that are almost invisible to us these days, but remain essential foundations that we should pay more attention to, that should not be presumed to last forever.

None of this stuff should be taken to the extreme otherwise you just get the doomshits, but ignore this stuff completely at your peril.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Zero growth under capitalism means most people get increasingly poorer. Hard to manage, that, long-term.

Quite so ...

“The colaborationist government Tsolakoglou has annihilated literally my every chance of subsistence which was based on a dignified pension which for 35 years I alone (without any state support) paid for.

Because I'm of an age that does not offer me the ability of a more dynamic reaction (without however excluding being the second man if one Greek grabbed a kalashnikov) I cannot find another dignified solution before I begin to search in the garbage bins for food.

I believe that the youth without future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of our nation upside down in Syntagma square just like the italians did with Mussolini in 1945 in Milan”

http://pastebin.com/w82iMZCS

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Why should we expect to see medical science advance in leaps and bounds?

Because that is what it has done for the last 100 years, that's why. And the collective enterprise that is science has never been stronger or more active than it is now. You are right that we should not be complacent. A new pandemic could come along and devastate us. Who knows. But there are no concrete grounds for pessimism.

 

[phildwyer]

I think there is a real danger of people confusing the very clever progress we have made in some areas in recent decades, with the more basic but essential foundations that were laid far earlier, and have not been rendered obsolete by fancy new things, but are as essential as ever.

Have we made any progress at all, really?

Yes, Westerners today enjoy better health and longer lives than their forbears. I'd argue that this is more than counter-acted by their obvious emotional misery, but that is impossible to measure.

What is measurable, however, is the death and destruction that were necessary for such small advances to be made. Such as: the genocide of three whole continents, the mass enslavement of a fourth, the wanton destruction of every human culture except our own, the wanton destruction of the environment, the immizeration of even the Western working-classes through two centuries of unregulated labor and starvation wages, several episodes of mechanized warfare making possible industrialized death for the first time ever, the development of ever-more lethal weapons of mass destruction.

If that's progress, give me stasis.

 

[elbows]

Right, so the 'why not?' is civilisational collapse. You predict this as if you had some inside knowledge about the future. You do not. And people were saying exactly the same thing in the 60s/70s about the Cold War. Exactly the same.

Regarding inside knowledge about the future, in order to anchor myself to some sense of the times we live in and the future possibilities, I have found it necessary to make at least one presumption about the future. I have bought into the idea that the era of cheap & easy oil is over. I have also tended to feel that alternatives that are obvious, easy and scale up to the required levels are not a safe bet, although they are not completely impossible either, especially if coupled with great progress on the efficiency/consumption side of the equation.

The main areas of uncertainty I have are how humans will respond to this over decades, what ideas and movements will become popular, and whether anything comes along that buys us time, a decade here, a decade there. For example about 7 years ago the gas situation looked as wobbly as the oil situation, but the likes of the USA has managed to exploit unconventional reserves on a sufficient scale to make a very real difference to the gas picture. How long this will last is rather unknown to me, and to what extent the same thing could be pulled off with oil is also less than clear.

 

[Teaboy]

Well thats cheered me right up Phil. I'm ready for the weekend now.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

You don't half talk utter shite, phil. You can go back to the times when most people lived through their final years in constant pain if you like, when death in childbirth, of women and their babies, was so commonplace that the Aztec god of fallen warriors was also the god of women who died giving birth.

I could go on, but a couple of random examples are probably enough.

 

[Crispy]

For example antibiotics made so much possible, and I see few signs of any comparable alternatives having been created in recent decades. So when we see our antibiotics losing the battle on certain fronts, it becomes sensible to stop taking all these foundations for granted, to stop assuming that the only way is up. Sometimes we will find new solutions but to presume that we always will does not seem sensible, it seems like complacency.

This doesn't invalidate your argument, nor does it help solve the antibiotic resistance problem, but check this out as an example of world-changing medical research: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html

A treatment that fights any virus, by detecting dsRNA (a fundamental step in the reproductive method of viruses and not otherwise found in any animal cell) and activating a protein that messages the host cell to self-terminate. Unless viruses manage to evolve a completely new reproductive method, then it should be possible to wipe them out, or at least offer a cure for all viral diseases.

 

[yield]

The Korean Peninsula?

Kashmir?

Kosovo?

Columbia?

 

[phildwyer]

You don't half talk utter shite, phil. You can go back to the times when most people lived through their final years in constant pain if you like, when death in childbirth, of women and their babies, was so commonplace that the Aztec god of fallen warriors was also the god of women who died giving birth.

I could go on, but a couple of random examples are probably enough.

No they are not.

First of all, what makes you think that most people in past ages lived out their final days in pain? A far higher percentage of people had access to opium and other pain-killers than they do today. This is another example of the strange thinking whereby today's people consider themselves the luckiest who have ever lived--for no apparent reason that I can see.

Now some questions for you: Would you rather be a hunter-gatherer in Angola or a slave in Mississippi? Would you rather be an independent small-holding peasant or an eighteenth-century coal-miner? Would you rather be a Tasmanian aborigine or DEAD along with your entire civilization?

Those are the questions that people really had to face, in real history.

 

[elbows]

This doesn't invalidate your argument, nor does it help solve the antibiotic resistance problem, but check this out as an example of world-changing medical research: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html

A treatment that fights any virus, by detecting dsRNA (a fundamental step in the reproductive method of viruses and not otherwise found in any animal cell) and activating a protein that messages the host cell to self-terminate. Unless viruses manage to evolve a completely new reproductive method, then it should be possible to wipe them out, or at least offer a cure for all viral diseases.

Cheers for the info. Certainly medicine was probably not the best example I could have picked to demonstrate a lack of progress, and all this stuff is good reason why people who are concerned about the future should not go overboard with thinking we have nothing new to fight problems with on a grand scale. Perhaps I should be slightly more complacent than I am, but what I really need to adjust my attitude on this front is more signs of new inventions etc actually coming to fruition. We seem to have found all sorts of potential all over the place, but unlocking that potential seems to be harder work than used to be the case with earlier and less fancy discoveries.

 

[Idris2002]

No they are not.

First of all, what makes you think that most people in past ages lived out their final days in pain? A far higher percentage of people had access to opium and other pain-killers than they do today. This is another example of the strange thinking whereby today's people consider themselves the luckiest who have ever lived--for no apparent reason that I can see.

Now some questions for you: Would you rather be a hunter-gatherer in Angola or a slave in Mississippi? Would you rather be an independent small-holding peasant or an eighteenth-century coal-miner? Would you rather be a Tasmanian aborigine or DEAD along with your entire civilization?

Those are the questions that people really had to face, in real history.

I don't think there were many hunter-gatherers in Angola during the slave trade, phil. You would have had to go to Namibia for something like that, I think.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

No they are not.

First of all, what makes you think that most people in past ages lived out their final days in pain? A far higher percentage of people had access to opium and other pain-killers than they do today. This is another example of the strange thinking whereby today's people consider themselves the luckiest who have ever lived--for no apparent reason that I can see.

Now some questions for you: Would you rather be a hunter-gatherer in Angola or a slave in Mississippi? Would you rather be an independent small-holding peasant or an eighteenth-century coal-miner? Would you rather be a Tasmanian aborigine or DEAD along with your entire civilization?

Those are the questions that people really had to face, in real history.

I don't see what that has to do with anything, tbh. Most people's lives in times past were short, tough and ended in an unpleasant way. I would rather be living here, now, than be a hunter-gatherer in Angola, a medieval peasant or a Tasmanian aborigine. Like you, I'm in my 40s now. We'd more than likely already have died one of those gruesome deaths had we been any of these things.

I'm not some mad positivist who believes unthinkingly in unending progress, but equally, the denial of progress is absurd. If you are a woman, I would suggest that to be alive today in Western Europe is a pretty good choice of time and place. Give me another one.

 

[phildwyer]

I don't see what that has to do with anything, tbh. Most people's lives in times past were short, tough and ended in an unpleasant way. I would rather be living here, now, than be a hunter-gatherer in Angola, a medieval peasant or a Tasmanian aborigine. Like you, I'm in my 40s now. We'd more than likely already have died one of those gruesome deaths had we been any of these things.

I'm not some mad positivist who believes unthinkingly in unending progress, but equally, the denial of progress is absurd. If you are a woman, I would suggest that to be alive today in Western Europe is a pretty good choice of time and place. Give me another one.

Yes, I did admit that the lives of Westerners over the last century are improvements on what could have been expected in the past--at least materially, not emotionally as far as I can see.

My point however was that this tiny improvement for a tiny section of the world's population has been achieved at the cost of greatly-increased misery for the vast majority.

Would you rather live in Angola today than in 1500? Or Guatamala? Or Pakistan? I think not.

 

[elbows]

I don't think such comparisons are easy to make. Its certainly not hard to see the downsides of progress, or to think of all the people who were killed by progress, but its completely unbalanced to not take account of all the people who are alive or in better shape due to progress, and not just in developed countries. All the people who aren't crippled by Polio or killed by smallpox.

In any case human nature and capabilities have meant that no progress was never an option.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Ever met a 16 year-old Israeli?

They have the confidence, maturity and organizational capacities of Brits or Americans 10-15 years older.

It's not hard to figure out why.

There will be a fair bit of post-traumatic stress I would guess. Not hard to figure out why, perhaps. Although the percentage might be higher among Palestinian youth.

 

[Dr Jon]

Yes, I did admit that the lives of Westerners over the last century are improvements on what could have been expected in the past--at least materially, not emotionally as far as I can see.

My point however was that this tiny improvement for a tiny section of the world's population has been achieved at the cost of greatly-increased misery for the vast majority.

Would you rather live in Angola today than in 1500? Or Guatamala? Or Pakistan? I think not.

I think David Benatar has the right sort of idea: it is Better Never to Have Been.
Not in our finite, limited universe at any rate.

 

[elbows]

Fuck that shit. At least we have reached the point where such beliefs are no longer thinly veiled when it comes to your attitudes towards life, but on naked display.

I can be somewhat misanthropic at times and one of many reasons I haven't had any kids myself involves me expectations for the future. But dictating that this is the way things should be for other people, allowing it to completely infect your spirit and sense of what is right or good or the appropriate way forwards is a load of wank and can be used to justify great horror.

Never mind whether the planet would have been better off without humans, or the various horrors of the human condition, we are alive, we are here in large numbers, and humans are both adaptable and good at struggling, even if the struggle ends in failure. So bollocks to the death worshippers.

 

[free spirit]

seriously? fair enough the rate of growth could decline, but is it realistically the case that within a few decades absolute population will be declining rather than rising (serious question like)

Is this the start of Dr Jon's great clear out?

depends how long this fucking stupid neoliberal bollocks carries on for.

There is a very strong causative link between population growth rates and stuff like the difference between rich and poor, education levels (particularly womens education levels), access to universal health care, access to contraception and family planning advice, welfare safety nets for all, life expectancy at birth etc etc, .

Basically the worse all of these aspects of a society the higher the population growth rate, and virtually without exception, the more all of these aspects of society improve the lower the birth rate (although it may take some time to filter through).

Obviously the other way to do it is via mass famine, drought an death, which realistically is where we're heading if we continue down this suicidal route of every more neo-liberal attacks on social infrastructure and equality combined with continued high population growth and increasing per capita consumption rates. Doesn't need to be this way though... as the banners used to put it 'another world is possible'.

 

[SpineyNorman]

I think David Benatar has the right sort of idea: it is Better Never to Have Been.
Not in our finite, limited universe at any rate.

You're an antinatalist too? That really is based on horrendous logic and gross misanthropy. Barking, utterly barking.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I like this ...

The reduction of the costs of constant capital can lead to an increase in the profit rate, but it crucially depends upon being able to “externalize” the harm it causes (i.e., to force those harmed by the pollution of raw material extraction, by the climate change caused by industrial production, or by genetic mutation produced by the spread of genetically modified (GM) organisms to quietly and continually submit to it without demanding that it cease). It is only when there is a mass refusal to allow this externalization to pass that ecological issues become “pressing” and an “emergency.”

Unless there is struggle against the harm and the tacit assumption of the costs, ecological damage is an aesthetic phenomenon like the smog in a Monet painting.

This struggle has now come out of the shadows and is threatening profitability throughout the system. There is a worldwide recognition that we aren’t just in another round between workers and capitalists to see how to organize the economy; we are facing catastrophic climate change and generalized social and environmental breakdown in a world where “the civilization of oil” has placed a great part of humanity in cities and slums that were already reaching their breaking point before the crisis set in. It’s frightening to see Mexico, for instance, with so many people barely surviving and the State and other oligopolists of violence already so intense, poised on the brink, with migrants returning from the USA... to what? One community recently came out with guns to cut off water to another that they considered was taking too much. What will happen when—as the scientists say is already determined—the average heat in these latitudes has increased three degrees, when every summer is as hot or hotter than the hottest on record?

There clearly cannot be any more profit-making business as usual. Indeed, in its disciplinary zeal, capitalism has so undermined the ecological conditions of so many people that a state of global ungovernability has developed, further forcing investors to escape into the mediated world of finance where they hope to make hefty returns without bodily confronting the people they need to exploit.

But this exodus has merely deferred the crisis, since “ecological” struggles are being fought all over the planet and are forcing an inevitable increase in the cost of future constant capital.

http://www.midnightnotes.org/Promissory Notes.pdf

 

[Nylock]

...And the collective enterprise that is science has never been stronger or more active than it is now...

I have read some disturbing features online and in new scientist which state that although science is in the ascendancy, it is also under unprecedented attack both from outside special interest groups and from within by opportunistic narcissists happy to shil for the special interest dollar. This has lead to an increasing level of cynicism from joe public when confronted with scientific evidence (the fact that the climate change denialists' arguments still have traction amongst large swathes of the general population bears witness to this phenomenon). When you add venal, short-termist politicians into the mix as well, it's not looking too solid out there tbh.

I do believe that science can help to provide a way through the coming decades, sadly i have no faith that those who purport to 'lead' us will do what's right and necessary until it's too late. Until some paradigm shift happens on a global scale where everyone realises that the mirage of libertarian capitalism will not provide the necessary solutions to the problems that we are sure to encounter in the future, we are going to be forever held hostage by our dependence on it as a system until it chokes the life out of our species and planet....

 

[elbows]

What bothers me on that front is that libertarian capitalism is hardly the only force which can lead us to zonk the planet. I doubt that libertarian capitalism can survive anywhere close to the point of actual species/planetary collapse, it leads us into the mess but its ill-suited to survive beyond the first challenges of that environment. Not enough carrot for the libertarian aspects to survive, leaving us with some other flavour of capitalism or something else entirely. Whether the something else can address human needs and wants in a manner that has more to do with sane co-operation and sharing, rather than desperate competition and a scrabble for what resources remain is quite a question.

 

[Nylock]

I hope we end up in the sane co-operation side of things soon -as right now it just looks like we are in the the early stages of the desperate competition and scrabble phase =/

 

[SpineyNorman]

I don't have a link as it's really just hearsay but I've been told today that sales of years' supplies of tinned food have recently increased dramatically (he seemed to think there were outlets that specifically sold years supplies, which wouldn't surprise me, there's a whole industry catering to survivalists, who are starting to look a lot less mental these days!)

Now whether this is just about people wanting to pre-empt price increases I don't know, but I suspect it's probably true.

I'm thinking of buying loads of tins of beans and condensed milk (that stuff's ace cos you can drink it and if you've got a camping stove/fire you can make toffee out of it too) every time I've got a few quid instead of going to the pub or buying weed or whatever and hoarding it away. If I can get enough supplies for me and a couple of extra people to last us until after the big die-off I could take 2 people in as slaves/bodyguards, and then if I've got a load left I could sell them as major luxuries in the post-peak oil apocalypse world and live like a king. I want a big V8 and a blind dog like mad max had

 

[Nylock]

 

[elbows]

Serious answer below, ignoring the comedy and fun:

Well Im quite into these subjects but that doesn't make me think that a variety of survivalist preparations are any less mental these days than they appeared 10 or 20 years ago.

There are a number of low-probability but still plausible events that could temporarily disrupt infrastructure and supplies in a manner where having some tinned goods on standby makes some sense. But having a years worth of food is way beyond a reasonable precaution and unless you have a far above average amount of resources available, there is no point even trying to prepare for a longer-term collapse by hoarding stuff. Even at the best of times there is no such thing as absolute security and no man is an island, so I think energies are better directed at thinking about community, politics and economics than personal survival.

Since I became interested in peak oil I've done none of this stuff, and I don't spend too much time thinking of utter doom. Rather, I simply try to appreciate every luxury and 'basic' every time I use it. Every hot bath, good meal, secure and untroubled sleep, warm and damp-free living space and every journey seen as a minor miracle to be thankful for, rather than something I will only realise the value of if a time comes where it is gone.

 

[Dr Jon]

You're an antinatalist too? That really is based on horrendous logic and gross misanthropy. Barking, utterly barking.

Despite our technological advancement, life remains a pointless, miserable struggle for most - even the rich - though money is quite good for removing struggle from the equation.

It is truly tragic that so many people scrape and struggle to merely exist - and yet we are expected to bring more people into the world for ever more desperate scrape and struggle, whilst being told that scrape and struggle is the best we can get!

Sorry folks, maybe I've missed something?
The idea of spending most of my life working, in a job that I hate, with people I despise, in order to perpetuate my meaningless existence, supposedly to bring children into this festival of pointless misery and exploitation seems to be a mugs game at best, if not absolute barking delusional insanity.

I don't expect many people to agree - after all, it goes against most of our "common sense" instincts and so on, but I think Professor Benatar has hit the nail on the head here. In my more cheerful moments, I've said that life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease. As in dis-Ease, you know, like discomfort. To be endured rather than enjoyed.

I'm astounded that more people don't complain about this TBH.
Maybe they don't have any imagination?

Anyway - enough derailment for one thread. I'll start another on this topic, probably in the theory/philosophy forum, in the near future.

 

[Belushi]

Jesus Christ I'm glad I'm me and not you Dr Jon.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Despite our technological advancement, life remains a pointless, miserable struggle for most - even the rich - though money is quite good for removing struggle from the equation.

It is truly tragic that so many people scrape and struggle to merely exist - and yet we are expected to bring more people into the world for ever more desperate scrape and struggle, whilst being told that scrape and struggle is the best we can get!

Sorry folks, maybe I've missed something?
The idea of spending most of my life working, in a job that I hate, with people I despise, in order to perpetuate my meaningless existence, supposedly to bring children into this festival of pointless misery and exploitation seems to be a mugs game at best, if not absolute barking delusional insanity.

I don't expect many people to agree - after all, it goes against most of our "common sense" instincts and so on, but I think Professor Benatar has hit the nail on the head here. In my more cheerful moments, I've said that life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease. As in dis-Ease, you know, like discomfort. To be endured rather than enjoyed.

I'm astounded that more people don't complain about this TBH.
Maybe they don't have any imagination?

Anyway - enough derailment for one thread. I'll start another on this topic, probably in the theory/philosophy forum, in the near future.

It's not because we lack imagination. Just because you have a shit life (not surprising given your attitude, I'm imagining a serious mate deficiency from where I'm sitting) that doesn't mean everyone else does.

And given the incredible struggles some go through every day just to stay alive, I'd say you've got a cheek, typing from your privileged position behind a computer screen, claiming they'd submit to death if only they weren't so lacking in imagination.