this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Collapse
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This is the place for discussing the potential collapse of modern civilization and the environment.
Collapse, in this context, refers to the significant loss of an established level or complexity towards a much simpler state. It can occur differently within many areas, orderly or chaotically, and be willing or unwilling. It does not necessarily imply human extinction or a singular, global event. Although, the longer the duration, the more it resembles a ‘decline’ instead of collapse.
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I was once in a boring work presentation. The presenter was explaining in detail a concept that didn't really need more than a few sentences to get across. My mind started wandering to what I would do after the collapse. I imagined myself on a farm somewhere, with self-sufficiency and solar panels and an alarm system and a whole field of crops. I imagined how troubling that would be, because hungry people would come to take my crops. I would have an alarm system, but what I am supposed to do? I can't blame them because they're hungry, but I also can't just let them take my food. I imagined to myself this guy reaching for one of my tomatoes, and then me shooting a warning shot, and the tomato blowing up that he was reaching for, and his expression of shock.
I then remembered that I was in a work presentation with several minutes having gone by and I was supposed to be paying attention. I started listening again, and found out that the guy was still talking about the same concept as when I'd originally wandered off. I left that job pretty shortly after that.
I hope you know that this is absolutely not how collapse is going to play out.
How do you imagine it playing out?
I'm not saying I will necessarily be one of the people on a little farm somewhere; that part is maybe unrealistic -- but if you envisioned no people anywhere with little farms, I think that's equivalent to saying we're all gonna die. The food has to come from somewhere, and the current system of massive factory farms run by corporate behemoths is linked to the current economic and technological system beyond any realistic hope of decoupling I think.
Do not underestimate what a small plot of land can contribute to your diet. This is what helped many families survive in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I imagine it involving a lot of suffering, the lose of life and property to natural catastrophes, food shortages and political and social revolts due to mass migration and sociaital unrest. Maybe an Eco fashist govment that will force it's population into degroth, because we missed the window to chance the system gradually without force over the last 50 years. Possibly a right wing government that will ignore the obvious climate chaos or find ways to keep business as normal going for an ever decreasing period of time, but for a more and more elite minority while the rest is left to suffer.
Is this dystopian? Yes. Is it a given? No, but I think it's a more realistic picture than the one you painted, which strikes me as overly romantic.
After the system finals breaks? After we have had a true simplification and a massiv reduction in global living atandarts? Then your vision might play out, and I hope it will for those that survive the chaos to come. But there will be suffering on the way from now to there.