The Collapse Meme
I don’t agree with some of the classic examples cited, which I’ve previously discussed here, but nevertheless, this is an interesting thought experiment posed by Nate Hagens over at The Oil Drum:
By definition, all previous ecosystem and non-human collapses were not ‘understood as collapse’ by those organisms alive during the collapse. Similarly, during historical human social collapses, (Rome, Easter Island, Anasazi, Maya, etc.), people might have known they were in the middle of some unpleasant trajectory, but they didn’t have the knowledge, historical record, technology or communication that modern society possesses in understanding/explaining what was transpiring. As such, when this civilization ‘collapses’, (which in the opinion of this writer is inevitable – the timing, direction, and severity of which remain the salient unknowns), it will be the first to have at least some portion of its inhabitants anticipate and understand its own collapse in a systems dynamics sense.
How will this odd ‘collapse trivia’ manifest in steering/pulling/resisting actual collapse, if at all?
That’s worth pondering, but unlike Hagens, I don’t see the collapse of all civilization as “inevitable.” Too End-Times-ey for my taste.
Too end-times-ey? It’s tosh, tout court.
So many assumptions, so little time.
Hagens’ piece’s most obvious weakness is that he thinks ‘the knowledge, historical record, technology or communication that modern society possesses’ makes us wiser than those poor ignorant souls in ‘Rome, Easter Island, Anasazi, Maya, etc.’ who, he reckons, might have known ‘they were in the middle of some unpleasant trajectory’ (very generous of him) but didn’t know they were doomed.
Hagens ‘knows’ we’re doomed. Why does he think those long-dead oldsters didn’t ‘know’ they were doomed and, this being history, ‘know’ they were doomed many, many times? (Many, many times.) They were just like us, ferkrisakes, forever waiting for the sky to fall. ‘Some unpleasnt trajectory’ is only the half of it. Most of them most likely spent most of their time predicting doom even when they could see that they were on the up and up.
Hagens thinks long-dead people were different from us. He also believes in a modern elect: ‘this civilisation … will be the first to have at least some portion of its inhabitants anticipate and understand its own collapse in a systems dynamics sense.’
He is, in shorts, a racist. Please don’t post any more links to supremacist, self-congratulatory bollocks masquerading as philosophy.
Regards.