You gotta wonder what's wrong with our society...

[mousme]

You have wonder what's wrong with our society when so many people envision a brutal apocalypse as the only solution to our troubles. After Armaggedon, people seem to believe, we're going to settle into some sort of agrarian utopia (after we shoot all the zombies starving looters/suburbanites, that is) and live happily ever after in a world without yuppies, SUVs, or water shortages.

Have things become so bleak that we can't envision things getting any better without most of the world dying off?

Comments

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Do you ever talk to people? I mean the general public? I'm praying I've got enough smarts to get through everything OK and help as many as I can. Most folks here in the US at least have been dumbed down by the powers at be to merely be good consumers or profit generators. We can hardly do anything for ourselves.

Mass die off. Seriously. Bound to happen at some point.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

But why do some view it as desirable, is my point? Also, why do they think it'll solve our problems in any tangible way?

In other news, if TSHTF, I'm very likely toast. Totally zombie fodder.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Desireable? Because they're convinced they'll come out of it on top.

Best way to keep from being z/f is not trying to go it alone. Interdependence is key, whether you're in a city or the country, whether you're talking TEOTWAWKI, an economic downturn or civil war. That's why I put so much into the Tribe Building and connections. I'm pretty sure I could eke by on my own, but I've got Princelings.

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

But why do some view it as desirable, is my point?

Because black humour is a coping mechanism? Both for actual life stresses and the gloomy prospect of a collapse?

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Because it would be hella convenient. Some days, I wish the holy rollers were right and the Rapture would come take them away. I'd have my pick of cars, at least, and I could hang out with the Buddhists.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Are there that many of the Righteous that the Rapture would actually solve our population crisis? :P

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Here in Jesusland it would, judging by the Come The Rapture This Car Will Be Unmanned type stickers.

I want this one:
http://www.northernsun.com/n/s/5830.html

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I hope so. I just see so many people who seem to seriously want it (present company excluded) and who aren't being tongue-in-cheek that it depresses me. :/

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that we're both suffering from a bit of selection error here, travelling in the circles that we do (and if you're worried, you should take a list at some of the feeds I'm reading).

What's more depressing? The fact that almost everybody else is either blitheringly clueless or dismissive of All This.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have been reading quite a number of the same feeds. I'm getting quite fond of Crunchy Chicken, among others, and Casaubon Blog, and a bunch of others. :)

What's more depressing? The fact that almost everybody else is either blitheringly clueless or dismissive of All This.

Or equally as depressing is that there are very few who seem to be able to walk the middle path. Maybe if there were more of those, we wouldn't be in this pickle. :P

I've been on a new MacGyver kick lately (I got over the abomination that was the Season 5 premiere and started watching again), and everything we're talking about now was on that show fifteen to twenty years ago: conservation, pollution, peak oil (in a disguised version of itself). The fact that nothing has changed in twenty years is truly depressing.

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

Sharon and Crunchy are a lot of fun, and Sharon provides a sane-ish counterpoint to Rawles. I've been following along with Sharon's Apocalypse Book Club thing; skipped Moon is a Harsh Mistress because my tolerance for Heinlein has diminished over the years, but Lucifer's Hammer? What fun; I wish that somebody would do a movie version of it in all its full-on seventies period glory... I mean, this thing was written when pocket calculators and digital watches were still high-tech. It'd be hilarious.

She's right, of course, that it's rather sexist and racist and not exactly well-written, but wow; Niven going all big-picture and sciency makes for fun reads, and you can see how it influenced the rightwing survivalist loons (or maybe vice versa). Or maybe it's just both Niven/Pournelle and the loons following the same line of reasoning to the same logical conclusions.

Crunchy? Well, I'm not quite sure that she gets it yet. We shall see.

So there's more to MacGyver than just a new Swiss Army knife-based stunt of the week? Wow. Who'da thunk :)?

You should probably do a post on that middle path notion of yours...

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude, Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not only made of win, but has exactly the kind of characters you would relate to. I highly recommend it for you. Haven't read any other Heinlein, but thoroughly enjoyed that one. :D

Crunchy seems to have more immediate problems on her hands (husband has cancer, I believe), so I can understand that she might not "get it" yet. :)

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

Heinlein characters that I'd relate to? Shoot me now, please :). I burned out on Heinlein a while back; he just plain annoys me now.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Moon is a Harsh Mistress is *the* *only* Heinlein I've ever managed to read. I like it a lot and I've read it more than once. Every other Heinlein I've ever tried to read has made me want to throw it across the room. Hard.

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

I used to like Heinlein. Then I stopped being an adolescent boy.

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the solution to our troubles, it's a likely outcome of current trends. If we're in carrying capacity overshoot, regardless of what we do we're going to get a dieoff :(. I really hope I'm wrong, because policy and social change can't countermand the laws of biology and physics.

I tried the exercise, though. I started doing a list of what we need to do to fix things. It got depressingly long and a lot of it was distressingly unlikely. In no particular order:

1) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective legislative action on climate change.

2) Convince the populations of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective action on climate change via changing their consumption habits.

3) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective, and timely steps towards transitioning away from oil towards renewable, sustainable, alternative energy sources.

4) Convince the populations of the developed and developing worlds to change their consumption habits to reduce oil dependency and minimize energy consumption during said transition.

5) Completely alter humanity's food production and distribution systems to eliminate environmentally harmful farming methods, topsoil depletion, dependency on oil for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, production, harvesting, storage, transport, and distribution, overfishing, and habitat destruction.

6) Once we've done so while somehow managing to produce enough food to still feed everybody, figure out how to allocate and distribute our food production in a just and equitable fashion.

7) Convince the US government that hey, wars of aggression against small oil-producing nations that post no threat to Western Civilization really aren't cool.

8) Convince the jihadis to live in peace and harmony with the rest of us. This might require solving the Israeli/Palestinian problem first.

9) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful legislative action on environmental conservation in order to conserve biodiversity and habitat, both on land and in the water.

10) Convince the population of the developed worlds to change their consumption habits for the greener. Meaningfully, not just buying green-labelled versions of the same old crap in the supermarket. Convince everybody else to stop deforesting and otherwise exhausting resources and trashing their environments, even if it means abject poverty for them.

11) Convince the governments of the developing world to take meaningful legislative action on population growth.

12) Convince the population of the developing world to stop having quite so many kids.

That's a dozen unlikely to highly improbable things, and I'm not a character in a Lewis Carroll novel. I just cannot see all of the above happening anytime soon, and I really can't see us as a species waking up in time. If we're lucky, we'll hit the civilizational brick wall after we're dead.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Or the Vulcans could land and...

White Lotus Time, Phnee.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

and I'm not a character in a Lewis Carroll novel

Y'know, that might explain some of it...

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

The world's gone through the Looking Glass?

I dunno. Not enough sleep, a hairy day in perspective, gray rainy morning, and gloomy talk right before bed, and all of a sudden the world is looking pretty bleak.

Meh. Lots of earthly delight to shift...

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Rain is good for your broccoli. :)

*hugs*

I'm sorry if I depressed you. I rode my bike into work and back, and while I'm tired and the officers made me cranky during the night, I am looking forward to a day's rest, and am slightly more optimistic than last night.

There's always Saturday to look forward to, as well. We're going to climb a mountain! YAY!

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

Climbing the mountain sounds like a blast. I need to reping raven_albion and arrange logistics...

[owldaughter.livejournal.com]

I hope the world hasn't gone through the looking glass. I'm counting on that venue of escape myself when things go Very Wrong. (See List of Dozen Unlikely Things, above.)

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

The urge to start singing White Rabbit is very strong, but the notion of me asking Alice what to do when logic and proportion fall sloppy dead takes me disturbingly way out past the lunatic fringe of gun nuttery...

[swestrup]

I'm totally voting against Armageddon. I do fear that, just as the atomic era ushered in all new existential threats, that the nanotech era we are now entering will expose us to existential threats that most folks have never conceived of.

The risk of things going catastrophically wrong in the next 50 years is very real, but the chance of things going unbelievably right is also there. Whats more for the first time ever it seems that some folks in positions of power are actually starting to worry about these issues. Thus the current ongoing conference in Oxford on existential risks.

So, put me down for a hopeful optimist. I know the future can be scary, but it can also be good, and I KNOW how messed up the past was.

[moonandtree.livejournal.com]

Nah, those people are generally lazy and don't see a way around capitalism, which is the purvue of the second greatest force in the world of humans - greed.

Myself, I think that the electric car, while not perfect, is just around the corner and will kill a great deal of gas emissions. Survival trumps greed every time.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Myself, I think that the electric car, while not perfect, is just around the corner and will kill a great deal of gas emissions.

In Quebec, and small parts of Western Europe, where electricity is a fairly clean, re-newable resource, yes, it will. In most of the rest of North America, and Europe, and Asia, and Africa, where electricity is generated by burning oil, or natural gas, or *shudder* coal, the electric car won't change a goddam thing, unfortunately.

[moonandtree.livejournal.com]

I think you're wrong. Nuclear.

It won't help people everywhere, but I believe that if there's a solution in quebec, there's a solution everywhere.

[taxlady.livejournal.com]

Although I am cynically optimistic, I don't think we will get away from greed. Greed is a very primate characteristic. Think about the monkey trap where a monkey just won't let go of something on the other side of the hole to get its hand out.

I think we will have to find ways to make greed useful.

[moonandtree.livejournal.com]

We don't need to get away from greed. We have Survival instincts that outweigh the greed ones. We are finding ways to make greed useful. That's the only reason the electric car even exists, because someone saw a way to make a big fricking pile of cash.

[grrscary.livejournal.com]

Its funny, I was just having this conversation with folk over the weekend.

While I was doing my MA research on Science Fiction and how it shapes how we see the future, I was on the road between SF conventions and the like for a few months. I decided to include a short interview with random folk about how they see the future as a part of my study.

What I discovered was that (mostly) Americans have a very very bleak and apocalyptic view of the future, where everything breaks down and society falls apart. Canadians, when asked, had a much more pro-active view of the future, with suggestions for change, growth and things that need to happen for us to improve the state of the world.

End conclusion? When the world ends, kids, move to Canada. (We're just ahead of the game :D )

[whiskeygirl8.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't think it would take anything of that magnitude to get rid of the people who are a drain on society. There are an awful lot of people out there who can barely tie their own shoes, much less feed themselves and protect themselves. Something minor (relatively) would get rid of most of them and the rest of us could go on living without them and be a lot happier.

I mean, look at how people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off about the recession. As if 75 or so years ago we weren't living in an actual depression with a large portion of the US being dust. Or, as if 65 years or so ago we weren't rationing everything and living on less so that we could fight a war.

(I know I'm being US-centric here, but it's my main frame of reference.) The people in the US don't know how good they have it compared to those in the past. And they cry, cry, cry over the dumbest shit. Every time I hear there's a recession, I keep wondering how come I still have at least a few hundred dollars left over every paycheck (assuming I don't spend it on absolute luxuries) when I only make around $18/hr (and work for the freakin' city.) I'm really not even sure if I qualify as middle middle class in the US. Maybe lower middle class. Which, honestly, is where a great deal of Americans are. But, they're still crying because they can't drive their SUVs all over creation and they can't buy so much food they throw half of it out. I mean, for Pete's sake, we have an OBESITY epidemic and we're worried about survival? Chicken Little needs to STFU.

Wake me when something really bad happens. In the meantime, I'll be at work talking to idiots who can barely dress themselves.

[luvenditti.livejournal.com]

I honestly believe that society will NOT degenerate that badly. Call me naive, call me stupid, call me anything you want. I think people should be careful, but there's no need to panic.