Feeling overwhelmed with the way the world is broken
July 7, 2023 9:38 PM Subscribe
Zoe Bee - Why We Secretly Want the World to End (1h5m5s) has provided a surprisingly good amount of solace and reassurance, with what's been going in the world of late.
I was particularly moved by section within 'The Myth of Human Nature' (29m35s), where in the redoing of the Stanford Prison experiment, without the original coaching to do bad things, in the new experiment the people naturally started working together and breaking down the barriers between the designated inmates and guards.
Also included: 'Three Ways to Change the World' (44m04s). Because who here doesn't want to make the world a better place?
I was particularly moved by section within 'The Myth of Human Nature' (29m35s), where in the redoing of the Stanford Prison experiment, without the original coaching to do bad things, in the new experiment the people naturally started working together and breaking down the barriers between the designated inmates and guards.
Also included: 'Three Ways to Change the World' (44m04s). Because who here doesn't want to make the world a better place?
Secretly?
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:03 AM on July 8, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:03 AM on July 8, 2023 [10 favorites]
I believe some people want the world to end because at least they won't have to deal with their current problems.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:37 AM on July 8, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:37 AM on July 8, 2023 [18 favorites]
So, I've been a member of a post-apocalyptic book club for several years now. My biggest draw by now is the group itself (it's made up of people who are the same kind of weird), but it's also been a fascinating study of this kind of mindset and of society.
A whole lot of these books - especially the ones written by straight white guys in the 20th Century and just prior - deal a lot with how the Survivors go on to ReMake Society. Every so often someone is sad about What Once Was And Is Gone - but for most of it, you get the sense that the author is thinking "we may not just survive, we may thrive and surpass what came before." It's like the authors are treating any apocalypse as a sort of Reset on society - stripping everything back to the essentials so that the (presumably) wiser people of today can start over and Get It Right This Time, leaving out all the bits that we've since learned don't work. It's genuinely not until you get to more recent books - or books by non-white people - that you find works that don't assume that. The Three Body Problem is something we read - and that ends up with what looks like everything in the universe getting sucked into a dimensional anomaly, except for one of those "closed ecosystem" paperweights that's a sealed tank of live brine shrimp and seaweed with a bubble of air.
The one kind of book we HAVEN'T read are recent post-apocalypses written for the "prepper" market - and from what I've heard, they're DREADFUL, focusing more on how the people who are prepared and who have the BEST gear all survive, and how people who opted for lesser-quality gear end up getting killed or starving or eaten by cannibal hordes or whatever. They sound awful. And - in fact, one of the books we read sounds like it pokes fun at that; it's set in an Anishinaabe reservation in Canada, where they're used to the power crapping out now and then and they know how to store and conserve food and some of them are still hunting and farming and know how to forage and store food "the old way". So they don't really think anything of it when the power grid all fails, and don't even know that anything else is going down until one of the kids who went to college comes home and tells them shit is hitting the fan. ...And then this prepper dude find them one day and sees that "hey, here's a whole colony of people who have a sweet setup, but I'm better-armed" and tries taking over.....the rest of the community just kind of decides to wait him out (he's eating through all their stores of food, but the rest of the community falls back to living off that huge lake stocked with bass a half days' walk through the woods and the various wild greens and beechnut patches scattered through the surrounding woods), and then when the prepper guy finally screws up and gets killed, they all move back into town, pack up what little they need, and go back to living off the land. So it's still kind of a "good riddance to bad rubbish, we'll do it better this time" kind of thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [21 favorites]
A whole lot of these books - especially the ones written by straight white guys in the 20th Century and just prior - deal a lot with how the Survivors go on to ReMake Society. Every so often someone is sad about What Once Was And Is Gone - but for most of it, you get the sense that the author is thinking "we may not just survive, we may thrive and surpass what came before." It's like the authors are treating any apocalypse as a sort of Reset on society - stripping everything back to the essentials so that the (presumably) wiser people of today can start over and Get It Right This Time, leaving out all the bits that we've since learned don't work. It's genuinely not until you get to more recent books - or books by non-white people - that you find works that don't assume that. The Three Body Problem is something we read - and that ends up with what looks like everything in the universe getting sucked into a dimensional anomaly, except for one of those "closed ecosystem" paperweights that's a sealed tank of live brine shrimp and seaweed with a bubble of air.
The one kind of book we HAVEN'T read are recent post-apocalypses written for the "prepper" market - and from what I've heard, they're DREADFUL, focusing more on how the people who are prepared and who have the BEST gear all survive, and how people who opted for lesser-quality gear end up getting killed or starving or eaten by cannibal hordes or whatever. They sound awful. And - in fact, one of the books we read sounds like it pokes fun at that; it's set in an Anishinaabe reservation in Canada, where they're used to the power crapping out now and then and they know how to store and conserve food and some of them are still hunting and farming and know how to forage and store food "the old way". So they don't really think anything of it when the power grid all fails, and don't even know that anything else is going down until one of the kids who went to college comes home and tells them shit is hitting the fan. ...And then this prepper dude find them one day and sees that "hey, here's a whole colony of people who have a sweet setup, but I'm better-armed" and tries taking over.....the rest of the community just kind of decides to wait him out (he's eating through all their stores of food, but the rest of the community falls back to living off that huge lake stocked with bass a half days' walk through the woods and the various wild greens and beechnut patches scattered through the surrounding woods), and then when the prepper guy finally screws up and gets killed, they all move back into town, pack up what little they need, and go back to living off the land. So it's still kind of a "good riddance to bad rubbish, we'll do it better this time" kind of thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [21 favorites]
I was particularly moved by section within 'The Myth of Human Nature '
I want to hear this repeated in discourse and media so much more. I remember even back in my college days in the 1980s hearing an anthropology professor going on about anthropology’s struggles to explain “the problem of altruism” without a basic serious interrogation of whether the premise that altruism was an aberration was even accurate. I mentally tuned out after that.
Altruism and its passive form, community-tending, IS the norm as far as I see. Our metaphors need to change. With it comes a redefinition of what actions constitute “baseline” and “abnormal” behavior as a person within an interdependent whole.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
I want to hear this repeated in discourse and media so much more. I remember even back in my college days in the 1980s hearing an anthropology professor going on about anthropology’s struggles to explain “the problem of altruism” without a basic serious interrogation of whether the premise that altruism was an aberration was even accurate. I mentally tuned out after that.
Altruism and its passive form, community-tending, IS the norm as far as I see. Our metaphors need to change. With it comes a redefinition of what actions constitute “baseline” and “abnormal” behavior as a person within an interdependent whole.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
I hate to be the bearer of good news. Carl Jung visited the USA in 1909. I believe that it was his first visit. In an appendix to his "Memories Dreams Reflections" there is a short letter to his wife dated Albany NY September 1909. He apparently had just returned from a tour of upstate NY. At the time Albany was a bustling city. Now it is a mere shell of a city. He notes the advanced technology of this country compared to Europe but says it has come at a great cost. He then observes that men are better off than women. In closing he remarks that this country already contains the seeds of its own destruction.
posted by DJZouke at 5:00 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 5:00 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
Isn't that the fun of every post-apocalypse story? You get to imagine what the world would look like without all the people you hate in it. You can have your preferred job, your preferred sexual setup, your preferred emotional tenor all the time. Or if you don't start out with a harem or a position as a motorcycle knight or (in the gay luxury Communism post-apocalypse) a job as a part time therapist in a tea shop, you'll end up with the heroic narrative you're certainly not getting in this world. If it's a Christian book, this world won't last too long but everyone goes to heaven, for all other books it's heaven on earth. Whatever the gender or race of the author, this tends to be the storyline, I can't think of anything outside maybe Joanna Russ's We Who Are About to... Maybe outside America, the narratives are different?
Speaking of America, many Americans were brought up to feel like they had a lot of personal agency, so seeing the reality (nope, we don't) is difficult to deal with to the point that IMO, even the video essay can't get around it. Hence the desire for the world to end, to ease the frustration or "get it over with." If you feel devalued and disappointed all the time, what's the point?
posted by kingdead at 5:18 AM on July 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
Speaking of America, many Americans were brought up to feel like they had a lot of personal agency, so seeing the reality (nope, we don't) is difficult to deal with to the point that IMO, even the video essay can't get around it. Hence the desire for the world to end, to ease the frustration or "get it over with." If you feel devalued and disappointed all the time, what's the point?
posted by kingdead at 5:18 AM on July 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
Hence the desire for the world to end, to ease the frustration or "get it over with." If you feel devalued and disappointed all the time, what's the point?
This.
Which, conversely, explains to some degree why it increasingly seems as if corporations, the wealthy, and conservatives in-general, have stopped pretending they care about anything other than themselves, and gone all-in on “got mine, fuck you.”
posted by Thorzdad at 5:27 AM on July 8, 2023 [11 favorites]
This.
Which, conversely, explains to some degree why it increasingly seems as if corporations, the wealthy, and conservatives in-general, have stopped pretending they care about anything other than themselves, and gone all-in on “got mine, fuck you.”
posted by Thorzdad at 5:27 AM on July 8, 2023 [11 favorites]
People want the apocalypse because they realize that we’re in a political (US) and ecological collapse and they realize they have no real power to stop it or change anything. So they play in a sandbox where maybe things won’t be so bad, or will even be better, because thinking about Katniss destroying the system beats the reality of painful, real-time decline you just have to watch in slow motion. It seems perfectly rational to me.
posted by vim876 at 5:28 AM on July 8, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by vim876 at 5:28 AM on July 8, 2023 [20 favorites]
Also, at least in the US, people are convinced the apocalypse is far more likely than a successful revolution, and therefore it’s true.
posted by vim876 at 5:51 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by vim876 at 5:51 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
I want it to end so I dont have to deal with everyone else’s problems. My problems are doing just fine, thank you.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 5:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 5:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
The first link makes the assertion that "end times" was a relatively recent phenomenon, but it hasn't seemed that way to me. The 1949 novel Earth Abides by George R. Stewart nailed the concept of survival after the apocalypse as far as I was concerned, and everything after that has been not quite as successful. No, we don't get to keep civilization after everything ends. Yes, we will be altruistic, but there are limits. It's complicated. And it's very, very sad.
I really don't want the world to end, though I've been living with the possibility all my life because that's how human beings roll. I still occasionally wake with a start because I saw a huge flash of light and I think for a little bit they dropped the atom bomb after all. The threat of famine, fascism and infrastructure collapse due to climate change is always with me. But no thank you. I mean, I finally got things organized the way I want them in my house, and I have time to go through my old journals. Not just yet, please.
posted by Peach at 6:28 AM on July 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
I really don't want the world to end, though I've been living with the possibility all my life because that's how human beings roll. I still occasionally wake with a start because I saw a huge flash of light and I think for a little bit they dropped the atom bomb after all. The threat of famine, fascism and infrastructure collapse due to climate change is always with me. But no thank you. I mean, I finally got things organized the way I want them in my house, and I have time to go through my old journals. Not just yet, please.
posted by Peach at 6:28 AM on July 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
Adding that yes, she addresses it later in the video, but the introduction does tend to give that impression.
posted by Peach at 6:39 AM on July 8, 2023
posted by Peach at 6:39 AM on July 8, 2023
"We are on the precipice of a unique apocalypse" is pretty much constant throughout history. I read a book a few years back where the characters were musing on how we'd pretty much extracted all the coal the earth could provide and industrial society was on the verge of collapse. It was written in 1928.
posted by phooky at 6:42 AM on July 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by phooky at 6:42 AM on July 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
I suspect "gendercide" fiction is also along these lines. Wouldn't it be nice to get rid of all of these men and therefore finally have a peaceful, equal society that we will never have otherwise, etc.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:55 AM on July 8, 2023
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:55 AM on July 8, 2023
going on about anthropology’s struggles to explain “the problem of altruism”
My guess is that the professor was referencing biological altruism, the problem or puzzle related to explaining its evolution. As for the end of times, being rescued is always satisfying if one thinks it is needed.
posted by Brian B. at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
My guess is that the professor was referencing biological altruism, the problem or puzzle related to explaining its evolution. As for the end of times, being rescued is always satisfying if one thinks it is needed.
posted by Brian B. at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Book spoilers people!
This is the third time in as many days that the ending of the Three Body Problem has been casually dropped into my eyeballs.
Sheesh.
posted by Faintdreams at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2023 [10 favorites]
This is the third time in as many days that the ending of the Three Body Problem has been casually dropped into my eyeballs.
Sheesh.
posted by Faintdreams at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2023 [10 favorites]
Okay, disregard my hasty first impressions :) I still disagree with some of what is said, but in a more nuanced way. Reminder to listen to the whole thing before commenting :)
posted by Peach at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Peach at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Another thing about the book club is that I'm kind of figuring out that you can make a reasonable guess about when a book was written based on the nature of the apocalypse in question. Nuclear holocaust? Late 20th-Century, most likely the 80s. General warfare? Early-mid 20th Century. Poison gas? 1910s. Pestilence or plague? 1990s and early 20-Aughts. Zombies? 20-aughts to 2010s. Environmental collapse? That's more recent. Asteroid hits earth? Odds are it was the 70s, although there's a few other outliers.
There's also a whole bunch of "wild-card" apocalypses, involving alien invasion or nanotechnology or the entire power grid collapsing or radioactive clouds or all-out societal warfare or bio-engineered carnivorous strawberry jam. Those are a little harder to figure out.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:03 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
There's also a whole bunch of "wild-card" apocalypses, involving alien invasion or nanotechnology or the entire power grid collapsing or radioactive clouds or all-out societal warfare or bio-engineered carnivorous strawberry jam. Those are a little harder to figure out.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:03 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
Duh, forgot to add my ultimate point about that - sometimes the post-apocalyptic fiction isn't just a call for a re-set - sometimes it's also a way to process fears about whatever Threat To The World is most looming. So maybe the kind of "but then everything was okay" talk is a sort of hopeful move - "okay, here's how at least some people might still make it even if the sea levels rise."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:06 AM on July 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:06 AM on July 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
"We are on the precipice of a unique apocalypse" is pretty much constant throughout history.
That's an awfully large claim. I could maybe be convinced that it's a recurring theme in human society, but there have been plenty of eras where people generally saw themselves as existing in a stable world or at the dawn of an exciting era of continual improvement. It's not apocalypses all the way down.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:59 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
That's an awfully large claim. I could maybe be convinced that it's a recurring theme in human society, but there have been plenty of eras where people generally saw themselves as existing in a stable world or at the dawn of an exciting era of continual improvement. It's not apocalypses all the way down.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:59 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
Thanks for this -- I have to watch it later!
Although I am not a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction for the reasons kingdead describes, I am into prehistoric fiction. It's rarer, but often badly done for the same reasons. Authors often can't help themselves -- they say: here is the real society in accord with human nature, here are the stupid ideas that ruined everything, here are the terrible consequences.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:08 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Although I am not a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction for the reasons kingdead describes, I am into prehistoric fiction. It's rarer, but often badly done for the same reasons. Authors often can't help themselves -- they say: here is the real society in accord with human nature, here are the stupid ideas that ruined everything, here are the terrible consequences.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:08 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
There is a really big difference between an oppressed group envisioning a world without their oppressors and a group that currently has economic, political, and/or cultural power envisioning a world where they have even more power and less pesky pushback.
posted by eviemath at 8:11 AM on July 8, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 8:11 AM on July 8, 2023 [14 favorites]
In particular, all indigenous stories that deal in any way, big or small, with colonialism and its legacies are arguably already post-apocalyptic.
posted by eviemath at 8:13 AM on July 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 8:13 AM on July 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
Albany is fine, actually
posted by en forme de poire at 8:20 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by en forme de poire at 8:20 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
The first link makes the assertion that "end times" was a relatively recent phenomenon, but it hasn't seemed that way to me.
I thought "end times" stories go way back in human literature...the Bible ends with one, so it's not new.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:35 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I thought "end times" stories go way back in human literature...the Bible ends with one, so it's not new.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:35 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I want it to end so I don't have to do laundry.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 8:51 AM on July 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by thecincinnatikid at 8:51 AM on July 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
would you destroy this world to save a better one.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:53 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:53 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Could we just end capitalism and not the whole world, though? I think liberals envision apocalypses because human beings cling to shitty ideas so stubbornly that only massive disruption seems to be a big enough pry bar.
posted by emjaybee at 9:45 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 9:45 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think part of the problem is that no one knows how to slowly unpeel the problem. How do you *slowly* end capitalism? I certainly don’t know, much less how to do so without massive social upheaval.
posted by corb at 9:48 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by corb at 9:48 AM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
we could ratchet the terrible incentives in the US and UK the other way agsin, frex — raise marginal tax rates, go back to anti-industry-concentration laws, enforce anti-pollution laws. Spend the tax money on accessible public goods.
Sure took a lot of catastrophes to get political support for that after the 19th c gilded age.
posted by clew at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
Sure took a lot of catastrophes to get political support for that after the 19th c gilded age.
posted by clew at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
Albany is fine? For the lower cost of living maybe. Rockefeller eviscerated the downtown population by eliminating 3,000 housing units and 9,000 people. There is no life in downtown Albany after 5 pm. Everyone leaves and goes back to the suburbs. The south mall is a joke. There was supposed to be all sorts of retail business there. It is practically empty. You must have found an alternative Albany.
posted by DJZouke at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2023
posted by DJZouke at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2023
I am surprised that The Rapture has not reared its head here yet.
posted by DJZouke at 10:16 AM on July 8, 2023
posted by DJZouke at 10:16 AM on July 8, 2023
EmpressCallipygos, can you confirm that the Anishinaabe-set book is Moon on the Crusted Snow? It's been on my reading-to-get-to list for a while.
Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves is another excellent Indigenous-written post-apocalyptic story, focused on the trauma of climate change, colonial-led genocide and the need (and willingness) to see other perspectives. The basic plot is that post-apocalypse, only Indigenous people are able to dream, so the rest of society turns to hunting them to harvesting their bone marrow as a cure. I'd say it fits into the category of "processing fears of the world today and the trauma of the past", and definitely not about the great re-set or prepper fantasies.
posted by mainly apples at 10:29 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves is another excellent Indigenous-written post-apocalyptic story, focused on the trauma of climate change, colonial-led genocide and the need (and willingness) to see other perspectives. The basic plot is that post-apocalypse, only Indigenous people are able to dream, so the rest of society turns to hunting them to harvesting their bone marrow as a cure. I'd say it fits into the category of "processing fears of the world today and the trauma of the past", and definitely not about the great re-set or prepper fantasies.
posted by mainly apples at 10:29 AM on July 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
I have several thoughts on this. About 20 years ago I started writing a story in which the world ended - sort of by accident, a financial panic, economic collapse - not because of any particular cause. Because people were aching for it, and just kind of went along with it. In part it was an attempt to explore this exact question. I never finished it, barely started it.
Now, in hindsight, little has changed: I still feel drawn to apocalyptic fiction, and so do others. But on the other hand for many people things have become measurably worse. I'm not the only one who feels they are living in a dystopia. Living with depression and anxiety is a real-life apocalypse, so why wouldn't you wish for it to end? Like suicidal ideation on a societal scale.
And that's before talking about the pandemic, the climate emergency, and the endless race to the bottom that is late-stage capitalism. A lot of people have lost their appetite for these stories as a result, but others still indulge in doom, perhaps even moreso.
I think as a society we realise that everything is wrong, so imagining dramatic apocalypses is how we process that collectively. Maybe even how we prepare ourselves for that increasingly likely outcome. Or how we desperately want to tell ourselves that things could be worse, so that we might learn to accept things as they are, rather than do the hard work of fixing things.
But I can't deny that sometimes I want to see it all burn. You have to admit, it'd be cathartic, at least for a few minutes, before reality set in. After all, apocalypse just means revelation, revealing. As in, it reveals who we really are. Judgement day. God knows we love an opportunity to judge people.
posted by Acey at 10:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
Now, in hindsight, little has changed: I still feel drawn to apocalyptic fiction, and so do others. But on the other hand for many people things have become measurably worse. I'm not the only one who feels they are living in a dystopia. Living with depression and anxiety is a real-life apocalypse, so why wouldn't you wish for it to end? Like suicidal ideation on a societal scale.
And that's before talking about the pandemic, the climate emergency, and the endless race to the bottom that is late-stage capitalism. A lot of people have lost their appetite for these stories as a result, but others still indulge in doom, perhaps even moreso.
I think as a society we realise that everything is wrong, so imagining dramatic apocalypses is how we process that collectively. Maybe even how we prepare ourselves for that increasingly likely outcome. Or how we desperately want to tell ourselves that things could be worse, so that we might learn to accept things as they are, rather than do the hard work of fixing things.
But I can't deny that sometimes I want to see it all burn. You have to admit, it'd be cathartic, at least for a few minutes, before reality set in. After all, apocalypse just means revelation, revealing. As in, it reveals who we really are. Judgement day. God knows we love an opportunity to judge people.
posted by Acey at 10:55 AM on July 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm really not interested in "post-apocalypse" stories in which humanity survives and rebuilds, because as other people in the thread have pointed out, they're not end-of-the-world stories at all. Regardless of the author's place on the political spectrum, they're all the same fantasies of "what if those people could be gotten rid of so we can take over and do things properly." The stories that matter to me are the ones in which humanity ends. Over. Kaput. We Will All Go Together When We Go. Ensure that future generations won't suffer as we have by preventing the existence of future generations.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:56 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:56 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I lived through my 80's childhood knowing that I would have roughly 12 minutes warning about incoming ICBMs. I also lived on a steady diet of Cold War propaganda about how there were people just itching to launch them. I quite honestly was very surprised to turn 30, and I then realized that I didn't really have any long term plans because there was never any reason to have them.
It's 20 years later and I still haven't really sorted that out. I was promised Armageddon and it never arrived.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:22 AM on July 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
It's 20 years later and I still haven't really sorted that out. I was promised Armageddon and it never arrived.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:22 AM on July 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
> we could ratchet the terrible incentives in the US and UK the other way again, frex — raise marginal tax rates, go back to anti-industry-concentration laws, enforce anti-pollution laws. Spend the tax money on accessible public goods.
who is "we" here. "we" as used in this sentence seems to be a group that holds power and as such is capable of ratcheting the terrible incentives in the u.s. and u.k. in one direction or another. i am pretty sure that no one here is meaningfully part of that "we."
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:59 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
who is "we" here. "we" as used in this sentence seems to be a group that holds power and as such is capable of ratcheting the terrible incentives in the u.s. and u.k. in one direction or another. i am pretty sure that no one here is meaningfully part of that "we."
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:59 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
There is a difference between "the world is going to end" and "the rules by which the world you know operates are going to end."
Climate change, economic collapse and angry, hungry people are going to change the latter in my lifetime, and I made my peace with that a while ago. Populations are going to move en masse once their former homes become uninhabitable, whether from heat or encroaching water or lack of usable water or societal collapse or various combo platters. Crops and farming will shift over time to what new conditions will support. Ease of travel will shift, with major growing pains as older transportation models become obsolete and different support systems are required. What works will continue; what doesn't will fade out.
There will be pushback, obviously; harsh and sometimes violent pushback, from people who believe that they're entitled to their current way of life forever and that The Camp of the Saints was a training manual. Prosperity as a shared goal versus prosperity as a zero-sum equation, sharing-is-caring versus I'm-all-right-Jack-get-your-hands-offa-my-stack, people are people versus America First and Britain for the British and similar xenophobic claptrap. There will be cries to Build the Wall and Stop the Boats and Repel the Invasion and Resist the Great Replacement and all that.
It's not a question of whether there will be hardship, but how much and where. Societies seem unable to grasp the notion of major change, as a general rule, until either (a) their leaders steer them there for them or (b) it's far too late to do so at all gradually. Whether we are on track A or B is an open question, to which the answer is B.
posted by delfin at 1:14 PM on July 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
Climate change, economic collapse and angry, hungry people are going to change the latter in my lifetime, and I made my peace with that a while ago. Populations are going to move en masse once their former homes become uninhabitable, whether from heat or encroaching water or lack of usable water or societal collapse or various combo platters. Crops and farming will shift over time to what new conditions will support. Ease of travel will shift, with major growing pains as older transportation models become obsolete and different support systems are required. What works will continue; what doesn't will fade out.
There will be pushback, obviously; harsh and sometimes violent pushback, from people who believe that they're entitled to their current way of life forever and that The Camp of the Saints was a training manual. Prosperity as a shared goal versus prosperity as a zero-sum equation, sharing-is-caring versus I'm-all-right-Jack-get-your-hands-offa-my-stack, people are people versus America First and Britain for the British and similar xenophobic claptrap. There will be cries to Build the Wall and Stop the Boats and Repel the Invasion and Resist the Great Replacement and all that.
It's not a question of whether there will be hardship, but how much and where. Societies seem unable to grasp the notion of major change, as a general rule, until either (a) their leaders steer them there for them or (b) it's far too late to do so at all gradually. Whether we are on track A or B is an open question, to which the answer is B.
posted by delfin at 1:14 PM on July 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
Secretly? (It deserves to be asked again)
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:40 PM on July 8, 2023
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:40 PM on July 8, 2023
Altruism and its passive form, community-tending, IS the norm as far as I see. Our metaphors need to change. With it comes a redefinition of what actions constitute “baseline” and “abnormal” behavior as a person within an interdependent whole.
posted by Silvery Fish
I will just repost this previous comment of mine from another thread (including the comment I was responding to):
soren_lorensen
"I dropped that [libertarian] ideology like a hot potato once I figured out that people are just hairless apes and social control is our killer app. Without that, we're fucking animals. I was raised to believe that each and every human being is deep inside a romantic hero or heroine, being held back only by The Man. I came quickly to realize it's the opposite."
------------------------
Nailed it. We are one of the most social and interdependent species. We depend absolutely on high levels of social cooperation and organisation, which requires a substantial degree of social regulation and restraint, considerably more than just the enforcement of basic property rights. It is the basis of our civilisation and success.
posted by Pouteria
posted by Pouteria at 7:33 PM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Silvery Fish
I will just repost this previous comment of mine from another thread (including the comment I was responding to):
soren_lorensen
"I dropped that [libertarian] ideology like a hot potato once I figured out that people are just hairless apes and social control is our killer app. Without that, we're fucking animals. I was raised to believe that each and every human being is deep inside a romantic hero or heroine, being held back only by The Man. I came quickly to realize it's the opposite."
------------------------
Nailed it. We are one of the most social and interdependent species. We depend absolutely on high levels of social cooperation and organisation, which requires a substantial degree of social regulation and restraint, considerably more than just the enforcement of basic property rights. It is the basis of our civilisation and success.
posted by Pouteria
posted by Pouteria at 7:33 PM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" has not yet entered the chat?
posted by away for regrooving at 12:39 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 12:39 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos, can you confirm that the Anishinaabe-set book is Moon on the Crusted Snow?
Yes, that sounds right.
There is a difference between "the world is going to end" and "the rules by which the world you know operates are going to end."
Yes and no. At least - we've chosen to include "the rules by which the world operates are ending" in our "postapocalyptic" list at the club; one book we read was The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, which was written from the perspective of a Saxon man living in England at the time the Normans took over. Another thing we read, Howard Jacobson's novel "J", was more of a dystopia - it was some time after some kind of hinted-at massive societal upheaval, one which was so bad that all the world's leaders came up with an unusually strict set of rules meant to sweep everything under the rug so everyone could move on....and you can figure out, by the end of the book, what that upheaval was about, and who was being targeted.
Yeah, there's a difference between the end of life on the planet or the end of a species, and the end of a given way of life. But even if it's the end of a way of life - even if it's just for one subset of people - that still feels pretty damn catastrophic.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:23 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes, that sounds right.
There is a difference between "the world is going to end" and "the rules by which the world you know operates are going to end."
Yes and no. At least - we've chosen to include "the rules by which the world operates are ending" in our "postapocalyptic" list at the club; one book we read was The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, which was written from the perspective of a Saxon man living in England at the time the Normans took over. Another thing we read, Howard Jacobson's novel "J", was more of a dystopia - it was some time after some kind of hinted-at massive societal upheaval, one which was so bad that all the world's leaders came up with an unusually strict set of rules meant to sweep everything under the rug so everyone could move on....and you can figure out, by the end of the book, what that upheaval was about, and who was being targeted.
Yeah, there's a difference between the end of life on the planet or the end of a species, and the end of a given way of life. But even if it's the end of a way of life - even if it's just for one subset of people - that still feels pretty damn catastrophic.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:23 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
There is no life in downtown Albany after 5 pm.
I've returned to working downtown after over a decade away, and arguably there's no life in downtown Albany before 5 pm also. Pretty much all the places I used to eat lunch are gone, and have not been replaced. Just empty storefronts. I now bring a depressing sandwich and a bowl of instant ramen. However, the diverse restaurants and markets on Central between Quail and North Lake are still rocking and rolling. At least we can support keeping that going.
posted by mikelieman at 6:55 AM on July 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've returned to working downtown after over a decade away, and arguably there's no life in downtown Albany before 5 pm also. Pretty much all the places I used to eat lunch are gone, and have not been replaced. Just empty storefronts. I now bring a depressing sandwich and a bowl of instant ramen. However, the diverse restaurants and markets on Central between Quail and North Lake are still rocking and rolling. At least we can support keeping that going.
posted by mikelieman at 6:55 AM on July 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Another thought - maybe there are just so many real threats looming over us all now that the appeal of the post-apocalyptic stuff is that "thank God something finally happened, the constant dread was killing me and now that it's finally here I can move on".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Pouteria: “I figured out that people are just hairless apes and social control is our killer app. Without that, we're fucking animals. I was raised to believe that each and every human being is deep inside a romantic hero or heroine, being held back only by The Man. I came quickly to realize it's the opposite.”That's more depressing than the ongoing capitalist crisis.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:53 AM on July 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" has not yet entered the chat?
The terms are confusing, especially how most people imagine a social system to work without overlap. Most Americans think Sweden isn't capitalist, and that welfare state socialism is a form of evolving communism rather than a defense against it. Most imagine that capitalist theory is written down somewhere, not that Marx coined the term for himself, unaware that his economics was based on the same metallist gold standard that colonized Africa for it during his lifetime. Most think that communism was never undermined by its black markets and its corrupt official insiders (like any prohibition, though on a massive scale). Most have no concept of how historical determinism gains momentum by being wrong about its predictions and prophecies, causing believers to spread the word as a movement to lessen their dissonance. So, if we assume it best to think of economic labels as mostly bunkum, then capitalism scores for lowering expectations and preparing us for utter disillusionment. Perhaps it lends a cautious mindset to address its problems piecemeal, rather than a utopian fantasy that promotes a cure for human nature.
posted by Brian B. at 8:54 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The terms are confusing, especially how most people imagine a social system to work without overlap. Most Americans think Sweden isn't capitalist, and that welfare state socialism is a form of evolving communism rather than a defense against it. Most imagine that capitalist theory is written down somewhere, not that Marx coined the term for himself, unaware that his economics was based on the same metallist gold standard that colonized Africa for it during his lifetime. Most think that communism was never undermined by its black markets and its corrupt official insiders (like any prohibition, though on a massive scale). Most have no concept of how historical determinism gains momentum by being wrong about its predictions and prophecies, causing believers to spread the word as a movement to lessen their dissonance. So, if we assume it best to think of economic labels as mostly bunkum, then capitalism scores for lowering expectations and preparing us for utter disillusionment. Perhaps it lends a cautious mindset to address its problems piecemeal, rather than a utopian fantasy that promotes a cure for human nature.
posted by Brian B. at 8:54 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
> Pouteria: “I figured out that people are just hairless apes and social control is our killer app. Without that, we're fucking animals. I was raised to believe that each and every human being is deep inside a romantic hero or heroine, being held back only by The Man. I came quickly to realize it's the opposite.”
That's more depressing than the ongoing capitalist crisis.
It's also wrong. People may be "hairless apes", but back when those apes were first losing their hair, they were taking care of each other.
Each and every human being is a hero or heroine deep inside. Time and again, the actual things that happen during a disaster is that the survivors start helping each other. They set up shelters and soup kitchens and figure out how to handle interpersonal conflicts and figure out how to take care of the kids and the elderly and the ill and suchlike. Zoe Bee quotes from Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built In Hell a lot, and we read that in our book club too - Solnit conducted interviews with the survivors of different disasters, from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake to....I think a couple other floods and explosions and such? And invariably, the kinds of stories she was hearing were stories of altruism, grass-roots organizing, and community bonding.
In fact, the only time things went to hell was usually when the government or a more traditional authority came in to "take charge"; there were a bunch of active soup kitchens in 1906 San Francisco for the first week or so, but when the National Guard (or whoever) came in the first thing they did was to close them all down and set up their own - which invariably were less helpful, because the National Guard was using their own resources that had to also be brought in and so they were set up in a couple of "stragetically important" locations and the locals had to figure out how to access them - but the grass-roots soup kitchens were being run by people who actually lived on the ground and knew that "oh for fuck's sake, THIS is a much better place for the soup kitchen because we have the pizzeria right here and that gives us access to the kitchen, and plus it's more centrally located" or whatever.
People are not all collectively selfish fucksticks. We want each other to be okay, and we do step up when the shit hits the fan. The "people are animals and will turn on each other", Bee suggests, is a myth perpetuated by the people in control - partly because they're afraid that we'll turn on them first, and partly because they want to stay in control.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:12 AM on July 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
That's more depressing than the ongoing capitalist crisis.
It's also wrong. People may be "hairless apes", but back when those apes were first losing their hair, they were taking care of each other.
Each and every human being is a hero or heroine deep inside. Time and again, the actual things that happen during a disaster is that the survivors start helping each other. They set up shelters and soup kitchens and figure out how to handle interpersonal conflicts and figure out how to take care of the kids and the elderly and the ill and suchlike. Zoe Bee quotes from Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built In Hell a lot, and we read that in our book club too - Solnit conducted interviews with the survivors of different disasters, from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake to....I think a couple other floods and explosions and such? And invariably, the kinds of stories she was hearing were stories of altruism, grass-roots organizing, and community bonding.
In fact, the only time things went to hell was usually when the government or a more traditional authority came in to "take charge"; there were a bunch of active soup kitchens in 1906 San Francisco for the first week or so, but when the National Guard (or whoever) came in the first thing they did was to close them all down and set up their own - which invariably were less helpful, because the National Guard was using their own resources that had to also be brought in and so they were set up in a couple of "stragetically important" locations and the locals had to figure out how to access them - but the grass-roots soup kitchens were being run by people who actually lived on the ground and knew that "oh for fuck's sake, THIS is a much better place for the soup kitchen because we have the pizzeria right here and that gives us access to the kitchen, and plus it's more centrally located" or whatever.
People are not all collectively selfish fucksticks. We want each other to be okay, and we do step up when the shit hits the fan. The "people are animals and will turn on each other", Bee suggests, is a myth perpetuated by the people in control - partly because they're afraid that we'll turn on them first, and partly because they want to stay in control.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:12 AM on July 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
the assertion that "end times" was a relatively recent phenomenon, but it hasn't seemed that way to me.
At least the 19th century. End-times Christians then (who eventually became 7th Day Adventists) endured The Great Disappointment when Jesus didn't return to "cleanse the sanctuary" on October 22, 1844.
posted by Rash at 2:03 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
At least the 19th century. End-times Christians then (who eventually became 7th Day Adventists) endured The Great Disappointment when Jesus didn't return to "cleanse the sanctuary" on October 22, 1844.
posted by Rash at 2:03 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Pouteria: “I figured out that people are just hairless apes and social control is our killer app. Without that, we're fucking animals. I was raised to believe that each and every human being is deep inside a romantic hero or heroine, being held back only by The Man. I came quickly to realize it's the opposite.”That's more depressing than the ongoing capitalist crisis
I think it’s hyperbole. I don’t think the author believed we were all romantic heroines and heroes, and I don’t think they believe we’re the opposite either. I say "the opposite" instead of "animals" because many animals form communities and support each other pretty well.
The author is right though that the natural human tendency towards cooperative sociality is at odds with its tendency towards selfishness, and for some people selfishness wins the day. It’s not an overwhelming amount of people in my experience, but it’s enough to disrupt the trust we would like to have in each other.
I too find it more depressing than capitalism because economic systems come and go, but shitty people are here to stay.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:42 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos: “It's also wrong.”Yes, of course. Civilization is the idea that human beings needn't live by the law of the jungle. It's a shame that view is apparently not universal.
Cf. The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival by Chris Begley, about which I wrote in another conference, "[The book] gets into why most preppers are conservative and how they’re 100% wrong about what is really necessary for survival and what the threats really are. For them, survivalism is mostly about getting to kill people they don’t like."
P.S. I let this sit in the comment box all afternoon. Coming back to it, I realized I should offer support for my statement about conservatives. I also recently finished The Undertow, Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet, which is pretty convincing. It's depressing enough it should be sold only by prescription.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:25 PM on July 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
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posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:14 PM on July 7, 2023 [51 favorites]