Evaluating civilization collapse

[George the original one]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2019021 ... n-collapse

I see a couple of researcher prejudices revealed in the article, but overall it is good.

[TheWanderingScholar]

It seems to an overall good article, and good stepping off point going off the suggested readings in the book for those making thought experiments on rebuilding civilizations if everything goes to blue-whale level sized shits.

[7Wannabe5]

The article defines innovation as patents/capita. The likelihood that an individual will file a patent is correlated to math skills and wealth. The correlation to wealth is likely due to multiple opportunities for failure. Innovation extends the curve, but extending the curve through increased efficiency can steepen the crash. Choosing to operate in a less efficient manner can build resilience which can soften the crash.

[unemployable]

The world's too interconnected now. Not even losing a war or reverting to socialism will work; we still have a Germany, will still have Venezuelans and so on. You'll probably get all sorts of offers to rebuild, albeit on the benefactor's terms.

Alternatively, hope for some external event that screws over the whole planet, like magnetic pole reversal or a gamma ray burst.

I like the idea of complexity being an aggravating factor. I do believe life in developed nations is getting inexorably more complex, and that this complexity manifests itself mostly as a stress-inducing distraction and a drag on life actualization and enjoyment.

[fiby41]

What is the geographic extent of the so-called western civilization exactly?

It includes North America but for some strange reason doesn't include South America although it is also in the western hemisphere. If it consists of developed countries because Australia is in it, then Japan and Korea are excluded- all three developed, eastern countries. If it comprises of previous colonies like US, Canada, why does western Europe claim to be in it?

That cannot collapse which has never existed.

[vexed87]

@filby, 'Western civilization' is often emotionally charged as the pinnacle and spearhead of progress and enlightenment, and really it can mean whatever the reader/writer wants it project on to it, but in the context of social complexity, which is what civilisation boils down to, it is essentially shorthand for a industrialised high-tech economy. i.e. not subsistence agrarian society, not even industrial manufacturing society (that's so 20th century), but rather the tech/service/financial industries with the centralised institutions and global interconnected supply chains.

The article points out, the real kicker is, were all in this together at this point as the civilisation has gone global, indigenous tribes are best placed with skills and knowledge to live outside the system, but even they are vulnerable to AGW, inevitable displacement of the cities, water stress, pollution etc etc.

[Clarice]

@Gtoo:
You've mentioned prejudices. I wonder which ones do you see? The first that struck me was East side blindness. The author says that Roman Empire was done by 476. Actually, that was just Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire, aka Byzantine Empire, stood for 1000 years longer, became the center of wealth, innovation, and culture, contributed many cultural traditions and memes to surrounding countries including Russia, and overall was having a good and quite enlightened time while Europe was going through the Dark Age. The article doesn't mention it at all.

[George the original one]

Yes, Clarice that was one of them. Using proxies like GDP for complexity without any justification struck me as a terrible shortcut and there's a definite anti-tech theme. However, you have to start somewhere and the overall tally of reasons for collapse was pretty thorough.

[Paula]

Indigenous tribes are best placed with skills and knowledge to live outside the system, but even they are vulnerable to AGW, inevitable displacement of the cities, water stress, pollution etc etc.

History has shown that indigenous people are the most vulnerable. Their knowledge and skills are based on particular areas with very specific characteristics. Without the buffer of technology, slight changes in their environment precipitate collapse.

Reverting to the lifestyle of an indigenous community (take your pick) is a fragile strategy based on the faulty assumption that the future post-collape world will look like the past. It will not.

[vexed87]

@paula, vulnerable to what exactly?

Tribal societies are vulnerable to their neighbouring civilisations, I agree.

However with the 2.8 million year history of the Homo genus, the vast majority of that time, life has been experienced outside of civic society and its specialised technologies/economies. If we were so vulnerable in such a state, then surely the genus would have been faced with extinction many times over?

Indigenous peoples are often unjustly accused of being stupid and unsophiscated compared with modern man and his technological marvels. However it is in fact the modern man that knows very little about the natural world and how to live in it. Sure you can operate an iphone, but can you build one from scratch? How about hunt a new species? There difference between the two types of life is simply that technology is simpler to leverage and and therefore more widely disseminated, but therefore suffers from lower productivity as one doesn't dedicate all their time to just one problem. Lowered productivity is not always a bad thing. The ultra modern man is hyper specialised and knowledge is not spread so democratically. Whilst collectively we are quite resilient, the system only does so by becoming increasing efficient over time to grow, removing slack from the system, that slack is also our resilience to shocks.

If anything, outliers aside, modern man is less adaptable and his brain and physical frame less exercised than his ancient counterparts. I do not dispute that that we cannot revert to hunter gatherer lifestyles in any meaningful timescale to avert collapse, but that is not to say we cannot learn from history and implement aspects of the lived experiences in an attempt and repeat making the same mistakes in judgment that led us toward our current predicament, one that has been faced by civilisation over and over.

It takes a greater leap from advanced civilization to tribal society, or visa versa, but not so much a leap to move to the middle of the two. They are not distinct states, but they blend together more than you might imagine. All civilisations are totally vulnerable to failure of agriculture, the BBC article quotes the 2C global temp range for successful harvest. Hunter gatherers could theoretically survive greater extremes simply by relocating, as they did many times.

IMO, our best bet to maintain some form of liberal civic society is to attempt to dig in at the level of an organic horticultural society, but they only thrive in rainfall economies on the back of plentiful natural resources. For instance, desert based societies require massive irrigation works and all the expense of supporting it. They tend to be more autocratic in nature or else they collapse because the land supports much fewer people without that infrastructure. Irrigation works don't build themselves, its usually slaves that do that, but where rain falls from the sky and trees plant themselves, so long as we leave them alone long enough, the conditions for civic society are more abundant. I know where I'd rather live.

[7Wannabe5]

When I lived in a small rural town,the electrical power went out for a week or so after a particularly bad storm, and nobody even got upset. It was just like "Hey, neighbor. How you doin'?" , "Oh, not bad. Just cooking up these steaks on the propane while the freezer defrosts." I can't say exactly what might have happened by Week 6 of such a situation, but I know it would have been nothing like the insanity that would break out in the city.

[Paula]

@paula, vulnerable to what exactly?

With the 2.8 million year history of the Homo genus, most lived experience has been outside civic society and its specialised technologies/economies. If we were so vulnerable in such a state, then surely the genus would have been faced with extinction many times over?

Vulnerable to change. Indigenous societies collapse quite rapidly when they contact the outside world.

Your answer is predicated on the idea that the future will look like the past. Technology does not magically disappear during a collapse. Planning and preparing to revert to subsistence farming is planning to fail.

We have many examples of what collapse looks like in the modern world. The media tends to focus on those most harmed, giving the impression that everyone is in the same boat. A useful approach is to look at the average people who thrived during a collapse. They can be hard to find because we are biased toward seeing negatives. Their examples can be quite enlightening.

I have a friend who left a lower-middle-class Venezuelan life in 2009 as a young college grad. A few years ago his younger brother asked him to send back fifty dollars in Bitcoin. The brother used that nestegg to barter goods and currency outside the official Venezuelan system. He says that the 3 percent daily inflation rate is what drives their profit and boasts that his extended family now lives at a higher standard of living than before the crisis.

The next crisis will probably not look like Venezuela. It will be different. To think that digging up the back garden and planting indegenous vegetables will provide anything but an incremental advantage over the neighbors like many Venezuelans have is short sighted.

Positioning oneself to thrive in a crisis involves finding ways not only to limit vulnerabilities to change but to benefit from the change itself.

[vexed87]

Venezuela and global systems collapse and are different beasts entirely. That's not to say Venezuela does not provide interesting insight into the fate of collapsing oil exporting nation, but can you rely on emigrating family to send currency back home in a globalised collapse scenario?

Technology does not magically disappear during a collapse. Planning and preparing to revert to subsistence farming is planning to fail.

No certainly not. However the resource base and complex societies required to support certain advanced technologies puts them out of reach of entire groups/nations when complexity collapses. See Korowicz crunch.

Having the ability to produce even just 20% of your own food will reduce your food imports by as much, until such a time that society can localise food production again. That much, coupled with grain stores might make the difference between total starvation. There are worse skills to have in your armory.

[7Wannabe5]

@Paula:

What you are talking about is anti-fragility, which is not the same as resiliency, which is not the same as sustainability, which is not the same as robustness.