Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

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ThisDinosaur
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Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by ThisDinosaur »

Do Civilizations "Collapse?"
Doomsday prep is a common theme around here. There is a certain underlying assumption about history; that civilizations collapse and our time is almost up. This article disputes that narrative.

There are political revolutions, wars, and sinusoidal interest in megastructures. But sudden mass changes in average living standards are rare.
Periodic Armageddon sells more books, though.
Stories of mass destruction, societal breakdown and civilisational collapse run deep in our culture, from Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by a wrathful god, to the destruction of Atlantis, submerged under the sea after a massive earthquake
Turning that to the possibility of near-future collapse, by imagining ourselves standing on the precipice of some epochal change, we make ourselves feel more important – we are living at a key time and we have the power to affect global civilisation, either positively or negatively.
The stories of the Maya and climate change, and the Easter Islanders’ ecocidal self-destruction, suit those who want to make a dramatic argument about our own mistreatment of the environment in modern times, and the possible fate of our own civilisation.

BRUTE
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by BRUTE »

Nothing Lasts.. but Nothing is Lost.

brute supposes it's all a question of perspective. has Britain collapsed? the British Empire surely seems to, but there also do seem to be a lot of humans living in Britain that would likely say they're doing ok. most likely, few of them feel like their civilization has collapsed. (cue Brexit joke).

the humans talking about civilizations collapsing, or finding interest in this kind of stuff at all, seem to be historians, most of them in awe over kings and battles and genocide and so on. in the terms they care about, yes, Britain has collapsed. it no longer has the biggest navy in the world, no longer rules over three continents. but in the terms of a fine tailor, maybe the tradition of British suit making has survived intact, and humans all over the world now wear British-style suits.

Riggerjack
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by Riggerjack »

Sure, makes a great movie.

But how you describe collapse determines whether it happens or not.

But all Golden Ages end. It's hard not to conclude that we are in such an age currently, given historical norms.

And it's not like the Spanish flu was the end of civilization. It just killed millions of people who survived The Great War. There is nothing I have seen preppers do that is only useful after the End of Civilization. Most of it would seem prudent to my grandparents.

Arguing that civilization doesn't end thus preppers are wasting resources is a strawman.

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Rome did not collapse overnight. And neither will our world.

Currently we are living a transitional era from where the energy fluxes and flows that sustained our economy were built upon something that could not last on the time scale of humans, instead moving towards something while not as powerful, can sustain us until we as a whole die. We are living in a time where ways that have lasted thousands of years must be abandoned to survive going forward, if we want to keep some natural beauty and niceties among our selves.

As for what preppers do? What is wrong with creating localized internet via mesh networks, growing your own gardens to supplement your livelihood? What is wrong with sharing and not being wasteful? Nothing really unless.

And brute makes a point: one day the American Hegemony will recede; we are seeing it now in a way. However does not mean we are collapsing, just waning in an era. The institutions we made, the actions we did, both good and bad, will affect the world long past its prime.

So honestly?

Developed civilization don't really collapse nowadays, just wax and wan.

chenda
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by chenda »

Yes, although the length of human lifetime might be too short, or too localised and distracted, to consciously notice, until long after the fall. Or maybe not. Easter Island definitely collapsed, though perhaps due to sudden European contact than internal failures. Either way, they all leave legacies.

According to the historian Bryan Ward-Perkins, there was a trend beginning in the 1960s to argue that Rome didn't really 'fall', but gradually transformed and evolved into the mediaeval period. He challenges this view and argues that the 6th to 8th centuries was a period of abrupt and sudden disasters, which led to all manner of misery and doom. Which isn't to say they same will happen to us. But this makes for an interesting take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruin

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jennypenny
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by jennypenny »

Even if it's a slow degradation, we don't all drift gently down together. Think of Flint, or Puerto Rico, or Darfur.

Praxis Prepper did a pretty good video about this ... https://youtu.be/yDpalzavFDk?t=45s

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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by jacob »

I'm no art historian, so perhaps I'm drawing the wrong conclusions, but one thing that fascinates is what appears to me as a decline in artistic skill level of how the emperors are depicted in statues and coins, starting with "really good" at the beginning of the Principate (generally considered the start of the decline---when they eliminated the Plebian Assembly in favor of a more authoritarian governance) and ends with art that looks pretty amateurish to put it mildly. If you believe in progress, those images are hard to watch because they look as if they should be the other way around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_emperors

I see this both as a measure of what society could afford to spend directly on such things ... and what society could afford in terms of maintaining a skilled cadre of artists. In that sense, "collapse" is dramatic because it's irreversible. Since it's possible to move the goal posts in terms of defining what civilization is, it's perhaps not all that of a useful thing to think about.

What interests me is the level of complexity a civilization can maintain. Now, that can go down and up and often fluctuates. The complexity of the US did take a hit in 2009 for example. Some people, particularly people who graduated from college in those years and people who lost their houses, still live with those effects. This does have knock-on consequences for what kind of complexity society will build and maintain.

George the original one
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by George the original one »

Collapse happens one safety net at a time. The marauders sack the state next door, then the county next door, and then, finally, your city... it takes awhile unless they're stopped. OTOH, blitzkrieg and revolutions are sudden, often taking only 6 months to overrun your locale from when they started because the affected populace are usually in denial about their odds of surviving when they're on the wrong side.

Provided natural disaster is no more widespread (or longer lasting) than what a hurricane or earthquake or volcano or tsunami do, then civilization doesn't collapse. Droughts, however, can turn the tide in a region.

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fiby41
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by fiby41 »

My civilization was breathed into life when these first verses of the Rig Veda were composed:

Aum Agni-me-lay pyro-hit-am ....

It has survived Islamic onslaughts, Catholic inquisitions, and enslavement by Christians. It is in decline but it endures somehow and it's past trackrecord makes me want to believe it will make it through.

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Sclass
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by Sclass »

I had a classmate who studied ancient cities in the Americas. Like lost cities that just got overgrown and abandoned. Her findings were that these places thrived for hundreds of years then collapsed due to tectonic shifts that literally changed the course of their irrigation canals. The common thread in her study areas was, big city dependent on irrigated farming using canals that would just stop flowing as the topography tipped the wrong way. Then everyone starves and the place crashes.

The research was done using mapping and topographic analysis of the canals. She was able to establish that the current topography was going the wrong way for the water to get to the fields. The data correlated well with archeological digs that indicated big earthquakes that could be dated with pottery shards. Neat for late night talks at the university.

Could that happen today? I don’t think so. We have pumps and electricity. Even Fukushima is being slowly rebuilt.

But I’m sure something else nasty could lead to collapse.

enigmaT120
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by enigmaT120 »

I was surprised at how technology can be lost, when I read an article in Scientific American that people had re-discovered how the Romans made concrete. That skill had been lost for a long time, and our current concrete recipe is different and not as strong, though it cures faster. The stupid article didn't give the recipe though, so I still don't know how to make Roman concrete.

BRUTE
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by BRUTE »

brute read that the roman concrete contained pig's blood or something.

Campitor
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by Campitor »

enigmaT120 wrote:
Fri Dec 22, 2017 1:12 pm
I was surprised at how technology can be lost, when I read an article in Scientific American that people had re-discovered how the Romans made concrete. That skill had been lost for a long time, and our current concrete recipe is different and not as strong, though it cures faster. The stupid article didn't give the recipe though, so I still don't know how to make Roman concrete.
http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/spillway/spillway.htm

Apparently the composition of the materials and the means of layering it is the key - the recipe isn't very different than what is used today. I doubt any edifice we build today will be worth keeping around for 2,000 years unless it used classical or neo-classical architecture. Some ArtDeco is nice.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete:

Vitruvius, writing around 25 BC in his Ten Books on Architecture, distinguished types of aggregate appropriate for the preparation of lime mortars. For structural mortars, he recommended pozzolana, which are volcanic sands from the sandlike beds of Pozzuoli brownish-yellow-gray in color near Naples and reddish-brown at Rome. Vitruvius specifies a ratio of 1 part lime to 3 parts pozzolana for cements used in buildings and a 1:2 ratio of lime to pulvis Puteolanus for underwater work, essentially the same ratio mixed today for concrete used at sea.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

jennypenny wrote:Even if it's a slow degradation, we don't all drift gently down together. Think of Flint, or Puerto Rico, or Darfur.
Right. That's why I think that the neighborhood where I own my vacant lots, which is full of recent refugee immigrants from all over the planet, within the surrounding detritus of the former grandeur of Detroit, is a good micro-model for the possibilities of the post-apocalyptic future. Since both of my parents grew up in Detroit; my father in upper-middle-class affluence, and my mother in upward-mobile immigrant working class setting, I have a pretty good conception of the speed and depth of the decline. For instance, my paternal grandparent's lovely brick Tudor home was worth less at one juncture in the 1980s than what they paid for it in the early 1930s.

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jennypenny
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by jennypenny »

There's a scene in SK's Storm of the Century (couldn't find a clip) where everyone is standing outside in the storm watching something. While everyone is distracted, Legion starts plucking people randomly from the crowd and no one notices. For some reason, that image always comes to mind when we talk about collapse.

Rune
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by Rune »

As others have noted, it is all about perspective. Do we look at institutions, language, culture, technology, art, religion, monuments, artifacts, etc. Plus - which metaphors are used? What isn't born/alive doesn't die. The idea of civilizational decline or death was very popular in the early 20th Century. The sociologist Pitirim Sorokin reviewed and critiqued most of the influential works in this book: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216603 It is well worth the read if you are into this topic, but you could skip to the end and see his conclusions which includes reflections on all of the above. Another interesting and more recent work is Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order as well as Political Order and Political Decay. As I recall, his conclusions were that societal stability rested on a strong state, the rule of law and responsible governance. However, he does see the Scandinavian welfare states as ideal types of the good society, so keep that in mind. He does not consider the effects of urbanization and increased energy expenditure on a global level, so for another relevant and interesting (and probably grim) perspective you might want to look into West's Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies. I only just read this, and am not an expert on quantitative analysis, but it was a thought provoking read when pondering the future: "life will continue to speed up and urbanization remain the dominant force as we head toward an impending singularity. How this plays itself out will determine much about the sustainability of the planet."

Smashter
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by Smashter »

Dragline turned me on to the Fall of Rome podcast. I bet that those interested in this thread would dig it. The host sets out to prove that Rome as a whole had a very slow decline, and that depending on where you lived and what you did, you might not even have noticed there was a decline until a couple of centuries into the downturn.

Keep in mind that the Fall of Rome pod is not "Hardcore History". It can be quite dry. But maybe that's a plus for some of us :geek:

On a related note, I happened to be going through some old lecture notes from a college class I took back in 2009. The class was called (ridiculously) the Geopolitics of Emotion.

The professor was really hung up on how America was in decline. Here are some direct quotes.

"Has America lost its purpose?"
"Have we lost the sense of our unique mission in the world?"
"Have we lost our place in the world?"
"Are we in decline? Many say yes."
"What have we done to ourselves?"
"The world has become wild, dangerous and violent." (he singled out the movie No Country for Old Men in this section)
"Woodstock had a million people; if Woodstock were to happen today with the same number of people, we would have to use 3 times the amount of space because people have become bigger."

That last one cracked me up.

Jason

Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by Jason »

From a historical perspective, civilizations collapse if you take the position that perpetual "progress" is the determining factor in analyzing a civilization's health. It's a modernistic approach to historical studies, started by Hegel with his thesis-anthisthesis-thesis dialectic view of history (Rise/Fall/Rise).

Being that there is a constant ebb and flow to organized societies, the question becomes one of political theory in order to determine the extent of the destabilization/disorder a "falling" civilization will have on its populace. It pretty much comes down to Rousseau or Locke contract theory. If your Rousseauian you hold to a bifurcated state of nature/state of civilization man where political order imbues the individual with rights. Locke believed that man possesses rights before entering the "state". That's why the Rousseuian French Revolution was more violent and passionate than the Lockean US revolution, and despite the French being a failure and the US a success, the French is the one most emulated amongst proceeding civil insurgents i.e. Che Guevara et al.

The doomsday people are by nature Rousseauian, but they have two problems: (1) they take the political theory model literally. Rousseau did not believe in an actual "state of nature" he just used it as a model to justify his agenda on the extent of state control over society. This problem leads to (2) they conflate "being" with history and that is why they postulate these Mel Gibson dystopian futures. The "end" or decline of a civilization has a corresponding "end" or decline in "being." Rights are lost, chaos ensues, people "return" to their natural, animalistic origins. I think history provides enough proof that in the historical flux of both gradual and violent change within "civilizations", this dramatic type of scenario has never arisen where the entire world has collapsed into disorder.

Farm_or
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by Farm_or »

Look at Venezuela today.

EdithKeeler
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Re: Do Civilizations "Collapse?"

Post by EdithKeeler »

s
I would posit that the smart jews left germany before being hauled off to concentration camps. I've always resolved that if things got really gnarly here, and there were laws passed that specifically targeted people like me in an adverse way, we'd move to another country that didn't suck. That's always been the way of things, if things gets bad, move somewhere else where it doesn't suck.
Actually, starting around 1933 and maybe earlier, Germany actively tried to encourage Jews to leave and even reduced the bureaucracy in order to make it easier for them to leave. They had to pretty much leave all their stuff in Germany, however, as Germany’s position was that anything the Jews had really belonged to the state. They were allowed to take about the equivalent of $5 out of the country.

As Germany decreased the obstacles to emigration, other countries increased barriers to immigration. Countries (including the US) reduced the numbers of immigrants it allowed in, and required more sponsors, proofs, etc. to let people in (hmmm. Sound familiar?). The US literally turned away a ship of German Jews who had their paperwork in order.

It’s all well and good to say “I’ll just move someplace else” when it starts to look bad, but many factors may prevent you from doing that. Will anyone let you come in to their country? Do you have money to leave? What about family members who can’t or won’t leave? You want to leave your sick mother behind?

Finally, I don’t know if you’re using “nice things” as a metaphor, but some of the “nice things” I enjoy are freedom of religion, a free press, relatively uncorrupt police, courts, etc. The best things in our society aren’t things at all.

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