jacob wrote: ↑Fri Oct 23, 2020 11:12 am
In terms of not knowing the parameters, the only good example of what will happen in the West during the collapse is perhaps post-USSR in Russia in the 1990s. Here death rates (and emigration) actually increased to the magic 5%/year. Health care systems collapsed and infectious diseases became more important (sounds familiar?). Being generally depressed (job loss, etc.) people also started drinking/drugging themselves to death (also familiar).
Perhaps this is an ugly and inconsiderate thing for me to say (it's admittedly ignorant), but this ↑ is pretty much the only thing that is giving me comfort in this whole CC discussion. I had the privilege of living in this world (sort of, post-communist Balkans country) in the late 90s, early 00s, and as I've said elsewhere on this forum before, my experience living in this village was pretty positive. Granted, I was an outsider in this village (and an American one at that!), and there's only so much insight a person can gain in 2 years living in a place where he doesn't have a really firm grasp of the language and lacks a lot of cultural competency, but there's a lot I preferred in this way of living as compared to how I live now in the US. Just as an example, I can get a tomato from a grocery store 12 months a year here, but in a second I'd give that up for the taste and crunch of the tomatoes I'd get in my village in May. I liked that what you ate and drank changed (drastically) by the season. I liked that "market day" was just once every other week, and the whole village came out for it. I liked that the movie theater was only open about once a month, and only during the warmer months--and the whole town would go out and watch whatever POS American movie the theater guy brought us. I liked that the whole town basically shut down (well, there wasn't much to shut down) whenever there was a wedding, or a funeral. I liked that the most common pastime was hiking up to the top of the "mountain" peak in the evenings after dinner. I liked that everyone just assumed they'd have to handle problems themselves, with nothing but their own ingenuity and tools, or those they could borrow from a neighbor.
Anyway, I know I'm SERIOUSLY romanticizing my 20-year-old experience, but when I read JMG et al. about the post-industrial/post-CC world, this is the image I have in my head, and it's not awful.
This of course assumes me and mine survive.
ETA: I also enjoyed all the drinking and smoking.
ETA ETA: I also liked that there were pretty drastic differences between one village and a neighboring one; to the extent that, by the end, even I could pretty much tell what village/town someone was from based on how they talked and what they wore. Contrast this to the US where regional differences are mostly a thing of the past--I mean, my kids are growing up in the Deep South and won't ever have even an inkling of a Southern accent. This kind of diversity is very much a tenant of Burkean/Kirkian conservativism.