Societal collapse in mid 21st century

[JohnRoberts]

School cafeteria food is a pretty easy target and I thought it was really lousy until I had to eat army mess hall chow, but that was better than eating surplus Korean war C-rats, while in Germany on NATO maneuvers in the early 70s (It's all relative).

For some poor children hot meals in school were their only hot meals. Some programs offered a second hot meal at the end of the school day. Not ideal, and they are yet another victim of Covid school closings (there are some efforts to keep feeding kids who had to come to the schools for the food).

Life sucks and then we die....

JR

 

[Tubetec]

I remember back in the early to mid 80's , heavy industry in my town took a few desperate blows , steel manufacturing , ship building , Dunlops tyres and Ford's auto assembly plant closed in quick succession , like a domino effect . My dad had a stable government job , piss poor pay and a heavy cross to bear due to the politics involved ,but it was nothing compared to the hardship my working class school mates had to bear . Us middle class boys werent singled out and ritually humilliated but actually being made watch while those less fortunate than ourselves were being made to suffer , does in itself qualify as torture under any human rights convention .

Many of those who withstood the brunt of the geopolitical downturn and its attendant familial hardships fell away to serious drink and dope addictions and other pitfalls due to lack of faith in a biased and cruel system that held a grudge over the sins of the fathers and grandfathers going back to before the formation of the Irish state in 1922 and subsequent civil war divisionary tactics by those in the driving seat .

For me on a personal level this was the greatest dissuader to climbing over the backs of the downtroden and up the ladder of a deeply flawed (mis)educational system .

'Woe to the downpressers ,they'll eat the bread of sad tomorrow'

David.

 

[user 37518]

Instead we have a massive obesity problem.

 

[cyrano]

You can see, obviously, who "We" are...

In the cited period, millions died prematurely worldwide, mainly from famine. But of course, as always, the uninformed keep their belief and consider their immediate surroundings as the only reality.

Haven't seen it, wasn't there. Didn't happen...

 

[Tubetec]

Selective memory exists for a reason , to allow us to aqquit/absolve ourselves of guilt . The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow and many chose to run and hide rather than take that medicine .

The idea of overpopulation leading to a collapse was mentioned by Aldous Huxley in an interview in 1958 , but his ideas goes back to the early 1930's 'brave new world' .



I posted this before but seeing as its on topic .

 

[JohnRoberts]

Selective memory exists for a reason , to allow us to aqquit/absolve ourselves of guilt . The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow and many chose to run and hide rather than take that medicine .

The idea of overpopulation leading to a collapse was mentioned by Aldous Huxley in an interview in 1958 , but his ideas goes back to the early 1930's 'brave new world' .


I posted this before but seeing as its on topic .

I already pointed out the 1968 Paul Ehrlich over-population book (Population bomb). The first reported famine was something like 400 BC.

The severity of famines have decreased with modernity. The most severe ones took place centuries ago.

The great famine in Ireland 1845-52 killed around 1M people and caused another 1M to immigrate to other countries.

In 1932-33 a man made famine Holodomor (affecting Russian Ukraine) killed almost 4M ethnic Ukrainians and is considered genocide by some.

More recently the great Chinese famine 1959-1961 killed between 15M and 55M

Drought, poor weather, and the policies of ruler Mao Zedong contributed to the famine, although the relative weights of the contributions are disputed.

This century most of the famine appear to be occurring on the African continent, for differing reasons.

The severity of these is declining as the world gets wealthier, but there are still bad governments (or no government) in some regions. The pandemic has not helped, diverting resources and attention away from reducing world poverty and lawless regions.

JR

 

[living sounds]

The idea

The idea of overpopulation leading to a collapse was mentioned by Aldous Huxley in an interview in 1958 , but his ideas goes back to the early 1930's 'brave new world' .

It's much older than the 20th century:

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

Unfortunately, just because we had a relatively stable period during the second half of the 20th century doesn't mean that things cannot and will not take a turn to the worse.

The planet is finite and the shocks to several systems become more pronounced. Positive feedback effects can hasten the onset and increase the effect size.

As already mentioned above, we're once again at the end of a ca. 80 year long debt cycle. Always a setup for general unrest. For our US friends: When was the last time armed peasants stormed the Capitol?

There is climate change (for instance, what if the marine econsystems reach a tipping point, leading to mass extinctions; or the insect population declines even more rapidly?).

And there are the more general markers regarding population, polution, food, resources etc. The civilized world has repeatedly experient long periods of collapse, even before classical Greece and Rome. It always happened.

I am an optimist by nature, but I can see the signs of danger flashing brightly.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Funny you don't sound that optimistic to me... (not a dis, just an observation).

I am pessimistic about the current administration but like a self-cleaning oven, we have mid term elections next year. Of course my political predictions have been wrong before.

JR

 

[living sounds]

I am pessimistic about the current administration but like a self-cleaning oven, we have mid term elections next year. Of course my political predictions have been wrong before.

JR

Organized disfunction is what I would call the state of the US political system in recent years. Largely fueled by the disfunction that is the modern Republican party. But that really is a discussion for a different thread.