Author: Eric Helland

Matrix

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill — you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”
— Morpheus

precipitating factors

How Western civilization could collapse

By Rachel Nuwer for BBC Future 18 April 2017

The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.

Such collapses have occurred many times in human history, and no civilization, no matter how seemingly great, is immune to the vulnerabilities that may lead a society to its end. Regardless of how well things are going in the present moment, the situation can always change. Putting aside species-ending events like an asteroid strike, nuclear winter or deadly pandemic, history tells us that it’s usually a plethora of factors that contribute to collapse. What are they, and which, if any, have already begun to surface? It should come as no surprise that humanity is currently on an unsustainable and uncertain path – but just how close are we to reaching the point of no return? Continue reading precipitating factors

social solidarity

What really happens when human societies are stressed by disaster?

Disasters are “characterized by a strong feeling of mutual suffering and in-group solidarity … most disasters produce a great increase in social solidarity among the stricken populace … Nations and communities typically demonstrate amazing toughness and resiliency in absorbing and coping with the disintegrative effects of disaster. And disaster-struck societies not only quickly rebound from disaster but often reconstruct and regenerate their social life with added increments of vitality and productivity … persons and institutions submerge their particular aims in a common effort. Old rivalries and conflicts are forgotten, or at least become subliminal, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming task. Almost complete selflessness and great generosity are the emotional climate of this time … the crisis accompanying a disaster is a strongly integrating force in the community. It demands a redefinition of roles in which the divisions of status and culture give way to humanitarian or universalistic considerations … The breakdown of racial and minority group barriers, and the acceptance of minority group members into new social roles, has been noted in both historical and contemporary accounts of disaster.” — Charles E. Fritz