Why Society is on the verge of collapse., page 1

Originally posted by butterflycatcher

Originally posted by St Vaast
Society is not going to collapse.

Things have been a hell of a lot worse than this, lots of times.

The survival instinct is incredibly strong. People adapt. Those who can't or won't get kicked to the wayside, but the others keep on going, living on a handful of dog-sick if that's all that's around.

Every generation imagines the 'end times' will be in their lifetime. It doesn't happen, they die of course and a new generation goes through the same with variations and the 'end times' beliefs capture a new audience, on and on.

Society isn't going to collapse. There are too many with a vested interest in keeping-on and they will keep on, no matter how rough it gets. In fact, we're having a cake-walk compared with what previous generations considered 'normal life'. People today are soft and self-indulgent. They've had it easier than any generation that went before. Put three people together in a mud hut and you have a society. It's what humans do.

Exactly what I would have said if I was quick enough. People adapt, get new skills, and work through it. Society isn't coming to a swift sharp end. That isn't how it works.

Dog sick becoming a staple does sound like the collapse of a civilization to me. Just to be clear plenty of civilizations have collapsed, and when one is as short-sighted and exploitative as ours it either changes its ways or goes the way of the dodo.

The top 10% of the population takes 50% of the resources. These are not superhuman "Producers of Wealth" but the people taking resources from the bottom 50% of humanity that live on 5% of the wealth through manipulation. We have had the resources to feed, clothe, house, and medicate every person on the planet with a fraction of the ecological damage for over a century. The greed of those who manipulate and divide us is the only thing that prevents everyone's needs from being met in full for a fraction of the work. With perceived scarcity comes the ability to manipulate.

If we don't change and collapse does happen people will still be here, but as many? One thing is for certain, in the event of a collapse people will be living in a much new pattern of existence. Most people today can identify over 1000 brand names but can identify fewer than 10 native plants and animals, much less their possible uses in a survival situation or possible medicinal value in the event of illness.

Corporations have used the Propaganda techniques of Edward Bernays (the father of PR and a favorite author of Goebbels) to infantilize people. By making them completely dependent on corporations for their survival the corporations becomes parental figures. It has gotten to the point where people identify with corporations. Corporations being granted personhood was the result of a clerk changing a supreme court decision in the paperwork. Afterwords the corporations kept using legal and political pressure to widen the gap. Today corporations have more rights than people under almost every legal rubric. This is not the way the world was meant to work.

If the suffering people are feeling causes them to question their behavior and change there is hope, if we keep trying to keep the systems we currently have intact collapse will occur. We are at the crossroads right now, there does come a point of no return where collapse becomes inevitable, nobody can say when. Collapse wouldn't be the end of the world, just the end of the world as we know it. In the long run hat sounds to me like a breath of fresh air for a suffocating people and their planet, even if the short term consequences would be disasterous. That is just how nature works - when you systematically ignore it disaster strikes sooner or later.

[edit on 15-8-2009 by wanderingwaldo]