PowerSwitch

https://time.com/5905324/reddit-collapse/

The Subreddit /r/Collapse Has Become the Doomscrolling Capital of the Internet. Can Its Users Break Free?

Since that article was written last year, the number of subscribers has gone up another 50% - it has just passed 300,000 and is rising at the rate of 500 a day.

While I do not get up and first thing I do is scroll through the reddit news (/r/collapse thing) about the collapse of human civilisation it is something I have an interest in and I liked reading through the comments there. I am glad that others have the same interest.

As a child I had a book called "The Guinness Book of Answers" and in one of the covers it had a description of all the human civilisations known to have existed. It struck me even then that of the approximately 40 of them only about five were still going and the others had collapsed. How they defined a civilisation I cannot remember.

I wonder when it is going to peak.

I've recently had a nagging feeling that collapse is imminent. It's unsettling.

I'm a prepper at heart, have been for years, but always hoped that things would be OK. Now I feel a bit pessimistic, as if things are accelerating towards a crunch.

I guess that many other people are feeling the same.

Catweazle wrote: ↑28 Jul 2021, 13:55 I've recently had a nagging feeling that collapse is imminent. It's unsettling.

I'm a prepper at heart, have been for years, but always hoped that things would be OK. Now I feel a bit pessimistic, as if things are accelerating towards a crunch.

I guess that many other people are feeling the same.

I think this is particularly true in the US. That subreddit is a tangled mixture of global ecological collapse and the death throes of American hegemony - which includes the debasement of the petrodollar. And reddit is very much US-centric. There's a lot of late teen and early 20-something Americans looking at what is happening in their country and the world, and seeing their hopes and dreams for the future melting into a pile of shit.

I think there's going to be a post-covid bounce - a relatively short period of rapid economic (re-)growth, and optimism among the collapse-unaware population ("Phew! The world hasn't ended. Back to normal!!"). Then when the scale of the long-term economic hangover becomes clear, things could turn nasty quite rapidly.

Any post-covid bounce is likely short lived in my opinion. We all (most?) knew collapse was coming the uncertainty was around the precise mechanism and timing. I think the history books will pin it on Covid around about now. Covid will turn out to be the straw the broke the camel's back - not a show stopper in itself but something that highlighted and uncovered a host of structural problems at all scales and overloaded the global financial system to breaking point.

There are so many red lights (finance, energy, climate, food, trade, equality, polarisation etc) flashing at the moment, I'd be amazed if we have another decade of just muddling though as we have the last decade. I hope to be able to quote and laugh about this on this very forum in 2031!

Might be a good idea to get the different views on what we think will happen by 2031, in relation to;
Constitutional position, distribution and use of electric cars (or other forms), equality, food, work/life, future mitigation, pensions both public and private, currency use, etc

About work/life balance in the near future, if you don't work you won't live. That was the case in the past even if working was hunter gathering. The concept of work/leisure, which is what I think you are talking about, will be very much curtailed.

For many years on these forums and elsewhere, around December, I USED to forecast that the next year would be "very similar to the last year, but a bit worse" Such predictions were generally correct.
The astute member may have observed that I made no such predictions recently.

Catweazle wrote: ↑28 Jul 2021, 13:55 I've recently had a nagging feeling that collapse is imminent. It's unsettling.

I'm a prepper at heart, have been for years, but always hoped that things would be OK. Now I feel a bit pessimistic, as if things are accelerating towards a crunch.

I guess that many other people are feeling the same.

Yep

I had a quick look at r/collapse and it sure is one potential mega rabbit hole........

And only slightly O/T, but why is a spectacular rise in almost anything often called "meteoric" Meteorites fall from the sky, not rise.

adam2 wrote: ↑29 Jul 2021, 19:10 And only slightly O/T, but why is a spectacular rise in almost anything often called "meteoric" Meteorites fall from the sky, not rise.

Perhaps it's the speed of the rise and the meteorite rather than the direction?

This post caught my eye.

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comme ... &context=3

"The general populous here (USA) just seems downright miserable. EVERYBODY I know is suffering from a physical ailment, a mental health struggle, or both. Everyone. And as a result, everyone has a fuse about an inch long. People are bitter, angry, and antagonistic. I'm seeing people ready to chop each other's heads off over the most minor inconveniences and burdens. Road rage is out of control and people in general just don't seem to have respect for each other anymore. Frankly, I'm seeing a lot more people act entitled, too."

Potemkin Villager wrote: ↑01 Aug 2021, 19:07 This post caught my eye.

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comme ... &context=3

"The general populous here (USA) just seems downright miserable. EVERYBODY I know is suffering from a physical ailment, a mental health struggle, or both. Everyone. And as a result, everyone has a fuse about an inch long. People are bitter, angry, and antagonistic. I'm seeing people ready to chop each other's heads off over the most minor inconveniences and burdens. Road rage is out of control and people in general just don't seem to have respect for each other anymore. Frankly, I'm seeing a lot more people act entitled, too."

Yes. Social media also reflects this - it is getting more and more toxic, all the time. There's a small but increasing minority who are newly joining the dots and grasping the big picture, and there's a lot more who just instinctively sense that something is quite badly wrong and that their lives are getting worse, but they aren't ready to start thinking about the collapse of civilisation just yet. Most of them have somebody or something to blame. The person I know who is looks particularly troubled is a very old and close family friend who has always been a climate change denier (claims humans aren't the primary cause of current climate change). Still hasn't changed his tune on that one, but spends a lot of time shaking his head about all the other things that are falling apart, and looking confused.

I've always thought one of the advantages of being 'collapse aware' for 20+ years is the mental side of things. As things go south a lot of folk simply aren't going to cope with their world view collapsing around them.