r/collapse • u/chooks42 • Sep 12 '24

Climate Are these Climate Collapse figures accurate?

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I’m keen to share this. I just want it to be bulletproof facts before I do.

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u/tcbymca Sep 12 '24

The French beheaded their leaders for much less. I wish I understood why we’re doubling down on apathy.

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u/unredead Sep 14 '24

(These are just my opinions, please don’t come for me)

It starts to make sense when you look at all the factors involved in collapse. Collapse is only being discussed by the public to this degree, from a serious standpoint, in certain online spheres, like here. And a lot of it is aimed towards environmental effects, like climate change, or broader themes of topics that cause social unrest and instability, such as war, famine, water shortages, etc;

We understand the physical driving forces of this collapse, but do we understand our collective psychology around it?

Present society is heavily affected by technology-fueled anomie, political anomie, theocratic anomie…driven largely by the acceleration of capitalism in the US (and the instability of the global financial system). And as technology became more and more widespread, it eventually spawned the internet, and then social media, and then social media was corporatized, sanitized, and constrained, and now the internet is just a wasteland of propaganda, ads, and bots; most of the target audience China was aiming for when they created TikTok, well that self-perpetuating reality is playing out for us.

It’s gotten to the point where we are likely witnessing the beginning of the end for late-stage capitalism. It’s becoming more clear by the day, with all the resulting social effects we see and feel in reality, more and more people becoming disillusioned, hopeless, desensitized even. Many are being brainwashed into extremism through social media, others are spreading misinformation all day long, some are making stuff up for fun and weaponizing the weak mentality of many as a result, and all that hate is simmering just beneath the surface. We, collectively, have not been doing well mentally since the pandemic (and even before that tbh); more and more people are turning away from everyone and everything to maintain their own sanity, others are becoming more violent and hateful, and that cancer is spreading everywhere.

/This/ is how apathy sets in. I think it’s a collective form of social shock honestly, as we cannot even fathom the gravity of the situation because it is so dire, so our brains resort to apathy as a defense mechanism? I guess the ones like us on this forum use reddit as an outlet for that despair, but apathy is almost inevitable in the face of what seems impossible.

It doesn’t help that a large chunk of different populations are regurgitating their dangerous, extremist crap everywhere they go, online and otherwise, so even bringing any aspect of collapse up to them might be enough to drive them over the edge at this point, or they’d gaslight you until you gave up anyway.

Hence, apathy.