The show’s good btw…
Capable? Yes. Willing? No.
Could not have said it better.
If a civilization chooses not to be civil … why call it a civilization?
I think Capable should be downgraded to a Maybe at this point…
I disliked the books and haven’t tried to watch the show.
But I think I disagree that our civilization is no longer capable of solving it’s own problems. Rather, I think our civilization is going through one of the crappy parts of common cycles that civilizations go through. Frighteningly, this part usually comes right before really scary crappy parts.
Civilizations aren’t static and the patterns don’t always happen the same way, but I think we can predict that
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Things get really shitty. People pull together for survival and build to a place of stability and prosperity.
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The rich and powerful (being short sighted idiots just like the rest of us, but ALSO insulated from and out of touch with reality), start looting society for their own selfish, short term benefit. This destabilizes the institutions and systems creating the stability and prosperity. The population at large doesn’t really understand what’s happening or why, but they DO know that while they’re still relatively comfortable, they’re scared and they don’t like it. They get more conservative and eventually turn to fascists, strongmen and authoritarians to try to get stability back.
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This doesn’t work out. It exacerbates the existing problems, makes things even more scary and less stable. Eventually war and rebellion break out.
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When the dust settles, things are really shitty. People pull together for survival and build back to a place of stability and prosperity.
These steps aren’t exact. They’re trends. Lots of things can disrupt them (including famine, plague and barbarian invasions). But in step 1/4, we (humans) are actually REALLY good at collectively solving problems. In step 2 we’re TERRIBLE at collectively doing anything. In step 3 we (collectively) are trying to solve all the WRONG problems… then back to step 1/4.
We seem to globally be right at the tail end of step 2. Which SUCKS.
tl:dr; This has all happened before and will surely happen again. Hostile aliens are just a modern take on the “barbarian invasion” disrupter. Beware of strangers bearing gifts.
Theorists and futurologists refer to it as the ‘Great Filter’ … a series of challenges that civilizations go up against which determines if they make it past the filter or not.
Our current filters are climate change, nuclear war and artificial intelligence … will we use nuclear tech or AI to benefit ourselves? Will we work towards dealing with climate change? or will us acting negatively with all this be the cause of our regression … or destruction?
We have equal capability at this point … we are just as capable of collectively solving these problems … or using them to destroy ourselves.
Our collective futures are most definitely in our own hands … whether or not we use those hands for good or ill is up to us.
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FWIW, book three is basically “a feminized society is incapable of making the hard but necessary choices”. I like the series for its concepts, but not its themes or characters. It has a lot of Incel-adjacent stuff going on.
That said, when we’re being so half hearted about global warming, it’s hard not to be cynical. People want the solutions to keep everything the same, but without carbon output. It’s not going to work that way.
We’re having a hard time convincing people that they don’t need an EV with 600 miles of range if you’re just willing to rest for 20 minutes every two to four hours of driving. Which would be a good idea, anyway. That’s a relatively minor change compared to the status quo.
The real solution is high speed rail and bikes. How do we get people to go along with that if we can’t even go so far as small changes to road trips?
Thank you, I have been saying the same thing about the books for a while now. They are incredibly misogynistic and the characters are pretty badly written. And yet I still keep seeing them recommended. They remind me of the old scifi novels like Niven and shit where its just a few cool scifi concepts and then a heaping load of sexism.
I listened to them on audiobook, most books I read more than once, don’t plan on going back to them though. A good series I recently listened to was the wayfarers by becky chambers, very good characters.
you’re not wrong, but is easier to buy a car that can travel that than it is to convince people to build thousands, if not tens of thousands, of charging stations
Are charging stations really the problem nowadays? At least here in Germany, it is not.
In the US, it’s getting there, but not good enough.
I just did a trip to Minneapolis and tried to use some of the chargers around the suburb of Plymouth. They chose a deployment based on the DirtRoad app, which is terrible. Totally broken. Tried three different L3 stations and they all errored out in unique ways.
Came down to going to the other side of the city to a Walmart, with only a few miles of range to spare. Of all places, Walmart seems to at least have reliable chargers.
US needs lots more L3 chargers, and tons more L2 chargers in places you’ll tend to be a while (hotels and event parking and such). Once that’s done, though, there isn’t much call for more than 400 miles of range, tops. Further battery improvements can go into making it cheaper and lighter, not go longer.
Capitalist realism. Human society has always been able to solve its problems. The issue is capitalism — our current society — can’t solve the problems it created like massive wars, hunger, regular economic crisis, and global warming.
Capitalism hasn’t existed forever, and it won’t exist in the future. Our civilization will solve the problem of capitalism by seeing to its abolition.
Are you referring to some pre-capitalism economic systems?
Like Feudalism? Greco-Roman slave-based economies? Tribal subsistence economies? Mesopotamian barter-based economies? Ancient Indian caste-based economies?
Seriously, which system are you pointing to that holds answers? I’m not against your position, I just can’t imagine what you mean.
Capitalistic Socialism seems the most successful offshoot of Capitalism. Pure Capitalism is killing its social networks, and the fabric of that system’s societies is falling apart.
It was just the statement that “human society has always been able to solve it’s problems” followed by a condemnation of capitalism. So I assumed there was some prior system that worked better for solving problems.
I guess they say Mussolini made the trains run on time. And Egypt’s slave economy was stable for thousands of years.
It’s like I said, I can’t see a prior example that is not meaner and uglier than capitalism, or at least as mean and ugly.
Capitalistic Socialism may indeed be a better path for the future. But I didn’t think it could be the original poster’s intent.
apparently “egypts slave economy” is largely debunked. they had slaves like every other stone age culture, but their economy (and pyramid building) relied largely on paid labor
And of all the ones there, that one I pulled out of my ass. Thank you.
For the records, saying that capitalism is temporary does not imply OP desires reverting to a previously existing economic system either, so the egypt thing was a non-sequitor anyways
I’d diagnose the problem similarly to the person you replied to and I don’t think I’d feel compelled to offer a specific remedy either.
People have been experimenting with economies and societies for thousands of years and we are in a relatively new money/power/control stuck spot right now. I’m sure there’s been a system in history that would work much better than what we’ve got, but I just read recreationally so I dunno what it is and just because something worked 1000 years ago in North America doesn’t mean it’ll work here today. I wouldn’t mind giving something new a shot though, what we have is not working for most people.
Context: An eco-terrorist organization that’s a fifth column for an alien invasion made this statement
No civilization has ever been capable of solving the problems of civilization. This is why history hasn’t ended yet. We hope that eventually we may discover how to address the problems of civilization. We weren’t built for any of this. We have to use non-intuitive methodology because the intuitions we evolved have equipped us for a totally different lifestyle. We have not figured out how to get humanity to function peacefully and productively in these massive systems. We’re the first animals to even try to do what we’re doing.
Only way we solve all of our problems is fundamentally changing human nature imo regardless of what system you try to put in place
The thing about that is that there isn’t a definable human nature, just tendencies and systems. Using technology like CRISPR to force a definable human nature for all humans would likely doom us. It would be nice until the the environment we adapted our species to changes and then no one in the entire population would be capable of adapting to the new environment since we bottlenecked ourselves for short-term peace and prosperity.
I’m not suggesting changing human nature would be anything but a terrible, dystopian idea, just that it’s the only way to solve certain problems
The real solution is just to live with the flaws and try minimise the damage
We’re capable, we just have to stop relying on technology, hierarchies, and buck-passing to solve our societal problems for us.
When we rely on technology (in this case I mean “any human-made cosntruct to solve a problem” and not just “machines”), we start falling into the Golden Hammer bias. Think of a societal issue that you care about, no matter how general, look it up, and see some results are just “So-and-so has invented an app to combat [issue].” Then you look into the app and realize that it doesn’t do anything to attack the root of the problem, and instead treats some symptoms while fitting into the existing framework that caused the problem in the first place. Incidentally, that’s how society has become so full of middlemen.
E.g. insurance: health care becomes expensive enough to break the bank for everyone below a certain threshhold -> someome proposes a system where everyone pays so the people who need it can cash in -> the people who need it pay for this system, those who don’t need it don’t pay -> the system needs overhead, so it starts charging more and attempting to drive down costs -> the providers artificially increase prices to compensate for the costs being driven down -> more people need insurance. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Tons of ink has been spilled on the problems with hierarchy, but the simplest argument I can give on why it’s bad at solving societal issues is: when you put your fate in someone else’s hands, you give them the ability to make choices that negatively impact you with no recourse.
Every solution to this problem so far has either been “let’s just add another person who sits above the people who sit above us” (which just adds a layer to the original problem) or “let’s try to make our relationship more equal without removing their power over us” which cuts down on the benefits of entrusting that power to someone else AND provides none of the benefits of an equal (horizontal) relationship.
Finally, buck-passing is tempting, especially when the problems aren’t our fault. But we’ve become a global society of people looking to point the finger at someone else, and pay another person to do the hard part for us.
Take climate change for example. One of the rallying cries of online activists has been “100 companies are responsible for 71% of GHG emissions.” Great! Now what? What good did assigning blame do? What I’ve been told is that now we should get them to stop. Ok, how? The response i usually get is to elect officials who will enact sanctions for polluting and rewards for cutting down on pollution. And now we’re passing the buck, adding a middleman, giving someone else power over us to control our fate, and completely relying on the demonstrably broken technology that is representative government.
What I want to know is what I can personally do today, starting now, to combat the problem. What change to my lifestyle can I make that won’t destroy me or my future? I’m not saying we shouldn’t support representatives who act in our interests—we absolutely, unequivocally should do that (unless it hampers our ability to enact a better solution)—but I want a solution I can personally participate in, too.
Because, by and large, those solutions get a lot more good done quicker while relying less on “necessary” evils.
What I’m hearing you say is, we can solve our own problems, we just need human nature to be different. Which, well… Good luck.
To conflate the way of the crowd with human nature is a folly at best
Come on. The way humans behave in groups is certainly part of human nature. And when we’re talking about solving problems of a society, it is the most relevant part.
Yes, but not all humans behave the same way in groups. That’s why cultures are different, it’s why the fields of sociology and anthropology exist, and it’s why conflating “something a lot of people do” with “human nature” is pessimist bologna.
I disagree. I see problems solved all the time.
I’m partial to the notion of memetic evolution, which is to say that humans have a concurrent driver of behavior besides our genes. Less so than capability or willingness, I tend to believe that some of the memes driving us are too successful, if that makes sense. They perfectly capitalize on the foibles of the human organism and I just don’t believe we’re able to surmount that. The only likely way out is running through the painful cycle described in another comment here. We need to suffer sufficiently to initiate a change in the ideas by which we operate
No.
The only pressing problem we’re at the threshold of being unable to solve is climate change.I still stand that if politicians would grow a backbone, most of the problems we have would be solved overnight.
if politicians would grow a backbone, most of the problems we have would be solved
Politicians aren’t scared to do what’s right. Their job is to act in the interest of their fellow elites. The most successful at empowering their fellows are given more power. Solving society’s problems isn’t remotely on the agenda.
If anything, we want more cowardly and timid elites. Politicians with a backbone are just more dangerous predators.
If there was a time in the past that we were capable of solving our problems, why didn’t we do it then?
“Problems existing” is not the same as “never solving any problems.” Old problems get solved, new ones arise, and no problem gets solved until it does. People in the middle of the process always point to the extant problems and go “welp, we’ve never solved that one, guess we’re fucked”
Great point. Have we ever?
It’s both capable and willing, the problem is that not everyone agrees with the solutions being used. And so they say “we’re doing it wrong” instead of “I think we’re doing it wrong.”
I mean, not everyone agrees what the problems are. We can’t even approach talking about solutions until we settle on the problems. And that problem seems to be getting worse.
Is it really a problem, though?
I’d argue that our civilization is more capable of solving it’s own problems than it ever has been, just because we are are far better at identifying them, communicating them to the rest of the world, and analyzing the effects of what we try. Just because we have not solved all our problems does not mean that people in years past would have been able to do so and we’ve somehow lost that ability.
I disagree. “No longer” implies we were ever capable
Good catch, and I agree.
- spiderwort ( @spiderwort@lemm.ee ) 2•2 months ago
We can but the solver won’t come from the mainstream, it’ll come from the edge. One of those insane weirdos that everybody knows is badwrong.
So be kind to weirdos.
The normies you can safely pound to paste tho.