all i can say is, learn to shake the reapers hand, mirror it’s grin - it’s going to take the whole damn universe someday. and then, another beginning? this is how stories go.

But that was the fun part as well! Nothing was boring in Malawi; you hitched a ride in the back of a mini-pickup truck with thirty other people and some goats and chickens up a rutted dirt road as fast as the truck could go, always excepting to be robbed and for the truck to break down, just to get to town! God that was fun! I always planned for chaos and usually, it came…

I think as humans, we need a certain amount of disorder/anarchy and chaos to keep our brains sharp, to keep us healthy and happy. Malawians are some of the happiest people I know, and they lives lives always teetering on the edge of chaos…

I think that is why I continue to ride my bike down 122nd Ave in Portland as well…gotta get some use out of those adrenal glands…

Let’s end civilization!
Carrot

Shusli

–R.E.M.

I see the “conforting” aspect of social collapse like this: The collapse is due to a bad idea taking it’s inevitable course. The bad idea is something like: We can take from nature without giving back, or we can take faster than nature can regenerate, or we can defy the ecological web of life for our own benefit, etc. And we not only have the idea, but we have an entire culture of which every aspect is based - bottom line - on that idea. If we don’t voluntarily get rid of the idea, nature is going to make us do it. One way or other the idea has to die - the question is whether we do this voluntarily (separate the idea from us) or not-voluntarily (we die along with the idea).

So…
The “positive spin” or “conforting” aspect of social collapse is the hope/expectation that the bad idea will finally die, and the survivors (if any) can start fresh with better ideas. Or at least without the one bad idea.

I must agree with Roxanne in the first reply to your article, Scout.

For many third world peoples, this world is already an apocalypse.

I mean, we watch a movie like Mad Max or Escape From LA like it’s perceived as some futuristic fantasy world that nobody has yet seen. However, when you really look at some of the most impoverished places on this planet, those chaotic, dirty, wild, and colorful third world countries really do look post-apocalyptic to me. Those people live modern apocalypse at the feet of the wealthy/powerful. I suppose the only thing left for a full apocalypse is when those wealthy/powerful are dragged down into the blood and mud along with everyone else. Their structures, physical and personal, collapsing, leaving the gaping voids back to the gods and the living environment to reclaim.

There is beauty to be found in the chaotic contrast of such collapse.

I too have been very fascinated (and terrified) by visions of apocalypse ever since I was little. I’m drawn to it like a moth to the light. Hell, even my alias for music production is Apok. My favorite TV series was Jericho. I’ve been lead down a path to radical lifestyles and visions of dystopian and/or apocalyptic futures. I plan on living off the grid someday, perhaps in an Earthship. I daydream of revolution, rewilding, suvivalism, steampunk, cyberpunk, etc.

But on a more serious, and less fantasy-driven note, I really do see the possibility (perhaps even the inevitability) of civilization’s collapse, be it partial or absolute. I also am very intellectual, politically/philosophically minded, and very concerned about our effects on the environment. I have developed principles, morals, and ethics based around these ponderings. I want to live a lifestyle that allows me to follow such personal maxims. I also think that the amount of damage we do to each other and our environment is undeniable, so I can set aside any doubts that my beliefs are too radical or idealistic. We REALLY NEED CHANGE in this world, and we’re overdue for it. Everybody knows this, at least deep down.

Ok, but I sorta digressed from my point I originally set out to state. I was pondering apocalypse and all that stuff. Most peoples’ visions of apocalypse, including my own, include very abrupt, harsh, violent collapses of society. I think that I’ve finally questioned this vision. I imagined what it’d be like if apocalypse, or civilization’s collapse came on very gradually and relatively slowly. An apocalypse that was difficult to define and faded out pathetically rather than burnt out brilliantly. Or even… an apocalypse which was slow enough to allow it to become a transition to a fundamentally NEW and BETTER lifestyle(s). Pondering such a real possibility gives me increased hope that sustainable lifestyles can be implemented in the nooks, cracks, and decayed holes in civilization. And I know this is somewhat of a cliche, but perhaps sustainability can grow through the ruins of civilization (quite literally) like a blade of grass breaks through asphalt.

Hope I made sense there.

“…This existential perception of collapse as pessimistic really only takes hold of people in “more developed” countries (meaning the countries that steal from everyone else). Rich people will no longer have the ability to steal from poor people. Doesn’t that make you feel sooo sorry for those rich people?!? They won’t have cheap IKEA crap filling their previously air-conditioned McMansion, built by Mexicans. I can guarantee you that people in third world countries do not fear the collapse of civilization. Those at the bottom of the pyramid, the tortured slaves who make our affluent, luxurious American life possible, will no longer experience oppression and can live more comfortable lives, restoring their connection to their land….”

I was thinking this same thing today when I read these two links about what’s going on in Burma, where, while all the reports say “how the gov’t there is “very secretive” ” and I keep thinking, “uh, yah–It’s called prison mentality, assholes–Those people are prisoners, and they happen to know it, while the rest of us look on and wonder what the big secret is…”
The apocalypse started in Burma long before the mongroves were decimated, and I was thinking about how those people and that land are victims of their gov’t’s imprisonment of them and their land:

Mangroves would have protected villagers Related Articles

By Geoffrey Lean Sunday, 11 May 2008

Tens of thousands of people died in the Cyclone Nargis disaster because vital mangrove forests had been cut down, destroying the land’s protection against the sea.

Far more people were killed by a 12ft wave which stormed ashore during the violent storm than by its 120mph winds, the Burmese government admits. “It swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages,” said the minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe. “They did not have anywhere to flee.”

But the wave could only be so devastating because the thick mangrove forests had been almost entirely destroyed; intact, they would have absorbed much of the power of the sea.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mangroves-would-have-protected-villagers-825918.html

“…International agencies called on the country’s secretive military junta to allow immediate access to those stranded without food, clean water and medicines….The military authorities are continuing to delay giving visas to foreign aid officials, and insist on taking control of such shipments as are permitted….”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/burma-death-toll-could-reach-15-million-825911.html