General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSome hard hitting reality - the "social pathologies of collapse".
Let me give you just five examples of what Ill call the social pathologies of collapse strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we dont usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.
America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days. Thats one every other day, more or less. That statistic is alarming enough but it is just a number. Perspective asks us for comparison. So let me put that another way. America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days, which is more than anywhere else in the world, even Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, the phenomenon of regular school shootings appears to be a unique feature of American collapse it just doesnt happen in any other country and that is what I mean by social pathologies of collapse: a new, bizarre, terrible disease striking society.
On Powerlessness and Indignity
Why would people abuse opioids en masse [in the USA] unlike anywhere else in the world? They must be living genuinely traumatic and desperate lives, in which there is little healthcare, so they have to self-medicate the terror away. But what is so desperate about them? Well, consider another example: the nomadic retirees. They live in their cars. They go from place to place, season after season, chasing whatever low-wage work they can find spring, an Amazon warehouse, Christmas, Walmart.
Now, you might say well, poor people have always chased seasonal work! But that is not really the point: absolute powerlessness and complete indignity is. In no other country I can see do retirees who should have been able to save up enough to live on now living in their cars in order to find work just to go on eating before they die not even in desperately poor ones, where at least families live together, share resources, and care for one another. This is another pathology of collapse that is unique to America utter powerlessness to live with dignity. Numbers dont capture it but comparisons paint a bleak picture.
Should the world follow the American model extreme capitalism, no public investment, cruelty as a way of life, the perversion of everyday virtue then these new social pathologies will follow, too. They are new diseases of the body social that have emerged from the diet of junk food junk media, junk science, junk culture, junk punditry, junk economics, people treating one another and their society like junk that America has fed upon for too long.
Read the whole article - very eye opening.
https://eand.co/why-were-underestimating-american-collapse-be04d9e55235
blondebanshee
(353 posts)Posted on FB.
Ohiogal
(32,002 posts)Bragi2
(37 posts)I saw it a week or so back. Everyone should read that article.
Ohiogal
(32,002 posts)Response to Ohiogal (Original post)
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