Temple of Zagan

An essay posted on 8chan almost ten years ago, detailing what people might expect from a societal collapse versus actual signs of one:

I think it’s important to point out that when it comes to collapse, you’re primed to look for certain signs as indicative of a collapse, even though they’re not close to how things tend to unfold. Partly this is due to media Hollywood blockbusters, partly it’s probably intentionally, because it makes the real collapse less directly apparent to you.

You’ll find yourself rapidly adapting to a new normal. The fact that you have less than you used to have is also something you quietly sweep under the rug. Something that economic conditions forces upon us we reinterpret as our own decision. Something that we can’t spin is something we decide not to publicly acknowledge. We don’t recognize collapse because we reinterpret it as a voluntary return to simpler conditions. Hence the hipster phenomenon.

Some examples:

Economic depression

What you expect: Unemployment lines, shrinking GDP figures, bank robberies, civil insurrection, government bankruptcies, failing companies, bankers and yuppies jumping from rooftops.

What happens: The young all decide to go to college, they don’t want a job, they’d rather spend until the heat death of the universe “developing themselves”. Then after graduating, they decide to “go abroad for a year”, typically working in a foreign country in farm labor. Back home, the government decides it can no longer support every individual and the most unfortunate quietly decide to kill themselves as a result. They’re bullied out of their benefits, in the same way that many employers won’t admit that they can’t afford keeping you hired, but instead blame you. GDP keeps growing because a tiny group of people can inflate their wealth on paper to ridiculous levels.

Peak oil

What you expect: Skyrocketing oil prices, big lines at the gas station, rationing of gasoline, sudden shortages.

What really happens: Oil producing nations are destabilized as lingering tensions erupt in ethnic conflicts, while oil production rapidly drops in the process. Global prices oscillate, oil is renamed “liquids” and definitions are stretched. Young people stop buying cars. Hip new companies come with edgy innovative solutions, like putting a sail on a boat. We’ll never refer to it as taking a step back, returning to an older technology. We’ll present it as something new, something more efficient.

Energy crisis

What you expect: Grid failure. You wake up one day and the electricity doesn’t work and the whole nation is without as people start plundering.

What happens: Some people have their electricity shut off, but it’s because they are irresponsible people, who don’t pay their bills. In winter, some people receive letters in the mailbox that during certain periods, they may have to be rationed. The government decides to cut down on lighting on public roads. Some companies agree to pause their activities during peak demand hours, so that consumers can cook food and watch TV without trouble. Eventually you’ll get used to occasional blackouts and eventually you’ll get used to the fact that they tend to occur during certain periods. Later on, you don’t even expect to get electricity during certain periods of the day/year any longer.

Food shortages

What you expect: Supermarkets have empty shelves. People plunder, other people collapse in the street. Images on TV of people in your neighborhood with strong accents complaining that their child is hungry and begging for help.

What happens: Prices for certain items surge, you decide to stop buying them. People at the bottom of the pyramid no longer buy food in the supermarket, they’re given the leftovers in food banks. People feel ashamed, don’t talk about it. Some schools quietly decide to stop having gym classes.

Adaptation

What you expect: Most people in the city start to die, the rich flee to their wilderness retreats, others people build their own communities where they grow their own food and get their own electricity.

What happens: Wearing second hand clothing becomes trendy among the young, as do bicycles. Supermarkets stop throwing away food. People have fewer children. Paid jobs are replaced by volunteer jobs. People are asked to patrol their own neighborhoods, the unemployed are asked to take grandma for a walk. Euthanasia becomes accepted, doctors stop trying to treat every health condition.

Foreign conquest

What you expect: They come in carrying black banners, they’re well organized and manage to stage a coup, implementing Shariah law and beheading your prime minister.

What happens: You decide to stop saying certain things, it’s not worth risking and why would you incite violence by drawing cartoons? People arrive in large groups and we can’t blame them as they fled a war, so we’ll temporarily resettle them in hastily assembled communities. Temporary eventually becomes permanently. Police find it difficult to maintain order there, try to delegate this task to the local imam or certain elderly people, who look the other way as certain people try to impose their own laws on these communities. Every time the community riots, some concessions are done by the government, in the form of a new youth center, ceding a squatted building, anti-discrimination legislation (affirmative action) and “job opportunities”. Appeasement is nothing new. It’s what the French did with the Normans who landed over a thousand years ago, giving up land in exchange for not being raided.

Climate change

What you expect: Some sort of day after tomorrow scenario.

What happens: People start to die in third world countries, but we don’t blame climate change, we blame a civil war, which we blame on ethnic tensions. Millions of people migrate to the North, but we don’t blame climate change, we blame civil wars. Nation states permanently devolve into a state of tribal anarchy akin to Somalia, which we don’t blame on climate change.

Point being: It’s there, but you have to look carefully for it. Nobody wants to admit collapse, but the signs are visible to all. It’s sugarcoated, it’s rationalized, it’s reinterpreted, it’s rebranded, but it’s there. We give undue importance to new small gadgets, we give new names to old concepts, we redefine growth, we present involuntary decisions as voluntary and it’s easy to fool each other as we do so.

It’s fun to think about the various points made in this almost 10 years old essay, and try to figure out which ones came true.  A general prediction made in the opening part, which states “You’ll find yourself rapidly adapting to a new normal. The fact that you have less than you used to have is also something you quietly sweep under the rug”, which is also echoed under “Adaptations”, is largely true for today.  Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying, aka the MAiD program, is indeed the beginning of euthanasia being accepted in the western world, and the one thing I, years ago, would not have expected to happen.

The conditions under “Food Shortages” have become true in the US as of the past few years due to inflation.  The signs under “Energy Crisis”, strangely enough, have become true in my area due to decaying infrastructure.  Price of energy have remained affordable, but it’s simply normal nowadays for there to be blackouts during certain weather conditions, and normal for the blackouts to last more than a day.  Even brownouts, where the electricity goes out for a few seconds during intense wind, have become more common and “normal” in the recent years for my area.

“Economic Depression” and “Foreign Conquest” are somewhat true, but of a different flavor in the US.  College graduates generally wants to work in the US, but decent jobs are scarce.  We get thousands of people illegally crossing the border into our nation each day, but they are South American instead of Islamic.  The part where the essay mentions that one simply decides to stop saying certain things, though?  That part is on point for most people.

The predictions and signs under “Peak Oil” and “Climate Change” are mostly misses for me.  Overall, both fun and alarming to go through this essay and compare it with the present day.

 

 

 

 

Originally from 8chan: