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The raging inflation that is grinding this country down is not monetary, it is rage inflation. Everybody, it seems, is outraged by everybody else; foaming at the mouth over tweets, texts, posts, remarks, books, 40-year-old high school yearbook pictures, items of clothing, wearing or not wearing masks, getting or not getting vaccinated, race, religion, politics, real or imagined insults, assaults, and multiple other umbrages.
Not only has the number and frequency of rages increased exponentially, but the expression of them has intensified similarly. Today, an outrage not expressed by multiple death threats to the offender is considered hardly worth mentioning. Outraged Kens and Karens feel entitled to express their disgruntlement by accosting people in public places, waving guns at them (sometimes actually shooting them) and quite often sending an email describing in lurid detail the manner in which they intend to butcher the offender’s entire family.
This of course is a sure sign of a disintegrating society. A culture that cannot instill in its citizens restraint, that cannot maintain in the public square boundaries of civil discourse and behavior, by definition is not civilized. The larger the number of people who routinely participate in riots and mass shootings, who respond to any perceived affront with insults and vulgarities and guns, the fewer the people who stand between them and utter dissolution of society.
The question before us now is, once a culture has begun to spring leaks like ours has, once the behavior of ordinary people has deteriorated as has our population’s, how do you get back? How do you reboot decency and courtesy and tolerance and restraint when they have fled the scene?
As far as I know, you don’t.
Dear Mr Lewis
I agree in general with your observation, but non-civilised societies i.e. tribal and feudal societies, don’t behave without restraint either, they are usually bound by very formal codes of behaviour within their societies to directly prevent such behaviour. So where do we see such unrestrained aggressive behaviour? In organised crime and prisons inmates (not surprising as they are one and the same, mostly). So what does this observation of the current state of western society inform us of ? When more and more of the populus of a society act out as gangsters, that society will fall. The last question is will that society recover at some point, or will it be replaced by another with greater social cohesion? (historically it’s the second that usually happens).
I agree that the second scenario seems more likely, but only if in smaller, more manageable configurations. America is simply too damn sprawling in size, complexity and population to be governable. Too much ‘diversity’ – politically, economically and culturally – breeds sub-cultural mistrust and hostility along already existing regional, ethnic and economic fissures. In ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’, Gibbon writes, “…for the sentiments of the East were very different from those of the West”. So it was and shall be again.
Tribal and feudal societies have organization and structure which can fall apart under sufficient stress. “Civilization” here needs a broader definition.
Anxiety and anger are breaking out at the slightest provocation. I blame the cognitive dissonance caused by the denial of the forces acting on us. Prices go up, wages stay flat, opportunities dry up. Yet, we are promised an ever more prosperous and interesting life by movies, stories, advertising, and government. It’s all wishes and desperate hope.
What we’re going to get is hunger in the dark and cold. We should spend our time growing potatoes and raising chickens.
I think you are exactly right.
That’s what they did in the USSR in anticipation, they started growing potatoes. Of course, one could make an argument that the Soviet people were better informed by their media as they headed into collapse, than we are now. Pravda was after all, persistent in the 80’s in letting it’s readers know that the growing of potatoes in public spaces was illegal.
Wink. Wink.
And by all accounts, there was a mass sharing of the all those mini-potato harvests after the collapse (possibly as a result of decades of commie indoctrination?), which likely prevented, a mass starvation event.
I don’t know, but something tells me whatever is coming is not going to go as smoothly as the collapse of the USSR, and the noble potato will not be of much help when it comes.
Doesn’t mean I’m not growing some, just in case.
They had been ‘growing potatoes’ for many decades before collapse. Also, there’s no evictions during the decline & collapse because the state gave you and yours a place – same for everyone so no ever growing homelessness & corporate mega slum lords. What do you figure American homelessness just before collapse & post collapse will look like? Assuming there’s an indisputable collapse date as with the USSR, which is the exception.
“Russian Dacha is a unique traditional summer house in Russia. Or, rather, a house with a garden for growing vegetables and relaxing.”
“During the soviet times dachas were given to everyone and now almost 60% of Russians have one.”
https://youtu.be/9jiWqO7yjU4
So no major worries about shelter & a shit loads of people who know how to grow their own food & have a place to grow it. It was obviously not perfect. They had increased death rates for a decade, but I think it saved many lives.
The rest of the world was just revving up for globalization (AKA suicide) at the same time the USSR was going down. Perhaps people will think & act differently when they realize the entire ship is going down. I don’t hear so many people call doomers, “crazy, nihilist fucking doomer bla bla bla” these days. Where did they go? r/collapse – joined up & now pretend they knew all along. Ya me too. I was collapse aware before they cut the umbilical cord.
Did the Romans know some 1800 years ago that their culture and civilization was in decline. Took another 400 or so to complete the historic arc into the Dark Ages, visible now in hindsight. We moderns, on the other hand, know fully, well, and in advance that our days are numbered, and worse, that our decline into barbarity will take decades (or just a few years), not centuries. Or as the misappropriated line goes, “the light at the end of the tunnel has now been extinguished.” So what’s the proper response? Dylan Thomas put it this way:
Empires seem huge and indestructible at their zeniths but are eventually reduced to the dust from which they came. As Donovan put it:
“First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”