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?
That’s just not how language really works, Axl.
Me fail English? … That’s unpossible
Because they have civilians
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?
As someone who’s read the series, every single character of wood which is a damn shame.
It’s a lot like golden age American SF. Fantastic concepts, cardboard characters.
FWIW, book three is basically “a feminized society is incapable of making the hard but necessary choices”.
That is one way of reading it. Another is that the vast majority of humans will do the decent thing even if it ends up backfiring on them. Which, if anything, is wildly optimistic. I would also point out that of the two species in conflict, the one that played decent went on to become a galactic civilisation, while the other died out.
Trisolarans did make it to the end. The message sent out to everyone included their language. The humans who became a galactic civilization were from a renegade ship that took the selfish choice in the Prisoners Dilemma.
Wasn’t it only one Trisolarian who survived? Also the humans were from two ships if I remember correctly, and one was a civilian ship.
Just an anecdote: Any bike I’ve ever owned, got stolen or if it was well locked, wrecked and hacked to shit for no apparent reason. I have ADHD so it’s difficult for me to go through the motions of carrying the bike with me to the office and back, each time I leave, and at home I haven’t the space to bring it up with me. Most grocers or markets or shops don’t allow me to wheel it along with me inside.
It would be amazing if that was an option, but I’m not rich enough to replace a bike every few months, and I do move enough to warrant having a good bike, not just any cheap and rusty one. So it’s a pickle.
I am still very much in opposition of unnecessary cars in cities, so I do not own one currently, and instead of bike, I move about with buses and trains. It’s okay, but I’d love to have the freedom some days, that a bike provides.
But it is simply impossible for me to own one. It makes no sense whatsoever, since for some reason, the cities are not even close to safe to keep one for someone like me who’s not so great with self-execution and routines. And I live in one of the safest countries on earth, that has been declared the happiest country on earth for 7 years in row now… I can’t imagine how bad it is elsewhere…
Sometimes reality does not fit well with ideals.
Luckily, I have the option of public transport. But I don’t even know what I would do if I didn’t…
That’s surprising. I own a bicycle too, as does practically everyone here. Never got it stolen.
A tip is to not have an expensive looking bicycle, but one that looks shoddy. Locking can also happen in multiple ways, and at different places. You might need to bind it to a street light for example, through the wheel and the frame.
A foldable bicycle is also an option.
Most everyone I know have and daily drive one too.
The difference is in the having adhd and not having adhd department. They are very careful and dutiful with them. I can only ever attempt my best to be so, and it only takes the one slip of the mind and it’s gone.
I’m not saying having and using a bike is not safe. I’m saying having and using a bike is not safe, if you end up offering the low hanging fruit to thieves even once a while.
deleted by creator
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.
Capitalism hasn’t existed forever, it literally started in the late 1700s during a period called The Industrial revolution, when factory machining started the first cottage industries that pushed out previous modes of hand crafting.
At that point, when machines and cottages to hold them started to be required for mass production and hence competition in the market (pushing out hand crafting as a competitor) CAPITAL became a requirement of mass wealth accumulation… because one needed large sums of Capital to buy the machinery, rent the building, and hire and train the workers to exploit. So it became the limited province of the already well off to do.
That’s when Capitalism was born, and why it’s named CAPITAL-ism. Because it has Capital requirements if you want to join the Capitalist class. It was created in the British Industrial Revolution.
That you’re unaware of this change in the mode of production and what it represents, and believe that "oh Capital has just existed forever" is what some Marxists refer to as being in a state of “false consciousness”.
The system wasn’t always this way, and doesn’t have to necessarily be this way (eg. Marx offered the model of workers owning the machinery or “means of production” as his alternative, and there are likely others). Capitalism is a product of a technological “change of epoch” of the “mode of production.”
…and it’s defined the age we live in, and how we think. Which is what the later Frankfurt School neo-marxists discuss.
P.S. It’s also worth noting that the British Industrial Revolution, The French Revolution, and the American Revolution all overlap in time periods. Live was very different before the late 1700s.
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.
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.
Things seemed pretty good in the pre-agricultural age of hunting and gathering.
The whole “good times create weak people” is fascist propaganda.
Those were the delusional words of someone who lived in an upside down country. Kinda agree but if a single country fails, humanity doesn’t get extinguished.
Think about climate change and reevaluate that position. There is no feasible way that the countries of the world will get together and all agree to do anything meaningful about it because anything MEANINGFUL will result in mass death. There’s really no other way around it. Which is why everyone is dragging their feet. Who wants that? Who wants to be responsible for that?
Earth’s climate has changed many times before and life found a way, regardless.
People who hate themselves and have low self steem say that humans are cancer but the real cancer are the doomers that only sigh, complain and lie flat without doing anything to help because they think everything is doomed. Well, aside from the usual corporate billionaire cancer from crapitalism
Humanity fuck yeah.
deleted by creator
I can give you the only true answer to your question of “what can I do today to help fight climate change?” But you won’t like it and this ‘solution’ does not preserve society in really any meaningful way, however it does help to address climate change and prevent the entire natural world from dying of heat stroke. So the question becomes, what do you want to save? You can’t save everything and trying to do so will only result in you saving nothing.
The answer is large scale industrial sabotage. And when everything grinds to a halt and people start starving to death because of no industrialized food production and various other factors, you will regret the actions. As you and your own family fall victim to violence over food or land because everyone is panicking and trying to survive, you will likely regret it more. But then in 1000 years, there may still be people alive to call you a monster, if they remember you at all.
Or you could mandate that corporations, instead of being legally required to make the line go up at the expense of anyone they can exploit, are required to pursue less environmentally destructive practices. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of them already did research on this but found it impacted their bottom line and dismissed it.
I’m fucking laughing out loud reading this comment.
deleted by creator
Our civilization is more than capable, but those who have money and power are unwilling, because that’s not something they’re interested or invested in.
Distribution of money and power is a facet of society.
I disagree. I see problems solved all the time.
(Squints) What do you mean by “solved”?
I mean, we’re pretty good at math. We can “solve” math problems. But when the math is applied and we choose to do the opposite of what the math says, then we’ve not “solved” the problem, we legitimately make it worse.
See also: climate change, housing bubbles, food insecurity, pay equity, universal childcare, universal healthcare, universal pharmacare, student to teacher ratios, media consolidation, and most other market-based solutions.
e: and, as said below, war. That math only maths when dominating “others”.
I’m referring to the way golden rice solved vitamin A deficiency for millions of people.
I don’t care about math “problems” at all I’m talking about real problems.
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
I think it is still capable of solving the problems we currently have, but the biggest question is, will it?
Politics, nationalism, greed, and corporations are currently blocking attempts to solve the climate crisis.
Can we get them out of the way before it’s too late? I guess we’ll find out.
I honestly think it’s too late already. The world as we know it will cease to exist soon. We are already clearly seeing the effects of climate change, and there is much more to come based on the current level of co2. Not to mention that we keep pumping more of the stuff into our atmosphere.
If something absolutely won’t do something, it is not capable of doing that thing.
Won’t =/= can’t
We can solve problems, the status quo is just to profitable for those in power. Don’t you find it strange how the status quo persists despite both mainstream political parties running a Change candidate for president and winning? (MAGA is the shitters form of change, just in the wrong way)
Clearly the people are looking for solutions, even if they don’t know the answers.
Consider watching a video on first past three post voting. If we change how we vote in each of our individual states , people can vote for 3rd parties and still have their vote count if their preference didn’t win. No spoiler effect!
I’d disagree. If you look at the problems which create existential problems for “our civilization” (more on the scare quotes in a minute), the list is pretty short.
-
Nuclear war - This is existential to both civilization and to humanity as a species. Fortunately, this one is pretty easy to forestall: don’t fucking do it. And that’s actually been working out OK for the last few decades. For as insane of a system as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is, it’s also been pretty successful. Once every nation knew that using nuclear weapons in war meant everyone loses hard, they never got used again. Prior to that situation, they got used. And, there is no reason to believe that the US wouldn’t have used them again, if the USSR didn’t also have their finger on The Button. Sure, universal disarmament sounds like a better solution, but that also assumes everyone is willing to act in good faith. Just one bad actor and that all falls apart. And you can pretty much assume that there will be plenty of bad actors.
-
Climate Change - Depending on how bad this gets, it might rise to the level of “existential threat”. But, most of the currently likely outcomes are probably not. This isn’t to say they aren’t bad and really horrific for a lot of people. But, even looking at something like a 2C rise over the next century, it’s probably not going to cause the outright collapse of most major countries. Anyone not living in the US, China, India or a Western European country is fucked. Water shortages and famine in Sub-Saharan Africa are going to rise to levels completely unprecedented in history. But, from a question of “will society collapse”? The answer is “probably not”. Though the surviving societies will only do so by accepting a mountain of corpses on their doorstep. And even some of the major countries might end up collapsed due to resource wars.
-
Astronomical Events - Throwing this in to avoid the “but actshuly” responses. Yes, if we suddenly discovered a big ass rock headed our way, we’re likely fucked. Also, if we get caught by a massive gamma ray burst, we’re all gonna get turned to jerky. But, these are so low likelihood events as to not be worth worrying about.
Other than that, there isn’t all that much which could really wipe out all civilization, everywhere, at once. And this is where I get back to those “scare quotes”. We don’t really have one single civilization on Earth. We have a bunch of them which interact in lots of ways. While that interdependence does make things a bit fragile, it also means that there is a higher degree of redundancy. If the US went tits up tomorrow, it would have some major impacts on China, India and Western Europe. But, each of those areas has a reasonable chance of adjusting and and continuing on. There may be a lost decade or three while supply chains adjust and new infrastructure is built out, but there is nothing wholly unique to the US which couldn’t be replicated elsewhere. And depending on how the US failed, the useful bits of the US economy might well be able to be rebooted by someone else. Again, there is probably a lot of death on the table, the US is a major food exporter, after all. But, China already has a history of weathering millions of people dying to famine, I’m sure the PRC government could figure out a leap forward. An with such useful farmland in the US, one would expect farms to pop back up and get producing pretty quick. Maybe not at the level of output which the US currently has, but if we’ve killed off half or more of the US population, then we have a bunch of useful farmland with a lot less people to feed.
-
If there was a time in the past that we were capable of solving our problems, why didn’t we do it then?
deleted by creator
Great point. Have we ever?
No.
Humanity always finds a way.
No problem is ever solved no solution has ever been without further problems.
This is indicative of an ever expanding problem-solution matrix of entropy, meaning we’re neither solving issues nor creating problems, we’re just creating more complex landscapes to navigate.
This is why Buddhist monks and high tech computerized supply chains can both legitimately be said to have the answers we need, even though they’re from radically different ends of this entropy.
It’s also why they’re both wrong and lying to themselves.
We are both the problem and the solution.
