Signs of Societal collapse

[WarriorDiplomat]

These are some of the things that our wise forefathers studied and understood about societies.....that Democrats ignore......The ancient Greek philosopher Polybius (c.200 – c.118 BC) asserted that all nations follow a cycle of; democracy, oligarchy, dictatorship, tyranny and collapse.

According to psychologist Erich Fromm it is possible for an entire nation, if they all share the same vices and errors, to become insane—a "folie a millions". Inhuman treatment by the rulers inevitably leads to collapse;
Despots and ruling cliques can succeed in dominating and exploiting their fellow man DEMOCRATs? ... but their subjects react ... with apathy, impairment of intelligence, initiative and skills ... or they react by the accumulation of such hate and destructiveness as to bring about an end to themselves, their rulers and their system. ... if man lives under conditions contrary to his nature and to human growth and sanity, he cannot help reacting.

Common Changes occurring with collapse

Reversion/Simplification: A society's adaptive capacity may be reduced by either a rapid change in population or societal complexity, destabilizing its institutions and causing massive shifts in population and other social dynamics. In cases of collapse, civilizations tend to revert to less complex, less centralized socio-political forms using simpler technology. These are characteristics of a Dark Age. Examples of such societal collapse are: the Hittite Empire, the Mycenaean civilization, the Western Roman Empire, the Mauryan and Gupta Empires in India, the Mayas, the Angkor in Cambodia, the Han and Tang dynasties in China and the Mali Empire.

Incorporation/Absorption: Alternately, a society may be gradually incorporated into a more dynamic, more complex inter-regional social structure. This happened in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Levantine cultures, the Mughal and Delhi Sultanates in India, Song China, the Aztec culture in Mesoamerica, the Inca culture in South America, and the modern civilizations of China, Japan, and India, as well as many modern states in the Middle East and Africa.

Obliteration: Vast numbers of people in the society die, or the birth rate plunges to a level that causes a dramatic depopulation.
Other changes that may accompany a collapse:

Destratification: Complex societies stratified on the basis of class, gender, race or some other salient factor become much more homogeneous or horizontally structured. In many cases past social stratification slowly becomes irrelevant following collapse and societies become more egalitarian.
LGBTQ?
Despecialization: One of the most characteristic features of complex civilizations (and in many cases the yardstick to measure complexity) is a high level of job specialization. The most complex societies are characterized by artisans and tradespeople who specialize intensely in a given task. Indeed, the rulers of many past societies were hyper-specialized priests or priestesses who were completely supported by the work of the lower classes. During societal collapse, the social institutions supporting such specialization are removed and people tend to become more generalized in their work and daily habits. Look at our colleges today producing people with no useful skills

Decentralization: As power becomes decentralized, people tend to be more self-regimented and have many more personal freedoms. In many instances of collapse, there is a slackening of social rules and etiquette. Geographically speaking, communities become more parochial or isolated. For example, following the collapse of the Maya civilization, many Maya returned to their traditional hamlets, moving away from the large cities that had dominated the political landscape.

Destructuralization: Institutions, processes, and artifacts are all manifest in the archaeological record in abundance in large civilizations. After collapse, evidence of epiphenomena, institutions, and types of artifacts change dramatically as people are forced to adopt more self-sufficient lifestyles.

Depopulation: Societal collapse is almost always associated with a population decline. In extreme cases, the collapse in population is so severe that the society disappears entirely, such as happened with the Greenland Vikings, or a number of Polynesian islands. In less extreme cases, populations are reduced until a demographic balance is re-established between human societies and the depleted natural environment. A classic example is the city of Rome, which had a population of about 1.5 million at the peak of the Roman Empire during the reign of Trajan in the early 2nd century AD, but in the Early Middle Ages the population had declined to only around 15,000 inhabitants by the 9th century.

[TFA303]

Very interesting - what's the source for this analysis?

Here are some similar thoughts comparing our current situation to that of Spain before their Civil War.

By 1935, left-right opinion had become so polarized that there was practically no middle ground left. Both sides came to distrust democracy because it was the means by which their enemies might take power. And, as one Nationalist interviewed in the documentary puts it, people on the left and right just flat out hated each other. The whole country was a powder keg.

By the 1936 campaign, the centrist parties had practically disappeared. A leftist coalition won the vote, but deadly violence between left and right began ramping up. A far-right fascist militia, the Falange, formed. Mutual assassinations on both sides, and street fighting between Falangists and Republican forces, triggered a military coup against the government. The coup failed to overthrow the Republic, but it did divide the country, and spark a civil war between Nationalists and Republicans. Gen. Francisco Franco quickly emerged as the Nationalist leader.

Well worth your time to read.

[WarriorDiplomat]

Originally Posted by TFA303

Very interesting - what's the source for this analysis?

Here are some similar thoughts comparing our current situation to that of Spain before their Civil War.


Well worth your time to read.

I got the paste from Wikipedia....it matched the research I have done reading about civilizations and the conditions that were present towards the end.....I found the constant of society becoming homogenous and even reversal of dominant roles as the loudest indicator that is present today here....at least jumps out at me....societies do not seem to survive when the natural order is disturbed almost a hardwire primordial phenomenon.

Its interesting to note like any other natural occurrence that certain patterns have consistent presence as a "sign of the times" almost as if their is a critical mass in which something genetically happens to people under these conditions.....in a primitive example overpopulation leads to resource depletion followed by starvation and de-population....resource recovery...the cycle restarts

[7624U]

Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Dwight D. Eisenhower.

IE Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Wikipedia.

[Old Dog New Trick]

What the universe will look like when Twitter and Facebook accounts meltdown next time Apple says we have a battery problem and your older model iPhone will need to be replaced because it’s the old battery technology that’s the problem. It’s the battery stupid! This will of course affect Samsung, LG and Motorola as the batteries are all secretly made by the North Koreans in the same Tajikistan factory using lithium mined in Afghanistan.


End of the world mayhem for sure!

[Trapper John]

Originally Posted by WarriorDiplomat

I got the paste from Wikipedia....it matched the research I have done reading about civilizations and the conditions that were present towards the end.....I found the constant of society becoming homogenous and even reversal of dominant roles as the loudest indicator that is present today here....at least jumps out at me....societies do not seem to survive when the natural order is disturbed almost a hardwire primordial phenomenon.

Its interesting to note like any other natural occurrence that certain patterns have consistent presence as a "sign of the times" almost as if their is a critical mass in which something genetically happens to people under these conditions.....in a primitive example overpopulation leads to resource depletion followed by starvation and de-population....resource recovery...the cycle restarts

You are exactly correct and somewhere back in my education I recall a whole science on the subject. I think it was systems biology?? IIRC

[tom kelly]

Will the old white men, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden etc. continue to lead the democrat party or will the old women prevail, Senator's Warren, K Harris, take the leadership of the party. I think the younger "more attractive" newcomers like AOC, Beto O Rourke will rise to the top of the democrat party. A new billboard in Times Square "Thanking" AOC, the barmaid congresswoman for killing the Amazon NYC Hqs. Socialism at it's best? NOT HELPING ANYONE.

[WarriorDiplomat]

Originally Posted by tom kelly

Will the old white men, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden etc. continue to lead the democrat party or will the old women prevail, Senator's Warren, K Harris, take the leadership of the party. I think the younger "more attractive" newcomers like AOC, Beto O Rourke will rise to the top of the democrat party. A new billboard in Times Square "Thanking" AOC, the barmaid congresswoman for killing the Amazon NYC Hqs. Socialism at it's best? NOT HELPING ANYONE.

I can't wait to see the backstabbing battle royale when they start debating each other....I have always said it the Democrats are a loose nit group of misfits who are constantly at each others throats and align themselves with whomever they can recruit into their tribe that can further their own agenda

[WarriorDiplomat]

Originally Posted by Trapper John

You are exactly correct and somewhere back in my education I recall a whole science on the subject. I think it was systems biology?? IIRC

It seems logical to me....their is next to nothing that nature does not eventually take over and correct...even when species go extinct the ecosystem adapts...Great Minds think alike brother

[Trapper John]

Originally Posted by 7624U

Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Dwight D. Eisenhower.

IE Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Wikipedia.

IMHO, the larger threat is the misappropriation of scientific thought/evidence to support a specific policy agenda or social narrative, by the political elite. e.g. Margaret Sanger and eugenics. A little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing! I can only imagine the nonsense AOC will come up with next purportedly supported by scientific evidence.

[Ret10Echo]

Originally Posted by Trapper John

IMHO, the larger threat is the misappropriation of scientific thought/evidence to support a specific policy agenda or social narrative, by the political elite. e.g. Margaret Sanger and eugenics. A little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing! I can only imagine the nonsense AOC will come up with next purportedly supported by scientific evidence.

Anybody tracking on the Sokal Hoax pulled off by Peter Boghossian ( and James Lindsay?

One paper about rape culture in dog parks (in which the writer claimed to have inspected the genitals of just under 10,000 dogs while asking their owners about their sexuality) was honoured for excellence as one of 12 exemplary pieces in feminist geography by highly ranked journal Gender, Place and Culture, which published the paper.

This was my personal favorite... and was SO close to getting published

a feminist rewriting of a partial chapter from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf – was enthusiastically accepted by feminist social work journal Affilia. The project came to a premature end when Twitter account, Real Peer Review – an account which focuses on exposing poor quality academic scholarship – drew attention to the “dog park” paper.

[Trapper John]

Originally Posted by Ret10Echo

Anybody tracking on the Sokal Hoax pulled off by Peter Boghossian ( and James Lindsay?




This was my personal favorite... and was SO close to getting published

Wasn't aware of this. Am certainly following this now. Thanks for posting! Academia

[Peregrino]

Used to be a checklist called "Indications of an Incipient Insurgency". I think if someone were to start checking the boxes, most of them would be marked. Makes one wonder what the tipping point is.

[PSM]

Originally Posted by Ret10Echo

Anybody tracking on the Sokal Hoax pulled off by Peter Boghossian ( and James Lindsay?




This was my personal favorite... and was SO close to getting published

And this more recently:

How three MIT students fooled the world of scientific journals
A decade later, CSAIL alumni reflect on their paper generator and reveal a new fake-conference project.

In recent years, the field of academic publishing has ballooned to an estimated 30,000 peer-reviewed journals churning out some 2 million articles per year. While this growth has led to more scientific scholarship, critics argue that it has also spurred increasing numbers of low-quality “predatory publishers” who spam researchers with weekly “calls for papers” and charge steep fees for articles that they often don’t even read before accepting.

Ten years ago, a few students at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) had noticed such unscrupulous practices, and set out to have some mischievous fun with it. Jeremy Stribling MS ’05 PhD ’09, Dan Aguayo ’01 MEng ’02 and Max Krohn PhD ’08 spent a week or two between class projects to develop “SCIgen,” a program that randomly generates nonsensical computer-science papers, complete with realistic-looking graphs, figures, and citations.

SCIgen emerged out of Krohn’s previous work as co-founder of the online study guide SparkNotes, which included a generator of high-school essays that was based on “context-free grammar.” SCIgen works like an academic “Mad Libs” of sorts, arbitrarily slotting in computer-science buzzwords like “distributed hash tables” and “Byzantine fault tolerance.”

The program was crude, but it did the trick: In April of 2005 the team’s submission, “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy,” was accepted as a non-reviewed paper to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), a conference that Krohn says is known for “being spammy and having loose standards.”

When the researchers revealed their hoax, calls started coming in from the likes of The Boston Globe, CNN, and the BBC. Stribling’s phone was ringing off the hook thanks to his name being listed first on the paper. (“Randomly listed first,” he adds proudly.)

In the wake of the international media attention, WMSCI withdrew the team’s invitation to attend. Not to be deterred, the students raised $2,500 to travel to Orlando, Florida, where they rented out a room inside the conference space to hold their own “session” of randomly-generated talks, outfitted with fake names, fake business cards, and fake moustaches.

At the time the stunt may have seemed like nothing more than a silly “gotcha” moment in the tradition of the “Sokal affair,” in which an NYU physicist wrote a nonsense paper that was accepted by a journal of postmodern cultural studies. But SCIgen has actually had a surprisingly substantial impact, with many researchers using it to expose conferences with low submission standards. The team’s antics spurred the the world’s largest organization of technical professionals, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), to pull its sponsorship of WMSCI; in 2013 IEEE and Springer Publishing removed more than 120 papers from their sites after a French researcher’s analysis determined that they were generated via SCIgen. (Just a few weeks ago Springer announced the release of “SciDetect,” an open-source tool that can automatically detect SCIgen papers.)

The trio of CSAIL alumni have since moved on to other things: Aguayo is a technical lead at Meraki; Krohn, who co-founded both SparkNotes and the dating site OKCupid, now runs Keybase, a startup aimed at making cryptography more accessible; and Stribling had stints at IBM, Google, and Nicira before joining Krohn’s team at Keybase this month.

But even a decade later, the team’s creation improbably lives on. Stribling says the generator still gets 600,000 annual pageviews that manage to crash their CSAIL research site every few months. The creators continue to get regular emails from computer science students proudly linking to papers they’ve snuck into conferences, as well as notes from researchers urging them to make versions for other disciplines.

“Our initial intention was simply to get back at these people who were spamming us and to maybe make people more cognizant of these practices,” says Stribling, before deadpanning: “We accomplished our goal way better than we expected to.”

SCIpher

For the 10-year anniversary, the team reconvened for a project that’s once again aimed at predatory publishers.

“SCIpher” lets you hide secret messages inside randomly-generated calls for papers (CFPs) that appear to be coming from (fictional) conferences with names like “the LYGNY Symposium on relational, software-defined technology.”
Entering a secret message into SCIpher create text for a ready-to-send CFP that the CFP’s recipient can throw back into the generator to recover the original message.

Stribling says he views SCIpher as a cheeky way to trade secrets — not to mention, to poke fun at conferences’ ridiculous, jargon-filled names.

“We combined almost-pronounceable acronyms with random buzzwords cribbed from the SCIgen grammar to evoke the kind of niche specialization that results from thousands of concurrent conferences clamoring for authors,” says Stribling. “Plus, while an encrypted email would be a big red flag for some investigators, in our experience when you send out a call for papers, it's very unlikely that anyone will read it.”

Oh, those scamps at MIT.

[Box]

There was a Masters Thesis from NPS that discussed an modern day insurgency in the USA.
https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/5739

...it could NEVER happen to us - we are too 'connected'


AmIrite?