The USSR is definitely the nearest analog. That was, what, 35 years ago. That’s very recent, in civilizational terms. A little over 100 years ago, in the early 20th century, several large, powerful empires collapsed. That’s relatively recent, all things considered.

Maybe it doesn’t seem to happen as much today because in the aftermath of all of those empires collapsing, new, more resilient nation states were formed, with more sustainable social, cultural and political systems. But the US is much older than all of them. The oldest democracy still going. Also by far the oldest federated, presidential republic. It’s hard to really compare the resiliency of a country like ours to, say, a much more recently formed parliamentary democracy, especially when most of those nations are much smaller than us by population, and are usually significantly less geographically and ethically diverse.

It’s like they’re daring me at this point.

I don’t want to leave this country. I was born here, my dad was born here, my dad’s dad was born here, etc. But, holy shit, this society is failing. It’s not failed, yet, but it is failing. I want to believe that things can turn around, but it gets harder everyday to hold onto that belief.

It’s especially hard because I feel like my proposals for how things could be fixed are actively, aggressively being fought against by many of my countrymen. Hell, we can’t even agree on the problems, let alone solutions. For a lot of Americans, there is no problem! This is all hunky-dory.

A nation is a shared idea. A nation exists when a group of people all agree that they are a nation. I ain’t in the same nation as these folks. They’ve got their idea of America and I’ve got mine, and they are two different things. I’m not a part of the shared idea anymore. It’s moved away from me. It’s become something that I don’t understand or agree with. I don’t think it’s moral or rational, or sustainable.

Frankly, I think the idea of America as a nation, as it stands right now, is doomed to fail. It’s far too tolerant of greed, ignorance and liars with malicious intent. A society like that won’t last. It will collapse.

So you’re telling me that people don’t like being bombed or shot by a foreign military, all while being told at the point of a gun that they should be grateful because it’s being done for their liberation? Well I’ll be darned.

Trump asks his boss to stop, boss says get back to work.

As a species things do just keep getting better for us, except in periods of systemic transition.

I think that’s been generally true since the first agricultural revolution led to the emergence of civilization, 10,000 or so years ago. But, progress has not been linear, it’s been exponential, with most of the progress occurring in just the last few hundred years, since the industrial revolution. In that regard, the progress that we’ve experienced over the last few hundred years has been anomalous.

The way of life that we take for granted today is very different from how most of humanity has lived through the vast majority of history (and that was itself very different from how our species had lived through the vast majority of our existence, with humans living in small hunter-gatherer tribes for most of our time as a species).

Modern life has existed for only the blink of an eye, on evolutionary time scales. Yet, in that time we have used up an incredible amount of natural resources, and we have made significant, irreversible changes to the Earth’s biosphere and climate.

It took our species nearly all of the 10,000 years of civilization’s existence to go from a few million people on the planet to a billion, but it only took a little over two centuries to do from one billion people to over eight billion. That kind of exponential growth simply cannot be sustained indefinitely on a planet with finite resources. Even at maximum possible resource use efficiency, and even with the maximum possible environmental impact mitigation efforts, the Earth still wouldn’t be able to sustain our growth forever. We would reach some hard, physical limit to growth, eventually.

I feel like our whole lives here in the US we’ve been told to expect things to just generally keep getting better, seemingly forever. Like, that’s the narrative of “progress.” The economy just keeps growing, the nation just keeps getting richer, technology just keeps getting better, living standards just keep getting better, so forth and so on. But, that was probably never realistic, or even feasible. I mean, no civilization progresses forever. Essentially every civilization that’s ever existed has followed a pattern of ascension followed by decline. Many of the most notable civilizations ascended very quickly and dramatically, and then collapsed just as quickly and dramatically. Why should we expect to be any different? What makes us think we won’t follow the same pattern as basically every other civilization in history?

I’m drinking my dinner plans right now. But I drive by a Culver’s all the time. I’ll definitely stop in someday soon and give it a try.

If warming continues to accelerate, we’ll hit 2C before 2050.

Yeah.

I’ve never been to Culver’s. Is it any good?

“An important caveat, however, is that the acceleration may prove temporary,” said Beaulieu, who has published on the topic but was not involved in the new study. She added that the strong El Niño of 1998 also produced a period of apparent anomalous warming.

“The relative slowdown that followed was interpreted as evidence of a pause in global warming,” she said. “Continued monitoring over the next several years will be essential to determine whether the accelerated warming rate identified here represents a lasting shift or a transient feature of natural variability.”

It might be temporary. It might be transient. Then again, it might not be. We’d be taking a huge risk by proceeding on the assumption that it will only be temporary. If we’re wrong the consequences could be severe. Maybe some people are willing to risk the future on hope, but I don’t think that’s a wise decision.

You ever hear the saying: hope for the best, prepare for the worst? We’re not prepared. Not even close. It’s true the worst case scenario isn’t likely, but it is possible. And worse case, though not necessarily worst care scenarios are also possible, and more likely. We’re not prepared for those either.

I talked to god just now and he said Trump is a dipshit.

The practical incentives are there already, but far too many people are too greedy and shortsighted to recognize them. There are long term negative consequences to prioritizing short term individual gains over long term, sustainable prosperity for all. And achieving that sustainable prosperity does not require people to replace self interest with altruism, it requires that people to adopt a more enlightened, forward looking self interest. It’s getting people to understand that overindulgence and a zero sum mentality today, without thought for the consequences tomorrow is not self interest, it’s self destruction.

If that can’t work then civilization is fucked.

Eventually your auto insurance will go up to the point where it’s unaffordable to drive yourself.

Then I’ll sell my car for scrap and walk or bike. And when I can’t walk or bike anymore, well, there’s always mobility scooters.

Everyone suddenly has their own personal drivers.

I don’t want a driver. Even if I had enough money to pay a personal chauffeur, I wouldn’t want one. I prefer to drive my own car.

But maybe I’m in the minority on that one. Maybe most people would prefer self-driving cars. That’s fine, I guess, but I just hope someone keeps making regular cars, because I ain’t interested in being driven around by a robot.

Ideally I’d be able to live in a city or town designed around people, not cars. So I wouldn’t have to own a car, autonomous driving or otherwise, to get around.

Yeah, but the whole point of a car is autonomy and independence. The person’s, not the car’s. If you’re looking for someone, or something, to transport you places, buses and trains are much cheaper and safer.

Pretty sure they didn’t have autonomy for quite a few decades now.

That’s true. The Iranian nation hasn’t had its own autonomy for some time. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

In you’re little analogy is the abusive dad always saying he wants to kill me and was handing out guns to people in the neighbourhood, telling them to take shots at me, which resulted in one of my kids getting killed? Then the abusive dad starts putting together a bazooka, all the while saying he’s going to kill me?

I mean, if you want to expand the analogy, let’s talk about how the neighborhood vigilante has been interfering in the affairs of the family of the abusive father, long before the abusive father was even in power. Like in 1951 when the family’s parliament voted to nationalize their oil industry and as a result the vigilante and his old friend helped carry out a coup of the family’s democratically elected prime minister (operation Ajax), and replaced him with an autocrat. Or in 1980 when the vigilante aided another abusive dad, a fella by the name of Saddam Hussein, in his invasion of the home of the abusive father and his family. An invasion and war that resulted in half a million deaths, and that Hussein guy using chemical weapons against the poor family.

It’s dishonest to talk only of the crimes of the abusive father but not acknowledge the crimes of vigilante. And that’s the thing about vigilantism: answering crimes with crimes is not a viable or moral solution. It’s lawlessness and chaos, and a self perpetuating cycle of violence.

Very bizarre to attempt of some analogy to be all “think of the children” over a guy that was such a terrible person.

Well, that terrible person is dead. Now what? You gonna take care of those kids? Or are you just going to wait until another abusive father comes and takes the places of the one you just killed?

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

It frustrates me beyond words that we can’t even get 51% of Americans to agree on something like this, which I think is so obvious. But, that’s where we are as a country. I suppose I need to have enough wisdom to accept that.

Young men, maybe. I’m in my 40s and there’s no way in hell I’m sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor. That would destroy my back.

The Shah became quite autocratic by the early to mid 70s or so. But I think a fair number of Iranians today feel the Monarchy was preferable to the Islamist theocracy. And it should be up to the Iranian people. But if the Iranian people can’t come to a consensus, the decision will be made for them, by the Islamists or the monarchists or the US and Israel, or someone else.