{"id":30168,"date":"2018-01-25T18:47:28","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T23:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30168"},"modified":"2018-01-25T18:47:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T23:47:28","slug":"why-were-underestimating-american-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30168","title":{"rendered":"Why We\u2019re Underestimating American\u00a0Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Why We\u2019re Underestimating American\u00a0Collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n

The Strange New Pathologies of the World\u2019s First Rich Failed\u00a0State<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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You might say, having read some of my recent essays, \u201cUmair! Don\u2019t worry! Everything will be fine! It\u2019s not that bad!\u201d I would look at you politely, and then say gently, \u201cTo tell you the truth, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re taking collapse nearly seriously enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why? When we take a hard look at US collapse, we see a number of social pathologies on the rise. Not just any kind. Not even troubling, worrying, and dangerous ones. But strange and bizarre ones. Unique ones. Singular and gruesomely weird ones I\u2019ve never really seen before, and outside of a dystopia written by Dickens and Orwell, nor have you, and neither has history. They suggest that whatever \u201cnumbers\u201d we use to represent decline\u200a\u2014\u200ashrinking real incomes, inequality, and so on \u2014we are in fact grossly underestimating what pundits call the \u201chuman toll\u201d, but which sensible human beings like you and I should simply think of as the overwhelming despair, rage, and anxiety of living in a collapsing society.<\/p>\n

Let me give you just five examples of what I\u2019ll call the social pathologies of collapse\u200a\u2014\u200astrange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don\u2019t usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.<\/p>\n

America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days. That\u2019s one every other day, more or less. That statistic is alarming enough\u200a\u2014\u200abut it is just a number. Perspective asks us for comparison. So let me put that another way. America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days, which is more than anywhere else in the world, even Afghanistan or Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why We\u2019re Underestimating American\u00a0Collapse The Strange New Pathologies of the World\u2019s First Rich Failed\u00a0State You might say, having read some of my recent essays, \u201cUmair! Don\u2019t worry! Everything will be fine! It\u2019s not that bad!\u201d I would look at you politely, and then say gently, \u201cTo tell you the truth, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[18140,150,292,14273,18141,16981,827],"class_list":["post-30168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-american-collapse","tag-collapse","tag-failed-state","tag-medium","tag-pathology","tag-umair-haque","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30169,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30168\/revisions\/30169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}