{"id":54193,"date":"2020-07-16T11:08:54","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T16:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54193"},"modified":"2020-07-16T11:08:56","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T16:08:56","slug":"business-as-usual-porn-or-we-need-to-talk-about-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54193","title":{"rendered":"Business-as-usual porn \u2013 or, We need to talk about collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/smallfarmfuture.org.uk\/2020\/07\/business-as-usual-porn-or-we-need-to-talk-about-collapse\/\">Business-as-usual porn \u2013 or, We need to talk about collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I think we need to talk openly and calmly about the possibility of societal or civilizational collapse arising from humanity\u2019s present predicaments. And that\u2019s mostly what I want to pursue in this post \u2013 not so much what the likelihood or the underlying mechanisms of collapse might be, but the idea that it would be useful if, as a society, we could talk about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe that\u2019s happening in one sense. The noises offstage from scientists, multilateral agencies, social critics and political activists about the possibility of collapse are getting louder<sup>1<\/sup>. Inevitably, so is the pushback from those arguing that this is so much overheated rhetoric, and everything\u2019s just fine<sup>2<\/sup>. My sense is that there\u2019s far greater empirical weight behind the former than the latter position, but it\u2019s the latter one that seems to dominate public discourse. There\u2019s precious little public and media attention to the rather big news that the way we live may soon be ending. Indeed, people who say such things are generally relegated from serious debate, and sometimes accused of peddling \u2018collapse porn\u2019 with their mawkish tales of impending doom<sup>3<\/sup>. It\u2019s a curious phrase. Inasmuch as pornography presents people with something that they guiltily want to see, but in unrealistic and idealized ways that hide the reality of the relationships involved and erode their integrity, perhaps we should rather be talking about \u2018business as usual porn\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m not too sure why business as usual porn is so widespread, but I think possibly it\u2019s because of an unfortunate fusion between two aspects of modern life. First, a sense that the vast technological reach of contemporary societies armours us against the malign contingencies of the world, and second an elaborate and urbanized division of labour that denies most people even the remotest capacity to care for themselves in the face of those contingencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business-as-usual porn \u2013 or, We need to talk about collapse I think we need to talk openly and calmly about the possibility of societal or civilizational collapse arising from humanity\u2019s present predicaments. And that\u2019s mostly what I want to pursue in this post \u2013 not so much what the likelihood or the underlying mechanisms of [&hellip;]<\/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":[2,4,7],"tags":[14285,15683,150,9738],"class_list":["post-54193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-business-as-usual","tag-chris-smaje","tag-collapse","tag-small-farm-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54193","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=54193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54194,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54193\/revisions\/54194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}