Are we in the opening scenes of a post-apocalyptic movie?

[Josquius]

So its been quite a year....
So many norms being broken and general fucked upness around.
Is this the new normal and its all down hill from here?
Or can good times be in the future?

[Tamas]

I think we may be the closest we have ever been. Sure the Cuban Missile Crisis was pretty close and there were other crises but it feels like those were part of a "game" largely understood and more importantly adhered to by all the major participants.

We do not have that now. The two nuclear superpowers are both led by fascist cleptocracies, with America in particular run by a demented fool. Sure Putin is probably also falling apart slowly but he has a grasp of world politics.

And, not unconnectedly, we are seeing the rapid melting away of the old post-ww2 order. At one hand Russia has been proven to be an absolute paper tiger with "only" their massive nuclear arsenal keeping them at the big boys' table. On the other hand America has lost all willingness and thanks to Trump, ability, to act as a stabilising force while being very happy to be the opposite.

All this seems far more chaotic toe than the cold war era ever was, although I appreciate I am looking back at the latter in hindsight.

I think things spiralling out of control into a global armageddon is a reasonable scenario. Unlikely, but entirely possible.

[PJL]

I wouldn't rule it out personally. The 2nd verse of Abba's Happy New Year certainly feels more relevant than ever given the current world situation.

[The Brain]

Wasn't it Erich Kästner who wrote at new year's 31/32 (from memory, so cut me some slack)

Wird's besser? Wird's schlimmer?
Fragt man alljährlich
Seien wir ehrlich
Leben ist immer lebensgefärlich

[crazy canuck]

Yes, we are now at or over 1.5C of warming.

We are definitely in the mitigation phase of global warming.

[Josquius]

Yes, we are now at or over 1.5C of warming.

We are definitely in the mitigation phase of global warming.

We should be.
The way things are looking at the moment seems far more we are in the "there's nothing we can do anyway. Who cares. We've more important things to do" stage.

[crazy canuck]

Yes, we are now at or over 1.5C of warming.

We are definitely in the mitigation phase of global warming.

We should be.
The way things are looking at the moment seems far more we are in the "there's nothing we can do anyway. Who cares. We've more important things to do" stage.

Depends who is we.  The Americans are definitely in don't look up mode.

[Sheilbh]

Yes, no and maybe I don't know and I think it probably depends where you're looking at it from.

I think the framing is interesting becuse there was an extraordinary article by Peter Thiel in the FT for Trump's inauguration. The reason it was so extraordinary - and right to publish - was how unhinged it was. But the whole framing of it was around apocalypse. As you'd expect from a fan of Girard, Thiel was using its original meaning as an unveiling, a moment of revelation when what is true but obscure is clear. It was, needless to say, something Thiel looked forward to with glee. As mad as his article was I think there is something interesting in that additional meaning of the apocalyptic.

My immediate thought though is the Gramsci line is right. It's not apocalypse it's that we're between regimes, in the interregnum - "the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass." It's become a cliche and I think there are problems with using that to interpret the current moment. But I do think we are in a period of interregnum where an order is dying but a new one has not yet been created. More diagramatically Arrighi has his list of regimes and interregnums - so the regime based on British power ends with the First World War, but is not replaced by the post-war order until 1945. That period lasts until the crises of the 70s and is replaced by the neo-liberal order which, on his measure, ended with the collapse (and rise/return of Asia). I think we are still in that middle phase - and the key point as I think on every single issue is China particularly and Asia more generally. Whether it's climate, the economy, politics, culture whatever - if that's not at least half the story we're telling, or picture we're interpreting then we are missing what's happening for parochial navel-gazing.

Having said all that I do think about the Keynes passage about pre-WW1 Europe because I do suspect - especially for Europeans - we'll be explaining to future generations what the 90s and 00s was like in a similar way:

What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914! The greater part of the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot. But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average, into the middle and upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend. He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.

Again I think the key forces here are globalisation and the rise of Asia. But I think part of the consequences of that, especially with Trump, is that there is going to be a decoupling of Europe and America. Which will be transformative and I think is already relevant in how Europe orients itself towards Russia and China as I think we're moving back to Eurasia after a few hundred years of a Euro-Atlantic with the Americas as European hinterland, then s shaed Atlantic, to Europe as an American frontier. Again I think it maybe feels like apocalypse if you're in - and a believer in - that Euro-Atlantic, but possibly not if you're from, say, China or India within living memory of profound absolute rural immiseration and seeing vistas and possibilities opening that were impossible to imagine a generation ago. Again I think for a lot of the world the "rules based liberal order" is not something to mourn because it never looked rules based, liberal, or orderly for them.

On nukes I've always had a base layer of anxiety about this - I'm always surprised that people don't share because it seems to me almost incredible that we've had the capacity to destroy ourselves for 80 years and so far haven't. I think the risk is far lower than it was during the Cold War but I still find it strange that people don't worry more about them.

[Tonitrus]

I don't fear a nuclear armageddon from Trump/Putin...I think both are eager to avoid MAD.  Same from any of Trump's potential successors...all of them are likely to just bend over while stealing from the local monetary sources.  On the Russian side I am less sure...it feels like most of the public/media-facing Russian demagogues speak in apocalyptic tones worthy of the worst religious zealots (the line of "what good is the world if Russia is not in it" while talking casually of using nuclear weapons...).  It may be likely that whomever takes over after Putin will just be some similar grey figure with the necessary hold over the state security apparatus...but that is a big unknown as seen from here.

Meanwhile, China is not likely to just chill on Taiwan forever...but I suspect that if push came to shove, we'd just let them try and take it, and just muddle through any resulting consequences.

[DGuller]

I don't fear a nuclear armageddon from Trump/Putin...I think both are eager to avoid MAD.  Same from any of Trump's potential successors...all of them are likely to just bend over while stealing from the local monetary sources.  On the Russian side I am less sure...it feels like most of the public/media-facing Russian demagogues speak in apocalyptic tones worthy of the worst religious zealots (the line of "what good is the world if Russia is not in it" while talking casually of using nuclear weapons...).  It may be likely that whomever takes over after Putin will just be some similar grey figure with the necessary hold over the state security apparatus...but that is a big unknown as seen from here.

Meanwhile, China is not likely to just chill on Taiwan forever...but I suspect that if push came to shove, we'd just let them try and take it, and just muddle through any resulting consequences.

The danger doesn't come only from intentions, it also comes from dynamics that inherently can't be 100% predictable.  Sometimes events happen to play out even when everyone understands it's to everyone's collective detriment.  If a nuclear exchange does happen at some point, it would most likely be due to a brinkmanship gone wrong.

That said, we've been living with this fear for decades, so it's old hat at this point.  The new fear I have is that the world is locked on a course to become ever more centralized, and AI will unlock plenty of new ways of ensuring that any challenge to central authority gets identified and contained earlier than ever.  The entrenchment of central authority will lead a world that is very brittle, much like a forest that was never allowed to have brush fires.

[Josephus]

Nobody's brought up AI, either. I really don't think we can underestimate the potential danger of this.

[edit] Yes, I know there's an entire thread about it.

[DGuller]

Nobody's brought up AI, either. I really don't think we can underestimate the potential danger of this.

[edit] Yes, I know there's an entire thread about it.

I did bring up AI in my post, and I'm scared of it for many reasons.  I think people get so caught up about measuring ChatGPT's IQ that they don't think about the scalability of knowledge aspect, and how dangerous it can be all on its own. 

When you have access to a whole world of knowledge, including private knowledge that's generally not of interest to more than a few people, you don't need to be a genius to connect the dots.  Most dots in the world don't get connected not because people are too dumb to connect them, but because they don't have them in the first place due to human limits.  Our privacy and agency relies on a lot of dots staying unconnected that an AI will connect to our detriment, intentionally or not.