Collapse, incidentally, is a process, not a singular event. It is the inevitable "fate of empires," for structural reasons.
Numerous authors, going back at least to Spengler, independently of one another & working out of different disciplines & from completely different backgrounds, have looked at the history of the empire & reached the same conclusion. While the specifics differ, empires collapse. Their collapse is not the end of the world. The political-economic & cultural centers of gravity shift elsewhere (e.g., to the U.S. when the British Empire collapsed). Collapse does not necessarily mean the end of that society. There's still a U.K. Just not a British Empire. There will still be a U.S. It just won't be the world's center of financial or political-economic gravity after its collapse.
Today's "experts" (often driven by ideological commitment of one sort or another) are denying that the U.S. can collapse. It's onward & upward forever!
To deny that civilizations/empires have life spans just as do individuals is to stare history in the face & deny that it exists. How rational is that?
The Five Stages of Collapse according to Orlov (I presume in no particular order):
(1) Financial collapse: faith in "business as usual" is lost.
(2) Commercial collapse: faith that "the market shall provide" is lost.
(3) Political collapse: faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost.
(4) Social collapse: faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost.
(5) Cultural collapse: faith in "the goodness of humanity" is lost.
(1) Financial collapse: faith in "business as usual" is lost.
(2) Commercial collapse: faith that "the market shall provide" is lost.
(3) Political collapse: faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost.
(4) Social collapse: faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost.
(5) Cultural collapse: faith in "the goodness of humanity" is lost.
I am unsure where educational collapse fits in. Arguably, an educational system has collapsed when it dispenses neither "well rounded" liberal arts graduates nor "vocational" future employees competent in STEM fields.
Collapse does not mean the institutions are gone, obviously. They exist, but are "treading water," as it were ... being sustained through force of habit & what remains of public faith in them, however irrational that faith really is. The Saker explains this in the article below, which expounds Orlov's ideas while adding a few of his own.
The Saker distinguishes E1 from E2 events. E1 events, occurring in a protracted sequence, are comparable to what it takes to move a fragile object such as piece of glasswork to the edge of a table. In systems terms, whatever resilience the system has enables it to parry or absorb numerous attacks on its integrity & function (whether these come from within or without).
The E2 event then is equivalent to whatever energy it takes to push the item of glasswork over the edge so that it falls & shatters: what Malcolm Gladwell called *The Tipping Point*.
Note that precipitating an E2 event takes much less energy than an E1 sequence of events, even thought the results are far more catastrophic.
Recently, Orlov drew attention to reasons for thinking that the impending E2 event that will bring the U.S. empire to its knees will decimate the U.S. population by around 100 million people! He's keeping the details behind a paywall, so I can't link to them directly, but can send you to this:
Note that these are projections for 2025. That would be year, other things being equal, an 8-year Donald Trump presidency would end. This is assuming Trump survives Mueller's witch hunt, or whatever financial meltdown ensues once what Brandon Smith calls the Everything Bubble bursts.
Trump has no control over this last, btw.
No, "growing the economy" won't solve the problems, any more than acquiring new territories saved Rome. Not even turning to Christianity saved Rome; the rot was too deep, & the only thing to do was begin new systems.
That is the only thing that will save America: building new systems to replace the ones that are failing.
Some of us are at work on building such systems even as I write these words.
[To be continued as I've been called to lunch, lol....]
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário