Apocalypse Now???

Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Guest » Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:36 am

Holly wrote:
Guest wrote:
Holly wrote:
Lambert wrote:I get where you're coming from, Holly. With so much happening in the world it can feel like we're heading towards some sort of climactic disaster. The dread of existential thread is something that's been felt by people throughout the ages, but for different reasons. Centuries ago it was the plague. Later it was the Cold War and the IRA. Now it's the weather and Islamic State,

There are things that we as individuals can change, and things we can't. if you're going to worry about anything, it makes more sense to worry about the things you can change, than it does to worry about things that are entirely out of your control.



Oh I totally agree, there isn't a lot we can do when it comes to natural disasters...NZ has had its fair share of earthquakes lately :ooer: but I am worried about idiots like Trump and Kim, two narcissistic psychopaths who hold the worlds safety in their hands. I do believe that doom is just 5 minutes away.


The Doomsday Clock is on 23.59


Scary but so true ! Will there be peace in the next 5 years?...I really don't think so.


I disagree.
Trump is so random that no one will cross him.
Kim has already blinked.
It does depend on how pissed off Vlad gets with the idiot.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby wutang » Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:40 am

Lady Murasaki wrote:We can't do much about the natural disasters but the human disasters can be helped.



Always worth remembering that natural disaster are social disasters

It is generally accepted among environmental geographers that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. In every phase and aspect of a disaster – causes, vulnerability, preparedness, results and response, and reconstruction – the contours of disaster and the difference between who lives and who dies is to a greater or lesser extent a social calculus. Hurricane Katrina provides the most startling confirmation of that axiom. This is not simply an academic point but a practical one, and it has everything to do with how societies prepare for and absorb natural events and how they can or should reconstruct afterward. It is difficult, so soon on the heels of such an unnecessarily deadly disaster, to be discompassionate, but it is important in the heat of the moment to put social science to work as a counterweight to official attempts to relegate Katrina to the historical dustbin of inevitable “natural” disasters.


This isnt to ignore natural events but to realise that who lives and who dies, who suffers the most, etc is dependent on social factors

Whether a natural event is a disaster or not depends ultimately, however, on its location. A large earthquake in the Hindu Kush may spawn no disaster whatsoever while the same intensity event in California could be a catastrophe


There is a reason that the poor tend to get fucked more than the rich in the aftermath of a disaster

Vulnerability, in turn, is highly differentiated; some people are much more vulnerable than others. Put bluntly, in many climates rich people tend to take the higher land leaving to the poor and working class land more vulnerable to flooding and environmental pestilence. This is a trend not an iron clad generalization: oceanfront property marks a major exception in many places, and Bolivia’s La Paz, where the wealthy live in the cooler valley below 13,000 feet, is another. In New Orleans, however, topographic gradients doubled as class and race gradients, and as the Katrina evacuation so tragically demonstrated, the better off had cars to get out, credit cards and bank accounts for emergency hotels and supplies, their immediate families likely had resources to support their evacuation, and the wealthier also had the insurance policies for rebuilding. Not just the market but successive administrations from the federal to the urban scale, made the poorest population in New Orleans most vulnerable


The whole piece in worth reading it goes into the different levels of preparedness that goes into different areas, how Governments response tend to favour rich over poor (to quite disasterous effects) and how the rebuilding afterwards is politically motivated (in Puerto Rico the US Government is using the crisis to force through a privatisation agenda, they did the same after Katrina.

There’s no such thing as a natural disaster - Neil Smith

https://libcom.org/library/there%E2%80% ... neil-smith
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby wutang » Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:43 am

Another good book worth checking out on how disasters are exploited by the political/business class to their own benefits

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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Cannydc » Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:59 am

Holly wrote:
Cannydc wrote:
Holly wrote:
Lady Murasaki wrote:24 hour rolling news doesn't help if you're feeling anxious.


You too Lady... speak!
what's your response to my post? Is there anything wrong with what I said?


It is paranoia of the highest order.

It's someone standing in a roof screaming "We're all gonna die !!"

Meanwhile, the rest of us just get on with life. We don't ignore major crises, but we don't panic about them either.



Hmmm OK, fair enough. Get on with your life and be ignorant.. You really are rather naive though if you think we should all just sit back and not panic..there's a lot to panic about, can't you see that? FFS, what does it take for you to start worrying?



Ignorant ?

It would be ignorant of me to believe that I could stop ANY natural disaster. But I can (and do) tend to avoid places where these are more commonplace.

As for a terrorist attack - same, same.

I regard this as far from ignorant, more sensible. As for panic - nah, I served 23 years in HM forces. Panic solves nothing.

If you suffer from unusual anxiety, I humbly suggest you have a word with your GP. He can't stop hurricanes either, or terrorist attacks - but he can treat anxiety.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Keyser » Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:24 pm

Not really Holly.

If you are a student of history you will know that (in general) people are very slowly becoming more peaceful and enlightened as the centuries grind on - a lot of this has to do with the rise of science and the economic and medical benefits that it has given us.

Only a few hundred years ago people were being hung/burned at the stake in Europe for witchcraft and in America you just have to look at the Salem Witch trials.

You will never change the savage nature of the beast but at least in Western democracies people are not fighting to survive every single day and that makes a big difference (of course if the electricity and food supply failed we would soon see a return to barbarity).

The main thing I worry in the 21st century (in the West) is the proliferation Wahhabist Islam which seeks to turn back the clock to a far more savage age.

The vast majority of people (of whatever faith, race or colour) just want to live out their lives in peace.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby wutang » Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:34 pm

Keyser wrote:Not really Holly.

If you are a student of history you will know that (in general) people are very slowly becoming more peaceful and enlightened as the centuries grind on - a lot of this has to do with the rise of science and the economic and medical benefits that it has given us.

Only a few hundred years ago people were being hung/burned at the stake in Europe for witchcraft and in America you just have to look at the Salem Witch trials.

You will never change the savage nature of the beast but at least in Western democracies people are not fighting to survive every single day and that makes a big difference (of course if the electricity and food supply failed we would soon see a return to barbarity).

The main thing I worry in the 21st century (in the West) is the proliferation Wahhabist Islam which seeks to turn back the clock to a far more savage age.

The vast majority of people (of whatever faith, race or colour) just want to live out their lives in peace.



Counter-argument: the 20th century.

Salem Witch trials vs the Holocaust :dunno:

Also, "Wahhabist Islam which seeks to turn back the clock to a far more savage age": given the shit that western states have been doing just in the last couple of decades alone I think they are just committed to the savage age....

...especially when you consider that the UK/USA funds, arms and supports these very same militant wahhabi groups.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Keyser » Mon Oct 02, 2017 4:02 pm

wutang wrote:
Keyser wrote:Not really Holly.

If you are a student of history you will know that (in general) people are very slowly becoming more peaceful and enlightened as the centuries grind on - a lot of this has to do with the rise of science and the economic and medical benefits that it has given us.

Only a few hundred years ago people were being hung/burned at the stake in Europe for witchcraft and in America you just have to look at the Salem Witch trials.

You will never change the savage nature of the beast but at least in Western democracies people are not fighting to survive every single day and that makes a big difference (of course if the electricity and food supply failed we would soon see a return to barbarity).

The main thing I worry in the 21st century (in the West) is the proliferation Wahhabist Islam which seeks to turn back the clock to a far more savage age.

The vast majority of people (of whatever faith, race or colour) just want to live out their lives in peace.



Counter-argument: the 20th century.

Salem Witch trials vs the Holocaust :dunno:

Also, "Wahhabist Islam which seeks to turn back the clock to a far more savage age": given the shit that western states have been doing just in the last couple of decades alone I think they are just committed to the savage age....

...especially when you consider that the UK/USA funds, arms and supports these very same militant wahhabi groups.


But you could also say that in past centuries if any state had access to nuclear weapons post WW2 they would have used them - history is one long record of war, genocide, murder and atrocity since we built the very first Neolithic towns and cities.

I do despair at the West's support of Daesh Arabia and the other Gulf states for economic and geopolitical reasons - but I was not talking of the governments but the general population of countries around the world.

The gradual improvements of the rights of women, the disabled, the mentally ill and LGBT people are undeniable evidence that we are slowly becoming far more tolerant.

But none of the above sentence applies to Wahhabist ideology does it?
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Maddog » Mon Oct 02, 2017 7:24 pm

We have far more media, chasing far less apocalyptic stories.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Stooo » Mon Oct 02, 2017 7:35 pm

Holly wrote:What on earth is going on? Massive hurricanes, massive floods, massive earthquakes, massive volcanic eruptions... HUGE threat of nuclear war (that's actually the most scary ) invasion by not so Western friendly Muslims :thud: ...but yeah, we're all good eh? :roll:

Anyone else being just a little bit worried for the future?


I've been a bit of a grumpypants over the apparent collapse of mankind myself recently and it got me thinking of when my Dad was greeting about much the same thing when he was my age, so I did an experiment.

I asked my 20 yr old son if I was a miserable old paranoid bastard and he said yes :ooer:

We're getting older and mortality is on the horizon and that's a bit worrying, we won't live forever even though we thought we would and so we worry about stuff that probably won't happen anyway :dunno:
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Lady Murasaki » Tue Oct 03, 2017 8:22 am

wutang wrote:Another good book worth checking out on how disasters are exploited by the political/business class to their own benefits

Image


Yeah but Holly didn't mention human exploitation in her op :whistle:
I get your point though.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Trapper John » Tue Oct 03, 2017 8:44 am

As much as I don't want to agree with Canny, it is a small minority who grab the headlines and like someone said, wall to wall news only serves to make things sound worse than they really are.

It's a dangerous world, always has been though and we are far more likely to suffer or be harmed by a 'natural' event than a man made one.

Since life first appeared on Earth it's been a constant battle between that life and every thing else that wants to destroy it. Things will never change.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Holly » Tue Oct 03, 2017 9:38 pm

I guess you guys are right, Earth has always been a dangerous place. I think as we get older, we just become more aware.
I'm not exactly a petrified, fearful wrack :paranoid: ...but I do worry a lot for my children's future.. Yes I know, nothing I can do about it, but I can't just push a button and stop worrying.
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Re: Apocalypse Now???

Postby Keyser » Tue Oct 03, 2017 9:42 pm

Holly wrote:I guess you guys are right, Earth has always been a dangerous place. I think as we get older, we just become more aware.
I'm not exactly a petrified, fearful wrack :paranoid: ...but I do worry a lot for my children's future.. Yes I know, nothing I can do about it, but I can't just push a button and stop worrying.


But you should start worrying if some other bastard pushes a button Holly - especially the red one! :laughing:
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