The Disaster Zeitgeist

[jamesq]

othelianna and I were philosophizing on our way down to Coronet. We were talking about the current trend to panic over potential pandemics (SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, etc.). My take on it was such:

I think society is recognizing on a low, quasi-subconscious level, that we're heading for a fall. The constant talk of climate change, potential pandemics and peak oil has got us all convinced that something bad is going to happen and it's going to happen within our lifetimes. It's like we're living in a golden age and we're all genre-savvy enough to know what happens to people living in a golden age.

Averting it is likely to be hard. We've probably already missed the boat on climate change and peak oil, but we don't want to admit that. We want a quick fix. Something that's bad, but not necessarily bad for us personally. A nice pandemic that wipes out half the population (but misses our friends and relatives) would be good. It's like we think we can't have a double helping of all the bad things that could happen. "God would never follow up the pandemic of 2010 with climate change. We're only supposed to have one tragedy per generation".

It's not a rational feeling, but humans en masse are not rational beings.

The SF author Brian Aldiss called this sort of thing a "cosy calamity". I think it's why zombie uprisings have become the latest fad in horror stories. Dealing with zombies is action packed and kind of romantic (in a save the damsal sort of way), plus it leaves the Earth relatively unharmed. Dealing with the very real problems of what to do with a continental infrastructure built on the idea of $.50/litre gasoline when the middle class can no longer afford to fill up their cars is much harder and doesn't lend itself to beheadings.

A pandemic also has the attribute of being not our fault. It's random in a way that climate change or peak oil is not. Sure, the world went to hell, but at least it wasn't anything humans did.

We want to be in a world where a few exceptional men and women (like ourselves) can provide a quick and permanent fix to our problems. We don't want to live in one where we have to rely on 6 billion Bubbas making responsible choices forever to keep everything from falling further into hell. Since we know we live in the latter and not the former, we start to think "but with if something took out all the Bubbas"?

Comments

[snooness2]

Or humanity has a inate understanding that over population=bad, and were sensitive to worrying about the bad because part of us knows we are hopelessly over populated.

Usually over population in nature=disease and or war in conjunction with a climate collapse.

So humanity as a hole will continue to collectively jump in fear at a lot of nothing until something major happens. You know there is something wrong with the environment, and you start looking over your shoulder.

It's like walking down a back alley in a rotten neighbourhood at night. You jump at every sound or walk faster because you naturally sense the situation is not safe.

This is the same thing with the pandemic panics... we all know intuitively there is the stalker in the woods - we just don't know when he will strike and what he looks at.

[jamesq]

Damn. I like your theory better.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks.... not my theory.
That's the prevailing opinion of many scientists that are studing crop science and how to feed the current population.

4 years ago they were saying that we would start seeing food riots in the 3rd and 2nd world in 5 years (they happened last year).... and in 10 we'd be seeing food riots in the 1st world if we didn't either
1) stop breeding (not happening considering the state of world affairs)
2) have a mass casulty effect (might happen)... famine, flood, disease, or war
3) increase crop productions using technology of some sort... you know like the increase the idea of plows caused. (we can choose to do this by funding it)

One lecturer suggested our only way out would be through crop genetics. I'm not sure I'd want to place all my eggs in one funding basket though. There are other technologies on the horizon (aside from breeding varieties) that might help... but they have less funding then the "cool biotech" work.

Watching lecture stats on this stuff is... terrifing even the conservative estimates of what will happen. (Even if you take into account that some of it is skewed to shock).

My suggestion is learn to grow fruit and veggies... if nothing else you'll save a bit on food costs.

[snooness2]

yeah - that was me...

[bungle-lord.livejournal.com]

Or the worries about pandemics might be the reaction of people hearing it on the news. How prominent was the O.J. Simpson topic in water cooler conversations for a while there? As a test, count the number of conversations about pandemics two weeks after there are no news specials or reports about them.