How would southern france compare to the Australia with
47,000 years of habitation?

I believe the stance the Long Now Foundation takes is; this current evolution of human has been around for roughly 10,000 years based on the fossil and archaeological record, yet we think and plan in ever smaller futures. Their idea is that if we've been around for 10,000 years, assume that we could be around for another 10,000. Generally, we should consider a longer future than the next weekend, fiscal quarter, news or election cycle. Also, if we started to think (and act) in longer terms our decisions would be very different.

I wasn't assuming that many generalizations could be made about ETS readership. Only that the people who have responded to my previous threads on the subject have been overwhelmingly upbeat and optimistic.

As far as this forum's guide lines go, I believe we're "supposed" to talking about relatively short term things, the 72 hours that most emergencies last and then a few weeks or months nodding to the fall out after hurricane Katrina.

For this topic, I'm thinking in terms of years or decades with the world looking very different at the other end.
It's really not at all about "doom and gloom". I'm not religious (I don't believe in God's wrath), and I'm not particularly political (Republicans and Democrats only represent a weakness in the system). We've just spent so much time and energy (collectively) acting without any thought to the long term consequences. Like scafool said, it's a train wreck in slow motion. We've built up so much "momentum" based on assumptions that aren't panning out, that the eventual fall has to monumental in proportion.

The most difficult part, for me anyway, is trying to figure out when and where it will hit the turning point, actual collapse where everything starts to break down, and how best to prepare.

That's for sure!

Nicely put, Michael!

The human race is nothing if not short-sighted. Short-term planning, short-term thinking.

Scafool says he thinks the collapse is already here. I think we're sliding down the slope, but we haven't hit bottom yet. It's getting bad, but probably not as bad as it's going to be.

I think water and food are going to be the big problems. Most of our water is contaminated, most people don't have enough storage to get through a dry month, much less a drought. California's farms are going down the toilet, and that mostly leaves us with the breadbasket of the country, which is pretty far from here and many other places.

The domino effect is going to be ugly. IMO.

Sue

As an historian by profession, I have to side with Chris. 10.000 years is absolutely nothing at all if you consider the history of our planet as a whole. I don't even understand why they talk about 10.000 years (aside from being a round number). The human race has existed for a lot longer than that.

The idea that we should think long term instead of just a few years or decades ahead is by all means a positive one. Had the humankind actually considered the impact our actions are going to have in the many years to come, the future of our children and great-great-grandchildren might look less bleak.

Still, the idea that we can somehow prepare for the next 10.000 years is, for lack of a better word, useless. We would need to be able to predict future if we were supposed to plan for it. History is a great teacher but it cannot foretell the future.

People always make preparations based on their past experience and that's why we're never properly prepared for whatever disaster does happen eventually. At the outbreak of WWII most military thinkers were expecting trench warfare on steroids but what in fact happened was something totally different (different even from what the most radical military theorists predicted). The US arrived in Vietnam equipped to fight hordes of Soviet tanks on central European plains but the real enemy were guerillas hiding in the jungle. Everyone was already well aware of terrorism before 9/11 but the thought of anybody flying a couple of passenger jets into WTC would've been widely dismissed as science fiction just days before the attack. Goes to show we have no idea what's going to happen in the next few months or years, let alone a few millenia.

I'm not suggesting that I'm attempting to prepare for 10,000 years from now. I was just identifying the stated stance of the Long Now Foundation.

I'm an ecologist by training but the lessons of history are not lost on me.
I've believed that we (the USA... humans?) have been heading for a fall for a long time. From and ecological stand point, there is no balance being reached (or even approached) and systems of life require a dynamic equilibrium.

Ever since the 1950's and probably well before that, we've been pushing the pendulum as far and fast as we could. Now we're running out of steam and that pendulum is going to swing back.
Historically, human societies have always gone through periods of rise and fall. Historians, correct me if I'm wrong, but the size and extent of any given collapse (and what that ment to the average citizen) depends on the size of the civilization. For all practical purposes, we now have a global society. The ideas of "here" verses "over there" don't mean very much as we are all so interconnected economically and environmentally.
We've build an amazingly complex and relatively efficient house of cards but have neglected the crumbling foundation.

Back to the lecture mentioned above; if you believe that some sort of collapse is happening or going to happen soon, how can we best prepare for it?

I agree with Tom_L, predicting what will actually happen, how it will all play out is next to impossible. So I suppose it comes back to the usual issues, food ,water and shelter. Orlov also adds transportation and security. Thinking about these things in terms of 72 hours is different from a 3 week scenario; a decade long scenario requires different thinking all together.

I know a lot of people take the stance that if you can't really prepare for it, why worry? I wish it were that easy to turn off my anxiety. I would at very least like to hedge my bets and attempt to prepare for thing I think might happen. Then hope that some of those preparations help me when the unforeseen happens.

Sorry guys, I was just making an observation. The Long Now site has a lot of other stuff besides Orlov on it, I was just referring to the Orlov dissertation link.

It's all good food for thought, but I have more than enough on my plate just trying to get through the next few years. Forward thinking to 10,000 years from now just seems to be wasted effort beyond simple intrigue. Something I learned from studying probabilities is that the number of possible outcomes increases exponentially over time, so that no level of planning would allow for any sort of reliable prediction as to final outcome in even 100 years from now, let alone 10,000. There are just way too many variables to consider. Even still, were it possible, the weight such a consideration has on my current existence is quite negligible. I need to focus my attentions on getting through this life more or less intact, and providing my immediate progeny with a slightly greater advantage, or at least better opportunity, than I have.

If I have to consider anything about the future, I hold to this one truth, change is inevitable. You can resist it only so long, and the longer you resist, usually the more dramatic the effects of the change. Today, I am taking a big bite out of the apple, and slurping the oyster. In a couple years, I may be living the life of an Ivan Denitsovitch, if I am still even alive. It's the nature of the game, you can't keep rolling doubles everytime, and you can't win with a strategy that requires such luck either.

There's probably lot of truth in that observation. Our problem is that analyzing past events is relatively easy in hindsight but an objective assessment of the current situation is next to impossible.

Maybe the closest historical parallel to what we're facing these days is the collapse of the Roman empire. The word 'collapse' (just like revolution) generally implies something sudden but in human history, there have been very few truly sudden changes. For instance, the Roman empire was in many ways a global society from the contemporary perspective. But its decline lasted no less than at least a couple of centuries (depends on how you define its decline). And for nearly another 1500 years, the Roman empire lived on in some form, nominally at least, because old, proven ideas die hard.

What's really interesting is that the decline of the Roman empire has a lot in common with the current situation in the Western world: declining ideals, demographic crisis, old insitutions that no longer work like they used to, failing economy and an influx of foreign immigrants (not wanted by many but simply inavoidable), which will invariably change our society.

If you look at modern history, you could say the US reached its peak as a superpower by the end of WWII. Then there was the fiasco in Vietnam and the oil crisis (not sure we learned anything from that lesson), another brief but perhaps deceptive peak at the end of the Cold War and now another fiasco in Iraq plus an economic crisis of gigantic proportions. Perhaps the biggest difference is that with today's technology, fast travel and communication possibilities everything will happen much faster than before and on a much larger scale. But the basic mechanisms probably remains the same. So like Benjammin said, change really is inevitable. It's just a matter of how we can adapt to the new reality.

Witch is why this forum exists, right? So that those of use to choose to, can be attempt to prepared for possible foreseeable scenarios. Weather it's a car accident, plane crash, getting lost in the woods, earthquake... or social collapse. Just like all emergencies, you never "know" when they will happen or how they will play out. You can, however, think about possibilities probabilities. The chance of me dying in a plane crash are almost none if I never fly. That said, when I do fly, I think about what could happen and what I might be able to do about it; watch the safety instructions and count how many rows I am from an exit. I don't think about that if I'm not flying. There is (in my view) great potential for things to get really bad in this current economic situation. I'm hoping for the best and trying to prepare for the worst.

Oh I hope I am not the cause for this debate. There is certainly enough info in the Long Now link to make for good, relevent discussion. I have no problem with the post, just wanted to point out that the Orlov stuff was already linked once before, not that it's a bad thing to repeat, just that it was a repeat as far as I could tell.

Preparing for something 10,000 years in the future might not be practical, but some of the more near term elaborations from the website and the dissertation do give cause to reconsider some issues about what is/has been happening of late. If nothing else, Orlov's point about stocking commodities now as effective barter for later reaffirms the same thoughts I've already put into action.

It's important to keep a firm grasp of history, so we don't follow others off the edge.