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Does civility only last a week?
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm getting really tired of reading fiction where humanity is just a glittering generality and people are portrayed as sadistic malcontents when no authority figure is looking. Yes, some people do bad things but I have a hard time believing the bulk of people will fall into chaos if they hit a speed bump in their daily lives. So take this hypothetical - electricity is cut off for an entire city for one week. An evil genius with a cape and rocket boots wants to test the people living in a large urban setting and, using bizarre technologies, cuts the power for a week to see what happens. Chicago, Toronto, Moscow, doesn't matter - can people stand that kind of shocking change for long? If there's temporarily no central authority, is civilization going to revert to lootings, block warfare, only the strong survive, and all the rest of that crap referred to in fiction?
I have a bit of faith in humanity and I'll say no, we wouldn't go crazy without power for a week. It'd be a crisis but neighborhoods and small communities would band together and have the sense to ration supplies and protect each other, even in a big city setting. Now, power without a month? No, any city would be a burnt out husk by then but I think a week is doable.
I have a bit of faith in humanity and I'll say no, we wouldn't go crazy without power for a week. It'd be a crisis but neighborhoods and small communities would band together and have the sense to ration supplies and protect each other, even in a big city setting. Now, power without a month? No, any city would be a burnt out husk by then but I think a week is doable.
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When the power went out in NYC a few years ago because of some issue with the grid civilization stood pretty damn strong. It was rather sad that the news took this and went with the approach of 'New Yorkers not rioting at first chance!!!!' but that doesn't diminish the feat. Now, if it were to drag on for a week...
I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but I was in NYC for the blackout too (and I'm still here) and if it HAD lasted an entire week there would have been chaos. I'm nearly positive of that.
Of course our entire urban existence is a tall, precarious tower balanced on the marvel that is electricity, I guess. Even feeding yourself can get tricky after a week of no power. So maybe it is.
Haha (trailer for The Trigger Effect).
Disaster, no, we would just revert to the previous level of technology. It would take a hell of a lot for us to go back to subsistence farming en masse not to mention the simple fact that our dependence on technological infrastructure is far from precarious. Sure we need more redundancy and fail-safes, but we're pretty damn safe. Especially Chicago, to go with your first example. We're mostly powered by nukes and are sitting on the largest water cooler in the world with a river flowing backwards for sanitation, and the nation's bread basket at our doorstep. Even if the world reverted to fiefdoms we'd be able to cope fairly well.
This should be pretty much self-evident. Some people are very bad, some people are very good, most are just trying to eek by.
Unfortunately, it's usually easier to be destructive than to be benevolent - easier to burn down a house than to build one; easier to kill than to save the dying; etc. So even if only a tiny, tiny minority of people were destructive fuckwits, they'd sadly do an amount of damage disproportionate to their own numbers.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
However, in small areas, such as up here, losing power for a week hasn't been a big deal. Earlier this year we had a massive wind storm that torn down trees and knocked out power in one of our larger towns (it's technically large enough to be a city
Yeah, and what I'm saying is that change would be so drastic that it would be coupled with nothing short of immense tragedy, even if humanity pulls through in the long run.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I always get reminded of that story where two guys in a rescue boat come across a woman sitting stuck on a piece of debris or something, and they tell her she must show them her breasts otherwise she's staying where she is at.
Granted this may not be the representation of the entire population, it is still a useful illustration that during disasters, people who are seemingly doing "good deeds" may still resort to immoral/unethical behavior to get something out of it.
Didn't most of those stories turn out to be made up out of whole cloth by right wing bloggers and bigoted locals?
The BBC covered it, but the only person who I can find who actually reported seeing it was this guy named Ged Scott, a bus driver on holiday from the UK. So, yeah, if a bus driver from the UK said it, it must be true.
There was a much more well-documented account of a New Orleans resident who voluntarily flashed her breasts at police to ensure that they'd routinely patrol her home.
Regarding media sensationalism and rumor-mongering, Reason Magazine had a pretty well-sourced article on it. I don't usually care for Reason, but this article seems pretty solid.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I weep for the fact that humanity works that way, but shit, smart woman.
I can see that. Three meals a day, that means one full day without food, and another morning where there's no promise of food on the horizon.
Waking up hungry can do a lot to fuck with a person's resolve.
The thing is, it would take a lot of infrastructure damage to cause a whole area to use up all its food supplies and then have no food for a day and a half. That's not a week's power outage, that's a severe Katrina-level natural disaster.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Eh, for most people, at least for most people in America, coffee is enough of a breakfast.
Speaking of coffee, I think a coffee outage would be infinitely more dangerous for the order of our society than a power outage.
Try that after not eating for 24 hours and not having any idea where your next meal is coming from.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I wasn't really comparing a coffee outage with a food outage.
I think, in the short term and on a personal level, we are more dependent on caffeine than on power. Sure, without power productivity would suffer a shit ton, but without caffeine a lot of people would simply not be able to wake up, and, if they did, stay awake.
And hunger is a bigger motivator than caffeine. By a long shot.
I think we're speaking in different frequencies here.
I know what he was talking about. I took his "waking up hungry can do a lot to fuck with a person's resolve" statement out of context and responded to it. That's why it's bolded. I then used it to transition to what I was about to say.
Again, not comparing lack of food to lack of caffeine. I'm comparing lack of power to lack of caffeine.
In fact, the whole idea of taking things out of context would be pointless anyway. It was being discussed that going more than a day without food would cause a severe drop in civility and you chime in to tell us that it wouldn't happen with the first meal? Well thank you. Prehaps we should discuss what would happen three meals down then.
*There's still the possibility of being arrested, although lower.
*You still the families/friends coworkers.
*You'd likely still have your job
*Land line phones would still work
*etc, etc
If you truly want to test human morality, you have to assure people of one of the following:
1) No one is coming to help them
2) No one is going to get caught for any crime
3) Your death is assured in X amount of time
4) No one will think less of you and no consequences will come to anyone you care about for what you do.
Convince people of one or more of the above, for just a day or two, and I bet you'd see an incredibly rapid decay of many people's civility and morality. People hold firm to morality and behavior because it's what everyone else does, and because there are inevitable social or physical consequences to disobediance.
With that said though, it's incredibly difficult for society to truly break down and for the majority of people to give up their morality. Not because they're innately good mind you, goodness no. No, more likely because we understand the vast ramifications of changing our morality and behavior. Consequences to yourself, your family, your legacy after you die, your income, your social status, even the consequences of what will happen in the afterlife.
Breaking down all these barriers would be incredibly difficult, and I even daresay impossible in entirety. The only way you would see a total and complete breakdown of society as we know it is if you were able to assure people with 100% certainty that no consequences, both in this life or the next, would ever come to them or those they care about.
PS: The whole coffee comment is merely stating that if someone is hungry and unable to sustain themselves, and STILL has no idea if/when they will ever get to eat again, they will enter survival mode. At that point society means little. Morality means little. It is survival of the fittest. It's hard to picture for some people in our day to day society, but if you have a bit of imagination you can see where it goes from there.
A crisis for sure, but manageable. Civilization would be intact. Lots of destroyed property, lost revenue and productivity, and surely a sizable amount of lost life. But people would be able to rebuild and resume civilization in time.
Now if the whole country lost power for a week?
FUCK
Is their morality really decaying, or are we just seeing how morality works itself out in a setting where there's no oversight?
That's silly. Plus, a power outage almost certainly includes a coffee outage. Not many people know how to roast coffee beans over a fire, grind them manually, and concoct a brew without a coffee maker.