4 korrents from this piece
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Their wordsDespite being an excellent epistemic opportunity, civilizational collapse seldom inspires introspection among thinkers living through it. Mayan or Roman thinkers don’t seem to have reflected on their ongoing collapse.
Their wordsWe act as if we are already living in a scientifically-planned society, immune to collapse on a time scale that any of us have to worry about.
Their wordsThough we usually think of collapse as a slow process, it can in fact happen very quickly, as was the case with the Late Bronze Age collapse.
Their wordsThat knowledge never should have been lost in the first place, but in a dysfunctional society, such loss of knowledge becomes the rule.