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Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:50PM (#27837581)
In reality, no one owes anyone anything. That doesn’t make it ideal or justified.

Turns out that’s a bad way to structure a society and being hyper individualistic just ends up in your society collapsing.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by michaelmrose on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:53PM (#27837633)
If society collapses it will be because we ignored existential threats like climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare etc.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @03:59PM (#27837703)
Wrong. Societies have dealt with far worse situations and managed to survive. Societal cohesion is what prevents anarchy in the long run, not avoiding natural disasters.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by msbarnett on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @04:49PM (#27838237)
Precisely none of “climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare” constitute a natural disaster, nor has this quasi-neo-confucian conception of societal cohesion via filial piety historically triumphed over anything worse than any of these modern extinction scenarios.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:02PM (#27838396)
None of those things would result in the complete extinction of human beings.

The Black Death was pretty horrible and yet European society still exists.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by gBszkp6V on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:11PM (#27838489)
Why did you just shift the goalposts from societal collapse to complete human extinction?
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:13PM (#27838500)
Because the comment used the word extinction?
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by slacktide on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @06:39PM (#27839360)
European society exists today, but experienced societal collapse at the time, which extended for hundreds of years. Y'know, the Dark Ages?
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by Thiez on Thursday July 15, 2021 @08:05AM (#27843768)
The Dark Ages were before the Black Death...
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by sudosysgen on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @08:42PM (#27840250)
Nuclear war could definitely kill literally every human. Even more if you get bio weapons and omnicidal nuclear strikes at once.

The Black Plague is not even a cold compared to what we can engineer.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by msbarnett on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:07PM (#27838451)
I’m not going to bother arguing about it, but suffice to say I don’t share your sunny optimism vis-a-vis nuclear holocaust.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:10PM (#27838475)
Many scholars have posited that a global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to human extinction. This position was bolstered when nuclear winter was first conceptualized and modelled in 1983. However, models from the past decade consider total extinction very unlikely, and suggest parts of the world would remain habitable.[25] Technically the risk may not be zero, as the climatic effects of nuclear war are uncertain and could theoretically be larger than current models suggest, just as they could theoretically be smaller than current models suggest. There could also be indirect risks, such as a societal collapse following nuclear war that can make humanity much more vulnerable to other existential threats

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by michaelmrose on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:15PM (#27838537)
We might live but we wouldn't live well and our long term prospects would be dim.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:23PM (#27838611)
The claim was “extinction event.”
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by msbarnett on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:34PM (#27838725)
The phrase I used was actually “extinction scenario” rather than a singular event, and “most people die immediately, an unlucky few eke out lives of unspeakable horror and pestilence for a handful of generations before the species collapses entirely” was basically what I had in mind.

Really though I can’t imagine what you think this pedantic obsession with whether or not everyone gets blown up immediately is adding to the conversation.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @11:00PM (#27840977)
It’s not pedantic, it’s referencing actual studies on the topic. No expert thinks that humans would go extinct.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by oblio on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:52PM (#27838883)
We're incredibly resilient. We can eat anything and we have technology that can be used in some of the worst environments on the planet and that allow us to get shelter and food.

We'd be 10 thousand not 10 billion and life would suck but we would survive. And the fallout would clear within a few decades or centuries.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by sudosysgen on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @08:44PM (#27840265)
No, we wouldn't. The fallout could feasibly kill everyone without WMD protection within a few years.

10 000 people is not nearly enough for a modern division of labour - we'd be reverted back to prehistoric technology levels within a generation, with a bonus of fallout and absolute climate dysfunction. Given a sufficiently destructive nuclear exchange literally every single human could die.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by not_jd_salinger on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @04:49PM (#27838242)
Can you please list some of this "far worse situations" than nuclear war and climate change as we are currently facing?

"Societal cohesion" doesn't do too much to help us survive crop failures and wet bulb temperatures over 35C.

Aside from that, I think you might misunderstand your causal arrows a bit. It is fair more likely that massive industrialization and late state capitalism led to a society that valued the individual over the social unit, rather than that a sudden desire to be individuals sprung up in people's hearts and made a mess of the world.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by ceilingcorner on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:00PM (#27838387)
Black Death and Mongol Invasions were probably worse on a per-person basis for those affected than even a realistic nuclear war would be.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by sudosysgen on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @08:46PM (#27840277)
Absolutely not, not even close. 99.9% of the population dying within a few years is not comparable to a disease that killed ~10% of the population and a series of invasions that killed at most a single percent.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by neuralRiot on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @04:24PM (#27837960)
> If society collapses it will be because we ignored existential threats like climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare etc.

All that where created by an individualistic approach. Party now and let future generations deal with the dirt.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by msbarnett on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @05:00PM (#27838377)
> All that where created by an individualistic approach.

How so? TFA attributes this modern alienation to changes in the American family structure that took place in the last half of the 20th century. All three of the threats the person you’re responding to listed, nuclear war, (modern) biological warfare, and climate change, were developed or essentially locked in in our society prior to the last half of the 20th century – largely by people born before or right around the end of the 19th century, who were presumably much more attuned to this “dutiful family obligation” mindset, since those are the very people TFA is contrasting these post-1950 changes against.

The plain history of these developments would seem to argue that post-1950 societal changes had nothing whatsoever to do with these threats, unless you’re arguing that the effect preceded the cause.

Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by mensetmanusman on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @04:31PM (#27838058)
Change ‘will’ to ‘might’ and this statement is likely more true.
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by EvilEy3 on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @06:05PM (#27839005)
What makes you think society is more important than individual?
Re:A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement by 1270018080 on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @06:12PM (#27839089)
Without society, the best you can do as an individual is forage for food while naked and homeless. A little hyperbolic, but not far off.