Gotham brought down: turkey day style

Well this is a new one to me. I suppose I should have posted this last Thanks Giving, but I was a bit busy.

So you aren't convinced that our modern world is reaching a point of uncontrollable complexity.

Try this one on for size.  Areas of New York City are under siege of wild animals:  turkeys to be exact.
Flock of feral turkeys causing chaos in New York
AP Press via Dailey Mail (U.K.), 21 November 2013 (hat tip: NC)

'We don't want to kill them. We just want them to leave us alone,' says Barbara Laing, who watched as at least 50 turkeys converged outside her house around sundown one recent evening with a chorus of honks — of the turkeys and of drivers who were futilely trying to shoo them out of traffic.

The turkeys milled on the grass, flew up like cartoon ghosts into a large maple tree, and settled in for the night.

It's a sight that charms onlookers and sometimes residents, when the turkeys aren't fouling yards with droppings, devouring gardens, waking up residents with raucous pre-dawn mating sessions, and utterly disregarding dogs and other supposed deterrents.

I should come up with some sort of clever apocalyptic incite, but I am at a loss for the moment.

Turkeys on Staten Island (thumbnail: see link above for more)

Cycles go up, and down

Peter Turchin, who I have sited in the past, has a nice piece discussing some of the elements with within his study of cyclical patterns within human society.

 

Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites as Our Society Frays

Peter Turchin, Bloomberg, 20 November 2013 (hat tip: NC)

Complex human societies, including our own, are fragile. They are held together by an invisible web of mutual trust and social cooperation. This web can fray easily, resulting in a wave of political instability, internal conflict and, sometimes, outright social collapse.

Analysis of past societies shows that these destabilizing historical trends develop slowly, last many decades, and are slow to subside. The Roman Empire, Imperial China and medieval and early-modern England and France suffered such cycles, to cite a few examples. In the U.S., the last long period of instability began in the 1850s and lasted through the Gilded Age and the “violent 1910s.”

We now see the same forces in the contemporary U.S. Of about 30 detailed indicators I developed for tracing these historical cycles (reflecting popular well-being, inequality, social cooperation and its inverse, polarization and conflict), almost all have been moving in the wrong direction in the last three decades.

I find some of his work to be to "modern" in its politics, with too much emphasis on the foibles of modern politics within these long term trends. In that sense, I am probably more "cyclical" than he is, because I am dubious as to most societies abilities to weather the vagarious of demographics, geo-politics, or unlucky "Black Swans" through anything other than lucky happenstance.  It is similar to the randomness of "Texas Holdout" or coaching in the NBA.  You can always ruin a good hand, but once you get to a certain threshold of competence, fate trumps skill.

 

And since I can see the argument coming, I don't see Obamacare as self-sabotage.  It is the expected overreach of an already overextended society. 

Nuclear burnout

The people with the finger on the big trigger are having problems.

 

Not exactly comforting news.

 

Nuke troubles run deep; key officers "burned out"

Robert Burns, AP Press (via Yahoo News), 20 November 2013 (hat tip: NC)

Trouble inside the Air Force's nuclear missile force runs deeper and wider than officials have let on

An unpublished study for the Air Force, obtained by The Associated Press, cites "burnout" among launch officers with their fingers on the triggers of 450 weapons of mass destruction. Also, evidence of broader behavioral issues across the intercontinental ballistic missile force, including sexual assaults and domestic violence.

Part of the problem seems to be the surreal nature of their assignment.

"We all acknowledge their importance, but at the same time we really don't think the mission is that critical," Neal said, adding that his peers see the threat of full-scale nuclear war as "simply non-existent." So "we practice for all-out nuclear war, but we know that isn't going to happen."

To anyone who pays any attention to the concept of Black Swans (disproportionally important unanticipated outlier events) this disconnect is very worrisome.

 

Events that seem highly unlikely, or even impossibly remote, happen rather frequently.  That there are personal issues in such a dangerous area is not going to help matters.  Just because it doesn't seem likely to make a difference, doesn't mean it won't.  World ending outliers deserve a lot of respect.

Dying of boredom

Well there are a lot of ways for our individual world to end.  But one not often discussed is dying of boredom.

 

Apparently there is a lot to be learned.  For in fact, there is not just one type of boredom, but five:

 

Researchers discover new category of boredom

Karen Kaplan, McLatchy DC, 19 November 2013 (hat tip: NC)

- Indifferent boredom, a relaxing and slightly positive type of boredom that "reflected a general indifference to, and withdrawal from, the external world";

- Calibrating boredom, the slightly unpleasant state of having wandering thoughts and "a general openness to behaviors aimed at changing the situation";

- Searching boredom, the kind that makes you feel restless and leaves you "actively seeking out specific ways of minimizing feelings of boredom"; and

- Reactant boredom, which is so bad that it prompts sufferers "to leave the boredom-inducing situation and avoid those responsible for this situation (e.g., teachers)."

add to these four the new category:

-"apathetic boredom" - was quite common among high school students, according to the study, published this week in the journal Motivation and Emotion.

Boredom is apparently an indirect killer:

Boredom isn't just boring. It can be dangerous, either for the person who is bored or for the people around him. For instance, people who are bored are more likely to smoke, drink or use drugs. Kids who are bored are more likely to drop out of school and become juvenile delinquents. Studies have also linked boredom with stress and other health problems.

This is an area that is only intermittently focused on by apocalyptic writers portraying the collapse of modern "high entertainment" society.  If anything, authors have a tendency to push the idea that we will all be happier once we are done with the distractions, and can all hang out at the square-dance together.

 

I have my doubts.  In traditional societies, drunken revelers seem to have been pretty common where the beverage was available.  What were they reveling about if there current circumstances were all that exciting.  If military life is described as long stretches of boredom, intermixed with moments of shear terror, my suspicion is that a lot of any future (survivable) apocalypse is going to have a lot of boredom.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/19/209082/researchers-discover-new-category.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/19/209082/researchers-discover-new-category.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/19/209082/researchers-discover-new-category.html#storylink=cpy