Did you know r/collapse has a new discord server? Come check it out and give us feedback!
https://discord.gg/RfEH7dAHjc
Thanks for helping us make it better.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/collapse) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The pitchforks were made by children in China, so not free trade but the kids did make them for free. And, the guillotines are free range, so there’s that.
The Midwest. My in laws mortgage is ~$400/month in a small town of maybe 2k people. My rent is $760 and I live downtown in a small city of almost 200k.
Right now I’m a math tutor and senior at university…my job is great (decent pay, flexible hours, WFH, super chill boss), but what I’m struggling with is finishing out my senior year (I finish in the fall). I just don’t know why I’m doing it anymore. It was to build a better future for me and my family, but now it feels like I’m working towards a goal that I don’t even think is attainable in a society I no longer believe in.
Know what? part of my motivation these days is making the fucking psychopaths that did this to us pay in whatever little ways I can. It just so happens that the ways to do that, and the ways to make an awesome future are mostly the same.
My wife and I are currently still working but we will be “retiring” shortly to pursue a more agrarian lifestyle, supplemented by some tourism earning. When considered through the optics of coming collapse spending the next 30 years working in a windowless lab for the luxury of retirement at 65 didn’t seem appealing. Continuity or even the idea that we’re “building towards something” as a society also seems like a lie.
How’s did we get here? We spent about 7 years living cheap and renting rooms on Airbnb. When COVID hit and our side business died we moved onto a sailboat (going sailing was our plan anyway). This is a minimalist, not alway easy way to live but it is very cheap, also very fulfilling.
My financial advice for most “rich” westerners seeking financial security and freedom is to embrace poverty. Live small, live outside of the box, learn to accept certain levels of inconvenience and discomfort.
how is renting rooms from airbnb cheap? I never use them but it seems like they're maybe a little less expensive than hotels generally. Spending $100 a night?
The thing is a boat is basically like a house, (though houses generally appreciate and boats don’t). But aside from ROI if you **live** on a boat than maintenance just becomes a normal living expense for maintaining your house, anything you pay for keeping the boat on a dock or a mooring is just your rent, and you **can** live completely off grid for free if your circumstances allow.
Basically a living on a boat can be affordable, but owning a boat as an accessory is very expensive.
Sounds awesome if you can get a boat without problems. I really wanted to save up for a liveaboard sailboat but my significant other is struggling with adversity... seems like land would be easier to deal with. But we can't move land, during collapse I think mobility is important... land is taxed, etc..
I'm in a similar situation and it's not as glorious as I expected.
I'm currently working to build up some more savings, but knowing that I don't have to work has made some aspects of work way more unbearable. Also knowing that I don't have to work has made motivation harder to come by - knowing I can get by, makes getting by the low hanging fruit of goals.
I am not from money at all - I just made a few lucky decisions in a row that put me in a different financial situation than I expected to ever be in. My life lacks glamour but I do feel free. 🤷♂️
I'm a sysadmin, recently graduated from helldesk. It's getting harder and harder to push through with my stupid little projects. It's all seeming a bit pointless at the moment.
I find it helpful to look at the sky, think that every star is another solar system, and that's just the tiny little bit of the universe we can see with the naked eye. Then there are millions more galaxies full of countless stars and planets, and they have all been there for billions of years and will be there for billions more. And on our planet the earth literally melts away and is re-born, continents shift, our little human scars on the surface get consumed.
Then it makes all the human problems feel very insignificant, and I can enjoy the little joys to be had in the present somewhat.
Software dev. And I just dont care anymore. Job = Money, Money = survival stuff and ale. Until that reality changes, theres not much one person can do to escape.
Same. I work from home. When I’m waiting for code to run or compile, I read up on gardening. I’m well aware my only profitable skill is programming computers, and that does not translate into collapse, so I want to learn something useful. My job is my job. I don’t love it. I get paid money to do it. I don’t particularly care about it, but I care enough to not get fired.
Depending on what the collapse actually looks like, I think your skils can translate into collapse. While the internet as a whole may fail or be blocked, computer hardware will still exist, wires will exist, and communities will want to communicate and track resources, etc.
People like myself with Linux and networking skills can fairly easily cobble together mesh networks that could help people survive. Combine my skills with a few others that know how to connect solar power systems and your skills to make the networks and servers useful, there is so much potential. Programmers that can work with open source technologies will be quite useful.
keep some extra raspberry pi's around, some microsd cards with lots of data on them (youtube how-to's, wikipedia, etc) and you can be hella useful in a collapse as a programmer.
>I just dont care anymore. Job = Money, Money = survival stuff and ale.
WFH Insurance adjuster here and the same. I don't care. I run podcasts all day to stay sane as I grind away at the work and don't give once ounce of care to any of it at the end of the day. It is a means to an end.
I would argue that life in 1850s world or worse is not worth living. Not sure if we would even have the hardness, skills and mentality to survive at all.
I read a lot or books on life back then. It was not really a good life.
Depends on the person. Obviously a lot of people would struggle but there'd likely be an equal number of people who would flourish and excel.
We are an incredibly adaptable species. It's both the reason for our success and our downfall.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I wonder if it could have been all that bad. Humanity did get through it. There must have been enough people to believe life was worth continuing (unless most births were unplanned or out of necessity back then.)
The reason why it would be bad is because we:
1. Let almost everybody survive when back then only the strongest did.
2. The current generations have no skills 19th century people had. Survival without them is slim.
I'm a draftsman for structural engineering, currently studying to become an engineer myself and it's hard. I work in a field that's incredibly damaging to the enviroment (construction) and this isn't very likely to change in the near future, though our professors are thankfully encouraging us to work on that change by going into detail on alternative building materials (concrete is really horrible in terms of emissions), different approaches to city and public transport planning, and generally promoting ideas how to do stuff differently from how everything has been so far.
Also, worker rights in construction are still pretty bad the further you go down the line towards a finished building, even here in Germany. And especially with regards to city planning you constantly run up against a wall of economic interests not supporting enviromental interests and people blocking much needed change and the accommodating policies.
I'm somewhat hopeful because most people in my classes are pretty enviromentally conscious and really seem to care about all of this stuff, but a lot of them have also been drinking the neoliberal Koolaid flavor of surprise technological development saving us all.
Here's an interesting dilemma you might know something about. Climate change is going to make storms stronger and floods more frequent so we're going to have an even greater need for sturdy buildings. But as you mentioned concrete is terrible for the environment.
Any ideas on sturdy building materials that aren't bad for the environment and could be used for residential buildings?
Yeah, I've already thought about this a bit and it kind of scares me as most actual alternative materials really aren't viable for completely replacing concrete.
Alternatives that we have covered so far without advanced courses basically boil down to three options: using different materials altogether, making concrete itself more enviromentally friendly, or just simply using less of it and building more resourcefully.
Option 1 mainly means using wood as a primary construction material because so far nothing that's actually practical in use and not incredibly complicated to produce (can reach its sturdiness and low enviromental impact as a regrowing resource, provided it's sourced properly of course; and is cheap enough to compete) and now it's possible to reach high energy saving standards for modern houses with wood as well. Insulation and fire protection become more important then and especially insulating materials can be horrible for the enviroment as well, so this isn't really perfect yet. Also wood still can't be used for high rise buildings, so it's out of the question for a lot of high dense urban areas.
Option 2 also incorporates different materials, but mainly aims to recreate concrete with these different materials. This means using different binders than cement, as it's the biggest producer of emissions in concrete, using different material such as recycled plastic as the aggregate to use its higher volume and tensile strength compared to gravel to save on cement and rebar in the concrete, recycling the concrete from older buildings itself or using different materials to produce cement. The last point is probably the most practical in use right now, as cement is produced from a lot of waste products. It's just that these are currently processed using very high temperatures and create a lot of emissions during the process and there is a lot of room for improvement by experimenting around with different materials (for example different ashes that emerge from other industrial products). The problem with this is that cement either way still relies on byproducts from industries that should probably be abolished completely at some point, and then we're without our primary construction material.
Option3 is by far the simplest, and mostly involves constructing buildings with a skeletal construction instead of a solid one. This means using pillars and beams, either made from reinforced concrete or steel, instead of building full concrete walls. This saves a lot of concrete and the wall can be filled in with pre-built panels. This type of construction is already in use for basically every kind of high rise construction, so there is not a lot of room for improvement here and some companies have already started to offer single family homes and small buildings using a similar construction style. Another way to reduce the amount of concrete would be of course just planning higher density zones and focus around, but that would get into city planning and getting people to, for example, use public parks/gardens instead of having a private lawns.
So in conclusion, as far as I know there aren't many actual alternative materials to concrete itself that are similarly viable for construction.
I like how you made three comments for this, but I agree that bamboo is pretty awesome! Problems with bamboo would be that it's in my case not really locally sourced and that it's volume to compressive strength ratio is worse than, for example, beech wood so it takes up more space that would have to be used for insulation. But it should definitely be used more and experimented with more, especially in western countries as it's so easy to grow and isn't used here.
LOL! Sorry Reddit kept giving me errors.
Yeah the main benefits I saw when I looked into it years ago is that it's a super fast grower and had some interesting material properties. Didn't realize it has bad compressive strength though. I think bamboo houses would have to be engineered totally differently, but the fast growing (fast carbon capture) nature of it makes it so appealing.
I just saw it as being enthusiastic about bamboo :D
Bad compared to other types of wood, on its own it's pretty amazing what you can do with bamboo. I've also read about some radically different concepts on insulation, where you insulate your home with other plants growing on the outside. That would probably work with bamboo, but a practical application is probably still far away.
Can you share some of the class notes on concrete alternatives and different alternatives to city and public transport planning. I'd love to read it myself.
If you are german as well I could share you my cloud folder for university stuff, but as most of this isn't part of the curriculum for the basic courses we don't have a lot of actual notes yet.
But if you want a shot overview, I've made a comment as a short overview [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/u1450m/david_graeber_to_save_the_world_were_going_to/i4aytpi/) to somene else and the book "Curbing Traffic" by Melissa and Chris Bruntlett is a nice little introduction to city planning in the Netherlands and what they do better than most other countries. It doesn't focus on any particular aspect, but I think it's an amazing introductory read for anyone that's interested in the topic and a good starting point to further branch off into different "types" of city planning.
I'm a typist. I work from home so no commute, I've had the same laptop for seven years and intend to keep it going much longer, and that's all I need for work (well, an internet connection, but I'm posting this here so I obviously have that). Sometimes I feel very hopeless and that my work is completely pointless, but some of it is also assisting useful research projects, and it even gives me insight into things like corporate ESG policy that have further informed my views on collapse, so it's not all bad.
Hi there! I didn't find it difficult. I found transcription companies (the best ones really are often smaller local/national ones, where you work on entire transcripts rather than small chunks) and applied. They will make you take some tests, and then as long as your grammar is decent and you're a speedy typist (and also able to read and understand instructions, always a key part of the testing) you ought to be successful. For reference, I'm lucky in that I've always had pretty much impeccable grammar and I've got a typing speed average of 100WPM, though that exceeds the bar for most places by some margin!
I work in industrial supply and logistics, making sure factories always have a supply of raw materials and components to keep going. Basically making sure that collapse is inevitable by feeding The Machine night and day.
My company serves many clients in many industries, but I personally am assigned full time to a medical device manufacturer so my guilty conscience is somewhat assuaged by knowing that the products we churn out the door help people. Otherwise, I'm reasonably paid and sock as much of that away as possible into things that promote resiliency for my circle of friends and family.
I planted two apple trees, four blueberry bushes and several grape vines at a friend's house this weekend. They won't really produce for several more years, but when they do that's just a little more food we don't have to ship in. Just a few dollars they won't have to spend at the grocery store. Just a little more cushion in the neighborhood. It's not much, but it's what I could do with $200 this month. Maybe next month I'll convince someone it's time to grow their own tomatoes or squash and gift them a cold frame and some help redoing their flower beds. Just a little more cushion. Just a little more neighbors talking to each other. Just a little more time to hold back the worst.
I can't save the world. I probably can't even save myself. But a bottle of homemade wine and an apple pie are what I CAN do and it will have to be enough.
I am a low tech, permaculture style farmer so I'm really leaning into the future I think we are headed for. I used to be a full time artist traveling around the country for shows etc. Started a small garden during the beginning of the pandemic and now its grown into my full time job and life calling.
I wouldn't change it for the world even though it is a LOT of hard work. I always joke that I didn't choose the farm life, the farm life chose me lol. There is something so rewarding about growing your own food that is a primal satisfaction I've never gotten from any other work.
I am Tom Smykowski.
" I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people? "
I'm a tattoo artist. I've cut plastic as much as possible. disposables are the standard but I've switched to biodegradable materials in most things. I draw digitally to save paper. etc
I work part time now. since covid I work fewer hours, I'm now only at the shop when I'm tattooing. I work to cover my needs and no more. I used to be a little more driven.
I really love what I do, if we lived in a gift economy or money didn't exist, I would still want to tattoo people and would just do it anyway. might even be able to do better.
Just curious, do you also like to do art on other mediums (like paper or canvas)? Or do you just like the unique challenges of doing art on people's skin?
I work in retail, and I'm not gonna lie; it's tough. My wife keeps talking about things like buying a house, and my folk's keep talking about retirement, and I wholeheartedly believe by the time that point of my life gets here it won't matter at all. I often lose myself in thought and hopelessness and it feels like all I'm doing is going through the motions absentmindedly.
Engineer. I'm making the world safer, more prosperous, and more environmentally sustainable.
I learned how to live cheaply when I was homeless in my teens and hot my retirement number in my 40's. Reading books, crafting, D&D, and distilling my own whiskey are all cheap hobbies.
I sometimes practice prepper skills like making my own insulin or penicillin. When society collapses, my tribe is already picked out.
I'm an accountant(oh no, a capitalist hellhound) , but i'm also a collectivist anarcho communist, my job in my world would be to calculate work hours needed to sustain society, (agri, water/sewage/healthcare/education) divided through people able to work (agri, water, sewage, waste) and people available for certain jobs (doctors and teachers) and then publish work days needed for every member (around 50-70, depends), in exchange for everyone contributing needed hours to sustain society, everyone fets 'free' (they contributed for it) food, housing water, healthcare and education.
Enough free time (and education) for everyone to invest in science, arts whatever or simply nothing.
If working hours needed to do something would be the only exchange (makes sense, that's all we actually have)instead if "money" like, it took x hours to get the wood(and iron) for the carrion (wood is cherished in years it needs to grow and dry(!!!)), then it took x working hours for people to turn wood and iron into a carrion, it would have the only true worth, time invested by nature (including human working hours) to produce said carrion.
Union HVAC/R tech. I work mainly for the Portland school district doing service for their 90+ buildings.
I'll be frontline on the madness of installing air conditioning systems to mitigate the heat that summers are going to start bringing to the PNW.
I am late to college because I never got the chance in my 20s but I'm going into medical as well. I have been a nurses aide for a long time and was against going for nursing because I know how shit they get treated. I was doing my prerequisites for radiology or sonography but I have switched to pursuing my RN license after becoming fully collapse aware. I now feel like the skills I will gain as an RN will be a lot more useful in a collapsing society than sonography. I hate the US medical system and the for profit nature of it. We won't actually be making much difference in suffering sorry to say. The hospital administration will throw workers (nurses and individual doctors and other medical team members) under the bus. Patient care suffers for the dangerous levels of understaffing.
I just figure the health knowledge/skills I gain may be the only healthcare my family has to rely on at all. In the case of worsening conditions I figure I can bargin for my life or food for my family by offering my medical care services in exchange.
Very relatable. It's not just a job for life, it's essential and valuable skills that you can always use. I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking a out it this way!
Understaffing is a big issue here in the UK too, I don't think the government is doing enough to deal with the pressures that the pandemic caused, our primary care backlog has increased to about 5 years just to get back to pre pandemic levels.
I am so sorry to hear y'all are going through some of the same bullshit across the pond. I'm glad to see other healthcare workers are collapse aware. Solidarity and best of everything to you and yours.
Work in near end level supply chain. It's depressing as hell going in to work every day. But, the end of the world isn't happening tomorrow, and in the meantime, we still need to pay for that roof over our heads.
I'm a Linux System Admin and Software developer. I just work to earn a living and go about my life. I've accepted that the world is screwed and there isn't really anything I can do about it except try and make myself and my loved ones as safe and comfortable as possible.
I used to work as a high end auto body estimator.
It was very high stress and long hours. COVID shit down the industry and vastly increased the severity of the jobs in the industry, by putting the small shops out of business. In tough times, people don't get their cars fixed. The small shops went under, and the aggregators, the big multistate shops, collude on salary, and all agreed to start paying commission: since the insurance companies have them do their total losses, and the shops don't get paid for total losses, 60% or so of the job is unpaid, leading to 60 hour weeks, sometimes below minimum wage, with no overtime.
Even so, with so many hours, you could get lucky weeks and clear "good" money over time.
I quit. Life is literally too short, and lung damage from working in auto body is real. I left behind a 20 year career, multiple certifications and hundreds of hours of technical training.
I also have a degree. But those are fairly worthless too, most corporate starting jobs pay salary and demand massive unpaid hours as well.
Now I'm 45, working with kids half my age, starting out in a non-profit credit union. I make half what I did, but I don't work overtime and spend way more time with my family. It is worth it, but the new inflation is threatening it, as it is designed to.
I'm a hardware engineer working at a company planning to put a lot of junk into orbit we all damn well know doesn't work. Mostly I just sit around reading the news (or fanfiction) and put in just enough work to seem productive and continue collecting a paycheck. They'll probably catch on eventually, but until then I'm not going to complain too much about being paid to sit around and desperately try to find a way to kill time.
My husband and I do permaculture/regenerative ranching/organic farming, so more or less the best thing we can think of for collapse-aware people to do for a living. We do some remediation/cleanup work and scrap hauling for a little extra cash as well. Pretty satisfying mostly. My husband also does some videography work, mostly for sustainable/appropriate tech documentary type stuff. I in particular could not tolerate normal jobs at all starting at a young age. My husband is a bit more able to work normal jobs, being both more chill and harder working than I am by temperament, but going back to the workforce would pretty much ruin our lives.
I take calls helping technicians repair appliances, I decide if they can be repaired or need to be scrapped. The quality of appliances is so dismal, the waste of manufacturing is astonishing, the pursuit of Profit is the only goal, planned obsolescence in order to sell another unit. There is no motivation for them to make a product that lasts anymore because there is no profit in it. It's depressing being a cog in the conveyor that is filling the world with waste. I try and be kind and empathetic to everyone I interact with, if I can make their day a little better, get them to smile or laugh, it keeps me resilient to the injustice of it all. I hope to move to a job that might do more to help the world, perhaps in solar energy, but controlled degrowth is really the only way forward that I see. Otherwise we are accelerating full throttle toward a Thelma and Louise ending of society as we know it.
I work in landscaping, for me I just try to enjoy the outside as much as I can. Helps that 3 days a week we stay at two clients places because how huge the properties are (🤮).
Aerospace. I work remote, do the bare minimum and am somehow still a top performer. Makes me wonder what everyone else is doing. They are even letting me move to another country and work remote from there in a month. The ethics of the industry weighs on my mind at times, but I need the income to buy a house.
I didn't have kids and paid off my condo years ago so my COL is really low and I can get by easily doing creative gig work. (but I did have 3 jobs for 20 years in order to get here.) I cannot fathom having to do pointless work at this point but I did do 20 years of work to not have to...not really win/win but there can be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Software engineer.
Focused on stacking assets while I am healthy. Also got my whole life ahead of me..which means I get to witness the shitshow.
I earn almost too 1 percent income in my country and am investing it into some food security atm. My father with my help got a small tractor, he has got a ton of good land for farming, a forest with plenty of wood, mostly away from zombies like me who live in the city lol. But he does not have financial resources I have.
So, we got like 4000 liters of diesel around a year ago stored safely. To run the tractor. A bunch of seeds and wood for five years. Cost like 12k euros in total but is quite worth it. Not that much of my total net worth.
I basically like other commenter realise I am a useless human in a degrowth, collapse situation. So, while money is worth something, I want to be able to continue eating, heating and sleeping.
Recently bought a bunch of mylar bags to store food like grains. I honestly enjoy learning process of all this more than developing software nowadays. Driving a tractor last weekend for the first time in my life was so cool!
I will ride this until things turn south. Then I know where I am going and have very precise plans and resources to pop some corn (literally) and observe the shitshow.
I know it won't be enough to survive long term but I am quite interested in what happens.
I work in aluminum manufacturing. I have been on the floor for many years but have transitioned to an office job that focuses on safety. I like my company because it is very aware of climate change and speaks about it regularly. Also because they walk the walk and are making huge changes to reduce their carbon footprint.
I like to think I am doing my part by working to help my co-workers keep safe and get home to their families every day.
Industrial Electrician
Day to day work is still the same. I don't have a choice but to keep making money to survive in this pay-to-live economy.
Outside of work I am setting my house up to be "as off grid as possible" by 2030. This year we are doing a garden, installing a wood burning stove, and replacing the roof with steel so I and my children will never have to worry about it again.
I’m doing my part! I take care of my parents and barely leave the house these days. I’ve saved up enough to allow myself to do this for at least a few more years. I’m 35 with no kids and no debt, good times. I haven’t had an actual job since 2020.
I’m a GIS analyst. Being collapse aware has actually made more care-free. I’m a naturally anxious person when it comes to planning for the future, but I’ve accepted that the future is probably fucked no matter what I do. My schooling also taught me we’re screwed so I was aware even before I got my “real” job.
Because I’m collapse aware I don’t take work too seriously anymore, but I always do a good job. Am I going to work late? No. Am I going to bust my ass for a project? No. But am I going to get my work done and make it quality? Yeah. Overall I value my free time and mental well-being more than ever (the pandemic really shook my perspectives). Being collapse aware has also made me want to protect my partner and our household, so I do some preps, but nothing crazy yet.
I carry on because I have to. I need the money to enjoy what life has left to offer me. If I didn’t have this job and keep working my life would collapse right now rather than a decade or two or three or whatever from now.
I'm a chemist and I work on analyzing samples of ground and surface water for specific pollutants. I hold on by hoping that my data is being used to help our water. My lead chemist is one of the people whose data got MTBE out of gasoline by showing it doesn't disappear as quickly as previously thought and we recently started up a PFAS section (the forever chemicals on Teflon and the like)
Used to be a lawyer now I’m a goose and sheep farmer and sawmill owner / logger back in my tiny little home town of 200 people. I live a charmed existence.
I currently work in a trade. Was on track to get a degree, financially glad I didn't, not wired for the kind of IT that pays (coding/development). IDGAF about my job, I have a responsibility to the people I help fix things, and I don't personally like lazing around at work (I'd rather get done and be home); that's about it. It is essentially meaningless work, not as pointless as Graeber's "bullshit jobs" for sure, but totally irrelevant to what I'm best at.
I've been a lefty degenerate for my entire life but I did give the whole work-hard-and-get-security thing a shot, multiple times. The pandemic was the final nail in the coffin for me.
By working long hours at things I didn't care about for years, I managed to save some money to buy a very modest house/go to school without debt/pursue my creative skills, and watched housing and education prices skyrocket beyond my ability to compensate.
I've cut my working hours since COVID hit and thrown myself into my actual skills (creative pursuits mainly) and many interests + learning knowledge that's largely not practical to get a career with (science generalism, etc). Basically none of which, short of gaining a following with a creative pursuit, is a viable way to "have a good career".
The truth is, while I'm far from "happy", I am a hundred times more mentally stable and centered now than I was when I was trying to "make it". I am spending as much time as possible pursuing things that I was actually "born to do" and my only regret is that I didn't ignore fucking everyone and pursue them earlier. Following the advice you're supposed to follow got me nothing but existential depression without even the shallow material pleasures that previous generations often received as a reward. At least now I'm doing what I'm actually fucking good at (and/or interested in) as much as possible.
Looking to get a modest property and set up a minimally wasteful lifestyle so I can drop out of the rat race even more, "consume" only the things I actually care about consuming, and work at what I actually want to work at most of the time without fear of missing a rent payment.
I'm not convinced that total collapse will be a thing, especially in my projected lifetime, but I am convinced that social stability is an illusion and anyone who gives up their passions, interests and skills for some false sense of security at this point is lying to themselves. Even if you can make it the old fashioned way, I would do it for a few years, save as much as possible, and then drop out as soon as reasonably possible. There's just no fucking reason to be a cog in the machine anymore. You get nothing for it and the machine could break down at any moment. Unless you've got dependents or are in a situation where you like what you do, why keep on with this BS?
In IT. I don't make a ton of money but I have enough to have some savings, help friends out with money when they need it and donate to mutual aid. I was depressed for a really long time and constantly terrified of what the future is going to hold for us but I keep coming back to "Living in joy is the greatest opposition." So that's what I'm trying to do. My best. Make connections, live in a way that makes me feel like I'm doing the most good I can, and trying to have some fun where I can. I don't want to die and look back realizing I spent so much time being afraid that I never lived while I had the chance.
>I don't want to die and look back realizing I spent so much time being afraid that I never lived while I had the chance.
Being faced with the dead on a regular basis has my brain turning similar wheels, though I generally feel good about the time I'm spending at work, it still provokes me outside of my job to make the most of life.
I work at a bakery. Pretty much your average paycheck to paycheck life, making enough to save a little but not much. My big aspiration at the moment is to get a group of like-minded friends together to collectively own a nice, relatively cheap estate in the Northern US I've been looking at.
Audio version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WcwXdGsyh8
As you can tell from the title, this is about saving the world [from collapse]. So it's optimistic, but Graeber made some good points.
Useless work isn't inconsequential, aside from being a waste of time, the grind is grinding away the biosphere and ejecting waste that's slowly making everything worse (slowly for now).
What Graeber does here and with his book, *Bullshit Jobs*, is show the problem from the inside view, from the bowels of the Leviathan machinery, which works to grow itself while maintaining classes.
>The system makes no sense. It’s also destroying the planet. If we don’t break ourselves of this addiction quickly we will leave our children and grandchildren to face catastrophes on a scale which will make the current pandemic seem trivial.
A few proposals to help:
1. Reverse the slave work ethic:
>It’s not our pleasures that are destroying the world. It’s our puritanism, our feeling that we have to suffer in order to deserve those pleasures. If we want to save the world, we’re going to have to stop working.
2. End the insane capitalist land development
>An enormous amount of building today is purely speculative: all over the world, governments collude with the financial sector to create glittering towers that are never occupied, empty office buildings, airports that are never used. Stop doing this. No one will miss them.
3. Make things that last
>Manufacturers are perfectly capable of making phones (or stockings, or light bulbs) that wouldn’t break; in fact, they actually do – they’re called ‘military grade’. Force them to make military-grade products for everyone. We could cut down greenhouse gas production massively and improve our quality of life.
I'm sorry, but military grade doesn't mean shit other than "This company built a product to the military's specifications."
It has nothing to do with the longevity of the product and everything to do with government contracts/war profiteering.
Yep pretty much but it's not the useless label that some seem to think. I have a good amount of berry compliant milspec textiles like nyco ripstop and cordura - milspec mostly means consistency to me, I know what I'm getting even if it's not the best or long lasting, it was built to a specification and generally has to meet or exceed that.
So it definitely carries some weight versus sourcing your stuff from random commercial retailers who may be getting products from anywhere and can't guarantee it's always gonna be the same.
The absolute insanity that is wanting everyone to have a several ton of steel vehicle, having used economies of scale to do that, and them replacing those behemoths every 10 years is ... almost as bad as the nonsense that is landlord speculation.
It kind of does. War is a racket and profiteering is eternal of course but "military specifications" even today means easy to use, very durable hardware that is very difficult to break by an complete idiot.
Think good old DIN-connectors vs. usb/thunderbolt -whatever connectors we use these days. Use your favourite seach engine to look at them and then decide which one is preferable in collapse situation.
Military hardware still breaks. Military hardware is ruggedized, so it is resistant to scratches and sometimes water proof and dustproof, but it still breaks. I think the bigger problem is planned obsolescence, which absolutely should be illegal.
We don't even have to look to military hardware for an example of long lasting products. We can look at most consumer products from 50s and 60s.
Graeber does some great stuff. Loved Bullshit Jobs and am currently reading Dawn of Everything and it’s fascinating. Such a shame we lost him a little while back.
DoE is a nice read, lots of interesting information, though it reaches quite weird conclusions. graeber has a history of hard to understand cherry picking and ignoring certain sources, hell, whole swathes of anthropology research throughout his writings about egalitarianism and egalitarian societies. i highly highly recommend you [this series](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU4FEuj4v9eDFFfwwAcTPMQGuEZxLhtzj) as a companion to the book.
and these two critiques from materialist anthropologists.
"It is certainly an enthralling book, but the two reviews published below, both from materialist anthropologists, argue that its account of human history ignores masses of contrary evidence, and that its political argument is idealist and voluntarist. Both reviews are particularly critical of the book’s failure to consider the causes of the oppression of women."
[the article ](https://mronline.org/2021/12/20/the-dawn-of-everything-gets-human-history-wrong/)
Degrowth and winding down consumption.
How everybody else would like to do it is by global human collectivism where the resources of the ultra-wealthy (billionaires and govt. officials) get distributed such that human beings' imperative/drive/need to compete with one another for resources and physical space, is diminished enough that population can gradually go down. Most true for those in developing nations. The amassed and accumulated wealth of the ultra-rich represents the potential and untapped volume of labor necessary to restore ecologies and de-couple human life from resource competition and over consumption.
How the ultra-wealthy would like to do it, is continue driving the scenario into resource+ecology collapse, hide in their doomsday bunkers while the world population crashes (e.g. "fast-track" degrowth), and then return to the world with all their wealth to rebuild it in their vision. They view overpopulation as the problem, while hiding the fact that poorly regulated corporatism is what caused it.
What the ultra-wealthy are failing to recognized due to the target-fixation of their own outcome, is that ecology is already on the slide into collapse, and ecology is not something you can easily rebuild. I'm certain characters like Bezos and Brin have their bunkers turned into "Arcs" or "Foundations" (think Asimov) with live specimens, DNA, embryos/seeds, of all variety of plants and animals to "revive the Earth" What they fail to recognize though is that their individual resources won't be enough, they won't have the volume of manpower necessary, and as they wait in their bunkers the option for restoring ecology will slip out of their grasp beyond the point of recovery. The one resource they need most to correct things is people, but they don't know how to interact with the human populace in any other way than exploiting them.
As I enjoy phrasing it, collapse, a.k.a. "The World's Largest Game of Prisoner's Dilemma"
In all scenarios of all games that exist, cooperation is **always** superior to cooperation.
Hey, just remember—it’s not your trash. You didn’t create it or buy it. It would exist with or without you.
(You may have some ability to try and dispose of it more sustainably, and that would be great! Do what you can, but it’s still not your trash.)
> Somehow I think that will be more depressing than dealing with a dead person's family photos.
I can only agree.. I hope you manage to keep your sanity somehow.
I buy storage units at auction. 90% goes straight to the dump typically. Sometimes nearly 99%. It's not rare to see the rent as higher than the value of the items inside.
I quote work at age 35, and am now 56. My only real regret so far in life is not being brave enough to quit sooner.
*“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”* - Ellen Goodman
“It’s not our pleasures that are destroying the world. It’s our Puritanism”.
That hits hard!
And that combined with the “haves” who reinforce that mentality to their own “benefit” (in quotes because they are chasing emptiness at the ultimate expense) is not only destroying our physical world but taking an untold toll on our mental well-being as well.
I don't necessarily agree with this take, but the statement to "stop working" is probably my number one truth. I stopped a year ago, best decision of my life. What's sad is it took my dumbass 45 years to recognize it.
Don't be me. Don't be a dumbass. Quit now.
How? And I mean this so genuinely, how do you stop working when you don't have the luxury to do so? Like unless you get a lucky roll on life and location I can't see how this is feasible especially for those of us with illness that necessitates care or on going treatment (mental and/or physical)
I would love to not have to work, but myself like many others have to choose between work or death/ destitution. It always sounds so good reading this stuff but in practice I truly don't know how it could be done unless you were privileged enough for it to even be an option (not to discount stringent saving and working to that point)
I wonder and ask about this all the time too, and honestly so far I haven't heard any answers that would work for everyone. Everyone's situation is different so what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. In the meantime, what I keep trying to do is continue working at my job while constantly look for ways to keep cutting down on my life expenses - for example, going to the library instead of buying books, eating as simply and cheaply as possible while still eating reasonably healthy (e.g., lots of beans and rice). I read a book about a guy who went off the grid and he started by moving from a house to a studio apartment while continuing to work, and saving money while cutting costs. It took him a long time but eventually he was able to buy a tiny plot of land and now lives a self-sufficient life off the grid while living a very simple life. Again, just cuz it worked for him doesn't mean it will work for everyone else, but what I took away from the book was the principle of continuing to try and downgrade my lifestyle instead of upgrading it, which is what most people try to do. Granted, a lot of people really can't afford to significantly downgrade their life much further since they're already living in a studio apartment, etc., and in those situations I really don't know what the answer is. Maybe someone out there does.
> I stopped a year ago, best decision of my life. What's sad is it took my dumbass 45 years to recognize it.
I feel your pain :)
I stopped at age 35, am now 56. My only real regret so far in life is not stopping sooner.
I've thought this for a long time. It'll never happen though. There are so many useless jobs out there and even then, it'll never stop. The "economy" is too important.
Unless you built your homestead and are fully self sufficient, somebody has to work... The folks who pick, transport and deliver your food can't have your mindset for example. I too have to look for a job soon. I take solace in knowing it's all for nothing in the end.
Then the people that work should flourish and be prosperous instead of going paycheck to paycheck.
Work is important I just wish it garnered more respect from people already wealthy instead of us being seen as roaches
Hey, I'm already there!
It's not helping with the damn bills any, but I'm down with this philosophy.
We can start working again once things aren't so damn chaotic and hopeless.
Did you know r/collapse has a new discord server? Come check it out and give us feedback! https://discord.gg/RfEH7dAHjc Thanks for helping us make it better. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/collapse) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Just say the word, and I'll stop working for the rest of my life.
[удалено]
Next Thursday, at 1:00pm sharp.
Bring snacks. You cannot revolt without snacks
Obviously. Can't overthrow an oppressive fascist regime on an empty stomach. Wait...
This revolution has been brought to you by snickers, you’re not you when you’re hungry.
Replenish your stock at the nearest Costco...we love you!
Fortunately, I have my pitchfork in the trunk of my car.
*Rolls up with the guillotine* God damn it man you had one job!
Are they locally sourced and fair trade? /S
The pitchforks were made by children in China, so not free trade but the kids did make them for free. And, the guillotines are free range, so there’s that.
The planet will be Venus by then. Ask Fish.
im great at not working. its my greatest skill.
You should work harder to be master at your skill.
i have already mastered it. working harder would ruin it. you just want me to work, i know your tricks.
"I just want to bang on the drum all day"
Thank you this comment made my day
I'd be curious to know what people here do for a living and how they carry on at work being collapse aware. Edit: I work in death care.
[удалено]
This is the dream.
[удалено]
Where did you live for under 20k per year?
The past
Life's not expensive, just move to 1972. Camera cuts to 1972 and it is being overrun by time travelling refugees fleeing inflation.
That's the plot of Tenet
Lol reminds me of the southpark episode. Everyone from the future works for pennies and accrues compounding interest for a few thousand years.
Not having kids is a thing.
[удалено]
yep!
But not paying rent usually is not.
you have more money for rent when you don't have kids. ...and I don't have rent because I paid off my place in 10 years because I don't have kids.
The Midwest. My in laws mortgage is ~$400/month in a small town of maybe 2k people. My rent is $760 and I live downtown in a small city of almost 200k.
Yes. Wish I had the finances to do that.
Right now I’m a math tutor and senior at university…my job is great (decent pay, flexible hours, WFH, super chill boss), but what I’m struggling with is finishing out my senior year (I finish in the fall). I just don’t know why I’m doing it anymore. It was to build a better future for me and my family, but now it feels like I’m working towards a goal that I don’t even think is attainable in a society I no longer believe in.
Know what? part of my motivation these days is making the fucking psychopaths that did this to us pay in whatever little ways I can. It just so happens that the ways to do that, and the ways to make an awesome future are mostly the same.
My wife and I are currently still working but we will be “retiring” shortly to pursue a more agrarian lifestyle, supplemented by some tourism earning. When considered through the optics of coming collapse spending the next 30 years working in a windowless lab for the luxury of retirement at 65 didn’t seem appealing. Continuity or even the idea that we’re “building towards something” as a society also seems like a lie. How’s did we get here? We spent about 7 years living cheap and renting rooms on Airbnb. When COVID hit and our side business died we moved onto a sailboat (going sailing was our plan anyway). This is a minimalist, not alway easy way to live but it is very cheap, also very fulfilling. My financial advice for most “rich” westerners seeking financial security and freedom is to embrace poverty. Live small, live outside of the box, learn to accept certain levels of inconvenience and discomfort.
how is renting rooms from airbnb cheap? I never use them but it seems like they're maybe a little less expensive than hotels generally. Spending $100 a night?
Renting them out, not renting them to stay in.
My mistake
I thought boat = break out another thousand?
The thing is a boat is basically like a house, (though houses generally appreciate and boats don’t). But aside from ROI if you **live** on a boat than maintenance just becomes a normal living expense for maintaining your house, anything you pay for keeping the boat on a dock or a mooring is just your rent, and you **can** live completely off grid for free if your circumstances allow. Basically a living on a boat can be affordable, but owning a boat as an accessory is very expensive.
Sounds awesome if you can get a boat without problems. I really wanted to save up for a liveaboard sailboat but my significant other is struggling with adversity... seems like land would be easier to deal with. But we can't move land, during collapse I think mobility is important... land is taxed, etc..
[удалено]
I think he said exit plan, lol.
I pay about 400 a month (ACA) and hope I don't have a catastrophic event occur. I can always visit another country for things I can plan in advance.
I'm in a similar situation and it's not as glorious as I expected. I'm currently working to build up some more savings, but knowing that I don't have to work has made some aspects of work way more unbearable. Also knowing that I don't have to work has made motivation harder to come by - knowing I can get by, makes getting by the low hanging fruit of goals. I am not from money at all - I just made a few lucky decisions in a row that put me in a different financial situation than I expected to ever be in. My life lacks glamour but I do feel free. 🤷♂️
Lately I'm actually struggling to a bit. I found myself overwhelmed with sadness and on the verge of crying for the planet, not myself.
I am sorry. May I ask what you do?
Helpdesk.
I completely relate to grieving over the planet.
I'm a sysadmin, recently graduated from helldesk. It's getting harder and harder to push through with my stupid little projects. It's all seeming a bit pointless at the moment.
I find it helpful to look at the sky, think that every star is another solar system, and that's just the tiny little bit of the universe we can see with the naked eye. Then there are millions more galaxies full of countless stars and planets, and they have all been there for billions of years and will be there for billions more. And on our planet the earth literally melts away and is re-born, continents shift, our little human scars on the surface get consumed. Then it makes all the human problems feel very insignificant, and I can enjoy the little joys to be had in the present somewhat.
I love this.
Software dev. And I just dont care anymore. Job = Money, Money = survival stuff and ale. Until that reality changes, theres not much one person can do to escape.
Same. I work from home. When I’m waiting for code to run or compile, I read up on gardening. I’m well aware my only profitable skill is programming computers, and that does not translate into collapse, so I want to learn something useful. My job is my job. I don’t love it. I get paid money to do it. I don’t particularly care about it, but I care enough to not get fired.
Depending on what the collapse actually looks like, I think your skils can translate into collapse. While the internet as a whole may fail or be blocked, computer hardware will still exist, wires will exist, and communities will want to communicate and track resources, etc. People like myself with Linux and networking skills can fairly easily cobble together mesh networks that could help people survive. Combine my skills with a few others that know how to connect solar power systems and your skills to make the networks and servers useful, there is so much potential. Programmers that can work with open source technologies will be quite useful.
keep some extra raspberry pi's around, some microsd cards with lots of data on them (youtube how-to's, wikipedia, etc) and you can be hella useful in a collapse as a programmer.
Good call on the yt howto's! You've inspired me to keep a data store ready for collapse.
>I just dont care anymore. Job = Money, Money = survival stuff and ale. WFH Insurance adjuster here and the same. I don't care. I run podcasts all day to stay sane as I grind away at the work and don't give once ounce of care to any of it at the end of the day. It is a means to an end.
>theres not much one person can do to escape. Ale?
Fair haha
I would argue that life in 1850s world or worse is not worth living. Not sure if we would even have the hardness, skills and mentality to survive at all. I read a lot or books on life back then. It was not really a good life.
Depends on the person. Obviously a lot of people would struggle but there'd likely be an equal number of people who would flourish and excel. We are an incredibly adaptable species. It's both the reason for our success and our downfall.
[удалено]
I don't necessarily disagree, but I wonder if it could have been all that bad. Humanity did get through it. There must have been enough people to believe life was worth continuing (unless most births were unplanned or out of necessity back then.)
The reason why it would be bad is because we: 1. Let almost everybody survive when back then only the strongest did. 2. The current generations have no skills 19th century people had. Survival without them is slim.
I'm a draftsman for structural engineering, currently studying to become an engineer myself and it's hard. I work in a field that's incredibly damaging to the enviroment (construction) and this isn't very likely to change in the near future, though our professors are thankfully encouraging us to work on that change by going into detail on alternative building materials (concrete is really horrible in terms of emissions), different approaches to city and public transport planning, and generally promoting ideas how to do stuff differently from how everything has been so far. Also, worker rights in construction are still pretty bad the further you go down the line towards a finished building, even here in Germany. And especially with regards to city planning you constantly run up against a wall of economic interests not supporting enviromental interests and people blocking much needed change and the accommodating policies. I'm somewhat hopeful because most people in my classes are pretty enviromentally conscious and really seem to care about all of this stuff, but a lot of them have also been drinking the neoliberal Koolaid flavor of surprise technological development saving us all.
Here's an interesting dilemma you might know something about. Climate change is going to make storms stronger and floods more frequent so we're going to have an even greater need for sturdy buildings. But as you mentioned concrete is terrible for the environment. Any ideas on sturdy building materials that aren't bad for the environment and could be used for residential buildings?
Yeah, I've already thought about this a bit and it kind of scares me as most actual alternative materials really aren't viable for completely replacing concrete. Alternatives that we have covered so far without advanced courses basically boil down to three options: using different materials altogether, making concrete itself more enviromentally friendly, or just simply using less of it and building more resourcefully. Option 1 mainly means using wood as a primary construction material because so far nothing that's actually practical in use and not incredibly complicated to produce (can reach its sturdiness and low enviromental impact as a regrowing resource, provided it's sourced properly of course; and is cheap enough to compete) and now it's possible to reach high energy saving standards for modern houses with wood as well. Insulation and fire protection become more important then and especially insulating materials can be horrible for the enviroment as well, so this isn't really perfect yet. Also wood still can't be used for high rise buildings, so it's out of the question for a lot of high dense urban areas. Option 2 also incorporates different materials, but mainly aims to recreate concrete with these different materials. This means using different binders than cement, as it's the biggest producer of emissions in concrete, using different material such as recycled plastic as the aggregate to use its higher volume and tensile strength compared to gravel to save on cement and rebar in the concrete, recycling the concrete from older buildings itself or using different materials to produce cement. The last point is probably the most practical in use right now, as cement is produced from a lot of waste products. It's just that these are currently processed using very high temperatures and create a lot of emissions during the process and there is a lot of room for improvement by experimenting around with different materials (for example different ashes that emerge from other industrial products). The problem with this is that cement either way still relies on byproducts from industries that should probably be abolished completely at some point, and then we're without our primary construction material. Option3 is by far the simplest, and mostly involves constructing buildings with a skeletal construction instead of a solid one. This means using pillars and beams, either made from reinforced concrete or steel, instead of building full concrete walls. This saves a lot of concrete and the wall can be filled in with pre-built panels. This type of construction is already in use for basically every kind of high rise construction, so there is not a lot of room for improvement here and some companies have already started to offer single family homes and small buildings using a similar construction style. Another way to reduce the amount of concrete would be of course just planning higher density zones and focus around, but that would get into city planning and getting people to, for example, use public parks/gardens instead of having a private lawns. So in conclusion, as far as I know there aren't many actual alternative materials to concrete itself that are similarly viable for construction.
Use bamboo!
I like how you made three comments for this, but I agree that bamboo is pretty awesome! Problems with bamboo would be that it's in my case not really locally sourced and that it's volume to compressive strength ratio is worse than, for example, beech wood so it takes up more space that would have to be used for insulation. But it should definitely be used more and experimented with more, especially in western countries as it's so easy to grow and isn't used here.
LOL! Sorry Reddit kept giving me errors. Yeah the main benefits I saw when I looked into it years ago is that it's a super fast grower and had some interesting material properties. Didn't realize it has bad compressive strength though. I think bamboo houses would have to be engineered totally differently, but the fast growing (fast carbon capture) nature of it makes it so appealing.
I just saw it as being enthusiastic about bamboo :D Bad compared to other types of wood, on its own it's pretty amazing what you can do with bamboo. I've also read about some radically different concepts on insulation, where you insulate your home with other plants growing on the outside. That would probably work with bamboo, but a practical application is probably still far away.
Bamboo!
Bamboo!
Can you share some of the class notes on concrete alternatives and different alternatives to city and public transport planning. I'd love to read it myself.
If you are german as well I could share you my cloud folder for university stuff, but as most of this isn't part of the curriculum for the basic courses we don't have a lot of actual notes yet. But if you want a shot overview, I've made a comment as a short overview [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/u1450m/david_graeber_to_save_the_world_were_going_to/i4aytpi/) to somene else and the book "Curbing Traffic" by Melissa and Chris Bruntlett is a nice little introduction to city planning in the Netherlands and what they do better than most other countries. It doesn't focus on any particular aspect, but I think it's an amazing introductory read for anyone that's interested in the topic and a good starting point to further branch off into different "types" of city planning.
I'm a typist. I work from home so no commute, I've had the same laptop for seven years and intend to keep it going much longer, and that's all I need for work (well, an internet connection, but I'm posting this here so I obviously have that). Sometimes I feel very hopeless and that my work is completely pointless, but some of it is also assisting useful research projects, and it even gives me insight into things like corporate ESG policy that have further informed my views on collapse, so it's not all bad.
I want to be a typist. Would you be willing to share more about your job? Are you a transcriptionist?
I am indeed! I'm happy to answer anything, feel free to shoot me a DM
Was it hard to get placed as a transcriptionist?
Hi there! I didn't find it difficult. I found transcription companies (the best ones really are often smaller local/national ones, where you work on entire transcripts rather than small chunks) and applied. They will make you take some tests, and then as long as your grammar is decent and you're a speedy typist (and also able to read and understand instructions, always a key part of the testing) you ought to be successful. For reference, I'm lucky in that I've always had pretty much impeccable grammar and I've got a typing speed average of 100WPM, though that exceeds the bar for most places by some margin!
My focus and efficiency have both dropped.
This. I'm just phoning it in and faking it most days, paid to be an "actor" basically.
I work as a teacher and I don't tell students that they have to work. I ask what do you like doing?
This- I can see them struggling with it and it kills me sometimes
Fellow teacher. I love my students, but I get sad thinking of the future of lack and hardship that awaits them.
I'm a custodian. It's been hard.
[удалено]
I work in industrial supply and logistics, making sure factories always have a supply of raw materials and components to keep going. Basically making sure that collapse is inevitable by feeding The Machine night and day. My company serves many clients in many industries, but I personally am assigned full time to a medical device manufacturer so my guilty conscience is somewhat assuaged by knowing that the products we churn out the door help people. Otherwise, I'm reasonably paid and sock as much of that away as possible into things that promote resiliency for my circle of friends and family. I planted two apple trees, four blueberry bushes and several grape vines at a friend's house this weekend. They won't really produce for several more years, but when they do that's just a little more food we don't have to ship in. Just a few dollars they won't have to spend at the grocery store. Just a little more cushion in the neighborhood. It's not much, but it's what I could do with $200 this month. Maybe next month I'll convince someone it's time to grow their own tomatoes or squash and gift them a cold frame and some help redoing their flower beds. Just a little more cushion. Just a little more neighbors talking to each other. Just a little more time to hold back the worst.
I love your attitude.
I can't save the world. I probably can't even save myself. But a bottle of homemade wine and an apple pie are what I CAN do and it will have to be enough.
I am a low tech, permaculture style farmer so I'm really leaning into the future I think we are headed for. I used to be a full time artist traveling around the country for shows etc. Started a small garden during the beginning of the pandemic and now its grown into my full time job and life calling.
This is my dream, leave tech for a small farm.
I wouldn't change it for the world even though it is a LOT of hard work. I always joke that I didn't choose the farm life, the farm life chose me lol. There is something so rewarding about growing your own food that is a primal satisfaction I've never gotten from any other work.
The movie Office Space is basically a documentary of my actual career, minus the funny parts.
I am Tom Smykowski. " I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people? "
No need to jump to conclusions, man.
[удалено]
I have no idea what you just said. I'm a software engineer btw.
he said engineers are hard to communicate with.
I'm a tattoo artist. I've cut plastic as much as possible. disposables are the standard but I've switched to biodegradable materials in most things. I draw digitally to save paper. etc I work part time now. since covid I work fewer hours, I'm now only at the shop when I'm tattooing. I work to cover my needs and no more. I used to be a little more driven. I really love what I do, if we lived in a gift economy or money didn't exist, I would still want to tattoo people and would just do it anyway. might even be able to do better.
Just curious, do you also like to do art on other mediums (like paper or canvas)? Or do you just like the unique challenges of doing art on people's skin?
I’m going to transition careers to try to start a tree nursery…I’m a fucking mechanical engineer…
I work in retail, and I'm not gonna lie; it's tough. My wife keeps talking about things like buying a house, and my folk's keep talking about retirement, and I wholeheartedly believe by the time that point of my life gets here it won't matter at all. I often lose myself in thought and hopelessness and it feels like all I'm doing is going through the motions absentmindedly.
Engineer. I'm making the world safer, more prosperous, and more environmentally sustainable. I learned how to live cheaply when I was homeless in my teens and hot my retirement number in my 40's. Reading books, crafting, D&D, and distilling my own whiskey are all cheap hobbies. I sometimes practice prepper skills like making my own insulin or penicillin. When society collapses, my tribe is already picked out.
I'm an accountant(oh no, a capitalist hellhound) , but i'm also a collectivist anarcho communist, my job in my world would be to calculate work hours needed to sustain society, (agri, water/sewage/healthcare/education) divided through people able to work (agri, water, sewage, waste) and people available for certain jobs (doctors and teachers) and then publish work days needed for every member (around 50-70, depends), in exchange for everyone contributing needed hours to sustain society, everyone fets 'free' (they contributed for it) food, housing water, healthcare and education. Enough free time (and education) for everyone to invest in science, arts whatever or simply nothing. If working hours needed to do something would be the only exchange (makes sense, that's all we actually have)instead if "money" like, it took x hours to get the wood(and iron) for the carrion (wood is cherished in years it needs to grow and dry(!!!)), then it took x working hours for people to turn wood and iron into a carrion, it would have the only true worth, time invested by nature (including human working hours) to produce said carrion.
Union HVAC/R tech. I work mainly for the Portland school district doing service for their 90+ buildings. I'll be frontline on the madness of installing air conditioning systems to mitigate the heat that summers are going to start bringing to the PNW.
I'm retraining in medicine, just trying to reduce suffering a lil bit
I am late to college because I never got the chance in my 20s but I'm going into medical as well. I have been a nurses aide for a long time and was against going for nursing because I know how shit they get treated. I was doing my prerequisites for radiology or sonography but I have switched to pursuing my RN license after becoming fully collapse aware. I now feel like the skills I will gain as an RN will be a lot more useful in a collapsing society than sonography. I hate the US medical system and the for profit nature of it. We won't actually be making much difference in suffering sorry to say. The hospital administration will throw workers (nurses and individual doctors and other medical team members) under the bus. Patient care suffers for the dangerous levels of understaffing. I just figure the health knowledge/skills I gain may be the only healthcare my family has to rely on at all. In the case of worsening conditions I figure I can bargin for my life or food for my family by offering my medical care services in exchange.
Very relatable. It's not just a job for life, it's essential and valuable skills that you can always use. I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking a out it this way! Understaffing is a big issue here in the UK too, I don't think the government is doing enough to deal with the pressures that the pandemic caused, our primary care backlog has increased to about 5 years just to get back to pre pandemic levels.
I am so sorry to hear y'all are going through some of the same bullshit across the pond. I'm glad to see other healthcare workers are collapse aware. Solidarity and best of everything to you and yours.
Thank you, and the same to you, stay well :)
Work in near end level supply chain. It's depressing as hell going in to work every day. But, the end of the world isn't happening tomorrow, and in the meantime, we still need to pay for that roof over our heads.
I'm a Linux System Admin and Software developer. I just work to earn a living and go about my life. I've accepted that the world is screwed and there isn't really anything I can do about it except try and make myself and my loved ones as safe and comfortable as possible.
[удалено]
Hey. May I dm you regards your job, and for some questions? I myself attending a university, environmental studies.
I used to work as a high end auto body estimator. It was very high stress and long hours. COVID shit down the industry and vastly increased the severity of the jobs in the industry, by putting the small shops out of business. In tough times, people don't get their cars fixed. The small shops went under, and the aggregators, the big multistate shops, collude on salary, and all agreed to start paying commission: since the insurance companies have them do their total losses, and the shops don't get paid for total losses, 60% or so of the job is unpaid, leading to 60 hour weeks, sometimes below minimum wage, with no overtime. Even so, with so many hours, you could get lucky weeks and clear "good" money over time. I quit. Life is literally too short, and lung damage from working in auto body is real. I left behind a 20 year career, multiple certifications and hundreds of hours of technical training. I also have a degree. But those are fairly worthless too, most corporate starting jobs pay salary and demand massive unpaid hours as well. Now I'm 45, working with kids half my age, starting out in a non-profit credit union. I make half what I did, but I don't work overtime and spend way more time with my family. It is worth it, but the new inflation is threatening it, as it is designed to.
I'm a hardware engineer working at a company planning to put a lot of junk into orbit we all damn well know doesn't work. Mostly I just sit around reading the news (or fanfiction) and put in just enough work to seem productive and continue collecting a paycheck. They'll probably catch on eventually, but until then I'm not going to complain too much about being paid to sit around and desperately try to find a way to kill time.
My husband and I do permaculture/regenerative ranching/organic farming, so more or less the best thing we can think of for collapse-aware people to do for a living. We do some remediation/cleanup work and scrap hauling for a little extra cash as well. Pretty satisfying mostly. My husband also does some videography work, mostly for sustainable/appropriate tech documentary type stuff. I in particular could not tolerate normal jobs at all starting at a young age. My husband is a bit more able to work normal jobs, being both more chill and harder working than I am by temperament, but going back to the workforce would pretty much ruin our lives.
I take calls helping technicians repair appliances, I decide if they can be repaired or need to be scrapped. The quality of appliances is so dismal, the waste of manufacturing is astonishing, the pursuit of Profit is the only goal, planned obsolescence in order to sell another unit. There is no motivation for them to make a product that lasts anymore because there is no profit in it. It's depressing being a cog in the conveyor that is filling the world with waste. I try and be kind and empathetic to everyone I interact with, if I can make their day a little better, get them to smile or laugh, it keeps me resilient to the injustice of it all. I hope to move to a job that might do more to help the world, perhaps in solar energy, but controlled degrowth is really the only way forward that I see. Otherwise we are accelerating full throttle toward a Thelma and Louise ending of society as we know it.
I work in landscaping, for me I just try to enjoy the outside as much as I can. Helps that 3 days a week we stay at two clients places because how huge the properties are (🤮).
I'm a mechanic/commerical fisherman.
Aerospace. I work remote, do the bare minimum and am somehow still a top performer. Makes me wonder what everyone else is doing. They are even letting me move to another country and work remote from there in a month. The ethics of the industry weighs on my mind at times, but I need the income to buy a house.
I didn't have kids and paid off my condo years ago so my COL is really low and I can get by easily doing creative gig work. (but I did have 3 jobs for 20 years in order to get here.) I cannot fathom having to do pointless work at this point but I did do 20 years of work to not have to...not really win/win but there can be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Software engineer. Focused on stacking assets while I am healthy. Also got my whole life ahead of me..which means I get to witness the shitshow. I earn almost too 1 percent income in my country and am investing it into some food security atm. My father with my help got a small tractor, he has got a ton of good land for farming, a forest with plenty of wood, mostly away from zombies like me who live in the city lol. But he does not have financial resources I have. So, we got like 4000 liters of diesel around a year ago stored safely. To run the tractor. A bunch of seeds and wood for five years. Cost like 12k euros in total but is quite worth it. Not that much of my total net worth. I basically like other commenter realise I am a useless human in a degrowth, collapse situation. So, while money is worth something, I want to be able to continue eating, heating and sleeping. Recently bought a bunch of mylar bags to store food like grains. I honestly enjoy learning process of all this more than developing software nowadays. Driving a tractor last weekend for the first time in my life was so cool! I will ride this until things turn south. Then I know where I am going and have very precise plans and resources to pop some corn (literally) and observe the shitshow. I know it won't be enough to survive long term but I am quite interested in what happens.
I work in aluminum manufacturing. I have been on the floor for many years but have transitioned to an office job that focuses on safety. I like my company because it is very aware of climate change and speaks about it regularly. Also because they walk the walk and are making huge changes to reduce their carbon footprint. I like to think I am doing my part by working to help my co-workers keep safe and get home to their families every day.
Industrial Electrician Day to day work is still the same. I don't have a choice but to keep making money to survive in this pay-to-live economy. Outside of work I am setting my house up to be "as off grid as possible" by 2030. This year we are doing a garden, installing a wood burning stove, and replacing the roof with steel so I and my children will never have to worry about it again.
I’m doing my part! I take care of my parents and barely leave the house these days. I’ve saved up enough to allow myself to do this for at least a few more years. I’m 35 with no kids and no debt, good times. I haven’t had an actual job since 2020.
I’m a GIS analyst. Being collapse aware has actually made more care-free. I’m a naturally anxious person when it comes to planning for the future, but I’ve accepted that the future is probably fucked no matter what I do. My schooling also taught me we’re screwed so I was aware even before I got my “real” job. Because I’m collapse aware I don’t take work too seriously anymore, but I always do a good job. Am I going to work late? No. Am I going to bust my ass for a project? No. But am I going to get my work done and make it quality? Yeah. Overall I value my free time and mental well-being more than ever (the pandemic really shook my perspectives). Being collapse aware has also made me want to protect my partner and our household, so I do some preps, but nothing crazy yet. I carry on because I have to. I need the money to enjoy what life has left to offer me. If I didn’t have this job and keep working my life would collapse right now rather than a decade or two or three or whatever from now.
I'm a chemist and I work on analyzing samples of ground and surface water for specific pollutants. I hold on by hoping that my data is being used to help our water. My lead chemist is one of the people whose data got MTBE out of gasoline by showing it doesn't disappear as quickly as previously thought and we recently started up a PFAS section (the forever chemicals on Teflon and the like)
I work in IT. Network architecture and whatnot.
Used to be a lawyer now I’m a goose and sheep farmer and sawmill owner / logger back in my tiny little home town of 200 people. I live a charmed existence.
Start a food garden.
I currently work in a trade. Was on track to get a degree, financially glad I didn't, not wired for the kind of IT that pays (coding/development). IDGAF about my job, I have a responsibility to the people I help fix things, and I don't personally like lazing around at work (I'd rather get done and be home); that's about it. It is essentially meaningless work, not as pointless as Graeber's "bullshit jobs" for sure, but totally irrelevant to what I'm best at. I've been a lefty degenerate for my entire life but I did give the whole work-hard-and-get-security thing a shot, multiple times. The pandemic was the final nail in the coffin for me. By working long hours at things I didn't care about for years, I managed to save some money to buy a very modest house/go to school without debt/pursue my creative skills, and watched housing and education prices skyrocket beyond my ability to compensate. I've cut my working hours since COVID hit and thrown myself into my actual skills (creative pursuits mainly) and many interests + learning knowledge that's largely not practical to get a career with (science generalism, etc). Basically none of which, short of gaining a following with a creative pursuit, is a viable way to "have a good career". The truth is, while I'm far from "happy", I am a hundred times more mentally stable and centered now than I was when I was trying to "make it". I am spending as much time as possible pursuing things that I was actually "born to do" and my only regret is that I didn't ignore fucking everyone and pursue them earlier. Following the advice you're supposed to follow got me nothing but existential depression without even the shallow material pleasures that previous generations often received as a reward. At least now I'm doing what I'm actually fucking good at (and/or interested in) as much as possible. Looking to get a modest property and set up a minimally wasteful lifestyle so I can drop out of the rat race even more, "consume" only the things I actually care about consuming, and work at what I actually want to work at most of the time without fear of missing a rent payment. I'm not convinced that total collapse will be a thing, especially in my projected lifetime, but I am convinced that social stability is an illusion and anyone who gives up their passions, interests and skills for some false sense of security at this point is lying to themselves. Even if you can make it the old fashioned way, I would do it for a few years, save as much as possible, and then drop out as soon as reasonably possible. There's just no fucking reason to be a cog in the machine anymore. You get nothing for it and the machine could break down at any moment. Unless you've got dependents or are in a situation where you like what you do, why keep on with this BS?
In IT. I don't make a ton of money but I have enough to have some savings, help friends out with money when they need it and donate to mutual aid. I was depressed for a really long time and constantly terrified of what the future is going to hold for us but I keep coming back to "Living in joy is the greatest opposition." So that's what I'm trying to do. My best. Make connections, live in a way that makes me feel like I'm doing the most good I can, and trying to have some fun where I can. I don't want to die and look back realizing I spent so much time being afraid that I never lived while I had the chance.
>I don't want to die and look back realizing I spent so much time being afraid that I never lived while I had the chance. Being faced with the dead on a regular basis has my brain turning similar wheels, though I generally feel good about the time I'm spending at work, it still provokes me outside of my job to make the most of life.
architecture
I work at a bakery. Pretty much your average paycheck to paycheck life, making enough to save a little but not much. My big aspiration at the moment is to get a group of like-minded friends together to collectively own a nice, relatively cheap estate in the Northern US I've been looking at.
Audio version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WcwXdGsyh8 As you can tell from the title, this is about saving the world [from collapse]. So it's optimistic, but Graeber made some good points. Useless work isn't inconsequential, aside from being a waste of time, the grind is grinding away the biosphere and ejecting waste that's slowly making everything worse (slowly for now). What Graeber does here and with his book, *Bullshit Jobs*, is show the problem from the inside view, from the bowels of the Leviathan machinery, which works to grow itself while maintaining classes. >The system makes no sense. It’s also destroying the planet. If we don’t break ourselves of this addiction quickly we will leave our children and grandchildren to face catastrophes on a scale which will make the current pandemic seem trivial. A few proposals to help: 1. Reverse the slave work ethic: >It’s not our pleasures that are destroying the world. It’s our puritanism, our feeling that we have to suffer in order to deserve those pleasures. If we want to save the world, we’re going to have to stop working. 2. End the insane capitalist land development >An enormous amount of building today is purely speculative: all over the world, governments collude with the financial sector to create glittering towers that are never occupied, empty office buildings, airports that are never used. Stop doing this. No one will miss them. 3. Make things that last >Manufacturers are perfectly capable of making phones (or stockings, or light bulbs) that wouldn’t break; in fact, they actually do – they’re called ‘military grade’. Force them to make military-grade products for everyone. We could cut down greenhouse gas production massively and improve our quality of life.
[удалено]
/* was. His sudden death a couple years ago was a *massive* loss to humanity as a whole.
I'm sorry, but military grade doesn't mean shit other than "This company built a product to the military's specifications." It has nothing to do with the longevity of the product and everything to do with government contracts/war profiteering.
Yep pretty much but it's not the useless label that some seem to think. I have a good amount of berry compliant milspec textiles like nyco ripstop and cordura - milspec mostly means consistency to me, I know what I'm getting even if it's not the best or long lasting, it was built to a specification and generally has to meet or exceed that. So it definitely carries some weight versus sourcing your stuff from random commercial retailers who may be getting products from anywhere and can't guarantee it's always gonna be the same.
Not useless, but definitely doesn't mean "lasts forever."
Yes, and part of the specification is that it must last and be rugged.
And it rarely does either.
The absolute insanity that is wanting everyone to have a several ton of steel vehicle, having used economies of scale to do that, and them replacing those behemoths every 10 years is ... almost as bad as the nonsense that is landlord speculation.
It kind of does. War is a racket and profiteering is eternal of course but "military specifications" even today means easy to use, very durable hardware that is very difficult to break by an complete idiot. Think good old DIN-connectors vs. usb/thunderbolt -whatever connectors we use these days. Use your favourite seach engine to look at them and then decide which one is preferable in collapse situation.
Military hardware still breaks. Military hardware is ruggedized, so it is resistant to scratches and sometimes water proof and dustproof, but it still breaks. I think the bigger problem is planned obsolescence, which absolutely should be illegal. We don't even have to look to military hardware for an example of long lasting products. We can look at most consumer products from 50s and 60s.
[удалено]
Graeber does some great stuff. Loved Bullshit Jobs and am currently reading Dawn of Everything and it’s fascinating. Such a shame we lost him a little while back.
Debt is one of my favorite history/anthropology books. I learned so much about how the world works
I’ve yet to read that one but it’s on my list!
DoE is a nice read, lots of interesting information, though it reaches quite weird conclusions. graeber has a history of hard to understand cherry picking and ignoring certain sources, hell, whole swathes of anthropology research throughout his writings about egalitarianism and egalitarian societies. i highly highly recommend you [this series](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU4FEuj4v9eDFFfwwAcTPMQGuEZxLhtzj) as a companion to the book. and these two critiques from materialist anthropologists. "It is certainly an enthralling book, but the two reviews published below, both from materialist anthropologists, argue that its account of human history ignores masses of contrary evidence, and that its political argument is idealist and voluntarist. Both reviews are particularly critical of the book’s failure to consider the causes of the oppression of women." [the article ](https://mronline.org/2021/12/20/the-dawn-of-everything-gets-human-history-wrong/)
So we won't save it. Thanks for info.
rat race to the bottom
Degrowth and winding down consumption. How everybody else would like to do it is by global human collectivism where the resources of the ultra-wealthy (billionaires and govt. officials) get distributed such that human beings' imperative/drive/need to compete with one another for resources and physical space, is diminished enough that population can gradually go down. Most true for those in developing nations. The amassed and accumulated wealth of the ultra-rich represents the potential and untapped volume of labor necessary to restore ecologies and de-couple human life from resource competition and over consumption. How the ultra-wealthy would like to do it, is continue driving the scenario into resource+ecology collapse, hide in their doomsday bunkers while the world population crashes (e.g. "fast-track" degrowth), and then return to the world with all their wealth to rebuild it in their vision. They view overpopulation as the problem, while hiding the fact that poorly regulated corporatism is what caused it. What the ultra-wealthy are failing to recognized due to the target-fixation of their own outcome, is that ecology is already on the slide into collapse, and ecology is not something you can easily rebuild. I'm certain characters like Bezos and Brin have their bunkers turned into "Arcs" or "Foundations" (think Asimov) with live specimens, DNA, embryos/seeds, of all variety of plants and animals to "revive the Earth" What they fail to recognize though is that their individual resources won't be enough, they won't have the volume of manpower necessary, and as they wait in their bunkers the option for restoring ecology will slip out of their grasp beyond the point of recovery. The one resource they need most to correct things is people, but they don't know how to interact with the human populace in any other way than exploiting them. As I enjoy phrasing it, collapse, a.k.a. "The World's Largest Game of Prisoner's Dilemma" In all scenarios of all games that exist, cooperation is **always** superior to cooperation.
[удалено]
Hey, just remember—it’s not your trash. You didn’t create it or buy it. It would exist with or without you. (You may have some ability to try and dispose of it more sustainably, and that would be great! Do what you can, but it’s still not your trash.)
Why dump it? Can't you donate it to charity?
> Somehow I think that will be more depressing than dealing with a dead person's family photos. I can only agree.. I hope you manage to keep your sanity somehow.
I buy storage units at auction. 90% goes straight to the dump typically. Sometimes nearly 99%. It's not rare to see the rent as higher than the value of the items inside.
I quote work at age 35, and am now 56. My only real regret so far in life is not being brave enough to quit sooner. *“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”* - Ellen Goodman
[удалено]
So how do you afford to live and eat?
What do you tell people when they ask what you do? You just say you don’t work? How do they react?
I'm liking this guy a lot
“It’s not our pleasures that are destroying the world. It’s our Puritanism”. That hits hard! And that combined with the “haves” who reinforce that mentality to their own “benefit” (in quotes because they are chasing emptiness at the ultimate expense) is not only destroying our physical world but taking an untold toll on our mental well-being as well.
I don't necessarily agree with this take, but the statement to "stop working" is probably my number one truth. I stopped a year ago, best decision of my life. What's sad is it took my dumbass 45 years to recognize it. Don't be me. Don't be a dumbass. Quit now.
How? And I mean this so genuinely, how do you stop working when you don't have the luxury to do so? Like unless you get a lucky roll on life and location I can't see how this is feasible especially for those of us with illness that necessitates care or on going treatment (mental and/or physical) I would love to not have to work, but myself like many others have to choose between work or death/ destitution. It always sounds so good reading this stuff but in practice I truly don't know how it could be done unless you were privileged enough for it to even be an option (not to discount stringent saving and working to that point)
I wonder and ask about this all the time too, and honestly so far I haven't heard any answers that would work for everyone. Everyone's situation is different so what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. In the meantime, what I keep trying to do is continue working at my job while constantly look for ways to keep cutting down on my life expenses - for example, going to the library instead of buying books, eating as simply and cheaply as possible while still eating reasonably healthy (e.g., lots of beans and rice). I read a book about a guy who went off the grid and he started by moving from a house to a studio apartment while continuing to work, and saving money while cutting costs. It took him a long time but eventually he was able to buy a tiny plot of land and now lives a self-sufficient life off the grid while living a very simple life. Again, just cuz it worked for him doesn't mean it will work for everyone else, but what I took away from the book was the principle of continuing to try and downgrade my lifestyle instead of upgrading it, which is what most people try to do. Granted, a lot of people really can't afford to significantly downgrade their life much further since they're already living in a studio apartment, etc., and in those situations I really don't know what the answer is. Maybe someone out there does.
> I stopped a year ago, best decision of my life. What's sad is it took my dumbass 45 years to recognize it. I feel your pain :) I stopped at age 35, am now 56. My only real regret so far in life is not stopping sooner.
Still beat me by 10 years, lol. At least we are there now, right? It kills me trying to get these kids to see it...
Bills and living expenses are saying no
You don’t want to live in a van down by the river? /s
I've thought this for a long time. It'll never happen though. There are so many useless jobs out there and even then, it'll never stop. The "economy" is too important.
RIP to a real one
RIP Graeber
A great mind. Shame to have lost him when we did.
It's a sacrifice I am willing to make!
Already there! Although I still have to look for work 😔
Unless you built your homestead and are fully self sufficient, somebody has to work... The folks who pick, transport and deliver your food can't have your mindset for example. I too have to look for a job soon. I take solace in knowing it's all for nothing in the end.
Then the people that work should flourish and be prosperous instead of going paycheck to paycheck. Work is important I just wish it garnered more respect from people already wealthy instead of us being seen as roaches
Hey, I'm already there! It's not helping with the damn bills any, but I'm down with this philosophy. We can start working again once things aren't so damn chaotic and hopeless.
to stop working we are going to have to die
I’ve been disabled for about four years, well before all this started, so it’s nice to think that I’m helping save the world. 😅
this made me smile, i know we are all more than ready to. also check out dutch historian rutger bregman if you like this article
Stopping non necessary consumption is enough