I feel like elaborating on this I used to have a fascination with stories about people who survive disasters and what makes someone resilient in extreme conditions (which I totally am not) I read a book about it and the guy said the most dangerous thing was denialhttps://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1250222170304729088 …
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It's not that people who do inexplicable, self-destructive things in a crisis have made peace with death and embraced it It's the exact opposite, they REFUSE to accept death, even the possibility of it, they think acting like what's happening isn't happening will save them
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And the common thread of survivor stories is that survivors at some point have a switch flip in their heads As bizarre and fucked up as the situation is, they accept that this is the situation You have to play by wilderness rules, civilization rules are over, they don't apply
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He got kind of highfalutin about it Baudrillard's quote about "mistaking the map for the territory" We all have a simplified "map" of the world for our daily lives to make the territory easier to handle, a bunch of rules overlaid on the physical reality
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It's how you live life in civilization You stay on the marked path to cross the grass instead of taking a straight line Food in the trash isn't for eating, you're allowed to walk through doors but not climb through windows Child socialization stuff
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And the really hard bit necessary switch to flip is understanding when the map no longer describes the territory, you're not in Kansas anymore That raw meat is disgusting but it's the only food and no one's bringing you anything else and if you don't eat you'll starve
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Hacking your own arm off is horrible, too awful to think about, but NO ONE KNOWS YOU'RE HERE and NO ONE IS SENDING HELP and if you don't do it YOU WILL DIE HERE Etc, etc
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It's not that people who refuse to do these things and then die made a *rational choice*, that they actually said "I would rather die than eat bugs", "I would rather drown than take my shirt off and let people see me naked" It's "I can't believe this is allowed, this isn't fair"
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This inability to accept that the universe isn't fair, that the fairness you think is the way the world works was imposed on reality by a lot of people's daily effort, the collective project we call "civilization", and if you fall through its cracks all kinds of shit happens
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Like Michael Scott driving right into the lake, in an almost too perfect reference to Baudrillard Refusing to accept the plain evidence of your senses that there's a lake there and not a road because you just won't let go of the map, you can't function without it
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And now our whole civilization is going through a crisis where a ton of details from the map that people thought were laws of nature have been ripped away All those finance tips about the stock market returning 4% every year or renters will always pay your mortgage for you
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"They can't just CLOSE EVERYTHING, they can't just LAY EVERYONE OFF, we can't have a Second Great Depression RIGHT NOW, in my lifetime, they promised with the Fed and the SEC no such thing was possible ever again This can't be happening"
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Again and again that childlike whine of THIS ISN'T FAIR, THIS ISN'T RIGHT, I CAN'T BE EXPECTED TO LIVE LIKE THIS You're right, it fucking sucks, there's nothing good about it, but there's no manager to complain to who can magically make a virus go away because it's wrong
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And the guy was very harsh, he said that people who talk like this may be very smart and very kind and very hardworking decent generous people in normal civilized life But that tone of voice in a time of disaster is the sound of a dead man walking
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End of conversation
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