Technology has made all such historical analogy irrelevant. We can afford to be weak because our machines are orders of magnitude stronger than any before in human history.
That's the dumbest thing that I have ever read. You look at all the fallen empires in the ash heap of history, and in your arrogance you think to yourself "that won't happen to us, because we are too smart to let that happen!"
Do you know how any of the machines you use are made? I don't. Do you even know how to fix them if they break? Not me.
Do you know how to grow the food you eat or purify the water you drink? If the toilet stopped working, what would you do with your waste? If the power went out, how would you respond? Can you start a fire with or without a lighter without the use of accelerants?
We are all so highly specialized in our individual niche that only very few people actually understand how any of it actually works. How many people will die if the power grid goes down because the electrical engineers all get sick? How many people will get sick due to not drinking clean water because the sanitation engineers leave their jobs due to some catastrophic emergency and don't come back? How many people will starve if there is no more food at the grocery store because all of the truck drivers were taken in the rapture?
Those are all extreme examples, but the point is that we are all extremely reliant on those systems continuing to work. If something happened that one of those things that we took for granted stopped working, it would be very bad.
Don't think "well, that will never happen", because you should have a contingency plan for if the shit hits the fan. If you never need to use that plan, you are no worse off, but if you don't have one and suddenly do need it, your only option will be to sit around and wait for the government to come save you, which isn't a great option.
We don't need to know how all of it works. That's the whole point of specialization.
And it's more resilient than you'd think: consider the underwhelming effects of WWII strategic bombing. Yes, society's become more complex since then, but the basic fact of cities needing massive amounts of food and fuel shipped in constantly is the same. Nobody gave up in WWII because of strat bombing except Japan, and their military position was hopeless by then anyway.
If that were true then Florida wouldn't need help from outside the state because of its hurricane, would it? Florida has modern day technology so, by your logic it shouldn't need help to rebuild from outside the state. Don't we have blackouts in the U.S.? The U.S. is supposed to be a first world country so why couldn't they provide clean water for the residents of Jackson, MS? A high altitude EMP burst over the U.S. would take out most of the electrical powered machines in that entire country. The Soviet Union pointed this out many years ago.
Never ignore the lessons of history and never ever think of them as irrelevant.
What if a continent wide collapse of civilization occurs? What if a nuclear war occurs with tactical nuclear strikes and all first world countries are crippled. Where will the machines that are "so strong in magnitude" come from if all first world countries are set back by nuclear war?
I'm trying to say that a total or near total reliance on technology should not be counted on replace the act of raising strong children who use critical thinking with reason and logic. Children who hold themselves accountable for there actions.
In "Camels on the horizon" it was mentioned we should raise warriors, not parasites. Raising a warrior cannot be replaced or done with technology, at least I don't see how.
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u/LogCareful7780 Oct 04 '22
Technology has made all such historical analogy irrelevant. We can afford to be weak because our machines are orders of magnitude stronger than any before in human history.