Actually I think the Futurama model is the most accurate: after everything gets destroyed, people rebuild it and move on. Lots of historical examples too: Japan in WW2, Germany in WW1 and 2, etc.
I think most people’s morality is much more situational than we would like to believe.
In desperate times, and absent any authority/governance, I think many questionable things would occur.
People survive today in lawless environments by a combination of banding together for safety and learning how to defend oneself. One could argue many cities like New York or Detroit can at times be virtually law free yet people manage to survive.
It would probably be the same after an apocalypse. Anyone looking to harm another would find easy victims hard to find as “good” people would quickly either arm themselves or come together for safety.
These, to start with:
But in the early days of those “good” communities women might take on a vastly different role. There may not be as much violent rape and murder but with power, strength, and food being immensely important the question of what is a wife and the treatment of her may be variable.
Well we could just follow history. Whether it’s the Russian Civil War, the Bosnian War, or the Second Congo War that’s exactly what happened. When law and order totally falls apart, the strong attack the weak. And unpopular minorities and women are usually the weakest people in society. Yes people do form local protection groups. But those are often used to settle old scores; do you really think the lynch mobs in the old South punished all people equally?
Some of the arguments posted upthread are pretty weak. “New York and Detroit were law free”? At what time did these cities abandon their police forces and court systems? Insufficient legal forces and no forces at all are totally different things. And to regards to post-WW2 Germany and Japan:no way those countries avoid anarchy if well armed occupation forces that could and would mercilessly punish civil unrest weren’t all around them.
My point was that there are dangerous areas in those cities where police presence is weak and often people are forced to fend for themselves.
But I will agree that in such a situation whoever has the guns will have control.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from this. The chimps band together and have territorial disputes with other groups of chimps; I’m not sure how this is any different than current human behavior in current human society - other than the greater frequency of violence, for which, the numbers seem fuzzy at best(1.5 - 5 times the rate of killing, that is a very large range of guesses). You are choosing to focus on a more violent than average group of chimps to start with also. Why not start with the bonobos - which tend to “make love not war.”
Or you could look at a documentary such as “Stress, Portrait of a Killer,” in which the dying off of the alpha males resulted in a much more peaceful ape society - which would be a situation much more in line with the OP.
If you are attempting to make a case for the inherent evil killer nature of humans your evidence thus far is not very compelling in my opinion.
Exactly where did I say that?
Earlier you wrote:
I did not say that you said that. I said in my post that I did not know what to take away from your statement, the OP is asking a question about what would would happen in a world where the social structure has been dismantled. By saying that human behavior is guided by “threat of imprisonment” implies that without that threat, people would do things which would land them in prison; which are often pretty bad or evil.
Of course, you could have meant that people would sell pot with wild abandon or steal cable to their hearts’ content, but I was taking the statement in context of the thread in which the OP is talking about rape and murder. So, I reasoned that perhaps in regards to the question the OP is stating you are coming down more on the side of post apocalyptic rape and murder. If that is not the case, just post what your position is or if you don’t have a position, or if you just like linking articles about “killer apes” whenever the opportunity arises.
Yes, among groups of people who have consumed excessive apocalypse entertainment.
We’re literally apes. Strip us of structured armed authority, and we will behave like apes, because we are apes. We’ll gather into groups led by the ballsiest apes and rape/ make sweet love, kill/ eat bananas until the clever/ rich/ powerful among us decide it’s more profitable to establish serfdom. Then, we’ll be civilized again.
AFAIK You have a highly idealized an inaccurate view of ape behavior, which cannot be generalized among various ape groups within the same species let alone among different species of ape. Of course, if it makes you feel better to think this way don’t let scientific ape research bring you down.
It’s basically a reversion to tribalism, like you see in urban gangs. Only those in your gang are “people”, everyone else are those two-legged animals you either plunder or drive out/kill in competition for resources. Civilization begins when it starts making economic sense to seize and hold slaves; then the tribal chief becomes a god-king whose greatness is measured by his success in conquest. Once things start getting large and complex enough that professional administration is necessary, a “state” as an abstract concept beyond a particular ruler comes into being.
This may be an exaggeration, but possibly not by much.
I was reading about digging up old bodies from the black plague. When the plague first started, the bodies showed signs of disease but in later plagues the bodies showed physical trauma aside from death by disease, showing that society was breaking down and people were becoming more violent and anti-social as the disease destroyed society. So there is that.
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_25449630/london-skeletons-reveal-secrets-black-death
There is the fact that as murder and rape goes up, people are going to start demanding an authoritarian/military/police state to keep them safe. People want security. So I don’t think it would devolve into ‘every man for himself’. It would devolve into authoritarian police states going out and killing off the vigilantes.
Typically it’s much simpler than that. At some point some leader of a roving bandit gang decides that you can only raid a village kill all the occupants and steal their stuff once. If you stick around and let the people live so they can farm and work, you can collect protection money every year.
I think its important to note that in this article, no scientists are making these claims. this is an article where a journalist is trying to make an interesting story out of disease research.
There are plenty of quotes from scientists about the insight into the disease of the plague itself, but the only part about a lawless society is an unquoted interjection by the journalist. And why would this be? If I were to guess I would say no scientist in his or her right mind would attempt to make such an extrapolation for fear of being roundly laughed at by his or her peers. To see that taking 25 skeletons from a limited geographic area and gleaning anything about the progression of a society containing tens of millions of people over a 50 - 60 year period and spanning hundreds of miles is a completely unfounded extrapolation is not something one needs more than a freshman level of statistical understanding to see.
Of course the journalist has little to fear in terms of professional ostracism in making such claims.
The catch is that there may not be a strong constant police presence, but if things got out of hand, there would likely be an overwhelming police presence to crack down on whatever it is.
That’s a long way from being some kind of lawless craziness.
My opinion is that in the very early post-cataclysm world, there would be a lot of rather violent action. Maybe not thrill killings and the like, but rather already lawless elements acting unfettered in the absence of effective law enforcement. I mean, your average law-abiding person isn’t going to shave/dye his hair into a red mohawk, put on shoulder pads and assless chaps and go all Road Warrior just because the cops aren’t around.
If no pre-cataclysm goverments survived, I think you’d end up with some combination of proto-feudal warlords (essentially legitimized criminal gangs), but there would be enough people around to form more civilized and democratic type communities. Eventually there would be friction between them, and they’d grow and consolidate territory- the boundaries wouldn’t necessarily conform to our current political boundaries.
If the Federal government or state governments survived, then there would surely be some kind of Federal Marshals / Ranger type law enforcement/paramilitary presence relatively quickly. These officers would likely be endowed with sweeping powers to establish and enforce the law and keep the peace. There would probably also be some kind of circuit judge system in conjunction with this. Basically it would be rather Wild-West-ish for a while until the governments got a handle on things.
lol
Why just the other day I saw a roving band of post-apocalyptic Road Warrior thugs raping their way down 5th Avenue. I don’t know how we survive here.
(No, no, I really want to see you argue that New York City is virtually law free.)
Just so you know, “The Warriors” is not a documentary.
Yeah I was going to comment on this. Even in the bad old days of the 70s it was hardly lawless. Nowadays were there used to be a hooker every 10!feet in Times Square now there is a cop or two.