Greg Bear's Eon has a nice counter-example to the general sci-fi trend of apocalyptic dystopias.
The myth that panic, looting, and antisocial behavior increases during the apocalypse (or apocalyptic-like scenarios) is in fact a myth—and has been solidly disproved by multiple scientific studies. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, a research group within the United States Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), has produced research that shows over and over again that “disaster victims are assisted first by others in the immediate vicinity and surrounding area and only later by official public safety personnel […] The spontaneous provision of assistance is facilitated by the fact that when crises occur, they take place in the context of ongoing community life and daily routines—that is, they affect not isolated individuals but rather people who are embedded in networks of social relationships.” (Facing Hazards and Disasters: Understanding Human Dimensions, National Academy of Sciences, 2006). Humans do not, under the pressure of an emergency, socially collapse. Rather, they seem to display higher levels of social cohesion, despite what media or government agents might expect…or portray on TV. Humans, after the apocalypse, band together in collectives to help one another—and they do this spontaneously. Disaster response workers call it ‘spontaneous prosocial helping behavior’, and it saves lives.
...Humans all over the world display this behavior after disasters. They display it consistently, no matter what kind of disaster is happening or what culture they come from.
What really happens after an apocalypse? Society works better than it ever had, for a brief time.
The writer Rebecca Solnit wrote an entire book about this phenomenon, and she called it A Paradise Built in Hell. She points out that it is really the fear on the part of powerful people that powerless people will react to trauma with irrational violence that is preventing us from seeing how apocalypse really shapes our societies.
...Apocalyptic science fiction tells us so much about how the future is going to hurt—or could. But it can also explore how the future will be full of spontaneous helping; societies that bloom for a night, a few weeks, a month, to repair what has been broken. The human capacity to give aid and succor seems to be universal, and triggered quite specifically by the disruption and horror of disaster. Science fiction might let us see that utopian potential more clearly, and imagine how we might help each other in ways we never knew we were capable of.
https://www.tor.com/2018/11/14/what-really-happens-after-the-apocalypse/
The UK is going to get a chance to test this out next April.
ReplyDeleteI think the interesting question here is really why do people like making and watching these doomsday fantasies? Certainly in the US there’s a large audience of comfortable people who spend a lot of time dreaming about the collapse of society. Some of it’s probably to do with religious millenialism but Isuspect a large part is todo with them feeling thwarted where they are - they dreamed of getting rich and living lives of perfect selfishness but that didn’t happen and instead they’re reliant on social networks. Only at the end of things can they fulfill their potential for shouting I AM, so these spectacles of cruelty give them a flash of that release.
ReplyDeletereligious millennialism
ReplyDeleteNot me. I'm just an atheist who likes watching things blow up.