After reading up on what it is, I can somewhat grasp that instead of finding compromise and abiding protocols in society and it’s systems that we push forward the problems to destabilise the structure of it until it eventually it collapses allowing those to rebuild from scratch.
Could anyone share their thoughts on what it means to them?
P.S Harassment architecture was an interesting read albeit seems like it was written by a basement dwelling edgelord
In: Economics
Pretty much “it’s easier to rebuild from the ground than to restructure a bad building”.
Problem is that historically things can go from very bad to even worse. Hardships are not like a time you have to pass through but can actually destroy a lot more that was built before.
Just look at the collapse of the roman empire. In no scenario speeding up the collapse would have helped them recover.
The faster things go down the lower will the bottom be before you start recovering.
It’s sort of a “let’s just rip the Band-Aid off” theory of history, where people believe that making a crisis worse in the short term can actually have the effect of making it better overall and saving lives and hardship in the long term. Accelerationism is distinct from the idea that structures must be rebuilt from scratch, though. The latter would be better termed radicalism. Accelerationism is more like the idea that through destabilizing actions, we should try and get through that process quickly, instead of carefully. An accelerationist might argue, for instance, that discontinuing food security welfare programs could be a good thing because hunger would make people revolt.
Of course this is opinion, but personally, I’m skeptical of it. I think that “the worse things are, the better they are” situations are very exceptional, and that most of the time, the better things are, the better they are. People in incrementally better circumstances, are incrementally better, not worse, equipped to fight for their interests. I also have observed that the people who are advocating for “accelerated revolution” are rarely the people who would, themselves, most likely stand to be hurt or killed in one.
Those “We’ve been pushed TOO FAR and it’s FINALLY gotten bad enough that we’re suddenly roused to take drastic action” moments make for great dramatic storytelling, and that’s why we love Braveheart, but I think the reality is more often the opposite: the more beaten-down a people are, the less able they are to look up from their individual emergencies and take action to protect themselves collectively.
Arguably, the idea is that there exist problems in a system that can’t be solved by any configuration of that system- so you have to demolish it to make a new one that works better, and you may as well get that over with as soon as possible- not doing so just prolongs the bad system.
The counterargument is that the costs of demolishing the system are *high*. For instance, if you realize that you’re on a ship that was poorly designed, the cost of trying to sink the ship and rebuild it is probably higher than just doing what patches you can while keeping it afloat.
Look at it this way: you’re bored a lot, and you want a new PS5 to entertain yourself. You have $0 in your piggy bank, so you need to get money somehow.
The incrementalist way to do it would be to agree to a chore list with your parents, a set allowance for doing so, and gradually saving up the money over the course of a year to buy the PS5 yourself. You made small progress over time and eventually achieved your goals.
The accelerationist way of doing it would be to start being an enormous pain the ass to your parents, throwing tantrums, leaving messes around the house, not doing chores, etc. that they break down and buy you the PS5 after a month.
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