demagogue on 5/6/2019 at 15:55
I just watched the last episode of Chernobyl and am still worked up. I wasn't sure if I should post about it. But it's getting (
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/04/chernobyl-is-the-highest-rated-tv-series-ever) listed in IMDB as the highest ever rated TV series (mini as it is), so it's not just me who thinks it's a big thing. Whether it deserves the title of best ever or not, it's certainly a great show and in the very top tier.
It's an inherently great drama just by itself. I actually studied the social effects and regulation and mistakes of Chernobyl for my big report on the Fukushima disaster and a lot of the botched recovery for that. So I knew a lot of things already, but seeing it dramatized of course gives a human face to everything. Great disasters call for great sacrifice and heroism, but also countless little human-sized disasters that you wouldn't even think about but are their own little tragedies.
It's especially timely now though. The subtext of the whole show is that ideology and ego lead people to live in delusions, but the truth doesn't care. And if you don't tend to the truth at the end of the day, that's how disasters happen and humans suffer. I don't like to see humans suffer because of bad ideas and ego, so I'm especially sick of the lying and delusion. This show really brings that point home.
In our era, it reminds me of that average atmospheric carbon sensor sitting on the top of Mauna Loa, Hawaii. There are all these delusional people hemming and hawing about whether climate change is real or not, and whether you can trust the elites and scientists not to have some secret agenda. The sensor doesn't care. It steadily climbs up year after year after year, dispassionately and inexorably. No matter how deeply you believe the lies and mythologies, at the end of the day one has to reckon with the readout on that sensor and the toll of human suffering it foretells.
Tony_Tarantula on 5/6/2019 at 16:14
Is this the latest show that I'm supposed to obsess over in order to fit in as a trendy urban white person?
Nicker on 6/6/2019 at 02:05
No. Just go back to sleep, Tony.
Nicker on 6/6/2019 at 02:06
Dema. I have been tempted to watch that but I am not sure if I can handle the gravity at the moment. It does look intense.
Gray on 6/6/2019 at 02:33
[video=youtube;0EBTn_3DBYo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EBTn_3DBYo[/video]
Starker on 6/6/2019 at 05:25
Quote Posted by demagogue
Great disasters call for great sacrifice and heroism, but also countless little human-sized disasters that you wouldn't even think about but are their own little tragedies.
A friend of mine was one of the people who was ordered there to clean up the mess. Messed him up for life as well. Nobody gave a damn about the consequences, the Soviet go-to solution was always to just throw people on (and in front of) any problem they encountered.
Starker on 6/6/2019 at 06:06
Quote Posted by demagogue
In our era, it reminds me of that average atmospheric carbon sensor sitting on the top of Mauna Loa, Hawaii. There are all these delusional people hemming and hawing about whether climate change is real or not, and whether you can trust the elites and scientists not to have some secret agenda. The sensor doesn't care. It steadily climbs up year after year after year, dispassionately and inexorably. No matter how deeply you believe the lies and mythologies, at the end of the day one has to reckon with the readout on that sensor and the toll of human suffering it foretells.
It's not a delusion, it's wilful ignorance. And business:
[video=youtube;RLqXkYrdmjY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqXkYrdmjY[/video]
Tony_Tarantula on 6/6/2019 at 14:06
So is there anything to this that I wouldn't already know from having read a massive amount of Soviet History?
To me what was interesting about this whole incident is that it repeated the standard pattern of Soviet behavior: bureaucrats insulated by the system escaping responsibility by pushing the blame onto hapless underlings. Like any socialist culture the Soviets cultivated a ruthlessly Darwinian bureaucracy where the survivors were extremely good at pushing the blame for failures onto other people (example: the mass arrests and torture of "agricultural wreckers" to prevent those making the agricultural directives from having to admit their raging incompetence). It was the same way here where everyone is terrified of ever saying anything other than "The motherland, in it's infinite wisdom, has guided us to a state of affairs where everything is perfect" so problems are swept under the rug.
A lot of the time these problems can be pushed downhill. Peasants can be made to do with starvation rations by keeping them at the point of a gun, military defeats can be passed off by shooting the lower level commanders for "deliberately handing terrain to the Germans"......but every so often you get a massive disaster such as this where the people you would normally blame are dead or the sheer scale of the event is too much to cover up the failure.
TTK12G3 on 6/6/2019 at 16:43
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Is this the latest show that I'm supposed to obsess over in order to fit in as a trendy urban white person?
No, but but posting like this helps let people know how cool you are, while statements like this:
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
So is there anything to this that I wouldn't already know from having read a massive amount of Soviet History?
remind them of how intelligent and cultured you are.
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
To me what was interesting about this whole incident is that it repeated the standard pattern of Soviet behavior: bureaucrats insulated by the system escaping responsibility by pushing the blame onto hapless underlings.
It seems to me like that is a big part of the storyline.
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
A lot of the time these problems can be pushed downhill. Peasants can be made to do with starvation rations by keeping them at the point of a gun, military defeats can be passed off by shooting the lower level commanders for "deliberately handing terrain to the Germans"......but every so often you get a massive disaster such as this where the people you would normally blame are dead or the sheer scale of the event is too much to cover up the failure.
I am not sure that you can blame all of this on "socialism" as it seems like it has been a problem at some point or another in almost every society under all kinds of political systems.