this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Collapse
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This is the place for discussing the potential collapse of modern civilization and the environment.
Collapse, in this context, refers to the significant loss of an established level or complexity towards a much simpler state. It can occur differently within many areas, orderly or chaotically, and be willing or unwilling. It does not necessarily imply human extinction or a singular, global event. Although, the longer the duration, the more it resembles a ‘decline’ instead of collapse.
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About the only thing I am unsure about is how the waddling dinosaur contributes to the gloomy atmosphere, aside from the physical threat of being trampled underfoot that it would pose.
I guess a modern turn of phrase would be something like, “I almost expected to see…”, in that the conditions were so bad that it wouldn’t be above a sauropod to be present.
Plus, there are also historical interpretations to consider, because when this passage was penned, large dinosaurs were also considered to be mostly aquatic due to their sheer size (water bouyancy was seen as an aid to allow them to stand) and not particularly graceful on land. So “waddling” is indeed a period-appropriate view of how such a sauropod would walk, and not just artistic license by the author.
My take on this is that the "as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth" section is key for the rest of it. All of this is obviously metaphor, but the metaphor Dickens seems to be going with is that "it's so muddy out there, that it's just like prehistoric earth just after land started becoming visible (waters receding and making land visible), and to imagine yourself there walking along and seeing a huge fucking dinosaur basically swimming up the street (in the wet mud) and that 'would not be wonderful to meet' that dinosaur because obviously that's fucking terrifying and it might eat you."
All of the metaphor references are pointing to "muddy as fuck out there and really slippery, and so much so that there might as well be dinosaurs/lizards swimming down the street and that's just miserable".
Ironically, it’s more of a Christian source than a scientific one. Once we had any sort of a clear idea of what happened that far back, it’s the land that acquired lakes and oceans by a million years of constant rain as the earth cooled enough for vapour in the atmosphere to precipitate out, whereas the story of Genesis had the waters first, then god creating land by drawing the waters back.
In this case, the dinosaur is just an inadvertent hitchhiker.
Yep - that tracks. Your take is a bit more precise. I think the important part is not to be too hung up on the science of that age and their exact interpretation of how the earth came about, but more just focusing on the general “muddy like (probably) just after the earth was formed and land first came into existence.”
Also a comparison to the Lord Chancellor - an incredibly significant figure of an old institution not fit for modern times.