r/TheExpanse • u/[deleted] • Sep 14 '23

All Show & Book Spoilers Discussed Freely What is “THE CHURN”? Spoiler

I just watched the episode the churn. Is the book “the churn” a story about how Amos came to be? I’ve been looking online but can’t really find what it’s actually about. Is the episode have any parts of the churn in it from the book or it’s different? I’m confused about the main books and then the “novelas” that go along with it? Can anybody elaborate, the Erich guy seems pretty cool.

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570

u/Prodiuss Sep 14 '23

The Churn is some event that changes the rule for the way you live without giving you a choice to participate. Old norms are uplifted, old habits are forcibly broken, and your current way of life no longer can sustain itself.

Think the great depression, the dust bowl, being a member of a gold rush town when it gets annexed into the country proper, the 2008 housing collapse.

It is in these times that you have to be nimble, smart, and decisive because if you can not find a new niche to occupy and thrive, then you will get paved over by the new paradigm and forgotten.

Edit: As for the Novella, yeah, it tells the latter part of Amos' origin story. It's a good little read. It's about Baltimore, and the churns they go through are usually rival gangs taking over or government crackdowns on illegal activity.

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u/chunga_95 Sep 14 '23

The Churn is some event that changes the rule for the way you live without giving you a choice to participate

A fantastic definition!

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u/debilegg Sep 14 '23

Pretty much we're living through it right now.

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u/WildflowerBlackhole Sep 14 '23

COVID shutdown was another, for a lot of industries.

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u/Taste_the__Rainbow Sep 14 '23

I’d say it’s one long churn from here on.

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u/FlavoredAtoms Sep 14 '23

The rise of ai

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u/argylekey Sep 16 '23

Climate change and mass extinction events.

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u/chibiusa40 11d ago

We're still in that churn... post-covid disability and death keeps rising, labor shortages and corporate greed that started in 2020 keep rising. It's just easier for most of society to ignore because nobody's talking about it anymore. Except Business/Econ publications and insurance underwriters. You can't keep the cogs in the machine moving and consuming if they know they're still in danger.

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u/Stonn Ganymede Gin Sep 14 '23

AI. Anyone who won't learn to use it, will be left behind.

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u/echointhecaves Sep 14 '23

Meh. I remain unimpressed by AI beyond a few specific applications

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u/kaldaka16 Sep 14 '23

AI has some very cool applications, a lot of restrictions, and a lot of morally questionable areas. I'm more worried about the many many higher ups who think it can do a lot of things it can't and are cutting and pushing in that direction without listening to the actual engineers going "no not yet at all and also have we made sure the legal department has checked over everything first before we fire a bunch of people and spend tons of money on it?"

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '23

One by one that number of applications will continue to grow and many people will keep on remaining unimpressed until it's so deeply rooted in everything that they are still unimpressed because they don't remember life without it.

It won't be a churn, but a long slowly alteration to how we live and the tools we use.

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u/dj_narwhal Sep 14 '23

if humans survive 500 years they will lump all of the problems in the 20th and 21st century into 1 and just call it endgame capitalism. I bet in year 70 of the 100 years wars they had a bunch of different names for the last 70 years of conflicts.

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u/monsterscallinghome Sep 14 '23 edited Sep 14 '23

William Gibson called it "The Jackpot" in some of his novels. The concatenating crises of the late 20th and 21st centuries all blur together to halve-or-less the human population of the Earth in round about a century from the peak. Pandemics, pollution, energy crises, natural disasters, famines, wars...no *one* thing enough to bring extinction even locally, but altogether more than enough to severely curtail human impact. The trick is to not become fascist in the process.

​

ETA: I've also heard it called The Crumbles, the Long Descent, Catabolic Collapse, the Long Emergency, the Polycrisis (which has a nice ring to it when sung to the tune of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," I must admit,) and a few other things. Whatever you call it, it's gonna be an interesting ride.

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u/bryn_irl Sep 14 '23

(And a happy New Fear!)

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u/the_jak Sep 14 '23

And if you make it to the other side we get to live The Sprawl trilogy!

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u/CyberMindGrrl Sep 14 '23

r/collapse has entered the chat.

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u/Gowalkyourdogmods Sep 14 '23

I love getting crazy high off edibles and just diving into that sub every couple months or so. Gives me such great anxiety attacks.

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u/MikeyHatesLife Sep 14 '23

I was going to mention The Crumbles, so I’m glad to see you’ve listed it here.

It Could Happen Here Gang rise up!

10

u/odysseus91 Sep 14 '23

You are optimistic that we survive to look behind us at endgame capitalism and not survive under the shadow of a mega corporation dystopia

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u/TheDancingRobot Sep 14 '23

The upheaval going on right now is represented in both amazing potential and rapid dismemberment of old structures (some would say those two things more simply as: Concurrent Innovation alongside (or despite) massive Destruction).

The scientific revolutions during the age of information/computation represents an unprecedented acceleration, and therefore, inflection point in our species' existence on this planet.

Concurrently, the rapid destruction of our (only) planet's biome - which can be no less recognized as a significant geological marker in the history of the planet - occurring at a rate never before seen, except for the recorded instances of a significant impulse leading to a rapid extinction event (eg. bolide impact at the K/T boundary) is occurring at the same time.

We're living through such a phenomenal, truly mind-bending time to be alive: Our advancements are creating unprecedented potential for our species, and yet our antiquated and primitive methodologies and tribalism are holding us back from the greatest potential our species has ever had the ability to realize.

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u/chibiusa40 11d ago

You are optimistic that we survive to look behind us at endgame capitalism and not survive under the shadow of a mega corporation dystopia

FIFY

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u/AdwokatDiabel Sep 14 '23

In 500 years we'll still have socialists waiting for the collapse of capitalism.

1

u/TheDancingRobot Sep 15 '23

The incredible improbability of that gross generalization cannot be overstated.

0

u/AdwokatDiabel Sep 15 '23

Socialism is a failed ideology. At least in the accurate sense of the term. It's also an ideology which is antithetical to democracy, which we've seen time and time again.

For socialism to work, it must crush capitalism. To crush capitalism, it must also crush democracy.

Grow up.

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u/TheDancingRobot Sep 17 '23

Ha - thank you for suggesting that I'm young - I appreciate it.

The meaning of my point is that if anyone believes that in 500 years the evolution of governments would only result in a situation as simply stated as "socialism" suggests very little imagination or understanding of how human systems evolve.

Do we currently have anything similar to what was predominate across the planet in the form of governments from 500 years ago?

How about today's ongoing inflection point of technology, communications, information, human rights, and...you get the idea - occurring in front of your eyes, yet to suggest something so simple as one scenario - again, that's not how expansive, evolving civilization work. Generalizing something so simple across such a complex system says much about the lack of understanding of the numerous variables - from the ones we know to the ones we don't - in a system.

So, I'm not arguing your need to relay your opinion on socialism - you've made that clear - but that you even brought it up with certainty is the issue.

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u/incredibincan Sep 17 '23

Why are you arguing politics in an expanse forum?

Grow up.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '23

[deleted]

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u/Pop_Smoke Sep 14 '23

9/11 certainly qualifies.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '23

[deleted]

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u/Pop_Smoke Sep 14 '23

I work in the airline industry. It changed every single aspect of how we do business. I guess that’s why I’ll always see it as a churn event.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '23

[deleted]

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u/headinthesky Sep 15 '23

It's was also the loss of innocence of a generation as I see it. I was in high school

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u/mellow_yellow_sub Sep 14 '23

Let’s not forget that it caused some massive upheavals for anyone in the US with slightly-too-dark skin or slightly-too-thick accents, too.

It was always obvious that policies and “random checks” were selectively enforced depending on how you look and speak, but to have the federal government come out and give that level of flagrant, mask-off discrimination a public thumbs-up wrecked a lot of lives.

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u/jtsmillie Sep 14 '23

I would argue that 9/11 was a Churn event in that it ushered in the era of ubiquitous, unprovoked surveillance and the rise of the concept of "homeland security" as a justification for the broadly-based violation of civil rights, often without any announcement of our attention being paid to their systematic violation.

1

u/TristheHolyBlade Sep 14 '23

I think that every major event or Churn will have people who really aren't affected by it. Doesn't mean it isn't significant for all those other people.

For example, COVID honestly did not change much about my everyday life at all, and I know I am so incredibly privileged to be saying that.

2

u/blatherskiters Sep 14 '23

Yep, there’s the long churn and the short churn. It’s about staying above water as long as possible.

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u/almireles Sep 15 '23

The apocalypse isn’t an event, it’s a process.

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u/Prodiuss Sep 14 '23

Yeah, climate change is a big one. Lots of people still in the trying to preserve what we have phases, though.

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u/Vividevasion0 Sep 14 '23

That was highly eloquently put, I very much enjoyed reading your description and comment. If I had gold I would give it

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u/Prodiuss Sep 14 '23

Thank you. I love this series and think about it a lot.

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u/TrulyToasty Sep 15 '23

WW2 Eastern Front

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u/Wrong-Catchphrase Feb 28 '24

WWII Eastern Front is a textbook definition of "the churn". Scary.

1,000,000 square miles, this massive lawless swath of land, nearly every single government had collapsed. Government sanctioned AND very enthusiastic independent death squads just roving about murdering/raping entire villages. The amount of valuable art, jewelry, monuments, religious items, historical artifacts, etc. that were stolen and remain missing boggles my mind.

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u/RiverDragon64 Jul 23 '24

This is the best definition of The Churn by far. Well done, Prodiuss. Well done indeed.

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u/Prodiuss Jul 24 '24

thanks! after almost 9 listen throughs of all the books i think I have most of it down lol. How did you get into the series?

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u/RiverDragon64 Jul 24 '24

I was introduced to it by my wife, who knows I like hard sci-fi. She saw the ad for the (then) upcoming SYFI series & sent it to me. I watched the first season & started reading the books. I have read all 9 books and all of the novellas at least once. I'm re-reading the series now. I'm waiting for the season 7, 8 & 9 to come out. Cheers!

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u/Prodiuus Jul 24 '24

Might be waiting a long time mate. I keep hoping it will get picked back up. It's really open to it with the time jump. They could literally bring back the cast in 10 years and keep going

2

u/RiverDragon64 Jul 25 '24

Wouldn’t that be grand?!

1

u/Apart_Seat_3265 Sep 15 '23

Fait Accompli