-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 14, 2007 11:04:10 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: At the End of the World, the Last Dragon the Hero Must
Slay Is "Human Nature"
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=281
The End of the World
By William M. H. Kötke, 10 July 2007
We are all looking at the end of the world as we know it.
Our attention is focused on the holes in the ozone layer, planet
warming, peak oil, the spread of DU weapons, the collapse of the
house of credit cards, and the prospect of the planetary financial
elite quickly establishing fascist control of the planet. Below
this threshold of conscious awareness our biological survival
systems are rapidly eroding. At this point some twenty percent of
the planet’s soils erode each twenty-five year period. Each year at
least two hundred thousand acres of irrigated crop-lands go out of
production because of salinization or water-logging and experts say
that sixty to eighty percent of all irrigated acreage is due to
follow the eight to ten million acres that have historically gone
into ruination from irrigation. The total drylands of the planet
are 7.9 billion acres of which 61% are desertified, that is, driven
by human abuse toward uselessness. Globally, 23% of all arable crop
lands have been lost since 1945 through human use and experts say
that all arable land on the planet will be ruined in 200 years.
It is estimated that prior to the human culture that we term
civilization, one third of the planet was covered with closed
canopy forest. Now forests cover 10% of the earth. In the oceans
the collapse of major fish stocks is increasing. At least eight
stocks have collapsed beginning with the Antarctic Blue Whale in
1935 to the Peruvian Anchovy stock collapse in the late twentieth
century. Since 1984 the world fish catch has been shrinking even
with greater investment and the taking of what in former times were
considered “trash” fish. Of the 32 ocean fisheries, 30 are in
decline and some of those are collapsing. At the same time coral
reefs and mangrove swamps which are considered the “incubators” of
sea life are dwindling precipitously.
Soil is the basis of the planetary terrestrial life. In the best of
circumstances such as old growth forests and prairies, soil builds
at the rate of one inch each three hundred to a thousand years. It
is being exhausted and is eroding away. The way that the industrial
system has continued to increase the food supply is by trading off
soil fertility for fossil fuel energy through artificial
fertilizers. Now, nearly half of the world’s people eat because of
the added production of food caused by artificial fertilizers being
injected into depleted soils and the use of all of the other
accouterments of fossil- fueled industrial agriculture. Half of the
planetary population is hanging out on a limb essentially eating
petroleum! Now as the population continues to explode we reach peak
oil and its decline. We do not need to continue filling in the
details. Our intellect can draw the conclusion for us. An
exponentially exploding world population with increasing material
consumption, based on dwindling resources and a dying planet, won’t
work!
But this is not a new phenomenon as some would assume. This culture
of civilization, of empire, was an ecological catastrophe when it
began some eight thousand years ago. It is this culture and its
inculcated reality-view that is the disaster. Half of China was
once a great temperate zone forest. That forest was gone before
recorded history, destroyed by the Han Chinese Empire. The Indus
River Valley Empire had ecologically destroyed its habitat before
recorded history. We do have recorded history of the Sumerian and
Babylonian empires. We know they decimated the forests and
overgrazed the landscape. One third of the land in Iraq that should
be arable right now is still so salinized from imperial irrigation
four and five thousand years ago that it cannot be used. The
erosion material coming down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from
that destroyed watershed has filled in 185 miles of the gulf. As we
follow the history of this type of human culture we find the Mid-
East ecologically denuded. The empires of Greece and Rome used
Turkey and North Africa as “breadbaskets.” Now, there are towns in
Turkey, North Africa and even in Italy that were port cities during
those empires which are now ten and fifteen miles from the water -
all filled in with erosion material from the ecologically destroyed
landscapes. Then we go on to the destruction of the great forests
of Europe and now the whole world. These examples and many more are
indelible effects on the world ecosystem which have not recovered
in thousands of years.
The Success of the Human Species
Are humans a failed species?
Is it what some Natives Americans have said, “very shrewd but no
wisdom?”
When we look around the biosphere we see that most other species
devote much of their life energies to birthing, raising and
protecting their progeny. In this respect, civilized humans are a
failed species. They can’t even keep the planet alive for their
descendants. But humans have been a marvelously successful species.
For several million years we existed as forager/hunters. We lived
in balance with the ecosystem, migrating in our traditional
patterns around our areas gathering the fruits of the earth. We
were adapted to the planetary life. We developed astonishing oral
literatures, we developed a rich cultural life. Anthropology says
that each forager/hunter worked an average of 500 hours per year
obtaining the necessaries of life. Traditional agriculturalists
like the Hopi or Balinese worked 1,000 hours per year and had
shorter life spans. Now the modern industrial person works 2,000
hours per year on average and only stay alive because they have
health insurance. Anthropology says that the forager/hunters (even
those still remaining) have almost perfect health.
They also had a rich culture. They didn’t simply sit around the
campfire but created voluminous oral literature, great works of art
as handcrafts and a rich ceremonial life of the tribe. Our species
lived with the living earth. We had wide knowledge of the living
things around us and we respected life. Such a grotesque event as
killing thousands of buffalo simply to take their tongues or hides
away to market and to leave the carcasses to rot were an act that
was inconceivably inhuman in the eyes of a forager/hunter.
Our ancestors were well fed with a widely varied diet.
Anthropologists studying the Kung Bushmen of the inhospitable
Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa say that each person’s daily
protein intake was more than Britain and exceeded by only ten
industrial countries. The proportion of men and women over sixty
was only ten percent smaller than industrial countries. Forager/
hunters who lived in more luxurious ecosystems did even better.
This means that most of the people of the third world and the poor
of the first world do not even have the living standards of the
Kung Bushmen and for eight thousand years, all of those who did
breast beating about the superiority of “civilization” did not even
come up to the living standards of free living forager/hunters -
talk about being sold a bill of goods!
For 99% of the time our species has lived successfully in balance
with the energy flows of the earth. The soil community with its
millions of inhabitants provides a milieu in which plant roots can
absorb nutrients that are in solution. The plant community sheds
leaves and other organic debris onto the soil which feeds it as it
is eaten by the “decomposers.” This cycling of biological energy is
then extrapolated to the cycles of life of all the other biological
entities of the ecosystem through the food chains and other
services species do for each other in what is an energy flow system
with photosynthesis as the primary motor. This is the energy flow
system that our species was adapted to for an untold period of
time. Being a small nomadic group (average of 28 people according
to anthropology) we had a cooperative culture, a sharing culture
and being migratory we only carried necessary items so that
materialism, the accumulation and adulation of material goods, did
not occur.
The Inversion
Then in Central Asia and Northern China, humans began to destroy
the living planet with agriculture and herding. The military based
empires began to grow by running a net deficit of the earth’s
fertility - a human culture based in looting, thievery. This
culture began then, in just an eye blink of time, just eight to ten
thousand years, and the energy adaptation changed. Humans began
civis, towns, the root of the word civilization. Male dominance -
patriarchy, the horse and militarism became rooted in the soil, to
grow based on sucking out the fertility of the earth. This culture
was, in its origin, a culture of coercion based upon biological
slaves such as annual plants and domesticated animals and human
slaves, in order to extort fertility from the earth. The ecological
history of empire is there for all to see. We no longer gather the
fruits of the earth, we force the earth to give up surpluses,
profits, until the earth can no longer, then we move on. This is
the culture of empire, a culture of growth and imbalance. Its main
tenets are patriarchy, hierarchy, materialism, and militarism. The
configuration of the imperial system is: an Emperor (male),
surrounded by a small financial/military elite, who control and
profit from a coercive hierarchal command system. That is, they
feed off the productive social activities of the people in society!
Now we are near the end. The culture of empire has spread over the
earth except for a few pockets of remaining forager/hunters. As the
exploding population meets the dwindling resources, societies begin
to unravel. We are beginning to see massive cities around the
planet, each encircled by millions of the poor. These people are
still fed by the dwindling acres but the breaking point is in sight.
The Gauntlet
The human species is faced with an ultimate. Will the species die
off or can a rabbit be pulled out of the hat over the long term?
Inasmuch as humans live from other living things, we know that
whatever humans may exist in two hundred years will be humans that
have been able to keep their area of the planet alive.
We live in an era in which a number of things are occurring that
have never happened to the species before. We live in a time of
human caused, mass, global, die off of species. This is the third
and largest mass die off of species since life began on earth, the
previous (and second) die-off being when the dinosaurs went down
millions of years ago. Humans have also caused the ozone holes and
the climate warming. But, we also now have planetary communication
and through the internet we also have planetary communication
available on an individual level. This is the first time that the
human species as a whole can communicate. This is also the first
time that humans are in control of evolution on this whole planet
and the possible further manifestation of themselves. Humans are in
control and the choices that they make in the next few generations
will determine the course for the future of the species as well as
the earth.
The Cultural Conditioning
Culture is hypnosis. A hypnotic suggestion can be given in deep
trance or in light trance, a state of conscious attention such as
watching television. In light trance the suggestion is repetitive
over time. We have all had a world view suggested to us by our
cultural conditioning. For example, we intellectually know that,
except for native people, the rest of us in the American hemisphere
and many other places on the planet are colonials. But, we don’t
subconsciously hold this understanding because of the
culturalization. Since birth we have heard of “warlike” Indians.
But intellectually we know that any country that is invaded will
put up a vigorous response. Intellectually we know that, according
to the historian Eduardo Galeano, up to 70 million native people
were eliminated from the Americas by sword and pestilence yet we
subconsciously view the holocaust of the Jews and Armenians as the
only significant massacres.
In this manner our world view is created. The gold fish does not
see the water. As our culture instructs us that wealth is security
and is the purpose of life, we use up the earth more rapidly toward
our demise. On a psychological level we identify with our material
possessions and subconsciously assume our existence without these
elements would be non-identity. Our needs toward greater ego-
security also point toward our demise.
The Species Initiation
Now that the planet-wide human species, is by default, in control
of the life of the earth we can understand what would be needed for
the species to succeed to full maturity. The first order is to stay
alive. To do that we must maintain that which feeds and shelters
us. We must keep the earth alive and ecologically restore it even
in the areas of dense human population today. Our reality view is
in fact, global now by default. Ozone holes, nuclear radiation, sea
level rise, planet heating and the rubbing out of the living flesh
of the earth are global phenomena.
Like the Six Nations Iroquois who frame each tribal decision to its
effects on the seventh generation, we must create a reality frame
as the life of the earth. Given our subconscious conditioning that
is difficult, but in this case our intellect can lead us. If we can
frame our cultural reality view as based upon the care of the earth
and teach that to the children, then many other cultural values
will flow from that.
A present day citizen of the earth, if they were a mature and
responsible adult would say that honorable actions would perpetuate
the living earth for its sake as well as for the progeny of the
human species. That commitment at the level of the whole species
would signify the initiation of the species to maturity.
The Hero At The Portals of Initiation
The center does not hold. Oil and the resources of the earth such
as soil and forests are exhausting as the mass swells. Can the hero
make it through the disintegration? Can small land based, self-
sufficient communities make it through, some of them? Can they
carry the universal value of life through with their culture? Can
they create a culture that will spread in the future that focuses
on the highest development of each human as a person rather than
the highest rung up the ladder of empire?
This is what is being asked of the hero for initiation into human
species maturity -- nothing less than courage, the adherence to the
culture of life over long periods of time and transformation.
All the elements that we need exist. We have examples of
alternative buildings, created from local materials, with solar
advantages that can heat and cool themselves with no outside energy
inputs. We have a world-wide movement to Permaculture which can
help us restore ecologies while producing more human food per acre
than the industrial system. We have a wide and increasing selection
of human development methods which can aid in the development of
each individual to their highest potential - outside the
materialist paradigm. We have planetary communication through the
internet whose maintenance could require few resources.
When the hero can succeed at the matter of keeping the human
species and the planet alive and see that as just a “housekeeping”
duty, then we can get on with the truly challenging task of
creating a positive and joyous human culture to which the hero is
entitled.
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