Jay Hanson wrote:
>
> From: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> >>There are no doubt many factors that determine whether civilizations
> >>collapse slowly like Rome or quickly like the FSU and ex-Yugoslavia. I
> >>believe a large factor is ethnic homogeneity. After all, our culture
> >>demands that we find someone else to blame. It's another positive
> feedback
> >>if the scapegoats are within our own borders.
> >
> >My point about Rome was that it never really collapsed. Over the
> centuries,
> >it became transformed into civilizations which were no longer really Roman,
Rome never really collapsed? Somehow we need to differentiate
between a scholar spending his day in the Alexandrian Library
and an 8th century monk in an unheated monastery. We need to
differentiate between republican life in the Roman Forum, and
vassalage in rural Europe a few centuries later
(what of Europe *wasn't* rural, at that time?).
AIDS isn't "collapsing" anything, is it? AIDS is
only "transforming" people's lives, yes?
*Everything* is transformation. I think Jay's definition of
COLLAPSE is a pretty good one:
>
> Tainter defines "collapse" as a "rapid transformation to a lower degree of
> complexity, typically involving significantly less energy consumption
> (Tainter 1988)". This may or may not include widespread violence. In fact
> "collapse" could look a lot like the kind of society some people are
> advocating.
>
> Jay
> -------------------------
> COMING SOON TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU!
> http://dieoff.com/page1.htm
A word which needs to be resurrected is: *transfiguration*.
Cultural *advance* does not only bring additional commodities
into the larder, it also give new meaning even to old things, as when
a couch potato suddenly sees physical exertion as a way of
becoming Adonis-like, and books as a way of discovering
that the world contains ideas, e.g., "Adonis". Cultural
advance makes an Unwelt into a Cosmos (sorry for the mis-spelling,
but Unwelt is even better than Umwelt, since my cats have an
Umwelt, and it seems richer than many humans' Lifeworlds....)
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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