Thanks for reminding me. I have "Collapse" but have only read a little of
it. Will get back to it and maybe get back to you.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "futurework"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2008 7:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] From memes to viruses?
>I am wondering how many people within range of this have read Jared
>Diamond's "Collapse; how civilizations choose to succeed or fail". There
>are plenty of examples of how societies chose to survive. Usually it was
>by eliminating class structures and going to a peasant, egalitarian
>type of society.
>
> The prime example of this is the Maya of around 900 A.D. The
> archeological record shows that once all these palaces were smashed and
> the human sacrificing priests were thrown off of their step pyramids,
> the standard of living for the peasantry improved. They were much
> better off for about 600 years until the guys with the guns and
> crucifixes showed up from across the sea.
>
> As Marx said, history is written by the ruling classes who do not like to
> believe that they might not be essential to society and do not want the
> inferior classes to get the idea either. I think the evidence from
> archeology to contemporary observations show that people are best off
> when you have a society of free holding peasants with no ruler class.
>
> Alas, most Marxists do not get that idea. They think all land should be
> held in common. In many places it is and it works well, but only if the
> critical level of government is the village.
>
> Of course we now have industrialism and most people are now living in
> cities. That is a problem humanity has never faced before.
>
> The good part of urbanization is that when people move from the country
> side into the cities, their birth rate drops drastically. The bad side is
> that, first, the environment gets destroyed, and second, agriculture
> gets taken over by the urban economy. Both of these cause food production
> to drop.
>
> So, I think too that there will be change, but I do not think it will be
> all that unpleasant if the class war gets managed right. I am especially
> much more optimistic about peasant revolts. When the peasants are clear
> about what they are trying to achieve, and do not let themselves be
> lead by fanatics and charlatans, they usually create a great improvement
> in their lot.
>
> Besides the Maya, another good example is the slave revolt on Haiti.
> The slaves took over the plantations, drove off several French armies
> sent to re-enslave them, and were a lot better off than they were
> before. However, the great powers of the time persistently boycotted
> them and over time this wore them down.
>
> After Saint Patrick overcame the druids, the Irish developed a very
> peaceful, prosperous and egalitiaran society for about four centuries
> until the guys with the horns on their helmet showed up from across the
> sea.
>
> Notice a pattern about peaceful agrarian societies? Almost all caste or
> class oriented societies, the historians tell us, originated in a
> military conquest in which a technically superior or just more
> aggressive people found they could use a weaker people for their own
> benefit.
>
> The thing is, when societies start to fall apart because of the greed
> and idiocy of an elite, it goes one of two ways. Either it collapses
> into a dark age, or else the rulers are overcome and you have an age of
> peace and freedom.
>
> This is what is going to be decided over the next 50 or so years. It
> looks pretty good that the latter will happen, because the underdogs all
> over the world are developing pretty good leadership and are sensible
> about what they are trying to achieve. This is what usually leads to
> success for peasant and slave revolts.
>
> The underdogs fail when they do not know what they want, only that they
> are unhappy with what they have. That is why the Jacquerie failed at
> first, and why Watt Tyler screwed up his rebellion in 1381, and why the
> Hussites failed in Germany.
>
> In about the same time frame the Swiss freemen were spectacularly
> successful in defeating the armies of the feudal warlords, Wallace and
> Bruce got the English out of Scotland for four centuries, and the
> Latvians fought off waves of crusaders to remain a pagan and classless
> society.
>
> Another thing happened in France, which was well discussed by Tuchman,
> but otherwise not well recorded in history. After the black death and
> the failed peasant revolt, and the hundred years war, most of the
> nobility of northern France allied with the English to kept the French
> peasants down. King Charles the Wise of France did something amazing
> for those times; he allied himself with the peasants against his nobles
> and the English, to regain control of his kingdom. His constable, Du
> Geusclin, organized a very effective guerilla war, with a small
> professional army supporting the armed peasants.
>
> But enough of my ramblings. My aim is to demonstrate that there is no
> reason to be pessimistic that the species cannot get through the present
> crisis and achieve a better way of life for all the world's people.
>
> tr
>
>
>
>
>
> On 27-Apr-08, at 4:52 PM, Ed Weick wrote:
>> It is a long time since I read Tuchman. I have her on my shelves and
>> should look again. However, in general, the 14th Century brought a
>> close to a warm spell that lasted some four centuries and in which, in
>> Europe, population grew and agriculture was greatly expanded, many great
>> cathedrals were built and the Norse were able to settle Greenland.
>> During this period, the Church initially encouraged freedom of thought,
>> but when that freedom began to threaten its power, the lid was slammed
>> down. The impact of Abelard, who was a teacher but not, I believe, a
>> monk and other thinkers of the time was so large that the period during
>> which they lived, thought and taught, the 11th and 12 Centuries, is
>> referred to as the 12th Century Enlightenment.
>>
>> The period came to an end at the beginning of the 14th Century, when a
>> cold spell sometimes referred to as "the little ice age" began. Crop
>> failures led to mass famine in about 1315 and many times thereafter.
>> The Black Death in which one-third to one-half of the population of
>> Europe died occurred in mid-century and recurred several times
>> thereafter, eg. London in 1665. Peasant rebellions occurred -- eg. the
>> Jacquerie in France in 1358, the English Peasants Revolt in 1381, and
>> the German Peasants Revolt in 1525 -- but not very much changed because
>> of them. The lot of peasants did improve because disease and famine led
>> to shortages of labour, but peasantry even as free labour was not an
>> easy life. I would argue that, for the common people, there really
>> wasn't much of an improvement in living standards until the latter part
>> of the 19th Century and it wasn't really until the early part of the
>> 20th Century that really big improvements came with democratization and
>> unionization.
>>
>> Where we go from where we are now is difficult to say. I would argue
>> that there is already considerable evidence that, with excessive
>> population and dwindling resources, we can not go on as we are. There
>> will be change and it won't be pleasant.
>>
>> Ed
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "futurework"
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2008 1:34 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Futurework] From memes to viruses?
>>
>>
>>> Oh, dear. I got the exact opposite impression about Tuchman's mirror
>>> when I read that book. I thought the 1300s were a time of coming out
>>> of a stagnant social order into the modern age, with a kick from the
>>> black death.
>>>
>>> What happened with the famines and epidemics was that Europe's
>>> peasant population suddenly declined. Yet the lords still expected the
>>> same incomes as before. The Great Peasant revolt in France was
>>> viciously put down by the knights, but they could not get the peasants
>>> back on the estates. The lords had to start offering rented land at
>>> reasonable rates to get anybody to work the land.
>>>
>>> The age of Serfdom ended. It had begun eight centuries previously
>>> when the conquering Franks set up a military government after
>>> destroying the Gallo-Roman kingdom that existed for a short while
>>> after the fall of the western Roman empire. They made the Gallo-
>>> Romans serfs.
>>>
>>> Far from the church developing more authority in this time, its power
>>> collapsed. This was the time of the great schism, when there were
>>> two, sometimes three popes around, all claiming to be the real pope.
>>>
>>> I get puzzled about somebody who thinks these medieval monks like
>>> Abelard and Anselm were examples of enlightened thinking. The idea of
>>> 'reason' has been the biggest problem with western civilization down
>>> to the present.
>>>
>>> In the present, we are also struggling to come out of an outmoded form
>>> of social organization and those who benefit from this organization
>>> are resisting fiercely. But they are steadily losing authority. Good
>>> sense eventually overcomes rationalism, but it usually takes a
>>> disaster like the black death, or an environmental collapse.
>>>
>>> Rationalists are people who can not get it that there is no such
>>> thing as 'objectivity'. Everyone's thought is conditioned by
>>> experience and what they have been told and believed are 'laws of
>>> nature'. Good sense is the innate human ability to get outside of
>>> self and preconditioned thinking , and ask what is actually happening.
>>> Education is mostly about neutralizing this ability and conditioning
>>> people to think in the 'rational' framework hammered into them.
>>>
>>> When people who have been taught to be 'reasonable' encounter
>>> something that contradicts 'reason' they cannot understand it and
>>> think some 'forces of darkness' are gathering.
>>>
>>> Actually, the forces of good sense and peacefulness are gathering.
>>> The dark forces that have prevailed are now frantically trying to
>>> make everything 'rational' again.
>>>
>>> tr
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 26-Apr-08, at 3:47 PM, Ed Weick wrote:
>>>> I've been looking through stuff I've written during the past few
>>>> years and found the following, which seems relevant to the discussion
>>>> of memes that has been a dominant feature of the Dissenters list
>>>> recently. It may be of interest to some of you.
>>>>
>>>> Ed
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A Short Essay on Viruses
>>>>
>>>> Some recent postings have raised the fascinating topic of the effect
>>>> of disease on history. Recurrent pandemics such as bubonic plague,
>>>> cholera, typhus and influenza have played an enormous role in
>>>> defining the course taken by peoples for several centuries
>>>> thereafter. Syphilis has brought dynasties to ruin. The viruses or
>>>> bacteria which were at issue affected physical health. I would
>>>> suggest that another type of virus, a intellectual one, has been at
>>>> least equally potent in shaping human history. As an entity, we can
>>>> think of it as something like a computer virus - as something which
>>>> does not take the shape of an organism, but which is transmittable
>>>> from person to person nevertheless.
>>>>
>>>> What does this intellectual virus do? Just as biophysical viruses
>>>> sicken the body, it sickens and immobilizes the mind. It numbs and
>>>> dulls human potential, and plunges people into states of pessimism,
>>>> meanness and despair.
>>>>
>>>> The impact of this virus varies from civilization to civilization,
>>>> and from era to era. The Aztecs have recently been mentioned on this
>>>> list. Some years ago I did some reading on the Aztecs, and one of the
>>>> things I recall is that, for many years before the coming of Cortez,
>>>> the Aztecs were in a state of deep pessimism. They felt their world
>>>> to be ending. I believe it had something to do with their calendar, a
>>>> human invention which they invested with cosmic powers. When Cortez
>>>> finally came along, they were immobilized to the point of not being
>>>> able to do anything about him and his small army. However, the facts
>>>> of smallpox and rebellion by peoples the Aztecs had subjugated did
>>>> not help.
>>>>
>>>> Another example of the virus comes from the 11th to 14th Century
>>>> Europe. Led by activist thinkers such as Peter Abelard, and fed by
>>>> the accessibility of Arabic and Classical material, the 11th Century
>>>> witnessed an increasing secularization of the Christian world, and an
>>>> explosion of initiatives toward a more rational theology, which laid
>>>> the foundations for the development of science. Heretical
>>>> liberally-religious groups such as the Waldensians and Cathers sprang
>>>> up and found fertile ground among intellectuals who had been long
>>>> dominated by oppressive Catholicism. It was not long, however, before
>>>> the virus set in. The very foundations of the Church were threatened.
>>>> The Church moved to suppress the liberalizing influences in whatever
>>>> way seemed necessary. People such as Abelard were isolated. Heretics
>>>> were burned at the stake. Finally, in 1277, the Pope issued a
>>>> statement on where the church stood on the matter of faith versus
>>>> reason. If you wanted openness and reason, you could not have it in
>>>> the Church and the Church was very much in control.
>>>>
>>>> Now, some will argue that there was no virus at all, that all that
>>>> happened was that the dominant power structure, the Catholic Church,
>>>> had been challenged and had retaliated. But that was not all that
>>>> there was to it. The drama played itself out over two Centuries, and
>>>> it would appear that for much of that time the Church had been
>>>> tolerant of what was going on, and even encouraging. Anselm of
>>>> Canterbury, 1030-1109, who lived at the beginning of the so-called
>>>> "Twelfth Century Awakening", was an early rationalist. Peter Abelard,
>>>> 1079-1142, was condoned by the Church for a considerable part of his
>>>> life as a teacher. But what gradually happened was something of a slow
>>>> "gathering of dark forces", to use a Tolkien-like image.
>>>>
>>>> The growing virus of the intellect was aided and abetted by natural
>>>> disasters and real biophysical viruses which reinforced the vengeful
>>>> power of God. Between 1315-1317 Europe was devastated by a "hideous
>>>> famine". Adverse trends in climate which had begun in the 13th
>>>> Century culminated in appalling weather conditions which led to an
>>>> "medieval economic depression" which continued to have effects to the
>>>> beginning of the Renaissance. And, of course, 1347 brought the Black
>>>> Death.
>>>>
>>>> What does all this have to do with the world of today? Some years
>>>> ago, Barbara Tuchman held the world of the 14th Century up to us,
>>>> proposing that in it we would see a distant mirror image of
>>>> ourselves. We tend to forget her lesson. The 14th Century saw the
>>>> closing down of an earlier two-century period of enlightenment; the
>>>> 20th Century may be witnessing the closing down of the one which has
>>>> now run for some two centuries, beginning, I would propose, with the
>>>> American and French Revolutions.
>>>>
>>>> Though it saw war and mass exterminations, this period also witnessed
>>>> the growth of democratic institutions, the spread of "universals"
>>>> (education, health, social security), the humanization of capital,
>>>> the growing power of labour, and rising standards of living. However,
>>>> this may have begun to end sometime during the past fifty years. The
>>>> past few decades, since World War II, have been a period of economic
>>>> florescence and gradual decline. The 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s,
>>>> were the perhaps the most prosperous years of human history. It was
>>>> not only the advanced world which prospered and grew, but the
>>>> underdeveloped world witnessed the Green Revolution and
>>>> industrialization which showed every promise of bettering human life.
>>>> Since then, productivity has fallen, unemployment has grown, and
>>>> poverty has again become part of the accepted commonplace. The Green
>>>> Revolution, based on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, has turned
>>>> out to be green more in illusion than in fact, and industrialization
>>>> in the NICs is raising the prospect of massive environmental damage.
>>>>
>>>> So, these are real problems. What do they have to do with my virus? I
>>>> would suggest the following: along with the deterioration of the
>>>> economy, the falling productivity of capital (except, it would seem,
>>>> the productivity of finance capital), the mounting debts of
>>>> governments, and growing unemployment, has come a pessimistic
>>>> meanness - a gathering, once again, of the Tolkien-like "dark
>>>> forces". It is hard to tell how this began, but someone, some group,
>>>> somewhere may have started it and it has since spread to become the
>>>> dominant thought mode of our civilization. During the 1950s, we
>>>> placed our faith in education and growth, and during the 1960s in
>>>> flower-power and the rebuilding of society along more humane lines.
>>>> Since then, we have been running for cover, striving, as John Ralston
>>>> Saul has so ably pointed out, to hide within corporate groups and
>>>> exclude others by speaking specialized languages that are not even
>>>> understood by ourselves.
>>>>
>>>> Whether or not there really is a virus behind all of this does not
>>>> matter. My point is that, as in the 14th Century, we have once again
>>>> become a society of despair. Like the Aztecs waiting for, and
>>>> dreading, the return of Quetzalcoatl, we are immobilized. Our
>>>> governments, unable to do anything positive, are doing every negative
>>>> thing they can - cutting, hacking and lacerating all in the name of
>>>> satisfying our dour lust for leanness and meanness. A whole culture
>>>> of consultants, like an austere medieval priesthood, has grown up
>>>> around re-engineering and lean production - squeezing more work out
>>>> of those lucky enough to retain their jobs and getting rid of
>>>> ("terminating") all others.
>>>>
>>>> How do we get out of this? Must we again endure two centuries of
>>>> purging and self- flagellation before a new renaissance? Or can we
>>>> come to recognize that many problems are of our own making and refuse
>>>> to become victims of the virus of despair? How, in place of universal
>>>> pessimism and lost hope, do we promote the idea that we can regain
>>>> control? I believe that the answers cannot come from society, or, as
>>>> some appear to believe, from a technology such as the internet. They
>>>> must come from ourselves, each and every one of us. It would seem
>>>> that the most important thing is to become skeptical of everything,
>>>> including popular scapegoats and remedies.
>>>>
>>>> Is it really the TNCs, computers and robotics that are shafting us?
>>>> If so, what countervailing powers do we have? If not, find the real
>>>> causes. Perhaps it is ourselves, burying our heads in the sand and
>>>> getting our asses kicked. Is it government? Well, in democracies,
>>>> those who govern are accessible, and if they are not, storm the
>>>> barriers and make them so. They are our servants, not our masters.
>>>>
>>>> But perhaps it really is ourselves. We don't like to think that it
>>>> is, so we look around for others to blame for having done this to us,
>>>> or perhaps for a virus. Having quoted him once, I will quote my old
>>>> friend Pogo Possum again because he may be right: "We have seen the
>>>> enemy and he is us."
>>>>
>>>> Ed Weick
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>
>
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