Orlov and the Wonderful, Terrible, Radical Simplification
I just finished reading Dmitri Orlov’s article, The Five Stages of Collapse, published on the Energy Bulletin. I highly recommend it. Orlov helped me, as I believe he intended, to visualize and come to more concrete terms with the likely course of The Collapse of Western Civilization. He presents a lucid picture of what the unwinding will look like in the United States or, as the case may be, the coming “North American Union.” Which political entity will be in place depends, of course, on whether the powers that be will have time to implement their more elaborate political plans for control and domination before the balloon bursts and their insane schemes fall apart.
I very much appreciate Orlov’s analysis and I want to offer a couple of additional perspectives that occurred to me as I thought about it. First, he is incredibly clear and thoughtful about the economic, political and social conditions, but does not factor in the impending torrent of wild fluctuations in weather and climate. To me those forces, as well as global fossil fuel shortages, are likely to hasten the movement through the stages he describes, to accelerate the process. It’s rather sobering to consider crop failures, serious interruptions or losses of basic fuel imports, and likely power grid disruptions from weather events, in additon to the economic and financial failures already in motion.
The other issue that occurs to me is that Orlov doesn’t point to any ultimate “good” to come of collapse, either for humans or for the non-human world. The tone of his article suggests only a sense of failure, that we have “fucked up,” collectively, and that there’s not much to feel but a kind of stupidity and despair, as well as, of course, alarm. It brings to my mind the image of a teenager who stumbles out of a police car, having totaled the family car, seriously injured his girlfriend now in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, with six too many beers already vomited into the ditch, and muddy clothes torn, on a rainy night. He’s scraped up but still able to shamefully stagger into the house, aware that there is no way to avoid the horror and wrath of critical parents. There’s no suggestion of greater meaning inherent in this image, nor is there a larger context from which to view the scene. The kid fucked up and it’s a big mess. It is easy to see this culture in those terms. Collectively, we, the people of civilization, have fucked up and it IS indeed a big mess. Despite the contributions of Mozart, Einstein, and countless other human luminaries, as a whole we’ve brought the planet into a global mass extinction event that has the potential to rival the end Permian extinction, when more than 90% of all species were lost. It’s that bad.
Still, I see it in a larger context. I see the collapse as a piece of the story of the human, a real live myth, a very big and very profound story. I see this time and these events in ways that I imagine Gaia or Mother Earth may see them. What all of this represents is a vitally necessary process of cleansing and balancing. At it’s best, what we are involved in, and witness to, is a spiritual initiation rite of the highest order for an adolescent species in sore need of such an initiation. The stakes are extremely high, as well they should be. It’s hard, sobering, and at times shameful to look at our drunken, disconnected, destructive behavior. But I sense that we are in the hands of Elders, the forces of Life, our ancestors, or even maybe just simply the laws of biology, evolution, and physics, but certainly powers older and greater than the inflated collective, civilized human ego in the midst of this wild and unrestrained adolescence brought about by the fossil fuel age. If we, some of us anyway, are willing to stay the course of this initiation, we may make it through to adulthood and beyond. Or not. But if we do not then the species was not up to the task. We won’t get to become a mature species. The process of incorporating big brains and opposable thumbs into a carbon based world will have to begin again. It will be a tragic loss. But at any rate it’s a good and meaningful story to be a character in. Better this than “Leave It To Beaver.”
While Orlov doesn’t touch on the profound mythos here, I still heartily recommend reading the whole article. His new book is likely even better. Here is a brief excerpt, where Orlov describes the stages:
Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed to resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.
Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.
Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.
Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity” (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes “May you die today so that I die tomorrow” (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.
The word “collapse” implies for most people something highly negative. No doubt it is important to be sober about the level of shock and suffering that will be entailed in this process. But it is also important, in order to be able to imagine any light at the end of the tunnel, to play with other language that could also describe the process we find ourselves in.
For example, it feels very different to say: “We are on the brink of the radical simplification of human society on the planet.” Joseph Tainter, author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, describes collapse as a reduction in the scope and complexity of a society. We’re going to find ourselves with far less complex systems due to less availability of fossil energy to support those complex systems, but also due to greater stresses on basic systems of food production, shelter, heating, water availability, etc. These stresses will be result from climate change and ecological overshoot, by which we’ve seriously damaged the life support systems, the ecosystems, of our local landbases.
The word collapse calls up images of horror. And that’s not inappropriate. But images of collapse inspire no visions of ultimate benefit. On the other hand the term radical simplification could sound a different chime for people exhausted from the current wage slave system, where the many work ever harder to stuff the ever more soft and opulent feather beds of the few elite. Radical simplification of life, if people would slow down enough to contemplate it, could actually feel like a breath of non-polluted air. Too many people, most people I would venture to say, and even those with currently stable incomes, are incredibly lonely. They sit in quiet despair in front of their television sets or walk the malls with iPods stopping their ears, or drink beers and soullessly cheer at yet another sporting event, forever in frantic search of more distraction. For most, collapse will be, alternatively, either a shock or, if it proceeds slowly, just a heightened erosion of already degraded and meaningless lives. The coming transition will not be pretty for the bewildered herd. But for visionaries and cultural creatives collapse, or radical simplification, likely calls up what may seem to be paradoxical feelings of relief and even empowerment. I’ve heard more than one friend recently exclaim, “Bring it on. I’m sick of this shit.”
Joseph Tainter suggests that the fall of the Roman Empire was not, except for the elite, a step back. According to Wikipedia,
We often assume that the collapse of the Roman Empire was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Tainter points out that it can be seen as a very rational preference of individuals at the time, many of whom were actually better off (all but the elite, presumably). Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that average nutrition actually improved after the collapse in many parts of the former Roman Empire. Average individuals may have benefited because they no longer had to invest in the burdensome complexity of empire.
While mainstream culture, and it’s majority, have no realistic idea what’s brewing, there are many movements towards simplification already sprouting, perhaps from an intuitive sense, amongst the sensitive and creative, that the current system is in free-fall and about to go splat on hard pavement. Local food, local, cooperative business, the growing co-housing and communities movements, and small but aware groups now gather to educate their neighbors about the impending crises, as is evidenced in the “relocalization movement” typified by national groups like the Post Carbon Institute, The Community Solutions, and more local groups like Boulder Going Local.
The relocalization movement, already seeded in many minds, if not in huge numbers of actual locations yet, will grow best and fastest from the composted detritus and decay of the fossil fueled consumer culture. Orlov suggests that decay has already begun and will culminate in Stages 3 and 4, hopefully avoiding Stage 5. While I don’t relish the suffering that all of this will entail, I do welcome the open and more fertile ground that will open up as we move away from the current dominant culture and paradigm. The decay of large systems of control and domination will foster the possibility of reconnection to place, to non-human life, and to one another in families and small communities, like we have not seen for generations, perhaps centuries. We have the opportunity to become members of local communities grounded in the reality of the planet.
I don’t have a sense that Orlov holds any such sentiment. I use the word sentiment in it’s highest sense: the thought that it is necessary for us as a species to pass through terribly trying physical times and rigorous spiritual exercise is one based on pure sentiment. I possess a basic and enduring love for the capacities we have as human beings: our abilities to love deeply, to care immensely, and to be consciously, intimately and passionately connected to all of life.
I very much appreciate Orlov for giving us a likely map to the unwinding because it reinforces for my rational self what my heart has intuitively come to: it’s time to get out of highly populated areas, to find a small, remote town or village where there is the possibility of coming together to provide for the essentials locally, apart from the larger systems that are about to crumble.
As I read Orlov’s analysis I felt ever more convinced of the dangers of dependence on the larger structures for one’s basic needs. But I could also see that there clearly resides the possibility, and even likelihood, that for some of us who are aware and making rapid preparation, that collapse, necessary radical simplification, is likely to foster the growth of innumerable small bastions of sanity, deep humanity and growing spirituality. In those places we will work with great purpose toward the regeneration of natural systems and the evolution of loving connection across species, generations, races and sexes.
If we wake up now, see the handwriting on the wall of this prison and walk away from it, we can sit together in circle with one another, and with the whole community of our landbase, to weather the huge storms that will rage around us. And as the storms abate, those of us who have done our work, our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical work, with the help of greater forces, will have the opportunity to make amends, to work to offer deep reparation for the harm we have collectively caused. With grace, we, and our descendants, will also have the chance to water and care for the seed of re-member-ing our deeper ancestral selves, our ancient legacy of consciousness, that honored life in all it’s forms. What a Way to Go.
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March 1st, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Dear Sally,
This is very powerful. By far my favorite entry of all.
Bring it on-I’m sick of this shit!!
Thank you for sharing your deep wisdom, and for possessing “….a basic and enduring love for the capacities we have as human beings: our abilities to love deeply, to care immensely, and to be consciously, intimately and passionately connected to all of life….”
-Roxanne
March 1st, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Dear Sally
Many thanks for this excellent article; I think your take on our current predicament is becoming increasingly refined and accurate. That’s exactly how we see it. I really like the way you have extended Orlov’s analysis by defining collapse as necessary radical simplification. Nothing bad is occurring; it’s all good. Bring it on - definitely!
As for us, we now have our 25 acres in the foothills of the Southern Alps on the South Island of New Zealand. We see it as farming and guns - farming for food, and guns to keep the ravening hordes away! Strong and well-organised communities will survive to inherit the future.
Keep up the good work!
Love to all, Robin & Adrienne Scott
March 1st, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Thanks.
I think Orlov’s best work is the comparison between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I was so taken with your article that I just had to read it aloud to my wife who very quickly was screaming at me to shut up, that she didn’t want to hear it and that I (and you) were going to be very sorry when things turn out the way you (and I) seem to think. I am very much in the “bring it on. I’m sick of this shit” camp but she is still hoping against hope that civilization will be able to kick the can down the road until our future grandkids are grown. One thing is certain though, ain’t none of us, neither we nor our children nor our children’s children are going to survive this thing, even if by luck we should all eventually die just of old age and natural causes. The shitstorm that is now beginning will still be unfolding for hundreds and thousands of years. Bring it on. Humanity roamed the earth for hundreds of thousands of years and longer without central heating and air conditioning and plastic salad shooters and can do it again. We came of age in the last great ice age. Whatever hand the earth and karma deals us, let’s strive to live our lives with courage and grace. Hopefully it won’t be empty posturing and we can pass an ethic of true maturity on to our posterity.
March 1st, 2008 at 11:58 pm
LLPete:
I think you are right. I’m sick also of the touchy-feelies who think they can ‘love’ and ‘hug’ their way out of the shitstorm. It is going to be Chaos: not unstructured chaos, but the kind that makes fractal patterns; Sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The better you know your neighbors, the more prepared you are, the better you will be able to influence the outcome, but you can’t even shoot your way out if the government comes with tanks take your guns (or take you to fight in the oil/water/floodplain wars). We all need to work from our point of defense and source of food/water/shelter to build networks, but we damn sure aren’t going to be in control except for as far as we can reach out and ‘touch’ someone with a pitchfork or a rifle. Everyone will be shooting whomever they please to get whatever they need or want. You will have to be a better neighbor or a better shot. Both will be useful skills.
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:21 am
LLPete
Thank you - ‘whatever hand the Earth and Karma deals us, let’s strive to live our lives with courage and grace’. Absolutely right on, man.
Respect, Robin
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:30 am
Right on, Sally! I’m with you all the way: “And as the storms abate, those of us who have done our work, our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical work, with the help of greater forces, will have the opportunity to make amends, to work to offer deep reparation for the harm we have collectively caused. With grace, we, and our descendants, will also have the chance to water and care for the seed of re-member-ing our deeper ancestral selves, our ancient legacy of consciousness, that honored life in all it’s forms.”
With love to you and Tim,
Suzanne
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:44 am
I have always liked analogies as they usually simplify rather complicated situations. I have one today that I would like to share with you. I am thinking that the process that we as Americans are going through today is like a long train that is stretched out into the far distance. On board the train in various types of cars are seated the majority of the American Public. Some are in luxuriously appointed coaches and for a very privileged few we find them in private cars. Some are in sleeper cars and a minority are either riding in boxcars or cattle cars and a few are riding the rails. In the locomotive are a few deranged engineers. Scattered among the passengers are the conductors who are our politicians who keep assuring us that they are taking care of everything, so just sit back and enjoy the ride. As the train speeds along, drinks are being served and entertainment composed of old movies from the past are being shown on wide TV screens. Outside the windows we can see numerous large electronic signboards telling us what to expect when we reach our destination, however these displays do not indicate the time of arrival or the final destination but they are providing information that is thought to be helpful to the wary passengers. There are numerous large signboards that tell us how well off we all are and we are to not worry because the train is in good working order and safe from any robbers and the tracks ahead are clear and in good repair. Occasionally we see small groups of people standing alongside with signs and banners with messages telling the passengers to get off the train because whatever your destination is it will not be what you expected. In the locomotive only the engineer knows where he is taking this train and he is absolutely convinced that he is on the right track and he will get the passengers where they need to be even if he kills all of them including himself in the process. Meanwhile back at the railroad headquarters the board of directors are sitting in their comfortable leather overstuffed chairs, smoking Cuban cigars and drinking toasts to the success of this final train ride and congratulating themselves on this experiment that has taken many years in various planning stages and now is close to fruition. Now the master plan goes like this. The people in the private cars along with their servants are heading for an extremely well protected gated community where they will have all the accoutrements befitting their exalted positions in the new society. Those in the box cars, and cattle cars along with those riding the rails and many of the coach passengers are headed for the long term containment facilities where they will be confined indefinably to become the industrial work force. Those who dissent will be placed on a one-way rail trip to a final solution camp where they will be erased from history. Those few remaining in the coaches will be relocated to well organized communities where they will be given positions and privileges contingent upon their acceptance of whatever they are told by the conductors who are answerable only to the Board of directors of the corporation. Way down the tracks are a small group of militants who have secreted a large supply of explosives sufficient to derail this train, but there are also those among them who are dedicated to putting out warning flares far enough in front of the onrushing train which will give the engineer ample warning to stop the train before it runs over the peaceful protesters who will be lying on the tracks.
I leave it to you to finish this story.
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:03 am
Jack Finley: Great analogy, Jack. I would just like to add to the story that the train is a variable entity. It could be Tim’s train to hell, or it could be just the general train to the future. The various classes on the train think they are somewhere they are not. The rich think they are driving the train, the poor are told they are riding the roof of the freight cars. I think the richer people are, the less necessary they are to the train, and the farther they are from the engine, but the more they are weighing it down when it crosses the old rickety bridge of change. The poor who are actually shoveling the coal into the engine don’t realize they could have just pulled the pins to the Rich cars and left them to sit and rot, while lightening their own burden of shoveling coal to keep things rolling. If it wasn’t for the hyperactivity of the Screaming Rich, then the train could travel at a leisurely pace and everyone could take turns enjoying the scenery and the conversation.
If you aren’t working for and paying those who are richer than you, what are you good for in this Economy Train?
Even if we pull the pins now, the rich payload at the back of the train will crash into us when we slow down, or drag us all down into the Pit of Despair when the whole thing tries to cross the Rickety Bridge of Change.
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Jack Finley wrote: “I have always liked analogies as they usually simplify rather complicated situations. I have one today that I would like to share with you. I am thinking that the process that we as Americans are going through today is like a long train that is stretched out into the far distance. On board the train in various types of cars are seated the majority of the American Public. Some are in luxuriously appointed coaches and for a very privileged few we find them in private cars. Some are in sleeper cars and a minority are either riding in boxcars or cattle cars and a few are riding the rails….”
Interesting analogy-Did you see the movie, “What A Way To Go” to which this blog-site is dedicated, which Sally produced? ( I watched it last night for the fifth time…)
And, “…Way down the tracks are a small group of militants who have secreted a large supply of explosives sufficient to derail this train, but there are also those among them who are dedicated to putting out warning flares far enough in front of the onrushing train which will give the engineer ample warning to stop the train before it runs over the peaceful protesters who will be lying on the tracks…”
There are also those who are going to blow themselves up with the train; those who see sacrificing their lives in/on the war-train as part of the solution. In fact, if the analogy works, and I think it does, then this train’s been running a long long time, and the derailers with the explosives have been evident in other-than-white / middle-class american culture for just as long—traditional indigenous cultures, “insurgents” in countries this country has battered and bombed, and palestinians come to mind…
March 2nd, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Thanks Sally.
You put my thoughts into such eloquant language - It is wonderful to read. I love the phrase “radical simplification” it’s perfect.
Orlov did not mention the climate or the loss of cheap fossil fuels, I wonder why not?
I live on the West Coast of BC and the spectre of rising sea levels is a concern to me and with no diesel fuel, food costs go up.
I think that the financial situation in the USA is now on everyones’ radar and it has pushed the more relentless but less “sexy” climate and fuel concerns to the outside.
We still need the synthesis of the Orlov financial breakdown with the other two.
Keep up the good work,
Mary
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Why doesn’t anyone remember (or aren’t any old enough?) that some 40 years ago a youth culture came to the fore and quickly knew how to put together community values, actually seemed to have it in hand . . . for a few years, until suddenly the stars in their eyes faded? They forgot the moorings they had briefly established, got hooked by the greed they had dedicated themselves against, and ‘went for the dream’ that those running the society have pushed on us for the long life of this country.
We’re all short-sighted fools . . . always have been! A flash of gold, a glitter of jewels promised, and off we go, chasing after the pie in the sky. BUT THAT GENERATION BRIEFLY SAW THROUGH THE ILLUSION!
I have no idea why their vision suddenly vanished. I, myself, was from an earlier generation, but I was there and I joined briefly with theirs. I was like a Rip-van-Winkle who hadn’t the inspiration that motivated them . . . but similarly, I had no ’stars in my eyes’ to lose. I watched them go for their mess of pottage, thinking they could somehow change the entire system from within. They were wrong, of course, and I knew they were wrong, for I had come out of what they went into. I knew that it was nothing but a deadfall. I knew that I had found something far better than the gold they sought (as they made believe they had higher purposes). Yeah, that was the boomer generation . . . do any of you recall it?
I’m not just here to recite history. I’m talking about What It Was (?) that suddenly possessed them, and just as suddenly vanished, about seven years later. I really don’t think any of them remember it today. But I know, because I continued to live with the star-tears that dropped from their eyes. I left jobs and automobiles, money and the urge for it behind, along with all the ego trips that keep people from seeing how hooked they really are. And just that shadow of a dream continued to work for me . . . so I know it’s real.
I have virtually nothing now; I live on less than $10K a year, but I have everything I need. And it doesn’t include a gun, or any supposition to farming. Yes. What I got from them is real and it is not going to desert me. But I wonder why none of those whom I learned and got it from can remember what it was all about . . . I wonder why they aren’t trying to get back to it.
I sort of think it may be about to return. Not for them, but for a new younger generation. At least, I’m hoping so.
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 am
“Sick of the shit”
It will be what it will be. Part of me experiences excitment when thinking of a beautiful community of people depending on one another to survive and prosper…..True community like we have not experienced. Tending the land…Valuing all that we are blessed by……A true humility for life and ALL that it offers………..and the other part of me experiences the anguish of what it might look like when people suffer so severly due to ignorance and denial. I work to stay as grounded as possible in each moment…but I feel the shift occuring and continue to stay as focused as possible for whatever the moments present……….I am very fortunate to have friends that are aware and committed to creating a wonderful life in whatever the present situations may be. Know your garden, find your water and when in the river push off and hopefully you have a few good friends with you to celebrate each passing moment………The Hopi also say to watch out for seriousness…………..
Keep your heads above water………..Love your neighbor, they will probably end up a family member………
March 4th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Great stuff, I just wrote an article for my group the AAFANTE Tribe (African Americans Forming A New Tribal Existence) about the above state of affairs. From what I can gather oil was to civilization what crack cocaine became to junkies. Modes of energy have been around on this planet a long, long time, but oil was super charged and it began to be extracted at a time when man had started his for better more productive mousetraps, machines.
Therefore, once man experimented with the many ways oil could be refined and used he invented applications to employ it.
That is much like cocoa. The plant and it’s active ingredient have been around for eons. When it was processed to cocaine people started using it in different ways, drinking it, snorting it and shooting it.
However it was not until the early 1980s when people started refluxing it with baking soda to get to its maximine potential that it began to be consumed in enormous amounts, just as oil and its derivatives did. In a sense civilization is a macrocosm of individual addicts just as singular additive people are microcosms of civilization.
I will post the article next. If it is not appliable please forgive me In advance. I think every human on the planet has a right to know what has happened, what is happening and what will or may happen.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I got it. It came to me during sleep time early this morning. I now have a working theory on what we are facing as citizens of civilization, and for me the abstracts finally came together to paint a clearer picture.
So picture this, for 3 million years of so humanoids lived by the original law and that was the “Law of Life”. That law kept all organic matter in basic harmony. By harmony I don’t mean to suggest that there was no violence, no killing, no theft, not at all. What I am suggesting that the one thing there was not was war.
War as it came to be defined and known is a manifestation of civilization. Fights and battles have existed as long as there have been species on the planet competing for an energy source – food.
The original program or the Law of Life can be observed by simply going into your back yard and looking at natural plant and animal life. One of the first major laws of life was as Quinn put it, it is called, The Law of Limited Competition. It says you may hunt your enemy, but cannot hunt his food supply or limit his food supply. In other words you may hunt and fight but you must not wage war. As you will see the waging of war creates disharmony and unbalance in nature. It makes it extremely hard for nature to rebalance the ravages of war.
Another vital law of life to understand is the strategy of the erratic competitor. These were the rules that tribes operated under until the advent of civilization. It simply says, “I will attack you on occasion and I know you will attack me. I may steal some of your food and even your women. I will give as good as I will take and I shall do it erratically. However, I will not hunt down your food supply or fight you to extinction.
Now this is important. Tribes didn’t operate like this because of some inherent goodness or altruism. They did it because following these unwritten, unspoken and probably un-talked about laws was sustaining. In other words they worked and had worked for millions of years until………
I would think that humans have always had the capacity for greed avarice, sloth, envy, pride, lust, resentment, shame and tribal people were no different. However if anyone of these issues became overwhelming they could and would upset the balance in the tribe.
Therefore it served them well to deal with it as soon as it cropped up. They knew it would happen; they just had very effective ways of handling it and they did.
Ok so the stage was set and the die was cast and if any of you have done the required reading or seen the movie Apocalypto or the latest documentary, “What a Way to Go”, you have some idea of the impact of civilization. If you don’t know then I suggest you do your own research.
Here is my theory of what started to drive civilization shortly after it was formed. I think mankind as it came to exist in the culture of civilization over identified with what I am terming and coining, “Collective totalitarian compulsive obsessive greed disorder”.
_________________
Mr. Mann
“So called black people have talked themselves into something they cannot talk themselves out of.”
All evidence suggests that war and particularly wars of attrition starts with civilization and the etymology of war is to create confusion one can began to understand that it would be one of the principal weapon for a culture to impose its will upon another. Or as Quinn and the movie refers to it the culture with the one right way for everyone to live. By the way that is the United States Marine Corps definition of war also.
So let’s do a short etymological exercise on greed:
greedy
O.E. grædig “voracious,” also “covetous,” from P.Gmc. *grædagaz (cf. O.S. gradag, O.N. graðr “greed, hunger”), from base *græduz (cf. Goth. gredus “hunger,” O.E. grædum “eagerly”), cognate with Skt. grdh “to be greedy.” In Gk., the word was philargyros, lit. “money-loving.” Greed is 1609 back-formation. A Ger. word for it is habsüchtig, from haben “to have” + sucht “sickness, disease,” with sense tending toward
Notice the reference to hunger at least two times. Do you think it coincidence that scarcity of food emerges with totalitarian agriculture thus producing hunger on a mass scale? That is not to say that tribes didn’t suffer from hunger, but never in the sense to make them greedy because if one was hungry all were hungry. That is a vast difference where in civilization thousands and millions could be hungry and a few “elite” would eat well.
So right away after agriculture we began to see the culture of greed emerge sustained by war.
Next look at the meaning of war meaning, to confuse and perplex. Let’s put this improper context. Tribal people had no conception of war as we know it. There was no need. Why would they want to wipe out their adversaries? What would they have done with the land? Without a means to wage war of attrition the concept didn’t exist, yet. However, when man began to grow hi own food, store it, lock it up, hire former hunters to guard who evolved into a warrior class they could then do something never before done in the history of mankind, wage war.
war
late O.E. (c.1050), wyrre, werre, from O.N.Fr. werre “war” (Fr. guerre), from Frank. *werra, from P.Gmc. *werso (cf. O.S. werran, O.H.G. werran, Ger. verwirren “to confuse, perplex”). Cognates suggest the original sense was “to bring into confusion.” There was no common Gmc. word for “war” at the dawn of historical times. O.E. had many poetic words for “war” (guð, heaðo, hild, wig, all common in personal names), but the usual one to translate L. bellum was gewin “struggle, strife” (related to win). Sp., Port., It. guerra are from the same source; Romanic peoples turned to Gmc. for a word to avoid L. bellum because its form tended to merge with bello- “beautiful.” The verb meaning “to make war on” is recorded from 1154. First record of war time is 1387. Warpath (1775) is from N.Amer. Ind., as are war-whoop (1761), war-paint (1826), war-path (1775), and war-dance (1757). War crime first attested 1906. War chest is attested from 1901; now usually fig. War games translates Ger. Kriegspiel (see kriegspiel).
This my friends was I think the opening of the real Pandora’s box. Once these emotions emerged as the dominate drive of men, no longer checked by the nessicity of continuing the sustaining life style of the small clans, groups and tribes, man was now driven by inner demons that was and still is insatiable. Thus my theory of Collective totalitarian compulsive obsessive greed disorder or CTCOGD. From this comes all other forms of addictions and in a real sense I think it safe to say that the citizens of civilization are addicted to power, control, war and their own demise of course
Tell me what do you think?
_________________
Mr. Mann
“So called black people have talked themselves into something they cannot talk themselves out of.”
March 4th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Mr. Mann:
Two things: First, you have a good analogy. I heard a comedian do a skit just like it. He starts out with people using wood for heat, and that was like tobacco, then coal, which is like marijuana, then oil, which is like crack.
On to the evils of civilization: It’s all in the Marketing. Douglas Adams said “We should never have come down from the trees.” I think that we should never have stopped eating strangers (missionaries and salesmen) that we didn’t know or someone didn’t vouch for. Once you become marketed to, you become marketed yourself to people with bigger markets.
There needs to be some kind of feedback mechanism to limit the reach of Coercion by bullies. The US constitution was supposed to protect individual rights, but the money flowed faster than the wisdom when it came to writing amendments, so the corporations took over all three branches of government plus the ‘free’ press.
In a tribal situation, nature provides the feedback limiter with resource and environment availability. Civilization, then technology has potential to add to species survivability and Net Creativity, but it has to be kept in check. Too late for this go-’round, but perhaps these words or ideas we have will make it through The Hole to the future. (The Hole is about the size of a human being, and is the passageway through to our future.)
March 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
autiegray, much thanks for the feedback. The tribe I belong to is looking to get more involved in the movement to at least help facilitate the crash. We have no illusion that it can or should be prevented.
Once I got over my pre-dispositional delusion that “they” would take care of it and went through the stages of acceptance I decided tha of I was going out I would go out swinging.
I am not so egotistical to think that man is the alpha and omega nor is he the top of the food chain. I remember reading Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene” several years ago where he suggested that perhaps man is not all he thinks he is. Perhaps he is just a carrier of genes and I add that perhaps man’s so called consciousness is only a trick to make him think he is in control.
What, just what if all of humanity just mere farms for microbes? Makes me kinda humble.