Civilization and succession

In an Archdruid Report post a couple of weeks ago, I used the well-worn metaphor of bacteria in a petri dish to talk about the way that ecological limits constrain the range of possibilities open to any life form, Homo sapiens included. Several people objected to the comparison, insisting basically that human beings are enough smarter than microbes that the same rules don


On a deeper level, of course, such comments miss the point just as thoroughly as the claim they