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Page added on June 12, 2016
How Did Things Get To Be This Way?
Ojibway elder Basil Johnston said that a good life is impossible for people disconnected from their history. We must know who we are. The venerable historian William Cronon was the son of a history professor. One day, his father gave him the magic key for understanding the world. He told his son to carry one question on his journey through life: ‘How did things get to be this way?’
Sometime, when you’re feeling a bit bored, eager for thrills and excitement, get a library card and spend the next 20 years reading. Search for answers to Cronon’s question. Read 500 books on environmental history, ecology, anthropology, night after night, year after year, and type thousands of pages of notes.
It’s a mind-altering experience, a spiritual journey. In the process, you become something like a shaman, with the ability to pass through the veil, and discover important information in a non-ordinary state of consciousness. When you return to the ordinary reality, you can share what you have learned, and guide your people closer to the path of healing — in theory.
More commonly, finding real answers to Cronon’s question turns you into a notorious dolt, a filthy and disgusting pariah. Doomer! Go away! You’re crazy! Most folks prefer to remain in a world of illusions, a realm that has little in common with the power visions of the history shaman. Illusions are comfortable. The economy is recovering. We’re zooming toward Utopia. The best is yet to come. Right?
Conservation writer Charles Little has given many lectures on tree death in America. He is often asked one question: ‘A hand will be raised at the back of the room. “But what can we do?” the petitioner will ask. Do? What can we do? What a question that is when we scarcely understand what we have already done!’ Indeed! How can the human journey avoid one more cycle of repeated mistakes when we fail to understand most of the mistakes?
Biologist Paul Ehrlich once spent time among the Inuit of Hudson Bay, Canada. He was shocked to discover that the entire knowledge-base of their cultural information was known by everyone — how to hunt seals, tan pelts, weave a net, sew a coat, and so on. Yet, in our advanced civilisation, nobody knows even a millionth of our cultural information. You can get a PhD from Stanford and never learn anything about agriculture. Food is one thing we truly need. What is the plan for feeding 11 billion? Is it possible?
Meanwhile, mainstream society has invented a comical joyride in magical thinking — if we simply call something ‘sustainable’ enough times, then it is! In the blink of the eye, forest mining becomes Sustainable Forestry™ and soil mining becomes Sustainable Agriculture™. In a barrage of oxymorons, business as usual is kept on life support, by any means necessary, for as long as possible. What should we do about this? How can we revive the original meaning of sustainability?
In Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization, Richard Manning writes, ‘There is no such thing as sustainable agriculture. It does not exist.’ He says, ‘The domestication of wheat was humankind’s greatest mistake.’ In Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, geologist David Montgomery concurs. ‘Continued for generations, till-based agriculture will strip soil right off the land as it did in ancient Europe and the Middle East. With current agricultural technology though, we can do it a lot faster.’ Contrary to common beliefs, history shamans have a hard time finding examples of genuinely sustainable agriculture. Have you seen recent images of Uruk, the magnificent city of King Gilgamesh?
In Here on Earth, Tim Flannery said that we are like sheep in a pasture. We no longer need big brains, because our shepherds take care of us. We have become ‘helpless, self-domesticated livestock.’ ‘While we sit in our air-conditioned homes and eat, drink and make merry like cattle in a feedlot without the slightest thought about the consequences of our consumption of water, food and energy, we only hasten the destruction — in the long term — of our kind.’ Won’t it be a healthy change when the lights go out, and we are once again required to be fully present in reality?
Flannery said that our ice age ancestors had bigger brains than we have now — 10 percent larger in men, and 14 percent in women. In Lone Survivors, Chris Stringer noted that the people of today have brains that average 1350 cc in size, and this is ten percent smaller than the average size of Homo sapiens brains 20,000 years ago. The average Neanderthal brain was 1600 cc — much bigger than ours. Could that imply something?
Anthropocentric scholars are fond of dismissing Neanderthals as dullards, because their tool kit changed little over 350,000 years. For 350,000 years, they lived by killing megafauna, but failed to wipe them out. Flannery noted, ‘Mammoths, straight-tusked woodland elephants, and two species of woodland rhinoceros coexisted with Neanderthals for hundreds of thousands of years.’ What was wrong with our incompetent cousins?
Today, every newborn that squirts out of the womb is a wild animal, with genes fine-tuned for life on a healthy tropical savannah. Infants only become consumers by being raised in consumer society. If we had been raised in a Neanderthal culture, would we live in balance?
In The Tender Carnivore, Paul Shepard wrote that when scientists raised chimps in their home, along with their own children, the chimps were at least as intelligent as children, until the children were three or four, learned language, and left the chimps in the dust. Different intelligence allows us to better comprehend the complexity of the world, but it also enables us to better destroy it. Much of our cultural information will be lost forever when climate change pulls the curtains on life as we know it. How can we preserve the tiny portion of this knowledge that is needed for a return to the path of good life?
Recently, I’ve become fascinated by our closest living relatives, the chimps and bonobos. We share something like 99 percent of our genes with them. Their ancestors have inhabited the same place for millions of years, without trashing it. Imagine that! They still enjoy a healthy life in a healthy place. Is that really so terrible? Once upon a time, our ancestors lived in the same region, in much the same way. What happened?
Chimps and bonobos did not make serious weapons, wage war against ape-eating predators, spread around the world, invent agriculture, explode in numbers, live in filth, and die by the millions from infectious diseases. They did not wage war against infectious diseases, soar into extreme overshoot, load the atmosphere with crud, and blindside the planet’s climate. Instead, they inhabit a niche in their ecosystem, and live as they have for millions of years, without rocking the boat. Is there something we could learn from their example?
Is it time to burn our Superman and Superwoman uniforms, apologise to the family of life for our furious rampages, return to the tropics, abandon words, clothes, and spears, and try to remember who we are? Can we recover a mode of enduring simplicity and stability that would no longer require a history to guide us? Can we someday heal so well that we never again have to ask ‘How did things get to be this way?’
31 Comments on "How Did Things Get To Be This Way?"
onlooker on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 1:15 pm
Maybe if some of us make it through the other side of the bottleneck of consequences we can regain our balance and equilibrium borne of humility and simplicity. But this current crop of humans are doomed as they bit from the tree of hubris ,comfort, pleasure and convenience. Too late for us.
Survivalist on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 1:46 pm
The Greenland ice sheet is experiencing very high levels of surface melt.
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
It’ll be interesting to see how it’s collapse proceeds.
GregT on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 2:32 pm
“It’ll be interesting to see how it’s collapse proceeds.”
Worthy of nothing but the best. Orville Redenbacher’s.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 3:56 pm
@onlooker
I’m pretty sure none of the fucking retards on this comment board will make it through the bottleneck. I’m pretty sure most of them couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. You’ll all make better fertilizer than you did human beings.
Apneaman on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 4:11 pm
Truth, there is not going to be a bottleneck since the humans have already smashed the bottle and are simply waiting for the inertia to come stomp them.
You’re gonna look even stupider than you sound when you starve to death up on retard mountain.
THLB the mountain king – king of fuck all.
Survivalist on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 4:14 pm
More on Greenland ice sheet
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2016/06/greenland-witnessed-its-highest-june.html?m=1
Survivalist on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 4:15 pm
@apneaman
Are you a believer in near term human extinction?
Apneaman on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 4:20 pm
Survivalist, depends on your definition of near term. I don’t believe any of the humans will be around to usher in the next century.
Plantagenet on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 4:30 pm
Yes its important to figure out how things got this way, but its even more important to figure out what should be done next.
Cheers!
Survivalist on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 4:40 pm
Once the ice sheet collapses the methane release from the Siberian Arctic ice shelf will increase as the water above it warms.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-sea-ice-breaks-may-record-20415
Go Speed Racer on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 6:11 pm
There is no bottle neck.
Just a whole lot of red necks.
Survivalist on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 6:46 pm
@Apneaman
What is it that you believe will kill all the people off, famine?
makati1 on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 6:52 pm
All of you who are under 40 have an exciting, if difficult, life ahead. I hope you all are preparing for it. Buckle up!
The rest of us do also, but we have been there and done that. We may not live to see the worse humanity can do to humanity. You probably will. Sorry about that.
makati1 on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 6:58 pm
Survivalist, the list is long but here are a few of the negatives, not in order of importance:
1. Climate change
2. Financial collapse
3. Famine
4. War (nuclear?)
5. Pestilence
7. Oceans rising
8. Negative feedback loops
9. Human stupidity
10. ???
Any combination of these could end humanity forever, but we have all of these happening simultaneously. Odds are good that we will go extinct in this century.
onlooker on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 7:04 pm
Survivalist. Mak actually forgot a pretty big one. Contamination and poisoning of our air, water and land with thousands of chemicals,radiation and man made organic and inorganic substances all man made such as heavy metals. We are literally choking ourselves to death with poisons.
Survivalist on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 7:07 pm
I’ve never heard of a death certificate that said ’cause of death- financial collapse’. While financial collapse may be the root cause of suicide the proximal cause is the suicide. Likewise a death certificate will never say ‘climate change’. It may say ‘heat stroke’ or ‘dehydration’ or ‘starvation’. I’m interested to know what Apneaman believes will be the proximal cause of death in the human extinction event he anticipates.
I’m well versed in the generalities Mak. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. If I ever need help with the simplistic I’ll ask you.
Davy on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 7:13 pm
Survivalist, it is likely the proximate cause will be breakdown of the food chain from the convergence and reinforcement of peak oil dynamics, climate change and a collapsing economy. Once people are not eating properly states will fail. This contagion will spread and before you know it the global system is barely functioning. This could happen over a decade per the realities of climate change and peak oil dynamics or sooner per the uncertainty of global economics.
makati1 on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 7:27 pm
Surv, financial collapse is going to make things like famine, pestilence and human stupidity much, much worse. When YOU cannot afford food, your meds disappear, and more people get desperate, death is going to be a bigger part of your life. And financial collapse is one of the sure things in our future.
We live in a very interconnected world. No country/people are truly independent of the rest of the world if they want to maintain their current lifestyle. None. But then, maintaining our current lifestyle is not going to last much longer, is it?
Harquebus on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 9:01 pm
“If it moves, shoot it; if it don’t move, chop it down.” — Old Hillbilly.
jjhman on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 10:37 pm
” till-based agriculture will strip soil right off the land as it did in ancient Europe and the Middle East. ”
Am I missing something? They’ve been farming in the middle east and in Europe for, I dunno< 6,000 years? And this guy is afraid we are going to ruin the soil like they have.
I consider myself pretty pessimistic about what is called civilization but this business about the topsoil seems like a real red herring to me.
JuanP on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 10:49 pm
“They died of progress” by JMG
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.ke/2016/06/they-died-of-progress.html
JuanP on Sun, 12th Jun 2016 10:58 pm
“The Money Cult” by Orlov. “The current state of the global oil industry is a good example: either the price is so high that marginal consumers cannot afford it (as was the case until quite recently), or the price is so low that the marginal producers can’t break even (as is the case now)”
http://cluborlov.blogspot.gr/2016/06/the-money-cult.html
makati1 on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 1:04 am
jjhman, most of the “soil” in the US is nothing but sterile sand. The minerals have been long gone. Now it takes artificial fertilizers and chemicals to grow crops. Two thirds of the topsoil that was on American farms 100 years ago is gone. Eroded or blown away by till based farming.
Not to mention that it kills most of the life in soil that is needed for good crops. Did you know that there should be billions of organisms in one cubic yard of topsoil? Most too small for the human eye to see, but necessary for healthy soil. Most have been killed off by chemical poisons or poor soil management. Or both.
Useful education is really lacking today.
GregT on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 1:32 am
“most of the “soil” in the US is nothing but sterile sand.”
Not only in the US Mak, but throughout much of the world. I’m surprised by JJ’s comment above. We learned about this 30 years ago in grade school.
derhundistlos on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 1:52 am
Mak, like most, also failed to mention the present mass extinction crises. Every 24 hours we relegate an additional 150 species, on average, to the extinction dust bin. As we do so do we destroy the intricate web of life on which all life depends. The canaries in the coal mine are already dropping left and right- Chytrid, White Nose Syndrome, Colony Collapse Disorder, etc.
When I learn about unspeakable cruelties as in the following comment, I ask myself how people can come to believe a place called heaven actually exists, “In China, abuse and plain cruelty towards the dogs is encouraged under the popular and misconceived belief that the adrenaline rush makes the meat softer, and since the animal was strong enough to withstand torture, that strength will be transferred to the one who eats it.
Ching says he’s seen just about everything, from dogs being boiled alive to being sodomized, being thrown against walls and even disemboweled. He captured the horrifying images with his phone — a hidden camera in plain sight.”
theedrich on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 1:57 am
How Islam got this way? Check out https://www.suchanek.name/texts/poor/sharia.pdf and look at Section p17.0 (“SODOMY AND LESBIANISM”),and p17.1 “ There is consensus among both Muslims and the followers of all other religions that sodomy is an enormity. It is even viler and uglier than adultery.”Follow this with p17.2: “Allah Most High says: ‘Do you approach the males of humanity, leaving the wives Allah has created for you? But you are a people who transgress’ (Koran 26:165-66).”
And finally, p17.3: “ The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:
(1) ‘Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.’
(2) ‘May Allah curse him who does what Lot’s people did.’
(3) ‘Lesbianism by women is adultery between them.’”
Maybe this, rather than the defecations of Ø, provides a little insight into how the Orlando massacre at a gay nightclub took place early on 2016 June 12.
Note that an Iranian imam, Musab Masmari, had pontificated in Orlando in April that homosexuals should be murdered “out of compassion.”
So we know what can be expected when, persuaded by the Progressives, Whitey rejects his instinct for survival and the Mohammedans take over Europe and America. Our few remaining descendants will know exactly how things got that way.
Apneaman on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 12:37 pm
jjhman
Ruined soils? The first known civilization Sumeria was done in by this. Bountiful crops leading to population boom leading to over farming leading to overshoot. They knew it was happening and why, yet they kept doing it, just like the humans today and just like all the other dead civilizations. The reason that farming did not end for these 6000 years is because the humans migrated to new areas and started the cycle over again. Also there are instances where forests were cut down, the land farmed until exhaustion then abandoned for a century or more – new forests grew and eventually folks came back and started clearing and farming again. If I remember correctly this happened in areas of the north east of the US. The only reason we’re talking today is because of the “green revolution” in which the gig is up. There is nowhere else to go.
“Decline[edit]
This period is generally taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Mesopotamia toward the north. Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity. Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Poorly drained irrigated soils, in an arid climate with high levels of evaporation, led to the buildup of dissolved salts in the soil, eventually reducing agricultural yields severely. During the Akkadian and Ur III phases, there was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, but this was insufficient, and during the period from 2100 BC to 1700 BC, it is estimated that the population in this area declined by nearly three fifths.[27] ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer#Decline
Best book I’ve read on the history of agriculture.
“Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization: Richard Manning.”
Richard Manning – Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdr-maH3jtc
Apneaman on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 12:41 pm
Junk Food Is Bad For Plants, Too
How a steady diet of fertilizers has turned crops into couch potatoes.
“It’s undeniable that crops raised on fertilizers have produced historical yields. After all, the key ingredients of most fertilizers—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—make plants grow faster and bigger. And popular insecticides and herbicides knock back plant enemies. From 1960 to 2000, a time when the world’s population doubled, global grain production rose even more quickly. It tripled.1
But there is a trade-off. High-yielding crops raised on a steady diet of fertilizers appear to have lower levels of certain minerals and nutrients. The diet our crops eat influences what gets into our food, and what we get—or don’t get—out of these foods when we eat them.”
“Agronomists who analyzed archived wheat samples collected from 1873 to 1995 found significant declines in iron and zinc.2 A 2009 study of nutrient levels in United States crops concluded that there was strong evidence for 5 to 40 percent declines in the mineral content of fruits and vegetables over the previous 50 to 70 years.”
http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/junk-food-is-bad-for-plants-too
Apneaman on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 12:48 pm
Arctic melting feeds on itself
http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-melting-feeds/
The embers of last year’s wildfires are coming back with a vengeance
http://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2016/06/02/the-embers-of-last-years-wildfires-are-coming-back-with-a-vengeance/
Apneaman on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 12:51 pm
A Minnesota heat wave caused this road to buckle, sending cars flying
A couple of days with highs in the 90s caused the pavement on a Minnesota highway to buckle Saturday evening, giving cars which hit the spot at full speed about three feet of air.
Traffic cam footage of Highway 36 in the Twin Cities shows a handful of vehicles going airborne before most drivers figure out they should slow down or change lanes — though a few daredevils continue to take the suspension-punishing jump.
Watch the cars go flying in the video below.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/629580/minnesota-heat-wave-caused-road-buckle-sending-cars-flying
onlooker on Mon, 13th Jun 2016 5:26 pm
http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-exploding-permafrost-methane-craters-global-warming-2016-6
Giant holes are bursting open in Siberia, and you can hear the explosions from 60 miles away