by Ibon » Thu 22 Aug 2013, 09:11:31
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I')bon,
But kudzu ape is also termite ape, living in our own special mounds, with our own special classifications of worker, care taker, warrior, and queens.
Good video.
I think Newfie brings up a great point that the vast majority of humans will follow like ants or termites. This is probably something deeper than the mechanized conditioning we have seen progressing during the industrial revolution, and indicates actually the pliability of the masses of humans to do even the most demeaning of work.... or to follow the most dehumanizing of ideologies...... or to succumb to exploitive institutional social structures whether it be government, religious, or economic.
The flip side of this is that the masses can also align with what is still only a theoretical environmentally benign social or political or religious cultural institution assuming one evolves after a correction. Why that is likely to happen is worth elaborating and I will spend the rest of this post trying to outline this.
Maybe some of us have checked out on the top of mountains or rural retreats or within our heads in urban areas but any real hope for humans will be to harness the masses of Termite Apes as Newfie aptly names us toward values that are environmentally benign. If however the 1-3 % of us as strong individuals able to see the bigger picture project our own self actualization on to the rest of humanity and try from there to project trends going forward then we are hopelessly misguided. We have to understand future social evolution from Newfie's point that the vast majority of humans will never, in any age, want to open the aperture of their individuality much beyond following like termite ape.... this is at least my interpretation of what Newfie is saying and I wait any corrections or clarifications. Another name for this human could be Tow The Line Ape. And our future will depend on what institutions in the future do the towing.
Another way to look at how powerful Termite Ape is can be seen when we consider that in all these decades of unbelievable wealth and affluence how pitifully few of the masses actually did take pathways to self-actualization, creativity, original thinking. How many instead bought into the religion of materialism hook line and sinker? Look at the video and ask yourself how many in the BRIC nations (ie.China) are following this even more faithfully than what we name the more “individualized” west. Termite Ape is powerfully fixed to conservative messages of group cohesion and conformity regardless of race or culture or socio economics. Facebook?!
Secularism and the sheer crushing weight of reason and technology was long believed in the scientific community to eventually conquer ignorance and eventually kill faith and religions. But it didn't. There has always been a great fallacy in the secular and environmental movement that at some point the masses will awaken. The vast majority of humans do not want to be awake, they would prefer having the script and menu spelled out.
This for me points to a huge underappreciated force coming out of the consequences of biosphere feedback which is the renaissance of faith, the sense of the sacred and the survivors of a die-off willing to align themselves with a mythology that germinates from the ashes like jack pine seedlings. Think about this a moment. What makes a Termite Ape agree to work in a factory like in that video? It comes from a deeply conservative place that this path is what will lead to security and hopes of progressing materially. I postulate that the conditions following the consequences of biosphere feedback will strengthen this conservatism and make the surviving masses more willing and compliant to hang on to whatever social institution follows. And this social institution will not be based on secular reason alone. That is one of the reasons why on a lot of my recent posts I bring up words like worship and sacred.
Following the cynicism of our current economic system, the consequences of which can be seen in that video, will one day lead to overshoot collapse. We all know this. 7 going to 9 billion based on the foundation of further exploitation on non renewable resources? Do you think the masses will persist afterwards in being faithful to the secular religion of progress and technology and materialism when the ruins of this system will be laid to waste? That will be the death of cynicism and the birth of what I see as spiritual renaissance and sacredness toward our planet. The Overshoot Predator will be a jealous god that will demand respect. Just look at the wrath we awakened?
This cohesion and conformity of Termite Ape has been harnessed toward materialism and the pursuit of growth progress and acquiring stuff and consumerism. But it can be theoretically harnessed toward a foundation of sacred worship toward our planet and biosphere especially when whipped into compliance by external consequences. But not one day before The Overshoot Predator does his work. In this sense the Overshoot Predator can be seen as the coming messiah, being the agent of destruction and the agent of transition from cynicism to sacred worship toward our planet at the same time.
Ultimately it really doesn’t matter what kind of values the human society has following the collapse and die-off from the point of view of carrying capacity, at least initially, since we will fall back to carrying capacity not because of cultural transition but from the work of the Overshoot Predator. I am just suggesting that the complete failure of secular materialism will be laid bare by the Overshoot Predator and will leave a void that will need to be filled and if the pendulum of history is any guide we can expect faith and the sense of the sacred to re-emerge from the ashes of cynicism.
In the meantime we cynically march forward toward the days of reckoning.
And remember something. Those of us very very few individuals standing on the outside looking on to this process are at the moment largely irrelevant. Some of us in a future generation may be priests and shamans but that is another chapter. In the meantime though we can already start to worship the coming messiah, the Overshoot Predator. A creator by default not by design. I don’t need secular proof of his existence. I have faith and know him.
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
blog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/
website: http://www.mounttotumas.com
) are capable of acting rationally, the vast majority are easy prey to the psychopaths among us, who are always always always always always alway playing their own cards (see our own troll here, immune to public pressure, rebuttal, shunning). If we weren't pack, tribal-animals by nature (by the same DNA) we might collectively have the confidence to resist their influence. But sadly we appear not to be.
