$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')Civilization" is often defined like this: "Thousands of years ago, humans slept in caves, communicated with crude grunting noises, were stalked by wolves and saber-toothed tigers, lived in a state of constant scarcity and extreme stress, and died of old age at 30 if we weren't killed in tribal warfare. Life was 'nasty, brutish, and short' and nature was 'red in tooth and claw.' Then, through a series of innovations, we started living better and better, a trend which continues to this day and will continue on into the future without limit, if only we can save civilization from being destroyed by 'terrorism' or climate change or some other external threat."
This story is so wrong that you could call it a strawman if it wasn't so popular.
PeakOil is You
How to Save Civilization
How to Save Civilization
by roccman » Sat 15 Sep 2007, 14:26:20
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n response, the primitivist strawman goes like this: "For a million years, humans lived in Eden, in peaceful, egalitarian, nature-based societies. We could recognize thousands of species and the relations between them, and with this direct grounding in ecology, we knew to keep population stable and not deplete the land, so we always had plenty to eat, and spent only a few hours a day in meaningful productive activity, and the rest of the time relaxed and played. Then, around 10,000 years ago, through a million-to-one fluke, someone invented grain agriculture -- we started forcing food from the Earth instead of taking what it gave. Because grains feed opiate receptors in the brain, we didn't stop. Because grains are loaded in calories and low in other nutrients, we suffered from deficiency diseases and also exploding population. We became crowded and competitive, and put our spare energy into warfare, so agriculturalists could conquer land from foragers, massacre them, cut down the trees, and plow fields to grow more grains to make more people to require more land and resources -- a vicious cycle of cancerous growth that continues to this day, but will eventually run out of room to take without giving, and collapse, or we'll bring it down ourselves, and then we can go back to being happy forager-hunters."
In broad strokes, this is true.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]If we want to save this particular civilization, it would not be enough to stabilize population and energy consumption. We would also have to abandon economic "growth," and abandon technological "progress" defined in terms of complexity or size or power.
http://ranprieur.com/essays/saveciv.html
Banning all forms of advertising would be a step in this direction.
"There must be a bogeyman; there always is, and it cannot be something as esoteric as "resource depletion." You can't go to war with that." Emersonbiggins
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Re: How to Save Civilization
by mercurygirl » Sat 15 Sep 2007, 16:10:33
Great article and website. I seem to remember browsing it before, but not this particular essay. Thanks.
On another article, $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'w')hen it says "zombies," just substitute "dead people" or "incapacitated people" or "rioters" or "insurgents" or "you."
On another article, $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'w')hen it says "zombies," just substitute "dead people" or "incapacitated people" or "rioters" or "insurgents" or "you."
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