[PenultimateManStanding]

I'm reading about Walter Benjamin, an early 20th Century intellectual who wrote that our rational materialistic - technological civilization is driven by a nihilistic anti-spirit desire for revenge against Nature for placing us here in this meaningless world (I'm paraphrasing). Consciousness as a Curse, Life is a Bitch, that sort of thing. There is some sort of collective unconscious drive to anihillation - and all the destruction of the environment is really part of the plan all along!

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's a lot easier just to extrapolate from the behavior of other animals because we are, after all, just animals ourselves. All animals will seek to multiply and dominate their environment even if that means that their decendants will die because of that domination.

[threadbear]

A tantrum of consumerism--of devastating proportions--with devastating consequences.

Benjamin understood what many don't. Man's environment must in some way match his yearning for dignity, love and a sense of on-goingness. I could go on in a more transcendental vain, but won't out of respect for circular humanists.

Animals have the same basis, but the triumph of behaviourism has limited our capacity to understand this. In the same way, rational materialism has destroyed the ability of modern man to grasp the essential problem with North American suburban culture. And it's produced unconscious rage, because it has reduced us to something far beneath animals. WE have BECOME the machine, the cybourg, the whirring ,clicking, beeping, consuming, but ultimately empty cylinder.

Occam's razor is another useful tool to excise the essence to redeem the material. To a man with a razor, everything looks easily reducible. That is precisely what's wrong with materialism, rational, scientific and otherwise.

[EnviroEngr]

Let's float a balloon here:
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic3266-30.html#62101

[threadbear]

Kochevnik, People are greedy, selfish, giving, compasstionate, cruel, kind bitter, cynical, heroic, strong. Their potential to manifest all of the above traits, with all of the inconsistencies and contradictions is pretty amazing. I guess you could say we're flexible.

Hunter gatherer societies don't dominate in the same way agrarian people do and there are many surviving examples that have survived thousands of years. Most of them are under threat, but they are still here.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'K')ochevnik, People are greedy, selfish, giving, compasstionate, cruel, kind bitter, cynical, heroic, strong. Their potential to manifest all of the above traits, with all of the inconsistencies and contradictions is pretty amazing. I guess you could say we're flexible.

Hunter gatherer societies don't dominate in the same way agrarian people do and there are many surviving examples that have survived thousands of years. Most of them are under threat, but they are still here.

[Chocky]

If hunter-gather societies are so great, why are they so easily and quickly dominated by more advanced societies?

[PenultimateManStanding]

That's a good question Chocky. How do you suppose we are going to survive tha fall off of energy? We're finished as far as I can see. You got any greater vision?

[threadbear]

Chocky,

"If hunter-gather societies are so great, why are they so easily and quickly dominated by more advanced societies?"

The hunter-gatherer way of life is one of balance, sustainability, it's pull is suggestive, found in art and literature- not militaristic. It doesn't impose, it invites. If the hunter gatherer way of life had been successfully dominated we wouldn't see it reinvigorated through the celebration of magic and shamanism in literature. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc...

It WILL prevail. Given a choice, most of us would take Frodo's life over Willy Loman's death, anyday.

BTW, Arthur Miller passed away recently.

[Chocky]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hat's a good question Chocky. How do you suppose we are going to survive tha fall off of energy? We're finished as far as I can see. You got any greater vision?

[rowante]

I'll be following you PMS, into Walter Benjamin's works. I'm ready Daniel Pinchbeck's "Breaking Open the Head". Highly recommended btw. This morning, before seeing this thread on PO I came across this quote in Pinchbeck:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Benjamin', '
')Capitalism is probably the first instance of a cult that creates guilt, not atonement... The Nature of the religious movement which is capitalism entails the endurance right to the end, to the point where the universe has been taken over by that despair which is actually its secret hope. Capitalism is entirely without precedent, in that it is a religion which offers not the reform of existence but its complete destruction. It is the expansion of despair, until despair becomes a religious state of the world in the hope that this will lead to salvation.

[threadbear]

Chokey said:

"they spend almost all their time collecting food, and are at the mercy of the weather, migration patterns of animals etc
-they have only the most rudimentary medical care
-infant mortalality rate is incredibly high
-They are often in a constant state of low-level warfare with other groups
-Their societies often are quite violent- what we would call domestic violence is often ingrained, as is rape
-Their culture often contains morally incorrect principles (Some Australian Aboriginal tribes practiced infanticide (twins were considered 'evil sprits' and so were killed at birth'. Women who observed secret male initiation ceremonies were gang raped then killed) "

When I read your points about warfare and the no medical insurance, thought you were talking about the US for a minute there.

Hunter gatherer societies aren't all sweetness and light, you're very accurate here. They operate on a more primary and immediate level. The bushmen of the Kalahari seem to have achieved something close to a peaceful Utopia, but other cultures I've read about make me cringe, like the violent Yamomamo of South America. A Yamomamo woman is considered "ignored" if she isn't beaten by her husband.

In colonial dominating cultures, like our own, there are usually several degrees of separation between the average Joe and the ongoing human rights abuses that keep his society in the dominant position. That's where his moral values can be held up to scorn.

And, you're also correct that, within our own large society, that has more centralized control and developed legal systems, there is much less tolerance for the extremes of behaviour and limited liklihood of tribal warfare, with the exception of the Krips and the Bloods and other gangs.

What more primary societies do offer is a richer, more connected life, in all of it's beauty and ugliness. Our own society is suffering from tight centralized control but weak interpersonal relationships, and a disconnect with the natural world. That's produced this curious void that has people engaged in an orgy of trying to generate real beauty and meaning by purchasing consumer products, many of them essentially useless.

Perhaps, the future will offer a new form of balance, where we can borrow some of the immediacy and beauty of being connected to our environment and each other (through the forming of intentional communities, perhaps?), while ditching the void of consumer capitalism, and the tribal warfare of primitive culture?

[Chocky]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')our point about war is interesting... but still, it goes on now. How many casualties from the Iraq war so far? Got any proof about the domestic violence bit... rape is still unfortunately common in modern society, no?

[sampo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'B')enjamin understood what many don't. Man's environment must in some way match his yearning for dignity, love and a sense of on-goingness. I could go on in a more transcendental vain, but won't out of respect for circular humanists.

[threadbear]

How am I being patronizing, Sampo? Some people have no stomach for transcendental digressions, as some of it's pretty vague and annoying, even to people of a spiritual bent. For circular humanists there's the extra burden of having to gag through airy fairy stuff that they don't resonate with. Would it help if I used the term secular humanists instead of circular humanists? What if I put one of these to soften the blow. And how about one of these to indicate humility. I'll do anything, anything to avoid being patronizing. Sigh.

[gg3]

I found the phrase "circular humanist" to be a perfectly acceptable form of sarcastic criticism, and memorable as well. Good meme-virus there!

Re. "humans are." Humans are anything you want to say that has any basis in observable behavior. Usually statements that begin "humans are..." and contain one-sided observations, are more a reflection of either the personality or the immediate mood of the persons making the statements.

And for us here, with our noses rubbed in the Malthusian prospects of our time, it's particularly easy to fall into one of those depressed moods for which cynicism provides an easy (though cheap) form of relief. Entropy in any form is easier than its opposite, by definition: so therefore easier to embrace an entropic view of humans; i.e. a cynical view that requires one to make comparatively little effort as an outcome.

Rational materialism and all the other -isms, are ex-post-facto rationalizations for the underlying Malthusian fact that organisms of every known type tend to breed right up to the limits of their resources and then go through overshoot and collapse.

Humans, being more or less conscious at least some of the time, can at least see the edge of the cliff coming and comment on it. "Look honey, I see the edge of a cliff coming!" "Gee, dear, you're right. Look at all those starving people down there in the abyss. You don't suppose we're about to join them, do you?" "I don't know, but hey, in the meantime, I need another quick flood of dopamine and serotonin in my synapses, so let's try making another baby, shall we?" "Sure, sounds good to me!"

As for hunter-gatherers, anyone who wishes to join them is welcome to do so. Personally I prefer running water, hot when needed, clean clothes, clean food, proper waste disposal, a warm dry place to sleep every night, lawfulness and the ongoing reduction of violence, and the tangible accumulation of knowledge from one generation to the next. These things are not incompatible with a sustainable existence; only the prevailing dichotomisms ("either/or" ways of thinking) make them appear to be so.

This isn't to say we can't learn valuable lessons from hunter-gatherer societies; obviously we can. But one doesn't need to buy the whole ideology and all of its sequelae, any more than with any other cultural philosophy whether spiritual, material, or some combination thereof.