Essay of the Day- Jared Diamond

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by Peter Clements, May 19, 2006.

  1. Peter Clements

    Peter Clements Junior Member

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  2. Douglas J.E. Barnes

    Douglas J.E. Barnes Junior Member

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  3. Alex M

    Alex M Junior Member

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    I've thought for some time that things went wrong somewhere back there, and wondered how we could fix it, but hadn't seriously thought about that far back! I mean, we're here, now, aren't we?

    I'm gunna hafta think about this one, long and hard. :?
     
  4. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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  5. Alex M

    Alex M Junior Member

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    OK. I've been thinking about how the whole mess came about, and how we forced a shift in the evolutionary pressure from nature and the environment, to culture and technology. It started, I think, when our monkey anscestors learned how to talk - the first techne - and became, as Ronald Wright puts it, "experimental creatures of our own devising" He goes on, "Nature let a few apes into the lab of evolution, turned on the lights, and left us there to mess about with an ever-growing supply of ingredients and processes." (A Short History of Progress, p13)

    We now face a situation where the culture we developed as our own evolutionary path, is exerting pressure back onto the natural environment from which we imagined we had freed ourselves. We face a new evolutionary selection pressure, at once natural, yet of our own creation. How our technological culture - civilisation - responds is the vital key to our survival.

    Some very useful thoughts on the role of permaculture in that response, are found here: https://www.permaculturetas.org/board/vi ... hp?p=50#50
     
  6. Loris

    Loris Junior Member

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    Tend to agree with you but have some life experience to temper intellectual arguement. Recently come back to the city after 10 years in isolated outback. Absolutely wonderful as you can imagine - no people, no traffic, no regulations etc etc. Couldn't say enough about the quasi past life flash back UNTIL something goes wrong. The type of problem to put us in a spin were injuries, especially life threatening ones which were all too common around us because everyone was doing highly physical work. Then you pine for developed society with hospitals etc. Also, the roads out there were virtually non-existent which was great because it stopped too many people coming out but the slightest shower had us really thinking about food supplies. And when there was a flood, food had to be thought about seriously, stockpiles build up and thoughts of cutting back depending on the severity. Real life can be very bloody and mucky. I would go back tomorrow.
     
  7. Mike_E_from_NZ

    Mike_E_from_NZ Junior Member

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    Who was it that said "Give me liberty or give me death". I am sure that fits in this thread somewhere.

    Mike
     
  8. Alex M

    Alex M Junior Member

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    Whether or not anyone gets the former, we all get the latter! :lol:
     
  9. joan

    joan Junior Member

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    Is this the link https://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html of where Jared Diamond's essay located? I want to read his essay about "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" but I cannot open the link.
     
  10. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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  11. starFury

    starFury Junior Member

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  12. joan

    joan Junior Member

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  13. Jana

    Jana Junior Member

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    With the beginnings of agriculture women were relegated to domesticated labor animals, while power accumulated in the male side of the population with the establishment of the patriarchal religions, war and pillage. The dependent and subservient position of women in a culture of violence prevents the divine feminine from fully emerging. Presovereign, enslaved women cannot feed their children their souls, nor the deep sophic wisdom necessary for the establishment of the whole human. When humanity moved away from The Goddess or Sophia, the pregnant Void or Unified Field as God and established warring Sky Gods in her place...we all but cut ourselves off from the source of Spirit itself. When we reestablish sacred childrearing by whole or sovereign women...only then can we build a sustainable, spiritual culture that is not going to fall under the mechanisms of its own inner disease.

    “With agriculture usually come division of labor, increased sexual inequality, and the beginnings of social hierarchy. Priests, kings, and organized, impersonal warfare all seem to come together in one package…Kingship and warfare may have originated as survival strategies. Then, perhaps civilization itself became a mechanism for re-traumatizing each new generation, thus preserving and regenerating its own psycho-social basis…Even the democratic industrial state functions essentially as an instrument of multinational corporate-style colonial oppression and domestic enslavement…Systems theorists Tom Peters and Peter Senge are advocating the transformation of hierarchical, bureaucratized organizations into more decentralized, autonomous, spontaneous ones.”
    www.eco-action.org/dt/critique.html —The Primitivist Critique of Civilization by Richard Heinberg; www.museletter.com/

    “In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence. Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.”
    www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html —"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race," by Jared Diamond

    Thus the plague of paranoia, arrogance and dominance that is now driving us headlong toward apocalypse is the consequence of a culture of fear. If the structure of our hubric culture, from the womb to the grave, prevents the realization of our shamanic, mystic or unitive Self, then we must transcend that culture in order to save our soul. We do that by learning to love beyond the fear programming. Primitivism is the perennial belief in the necessity of a return to origins and the superiority of a “deeper” life close to nature. This is simply the intuition to overcome the toxic fear and combative position of the ego’s self defense system, to reconnect to the divinity within and the Self as the center of gravity. When we reconnect and rectify agriculture and land use, such as with permaculture and soil building, we then build honorable foundations for a sustainable, morally sound civilization. Good soil is the foundations of every civilization. To move out of the predatory/parasitic mode of corporate consumerism we must reinstall the electrical mineral basis to life. Darren Doherty says the level of land degradation on this planet is unfathomable. The good news is we are now waking up and choosing to readapt ourselves to nature.

    “Voices of The First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime,” by Robert Lawlor
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDMg6W95-2s —Rx for the Biosphere, Darren Doherty. Excellent series on the importance of sinking carbon into soil organic matter and soil building.
    https://carbonfarmersofamerica.com/index.htm —Topsoil by Abe Collins
     

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