- 22 Jun 2021 20:20
#15177805
There are three fatal flaws with civilization:
1) Agriculture
2) Authoritarianism
3) Property
Agriculture is the main culprit. It brings about changes to the human ethic that create Authoritarianism and Property.
The human animal was evolved to work together in small family centered units... tribes if you will. These groups operate on a human ethic that demands people live and work together in order to survive. For about 188,000 years such groups managed to live in small hunter gatherer groups that ranged in size from 50-150 individuals. For such group to survive there were certain rules that had to be observed... an ethic that people work together... within the group... and share the gains of any labor the group performed. Leadership in such groups was generally fluid and the leaders were directly socially responsible to the other members of the group.
Agriculture changed all that. Once a group moved to the agrarian lifestyle we can find in the archeological record a change in housing and social lives that right from the beginning shows how the human ethic gets twisted by the demands of growing crops. Hunter gatherer groups tend to all live in the same kind of housing, eat the same kinds of food and do not have multiple layers of authority or strict roles outside of gender. On the other hand, when people move into an agrarian lifestyle one of the first changes we notice are mansions... temples... and class restrictions.
This change in ethic derives from the idea that the groups in question "own" a certain patch of land. That crops are the property of those who plant them and work them. Such ideas were completely foreign when people first started farming, and such ideas have led to authoritarianism... to control production and force the majority to work for a few "leaders/property owners". Property ideas led to markets and the idea of profit... perpetual, unearned growth, which in turn led to overpopulation as societies learned very quickly that it takes a huge amount of labor to plant and tend crops.
Agriculture is also extremely inefficient from an ecological POV. It does poorly in comparison to a pristine ecology because Agriculture uses less of the energy from the sun to produce life, while also requiring a huge amount of additional energy to sustain. Agriculture tolerates a much smaller group of plants and animals in any given plot of land. This destruction of the original ecosystem upsets the balance that is achieved by a more natural group of plants and animals competing for energy niches to exploit. The additional huge increase in energy required to accomplish an agrarian lifestyle means that more people and animals had to live on any given plot of land than the sun could provide sustenance for. This fact has led to eternal wars as groups struggle to gain ever larger masses of land and people to work that land. Eventually, this fatal flaw led us to use fossil fuels... which is just stored heat from the sun to create the necessary energy needed to grow and "prosper" as an agrarian society.
As a by product, the agrarian lifestyle creates hierarchies of authority which ALWAYS end in a mal-distribution of available resources. Authoritarianism selects leaders from the most ruthless individuals within any social group. It disconnects such leaders from the evolved human ethic and allows such individuals to avoid accountability for their social behavior. This leads such individuals to ruthlessly pursue greed. The more layers of hierarchy a society creates the more unstable it becomes due to resource hoarding by individuals who are inherently sociopaths. Such considerations mean that entire societies are led to pursue the interests of a few criminals at the expense of the larger interests of the society itself. Which is why civilization after civilization falls apart over time.
Then there is the problem with property, and the markets that are created to serve the acquisition of more property and greater fortunes. There is a fundamental difference between wealth and riches. Wealth is what a community creates. Riches are wealth diverted from the community and into hands of a sociopaths... or leaders as we are trained to call them. Such systems create massive social imbalance and instability always leading to strife and wars and eventually to the downfall of the society that created such systems.
The fact of climate change shows civilization to be a fatal trap that has taken 12,000 odd years to spring shut. In that time we've tried many different strategies to overcome the problem inherent to agrarian systems. Only to fail each and every time.
Can these problems be solved? Could we produce and distribute based on minimal need, rather than extreme greed? Could we designed systems of planting that minimize damage? Could we choose leaders that serve rather than that exploit? Could we be focused on responsibly sustaining our lifestyles and seeking ever more efficient ways to sustain our population?
Sure... but we don't.
We make the same mistakes over and over again trying to achieve a different result.
Because greed makes people crazy. It's a mental illness to pursue profit at the expense of life.
And because of the way our "leaders" choose to pursue civilization, people are forced to follow lunatics.
1) Agriculture
2) Authoritarianism
3) Property
Agriculture is the main culprit. It brings about changes to the human ethic that create Authoritarianism and Property.
The human animal was evolved to work together in small family centered units... tribes if you will. These groups operate on a human ethic that demands people live and work together in order to survive. For about 188,000 years such groups managed to live in small hunter gatherer groups that ranged in size from 50-150 individuals. For such group to survive there were certain rules that had to be observed... an ethic that people work together... within the group... and share the gains of any labor the group performed. Leadership in such groups was generally fluid and the leaders were directly socially responsible to the other members of the group.
Agriculture changed all that. Once a group moved to the agrarian lifestyle we can find in the archeological record a change in housing and social lives that right from the beginning shows how the human ethic gets twisted by the demands of growing crops. Hunter gatherer groups tend to all live in the same kind of housing, eat the same kinds of food and do not have multiple layers of authority or strict roles outside of gender. On the other hand, when people move into an agrarian lifestyle one of the first changes we notice are mansions... temples... and class restrictions.
This change in ethic derives from the idea that the groups in question "own" a certain patch of land. That crops are the property of those who plant them and work them. Such ideas were completely foreign when people first started farming, and such ideas have led to authoritarianism... to control production and force the majority to work for a few "leaders/property owners". Property ideas led to markets and the idea of profit... perpetual, unearned growth, which in turn led to overpopulation as societies learned very quickly that it takes a huge amount of labor to plant and tend crops.
Agriculture is also extremely inefficient from an ecological POV. It does poorly in comparison to a pristine ecology because Agriculture uses less of the energy from the sun to produce life, while also requiring a huge amount of additional energy to sustain. Agriculture tolerates a much smaller group of plants and animals in any given plot of land. This destruction of the original ecosystem upsets the balance that is achieved by a more natural group of plants and animals competing for energy niches to exploit. The additional huge increase in energy required to accomplish an agrarian lifestyle means that more people and animals had to live on any given plot of land than the sun could provide sustenance for. This fact has led to eternal wars as groups struggle to gain ever larger masses of land and people to work that land. Eventually, this fatal flaw led us to use fossil fuels... which is just stored heat from the sun to create the necessary energy needed to grow and "prosper" as an agrarian society.
As a by product, the agrarian lifestyle creates hierarchies of authority which ALWAYS end in a mal-distribution of available resources. Authoritarianism selects leaders from the most ruthless individuals within any social group. It disconnects such leaders from the evolved human ethic and allows such individuals to avoid accountability for their social behavior. This leads such individuals to ruthlessly pursue greed. The more layers of hierarchy a society creates the more unstable it becomes due to resource hoarding by individuals who are inherently sociopaths. Such considerations mean that entire societies are led to pursue the interests of a few criminals at the expense of the larger interests of the society itself. Which is why civilization after civilization falls apart over time.
Then there is the problem with property, and the markets that are created to serve the acquisition of more property and greater fortunes. There is a fundamental difference between wealth and riches. Wealth is what a community creates. Riches are wealth diverted from the community and into hands of a sociopaths... or leaders as we are trained to call them. Such systems create massive social imbalance and instability always leading to strife and wars and eventually to the downfall of the society that created such systems.
The fact of climate change shows civilization to be a fatal trap that has taken 12,000 odd years to spring shut. In that time we've tried many different strategies to overcome the problem inherent to agrarian systems. Only to fail each and every time.
Can these problems be solved? Could we produce and distribute based on minimal need, rather than extreme greed? Could we designed systems of planting that minimize damage? Could we choose leaders that serve rather than that exploit? Could we be focused on responsibly sustaining our lifestyles and seeking ever more efficient ways to sustain our population?
Sure... but we don't.
We make the same mistakes over and over again trying to achieve a different result.
Because greed makes people crazy. It's a mental illness to pursue profit at the expense of life.
And because of the way our "leaders" choose to pursue civilization, people are forced to follow lunatics.