Tuesday, August 18, 2015

General Systemic Failure? Or, Was It Always This Bad, Once We Reached Supra-Tribal Population Sizes?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)


"People worldwide must understand that we have already entered a stage of general systemic failure ..." 
The empire of disaster capitalism came up with a new business plan for the world: after the destruction, nothing really gets rebuilt.

Is it really new? After all, the annihilation of the then-cultures - and languages - of Iberia (Portugal & Spain), by Carthage & especially by Rome occurred over 2000 years ago, but still sound relevant today. Similar cultural genocide was practiced by the Assyrians hundreds of years before that. Countless other examples abound in ancient history.

In principle, has anything really changed that much? Disaster capitalism, gang warfare, feudal mercantilism, or empire building ... are all flavors of the same root process? Disorganization.





6 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Not profitable enough to rebuild?

The Earth is full of ancient ruins. These have to start somewhere.

Matt Franko said...

Bob they are mostly all Temples..... somebody should tell the Pope they have manifestly been abandoned...

rsp,

Peter Pan said...

Archeology is more than just temples. It is filled with little things, bits and pieces, tools, toys, pottery, ornaments. A cornucopia of lives and stories untold. All abandoned, discarded, and forgotten.

New Orleans Is Sinking... could be a great blues tune.

Peter Pan said...

I'll never forget this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIYb9bBA9mY

Ignacio said...

I read this yesterday: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/17/mass-grave-prehistoric-warfare-ancient-european-farming-community-neolithic

Not much has changed apparently! But the article is full of all sort of conjectures, so not much use scientifically (like all things archaeology IMO).

Anyway, we have triggered already the six biggest wave of extinctions on earth ever (at least known ones) and, for the time being, an irreversible climatological feedback loop that would require the kind of effort (and technology) we don't want to do (or have).

The population is said to plateau @ 12,000 mill. humans at the end of the century, even with ageing population, I can't imagine all us living in McMansions like the current system is selling to people.

There is not the kind of leadership and organization, or self-awareness, to turn this on time, education is improving, but at enough fast rate? I doubt it, as at core we are still sold to the same values capitalisms promotes (which are basically consumerism).

Tom Hickey said...

Consumerism is the fatal flaw in capitalism because it is fundamentally crass materialism, and materialism gets the wisdom of life backwards being based on individual self-interest rather than the interest of the whole. This is the age-old teaching of the wise. Now we are developing scientific understanding of it through systems, especially biological systems and ecosystems.

Yes, there is spontaneous natural order that tends toward equilibrium and homeostasis, but that affects the entire ecosystem, not the humanly constructed economic system. What is a functional outcome for the ecosystem as a whole may be severely dysfunctional for some subsystems, especially is they are a negative aspect in natural self-correction. It's called culling and extinction.

Humans are fouling the nest at an unsustainable rate. Whether that can be reversed depends on how quickly we can jettison capitalism for a sustainable social, political and economic system, or migrate to another planet to begin the process again with fresh resources.