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- Biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism.
- Solzhenitsyn
Civilization provides us with clean water, fresh food, shelter, and electricity. Beyond this its values are dubious.
Two views of civilization
The view that all businessmen, politicians, Marxists, feminists, libertarians, and office workers subscribe to is one of upward struggle. Yes, we will have some sort of problems in the future, but we should deal with them when we get there. Right now we should deal with our immediate problems. I need to get that promotion, pay my bills, put my kids through college. This is naturally the path to success in any society-- quite simply, it's the means to happiness and survival here on Earth-- but it is also a very narrow view. You can't approach life from the direction of your very real problems and think about the future of society as a whole.
The long term view is a lonely one. Nobody will give you power if you can see with the perspective of ten generations. There are many people who are familiar with this view, and if you are reading this you are likely one of them. We recognize that there are many shortcomings nobody has yet addressed. But who among us really has the ability to change things for the better? Pretending that you can take certain actions yourself and hope other people will do the same is tokenism. It takes someone who already has political and cultural power-- that is, a king or despot-- to control the direction of civilization.
Civilization's departure from nature
- On March 29th, 2008 at 8pm local time Earth Hour will commence ALL AROUND THE WORLD.
- Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a POWERFUL MESSAGE about the need for action on global warming.
- Be part of making Earth Hour 2008 a huge, global success by telling your friends and family. Remember, every single light makes a statement and makes a difference.
- Last year, on 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney (Australia) businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour.
In this civilization we destroy the natural world to create comfort, allowing us to funnel our lives free of suffering into various kinds of self-pleasure and failed attempts to circumvent human nature, while at the same time remembering every once in a while that we are destroying the planet and turning off the lights to symbolize that we are sad to see it go.
Giving this up to return to suffering in harmony with nature is considered ludicrous because we already did that for many thousands of years and it worked well, without any complications, whereas civilization presents new complications every day which we find interesting. Also, people would not voluntarily sacrifice comfort for any reason on anything more than a token turning-the-lights-off scale, and even that is questionable.
The goal of civilization is unclear. It has already been proven that civilization cannot circumvent human nature, nor can one enter a permanent state of intellectual and physical pleasure. If it cannot be sustained, of course, it will regress. This may happen in a violent, voluntary, or slow and beautiful way, depending on obscure and unpredictable factors.
Further reading
Ishmael, I guess?
Peruse http://www.awok.org/ and see if anything there is interesting. I did not read much of it yet.