Website review: The Archdruid Report: Back Up The R...
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laodan discovered 3 months ago- Back Up The Rabbit Hole in The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
As the world closes in on the end of the 21st century's first decade, its industrial societies are leaving behind a period in which just such a temporary set of conditions held sway. Until we recognize the blind alley down which those conditions led the developed world, we will be hard put to respond to a future that has begun to move in a very different direction. ... During the quarter century of ultracheap energy, transportation costs were so low that they became a negligible fraction of the cost of goods. This allowed manufacturers to arbitrage the difference in labor costs between industrial and nonindustrial countries without having to take shipping costs into account. ... Another result, at least as dramatic as globalization though less ballyhooed then or now, was the rise of a throwaway economy all through the industrial world. In hindsight, I suspect, the entire period from 1980 to 2005 will be seen as one of history's supreme blind alleys. ... The possibility that the only way forward out of the present blind alley may require going back to less convenient and more costly ways of doing things is nowhere on our collective radar screens just now. Back Up The Rabbit Hole This idea of progress as being the direction forward on the line of history is typically a story derived out of the religions of the word. This is nowhere to be seen in China and the greater Confucian area nor in any area where animism is still in practice. The Western idea of progress starts with the religions of the word being imposed on all citizens as the societal glue of early kingdoms and empires. That moment is also considered to be the beginning of Western civilization moment that Toynbee spent his life studying. Civilization is like a house. The FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION are not made of bricks but of AXIOMS of a model of perception of reality that is shared by all the citizens. Culture, understood as epochal behavior within society, is then added to the axioms to grow the house of civilization. Each particular snapshot of epochal behavior acts thus like a CULTURAL ADD-ON. A civilization is then the sum of its axioms + its cultural add-ons. So how do the axioms of our Western and Christian civilization compare with the axioms of the Chinese civilization? It's the story of dualism in the West versus the polarities of unity in China. - dualism: God versus devil, beginning versus end, good versus evil, love versus hate, "you are with us or you are against us", progress versus regress, and so on. Under dualism it is implied that you are on the side of God and good and that the road of history is made of progress. The logical behavior in such an axiomatic setting is thus to believe that everything is fine because we are on the road of progress towards reaching God (ultimate good). As a consequence Westerners experience an utter inability to recognize reality as it is and tend to reject the idea that what they do could be wrong, or even less, counterproductive to their own interests. - polarities of unity: the contact between polarities generates a burst of energy fueling changes and transformations that are as the seconds on the ticking clock of evolution. In that axiomatic setting there is no beginning and end, no all and nothing, no progress and regress. Reality is perceived indeed as a continuum of change. And the logical behavior is then to surf on the realities of the moment in order to position oneself to be able to size the best opportunities at hand in the present. In light of this I'm afraid that John's assertion that "The challenge before us now is to climb back out of the rabbit hole and deal with the world we will have to face when the extravagant Wonderland of the brief era of ultra-cheap energy dissolves into windblown leaves and the shreds of a departed dream" is wishful thinking, for, as Toynbee observed (in a Western civilizational environment) it's NECESSITY that powers change and not the willpower of men.
- Back Up The Rabbit Hole in The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
