Civilisation and Collapse
On Monday October 1 Zac came in to be involved in a discussion about civilisation and the collapse of natural and economic systems.
We played some excerpts from a film called The Fuck It Point. And Wave, Linda and Zac discussed the topic.
Below is a piece that Zac wrote relating to this topic.
In this particular piece, I will not be creating the illusion of the ‘Other’. In this, I use the particular pronoun ‘We’. We are ALL homo sapiens. Civilization is not a separate entity, or a construct that exists outside of ourselves.
I hate to use such a logical fallacy (known as ‘poisoning the well’ but it’s very often used effectively, by our own kind no less), but you are wrong if you think otherwise, you absolutely cannot dispute that fundamental truth. Civilization is not separate from us.
It would not EXIST without us. By using this particular pro-noun (a very cheeky literary method, I might add) of addressing humanity as a collective, the logical conclusions in this passage cannot be ignored.
THE MARKET
OUR COMPLETE focus for progress is THE MARKET PLACE. It permeates every aspect of our existence, down to the very soil we tread our feet on.
Can you picture anything more absurd that we must pay for access to clean water and shelter? The most basic needs for our survival has been reduced to a quantifiable amount. Our ancestors used the concept of bartering to make their lives easier, where one may have possessed certain skills another lacked, we could make exchanges based on mutual benefit. This is no longer the case. What we have created is now an abomination beyond control, and it has enslaved us.
This is the lens in which we choose to view reality. The empirical method of quantification, an essential component of scientific research for us as a species turns into a relentless, unforgivable weapon when used outside its intended realms. Scientific progress is essential to ourselves as a species, and the lens of quantification has certainly done lots for the common good, but it is detrimental when wielded in the Market Place.
There is bitter resentment in knowing that our improvement and progress as a species is impeded by the Market Place. If this was not true, we would not allow famine and preventable disease to continue ravage our species. We would not allow threats to the stable harmony of nature through the destruction of natural resources.
We willingly kill, starve, suffer, and die, ourselves and even the planet that we exist on in the name of profit.
Productivity is the monster that quantification transforms to, in the hostile realm of the Market Place. Our very value as people is determined through this lens. We feel valuable as productive members of society, which we determine to be our economic output.
Our market place, and its currency, dictates reality. We view our entire lives through our relation to this. For many of us, this may be in the form of attaining education, in order to acquire wealth in this area. We engage in fierce competition in order to gain this. We do so willingly. We have put ourselves through the absolute dredges of the hells we have created, for this. We willingly sell our entire beings to this.
We have deprived our natural state itself as physically active beings for this. We willingly imprison ourselves, and develop health problems and disease. The access to the vital medicine we need in order to survive is often restricted because we can’t afford it. Some of the medicines we use to ‘kill the pain’ we experience even end up killing us.
On particular occasions, we have inflicted harm upon our bodies through consciously depriving ourselves of nourishment, through injecting plastics into our limbs, to attain what we so foolishly defined in our market place as beauty.
We would even forsake our sacred virtue of science, in the creation of medicines. We lie about their effectiveness, in the ones that work and the ones that don’t. We would fake clinical trial data, and allow an entire generation of our species to be subject to its falsehoods. We would prohibit these attempts to heal the pain we inflict upon ourselves, We would deny ourselves the hemp plant. for its powerful medicinal qualities, as well as scorn and demonise ourselves for using it.
We would even determine the substances we ingest into our body by the amount of productivity we generate through them. Through our fetish with the militant buzz of caffeine, to ensure productivity & the deceptive pain killer, which would dull the pain. We actively scorn the substances that would induce states of contemplation, the appreciation of nature in all of its beauty and splendour, the intimate moments of connection with our humanity, the dissolution of the boundaries and the ego we create amongst ourselves. This, we view with more contempt than the ego poisoning of alcoholic substances.
The market place and our methods of communication technology that have become central to our lives have divided us and removed us from our natural state of social interaction.
We would willingly poison our food, (purchased no less) through this lens of quantification and the market place. We would poison its appearance, its taste, to make it cheaper, to make it more appealing, to make it last longer, to make it more marketable. We would scorn organic food, because of profit loss and a perception of lack of productivity, and lace our foods with toxic chemicals to repel and murder other living creatures that seek such sustenance.
We would even create false nourishment, and tell ourselves grand lies about its detrimental effects on our bodies.
We would sell our minds for this market place. Those innate gifts we possess, squandered in such a way. Many times, we used this to trick ourselves into externalising our happiness. We would use knowledge of our behaviour to sell more things, and sell them better. We lured ourselves with the promise of happiness, and even equate wealth and materialism with the possession of a state of mind.
We would misappropriate logic, suspend morality for this purpose. We have even used these tricks to manipulate the currency itself, in order to further our bloated oligarchic wealth.
We would tamper with natural cycles, even interfering with the hive minds of the bees. Our attempts to make them subservient to the market place would result in a mass genocide of their species. Our repeated attempts to control their populations through poor breeding, rather than natural selection, the replacement of their Queens (even on a micro level, we like to ignore sovereignty), would result in the collapsing of hives around the world. The bees are a crucial element to natural harmony as stewards of seed pollination, and their decline threatens a precious balance. Even in a direct example of our influence and foolish attempts to control nature, we still refuse to acknowledge our mistakes, or create change.
We would deprive other species the nourishment they have evolved to digest in order to further this purpose. Why else would the cattle we ingest be fed with corn instead of the grass that has sustained them for millennia? We bend the environment around us to our collective will to make it more productive.
THE EMPIRE
The very nature of the Empire is conquest, control & expansion.
Our current global empire is Western Civilization. We spread ideals of democracy, peace, civil rights, & freedom of speech. We like to do this through genocide and violence.
The United States and even Australia were created for the purposes of furthering EMPIRES, in the name of expansion for wealth, and the power we associate with it.
We willingly destroy resources, and kill and enslave our own species through this Imperialism.
We would kill and control those who practiced those ancient beliefs of shamanic practice, animism and mysticism. These events have occurred in our history as even today, we remove our shamanic populations from their native lands, in the name of the market place.
How ironic that even once the Americas were freed from the shackles of Imperialism, and created a nation with just ideals, the enslavement of our fellow humans continued, on the basis of their skin pigment.
The arrival of our ancestors to the new world heralded slavery and destruction.
By allowing The Empire to continue, we eschew the very democratic ideals that we supposedly uphold. Furthermore, this compromises the very virtues we champion for ourselves as collective humankind.
We have ousted sovereign nations globally, in support of this, throughout the Middle East, and Asia, and Latin America. Those who would dare champion different ideologies would face the sword, their people murdered and ‘regimes’ overthrown.
There is only one method of action.
The logical conclusion is that WE. need to change. NOW