Waiting For The Lights To Go Out

Ronald B. Wright, in "A Short History of Progress", explains that
this planet has known 4 civilizations, each of which lasted about
1,000 years before self-destructing.

We are the 5th civilization. And we are different in two ways:

* our civilization covers the entire planet earth,
* we know why the previous civilizations failed.

If we fail, the planet fails. Yet in order to save ourselves and this
planet, we must all ... all ... understand that we cannot eat, burn, or
waste more resources than the earth can produce.

Yet the "free enterprise" or Capitalist system depends upon our
eating, burning, or wasting more and more.

What do you think? Can we save ourselves if it means living in
peace co-operatively and constructively?

<p>What was the starting date of the fifth civilisation?</p> <p>What do I think? It depends upon how “coöperation” and “constructiveness” is defined — one person’s coöperation could be another person’s selling out, and one person’s constructiveness could be another person’s loss of sovereignty.</p> <p>Some think that our civilisation is already past the point of being able to cope without cheap petroleum (current prices still being well within cheapness), e.g. <a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/node/1207">this commentator’s view</a>.</p><p>---<br>Shatter your ideals upon the rock of Truth.<br />
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— The Divine Symphony, by Inayat Khan<br />

Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to nonviolence. Those bridges are now effectively gone; we have gone too far down the rabbit hole.<br />
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Outspoken military critic Stan Goff has warned activists that "the gun", in all its forms, would be brought out before this was over. It is inevitable. The groups that have the power will not give it up without a bloody fight. False flag terror attacks, a fake war on terrorism, routine political murders and stolen elections remain causes for outrage and defiance, but they can no longer be useful avenues to justice: the legal system is broken. It's broken for reasons far greater than what used to be called corruption. And it cannot be fixed when a global war and unprecedented economic and ecological collapse are smashing down every wall between humanity and the unthinkable.<br />
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Politicians are creatures of economics. Their success has always been measured first and only by what economic benefits they returned to constituents or themselves. We get the government that we deserve. We have all told the politicians what we really want them to do for us while speaking hollow platitudes from the other side of our mouths. We are all prisoners of the way money works. Until we change that, any solution is only temporal and illusory. No electoral change is possible now that elections all over the world are or will be swearing their allegiance to privately owned software programs and obvious manipulation.<br />
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The total collapse of our oil-based economic system and the end of our society as we know it, with all the strife that will occur as a result is a dreadful prospect. It is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of the renewal of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately and physically with our neighbors, to live in harmony with the earth and to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained or simply consuming to avoid boredom.<br />
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There is very little time left, and it is impossible at this point to redesign our entire civilization. But we can possibly restructure our own lives and our local communities to survive the transition. This is our duty to generations to come, and to the rest of the biosphere. But we need options and advice. We need practical suggestions which can be undertaken by individuals, families and small communities. We need guidance on what can be achieved at a local level with limited means. And we need advice on how to achieve this in the most democratic and egalitarian manner possible.<br />
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To aid in this, reknowned geologist and science journalist Dale Allen Pfeiffer has created a website devoted to these issues. I strongly urge folks to have a look. <<a href="http://www.survivingpeakoil.com>">http://www.survivingpeakoil.com></a>;<br />
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Chall:

Great input. How about submitting what you've said, as a story,
where more may see it and read it?

The sick irony is that what Chall is describing is something like the lifestyle the Canadian natives lived when we arrived and forced our superior way of life upon them!!! They are the group that we now need to ask for advice from. Hopefully they still have the knowledge and heart to help us save ourselves.

It's often stated that we are animals, but we are not that smart. It's often stated that we are superior to animals but only in that we are the most ignorant of animals. The animal world of survival of the fittest in my mind is more humane than the survival of the richest.

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"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche