Premise One: Civilization in its present form is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.
Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread use of violence.
Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.
Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.
Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.
Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.
Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.
Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.
Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.
Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.
Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.
Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.
Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.
yes, you're right, we should all immediately strip naked and go live in the woods, except that 90% of the world's population needs to die first so that the survivors would be able to sustain themselves without agriculture.
on the other hand, what if the whole "purpose" of humanity is to consume and destroy everything, much like a flesh-eating bacteria? in that case I think we need to work on getting off the planet, in order to rape, pillage, and destroy the rest of the galaxy. It may take time, but I have faith in humanity's essential depravity and destructive nature.
p.s. you guys all sound kinda depressed today. you ought to go do something nice for yourself...eat an ice cream cone or something...I mean, cheer up, you know? jeez.
Post modernity is a funny thing.....it came on the same wings as modernity...a rational way to view and understand with the emphasis places on the scientific rendering of existence...yet it is amazing to me that the loss of what is substantial and meaningful is so far spread that we can even speak of it as a veil of sorts over the true reality. Although that last statement is true only as long as we believe there is a facet of "truth" which is hidden from view. Bauldrillard will call this "the murder of the real".
The problem which has manifested in so many ways throughout our culture....from our insatiable wants being regarded as "needs", to the loss of passion within ourselves....to the lack of connection we feel with every other living thing, works on the basis of the need for human control. We find fault within the world because it has a propensity to "hide" its secrets from us, and not feel the need to correct every half-assed hypothesis you can make about it. There is the lack we see...something which we are arrogent enough to make claims about the true nature of the world, ourselves and everything else we can label.
"We labour under the illusion that it is the real we lack the most, but actually, reality is at its height. By our technical exploits, we have reached such a degree of reality and objectivity that we might even speak of an excess of reality, which leaves us far more anxious and disconcerted than the lack of it. That we could at least make up for with utopianism and imagination, whereas there is neither compensation for - nor any alternative to - the excess of reality." - Jean Baudrillard
We lack the ability to see these thing anymore (in general) and although there are some who have awoken from the slumber of complacency...the great task at hand now is being able to work through these problems....and for some it is harder than can be imagined....
For with our complacency....the normalization of heinous actions and thought processes, we lack the ability to even speak of the loss we have incountered....
If I can make a suggestion to all and no one...please pick up and read The Perfect Crime by Jean Baudrillard....
Although he is seen as a post modern philosopher....there is nothing further from the truth....he is a beacon of light into inspecting the murder of the real and the human substitution to compensate for the nothing we feel inside of ourselves.
Oh totally= but this guy says Boudrillard's name more often than the preposition "the". Dead serious, he can't talk like a person anymore, he speaks only of Boudrillard. I can't imagine that being very good for a relationship. It's not Boudrillard's fault, living off of essays isn't good for anyone though.
I use him a lot in my research....themes and whatnot. it is true....you cannot just live off of essays....but his work is very powerful in the very best sense. Have you read any of his work? I suggest you look into him...
Really more of a Nietzsche and Marx fellow. I have problems with postmodernism.
I read Stanley Fish's paper "justifying" U.S. retalliation for 9-11 from a postmodern perspective- it essentially came down to "We can defend ourselves because we're America". I wanted to whoop the shit out of Stanley Fish to see if he started to shout "You can't beat up on me, I'm Stanley Fish!"
I now display all the symptoms of living off of essays just as those I criticize.
Nietzsche is nothing short of amazing....his critiques on modernity all the way to his optimism for the ability for the human spirit to overcome all of which we enslave ourselves with is something which I think most everyone should be exposed to...
as for Marx, I do enjoy his economic writings but i have issues with any one thing that appeals to the vestiges of perfection or utopianism in any way shape or form.
Nietzsche is nothing short of amazing....his critiques on modernity all the way to his optimism for the ability for the human spirit to overcome all of which we enslave ourselves with is something which I think most everyone should be exposed to...
as for Marx, I do enjoy his economic writings but i have issues with any one thing that appeals to the vestiges of perfection or utopianism in any way shape or form.
I think Karl had little illusion about mankind, I'm sure he grasped that economic justice isn't the same thing as total happiness. But it IS much nicer not to be starving and one WILL do better in matters of love and joy if one is healthy and well...
I think that's my favorite stuff, really: the kind of knowledge that seems obvious like that. Nietzsche said "the unlived life is not worth examining," I feel that way about all the looking to religion and "deeper understanding" people do. One of my professors told me I had similar beliefs to ancient Chinese philosopher Menchus (spelling?). I'm really into "common sense" I guess.
Nietzsche is nothing short of amazing....his critiques on modernity all the way to his optimism for the ability for the human spirit to overcome all of which we enslave ourselves with is something which I think most everyone should be exposed to...
as for Marx, I do enjoy his economic writings but i have issues with any one thing that appeals to the vestiges of perfection or utopianism in any way shape or form.
Marx's utopia, like the majority of proposed utopias, was complete and utter bullshit. He wrote it staying in what amounts the pool house of a well-to-do friend who took pity on him and took him in.
Nietzsche was a genius, but is still remarkably misunderstood. For most people, all of his writings still have dark, fascist undertones. If they allowed themselves to understand the content of the writings instead of coming at it with all their preconceptions, they would understand that Nietzsche believed in a greater moral good through self-actualization.
I can't tell you how many times I've been talking about the strengths and weaknesses of Existentialism to other people, only to have them sputter something about "You mean you can do whatever you want because there's no god?" because that's the one thing they've heard over and over from myopic, religion-blinded contemporaries who are absolutely terrified and outraged at the prospect of not needing a judeo-christian-islamic god to have morality.
Zeroslives, Mencius was great. He was a harder-core Confucian than Confucius, and was one of the few Chinese philosophers of his era to speak out against the "mandate of heaven," which is more or less a culturally sanctified way of shutting people up. Confucius, himself, is another great example of how people will latch on to a figurehead, and fanatically try to follow their teachings to the letter--while completely ignoring actual content and metaphoric information.
You can say whatever you want, but it doesn't make it true.
treeswithoutleaves - old school page 1633
I joined this site when there were less than 10 pages Men and Women profiles combined. When you needed to have your profile approved manually.
I doubt you ever even posted on the IKON board let alone the one before it.
I was deleted twice for 3jane comments and I had a different username before twol. And I waited to have my profile added.
And I was on that board. But not the one before it. So maybe you win the big dick contest this time. But that doesn't mean it wasn't fun pissing you off for 5 minutes.
This board is so overrun with shit anymore, the only thing I even feel like doing is posting shit that I write on other, more inspired forums and see how the "omg guys my shit looked green today is that OK" crowd responds.
This board is so overrun with shit anymore, the only thing I even feel like doing is posting shit that I write on other, more inspired forums and see how the "omg guys my shit looked green today is that OK" crowd responds.
What forums do you post on that "ooh" and "ahh" over half-assed jr. college term papers that you post without explanation?
SO, today when I was taking my ginger orange carrot juice from CA pizza kitchen from the train station to the anarchist book store, I remembered I need to pick up some hemp chain lubricant for my fixie, and then I saw Doug and Joanie and they were all like "remember that basement warehouse that was converted into a youth center that was repurposed into a performance space that was super-exclusive, but not really super-exclusive because we had a myspace page for it but then later on a facebook for it after nobody bothered with that myspace shit anymore but then peter wouldn't fuck with that shit anymore because it kept getting spam well ANYWAY it is closing. and we thought you would like to know" and it totally bummed me out, because I knew about that repurposed space before anyone and it made me miss the bike shop, which closes at 6 on Thursdays, and I like to sleep in on Thursdays.
heres a theory, we're an extension of mother nature. we are destroying shit cause we evolved to. maybe we're just evolved enough to have delusions about how collectively advanced we are but not past territorial pissing and chest beating. all this sentience has gone to our heads.
Its not ONLY about fixing it. It is about a total paradigm shift in our thought! The world will continue on with or without us, in the grand picture it doesn't matter if we blip out of existence tomorrow. A change in thought is meaningful only to us because we threaten our own survival.
Lastly, the world is not shit, it is already complete and whole. The imperfection is within us and us alone.
Sorry TooDark, I should have specified. When I say "the world" is shit, I mean "the world" as like the human species and it's *cough* accomplishments.
Clearly the planet is fine. It's just doing it's thing. It's recovered from far worse than us. But we are fucked. What we know and love as civilization (the topic of this thread) is going to hell in a handbasket.
