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Related: About this forumWhen civilizations die
This was posted by mind-mover in another forum. The reference to Celine is interesting. He was a chaos theorist. It's worth following to the link. Maybe send Hedges a card. I think he's getting depressed.
When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snookis pregnancy, Hulk Hogans sex tape and Kim Kardashians denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. [A]t times when the page is turning, Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in Castle to Castle, when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8808-when-civilizations-die
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When civilizations die (Original Post)
pscot
May 2012
OP
Nihil
(13,508 posts)1. Definitely worth reading.
Thanks for the cross-posting as I wouldn't have seen it otherwise!
Bigmack
(8,020 posts)2. And ANOTHER thank-you!
Wouldn't have seen it otherwise, either. Ms Bigmack
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)3. What a great article!
These two paragraphs hit me hard:
When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of primitive societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planets ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.
The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction. The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.
The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction. The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.
I too think Hedges is getting depressed. Speaking from personal experience, it's impossible to think long and deeply about these issues and stay out of the abyss.
pscot
(21,024 posts)4. That concept of hubris has been on my mind a lot lately
The men who created our democracy were great admirers of the Greeks and Romans. We don't seem to admire anyone but ourselves. If only we were as clever as we think we are.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)5. whomever the gods would destroy, they first make mad
pscot
(21,024 posts)6. Boy howdy, that's us.