A WAY TO SURVIVE

One observation is how my thoughts do or don't change over seven months of steady reading and commenting on ourfiniteword dot com blog which deals with economics and energy. That is a blog for hard headed materialists who brook no mysticism.(Why I find it appealing, and how I managed to remain there all this time is something of a mystery.) It has been a sobering experience, since I've had to come to the conclusion that humanity's best hope is to stay within civilization. As a practical matter, we having "broken the link" with any pre-civilized cultural or physical means to substantially survive as a species, having no option but to hang on to our civilization, however it mutates in an exceedingly opaque future. One does not see how it can continue. One does not see how it can end. We just seem (IMO) to be in a place where turning back or going forward are both foreclosed. We might as well observe where we are and what we are doing, since that is usually a good practice when we are stuck.

Observing where we are and what we are doing seems to me not unlike what pre-civilized people did in order to survive. We find ourselves in a human-built world, with mere remnants of "nature" hanging on by its teeth. And here I draw a blank. I don't see our civilization, devoid of this small natural remnant, as being good, worthy or feasible. Equally, I see no remote option of ditching civilization, greatly reducing our numbers, and reconnecting to nature. 

The problem I'm looking into now is the absolutely inadequate way in which we look at civilization, looking at it as though it wasn't sacred, eschewing imagination and awe in the process. It means that we have a rote civilization of repressed ability for critical thinking, led by a psychopathic elite who benefit from that...or think they do. 

We have not, however, lost the same ability for animism that our "indigenous" ancestors embraced. I doubt that animism requires a separation between the dead and the living. Perhaps in animism, all is alive. It would then be possible to see the built world as alive, albeit a different kind of alive from nature. 

Following from this, there is need to look critically at the smart set's preoccupation with thermodynamics. Everything runs down and, and based on that, has a predestined term of existence leading to final collapse. I don't believe in that. And I don't see why, with all its obvious differences, civilization can't be run the way Australian aborigines have run their 50,000 year old culture. I know this is the point at which many might question my sanity, but never mind.


Part II

Apparently, we live with an economic system that is like a game of musical chairs. We dance while the music plays, and someone gets left out when it stops. And the game keeps going till none are left. In other words, nobody's concerned with how to keep a living system going. That, to me, has nothing to do with whether things have been made by people or are natural. If we want civilization to be coincident with a living system, we have to observe it and see where and how that can work. Stopping to see civilization with non worshiping and fresh eyes means we do not follow it as a religion. We assess it scientifically, and here science and art seem to coincide. We might even turn it upside down and stand it on its head. 

Meanwhile, a very new hypothesis of mine is that, for it to continue as a life system, it must waste the minimum of energy. On every level, it must flow smoothly. It means that even bad things, as long as the system can withstand them for some time, should not be opposed. Opposing something because it is repellent could lead to disruption of the only system we have to sustain life. (If we plunge the world in darkness in order to cool the planet, we leave nuclear facilities unguarded, and we kill off all complex life. A direct assault on nuclear plants that are the heart of the problem means our electric grid get compromised, which, ironically, lessens the ability to safeguard nuclear sites.) Everything in globally networked civilization fits together like complex clockwork. You can't tinker with one discreet part of it and expect the whole to work. Everything is interdependent. And with such global-scale complexity to work with, "aesthetic intuition" is of prime value. You have to turn yourself into a mirror of the system and "feel" what can or can't be changed without harming the flow. And if you don't love it you can't change it. You can only destroy it and build something new, possible equally misguided. 

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