What's so good about civilization?

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

All over the various mediums the talking heads and experts can been seen touting the so called virtues of civilization. Yet few people know its history, where, when and how it started and more importantly what preceded civilization and what it (civilization) destroyed.

What institutions are a direct result of civilizations? Read on to find out.

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

Daniel Quinn: The Boiling Frog

(Excerpted from the book, The Story of B, by Daniel Quinn.)

Systems thinkers have given us a useful metaphor for a certain kind of human behavior in the phenomenon of the boiled frog. The phenomenon is this. If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.

We all know stories of frogs being tossed into boiling water - for example, a young couple being plunged into catastrophic debt by an unforeseen medical emergency. A contrary example, an example of the smiling boiled frog, is that of a young couple who gradually use their good credit to buy and borrow themselves into catastrophic debt. Cultural examples exist as well. About six thousand years ago the goddess-worshipping societies of Old Europe were engulfed in a boiling up of our culture that Marija Gimbutas called Kurgan Wave Number One; they struggled to clamber out but eventually succumbed. The Plains Indians of North America, who were engulfed in another boiling up of our culture in the 1870s, constitute another example; they struggled to clamber out over the next two decades, but they too finally succumbed.

A contrary example, an example of the smiling-boiled-frog phenomenon, is provided by our own culture. When we slipped into the cauldron, the water was a perfect temperature, not too hot, not too cold. Can anyone tell me when that was? Anyone?

Blank faces.

I’ve already told you, but I’ll ask again, a different way. When did we become we? Where and when did the thing called us begin? Remember: East and West, twins of a common birth. Where? And when?

Well, of course: in the Near East, about ten thousand years ago. That’s where our peculiar, defining form of agriculture was born, and we began to be we. That was our cultural birthplace. That was where and when we slipped into that beautifully pleasant water: the Near East, ten thousand years ago.

As the water in the cauldron slowly heats, the frog feels nothing but a pleasant warmth, and indeed that’s all there is to feel. A long time has to pass before the water begins to be dangerously hot, and our own history demonstrates this. For fully half our history, the first five thousand years, signs of distress are almost nonexistent. The technological innovations of this period bespeak a quiet life, centered around hearth and village - sun-dried brick, kiln-fired pottery, woven cloth, the potter’s wheel, and so on. But gradually, imperceptibly, signs of distress begin to appear, like tiny bubbles at the bottom of a pot.

What shall we look for, as signs of distress? Mass suicides? Revolution? Terrorism? No, of course not. Those come much later, when the water is scalding hot. Five thousand years ago it was just getting warm. Folks mopping their brows were grinning at each other and saying, “Isn’t it great?”

You’ll know where to find the signs of distress if you identify the fire that was burning under the cauldron. It was burning there in the beginning, was still burning after five thousand years … and is still burning today in exactly the same way. It was and is the great heating element of our revolution. It’s the essential. It’s the sine qua non of our success if success is what it is.

Speak! Someone tell me what I’m talking about!

“Agriculture!” Agriculture, this gentleman tells me.

No. Not agriculture. One particular style of agriculture. One particular style that has been the basis of our culture from its beginnings ten thousand years ago to the present moment - the basis of our culture and found in no other. It’s ours, it’s what makes us us. For its complete ruthlessness toward all other life-forms on this planet and for it’s unyielding determination to convert every square meter on this planet to the production of human food, I’ve called it totalitarian agriculture.

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

Ethnologists, students of animal behavior, and a few philosophers who have considered the matter know that there is a form of ethics practiced in the community of life on this planet - apart from us, that is. This is a very practical (you might say Darwinian) sort of ethics, since it serves to safeguard and promote biological diversity within the community. According to this ethics, followed by every sort of creature within the community of life, sharks as well as sheep, killer bees as well as butterflies, you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war. This ethics is violated at every point by practitioners of totalitarian agriculture. We hunt down our competitors, we destroy their food, and we deny them access to food. That indeed is the whole purpose and point of totalitarian agriculture. Totalitarian agriculture is based on the premise that all the food in the world belongs to us, and there is no limit whatever to what we may take for ourselves and deny to all others.

Totalitarian agriculture was not adopted in our culture out of sheer meanness. It was adopted because, by its very nature, it’s more productive than any other style (and there are many other styles). Totalitarian agriculture represents productivity to the max, as Americans like to say. It represents productivity in a form that literally cannot be exceeded.

Many styles of agriculture (not all, but many) produce food surpluses. But, not surprisingly, totalitarian agriculture produces larger surpluses than any other style. It produces surpluses to the max. You simply can’t out produce a system designed to convert all the food in the world into human food.

Totalitarian agriculture is the fire under our cauldron. Totalitarian agriculture is what has kept us “on the boil” here for ten thousands years.

[Quita B]

Did totaltarian agriculture make it capable for non (gatherers and hunters) control of food surplus, distribution of food based on class, and quitlity of food for purpose of population control? The actual switch of nomadic behaviors that was more like a relationship of mutualism with the earth inhabitants of the land move to the idea of land ownership based on economics not work ethic in turn produces social parasitic civilization that creates an unsustanable enviroment.

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

There are only a few cultures on the planet, one is agriculture another is aquaculture, you have hunters/gatherers and pastoralists. Outside of these four main groups you will not see any great distinction between. To really get up under this concept it is suggested you look carefully at the major differences between the 4 and what is the commonality of the four also.

Now do the etymology on the word culture, but you will have to know some other methods to get it back to its original intent. If you are committed to this and you now think about this hard you may see that among the people of these different cultures, in other words intra-cultural there is not much difference at all.

What are the differences between so call black people in America and so called white people in America? List them out and share with us if they are truly cultural differences or differences in style, tradition and customs and how these differences make them cultures.

[Adisa]

Agriculture:  Agri and Culture:  Latin agricultura, Agri led to Acre.  

Acre, tilled field, open land, from Greek Agros, plain, open country

Culture:  Cult and ure:  tilling of the land from Latin cultura, cultivating, agriculture care of culture. 

Cult:  particular form of worship from Latin cultus care, labor, cultivation, worship, reverence tended.  Cult led to colony. 

Ure:  effect operation and practice, from Latin opera.

Opera:  Latin opera meaning work effort, led to opus. 

Opus:  latin meaning work, labor exertion.   

Colony:  ancient Roman settlement outside Italy from Latin Colonia settled land, farm landed estate from colere inhabit, cultivate, practice,  led to cycle. 

Cycle:  from Greek Kyklos circle, wheel, any circular body, motion, events.

There is no true cultural difference.  There can be different methods to culturing but I do not see how there are or could be cultural differences, styles, traditions or customs between so called white and black people.   

[Clifford Black]

@Adisa-This, (what you are doing) is the kind of work that has to be done before a person can begin to develop and have the power of seeing/comprehension which can allow the overcoming of non-sense.

B.

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

Quita in short yes and yes and yes. There is nothing wrong with agriculture per se, it's just when one group imposes its will and values upon another that things get difficult. If you look you will see the greatest of sins, greed, steering the whole ship to its collision course of destruction.

[Clifford Black]

Bro. Al,
I am doing my best to wait on others to adress this discussion.
(B)

[Clifford Black]

I am starting to think that recent conversations about people, who want crops without plowing, is in fact the reality that we find ourselves trapped within.
(KANNOBE)

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

So true and the crazy part is it is all hidden in plain sight. Remember a few years ago when the inland hurricane or straight line winds hit Memphis? Almost all the power in the city was out for days and in some places weeks.

The city was only a few days from reverting to hunting and gathering, though the hunt and gather would not look like the original. Memphis, is served by just a few food companies and they had no way of storing anything but dry and canned goods, but even worse was they had power themselves.

Had not the weather been fair and the power not restored at the time it did we were about to witness real turmoil. People would have been forced to think about how they eat in an entirely different way. With no Kroger's or Piggly Wiggly or Big Star to act as the middle men in the systems of food production I think panic would set rather quickly.

When you think about it people are truly at the mercy of the food corporations. If there ever was even a threat of mass insurrection all they need do is cut that supply chain and it's all over. Makes you go ummmm.

Canbe

[B. Crittenden Freeman]

So, by buying a Big Mac or a Whopper, I am a slow boiling frog?
Consume Mass Quantities, Sir Conehead???
I have a couple of ideas for restaurants. Unique ones. I let them go. Why? Once I was in an Applebees and saw all the waste of food in the garbage bins and was stunned!!! and I thought to myself, there is no way I can contribute to this.

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

Barry, we have little choice in how we eat initially. We can think it through and make some changes, but our individual foot prints are really not the problem as much as our collective thought or shall I say beliefs are.
We are living or enacting a story not created by us, but devised for us, from a long time back. The story is supported by so many institutions that it is built into the very fabric of our existence and most people will never question it to any degree.

To the few fortunate or in this case perhaps unfortunate ones, who dare to peel back the curtain of lies and illusions isolation is mostly our punishment or liberation depending again on how you view it. We have a dynamic opportunity here to truly build something I have never thought possible. We have effective processes to do research, check, filter, and create a "think tank" of our own an intelligence community that we control.

No longer do we have to depend on "them" to think for us, to tell is what is and what is not. We can and are doing that for ourselves. This is the Zion they were speaking of in the movie. We are against anything, but ignorance. We are not anti anything, not protestors or protesting.. We are anarchists or any of those ist they love to come after. We just love knowing how to know. That's a concept and it cannot be destroyed or even infiltrated to make harm of.