THE END OF THE WORLD?
By William M. H. Kotke
CounterCurrents.org, India
12 September, 2007
We are all looking at the end of the world as we know it. Our attention
is focused on the holes in the ozone layer, planet warming, peak oil,
the spread of DU weapons, the collapse of the house of credit cards,
and the prospect of the planetary financial elite quickly establishing
fascist control of the planet.
Below this threshold of conscious awareness our biological survival
systems are rapidly eroding. At this point some twenty percent of
the planet’s soils erode each twenty-five year period. Each year
at least two hundred thousand acres of irrigated crop-lands go out
of production because of salinization or water-logging and experts
say that sixty to eighty percent of all irrigated acreage is due to
follow the eight to ten million acres that have historically gone
into ruination from irrigation. The total drylands of the planet
are 7.9 billion acres of which 61% are desertified, that is, driven
by human abuse toward uselessness. Globally, 23% of all arable crop
lands have been lost since 1945 through human use and experts say
that all arable land on the planet will be ruined in 200 years.
It is estimated that prior to the human culture that we term
civilization, one third of the planet was covered with closed
canopy forest. Now forests cover 10% of the earth. In the oceans
the collapse of major fish stocks is increasing. At least eight
stocks have collapsed beginning with the Antarctic Blue Whale in
1935 to the Peruvian Anchovy stock collapse in the late twentieth
century. Since 1984 the world fish catch has been shrinking even
with greater investment and the taking of what in former times were
considered "trash" fish. Of the 32 ocean fisheries, 30 are in decline
and some of those are collapsing. At the same time coral reefs and
mangrove swamps which are considered the "incubators" of sea life
are dwindling precipitously.
Soil is the basis of the planetary terrestrial life.
In the best of circumstances such as old growth forests and prairies,
soil builds at the rate of one inch each three hundred to a thousand
years. It is being exhausted and is eroding away. The way that the
industrial system has continued to increase the food supply is by
trading off soil fertility for fossil fuel energy through artificial
fertilizers. Now, nearly half of the world’s people eat because
of the added production of food caused by artificial fertilizers
being injected into depleted soils and the use of all of the other
accouterments of fossil- fueled industrial agriculture.. Half of
the planetary population are hanging out on a limb essentially eating
petroleum! Now as the population continues to explode we reach peak oil
and its decline. We do not need to continue filling in the details. Our
intellect can draw the conclusion for us. An exponentially exploding
world population with increasing material consumption, based on
dwindling resources and a dying planet, won’t work!
But this is not a new phenomenon as some would assume.
This culture of civilization, of empire, was an ecological catastrophe
when it began some eight thousand years ago. It is this culture and
its inculcated reality-view that is the disaster. Half of China was
once a great temperate zone forest. That forest was gone before
recorded history, destroyed by the Han Chinese Empire. The Indus
River Valley Empire had ecologically destroyed its habitat before
recorded history. We do have recorded history of the Sumerian and
Babylonian empires. We know they decimated the forests and overgrazed
the landscape. One third of the land in Iraq that should be arable
right now is still so salinized from imperial irrigation four and five
thousand years ago that it cannot be used. The erosion material coming
down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from that destroyed watershed
has filled in 185 miles of the gulf. As we follow the history
of this type of human culture we find the Mid-East ecologically
denuded. The empires of Greece and Rome used Turkey and North Africa
as "breadbaskets." Now, there are towns in Turkey, North Africa and
even in Italy that were port cities during those empires which are
now ten and fifteen miles from the water – all filled in with erosion
material from the ecologically destroyed landscapes. Then we go on
to the destruction of the great forests of Europe and now the whole
world. These examples and many more are indelible effects on the
world ecosystem which have not recovered in thousands of years.
The Success of the Human Species
Are humans a failed species? Is it what some Natives Americans have
said, "very shrewd but no wisdom?" When we look around the biosphere
we see that most other species devote much of their life energies
to birthing, raising and protecting their progeny. In this respect,
civilized humans are a failed species.
They can’t even keep the planet alive for their descendants. But humans
have been a marvelously successful species. For several million years
we existed as forager/hunters. We lived in balance with the ecosystem,
migrating in our traditional patterns around our areas gathering
the fruits of the earth. We were adapted to the planetary life. We
developed astonishing oral literatures, we developed a rich cultural
life. Anthropology says that each forager/hunter worked an average
of 500 hours per year obtaining the necessaries of life. Traditional
agriculturalists like the Hopi or Balinese worked 1,000 hours per
year and had shorter life spans. Now the modern industrial person
works 2,000 hours per year on average and only stay alive because
they have health insurance. Anthropology says that the forager/hunters
(even those still remaining) have almost perfect health.
They also had a rich culture. They didn’t simply sit around the
campfire but created voluminous oral literature, great works of art
as handcrafts and a rich ceremonial life of the tribe. Our species
lived with the living earth. We had wide knowledge of the living
things around us and we respected life. Such a grotesque event as
killing thousands of buffalo simply to take their tongues or hides
away to market and to leave the carcasses to rot were an act that
was inconceivably inhuman in the eyes of a forager/hunter.
Our ancestors were well fed with a widely varied diet.
Anthropologists studying the !Kung Bushmen of the inhospitable Kalahari
Desert in Southern Africa say that each person’s daily protein intake
was more than Britain and exceeded by only ten industrial countries.
The proportion of men and women over sixty was only ten percent
smaller than industrial countries.
Forager/hunters who lived in more luxurious ecosystems did even
better. This means that most of the people of the third world and
the poor of the first world do not even have the living standards
of the !Kung Bushmen and for eight thousand years, all of those who
did breast beating about the superiority of "civilization" did not
even come up to the living standards of free living forager/hunters –
talk about being sold a bill of goods!
For 99% of the time our species has lived successfully in balance with
the energy flows of the earth. The soil community with its millions
of inhabitants provides a milieu in which plant roots can absorb
nutrients that are in solution. The plant community sheds leaves and
other organic debris onto the soil which feeds it as it is eaten by
the "decomposers."
This cycling of biological energy is then extrapolated to the cycles
of life of all the other biological entities of the ecosystem through
the food chains and other services species do for each other in
what is an energy flow system with photosynthesis as the primary
motor. This is the energy flow system that our species was adapted
to for an untold period of time. Being a small nomadic group (average
of 28 people according to anthropology) we had a cooperative culture,
a sharing culture and being migratory we only carried necessary items
so that materialism, the accumulation and adulation of material goods,
did not occur.
The Inversion
Then in Central Asia and Northern China, humans began to destroy the
living planet with agriculture and herding. The military based empires
began to grow by running a net deficit of the earth’s fertility –
a human culture based in looting, thievery. This culture began then,
in just an eye blink of time, just eight to ten thousand years, and
the energy adaptation changed. Humans began civis, towns, the root
of the word civilization. Male dominance – patriarchy, the horse and
militarism became rooted in the soil, to grow based on sucking out
the fertility of the earth.
This culture was, in its origin, a culture of coercion based
upon biological slaves such as annual plants and domesticated
animals and human slaves, in order to extort fertility from the
earth. The ecological history of empire is there for all to see. We
no longer gather the fruits of the earth, we force the earth to
give up surpluses, profits, until the earth can no longer, then
we move on. This is the culture of empire, a culture of growth and
imbalance. Its main tenets are patriarchy, hierarchy, materialism, and
militarism. The configuration of the imperial system is: an Emperor
(male), surrounded by a small financial/military elite, who control
and profit from a coercive hierarchal command system. That is, they
feed off the productive social activities of the people in society!
Now we are near the end. The culture of empire has spread over the
earth except for a few pockets of remaining forager/hunters. As the
exploding population meets the dwindling resources, societies begin
to unravel. We are beginning to see massive cities around the planet,
each encircled by millions of the poor.
These people are still fed by the dwindling acres but the breaking
point is in sight.
The Gauntlet
The human species is faced with an ultimate. Will the species die off
or can a rabbit be pulled out of the hat over the long term? Inasmuch
as humans live from other living things, we know that whatever humans
may exist in two hundred years will be humans that have been able to
keep their area of the planet alive.
We live in an era in which a number of things are occurring that
have never happened to the species before. We live in a time of
human caused, mass, global, die off of species. This is the third and
largest mass die off of species since life began on earth, the previous
(and second) die-off being when the dinosaurs went down millions of
years ago. Humans have also caused the ozone holes and the climate
warming. But, we also now have planetary communication and through
the internet we also have planetary communication available on an
individual level. This is the first time that the human species as a
whole can communicate. This is also the first time that humans are in
control of evolution on this whole planet and the possible further
manifestation of themselves. Humans are in control and the choices
that they make in the next few generations will determine the course
for the future of the species as well as the earth.
The Cultural Conditioning
Culture is hypnosis. A hypnotic suggestion can be given in deep trance
or in light trance, a state of conscious attention such as watching
television. In light trance the suggestion is repetitive over time.
We have all had a world view suggested to us by our cultural
conditioning. For example, we intellectually know that, except for
native people, the rest of us in the American hemisphere and many
other places on the planet are colonials. But, we don’t subconsciously
hold this understanding because of the culturalization. Since birth we
have heard of "warlike" Indians. But intellectually we know that any
country that is invaded will put up a vigorous response. Intellectually
we know that, according to the historian Eduardo Galeano, up to 70
million native people were eliminated from the Americas by sword and
pestilence yet we subconsciously view the holocaust of the Jews and
Armenians as the only significant massacres.
In this manner our world view is created. The gold fish does not
see the water. As our culture instructs us that wealth is security
and is the purpose of life, we use up the earth more rapidly toward
our demise. On a psychological level we identify with our material
possessions and subconsciously assume our existence without these
elements would be non-identity. Our needs toward greater ego-security
also point toward our demise.
The Species Initiation
Now that the planet-wide human species, is by default, in control
of the life of the earth we can understand what would be needed for
the species to succeed to full maturity. The first order is to stay
alive. To do that we must maintain that which feeds and shelters
us. We must keep the earth alive and ecologically restore it even in
the areas of dense human population today. Our reality view is in fact,
global now by default. Ozone holes, nuclear radiation, sea level rise,
planet heating and the rubbing out of the living flesh of the earth
are global phenomena.
Like the Six Nations Iroquois who frame each tribal decision to its
effects on the seventh generation, we must create a reality frame as
the life of the earth.
Given our subconscious conditioning that is difficult, but in this case
our intellect can lead us. If we can frame our cultural reality view
as based upon the care of the earth and teach that to the children,
then many other cultural values will flow from that.
A present day citizen of the earth, if they were a mature and
responsible adult would say that honorable actions would perpetuate
the living earth for its sake as well as for the progeny of the
human species. That commitment at the level of the whole species
would signify the initiation of the species to maturity.
The Hero At The Portals of Initiation
The center does not hold.. Oil and the resources of the earth such as
soil and forests are exhausting as the mass swells. Can the hero make
it through the disintegration? Can small land based, self-sufficient
communities make it through, some of them? Can they carry the universal
value of life through with their culture? Can they create a culture
that will spread in the future that focuses on the highest development
of each human as a person rather than the highest rung up the ladder
of empire? This is what is being asked of the hero for initiation into
human species maturity – nothing less than courage, the adherence to
the culture of life over long periods of time and transformation.
All the elements that we need exist. We have examples of alternative
buildings, created from local materials, with solar advantages
that can heat and cool themselves with no outside energy inputs. We
have a world-wide movement to Permaculture which can help us restore
ecologies while producing more human food per acre than the industrial
system. We have a wide and increasing selection of human development
methods which can aid in the development of each individual to their
highest potential – outside the materialist paradigm. We have planetary
communication through the internet whose maintenance could require
few resources.
When the hero can succeed at the matter of keeping the human species
and the planet alive and see that as just a "housekeeping" duty,
then we can get on with the truly challenging task of creating a
positive and joyous human culture to which the hero is entitled.
William H. Kotke author ofGarden Planet: The Present Phase Change of
the Human Species. See at: and THE FINAL
EMPIRE an underground classic book available for free download at:
.