why dismantle civilisation ?
Created by disciv on 01 Jan 2008 | Tagged as:
“What does it mean to dismantle civilisation? What it means is: Depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and to destroy the world. I can’t give a better definition than that.” Derrick Jensen
The natural world is under attack. Our global economy & corporate capitalist system is destroying the planetary eco system at a pace that few of us can comprehend. Old growth forests are all but gone. The oceans are dying, choked with human-made poisons and plastic trash. Topsoil is depleted, deserts are expanding, industrial agriculture renders land unfit for life. Species are being pushed into extinction at an estimated 200 per day. The human population now stands at 6.5 billion, and climbing. This cannot continue.
This blog hopes to pull together many diverging strands of information, to illustrate that the problem lies not with any one simple factor, but with the whole culture that we call civilisation. The way we have been raised to view humans as superior and seperate to nature, and hence how we behave in relation to our surroundings is ultimately the problem.
This civilised society, where most people have little connection with the earth, and practically no involvement with the source of their food, is unsustainable. Before the discovery of fossil fuels civilised human society was already creating deserts, but since oil our ability as a race to totally screw up our planet has accelerated. By its very nature this culture needs to keep expanding to exist, taking more and more resources, and enslaving more and more people to a life of servitude to the machine. Globalisation has upped the stakes, pushing billions into wage slavery, making everything into a commodity to be bought and sold for worthless pieces of paper, or blips on a computer screen.
Enough is enough. Hopefully you too will come to see the insanity of this culture, but also be introduced to ideas and concepts that inspire you to make a difference in your life. To step out of the wage slavery rat race, and divert your energy into really living, with the joy of being a free animal, in harmony with your surroundings and other people, both human and otherwise.
Destroy civilisation, destroy individual human power, destroy the oppression of spirit that civilisation thrives on. Destroy the last hierarchical communication system still intact (clue: render unto Caesar).
Peak oil is probably the most important factor that will help humanity to waken and achieve all this – an immediate imperative no one can ignore. The lessons that we will collectively learn over the next few decades (if we survive Gaia’s retribution) may endure and lead to a form of ‘civilisation’ (sic) in which Derrick’s vision of communities in which the abstract, subservience to production, and human power over other humans and nature is forever against the law.
We are at the cusp of a global awakening due to the mass-communication abilities that have been developing ever since Caxton, since written language. We now have a non-hierarchical means of subverting power, the webby/netty/inter revolution. Our words, in omnibus, in blogs, speak undeniable truth to power. This new system will allow localised communities around the world to share experience – to share solutions, in terms of permaculture in its broadest sense. And other visions. The revolution has been happening for the past decade and it is humanity’s greatest tool against power.
How do we retain and enhance this global consciousness system after the electricity is turned off? What if civ decides to emasculate our ability to self-organise against it – by pulling the plug on the net tomorrow?
Alastair
http://www.usofc.blogspot.com
I’m with you on the dismantlement. But if we are going to do it, we need to reach people from inside their mentality. Align with the people, then attack the problem. Come join me in hacking the human race. Over the course of the next few months, my grand plan will be revealed. Click on the [about] section at my blog for more info.
The key to the hacking IMHO is the RWA (Altemeyer) , the Right Wing Authoritarian mind, a condition that overlaps to some extent with psychopathy. It is the mind of fear, the driver of Civ and it is also by its function the main driver of anxiety, stress, and cultural PTSD which now pervades our world.
Authoritarian followers and leaders (the latter tend to be closer to psychopaths than the former) do a subtle communication between each other but it is far from unhackable. RWA’s tend to be less flexible in thinking, too rule constrained and compartmentalised. They think differently to most of us and if the term ‘dim and reactionary’ ever had an appropriate use it is for RWA’s. RWA leaders tend to be smart manipulative controlling and intuitive to attempts to subvert their power, but they are still fixed in their thinking and unable to function when forced to defend their ‘arguments’.
Break into the Authoritarian’s communication system (not too difficult; no this is not Terrorism – we are talking about minds not computers) and hack the code, then the hierarchy cannot function. RWA is the personality trait associated with anti-nature, anti-feminine, and everything to do with Civ and centralised control that has happened ever since the masculine principle coincided with (or maybe resulted from) agriculture and the opportunity to dominate, and practice dominating, and evolve human traits for dominating.
Until now. Now the code which RWA leaders communicate their messages to followers – their partners in maintaining the hierarchical system – is most refined in the media. Its the stuff of exasperated progressives everywhere – the hidden manipulations which calm the agitated masses, the Soma, the Hitler process.
It would appear simple to develop ways, possibly using Lackoff’s reframing technique among other ideas, in order to hack the Hitler process and disrupt the culture of obedience that the hierarchy depends upon. If the hierarchy can be disrupted in this way rather by imploding then there is a chance that panarchy/rhizome could emerge.
The phrase ‘dismantle civilization’ is very broad. While we want an end to many things, I don’t think we want a full return to the Stone Age, which is how some might interpret the phrase.
What we really need is a transformational process, analogous to the caterpillar-butterfly process, which can dissolve away what we don’t want and nurture what we do want.
At the micro level that process is call ‘localization’, and at the macro level – the level of ‘dismantle civilization’ – it might be called ‘deglobalization’. Globalization is about making us all dependent on international monetary & commodity flows that are controlled by financial elites. Deglobalization is about freeing ourselves from those flows – freeing ourselves from the global economy. Not giving up trade, but doing it by other means than the elite-controlled marketplace.
Deglobalization refers not only a community seeking sustainable self-sufficiency, but also to Venezuela paying off her IMF debts, and any group that establishes their own currency. Deglobalization can be pursued at any level of society, wherever the will exists at that level. It is about dismantling the mechanisms of hierarchy and at the same time building mechanisms closer to the grassroots.
best wishes
Richard Moore
author, Escaping the Matrix
hi richard
thanks for visiting our site, and leaving this comment.
we accept that ‘dismantle civilisation’ can be misunderstood as meaning do away with everything humans have learned over the last 10,000 years or some such.
that is why we have explained in http://www.endgame.org.uk/what-is-civilisation/ what we mean by civilisation. a heirarchy system, a culture of empire, with a few at the top of the pyramid benefitting at the expense of the rest of us. and a system of cities deriving their needs from elsewhere, and with a monoculture worldview, disregarding cultural, geographic and political differences, imposing their structures on others, and forcing people into the cash economy, and away from subsistence farming.
so, we agree with you, but perhaps have more concern that if humans dont learn to live in harmony, and dont attempt at least to stop civilisations machines and corporations from dismantling our planet, none of us may be able to survive in the coming decades.
we delberately chose this title, as there are already plenty of ‘what are we gonna do, oil is running out’ and ‘we should learn to live together nicer’ websites and other info resources. we are saying that things are worse than you can imagine, and we need to do something now. we each have a part ot play, in the transformation of human culture and society, from monkeywrenching to permaculture and everything else.
hopefully at least a few people will be inspired to find their role in the transformation, and also recognise that although others are doing something different, we are all to some degree working to the same (locally diverse) ends.
Great site.
I’ll put a link for it on mine.
Totally agree. We need to dismantle this omnicidivilization.
Best
-Misko
I want to add to my last posting that people have been disconnected from their truth and isolated from the awsome whole. Lured into a blind state of security and freedom. these are all illusions. I do not think violence or protest is the answer. We must starve the beast by not feeding it our hopes and dreams anymore. Deny it what it needs the most. Disconnect from the system and reconnect with our natural state. It only takes 15% of us to affectely change the thinking of the whole.
Ok, lots of people sure understand and agree with dismantling, rethink this civilization, but really do we have any hope? Unfortunately I doubt it. As you mention the population growing, this is the biggest problem and noone can stop that only a huge natural disaster or sthg like that. Yes sustainability and permaculture is a great idea and many peoeple willing to do it but lets face it, where on this wonderful Earth 7 billion human can exercise gardening?! It is quite an important element of the dismanteling that you have to be able to grow your own food, but the planet is just crowded, simple.