Three “Civilized” Perceptions.
Britannica, land of hope and glory.
Belgium, for freedom and law.
United States of America, where the flag stands for freedom.
Reality.
“You can best serve civilization
By being against
What usually passes for it.”
So says Wendell Berry …
And we should all agree!
If could be that many have tried
To serve civilization?
Examples you ask? …
Dickens’ twist on London’s exploitations of poor youth,
A very long list.
The Cherokees’ trail of tears. Lasted for years. Yet exists my dears.
Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona underlines the plights, the never-ending fights for indigenous rights.
Conrad’s darkness. … Hearken!
Sinclair’s jungle. In a different fashion, but continuance of broad cruelty … it exists and strangles.
(Old friend and classmate Adolph Chapa got into these bloody, brutal, back-breaking slaughtering tangles
At the ripe old age of fourteen in an Illinois town. … He was just barely single?)
Ida Wells’ battles against lynchings
And fight for the advancement of colored people.
Carson’s spring of silencing biocide and the birds that died.
Diamond’s guns, germs, and steel.
Man’s inhumanity to humanity,
Genocide and slavery were real
And are still.
Catton’s overshoot. We have overshot!!!
Hersey’s Hiroshima
Oyez! Oyez!
There are many, many more civilization exposés.
Civilization implies a better state. …
In terms of health of humans and dynamic homeostatic symbioses …
And energetics and hours worked to TRULY LIVE! …
Sometime, somewhere in the Paleolithic Period
Was the most civilized
While humans have been around.
Currently some one half billion of us
Have 600-plus square feet of air conditioned
Living and automobile space per capita
And transform about 200,000-plus kilocalories per capita daily
On the backs of at least three billion humans
While also breaking the back of dynamic homeostatic symbioses
Or Nature.
Perhaps civil was pre or will be post humans and humanity.
Naw.
Can’t say that!
I do love self and those of my species too much
To say that.
That’s why I propose that we strive to live the seven S’s.
And reduce human and domesticated species population growth.
And human consumption by Haves.
And increase consumption by have-nots, including other species.
Let’s live sabiamente,
Simply, smally, slowly,
Steadfastly, sharingly,
Sustainably.
As positively ethical applied community ecologists …
PEACEmakers.
“To live,
We must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation.
When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently,
It is a sacrament.
When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively,
It is a desecration.
In such desecration
We condemn ourselves
To spiritual and moral loneliness,
And others to want.”
So says Wendell Berry.
And we should all agree!
…………………………..
I’m voting, campaigning for Biden and Harris
And perceive I’m doing some good.
But with almost eight billion humans going on ten-plus billion
And with too many of these transforming more than 200,000-plus kilocalories
Of “renewable” and nonrenewable energy each day,
The reality is that civilization will never be civil
Not even with a Bernie and an Elizabeth in the driver’s seat.
pbm
( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )
