Let Them Eat Cake, And So They Drank Blood
CZ
At some point under the yolk of civilization, either population increases beyond sustainability of the land, the land is mismanaged, or the climate changes and hunger becomes widespread. No longer appeased by worship or sacrifice, the gods rebel, the system fails, the people revolt and destroy it. Population crashes and the cycle begins anew.
Since all modern people labor under the misconception that the Earth is theirs to dominate, agriculture appears to be the only possible process to that end. Civilization arises when people band together to try and make the formula work. They institute rules and regulations of behavior creating social hierarchy to increase efficiency and productivity. Slaves are necessary to further the agenda of those in power. Technology is an outgrowth of this fear-based desire for power and control. As successive civilizations expand, mature and collapse, they become increasingly complex. Yet, the inherently unworkable cycle always repeats. Though they may last for thousands of years, ultimately civilizations always collapse.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Unknown
Slackers derive their energy from this pulsing mass of social bioplasm while quietly learning the skills necessary to survive the inevitable crash. Right now is the best time to adopt the Slacker lifestyle. While in any civilization an upper class and the waste it creates is often enough for a clever individual to subsist, our culture with its large, wasteful and destructive middle class offers the highest standard of living any Slacker could possibly want. But you better hurry; the middle class is dying. The Great Remission will soon begin. The peak of this civilization is already history.
Becoming a Slacker is as much about doing the right thing as it is about taking it easy. If you want to contribute to civilization, by all means strap on the harness, keep your shoulder to the wheel, whip those credit cards and spend most of your money on a house that’s too large, a car that’s unnecessary, food that’s unhealthful and medical care that is designed to make you sick rather than ensure your health. We Slackers need you. If everyone opted for the Slacker life, it wouldn’t work at all. Being a modern Slacker can only be accomplished in a decadent, civilized society.
Once civilization crashes the Slacker will have to adapt to different conditions. It therefore behooves the Slacker to use his time wisely to live closer to Nature and to learn her ways. Though civilization may last another hundred years, those who prepare for civilization’s ultimate demise will be more likely to survive.
If being a Slacker doesn’t appeal to you, just realize that some of the money you labor for is siphoned off for warfare and corporate welfare, a system that creates unrest and death in the world—maybe not in your world, but in places where the people don’t have the wherewithal to stop the powerful all-consuming civilization you support. In the Great Remission, the last to hop on the globalization bandwagon will be the first thrown under the wheels. They’ll blame you for disrupting their homelands and then pulling away the brass ring just before they could grab it. That makes you their enemy. Eventually all civilizations fall from decadence generated within and are dismantled from without by the impoverished and oppressed. Beware.
Another factor working against sustainability of the present system is the need for constant growth and increased energy consumption. Don’t think that technology will stop the fall. Technology will cause it. We’re already close to the edge. Ethanol is a scam. Hydrogen needs more power to produce than it releases when used. Nuclear power produces untenable waste. No other energy source can replace fossil fuels in our civilization, and they have turned the Earth into a simmering crock-pot. More energy isn’t the answer anyway. Power in the hands of mankind is the problem itself.
Industrialization and technology bring into existence nearly 6000 new chemical compounds every week, many of them poisonous. The toxic wastes of their production are disposed of by dumping them on the land, into the air and waterways or the oceans. Testing these chemicals for their effects on biosystems seldom happens. It’s an open experiment the results of which we are just beginning to feel.
The Earth and its resources is a finite, closed system. Already residents of the first world live far beyond what the planet could sustain if everyone alive lived at that level. And more people arrive every day.
Some believe that the oil supplies have already reached an apex and are on the decline. Even if they aren’t, we cannot keep pumping combustion gasses into the atmosphere indefinitely.
The proliferation of humanity and it’s irrational gluttony stresses biological ecosystems millions of years old, systems that support our crops, soils, oceans, forests and rivers. At some point, a seemingly insignificant key species will die off and an important ecosystem will fail. It’s happened before. When it happens again, the human species will experience a horrific and unprecedented die-off.
Genetic tinkering is prying the lid off Pandora’s box. We are in the throes of Earth’s fifth great planetary extinction cycle, the fourth being the death of the dinosaurs. Following every Great Extinction is a period of rapid evolutionary change triggered by the opening of newly vacated ecological niches. Artificial genetic manipulation contains the potential to foster an uncontrollable evolutionary explosion to replace lost diversity with new life forms. From a purely biological point of view, this is exciting and wonderful. For humanity however, a strong possibility exists that something else will either arise to compete for the niche now occupied by humans, or more likely, feast on the abundant human forage.
It’s the Rainbow, Stupid!
CZ
But don’t worry about it. It’s all good. Fat kids aren’t healthy. Bored housewives are big trouble. A life of convenience leads to an artery-clogged death. The wealthy use the most tranquilizers, go to the shrink most often and are the most miserable. Civilization wasn’t working anyway. In the end it never does.
Change is hard. You may still believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The Slacker would rather sit and admire the beauty of the rainbow than go looking for that gold. In the real world, gold is quite useless and has no value anyway.
Oh, and by the way, there is no pot of gold there. It’s the rainbow, stupid!
To be continued...
Image all mine
Preface part 1, part 2
Introduction
Why Slack? part 1, part 2
The Purpose of Life
Paradox of Civilization:part 1