Monday, February 23, 2015

Feeling Like Something Isn't Right?

Feel like something isn't right? The study of societal cycles and collapse is a major theme of the blogs I've been reading for the last 10 years or so (although apocalypse has really been a theme for children of the Cold War), blogs like those by John Michael Greer, Dmitry Orlov, James Howard Kunstler, Guy McPherson, and Morris Berman. Some important books that could be read in association: Kohr's "The Breakdown of Nations" (1957), Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" (1988), Diamond's "Collapse" (2005). Each has a POV and its own strengths, focus, and weakness, so all are worth checking out. Here is a basic WIkipedia article as a gateway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse
Societal collapse is the fall or disintegration of human societies. Societal collapse broadly includes abrupt societal failures such as that of the Mayan Civilization, as well as more extended gradual declines of cultures,...
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
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  • Lance Foster Plus, as an archaeologist, learning about this stuff is just something that is part of our discipline, as much as money is for accountants.
    8 mins · Like
  • Lance Foster It's an occupational hazard of being trained as an archaeologist, and reading history and biology and geology...everything that is born must die, and that includes everything, like civilizations, species, planets...
    All scholars and others can do is a salvage for the next cycle, even if the salvage is imperfect, like the Greeks did of the Egyptians, and the Romans of the Greeks, and Islam did of Classical civilizations, etc. The question is then, what shall we salvage of ours? If the lessons are true, we cannot, but we can record the best we can, perhaps establish some schools or libraries, and the NEXT cycle will see either a group that will salvage from what we save…or burn what we save to the ground like the Library at Alexandria.