Listen to a reading of this article: Did you know chimpanzees hunt smaller primates for food? They do. They're actually very skillful hunters due to their size, their strength, and especially their intelligence. They coordinate their attacks, working together to cut off the escape routes of their prey to greatly increase their success rate. Scientists have even frequently observed them
Good points made, but as a primatologist I'll mention that chimpanzees are excellent ecosystem engineers, spreading fruit seeds around the forest and generally fitting into their ecology. Unlike consumerist human cultures, they don't wreck their own habitats and their hunting is pretty small-scale. We would actually do well to be more like chimpanzees and less like rapacious planet destroyers.
living as an organic part of -- not engineering -- the ecosystem would be nice. human society can emulate the natural world, in which every member or part fits comfortably.
I read just this morning that in some areas red colobus monkeys are close to extinction because of hunting by chimpanzees, so the analogy only goes so far.
'In some areas' is key, and the chimpanzees are reducing populations of one species, not laying waste to the entire ecosystem as we do. It should also be kept in mind that both chimpanzees and colobus are being forced to inhabit increasingly tiny patches of forest by human activities, which likely affects this dynamic as well. I don't think chimpanzees hunting colobus even approaches the scale of the kind of damage agriculturalist humans inflict on the world.
You are confusing biology with mother culture, IMO.
We modern industrial "civilised" humans are no longer homo sapiens. Talk to any remnant indigenous humans (homo sapiens!) and they will tell you: we modern industrial "civilised" humans are crazy and our dominant culture (aka "civilisation") is insane. They are really pissed off to be lumped in with us when we begin making this a species problem.
Who's "we"? We are homo colossus, homo economicus, homo rapiens, homo stupidus, homo separatus, homo parasiticus, homo indoorsians, homo domesticates....
Faced with peak everything, The 6th Mass Extinction and climate chaos, we're going to either change hard and fast to a low-tech, light ecological-footprint, local culture, or we're joining the die-off.
This is a cultural crisis. We are "civilised", swimming in an ocean of mother culture, so encompassing, so captive, so inculcated, so indoctrinated, the vast majority can not see it. And it's mostly by design. We've been raised to be energy and ecologically illiterate. This really suites The Powers That Be, who have been actively farming us for quite some time.
The issue is not us as human beings. The issue is us as "civilised" dumb-arsed idiots...city idiots, citiots.
What was needed was a massive cultural revolution 40-50 years ago, before the globalized "growth" and "progress" fetish took off. Now it's really late in the game. I wonder if there are enough waking up who can see? Even this late in the game, we could at least make a difference for whoever gets to survive the collapse, already underway and obvious to those who will look.
"The dominant culture is insane and unreachable, as are most of it's inhabitants. It has a death urge. It is pathological and suicidal. It wants to kill everyone and everything, including itself. And it will do so, unless we stop it."
The trouble in this world is that if you ain't growing, you are dying. The chimps recognize that in their subconscious as does any bacteria on the planet.
Ever try to get rid of toe fungus? The real cure is to wipe out all bacteria in the body almost killing the host.
We are nothing more than fungus on the planet. Despite all of the crap we invent, we are one winter power outage, one volcanic eruption, one little comet, one virus, one giant solar flare from becoming the Walking Dead running around killing each other for some dried rice.
Civilization as we call it is nothing more than some mutant monkeys run by the lowest common denominator, the rich guys.
I will continue to work my farm. I hope and pray for humanity. But we really are too low on the evolutionary scale to really achieve true greatness.
I heard Schwab speak yesterday. It reminded me so much of Hitler speeches. I am flabbergasted that everyone cant see this whole lie.
With Conservatives they tell the evil, then do it. With liberals they tell you a lie and then do the evil.
I appreciate the vision and the positive conception of humanity. So much work has gone into subverting that, which is really the essence of evil: finding new artful ways to subvert the natural thirst for truth (which children are born with ie curiosity) and often replace genuine spiritual or intellectual investigations with a bunch of fake “imitations” that look like they’re good, but are actually designed to send people off course. The Narrative Matrix is designed to that.
The piece Whitney Webb recently published on the Malthusians’ Revenge is the kind of thing more people should get a chance to read to get a sense of what the enemy is really vying to control, on an epistemological level.
Beyond what people think, the oligarchy concerns itself with how people think. Certain “scientific” theories about the universe are popular and considered the “official line” not because they are true or there isn’t plenty of evidence against it, but because on a deeper fundamental level it upholds the imperial view of humanity that makes it controllable, that makes its story easy to “re-frame” in a way that shapes our imaginations, and consequently, the kinds of ideas we are capable of generating.
“Black-pilled” people are ultimately operating under the pathological assumption that everything has already been decided. But the “New World Order” has failed many times, as in the first try with the “League of Nations.”
Genuinely creative human beings are naturally drawn to the idea of doing the impossible.
Absolutely! I've been following her work for 2 years and recommend her to everyone I know (along with Caitlin, Alison McDowell, and the above cited Derrick Jensen)
I just checked out the article you linked to because I love Whitney and was curious what I'd missed, but the article is by Matthew Ehret. Sounds very interesting though, will definitely read it.
I'm not sure doing away with national terroritories is the way to go. Just as liberty implies the individual has self-determination, the same applies to groups; and we area very terroritorial species. The alternative is basically globalism, which is why the globalists are so intent on breaking down borders and transferring national sovereignty to their own hands.
Which doesn't mean nations necessarily have to fight. However, even when they do, having governance distributed as widely as possible is far preferable to concentrating it within one planetary polity. Even if the latter starts with good intentions, it's a singular point of failure that can easily be captured by bad actors. A redundant, localized governance system is more chaotic and less efficient, but far more resilient against tyranny.
I share your misgivings about being relaxed about borders etc, John, but it is already a done deal. The post-nation state era arrived in the West a generation before the term 'globalisation' came into use. Hollywood noticed before everyone else: https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc
It is possible that the nation-state may be revived and fortified across those parts of Eurasia that have truly first class air-defence systems, but the likely future of the West if present conditions persist is simply more of the current imperialism, albeit more restricted spatially. Even if the new nationalists (Xi and Putin) succeed, the degree of coordination and synchronisation required for effective trade, transportation and communication will ensure regional forms of co-operation that will resemble much of present-day globalisation. The new nationalists simply want a less zero-sum version of globalisation, not its abolition. They want to re-negotiate a better deal, with more leeway for states and a stronger position for national oligarchies.
It is a mistake to assume that globalisation requires one world government. It does not. It merely requires co-operation between elites across formal boundaries, with sovereignty retained at a national level as a legitimising agent to keep the masses in line.
Nations can exist without states. The future will reveal which of the present nations can do this. So far self-declared nationalists remain fixated on states. Perhaps the only role left for genuine nationalists will be to ensure the welfare/survival of sub-national groups (the embryos of future nations) in the neglected or abandoned zones vacated by the system.
I read most every comment at this venue and I'm here to tell you, there is no hope of ever transcending ourselves. The majority posting here are a thousand times more vicious and ferocious and hateful than any chimpanzee. At least chimpanzees don't have pet cats.
While I don’t believe we descended from apes (I wasn’t there), I do believe we have a God given responsibility to be stewards of the planet. We’ve done this poorly, particularly through the industrial revolution. It’s greed, simply. Wars are about greed. The call to better stewardship of the planet is always important.
Well, we have an instinct for greed. One explanation is that it was an accident of Evolution; another is that God or the gods or whatever put it there in creating humans. It doesn't make much difference, as it is evident that only a small minority of humans can step so far out of Nature as to control and minimize greed -- their own and others'. I think the most likely conclusion is that humans will kill themselves off and some other species may evolve to take their place, if they have a place. Humans could be merely a chance excrescence to be sloughed off in some further accident.
In THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, Riane Eisler predicted a shift from the patriarchy (she called it the “dominator model”) to a collaborative model, as you suggest here. I’ve held to that vision since I read it many years ago. I dare say we are in the transition now, which explains the crazy times we are moving through. The “dominators” can’t navigate the shift and are desperate to hold on to the old ways. But it is inevitable. We just need to hold on.
Humans are just another mammalian species on the planet, we don't like to think of ourselves as part of the greater natural world but regardless of what we want we are part of that larger system. I remember watching rabbits do the very same thing, over producing because of a lack of predators, millions of rabbits were culled and still the numbers were uncontrollable until natural took over, disease and famine wiped out massive numbers, much more than humans could manage.
Nature is a system with checks and balances and humans like any species are subject to that balance, the eco warriors are just as ignorant as to their side effects of their actions. The above mentioned rabbit horde was caused by the elimination of predators by humans. The restoration of predators has resulted in a healthy balance in the system.
The Savory institute has shown clearly that the destruction of vast herds of grazing hoofed animals has led directly to desertification, we have caused climate change not by burning fossil fuels but by eliminating all of the wild life that kept the system in balance. Fish stocks being decimated is shifting the oceans balance, decimation of millions of buffalo has led to destruction of grass lands.
In the end the academic environmentalist is a threat to the planet as much as the rancher, farmer, hunter or oil driller.
Keep ‘em coming, Caitlin. I really appreciate your writing talent, sardonic humour and powerful insights. I tell everyone I can to read/listen to your work.
Never understood why the Kinks weren’t as highly regarded as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Those two never did much for me. But the kinks and The Who… man!
Since childhood, I've felt like our species is on the cusp of a spiritual quantum leap, much as you've described so eloquently. I think there are millions of us globally who've had this feeling.
I have also felt that I am destined to witness this event, and it sure does feel imminent.
I think people have different abilities to raise their consciousness. Unfortunately psychopaths are overrepresented in positions of power and these people have no ability (or interest) in doing something that is aimed less at their own than the common good.
In fact, I think the presence of psychopaths and sociopaths is one of the more profound societal dilemmas that we have. These people want power more than most and they suffer under less constraints (empathy, principally) in their pursuit of it, making them somewhat optimized for that goal. In the old days the odd psychopathic leader could do serious damage but he did not threaten life on the planet.
Good points made, but as a primatologist I'll mention that chimpanzees are excellent ecosystem engineers, spreading fruit seeds around the forest and generally fitting into their ecology. Unlike consumerist human cultures, they don't wreck their own habitats and their hunting is pretty small-scale. We would actually do well to be more like chimpanzees and less like rapacious planet destroyers.
living as an organic part of -- not engineering -- the ecosystem would be nice. human society can emulate the natural world, in which every member or part fits comfortably.
I read just this morning that in some areas red colobus monkeys are close to extinction because of hunting by chimpanzees, so the analogy only goes so far.
And of course re-reading the article I notice now that she made the same observation. Duh.
'In some areas' is key, and the chimpanzees are reducing populations of one species, not laying waste to the entire ecosystem as we do. It should also be kept in mind that both chimpanzees and colobus are being forced to inhabit increasingly tiny patches of forest by human activities, which likely affects this dynamic as well. I don't think chimpanzees hunting colobus even approaches the scale of the kind of damage agriculturalist humans inflict on the world.
You are confusing biology with mother culture, IMO.
We modern industrial "civilised" humans are no longer homo sapiens. Talk to any remnant indigenous humans (homo sapiens!) and they will tell you: we modern industrial "civilised" humans are crazy and our dominant culture (aka "civilisation") is insane. They are really pissed off to be lumped in with us when we begin making this a species problem.
Who's "we"? We are homo colossus, homo economicus, homo rapiens, homo stupidus, homo separatus, homo parasiticus, homo indoorsians, homo domesticates....
Faced with peak everything, The 6th Mass Extinction and climate chaos, we're going to either change hard and fast to a low-tech, light ecological-footprint, local culture, or we're joining the die-off.
This is a cultural crisis. We are "civilised", swimming in an ocean of mother culture, so encompassing, so captive, so inculcated, so indoctrinated, the vast majority can not see it. And it's mostly by design. We've been raised to be energy and ecologically illiterate. This really suites The Powers That Be, who have been actively farming us for quite some time.
The issue is not us as human beings. The issue is us as "civilised" dumb-arsed idiots...city idiots, citiots.
What was needed was a massive cultural revolution 40-50 years ago, before the globalized "growth" and "progress" fetish took off. Now it's really late in the game. I wonder if there are enough waking up who can see? Even this late in the game, we could at least make a difference for whoever gets to survive the collapse, already underway and obvious to those who will look.
"The dominant culture is insane and unreachable, as are most of it's inhabitants. It has a death urge. It is pathological and suicidal. It wants to kill everyone and everything, including itself. And it will do so, unless we stop it."
Derrick Jensen
I love Derrick Jensen, have all his books. My favorite "Myth of human supremacy" is one I keep going back to and reflecting on.
Profound and scary!
A positive message. Lets hope and focus on that.
The trouble in this world is that if you ain't growing, you are dying. The chimps recognize that in their subconscious as does any bacteria on the planet.
Ever try to get rid of toe fungus? The real cure is to wipe out all bacteria in the body almost killing the host.
We are nothing more than fungus on the planet. Despite all of the crap we invent, we are one winter power outage, one volcanic eruption, one little comet, one virus, one giant solar flare from becoming the Walking Dead running around killing each other for some dried rice.
Civilization as we call it is nothing more than some mutant monkeys run by the lowest common denominator, the rich guys.
I will continue to work my farm. I hope and pray for humanity. But we really are too low on the evolutionary scale to really achieve true greatness.
I heard Schwab speak yesterday. It reminded me so much of Hitler speeches. I am flabbergasted that everyone cant see this whole lie.
With Conservatives they tell the evil, then do it. With liberals they tell you a lie and then do the evil.
I appreciate the vision and the positive conception of humanity. So much work has gone into subverting that, which is really the essence of evil: finding new artful ways to subvert the natural thirst for truth (which children are born with ie curiosity) and often replace genuine spiritual or intellectual investigations with a bunch of fake “imitations” that look like they’re good, but are actually designed to send people off course. The Narrative Matrix is designed to that.
The piece Whitney Webb recently published on the Malthusians’ Revenge is the kind of thing more people should get a chance to read to get a sense of what the enemy is really vying to control, on an epistemological level.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/06/investigative-reports/the-revenge-of-the-malthusians-and-the-science-of-limits/
Beyond what people think, the oligarchy concerns itself with how people think. Certain “scientific” theories about the universe are popular and considered the “official line” not because they are true or there isn’t plenty of evidence against it, but because on a deeper fundamental level it upholds the imperial view of humanity that makes it controllable, that makes its story easy to “re-frame” in a way that shapes our imaginations, and consequently, the kinds of ideas we are capable of generating.
“Black-pilled” people are ultimately operating under the pathological assumption that everything has already been decided. But the “New World Order” has failed many times, as in the first try with the “League of Nations.”
Genuinely creative human beings are naturally drawn to the idea of doing the impossible.
Whitney Webb should be more widely read by everyone. One of the best investigative reporters and insightful observers out there, if not the best.
Absolutely! I've been following her work for 2 years and recommend her to everyone I know (along with Caitlin, Alison McDowell, and the above cited Derrick Jensen)
I just checked out the article you linked to because I love Whitney and was curious what I'd missed, but the article is by Matthew Ehret. Sounds very interesting though, will definitely read it.
I'm not sure doing away with national terroritories is the way to go. Just as liberty implies the individual has self-determination, the same applies to groups; and we area very terroritorial species. The alternative is basically globalism, which is why the globalists are so intent on breaking down borders and transferring national sovereignty to their own hands.
Which doesn't mean nations necessarily have to fight. However, even when they do, having governance distributed as widely as possible is far preferable to concentrating it within one planetary polity. Even if the latter starts with good intentions, it's a singular point of failure that can easily be captured by bad actors. A redundant, localized governance system is more chaotic and less efficient, but far more resilient against tyranny.
I share your misgivings about being relaxed about borders etc, John, but it is already a done deal. The post-nation state era arrived in the West a generation before the term 'globalisation' came into use. Hollywood noticed before everyone else: https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc
It is possible that the nation-state may be revived and fortified across those parts of Eurasia that have truly first class air-defence systems, but the likely future of the West if present conditions persist is simply more of the current imperialism, albeit more restricted spatially. Even if the new nationalists (Xi and Putin) succeed, the degree of coordination and synchronisation required for effective trade, transportation and communication will ensure regional forms of co-operation that will resemble much of present-day globalisation. The new nationalists simply want a less zero-sum version of globalisation, not its abolition. They want to re-negotiate a better deal, with more leeway for states and a stronger position for national oligarchies.
It is a mistake to assume that globalisation requires one world government. It does not. It merely requires co-operation between elites across formal boundaries, with sovereignty retained at a national level as a legitimising agent to keep the masses in line.
Nations can exist without states. The future will reveal which of the present nations can do this. So far self-declared nationalists remain fixated on states. Perhaps the only role left for genuine nationalists will be to ensure the welfare/survival of sub-national groups (the embryos of future nations) in the neglected or abandoned zones vacated by the system.
At the risk of being trite, hope is a revolutionary act. This has never felt more true than today.
I read most every comment at this venue and I'm here to tell you, there is no hope of ever transcending ourselves. The majority posting here are a thousand times more vicious and ferocious and hateful than any chimpanzee. At least chimpanzees don't have pet cats.
Thanks for helping us avoid sanctimony.
While I don’t believe we descended from apes (I wasn’t there), I do believe we have a God given responsibility to be stewards of the planet. We’ve done this poorly, particularly through the industrial revolution. It’s greed, simply. Wars are about greed. The call to better stewardship of the planet is always important.
Well, we have an instinct for greed. One explanation is that it was an accident of Evolution; another is that God or the gods or whatever put it there in creating humans. It doesn't make much difference, as it is evident that only a small minority of humans can step so far out of Nature as to control and minimize greed -- their own and others'. I think the most likely conclusion is that humans will kill themselves off and some other species may evolve to take their place, if they have a place. Humans could be merely a chance excrescence to be sloughed off in some further accident.
In THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, Riane Eisler predicted a shift from the patriarchy (she called it the “dominator model”) to a collaborative model, as you suggest here. I’ve held to that vision since I read it many years ago. I dare say we are in the transition now, which explains the crazy times we are moving through. The “dominators” can’t navigate the shift and are desperate to hold on to the old ways. But it is inevitable. We just need to hold on.
A long list of elected Democrats here in the U.S., and Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen and other female leaders in Europe, are great examples ... not.
Agreed. (I wanted to like your comment but it wouldn't let me)
Humans are just another mammalian species on the planet, we don't like to think of ourselves as part of the greater natural world but regardless of what we want we are part of that larger system. I remember watching rabbits do the very same thing, over producing because of a lack of predators, millions of rabbits were culled and still the numbers were uncontrollable until natural took over, disease and famine wiped out massive numbers, much more than humans could manage.
Nature is a system with checks and balances and humans like any species are subject to that balance, the eco warriors are just as ignorant as to their side effects of their actions. The above mentioned rabbit horde was caused by the elimination of predators by humans. The restoration of predators has resulted in a healthy balance in the system.
The Savory institute has shown clearly that the destruction of vast herds of grazing hoofed animals has led directly to desertification, we have caused climate change not by burning fossil fuels but by eliminating all of the wild life that kept the system in balance. Fish stocks being decimated is shifting the oceans balance, decimation of millions of buffalo has led to destruction of grass lands.
In the end the academic environmentalist is a threat to the planet as much as the rancher, farmer, hunter or oil driller.
Keep ‘em coming, Caitlin. I really appreciate your writing talent, sardonic humour and powerful insights. I tell everyone I can to read/listen to your work.
I really appreciate this perspective, but also appreciate the fact that I have The Kinks Apeman stuck in my head now!
https://youtu.be/eEep67akIn4
Oh man! One of the best songs of all times!
Never understood why the Kinks weren’t as highly regarded as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Those two never did much for me. But the kinks and The Who… man!
Since childhood, I've felt like our species is on the cusp of a spiritual quantum leap, much as you've described so eloquently. I think there are millions of us globally who've had this feeling.
I have also felt that I am destined to witness this event, and it sure does feel imminent.
The analogy with other primates in the relevant sense is unsound.
I think people have different abilities to raise their consciousness. Unfortunately psychopaths are overrepresented in positions of power and these people have no ability (or interest) in doing something that is aimed less at their own than the common good.
In fact, I think the presence of psychopaths and sociopaths is one of the more profound societal dilemmas that we have. These people want power more than most and they suffer under less constraints (empathy, principally) in their pursuit of it, making them somewhat optimized for that goal. In the old days the odd psychopathic leader could do serious damage but he did not threaten life on the planet.
These are not the old days.
Institutions within which power is concentrated attract psychopaths and sociopaths.
This is her best one yet!