Friends, Here's the draft of chapter one for my new book. I still don't have a title for the book. I got very little feedback on the Introduction. I hope you'll take the time to review this chapter and tell me what you think. want the book to make sense in reality, and also to make sense to the reader. Defects in either category - or missed opportunities - need to be brought to my attention. all the best, rkm ________________________________________________________ Chapter 1: THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATION Civilization and human nature ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Historians tell us that the first systematic agriculture, and the first civilizations, began between ten and thirteen thousand years ago in China and the Fertile Crescent. They call these developments the Agricultural Revolution. Thirteen thousand years may seem like a long time ago, but the timeframe is negligible on the bio-evolutionary scale - which is measured in hundreds of thousands of years. Humans evolved as social beings in small hunter-gatherer bands which started out over a million years ago and which resembled the baboon or chimpanzee troops that survive today. We know quite a bit about how these pre-agricultural human bands lived from archeological evidence and from observations of surviving hunter-gatherer societies as they have come into contact with civilization. These societies varied greatly, depending on environmental conditions, competition from neighboring groups, and inherited cultural traditions. Nonetheless, there were certain attributes which all such societies seemed to have in common. They were based on small, autonomous, territorial, politically egalitarian, sustainable, self-sufficient groups - and they had elaborate cultural rules and strong beliefs about the world and their place in it. Central to these was the belief that humanity is part of nature and needs to live in harmony with nature. This belief was essential to the economic survival of these societies, and it is reflected in the mythologies and folk tales that anthropologists have uncovered in their encounters with such societies Human nature evolved from the beginning in these small, egalitarian groups and continued to evolve in such groups until relatively recently -far too recently to have changed our basic genetic inheritance. Experts differ as to how much of human behavior and attitudes come from nature or from nurture. But whatever constitutes "human nature" (the common tendencies and capacities we're all born with in some measure), we can be sure that it arose in such groups. To the extent there is a human nature, it is about living in an autonomous, egalitarian, cooperative community - where everyone takes responsibility for the operation of the community and its welfare, according to the traditions and roles that have evolved culturally in that community. As a species, those are the conditions that are "home" for us - comfortable for us in our deep psyches. At the same time, the human species is characterized by a unique cultural flexibility, triggered entirely by environmental factors. An infant can be moved from one culture to any other and it will fully adapt. This flexibility has generated such a wide proliferation of quite different cultures that many people believe there is nothing left of any instinctual human nature. Even if these people are correct, an appreciation of where we came from is useful when our own culture presents us with the absurd theory that our "nature" is to compete with one another. Humanity has from the earliest days known a lot about plants and animals - their life cycles, in what way they can be used for food, artifacts, or medicines, and which are poisonous and should be avoided. If a hunter-gatherer group migrated to a new kind of locale, they would totally assess their new environment within about three generations. Hunters understood the breeding cycles of prey animals, and they would target individuals so as minimize stock depletion. Tribes understood what nourishes edible plants, and they would modify the environment so as to encourage productivity. Proto agriculture and proto animal husbandry had developed in many places long before the emergence of the Agricultural Revolution. The spark that ignited the Agricultural Revolution was not technological - it was not about a new agricultural invention. It was about adopting the mentality of exploitation - what Daniel Quinn calls the "Taker myth". The revolutionary spark behind the Agricultural Revolution was a paradigm shift in world view - from humanity being part of nature to humanity having dominion over nature. This radical shift is plainly expressed in the biblical Garden of Eden story, where Adam and Eve are instructed to avoid the serpent, leave the Garden, go forth and multiply, and take dominion over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the land. The Garden is how humanity had lived since time immemorial, in tribal groups that were in harmony with nature - frequently with Hermes the serpent as their primary mystical symbol. The biblical story, passed down from the early days of agriculture, is a revolutionary manifesto - proclaiming a new world view, and banishing believers from the old ways and the old myths. This revolutionary dominion myth has been buried deep ever since in our civilization-conditioned psyches. But fortunately it hasn't been there long enough to become an inherited trait. Once people adopted the dominion myth, it was only a small step to extend the notion of dominion over "the beasts of the land" to dominion over "inferior peoples". Most of the early civilizations we know about captured slaves and used them to carry out the back-breaking work of early agriculture. The dominion myth is a dysfunctional illusion which has poisoned the development of civilization. It has moved us out of balance with nature and it has led us away from egalitarian social relationships. It has brought us to the brink of environmental collapse and threatens our survival as a species. But our deep cultural roots, based in cooperative communities, still remains in our species psyche. It's effect has been inhibited by our also long-evolved adaptability to conditioning, but the primordial template is still there in the background. It shows up in the incredibly strong buddy-bonds that get formed in combat - in conditions psychologically comparable to a tribal hunting party. It's part of why we like to follow the intertwined lives of the characters in our favorite TV series. It's part of why we gather together as extended families at the holidays, and why people find comfort in the society of a community church. It's part of why we find the competitiveness and isolation of modern life so stressful, and why so many people feel lost and purposeless, if they slow down enough from the rat race to think about such things. Civilization and the evolution of elites ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ When tribes began to adopt systematic agriculture ten to thirteen thousand years ago in China and the Fertile Crescent, certain social and economic patterns always developed, following a predictable evolutionary path. Land is cleared for crops. Animals are penned or herded and their breeding brought under human control. In many cases slaves are captured from neighboring tribes to carry out the work of agriculture. Grains are accumulated and stored in significant quantities, sufficient to feed a warrior class and support growing populations. Control of the grain store becomes an available key to power - and Chiefs soon arise who have absolute authority and who are feared as divinities. All of these things happened, just like clockwork, in all those places where the Agricultural Revolution was experienced. Next always come cycles of warfare and conquest, and eventually the emergence of kings and emperors - still holding claims on divinity and wielding absolute power. The average size of a domain grows larger over time, along with populations, while the technologies of political control, food production, and weaponry gradually but relentlessly evolve. The dominant political paradigm is always hierarchy, with power at the top and various powers delegated selectively downward through a chain of command. The society as a whole acts with the will of the king or emperor. The army as a whole acts with the will of the general. We say that Alexander conquered Persia, and we pay homage to the identity between the will-of-the-leader and the actions-of-the-whole. As these cycles unfolded over the millennia following the Agricultural Revolution, the evolution of civilization followed always the hierarchical path. From the earliest chiefdoms, society's choices have always been made by a leader or an elite clique who act according to their own perceived self interest. Their population have always been "beneath them" and have always been as available for exploitation as the crops in the field or the animals in the pens. There were to be sure some benevolent rulers , but it was the more aggressive and ruthless kinds of rulers who were the most successful at building empires - and their actions tended to drive the course of civilization's evolution. There is much justice in saying that the evolution of civilization has been the by-product of a game played among elites, who deploy their pawns and soldiers, and defend their castles, competing to see who can conquer the others, and who can gain the biggest kingdom and capture the grandest treasure of gold and minerals. The game goes on to this day as the last remaining super power seeks to increase its control over petroleum resources in the Middle East. Let's take a look at the elite who run the USA today, and who increasingly dominate the affairs of the whole globe. Let's start with the 500 biggest banks, industrial corporations, and financial institutions - that familiar Fortune 500. Those 500 represent the driving core of America's economic system, and their valuation (as reflected in the stock market) more or less defines the "economic health" of the American economy. These 500 control immense wealth and resources, and they have a great deal of power to set the price of commodities globally, determine the availability of credit and the accompanying interest rates, and to manipulate the conditions of international trade and financial exchange. By looking inside this world of the Fortune 500 we are likely to find links to those who guide and manage today's global system - and who profit the most from it. If you look at the boards of directors of these 500, you find lots of overlap - there's only a relative handful of different individuals involved. If you then take only those directors who are on the boards of several of the 500, then you begin to see actual members of the elite clique, or people who are very close to them and represent their interests. In any case, we are glimpsing "elite circles". The Rockefeller brothers are the most obvious examples of ultra-wealthy individuals known to exercise considerable personal influence over national and global affairs. Kissinger is the most obvious example of a professional technocrat in elite circles - influencing through his creative thinking and communication skills rather than leveraging the depth of his pockets. Members of this community typically alternate between government "service" and lucrative private gigs on corporate boards or as consultants and lobbyists. The neocon rat pack is a good example of that phenomenon. It's not just that this community influences the economy and government policy, they to a large extent ARE the government and the economy. This world, inhabited by these top company directors, top government officials, and the ultra wealthy, I think of as the "elite community". It doesn't all gather together in an annual convention, there isn't necessarily a single committee that secretly determines its agenda, and the constituency changes over time. Nonetheless this elite community as a whole maintains effective internal communications over time (with the help of consultants and think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations) and manages to reach consensus on which way to drive the economy and the nation when they find it necessary to do so. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is generally given the honor of announcing the current economic consensus and pronouncing the policies that have been adopted, while for political affairs the honor goes to the President or a Cabinet member. All of this in the typical hierarchical style. Societies, particularly the ones we'd call the most advanced, continue to this day to be controlled by elite cliques. The membership of the clique may be somewhat amorphous and layered, and the control may be somewhat indirect. But when it comes down to the fundamental decisions that determine a society's path, the inner clique reaches a consensus and is able to inject its agenda into the political apparatus by various means. In exercising this power the clique serves its own personal or class interests and is quite willing to exploit and deceive its own population and politicians in the process. Conquest and empire building, played out like a competitive game, continues to be the paradigm guiding international relations, and it is elite cliques who are setting the strategy and calling the moves, either overtly or behind the scenes. The evolution of hierarchical organizations ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Civilization has co-evolved along with the elaboration of hierarchy - from the first chiefdoms, to the Pharaohs & the Priesthood, the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, European empires, Republics, bureaucracies of all kinds, Corporations, the Pentagon, the World Trade Organization, etc. If we survey these various kinds of hierarchies, past and present, certain patterns stand out clearly. Regardless of how benevolent may have been their establishment, hierarchical organizations always exhibit certain characteristics eventually - from small organizations all the way up to nations and empires. There is a certain internal culture that develops, where social dynamics play a major role independent from the functional objectives of the organization or its formal structure. Internal politics always emerge, with intrigues and with factions competing for power in the hierarchy. The ability to play the political games usually pushes one up the hierarchy faster than any other competence. Control becomes increasingly centralized and is supported by internal political networks as well as by formal chains of command. The top leadership of the organization typically seeks to extend the power of the organization and to ensure its long-term survival - with at least as much passion as is devoted to accomplishing the official objectives of the organization. The leadership clique communicates with the internal organization and with outside world using PR tactics, clouding over their operations and intentions sufficiently to provide cover for whatever machinations they might be up to. We see these kinds of patterns in large corporations, in military organizations, in the the Executive Branch and it's Intelligence Community, in the UN, in political parties, in labor unions, in Congressional operations, in local governments, and often we see it in reform organizations and activist groups. Hierarchies are evolving machines which have a predictable behavior that emerges once they mature. They are aggrandizing and secretive, and they are controlled internally by cliques whose agenda is not necessarily in full alignment with the presumed mission of the organization - nor with the sentiments of the organization's avowed constituency (the stock holders or the people). Our civilized societies are plagued by all manner of hierarchical organizations, controlling every aspect of our lives - our jobs, our leisure, our food and energy supplies, our economies, and the actions of our governments. Just as international affairs are played out as a competition among ruling elites, so are the internal affairs of a nation largely the result of competition and deals that are made among the cliques who run our hierarchical institutions, corporations, and agencies. The top cliques dominate the lower cliques, and so on down to us ordinary people who have no say in how our society operates. Hierarchical organizations of any kind are a fatal virus in any democratic society. They inevitably serve as a platform for power-seeking elements who wish to impose their own agendas on the society around them. Valiant attempts have been made to tame hierarchies, and one of the most thorough attempts was by the Founding Fathers when they designed systematic check and balances into the American Constitution. But over time the inherent dynamics of hierarchy prevailed - as they always must - and power has been gradually centralized in the White House. Neither governments, nor political parties, nor social organizations, nor business enterprises can be organized hierarchically if we wish to have a democratic society. Capitalism and economic growth ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Much confusion surrounds the nature of capitalism. We are told by the elite-controlled media that capitalism, free enterprise, and democracy are inseparable from one another and even identical with one another. Adam Smith is cited as an apologist for capitalism, and his reasoning and conclusions are used to support the claim that market forces will lead inevitably to a more prosperous life for everyone. We are told that the only alternative to capitalism is centrally-planned socialism - an alternative that has collapsed from its internal inadequacies. All of these notions are myths or outright lies. Let's first examine the distinction between capitalism and free enterprise. To begin with, free enterprise and trade have been going on for thousands of years, while capitalism is a relatively recent development (c. 1800). For that reason alone they could hardly be the same thing. In order to clarify the distinction, let's compare the economics of a small town shop with that of a public (stock) corporation. In a typical small town shop, the business is considered to be successful if it generates enough profit to support the proprietor and their family. There is no particular reason why the business needs to grow in order to be successful. Some businesses here in my adopted home town of Wexford have been operating since the 1600s and are still doing the same kind of business on about the same scale and are still being happily operated by the original family. In a shop-like enterprise, success is measured in terms of the amount of profit generated. Public corporations on the other hand must grow in order to be successful, or even to survive. Investors purchase stock in the corporation because they want to see their investment increase in value. If profits don't increase steadily, investors sell their stock, the value of the corporation plummets, the CEO is likely to be out of a job, and the corporation is likely to fail or be absorbed by a larger one. The dynamics of free enterprise and the dynamics of capitalism are quite different from one another. In a capitalist enterprise, success is measured by the INCREASE in the amount of profit generated. Let's next turn our attention to Adam Smith and examine the relationship of his theoretical models to capitalism. Smith was a brilliant theorist with a deep understanding of economic affairs. The models he developed have stood the test of time. He showed with elegantly chosen examples and reasoning that -UNDER CERTAIN NECESSARY CONDITIONS - if buyers and sellers all pursue their own private advantage, that will automatically lead to the best operating economy for everyone. UNDER THOSE CONDITIONS, it is as if an "invisible hand" guides the actions of each to ensure the prosperity of the whole. Apologists for capitalism refer to Smith, and want us to believe that corporations pursuing their own advantage are good for society. They equate capitalist market forces with Smith's invisible hand and assure us that prosperity will come to everyone in the long run - if only we remove all regulations so that corporations can pursue their private advantage more aggressively. They use the word "reform" to refer to such corporation-liberating policies. The stark fallacy behind this deceptive propaganda is the simple fact that Smith's necessary conditions do not apply in our capitalist societies! Smith's model requires that all buyers and sellers be small entities - so small that no one of them or small group of them can significantly influence the market price of goods. Nothing could be further from the conditions of today's economy, where global trade and commerce in every sector is increasingly controlled by a handful of huge transnational corporations. When these giants pursue their own private interests, often in league with one another, there is no invisible hand to keep their actions directed toward the public good. Smith's model also requires that there be no trade secrets or patents - to prevent technological developments from being used as instruments of monopoly. Again, our society operates opposite to Smith's conditions, and capitalism is universally characterized by the development of monopolies. David Korten, in "The Post Corporate World - Life After Capitalism", elaborates more fully the contrast between capitalism on the one hand, and the market economies envisioned by Smith on the other. In every way they turn out to be opposites of one another. As regards alternatives, there are many. Indeed, every kind of economic arrangement that existed prior to about 1800 would be a candidate. We are expected to believe that economics didn't exist before 1800, just as we are expected to believe that society didn't exist before Agriculture - and that Adam and Eve were the first humans a mere 13,000 years ago. One alternative to capitalism is a market economy, as Smith envisioned, and which has been operating for thousands of years in the small-business sector. We need only implement appropriate measures to prevent market-distorting concentrations of wealth. Another alternative can be found in many parts of the third world, where communal agriculture is practiced. A whole village works the common land together, and then all share in the resulting food and income. Different economic systems make sense in different environmental and cultural conditions. A capitalist enterprise comes into existence when some investor decides to put money into the enterprise in the hope of getting his investment back plus more. If the proposed enterprise does not look like it will grow, no one will invest and the enterprise will never come into existence. If it gets launched but doesn't succeed in growing, investors will take their money back out and the enterprise will fold or go on the auction block. Every capitalist enterprise operates under a growth imperative: keep growing or die. Similarly, every capitalist economy operates under a similar imperative: keep growing or collapse. Evidence of this growth imperative is seen every day in the financial pages. Everything there is about growth, growth, growth. Companies are reported as doing well or poorly depending on their growth in the most recent fiscal period. Business sectors get good marks if they show greater growth than the market average. Politicians promise that their policies will lead to increased growth, and declining growth leads to predictions of economic hardship and recession. In a capitalist economy, economic growth is synonymous with economic health - and this is true in reality as well as in the rhetoric of the financial pages. Capitalism cannot exist without economic growth. Growth is the life blood of capitalism. Capitalist societies as a whole are driven by this growth imperative that is inherent in capitalism. Each year their GDP (size of their economy) must be larger than the year before, or else there will be economic stagnation, unemployment, factory closures, etc. This need to grow the GDP is relentless: each year must be larger than the previous, year after year, decade after decade. This relentless pressure causes every capitalist nation to go through certain very predictable phases of development. In the first phase, the domestic economy is developed. Enterprises grow in size, commerce becomes centralized in the hands a few big players, and the domestic market is eventually saturated. Growth stagnates. At this point, the nation must look outward for growth opportunities. Sometimes further growth can be achieved by more aggressive international trade and a greater focus on producing products for export. But for many nations, and all the largest ones, the need for growth has only been satisfied historically by the pursuit of imperialism. Indeed, all the major wars of the past two centuries have been the result of capitalist nations competing for colonies and spheres of influence. In that way they have been able to gain access to resources and markets, which in turn provided the required economic growth. Earlier I said that international affairs were essentially a game being played among competing elites. Ever since about 1800, capitalism has been the name of the game they've been playing. It's like playing Monopoly on a global board, except that it's for keeps, and when you capture a property people die in the process. The human and environmental costs of capitalism's growth imperative have been astronomical. Sweatshops, child slavery, war casualties, depleted soil and fishing stocks, extincted species, destroyed rain forests, landless peasants , famines - these are all inevitable consequence of the relentless pursuit of ever increasing profits by the few at the top. It is not the greed or callousness of individual CEOs that causes these excesses, but rather the systemic nature of capitalism itself. In our time we are seeing capitalism's insatiable need for growth colliding dramatically with the finiteness of Earth's resources. We are now on the declining side of the petroleum curve, for example, meaning that our entire industrial infrastructure is threatened with collapse within only a few decades. Global warming is real, and it's effects are proving to be more dramatic and rapid than any scientist was able to predict. Recent studies indicate rather conclusively that the Gulf Stream is likely to stop flowing within a decade or two, plunging Europe into a new ice age. Capitalism is literally destroying the Earth as we know it. Meanwhile, the comfortable elite community does not suffer from the adverse consequences of the way capitalism operates. Quite the opposite, the more rapacious the exploitation practices become, the greater the profits on their bottom lines. They will always be able to dine on lobster and vintage wine, right up to the day those go extinct. It is in their perceived self-interest to continue and accelerate economic growth in their money terms, despite the long-term consequences that will be ultimately disastrous for all concerned. And in any case, because of their community's cultural beliefs, they can perceive no alternative way to proceed. They are locked in, and by their Dow-Jones evaluations they are doing just fine. They're a bit like the man who jumped off a 50 story building, and was heard passing the 25th floor - "So far it's a gas! What a view!". These people are in denial - deeply embedded in their culture. They protect that denial by embracing the myth that progress, technology, money, and their cleverness will be able to solve any problem that comes up on their radar. Humanity's relationship to nature is determined primarily by this elite community, who have insulated themselves from the adverse consequences of their capitalist system, and who gather unto themselves the lion's share of the economic benefits that accrue. Our whole global society is being used as a vehicle by this elite, a vehicle whose mission is to transform the resources of the Earth into numbers in their bank accounts and into waste dumps. Capitalism is this vehicle's current engine. By the time the last tree has died, and elites discover they cannot eat their money, it will be too late for the rest of us. Capitalism is a cancer ravaging the Earth and its societies. Capitalism's hunger for growth consumes and destroys its host societies - while simultaneously enriching the few at the top. Capitalism is both a dysfunctional economic system and a tool of suppression used by elites to control and exploit their populations. Capitalism cannot be reformed because growth is its essential nature. If the health of the Earth and the health of our economies are to be achieved, capitalism must be replaced everywhere by other more functional economic systems. Our economies must be made sustainable if humanity is to survive and prosper. ________________________________________________________ -- ============================================================ If you find this material useful, you might want to check out our website (http://cyberjournal.org) or try out our low-traffic, moderated email list by sending a message to: •••@••.••• Richard Moore (rkm) Wexford, Ireland _____________________________ "...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire." - Srdja Trifkovic There is not a problem with the system. The system is the problem. Faith in ourselves - not gods, ideologies, leaders, or programs. _____________________________ "Zen of Global Transformation" home page: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ QuayLargo discussion forum: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads cj list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj newslog list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog _____________________________ Informative links: http://www.globalresearch.ca/ http://www.MiddleEast.org http://www.rachel.org http://www.truthout.org http://www.zmag.org http://www.co-intelligence.org ============================================================
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