Cultural Collapse and a Return to our Roots - Atavism

Atavism: recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity.

So we ATSers all know our world is in meltdown mode. Our culture can't sustain it's current lifestyle for much longer. Our Earth can't afford it. We are clearly on the brink of running our car off a cliff, and if we don't put on the brakes fast enough and hard enough, we're going to hurl ourselves into a Cultural Collapse. Our culture's mere 10,000 year existence has been gradually brainwashing us into believing we're apart from nature. When someone says they need to go on vacation to "get closer to nature", this is implying we humans are not a part of nature. We are absolutely a part of nature. We dominate the animal and plant kingdom and manipulate nature at our own will, with no real care for the well-being of any other species besides ourselves. There are dangerous repercussions involved when for 10,000 years a culture gradually forgets how to live with the Earth. We begin to mistreat the Earth. This is a direct result of our species gradually, and mostly unconsciously getting in a bad habit of separating ourselves from nature, and separating ourselves from the gods. We need to rethink how to live on, no: how to live with the Earth and all of it's biological life. We need a reversion of our ancient, Earth-aware lifestyles. This is called Atavism.

it is not as easy to see beyond a point of view we think of as coming to us naturally. We take advantage of the idea of what “normal behavior” is, when it is simply actions dictated by the puppet master that is Mother Culture. We also do not think twice about our “right” to the world and all of its’ natural “resources”. The very word resource suggests that the Earth is something to be exploited for profit, used, sold but not valued. We are raised with the convenient reasoning of, ‘The Earth was made for us and we can do with it what we will’. We do not realize what the repercussions of phrases such as this: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground (Genesis:1:26).” According to scripture such as this, we have a god given right to do whatever we want with the Earth. In fact it is our duty to ”subdue” her. This leads to the idea that, ‘We are the climax of creation, everything that has happened before only happened to lead up to our existence’. All beliefs which are taken for truth have been fed to us by our culture since infancy; it is a great lie that we tell ourselves to justify our actions, the actions we take against the very thing that gives us life: The Earth.

Our distant, intangible, omnipotent, and human gods have led us away from the Earth. Why do we see god as something far away, as on high, as in the heavens or on a mountain top? Why do we see god as something “looking down upon” us and curious only about humans when there have been a millennia and more without us? Where has our local divinity gone? Where have our spirits of the trees, gods of a place, soul of the Earth gone? Nowhere, we just forgot about them for awhile. But slowly, it seems in recent trends, we have been gravitating back (literally being pulled back to-as gravity does) the Earth. To turn back to our local divinities will help us gain new vision. By remembering where we come from we can bring on the waves of change to wash out the old programs, religions, practices, and culture that have failed us and will continue to fail us until. Should we fail to change (to see) to rise from the cave and walk into the open air, we will be left in the wake of destruction at our own hand. Then all we have is collapse.

It is a rather well known/accepted historical and archaeological fact that approximately 10,000 years ago in a region known as the Fertile Crescent (modern day Iraq/small portions of Iran-also ancient Mesopotamia) the cradle of our modern day way of life was born. The agricultural revolution is what made history. It literally created our idea/view of what history is. Before this time our text books, scientists, historians, and teachers all refer to this as the "prehistoric period". It is literally before history, pre-history. In other words this time period is considered to be before anything noteworthy within our species happened. We are talking at least 200,000 years of human history that is considered to be not worth our time to think of as historically significant. That is 20 times longer than our current culture has even been around.

And to put it most simply: (here, "T.A." stands for Totalitarian Agriculture):

about making your neighbors do as you do, about believing that there is only one way to live and thus, also, about doing as no other people or even species had ever done before. It was also about the direct effect it had upon the Earth, upon nature, upon the ecosystem, upon the soil, upon the animals, and upon the biosphere. The effects of T.A. upon the biosphere and upon any ecosystem can be devastating not only to the land, plants, and animals but to ourselves as well.
Four things that we as T.A.'s do that no other species does:
(1) we exterminate our competitors,
(2) we systematically destroy the competitors’ food to make room for our own foods,
(3) we deny our competitors access to food we've produced, and
(4) we do not follow the “peace-keeping law" (the "peace-keeping" law is also a coined Quinn phrase which he defines as a natural "law" that all species follow that states, " you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food (Daniel Quinn, Ishmael)"). Now, you may ask yourself, why would those four things that we do be so bad?

excerpts from a highly recommended read: "The Atavist" Blog

So, would it be that bad? We've got to do something to stop ourselves from our culture's present trend of ignorant, materialistic, wasteful, superficial, selfish ways and get back to living close to Earth.

When the power grid fails and communications go down, well, we'll get pretty close to nature.
Sounds wonderfuly to be able to be truly happy though,
In time, this planet could be a utopia, everyone living in harmony with eachother, and nature. Gotta start at the bottom and work to that.

reply to post by metalshredmetal


I love technology, and love where it can take us. There is no reason we can't treat our planet with respect and have technology as well.

Originally posted by VI0811
reply to post by metalshredmetal

 

I love technology, and love where it can take us. There is no reason we can't treat our planet with respect and have technology as well.

Not in the least, I love technology as well. And we can definatly use it to our advantage. But we're not for a lot of things, and we really should be.

Originally posted by VI0811
reply to post by metalshredmetal

 

I love technology, and love where it can take us. There is no reason we can't treat our planet with respect and have technology as well.

I never typed the word technology in my post, nor implied anything about living without technology. Many people jump to assumptions when they think about what Atavism means. This happens because of an entire life of cultural conditioning. Our materialistic culture fundamentally rules that as soon as some aspect of our seemingly essential luxuries appears threatened, we become defensive because we think we are vulnerable or less advanced without that luxury. We don't need technology, and we're not better off with it. At least not the cumbustion engine, entertainments, mass production, disease inherent and self-involved technologies we're used to today.We have the capability to live with technology in cooperative and Earth-friendly ways. But today we spend more money on weaponry and centuries old fossil fuel methods than renewable energy or sustainable living. What we need is a new vision of how technologically advanced people can live with the Earth in a cooperative way.