Reaction to: Why We Need War

I introduced Joseph Caldwell’s article Why We Need War, with the following words:

As Bush and Cheney rush to WAR to protect the American way. Many in Europe and elsewhere are having second thoughts. Even the American congress is feeling a sense of peril.

My readers know that I have been calling for a movement towards ONENESS in an attempt to lead humanity out of the adversary-neutral mechanisms that are destroying us and our planet. My calls have mostly gone unheard, and the momentum towards world war three seems unstoppable.

I still have some cards up my sleeve and have not given up, but I worry for this generation. A very very large number of humans could die, and die very soon. Many of them women and children, and perhaps to your surprise, many of them American.

Joseph George Caldwell is a man who has studied our human crisis for some time. Frankly, his writings frighten me. They predict a very dark future. Unfortunately, I am finding less and less argument against his logic.

Things are much worse than they seem. In this his latest treatise, he argues that humanity needs war to protect us from ourselves. That the only hope for any human future and for the rest of life on the planet – the only way to stop human overpopulation and the industrial rape of the Earth – is for most of humanity to die.

I received the following letter from a reader named Alan. His letter is posted in full, but interrupted with my annotations:

Timothy:

I find it truly bizarre that you would go to the length of posting Caldwell’s pro-war manifesto on your website, and on newsgroups. It is one thing to find yourself with “less and less argument against his logic”. It is another thing to widely distribute and promote an article which does not only *predict*, but essentially *advocates* WWIII. Note that I am not taking a position on what Caldwell has said. I am only pointing out the extreme incongruity of your dissemination and promotion of it. Did you not recently strongly advocate total personal disarmament? Are you now saying that you were wrong, and that we should arm and train for the coming war?

The role of CommUnity of Minds in the SynEARTH network is to focus on our human problems. It is open to all points of view. I often do not agree with a featured writer, but solving our problems requires understanding all perspectives. My motto for CommUnity of Minds’s is: ì We each view reality from our own unique perspective, only a community of minds can show us the truth.”

I am strongly against war as I have written here: Beyond War. I am for a powerful form of disarmament that could be accomplished using a new mechanism I call “synergic containment“. I am still working on a full description of that mechanism for future publication.

My conclusion from reading of Caldwell’s treatise is that war is unwinnable. I believe Caldwell thinks that this unwinnablility is good, since total war will stop humanity’s attack on biodiversity and the planet.

The unwinnablity of modern war, is what the present advocates miss.

Progress + warfare = human extinction

We are Time-binders and the mark of human power is everywhere. When knowledge is incorporated into matter-energy, it becomes a tool. As Andrew J. Galambos explained:

ìHumans develop evermore powerful knowledge and therefore evermore powerful tools. When tools are used to harm other humans they are called weapons. Since human knowledge can grow without limit then tools themselves can be made without limit. And limitless tools can will produce limitless weapons.”

And, limitless weapons (progress) combined with leveraged adversity (warfare) must by all definitions and understanding of science produce human extinction.

Bush and Cheney would not be so strongly advocating war against Iraq, if they realized that they couldn’t win. There are under the mistaken impression that America won the Gulf war in 1991. We didn’t. If we had, why would we need to refight it in 2002? If we, the western nations, had won World War I, why would there be any need to fight World War II? And, if the west won World War II, why would there now be need for World War III?

I found Caldwell’s piece to be provocative, and I sense that there is some truth in what he says, even if his case is weak. He makes a lot of bald assertions, but does not do enough documentation or persuasion. Both your text and his have interesting incoherences, as though written by individuals confused as to how they ended up saying what they are now saying. For example, he gives a long quote from Toynbee’s “The Suicidalness of Militarism” which seems perfectly inconsistent with his thesis. He never explains how this inevitable great war would reduce the population to the dramatic extent that he thinks is necessary (wars, even the bloodiest ones, seldom have much effect on population).

George W. Bush surrounds himself with “expert advisors” then listens and does what they say. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. He his doing what is “right”. We will see the ”truth” in the long run. Many of these advisors are “neo-hawks” and it is reported that they are advocating the use of nuclear weapons. But would the use of nuclear weapons result in a limited war? Certainly, Caldwell is not talking about a limited war. He is talking about world war three.

In world war II, only one of the combatants, America had nuclear weapons, and that combatant had only three or perhaps four. One was used to test the prototype in New Mexico. Two were dropped on Japan, and the fourth one was not used.

The Hiroshima blast destroyed more than 10 sq km (4 sq mi) of the city, completely destroying 68 percent of Hiroshima´s buildings, another 24 percent were damaged. Nearly 130,000 people were killed; more than 60,000 were incinerated almost instantaneously in a tremendous fireball. In Nagasaki one-third of the city was destroyed and nearly 66,000 people were killed. This was in 1945.

Since then, humanity has made a lot of progress. Today the five acknowledged nuclear powers possess about 31,000 nuclear warheads.These weapons are much more powerful and can be delivered anywhere on Earth with the touch of a button.

Iraq, Iran and Libya are also actively seeking weapons. And, let us not forget North Korea. And, even Japan has recently hinted that if they chose they could make nuclear weapons in very short order.

Before its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union had more than 27,000 nuclear weapons and enough weapons-grade plutonium and uranium on hand to triple that number. Since then, severe economic distress, rampant crime, and widespread corruption in Russia and other former Soviet countries have fed concerns in the West about loose nukes, underpaid nuclear scientists, and the smuggling of nuclear materials. And security at Russia´s nuclear storage sites remains worrisome; only 40 percent of them are up to U.S. security standards. (link) 

This is why I fear that any use nuclear weapons could open “pandora’s box” and produce very high civilian counts. Caldwell thinks that would be good for non-human life and the planet. I don’t agree.

Some Bush’s advisors have proposed hitting the entire middle east, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Syria with a nuclear strike all on the same day. Taking out the capitals of all of those nation states simultaneously. This would be the best way to protect the oil. And don’t forget that is why we are there. Another scenario would be get a good conventional war going, and then when Iraq hits Israel, wait for Prime Minister Ariel SHARON  to take out the middle east with his 100 nuclear weapons. I think he would be glad to do it. He only needs the justification.

You say that “Things are much worse than they seem.” Perhaps. But how would one know? How do YOU know?

I am referring to the state of the planet. In our pursuit of unlimited growth and profits, we are destroying the planet. We are fouling our own nest. The signs of this are the loss of biodiversity, the degradation of air, water, soil, plant and animal life. The increasing disease states through out the world, but especially in Africa, Asia, and South America. See: Its Much Worse Than It Appears, Did you know, CRISIS, Problem #1, Scientists Speak, Global Warming, & Die Off .

You do not give details; you only imply that Caldwell’s (pro-war) view is correct. (Which it MAY BE; that’s not my point.) Caldwell’s view is that war is not only inevitable, but that it is *fundamentally good and wholesome*. Is this your view, also?

NO! I am a synergist. I want us to put away war and act responsibly.

Synergists believe there is enough for everyone, but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are interdependent and can only obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language of love.

But, to be successful in our present world, the synergist must understand all three languages and know when to use them. Synergists must sometimes use the language of force, and sometimes the language of money, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists are seeking allies–when synergists are seeking to build community–they must speak the language of love.

 Note too that I AM NOT CRITICIZING YOU. Perhaps the opposite of that, even. I suspect that in reading Caldwell’s piece you might finally have found yourself (as I once found myself) questioning assumptions long unquestioned — assumptions internalized from a lifetime of exposure to mainstream media, schools, religions, etc. You might have found yourself wondering, perhaps for the first time ever, if the “ideals” of peace and non-violence — which we’ve been spoon-fed and which we swallowed as good liberals and subjects of liberal indoctrination — may not be as they are represented. That there might be a whole other side to things, and that some of the things we take as axiomatic might be precisely wrong. MIGHT. PERHAPS. I really do not have all this figured out yet. But perhaps that is what happened to you, and what precipitated the very odd event of your posting, with apparent approval, Caldwell’s tract. And in my view, anything which causes the questioning of long-unquestioned assumptions is almost necessarily good. I only wish that you had given a little more detail as to the “inner journey” that resulted in your being moved to post that article.

Winston Churchill is credited with saying, “Before age 30, if you are not a liberal, you don’t have a heart. After age 30, if you are not a conservative, you don’t have a brain.”

I think life is more complicated than this. Synergists choose to work together and speak the language of love. But they must also act responsibly. I did not post Caldwell’s article to promote it. I posted it as a tool to wake up humanity to the growing dangers we face. I am afraid we are nearing a point of no return. Any war will only make things worse for humans. A war like Caldwell envisions will create a dark age that may well ecclipse humanity.

FYI, I am placing the Caldwell item in a file that I have with the heading “Might is Right; In Praise of War and Violence”. Therein, Caldwell will be in the company of fascists, Nazis, and other “Will to Power” types whose writings are nearly indistinguishable from his.

I think his writing is a little different from theirs. The fascists and Nazis thought that they could win. Caldwell predicts the human species will be reduced in numbers to less than 500 million, perhaps to less than 10 million. While Caldwell seems to think this might be winning, (for biodiversity and the planet) I certainly don’t. And I expect such a scenario could just as easily end with zero humans left. 

Thank you Alan, for your intelligent and thoughtful letter and thanks for sharing the following clips and links with me.

Timothy Wilken

A FEW QUOTATIONS ON WAR AND VIOLENCE (that Caldwell missed, I guess)

“A prolonged peace favors the predominance of a more commercial spirit, and with it a debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminancy and tends to degrade the character of the nation.” –Immanuel Kant

Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. War is part of God’s world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man: courage, abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice. Without war the world would sink into materialism. — Helmuth von Moltke, WWI general

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mill

“Civil war is a terrible crucible through which to pass character; the dross drops away from the pure metal at the first touch of the fire.” — Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes, Confederate States Navy

“It is strange that the more obstinately Humanity runs away from the reality of war, the more terrible and inhumane the wars get, and the more deeply Humanity goes down the Spiral of Horror into Vileness.” — Alexander Dugin

“Love of war stems from the union, deep in the core of our being, between sex and destruction, beauty and horror, love and death… the closest thing to childbirth for women: the initiation into the power of life and death… The love of destruction and killing in war stems from that boyhood fantasy of war as a game… Men love war for love and war are at the core of man. We must love one another or die. **To overcome death, our love for peace, for life itself, must be greater than we think possible, greater even than we can imagine.** — William Broyles, Jr., Vietnam veteran, in “Why Men Love War,” Esquire, 11/84

“Any people can have body peace if they will sell their souls for it. Peace is a condition, not an end. It is a condition our souls can live with only if our souls and minds are free. Unless you will buy peace for your body with the most violent of war: murder of your soul.” — Geronimo (Watch for Me On the Mountain, pg 130)

When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars. — Oswald Spengler

“War, stress or conflict is to the man what maternity is to the woman. I do not believe in perpetual peace; not only do I not believe in it but I find it depressing and a negation of all the fundamental virtues of man.” — Mussolini

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PS: Some other things I found relevant to this topic:

From the Atlantic, June 2000

The Return of Ancient Times: Why the warrior politics of the twenty-first century will demand a pagan ethos

by Robert D. Kaplan

“Western admirers of Rabin and Hussein prefer to forget their ruthlessness. But NiccolÚ Machiavelli would have understood that such tactics were central to their virtue. In an imperfect world, Machiavelli wrote, good men bent on doing good must learn how to be bad. And in this world virtue has much less to do with individual perfection than with political results. By substituting pagan for Christian virtue, Machiavelli explained better than any political scientist today how Rabin and Hussein could become what they were. There is nothing amoral about Machiavelli’s pagan virtue either. The late Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin observed that Machiavelli’s values may not be Christian but they are moral. Berlin implied that they are the Periclean and Aristotelian values of the ancient polis — values that secure a stable political community.”

“The uncomfortable classical truths enunciated in the fifth century B.C. by the historian Thucydides, revived by Machiavelli, and imbibed by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison — truths such as Morality and patriotism can best be obtained through self-interest; Conflict is inherent in the human condition; The law of nature precludes a republic of perfect virtue and demands instead a balance of forces among men and groups — are often forgotten. The American elite has come to believe that the solution for humanity is to adopt a few universally applicable remedies, such as democracy, respect for minority rights, and free-market capitalism. Whether liberals or neoconservatives, many of those who came of age in the 1960s have trouble dealing with such facts as national characteristics ingrained by historical and geographic circumstance, and violence for its own sake.”

“As distasteful as the ideas of Machiavelli and Hobbes may seem to the contemporary mind, those two philosophers invented the modern state. They saw that all men needed security in order to acquire material possessions, and that a bureaucratic organ was required to regulate the struggle for acquisition peacefully and impartially. The aim of such an organ was never to seek the highest good, only the common good.”

“The Founding Fathers departed from Machiavelli in placing more faith in ordinary people, but they did adhere to his ideas of pagan virtue. Recognizing that faction and struggle are basic to the human condition, they substituted the arenas of party politics and the marketplace for actual battlefields.”

—————–

Read Kaplan’s FULL TEXT

Also see the Atlantic archives:

“Four Star Generalists,” by Robert D. Kaplan (October 1999) Military history pierces the philosophical fog that often surrounds the other humanities.

“Kissinger, Metternich, and Realism,” by Robert D. Kaplan (June 1999) “What Kissinger has always offered is a grimly persuasive view of the human condition.”

“And Now for the News,” by Robert D. Kaplan (March 1997) The disturbing freshness of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.

Elsewhere on the Web Links to related material on other Web sites.

Machiavelli Online – General information about Machiavelli, the text of some of his writings, and links to related sites. Posted by a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.

As Bush and Cheney rush to WAR to protect the American way. Many in Europe and elsewhere are having second thoughts. Even the American congress is feeling a sense of peril.

My readers know that I have been calling for a movement towards ONENESS in an attempt to lead humanity out of the adversary-neutral mechanisms that are destroying us and our planet. My calls have mostly gone unheard, and the momentum towards world war three seems unstoppable.

I still have some cards up my sleeve and have not given up, but I worry for this generation. A very very large number of humans could die, and die very soon. Many of them women and children, and perhaps to your surprise, many of them American.

Joseph George Caldwell is a man who has studied our human crisis for some time. Frankly, his writings frighten me. They predict a very dark future. Unfortunately, I am finding less and less argument against his logic.

Things are much worse than they seem. In this his latest treatise, he argues that humanity needs war to protect us from ourselves. That the only hope for any human future and for the rest of life on the planet – the only way to stop human overpopulation and the industrial rape of the Earth – is for most of humanity to die.

Why We Need War

Joseph George Caldwell
Foundation

Although many books have been written on the subject of war, most of them deal with the history of war or the art of war, and not on the necessity of war.  Also, much has been written on the subject of peace, but the viewpoint presented is usually that, between the options of war and peace, peace is not only the preferred state, but is desired to the total and permanent exclusion of war.  This article presents the point of view that war and peace are both essential in and to human existence.

Motives for War

The reasons for war are many, and I shall group them into three major categories: (1) Human nature; (2) Population moderation; and (3) Promoting the health of the biosphere and saving the human race from extinction.  This article will present points in support of the thesis that war is as essential as peace to humanity and the rest of the biosphere.

Human Nature: With the ìknowledge of good and evil,” mankind is truly set apart from the other species inhabiting the planet.  The concept of evil does not apply to other animals.  Their motives and activities are simple, often instinctive, and they relate to basic biological or sociobiological needs such as the need for food, water, shelter, sex, companionship, living space and long-term survival.  Their motivations are not complex, and their diversions are simple.  The motivations for their behavior are not characterized by greed, envy, avarice, cruelty, hatred or a host of other human emotions that have little to do with basic survival (food, shelter, freedom, and a good living environment).  With human intellect, emotions, and drives, the diversity and complexity of behavior compounds tremendously.  An infinite variety of plots, intrigue, activities, environments and complex social structures evolves.  The games that people play are much more sophisticated than those of the rest of the animal kingdom.  And that brings us to the most challenging and significant game of all – war.

What is war?  In simple terms, war is organized killing – a game between ìsovereign” groups in which the stakes, for many of the participants, are life, maiming and death, or at least freedom and slavery (loss of sovereignty or property).  It is called a ìgame” because it has objectives and rules, or at least procedures.  It is the most significant game because the stakes involve the most highly valued aspects of human physical existence – life, health, freedom, and quality of life.

Why do human beings wage war?  Wars have been waged as long as human beings have been around, beginning as clashes or feuds between neighboring families or tribes, and evolving to large-scale conflicts between large nations and civilizations.  Human motivation and behavior are complex, and the reasons for war are correspondingly many.  The objectives of war are the achievement of social, political, economic and religious goals.  Following is a list of some of the major motivations for war.

Conquest.  One group may wage war on another to steal its land, or possessions, or its people (for use as slaves or breeding stock).  These objectives are easy to understand.  They are motivated by greed, or the desire for a better quality of life (e.g., better land), or a simple desire to remain free (kill or be killed, defense of one´s family and home).  Liddell-Hart (Strategy) observed that the primary purpose of war is to secure a better peace – i.e., to improve the quality of life for the survivors after the war is over.

In addition to these economic and political objectives, wars of conquest may be waged simply to satisfy ìblood lust” – for the thrill of battle.  Read Barbara Ehrenreich´s book, Blood Rites, to understand the importance of this motivation.  The thrill of war is similar to the thrill of winning a physical game, such as a rugby game, just incredibly more intense.  Many men relate strongly to this motivation.  For some, it is as simple as the thrill of killing another human being in mortal combat, or of claiming the spoils of war (looting, rape).  Others crave the thrill of leading other men into battle.  Recall the conversation between Generals Omar Bradley and George S. Patton in the film, Patton, in which Bradley says to Patton, ìGeorge, there is a tremendous difference between you and me.  I fight because it is my duty and I am trained to do it.  You fight because you love it!”  Many men love to fight.  Talk to a veteran about his war experience.  For many men, their participation in war was the most significant event of their lives.  And the profundity of the experience is in direct proportion to its level of risk, uncertainty, violence and brutality – even if no material reward was promised or obtained.

Alexander the Great did not have to conquer the world.  He simply wanted to, as a personal goal.  The same may be said of many other great conquerors, such as Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, or Tamerlane (Timur Lenk, Tamburlaine) or Napoleon.  Sun Tzu and Thucydides observed that war is a naturally recurring state of human society – a conscious act, not an aberration.

Maintenance of Political Power or Status.  If the leader of a group or nation is threatened by another group or nation, it is easy to understand why he will wage war, with the support of his people.  But it may be that he can enhance his chances of retaining or enhancing his political power by waging war, even if there is no significant threat from the opponent.  A war may provide his people with a significant occupation.  He may be better at waging war than managing peace, so that his position is stronger in wartime than in peacetime.

The Need to Create.  Man has an innate need to create, to build, to do meaningful work.  This is a strong drive, and one of the defining characteristics of the species.  No matter what has been built before, the current generation of mankind sees a better way, or its own way, of doing things.  In a physical world, however, it is not possible to leave every created thing intact for all time.  In order to build new things (buildings, cities, nations, civilizations or religions – or people), the old must be destroyed, to make room for the new (either physically or conceptually).  All things in this physical universe pass through birth, growth, realization of purpose, dying and death. As long as the human species survives, its artifacts – no matter how precious to their creators – will eventually be destroyed, to make room for the creations of its later generations.  What the human species builds in time of peace must be destroyed in a time of war, and what is destroyed must be rebuilt in a new manifestation.

Religion.  The role of religion in war varies.  In many cases, it is simply a way of distinguishing the combatants.  The real reason for the war may be political (increase in power) or economic (conquest of lands or other spoils of war).  It is easier for a leader to motivate his citizens to kill those of another nation if the other nation is of a different religion (or race or language or political structure).

 Once war begins, each side prays to its own version of God for victory.  If God cares about us, it is hard to imagine that He wants the other side to win the war.  If He wants us to win, it follows that He wants the other side to lose.  Although religion may not have been a significant factor in causing the war, it becomes a rationale for killing the enemy, and a great motivator or morale booster for the people.

Religion may in fact be a major reason for war.  Some religious leaders (e.g., Moses, Joshua, Mohammed) were inspired by God to wage war on infidels.  In the quest for the ìPromised Land,” the Jews were instructed by God to wipe out tribe after tribe of the Land´s then-current occupants.  Mohammed and his successors conquered the world from India to the Atlantic in the name of Allah.  In conquering the New World, the leaders of France and Spain believed that it was their moral and religious duty to convert the heathen savages of North and South America to Christianity, or kill them.  (See Arnold Toynbee´s An Historian´s Approach to Religion, or A Study of History, for more discussion on religion and war.  Barbara Ehrenreich also discusses the close relationship of religion and war in Blood Rites.)

Population Moderation

Overpopulation is a major cause of war.  All species, including human beings, breed prolifically.  It is axiomatic that species breed to the limits imposed by their environments.  An ecological equilibrium, or ìbalance of nature” evolves and remains stable over a long period of time.  In times past, human beings relied on infanticide and war as principal means of reducing or moderating human numbers, when the carrying capacity of the land was reached.  These were the same processes used by other animal species in response to overcrowding.

With the advent of Christianity as a major religion on the planet, the use of infanticide as a means of population control declined, and war remained the major policy tool used to address overpopulation.  There are two aspects of the relationship of overpopulation to war.  First is the response of a group that is being ìsqueezed” by the increase in population of another group (e.g., the American natives by European settlers).  Second is the response of a government to the increase in the size of its own population.  Although it is said that ìa prince without population is without power,” nations throughout history have responded to their own overpopulation (inability of the land to feed the citizens) by launching war (e.g., the Greek wars of 750 – 550 B.C.).  The response to overpopulation involved both the national leadership and the family.  In the recent history of Western Europe, it was common practice for each family to send its second and later sons to join the military – only the first son would inherit the land, in order to avoid fractionalizing the family´s landholdings.  When population exceeded the capacity of the land to support it, the national leadership proceeded to launch war on its neighbors.  Wars continued for years, and thousands and thousands died.  The leaders of the combatant countries mutually recognized the value of war in moderating population – it was not a ìfight to the death,” and neither government was in jeopardy.  Sun Tzu observed that it was not in the interest of a state to become involved in a protracted war, but he was speaking of a war that significantly drained national resources, not a long-term ware that helped to moderate population size.

War is not, of course, the only phenomenon that moderates human population size.  Bad weather may lead to famines, and climate change may lead to permanent changes in human population levels.  Disease has sometimes played a significant role in moderating population, as in the case of the Black Death (bubonic plague) in medieval Europe and perhaps HIV/AIDS in Africa and Asia today.  The principal topic of this article, however, is war, not overpopulation, and so the discussion is concerned mainly with the role of overpopulation as a cause of war, rather than with the influence of war on overpopulation.  Most nations today are not terribly concerned with overpopulation, and would not consider going to war as a means of population control.  They will still go to war in response to population pressure from another group (i.e., as a result of overpopulation), but not as a proactive population-control measure.

Modern times have severely restricted the use of infanticide and war as population-control measures, with the result that populations have exploded.  The most egregious example is Africa (where I have worked for a number of years).  Prior to a few hundred years ago, infanticide and war (and selling of slaves) were used to keep the population in balance with the rest of the environment.  If population increases or environmental changes occurred so that the land could no longer support the population (by farming or hunting and gathering), a tribe or part of it simply moved on to other land.  If there were already people there, war ensued, the losing tribe was exterminated, and the land continued to support the human population.

With the advent of the industrial age, disaster ensued.  Disease control measures lowered the death rate, and the imposition of colonial rule prevented local tribes from moving around and waging war to keep population in line with carrying capacity.  Christianity and changing Western morals, laws, and economics imposed restrictions on infanticide and slaving.  The population began to grow rapidly.  For most of the twentieth century, the population growth rate was an astronomical three percent per annum, with the population doubling about every two decades.

The impact on the environment was devastating.  The beginning of the end was quite apparent by the middle of the twentieth century, when women gathering firewood could no longer obtain sufficient firewood from deadfall, and started to use live trees for fuel.  Although colonial rule ended shortly after mid-century, the new nations of Africa never returned to their former means of population control.  As the population grew without bound, the point was quickly reached at which the land could no longer support the people.  As a result of massive overcrowding and gross intermingling, disease – notably HIV/AIDS – became rampant.

The population of Africa is perhaps one hundred times what can be supported by traditional means (traditional farming, cattle-raising, hunting and gathering).  (It is one thousand times that required for a healthy balance of nature and meaningful human existence.)  In the absence of war, the population has exploded and disease has become rampant (the HIV rate is over 30 percent in many African countries).  Poverty, virtually unknown a millennium ago, is now a horrible prison for hundreds of millions of people on the continent.

The social costs of global industrialization on Africa have been catastrophic.  In earlier times, Africa was characterized by strong tribal social structures.  Men had a significant role to play in family and society.  Their role was to protect the tribe and the family from wild animals and to wage war.  Their actions kept the human population in line with the ability of the land to support it.  With gross overpopulation, most African men have no means of providing an acceptable level of living for their families.  They have been emasculated by global industrialization.

International organizations and agencies (United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund) claim that Africa´s problems are the result of African cultural shortcomings, such as corruption (the chief/leader controls everything, lack of democracy, transparency, etc.) and regional wars.  This is completely false.  They say this because it is good for global business to have hundreds of millions of African consumers, no matter how desperately poor they may be, and no matter that their society has been destroyed and will continue to be destroyed as long as globalization continues.  It was African culture, including war as the lynchpin, that kept Africans free and healthy for millions of years.  War kept Africa healthy.  Peace has destroyed it.  Bad planetary government (democracy, anarchy) has destroyed it.  What Africa needs is more war, not less of it.  What Africa needs is able and responsible planetary government, not government by the masses or anarchy.  When the population of Africa drops by a factor of one hundred or one thousand, when mass crowding is gone, when gross intermingling of peoples ceases, when global industrialization ends and good planetary governance is established, then Africa´s health – and happiness – will return.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am using Africa simply as an example.  What is happening in Africa is happening worldwide, just at a different rate.  The world is being choked to death by global industrialization and peace – and government that is not suited to responsible planetary management.

Preserving the Health of the Biosphere, and
Saving the Human Race from Extinction

As noted in previous articles, the current global peace has been more destructive to the planet´s biosphere and the quality of human life than war ever has.  Peace is rapidly destroying the biosphere that evolved over the last 65 million years, and is placing the continued existence of the human species in peril.  The biosphere is not designed for, and cannot accommodate, large-scale industrialization.  Extreme overcrowding and global commingling of people is not conducive to good health of the human species.  Global industrialization has resulted in direst poverty and deprivation for billions of human beings.

Neither extreme war nor extreme peace can continue for very long.  War and peace constitute a duality in which both conditions are essential for the good health and long-term survival of the human species.  No species can continue to breed without some sort of process of population moderation taking place, and no species can remain in good health without some sort of natural selection.  War is essential for both of these processes.  They both contribute to the health of mankind.  All animals fight for space, sustenance, and sex.  This is not only natural, but essential for health and survival of the species.  (Of course, no species – or nation or civilization — survives forever – we are speaking here in relative terms.)

As Liddell-Hart noted, the purpose of war is to secure a better peace.  It is also the purpose of peace to prepare for war.  As Machiavelli (The Prince) observed, war is the single important concern of a good leader.  No society will – or can – continue for very long without war.  War is needed not only to moderate the population, but to temper it, to provide it with discipline, and keep it strong.  A society´s military is a reflection of its civilian population.  If either deteriorates in quality, the society will soon cease to exist.

It is instructive to quote further from Machiavelli on the importance of war to a leader: ìA prince, therefore, must have no other object or thought, nor acquire skill in anything, except war, its organization, and its discipline.  The art of war is all that is expected of a rulerÖ.The first way to lose your state is to neglect the art of war; the first way to win a state is to be skilled in the art of war.”  (NiccolÚ Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by George Bull, Penguin Books, 1961)  On the relationship between war and politics, Machiavelli writes, ì(1) Military power is the foundation of civil society; (2) A well-ordered military establishment is an essential unifying element in civil society; (3) A policy of military aggrandizement contributes to the stability and longevity of civil society; (4) The military art and the political art possess a common style; (5) A military establishment tends to reflect the qualities of the civil society of which it is a part.”  (NiccolÚ Machiavelli, The Art of War, revised edition of the Ellis Farneworth translation, by Neal Wood, Da Capo Press, 1965, 2001).

Sun Tzu (The Art of War) wrote that no nation has ever benefited from a protracted war.  To the extent that the war becomes a heavy and chronic burden, this is true.  War by its nature is, compared to peace, violent and convulsive.  To be successful, it requires a maximal, focused concentration of force.  This cannot be accomplished in a protracted war.  A blitzkrieg works; a First or Second World War works; a Thirty Years´ War or Vietnam or ìWar on Terrorism” does not.

Unlike war, for peace to be beneficial, it must be longer term.  The accomplishment of great things – music, art, architecture, science, engineering – often takes time and resources that are not available during war.

Most nations have Departments or Ministries of War (or ìDefense”) – because war matters.  It is the only nonessential function of a state.  They do not, however, have Ministries or Departments of Peace.  Peace matters too, but in most cases it is not carefully managed, and certainly not optimized (directed toward a specific long-term objective).  No nation (or other secular organization) on Earth at the present time has a long-term plan for planetary management.  Most nations do not even have a long-term plan for themselves (perhaps they know that the ìlong term” for nations is not really very long at all!).  Peace is to a large extent a period of unplanned recreation (and ìre-creation”).  To a degree, that is fine – it contributes to the arts and sciences and philosophy and religion.  But to waste the precious interlude of peace on hedonistic pleasure and move mindlessly to the next war is a waste.  The purpose of war is to prepare for a better peace, not a wasted peace.  Wars will always occur, to destroy the physical structures and populations that man previously created.  What is important is that man take advantage of peace interludes to advance mentally and spiritually.  Mankind has certainly advanced intellectually in the present peace – there has been an explosion of knowledge in this era – but he has not advanced much mentally and spiritually.  Perhaps that will happen after the next great war.

Religion places a very high importance on war.  It is a matter of life and death and freedom, and it is of paramount importance to human existence.  Polytheistic religions (e.g., of the Greeks, Romans, and (perhaps) Hindus) invariably have a god of war.  The history of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is a history of war.  Just as much as peace, war is a primary instrument of God´s handiwork.  Moses and Mohammed were leaders in war – both wars of conquest (the conquest of the Promised Land) and wars of conversion (the wars of 622-732 A.D., in which Islam (under Mohammed, his close friends and immediate successors) conquered from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean).  Jesus Christ is often referred to as the ìPrince of Peace,” but this refers to inner peace, not political peace.  He never stated or implied that war is an evil, or even undesirable.  Quite the contrary, he instructed to ìrender unto Caesar what is Caesar´s, and unto the Lord what is the Lord´s.”

The evidence is strong that placing too great an emphasis on either war or peace is suicidal.  Everyone is familiar with Neville Chamberlain´s infamous statement, ìI have brought peace in our time,” and can readily imagine that a pacifist nation without a patron will soon perish.  What is not so evident is the fact that an overemphasis on militarism can also be fatal.  Arnold Toynbee discusses this topic at length in A Study of History (vol. I-VI of D. C. Somervell´s two-volume abridgement, Oxford University Press, 1957, 1985).  ìMilitarism, as we shall see at a later point in this Study, has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations during the last four or five millennia which have witnessed the score or so of breakdowns that are on record up to the present date.  Militarism breaks a civilization down by causing the local states into which the society is articulated to collide with one another in destructive fratricidal conflicts.  In this suicidal process the entire social fabric becomes fuel to feed the devouring flame in the brazen bosom of Moloch.  This single act of war makes progress at the expense of the divers arts of peace; and, before this deadly ritual has completed the destruction of all its votaries, they may have become so expert in the use of their implements of slaughter that, if they happen for a moment to pause from their orgy of mutual destruction and to turn their weapons for a season against the breasts of strangers, they are apt to carry all before them.”

In the section, ìThe Suicidalness of Militarism,” Toynbee describes several examples to support his assertion, including Assyria, Charlemagne, and Timur Lenk.  The example of Assyria is particularly impressive.  ìThe disaster in which the Assyrian military power met its end in 614-610 B.C. was one of the completest yet known to history.  It involved not only the destruction of the Assyrian war-machine but also the extinction of the Assyrian state and the extermination of the Assyrian people.  A community which had been in existence for over two thousand years and had been playing an ever more dominant part in South-Western Asia for a period of some two-and-a-half centuries, was blotted out almost completely.  Two hundred and ten years later, when Cyrus the Younger´s ten thousand Greek mercenaries were retreating up the Tigris Valley from the battlefield of Cunaxa to the Black Sea coast, they passed in succession the sites of Calah and Ninevah and were struck with astonishment, not so much at the massiveness of the fortifications and the extent of the area they embraced, as at the spectacle of such vast works of man lying uninhabited.  The weirdness of these empty shells, which testified by their inanimate endurance to the vigour of a vanished life, is vividly conveyed by the literary art of a member of the Greek expeditionary force who has recounted its experiences.  Yet what is still more astonishing to a modern reader of Xenophon´s narrative – acquainted as he is with the fortunes of Assyria through the discoveries of modern archaeologists – is the fact that Xenophon was unable to learn even the most elementary facts about the authentic history of these derelict fortress-cities.  Although the whole of South-Western Asia, from Jerusalem to Ararat and from Elam to Lydia, had been dominated and terrorized by the masters of these cities little more than two centuries before Xenophon passed that way, the best account he is able to give of them has no relation to their real history, and the very name of Assyria is unknown to him.”

It is interesting to consider Toynbee´s comments in light of the size of the defense budgets of the nations of today´s world (and vice versa!)

The planet´s biosphere is being destroyed by large-scale industrialization.  Much of human society lives in unimaginable misery, squalor, disease, and meaninglessness.  Peace has continued for too long – it is a bad peace, that is destroying the planet.  Through peace, however, mankind has achieved the means of bringing global industrialization to an end.  As we enter the Age of Aquarius (age of thought, knowledge, wisdom) we enter a new age in which mankind can realize a higher level of development.   It is through war that this will be achieved.  At the present time, mankind as a whole has no sense of destiny or purpose.  Modern civilization is destroying itself and the rest of the biosphere in a mindless, hedonistic orgy of global industrialization and overpopulation.  This will end soon.  A great war will lead to a great peace.

© 2002 Joseph George Caldwell.  All rights reserved.

Previously articles at CommUnity of Minds by this author include  Isaac Asimov Saw It All and Did you know ?  You can visit the author’s website: Foundation. 

Are thinks really this bad ?

CRISIS, Problem #1, Scientists Speak, Global Warming, RWWNL, Its Much Worse Than It Appears,  & Die Off .

ONENESS, A Synergic Future, SYNOCRACY, ORTEGRITY , GIFTegrity , Solutions #1, Chaordic Design Process, & Vision for a Synergic Transition.

Reposted from Monday’s edition of the The Guardian of London .

Its Much Worse Than It Appears

John Vidal
 Johannesburg

The real level of world inequality and environmental degradation may be far worse than official estimates, according to a leaked document prepared for the world’s richest countries and seen by the Guardian.

It includes new estimates that the world lost almost 10% of its forests in the past 10 years; that carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming are expected to rise by 33% in rich countries and 100% in the rest of the world in the next 18 years; and that more than 30% more fresh water will be needed by 2020.

The background paper for last month’s Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pre-Johannesburg meeting on sustainable development draws on many previously unseen UN, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, and academic papers.

Although the governments of the world’s 22 richest nations who make up the OECD have seen the document, many of the calculations are new and considerably different from their own.

It calculates that less than 0.1% of of the average income of the 22 members of the OECD actually finds its way to the world’s low income countries and just 0.05% went to the least developed countries. Recent US and EU initiatives, it says, “will not meet targets at any time soon”.

Donor assistance for environmental protection and basic social services has declined to less than 15% of all aid compared with 35% at the time of the last earth summit in 1992.

The OECD paper calculates that rich countries now subsidise their industries by up to $1,000m a year, including more than $300bn in agriculture. This, it says, is having increasing effects on the development of poor countries. and on environmental degradation. If unrestricted market access were given to just the four richest economies in the world, it would increase per capita incomes of more than 2 billion people in the world’s most populated countries by 4% a year.

Meanwhile, the paper finds that foreign assistance from western European countries, including private funding and direct investment encouraged through national policies, was more globally oriented in 1900 than it is today.

It says that if the EU, Canada, Japan and the US allowed migrants to make up 4% of their workforce, the returns to poor countries could be $160bn to 200bn a year – far more than any debt relief could provide.

The paper’s calculations of environmental degradation suggest the many conventions, treaties and intergovernmental agreements signed in the past decade have had little or no effect on stopping the rush for timber and mineral resources in the developing world and that extinction of species is now reaching 11% of birds, 18%-24% of mammals, 5% of fish, and 8% of plants.

Over the next 18 years, says the report, global energy use is expected to expand by more than 50%, and by more than 100% in China, east Asia and the former Soviet Union. Transport is by then expected to account for more than half of global oil demand.

“The non-renewable fossil fuel resource base is expected to be sufficient to meet demand to 2020 though problems beyond that point are foreseen for natural gas and possibly oil,” the report says.

It adds that OECD countries subsidise the emission of global warming gases by $57bn – almost exactly what the report estimates it would cost to meet international targets. The paper suggests that investing the money in reducing climate change emissions would have next to no effect on the global economy. “Through the provision of subsidies on fossil fuels governments are effectively subsidising pollution and global warming as more than 60% of all subsidies flow to oil, coal and gas.”

Environment and development groups yesterday reacted to the report with horror.

“The rich world knows this is happening,” said the chair of Friends of the Earth International, Ricardo Navarrez. “We in poor countries have always known the climate is changing, aid does not come, and the poor are getting poorer. The richest countries are here in Johannesburg to keep the system going.”

Key facts from OECD report

Depleted resources:

Fisheries

Σ Nearly 50% of all fish stocks are fully exploited, 20% are overexploited

Σ Only 2% of global fisheries is recovering from overfishing

Forests

Σ On current trends by 2025 15% of all forest species will be extinct

Development

Σ 60% of the world’s population lives in ecologically vulnerable areas

Σ 3 million people die each year due to air pollution and 5 million due to unsafe water

Foreign investment

Σ 80% of global finance flows went to rich countries in 2000, with the entire African continent receiving less than 1% of direct foreign investment

Σ In 1914 40% of western European investment went to Africa, Latin America and Asia. In 1990 less than 20% went to those regions

Water

Σ Global water withdrawals are expected to rise 31% by 2020

Σ Most groundwater resources are being replenished at a rate of between 0.1% and 0.5%

 The Guardian of London

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Useful sites
UN pre-summit report: Trends in sustainable development (pdf)
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Weblog of current and continuing reports on the World Summit

This 1997 speech by wiseman Daniel Quinn seems particularly appropriate during this week of the World Summit on Sustainability in Johannesburg, Africa.

Preparing Ourselves and Our Children for Extinction

Daniel Quinn

In a recent semi-documentary film called Garbage, a toxic waste disposal engineer was asked how we can stop engulfing the world in our poisons. His answer was, “We’d have to remove everybody from the face of the earth, because humans GENERATE toxic waste, whether it be pathogenic organisms that we excrete from our bodies or whatever. We are toxic to the face of the earth.”

What is your gut reaction to this assessment? Please raise your hands if you agree that humans are inherently toxic.

I understand that many representatives of the First Peoples are attending this conference. I hope there are many in this audience. Please raise your hand if you belong to an aboriginal people. Thank you. Now I’d like to ask you the same question I asked the whole group a moment ago. If you consult your traditional teachings, do you agree that humans are inherently toxic to the life of this planet?

Those who know my work will know that you’ve just demonstrated one of my basic theses, that the people of my culture, whom I call Takers, have a fundamentally different mythology from the First Peoples, whom I call Leavers. In Taker mythology, humans are indeed viewed as inherently toxic to the world, as alien beings who were born to rule—and ultimately destroy—the world. As WE are currently ruling and destroying the world. In Leaver mythology, by contrast, the world is a sacred place, and humans are not perceived as alien to that sacred place but rather as belonging to it. In other words, in the Leaver worldview, people are no less a part of the sacred framework of the universe than scorpions or eagles or salmon or bears or daffodils. . . .

When I first proposed to speak here about how we’re preparing ourselves and our children for extinction, the organizer of the conference wondered if this topic wasn’t directed too exclusively to members of “our” culture—the culture I call Taker culture in my books—the dominant culture of the world, found wherever the food is under lock and key and people have to work to get it. I think it’s important that you hear my answer to this question.

The reality is that, even if you’re a member of one of the First Peoples, you and your children are constantly bombarded with messages from Taker culture by way of books, billboards, movies, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, and of course pre-eminently by way of the schools.

In other words, it doesn’t really matter whether you belong to our culture or not in this regard. If you or your children watch television, go to movies, listen to the radio, and go to our schools, then, like it or not, you’re preparing yourselves and your children for extinction.

But what do I actually mean by this outrageous statement? I’ll tell you this in a nutshell and then offer some examples of what I’m talking about. In a nutshell: We have been taught—and are therefore teaching our children—that, individually, we are all pretty much helpless when it comes to saving the world. That is, unless we happen to have the power of a world leader—the power of a Clinton or Yeltsin. Or unless we happen to control some vast multi-national corporation like Shell Oil or Du Pont. Or unless we happen to control some big organization like the Red Cross or Greenpeace or the World Wildlife Fund. We’ve been taught (and are therefore teaching our children) that, as individuals, all we can do is wait for OTHER people—POWERFUL people—to save the world. Oh sure, we can do our little bit. We can reduce, reuse, and recycle, and this is very nice and very useful—but really important and far-reaching global change must come from the TOP. We just have to wait and hope for the best. We’re like people standing around watching a neighbor’s house burn down because we’ve been taught that this is a problem for PROFESSIONALS to handle. We mustn’t interfere. Until trained fire-fighters arrive, we’re just supposed to stand there and watch—and if they NEVER arrive, then the house will just have to burn down right to the ground. . . .

Since my novel Ishmael appeared in 1992, I’ve received well over five thousand letters from readers—many of them young people. When they write to me, they don’t say, “Why have I been taught that individually I’m helpless?” This teaching is revealed in a more subtle way. They say to me, “Since I’m not a world leader and don’t control a multi-national corporation or a big NGO, I’m looking for a career that will enable me to make a difference. I’m thinking of going into environmental engineering or something like that. Can you make a suggestion?” Now, until you think about it, this might sound like someone who’s on the right track here. But listen to what he’s really saying. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not electrical engineers. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not optometrists. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not English teachers. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not bus drivers. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not homemakers. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not mail carriers. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not grocery store clerks. Environmental engineers can make a difference—but not potters. I could stand here and extend this list all day—this list of occupations in which people can make no difference. It includes virtually every occupation being pursued on the face of this planet today!

Here’s a statement from an actual letter, from a young woman in Knoxville TN. She writes, “I’ve been in graphic design since I finished high school in ‘86, and I’m still there, but I’m starting to look more and more seriously at environmental policy, national and world politics, and similar areas. I’ve always despised and hated politics.” Do you see what she’s saying? “I’m thinking of going into something I’ve always despised and hated“—because she can’t make a difference as a graphic designer. For her, the question is no longer, “What am I really GOOD at?” It doesn’t matter that she might be a terrific graphic designer and a rotten politician. She has come to believe that graphic designers can’t make a difference. Only very, very rare people can make a difference.

Here’s another, from a young man in Waco TX: “I treasure the ideals of your novel, and pledge my services toward getting something started. I do have one question that I think only you can answer for me, and that is: What can I do to find a job that adheres and advances the principles of your novel? It’s what I’ve been searching for all my life.”

My answer to him was this: We ALL have to make a difference. It doesn’t matter what job we do. We can’t have people saying, “Oh I just flip burgers, so I can’t make a difference.” “Oh I just drive a cab, so I can’t make a difference.” “Oh I just sell insurance, so I can’t make a difference.” “Oh I’m just an auto mechanic, so I can’t make a difference.” “Oh I’m just an accountant, so I can’t make a difference.” Concentrate on doing what you do best, because THAT’S where you’ll have the most influence on the future of the world.

You know, I’ll bet almost all of you were idealists when you were young—or were considered idealists by friends and teachers. If you were an idealistic youngster, please raise your hand. Good. Now—how many of you as youngsters had the experience of being told by a parent or teacher, “Who do you think you are? YOU can’t change the world.”

Believe me, nothing’s changed since you were young. This comes to me from a tenth-grader in Philadelphia: “I just finished Ishmael, and I want to thank you because you have successfully written down in complete form what I and so many people have thought about only in fragments. But when I try to talk to people about these things, being only fourteen, they tell me I’m foolish and ‘trying to be a hippie.’”

This is from the same design student who thought she’d have to go into politics in order to make a difference: “My advisor says I’m young and enthusiastic, in a kind of condescending way when I told him about wanting to go into environmental policy and change people’s perceptions and the way things are done. I want to prove him wrong. . . ”

But I’m not bringing this up to caution you against discouraging young people’s idealism and enthusiasm. I’m sure you don’t do that—or you wouldn’t be in this audience at all. What I’m trying to do is deepen your understanding of what’s happening when oldsters tell youngsters, YOU can’t change the world.

“I want to prove him WRONG,” the design student said. Wrong about what? She IS young and enthusiastic, so she can’t prove him wrong about that. What are the two of them really talking about? What her advisor is hearing from her is something like this: “I’m not going to end up like YOU. You never made any difference in your whole life. Well, I’m not going be like you. I’m going to make a difference.” And of course he’s defending himself the only way he knows how. He can’t say, “Look, kiddo, you may not believe it, but student advisors make PLENTY of difference.” He probably doesn’t even believe it himself! Why would he? He’s been told from childhood that only big shots make a difference. Since he can’t say this, he says instead, “Believe me, you WILL end up like me. What YOU have aren’t ideals, they’re just illusions. Nothing you do will make any difference, and life is going to prove me RIGHT.” He actually has a vested interest in discouraging students, in preparing them for extinction. Their failure will be his vindication! The vein of pessimism runs deep in our culture and is broadcast like a virus in all our communications—including all our communications directed to those of you who belong to the nations of the First People. Three years ago a young Navajo student at Dartmouth managed to track down my unlisted phone number. He told me that over the years he’d drifted away from his cultural roots. Then he read Ishmael. He was calling because he wanted to give me his reaction personally, and this was his reaction: “You’ve given me back my religion.” I asked him to explain why he felt this way, because of course there’s nothing in my book about Navajo religion in particular. He said, “When I was growing up among my own people, I was taught to think of humans as a blessing on the world. Living among your people, I’ve been taught to think of humans as a curse on the world. I didn’t notice it happening until I read your book, and that’s how you’ve given me back my religion.”

This brings me back to where I started, with the assessment of the waste disposal engineer who was asked how we can stop poisoning the world. Here it is again.

He said, “We’d have to remove EVERYBODY from the face of the earth, because humans GENERATE toxic waste, whether it be pathogenic organisms that we excrete from our bodies or whatever. We are toxic to the face of the earth.”

I’d like to take a few minutes explore this strange mythology, so central to our culture, and its impact on our children and their vision of the future.

To begin with, is it mythology? Oh, most certainly it is mythology. Humans no more “generate toxic waste” than elephants or grasshoppers do. And the organisms we excrete from our bodies are no more pathogenic than those excreted from the bodies of sparrows or salmon. This engineer was speaking pure mythology, because the biological truth is that humans lived on this planet for three million years without being any more poisonous than our primate ancestors.

It has been the work of my life to pin down and demolish the lie that is at the root of this mythology in our culture. It’s to be found in the way we tell the human story itself in our culture. You can see it perpetuated in textbook after textbook, and if you keep your eyes open, you’ll see it repeated weekly somewhere—in a newspaper or magazine article, in a television documentary. Here it is, the human story as it’s told in our culture, day in and day out, stripped to its essentials. “Humans appeared in the living community about three million years ago. When they appeared, they were foragers, just like their primate ancestors. Over the millennia, these foragers added hunting to their repertoire and so became hunter-gatherers. Humans lived as hunter-gatherers until about ten thousand years ago, when they abandoned this life for the agricultural life, settling down into villages and beginning to build the civilization that encircles the world today.” That’s the story as our children learn it, and it has just this one little problem, that it didn’t happen that way at all. Ten thousand years ago, it was not HUMANITY that traded in the foraging life for the agricultural life and began to build civilization, it was a single culture. One culture out of ten thousand cultures did this, and the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine went on exactly as before. Over the millennia that followed, this one culture, born in the middle east, overran neighboring cultures in all directions, finally arriving in the New World about five hundred years ago. At which point it began to overrun the native cultures of THIS part of the world as well. It is a truism that the conqueror gets to write the history books, and the history our children learn is history as WE tell it. And the central lie of this history is that HUMANITY ITSELF did what WE did.

Well, even if this is so, why does it matter? It matters because everything the waste disposal engineer said was false about HUMANITY, but absolutely true of this one conquering culture. HUMANS don’t generate toxic wastes—but our culture certainly does. HUMANS aren’t toxic to the face of the earth—but our culture certainly is.

It’s vitally important for our children to know that the curse that needs to be lifted from the earth is not humanity. It’s important for them to know that we may be a doomed culture, but we are not a doomed species. It’s important for them to understand that it’s not being HUMAN that is destroying the world. It’s living THIS WAY that is destroying the world. It’s important for them to know that humans HAVE lived other ways, because it’s important for them to know that it’s POSSIBLE for humans to live other ways. Otherwise they can only repeat the falsehood spoken by that waste disposal engineer: That the only way to stop poisoning the world is to get rid of humanity.

Here’s what a college student in Arkansas wrote to me: “Standing riverside with my geology class in the Grand Canyon, viewing one and a half billion year-old basement rocks, humankind’s history was a vertical mile away in the dust of the South Rim. Strangely, my classmates struggled with the concept and acceptance of geologic time. I felt the overburden of reality. Since that time, the extinction of Homo Sapiens has often appeared to me to be the ONLY solution for the vast spread, dominance, consumption, and destruction inflicted on the world by this species.”

This is from a ninth grader in Eugene Oregon: “Since reading your book a second time recently, I’ve talked with some of my friends about their theories about life, the universe, and so on. Some thought we should just kill off all the humans (which I’ll admit would be one way of dealing with things).”

This is from a graduate student at the University of Oregon: “I was at an aquarium with my daughter shortly after re-reading Ishmael, and I happened to spend some time looking at the jellyfish tank. I wondered if the world would be better off if evolution had stopped with these spineless, brainless, majestic entities. . . . Despite our best efforts to resuscitate the cancer known as humanity, we are in fact on our way out, and indeed that may be for the better.”

These students, as you hear, are all thoroughly reconciled to the disappearance of human life.

We absolutely must stop sending our children out to save the world, first arming them with the undermining belief that humans are inherently toxic. Because if they truly believe this, then they will truly be prepared for extinction. We must be on vigilant guard against teaching our children—even by indirection— that the very best thing that can happen to the world is the extinction of the human race.

I know very well that I have set myself up for at least one hard question with this talk, and I’d like to address at least this one hard question before I invite your questions.

I have said—not only here but in a thousand letters and a dozen other speeches like this one—that there is no one who is without resources to change the world. I believe this is a message we must give our children. We don’t just need caring environmental engineers. We need caring attorneys, caring physicians, caring fry cooks, caring salespeople, caring real estate developers, caring industrialists, caring journalists, caring entrepreneurs, caring veterinarians, caring stock brokers, and caring carpenters. We even need good people in bad places. In fact we especially need good people in bad places. For example, whether you know it or not, the film industry is tremendously pollutive and tremendously wasteful. Does this mean caring people should avoid it? Hardly! Just the opposite! We mustn’t leave pollutive and wasteful industries entirely in the hands of people who don’t give a damn about the world. This is why I say and say again that there is no place where no good can be done. And this is why I say to young people, “Don’t think about going into noble lines of work, think only of doing what you do best. Because that’s where you’re going to make the most difference in the world.”

People often ask me if I practice what I preach, and what I say to them is, “Look, I’m doing exactly what I preach. What I preach is, USE YOUR BEST RESOURCES TO DO WHAT YOU CAN DO. And that’s what I’m doing. Doing what I do best, I’m reaching hundreds of thousands of people all over the world in the cause of saving the world.”

I say to them, “Do you think I should have been an environmental engineer instead? I would’ve been a LOUSY environmental engineer!”

And then people typically say to me, “Well, that’s great for YOU, but what am I supposed to do? I’m just a dressmaker, just a bricklayer, just a fiddle player, just a massage therapist, just a choir director, just an asphalt spreader—fill in the blank.

I hope you see that I’m talking about an EDUCATIONAL problem here. We have honest to god GOT to stop teaching our children that only OTHER people count. I think we need to make it a top-priority goal for us to teach our children that it isn’t just people with special jobs who are going to save the world. If the world is saved, it will be because all six billion of us stopped waiting for someone ELSE to do it. If the world is saved, it will be because the people of the world finally woke up to the fact that saving the world isn’t the work of specialists. It’s work we all CAN do—and all MUST do.

©1997-2001 Alan D. Thornhill, DataDrive, and Daniel Quinn

Address by Daniel Quinn delivered August 16, 1997, at the annual conference of the North American Association for Environmental Education, Vancouver BC.

Ishmael Community

Sinking Ship

The ship was sinking—and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, “We’ve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.” But the crew said, “First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we’ll take care of the lifeboats.”

Then the women said, “First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.”

The racial minorities said, “First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly.”

The captain said, “These are all important issues, but they won’t matter a damn if we don’t survive. We’ve got to lower the lifeboats right away!”

But the religionists said, “First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats.”

Then the pro-life contingent said, “First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else.”

The right-to-choose contingent said, “First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we’ll help with the lifeboats.”

The socialists said, “First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that’s done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.”

The animal-rights activists said, “First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can’t let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats.”

Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned.

The last thought of more than one of them was, “I never dreamed that solving humanity’s problems would take so long—or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.”