"We are not the first civilization to collapse, but will probably be the last"

[FirstLight]

by: Chris Hedges
LINK! https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/we-are-not-the-first-civilization-to-collapse-but-we-will-probably-be-the-last
(sorry I forgot!)

This is an amazing read and puts our current situations into perspective on many levels...

CAHOKIA MOUNDS, Illinois — I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples. The temperatures, in the high 80s, along with the oppressive humidity, have emptied the park of all but a handful of visitors. My shirt is matted with sweat.

I look out from the structure—known as Monks Mound—at the flatlands below, with smaller mounds dotting the distance. These earthen mounds, built at a confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, are all that remain of one of the largest pre-Columbian settlements north of Mexico, occupied from around 800 to 1,400 AD by perhaps as many as 20,000 people.

This great city, perhaps the greatest in North America, rose, flourished, fell into decline and was ultimately abandoned. Civilizations die in familiar patterns. They exhaust natural resources. They spawn parasitic elites who plunder and loot the institutions and systems that make a complex society possible. They engage in futile and self-defeating wars. And then the rot sets in. The great urban centres die first, falling into irreversible decay. Central authority unravels. Artistic expression and intellectual inquiry are replaced by a new dark age, the triumph of tawdry spectacle and the celebration of crowd-pleasing imbecility.

“Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum,” anthropologist Joseph Tainter writes in The Collapse of Complex Societies. “Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration.”

The article goes on the compare modern cities (St. Louis as one close to Cahokia) and how the same effects of collapse and disintegration are occuring now.
Also noted, climate issues we are facing NOW were not "supposed" to happen till 2050+
And the part about how segments of the population will hunker down and get violent and disease due to the denial of the disinegtration of civilization and resources...


so yeah, get ready for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

[JoeOtterbein]

1. Sounds good...

...do you have a link to the rest?

[FirstLight]

3. sorry I fixed it!

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/we-are-not-the-first-civilization-to-collapse-but-we-will-probably-be-the-last

[JoeOtterbein]

2. Here's the link:

[link:https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/17/chris-hedges-we-are-not-the-first-civilization-to-collapse-but-we-will-probably-be-the-last/|

[JoeOtterbein]

4. K n R ! Thanks for posting!

An important, and depressing as hell, read.

[FirstLight]

5. super depressing, but really, not what we aren't already seeing...

It's like the caboose is on fire and slowly consuming the rest of the train (gaining speed as it goes)...and the conductor and the people in the nice passenger cars are still convinced it's not happening or won't touch them. So the train keeps on going, as usual...

[enid602]

6. Geography

….largest pre Columbian city north of Mexico….largest city in North America.
Last time I checked, Mexico was in North America.

[FirstLight]

7. I'm sorry ...THAT"S your takeaway?

:eyeroll:

[ret5hd]

9. "that's"

(i kid, i kid!)

[wnylib]

19. In anthropology, Mexico is usually included with

the Central American region as Mesoamerica, due to its pre-Columbian cultural associations.

North America, Mesoamerica (meaning "Middle America" ), and South America.

Mexicans refer to US Americans as norteamericanos (North Americans).

[Heather MC]

8. When Lake Meade Goes Kiss the Desert goodbye 😥😥😥😥😥

[FirstLight]

10. It's like watching a slow trainwreck ...over decades.

Then critical mass happens and we see stuff NOW they said would happen in 50-100 yrs.

Enjoy your tapwater and groceries whlle you have them. regardless of politics, things are gonna get narly here really quick.

I'm not a prepper, nor do I own a gun. But maybe...? ugh, awful choices and the world is so much bigger so when a whole PLANET goes to shit, what can you do?

[Heather MC]

14. I agree with you

it's going to get ugly. Look how people behave during Christmas. imagine if Christmas is the last water truck in the west😥😥😥

Remember the young lady who ran out on the tennis court with that sign mentioned we have 1028 days left. I believe her

[DemocraticPatriot]

18. "Christmas is the last water truck"

That is my most-loved quote of the day... but it is not pretty...


Glad I reside in-between all of the Great Lakes...

The most recent doomsday article I read predicted that most of the country will attempt to relocate here in Michigan, due to the more moderate climate and generous water supply...

Bravo for that line, Heather! lol

[Heather MC]

20. Awwww Shucks!💜

[airplaneman]

21. It's not just lake Meade

The Largest rivers in China, Germany, Italy, and numerous other places around the world are 75% gone just like lake Meade. This is starting to scare the crap out of me. In the USA alone right now 38% of our crop land is not being planted because of weather changes. Last year we lost 50% of corn, soybeans, potatoes and others due to too much rain. Fresh water is vanishing world wide followed by crop failures and who knows what else.
-Airplane

[Heather MC]

24. We have to start encouraging people to grow their own food.

We also have to start admitting that we don't need all the processed foods manufacturers make. We live in a society of extreme unnecessary excess. It's overly filled with stuff we don't need and we didn't ask for. I was in Burlington Coat Factory the other day, they have a shelf that's filled with about 800 different perfume. Why do we need to choose from 800 different perfumes? I was in Walmart years ago I don't frequent that storage nowhere near me where I live. Anyway I was in Walmart and I don't want to hear in cap shelves they had it was just filled with about 50 to 60 different vegetable oils from different companies. Why do we need 50 to 60 different vegetable oil companies?

It's just vegetable oil why do we need so much variety in vegetable oil.

There's a shopping center up the street from my house that's filled with stores that are constantly filled with stuff TJ Maxx, the Dollar Tree, Burlington, Home goods.
And it's absolutely amazing because none of these stores ever overlap what they have they always have different stuff from the other store, Is Marshall's, Ross. These are all professional corporate thrift shops basically. Walmart, every single one of these corporate stores is filled to the brim. Bed Bath & Beyond is such a junk store I can't even go into it. They literally pile stuff up to the ceiling in those stores and it just looks like a hoarder's paradise.


We don't need all this crap these corporations keep pushing into our communities. And trying to convince us that we constantly have to be consuming and buying their cheap ass products.

And even in the grocery stores the food industry the corporations the food that they provide it's not food it's death. When you eat food where the nature has been taken out of it you are consuming death.

And that may sound extreme but it's true we should only be eating living food. We've been so lied to also they could make money off of us and turn us into a commodity it's upsetting

[FirstLight]

28. you are so spot on!

I am amazed by the crap we are surrounded by... and let's also look at the fact it is mostly manufactured in china or some other far off country...so what's the carbon footprint for the shipping and trucks to get it there?

[Heather MC]

32. It's because we are all commodities, And the governments, and the corporations

Do everything they can to make money off of us, that they allow us to have. Isn't that stupid?

What would happen, comma if a majority of us decided to stop participating in the system.
Well let's say 30 to 40% of the system we just stop utilizing their corporations

Just imagine how much change we could affect by being change 1st

[DemocraticPatriot]

11. Does this mean that all the other civilizations will not collapse

after ours does ?


I care not to contemplate the supposition... chances are good that I will be dead before I am directly confronted with such circumstances...


I pray for the children, that is all I can do. I wish them luck.

[Random Boomer]

15. You missed the point

The prediction is that there will be no more civilizations to fall after this one collapses.

I tend to agree with that assessment. Assuming that anyone survives the remainder of this century, they'll be living in the rubble of a technological society that can't be rebuilt. We've used up all the easily accessible resources and will no longer be able to run or maintain the specialized equipment necessary to reach the resources that remain, but are difficult to access.

The good news is that our species thrived for 200,000 years or more with nothing more than stone tools, which will remain plentiful even after the existence of oil and internal combustion engines has faded from memory.

[DemocraticPatriot]

17. I might have mistaken "civilizations" for "empires"...

In either case I presume that I won't have a vote on the matter.
However, I still hope for a future, for younger genrations...

[hunter]

27. The rubble of our civilization will be full of resources.

No need to dig copper ore out of the ground and refine it when all you have to do is dig through abandoned suburbs for copper wire and pipe.

Need some high quality steel? Imagine how useless guns will be without ammunition. How are your skills as a blacksmith?

If the human population collapses the survivors won't be short of any physical resources. Rather they'll be short of the social structures required to utilize them effectively.

And it will have been this collapse of social structures that is the root cause of the catastrophe, not any shortage of physical resources.

If this civilization collapses and I survive I'll be blaming all the lazy-ass anti-intellectuals and their fucked up ideologies and religious beliefs.

[Martin68]

12. It goes without saying. Entropy applies to all systems, particularly man-made ones.

But the faster technology develops, the faster a society disintegrates. We can't keep up with our own technology, and never could. The Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans The Ottoman Empire, the British Empire...all bore the seeds of their own destruction within them. Humans can't keep up with the social, political, economic, and environmental changes that a rapidly developing technology inevitably brings.

Mr. Toad in his brightly painted Gypsy Caravan? Run into the ditch by a powerful new motor car? Toad lay in the ditch wordlessly mouthing 'Poop, poop." Ditched his romance with the Gypsy life for a modern hydrocarbon machine, and he ended up in prison. When he returned to Toad Hall, the weasels had taken it over. A metaphor for the 21st Century?

[harumph]

23. I love your post. Mr. Toad, one of my favorites.

[Loki Liesmith]

16. Civilization is not going to collapse.

[Martin68]

26. If global warming is not brought under control, it is very likely civilization will collapse.

Humans will survive though. We're tough and adaptable. But technology might be out the window.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

22. Pretty much where we are today...

Civilizations die in familiar patterns. They exhaust natural resources. They spawn parasitic elites who plunder and loot the institutions and systems that make a complex society possible. They engage in futile and self-defeating wars. And then the rot sets in. The great urban centres die first, falling into irreversible decay. Central authority unravels. Artistic expression and intellectual inquiry are replaced by a new dark age, the triumph of tawdry spectacle and the celebration of crowd-pleasing imbecility.

We have our parasitic elite oligarchs -- Murdoch, Koch, Sinclair, Mercer, Putin, et. al. -- and the wars and we have the imbecilic spectacles favored by the conglomerated media under the parasites' control.

[dalton99a]

25. A must read.

Last edited Sun Sep 4, 2022, 11:15 AM - Edit history (1)

The site is worth a visit

[FirstLight]

29. Thanks for this!

I have always wanted to visit this place and also the Serpent Mound.

funny, if any future explorers were to find our remnants, what would it be? I've often joked that either they would think we worshipped the "madein (from) china" that is stamped on everything we see...or that we worshipped at the 7-11 because they are in every town! lol

[dalton99a]

30. Perhaps they will wonder about another life form

[FirstLight]

31. that's hilarious!

reminds me of schoolhouse rock