civilization collapse

men compete for resources women reward men for collecting resources men that use a military industrial complex have better reproductive success men that build bigger moai have better reproductive success and the afterlife? if only it were true it breaks my heart that the meek will NOT inherit the earth that good deeds in this life will not be rewarded that ancient people's whose ancestors were all killed are gone forever from the gene pool we are the descendants of Cain make no mistake - the meek are dead and it breaks my heart to accept it

intuitively the conclusion i get from: "consider military industrial complex users - are they better able to reproduce than non military industrial complex users?" or "evolution has selected for weaponizers, exploiters, polluters" or "consider fossil fuel users - are they better able to reproduce than non-fossil fuel users?" is that this is true of the competition between males for females that is the males that have the most reproductive success are the weaponizers, exploiters, and polluters - and so those characteristics are propagated further when i consider this i am struck by other existing civilized high density populations in the ecosystem - ants and bees. they build complex structures, they alter their environment, they have complex communications - and they use males for reproductive purposes only because males are too expensive

facts: - indigenous people's fight civilization -- the celts fought the romans -- the gauls fought the romans -- the amazonian peoples fight the canadian mining companies - why fight? -- because the civilized people act brain damaged -- they pollute rivers -- they destroy forests -- they dig huge holes in the groud -- that is the behaviour of someone with brain damage - consider rapa nui aka easter island -- the civilized people that built the moai -- did moai users have better reproductive success? -- did competitive moai (ie. building bigger) have better reproductive success? -- they chopped down the last tree -- they lived on an island -- no trees = no boats = no food - consider the farmers of the central valley in california or farmers in ancient sumer -- the water table falling -- salt increasing -- increased production leads to decreasing yields -- http://www.cvsalinity.org/ -- http://related.springerprotocols.com/lp/de-gruyter/salt-seed-and-yields-in-sumerian-agriculture-a-c...

Q: What's the moral response to Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies and Smil's Global Catastrophes and Trends? A: Is it something like applying the golden rule to the ecosystem's investment in me? Am I an asset that generates wealth for the ecosystem, or an expense that increases entropy, hastening the eventual heat death of the universe? Am I doing unto the ecosystem as the ecosystem is doing unto me? No.

I have not read the book - just this essay. Seems similar to "Agriculture: the demon engine of civilization" by John Zerzan. Full text here. Review of Zerzan's work here. However an interesting tangential question is why only 10,000 years ago? Why not earlier? Art appears. Climate supports agriculture. Also we have the discoveries in 2005 of mirror neurons. How stuff works - stuff you should know podcast here - listen. The article with the mind experiment that was the basis for the Matrix can be read here.

The best book to date outlining the REAL threats to civilization collapse. Thoroughly researched and documented with an exhaustive and enlightening bibliography. There is at least one threat Smil has overlooked - the sunspot cycle identified by NASA that may cause $1 to $2 trillion in damages. Story here. Link to Google Books Link to Amazon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel#Jet_biofuels Oil prices increased about fivefold from 2003 to 2008, raising fears that world petroleum production is becoming unable to keep up with demand. The fact that there are few alternatives to petroleum for aviation fuel adds urgency to the search for alternatives. Twenty-five airlines were bankrupted or stopped operations in the first six months of 2008, largely due to fuel costs.[21]