[kosoman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oYzI652Dzk

I recently heard this lecture and found the views quite interesting. Its definitely a very different narrative regarding how humans have found themselves in the position they are today, and it certainly is a viewpoint that i've not really thought about.

I guess with all the Islam bashing, its quite a breath of fresh air to hear a narrative from a muslim that is definitely quite intriguing and thought-provoking.

Purely from some references in the lecture, im guessing this was made some time in the 70s from professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of Georgetown University.

Anyway thought i'd post it on here (also posted it on one the peakoil articles) to see what peoples response to it would be.

Koso

[americandream]

@ kosoman

Consulting the tea leaves will not resolve these issues, only logic.

[kosoman]

AD, what? I dont get what you mean. Did you listen to the lecture?

[americandream]

AD, what? I dont get what you mean. Did you listen to the lecture?

Yes. To suggest that capitalism is the non spiritual counterparty of Islam is bizarre. Both are steeped in the irrational. Capitalism however has based it core tendency on the fruits of reason.......technology. But it is no more rational than any of the other forms of tea leaf gazing.

[SeaGypsy]

Both likely have their roots in the so called 'spice' trade. Opium, hashish, cocaine, gold, ivory, cloves, nutmeg & human slaves. Long walks with plenty of psychedelics.

[Ibon]

First of all thanks for posting this Kosoman. We need more of these threads that try to identify the origin of our dysfunction.

I am trained as an ecologist and with moderate knowledge of human history. I do not have enough academic background about the Renaissance and greek mythology etc. to comment on his claims. Having said that I will still offer my insights and opinion.

This is all very euro centric which makes sense since it was western europe that gave rise to material consumerism and from my understanding his basic claim is we abandoned a sense of the sacred in our religious beliefs and how this was the price we paid for gaining access to materialism. He did mention how the Asian cultures in China, India and Islam resisted western materialism initially but have now capitulated. I think there is something to that he did not elaborate further on which I will get to further down.

I have often made the claim that we lost a sense of the sacred toward nature and this is the root of our problems. So I found the lecture intriguing. I also firmly believe that consequences of human overshoot will bring nature back into the center of our spiritual life. So, solutions to human overshoot ultimately are going to be found in reclaiming a sense of the sacred toward nature. Further tweaking materialism is a dead end. Maybe.

This reminds me a bit of when we discuss native cultures. Native cultures often stayed within carrying capacity and did place nature as the sacred center in their mythologies. Some argue that native peoples technology wasn't advanced enough to create abstract environments so nature was all they knew so of course it was the sacred center. So there was nothing really noble about native cultures, they simply weren't advanced enough to create civilizations. Others like myself argue that many of these native cultures didn't advance technology exactly because their mythology was based on nature being the center and was sacred.

Seyyed Hussein points out something similar here that is important in this regard that I think is worth elaborating. It is not advances in technology that eventually lead to materialism. It is the other way around. It is an orientation toward materialism that then leads to technological advances.

I am going to outline what I see as the 4 possibilities for the outcome of the current human overshoot on the planet

1) We go extinct as a species. Let's get that one out of the way quickly. It could happen

2) WE collapse back to simple tribal populations much like The Mayans after the 10 century AD that were living in thatched roofed small villages close to the ruins of their
former civilizations.

3) Materialism and science in the end does indeed effectively engineer our society after a die-off so that a greatly reduced number of humans stays within carrying capacity maintaining technology at a high level with further advances. Global ecosystems recover and humans remain apart from nature in their own techno materialistic utopia where they self regulate their consumption and population. In other words, the optimum materialistic control of our environment is successfully achieved. That the human overshoot of the 20th and 21st century was a hiccup on the road toward techno utopia.

4) Consequences of overshoot forces nature back on the center stage, revealing how we have abused our planet and the consequences become so profound that this indeed causes a renaissance in our spiritual life that returns nature as the sacred center and that technology, at a greatly reduced level of materialism, works within the framework of taboos and sacred commandments that nourish our planet and societies that are more integrated. Man not separate from the natural world as in option 3.

Every single culture once exposed to materialism has fallen prey to its power to harness technology as a way to control. Not a single religion, whether simple HG tribal ones, nor the mythologies of other non european civilizations like China India or Islam, could resist. Western materialism dominates the planet as does its effluent in the form of destroyed ecosystems, pollution and climate change.

Can we really wrestle this materialistic beast and bring sacred spirituality back to the center of our civilization? This is a key question I do not have the answer to. Once you let the cat of materialism out of the bag can you ever have the sense of the sacred return to the center of a culture's life?

[Ibon]

Long walks with plenty of psychedelics.

There is something in there SeaGypsy that is part of the answer to our dilemma.

[Ibon]

@ kosoman

Consulting the tea leaves will not resolve these issues, only logic.

AD, as the sacred was replaced with materialism this represented the very first pillar on the road to building a society based on capitalism. In analyzing the origins of capitalism this essay has value. This is not some esoteric spew looking at tea leaves. You often despair at how posters don't adequately understand capitalism and marxism but your cavalier dismissal of this essay demonstrates how you are so entrenched in your anti-capitalism dogma that you yourself didn't even listen long enough to see what substance was in the talk. Shame on you. I expect better of you.

Sometimes we are held hostage by the way we cultivate our narratives to the point that they become like tape recordings where we just press the replay switch without any longer allowing new and novel information to enter. You are not the only one guilty of this AD

[americandream]

@ Ibon

In attaining greater cognitive ability, it follows that we understand the sacred nature of the planet at a cerebral level, in using our tools. If we continue to ascribe that sacredness to some unknown source, that belief style is susceptible to be corrupted as we find in these times with such absurd ideas as The Secret.

Yes nature is sacred at a rational level because we are a part of it, not its overlord. Thus we are advised to use our greater dexterity with tools and our social economy in concert with this relationship. Thus we learn to live within our means whilst developing that dexterity in a considered fashion.

The tea leaves belong to a time when we acted more instinctively. With greater sentience, that time has passed.

[americandream]

Capitalism has some cultic like qualities in the blind belief in the supremacy of technology as we see in the likes of Graeme and his belief in geo engineering. This is a dangerous and vapid stance as it is based on a core irrationality (or tendency), the hunger to accumulate.

[Rod_Cloutier]

I couldn't listen to the whole tirade, it is too long. I did note that this is from a lecture series of 1976/1977, nearly 40 years ago !

In my Ayahausca psychedelic experiences, I have gained a new spirituality. I no longer fear death, I've already planned my next life on a higher existential level where I'm going to exist as a hexagon inside of a machine consciousness pondering in detail the mysteries of the universe. (I'm actually waiting for this outcome in eager anticipation)

I also saw two 'fates' for our planet; one where we carry out business as usual, and we have an 'Easter island' fate for the whole planet and the ecology eventually collapses, humanity dies, and the whole planet is essentially dead for millions of years. Life eventually recovers. The other is that we 'wake up' and mature as a species and learn to live within nature rather than dominate it. Both choices are possible, and God has no preference for which outcome we choose.

Given my changed spiritual nature, I'm still living as I did before I started using psychedelics. I live in a large house in an urban area, I drive a gas guzzling minivan, I work for a large mega-corporation. I personally would prefer to avoid the 'Easter island' die-off. At the same time I observe that our civilization is accelerator foot on the floor towards Seneca's cliff.

[Rod_Cloutier]

Can't we do that?

Yes. Why not !

And you misinterpreted what I said above. I meant that I will be living as a literal hexagon in a machine civilization, not that we would all be living in hexagram structure.