Civilization. Bigger they are, harder they fall...

Civilization is a relatively recent, and insanely destructive, social structure. Cities are only ever built and maintained through slavery, violence and theft from other land bases, and they only ever expand in parallel to ecological disasters, marine dead zones and man-made deserts.  But anything that is unsustainable… even something really, really big, must come to an end, either one piece at a time, or in one massive crash.

There are other attributes which have been common to all city building cultures, but perhaps more revealing are the pictures and parables which are used to help characterize them. These can also help us to envisage the collective unconsciousness of the inhuman inhabitants of cities.

The teetering tower being built on rotten foundations, or over the graves of slaves.
The machine beast, ever consuming, ever expanding, but never satisfied.
The endless production line or huge factory farm, crammed with human live stock.
Or the consuming cancer, leeching vast amounts of energy and nutrients, draining life from the body of the earth.

However, human beings do not inherently behave like a giant planetary pest. Small communities of humans have lived and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years by adapting to and actually enriching their ecosystems. Many still exist, dwelling on the fringes and wild places not yet conquored by civilization, and they do so without exhibiting the same malignant characteristics as city dwelling cultures. Civilized peoples have deliberately destroyed and devoured countless of these human tribal groups, eliminating alternative wisdom, and putting people from all over the world in competition for the same resources.

‘Progress’ is usually the ill-logic mindlessly cited for civilization’s genocidal past, precarious present, and fundamentally flawed assumption of continued expansion. But progress toward what? How can there be progress without an agreed objective? And what kind of progressive people would champion a society that causes untold destruction of diversity, knowledge, opportunities for independence and the very earth itself?

But the awesome, and infinite, alternatives to this monolithic monoculture can be seen all around us in the healthy, mutual micro exchanges of wild nature – where every body continually adapts to their surroundings and to each other in the endless and fantastical balancing act of life.

Some of the lowliest earthlings offer the most resilient resistance to the imperialist concrete culture. Creatures like termites, weevils, caterpillars, locusts, bacteria, moulds and mosses cause a gargantuan amount of direct damage, gnawing and nibbling away, slowly but surely breaking down the inhuman infrastructure and totalitarian agriculture which is vainly holding the world hostage.

The mighty efforts of these little life forms brings civilization ever closer to collapsing, gently, under it’s own weight. But in the shadow of that seemly unshakeable delusion of continued ‘development’ wee can not leave it up to moss alone to cushion our fall. The maniacle monstrosities of civilization should not, will not, and IS NOT going unchallenged in all sorts of small ways, and by wee earthlings all over the place…