Hitler’s corporatist regime made the Big Lie popular, but it has been used by every regime of the human culture called “civilization” since it began eight thousand years ago. After several million years of success the human species became entrapped in the mental confines of the Culture of Empire. That culture, characterized by agriculture, emperors, militarism and male dominance holds the image that members of the empire will materially gain from what the elite describe as the best human society yet. The idea of “progress” is embedded in the idea of Empire. This idea of “progress” is, in recent centuries, technological and material progression that the elite control, to the exclusion of progress in how humans treat each other, progress in world peace, progress in offering opportunities for each individual to fully develop their personal talents, and progress in feeding the world’s hungry.
“ Civilization” Itself is the Big Lie
Years ago the Nazis took a handful of prisoners and dressed them in German uniforms and shot them on the Polish border. They put out the Big Lie that Poland did it, then they invaded Poland. We’ve seen this type of Big Lie over and over and over again through the years. How does the Big Lie work? Quite simply the lie must be so big, so huge, that no one could believe that it could be a lie. (911) (Libya invaded for humanitarian reasons).
The Big Lie succeeds because of our subconscious conditioning by the culture of empire. The elite continue to tell us that we all live in a happy society where we all work together to build us all up. Then someone explains to us what fractional banking actually is. Who would believe that when one puts their $10 in a bank, the banker turns around and loans out $100 and then the borrower has to pay back the $100, $90 of which was created out of thin air – plus interest! While the banker in his business suit does nothing but sit there on his fat ass! Our culturally conditioned subconscious simply rebels at the thought. “No, no, how could that be? Naw, they couldn’t get away with something like that.” It is possible to explain to the intellect how this works, but this seldom comes down to the level of subconscious belief. The intellect might say so but the subconscious after a lifetime of conditioning says that our trusted leaders would not do such a grandiose thing.
The Biggest Lie Is That “Civilization” is Good for You
The Culture of Empire is based on the extortion of the fertility of the earth. Half of China was once a great forest. After centuries of Empire the soils are so exhausted that the only way food can be raised in the poor soil is by adding their own excrement. Beginning with the Sumerian and Babylonian empires, the deforestation and eco abuse of their land is so great that the erosion material carried by the Tigris-Euphrates river has extended it’s mouth into the Gulf, one hundred and eighty-five miles. One third of the possibly arable land of Iraq cannot now be used because of soil salinization caused by Babylonian irrigation. Only one tenth of the world’s forest remain since the beginning of the Culture of Empire. Ninety percent of the big fish in the ocean are gone. Millions of acres of soil have been exhausted. The emperor compels the “sacred growth” of Empire. Conquering people and adding them to the Empire is “progress” for the patriarch. “Surplus” (aka profits) from the soil, the forest and the sea are what drives the Empire until there is no more. The Culture of Empire has its basis in the looting of the earth.
The Culture of Empire Is Already Dead
It’s called overshoot. The “progress” of Empires is to grow right along with their more and more efficient looting of the earth’s fertility. At the point that we are right now, we find that the multi-billion human population is in the process of falling over the cliff after the Culture of Empire has eaten up everything. The limits of arable land on the planet has now been reached and now we discover that millions of acres of industrial agricultural soils are actually exhausted but continue to produce based on the fossil fuel trade-offs of fossil fuel based fertilizers, agricultural poisons (pesticides), fuel for tractors and the whole mass of that system. Now we learn about Peak Oil and the end of that energy trade-off. This is overshoot when billions continue to procreate without a food basis of their existence. Can our subconscious cope with this?
The Descent Into Chaos
When the ecological and fossil fuel energy to support it goes, the complex Culture of Empire will Unravel. If nothing else, the Empire will fall from the exhaustion of the feedstock to keep it going. Anyone who has tried to grow a garden on poor soil with limited water will understand. At this point our subconscious says, “Yeah, that may be true for the masses, but I and my family will survive.” Rural Americans think they will survive by poaching deer. That deer herd will survive about three days when the massive population really gets hungry.
We have to remember that we live in the Culture of Empire. What do Empires do when they start to decline? Rome started wars. This is our fate. We live on a planet controlled by massive institutions of power who battle each other for supremacy irrespective of living conditions or desires of the citizens. As decline proceeds and panic sets in with the ruling class, their solution will be war. The ruling class knows that when war comes the citizens will pull together in patriotic fervor and stop criticizing the rulers. As we topple over into scarcity the elites of the world will fight over the last resources. This war will ultimately become nuclear. This is extinction.
The Big Truth
Humans cannot live on this planet in perpetuity unless they live in balance with the biological world . For thousands of years now, humans have lived by taking more than they give. Chopping down forests without planting a tree. We see the result. When a forest is injured by fire or tornado a system of biological progression of healing takes place wherein a succession of plant guilds grow and lay down their bodies until the soil and guilds reach back to the climax ecosystem. Climax ecosystems all over the planet is the basic health of the planet. Look out your back door and see if you see a climax ecosystem. We have much ecological restoration to do if we are going to consider ourselves a mature, adult species that lives on a healthy earth. Humans can’t eat rocks, they must have a biological habitat.
The Call for Heroines
Just maybe, some humans can squeeze through the bottleneck by creating a new culture that seeks to live in balance and restore the earth (and having a culture commensurate with those values). Are there heroines willing to take that chance? If the earth can be re-colonized by mature humans in small colonies that live on restored watersheds around the world, in ecologically balanced villages, some may survive- to become the distant ancestors of an even more distant human species.
Heroines, what is it worth to you to save our species? Will you take the chance? Happily, the beginnings of a new culture has already been created that intuitively responds to that question. We have guidance and resources. Thousands of ecovillages exist around the planet. Check http://gen.ecovillage.org/ . Permaculture can produce more food per acre than the industrial system while building soil and increasing species diversity. Check www.permaculture.org
We can create housing from local materials that will heat and cool itself without external energy. www.alternativebuilder.com and the International Living Building Institute www.ilbi.org
Consider this: if you are not actively moving to build this new green world, YOU ARE IRRELEVANT in the long run; to your species, the earth and our great, great grandchildren.
By Wm. H. Kötke, author of The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future and Garden Planet: The Present Phase Change of the Human Species, available at the usual places. He may be contacted at: wmkotke@gmail.com