Spiritual Forum

One of our most fundamental cultural beliefs is this, that Civilization must continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance. This notion seems intrinsic to the human mind --self-evident, like The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Implicit in this belief about civilization is another: Civilization is humanity's ULTIMATE invention and can never be surpassed. Both these beliefs exemplify the cultural fallacy, which is the notion that one's beliefs are not merely expressions of one's culture but are intrinsic to the human mind itself. The effect of this fallacy is that it's almost impossible for the people of our culture to entertain the idea that there could be any invention beyond civilization. Civilization is the end, the very last and unsurpassable human social development.

No one is surprised to learn that bees are organized in a way that works for them or that wolves are organized in a way that works for them. Most people understand in a general way that the social organization of any given species evolved in the same way as other features of the species. Unworkable organizations were eliminated in exactly the same way that unworkable physical traits were eliminated--by the process known as natural selection. But there is an odd and unexamined prejudice against the idea that the very same process shaped the social organization of Homo over the three million years of his evolution. The people of our culture don't want to acknowledge that the tribe is for humans exactly what the pod is for whales or the troop is for baboons: the gift of millions of years of natural selection, not perfect--but damned hard to improve upon.

Civilization, in effect, represents an attempt to improve upon tribalism by replacing it with hierarchalism. Every civilization brought forth in the course of human history has been an intrinsically hierarchical affair--in every age and locale, East and West, as well as every civilization that grew up independently of ours in the New World. Because it's intrinsically hierarchical, civilization benefits members at the top very richly but benefits the masses at the bottom very poorly--and this has been so from the beginning. Tribalism, by contrast, is nonhierarchical and benefits all members with notable equality.

It's out of the question for us to "go back" to the tribalism we grew up with. There's no imaginable way to reestablish the ethnic boundaries that made that life work. But there's nothing sacrosanct about ethnic tribalism. Many successful tribal entities have evolved inside our culture that are not ethnic in any sense. A conspicuous example is the circus, a tribal enterprise that has been successful for centuries.

Beyond civilization isn't a geographical space (is not, for example, somewhere you "go and start a commune"). Beyond civilization is an unexplored cultural, social, and economic space. The New Tribal Revolution is our "escape route" to that space.

the above is from http://www.ishmael.com/origins/Beyond_Civilization/

and heres an amazon link for the book itself: http://www.amazon.ca/Beyond-Civilization-Humanitys-Great-Adventure/dp/0609805363

and a bit from the books blurb:

Futurist Daniel Quinn (Ishmael) dares to imagine a new approach to saving the world that involves deconstructing civilization. Quinn asks the radical yet fundamental questions about humanity such as, Why does civilization grow food, lock it up, and then make people earn money to buy it back? Why not progress "beyond civilization" and abandon the hierarchical lifestyles that cause many of our social problems? He challenges the "old mind" thinking that believes problems should be fixed with social programs. "Old minds think: How do we stop these bad things from happening?" Quinn writes. "New minds think: How do we make things the way we want them to be?"

Whether he is discussing Amish farming, homelessness, "tribal business," or holy work, Quinn's manifesto is highly digestible. Instead of writing dense, weighty chapters filled with self-important prose, he's assembled a series of brief one-page essays. His language is down to earth, his metaphors easy to grasp. As a result, readers can read about and ponder Beyond Civilization at a blissfully civilized pace. --Gail Hudson

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so. . .

perhaps at this time currently I may be asking for a storm, but. . 

was feeling I would post this to kind of start moving forward the creative gears a bit, and also perhaps kind of maybe contributing to a much more rapidly forming collective whole of mass world consciousness now, about these things, that we can all sense, of the psychic level on mass scale thats forming

and always remember their is no single person or organization that will be answering all our qualms in the "future", obviously, I still feel will be (and has been) a collective work, but also a collective mind or consciousness, of not just the way things are and can be, but also in the direct creation and building of the collaboratively collective new. Oh, and perhaps even someday (maybe soon even?) of a more real-time moment of action kind of way? hehe

so I'v been feeling, like others, more of a sense of the psychic level of human minds throughout the world, forming now, very rapidly into one whole, a kind of open table of transaction perhaps, without us even speaking to each other directly, individually, physically, etc etc

so see this book on its own as just one little crumb, as I'v always seen us, persons, as all having our own "crumbs" hehe, my little dummy word, hehe : )

also their have always been many big minds on these subjects, but lately I have been feeling that all knowledge will become a kind of open equilibrium of ever changing and ongoingly usable form, (perhaps maybe even functioning more like the endlessness of sacred geometry hehe, of course beyond the way the net has presented this situation already to us, but as always, it is all up to us to move actively forward, when we are ready of course)

cheers : )