Topic: Beyond Civilisaiton: Hasidic Jews

100 years beyond civilisation

P eople will still be living here in one hundred years - if we start living a new way, soon,

Otherwise, not.

But how would we get there, and what would it look like? Utopians can't let go of the idea of sweeter, gentler, more loving people taking over. I prefer to look at what worked for millions of years for people as they are . Sainthood was not required.

To project into the future: as people begin going over the wall in the early decades of the new millennium, our societal guardians are at first alarmed, seeing it as portending the end of civilisation-as-we-know-it. They try heightening the wall with social and economic barbed wire but soon realise the futility of this. People will keep dragging stones if they're convinced there's no other way to go, but once another way opens up, nothing can stop them from defecting. Initially the defectors derive their living from the pyramid-builders. They interact more and more with each other, building their own intertribal economy.

After a hundred years civilisation is still hanging on at about half its present size. Half the world's population still belongs to the culture of maximum harm, but the other half, living tribally, enjoys a more modest lifestyle, directed toward getting more of what people want (as opposed to just getting more).
-Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilisation, page 115

The Jews have their religious and cultural traditions to bond them together. I wonder if that's what we're missing? Or just sheer numbers?

The one thing Judaism and credit unions have in common are they both depend on a "common bond" to maintain their integrity. That is what is needed in any community, whether it be a spiritual bond, an economic bond or simply a bond of caring for one another.

I would speculate Roxy's last question is answered yes, that is what we are missing, various traditions to bond cultures together.

One of my problems with the tribal business model is that it exists in the context of the "market economy" which is caught in the same basic increasing intensity cylcle of civilization. I have no interest in competing with slave labor in China, either for me or for them.

What, no miracles?

J ack and Jill spent some days with their friend Simon on his small sailboat. One morning they woke up to find the boat was sinking.

"What in the world are we going to do?" Jill asked.

"Don't worry," said Jack, "Simon is very ingenious."

Simon called to them, "Come on, we've got to abandon ship."

Jill was alarmed, but Jack reassured her that simon wouldn't let them down.

"We're only a hundred yards from shore," Simon said. "Let's go."

"But how are we going to save ourselves?" the couple wanted to know.

"We're going to swim for it, of course!" Seeing Jack's look of dissapointment, Simon asked him what was wrong.

Jack said, "I was hoping that you could find a way of translating us directly ashore, without our having to get wet. "

A n early reader expressed the same disappointment with me. He was hoping I'd be able to find a way of translating us directly to our new economic homeland without our having to "get wet" in the Taker economy that surrounds us. The ultimate New Tribal economy (which at best I can only dimly imagine) is the dry land ahead. To reach it while holding ourselves disdainfully aloof from the economy around us would make walking on water seem like a very minor miracle indeed.
-Daniel Quinn, "Beyond Civilisation", page 188

The market economy that we all hate so much has the one thing that we all need; control of all of the resources in the world just about. In order to have access to them, we need to lay claim to them. The only way to accumulate resources without being thrown in jail is to "earn" them.