{"id":146,"date":"2010-08-03T08:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T08:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2010\/08\/pandoras-seed-the-unforeseen-cost-of-civilization\/"},"modified":"2010-08-03T08:42:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-03T08:42:00","slug":"pandoras-seed-the-unforeseen-cost-of-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2010\/08\/pandoras-seed-the-unforeseen-cost-of-civilization.html","title":{"rendered":"Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/div>\n

My son and I are preparing for our last trip of the summer \u2013 our annual 5-day adventure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. A little taste of something like our hunter-gatherer ancestors\u2019 life style.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It occurs to me that one big difference between them and us is the material that our gear is made of. Ours will mostly be poly-something and theirs was mostly animal byproducts. But perhaps the biggest difference is that we can\u2019t replace our gear ourselves but rely on a complex web of exchange.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking these thoughts because I just finished Spencer Wells\u2019 Pandora\u2019s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization<\/i>.\u00a0 I picked up the book a couple weeks back after hearing an interview of Wells, \u201cSeeds of Destruction,\u201d on Minnesota Public Radio. Click here<\/a> for that.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Wells is into tracing the movements of our ancestors from the near die-off ~70,000 years ago (we got down to between 2 and 10 thousand humans) to world dominance and what all that means for where we might be going in the future and how.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The die-off\/rebound period is a good news\/bad news thing about our natures. The bright side is that confronted with an environment that wasn\u2019t working for how we had become accustomed to living, our ancestors made cultural adaptations that were successful beyond anything the planet had ever seen.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The bad news is that it took a near die off before we were ready to let go and change. With peak-oil and global warming staring us in the face, I wonder if it\u2019ll take a near die-off before we are willing to change dramatically. <\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/span>
\u201cHad my back to the wall for so long, it\u2019s stuck,\u201d is a Bob line that comes to mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Pandora\u2019s Seed<\/i> reinforces and gives lucid examples about what\u2019s already clear: the way we\u2019ve been directing our greed for about 70,000 years has reached its limit. We now need to want less with as much creativity as we\u2019ve applied to wanting more.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one of Wells\u2019 last bits:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026at the present critical point in human history, were we have the tools to begin to solve some of the problems set in motion by the neolithic Revolution, saving ourselves will mean accepting human nature, not suppressing it. It will mean reassessing our cultural emphasis on expansion, acquisition, and perfectibility.\u201d<\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/span>
Imho, one way through this is for humanity to rediscover meaning in our spiritual inheritance (in the postmodern context not through Fundamentalistically pretending to be premoderns) and redirect our aspirations for living a life that counts to plumbing the depths of the nature of being itself. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My son and I are preparing for our last trip of the summer \u2013 our annual 5-day adventure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. A little taste of something like our hunter-gatherer ancestors\u2019 life style.\u00a0 It occurs to me that one big difference between them and us is the material that our gear is made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My son and I are preparing for our last trip of the summer - our annual 5-day adventure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. 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