Things Fall Apart...

As you can see from previous posts, this blog is more or less about the eventual downfall of mankind and ways to turn the corner on failed attempts at community and society. You may be asking "who's failing?" WE are failing! Capitalism is failing!

In my line of work, systems work in one basically designed pattern. When these systems break down, you are aging past an existence of vigor and your systems are losing steam. On the other hand, you could have some disease that causes you to take some kind of dramatic action, from lifestyle changes to aggressive medication treatments.

Maybe you can see the correlation to our style of economy. We are obviously at a point where something needs to be done to a (capitalistic) system that is failing. But why is it failing at such a, relatively, young age? I want you to ask yourself that question, but what I really want to do here is show everyone that its not only failing, it was never considered a truly long-lasting way to lead a community.

As we go into a weekend that will end in the honoring of a great man and the dawn of a new age in U.S. governmental history, I want to start the actual emphasis of my blog with a parable told in Daniel Quinn's, The Story of B:

"It is well known," B said, "that every piece of hand-woven cloth has an element of magic in it, which is the special magic of its weaver. This magic doesn't necessarily die with the individual weaver but rather can be passed on from generation to generation and shared among families and even whole nations, so that no one who is sensitive to such things can tell in a moment whether a piece of cloth was woven in Ireland or France or Virginia or Bavaria. This is true on every planet in the universe where weaving is practiced, and it was true on the planet I'd like to tell you about right now.

"It happened on this planet that a weaver named Nixt came along who was a strange compound of genius and insanity, violence and artistry, ruthlessness and charm--and this was the magic he wove into his cloth, and those who wore garments made from it became just like the weaver. The weaver was quickly renowned, and everyone wanted clothes imbued with his magic. Wearing such clothes, artists created masterpieces, merchants got rich, leaders extended their power, soldiers triumphed in battle, and lovers left their rivals in the dust. Almost immediately it was noticed that Nixtian magic had some drawbacks. Instead of lasting for centuries, artists' masterpieces tended to disintegrate after only decades. Instead of lasting for generations, merchants' riches tended to melt away in a single lifetime. Instead of lasting for decades, leaders' power tended to ebb away in years. Instead of lasting for years, lovers' charms tended to pall in months. No one cared. Artists wanted masterpieces, merchants wanted money, leaders wanted power, and lovers wanted conquests.

"Naturally every weaver in the land wanted to weave with Nixtian magic, and Nixt himself was soon so extravagantly wealthy that he was glad to share it with them. Within a generation, every single weaver in the realm was practicing only this one kind of magic and all others had been forgotten. From swaddling clothes to shrouds, everyone in the land wore clothes woven with Nixtian magic--and, as you can easily imagine, this nation almost overnight became preeminent among the nations of the world. There wasn't a thing to stop them from taking over the entire planet, and they proceeded to do so in just a few generations, and in every land they conquered, weavers who were practicing other kinds of magic either learned Nixtian magic or they took up some other occupation.

"The spread of Nixtian magic revealed another of its drawbacks. Its exhaustive qualities seemed to increase exponentially. When twice as many masterpieces were created with Nixtian magic, they disintegrated four times as fast. When three times as many mechants were getting rich with Nixtian magic, their money melted away nine times as fast. No one liked it, of course, but artists still wanted masterpieces, merchants still wanted wealth, leaders still wanted power, and so on.

"Within a thousand years, every weaver on the planet knew only one kind of magic and all others had been forgotten. Within another thousand years, it was forgotten that any other kind of magic had ever been practiced in weaving, and people soon ceased to think of it as magic at all; it was just part of the process of weaving, and for all they knew, this had always been the case. In other words, they experienced a Great Forgetting of their own. They eventually came to view Nixtian magic as just part of weaving--just the way people of our culture came to view totalitarian agriculture as just part of being human.

"The trouble was that once every man, woman, and child on the planet was wearing clothes woven by Nixtian magic, the exhaustive power of this magic was operating at such a high level that masterpieces were lasting only weeks--and no one wanted them. Fortunes were made and routinely lost within days, and merchants lived in a state of suicidal depression. Governments and whole political systems came and went like seasons of the year, and no one even bothered to learn the names of presidents or prime ministeres. Romances and love affairs seldom lasted for more than two or three hours.

"It was at this point of total systemic burnout that some enterprising paleoanthropologists happened quite fortuitously to discover that weaving had existed long before the time of Nixt, and that people had for hundreds of thousands of years been very happy to wear clothes woven with other kinds of magic. And amazingly enough--even with out Nixtian magic--artists had still occasionally produced masterpieces, merchants had gotten rich, leaders had become powerful, and lovers had made conquests. And, more important, these achievements had, by modern standards, been durable to an almost unthinkable degree.

"Terrifically excited, these paleoanthropologists brought their discovery to the attention of their department head and asked to be released from other duties so they could study ancient weavings and possibly even rediscover the magic employed in their production. 'I guess I don't get it,' the department head said, after patiently listening to their proposals. 'Why is it important to know what weavers were doing before the age of Nixt?'"


Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. day everyone.

Peace.