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Golden Earring - Tits 'N Ass (2LP Coloured)Format: 2 x LP, Coloured VinylCatalogue No.: MOVLP550CBarcode: 0602445547487Release Date: 14 Oct 2022Genre: Rock SIDE A 1. IDENTICAL 2. LITTLE TIME BOMB 3. COOL AS IT GETS 4. ACROBATS AND CLOWNS SIDE B 1. WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT LOVE 2. STILL GOT THE KEYS TO MY FIRST CADILLAC 3. DOPE RUNNER SIDE C1. THIS LOVE2. STRATOSPHERE3. OVER THE CLIFF INTO THE DEEP DEEP BLUE4. FLOWERS IN THE MUD SIDE D1. JUSTIN TIME2. AVENUE OF BROKEN DREAMS3. WANTED BY WOMEN
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4.8 ★★★★★
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★★★★★ 4
Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up
What is the difference between our 21st century global civilization, the ancient Sumerians, the Easter Islanders of Cook's day, empirical Rome, or the Maya civilization. Answer, not much. The last four are all societies that had their heyday, become stuck in a paradigm, and then brought ecological disaster on themselves via overpopulation and over exploitation of natural resources. "Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up", Wrights quotes from some pertinent graffiti. The cost this time could be in the billions of souls.
This a short book 132 pages of actual text with another 68 or so of footnotes at the end. It is a mad rush through human history exploring the collapse of those civilizations and a couple that have been more sustainable.
Wright also explores the traps of progress. That is mankind becomes so good at hunting he drives his food source into extinction. Then we become so proficient at an irrigation technology we ruin the land. We become so good at weapons we create bombs that could ruin the whole world. As a race, he contends, we seem to push every technology to the brink, to our collective woe.
I read with highlighter in hand. I had to restrain myself for marking whole long sections. As it is, the book now has a pink glow. Several pages have yellow tabs so I can find passages easily again. One such passage from the book summarizes it for me:
"The human inability to foresee - or to watch out for - long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer."
I remember as a biology major we studied the boom and bust cycle of animal populations. It was suggested in class that the human animal could follow the same cycle. The professor dismissed the idea, but not so Wright. He sees us at the high point in a few years, then the collapse unless we act now.
One other passage really struck home with me: "The idea that the world must be run by the stock market is as mad as any other fundamentalist delusion, Islamic, Christian, or Marxist." That tears at the very sand we have our society built on.
The sheer pace of Wright's march through history mirrors the author's urgency about how long we have to act to save our society. The countdown has already begun. The question remains, do we have the gumption to take the necessary action.
The book is at its heart liberal, and rightly so. Any possible solution to forestall the potential social collapse will not be from the top of the pyramid. They long ago seemed to have forgotten the concept of usufruct; we are just borrowing this planet from our children and grandchildren. Wright holds out a glimmer of hope, but the candle is flickering.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2010
★★★★★ 5
A short book loaded with sharp insights
Every year, Canadians eagerly huddle around their radios to listen to the Massey Lectures, broadcast by the CBC. For the 2004 season, Ronald Wright was the honored speaker. He presented a series of five lectures, titled A Short History of Progress. In 2005, Wright's presentation was published as a short book, and it became a bestseller. Martin Scorsese's movie, Surviving Progress, was based on the book.
It was an amazing success for a story contrary to our most holy cultural myths. Wright believed that the benefits of progress were highly overrated, because of their huge costs. Indeed, progress was approaching the point of becoming a serious threat to the existence of humankind. "This new century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all the dark ages in our past."
He pointed out that the world was dotted with the ruins of ancient crash sites, civilizations that self-destructed. At each of these wrecks, modern science can, in essence, retrieve the "black box," and discover why the mighty society crashed and burned. There is a clear pattern. Each one crashed because it destroyed what it depended on for its survival.
Wright takes us on a quick tour of the collapse of Sumer, Easter Island, the Roman Empire, and the Mayans. He explains why the two oddballs, China and Egypt, are taking longer than average to self-destruct. The fatal defects of agriculture and civilization are old news for the folks who have been paying attention. It has become customary for these folks to believe that "The Fall" took place when humans began to domesticate plants and animals.
Wright thinks the truth is more complicated. What makes this book unique and provocative is his notion of progress traps. The benefits of innovation often encourage society to live in a new way, while burning the bridges behind them as they advance. Society can find itself trapped in an unsustainable way of living, and it's no longer possible to just turn around and painlessly return to a simpler mode. Like today, we know that the temporary bubble of cheap energy is about over, and our entire way of life is dependent on cheap energy. We're trapped.
Some types of progress do not disrupt the balance of the ecosystem, like using a rock to crack nuts. But our ability to stand upright freed our hands for working with tools and weapons, which launched a million year process of experimentation and innovation that gradually snowballed over time.
We tend to assume that during the long era of hunting and gathering our ancestors were as mindful as the few hunting cultures that managed to survive on the fringes into the twentieth century. But in earlier eras, when big game was abundant, wise stewardship was not mandatory. Sloppy tribes could survive -- for a while.
Before they got horses, Indians of the American west would drive herds of buffalo off cliffs, killing many at a time. They took what they needed, and left the rest for legions of scavengers. One site in Colorado contained the carcasses of 152 buffalo. A trader in the northern Rockies witnessed about 250 buffalo being killed at one time. Wright mentioned two Upper Paleolithic sites I had not heard of -- 1,000 mammoth skeletons were found at Piedmont in the Czech Republic, and the remains of over 100,000 horses were found at Solutré in France.
Over time, progress perfected our hunting systems. Our supply of high-quality food seemed to be infinite. It was our first experience of prosperity and leisure. Folks had time to take their paint sets into caves and do gorgeous portraits of the animals they lived with, venerated, killed, and ate.
Naturally, our population grew. More babies grew up to be hunters, and the availability of game eventually decreased. The grand era of cave painting ended, and we began hunting rabbits. We depleted species after species, unconsciously gliding into our first serious progress trap.
Some groups scrambled to find alternatives, foraging around beaches, estuaries, wetlands, and bogs. Some learned how to reap the tiny seeds of wild grasses. By and by, the end of the hunting way of life came into view, about 10,000 years ago. "They lived high for a while, then starved."
Having destroyed the abundant game, it was impossible to return to simpler living. This was a progress trap, and it led directly into a far more dangerous progress trap, the domestication of plants and animals. Agriculture and civilization were accidents, and they threw open the gateway to 10,000 years of monotony, drudgery, misery, and ecocide. Wright says that civilization is a pyramid scheme; we live today at the expense of those who come after us.
For most of human history, the rate of progress was so slow that it was usually invisible. But the last six or seven generations have been blindsided by a typhoon of explosive change. Progress had a habit of giving birth to problems that could only be solved by more progress. Progress was the most diabolically wicked curse that you could ever imagine. Maybe we should turn it into an insulting obscenity: "progress you!"
Climate scientists have created models showing weather trends over the last 250,000 years, based on ice cores. Agriculture probably didn't start earlier because climate trends were unstable. Big swings could take place over the course of decades. In the last 10,000 years, the climate has been unusually stable. A return to instability will make civilization impossible.
Joseph Tainter studied how civilizations collapse, and he described three highways to disaster: the Runaway Train (out-of-control problems), the Dinosaur (indifference to dangers), and the House of Cards (irreversible disintegration). He predicted that the next collapse would be global in scale.
Finally, the solution: "The reform that is needed is... simply the transition from short-term thinking to long-term." Can we do it?
We are quite clever, but seldom wise, according to Wright. Ordinary animals, like our ancestors, had no need for long-term thinking, because life was always lived in the here and now. "Free Beer Tomorrow" reads the flashing neon sign on the tavern, but we never exist in tomorrow.
The great news is that we now possess a mountain of black boxes. For the first time in the human journey, a growing number of people comprehend our great mistakes, and are capable of envisioning a new path that eventually abandons our embarrassing boo-boos forever. All the old barriers to wisdom and healing have been swept away (in theory).
Everywhere you look these days; people are stumbling around staring at tiny screens and furiously typing -- eagerly communicating with world experts, engaging in profound discussions, watching videos rich with illuminating information, and reading the works of green visionaries. It's a magnificent sight to behold -- the best is yet to come!
Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable
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Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2013
★★★★★ 5
Wright is right
The fact Wright attacks popular concepts of progress is enough to merit five stars.
Until 1955, when I was 25, I naively believed progress was inevitable, natural, and simply a part of human nature and society. I attended the Earl Lectures that year. Swiss Theologian Emil Brunner presented three addresses on "Faith, Hope, and Love" at Berkeley, California. Westminster Press published his series in a book given the same title. I shall quote a few remarks.
Brunner traced the burgioning faith in progress to the nineteenth century, when "Darwin's theory of evolution seemed so to support and enlarge this optimistic evaluation of progress as to see it in a cosmic perspective." But the doctrine of progress is not the same as evolution.
"Although this idea of progress had a success for which the word 'triumph' is hardly an exaggeration, there were warning voices raised against it, voices of men of weight and importance who were not willng to accept the new doctrine," he said. "It was a new doctrine because it was not known to antiquity, it was not known in the time of the Reformation, it was unknown in all Asiatic culture. It was a new thing! The idea of progress became an axiomatic conviction which needed no proof and could not be disproved."
At one point, Brunner said, "Since Hiroshima the world does not believe in progress anymore." The end of WWII was still fresh in our memories, and I suppose that's why he said it. We know, today, that it didn't take long for much of the world to revive and renew its faith in progress. And now it's stronger--and more dangerous--than ever.
I'm not opposed to every aspect of progress. Progress, when it moves in wholesome and healthy directions, is a blessing. I'm glad my dentist is able to fill--and save--my teeth without pain. And when it came time for my doctor to pull my cataracts and replace them with implanted lenses, I marveled at the miracle. It was a quick and painless operation, and now I have wonderful vision.
It's that dogmatic idea of progress based on greed and cold indifference to global warming that concerns me. It's that ongoing waste of limited resources, whether they be animal, vegetable or mineral, that concerns me. We are pulling the carpet from beneath our feet, and the king is pulling hardest of all. And who is the king? Ignorance! Ignorance is king!
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Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2008
★★★★★ 5
My favorite book, in any genre
Ronald Wright is an amazing scholar and writer. His style is fun and easy to read while delivering impeccable historical research. I have listed to this book several times over the years and I appreciate it more each time. I recommend the audio version more than the print version because of the compelling way Mr. Wright delivers this 4-Part lecture series to his audience (now in book form).
Note to Amazon: Please make this book available on Audible, CDs are cumbersome.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2018
★★★★★ 4
How many trees do we have left?
In this book, the author takes a look at the downfall of civilizations. Yes, that's plural. There are several models of how civilization is progressing. One is that we're getting better and better as time goes by. Another, less popular one states that we are actually in decline, going down from some sort of golden age. You'll find many of these proponents in the old age homes and such. For them, the only disagreement is when we are declining from.
Wright takes a look at the cyclical nature of the rise and fall of civilizations, taking examples from several once- prospering civilizations. This book stands as a call to action that something must be done to grow smartly and be careful on how we allocate the scant resources we have left. While he doesn't hit an anything new, this book's strength is its concise nature. The several examples are familiar and in that have more impact.
The strongest example is one he visits several times to show an analogy of current times: Easter Island. This isolated speck in the Pacific was once a thriving mini-civilization with culture and art. And a lot of trees. These trees helped the islanders fish and raise their ceremonial head sculptures. However, these trees also were a poorly cultivated resource. Someone not too long ago cut down the last tree, and the island is now a wasteland and anthropological curiosity. We are doing the same thing. How many trees do we have left to cut?
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Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2009
