Prologue

A Terracotta Keystone

Prologue

~Exert: Graduate thesis of Roger Atomire, The philosophies of man, civilization verses nature.~

Ancient peoples abide by the laws of nature. As the great thinker Luise Artacac once wrote “I have deduced the laws that govern nature of both man and animal, I dare say thee laws of the world itself, down to three statements. All things, even those of the same species and family, are not created equal. Secondly, the better will take from the lesser whatever it desires and to the extent that its own superiority allows. And finally, nothing is permanently superior, or permanent at all.”

Most of us do not like that second statement, and so we hide from it. The quote is admittedly, direct and bold, and not entirely true. Never the less, is it not that exact thing that all people in all places fear. No man fears what is weaker that him, that would be absurd. But we all fear that someone or something stronger will come and take from us if we are found to be the lesser.

So we ban together into groups and try to pretend that these fundamental laws do not exist. In a group we are all stronger and so we no longer have to fear from the greater. This is not a brilliant leap of humanity, animals of all kinds ban together in groups for strength. These groups of men continued to fight, against the stronger or to become them. The response? We create much larger groups. Groups with rules and people to enforce those rules, and we call it civilization.

In regards to civilization there are two major flaws, of each I will discuss in turn.

Firstly is what I refer to as the violence illusion. When we create a civilization we act as if we have created a system that protects us from violence. In fact, we often judge the success of our civilization by its ability to keep violence away. This is a reasonable mistake to make. Tigers no longer leap out of the bushes at us, and our neighbor no longer hits us with a rock for our food. Why? Because we all follow the rules that we have made.

But what if someone does not follow our rules? The answer is easy, we enforce them. At first we may fine this person, or in some cultures shame him. But if this person continues to refuse to follow our rules we will arrest him, beat him, or kill him. Even if this happens rarely, many still follow the rules because such things might happen to them. We have simply traded violence in front of us, to threatening each other with it. All laws of any society come at the threat of violence, so do not be fooled into thinking that we live in any form of peace. We simply take our violence on credit.

I am not deducing whether or not this is an improvement. Simply clearing the fog. A wise man told me that “Violence is always a last resort.” Most of us would agree, but think about this quote. It does not say that violence “should be” or that it “usually is”. It is always a last resort for the simple reason that it is the only option that will always yield results...

...The second major problem with civilization, is that it dose not prevent the aforementioned three laws of nature. We certainly are not all identical or equal. The greater still takes form the lesser. Both legally and not. Both within a civilization, and between civilizations themselves. And not one civilization in history has granted immortality.

Thus the question of civilization versus nature is a joke. We do not act outside of nature or against it. We have always been within it scope. We falsely assume that our intellect means that we are something different, something better. Glorified ants, carrying out natures course on a nationalistic scale. This being true there is one statement that we can apply to all civilizations past, present, and future.

It is going to fall, and it will be at the cause of something stronger...