Calamitous events of recent times, both near and far, have given me pause in these latter days of 2021. They might have for you too.
I find myself feeling a deep knowing, as though it comes from far enough within me that it might even be reflected on my DNA. It has certainly reflected on my Spirit.
The civilisations that have grown and thrived all over our world since the Industrial Revolution, are now seeing their Days of Autumn slide into Winter’s embrace.
It is the way of all living things, this birth, growth, decay and death. And are not our civilisations living, breathing entities as well? The Macro reflecting the Micro?
Our species has been here many, many times before. More times than even the most ardent of archeologists can only find mere remnants of.
The great city-states of Mesopotamia, Central America, Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, all rose to great heights, and all, finally, fell into ruin. It is only hubris that leads us to believe we will end differently.
Perhaps because our world actually does encompass the entire world, and not the ‘known’ world of those times, we have been provided with a unique time-scale.
Will we collapse on the swords of this mess we’ve created and leave our descendants to scrabble among the ruins of their forbears?
It’s happened before.
Or will we reach the stars, whether they be metaphorical or literal?
And has that happened before too?
-oOo-
I found inspiration for this post in the series, ‘Fall Of Civilizations’, on YouTube. It’s well worth a look.
Widdershins Worlds 
I feel the same. Everything is cyclical, circular, we could be headed back to the starting point.
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I guess it depends on which starting point you want to start at. 🙂 … do we do ourselves in and a completely new species rises to fill the void? Are we reduced to subsistence farming and/or hunter-gatherers? Do the elite few use up the remaining resources maintaining their lifestyle for as long as they can while everyone else starves? … looming above all else in the climate catastrophe that we literally cannot avoid the consequences of anymore. The next few decades are going to be, hmm,’ interesting’.
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I think about this sort of thing a lot but I haven’t got the answers. Sometimes I’m feeling positive and think we will all collectively rise to a new level of consciousness and save ourselves but then …Twitter …and I think it’s impossible. Don’t know but room for hope.
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Twitter is like one of those ‘House of Mirrors’, where the reflected image is distorted, but unfortunately too many people think the distortion is reality.
I have hope too, not that ‘things will get better’ but that there will be ‘islands’, of sanity in among the coming chaos that will enable us as a species to emerge from this strange crucible of idiocy as grownups, and capable of enacting the truest possibilities … maybe. 🙂
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Sounds like a plan Widds
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Looks like a good set of podcasts. That old English poem about the Roman ruins sets you wondering how much they knew about the Roman Empire a thousand years ago compared to what we know now.
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I’m really enjoying them. 🙂
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A lot of people become reflective at the end of one year and the beginning of the next. This was an excellent post. I wonder if we have the courage to look behind us and fix the mistakes we made in the past? It might be a first!
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I’ve watched a few of the ‘Fall Of Civilizations’ episodes and I have to say it seems to be a case of ‘Oopsie, my bad’, and we move on to the next cycle without any thought of trying to repair what we broke. In many instances too, climate change played a big part in the collapse.
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Your intuition is correct.
https://theconversation.com/5-periods-of-mass-extinction-on-earth-are-we-entering-the-sixth-57575#:~:text=The%20fifth%20period%20of%20extinction,known%20as%20Cretaceous%2DTertiary%20extinction.&text=It's%20possibly%20the%20most%20known,the%20face%20of%20the%20earth.
I will close with this……”wherever there is a beginning, there will always be an end.”
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Always.
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I have children. They are just getting started, in many ways, in life. I’m not ready to lose hope for this generation. It has the same admixture of good, neutral/indifferent, and ‘bad’ kids as usual: human.
For me, fine. I’m 72, halfway through my magnum opus mainstream trilogy, and I’d like to see it finished and published, but it won’t make the same long-term difference as if I were 30. But I couldn’t have written it at 30.
My kids are at the place I was at 30-36: just making some of the BIG life decisions. And they got a start at some of that in a pandemic which hasn’t really abated enough in two years. I’m hoping they get some good times, too.
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I hope they do too. 🙂
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Interesting speculations. I think it hangs in the balance. The choice is ours. Will our civilisation come to a dreadful and painful end or will we rise and find our way forward? I’m not of the Elon Musk persuasion that sees our future in the stars. I’m too much of an earth shaman type for that. I’m enjoying your new thoughtful posts. 🙂
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Somedays I’m hopeful and others, not to much. It’s a process. Glad you’re enjoying them. I am too. 🙂
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I feel much the same 🙂
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We are living during scary times, but I have hope. I’m just hardwired that way! Merry Christmas, Widderwoman!
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Marry Christmas to you too, Susie, 😀
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I am afraid I have been saying this for some years now.
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Yep, me too. 😦
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I’m not holding out much hope for civilization, but I suspect we’ve been through this before. I just don’t understand the bent toward self-destruction. We’re a strange species. I’ll watch the youtube video later today. On a lighter note, wishing you a 2022 that surprises us with its truth, intelligence, and compassion. ❤
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Thanks for the good wishes 🙂 … may it be so for you too. 🙂
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The human species seems to me to be a most peculiar mix of innocence and arrogance. It might be best if we step aside and let the Dog Civilisation rise instead. Seriously so.
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Dogs, or octopussesesses. 🙂
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Good post. I think this year has given many of us pause for thought.
There are ruins, in folklore as well as on the ground, which tell us that another world is possible. It’s all there, in history and in the stories we tell, and the stories we share can amplify the positive voices of the future – kids we’ve raised and influenced, who will have better answers than we did.
Yes, our world is changing, but from an archaeological perspective (I studied prehistory) we’ve been here before. We’ll make it. It just won’t look like anything we recognise.
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Yep, I agree. 🙂
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Every nation seems to have its moment in the sun and some, get a second go, but only after a long [by human terms] period of dissolution. That is what’s happening to China at the moment. The old China reinvented itself multiple times during the course of 2000 years, but essentially stayed the same. Will be interesting to see how this new version fares. Will it turn into another dynasty after a period of ‘warlords’? Or will democracy emerge from prosperity?
All I know for sure is that neither Australia nor Canada has set the world on fire yet. That means our times is yet to come. 🙂
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Oh, you optimist, you! 😀
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Yeah, yeah…. 😉
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😀
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Great question. Things could go either way. Even if we are witnessing the end of our civilisation, I suspect there will be outcrops of alternative brilliance and surges of anarchistic never-say-die before the earth burns or drowns or suffocates or starves most of us. It is unusual for a day to go by in which I don’t think: I’m so glad to be alive in this complete madness.
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If I had my ‘druthers’, I’d get as far away from the coming times as I could … it would be interesting to see how it all turns out though. 🙂
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I get scared when I think about these things!
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