Re: [PEN-L] How the West won the world

[Waistline2]

>>The scarcity issue is tricky , if you think about it. "Civilization" begins based on the origin of agriculture and the _surpluses_ (the opposite of scarcity) that agriculture provided. The surpluses are the original basis for non-producing, predominately mental "laborers", priests and chiefs. Somehow, in this fall from the Garden of Eden, these non-producers decide to become the original ruling , male supremacist, exploiting class. To do this they create _artificial_ scarcity, artificial Necessity ( I have a huge essay on Necessity I'd like to share with you). In a technological context in which they have the capacity to produce much more than hunters and gatherers, abundance and surplus, they institute artificial scarcity and artificial lack of Necessities for the oppressed masses in order to control that producing class mass !  This is of course the a fundamental thesis of Marxism. <<   Comment   I actually enjoy reading the Bible - the Old Testament, and found it very useful in its historical narrative. Have you read the Bible - the Old Testament?   The Biblical fall from Eden and the emergence of a ruling class as an exploiting class is separated in history by thousands of eras. I am not at all sure if the initial emergence of a ruling class is in fact a class as we tend to define class, rather than a caste rooted in cultural rituals and heredity structures of social life. Then of course the thing called male supremacy emerges much later in the human drama.   The fall from Eden - "East of Eden" or Exit from Eden implies and means a fundamental change in how the initial earthlings sustained themselves or were able to sustain themselves. Adam takes his women, clothes and Cadillac from Eden - a more than less closed self sustain ecosystem, and become a tiller of the land. In this narrative there is no surplus or desire for such or need for such because necessity is still tightly wedded to narrow biological instincts and the subjective perception and understanding of need.   The Biblical narrative becomes confusing because so many characters have the same name. There are several Enoch's but one of these Enoch's is established as "he how went forth to build the first cities of man."  Enoch means foundation.   Now one of the Enoch's is said to be the first to walk with God - not Adam, and is stated to be our first intellectual charged with charting the four corners of the earth and stated to have written 365 books. This is not the Enoch who went on to build cities of man. The Enoch who went on to build cities of man is said to be in the line of Cain and what separates him from Adam is generations or time frame or eras.   Here is what is being stated by way of Biblical narrative. Adam becomes a tiller of the land rather than a hunter gatherer as an interactive functioning of his environment and need. There are specific reasons why the human collective can never spontaneously become hunters, until another breach in the environment takes place, that limits the boundary of what is eatable. Even today, we cannot simply eat flesh without elaborate preparations.   At the point the Adamn leaves the Eden his need is for nutrient as opposed to what we today call food. His nutrient requirements had more than less been met by nature. Something happened to disrupt this relative equilibrium between need and the immediate surrounding (environment) meeting these needs.   Artificial scarcity - man made scarcity as political control/power, or what I generally call the control of scarcity arises at another stage of the human drama more far removed from Adams flight from Eden than our distance from the historical and figurative Christ.   The twin fist of scarcity and abundance is what drove the Adam and this women Eve ("if you think I'm getting ready to till the land and raise children you got the wrong women." To which Adam replies, "Baby I would rather stay home with the kids we are going to make anyway or at least until I can figure out something to till the land with.") from their abode in the Eden.   Scarcity and abundance are cyclical coinciding with the seasons, in a context of more than less intractable scarcity, given population growth and migrations trends driven by environmental factors, such as depletion of a given vegetation in a given ecosystem of a given community of individuals. In the life cycle of the individual one might experience abundance but we know better. This of course is not the case in a very cold environment where vegetation and fruits are extremely seasonal.   The women called Eve is roughly 300,000 years ago on the long end and about 180,000 on the short end. Abundance by any measure does not appear for many thousands of years (eras) later, nor is there any indication of an emergent division of labor in society, until thousands of era later.    Hunter and gathering is in my estimate a very mistaken concept because our species are birthed as gatherers and only become hunters later. If anything the gather-hunter appears much later in the human drama. The  . . .   More later . . . Eve is calling . . . got to do some cooking     Waistline