It’s good to see some of the millennia-old illusions about history being slowly peeled away. To speak of the Roman Empire as, “the world’s greatest killing machine” is refreshingly honest. But to refer to it as bringing “civilization” continues the perpetuation of old delusions. A millennia-old Stockholm syndrome is just
Continue readingTag: anthropology
Writings of J. Todd Ring: BLOWBACK – And Collapse
JFK, MLK, The CIA – And The Collapse Of The West Yes, the evidence is clear: the CIA killed JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X. They are the goons of the corporate-state oligarchy. What did you think they do? Defend freedom and democracy? Were you born yesterday? (Read, Killing Hope,
Continue readingKersplebedeb: Human History Gets a Rewrite: A Review of “The Dawn of Everything” [The Atlantic]
[This review originally appeared in the November 2021 issue of the The Atlantic. The Dawn of Everything is now available at LeftWingBooks.net] Many years ago, when I was a junior professor at Yale, I cold-called a colleague in the anthropology department for assistance with a project I was working
Continue readingKersplebedeb: The Radical Promise of Human History: A Review of “The Dawn of Everything” [Boston Review]
[This review originally appeared in the Boston Review, November 3, 2021.] The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity David Graeber and David Wengrow [Available now at LeftWingBooks.net] The standard history of humanity goes something like this. Roughly 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens first evolved somewhere on
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Do You Want To Be An Ape, Or A Lion? On Alphas and The Sociology Of Delusion
This video/talk (linked below) expresses the social psychology underlying the deep, global crisis of legitimacy which the ruling elite are now facing. Kudos for that. However, it also reveals an utter ignorance of anthropology (see Eisler, Gimbutas, and Bookchin), and it expresses support for an obsolete social model based on
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: On Puritan-Capitalism: Money As The Measure Of All Things
The mechanistic materialist world view, which the West, beginning with Europe, adopted a mere 400 years ago, and then exported through economic, financial, military and cultural colonialism and neocolonialism to the rest of the world, has been nothing short of a cultural, sociological, political, economic, ecological, spiritual, public health and
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Big Brother Is Watching You – and Yes, It Matters
I talked to my boy in the car this past weekend about what to do when he drives, if he has any problems; and he talked to me about the language learning, free software that he uses on his phone. Two days later, Virgin Mobile, now owned by Bell, sends
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Overviews of philosophy, religion, politics, history & sociology: where one might begin – or continue in more depth
Fascinating look here, in this BBC podcast (linked below), at the history, sociology, psychology, theology and politics of fundamentalism, evangelism, millennialism & apocalyptism. See also, Michael Grosso’s, The Millennium Myth, & The Millennium Book of Prophecy by John Hogue. My own views in terms of religious philosophy, political philosophy and
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Gender, Hierarchy, Civilization & Collapse: A Few Thoughts
What did Sumeria ever do for us? Invented writing, our concepts of time, irrigation, cities, created the first literature…little stuff like that. Sumeria predates ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Biblical times, though it was a completely forgotten civilization until very recently. The civilization spanned roughly 3,500 years, between 5,500
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Kindred Spirits & “Civilization”
Thinking about questions of human society and what is “civilized” or “civilization” makes me realize again how much I agree with Chomsky, Gandhi and Thoreau. They have all been deeply critical of what is called Western “civilization”. It also makes me think it’s time to read Vine Deloria Jr. All
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The end of civilization? I’d like to see its beginning
Civilization? Technology does not define it. Morality does. That makes all empires uncivilized, because they are based in conquest, plunder, mass murder and theft. Amazing… Scholars still talking about the Roman Empire as civilized and civilizing… By what definition? Because they had sewers? I agree with Gandhi, Western civilization,
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Musings On History: Goths, the Fall of Rome, and the Future of Humanity
I love a good mystery. Who were the Goths? Where did they come from? How did they manage to sack Rome and defeat the most powerful empire the world had ever seen? What is their true cultural, mythological, spiritual, philosophical and ideological history? (Genetic history means little, since we
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: History Repeats: The Decline & Fall of the Western Corporate Empire
“The Goths remained on Roman land and would ally themselves with the Roman army. Later, however, one man, a Goth and former Roman commander, rose up against Rome – a man who only asked for what had been promised him – a man who would do what no other had
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Work and Workaholism: Puritanism, and A Day Off
This morning when I got up, feeling exhausted again from the on-going 30-year stint of sleeplessness and insomnia, I thought, I should take a day off – considering I pretty much never take a day off. (Some people imagine that writers and philosophers sit around all day staring at their
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Unplug: Nine Weeks To Basic Clarity
Important, extremely useful books here. A brain washing, in the sense of clearing away the fog and gaining some clarity and perspective, is critically needed, now more than ever. What Huxley and Orwell warned of is here. We need to read, reflect, and disconnect from the mediadrug. Shut off the
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Central Challenge Of Our Time
What is the central challenge of our time? It is not what most people think it is. It is not race or gender, or climate change, or the environment broadly, or issues of war and peace, or poverty, or justice, or equality, or fighting terrorism, crime or violence, WMDs and
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Collapse of Modern Civilization
More than 150 years ago Thoreau commented, “Our sills are all rotten.” He was right. It is for that reason that Western, and Westernized, “modern” “civilization” is collapsing. This could be cataclysmic, of course, (as in, an ecological holocaust), or relatively peaceful, (akin to the Maya abandoning their great cities
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Fantasy and Indoctrination: Rough notes on a few fantasy novels: part two
Here are two more fantasy books that I could not get through. That makes three in a row. And to think, I had a love affair with Terry Brookes’ Shannara series! (I read something like 20 Shannara novels in a row, and loved all of them, other than the last
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Degeneration, Collapse, and Rebirth
What we are facing is systemic degeneration: ecologically, culturally, spiritually, intellectually, psychologically, socially, and biologically in terms of degenerating health and shortening life spans. This is the slow-motion collapse of a civilization. What is needed is not to self-medicate or mask the symptoms, or to manage the symptoms of degeneration,
Continue readingThings Are Good: Our Collective Memory Lasts Thousands of Years
When European explorers made first contact with peoples around the world both cultures changed. Unfortunately for those being contacted they were changed by a lot of diseases and exploitation (sadly the exploitation continues to this day). Europeans also ignored the long history of the peoples they met and devalued their
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