Re: <nettime> Bioregionalism

[mp via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org>]

On 7/21/23 15:13, Joseph Rabie via Nettime-tmp wrote:

> I am curious about this determinism that "mp" postulates – that the
> worm was in the fruit, so to speak, the moment some human, ten
> thousand years ago, had the brainwave of planting a wheat field.
>
> That from that moment on, with the concepts and practises that were
> their logical consequence, we were set onto the tragic path that has
> led us inevitably to the Capitalocene.
>
> I do not think that it is correct to equate a small wheat field in
> ancient Irak to a mega-farm in the American Midwest. The ancient idea
> of abundance, of the breadbasket, has both a social and aesthetic
> value that are profoundly anchored in the collective psyche, and
> positive vision of the rural landscape.
Not intending to plead for determinism. Merely pointing at the 
conditions and the specific tools underpinning that type of 
civilisation, especially the plough, which rips open the skin of the 
earth, let's the nutrients bleed out, extracts the resources and leaves 
the soil depleted. It is a pattern and it repeats. With land with 
people. It permits, but does not determine, certain actions. James 
Scott's Against the Grain is useful here.
Class society, enslavement and whatever else could have found other 
platforms to rest on. Of course.
However, as per Montgomery, who calls it the most destructive invention 
ever made, the plough is extractive and eventually the soil dies. Then 
whoever was living on it go away.
It already happened in "our culture" - as it did in all those that came 
before. We are here, still, only because petrochemical input makes it 
possible to carry on a little further.
All this is just to say that premodernity was not, as originally 
suggested, in harmony with nature. They were also ploughing themselves 
to death. That is a romantic view, I belief, which obscures the continuity.
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