There is only ONE Culture

One of our members on latoc (doomers.us - from lifeaftertheoilcrash.net) posted a very good description of "modern" culture and its origins. I'm posting it below.


These are thoughts that have been gelling in my mind for the past eight years. It has been a very hard road for my spirit to follow because I used to be a deeply religious person and was committed to my own religion with intensity and fervor. The depth of pain I have felt along the journey of discovery has been sometimes too overwhelming to bear. But, my conclusions are, to me, inescapable today. I started my journey with the book, "Ishmael," by Daniel Quinn. It opened my eyes to a new comprehension of the entire system of the dominant culture contrasted with the many indigenous cultures in the world.

In order to think about what might happen with a new emergent culture, we need to have a
strong grasp on exactly what is the culture of the world today. The indigenous cultures of the world are many and varied. There are bushmen in Africa who still maintain their culture and Inuits in the upper reaches of Canada who are struggling to resist the lure of technology. I believe there might even be a few Laplanders in Europe still in existence, perhaps a few Native Americans within the United States but most of them have sold out to food stamps and welfare checks. The Mayan culture in Mexico has survived mostly intact in some of the mountainous areas and there are other pockets of humans in various places throughout the world that have clung to their indigenous roots.The dominant culture that flows across most of the planet actually originated from one place: the fertile crescent. This is the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq/Iran area. It spread out in both directions - into Asia and Europe and from there across the world. This dominant culture includes all of the European nations of the Anglo-saxon and equally the Asian populations of China, Japan, etc. This culture has a characteristic that is easily recognized regarding its food source - it follows the path of totalitarian agriculture. This is agriculture that says anything that slows down the spread of our fields must be annihilated, whether that is a counter culture of hunter gatherers, a deer eating the wheat, or a micro-organism living in the soil and attacking the roots.There is one very specific commonality to all of these various dominant populations that runs through them - and has run through them from their earliest beginnings.

This single commonality is easily bypassed by people examining the "differences" in the cultures - the eastern mind versus the western mind, the inscrutability of the Tibetan monk versus the macho posturings of the Norwegian viking, the deadpan humor of the British people versus the
slapstick comedy of the Appalachian villager. It is this single common characteristic that I believe is the single reason for the destruction of the planet and of all its indigenous people.This is the concept that there is only one right way. It is most easily seen among the Christians who missioned their way across the world, bringing death and destruction to anyone who dared
contradict their edict that the only way into heaven was through Christ. But the "one right way" exists in every governmental action, every dictator's edicts, every single expansion of the culture across the world. It says, "our way is the only right way and therefore we have the right to annihilate you, assimilate you, subdue you, or destroy you." The part that has caused me so much deep pain is the realization of the other commonality among the entire dominant culture.
It is the commonality of religion. I identify the major religions as these: Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Christian, Islam, and Baha'i. Most people think there are major differences between the major religions of the world. They aren't different at all. They all believe that their way is the only right way. Most people also do not realize that all of these specific religions came out of
the fertile crescent area of the world. The Jews and Christians are not the only ones who claim ancestry back to Abraham. Buddhists and Hindus have a genealogy that points back to Abraham as an ancestor to both Buddha and Krishna, and the same is true for Zoroaster and Mohammad as well.What it comes down to is this. One culture and one religion, originating in the Euphrates valley, that believed itself the only carrier of the one right way, has become the single dominant culture of the entire planet and is intent on forcing it's rightness onto all the peoples of the world. Until we can break free of the shackles of the "one right way," we will continue to destroy the planet. It is not nationalism, patriotism, or political aspirations that must be eliminated. It is the belief that there is only one right way. The one right way of the dominant culture believes that man is separate from the earth, not a part of the rest of creation, somehow elevated above the other creatures on the planet, and heading for a "better life" somewhere after this life. As a consequence, the one right way includes the right to use up the planet on the way toward that better life. In the end, this has resulted in the destruction of the planet; the possible extinction level event in our future, the resource depletion all over the planet and the end of the world as we know it. The indigenous cultures of the earth still live with the planet rather than exploiting it. Resources are one's neighbors rather than tools for technological advances. They understand that the earth is our mother and to destroy the earth means we destroy ourselves.