Diffusion and Darkness

(written on July 6, 2005)

It took some ten thousand years for agriculture to spread across the face of Eurasia and about another 1500 to spread to the Americas, as humans emerged from hunting and gathering, mostly like through chance observances of what happened when they dropped seeds in one place or another, leaving the area in the fall and returning in the spring.
When agriculture became consolidated in ancient civilization, nobles and kings pursued hunting as a sport, at times banning all others from pursuing it.

It has taken industrialization some two-hundred fifty years to spread across the face of the globe.
For some years now, people in the early industrialized countries – like retirees who worked all their lives in factories or, more likely, offices – pursue traditional agriculture (gardening) as a sport or hobby.

Now with the emergence of China, India and others as industrial powers, the headstart enjoyed by the early industrialized countries of Europe and their main colonial offspring is being overcome.

It may be the case one day, perhaps soon, that people in the early industrialized countries will pursue industrial enterprises as a hobby or sport, or at least they may attempt to do so for a while, sitting on their wealth.

Through the various stages of hunting & gathering, nomadism, agriculture and industrialization, vestiges, as well as significant groups, representing each stage remain, and in the midst of it all there have been wars, barbarians waiting at the gates, plunging the various civilizations into a dark age.

Europe, for example, has not yet recovered psychologically and spiritually from its two civil wars in the Twentienth Century – and it may never do so for as long as Tietmeyer says "No!".

Of course another dark age is still possible as the early industrialized nations compete with the newly industrialized nations for control over energy resources and with the nations that sit atop the main geological/geographical locations of one of the main such resources still in use today.

A serious world energy summit would be auspicable, but for the moment corporate and nationalist egoism still rules the day. Meanwhile, the barbarians still wait at the gates.