There are four essential phenomena that have been responsible for most epidemics and pandemics. Each phenomenon began when DI essentially replaced IW throughout the world. They include all or some combination of (1) Destruction of forests (2) Large scale wars (3) Overcrowded, polluted living conditions (4) Large-scale animal husbandry. Consider this brief history of pandemics:
Plague of Athens (circa 430 BCE): Athenians had built walls stretching from their seaport to the city of Athens that enclosed citizens in crowded and unsanitary living conditions during the Peloponnesian War. By the war's end, widespread removal of forests for timber and grazing caused such serious erosion that springs and streams disappeared. Forests were also deliberately burned as a war strategy.
Antonine Plague (165-180): Roman Soldiers brought back smallpox after returning home from a war that killed over 5 million people in the Roman empire. The conditions of war combined with previous intensive deforestation for clearing land for grains, olives and grapes as well as for construction were responsible for the plague.The Great Plague of the Byzantine Empire (527 to 564): Once again military campaigns involve with the siege of Rome and most of the Italian peninsula coupled with extensive destruction of forests for agriculture brought forth a disease carried by fleas and rats that killed off over ten percent of the population from Egypt through Asia Minor.
The Black Death: (1346-1353): Although there are various theories as to whether this was another bacterial disease coming from infected rodents or a virus, most authorities say it resulted from extensive commerce and overcrowded cities that followed famines, deforestation, inequality and warfare. Estimates are that it wiped out 1/3 of Europe's population. Cocoliztli epidemic: (1545-1548): After the invasion of the Americas, decimated Indigenous cultures were forced into easily governable areas where conversion to Christianity and the raising of animals imported from Europe created a pandemic that killed up to 90 percent of the native population of the native people. Russian plague (1770-1772): During and following the Russo-Turkish war, crowded, horrible sewage problems in Moscow, rapid population growth and industrial pollution killed a thousand people a day.Spanish Flu (1918-1920): This pandemic killed an estimated 500 million people from the South Seas to the North Pole fell according to some estimates, with around 600,000 in the U.S. Once again, it came from the cramped living quarters of soldiers combined with decimation of forests and soil throughout World War I primarily for wartime lumber needs.
As the scope of human destruction of the natural world expands to every inch of the globe, this brief history of pandemics and our awareness of climate change, extinction rates, water and air pollution and warfare offer us a terminal prognosis. We can continue with the same fear-based dominant worldview that hopes technology and money will somehow save us or we can remember who we really are and reconstruct our societies in ways that follow IW. Another look at the worldview comparison chart reveals how DW is responsible for our many plagues, not just the disease, but the violence, climate change and inequalities that surround us. If you agree, then how difficult is it to use them for all our decisions? All that is required is metacognitive reflection on which worldview truly guides us, followed by using self managed trance-based learning to "reprogram" our essentially hypnotized minds. There are few of us, Indigenous or otherwise, who are not somehow hypnotized by one of the beliefs that has emerged from the past 10,000 years of living in a world operating according to DW.
According to Hopi mythology, this won't be the first time we have to do this. Their Creation Story says humans were given nine finite worlds, in essence only nine chances, to live life in accord with the Natural laws of interconnectedness given to us. Each world has all that is needed for life in balance. However, on the first one, we forgot the ways we were to live and the Creator destroyed the world to purify it, after choosing some of those who had not forgotten the original instructions and sending them to the next world. This happened two more times. The third time the purification was a great flood. So the Creator destroyed the first three worlds because each time humans were given a chance, they became arrogant, suspicious, warlike, disrespect of nature, etc. We are now nearing the end of the 4th world. We know there are small pockets of Indigenous Peoples (those chosen to survive previously) who still remember the old ways. Whether we can learn from them soon enough to stay in this world, or whether there will be enough who respect the old ways to help start life again on the 5th world, is the question.
It would seem that each of these different worlds exists on Earth. The current one began with small bands who survived the last catastrophe, gathering and hunting while moving from place to place, they did not really have philosophical worldview precepts. They survived by learning how to live in relative harmony with their environment. Diet, exercise, hygiene, social purpose, life skills, communication, play, cooperation and rest replicated that of other-than-human life forms from which we probably learned much about individual well-being and mutual aid. As environmental conditions caused small bands to complement foraging and hunting with planting, perhaps we can even add the domestication of some animals, they recognized early on the risks of staying in one place. Some created civilizations in one place under IW so as to prosper without loss of balance, some did not.
Perhaps those who were especially productive had surpluses that led to competition instead of cooperation as a main feature of survival. Some got greedy and rationalized new behaviors by dismissing and attacking the original ways. Now the Creator is in the process of purifying the world again. Can we fearlessly reclaim our original worldview and reconstruct social systems before a purification much larger than COVID-19 occurs? Or must we go through another catastrophe of proportions akin to the great flood in hopes that those who survive will rebuild with IW in mind? It is time to come to terms with the prognosis for civilization in any event.
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