Nature and Civilization

In several posts, I've pointed out the odd malice that Western culture has toward the material world. The religious idea of a soul that's distinct from matter pervades almost every aspect of daily life and is the basis for opinions about the treatment of the natural world, and the treatment of animals, even domestic animals and pets. The idea that we are separate from nature is a bizarre fiction that even pervades environmentalism--the natural world is a thing to be managed and maintained in a static condition.

For more than 10,000 years, the tribes who would eventually become the people of the Western were on the move into new frontiers. They conquered, exploited, and used up lands. (Their conquests included the people of the West.) The consumption of the land is currently masked by the widespread availability of petroleum and chemical fertilizers.

Whatever the historic, indigenous society of European peoples was, the information is lost. The ability to live in a stable equilibrium with the natural world is lost. (Note that what's stable could vary wildly with techniques and methods)

That information might be the holy grail, or the red-sea parting, or the Arc that takes a small group of people to Eden.