The Mindless Tenacity of Barbarism

The Mindless Tenacity of Barbarism

As I have pointed out in numerous essays before, one can easily differentiate between Civilized and Barbarian Institutions simply by applying one objective criteria -- Population, that is, Civilized Institutions allow and provide for high levels of population and population density, while Barbaric Institutions favor depopulation and only thrive when the population densities are relatively low.

What we see in History is a series of Cycles… Cycles composed of Spirals to be more exact… in which Civilizations rise up and Populations grow until they increase beyond a certain point where its Civilized Institutions can no longer manage all of the complexities and requirements involved in housing and feeding so many People. Then the disintegrative and destructive Institutions of Barbarism come into play, reducing the overall population factors to a level where Barbarians can stretch out and again be thoroughly comfortable.

It may appear that I am being over-simplistic, but from the Civilized standpoint anyway, Civilized Institutions can be equated to Goodness and Light, while Barbarism, of course, is Evil – the veritable Reign of Darkness.

It is a terrible moment in any society’s history – the point where Individual Survival is advanced more through Evil than through Good. At that point in time when suddenly a Civilization exceeds its grasp and the advantage goes to Barbarism, then Goodness becomes a liability. Evil rises up wearing two races – first, those best suited to murder and mayhem will be the Big Winners as Civilization collapses. They are cold-blooded demonic thugs, but they call themselves “Warriors”. The other Face of Barbarism makes the best use of its Feet – these are the swiftest and fleetest Refugees – those who can turn their back on their Old Society the quickest and most rapidly abandon their Fellow and Family – these are the Survivors who live to repopulate the Post-Civilized World.

So it is that everybody’s Family Tree takes root in a manure heap.

History shows us that there is not really much of a moral difference between Barbarism’s Murderous Thugs and the Refugees. We have often seen that large Demographic Movements of ‘refugees’ pushed out of one region by overwhelming force, well, that they in turn become the ‘Murderous Thugs’ that push another Group out down the line. You see, once it becomes embedded in a Society’s “Moral View” that “Other People Do Not Matter” and that there is some kind of equivalent ‘Moral Imperative” that Personal Advantage should supersede all else, then it is just as likely that the person, the Refugee, who runs away from his responsibilities, will also not hesitate to kill someone else for their wallet… giving himself a promotion to “Warrior”.

One would expect that the Refugee’s great suffering would purge him of evil and leave him in a state of Purity. But no… Suffering gives way to Vengeance and the character of a Refugee People becomes vindictive. Such victims only swear to never be made such victims again, and then they do their best to become exactly like the Marauders who had victimized them in the first place. Attila the Hun had been a Refugee.

Of course a certain practical ‘leaven’ for Civilization is embedded within Barbarian Societies, and that is simply that the largest band of Thugs generally wins when it comes to violent contests for Territory or Resources. Big Gangs defeat small gangs. It moves up the scale until we are talking about entire Armies. To put that many people together without causing more self-destruction than practical benefit, we would have to have the resurrection of some basic rules, agreements, contracts, and particularly the psychological seed-sprout that a Cooperating Society is more powerful than any group of individuals standing alone. The first ‘virtue’ in any wholly Barbarian Society is Loyalty.

Indeed, the more ‘Civilized’ a Barbarian Society manages to become, the more successful it will actually be… which of course gives us the Rise of our ‘Civilizations’. So we would expect that Civilizations would rise up quickly, no?

Well, yes and no. Civilizations do arise, but there are problems.

Remember how we agreed that Barbarism favors and enjoys low levels of Population. Well, in the worst and most absolute collapses of a Civilization – not just the bottom of one of the ‘Spirals’ as things get worse, but the bottoming of the entire Cycle – the De-population is so extreme that the individual surviving Barbarians have really no effective competition for Land or Resources after the ‘dust settles’, so to speak. After a Deep and Final Collapse of a Civilization, with Population Levels dropping by 80 or 90% in just one or two generations, then Life becomes a veritable ‘Free For All’. Survivors can pick between any two or three Estates or Plantations to move into and take over as uncontested personal property. Food becomes plentiful and cheap. But, most importantly to our point, nobody needs to owe anybody anything – not a single virtue is required to get by well in any Golden Age of Barbarism. But even this total absence of Virtue can be made out to seem like a virtue. Thus it is that Barbarians at their absolute lowest will create a quasi-virtue – really the absence of all real virtue, and they will call it Freedom. Or they will be brazen about it and defy every true model of Morality with such slogans as “Greed is Good”. At such periods in History it is the Antichrist who reigns on Earth.



So it is that Barbarians will enshrine Freedom as the source of all their Wealth and Happiness. But actually looking at the facts, as we have, we see that they only enjoyed such Prosperity and Plenty because everyone else had died. So it is that the Doctrines of Freedom followed closely on the heals of any Black Plague or Major Famine, and of course enjoy a re-invigorating echo after any particularly grisly War. A Few Survivors get to keep what is left behind by the Dead Many. And then The Scheming Beggar who moves into a Palace pretends to his children that he was the one who built it in the first place. Freedom is the Right every pillager claims to keep what he has stolen.


So it is that Barbaric Societies, as they enjoy the Lowest Population Levels immediately after any Major Depopulating Collapse, will hone their doctrines and political theories to justify selfishness and division. As population levels naturally increase, and competition again begins to rise, then we will have practical benefits again accruing to the Communities that can best manage to suppress the Demonic Call to Freedom so that they can multiply their powers through Cooperation. But with Selfishness and Freedom so intrinsically a part of each Society’s kind of “Core Folk Religion”, any institutions built around Cooperation will be qualified and compromised. Civilization will grow up with the original stain of Barbarism, and the more pronounced that stain, then the sooner it will undergo the Next Collapse, where its half-hearted Institutions of Civilization cannot provide for even a moderately high level of Population.

Contingency for World Economic Disaster

It seems that the entire World was caught flatfooted by the 2008 Economic Crisis. It makes me wonder whether it forced anybody to do any serious thinking as to what to do for the next round. And there will be a next round. The way such cycles work is that the swings become more frequent and more severe until it hits a bottom. Capitalists are famous for claiming that every Painful Recession is just a ‘Necessary Correction’. Well, the ‘correction’ for Capitalism, as a World Economic and Political System, may be about to hit ‘bottom’.

The big problem, as I see it, is the Growth Factor that seems necessary to Capitalism. Now, one can either have stability and equilibrium, or one can have Growth. And then Growth is only possible in an Open Ended Non-Saturated System. What is an Open Ended Non-Saturated System? Well, I shall provide an example in reverse and describe a Closed System. Imagine that instead of many Capitalist Banks, it is all just one Big Bank. It has ALL the money. Now it lends out it money expecting 6% interest on the principal. Well, where is this 6% extra money supposed to come from? In a closed System there is no extra money. The same goes in regards to Profits. Suppose there is One Big Factory that makes Everything and employs Everybody. Its Customers would also be its Employees. They would only have as much Purchasing Power as the same money that was paid to them to build what they are about to buy. There would be nothing left over for Profits. So both Interest and Profit are impossible in a Closed System. But Capitalism has not yet ever been ‘closed’. Capitalism always has sought its Growth in Foreign Markets. And then Capitalism also cheats by constantly expanding the Money Supply. Theoretically, some companies are supposed to make profits while other companies go bust. But imagine how happy the World would be if 6% of the Companies went bankrupt every year… it’d always be like it is now… and that’s a big problem. This is because Globalization is becoming a Closed Saturated System.

So far Capitalism had only been lucky. The discovery and opening up of the American and Australian Continents provided an escape valve for European Overpopulation, and then the discovery of Arabian Oil relieved for a while price saturation in the Energy Markets. America benefited by the Wars which virtually wiped out the rest of the World’s advanced economic powers. And the Wars also ‘corrected’ the population somewhat – the survivors after the War not only had their own jobs back, but the jobs of their Dead Buddies also… they had their pick and wages were high.

But now with One Global Economy, with no new open Continents, no new Energy Supplies, and with Machinery, Technology, Robotics and Automation taking over more and more of Labor’s Productivity; well, Commodity Prices will skyrocket just as 99 percent of the population lose their jobs and thus their Purchasing Power. Profits, Growth and Interest will be satisfied with the Cheating of the constant expansion of the Money Supply, but combined with increasing demand and scarcity of Food and Energy Commodities, it will all lead to a Hyper-Inflation and the Death of the American Dollar.

Does anybody have a plan?

Right now things are very touchy. Everybody seems to forget that just two short years ago the World was experiencing the beginnings of such a Commodity Price driven Inflationary Crunch. Indeed, that is what precipitated the Economic Downturn – so many Americans had to stop paying their mortgages because they needed the money they were earning for Food and Gas. The Downturn cut off the big demand for Commodities. But what will happen IMMEDIATELY after the mildest Recovery? The Commodities Crunch will pick up exactly where it left off. And the Swing will be worst because Prices will go far higher… all that New Money will go into circulation to buy the same limited supply of Stuff, leaving the Poor further behind than every before.

And it looks like everybody is just going to let it happen.

I suspect that China has some kind of a Secret Contingency drawn up. It doesn’t make sense that China lend America more money than America provides in payment for goods and services. It is as though China is both sending America goods and services AND they money to pay for them. In the short-term this may be necessary for China. China is holding so many trillions of American Dollars, that it thinks it necessary to jump into the breach to protect their value. But the continuous throwing away of its Wealth in order to float America can not continue forever. China must know that it is bankrupting itself by such a policy. Therefore, it is necessary to believe that such intelligent people as the Chinese must have decided on a point where they will Bail Out – where they will Cash Out on what dollars they have left, and use Emergency Powers to immediately transform over to a Planned Economy. We might be able to discern hints about such a move in the way China allocates funding for its Economic Infrastructure. When we see preparations for increased Domestic Consumption, large scale agriculture and transportation projects, then we can guess that China is about to Pull the Plug on the Dollar and weather the storm with its saved resources.

Europe, with absolutely no Leadership or resources, will simply collapse into another Dark Age, but this time with no Church to bail it out.

America also has no plans. Really, there should be Report to Work drills, where it is made clear to people that Employed or Not, people simply can’t just ‘stay home’. If the police ‘stayed home’… if the truck drivers who transport all the food ‘stayed home’… if the utility workers who provide electricity and water ‘stayed home’, well, the East and West Coast Urban Population Centers would collapse into starvation and food riots. The flow of refugees would be met by the Armed Resistance of all those American Gun Nuts. When it would be over not two out of a hundred Americans would still be alive.

But maybe THAT is the Plan. I’ve always said that Capitalism is Barbarism and Barbarism requires a low population density. Once 98% of everybody is dead, Capitalism will work just fine again. Don’t you just love these ‘healthy corrections’ that Capitalism is so famous for?