Tag: Roman Empire

In the name of progress!

Or might that be in the name of insanity?

John Hurlburt is a frequent contributor to Learning from Dogs, as a quick search through the blog will reveal.

A few days ago, John sent Jean and me a film to watch.  It was the documentary Surviving Progress.  We watched it on Monday evening.  Here’s more on the film and related information.

survivingprogresssplash3

Here’s the trailer.

Published on Apr 6, 2012

Surviving Progress Trailer (Documentary 2012).

Directed by Mathieu Roy, Surviving Progress documentary film is based on the best selling book A Short History of Progress. From Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, this provocative documentary explores the concept of progress in our modern world, guiding us through a sweeping but detailed survey of the major “progress traps” facing our civilization in the arenas of technology, economics, consumption, and the environment….

Like all films these days, there is an associated website, from which one can read the synopsis, as follows:

“Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.”

Surviving Progress presents the story of human advancement as awe-inspiring and double-edged. It reveals the grave risk of running the 21st century’s software — our know-how — on the ancient hardware of our primate brain which hasn’t been upgraded in 50,000 years. With rich imagery and immersive soundtrack, filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks launch us on a journey to contemplate our evolution from cave-dwellers to space explorers.

Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired this film, reveals how civilizations are repeatedly destroyed by “progress traps” — alluring technologies serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. With intersecting stories from a Chinese car-driving club, a Wall Street insider who exposes an out-of-control, environmentally rapacious financial elite, and eco-cops defending a scorched Amazon, the film lays stark evidence before us. In the past, we could use up a region’s resources and move on. But if today’s global civilization collapses from over-consumption, that’s it. We have no back-up planet.

Surviving Progress brings us thinkers who have probed our primate past, our brains, and our societies. Some amplify Wright’s urgent warning, while others have faith that the very progress which has put us in jeopardy is also the key to our salvation. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking looks to homes on other planets. Biologist Craig Venter, whose team decoded the human genome, designs synthetic organisms he hopes will create artificial food and fuel for all.

Distinguished Professor of Environment Vaclav Smil counters that five billion “have-nots” aspire to our affluent lifestyle and, without limits on the energy and resource-consumption of the “haves”, we face certain catastrophe. Others — including primatologist Jane Goodall, author Margaret Atwood, and activists from the Congo, Canada, and USA — place their hope in our ingenuity and moral evolution.

Surviving Progress leaves us with a challenge: To prove that making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead-end.

WikiPedia adds:

Surviving Progress is a 2011 Canadian documentary film loosely based on A Short History of Progress, a book and a 2004 Massey Lecture series by Ronald Wright about societal collapse. The film was produced by Daniel Louis, Denise Robert, and Gerry Flahive and written/directed by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks.

So now to reactions to the film.

To say that it was compelling watching is both correct and, yet, emotionally disconnected.

The blunt truth is that the film is scary beyond belief.  Like watching a giant wave about to engulf you, or a snake about to strike; nothing to do but be transfixed; to be mesmerized by these last few moments of your life.

Because a reasonable conclusion to the weight of evidence put forward by the film is that the time left to pull back from the certainty of the end of life on Planet Earth is minuscule. By that I mean we are speaking of a decade, perhaps two at most.  Ninety-nine percent of the people reading this, living in your neighborhood, or your region, or your country will suffer the terrible consequences of the impending end of this planet as a home for life.

Unless?

Unless there is most incredible awakening of global consciousness in the next two or three years.  Unless the free world, from the highest in those lands to the vast masses of decent, working people, say, “Enough is enough.”

Unless every level of society, from local and national Governments, from Universities, from Churches, from employers both large and small, recognize that this time it’s different.  This is about to become a global crisis.

I taken the following from the Amazon page for Ronald Wright’s book A Short History of Progress, that inspired the film:

From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity’s development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we’ve unleashed but have yet to control. It is Wright’s contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age.

“the 10,000-year old experiment that we’ve unleashed but have yet to control.”

So let’s seek some solace.  Back to John Hurlburt who in a post in July, Maybe home is found in our quietness, offered this:

Evening Meditation

Our world is increasingly spiritually, morally, mentally, physically and economically bankrupt. Many people would like to change the world one way or another. Most don’t really know why. Some folks simply don’t care. The idea is to leave life a bit better than we found it when we were born.

The fact is we’re all intrinsically sacred in a universe we didn’t create. We tend to prioritize illusion and delusion above reality. Playing God is a precursor of evil.  A supreme faith in Money is self contradictory and ultimately fatal. Arrogance compounds the problem.

We connect in unified awareness through serene meditation. We experience harmony within an emerging celestial symphony. Answers flow from the inside out as we surrender to the eternal energy flow.

Be still and know…

an old lamplighter

I was going to close with a quotation from that most famous of Brits, Winston Churchill.  The one that goes:  “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

But after I had put the post ‘to bed’, so to speak, I started to read the Transition Primer from Transition US.  It was such a positive message that I decided to write about Transition tomorrow. Then there was a quote in the Primer that just had to be the one to close today’s post.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead.

Ever noticed how quickly a dog returns to wagging its tail!

Lets try not to get stuck in a rut…

A fascinating look back at making tracks!

This came in from Suzann, Su to her friends, a few days ago.  Suzann is Dan Gomez’s sister and if Dan’s name is familiar it’s because he, too, sends in items for Learning from Dogs, the recent Tad too much cabin pressure being an example.  It was Su that invited me out to San Carlos, Mexico for Christmas 2007 which resulted in me meeting Jean, a long-time friend of Su, and, as they say, the rest is history!  OK, to the article from Su.

oooOOOooo

Here’s a question?

Think about railroad (railways in ‘English’!) tracks.  The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.  That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in Scotland, and Scots expatriates designed the US railroads.

Why did the Scots build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why that gauge then?  Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?  Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long-distance roads in Scotland, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?  Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including Scotland) for their legions.  Those roads have been used ever since. [And rarely repaired! 😉 Ed. ]

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts.  Which forever more everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.  Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Bureaucracies live forever….

So the next time you are handed a specification or a procedure or process and wonder ‘What horse’s ass came up with this?‘, you may be exactly right.  Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story. When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.  The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

oooOOOooo

Just a fabulously interesting account of something we all take for granted, or had done until now! Thank you so much, Su, for sharing that with everyone.