From our perspective as a modern society, the actions of the Xhosa would seem foolhardy, even insane. First let me say, I’m not at all against alternate energy, or improved or even different technology. Heck, I drive an electric car myself and have done two solar power projects. But Waxman-Markey, if enacted, will be the equivalent of killing all our cattle at once. It took us over 100 years to get where we are now, we can’t expect change overnight, it must be gradual.
If NASA’s James Hansen can be an advocate, then I may as well suggest that you send this story to your elected federal representatives and to your local letters to the editor, as is our right in the US Democracy constititional republic – Anthony
Death of a Civilization
by David Deming
Over the past several years we have learned that small groups of people can engage in mass suicide. In 1978, 918 members of the Peoples’ Temple led by Jim Jones perished after drinking poisoned koolaid. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult died after drugging themselves and tieing plastic bags around their heads. Unfortunately, history also demonstrates that it is possible for an entire civilization to commit suicide by intentionally destroying the means of its subsistence.
In the early nineteenth century, the British colonized Southeast Africa. The native Xhosa resisted, but suffered repeated and humiliating defeats at the hands of British military forces. The Xhosa lost their independence and their native land became an English colony. The British adopted a policy of westernizing the Xhosa. They were to be converted to Christianity, and their native culture and religion was to be wiped out. Under the stress of being confronted by a superior and irresistible technology, the Xhosa developed feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. In this climate, a prophet appeared.
In April of 1856, a fifteen-year-old girl named Nongqawuse heard a voice telling her that the Xhosa must kill all their cattle, stop cultivating their fields, and destroy their stores of grain and food. The voice insisted that the Xhosa must also get rid of their hoes, cooking pots, and every utensil necessary for the maintenance of life. Once these things were accomplished, a new day would magically dawn. Everything necessary for life would spring spontaneously from the earth. The dead would be resurrected. The blind would see and the old would have their youth restored. New food and livestock would appear in abundance, spontaneously sprouting from the earth. The British would be swept into the sea, and the Xhosa would be restored to their former glory. What was promised was nothing less than the establishment of paradise on earth.
Nongqawuse told this story to her guardian and uncle, Mhlakaza. At first, the uncle was skeptical. But he became a believer after accompanying his niece to the spot where she heard the voices. Although Mhlakaza heard nothing, he became convinced that Nongqawuse was hearing the voice of her dead father, and that the instructions must be obeyed. Mhlakaza became the chief prophet and leader of the cattle-killing movement.
News of the prophecy spread rapidly, and within a few weeks the Xhosa king, Sarhili, became a convert. He ordered the Xhosa to slaughter their cattle and, in a symbolic act, killed his favorite ox. As the hysteria widened, other Xhosa began to have visions. Some saw shadows of the resurrected dead arising from the sea, standing in rushes on the river bank, or even floating in the air. Everywhere that people looked, they found evidence to support what they desperately wanted to be true.
The believers began their work in earnest. Vast amounts of grain were taken out of storage and scattered on the ground to rot. Cattle were killed so quickly and on such an immense scale that vultures could not entirely devour the rotting flesh. The ultimate number of cattle that the Xhosa slaughtered was 400,000. After killing their livestock, the Xhosa built new, larger kraals to hold the marvelous new beasts that they anticipated would rise out of the earth. The impetus of the movement became irresistible.
The resurrection of the dead was predicted to occur on the full moon of June, 1856. Nothing happened. The chief prophet of the cattle-killing movement, Mhlakaza, moved the date to the full moon of August. But again the prophecy was not fulfilled.
The cattle-killing movement now began to enter a final, deadly phase, which its own internal logic dictated as inevitable. The failure of the prophecies was blamed on the fact that the cattle-killing had not been completed. Most believers had retained a few cattle, chiefly consisting of milk cows that provided an immediate and continuous food supply. Worse yet, there was a minority community of skeptical non-believers who refused to kill their livestock.
The fall planting season came and went. Believers threw their spades into the rivers and did not sow a single seed in the ground. By December of 1856, the Xhosa began to feel the pangs of hunger. They scoured the fields and woods for berries and roots, and attempted to eat bark stripped from trees. Mhlakaza set a new date of December 11 for the fulfillment of the prophecy. When the anticipated event did not occur, unbelievers were blamed.
The resurrection was rescheduled yet again for February 16, 1857, but the believers were again disappointed. Even this late, the average believer still had three or four head of livestock alive. The repeated failure of the prophecies could only mean that the Xhosa had failed to fulfill the necessary requirement of killing every last head of cattle. Now, they finally began to complete the killing process. Not only cattle were slaughtered, but also chickens and goats. Any viable means of sustenance had to be destroyed. Any cattle that might have escaped earlier killing were now slaughtered for food.
Serious famine began in late spring of 1857. All the food was gone. The starving population broke into stables and ate horse food. They gathered bones that had lay bleaching in the sun for years and tried to make soup. They ate grass. Maddened by hunger, some resorted to cannibalism. Weakened by starvation, family members often had to lay and watch dogs devour the corpses of their spouses and children. Those who did not die directly from hunger fell prey to disease. To the end, true believers never renounced their faith. They simply starved to death, blaming the failure of the prophecy on the doubts of non-believers.
By the end of 1858, the Xhosa population had dropped from 105,000 to 26,000. Forty to fifty-thousand people starved to death, and the rest migrated. With Xhosa civilization destroyed, the land was cleared for white settlement. The British found that those Xhosa who survived proved to be docile and useful servants. What the British Empire had been unable to accomplish in more than fifty years of aggressive colonialism, the Xhosa did to themselves in less than two years.
Western civilization now stands on the brink of repeating the experience of the Xhosa. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, Europe and North America have enjoyed the greatest prosperity ever known on earth. Life expectancy has doubled. In a little more than two hundred years, every objective measure of human welfare has increased more than in all of previous human history.
But Western Civilization is coasting on an impetus provided by our ancestors. There is scarcely anyone alive in Europe or America today who believes in the superiority of Western society. Guilt and shame hang around our necks like millstones, dragging our emasculated culture to the verge of self-immolation. Whatever faults the British Empire-builders may have had, they were certain of themselves.
Our forefathers built a technological civilization based on energy provided by carbon-based fossil fuels. Without the inexpensive and reliable energy provided by coal, oil, and gas, our civilization would quickly collapse. The prophets of global warming now want us to do precisely that.
Like the prophet Mhlakaza, Al Gore promises that if we stop using carbon-based energy, new energy technologies will magically appear. The laws of physics and chemistry will be repealed by political will power. We will achieve prosperity by destroying the very means by which prosperity is created.
While Western Civilization sits confused, crippled with self-doubt and guilt, the Chinese are rapidly building an energy-intensive technological civilization. They have 2,000 coal-fired power plants, and are currently constructing new ones at the rate of one a week. In China, more people believe in free-market economics than in the US. Our Asian friends are about to be nominated by history as the new torchbearers of human progress.
May 13, 2009
David Deming [send him mail] is associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
D. King (13:43:31) :
David Ball (23:35:58) :
D.King (17:25:13) Thanks for coming out and posting an intelligent addition to the commentary.
If I thought there was a chance, even a small chance,
that rational argument and debate, could make any
difference, I would engage in it. The problem is that
we are arguing science and method, and they are arguing
ideology. There is no common ground. Please watch this
video and tell me what you see. This man is going to
change your life, my life, and more importantly, the lives
of millions of people in the third world. He hasn’t read
the bill he is voting on, but assures us that the consensus
vets the results. That’s what I meant by “bucket of stupid.”
And more.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=408_1243808281
No matter how valid or eloquent your argument, the
results will be the same. They’re not listening to you.
The problem is that ideology is leading science and method.
Now you need to know the objectives behind the ideology.
And AGW/Climate Change is only a small part of the surprises the have in store for us.
http://green-agenda.com
Agenda 21 United Nations: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
Speaking of Solzhenitsyn, his most famous novel is “The First Circle,” –title taken I think from Dante’s Inferno– the first level of Hell. This is where rationalists and skeptics are sent. Their only punishment is to live without hope.
So be it. Heaven for climate, Hell for company. It’s a true pleasure to discover a site like Anthony’s, and all the thoughtful people who congregate here. Just what I need in those times when I wonder if I’m the only sane person left.
UK Sceptic, I was horrified, just horrified, by the degradation in UK Science examination which you showed in your links. Physics in my time was about grasping the basic principles of physics, doing experiments using equipment and methods that proved or used or at least verified the principles, in ways and with equipment not so far removed from the original discoverers that the experience of discovery and proof could get lost. Title, apparatus, method, observations, conclusion. Every time. Now, it seems parrots rule ok.
Geoff Chambers, well said.
I’ve been tussling with a South African PhD scientist who cannot distinguish between parroting peer-reviewed material and checking the proof for himself. Reckons I’m a danger, perverting folk from taking the action needed to stop AGW. Looks like folk like him are writing the syllabuses now. And he’s the one with the science degree, not me. God help us.
All the time, I’m asking myself, WHAT CAN I DO to restore Science? I explode within, with frustration, then find another way to channel that frustration positively; then the whole process repeats… today I updated a page of bumper stickers. I’m still certain we NEED a skeptics’ Climate Science wiki… but I’m not the one to drive it through. But I’m being encouraged to turn my Primer (click my name) into a Dummies Guide… well, an Unconventional Dummies Guide… heck, we need a whole SERIES of Unconventional Dummies Guides, to restore and reclaim every department of real Science, the kind that everyone can participate in, that is about thinking for oneself, observing, looking for the patterns because patterns are beautiful and patterns yield the laws that give power…
E M Smith, are you going to write an Unconventional Dummies Guide yourself, so your children CAN learn the science that the present system denies them?
Aynsley Wellow, please rewrite your book as a small book in ordinary language for ordinary folk. Think of it like Schumacher’s “Guide for the Perplexed”. Condense the concepts and use diagrams /pictures to make them memorable, if appropriate, so that it can be the best-seller your $30 book cannot be. I’m sure your concepts will thereby actually improve. I’m sure they won’t lose out by pruning. We need reform in Science and that needs you. IMHO.
Ron de Haan (14:56:30) :
Ron,
What I don’t get is why?
Power and control seems petty and small minded.
If that’s the case though, I’ve had pets more self-
actualized!
Dave
Change built on a foundation of unbiased scientifically verifiable observation and tested hypothesis leads to great advances in human, environmental, and animal life. Change based on shadows and spin leads to horrific loss of human, environmental, and animal life.
Stewart and Harding also point to attributes of apocalypticism that describe the constant ascribing of sinister motives to those who present dissenting views: climate sceptics are in the pay of fossil fuel corporations, Lomborg’s analysis will assist these interests, and so on. Such conspiracy theories at once serve to defend the prevailing paradigm, reinforce solidarity among the adherents and reinforce their sense of purpose:
Conspiracy theories can identify absolute truths about the world while dismissing holders of power as sinister, corrupt, and deceptive; they can also resurrect agency and the sense of a privileged community ‘in the know,’ and an otherwise bleak present can become charged with purpose and focus (Stewart and Harding, 1999: 294).’
Scientists such as Lord May who commit the genetic fallacy, attributing the dissident views of climate sceptics to the ‘sinister, corrupt and deceptive’ antics of ExxonMobil, and who make statements that are logically identical to accusations of witchcraft, probably do not think that they have much in common with pre-Enlightenment societies.
===
I note with amusement that “Bucket of Stupid” used almost these same words – blaming the oil companies directly and exaggerating the impact of man on the environment to demand HIS IMAGED view of the world be imposed – with great harm to billions and tremendous loss of life to other millions – on the rest of the world of the population.
Quoting BOS above:
“Consider the huge amount of waste resulting from the ridiculous levels of consumerism in recent years. We denude our planet of trees, suck all the fish out of the oceans and expect everything will remain hunky-dory. (Incidentally, I wasn’t aware that Gore advocated stopping using carbon fuels. Thats a neat little propaganda trick.)”
Yes, Gore and his ilk do demand that we stop the use of carbon fuels, they DO exaggerate trends – invent trends when they need to, create false data, and promote the IMAGE of false so-called “peer-review” process and “government agencies” of like-minded “peers” who create false reports.
Yes, it IS about power. Money. Control. The enviro extremists CRAVE it and demand utter control over other people’s lives. The oil companies? Name their lies? Name their false reports? Name their propaganda and tell us how much they have paid? The environment socialists? Now, they are demanding 1.3 trillion in carbon taxes and a destroyed economy – for nothing. No good. No value. No useful product.
Pelosi already USED the false AGW crisis to raise oil prices in 2007 and 2008 – THAT is destroyed the previous rising markets and directly led to today’s failure of the housing, stock, insurance, and banking and automotive markets. Hint: It wasn’t the oil companies and utilities that destroyed last year’s earnings. It was the deliberate work of the enviro interests.
Trees? Give the poor more money, more energy, more “life” and THEY will stop burning trees. Today America has more forests than ever before – but YOU want to deny the poor overseas energy, health, and food, clean water, and life itself as you kill 100,000,000 by demanding THEY stop using DDT.
Gore – and his cohorts – ARE demanding we stop using coal and carbon – but can replace it with nothing but the “perfect new cows” rising from the river as the African tribes wanted. There ARE NO alternatives to conventional energy now – we can come close, and need to as economics demand and the supply and demand cycle continue.
FALSE promises of fake “renewable” energy claims only produce less energy at higher prices. And THAT kills people. The ultimate demand of most enviro’s sicne the 1970’s.
Phil Nizialek (09:51:17) :
Count me as one of the few who seriously believes in the superiority of Western society.
Unfortunately Phil, as the general election of 2008 illustrates, only 46.3% of the U.S. population can be included in that category (give or take the several thousand in Florida who may or may not understand the voting process).
Robert A Cook PE (16:53:43) :
…but YOU want to deny the poor overseas energy, health, and food, clean water, and life itself as you kill 100,000,000 by demanding THEY stop using DDT.
It’s O.K. Robert, the U.N. gave them bed nets.
D. King (15:37:29) :
Ron de Haan (14:56:30) :
Ron,
What I don’t get is why?
Power and control seems petty and small minded.
If that’s the case though, I’ve had pets more self-
actualized!
Dave
It’s about population control Dave, nothing more, nothing less.
@max
“So be it. Heaven for climate, Hell for company. It’s a true pleasure to discover a site like Anthony’s, and all the thoughtful people who congregate here. Just what I need in those times when I wonder if I’m the only sane person left.”
I know, I know. Anthony has created a place where we can huddle against the encroaching darkness and laugh, cry and blow on the flame of reason.
And hope.
“UK Sceptic (01:56:00) :
This begins with our children. In the UK kids are taught to be ashamed of their history. The three main sciences; biology, chemistry and physics (if you are lucky enough to attend a school that actually distinguishes between them) are dumbed down to near idiocy and possess a very biased slant towards climate change and other revenue raising environmental issues.
Bear in mind that the following GCSE papers are for 16 year olds:
Biology: http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/qp-ms/AQA-BLY1AP-W-QP-MAR08.PDF
Chemistry: http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/qp-ms/AQA-CHY1AP-W-QP-MAR08.PDF
Physics: http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/qp-ms/AQA-PHY1AP-W-QP-MAR08.PDF
Here’s what one appalled physics teacher has to say:
http://www.wellingtongrey.net/articles/archive/2007-06-07–open-letter-aqa.html
Kill science and there’s a good chance you can eventually render reason ineffective. At least that seems to be the reasoning behind the systematic destruction of the UK’s educational standards, particularly where science and technology are concerned. And we wonder why scientific consensus and peer reviewed false data is becoming the norm? Thankfully there are many people who are not willing to be intellectually disenfranchised which is why sites like WUWT are so precious.”
As a former UK resident and London Board GCE certificate(s) holder, this is such blatant destruction of the UK education system. It’s spreading however, to New Zealand and Australia unfortunately.
Years ago (1966) in anthropology class (Culture and Personality) we were taught about these sort of things, the Xhosa, the Ghost Dance, and Cargo Cults. These phenomena occur in societies under stress. I think Nazi Germany was another case of the same.
Look for things to get “Crazy Eddie” all over the world in the decades to come. Gorebull warming is just the beginning.
Although I grasp the sentiment of the article, I sense that it will make AGW believers even more certain of their beliefs, because they think it is rooted in science rather than an extraordinary credence given to a few key personalities.
I also think that it will take a generational change before scientists start analyzing critically the AGW panic and the personalities involved.
I’ve already opined that this blog (amongst others) will be come an invaluable resource for historians of the future. And people will never believe how much hysteria happened over a total warming over the 20th Century of 0.7C
D. King, please take your negativity elsewhere. You have still not contributed anything of any value to the discussion. I get the impression that you would be unable to do so. Best to just give up ’cause no one is listening. I think you are totally wrong about that. The paradigm is shifting as more people are waking up and starting to ask the tougher questions. I love all the bad mouthing this site gets from sites like RC, Climate Progress, DesmogBlog. We are having an impact and it is NOT being well received. Means we’ve hit a nerve. Time for a root canal, ……
David Ball (21:28:23) :
D. King, please take your negativity elsewhere. You have still not contributed anything of any value to the discussion. I get the impression that you would be unable to do so. Best to just give up ’cause no one is listening.
You win. I’m out.
This article does make some sense.
“Someone” is indeed herding us all toward the cliffs.
I think that this “CAGW crisis” is just another arm of the Cloward-Piven strategy of orchestrated crisis that was laid out in 1966. Connect the dots (and there are “dots” all over the internet). Saul Alinsky may have written Rules for Radicals but Cloward-Piven wrote the battle plan that’s being implemented right now.
David Horowitz summarizes it as:
“The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”
Cap and Trade (and poor innocent Co2) is the weapon.
Every segment of our economy/society is being targeted.
“Interesting Times”, indeed.
Hey Anthony,
have you seen this ??
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/05/20090528_ibuki_e.html
Its an Initial Analysis of Observation Data
(Greenhouse Gas Concentrations)
from “IBUKI” Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT)
🙂
This article is extremely timely. It parallels today’s eco-centric and left movements’ efforts to a tee. Each day they kill our cattle by putting energy resources off limits, using govt and enviro regulations to drive our factories and means of production overseas. Go visit a lefty site like Alternet, and see how many people there hate capitalism and American prosperity. Those are also people who worship the green movement.
When I was in high school a guy could get out of high school and go right to work in a factory or machine shop and make a decent middle class living. In Milwaukee we were the world’s machine shop. We had heavy industry making equipment that built the rest of the world. The US had a steel industry, a mining industry, and even an electronics industry. It was a time of great prosperity and able tradesmen.
Our modern day Xhosa (The political left) strangled our industry through government regulation, taxation, union corruption, liability lawsuit lottery, and extreme environmentalism. The once prosperous areas of Milwaukee are now ghettos with neighborhood after neighborhood of people unable to sustain themselves without the government’s help. We have killed the cattle, and we are now eating the remains. With the government out of money and begging China to fund our debt, the meat is now tainted, and will soon make us very ill.
A question the frightens me is, what would happen if we needed a World War 2 sized industrial war effort? We have killed off our mining and raw materials resource base, our oil industry, our steel industry, our electronics industry, the machine and fabrication shops, and the big assembly lines. It has been so long that the production equipment and the means to make it, as well as many of those tradesmen are now gone. What are we going to do, harass our enemy into submission with insurance agents, investment advisors, and fast food workers? The best weapon that we would have would be to send our political left and environmental movement to their country, and wait 30 years for them to cripple them too.
Slightly O/T- Yes I look at the SSN daily, and have concern about counting every pore and phage. As our minimum progresses and the AGW world falls apart, they will deny the minimum by using our new updated counts against the historical visible counts of Dalton or Maunder. There needs to be elaboration that the standards have changed.
[snip – policy. No valid email address given with this comment.]
trying to better ourselves isn’t really quite the same thing. our ingenuity that was fueled by fossil fuels led to the creation of nuclear which emits no carbon while producing energy. It also lead to PV cells, solar thermal, and geo-thermal. We can move on . the people in the story could have eaten something else that the British brought like pork.
Dear moderator,
The email address I gave was valid: no-spam@pobox.com
I get mail there daily.
I have other email addresses, but don’t want to give one that would reveal my identity. I could loose my job for publicly making such statements.
Sincerely,
Student-J
REPLY: Sorry, not buying it. The email appears generic, see http://pobox.com/ which is a generic email service “no-spam” has no obvious connection to a person.
Here’s some advice, if you don’t want to risk your job by saying outlandish things on blogs that could be traced to you, best then to simply watch and zip it. I’m not in the anonymous coward day care business, so don’t waste my time. – Anthony
@ur momisugly David Ball (21:28:23) – I am appalled by your tone and response to the comments made by D. King (Dave), which, like others I actually agree with.
As hunter (04:15:15) said: “‘It all boils down to a bucket of stupid’ – As good a description of AGW as I have yet read in one sentance”.
He later points out, quite rightly the problems that we face because the AGW agenda is now being driven by an ideology, not by science and reason.
I couldn’t agree more, and in the face of the tactics used by the AGW-droids, as you so tersely pointed out, we need as much humour as we can muster.
Your dismissal of Dave’s light-hearted commentary was rude and unnecessary and I hope you will apologise.
Anthony has shown that by a sensible, level-headed and, sometime homorous approach we CAN challenge the AGW myth; to start treating visitors here in the same way as the pro-AGW sites you mention makes us no better than them…
All of those people who say we will develop alternatives to fossil fuels are overlooking the fact that, if there WERE such alternatives, we would ALREADY BE USING THEM. All of the low-hanging energy fruit have already been found. There are NO substitutes on the horizon for portable fossil fuel engines; wind and solar only work for stationary installations (and are NOT environmentally neutral, and DO have deaths associated with their use, and can NOT replace fossil fueled power plants because their power-gathering mechanisms require FAR more land for equivalent power generation, and are subject to inherent periodic shutdowns [clouds, nightfall, variable weather, etc.]) We have already seen what political approval of corn-based ethanol has done; it raised the cost of food in general, and meat in particular, and farming on a scale necessary to replace fossil fuels is going to have an environmental impact larger than that of fossil fuels. Hydrogen is NOT a power source; hydrogen is a very reactive element, so all hydrogen is already locked into compounds, which have to be broken down, with energy inputs, before it can be burned in an engine or run through a fuel cell, so using hydrogen for powering portable devices will require a LOT of stationary power generation (and I won’t even go into the problems of hydrogen storage). Personally, given all of the uses of petrochemicals as chemical feedstocks, I feel we are INSANE to keep simply burning the stuff, but for the foreseeable future, WE HAVE NO ALTERNATIVES. Wishful thinking is not going to change this.
Pragmatically speaking, we can keep doing as we have been doing, while frantically looking for alternatives (someone MIGHT find one), and develop nuclear power to allow us to shift to hydrogen for portable devices (nuclear power will give us the excess energy to produce hydrogen on a mass scale). Politically, it ain’t gonna happen, but as long as the consequences are after the next election cycle, political trumps pragmatic.
What Max said. I also thought that with his “bucket of stupid” comment, D. King was referring to the Alarmists and their cattle/civilization-destroying ways. David Ball apparently thought D. King was referring to the discussion here.
Perhaps if D. King checks back, he could confirm or deny my impression.
/Mr Lynn
Max,
Thanks for your kind words.
Mr. Lynn,
Yes
a fifteen-year-old girl named Nongqawuse heard a voice telling her that the Xhosa must kill all their cattle, stop cultivating their fields, and destroy their stores of grain and food. The voice insisted that the Xhosa must also get rid of their hoes, cooking pots, and every utensil necessary for the maintenance of life.
And windmills would save them…..Oh wait, that’s today.