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I take it 'suck eggs' refers to a return to a life of rusticity, or as the ancient Roman would say, return to a "pagan" (natural, rural, rustic, hillbillie) life? In which case, yeah, you cant go back. Back there aint there no more. However the point reminds me of the many comparisons of our culture with that of ancient Rome, the depravity of leaders which spread all the way down to the people, the hypocrisy, corruption, et al. All the rhetoric of sermons dating from that era which condemn a whole society which we still hear from pulpits now. But, if I carry the metaphor even further, and note that the new religion viewed the previous as 'old superstitions', so likewise we are now seeing the beginnings of a movement which views the religions (currently held by political and economic leaders) as 'old superstitions'. The modern global economy is efficient at unprecedented levels; this implies a degree of rigidity, and assumptions tend to get made about resource allocation which reflect a conventional lack of wisdom rather than, as they would all have us believe, on hardheaded realistic business analysis. Because it is all tied togather by assumptions, it could all collapse togather in a global economic financial panic. In a panic, people get irrational; one of the effects will likely produce a Luddite movement to destroy the machinery (ie computers) which automated and replaced careers which had ancient lineages and many adherents. In any case, we know a paradigm shift is at hand; either the Net and the global market will replace the nation state and the political process as final arbiter, or a collapse into anarchy eventually resolves into a modern feudalism, with local control over local resources. In either case, if the cultural cosmology follows the political system, then we will see the current vision of a steep pyramidal heavenly power structure of God and His bureaucrats replaced by a peer-to-peer system, where every place is as sacred as any other place, ie, a neo-paganism, a pantheism. Joseph Campbell would have a field day forever. ;-) On Fri, 05 Nov 1999 14:26:22 -0600, K. Kris Hirst wrote: DB>> Anyone who takes a long view of history might ponder >> our own time and whether the system they see is more >> sustainable than previous socio-economic systems that >> we now sort thru the rubble of. > This kind of discussion always reminds me of Walter Miller's _A Canticle > for Liebowitz._ While my philosophy concerning the future and what they > might do with our information should we have a catastrophic collapse is by > no means as bleak as Miller's, I'm not certain we can really teach our > grandchildren to suck eggs. > Not that I'm planning on quitting archaeology anytime soon, or ceasing my > backup process every evening for that matter <g>. > kris > Kris Hirst > Office of the State Archaeologist > The University of Iowa > [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] > <http://archaeology.about.com> > Scribal Traditions http://scribaltraditions.com -- Arachne V1.50;beta, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://home.arachne.cz/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%