Mayans may INSIST 2012 isn't the end of the world, but millions of bored neurotic New Agers, conspiracy theorists, and hucksters from the world's post-industrial societies will inevitably refuse to take notice of the opinion of a bunch of silly Mayans... "Mayans? Aren't they extinct??"

This Associated Press article doesn't get too involved in trying to explain the differences between linear and cyclic views of time, or any of the other vast differences between the cosmovisions of the indigenous inhabitants of the New World and the cosmovisions of the Old World conquerors/settlers/occupiers. Still, it's worthy of reading, especially for anyone who has ever had any curiosity about the whole '2012 Mayan prophecy' issue... and ESPECIALLY for anyone who thinks the Earth's magnetic poles are gonna shift and civilization is gonna end and we should all be burying gold bars and canned food.

The article doesn't mention this (for obvious reasons), but Mayans are far more concerned with transgenic corn from Monsanto contaminating the epicenter of biodiversity for the originally domesticated Zea mays, and any of us should be as well. Millenarianism regarding the year 2012 is just one more distraction among many in our global consumer culture. We all need to stay focused on the real structural problems of the real world... so that if a real apocalypse ever does occur then it will be an opportunity for creation of a better world, instead of just a chance to start making the same mistakes. Anyway, enough polemicizing, (dinner is ready, hehe), just click on through to read the article....  (continued...)

"Tenderness appeared in man's mammalian ancestors eons before he learned to preserve fire or shape a stone." -- Lewis Mumford, The Conduct of Life

Ninety-nine percent of all humans who have ever lived were hunter-gatherers. Studies of hunter-gatherer societies readily confirm the respect given, and the support provided, by the group to a mother nurturing a baby. Since ancient times, however, continuing until the present, there has been a concerted effort in Western civilization to eliminate the necessity for the natural mother to nurture her newborn. Mothers in many cultures and at various times have been encouraged to suppress their tender feelings toward their babies, discouraged from nurturing them in the biological human way, and to give over their baby's care to others.
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The history of childhood in the civilized world reveals that babies have not always been perceived as lovable or needing tenderness. At various times and for varied reasons, they have been seen as evil, harmful, burdensome, worthless, unwanted, and expendable. They have, of course, been treated in accordance with these beliefs about them (deMause, Beekman). Lloyd de Mause, in his book on the history of child care, has stated, "The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused".
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DeMause is referring to the societies of civilization, not to societies of people living outside civilization. The story of people who live as hunter-gatherers is quite different as regards children than the one described by him. Studies by anthropologists of hunter-gatherer groups do not describe infant and child care in these groups as a "nightmare." They usually describe the care of the young as "indulgent".
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A human baby born today, to any parents anywhere in the world, would have no trouble fitting into a hunter-gatherer society. He evolved to do so. On the other hand, any baby born today in modern society does not fit our world, nor would any baby born in the past fit it either. Babies (and mothers) have not changed in their reproductive biological or genetic structure; it is society and mothers who have changed in their response to, and in their attitude toward, babies. We no longer value and support mothering or the babies' critical need to develop in relation to a tender, nurturing mother.

[ed. Those are some excerpts of a brilliant essay by Dr. James Kimmel that offers a sort of broad anthropological overview of childhood... About what our species has evolved to expect in terms of childrearing... and about what our contemporary culture seeks (and succeeds) to do with its proscribed childrearing practices (which amounts to acculturation; domestication & alienation from nature, including alienation from our natural selves and others like us.).... I really encourage everyone to read the essay in its entirety, even those of you who think reproduction is 'evil' and plan to never have any association with children.]  (continued...)

When wealthy technophilic urbanites begin to catch-on to the notion of a 'retrolithic revolution', what will the inevitable niche markets & subcultures of late capitalism look like? I'm sure we can all imagine multiple possibilities, and yet, as often happens, the truth will probably be stranger than fiction... as is the case with this mindblowing report about a techno-primitivist-capitalist "tribe" that is supposedly already well organized and established in the northeastern United States. I'm still holding out some hope though that this article is actually fiction, but it's very subtle satire if that's the case. And it's likely that life would be imitating art soon enough, in any case. This is definitely a must-read... not only is it the first fresh content this site has had in quite a while, it's also the most unusual and also the most directly relevant piece that has EVER been posted here. So, enough hype... I'll let you get to it...   (continued...)

What happens when a culture and its myths begin to crumble? New ones seem to arrive before the old have even disappeared. New ones in the shell of the old, from the crumbs of the old... they merge and blend and fade into one another. This can already be seen occurring in places where the system is faltering, like among the children who are splitting their time between the homeless shelters and the streets of the United States. What can be learned from such phenomena? Is this innate creative potential a threat or a source of hope for our future?
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"Captured on South Beach, Satan later escaped. His demons and the horrible Bloody Mary are now killing people. God has fled. Avenging angels hide out in the Everglades. And other tales from children in Dade's homeless shelters." (continued...)

In the last couple of weeks it seemed like I was seeing one horrific murder-suicide story after another. (And I wasn't looking for them.) There were several instances of decapitation, and not in Iraq or Indonesia, but in the 'developed world'... the leading economies of the 'developed world'. In Japan a boy walked into a police station carrying his mother's severed head and a couple of similar intra-familial murders in the US ended in a less passive form of 'suicide' than that of surrendering to the state -- individuals in two different cases actually attempted to remove their own heads after killing their parent[s]. The one in California who made his attempt with a circular saw wasn't quite successful (he succeeded in killing himself, but his head didn't roll across the floor), but a determined German fellow proved that a chainsaw can do the job. And just before removing his head so clamorously, he stabbed his father to death. (continued...)