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10 | THe PuitosopHy or Eco-Pourrics era. The current world order is not unsustainable, because it comes up against the limits of nature’s carrying capacity. Rather, it reaches the limits of nature, because it is unsustainable: its contradictions within the logic of the given system are irresolvable. In other words, any suggestions for the survival and renewal of our civilisation must of necessity come from outside the system (and this determines their reception). But is there still an “outside”? Does the success of globalism not entail the spread of the patterns of one single civilisation across the globe, absorbing into themselves or destroying every other pattern? We are faced, in radical Islam or the heirs of Mao-ce tung who have transformed from communists into capitalists, with the same totalitarian technocratic mentality that the modern industrial state forced onto its subjects and enemies. Still, it is worth knowing that the pursuit of empire-building and the consequent hybridisation of cultural patterns does not characterise our time alone. Thus has ended so far every civilisation that has passed its sell-by date, exchanging its remaining energies for empire-building, seemingly at the peak of its strength. The final days of Antiquity were set in motion by the expansion of the Roman Empire which conquered the known world and those of the feudal system by the development of absolute monarchies and colonial empires. They are not swept away by class struggle, not by external attack and not even by bloody revolutions! They collapse under their own weight, when their internal contradictions have become unsupportable. And while the dinosaurs, consuming their environment and doomed to destruction, are still fighting their murderous battles with each other, terrified little beings are experimenting with survival under their feet, the so-called mammals. They inherit the Earth. It should be noticed that the new cultural patterns, which serve as the starting-point for changes of historical proportions, emerge in like manner, usually from the initiatives of small local communities who till them and keep them, while fighting for their survival in faraway provinces and within the walls of monasteries. Or, as was the case at the dawn of the Modern Era, they rise from the tough everydays of urban communities independent from the prevailing regime, gradually and at first almost unnoticeably.
