I have been thinking about Zinnet challenge to prove that our society has failed or is
in the process of failure. I think an interesting study helps to shed light on this matter.
As anyone who pays attention knows, bee’s population has collapsed over the last few years.
A study out of Australia suggest a reason and gives us a hint to our own demise.
The study suggest that there is no one reason for the population decrease but does
point out that the stress of several reasons may be enough to decrease the population.
The bee’s are fighting environmental reasons such as pesticides and the failure of young bee’s to
do what is the bee’s job, that of collecting pollen and food. This overall stress is what has decimated
bee’s colonies. So take this to the human level and we do see the same thing. Not one thing, like say
the Roman empire collapse, but many things which brings about stress in the society and enough
stress and the empire collapse like the bee’s colonies. It is not an individual thing but a societal
event and that is what we are facing today. Not an individual thing but overall stress of living
our lives from the stress of earning a living to the stress of raising children to the stress of our
long commutes, with many, many people having to commute for several hours a day. I know
people who commute from Stockton to work and that drive is probably (one way) two hours and
so people in our store can commute up to 4 hours a day and that is not unusual at all around here
in the Bay area. You have the stress of world events such as 9/11 and other terrorist events and
then the daily call to war by the right wing (the latest call is to bomb Iran) All these events combine
(plus more) have the effect of creating loads of stress in everyday life. They must have influence in our
lives, they must impact our lives and that stress is what will eventually wear us down and finally
cause the collapse of America. It won’t be one event, but many, many stressful events which finally
take down America, just like stress finally took down the Roman empire.
Kropotkin