How much land does one need?

I'm working on some new ideas and haven't had time to write something original so, I thought I'd share of my favorite stories by Russian author, Lev Tolstoy.

It examines the problem of greed and never having enough. This translation is by Constance Garnett and is in the public domain.

How Much Land Does a Man Need?

by Lev Tolstoy
translated by Constance Garnett

I

An elder sister came to visit her younger sister in the country.
The elder was married to a tradesman in town, the younger to a
peasant in the village. As the sisters sat over their tea talking,
the elder began to boast of the advantages of town life: saying how
comfortably they lived there, how well they dressed, what fine
clothes her children wore, what good things they ate and drank, and
how she went to the theatre, promenades, and entertainments.

The younger sister was piqued, and in turn disparaged the life of a
tradesman, and stood up for that of a peasant.

"I would not change my way of life for yours," said she. "We may
live roughly, but at least we are free from anxiety. You live in
better style than we do, but though you often earn more than you
need, you are very likely to lose all you have. You know the proverb,
'Loss and gain are brothers twain.' It often happens that people who
are wealthy one day are begging their bread the next. Our way is
safer. Though a peasant's life is not a fat one, it is a long one.
We shall never grow rich, but we shall always have enough to eat."

The elder sister said sneeringly:

"Enough? Yes, if you like to share with the pigs and the calves!
What do you know of elegance or manners! However much your good man
may slave, you will die as you are living-on a dung heap-and your
children the same."

"Well, what of that?" replied the younger. "Of course our work is
rough and coarse. But, on the other hand, it is sure; and we need
not bow to any one. But you, in your towns, are surrounded by
temptations; today all may be right, but tomorrow the Evil One may
tempt your husband with cards, wine, or women, and all will go to
ruin. Don't such things happen often enough?"

Pahom, the master of the house, was lying on the top of the oven,
and he listened to the women's chatter.

"It is perfectly true," thought he. "Busy as we are from childhood
tilling Mother Earth, we peasants have no time to let any nonsense
settle in our heads. Our only trouble is that we haven't land
enough. If I had plenty of land, I shouldn't fear the Devil himself!"

The women finished their tea, chatted a while about dress, and then
cleared away the tea-things and lay down to sleep.

But the Devil had been sitting behind the oven, and had heard all
that was said. He was pleased that the peasant's wife had led her
husband into boasting, and that he had said that if he had plenty of
land he would not fear the Devil himself.

"All right," thought the Devil. "We will have a tussle. I'll give you
land enough; and by means of that land I will get you into my power."

II

Close to the village there lived a lady, a small landowner, who had
an estate of about three hundred acres. She had always lived on
good terms with the peasants, until she engaged as her steward an
old soldier, who took to burdening the people with fines. However
careful Pahom tried to be, it happened again and again that now a
horse of his got among the lady's oats, now a cow strayed into her
garden, now his calves found their way into her meadows-and he
always had to pay a fine.

Pahom paid, but grumbled, and, going home in a temper, was rough
with his family. All through that summer Pahom had much trouble
because of this steward; and he was even glad when winter came and
the cattle had to be stabled. Though he grudged the fodder when
they could no longer graze on the pasture-land, at least he was free
from anxiety about them.

In the winter the news got about that the lady was going to sell her
land, and that the keeper of the inn on the high road was bargaining
for it. When the peasants heard this they were very much alarmed.

"Well," thought they, "if the innkeeper gets the land he will worry us
with fines worse than the lady's steward. We all depend on that estate."

So the peasants went on behalf of their Commune, and asked the lady
not to sell the land to the innkeeper; offering her a better price
for it themselves. The lady agreed to let them have it. Then the
peasants tried to arrange for the Commune to buy the whole estate,
so that it might be held by all in common. They met twice to
discuss it, but could not settle the matter; the Evil One sowed
discord among them, and they could not agree. So they decided to
buy the land individually, each according to his means; and the lady
agreed to this plan as she had to the other.

Presently Pahom heard that a neighbor of his was buying fifty acres,
and that the lady had consented to accept one half in cash and to
wait a year for the other half. Pahom felt envious.

"Look at that," thought he, "the land is all being sold, and I shall
get none of it." So he spoke to his wife.

"Other people are buying," said he, "and we must also buy twenty
acres or so. Life is becoming impossible. That steward is simply
crushing us with his fines."

So they put their heads together and considered how they could
manage to buy it. They had one hundred roubles laid by. They sold
a colt, and one half of their bees; hired out one of their sons as a
laborer, and took his wages in advance; borrowed the rest from a
brother-in-law, and so scraped together half the purchase money.

Having done this, Pahom chose out a farm of forty acres, some of it
wooded, and went to the lady to bargain for it. They came to an
agreement, and he shook hands with her upon it, and paid her a
deposit in advance. Then they went to town and signed the deeds; he
paying half the price down, and undertaking to pay the remainder
within two years.

So now Pahom had land of his own. He borrowed seed, and sowed it on
the land he had bought. The harvest was a good one, and within a
year he had managed to pay off his debts both to the lady and to his
brother-in-law. So he became a landowner, ploughing and sowing his
own land, making hay on his own land, cutting his own trees, and
feeding his cattle on his own pasture. When he went out to plough
his fields, or to look at his growing corn, or at his grass meadows,
his heart would fill with joy. The grass that grew and the flowers
that bloomed there, seemed to him unlike any that grew elsewhere.
Formerly, when he had passed by that land, it had appeared the same
as any other land, but now it seemed quite different.





III

So Pahom was well contented, and everything would have been right if
the neighboring peasants would only not have trespassed on his corn-
fields and meadows. He appealed to them most civilly, but they
still went on: now the Communal herdsmen would let the village cows
stray into his meadows; then horses from the night pasture would get
among his corn. Pahom turned them out again and again, and forgave
their owners, and for a long time he forbore from prosecuting any
one. But at last he lost patience and complained to the District
Court. He knew it was the peasants' want of land, and no evil
intent on their part, that caused the trouble; but he thought:

"I cannot go on overlooking it, or they will destroy all I have.
They must be taught a lesson."

So he had them up, gave them one lesson, and then another, and two
or three of the peasants were fined. After a time Pahom's
neighbours began to bear him a grudge for this, and would now and
then let their cattle on his land on purpose. One peasant even got
into Pahom's wood at night and cut down five young lime trees for
their bark. Pahom passing through the wood one day noticed
something white. He came nearer, and saw the stripped trunks lying
on the ground, and close by stood the stumps, where the tree had
been. Pahom was furious.

"If he had only cut one here and there it would have been bad enough,"
thought Pahom, "but the rascal has actually cut down a whole clump.
If I could only find out who did this, I would pay him out."

He racked his brains as to who it could be. Finally he decided: "It
must be Simon-no one else could have done it." Se he went to
Simon's homestead to have a look around, but he found nothing, and
only had an angry scene. However' he now felt more certain than
ever that Simon had done it, and he lodged a complaint. Simon was
summoned. The case was tried, and re-tried, and at the end of it
all Simon was acquitted, there being no evidence against him. Pahom
felt still more aggrieved, and let his anger loose upon the Elder
and the Judges.

"You let thieves grease your palms," said he. "If you were honest
folk yourselves, you would not let a thief go free."

So Pahom quarrelled with the Judges and with his neighbors. Threats
to burn his building began to be uttered. So though Pahom had more
land, his place in the Commune was much worse than before.

About this time a rumor got about that many people were moving to
new parts.

"There's no need for me to leave my land," thought Pahom. "But some
of the others might leave our village, and then there would be more
room for us. I would take over their land myself, and make my
estate a bit bigger. I could then live more at ease. As it is, I
am still too cramped to be comfortable."

One day Pahom was sitting at home, when a peasant passing through
the village, happened to call in. He was allowed to stay the night,
and supper was given him. Pahom had a talk with this peasant and
asked him where he came from. The stranger answered that he came
from beyond the Volga, where he had been working. One word led to
another, and the man went on to say that many people were settling
in those parts. He told how some people from his village had
settled there. They had joined the Commune, and had had twenty-five
acres per man granted them. The land was so good, he said, that the
rye sown on it grew as high as a horse, and so thick that five cuts
of a sickle made a sheaf. One peasant, he said, had brought nothing
with him but his bare hands, and now he had six horses and two cows
of his own.

Pahom's heart kindled with desire. He thought:

"Why should I suffer in this narrow hole, if one can live so well
elsewhere? I will sell my land and my homestead here, and with the
money I will start afresh over there and get everything new. In
this crowded place one is always having trouble. But I must first
go and find out all about it myself."

Towards summer he got ready and started. He went down the Volga on
a steamer to Samara, then walked another three hundred miles on
foot, and at last reached the place. It was just as the stranger
had said. The peasants had plenty of land: every man had twenty-
five acres of Communal land given him for his use, and any one who
had money could buy, besides, at fifty-cents an acre as much good
freehold land as he wanted.

Having found out all he wished to know, Pahom returned home as
autumn came on, and began selling off his belongings. He sold his
land at a profit, sold his homestead and all his cattle, and
withdrew from membership of the Commune. He only waited till the
spring, and then started with his family for the new settlement.


IV

As soon as Pahom and his family arrived at their new abode, he
applied for admission into the Commune of a large village. He stood
treat to the Elders, and obtained the necessary documents. Five
shares of Communal land were given him for his own and his sons'
use: that is to say--125 acres (not altogether, but in different
fields) besides the use of the Communal pasture. Pahom put up the
buildings he needed, and bought cattle. Of the Communal land alone
he had three times as much as at his former home, and the land was
good corn-land. He was ten times better off than he had been. He
had plenty of arable land and pasturage, and could keep as many head
of cattle as he liked.

At first, in the bustle of building and settling down, Pahom was
pleased with it all, but when he got used to it he began to think
that even here he had not enough land. The first year, he sowed
wheat on his share of the Communal land, and had a good crop. He
wanted to go on sowing wheat, but had not enough Communal land for
the purpose, and what he had already used was not available; for in
those parts wheat is only sown on virgin soil or on fallow land. It
is sown for one or two years, and then the land lies fallow till it
is again overgrown with prairie grass. There were many who wanted
such land, and there was not enough for all; so that people
quarrelled about it. Those who were better off, wanted it for
growing wheat, and those who were poor, wanted it to let to dealers,
so that they might raise money to pay their taxes. Pahom wanted to
sow more wheat; so he rented land from a dealer for a year. He
sowed much wheat and had a fine crop, but the land was too far from
the village--the wheat had to be carted more than ten miles. After
a time Pahom noticed that some peasant-dealers were living on
separate farms, and were growing wealthy; and he thought:

"If I were to buy some freehold land, and have a homestead on it, it
would be a different thing, altogether. Then it would all be nice
and compact."

The question of buying freehold land recurred to him again and again.

He went on in the same way for three years; renting land and sowing
wheat. The seasons turned out well and the crops were good, so that
he began to lay money by. He might have gone on living contentedly,
but he grew tired of having to rent other people's land every year,
and having to scramble for it. Wherever there was good land to be
had, the peasants would rush for it and it was taken up at once, so
that unless you were sharp about it you got none. It happened in
the third year that he and a dealer together rented a piece of
pasture land from some peasants; and they had already ploughed it
up, when there was some dispute, and the peasants went to law about
it, and things fell out so that the labor was all lost.
"If it were my own land," thought Pahom, "I should be independent,
and there would not be all this unpleasantness."

So Pahom began looking out for land which he could buy; and he came
across a peasant who had bought thirteen hundred acres, but having
got into difficulties was willing to sell again cheap. Pahom
bargained and haggled with him, and at last they settled the price
at 1,500 roubles, part in cash and part to be paid later. They had
all but clinched the matter, when a passing dealer happened to stop
at Pahom's one day to get a feed for his horse. He drank tea with
Pahom, and they had a talk. The dealer said that he was just
returning from the land of the Bashkirs, far away, where he had
bought thirteen thousand acres of land all for 1,000 roubles. Pahom
questioned him further, and the tradesman said:

"All one need do is to make friends with the chiefs. I gave away
about one hundred roubles' worth of dressing-gowns and carpets,
besides a case of tea, and I gave wine to those who would drink it;
and I got the land for less than two cents an acre. And he showed
Pahom the title-deeds, saying:

"The land lies near a river, and the whole prairie is virgin soil."

Pahom plied him with questions, and the tradesman said:

"There is more land there than you could cover if you walked a year,
and it all belongs to the Bashkirs. They are as simple as sheep,
and land can be got almost for nothing."

"There now," thought Pahom, "with my one thousand roubles, why
should I get only thirteen hundred acres, and saddle myself with a
debt besides. If I take it out there, I can get more than ten times
as much for the money."


V

Pahom inquired how to get to the place, and as soon as the tradesman
had left him, he prepared to go there himself. He left his wife to
look after the homestead, and started on his journey taking his man
with him. They stopped at a town on their way, and bought a case of
tea, some wine, and other presents, as the tradesman had advised.
On and on they went until they had gone more than three hundred
miles, and on the seventh day they came to a place where the
Bashkirs had pitched their tents. It was all just as the tradesman
had said. The people lived on the steppes, by a river, in felt-
covered tents. They neither tilled the ground, nor ate bread.
Their cattle and horses grazed in herds on the steppe. The colts
were tethered behind the tents, and the mares were driven to them
twice a day. The mares were milked, and from the milk kumiss was
made. It was the women who prepared kumiss, and they also made
cheese. As far as the men were concerned, drinking kumiss and tea,
eating mutton, and playing on their pipes, was all they cared about.
They were all stout and merry, and all the summer long they never
thought of doing any work. They were quite ignorant, and knew no
Russian, but were good-natured enough.

As soon as they saw Pahom, they came out of their tents and gathered
round their visitor. An interpreter was found, and Pahom told them
he had come about some land. The Bashkirs seemed very glad; they
took Pahom and led him into one of the best tents, where they made
him sit on some down cushions placed on a carpet, while they sat
round him. They gave him tea and kumiss, and had a sheep killed,
and gave him mutton to eat. Pahom took presents out of his cart and
distributed them among the Bashkirs, and divided amongst them the
tea. The Bashkirs were delighted. They talked a great deal among
themselves, and then told the interpreter to translate.

"They wish to tell you," said the interpreter, "that they like you,
and that it is our custom to do all we can to please a guest and to
repay him for his gifts. You have given us presents, now tell us
which of the things we possess please you best, that we may present
them to you."

"What pleases me best here," answered Pahom, "is your land. Our
land is crowded, and the soil is exhausted; but you have plenty of
land and it is good land. I never saw the like of it."

The interpreter translated. The Bashkirs talked among themselves
for a while. Pahom could not understand what they were saying, but
saw that they were much amused, and that they shouted and laughed.
Then they were silent and looked at Pahom while the interpreter said:

"They wish me to tell you that in return for your presents they will
gladly give you as much land as you want. You have only to point it
out with your hand and it is yours."

The Bashkirs talked again for a while and began to dispute. Pahom
asked what they were disputing about, and the interpreter told him
that some of them thought they ought to ask their Chief about the
land and not act in his absence, while others thought there was no
need to wait for his return.


VI

While the Bashkirs were disputing, a man in a large fox-fur cap
appeared on the scene. They all became silent and rose to their
feet. The interpreter said, "This is our Chief himself."

Pahom immediately fetched the best dressing-gown and five pounds of
tea, and offered these to the Chief. The Chief accepted them, and
seated himself in the place of honour. The Bashkirs at once began
telling him something. The Chief listened for a while, then made a
sign with his head for them to be silent, and addressing himself to
Pahom, said in Russian:

"Well, let it be so. Choose whatever piece of land you like; we
have plenty of it."

"How can I take as much as I like?" thought Pahom. "I must get a
deed to make it secure, or else they may say, 'It is yours,' and
afterwards may take it away again."

"Thank you for your kind words," he said aloud. "You have much
land, and I only want a little. But I should like to be sure which
bit is mine. Could it not be measured and made over to me? Life and
death are in God's hands. You good people give it to me, but your
children might wish to take it away again."

"You are quite right," said the Chief. "We will make it over to you."

"I heard that a dealer had been here," continued Pahom, "and that
you gave him a little land, too, and signed title-deeds to that
effect. I should like to have it done in the same way."

The Chief understood.

"Yes," replied he, "that can be done quite easily. We have a scribe,
and we will go to town with you and have the deed properly sealed."

"And what will be the price?" asked Pahom.

"Our price is always the same: one thousand roubles a day."

Pahom did not understand.

"A day? What measure is that? How many acres would that be?"

"We do not know how to reckon it out," said the Chief. "We sell it
by the day. As much as you can go round on your feet in a day is
yours, and the price is one thousand roubles a day."

Pahom was surprised.

"But in a day you can get round a large tract of land," he said.

The Chief laughed.

"It will all be yours!" said he. "But there is one condition: If
you don't return on the same day to the spot whence you started,
your money is lost."

"But how am I to mark the way that I have gone?"

"Why, we shall go to any spot you like, and stay there. You must
start from that spot and make your round, taking a spade with you.
Wherever you think necessary, make a mark. At every turning, dig a
hole and pile up the turf; then afterwards we will go round with a
plough from hole to hole. You may make as large a circuit as you
please, but before the sun sets you must return to the place you
started from. All the land you cover will be yours."

Pahom was delighted. It-was decided to start early next morning.
They talked a while, and after drinking some more kumiss and eating
some more mutton, they had tea again, and then the night came on.
They gave Pahom a feather-bed to sleep on, and the Bashkirs
dispersed for the night, promising to assemble the next morning at
daybreak and ride out before sunrise to the appointed spot.


VII

Pahom lay on the feather-bed, but could not sleep. He kept thinking
about the land.

"What a large tract I will mark off!" thought he. "I can easily go
thirty-five miles in a day. The days are long now, and within a
circuit of thirty-five miles what a lot of land there will be! I
will sell the poorer land, or let it to peasants, but I'll pick out
the best and farm it. I will buy two ox-teams, and hire two more
laborers. About a hundred and fifty acres shall be plough-land, and
I will pasture cattle on the rest."

Pahom lay awake all night, and dozed off only just before dawn.
Hardly were his eyes closed when he had a dream. He thought he was
lying in that same tent, and heard somebody chuckling outside. He
wondered who it could be, and rose and went out, and he saw the
Bashkir Chief sitting in front of the tent holding his side and
rolling about with laughter. Going nearer to the Chief, Pahom
asked: "What are you laughing at?" But he saw that it was no longer
the Chief, but the dealer who had recently stopped at his house and
had told him about the land. Just as Pahom was going to ask, "Have
you been here long?" he saw that it was not the dealer, but the
peasant who had come up from the Volga, long ago, to Pahom's old
home. Then he saw that it was not the peasant either, but the Devil
himself with hoofs and horns, sitting there and chuckling, and
before him lay a man barefoot, prostrate on the ground, with only
trousers and a shirt on. And Pahom dreamt that he looked more
attentively to see what sort of a man it was lying there, and he saw
that the man was dead, and that it was himself! He awoke horror-struck.

"What things one does dream," thought he.

Looking round he saw through the open door that the dawn was breaking.

"It's time to wake them up," thought he. "We ought to be starting."

He got up, roused his man (who was sleeping in his cart), bade him
harness; and went to call the Bashkirs.

"It's time to go to the steppe to measure the land," he said.

The Bashkirs rose and assembled, and the Chief came, too. Then they
began drinking kumiss again, and offered Pahom some tea, but he
would not wait.

"If we are to go, let us go. It is high time," said he.


VIII

The Bashkirs got ready and they all started: some mounted on horses,
and some in carts. Pahom drove in his own small cart with his
servant, and took a spade with him. When they reached the steppe,
the morning red was beginning to kindle. They ascended a hillock
(called by the Bashkirs a shikhan) and dismounting from their carts
and their horses, gathered in one spot. The Chief came up to Pahom
and stretched out his arm towards the plain:

"See," said he, "all this, as far as your eye can reach, is ours.
You may have any part of it you like."

Pahom's eyes glistened: it was all virgin soil, as flat as the palm
of your hand, as black as the seed of a poppy, and in the hollows
different kinds of grasses grew breast high.

The Chief took off his fox-fur cap, placed it on the ground and said:

"This will be the mark. Start from here, and return here again.
All the land you go round shall be yours."

Pahom took out his money and put it on the cap. Then he took off
his outer coat, remaining in his sleeveless under coat. He
unfastened his girdle and tied it tight below his stomach, put a
little bag of bread into the breast of his coat, and tying a flask
of water to his girdle, he drew up the tops of his boots, took the
spade from his man, and stood ready to start. He considered for
some moments which way he had better go--it was tempting everywhere.

"No matter," he concluded, "I will go towards the rising sun."

He turned his face to the east, stretched himself, and waited for
the sun to appear above the rim.

"I must lose no time," he thought, "and it is easier walking while
it is still cool."

The sun's rays had hardly flashed above the horizon, before Pahom,
carrying the spade over his shoulder, went down into the steppe.

Pahom started walking neither slowly nor quickly. After having gone
a thousand yards he stopped, dug a hole and placed pieces of turf
one on another to make it more visible. Then he went on; and now
that he had walked off his stiffness he quickened his pace. After a
while he dug another hole.

Pahom looked back. The hillock could be distinctly seen in the
sunlight, with the people on it, and the glittering tires of the
cartwheels. At a rough guess Pahom concluded that he had walked
three miles. It was growing warmer; he took off his under-coat,
flung it across his shoulder, and went on again. It had grown quite
warm now; he looked at the sun, it was time to think of breakfast.

"The first shift is done, but there are four in a day, and it is too
soon yet to turn. But I will just take off my boots," said he to himself.

He sat down, took off his boots, stuck them into his girdle, and went on.
It was easy walking now.

"I will go on for another three miles," thought he, "and then turn
to the left. The spot is so fine, that it would be a pity to lose
it. The further one goes, the better the land seems."

He went straight on a for a while, and when he looked round, the
hillock was scarcely visible and the people on it looked like black
ants, and he could just see something glistening there in the sun.

"Ah," thought Pahom, "I have gone far enough in this direction, it
is time to turn. Besides I am in a regular sweat, and very thirsty."

He stopped, dug a large hole, and heaped up pieces of turf. Next he
untied his flask, had a drink, and then turned sharply to the left.
He went on and on; the grass was high, and it was very hot.

Pahom began to grow tired: he looked at the sun and saw that it was noon.

"Well," he thought, "I must have a rest."

He sat down, and ate some bread and drank some water; but he did not
lie down, thinking that if he did he might fall asleep. After
sitting a little while, he went on again. At first he walked
easily: the food had strengthened him; but it had become terribly
hot, and he felt sleepy; still he went on, thinking: "An hour to
suffer, a life-time to live."

He went a long way in this direction also, and was about to turn to
the left again, when he perceived a damp hollow: "It would be a pity
to leave that out," he thought. "Flax would do well there." So he
went on past the hollow, and dug a hole on the other side of it
before he turned the corner. Pahom looked towards the hillock. The
heat made the air hazy: it seemed to be quivering, and through the
haze the people on the hillock could scarcely be seen.

"Ah!" thought Pahom, "I have made the sides too long; I must make
this one shorter." And he went along the third side, stepping
faster. He looked at the sun: it was nearly half way to the
horizon, and he had not yet done two miles of the third side of the
square. He was still ten miles from the goal.

"No," he thought, "though it will make my land lopsided, I must
hurry back in a straight line now. I might go too far, and as it is
I have a great deal of land."

So Pahom hurriedly dug a hole, and turned straight towards the hillock.


IX

Pahom went straight towards the hillock, but he now walked with
difficulty. He was done up with the heat, his bare feet were cut
and bruised, and his legs began to fail. He longed to rest, but it
was impossible if he meant to get back before sunset. The sun waits
for no man, and it was sinking lower and lower.

"Oh dear," he thought, "if only I have not blundered trying for too
much! What if I am too late?"

He looked towards the hillock and at the sun. He was still far from
his goal, and the sun was already near the rim. Pahom walked on and
on; it was very hard walking, but he went quicker and quicker. He
pressed on, but was still far from the place. He began running,
threw away his coat, his boots, his flask, and his cap, and kept
only the spade which he used as a support.

"What shall I do," he thought again, "I have grasped too much, and
ruined the whole affair. I can't get there before the sun sets."

And this fear made him still more breathless. Pahom went on
running, his soaking shirt and trousers stuck to him, and his mouth
was parched. His breast was working like a blacksmith's bellows,
his heart was beating like a hammer, and his legs were giving way as
if they did not belong to him. Pahom was seized with terror lest he
should die of the strain.

Though afraid of death, he could not stop. "After having run all
that way they will call me a fool if I stop now," thought he. And
he ran on and on, and drew near and heard the Bashkirs yelling and
shouting to him, and their cries inflamed his heart still more. He
gathered his last strength and ran on.

The sun was close to the rim, and cloaked in mist looked large, and
red as blood. Now, yes now, it was about to set! The sun was quite
low, but he was also quite near his aim. Pahom could already see
the people on the hillock waving their arms to hurry him up. He
could see the fox-fur cap on the ground, and the money on it, and
the Chief sitting on the ground holding his sides. And Pahom
remembered his dream.

"There is plenty of land," thought he, "but will God let me live on
it? I have lost my life, I have lost my life! I shall never reach
that spot!"

Pahom looked at the sun, which had reached the earth: one side of it
had already disappeared. With all his remaining strength he rushed
on, bending his body forward so that his legs could hardly follow
fast enough to keep him from falling. Just as he reached the
hillock it suddenly grew dark. He looked up--the sun had already
set. He gave a cry: "All my labor has been in vain," thought he,
and was about to stop, but he heard the Bashkirs still shouting, and
remembered that though to him, from below, the sun seemed to have
set, they on the hillock could still see it. He took a long breath
and ran up the hillock. It was still light there. He reached the
top and saw the cap. Before it sat the Chief laughing and holding
his sides. Again Pahom remembered his dream, and he uttered a cry:
his legs gave way beneath him, he fell forward and reached the cap
with his hands.

"Ah, what a fine fellow!" exclaimed the Chief. "He has gained
much land!"

Pahom's servant came running up and tried to raise him, but he saw
that blood was flowing from his mouth. Pahom was dead!

The Bashkirs clicked their tongues to show their pity.

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for
Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to
his heels was all he needed.

A World out of Balance

Rage Against the Machine

A simple desultory phillipic

Megacity in China

The 21st Century kali-yuga Necropolis knows no ideology. It is both machine and organism, but has no soul. The machine has absorbed human souls and feeds off them when needed. Humans supply the crucial algorithms to systems that control everything from financial markets to hospitals and border crossings. But the system that runs the mechanical necropolis of the 21st century knows no distinction between capitalism and communism, between Islam and the Judaeo-Christian ethic. It is out of control. The algorithms now rule other algorithms that run the robots that crank the machine. The city is no longer a metropolitan cosmos that thrives on human culture and ideas. It is a robotic entity with no regard for human values. As time advances the Necropolis takes on a cannibalistic character; the only thing that matters to the system is further growth. It has no ideology other than continued growth. This kind of unconcontrolled growth is cancerous. It tends towards the destruction of the organism, in this case, human society. As a consequence we have uncontrolled violence, anger, crime and drug addiction and war.

Megalopolis, Tyrannopolis, Necropolis: Greater Tokyo

When villages became towns and towns became cities, the human element was still important. Control was ceded to mechanisms run by technocrats as the cities became metropolis. Control was lost when cities became monstrous megalopolis or heartless Tyrannopolis. Now we are entering the last phase of urban desolation: the Necropolis, the City of the Dead. https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/21/megacities-explosive-growth-poses-epic-challenges.html

The Necropolis knows no ideology: GuanZhou, China

The City of the Dead is no longer controlled by human intelligence. We have delegated control to machines that never sleep, networks, and electronic systems. You might ask, "Is Articial Intelligence upon us?" But the question is beyond academic; it is moot. The algorithms that control financial markets, currency conversion, and access to health control no longer need us and have already gone rogue. https://www.wired.com/story/tim-oreilly-algorithms-have-already-gone-rogue/amp

Map of Megalopolis

The tendency for uncontrolled growth and the acceptance of control algorithms in the City of the Dead doesn’t distinguish between religious persuasion, sexual preference, or racial identity; it feeds on all souls equally, rending sweat and blood into liquid gold and silver, boiling flesh and bone into Dollars and Euros, Deutschmarks and Drachma, and even smelting currency down into the ones and zeros of the digital combine.When Machines Rule

Mexico City, Aerial view

The Kali-yuga Necropolis is indiscriminate. The city of the dead uses the technology of metamorphosis to transform potatoes into potato chips, cows into hamburgers, pigs and horses into dog food, life into ashes and the human spirit into stone.

Bombay Kali-yuga Necropolis: the City of the Dead

Even Satan, the fallen angel of Paradise, had a soul. Necropolis has none. The human soul exists only to provide the city of the dead with the precious algorithms that fuel the robot culture. But the machine knows neither remorse nor contrition. Moloch, the golden calf, bloody god of child sacrifice, would run terrified from the kali-yuga monster that is the Necropolis.

Chicago Housing Projects

A frog in gradually heated water doesn’t notice that he is boiling. We may ask how we came to the boiling point, but again,  the point is moot. Cities became metropolis over the centuries. The metropolis became megacities and necrotic necropolis in my lifetime.  We were educated to believe that all growth is good. The cancer that is upon us is unstoppable. While millions self-medicate themselves with recreational drugs, there is no chemo-therapy that can stop the Necropolis.
With the world poised on the brink of nuclear destruction, lamentably perhaps only radiation therapy could halt the progress of the Necropolis, the city of the dead. But reducing the world to ashes in order to rebuild human civilization is unacceptable not only to us, but it is anathema to the prevailing algorithms as well. The machine must grow to survive; no apocalypse is permitted.  Only a gradual eclipse of human culture and life by speeding up the machine and grinding us into soul-less ashes. Thus we spin in an eccentric orbit. We are off balance.

The indigenous native American word for a "world is out balance" is koyaanisqatsi. As the unbalanced world of the Necropolis alters our priorities and values we don't notice since we are busy being forced to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.

With the uncontrolled growth demanded by the urban evolutionary process, Metropolis must morph into Megalopolis; Megalopolis must morph into Necropolis. The laws of the machine, the algorithms of the corporations must be followed; they are encoded into the system. Human life just isn't as valuable as it used to be. Why should it? A human life is now only a cog in the machine.

It is not a question of being a Republican or a Democrat; Black or White; Catholic or Islam. We all subscribe to the same system. In order to operate we need to co-operate with the system. And now that we have ceded control to the algorithms that run the machine, we can't even question how the system works. You cannot defeat the system. The house always wins.

As Leonard Cohen observed:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes Everybody knows.

whats up?

I owe my readers an apology for waxing so prolix. Sometimes I start riffing on ideas and just can't stop. I'll try to be more concise in future. A big shout out to all the folks on parikrama. Gaura hari bol.

Metropolis and Necropolis

Lewis Mumford’s analysis of civilization is hard to find. His Myth of the Machine is unavailable online, his Pentagon of Power has become a rare publication. He swam against the tide of 20th Century boosterism, the optimism of the technological society, and became unpopular.

Lews Mumford: not optimistic enough for the roaring twenties

However, many of his ideas have been adopted by those who value the idea of “Small is Beautiful,” such as economist E.F. Schumacher. Some of the ideas Mumford pioneered in the 1930s, for example, Appropriate technology and sustainable development have become watchwords of the post-modern industrial world.

Mumford’s analysis is worth looking at, since he was writing before the collapse of the economic system in the United States. He correctly predicted trends in urban development long before they happened. At the same time, he analyzed the problems that would arise with that development and questioned the ethos of the paradigm of absolute growth.

In the early part of the twentieth century the lack of development in “third world” countries was seen as the great human tragedy. The solution to the humanitarian disasters of the 1930s was seen in increasing agricultural and industrial production. Stalin’s policy of agrarian collectivization after the shortfalls in grain production is a notable example. While grain production was increased, Stalin’s policies had disastrous results. Stalin’s determination to grow wheat devastated the culture and spiritual growth of entire sectors of Russia and Ukraine where his growth policies were adapted.

Analogous to Stalin’s “growth” policies in the communist world the economic growth policies in the West have had similar devastating results.

While the 20th Century was a period of great economic growth and development, the focus on infrastructure and the creation of employment for people in urban centers has avoided more humanistic concerns, especially those of personal and spiritual development.

While many of the development programs undertaken in the twentieth century have certainly contributed to a more prosperous society in the material sense, the focus on economic concerns has impoverished the human spirit with disastrous results.

How would one explain the recent massacre in Las Vegas to a time traveler from the 1930s? One would need to explain how a small town in the desert became a mecca to gamblers and prostitutes and an entertainment venue for Frank Sinatra. For that matter, one would have to describe how Frank Sinatra became a star, how the mafia rose to prominence, and why hotels built in the middle of nowhere attract great crowds.

To our astonished listeners ground down by the poverty of the great depression of the 1920s this future would seem incredible indeed. That the mafia together with prostitutes, gamblers and movie stars had built a giant metropolis based only on sin, cheap alcohol, slot machines, prostitutes and strip shows would strain all belief. But to go further and report to our shocked listeners that in this decadent milieu of moral blight everyone is allowed to carry handguns would further strain belief and stagger the imagination. Perhaps some of our ancestors from the 1930s would remember the need for shotguns to scare off varmints. But they certainly knew better than to carry their shotguns into town or to church.

To learn that sophisticated fire-arms are not only legal but endorsed and encouraged, that shotguns are primitive compared to the light-weight and deadly machine guns that can be carried openly would certain surprise our grandfathers.

And to discover that an entire arsenal might be carried into a luxury hotel with no one raising an eyebrow would further baffle our ancestors. A traveler who ventured into 1930 from our own time would lose his audience if he began to describe the attack carried out on country fans by an enraged madman armed with machine guns.

That it would be possible and permissible for a millionaire to rent a luxury hotel room in Las Vegas with the purpose of murdering a large number of country fans would be dismissed as the worst kind of pulp fiction by any thinking intellectual of the 1930s.

No such city as Las Vegas could exist in the first place, since it would contradict all moral sense and decency to allow mafiosos and prostitutes to create a city with the express purpose of carrying out sinful activities. In the second place, even if such an atrocity as Las Vegas could exist in a weird science fiction story, the author of the story defies all common sense by setting his city in a desert with no water for the millions of residents. How could they possibly survive? Such a metropolis is obviously a fiction. In the third place, even if shotguns might be allowed on the ranch for self-protection in the Wild West, there is no way that any sane society would allow people to roam the streets of a town dedicated to alcohol, gambling, and prostitution armed with machine guns. All these premises of the science fiction story are unthinkable.

But Lewis Mumford saw this coming. An American social critic, he wrote about cities and the metropolis. As a public intellectual writing on architecture and society for the New Yorker in the 1930s he found that there were 6 levels of urban development. He describes the Culture of Cities from primitive tribal life to the decadence of the Nekropolis as follows:

1.Polis

Tribes and communities grow together into a town on the basis of a shared agricultural economy. From prehistoric times to the feudal townships of small nobles and princes.

2. Eopolis

The town grows gathering into it a collection of smaller villages whose tribes and communities have developed not only agricultural economies but small industries, trade, and commerce. The town gradually becomes a city. Ancient Eopolis include Cairo in Egypt and Hastinapura in India, Timbuktu in Africa and Macchu Picchu in Peru.

Towns and villages are gradually knitted together into larger communities coalescing around cities. In Europe, Rome was built as a number of settlements that began on seven hills and grew to include a Coliseum for games and a senate fore governing an empire that lasted 1000 years.

In Mexico, the Toltecs and Mayans, Aztecs and Mixtecs coalesced around Teotihuacan, forerunner of Mexico City where merchants would trade honey, feathers, obsidian glass, ceramic pots, weapons, women, slaves, avocados and tomatoes and thousands of other products, goods, and services in their vibrant markets in the shadow of the pyramids.

In Indochina the various peoples of the Khmer civilization created Angkor Wat and the city of Bayon around the Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong River in land rich for rice cultivation. Ruled by Jayavarman VII this peaceful Buddhist Eopolis grew to a population of over 100,000 long before London and Paris figured in the imagination of the Western mind.

3. Metropolis

With the dawn of the machine age, technology is a blessing. The town is now a complete city, reaching full stature, its population dense with complex systems of water and energy. Mechanical energy abides. Electricity is introduced along with the exploitation of steam engines or petroleum products and heavy industry: This level of development begins in cities like London, Bombay, and Paris and continues well into the 20th Century. Small communities morph into cities, and soon achieve the status of metropolis. The metropolis is cosmopolitan; driven by a vibrating economy, it pulses with culture and absorbs peoples from all walks of life, all nations, all languages.

4. Megalopolis

A Megalopolis is an overgrown machine, a giant city. The city has snarled into a mass of urban blight and decadence over more than a century. Gardens and breathing spaces have disappeared. Since land must be developed and subdivided into apartments and commercial space it is too expensive to allow for green areas. Economy exists only to feed the machine. Growth is pursued as an end to itself. Since growth fuels the machine it is a virtue. Unbridled growth is cancer; but cancer is necessary for all growth is good, even mutation.

Cultural values are being lost; religion is subordinate to money and economics. Corruption is rampant. Crime becomes normal.

The Megalopolis can no longer breathe. Public Transportation is choked with human bodies struggling to arrive to work areas on time. The original residential areas are chopped into smaller spaces and further subdivided to allow for more shops and stores. Houses become apartments. The gentry disappear from urban centers and are replaced by low-income residents. Overcrowding and poverty breeds misery, epidemics, and violence.

A Megalopolis is a city bursting with its own capacity. Human culture is no longer the essential define feature of a city this large. Economy is the only common denominator.

Lewis Mumford: “Megalopolis ushers in an age of cultural aggrandizement: scholarship and science by tabulation: sterile research: elaborate fact-finding apparatus and refined technic with no reference to rational intellectual purpose or ultimate possibilities of social use: Alexandrianism. Belief in abstract quantity in every department of life: the biggest monuments, the highest buildings, the most expensive materials, the largest food supply, the greatest number of worshipers, the biggest population. Education becomes quantitative: domination of the cram-machine and the encyclopedia, and domination of megalopolis as concrete encyclopedia: all-containing. Knowledge divorced from life: industry divorced from life-utility: life itself compartmentalized, dis-specialized, finally disorganized and enfeebled.

“Over-investment in the material apparatus of bigness. Diversion of energy from the biological and social ends of life to the preparatory physical means. Outright exploitation of the proletariat and increasing conflict between organized workers and the master classes. Occasional attempts at insurance by philanthropy on the part of the possessing classes: justice in homeopathic doses. Occasional outbursts of savage repression on the part of frightened bourgeoisie, employing basest elements in the city. As conflict intensifies rise of a coalition between landed oligarchy, trained in combat, and a megalopolitan rabble of speculators, enterprisers, and financiers who furnish the sinews of war and profit by all the occasions for class-suppression, price-lifting, and looting that it gives. The city as a means of association, as a haven of culture, becomes a means of dissociation and a growing threat to real culture. Smaller cities are drawn into the megalopolitan network: they practice imitatively the megalopolitan vices, and even sink to lower levels because of lack of higher institutions of learning and culture that still persist in bigger centers. The threat of widespread barbarism arises. Now follow, with cumulative force and increasing volume, the remaining downward movements of the cycle.

When do we become machines?

5. Tyrannopolis

The next to last step in the downward movement of urban life is what Mumford calls “Tyrannopolis.” The City is in decline: it can no longer contain or control its inhabitants through culture, religion, common heritage or other normal restraints. Force and military control are necessary to maintain order. Citizens are registered and their movements monitored. The is Orwellian. Economies swing between boom and bust, between wild prosperity and bankruptcy. Inflation, monetary devaluation, and poverty are endemic. The machine is out of control. Culture has collapsed into popular entertainment. Traditions are cannibalized into trends and fashions. People do meaningless work just to feed the machine. Values have fallen. Morality is nil. Disorder is the new norm. As Orwell put it, Ignorance is Knowledge and War is Peace.

In the Culture of Cities, Lewis Mumford describes the Tyrannopolis as follows:

Extensions of parasitism throughout the economic and social scene: the function of spending paralyzes all the higher activities of culture and no act of culture can be justified that does not involve display and expense. Politics becomes competition for the exploitation of the municipal and state exchequer by this or that class or group. Extirpation of organs of communal and civic life other than “state.” Caesarism. Development of predatory means as a substitute for trade and give-and-take: naked exploitation of colonies and hinterland: intensification of the cycles of commercial depression, following overexpansion of industry and dubious speculative enterprise, heightened by wars and war-preparations. Failure of the economic and political rulers to maintain the bare decencies of administration: place-hunting, privilege-seeking, bonus-collecting, favor-currying, nepotism, grafting, tribute-exacting become rife both in government and business. Widespread moral apathy and failure of civic responsibility: each group, each individual, takes what it can get away with. Widening of the gap between producing classes and spending classes. Multiplication of a Lum pen proletariat demanding its share of bread and shows. Overstress of mass-sports. Parasitic love of sinecures in every department of life. Demand for “protection money” made made by armed thugs and debased soldiery: organized looting, organized blackmail are “normal” accompaniments of business and municipal “enterprise. Domination of respectable people who behave like criminals and of criminals whose activities do not debar them from respectability.

Imperialistic wars, internal and external, result in starvation, epidemics of disease, demoralization of life: uncertainty hangs over every prospect of the future: armed protection increases all the hazards of life. Municipal and state bankruptcy. Drain of local taxes to service increasing load of local debt. Necessity to appeal to the state for further aid in periods of economic disorganization: loss of autonomy. Drain of national taxes to support the growing military establishment of the state. This burden penalizes the remnants of honest industry and agriculture, and further disrupts the supply of elementary material goods. Decrease in agricultural production by soil-mining and erosion, through falling off in acreage, through the withholding of crops from the city by resentful husbandmen. Decline in rate of population-increase through birth control, abortion, mass slaughter, and suicide: eventual absolute decline in numbers. General loss of nerve. Attempt to create order by external military means: rise of gangster-dictators (Hitler, Mussolini) with active consent of the bourgeoisie and systematic terrorism by pretorian guards. Recrudescence of superstition and deliberate cult of savagery: barbarian invasions from “within and without. Beginnings of megalopolitan exodus. Material deficiencies and lapses of cultural continuity: repression and censorship. Cessation of productive work in the arts and sciences.”

6. Necropolis.

The last stage in the rise and decline of the metropolis is the necropolis. Mumford is prolix; his prose is dense and often difficult, but it is worth quoting him at length. Mumford applies the term Nekropolis to Babylon and Nineveh and the decadence of Rome.

But let’s see if the definition of Necropolis or “the dying city” may be applied to Detroit or Las Vegas, to Los Angeles or Mexico City, to Paris or London, Bombay or Moscow. Is this not a refined intellectual’s description of the final days of the age of Kali?:

“War and famine and disease rack both city and countryside. The physical towns become mere shells. Those who remain in them are unable to carry on the old municipal services or maintain the old civic life: what remains of that life is at best a clumsy caricature. The names persist; the reality vanishes. The monuments and books no longer convey meaning; the old routine of life involves too much effort to carry on: the streets fall into disrepair and grass grows in the cracks of the pavement: the viaducts break down, the water mains become empty; the rich shops, once looted, remain empty of goods by reason of the failure of trade or production. Relapse into the more primitive rural occupations.

“if at all, in the provinces and the remote villages, which share the collapse but are not completely carried down by it or submerged in the debris. First the megalopolis becomes a lair: then its occupants are either hunted out by some warrior band, seeking the last remnants of conquest in gold or women or random luxuries, or they gradually fall away of their own accord. The living forms of the ancient city become a tomb for dying: sand sweeps over the ruins: so Babylon, Nineveh, Rome. In short, Nekropolis, the city of the dead: flesh turned to ashes: life turned into a meaningless pillar of salt.”

Lewis Mumford’s critique was considered alarmist in his day. It was not optimistic enough for an American society recovering from the Gread Depression. In later life he had the audacity to criticize American involvement in the War in Vietnam. His writings were ostracized and forgotten. Americans like a more hopeful message.

Recently interviewed by late-night talk-show host Steven Colbert, another public intellectual, Ta-nehisi Coates waxed pessimistic about racism and the future. Colbert encouraged him to end his analysis on a note of hope. Coates refused, saying, “To answer your question in a positive way, I would have to make shit up.”

“So there’s no hope?” asked Colbert.

“No,” replied his guest.

Mumford’s critique is not meant to deprive us of hope, but to provide us with a realistic picture of what’s going on. The word “vision” may mean a dream or divine hallucination; it may also mean just seeing what is. Returning to my imaginary time traveler and his 1930 ancestors: if they had read Mumford’s analysis of the decline of cities they would not at all be surprised at a sin city in the desert where millionaire visitors rent hotel rooms to shoot country fans with machine guns. It would not be the stuff of fiction to discover that the President of the United States occupies his time by shooting rolls of toilet paper at hurricane victims while maniacally laughing about the “calm before the storm” and the prospect of nuclear war with hydrogen bombs. This is not the stuff of science fiction, but the reality of the nekropolis in Kali-yuga.

The great prophet Chaitanya Mahaprabhy appeared in the 16th Century in Bengal and advised that the best hope in the nekropolis of Kali-yuga is to take shelter of the holy name by vibrating the great chant for peace:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare.

We would do well to take his advice.

End of the World vs. Future so Bright

The End of the World,

or the Future is so bright I need sunglasses

Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

The events of the last few weeks have been eye-opening: Hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico left a trail of devastation. Earthquakes in Mexico left Mexico City destroyed. An armed man shot thousands of rounds into a crowd of concert-goers in Las Vegas. A madman in Korea has threatened the madman in Washington with Hydrogen bombs. Is the end of the world near?

I think it was Alexis de Tocqueville who said that Americans prefer sentiment to truth. As I comb through sources looking for meaning this seems to ring true.

In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, for example, News sources ask us to focus on everything from the firing mechanism of automatic rifles to the Facebook pages of killers. We hear the compelling personal stories of panicked country music fans who were stampeded by a rain of bullets at an outdoor concert at a tragic massacre.

The President is flown in to offer his condolences. Cable News, Twitter, Facebook, cover the minutiae of every moment. But there is no attention to what it all means, no interest in understanding the cause of so much urban blight. Nowhere are we encouraged to think about the ethos that leads to this kind of dysfunctional society.

Politicians on the right call for moments of silence and prayers for the family; politicians on the left call for legislation that restricts gun ownership. Religious figures claim that this is punishment from God for the hedonism of our times.

We are offered a constant diet of sentiment, but little perspective, truth, or meaning. Absent from the public forum are any public intellectuals who are willing to give perspective on our culture of violence. Apart from the analysis of the killer given in an FBI psychological profile, we have no insight into the motives involved in the massacre.

The killing is all the more shocking for the lack of motives we are told. But perhaps the riddle may be solved by looking in the mirror. Perhaps the motives for massacre can be found in the endless culture of exploitation that molds our daily life. There may be some deep thinkers would could give some insight into these events, but perhaps their voices have been silenced. After all, introspection might threaten the bottom line of corporate media sponsors. We are to avoid the prophets of doom.

And then again analysis seems to fall into two camps: the optimism of progress vs. the apocalyptic. The prophets of doom tell us these massacres presage the end of the world where prophets of progress tell us not to worry. There is a warring dichotomy between "the end of the world is near" and the “future is so bright I need sunglasses.”

These different perspectives on the future have been around for a while. I grew up in the 1950s when the space race was on. The future was full of endless wonder. We felt that by the year 2000 we would conquer Mars, commute with flying cars, wear invisibility suits and anti-gravity belts. Engineers were optimistic about atomic motorcars, using uranium generators. Science fiction was no longer the stuff of fantasy.

Counter-posed to the optimism of engineers and science fiction aficionados, some Christian sects predicted the end of the world. During the Cold War of the 1960s it seemed perfectly credible that the world would end in atomic war.

As the year 2000 approached, many millenarian movements felt that the world would end. The ancient Mayan calendar was calculated to the year 2012, at which time it was predicted that time would stop.

I have watched the battling dichotomy between these two world-views for a life-time: the technocrats claim that the future holds only progress, while the prophets of doom tell us the end of the world is near. According to the prophecies of the ancient Vedas, the world is not to end soon. The Mahabharata predicts a gradual decline into what is called Kali-yuga or the “Age of Iron.” This prophecy holds that the age of technology began some 5,000 years ago and will continue for another 400,000 years or so as humans gradually decline into barbarism. The world ends as T.S. Eliot put it, "not with a bang but a whimper."

It seems that today there are two camps; either you follow the optimism of the futurisitc technocrats or you are branded as a doom-saying Luddite. But it wasn't always so. Many intellectuals in the last century grew to question the prevailing model. One of the most prescient minds of the 20th century studied the decline of Western Civilization through the rise of the megalopolis in the iron age. Lewis Mumford was a scholar, a literary and social critic who wrote extensively on cities, architecture, technology, literature, and modern life.

Lewis Mumford

He was one of the last great intellectual humanists of the 20th Century. the whose most important views are found in The City in History, 1960, Technics and Human Development, 1967, and The Pentagon of Power, 1970.

His analysis of civilization is noteworthy. While most 20th scientists expressed the optimism that we are in an age of continuous discovery and technological progress, Mumford was less sanguine:

“Plainly, a civilization that terminates in a cult of barbarism has disintegrated as civilization; and the war-metropolis, as an expression of these institutions, is an anti-civilizing agent: a non-city. To assume that this process can go on indefinitely is to betray an ignorance of social facts: decay at last halts itself. While the tasks of building, co-operation, and integration are never finished, unbuilding may be completed in a few generations. The chief question now before the Western World today is whether disintegration must be complete before a fresh start is made.”

Mumford's works explore how modern life while apparently offering opportunities for personal growth, for wider expression and development, really subverts spiritual growth and promotes an empty, soul-destroying conformity. He focuses on the paradox of progress. Scientists propose to explain everything, but end in the meaninglessness of a random universe.

Mumford could see even in the 1950s that the advance of technology while promising the utopia of endless development ends in the dysfunctional megalopolis.

The Megalopolis

In books like The Myth of the Machine, Mumford shows in lucid detail how the modern ethos of karmic exploitation released a Pandora's box of mechanical marvels which eventually threatened to absorb all human purposes into the religion of science and the myth of technology. An interesting example of his study of architectural dystopia in the age of iron is his article critiquing the building of the giant World Trade Center in New York, in 1970. Mumford Article on World Trade Center

The Myth of the Machine

In his later years, Mumford was more optimistic: he held out hope that the problems we face might be solved through spiritual advancement:

Certainly it is not in extensive cosmonautic explorations of outer space, but by more intensive cultivation of the historic inner spaces of the human mind, that we shall recover the human heritage.

 The Pentagon of Power, 1970.

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - I Won't Back Down

Tom Petty passed on yesterday. Here he is doing "I won't back down" with some great musicians including Beatle members Ringo Star and Sriman George Harrison, a friend of the Hare Krishna movement back in the 1960s.  I hope Tom Petty found the peace he was looking for.  He will be missed. I think this is a song about a faith that perseveres in spite of all obstacles: "You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down."

Adios Amigo.

Times vs. Eternities

The Culture of Amnesia

By Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

I’ve been writing this blog now for almost three years. Sometimes I feel that it’s hard to stay relevant. I like the motto “Read not the Times, read the eternities.” Spiritual contemplation, yoga, and Krishna consciousness are based on perennial wisdom.

The morning news with its ephemeral sensationalism is as easily forgotten as the tweeting of sparrows. At sunrise we find out that there’s a chance of rain followed by a mass shooting with possible electoral corruption. By lunchtime we can’t even remember where the new disaster or shooting took place. There’s a different reason for panic on the horizon. By evening time in the 24 hour news cycle there's a new earthquake or hurricane on which to focus our attention.

With all the latest gossip on social media, it’s impossible to remember what happened yesterday or last week. How can we be expected to pay attention to any long-term problems or solutions, when the incessant focus on the latest scandal has captured us so totally.

It may be that there is some conspiracy to increase this forgetfulness of our true self-interest. After all, the greatest creative and literary minds of our generation have been co-opted to create the mythology of consumerism. The best critical minds of the day now work at developing the algorithms that curate your entertainment options. Giant companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple are moving away from buying and selling products. They are getting into the business of repackaging and selling your privacy and attention span. With all the focus on selfishness, forgetfulness of self is the coin of the realm.

Absorbed in forgetfulness we are unable to evaluate what is critically important. When the Buddha was asked, “What is the most wonderful thing?” he answered, “The most wonderful thing is that everyone is dying and everyone is going to die, but no one thinks he is going to die.” Absorbed with ephemera, we fail to consider our place in the cycle of birth and death.

Forgetfulness serves the interests of the masters of the universe who sell eternal youth and enjoyment. It is inconvenient to remember that the material world is temporal, that death is real and imminent. It is impolitic to consider the consequences of unlimited exploitation.

Whether there is a conspiracy afoot to increase forgetfulness, or whether it is simply the tendency for conditioned souls inflated with ego to forget their own self-interest, forgetfulness is our disease.

And corporate advertising for the consumer society promotes our forgetfulness of self. In his letters to his son, Cicero counseled that Old Age has the advantage of allowing us to contemplate the self. Who would consider this to be wisdom today? There is no need to contemplate the eternal soul. Why be morbid? With cosmetic surgery and viagra you can be sexy forever.

The fascination with “News” promotes the culture of forgetfulness, since it is impossible to focus. Confronted with constant urgency, we lose perspective. The concentration on “News” means we lose all interest in history.

As a consumer-friendly fascism allows a small global elite to destroy and monetize cultures and traditions, we stumble quietly into darkness, peering into hand-held screens, watching videos of the world shrinking into chaos and corruption.

Forgetful of our own self-interest, our eternal spiritual nature, we suspend our disbelief and submit to the endlessly repeated “big lie” that sensual pleasure leads to self-realization. We eschew “religion” as dirty fanaticism even while embracing the alternate mythology: we can live forever surrounded with the hedonistic fun of empty technology.

The destruction of memory is viral. It is a self-inflicted wound. Camels enjoy eating thorn-bushes. When their tongues are pierced by the thorns the taste of their own blood makes their food more delicious. Our self-inflicted amnesia helps us pretend that ignorance is bliss. But ignorance is not enlightenment.

Absorption in scandal and disaster helps us forget our own self-interest, the life of the soul. In this sense constant absorption in the latest scandal is insidious, for it destroys our capacity for reason and disregards history.

Forgetfulness fuels a contorted view of history. At the present moment, with so many earthquakes, hurricanes, mass shootings and hydrogen bomb tests, many people think that we are at a unique moment in time. We are coming to the end of the world. But, again, this is forgetful of history. This is not the first time that the end of the world has been discussed.

Are we coming to the end of the world?

In 1981, I had the good fortune to find shelter at the ashram of His Divine Grace Bhakti Rakshak Shridhar dev Goswami. He was generous with his time and allowed us to pepper him with questions about everything from the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu to the end of the world.

At that time there was a class of truth-seekers promoting apocalyptic doom. According to their view, their guru had predicted the end of the world. They were convinced that the end of the world was coming soon.

It seems that one day they found their guru reading the news instead of the eternities. They were shocked and asked what he was doing. He explained that he was concerned about the situation between India and Pakistan. When they asked for a further analysis, the master scratched his head. He said, “Well, India has the bomb. Now, Pakistan has the bomb. Russia is backing India, and Pakistan has the backing of your United States of America. So, it may be that in the conflict between India and Pakistan, if there is an attack it may lead to a wider conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.”

His students immediately saw the logic. Long after the master had thrown the newspaper into the trash they promoted the idea: World War III is coming soon. I remember when the Master’s students sold atom-bomb survival suits with vegetarian canned food to be opened in case of nuclear war.

When these truth-seekers went to Shridhar Maharaja, they wanted confirmation. In those days, many people would come and go from the ashram, trying to get Shridhar Maharaja to confirm something for them. Everyone wanted the magic touch.

They asked him about the war after carefully laying out the argument: “Pakistan and India would enter into clash; The United States would back Pakistan. The Soviet Union would back India. Atomic war between the different parties was inevitable.”

Shridhar Maharaja responded as follows:

Student: Many people are worried about nuclear war. They think it may come very soon.

Sridhar Maharaj: 

That is a point on a line, a line on a plane, a plane in a solid. So many times wars are coming and going; so many times the sun, the Earth, and the solar systems disappear, and again spring up. We are in the midst of such thought in eternity. This nuclear war is a tiny point; what of that? Individuals are dying at every moment; the Earth will die, the whole human section will disappear. Let it be.

We must try to live in eternity; not any particular span of time or space. We must prepare ourselves for our eternal benefit, not for any temporary remedy. The sun, the moon, and all the planets appear and vanish: they die, and then again, they are created. Within such an eternity we have to live. Religion covers that aspect of our existence. We are told to view things from this standpoint: not only this body, but the human race, the animals, the trees, the entire Earth, and even the sun, will all vanish, and again spring up. Creation, dissolution, creation, dissolution—it will continue forever in the domain of misconception. At the same time, there is another world which is eternal; we are requested to enter there, to make our home in that plane which neither enters into the jaws of death, nor suffers any change.

In the Bhagavad-gita (8.16) it is stated:

abrahma-bhuvanal lokah
punar avartino 'rjuna
mam upetya tu kaunteya
punar janma na vidyate

"Even Lord Brahma, the creator himself, has to die. Up to Brahmaloka, the highest planet in the material world, the whole material energy undergoes such changes."

But if we can cross the area of misunderstanding and enter the area of proper understanding, then there is no creation or dissolution. That is eternal, and we are children of that soil. Our bodies and minds are children of this soil which comes and goes, which is created and then dies. We have to get out of this world of death.

We are in such an area. What is to be done? Try to get out. Try your best to get out of this mortal area. The saints inform us, "Come home dear friend, let us go home. Why are you suffering so much trouble unnecessarily in a foreign land? The spiritual world is real; this material world is unreal: springing and vanishing, coming and going, it is a farce! From the world of farce we must come to reality. Here in this material world there will be not only one war, but wars after wars, wars after wars.

There is a zone of nectar, and we are actually children of that nectar that does not die (srnvantu visve amrtasya putrah). Somehow, we are misguided here, but really we are children of that soil which is eternal, where there is no birth or death. With a wide and broad heart, we have to approach there. This is declared by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and the Bhagavad-gita, the Upanisads, and the Srimad-Bhagavatam all confirm the same thing. That is our very sweet, sweet home, and we must try our best to go back to God, back to home, and take others with us.”

So, the point I’m trying to make in writing this blog is that the “eternities” are more important than the “Times.”

The eternal wisdom of the Bhagavad-Gita, the Upanishads, and the Srimad-Bhagavatam cannot be ignored, and serve as a guide even in these turbulent times. By taking advantage of that wisdom we will gradually come to our true self-interest, leaving behind the amnesia that so shockingly afflicts us.