Acceptance of Collapse Book Recommendations

[kathleen]

Okay, I've read enough books regarding the collapse of our American Empire to be completely convinced. I am looking for book recommendations that fit into the acceptance stage. I know there was talk of Sacred Demise being a good follow-up to Dark Ages America. Any other suggestions?

[cygnus]

I read Sacred Demise.  I think it's a good book if you are just starting to come to grips with how you feel about the impending collapse, but if you're fairly well along on that path, not so much.  I didn't get much out of it, but I can see that it might be a good book for some to read. 

(I'm not saying that I'm fully adjusted to the reality of collapse, mind you.  I don't know if anyone really can be.  I am just to the point where things like meditation, writing, judicious community action, and spiritual work are more helpful to me at the moment.) 

[TLR1138]

Not really about acceptance, but I'm reminded of the lament for the fall of the Sumerian city of Ur and its Third Dynasty (c2000 BC) to the Elamites:

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.2.2&charenc=j#

The woman tears at her hair as if it were rushes. She beats the holy ub drum at her chest, she cries "Alas, my city". Her eyes well with tears, she weeps bitterly: "Woe is me, my city which no longer exists -- I am not its queen. Nanna, the shrine Urim which no longer exists -- I am not its owner. Woe is me, I am one whose cow-pen has been torn down, I am one whose cows have been scattered. I am Ningal on whose ewes the weapon has fallen, as in the case of an unworthy herdsman. Woe is me, I have been exiled from the city, I can find no rest. I am Ningal, I have been exiled from the house, I can find no dwelling place. I am sitting as if a stranger with head high in a strange city. Debt-slaves ...... bitterness ......."

[kathleen]

TLR-That was fascinating. 4,000 years and we are still looking at debt slavery. It was pretty chilling that the next stanza came from the woman in a debtor's prison. I don't know if it was just from the translation, but those passages were almost hypnotic. If their language was built that way it must have been amazing to hear a story being told. I imagine this lament will be repeated in some fashion by those today. Thanks for posting this link; it's a good reminder that there is nothing new under the sun.

[TLR1138]

The people of ancient Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon) left us tens of thousands of clay tablets. Some of them just contain tax records and sales receipts (and those are kind of interesting), but others contain accounts of everything from wars and disasters to ordinary events like marriages and food recipes and medicinal prescriptions.

Lots of them remain untranslated and sit in museum archives (there are only so many scholars who know how to translate them).

Some Sumerian proverbs:
Who possesses much silver may be happy;
who possesses much barley may be glad;
but he who has nothing at all may sleep.

For a man's pleasure there is marriage;
on thinking it over, there is divorce.

Go up to the ancient ruin heaps and walk around; look at the skulls of the lowly and the great. Which belongs to someone who did evil and which to someone who did good?

You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector!

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/
http://www.itanakh.org/texts/mesopotamian/
http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/