A Parable of the 1%*
Imagine a flock of pigeons in a corn field. Imagine that ninety-nine of them, instead of pecking the corn they need and using it as they need it, start to collect all they can into one big heap. Imagine that they do not leave much corn for themselves, but save this big heap of corn on behalf of the vilest and worst in their flock. Imagine that they all sit in a circle and watch this one pigeon, who squanders and wastes this wealth. And then imagine that they rush at a weak pigeon who is the most hungry among them who darest to take one grain from the heap without permission, and they punish him.
If you can imagine this, then you can understand the day-to-day behavior of mankind.
— William Paley
(found in Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom on 23 February)
*my title
23 February is the Roman festival of Terminalia, the last day of the ancient Roman year. The god of boundaries, Terminus, was remembered as the old year ended and the new began. Terminus was represented by Herms, the faceless boundary pillars set up between properties. On Terminalia, those who owned adjacent lands would meet at the pillar and invoke Terminus into the stone, adorning it with garlands. Libations of honey and wine were poured over the pillar, and honeycomb and freshly harvested grain were laid at its base. A lamb or a piglet would be sacrificed, and the ritual concluded in praise and song. In addition to these private rites, a public ritual was held at a place that traditionally symbolized the bounds of Roman territory — the sixth milestone on the way to Laurentum.
It is fitting that a god of boundaries be honored in Lent, though the two observances have nothing in common except their shared point in the solar year. Ritual acceptance of limits has deep roots in this season. Perhaps meditate on that today. And remember that in Rome, there is no reason to associate Spring with dearth. This time saw the harvest of winter grains and an end of winter’s hunger (such as they felt it at all). Still, instead of Dionysius, Rome honored Terminus on the last day of both the year and the winter, and two thousand years later many peoples are following the sober spring fast while the Hunger Moon waxes full.
Strange convergence, no?
I have been working in a bank for a year now. Despite my front-row seat on “the economy”, I still don’t understand why we give our lives over to the idiocy of this money-based culture. But I can say now, with some degree of expert judgement, that if you have financial resources, you should be spending it all as fast as you can on durable, useful things — like the ability to produce food and shelter for all those around you — because there is no reason to believe that our culture is going to hold together much longer. We have come to the terminus.
This world is not about to end. It is already ending.
It doesn’t take a Cassandra or a Jeremiah — or even a banker — to see that. We all know about the natural and not-so-natural disasters, the failing governing bodies, the wide-spread social fracturing. There is less discussion, but just as much anxiety over increasing costs, generally acknowledged to be the result of dwindling resources and increasing pollution. We hear about depression and epidemics and the opioid crisis. These are our daily generic stories, the broad strokes of a failing culture.
But it is hard to feel that failure. It is hard to internalize it and understand it. It is bigger than us, too big for our human hands and minds to grasp.
So what of the small and local? What are the stories of breakdown in your neighborhood?
Here is a recent week from my front-row seat on the terminus…
On Sunday night, the heretofore harmless town drunk was arrested for burning down a house. He broke into an abandoned property and lit it on fire. He was taken into custody on the curbside of his own home a few doors down the street, where he was sitting watching the flames. The burned husk of the home is a block from Main Street.
On Monday, the newspaper ran an article about an epidemic of unhoused children in the local school system. In 2018-19, there were 43 students who did not have a permanent home. This school year there are 121. The school district has 2185 students from kindergarten through twelfth grade, over 5% of whom have no regular place to live. These numbers began rising before last summer’s flood, though flooding disproportionately destroyed low-income housing and caused a spike. However, the rise began when emergency welfare payments, put in place during the pandemic, were ended. There are new sleeping bags behind my garage. It has been near zero (°F) most nights for weeks.
On Tuesday, the arsonist was at the bank. There was silence. Later, a quiet, if particular, man was screaming at the bank tellers. He stormed out, leaving his visibly embarrassed wife behind. She said he was not himself. He’d been in the emergency room for most of the weekend with a severe concussion after a new piece of farm machinery malfunctioned and smashed his skull.
On Wednesday, a young man, a veteran going through the hard times of a loud divorce, came in to empty his safe deposit box. A few hours later there were multiple emergency response vehicles heading down Main Street. First they were heading north, then a handful turned around and headed south. According to emergency scanners, those headed north were dealing with an accident in which there was one confirmed death. Those heading south were responding to a man passed out in a car parked in the dollar store parking lot. The man with the concussion brought muffins to apologize.
On Thursday morning, the newspaper reported that the dollar store encounter resulted in an arrest. The man was found in the driver’s seat of his car with an altered shot-gun in his lap and needles in the passenger seat. He was arrested for driving with a revoked license. Later it was determined that he was the suspected local leader of a Northeast drug cartel that had been using children as peddlers. He was and is a customer, as is the dollar store. That afternoon, a fastidious and rather conservative old couple began an ongoing project of turning all their investments and deposits into cash.
On Friday, it was discovered that Wednesday’s incident to the north of town involved the young man who had been emptying his safe deposit box that morning. He was found dead in the veteran’s cemetery. It was not an accident.
These are the stories from one small town. This is what collapse looks like in the particular. This is what we feel and, thereby, know.
What are the stories from where you live?
And do we really owe this culture this debt? Do we really believe that we should be giving our lives for this? Or is it more true that this culture and those who rule it owe us all a life…
I believe that when a majority of us can answer that question rationally, the last bonds will fall and we’ll finally step beyond the terminal bounds of empire.
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
Thanks for the Read !!!!
take care
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“…And do we really owe this culture this debt? Do we really believe that we should be giving our lives for this? Or is it more true that this culture and those who rule it owe us all a life…”
While I believe that – yes – it is “…more true that this culture and those who rule it owe us all a life…”, unfortunately (too) many of us take that to mean there’s no alternative but to passively wait for Them to do the right thing, suggesting that we’re helpless victims with no personal agency and must wait for Big Daddy (Big Brother?) to rescue us. I’m not saying that They don’t owe us anything. (Nor am I saying you’re implying this.) Ostensibly, there’s a social contract between Us and Them broadly outlined in the Bill of Rights that They are in the process of abrogating.
So, what does one do when you have a contract and the other party unilaterally breaks it, and there’s no higher authority (or access to that authority) to adjudicate? Protesting is all well and good – I’m an old-school “Leftie” who has participated in more protests and direct actions than I care to count – but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. They really don’t care what we say, because in Their supreme arrogance, They don’t have to. To be clear, I’m not advocating violence – I’m way too old for that anyway – although history has shown it may come to that someday. But we can withdraw our support for “the System”, as your recent essays have suggested. We can choose to not comply, both on the individual and collective levels.
I decided years ago that instead of banging my head against the proverbial brick wall, I was going to go around it. (Well, at least I was going to try.) All I can say is that it’s been a work in progress. I don’t profess to be an exemplar of simple living; I’m not claiming sainthood. I admit not being completely free of “the System”, but I try to remain conscious of my vulnerabilities – i.e., those things without which I’d really be in a pickle – and look for workarounds. An especially difficult one for me is owning a car, which is expensive to operate and maintain on a fixed income (Social Security, yet another vulnerability). I’ve found it nigh close to impossible living in rural Vermont and not having access to wheels. (Try vehicle-sharing when everyone is so used to having one at their beck and call. Believe me, it can get ugly!)
I live in a 200-SF, off-grid tiny house I built six years ago, because I did what you advise: converted retirement funds – which are no more than pixels on a computer screen – into something I owned and could actually touch. It has no running water (another long story), but there’s a well with a hand pump on the property where I’m parked, and I use a composting toilet that needs tending to every now and then. When people find out how I live I usually hear, “Oh, I could never do that!”. Or from my twin Millennial daughters, “Dad, I can’t live like you!” to which I answer, “I’m not asking you to.” (My sister thinks I’m crazy but thankfully still loves me.)
I get that it’s not for everyone, but it works for me. I’m not suffering. In fact, I’m relatively comfortable and very grateful for the freedom I have. Part of the reason I built a tiny house wasn’t to preach how to live, but to demonstrate (first and foremost to my kids) that you don’t have to live the way They say you do. Which is ultimately the point of my rambling. The idea is to be more conscious of where you are in your life, where you ‘d like to go, and what you’re willing to try. Experiment. Try something on for size. If you don’t like it or it’s too much too soon, back off a little and try something a little less ambitious. It’s not very different than going on a crash diet trying to lose 50 pounds in 3 weeks; probably not a great strategy for success. More than once I’ve seen people – often a young, idealistic couple fresh from the wilds of NYC with absolutely no useful skills (unless you consider GPS-ing the nearest Trader Joe’s a useful skill) – come to Vermont to homestead, only to quit after a month, although good on them for trying and deciding it wasn’t for them. (FYI, my sister and my daughters are not living a simple life. They are contentedly ensconced in “the System”, and I’ve learned to live my life and accept them in theirs.)
I’ve already gone on too long, so I’ll finish by opining that “social capital” is probably the most important thing of all. And here I’m not talking about “intentional communities.” While they’re fine if that’s your cup of tea – personally, I have a problem with being expected to sing from the same hymnal – they’re not an absolute necessity. Having others to “invest in” (and they in you), however, is. How we go about that and what it looks like is up to us. For my part, I try to meet people where they are.
Okay, enough!
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What do boundary and border have in common? They have been indispensable to the destruction of the commons through private property rights and the nation states that enforce them. My favorite definition is “A boundary is a real or imaginary line that separates two things.”
P.S. James Dickinson, Ry Cooder, and John Hiatt said it best in “Across the Borderline”
There’s a place, so I’ve been told
Every street is paved with gold
And it’s just across the borderline
And when it’s time to take your turn
There’s a lesson you must learn
You could lose more than you ever hope to find
And when you reach the broken promised land
Every dream slips though your hand
And you know it’s too late to change your mind
‘Cause you pay the price to come this far
Just to wind up where you are
And you’re still just across the borderline
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Great post. I love the micro snapshot of collapse in progress. This post is one of three things that made my hair stand on end this week. The other two are: (1) Jem Bendell pointed out the global average temp over the last six months is .5 C higher than the average one year ago, an increase which normally takes 500 years, and (2) the nationwide AT&T cell network outages yesterday morning. Got a few new grey hairs this week for sure.
I work in IT at a major University and we now spend almost all effort on fixing things, cyber security risk, and dealing with spiraling costs. Staff illness is way up since 2021, enrollments and budgets are nosediving, and the top level management and academic leaders are focused on feel good narratives, desperate to avoid dealing with the demographic, economic, and energetic reality.
I could go on, but i need to get busy battening down the hatches. Thanks for the always perceptive and inspiring writing.
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Yes… today I had to close 14 debit cards after an Amazon-fronted bin attack. Good times. And as to sickness, we’ve been through at least 2 rounds of COVID in our company since the new year alongside a horrible stomach bug that turns the digestive tract inside-out. We’re running ourselves to exhaustion to not quite keep our toes on the starting line.
Feel good narratives, indeed…
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