[ This is Chapter 1 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted "Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). The reprinting has been receiving excellent reviews:

Carolyn Baker in her national daily web site says: "Stunning" "A Masterpiece." "It was thirteen years ahead of its time. Now it is even more relevant. The book that explains the cultural basis of the present planetary crisis. William Kotke has brilliantly articulated what I would not only describe as an ‘encyclopedia of collapse’ but has skillfully depicted a vision of possibility imbedded within the core of apocalypse."

A review at Amazon.Com said: "This is an incredibly well documented and prophetic book. Prophetic in the sense that when I first read it over ten years ago, I was skeptical of many predictions. They have all turned out to come true. This book is indigenous and inspiring in the sense that it offers practical earth friendly strategies that affirm the possibility that man is part OF nature, not apart FROM it. Well written! Real history and facts, vitally relevant, and hence empowering! ..."

This first installment includes the Title Pages, Acknowledgements, Introduction, Table of Contents, and Chapter 1 (of 20): Pattern of the Crisis.
 
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have,

~ ronjon ]





To order this book, go to SCIY's Book Review at:

http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2008/4/18/3647174.html

and click on the AuthorHouse ordering link there.

AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2007 Wm. H. Kötke. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/20/2007

ISBN: 978-1-4343-3131-1 (e)
ISBN: 978-1-4343-3130-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4343-3129-8 (hc)

Printed in the United States of America
Bloomington, Indiana

This book is printed on acid-free paper.


THIS VISION OF THE FUTURE IS
DEDICATED TO THE GRAND CHILDREN
 
SHAUNA LYNN
AARON MICHAEL
BRADY ALAN
LEIGH  MICHAEL
JOHN POTTER
and to
SPARTACUS

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

One’s perspective of life is formed by all of the
experiences from birth and beyond. Though I am
responsible for each word, much of the focus of this
book comes from a wide variety of people and events.
Certainly the ranching culture of Central Oregon should
be acknowledged, where I gained an early experience as
a ranch hand. The years as a sawmill worker in Oregon
and California caused me to understand the point of
view of those people. The Civil Rights Movement, the
Viatnam War and the Summer of Love in Haight Ashbury
woke all of us up to the realities of the planet. Years as
a labor organizer and union business representative
allowed me to understand why it is so difficult for the
masses of us to make sudden beneficial changes. Living
in the mountains of Northern New Mexico I came to
understand how the four century old insular Spanish
culture there, established before the pilgrims reached
Plymouth Rock, had been able to endure as a self
sufficient society. The years spent chopping wood and
herding sheep for Katherine Smith, an elder of the
relocation-threatened, Big Mountain Navajos, instructed
me of the great strength of people who live with the earth.
In residing with the Jicarilla Apache  of New Mexico I
came to understand the functioning of a tribe. In living
in the Gila, in Catron County, New Mexico I personally
experienced the problems and insecurities of rural U.S.
viii

people as they face the chaotic future over which they
have little control.

A number of people assisted directly with the
production of this document. Lisa Pucci created the
beautiful illustrations and helped with early production.
Jay Scott of Silver City, New Mexico created the portaits
of the honored elders of the Gila who resisted empire.
Ellen Gellert, former instructor of Women’s Studies at
the University of Buffalo and later resident of the Gila,
provided valuable insights. Cecelia Ostrow, singer and
noted earth philosopher provided valuable editorial
work as did novelist Gary Stallings. To all who have
contributed, I thank you and hope that the effort meets
you approval.

Wm. H. Kötke
ix

CONTENTS
 

Acknowledgements - vii
Introduction - xi


Book One
The Collapse of Civilization

The History of Disintegration
Chapter 1
Pattern of the Crisis - 3
Chapter 2
The End of Civilization - 29

The Collapse of the Ecosystem
Chapter 3
Soil: The Basis of Life - 41
Chapter 4
The Forest - 81
Chapter 5
The Phantom Agriculture - 99
Chapter 6
The Dying Oceans - 131
Chapter 7
Extinction of Life by Species Increment - 141

The Exhaustion of the Industrial Empire
Chapter 8
Population, Poisons and Resources - 149

The Analysis of Empire Culture
Chapter 9
The Cultural Dynamics of Empire - 193
Chapter 10
The Psychology of Empire - 215

x

Chapter 11
The History of Modern Colonialism - 257
Chapter 12
Colonialism in the Modern World - 309


Book Two

The Seed of the Future

Creating A Whole Life
Chapter 13
The Principles of Life - 335
Chapter 14
Culture as Organism - 389

Living on the Earth
Chapter 15
The Life of the Tribe - 405
Chapter 16
The Restoration of the Life of the  Earth - 459
Chapter 17
Permanent Desert Culture - 485
Chapter 18
Choosing Reality - 507

On the Watershed
Chapter 19
The Natural History of the Watershed of the San Francisco River - 521
Chapter 20
Planetary Restoration-watershed Restoration - 589


xi

INTRODUCTION
 
The crisis of the planet Earth is so profound that
all of our lives will be caught up in it. Our lives will
change because of it. Our lives will change because
of the apocalyptic events happening now and the even
greater dislocations to come. We cannot avoid these
great trends of history but we can exercise awareness
and skill in action in dealing with them. The tumult will
be environmental and it will also be within the social
body of civilization.

Book I begins with a straight-forward examination of
our ecological situation on the planet. This is not pleasant
knowledge but it is imperative that we understand the
full dimensions of the problem before we invest our lives
in a solution. Book I also includes an explanation of how
we humans have arrived at such a point of personal and
planetary suicide. In this section the cultural dynamics,
the psychology and the history of our culture is examined
in order to gain insight for the future.

Book II is a plan of action for us to regain paradise.
This section answers the question of how to live in
balance with nature. This is not a theoretical answer.
It involves an actual watershed, what its ecology is and
what the food sources are. This section takes those
much abused words, “sustainable” and “balance with
nature,” and puts them on the ground. We will be urged
to immediately create a new ecologically sustainable land
based culture that will take us through the future times.
xii

Those who can respond will be accepting an initiatory
challenge such as has seldom happened to our kind. The
challenge is to bring out of the greatest wave of death
and destruction the earth has ever known, a new world
of wholeness and relationship of all of the tribes that live
in ecological sustainability. This era is the first time in
two million years that all of the tribes can connect as a
planetary whole in a geographical and material sense.
When our great, great, great grandchildren look back
at the crisis that their ancestors had lived through they
will understand why we changed ourselves, our culture,
our relationship with our mother the earth and our
relationship with the spirit of the cosmos.

xiii

BOOK ONE

THE COLLAPSE
OF
CIVILIZATION

3

Chapter 1
PATTERN OF THE CRISIS

Collapse on the Periphery

Individual empires have suffered cyclical collapse
since civilization began. The Babylonian, Greek and
Roman empires are classical examples. These civilized
empires initially expanded, funded by their base of
arable land, grazing areas and forests. As they reached
out, conquering new lands and peoples, their growth
was fueled by slave labor and appropriated resources.
Their growth continued until the ecological base of
the empire was exhausted. At that point, the empires
imploded. Sumeria and Babylonia stripped their lands
through overgrazing and deforestation. This brought
down huge amounts of erosion material that threatened
the irrigation works. They also inexorably salinized their
soil by irrigation. Early on, in the history of the Greek
Empire, Plato complained of the ecological devastation
in the area of Attica. By the end of that empire the
ecology of the whole of Greece was severely injured. Both
the Greek and Roman empires used North Africa as a
“breadbasket” and by the close of the Roman Empire it
was ecologically destroyed along with much of the rest
of the Roman territories.
 
4
Wm. H. Kötke

Though the standard political and social histories of
these empires do not stress an ecological view, there is
certainly no question that at the end of their cycles these
empires had little ecological energy remaining.
Anywhere the culture of empire (a.k.a., civilization)
has spread one finds devastated ecologies. The life is
literally “rubbed out,” the original life is gone. Much of
the living flesh of the planet does not now exist in those
places. But, we know that it did exist. The life in those
areas has suffered a die-back. The forests are gone, the
topsoil is depleted and the land is eroded. The richness
of the land has been used up. The wealth of the earth’s
life has been spent by the extortion of empire.

Empires implode. They collapse from within. This is
beginning now on the edges of world civilization where the
ecology has been stripped, the population is exploding
and the resultant social turmoil  insures further decline.
These implosions of the colonies will eventually become
general throughout the cultural system.

Islands such as Madagascar, the Canaries, the
islands of the Caribbean, many south sea islands and
others have been ecologically stripped. In areas like Peru,
whole mountainsides fall off because of the ecological
devastation caused by deforestation and hillside farming.
In Brazil’s Northeast, the coastal rain forest and the
fertile areas further inland have been replaced by desert.
In some areas of the former fertile southern interior
of Brazil, coffee plantations have reduced the land to
such eroded conditions that cows cannot even graze
it for fear that they will fall into the canyons created
by soil erosion. In Central Asia, many bodies of water
such as the Azov, Caspian, Black Sea and Baikal are
severely injured. The supply of caviar there has almost
ceased because the waters are so polluted that the fish
die. In Tibet where the Chinese Empire has invaded,
devastation is spreading as trees are cut, steep areas are
plowed and mines are begun.

5 
The Final Empire

The story of the brief empire of Venice is instructive
as to how the ecological base of empire injures the earth
and how the culture of empire uses up the life of the
earth to generate its ephemeral power. By the end of the
fifteenth century the City of Venice was emerging as a
sea-power. Venice traded all the way from the eastern
Mediterranean to England. Galley ships were the power
behind the merchant fleet. The oar-powered galleys
ultimately depended upon slave labor. They were fast
and could navigate where sailing ships could not. The
whole arrangement was based on wood for ships, and
in turn depended upon forests, which in the beginning
were abundant near Venice. As the power of Venice
was coming to an end, the City was obtaining ships in
Barcelona built with lumber from the forests of northern
Spain and finally from the Baltic region of northern
Europe, which had not yet been stripped. By this time
there were no forests anywhere in the Mediterranean
that could fund a sea-faring empire.

This phenomenon of implosion is occurring now in
the present World Empire. The country of Bangladesh
shows us one type of implosion. In the distant past the
whole of the area was populated by forager/hunters
such as those threatened tribes who live now in the
Bangladeshi hills. As the waves of empire culture came,
first with the Indo-Aryans thousands of years ago, the
life of the area was progressively degraded. Bengal as it
was formerly called, was conquered by the English early
in the colonial period. Prior to the conquest it had been a
fertile and self-sufficient area. When the English moved
in they began to put heavy pressure on the organic
fertility. They established the plantation system and
mined the agricultural land to ship valuables to the
“mother country.” Later, in the Twentieth Century when
England was severed from its colonies on the Indian
subcontinent, the region became part of Pakistan and
finally an independent country. In the later years,
 
6 
Wm. H. Kötke

Bangladesh has suffered flooding, a constant population
explosion and periodic drought.

Bangladesh is located on the delta of the Ganges River
that drains the Himalayan range. With the Chinese now
stripping Tibet, floods and erosion material race down out
of central Tibet borne by the Bramaputra River that joins
the Ganges and comes through countries that are being
stripped along the southern tier of the range: Bhutan,
India and in particular Nepal. Because the forests are
being stripped, the land no longer can absorb water and
the floods grow larger. The State of India’s Environment:
1982, a report by non-governmental groups, states:

“From Kashmir (far west) to Assam (far
east) the story is the same. Below 2,000
meters (6,500 feet) there are literally no
forests left. In the middle Himalayan belt,
which rises to an average height of 3,000
meters (9,800 feet), the forest area, originally
estimated at being a third of the total area,
has reduced to a mere 6-8 per cent.”1

A global environmental study, Gaia: An Atlas Of
Planet Management, says that the erosion is so bad
that an island of five million hectares (12,355,000
acres) of erosion material is beginning to surface in
the Bay of Bengal. “Around one-quarter of a million
tonnes (255,325 U.S. tons) of topsoil are washed off the
deforested mountain slopes of Nepal each year, and a
further sizable amount from the Himalayan foothills in
India’s sector of the Ganges catchment zone.” The study
notes that the countries of India and Bangladesh are
geared up to contest possession of the island when it
surfaces.2

Due to the periodic catastrophes of flood and drought
the society of Bangladesh is beginning to disintegrate
into a low-level warlord society where even the central
government cannot exert control much distance from the

7 
The Final Empire

capital city. One effort that the government is making
to alleviate its population crush is an attempt to settle
a relatively small “hill country” area with lowlanders.
These hill areas contain remnant tribes of non-civilized
people. The Bangladesh government has warred against
these people for some years, attacking them with modern
armies and rounding up the survivors into concentration
camps. As the lowlanders invade into the vacuum, they
level the forest and attempt to raise crops.

On the lowlands, a large share of the population lives
in the delta. Here the impoverished people fight each
other for small plots of land. As the floods come and
go, the islands and marshes change continually. As the
above-water areas dry out following a flood, the people
rush in to claim small plots on which they attempt to
grow food before the next flood or drought.

The combination of exploding population and
ecologically based disasters is causing the society to
disintegrate. This process which began years back in
Bangladesh is one of the effects that we can expect to see
in the years ahead in other parts of civilization.

Writer Mohiuddin Alamgir, researching his report,
Famine in South Asia; Political Economy of Mass
Starvation, asked villagers in Bangladesh during a
famine in 1974, about the reasons why people were
dying around them. He found that the villagers had
only a vague notion about the true cause. The villagers
could see that people were dying of disease and that
they had various symptoms but few villagers could see
or admit that people were starving. The villagers were
in a weakened condition, which allowed them to die of
the first disease that came around. Death was the end
result of the steady social deterioration that they had
experienced. “Once people ran out of resources to buy
food grains, they sold or mortgaged land, sold cattle and
agricultural implements, sold household utensils and

8 
Wm. H. Kötke

other valuables (such as ornaments), and, finally their
homesteads,” says Alamgir.3

When there is nothing left and people are starving,
they leave and wander aimlessly about the country of
Bangladesh. Many of the uprooted households that
Alamgir studied had begun to disintegrate, with members
of the same household wandering off in different directions
toward separate areas of the country. Deserted children,
deserted wives, deserted husbands and deserted elders
are becoming commonplace. Bangladesh society has gone
over the brink. The centralized control by the wealthy
elite and the military has broken down. The population
is destined to continue as a wandering, increasingly
hungry mass until, sometime in the future, all coherent
human society and culture dies and human cooperation
and optimistic effort disintegrates. It is this condition,
as shown by Bangladesh, which is the ultimate end of a
culture that eats up its survival systems.

We need keep in mind that forager/hunter populations
lived in stability in this area for hundreds of thousands
and perhaps millions of years because they did not
destroy that which sustained them.

Alamgir states that after previous famines in
Bangladesh, the society returned to near normal social
relationships, but he reports:

“Both separation of families and
desertion represent a breakdown of the
system of security provided by family and
kinship ties under traditional social bonds.
This is, of course, not unique in the 1974
Bangladesh famine, as reference to erosion
of social ties can be found in almost all
preceding famines. However, two points
should be noted: First, a slow process
of disintegration of traditional ties had
already set in and famine only accelerated
 
9
The Final Empire

it. Second, manifestations of breakdown of
kinship and family bonds were reversible in
the past in the sense that old relationships
were restored through the normal process
of post famine societal adjustment. This is
no longer true in the Bangladesh scenario
today where such processes seem to be
irreversible, which is reflected in the rate of
permanent destitution.”4

The horn of Africa region where the country of Ethiopia
is located represents another example of implosion.
Ethiopia is hit with periodic drought. If the region were
in its primordial climax ecological condition the droughts
would likely have minimal impact but like Bangladesh,
the region’s ecology is so ravaged that any perturbation
of climate becomes a disaster and the human created
situation is called an “act of God.”

Ethiopia originally had a stable population of forager/
hunter people but it became one of the “cradles of
civilization.” The life of Ethiopia is now almost gone.
Almost all of Ethiopia is high, mountainous country with
good rainfall, but there is little vegetative life left. The
ancient empires were nourished on it and the vitality
has evaporated. It is estimated that three quarters of the
country was originally forested yet at present only four
percent of the country has forest. One study estimates
that the volume of live trees now, is 800 million cubic
meters and then goes on to say that the annual fuel
wood consumption is 20 million cubic meters and rising
rapidly.5  Even if the remaining forests were only used to
heat houses and cook food they would not last long.

Despite having one of the highest death rates in the
world, the country’s population continues to rise. One
would think it would decline but unlike our former forager/
hunter culture, which sought to keep their population
within the carrying capacity of the environment, people

10 
Wm. H. Kötke

of the culture of empire do not. The people of civilization
have many motives, other than simply lack of awareness
that propels population growth. One important reason
is that civilized people work at exploiting the land and
the more hands the more production. Agrarians, for
example, traditionally have large families to help with
farm work and hard times call for more hands to force
the land to produce more. There is also motive for large
families so that one will be cared for in old age. There is
the motive of the pride of the patriarch in large families.
Though there are a number of basic motives, there is a
functional reason also why population is not responsive
immediately to food supply. If there is a famine or
drought, the children already born will have children.
Demographers say that population responsiveness has a
time lag of seventy years to social/environmental events
and even this responsiveness is only a momentary blip
on the over-all graph line of exponential growth.

One researcher highlights the continued drama of
destruction in Ethiopia partially attributed to population
growth:

“A dramatic alteration in environmental
quality has been visible within a single
lifetime in the hills surrounding Addis
Ababa. When the capital was founded in
1883 by the Emperor Memelik II, it was
still surrounded by remnants of rich cedar
forests and reasonably clear streams.
Deforestation and erosion were immediately
spurred by the influx of humans. In the
ensuing nine decades, virtually all the
available land in the region has been
cultivated, while charcoal producers cut
trees within a 160-kilometer radius for sale
in the city. Now the waters of the nearby
Awash River and its tributaries are thick

11
The Final Empire
 
with mud, and waterways are shifting their
courses more markedly and frequently than
in the past.”6

Addis Ababa sits in the high mountains of central
Ethiopia. It is near the headwaters of the Awash River.
From Addis Ababa, the river courses northeast into a
rapidly widening valley that eventually reaches the coast
at Djibouti on the Red Sea. UN researchers expect the
whole Awash Basin to soon become rocky desert; but the
eye of civilization sees only war, ideology and revolution.
The problem is ecological but the cultural attention and
media-focus emphasize war. As civilization fixates on
war and violence in Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia, in the
Horn of Africa, the life of the earth dwindles in that area
and starvation spreads. Although the destruction of the
life of the earth is caused by civilization, civilized society
is unable to see its own problem because the organic life
of the earth is below its threshold of consciousness.

El Salvador, in Central America, is another country
that is imploding on the periphery of the Empire of
Civilization. The Spanish Empire invaded the area that
is now El Salvador early in the sixteenth century. They
immediately began to enslave the stable and sustainable
cultures of the region as factors of imperial production.
At that time, the western two-thirds of the country was
inhabited by a Nahuatl speaking culture. The Nahuatl
language group includes Aztec, Hopi and Ute. In the
eastern one-third of the country, across the Lenca River
lived the tribes named Lenca, Jinca, Pokomám, Chortí and
Matagalpa. There are now some half-million “invisible”
Indians in El Salvador, in a country of five million. They
are invisible because they have been forced to abandon
their native dress and language. The first census from the
years 1769-1798 listed 83,010 Indians in a population of
161,035. Initially, the native people of the lowlands were
enslaved into the Spanish estates. These original estates

12
Wm. H. Kötke

exported cacao and balsam. By the end of that century,
indigo plantations were spreading out further into the
last Indian communal lands in the higher elevations.
Soon cattle ranching moved into the northern tier of
the country and masses of Indian people, who were not
among the indentured workers, were wandering through
the area in a detribalized condition. The native people’s
habitat had been destroyed. Inasmuch as their cultural
knowledge and skills were related to the living world, the
native people became powerless and dependent upon
the invading culture. By the middle of the Nineteenth
Century, coffee began to be the major export crop and
this agriculture with its need for the last available higher
elevation land, began to finish the remaining communal
Indian lands as well as their forest habitat. By 1930,
coffee was more than ninety percent of El Salvador’s
exports.7

In 1932, in the midst of the world depression, Indians
in the highlands around Sonsonate revolted against
both the imperial conquerors and their latino subjects,
the mestizos. The army of the oligarchy was unleashed
against the unarmed Indians. The virulent anti-Indian
racism of “latinos” was also unleashed as they, also,
began to participate. By the time the massacres were over,
somewhere variously estimated at between 15,000 and
50,000 children, women and men had been murdered
and the native land base was occupied by the aliens.8

The story of El Salvador is of native tribes who
lived stably with their habitat, the forests and other
ecosystems of the isthmus. The events since that time
have been created by the far different culture of empire,
which invaded, to extort valuables from the area. The
pattern displayed has been consistent since empire
culture began. The industrial revolution and markets
have added a few new wrinkles. The pattern is that
of a small powerful elite taking land and labor from
the colony for free or at very low price. The extorted

13
The Final Empire
 
valuables are then exported in exchange for currency
that supports the elite of the colony who, in return, keep
the native populations in control. This is the classic
picture of third world colonies and is the picture of El
Salvador. This pattern has persisted in El Salvador and
is largely the reason for its environmental destruction.
The oligarchy runs the country on a feudal basis little
changed from the days of the conquistadors. This means
that in the pursuit of their profits they need observe
no environmental laws. They may take any land they
need, they may use any type and amount of agricultural
chemicals on their crops and they may dump toxins in
any manner that they please. One group that researches
Central America’s environmental problems says that as
of 1990, “75 per cent of pesticides exported to Central
America from the U.S. are either banned or severely
restricted for use in the U.S.”9 This elimination of the cost
of environmental protection controls makes El Salvador a
high-profit enclave for its rulers and for the transnational
corporations located there. They are provided with an
impoverished and cheap labor pool, which is unable to
organize effectively because of military repression and
death squads. They do not have the expense of meeting
environmental standards so this gives them a decided
competitive advantage over other countries.

Since the arrival of civilized culture, 95 per cent of
the country’s original tropical, deciduous forest has
disappeared. Twenty mammal species and eighteen bird
species are gone. Serious soil erosion affects 77 per cent
of the country. Following deforestation, groundwater is
disappearing, sediments are beginning to fill the dams
and stop the hydroelectric supply and the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization says the country is
undergoing a process of desertification.10

In the familiar pattern, particularly since World War
II, the alliance between the domestic oligarchy, U.S. aid
agencies and transnational corporations have increased

14
Wm. H. Kötke
 
exports which has led to the clearing of the last viable
stands of old-growth ebony, cedar, mahogany and
granadilla trees. Where the country was once food self-
sufficient it now exports cash crops of food items and
even flowers to the industrial countries (for the profit of
the oligarchy) and imports food.

The Environmental Project On Central America
(EPOCA) says that: “Today unequal control of resources
remains at the root of poverty and environmental
destruction in El Salvador. A small elite, referred to as
the ‘Fourteen Families,’ comprises less than 2 per cent
of the population yet enriches itself from ownership of
more than 60 per cent of the country’s arable land. The
poorest 20 per cent of the Salvadoran people own no
land and receive only 2 per cent of the national income.”
In the countryside, the report says that: “two-fifths of
the population cannot afford a basic diet of corn and
beans.”11

The EPOCA report says that one in ten have access
to safe drinking water. “Look at a body of water in El
Salvador and you will see a reflection of almost every
major environmental problem in the country: pesticide
and fertilizer contamination; industrial pollution;
municipal waste and sewage; sedimentation from
deforestation and soil erosion; and waterborne diseases.
All the major waterways in El Salvador are contaminated
by raw sewage and a variety of toxic chemicals, according
to a 1982 report by the U.S. Agency for International
Development.”12

With the oligarchy occupying the land that an
agriculturist would call “arable,” the poor are forced up
onto the mountainsides where they use slash and burn
agriculture. Because the people are overcrowded and
there is not enough land, the fallow periods on the slash
and burn plots are too short. This quickly erodes the
topsoil and leaves the mountains denuded of all vegetation
except for hardy brush. In 1974 there were 400 people for

15 
The Final Empire

each square mile of El Salvador. The population doubling
time in El Salvador is now twenty-two years.13

These three countries, Bangladesh, El Salvador and
Ethiopia, with their varying histories and varying types
of impact from civilization characterize the periphery
of what we may term the industrial empire. These are
the conquered and colonized resource and labor areas
and their societies are collapsing under the pressure of
environmental degradation, population explosion, and
militarism and export economies. If the oligarchy of El
Salvador were to suddenly depart for Miami, the country
would still be in a state of disintegration. The soil, water
and air are poisoned. There are few natural resources left
and importantly for our analysis, the civilized culture of
the people of El Salvador would not be disposed to restore
the land mass to the climax ecosystem, even if that were
possible.

This is the beginning of the end for the Final Empire
of civilization. Here we see in these examples that there
is little remaining to take out and the populations are
exploding. When two people have five children and then
fifteen years later those five children have five children
the stage is being set for disintegration. As these factors
of soil and ecosystems work themselves out into social
turmoil and breakdown, the reports of the media refer to
revolution, economics and politics. The life of the earth
is not within their consciousness.

As the regions on the periphery of the empire implode,
the center is also imploding, though in a qualitatively
different way. The most general statement to make on
the system-wide implosion of the industrial empire has to
do also with the cultural consciousness. Because of the
nature of the culture, it lives and profits by exhausting
the life of the earth. Within the cultural bubble we tend to
measure our progress by our wealth. The more pressure
that the farmer puts on the soil, the more the farmer and
the banker profit. The more forests that are cut, the more

16
Wm. H. Kötke

the timber company and the employees benefit. What this
means is that as the life of the earth is eradicated, the
information feed-back system (bank accounts) reports
that things are getting better and betters. Progress is
being made. This is another major example of how the
reality of life is below the threshold of consciousness and
also helps to explain why civilization cannot extricate
itself from the fall toward apocalypse.

As we approach the end of the Final Empire, societies
become paralyzed and disintegrate. There is nothing
left with which the society can regenerate itself. In El
Salvador, even the “arable” soils are exhausted and
poisoned because they have been subjected to years
of industrial agriculture with its poisons and artificial
fertilizers. The other side of this grim equation is the
population explosion. This is compounded by the fact
that a majority of the population now is youthful and
just beginning to come into their child bearing years.
This means that the already overbearing population
has reached a take-off point and will climb even more
steeply.

The life of the earth dies out at varying speeds. So
that we do not lose contact with reality we must look
at this. These examples show swift destruction. It is
possible to see the huge erosion canyons in Ethiopia.
It is possible to see the floods of Bangladesh and it is
possible to count the children in hospitals in El Salvador
who have been poisoned with agricultural chemicals.
Although not as dramatic, we must realize that our
own backyard is degraded and poisoned. If any of us
walk out of our back door and look, we will see gross
injury to the life of the earth. We may view a lawn that
has been subjected to poisons and artificial fertilizers.
At some point in the history of that small area, toxins
may have been introduced such as motor oil, household
cleansers or maybe air drift or subsoil moisture seepage
of some industrial dump. The point is that if the climax
 
17
The Final Empire

ecosystem is not there then the earth is losing its life.
This is a difficult concept for modern people to deal with
mentally. The statement is that the life of the earth, the
climax ecosystem, must regain balance or the earth will
become substantially dead. The natural state of health
and balance of the earth is to be covered with climax
ecosystems or ecosystems closely approximating them.

There are examples in the Mid-East of reg pavements
(rock-hard soil) where forests once stood. The reg pavement
is a hard, virtually impermeable, layer of clays and other
dirt that covers wide areas. We have the example of El
Salvador proceeding toward desert status (and there are
other examples in other parts of the world of tropical
forests becoming deserts). With both of these examples
we can trace the historical devolution of these ecosystems
and soils, which usually begin with the cutting of the
forest. When we travel about the earth we don’t always
realize that where we are seeing a desert now, there may
have been a thriving semi-arid ecosystem. Where there
is a brushwood hillside, there was once a magnificent
forest. In those areas where we now see forest we will
soon see deserts.

The life of civilization is only an eye-blink in the eons
of time of the life of the earth. We can see the killing of
the life of the earth in the rapid dramas as well as the
long range spirals of descent. As we continue to examine
the condition of our earth we must maintain contact with
reality and realize that everywhere civilization has spread
the earth is hurting, injured and dying. Even if an area is
green with vegetation, it may only be the first aid crew of
weeds struggling to heal the earth and the chances are
good that soon the bulldozers will come to destroy even
that, so that the “real estate” can be “developed.”

Collapse From the Center

Our generation is on the verge of the most profound
catastrophe the human species has ever faced. Death
threats to the living earth are coming from all sides. Water,
 
18 
Wm. H. Kötke

sunlight, air and soil are all threatened. When Eskimos
of the far north begin to experience leukemia from atomic
radiation and Eskimo mothers’ milk contains crisis levels
of PCB’s, we must recognize that every organism on the
planet is threatened.

Compounding this crisis is the fact that the prime
forces in this affair, the civilized humans, are unable
to completely understand the problem. The problem is
beneath the threshold of consciousness because humans
within civilization (civilization comes from the Latin, civis,
referring to those who live in cities, towns and villages) no
longer have relationship with the living earth. Civilized
people’s lives are focused within the social system itself.
They do not perceive the eroding soils and the vanishing
forests. These matters do not have the immediate interest
of paychecks. The impulse of civilization in crisis is to
do what it has been doing, but do it more energetically
in order to extricate itself. If soaring population and
starvation threaten, often the impulse is to put more
pressure on the agricultural soils and cut the forests
faster.

We face planetary disaster. The destruction of the
planetary life system has been ongoing for thousands
of years and is now approaching the final apocalypse
which some of us will see in our own lifetimes. Far from
being a difficult and complex situation it is actually very
simple, if one can understand and accept a few simple
and fundamental propositions.

The planetary disaster is traced to one
simple fact. Civilization is out of balance
with the flow of planetary energy.

The consensus assumption of civilization is that
an exponentially expanding human population with
exponentially expanding consumption of material
resources can continue, based on dwindling resources and
 
19
The Final Empire

a dying ecosystem. This is simply absurd. Nonetheless,
civilization continues on with no memory of its history
and no vision of its future.

Possibly the most important source of life on this
planet is the thin film of topsoil. The life of the planet
is essentially a closed, balanced system with elements
of sun, water, soil and air as the basic elements. These
elements work in concert to produce life and they
function according to patterns that are based in the laws
of physics, which we refer to as Natural Law.

The soil depth and its richness are
a basic standard of health of the living
planet.

As a general statement we may say that when soil is
lost, imbalance and injury to the planet’s life occurs. In
the geologic time-span of the planet’s life, this is a swift
progression toward death. Even if only one per cent of
the soil is lost per thousand years, eventually the planet
dies. If one per cent is gained, then the living wealth, the
richness, of the planet increases. The central fact must be
held in mind of how slowly soil builds up. Soil scientists
estimate that three hundred to one thousand years are
required for the build up of each inch of topsoil.

The nourishment of the soil depends upon the
photosynthetic production of the vegetative cover
that it carries. There are wide differences in the Net
Photosynthetic Production of many possible vegetative
covers. As a rule it is the climax ecosystem of any
particular region of the earth that is the most productive
in translating the energy of the sun into the growth of
plants and in turn into organic debris which revitalizes
the soil.

A climax ecosystem is the Equilibrium State of the
“flesh” of the earth. After a severe forest fire, or to recover
from the injury of clearcut logging, the forest organism

20
Wm. H. Kötke

slowly heals the wound by inhabiting the area with
a succession of plant communities. Each succeeding
community prepares the area for the next community. In
general terms, an evergreen forest wound will be covered
by tough small plants, popularly called “weeds” and the
grasses which hold down the topsoil and prepare the
way for other grasses and woody shrubs to grow up on
the wound. (“Weeds” are the “first aid crew” on open
ground.) As a general rule, the “first aid crew” - the first
community of plants to get in and cover the bare soil
and hold it down - is the more simple plant community
with the smallest number of species of plants, animals,
insects, micro-organisms and so forth. As the succession
proceeds, the diversity, the number of species, increases
as does the NPP, until the climax system is reached
again, and equilibrium is established.

The system drives toward complexity of form, maximum
ability to translate incoming energy (NPP) and diversity
of energy pathways (food chains and other services
that plants and animals perform for one another).

The plants will hold the soil so that it may be built back
up. They will shade the soil to prevent its oxidation (the
heating and drying of soil promotes chemical changes
that cause sterility) and conserve moisture. Each plant
takes up different combinations of nutrients from the soil
so that specific succession communities prepare specific
soil nutrients for specific plant communities that will
succeed them. Following the preparation of the site by
these plants, larger plants, alders and other broadleaf
trees will come in and their lives and deaths will further
prepare the micro-climate and soil for the evergreens.
These trees function as “nurse” trees for the final climax
community, which will be conifers. Seedling Douglas
Fir for example, cannot grow in sunlight and must have
shade provided by these forerunner communities.

The ecosystems of this earth receive injury from
tornado, fire, or other events and then cycle back to

21
The Final Empire

the balanced state, the climax system. This is similar
to the wound on a human arm that first bleeds, scabs
over and then begins to build new replacement skin to
reach its equilibrium state. The climax system then is
a basic standard of health of the living earth, its
dynamic equilibrium state.

The climax system is the system that produces the greatest photosynthetic production. Anything that detracts from this detracts from the health of the ecosystem.

Climax ecosystems are the most productive because
they are the most diverse. Each organism feeds back some
portion of energy to producers of energy that support it
(as well as providing energy to other pathways) and as
these support systems grow, the mass and variety of
green plants and animals increases, taking advantage
of every possible niche. What might be looked at as a
whole unitary organ of the planet’s living body- a forest
or grassland- experiences increased health because of its
diversity within.

On a large scale, the bioregions and continental soils
substantially support sea life by the wash-off (natural
and unnatural) of organic fertility into aquatic and ocean
environments. This is a further service that these whole
ecosystems perform for other whole ecosystems.

A few basic principles of the earth’s life in the cosmos
have now been established. Balance is cosmic law. The
earth revolves around the sun in a finely tuned balance.
The heat budget of the planet is a finely tuned balance.
If the incoming heat declined, we would freeze or if the
planet did not dissipate heat properly we would burn up.
The climax ecosystem maintains a balance and stability
century after century as the diverse flows of energies
constantly move and cycle within it. In the same manner
the human body maintains balance (homeostasis) while
motion of blood, digestion and cell creation, flow within
it.

22 
Wm. H. Kötke

The life of the earth is fundamentally predicated upon
the soil. If there is no soil, there is no life, as we know it.
(Some micro- organisms and some other forms might still
exist).

Its vegetative cover maintains the soil and in
optimal, balanced health, this cover is the natural
climax ecosystem.

If one can accept these few simple principles then
we have established a basis of communication upon
which we may proceed. Anyone who cannot accept these
principles must demonstrate that the world works in
some other way. This must be done quickly because the
life of the planet earth hangs in the balance.

We speak to our basic condition of life on earth.
We have heard of many roads to salvation. We have
heard that economic development will save us, solar
heating will save us, technology, the return of Jesus
Christ who will restore the heaven and the earth, the
promulgation of land reform, the recycling of materials,
the establishment of capitalism, communism, socialism,
fascism, Muslimism, vegetarianism, trilateralism, and
even the birth of new Aquarian Age, we have been told,
will save us.

But the principle of soil says that if the humans
cannot maintain the soil of the planet, they cannot
live here.

In 1988, the annual soil loss due to
erosion was twenty-five billion tons and rising rapidly.
Erosion means that soil moves off the land. An equally
serious injury is that the soil’s fertility is exhausted in
place. Soil exhaustion is happening in almost all places
where civilization has spread. This is a literal killing
of the planet by exhausting its fund of organic fertility
that supports other biological life. Fact: since civilization
invaded the Great Plains of North America one-half of the
topsoil there has disappeared.

The Record of Empire

The eight thousand year record of crimes against
nature committed by civilization includes assaults on
the topsoil of all continents.

23
The Final Empire

Forests, the greatest generators of topsoil, covered
roughly one-third of the earth prior to civilization. By
1975 the forest cover was one-fourth and by 1980 the
forest had shrunk to one-fifth and the rapidity of forest
elimination continues to increase. Indeed, World Wildlife
Fund study released in 1998 states that between 1970
and 1995 the world’s forests declined ten percent. This is
a loss of forest cover the size of England and Wales- each
year. If the present trends continue without interruption
eighty percent of the vegetation of the planet will be gone
by 2040.

The simple fact is that civilization cannot maintain
the soil. Eight thousand years of its history demonstrate
this. Civilization is murdering the earth. The topsoil is
the energy bank that has been laboriously accumulated
over millennia. Much of it is gone and the remainder is
going rapidly.

When civilized “development” of land occurs, the
climax system is stripped, vegetation is greatly simplified
or cleared completely and the NPP plummets. In the
tropics, when pasture is created by clearing forest, two-
thirds of the original NPP is eliminated. In the mid-
latitudes one-half the NPP is lost when cropland is
created from previously forested land. The next step is,
that humans take much of even that impaired production
off the land in the form of agricultural products so that
not even the full amount of that impaired production
returns to feed the soil.

This points out a simple principle: Human
society must have as its central value, a
responsibility to maintain the soil. If we
can create culture that can maintain the
soil then there is the possibility of human
culture regaining balance with the life of
the earth.
 
24
Wm. H. Kötke

The central problem is that civilization is
out of balance with the life of the earth.
The solution to that problem is for human
society to regain balance with the earth.

We are now back to everyone’s personal answer
concerning how to respond to the planetary crisis. Most
proposals for salvation have little to do with maintaining
the soil. All of these seek to alleviate the situation without
making any uncomfortable change in the core values or
structure of existing society. They only try to “fix” the
symptoms. If we had a society whose core values were to
preserve and aid the earth, then all of the other values
of society would flow consistently from that.

The civilized people believe they have an obligation to
bring primitive and underdeveloped people up to their
level. Civilization, which is about to self-destruct, thinks
of itself as the superior culture that has an obligation to
bring others “up” to its level.

Civilization, is a cultural/mental view that believes
security is based on instruments of coercion. The size
of this delusion is such that the combined military
expenditure of all the world’s governments in only one
year- 1987- were so large that all of the social programs
of the United Nations could be financed for three hundred
years by this expenditure.

Looking back at the simple principle which says
that humans cannot live on this planet unless they can
maintain the topsoil, demonstrates the delusion. The
delusion of military power does not lead to security, it
leads to death. The civilized denial of the imperative of
maintaining topsoil, and the addictive grasping to the
delusion that security can be provided by weapons of
death, is akin to the hallucination of a alcoholic suffering
delirium tremens!
 
25
The Final Empire
 
Civilization must come to see that its
picture of reality is leading it to suicide.
It lives on topsoil and it is destroying
that topsoil.

This is ultimately a self-destructive act.

Here we have the whole of it. The problem is
imbalance and the solution is to regain balance.
Here we have the simple principle: if human actions
help to regain balance as judged by the condition of the
ecosystems and the soil beneath them, then we are on
the path of healing the earth. If the theory, plan, project,
or whatever cannot be justified by this standard, then
we are back in the delusional system.

We of civilization have lost our way. We are now
functioning in a world of confusion and chaos. We must
recognize that the delusional system of civilization, the
mass institutions and our personal lives function on
a self- destructive basis. We live in a culture that is
bleeding the earth to death, and we have been making
long range personal plans and developing careers within
it. We strive toward something that is not to be.

We must try to wake up and regain a vision of reality.
We must begin taking responsibility for our lives and for
the soil. This is a tall order. This will require study and
forethought. That is what this book is about. Humans
have never dealt with anything like this before. This
generation is presented with a challenge that in its
dimensions is cosmic. A cosmic question: will tens of
millions of years of the proliferation of life on earth,
die back to the microbes? This challenge presents us
with the possibility of supreme tragedy or the supreme
success.

Creating a utopian paradise, a new Garden of
Eden is our only hope. Nothing less will extricate

26
Wm. H. Kötke

us. We must create the positive, cooperative culture
dedicated to life restoration and then accomplish that in
perpetuity, or we, as a species cannot be on earth.
 
27
NOTES
 
1   Natural Disasters: Acts of God or Acts of Man?  
Anders Wijkman & Lloyd Timberlake.  New Society
pub.  Santa Cruz, Ca. 1988.  p.58.
2   Gaia: An Atlas Of Planet Management.  Dr. Norman
Meyers, General Editor.  Anchor Books.  Garden
City, New York. 1984.  p. 41.
3   Famine In South Asia: Political Economy of Mass
Starvation. Mohiuddin Alamgir.  Oelgeschlager,
Gunn and Hain Pub. Sweden. 1980. P. 135.
4   ibid. p. 135.
5   Physical Environment & Its Significance For Economic
Development With Special Reference to Ethiopia.  
Sven Beltrens. C. W. R. Gleerup.  Lund. Sweden.
1971.  p. 110.
6   Losing Ground: Environmental Stress and World
Food Prospects.  Erik P. Eckholm.  W.W. Norton &
Co.  New York. 1976. p. 94.
7   “The 500,000 Invisible Indians of El Salvador.” by
Mac Chapin.  Cultural Survival Quarterly.  Vol. 13.
#3. 1989. pp. 11-14.
8   ibid. p. 14.
9   EPOCA UPDATE.  “Pressure Mounts To Halt Pesticide
Exports.” Summer 1990.  The Environmental Project
on Central America.  Earth Island Institute, 300
Broadway suite 28, San Francisco, CA. 94133.  p. 13.
10  El Salvador: Ecology of Conflict.  Green Paper #4.  The
Environmental Project On Central America.  Earth
Island Institute, 300 Broadway #28, San Francisco,
Ca. 94133. p. 2.
11  ibid. p.3.
12  ibid.. p.3.
13  Margin of Life: Population and Poverty in the
Americas. J. Mayone Stycos.  Grossman Pub.  New
York. 1974.

28

See also:
Losing Ground: Environmental Stress and World
Food Prospects. Erik P. Eckholm.  W. W. Norton
Co.  New York. 1976.