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An interesting exchange between JMG and an anon on Toward Ecosophy´s recent Magic Monday. It´s on the theme "life will find a way" and "cycles". Link below to the original thread. 

>>>Hello JMG, As I get older, I come to learn more and more of the unimaginable diversity and abundances of human culture, languages and ways of living that have been gradually erased and homogenized by large civilizations and empires. The exact same seems to be true considering non-human life on this planet where the majority of current ecosystems look eerily silent and dead in comparison to the abundance and diversity they had just a few centuries ago. I wonder, what kind of occult force do you think, pushed human beings to exist in a way that is so destructive towards the fabric of life itself and goes so far away from its tendencies of abundance and diversity ? If nature is filled with intelligence, intent and spirits which have power over us, why have they not acted on us to prevent so much destruction ?

>>> [JMG´s response] You need to take a longer view. If you read up on the history of life on earth, you'll find that the tendency toward abundance and diversity is balanced by an equal and opposite tendencty toward simplification and destruction. There are great cycles of life in which species proliferate, and then suddenly or gradually die out.

>>>We are living through a period of radical simplification and contraction in the natural world, like the hundreds of other periods of the same kind that have existed in the past. On the other side of it will be a new period of diversification and abundance. It so happens that human beings are one of the main forces driving the contraction, but we're far from the first life form to have that role -- the first photosynthetic algae wiped out entire ecosystems of chemosynthetic bacteria by releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, for example.

>>>Human society is the same way. Periods of imperial consolidation alternate with periods of collapse, diversification, and the rise of new cultures. We're in the last years of a period of consolidation with a new dark age on the horizon, and another round of diversification and the birth of new cultures is coming. It's just part of the cycle -- and the spirits and powers of the cosmos know that cycle and shape it to their wills.

Link to the source of above exchange