These days, governments make all sorts of claims to be “sustainable.” It seems that I still have to run all government pronouncements through my handy dandy opposite meaning filter. “Sustainable agriculture” therefore, is agriculture doomed to failure because it can’t be sustained. A debt payment system which can’t be sustained, won’t be.

It seems that the very concept of sustainability is based upon a linear progression model of history. The civic religion of progress is deep and vast, but it too shall fail in time. The truth is that history is littered with cycles, not progress. Empires rise and fall. Crops have awesome years, and then miserable drought years. Populations rise and fall. Rivers change their banks, and rise with the floods, and fall with the droughts. The sunspots rise in number for a couple years, and then fall for a couple years. The tide comes in, and the tide goes out. Is the tide sustainable? Is high tide sustainable? Is low tide sustainable? Or is that just talking gibberish and nonsense to even contemplate a sustainable part of a cyclical phenomenon.

What then does flattening the curve mean? A curve is a small part of a cycle. We have cyclical death rates, and always have, and always will. Flattening the curve means you want to make a cycle into a linear thing. You want to turn a sine wave into a flatline. You want to turn a heartbeat into a flatline of death. That’s the only possible answer.

Sustainable agriculture isn’t a thing. We have cyclical agriculture instead. When the phosphorus mines run out, we’ll go back to rotating our crops, and seasonally changing the pasture of our animal herds. We’ll go back to composting our humanure. We’ll go back to droughts and famines and massive disease die offs. We’ll go back to serving the land instead of pretending that we own the land and pretending that we are god of the planet. Our collective hubris is not sustainable either.

You know that Icarus flew too close to the sun and melted his wings and fell to the Earth and died. That is what will happen to prideful men who run World Economic and Health Organizations. They will fall to Earth, like rain from the sky, and be crushed under their own pride, by the power of the sun itself. No king’s reign has ever been sustainable. No centralizing Tower of Babel will last forever. No digital technology can be used to track and trace and own every human on the planet. Slavery is not sustainable. Nations are not sustainable. Constitutions are not sustainable. You know what is sustainable? The need for freedom is sustainable. Dignity, Integrity, and Self-Governance are sustainable. That burning flame within each of us upon discovering an authority’s incompetence or malice can last for multiple lifetimes. Oppression is cyclical and will not last forever. Control is cyclical and will not last forever.