“Static societies” are societies that have reduced their historical movement to a minimum and that have managed to maintain their internal conflicts and their conflicts with the natural and human environment in a constant equilibrium. Although the extraordinary diversity of the institutions established for this purpose bears eloquent testimony to the flexibility of human nature’s self-creation, this diversity is apparent only to the external observer, the anthropologist who looks back from the vantage point of historical time. In each of these societies a definitive organizational structure has eliminated any possibility of change. The total conformism of their social practices, with which all human possibilities are identified for all time, has no external limit but the fear of falling back into a formless animal condition. The members of these societies remain human at the price of always remaining the same.
SOTS, Thesis 130 Guy Debord
At the beginning of the third season of the first year the Sower harvested seed from the field of fertile ground, and he stored it in common for the following year. In the first season of the second year, he went from the fertile fields and cast a portion of his allotted seed upon a field of stones. By the second season of that year only a portion of the portion had sprouted. As the season went on, the sun scorched those seedlings, and their roots could find no moisture in the stoney ground. And they withered away.
In the third season of the second year the Sower again harvested his seed from the fertile field and stored it in common for the following year. In the first season of the third year he went from the other sowers in the fertile fields and sowed his allotted seed in the field of stoney ground. By the second season, only a small part of the seed had sprouted. As the season went on, the sun rose higher in the sky and the seedlings withered away.
In the third season of the third year he harvested seed from the fertile field and stored it in common for the following year. In the first season of the fourth year as he carried his allotted seed to the field of the stoney ground he passed some other sowers, who were walking in the opposite direction, towards the fields of fertile ground. They said to him, ‘Why do you cast seed where it will not grow?’ The Sower did not reply to them and walked to the stoney field.
After the other sowers had cast their seed upon the fields of fertile ground they argued amongst themselves at the meaning of his squandering the product of their hard work: ‘Is his allotted seed sown in hope or in despair?' ‘Is he seeking achievement where it cannot be won, or showing us the limit of what can be done?’ ‘Is the stoney ground also a kind of seed?’ 'Is the seed also a kind of stoney ground?'
The seasons of the next years passed one after another, and the Sower sometimes kept to the same pattern and sometimes he departed from it. The others did not question him again. And nor did they consider the meaning of his actions, which became less remarkable to them.
