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The Tame & The Wild
I have uncovered what I think is sort of a peculiar paradox about “civilization,” or at least our civilization. Within primitivist thinking, civilization and all its consequent foibles essentially began (or was allowed to begin) with the invention of agriculture, which roughly boils down to the domestication of plant and animal species. Also within primitivist thinking, it is civilization which leads us away from pure nature and consequently our very selves. But we could look at it another way, in a way which maybe will help us to start to break down this hard duality of nature versus civilization.
The thing I’ve been thinking about, then, is that in our culture (maybe this isn’t universally so - I don’t claim to speak for all time and space here) is that those people who tend to work with domesticated animals and plants are, in a certain sense, the least civilized among us. Maybe it’s just a matter of our own social conditioning, but people who work these types of physical outdoor jobs (farming, ranching, gardening, landscaping, etc) are often looked down on by other facets of society: by those groups who are truly the most far removed from wild nature. We definitely think of farmers as being more “wild” than office workers, don’t we? And yet, compared to a wolf or a coyote or something, a farmer seems not very wild at all.
Whatever this is, it seems to throw a bit of a wrench into this idea that agriculture is the root of all that’s evil about civilization. Because if it were, then it might follow that those perpetrating that “crime against nature” would be some of the most villanous scum to ever walk the earth. Except they are not. Categorically, people who “walk the line” (or rather make the line) between nature and civilization are some of the nicest, most down to earth people around.
In any event, the point I want to make and the discussion I want to start has to do with degrees of wildness. If we can’t all agree on what civilization is or that it’s wholly bad, then can’t we at least admit that there are some lifestyles which are more “wild” than others? What would characterize such lifestyles as these? What value systems do they tend to operate around? How can we learn from such people, incorporate these elements into our lives, and transform our thinking from simple black and white into a lovely range of mushy grays?
In other words, how do we drop out halfway or is there no room for compromise?
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September 28th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
The dichotomy between “nature” and “civilization” is simply non-existent. That dichotomy is one of civilization’s most fundamental myths: it believes itself to be separate from nature, and thus, able to rule over it. In fact, civilization exists within nature, as part of it, as dependent on it as a tumor is on its host: without the host, the tumor also dies (though the tumor does not acknowledge that, and continues to grow regardless).
But let’s take a look at that biological metaphor. I find it very helpful. Is it so virulent because the cells are malicious and wish the body harm? No–they’ve simply continued to reproduce past their telomeres for some bizarre mutation. They’re no longer able to recognize themselves as part of the host organism, and so they grow without any consideration of said host.
Likewise, civilization is not something separate from nature, and neither is it driven by malice or “evil.” It is driven, first and foremost, by a bizarre memetic “mutation,” that makes us no longer able to recognize that we are part of the very ecologies we’re destroying. We imagine ourselves as separate from it, as lords over it.
This mutation begins with farming. What we believe is largely a function of how we live, at least on the sort of societal scale that’s of interest here. Individuals can believe anything they like, but beliefs that are too incongruous with the ways we live tend to be marginalized and ignored.
Hunter-gatherers are animists (though there is enormous diversity under this heading), because they cannot afford to be ignorant of their place in their ecology. Both of their main subsistence activities–hunting and gathering–require great appreciation for the world as a web of interconnections and dependencies. Ignoring this means starvation for a hunter-gatherer.
But farming is very different. Our domesticated crops are catastrophe-adopted plants; they are present at the earliest stages of succession. They come in right after a catastrophe, and secure the soil. Then bushes and shrubs come in, then small trees, and so on until it reaches a climax ecology with maximum biodiversity and energy. That kind of diversity supports a diversity of animal life, but only a percentage of it is food for humans: much of it is food for other species. But a field of just wheat can be harvested en masse to feed large human populations. This likely began with natural catastrophes, but in time, humans discovered they could create catastrophes that would favor the regrowth of these plants. We even invented a catastrophe engine–the plow. Thus was farming born: the practice of creating an annual catastrophe in order to favor the growth of catastrophe-adapted crops, and then ripping that wound open again and again to ensure it never heals (for more on this, see Richard Manning’s Against the Grain, or for a shorter version, his Harper’s article on the same subject, “The Oil We Eat“).
What kind of beliefs does this support? Ecology, balance, and webs of connection are the enemies of farming. Succession tries to increase the biodiversity of your fields, to introduce “weeds” that cannot be eaten. The earth tries to heal itself, but that healing is exactly what you must sweat and labor under the sun to keep at bay. You live off of the pus from the earth’s wound, so the last thing you want is for it to ever heal. Surrounding wilderness is worse than just “going to waste,” as agriculturalists insist of any ecology not under human domination, it’s actively supporting the “pests” (i.e., everything that isn’t human) that eat the farmer’s crops. So a farmer’s beliefs must at some level validate this endless war against all life, because this is agriculture’s inescapable nature. Some beliefs can be more or less aggressive, of course. Some might promote “stewardship,” but they all promote the alienation of humans and civilization from “nature.” As we all know, no war can be fought unless the enemy is first demonized, or at the very least, separated from one’s self.
Farmers are on the front line of that war, and I think that’s part of why we look down on them the way you mention. They have their hands dirty with the stink of “the enemy.” The urban elites are kept safe from such a fate by those farmers, but you’re right, there’s a stigma attached to them because they come too close to it.
That said, you raise a very important point that not all civilizations, or civilized people, are created equal. Some are far more virulent than others, on both scales. At the same time, this is something of a minor point, because this is no mere gradient from a n/om kausi in the Kalahari to a Madison Avenue executive. There is a major and distinct Rubicon that cuts so deep that it divides us on every level–socially, physically, psychologically, and spiritually–that flows between the most intense horticulturalist, and the most passive farmer.
In horticulture, the goal is, at its most intensive, to create a “food forest.” Rather than simply rely on webs of connection like foragers, they actively foster those webs. They help create a climax ecosystem. See Mann’s 1491 for how the primitive peoples of North America had turned this continent into something of a permacultural paradise with such techniques, prior to Columbus’ arrival. But even for the most intesne horticulturalist, the goal is still to make greater diversity.
For even the least virulent farmer (China might be a good example), we’re still talking about catastrophe (maybe just a little catastrophe, but still catastrophe). In both cases, because of that Rubicon, we’re also talking about a Rubicon in ideology, in social system, in psychology, and in spirituality. Diversity-based societies foster relationships at every level, and by extension personal expression; this shows in their psychology with a feeling of safety, always being surrounded by home and family wherever one goes. Catastrophe-based societies foster competition, and squelch personal expression with homogeneity; this shows in their psychology with feelings of depression or paranoia, always being surrounded by jealous rivals or constant threats wherever one goes. There’s variances, of course, at all levels, but these are the most important salient traits on either side of the Rubicon. The difference is that the most disturbed person from a diversity-based society might think that one of his relationships has gone sour and someone might not like him anymore, whereas even the healthist member of a catastrophe-based society has simply made his peace with the competition and mutual exploitation that defines his world. This, to me, is all the difference in the world.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Tim by posting that question you are only egging Jason on.
I personally have come to the conclusion that Jason is a nut. This post is kind of like taking a stick and hitting a bee`s nest a couple of times. Jason being the angry and vindictive bees. He will circle and buzz and circle now looking for people to sting with his anti intellectual homespun ideas.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Primitivism/Survivalism =
Jason is worse than a brainwashed Mormon. Jason is worse than a political devotee.
Jason is a Don Quixote of a crazy theory. If I had a time machine I would stick him in it and program it for 10,000 BC. anywhere, and get rid of him.
If he could send an occasional message from there, we could see how his theory really is.
Trying to debate Jason is like trying to debate against Jesus and the Devil at the same time , and both using any god-damned bit of disinformation to make spurious points.
Apparently you get a kick out of rattling Jason’s cage. This looks like another 100 comment diatribe if any one is suckered in.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
At least if it starts off with those sorts of inflammatory comments ::)
September 28th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I think people can see groundless invective when they see it, Skip. Your logorrhea isn’t worth responding to, since there’s nothing actually in it–just a long slur of insults. You don’t like me. We get it. Repeating that over and over again does not a rebuttal make.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
skip and prune’s comments are quite extreme non-sequiturs. Agree or disagree with Jason, his writing is vivid, reasoned and nuanced. Compare to the rhetoric of those accusing him with words like “devotee”, “nut”, and “vindictive”. There’s an easy judgement to be made here!
Tim, I found Colin Tudge’s So Shall We Reap interesting in breaking down our historical vision of the transition to agriculture, noting how people would have been coaxing wild crops along long before their domestication. But then, yes, there’s a relatively sudden “breakout” of agriculture proper after the last ice age.
But rather than taking “agriculture is the root of our problems”, and then being confused as to why many farmers are nice folk, it’s probably useful to take a wider view, and see that agriculture’s problem is in what it enables in civilization. It enables cities, creates the possibility of lives for others being totally cut off from nature. I guess the problem there is the combination of the division of labour and agriculture. The people supporting the system may be fine in themselves, but their actions can mesh together into a profoundly imbalanced system.
On the other end, “urban jungle” cliches aside, we all know that there are numerous pockets of city-bound life - very much in the city, but off the consensus map - that have more to do with “wildness” than either farmers or businessmen do. Homeless people, squats, unlicensed subcultures… Not that it’s to be idealized of course; just the observation that at every extreme, its opposite is constellated.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
I was talking about skip’s comments.
September 28th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Hey Jason,
Here’s a question for you. What about a different biological metaphor: complex multicellular life vs. single-celled organisms. The multi-celled organisms of course representing hierarchy, complexity, specialization, etc. and the single-celled organisms representing a more anarchistic/tribal way of life. What would you make of that analogy?
September 28th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Sorry, gotta clarify. I guess what I meant by that was that in my mind it seems that the evolution of multicelled life forms entails to some degree the same forces that have driven the formation of civilization, and so to that extent it seems, not inevitable, not a linear progression of evolution, and certainly not ideal or free from negative aspects, but nevertheless natural.
September 28th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Lots of pseudo-intellectual babblers here abouts.
Lots of what is referred to as , Pouring from the empty into the void.
Jason is just about the most asinine character I have run into in at least a couple of days.
I really hate people like Jason. He would like to set the human race back 10,000 years. Are some of the rest of you idiots also. Or does the posting on this site revolve around mostly pure crap and ridiculous speculation.
You all realize that I do not care what you think.? Good .
There are some really intelligent people on this site. Besides me I mean.
As far as David analogy ; Maybe you could add a few more of the cells you mention to your grey matter.
Oh Gyrus, Jason`s writing is vivid , reasoned , and nuanced. ? I got your number man. You couldn`t think your way out of a paper bag.
Prunes , I don`t consider my comments inflammatory. Just reality check.
Now listen and listen good. Jason is mad. I hope he gets help.
September 28th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
I could now see Jason turned into a mad dog survivalist. Its a short step from where he is to Eco terrorist. Very short.
I will keep an eye out for this type now if we do collapse.
Hopefully they will be far away in a remote region from civilization.
I will settle for the remnants of civilization rather than an anti-intellectual
pseudo/Tarzan.
September 28th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Wow.
September 28th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
I don’t like your blog. I’m not going to visit anymore. You toy with ideas
September 28th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
that I grew out of years ago. Grow up. And stop wasting your time. I don’t know why Annie still links to you.
September 28th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Skip, if you don’t care what people think and don’t want to dialogue, why are you wanking off here? Go home and play with your own toys.
September 28th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Why,? I don`t know , for some reason people like you just piss me off. I feel like it is kind of a public service. Apparently you don`t think I am dialogue-ing.? Does free speech give you a problem Al. ?
Do you think dialogue is only pretty sweet nothings.? Do you think that dialogue is mutual back scratching.?
Jeez , aren`t I better than Your Blog Sucks.? Now that guy or gal is kinda angry sounding. Pretty funny.
Hey Al , are you threatened by a real radical.? Free speech against your religion.?
Whatca mean by wanking Al. Is that is an insult.? ha ha. ~!~
I like some people here.
Just because I don`t care what you think, doesn`t mean I am a bad guy does it.?
September 28th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
I don’t see it. Tribal societies are made up of people, so wouldn’t they be the multi-cellular organisms? Of course, humans being social animals, we can’t form anything comparable to a single-celled organism. Moreover, multi-cellular organisms (at least, healthy ones) produce more cells until they reach their final growth level (climax ecology, carrying capacity…) and then stop. Civilizations continue to grow well past that. Your analogy also fails to take account of that, so I really can’t see it on multiple levels.
Well, everything’s natural, including hemlock.
But I think the difference between the way cells work in multicellular organisms is much more comparable to the way people cooperate in tribes, than the unchecked growth of civilization. Most importantly, of course, healthy multi-cellular organisms find an equilibrium state and stop growing.
Skip, like I said before, we get it. You don’t like me. I’m not your biggest fan at this point myself. That does not a rebuttal make. You’ve yet to actually make an argument. So, to quote my cruder companions, “put up or shut up.”
September 28th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Free speech against my religion? What nonsense is that? I’ve actually argued with Jason more than once. I’m not a primitivist. I’m also not some wanker that is simply bored in the evening and goes to blogs just to spout off. Try constributing something with a bit of substance to the conversation unless you prefer to give more pointless spouting.
Here is a free hint: Someone telling you that they think you are contributing is not (1) evidence that they are “angry” and (2) doesn’t give you the validation that you obviously think it does. Simply being a git isn’t the same as contributing.
September 29th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Actually Jason , I don`t really hate you. Have you every heard the term rhetorical polemic.?
Although I don`t care what you think , I did attempt to debate you, and found that you are not debatable, because you are already fixated on something.
Al , I am curious now you use this word wanker a lot . Does it have a special meaning to you.?
Back to the original post , perhaps I am what might be called wild. I don`t seem tame to myself. Maybe a wild intellect is more than Jason or some others can bear. Jason is a real fuss budget for what I consider his obtuse ideas. That he considers his rejoinders to be rebuttal no doubt makes him happy. Just makes me smile.
Jason I tried putting up, and you would have none of it. There is an old joke about some hard headed types that goes like this ; You can talk to them , but you can`t tell them much.
September 29th, 2006 at 9:48 am
I didn’t say “hate,” I said “don’t like.” And yes, I’ve heard of rhetorical polemic. I’m glad you’re able to publicly admit that’s what you’re up to.
To debate me, you’d need to cite facts, or arguments. You’ve never done that. You told me to read your study course, which I did, and then I rebutted it, and you called me a brainwashed nut because I couldn’t understand the unvarnished truth presented in the holy scripture set down by the first Technocrats in the 1930s and preserved ever since by the Holy Mother Church of Technocracy, Inc., but you never presented any argument for me to answer. I’m keenly aware of this, because I’ve been so patiently waiting for one. But if I can rebut your arguments, that doesn’t mean I’m undebatable, that means I don’t find your arguments particularly convincing. There’s a big difference there.
In this case, “putting up” means “putting up an argument.” “You’re a poo-poo head” is not an argument. Saying you have a “wild intellect” (whatever the hell that means), and that I’m “a real fuss budget for what [you] consider [my] obtuse ideas” isn’t one either. You want to “put up”? Tell me WHY you think my ideas are “obtuse,” and if I shoot those arguments down, tell me where my rebuttal goes awry. Back and forth, see? But with actual arguments–evidence and logic, not just what you think of me, which is, quite frankly, utterly irrelevant.
I mean, I could sit here and talk about your cult-washed Technocracy, complete with official “study course” (brainwashed initiation, anyone?), and a full blown church so organized it’s incorporated! But what good would that do? You already knew I’m not a big fan of yours, or your Technocracy. We already know you’re not one for primitivism, and you find me in particular quite grating. Fine. So either put up an actual argument, or quit whining about gripes everybody already knows you have.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Arguments don`t work with Jason.
By the way rhetorical polemic is not a dirty word. It is considered the highest form of debate. Blame the Greeks for it not me.
There are some ground rules for it though that come down from the past.
Lying is considered a no no. Lying means like what are saying up above. Like calling us an incorporated church. That is an example not of rhetorical polemic , but of lying to make a point which is not true.
You are a fish that won`t nibble on any bait presented. Real or Artificial. You prefer to make up stories about cults , Holy Mother Church’s etc.
I tried throwing a few crumbs of ideas to you , and you prefer to think of them as poison.
A full blown Church so organized its incorporated.? Dream on Jason. Fool.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Can’t know that ’till you try, can you? Once, I was a Catholic. Then I was a Quinnian. Now I’m a primitivist. Each was a major change in direction, and each because someone made a convincing argument. It’s rare for people to change something of consequence in their lives just for a convincing argument, so you’ve picked a particularly poor example here, given this rare twist in my personal history.
Rhetorical polemic … is the highest form of debate? That actually explains a lot–a lot more than you probably think.
See, this isn’t the first time you’ve accused me of lying. I come from a philosophical tradition. We have no dogma or leaders, and no organization whatsoever, so despite the fact that you call our leaderless, vague assemblage of generally like-minded people a “cult,” I have to say that from my background, Technocracy, Inc. is an incredibly regimented, hierarchical organization. The term “church” seems fitting to me. That’s the argument I’m making. Does Technocracy, Inc. bill itself as a church? No. Does that mean it isn’t one? No. It’s my opinion that it shares a great deal in common with churches, and that it seems to me to be perfectly fitting of that title (or, if you prefer, “cult” might work just as well). But that’s a far cry from lying, just like asking you a question is not putting words in your mouth. People who disagree with you are not lying, Skip: they disagree with you.
Well, I was tyring to be nice, but that’s because they were really, really dumb.
I’m sorry, I thought Technocracy, Inc. was incorporated in New York in 1933 as a non-profit organization. I don’t know why I would think that. How foolish of me!
September 29th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Hmm, I wasn’t really being so one-to-one in my analogy. To clarify, I was more focused on contrasting simple organisms (say, unicellular or simpler multicellular, like algae) vs. complex organisms with many moving parts.
I think the analogies are self-evident. Simpler organisms survive readily in smaller numbers, require less energy, less complexity, produce less impact on their environment. Complex organisms certainly can’t survive in the same simple terms, our organ systems are so complex and specialized, we require far more energy input in order to live.
This seems pretty easily transformed into an analogy between tribal life and civilization.
Yet one could argue that complex organisms exist because evolutionary forces tried to solve problems by pursuing complexity and growth. Certainly there are pathological manifestations of that growth force, but on the other hand, by the standard of simple organisms, complex organisms grow far beyond what is sustainable.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:53 am
To some degree, yes, and any analogy involves a certain degree of simplification, but I think this particular analogy oversimplifies too much by disregarding what I feel is the single most important facet of civilization’s existence, namely, that it depends on continual, exponential growth. Every analogy hides some things and reveals others, and a good analogy reveals more than it hides. In my opinion, this one hides more than it reveals. It reveals some of the differences inherent in more or less complex systems, yes, but it hides points like civilization’s unrestrained growth, or the fact that civilization’s existence requires the decimation of all other forms of life. Single-celled and multi-cellular forms of life not only can, but always do, co-exist and depend on one another, but civilization consumes simpler cultures. Jack Weatherford’s Savages and Civilization made an interesting case for how basically all of civilization’s artistic, philosophical, and technical achievements came from its periphery, with its interactions with simpler cultures it was dismantling at the same time–in essence, what we derived from consuming them. We’re now nearing a point where there’s no more simpler cultures to consume, and when that comes, will civilization collapse for the sheer stagnation that follows from its homogeneity? These are the kinds of dynamics that are most fundamental to civilization, so I can’t see your analogy as a particularly useful one, since it hides all these important implications in order to reveal a fairly simple point that complexity is a function of energy.
See Stephen Gould’s Full House. Evolution starts at the level of the simplest possible form, and pursues diversity, not complexity or growth. Now, greater diversity is going to mean greater complexity if you’re starting with the simplest possible form of anything, but if evolution were pursuing complexity, we’d expect to see most of the world’s life being the most complex beings that can be supported in a given area, right? Instead, what do we find? Most life is as simple as it can be, and only a very small number of very complex creatures exist. This is the pattern of diversity, rather than complexity: of a radiating hemisphere from a central point, rather than a line straight up into the stratosphere. Evolution has no one end-point, because the goal it pursues is not some Aristotlean ideal, but diversity.
Obviously not. Complex organisms are sometimes unsustainable, and they die out. Evolution is all about failed experiments. In the grand scheme, civilization is simply a particularly disastrous failed experiment that’s currently weeding itself out like any maladapted system. But those that survive do so because they are sustainable. Sustainable is sustainable, regardless of what scale one looks at it from. So from the standard of simple organisms, complex organisms are still quite sustainable. Unsustainably complex organisms are those where the cost of their complexity is greater than its benefit. The human brain actually pushes that envelope: it’s extremely complex and requires enormous amounts of energy, and if we weren’t bipedal, nomadic omnivores, it would be quite unsustainable. But we’ve made it work, by making it sustainable.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Wow you guys
Been reading Tim for quite a while now, with great pleasure. He’s been veering off into this primitivist/technocracy avenue, as I see it, for several reasons: he’s a thinker/seeker, has found these ideas to be interesting and fruitful for his own life process, you guys going on, and his new job. (hope I’m close Tim…?)
I’ve kept reading because I like the feel of this place - always interesting (I learn and go away with stuff to think about), and everyone is always attempting to be as thoughtful, honest and kind as they’re capable of being. And this second part is really important. There’s always been disagreement and debate here, but it’s been respectful and useful. We all learn, and Tim too.
Having left academia after 15 years, I can say on the positive side, that this kind of debate is unusual there. So in this sense it’s good.
But, the feeling of this place is changing, dichotomizing in an angry way.
This is the only blog that I do read every morning and have thought through many times why this is so. And I continue to look for others that would catch me like this.
So, I either may or may not be speaking for others, though I suspect so, but -
Please, cut it out.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Agree with Springhuman … who said it more nicely than I ever could. This is the sort of thing that makes me give up an interesting forum.
There used to be a very nice buddhist chat room in yahoo, til the ‘debaters’ (and that’s a very debatable term for those folks) came in and destroyed it. All the serious buddhists, seekers, wonder-ers and wander-ers, left. Finally, the ‘debaters’ left. I suppose they’d figured they’d done their job.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Prunes - apologies, your name going in my comment was a total blunder
September 29th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Jason,
Part of the problem I am running into when debating you is your use of the term “civilization” to refer to this system which pursues endless complexity. I don’t have a problem with that view in and of itself, but what I’m trying to say, or rather speculate, is that there must be healthy societies, or the possibility of healthy societies, that specialize and develop complexity beyond the tribal forms of organization. I base that speculation on the biological precedent of complex sustainable organisms. I’m not trying to say that “civilization” as you’ve defined it fits that role, nor that modern civilization comes close either; but that there is precedent for more complex systems coeexisting with simpler ones. I would term those complex systems “civilization” because I don’t know what else to call them.
Yet your definition of civilization assumes an inevitable outcome of increasing complexity leading to collapse, rather than just the existence of complex systems. So I’m not sure what term to use with you.
But that’s my point, anyway. Not that your complexity-driven civilization is the end product of evolution, but that biology demonstrates complex, specialized, hierarchical systems evolve naturally, even though they have many of the same general drawbacks that complex, specialized, hierarchical social systems have.
Also, I think you mistook what I was saying, I wasn’t making the point that evolution pursues complexity as its end-goal, but just that, included among evolutionary forces is the use of complexity to solve problems, which naturally results, in some cases, in complex organisms. When I said “one could argue that complex organisms exist because evolutionary forces tried to solve problems by pursuing complexity and growth,” I meant that to apply to those cases in which complex organisms evolved, not as a general principle of evolution. Natural possibility, not inevitability.
So here’s my confusion. Civilization is one naturally occurring possibility among the many diverse ways humans could have organized themselves. That it is expanding beyond its resources is not my issue with your ideas. But if in your analysis civilization always leads to overgrowth and collapse, then what would a culture with similar level of general complexity but without such drawbacks look like? Or do you not even consider that possible?
September 29th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Don`t worry you two, I am just parked here for a short time. I promise I will not offend your delicate sensibilities for ever. You two sound like Bloated Roman Noblemen lying on a golden couch.
I am just pointing out some things, then I will go away.
It is a real pity your Buddhist idle was disturbed. That is real tear jerker.
Spring human I hope to god you have not choked on one of your donuts in the morning and become sad by my posting.
Jeez what a guilt trip for pointing out a few things. Free speech hurt you.?
September 29th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Well, complexity’s always going to have a certain cost, and a certain return, right? Which means that this is really just a question of “too much of a good thing,” wherein you have so much complexity that you get into a run-away pattern of ever-increasing growth, right? Just the same as a climax ecosystem in succession, or the carrying capacity of a species, or the cells of a healthy mammal: you go up to this point, but once you pass it, you have some problems that set in, and those problems get worse as you move further and further past it.
Now there’s a huge amount of diversity in that statement. Our categorizations are fairly ethnocentric, in that we’ve teased out four different “subsistence strategies” that are all cultivators, and we lump everything else under “foragers.” Under the heading of foragers, you have everything from the Kwakiutl to the !Kung to the Inuit to the Pygmies. This represents the overwhelming majority of the diversity in human cultures. Then, we can compare feudal Japan to the contemporary United States: the same types of government, filled with the same types of bureaucrats, dividing their lands in roughly similar ideas of Cartesian space, on and on and on. The differences are primarily aesthetic. Even the most divergent civilizations are almost identical to each other on the grand scale of human cultural diversity. So we need to understand that we’re not talking about two equal and opposite possibilities: we’re talking about one very specific way of life, as opposed to anything else.
Why is that? That brings us back to complexity, and the immense costs it brings with it once it starts to get away with you. So the question is, what is that line? It’s a line like carrying capacity or a climax ecosystem, remember. If we look at the curves of complexity’s costs, and the societies that have tried them out, we see they all fall into a very similar pattern. Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies includes many, many graphs of this sort, and they all show exactly the same pattern. What we find is that when you pass what we can very vaguely call the “tribal” level of complexity, you get on this runaway train. So really, no, there is not a sustainable level of complexity past that. There’s no way to have civilization’s complexity without its destructiveness; that destructiveness is not a product of malice or even poor planning, but a direct consequence of its complexity. This is why all civilizations, no matter where they began, all end up looking identical to one another: there’s very few ways to make a society that’s that complex.
Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re more interested in cultural diversity than complexity. That, I’m happy to report, tribal societies have in spades. As I said before, most of the diversity between human cultures is accounted for among tribes. There is a wide range of viable levels of complexity, too, and it varies from region to region. In Uganda, even a forager society has collapsed: the Ik (see Colin Turnbull’s The Mountain People). Meanwhile, along the Pacific Coast, the Kwakiutl were able to institute a more-or-less sustainable chiefdom based on foraging. Those are probably the two most extreme end-points, but that gives you an idea of the immense diversity possible in the “sustainable zone.” Some cultures press the envelope of sustainability, leaving some ambiguity as to whether they’ve crossed that all-important threshold or not. The Haudenosaunee (”Iroquois”) are my personal favorite example of this.
I know there’s a very strong pull to think, “Yeah, but what if…” particularly where complexity is involved, because the human mind has no intuitive sense of complex phenomena. But what we know of complexity now is that it is not simply an independent variable. The “bad” aspects of civilization (that is, the defining aspects of it) are the consequences of a society that crosses that threshold of sustainable complexity: no matter what kind of society you have, if you cross that threshold, you will become identical to any civilization we have now, just as surely as any overshot population from algea to reindeer will behave in the same way.
“Complex society” is a good, neutral term. “Civilization” describes a certain cultural “package,” and what I’ve argued is that this package is the result of too much complexity. A society that is too complex will become a civilization, but you could still talk about a theoretical complex society that is not a civilization (no cities, no hierarchical organization, and so forth), but my argument would be that any such scheme involves at least a little bit of fantasy.
That’s absolutely the case. The evolved, stable, sustainable examples of complexity we have, whether in biology, animal behavior, or even in sustainable complex human societies like the Kwakiutl, are not universally kind or benevolent, and often share many things in common. My point is that all of these have their limits as well. Animals will grow to a certain size and stop. Societies will grow to a certain complexity and stop. It’s when they don’t stop that these systems are pathological. This is the very essence of my point, not that complexity is bad, but that civilization is a pathological form of it. By the same token, forming cells is not bad, but cancer is a pathological form of it. The difference between a complex, sustainable chiefdom, and even the most basic civilization, is the difference between a vigorous, aggressive but healthy cell, and a small tumor. This is why I don’t like your analogy: it’s the same as dismissing a tumor because they’re all cells, and healthy cells divide too, so cancer must not be a problem. I’m sure when stated in those terms, the point of divergence between my thinking and yours should be fairly obvious.
Ah, well yes, agreed. As evolution increases diversity, it must also inevitably increase complexity. But I think there’s also an upper ceiling of complexity, where things become so complex that they’re self-defeating: the complexity costs too much to maintain relative to what it gains you. The marginal return is too low.
There have been very complex, sustainable societies in the past, and there no doubt will be again in the future. They’re marvelous things. But I think the key to such a thing is that they must be limited by something outside themselves. Humans can’t judge good or evil, because we’re part of this world; I wrote about this on Anthropik today (but the spam filter makes me afraid to link it), because we always choose what’s good for ourselves and bad for something else. It’s like a judge ruling on his own case. So the first and most important aspect of a sustainable complex society is that it must not control its own limits to growth. It must be limited by some factor over which it has no control.
September 29th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Look, guys, you have to understand that Jason is a zealot. You’re never going to change his mind. Only he can do that, and only when he is ready. Right now, he is in the grips of a conversion experience — the latest of several, I’d imagine. He’s come to embrace a new belief system, and that has instilled in him a powerful confirmation bias that will not permit him to acknowledge any contradictory data. I’ve seen it before: most recently in a co-worker who became a Pentacostal after nearly killing himself. Jason is, at the moment, literally incapable of debate. He will respond to any evidence that undermines his worldview with incredulity and contempt. You cannot convince him that his understanding of thermodynamics is outmoded, or that his cosmology is far from settled. He doesn’t want to hear it. Understand that, and his screeds become just so much tedious evangelizing.
September 29th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
[…] Towards that end, I wanted to try to steer things in a bit better of a direction, now that I find myself with some free time again. There was a comment left recently by a reader named “springhuman” that I think sheds some light on a topic I haven’t been addressing: why am I going on and on about certain topics? He’s been veering off into this primitivist/technocracy avenue, as I see it, for several reasons: he’s a thinker/seeker, has found these ideas to be interesting and fruitful for his own life process, you guys going on, and his new job. (hope I’m close Tim…?) […]
September 29th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Arkham, your charges might make more sense if I didn’t have such a long personal history of significant personal changes based on convincing arguments. Now, can we stick to discussing the issues, rather than these tedious indictments of my character? None of you know me, so I’d appreciate if you stopped pretending you did. Or was this never about the issues at all, but about whacking me, personally, like a pinata?
September 29th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
In one sense, I agree with Jason that there’s really no point in trying to crowbar him as a person. Not because we don’t know him, but because what each of us is really focusing on in this argument - whether we like it or not - is actually ourselves. In one sense, I actually think that we ourselves are sometimes the most blind to what we really are, but that we also have the potential to understand ourselves far more deeply than anyone else ever could.
Whether or not Jason is undergoing a conversion experience is, therefore, a moot point. But we maybe would do well to understand what conversion experiences entail and look at ourselves to see if and when we are going through them, and what they end up looking like. One thing that seems to strike me about them is that they dredge up an enormous reserve of energy from the depths of our being, and with it comes all kinds of archetypal imagery from the unconscious. It may be a very valuable way of looking at primitivism in particular and the notion of the Apocalypse in a more general sense, whether or not it’s worth looking at Jason Godesky in that light!
September 29th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Uh huh. Well, I know I would like to hear your counter-arguments, y’know, the ones that actually seemed relevent, but funnily enough, got the least mention (i.e. his understanding of thermodynamics or the structure of his cosmology.) I honestly could give a crap about the campaign to change Jason’s mind.
The point of debate, as I see it, isn’t to make someone admit they’re wrong; it’s to back them into corner by puncturing their arguments until it’s obvious they have nothing left to support their thesis.
His points seem well-argued and he hasn’t failed to reply to any of the relevent criticisms — WHICH IS WHY I WANT TO SEE MORE. If there is some crucial flaw in his basic premise — it matters — it matters a lot, and I want to see it.
September 29th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Right. If I hadn’t already dug through the Anthropik site and witnessed first hand how amenable you are to debate and change, I might even believe you. Jason, your theses are logically inconsistent and scientifically unsound. Let us look at one of the more prominent flaws: the argument that thermodynamics militates against civilization. Organisms, ecosystems, and civilizations are dissipative structures: they grow more complex as a consequence of entropy, not vice versa. When such systems reach a bifurcation point due to mounting feedback they may indeed disintegrate — or they may leap to a more differentiated, higher level of order. (Example: Colonial microbes amalgamating to form a true multicellular organism.) And the clincher is that no one can know beforehand which way the crisis will resolve itself. So the “collapse” you envision may in fact result in civilization reconfiguring itself into some kind of global superorganism with built-in regulatory mechanisms that keep it from wildly metastatizing (a technological Sophia overlaying the biological Gaea). You have no way of knowing, and so your collapsist theories are essentially wish-fulfillment. You are imputing your desires to the data and arriving at a conclusion that best satisfies your intuition.
To the others: Now, watch as Jason meticulously deconstructs my argument and tries to dismiss far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, chaos theory, etc., as bunk.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Jacob: A few other inconsistencies and/or flaws I’ve noticed in Jason’s theses include:
1. The insistance that the universe is closed. Cosmologists have been vacillating on this point for decades and have yet to reach a consensus. There are cosmological models which suggest that the universe is actually part of a larger megaverse that is infinite and eternal, and from which the universe may be drawing energy to fuel its accelerating rate of expansion (as dissipative structures are wont to do). Again, we simply don’t know.
2. The rejection — or at least diminution in the face of alternative traditions — of Western “ethnomedicine”. The question immediately arises as to why Jason takes issue with this one facet of Western science and yet heavily mines its physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, and psychology for the substance of his theses.
3. The failure to account for the success of civilization-analogous behaviors in animals, such as social insects (ants, termites, bees) and mammals (naked mole rats). These creatures engage in agriculture and pastoralism, build monolithic habitat structures, organize into hierarchies with internal divisions of labor, and store material surpluses. How is it they’ve managed to thrive for millions of years, while humans are apparently doomed?
September 29th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Also, there is the peculiar notion that human evolution stopped in the Pleistocene. So far as I know, evolution never stops: it’s an ongoing process of variation and selection, and that selection need not be natural. Humans have been civilized, and therefore subject to the artificial selective pressures of war, slavery, genocide, and capital punishment, for 500 generations. One could easily contend that we are a domesticate species, with little of the ancestral wildness left in us.
September 29th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Thank you Arkham for the very interesting and thought provoking commentary .
We are pretty much in accord and I would agree with your thesis you have laid out. It seems like a plain and practical way of thinking about the subject of primitivism.
I appreciate the fact that you took the time to lay it out.
I gave up with idea presentation at a certain point , and just didn`t take it seriously then, for exactly the reason you describe. I just was getting no where.
The only point I concur with Jason on is that we are in deep shit as a society , and should change. I hope we do and am trying to do what I can in my own way.
September 29th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Well then we all agree on the most important aspect of all this, as far as I’m concerned! Where do we go from here?
September 30th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Arkham - thanks, some interesting and well-put objections to Jason’s arguments. I personally think that the bottom line is that we’re embedded in systems (both civilization and the planetary ecology) that are too complex for anyone to fully understand and predict, and therefore dogmatic predictions about the future - endless ascent to technological perfection, total collapse, or whatever - have to be taken with a pinch of salt.
We end up provisionally siding with a certain view in order to take effective action in the world (my impression of Jason’s connection to primitivism) - if we dithered about on that baseline of not knowing, nothing would get done. Still, that baseline has to be borne in mind at all times, and your “reconfiguration” vision of potential collapse is a useful counter to any dogmatism (inherent or perceived) in primitivism.
A couple of points I wondered about:
- I appreciate whether or not the universe is a closed system is undecided. I’m assuming you’re relating this to some argument Jason has made using the idea of it being closed as an argument for ultimate limits to growth. Whatever that argument was, I wonder whether we shouldn’t pull back the scope of our vision to just our planet. OK, if we truly get going with colonizing the solar system as a stepping stone to interstellar travel, the limits of the universe will become real questions. As it stands, our ambitions for space travel have floundered for quite a while, and given the energy issues that we’re facing just in terms of planet-bound travel (and agriculture), I wonder whether we’re in a position to make that leap into space any time soon and render planetary limits irrelevant. And yes, the planet is an open system, but there’s still a finite amount of energy hitting us from the sun each day. (Do pull me up on specifics, physics isn’t a speciality of mine - just trying to make a general observation!)
- On human evolution: I agree, it obviously hasn’t stopped. But does it operate on such small timescales as that of human civilization? As far as I know the general argument is that memetic evolution has superseded genetic evolution in the sense that it can operate on much shorter timescales and still have real effects in the world. That we’re genetically pretty much still the same as the first Homo sapiens from 200,000 years ago, and that civilization has developed and complexified on the back of rapid cultural evolution. It’s by no means a new argument that the disjuncture between these two levels of change accounts for our current woes, but I think it’s still salient. To me the value of primitivism - a return of, not a return to archaic modes of life, certainly nothing monolithic - is in trying to heal this disjuncture. This process involves all sorts of paradoxes that get us in a tangle if we regard it from the point of view of linear evolution (going “back” or “forward”). In any case, I think there’s plenty of “ancestral wilderness” left in us. And while it’s not to be regressed to, it’s certainly something unavoidable that we have to reconcile our developing cultural patterns with.
An aside regarding the linear evolution image, in Evolution as a Religion, Mary Midgley makes the point that the theory of natural selection arranges species in an image more reminiscent of a radiating bush than of a ladder or escalator. The bush image is very useful for dissolving any rigid linear images that we find ourselves attaching to (and the depth of their influence in our culture makes it almost impossible to avoid this from time to time).
September 30th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
I think this is a really important point and would like to hear Jason’s response as to whether he agrees that this is what he is consciously doing!
I also really like the idea of using the collapse as a symbol against dogmatism - even the would-be dogmatism of primitivists!
September 30th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Arkham, thanks for providing some actual criticisms beyond mere name-calling. I’m happy to address them, but first, I have to mention that this disturbs me:
So if I have a problem with your counter-arguments, it’s proof that I’m unwilling to listen? What if I have a valid disagreement with your criticism? Are you dismissing out of hand the possibility that I could actually believe the things I say I do? I’m not going to try to dismiss thermodynamics, chaos theory, or any of the other fundamentals you cite. I’m not a specialist in these areas. I’ve never been very good with physics. I just fail to see their application at this particular scale. As even I know, the physics that rule the very small world are almost irreconcilable with the physics that rule the very large world. Scale matters a lot in physics.
I’m not ashamed to admit that this kind of physics-talk is well beyond me, and I had to look some things up to follow along. I’m not sure how relevant this all is, though. Complexity always requires a certain amount of energy to be maintained. In any case where complexity builds up on some temporary energy source (usually detritus), they develop a level of complexity based on that level of energy. But that energy is temporary. When it is no longer available, that level of complexity cannot be maintained. As William Catton exemplified this process in Overshoot:
Catton is very keen on defining our industrial world as just such a detritus system—in our case, fossil fuels.
But I think I see what you’re saying, and it’s a valid point: civilization need not necessarily collapse, when it can answer its crisis with some huge jump in complexity that might allow it to continue. I think, if I’m translating your physics terms correctly into social science terms, that you’re talking about the same phenomena Schwartz & co. write about in After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies, or any of the other historical examples where civilization didn’t collapse. We nearly collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age; instead, we began working metal. At the end of the Renaissance, the European timber crisis loomed as large as peak oil does now, but instead led to the use of coal and eventually the Industrial Revolution. There are examples to support your contention that it can go either way.
The question is, are these situations unpredictable? Is it impossible to know which way they will go, until they do? There might be some truth to that, but I’ve made a study of these examples, both the examples in which society did collapse and those in which it didn’t, and I have found some patterns, so I don’t think we’re left entirely in the dark.
For instance, in both of those situations, there was a perfectly viable alternative already on the table: iron in the Bronze Age, and coal in the timber crisis. In both instances, it was out of favor because there was a superior alternative. Timber does not cause the black, unpleasant smoke that coal does, and iron is much harder to work than bronze. In both cases, there were small segments of society already using the alternative; blacksmiths in the Renaissance preferred coal for its higher burning temperatures, making iron easier to work (hence the blackened, sooty image of “the blacksmith” that we still carry today), and in the Bronze Age, iron was a byproduct of the bronze-making process that was considered extremely rare and valuable (it may have been, at that point, obtained mostly from meteorites; it was more valued than gold, and used only for sacred or ceremonial artifacts). When bronze became too expensive, however, smiths spent more time with iron, learned to mine iron ores, and how to work iron in the forge. When timber became prohibitively expensive, governments relaxed their laws against burning coal, and people learned to live with the pollution and grime that came with it.
The important factor, I think, is that in all of the cases we have that illustrate your example of moving to higher, rather than lower, complexity, is that the Deus ex machina was already on the stage—there was just no one paying much attention to it. It had the possibility, but until crisis levels made it economically viable, no one was going to bother with it. So the better question is, do we have any such machine-gods on stage right now? This is why we’ve been examining things like biofuels, coal, and nuclear energy at Anthropik: we’re evaluating their potential to be our own deus ex machina. So far, they’re all wanting. Solar energy has its limitations, as well, but solar energy is one of the most troubling, because it does have some potential to become such a deus ex machina. It may seem odd to call that “troubling,” since it would avoid collapse, but note that any possible avoidance of collapse must mean the continuation of our pattern of growth. The timber crisis was a threat to stop growing; coal allowed Europe to keep growing. The end of the Bronze Age threatened a stop to growth; iron allowed growth to continue. While in some theories we might be able to provide the earth’s current electrical needs with just 2% of our land mass covered in photovoltaic cells (though what I’ve been reading seems to cast great doubt on that oft-cited statistic), this is an open invitation to further population growth. In fact, all of these examples—iron, coal, or solar energy—are precisely the energy subsidies that Joseph Tainter discusses in Collapse of Complex Societies. And notice the pattern they create. They do not end the marginal returns curve for complexity: rather, they daisy-chain one such curve onto another. The result is that collapse still occurs, but from a much higher level of complexity, meaning that a much larger population is subject to die-off. In the case of solar, the possibilities are particularly frightening, since the theoretical limit would be covering the entire planet’s land surface in photovoltaic cells, with the subsequent extinction of all green plants, and with them, all multicellular life on the planet. In other words, collapse from our current level is still a survivable fall for our species, but just barely so. If we daisy-chain another curve on the end of this progression, we will not likely add much more time to this exponential growth curve, but we will add significantly to how far a fall is involved, such that the survival of our species is no longer an option, and our focus must turn to the survival of multicellular life itself. In other words, this is our last chance humanity has to restore equilibrium in its relationship to the rest of the world. If we fail to do so in our generation, then we damn our entire species to extinction.
Such a notion requires the idea that Sophia and Gaea are two separate things—and that humans are not part of this world. I reject both notions, but then, it has always been its dualism which I’ve found most distasteful in Gnosticism.
I don’t think we have no way of knowing, since all the previous examples have had a certain amount in common. It’s true that there’s a certain probability that the totally unprecedented could happen—but that’s a very low probability. It does exist, yes, but I do not think it is sufficiently probable to bother worrying about, just as I don’t worry much about alien invasions or the sun rising in the west. But you are right, there is a very narrow window to avoid collapse by sacrificing any hope for our species’ survival. But I’m an optimist: I think we’ll suffer the lesser of those two evils, the one that still has some kind of silver lining, as opposed to the one that entails the extinction of our entire species.
Again, I’m no physicist, but even if we grant such theoretical constructs as you mention above regarding a “metaverse,” wouldn’t that simply be a different model of what the universe is? If the universe we know about is pulling in energy from other universes, then doesn’t that simply mean that “the universe” is simply the total set of such universes?
Secondly, if the universe is ever-expanding, this does not affect my arguments in the least, since resources are still limited. If resources are not limited, then it would seem to me that would imply that the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy has been overturned, no? Has it? And if it hasn’t, then doesn’t that mean that there is a finite amount of matter/energy in the universe, and that no more can ever be created or destroyed? If that’s the case, then it follows that the amount of energy we can use is similarly limited.
Finally, I do not think the cosmic level is particularly relevant to what I’ve been arguing. My contention is, basically, that limits exist. This is what you’re taking issues with? But the basic amount of energy available is much less relevant than EROEI: Energy Returned on Energy Invested. If it takes you a barrel of oil to get a barrel of oil, then you don’t have a barrel of oil—you have nothing. Transport to other planets is extremely expensive in terms of energy. Transport to other star systems, exponentially moreso. Transport to other galaxies, exponentially moreso. In the aforementioned timber crisis, plenty of forests still existed, but they were further and further away from Europe’s population centers, and the amount of energy it took to transport the timber began to approach the amount of energy they yielded as fuel. Likewise, the problem of peak oil is not an exhaustion of our oil reserves, but the fact that what is left is increasingly difficult to obtain, so that the energy involved in drilling the oil begins to approach the energy the oil provides as a fuel. If sufficient energy does exist somewhere in the universe, but it is so far away that it takes more energy to get to it than we get from it, then what use is it to us? I may be simply misunderstanding your argument here—as I mentioned, I’m no physicist—but besides the fact that you’re counting on some very theoretical physics which may or may not have any relationship with reality whatsoever, this seems to be a fairly trifling and largely irrelevant counter-point.
Since you’ve made an attempt to paint me as someone unwilling to regard criticism, it seems particularly fitting to point you to the comments threads on thesis #1 and thesis #2 of my Thirty Theses, in which someone raised very similar points, of which they convinced me, and I ceded the points. In other words, they made a convincing argument and I changed my mind, on this very issue.
From a standard of total domination, to put Western biomedicine on the same level as any other ethnomedicine is certainly a “diminution,” you are correct. I do not believe that Western biomedicine is any more—or any less—effective than any other biomedicine. I have cited evidence for why this is so, in thesis #22. Our belief otherwise is simple ethnocentrism on our part.
As I argued in thesis #23, our sciences are similarly no more or less effective than indigenous knowledge systems. In both cases, they are certainly unique, and as such provide a valuable and unique perspective, but to say that they are “better” than the alternatives is simply a matter of willful ethnocentric blindness to how effective other techniques can be.
Why, then, do I rely so heavily on our other sciences? This is the most simple question of all: because it’s what we in the West find convincing. I, especially, am most comfortable with this format and approach. I can argue primitivism at the emotional or mythical levels as well when it is needed, but I am most comfortable operating inside the Western sciences, and that is what most readers find most convincing as well. All “ways of knowing” provide a certain viewport in the world, and I think we are at our best when we utilize as many as possible. I do not nurse any vendetta against Western sciences, but I do hope to put them into their proper perspective, so that people can appreciate that other views are just as valid. So long as we only value that Western, scientific view, however, it would be ineffective for me to argue that a mythopeiac view is valuable in mythopeiac terms. On the other hand, if I can vindicate the effectiveness and usefuless of mythopeiac thinking in scientific terms, then I might be able to convince people who fetishize science that other points of view may be just as valid.
The use of the terms “agriculture” or “pastoralism” among such animals is an incredible account of projection on our part. There are, of course, myriad methods of interaction between species in the animal kingdom, from symbiosis to parasitism, and all of these have found certain sustainable means. But let’s consider the most commonly-cited example of ants “farming” aphids. In fact, this is an example of symbiosis, not farming: ants protect the plants the aphids eat, and then consume the honeydew the aphids secrete. Ants “farming” aphids involves protecting the biodiversity that aphids rely on, rather than waging a never-ending war against biodiversity, as with, well, farming. This is a fine example of how concepts in the study of biology are so often riddled with false dilemnas arising from misused metaphors. William Gillis has been busy writing his “Fifteen Anti-Primitivist Theses” in response to my own Thirty Theses (I haven’t seen any comments functionality on his blog, so I’m waiting for him to finish before I compose a response on Anthropik). He raises many valid points, and highlights some of the problems with biology’s metaphors and constructs in his very first essay (of course, he argues this is a problem with biology, whereas I would argue that this is simply a problem with our understanding, or more properly, our metaphors for biology).
So, why have they been able to thrive for millions of years, while humans are apparently doomed? Because their “farming” is nothing like ours. In fact, if we wanted to more accurately compare the activities of ants to humans, the closest analogy I could think of would not be farming, but horticulture/permaculture.
I thought I had been particularly explicit on this matter, but apparently it must be reiterated. You’re absolutely right: evolution is always ongoing. It did not stop in the Pleistocene, and humans have been adapting to civilization for some 500 generations now.
Which is an incredibly short time in the evolutionary history of our species, and the adaptations required of us are almost a complete reversal of everything that had gone on before. Evolution hasn’t stopped, but we are still Pleistocene animals—not because we stopped evolving, but because we’re barely out of the Pleistocene now. It’s been far too short a time for any appreciable change, though civilization has provided an incredibly strong selective pressure and the change that has occured in the past 500 years is nothing short of incredible. But it is still far, far from sufficient. To turn humans into granivores, for instance, or to properly account for the unprecedented practice of adult lactose tolerance (much less the consumption of milk from other species) will take millions of years to iron out, even at our current breakneck pace.
We should also remember that only very few of us have a full 500 generations of civilized ancestors behind us. Most of us have far fewer than that. Most of us are descended from people who were forced to accept civilization by their hostile, civilized neighbors. For most of us, we’re lucky if we even have half that number.
I do think it’s valid to consider us domesticated humans, though, but not all animals are created equal with regards to domestication. Some cannot survive without humans. Others go feral extremely easily, like pigs. Will we ever be wild again? Probably not. The experience of domestication will always be in our past. But we can go feral. There’s our choice in this regard: keep plucking away in the hopes that in a million years or so, we’ll finally evolve to adapt to this radically new and anti-human system, or go feral, and instead make systems that adapt to us.
Do they? In this video, Dr. Bartlett lays out my new favorite way of thinking about planetary travel as a solution to the crisis of civilization, and how our lack of intuitive understanding of exponential growth betrays us on this question. He asks, “If we put bacteria in a petri dish at 11 AM, and the population doubles every minute, and the petri dish is full at noon—when is the petri dish half full?”
Inuitively, we start doing some complicated arithmetic, or we might go with 11:30. No, the correct answer is 11:59. The population doubles every minute, so it’s half full at 11:59, and then doubles to fill up the entire dish at noon.
Dr. Bartlett extends the question: what if, at 11:59, the bacteria in the dish discovered three new petri dishes. How long will it take them to fill up all the dishes? Again, we might intuitively expect another three hours, but if we follow through the progression, we see the shocking (but quite expectable) truth.
11:59 AM: One half of one petri dish is full. Three new dishes introduced.
12:00 PM: Population doubles. The first petri dish is filled.
12:01 PM: Population doubles. Two petri dishes are filled.
12:02 PM: Population doubles. All four petri dishes are filled.
In each doubling period, as much energy must be procured as was used in the entire previous history. In our case, in each doubling period, our population requires the same amount of resources as used by all of humanity throughout history. Our doubling period has now dropped to a single generation, and we have already used up nearly all the earth’s resources: to double again, to keep civilization going, we will need another planet. The next doubling period will need two more planets. The next will need four. Is that a pace we can really ever keep up with? If not, how much does space colonization really change the situation? Our expectation that it should is as fine an example as one could ask for that humans have no intuitive sense of exponential growth.
To a certain degree, yes. Obviously. I’ve changed my mind too drastically too many times to not bear in mind that it could—and probably will—happen again. On the other hand, “to our best knowledge at this moment” is as good as we’ll ever have to go on, and I think we have a dual obligation to always act on our best knowledge at the moment, while also trying to expand what our best knowledge at any moment is. That’s why I spend so much time on people who disagree with me, and so little amount of time on those who agree. To quote Isaac Jaffe from Sports Night: “If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”
September 30th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
We use some of Dr. Bartletts material as Technocracy material. What he is saying is absolute fact. We relate these facts to the price system model we use now.
Energy cost is only another scam in a price system. Abundant free energy of a non-polluting nature is available from electricity from the flow of water, without building damns. This is not done because our price system does not make money that way.
There is enough hydro power using water wheels , tunnels, between Lake Itasca and Lake Pepin in Minnesota to provide all power needed for the continental U.S.
As long as we have a system that values nothing except money we are doomed in the short term. Short term will be over soon. Then some real trouble starts.
Our program does away with the type of consumer society we have now.
October 1st, 2006 at 8:27 am
From the other thread:
Interesting. This is the first time I have heard about the idea that ALL farming requires more energy than it provides. As a follower of Peak Oil, I’ve read a lot about the idea that industrialized farming requires more energy than it provides, but not all agriculture.
Do you have any citations for this? If you do, I’d love to research them.
October 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 am
Wait a minute. Aren’t there some similarities between farming and the ant/aphid relationship? Why is the ant/aphid relationship a symbiosis and the relationship between a pastoral society and their cattle parasitical? Don’t the humans feed and shelter the cattle in exchange for milk the cattle produce? Is that not a symbiotic relationship? Do we not protect the biodiversity that our domesticated animals realy on (even though we destroy biodiversity for other animals)? Is it not symbiotic to the animals that we protect from predators that we then use for our food? When a farmer uses cats to hunt rats in silos, is that not a symbiotic relationship since the cats are being fed in exchange for their services? I know of organic farmers who use ladybugs rather than pesticides to protect their crops from insects. Is that not a symbiotic relationship?
Also, I do not see how agriculture is absolutely a war on biodiversity, since even in ancient societies, like Japan and the Incas, there were rules against land that could be cleared for agriculture. Throughout the history of ancient Japan, there were large areas of land that were still forested, and were reforested during the Edo Period. How does this equate a war on biodiversity? And the Incas had rules on the felling of trees.
I’ve read a similar argument posted by Taylor on Thesis #4. There, you argued that scarecrows, fences, and using cats to hunt rats in silos constituted “totalitarian agriculture.” I went back and read Quinn’s definition, and I interpreted Quinn as saying that TA defined actively destroying competition. As he puts it, TA is not about defending one’s food when the opportunity presents itself but creating opportunities to kill. Since scarecrows do not actively destroy crows, and cats only hunt rats that enter silos but do not actively destroy rats, how does this constitute TA?
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:42 am
Perhaps the world is poised on such a crap heap because of the way people behave towards one another. And you can see such behaviour right on this very forum. O well.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:06 am
Darok, I understand your point.
However, what really confuses me is that I see many extraordinary and extreme claims made by Jason on this site, yet I fail to see him provide or find any backing for them. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
For example, he argues that permaculture, like horticulture, can only support a population in the millions and villages of 300, and that it cannot support 6.5 billion people. Where is the backing for this claim, since we have not seen one way or the other what permaculture can and cannot support? He argues that permaculture is horticulture–where’s the backing here? I also did not see any rebuttal of other people’s arguments backing for that claim–especially people like David Holmgren, who, while he has argued that “large-scale cities” and “a global consumer economy” cannot be sustained, has specifically stated that “the most sustainable productive systems may provide for the needs of five to ten billion people.” Why can’t billions be sustained without destroying the ecological foundation? What if there was a sustainable way of supporting them which could create a balance and stop the extinctions? Where is the backing for this claim that it cannot? Why must billions die? Where is the backing for this?
He also argues that the mass extinction crisis is inherently due to civilization itself, and that civilization itself is inherently unsustainable. Sure, you cannot argue that there is a mass extinction going on. But very few people I have heard draw the line at civilization, and argue that is where the mass extinction started. Obviously the mass extinction did not become global until the Industrial Revolution.
And other people I read about argue that some civilizations, like Europe, are unsustainable, but that other societies like China, Japan, and Korea were sustainable because they did not expand and conquer the world (which they did) and their agriculture did not erode their soils (and it is true that a lot of their land has been farmed for over five thouand years) because of their practice of returning human manure to the soil from the cities, as well as their use of other trash and other return of nutrients. Is there any rebuttal to this that can support your absloute claim that civilization and agriculture is inherently unsustainable in all cases, since it is clear that agriculture does not always lead to topsoil erosion, like in the Yellow River or the Nile floodplain. I have argued this before, and Jason argued that Egypt was unsustainable due to the Aswan Dam. Sure, colonization may lead to an unsustainable society, but why does that make the society that was colonized unsustainable pre-colonization? Why is civilization so unsustainable? Where is the backing here? And why can’t civilization be made sustainable?
The returning of manure from cities to replenish nutrients also raises a point–why are cities inherently unsustainable? Why are they inherently parasities on their hinterlands if, as I pointed out, some cities in China did return some nutrients back to their soils and ecologies? And do cities require a civilization? They may require hierarchy, but hierarchy is not inherent to civilization.
He argues that agriculture is inherently unsustainable. Yet I hear other people like Quinn argue that it is just one style of agriculture (TA) but not agriculture itself. Things are not just unsustainable–they are ABSOLUTELY and INHERENTLY unsustainable. And then he seems to contradict himself–first, he argues that foragers always live in tribes, but is forced to accept the exceptional forager chiefdoms. However, I think he underestimates those exceptions. The Kwakiutl were not the only exceptional foraging chiefdom–the entire region they lived in was populated by chiefdoms. Then he argues that civilization will absolutely end, but also admits that there will be pockets of Neolithic kingdoms for centuries to come. Where is the logic here?
Again, I am not disagreeing with Jason, it is just that I am mystified by his points and cannot understand where he found the backing for them, especially since he makes absolute blanket assertions about things and applies it to EVERY single case. This is what I felt when I read these comments on this site–the more I read, the more confused and baffled I felt with what he was saying, and the less I was able to understand about what he or anybody said.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:07 am
Another example–why is collapse inevitable? Why must our civilization collapse? Where’s the backing here? I know I’m going on and on, but I’m just been thrown into a whirlwind of confusion because I just am unable to understand where you are coming from and what your claims mean and how you backed them up, especially since I see lots of counter-arguments as well.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:12 am
God, I’m just brewing in all these questions I cannot understand. Why must cities inevitably collapse? I’ve also noticed you haven’t made any mention of the fate of suburban areas. What is their fate? Why must they collapse too? Why is suburbia inherently unsustainable? Why can’t it be supported by permaculture, since it is not as dense as urban areas?
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:38 am
I also cannot understand why you think you can know the future absolutely, such as making claims that in 200 years, all of humanity will live primitively. (This seems to contradict your other speculation of collapsing neolithic kingdoms in the future, which obviously will not be primitive comapred to your definitions). I just say that since I see numerous futures predicted by people, all of which are false when compared to yours. (As I have said before, Christian rapturists believe everyone that Christians will survive, like your ideas that only primitivists will survive). I just think that, since you have argued that people cannot be gods, it is godlike for you to claim you know who will live and who will die during collapse. I personally agree with the “Que Sera Sera” song–the future’s not ours to see, and whatever will be will be. Of course, since I’m not planning on surviving, I can believe that, but if you want to try to survive, you will have to base your survival plans on a specific future, and you are basing your escape plans on your total civ-collapse futrure.
In reality, I just don’t know what to believe anymore. I’ve heard everyone argue everything, each with their own backing for their claims. I just can’t understand this debate anymore, since everyone seems to have their own right definitions for everything. I don’t feel like I know who is right anymore, and I just have to go away, and live my life. I don’t know what to believe in sustainability, since you argue one thing but I hear everything else other ways as well.
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:39 am
I also cannot understand why, if you assert that everything is good and evil, you also can assert that civilization is inherently evil. This seems a little hypocritical.
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:57 am
I also just am unable to feel the misery you claim everyone must feel, and I like civilization and cannot feel the dislike you claim everyone has. And I also cannot understand why you adamantly assert that humanity will survive this crisis when humanity indeed may not, since there is a high risk that humanity will go extinct.
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Okay, so it worked. I’m free.
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Tim, my mother wrote a letter just asking you to stop me from posting other comments. Her letter was stopped, but it did not stop me. Can you do what we ask and stop me as well?
Let’s face it. I am Taylor. I am ozaukeegirl, mont, aksum, palatia, and artemis as well. I just have a problem controlling myself with these blogs. I ask you to take this off, as well as block all comments from this IP address–I need it badly.
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
But I will need to test it in order to prove that I can no longer post (basically, by putting a post on here and then seeing it immediately disappear, like what happened with Anthropik).
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:55 pm
All right, I am now banned. Thanks, tim.
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
After all, Jason, you state that civilization will end absolutely, but then talk about potential surviving pockets.
October 2nd, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Jason, I also cannot understand this assertion you make that somehow, civilization must always grow or absolutely collapse. Why can you consider no middle ground here? Why is it that civilization must collapse if it does not grow? Why can’t it slow down or contract without absolutely entirely collapsing? This does not make sense. Where did you back this up? And if this is true, why did the US not collapse when it slowed down its consumption of oil in the 1970s?
October 2nd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
And this is Peaknickster…
And I must admit, I lied to you, Jason. I am Taylor, and aksum. I did this thinking I could control myself. I could not.
October 2nd, 2006 at 3:27 pm
But then, while the Kwakiutl and Sungir were geographically limited, so were the Chinese and Egyptians (heck, they did not conquer the entire world), so they were limited to a specific territory and could not expand and increase complexity indefinitely.
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Waterwheels and similar devices are not free in any meaningful sense. They must be built and maintained, which costs a certain amount of energy. Moreover, the energy they produce is fixed: there’s only so much energy that gravity has imbued in our rivers and streams. That puts a cap on how much energy you can get from such things. It’s been a while since I last looked at the hard data, but I remember hydroelectric being theoretically capable of providing about 2% of North America’s energy needs, more in the north.
Note also that this would involve other trade-offs. Look at what irrigation of the Colorado River has led to. The river no longer reaches the Gulf of California, so you wouldn’t be able to put anything down there anymore—which leads us to the more general principle that you’d now need to balance drinking water, irrigation and electricity against each other. Reliance on a single resource (running water) for so many of society’s needs would cap energy—and thus, complexity—at a fairly low level.
I don’t find that to be a terribly useful explanation, simply because the “crap heap” is very, very sudden, and very, very new. For two million years, these problems did not exist. Among those hunter-gatherers that still exist, these problems still do not exist. These problems appear at the Neolithic, and spread with it. I’m assuming that this did not also entail some radical transformation of human nature, and that civilized people are not significantly different from tribal people. I reject the Romantic notion of some “Noble Savage” who’s innately superior to the civilized man. But it is fairly obvious that tribal people live in evolved systems that have organized themselves and been tested over millions of years, whereas we live in an invented system of our own devising that is utterly untested. So, I find that explanation wanting because it doesn’t explain why people would behave like this towards one another. The recent, radical transformation of human society with agricultre explains precisely that.
Peaknickster, I know you said previously you’re not Taylor, but I have to remark again on the uncanny similarities: both from the same area, both pursuing programs in special education, both raising the precise same points, both mention your plans to consciously not survive collapse, both with the same writing style, both espousing the same logical fallacy by deeming my claims false simply because you claim they’re unique, both with the habit of posting dozens of comments in succession, and both ending in proclamations of despair to ever understand a subject where people disagree. Taylor used sock puppets on Anthropik to pretend that he was other people, projecting the image that there was an avalanche of independent criticism of us, when in fact it was just one person. Now you’re here, echoing the exact same points, in the exact same writing style, with the exact same (and fairly unique) habit of posting so many comments in succession. Can you see where my suspicions have been piqued and how, if you do have some connection with Taylor, hiding such a connection would be more than a little deceitful?
At any rate, allow me to try to address some of the points you’ve raised.
It’s absolutely true that fossil fuels have intensified this trend (10 calories for every 1 now farmed), but it is only an intensification. Marvin Harris discusses the caloric balance of pre-indu