Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short
by Steve ThomasI’m sure we’ve all gotten that famous phrase from famous asshole Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan thrown at us while arguing neo-tribal/primitivist point of view. Usually it happens in this form: “Mr. Quinn’s views are nothing more than a rehash of the Noble Savage beliefs of Jean-Jaques Rousseau [no mention of the fact that Rousseau never used that term]. The harsh reality is that before civilization mankind’s life was ‘nasty, brutish and short.’” The person usually shuts up after that, thoroughly convinced of their own intelligence.
Well Old Mr. Hobbes would be nothing more than an annoyance, if not for the fact that his work and the theories of Machiavelli (Good Earth, it’s like the marriage of Saddam Hussein and Satan in the South Park movie!) inform so much of the thinking of the neoconservative junta calling the shots in the White House.
So in order that we might have a ready-made counter whenever (and this happens a lot on internet forums, where people are especially interested in being pleased with their own intelligence) someone spits out that famous string of adjectives, I’m posting a paper I wrote a few months ago in which I engage Leviathan–particularly Chapter 13, “Of the Natural Condition of Mankind” and destroy its conclusions on its own terms, using Hobbes’ own premices. Or at any rate, I try to.
It’s a bit dryer than the kind of work I usually post here, and I don’t get into the refutation for a couple of pages, so readers familiar with the permutations of Hobbes’ argument might want to scroll down a bit.
…
“Steven and Hobbes”
an all-too-brief philosophical work by Steve Thomas
Thomas Hobbes�s view of human nature was somewhat bleak, believing as he did that human beings were incapable of living in anything resembling �peace� without being kept in terror of an overarching state. As he articulated in his philosophical treatise the Leviathan, human life outside of the state was a condition of permanent warfare. In this paper I will attempt to refute not Hobbes�s claims about human nature � which I think are fairly accurate � but his conclusion that the only way to bring humans as they truly are into a peaceful society is to impose a state authority onto them.
To Hobbes the definition of the �state of nature� is the lack of a commonwealth, a superordinant state authority. In this stateless condition are found men who are roughly �equal to one another in the faculties of body and mind;� equal enough, at least, that one man can always hope, at least �by secret machination, or by confederacy� to be able to overcome another (74).
Within the state of nature, says Hobbes, there are three sources for interpersonal conflict. The first of these is the fact of competition over scarce resources. Simply, there are resources that every person needs, there are not enough of them to go around, and men are left to compete with one another over the remainder � the equality of strength encouraging competition by leaving each man to at least be able to hope to out-compete his opponents and attain the desired goal. �If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end�endeavor to destroy or subdue one another� (75).
The second source of conflict also arises out of the �equality of hope,� as equality of hope brings with it �diffidence,� distrust. With no restrictions on their actions, a man may hope to be able to take from another man whatever the other possesses, and therefore is likely to do so. Moreover every man knows this about every other, and could be compelled to attack the other preemptively. The result is conflict in either case. Finally, all men according to Hobbes to some degree desire �glory.� This is the desire for reputation, for the praise and esteem of one�s fellows which may be gained through victory in combat.
The war that is the result of these natural conditions of man is a war of �every man against every man� (76). This is not to say that, barring the existence of a state, all men are continually fighting with one another. Rather, the condition of war consists of the knowledge that fighting could, at any time, occur with a set group of people; and in the state of nature this group consists of every other person. �War� says Hobbes, �consisteth�in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known� (76).
Hobbes is aware that he is presenting a rather dim view of human nature, and of nature in general, and that some are likely to object. To answer their objections he calls upon their own experiences, imploring a potential objector to �consider with himself � when taking a journey he arms himself�when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house, he locks his chests�� (77). If this is how men behave when they know there are laws which will compel at least some people to not attempt to break into their homes or assail them on the road, how much would a lack of a protective authority exacerbate these conditions?
In responding to Hobbes� claims, one must first consider the issue of scarce resources; that is, that which �two men desire� but which �nevertheless, they cannot both enjoy� (74). If things are really this dismal, if there is really so little of a given vital resource that everyone cannot obtain at least the very minimum necessary for the immediate continuation of their life � if this is the case, then things are very, very bleak indeed, and we shouldn�t be surprised to find a worst-case scenario of starving survivors fighting to the death. But it is much more likely that, lacking a state, resources will still be abundant enough that every member of a given human population can, if they are able to cooperate with one another and share everything which is available to any in common with all, obtain at least that which they need to subsist and persist from one day to the next.
The problem here, according to Hobbes, is that this might work if people were capable of ceding some resource or right or good to another with only the promise of future reciprocation � but they are not. According to the very laws of nature, says Hobbes, men are compelled to do that which they think is the best way to preserve their own life, and �forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or taketh away to means of preserving the same� (79). Giving up some portion of those resources I can obtain for myself, today, when there is no outside force compelling the borrower to repay me in the future, is in violation of this law of nature, according to Hobbes. It therefore cannot be done.
But what if the resources on which I depend upon for my subsistence vary in availability from day to day � as, without a state compelling individuals to intensive agricultural projects, they necessarily will? In this case these, Hobbes� laws of nature compels me to take steps to insure that, when I am unsuccessful in procuring those resources necessary for my survival, as invariably I will be, I will still be able to get what I need to live � and now, the only possible source is other men who have been more successful in their procurement than I.
So I have two options. I can try to take what they have by force. This is what Hobbes supposes I should do, as �in such a condition every man has a right to everything, even to another�s body� (80). I may be successful � in which case, I will survive today. But I will either have killed the other man, in which case I have one less person to steal from the next time I need to (as I invariably will), or I will have made an enemy who is likely to seek reprisal and at the very least will be on guard in the future, making it far more difficult to steal from him. If this condition continues, it is easy to see how eventually every person remaining will be dead, as they will have died at another�s hand, or died of thirst or starvation or exposure as there was finally none who was not too wary to be robbed. Thus this course of action is ultimately �destructive� of my life �or taketh away the means of preserving the same,� and by the laws of nature as articulated by Hobbes himself, I must �omit� it (79).
My other option is to enter into a covenant with whoever has obtained that which I need to continue my life, and indeed to enter into the same covenant � i.e., I will share with you when I have and you want, provided that when you have and I want, you will share with me � with as many others as possible, as the day may come when a given resource is extremely scarce, and many individuals fail to procure it. Hobbes would contend that, without a state, none of us are obligated to keep to our covenants � but if we don�t, the same scenario described above will occur, and we will die.
Thus it is the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, which forces men (and women, though for simplicity�s sake I have used Hobbes� sexist terminology) to keep their covenants and enter into mutually beneficial relationships, without the need for any state at all. Hobbes� ultimate fallacy is this: he correctly states that without the fear of external retribution, we cannot be compelled to keep our covenants; he correctly tells us that �where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice� (78).
But then he assumes that the threat of immediate death, by hunger, thirst, or exposure; by simple injury, by pregnancy or just by bad luck; all of which constantly hang over the head of the solitary human in the �state of nature,� does not provide a �common power� complete with the ability to dispense the harshest retaliatory justice in every way equal to the worst a moderately repressive state can do.
And that’s where it all turns to bullshit.
That’s a nice try but I think the real issue has more to do with power than a more formal state. I presume that Hobbes figured a state is a “fairer” mediator and administrator than chieftain tactics, but I haven’t read Leviathan and cannot comment. What I do fear however is that if person a and person b enter into a covenant, there is immediately a master-servant relationship. That would motivate the master to be even more successful so as to be able to maintain the
covenant in his (her) favor. So the outcome may not be a state, but maybe something worse, where one person is at the mercy of another, more powerful person’s whims. If (s)he’s a naturally kind oke, well that’s good fortune. If not - poor sod.
I’ve been reading John Zerzan, whose ideal model so far looks suspiciously like the Noble Savage you mentioned earlier on. I am not far into Running on Emptiness, but this is one of the central ideas and I’m trying to validate it. Rather than serve up an alternative to Hobbes, he is trying to find an antidote to civilisation. The best evidence he gives are of hunter-gatherer societies, who were (are in the case of the Khoi-San) not warring peoples and in harmony with their ecology.
martismo.blogspot.com
Comment by marts — 4 March 2005 @ 5:49 PM
I’m not sure I follow how a covenant automatically implies a dominance relationship. In fact, a covenant of mutual support would seem to preclude such a thing.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 March 2005 @ 6:16 PM
The argument Steve presented against Hobbes is really just a modified evolutionarily-stable-strategy. That being said, once you understand the mechanisms of an ESS there really isn’t much argument to be made against it.
“If I told a man to do what he does not want to do, then I would no longer be chief” — [u]The Emerald Forest[/u]
Comment by Janene — 5 March 2005 @ 9:10 AM
I have looked up ESS (http://www.elon.edu/ipe/Gottgetreu%20FINAL.pdf)
and it seems roughly to mean that within a certain population a
(dominant) strategy cannot successfully be invaded by a “mutant”
strategy. So presumably the altruistic mutual support strategy is one
possible strategy. Given the examples in the pdf the mss (a) is a
repeated game (b) does not have a Nash equilibrium (taking charity food for survival from the other player rather than finding one’s own means has a better short-term pay-off) (c) is, when averaged over time, a bit like a prisoner’s dilemma so that a collude, collude (mutual support, because over time person a and person b tend to trade places) is the better strategy, not defection.
So far so good. Because of the tendency towards collusion the mutual
support system seems to further satisfy the definition of an
evolutionary stable altruistic system, and according to the paper this
has 3 assumptions:
“1. The repeated game must be of an undisclosed horizon
2. There must be an appropriate discount rate
3. The initial distribution of agents must be sufficient to support
rational altruists” (p. 5)
Regarding the discount rate, “if the payoff in the future is discounted so it is worth less than the payoff of defecting in the next round, then the player will defect” (p. 5). Leaving the matter of rationalism aside, this alone allows a strategy based on self-interest and power to develop, as follows:
Suppose that some person or group, whether by luck and good fortune, or hard discovery work hits upon some marvellous natural resource (crude oil fulfills this definition in the industrial world), such as a new forest full of fruit or a new hunting-ground and fancies chances of securing it to enjoy it to the maximum. Thing is, if he shares it with everyone it will be no better than the old forest. But if he secures it with a few friends to help him protect it for themselves, they will keep out the rest of the tribes successfully and probably keep it for as long as they want. They won’t be popular with the rest of the tribe, but they’ll be better off. So, if they decide on this rationally, they may decide to defect from the orignal tribe - secretly - and so have devised a new strategy that has invaded and broken off the original population.
That was stage 1. In stage 2 the original tribe has now, let’s say,
fallen on hard times: their forest (or hunting ground, or whatever) has run dry. They want to share in the defected tribes’ good fortune. Now the defected tribe can decide to enter into a covenant that is fair, or a covenant that is subtly skewed to be self-serving, where “self” refers not to an individual self but to the defected tribe as a whole (NOT to the entire original tribe, which would have the defected tribe merely as a subset). So they may say, “fine, you may get a few
fruit, but only half of what we get; and what’s more you must pick the
fruit for all of us”. If the defected tribe is stronger and there is no reason for its members to think that the leftover members of the
original tribe, now begging for fruit, will find their own resource,
they may feel secure to wield power in this way and if that’s what they want may rationally succeed. It’s not quite what I had in mind yesterday, but is also an example of a master-servant relationship.
If this seems a bit farfetched, recall that the definition of ESS
states that the dominant strategy will be pervasive in the system. Since in our civilisation a capitalist system with self-interest (among other things) as one of its cornerstones tends to dominate it would seem that important aspects of this strategy has done markedly better than most others, including that of Noble Savages.
***
This is my first contact with the concept of Evolutionary Stable
Systems and I would like to know that I understand its essence (not everything, but the basic outline). Does my stated definition (and subsequent train of thought) indicate some understanding of it?
Comment by marts — 5 March 2005 @ 6:34 PM
Sorry, I meant Evolutionary-Stable Strategy, not System.
Comment by marts — 5 March 2005 @ 7:29 PM
You fundamentally have grasped the ESS…. but you are applying it in a way that is slightly skewed…. let me explain.
The ESS always applies to [i]individuals[/i] within a group. So you caanot talk about the the behavior of one population towards another, only about the individuals within a population. (The ESS is fundamentally a description of evolutionary behaviours/traits so it can never be applied to a group)
With that in mind, look back at both Steven’s argument and your own. An individual that either ignores or is unaware of thier systemic relationship with the group is always at a disadvantage should survival become more difficult. For a group to wield power over another group, however, the question becomes, how do they enforce it?
Let’s take your example. Tribe B lives in a rich environment — that’s your basic setting, yes? But that does not imply that they have class division or any other characteristic that would enable them to apply coercive force to Tribe A (at least, no more so than A can do to them). Perhaps they are a larger group — because of the bounty of thier land — but at what point is it useful for them take the chance of losing thier hunters in battle? Particularly when the only thing that they will ‘win’ is fewer resources (because they are sharing) and a little extra free time (since they only needed to spend a couple hours a day providing for themselves, how useful is putting that work on others?) — although, not really. Before they were spending a couple hours a day collecting food — now they would have to spend a couple of hours a day ‘enforcing’ thier will on the others….
So where is the benefit? And without there being an obvious benefit, what is the motivation? The one other concern that I have with your example is that it is somewhat one dimensional. Who of the original tribe makes up this ‘defection’ group’? Only the strongest? Is it by family affiliation? Is it purely random? A tribal group is generally a balanced group (again, by virtue of ‘what works’ not because of some ’sacred balance’) — so who do you pick to defect with you? If you defect from the group, do you end up with a reasonable balance? Do you have women and children left in both groups? Do you have enough individuals to be self sufficient? Take a tribal group of 24 individuals and cut it in half…. seems like it would make life more difficult for both groups.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 7 March 2005 @ 10:14 AM
Thanks for pointing out my mistakes …
I do see your point and agree that the problem is that enforcing the power has a smaller pay-off than doing without it. That is, the motivation to be powerful may be less compelling than the motivation to keep things the way they are. Perhaps it is such a poor strategy that in most cases the ones who tried were eventually abandoned by the rest of the group. And as you point out an isolated individual hasn’t the survival chance of individuals helping one another, so he’d just have died eventually. If that is the issue then I grant it, although I would say that in our present civilisation the scenario is very easy to envisage, and happens a lot because class divisions, as you point out, already exist.
But that makes it all the more interesting why civilisation (and state) came into being in the first place. Is it because the motivation to be powerful became a feasible strategy for an individual at some point, because of favourable environmental circumstances perhaps such as threats that eventually threatened the survival of the group he or she was a part of? Or some other perception that required organised activities? Fear can override many other considerations. In such a case a form of centralised authority can have more success than decentralised activities, and if weaponry and technology evolves or has already avolved in the more egalitarian phase then whoever starts seizing control may find ways to keep it, at least for a while. By influencing others’ perception of the threat the power-hungry individual starts organising activities (division of labor) and if (s)he was really good maybe the tribe survives.
I’m not sure what happens thereafter, and this may be completely off the mark anyway - all I’m sure of is that at some point, if an egalitarian society existed prior to ours, something prodded development of civilisation(s) and today we are a thriving virus on the planet.
I should point out that this power-hungry individual’s strategy made use of both the systemic awareness (by including him/herself as the organiser and thereby a beneficiary) and a form of self-interest that hadn’t a platform to express itself before.
If I seem reluctant to let go of the idea that power relationships tend to want to come into being, that is because, well, I am reluctant to let go of it
Comment by marts — 7 March 2005 @ 3:17 PM
Hey –
Yeah, this is one of those topics that it is really hard to figure out how to deal… we want the ‘good’ answer, but we don’t want to be pegged as ‘hopeless idealists’ and so we fight our selves every step of the way.
On where civilization started, I find it very easy to imagine a general scenario…
Populations in the fertile crescent ca 9500BCE found themselves in a rich area, with diverse wildlife and a whole host of easily ‘domesticable’ species. The warming trend made this even richer and populations started to both grow and settle — some groups found that there was enough resource to stay in one place year round. As some populations settled and others adapted other strategies, there probably developed a new dynamic between ’settled herders/hunters/horticulturalists’ and ‘nomadic/hunter/gatherer/raider’ populations. Basically, once the populations settled, they needed to protect what they had… and others wanted to take it. (and why not?)
From this starting point, it seems pretty simple to me to see a gradual expansion of specialization/division of labor and hierarchal power structures. Now, as to the details of why this all happened… I have some ideas, but that is all they will ever be… we’re never gonna know the specific dynamics that got us all the way to here….
Janene
Comment by Janene — 8 March 2005 @ 8:43 AM
I’ve had a look around the site and read Jason Godesky’s explanation of its raison d’etre. That’s sort of funny because although I didn’t realise the connection until now (despite mentioning that I’m reading him), I am busy reading John Zerzan whose works appear to form some of the basic sources of the Anthropik Network’s views. On this note I wondered if you would happen to know a network or blogger of your sympathies based nearer London (England)? Some emphasis on the philosophical side (including anthropolgy or sociology or … as the case may be) is desirable.
Following your post - and from it I conclude that the rise of civilisation (for all its faults) is nevertheless seen as a probable development given the circumstances you mentioned - I am busy wondering how the future (supposing some Future Primitive - I still need to get to the point in Running on Emptiness where it is properly defined, but I’m guessing -) would deal with the possibility of someone wanting to seize power in an environment ripe for it, thereby starting a similar divisive cycle all over again? Furthermore, what is the Anthropik Network’s vision for a future primitive? (if that’s all a lot of writing, pointing me to a post would be OK too
Comment by marts — 8 March 2005 @ 1:45 PM
I’ve actually not read Zerzan yet, but I think we have much in common. I’m in the midst of laying out a bit of a canon for myself in a series of post, starting with basic ideas and building up to, well, the things you’re asking about; how civilization came about, what I foresee for our future primitive, et cetera. As I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I guess I just have to ask for your patience for now.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 March 2005 @ 2:02 PM
Janene–
My understanding of ESS came until your discussion entirely from The Story of B. Thank you for the illuminating points you’ve made. It seems to me, both from B and from what you (and Marts) have said, that this all amounts to simple common sense. I.e., organisms do what works, not what fails. That was part of the point of my own writing, to show that the Hobbesian viewpoint (which again still informs some of the most powerful people in America today) is a recipe for failure, even accepting his premices about nature/human nature.
Marts–
Personally, I’m not a great fan of Zerzan.
I don’t like Future Primitive, because a lot of the anthropology is bad or out of date–ESPECIALLY the physical anthropology. Zerzan’s contention that H. erectus should be lumped into H. sapiens is exactly the opposite of where good physical anthropology has gone/is going. See Jeffrey Scwhwartz’s work. Jason & I both took classes with Scwhartz, and while he’s a true asshole, he’s an important thinker who effectively demolishes the “lumping” theory of human evolution.
Zerzan’s points about symbolic thought are very interesting, and to my mind the major redeeming quality to his work, but he approaches them (like he approaches everything) in the most fundamentalist, dogmatic sort of way that I think only obscures the issue. And in any case, recent discoveries–including the “hobbits,” Homo floresiensis, in Indonesia–are pushing the 50,000-year-ago symbolic threshold back farther and farther. And it’s worth noting that honeybees and vervet monkeys also possess limited forms of truly symbolic communication. I think Zerzan is right in making a case for its alienating properties–but I don’t think that’s the whole story at all. But Zerzan refuses to take a nuanced view on any topic; rather than saying, “symbolism forces us to view the world in a radically different way, which sometimes can be very harmful,” he just gives a blanket condemnation: Symbol=Bad!, written in a manner more reminiscient of a rock star or a professional wrestler than a thoughtful anarchist. I also disagree with his blanket condemnation of religion, including shamanism.
(I hope this post isn’t off-putting…I’m not trying to condemn your viewpoint, just to offer my own.)
Personally I reject dogmatic primitivism, but in that I speak only for myself. Jason, for instance, is much more convinced than I am that, for instance, gathering-hunting is the only viable longterm human subsistence strategy. I think permaculture/integrated agricultural techniques, in which an agricultural system is designed to function essentially as a natural ecosystem (but one which happens to produce an unusual abundance of human food), have a great deal of promise; moreover, I think they can be shown to be very sustainable and effective everywhere they’ve been applied in the indigenous world, among, for instance, the Kayapo of Brazil or on Tikopia, Pohnpei, and other islands in Polynesia and Micronesia.
Old JZ has provided some of the “sources” for my thoughts on a number of issues, especially the discussion of symbol, time, and number; but for the most part I think there are a lot of writers, even referring specifically to primitivism, who make a better case than Zerzan and do so in a more articulate, more factually accurate manner, including Stanley Diamond, Derrick Jensen, Ward Churchill, Chellis Glendinning and Paul Shepherd. I would cite, as the thinkers who have contributed most to sculpting my own set of fundamental-premises, Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jensen, Marvin Harris, and Donella Meadows.
Steve
Comment by Steve Thomas — 8 March 2005 @ 3:07 PM
Let me add Vine Deloria to that list as well.
Steve
Comment by Steve Thomas — 8 March 2005 @ 3:10 PM
Oh, as for visions (I didn’t see Jason’s comment til now), I’ll also (when Time allows, and Time never allows, so whenever I can escape its watchful Eye) be doing 2-3 posts outlining the best idea I can come up with for a better socioeconomic model.
Marts– Can I ask, where are you in this all? Are you coming to Zerzan by way of leftism? Have you encountered any other anti-/post-civ authors other than JZ? What do you think of Zerzan’s position?
Comment by Steve Thomas — 8 March 2005 @ 6:55 PM
“Asshole” seems a little harsh for Dr. Schwartz. He’s incredibly arrogant, but then, he’s definitely earned it.
As for horticulture, I’m open to the possibility, but I don’t think it’s proven itself. I can point to systemic, cultural barriers that would keep the !Kung from developing hierarchy. I can point to no such barriers among the Kayapo. That’s not to say there are none, simply there are none that I can recognize. Also, all we really know is that it’s better than agriculture. We can’t say it’s sustainable because, like agriculture, it’s only been going for 10,000 years. If it’s also unsustainable, but less virulently so, taking 25,000 years to kill itself off instead, how would we know?
Ultimately, though, diversity is good. I have my doubts about horticultural tribes, but horticultural tribes lack the ability to inflict their way of life on their neighbors–as much as they may want to. So if others want to pursue that course, it’s a vast improvement over what we’re doing now, and I wish them the best.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 March 2005 @ 10:30 PM
Jason–
I’ll be sure to look out for those posts.
Steve–
My lack of anthropological and archaeological knowledge doesn’t allow me to really argue the options, whether horticultural or hunter-gatherer. Apart from his specific critiques, Zerzan’s general stance - uncompromising, sweeping - is useful in that it provokes thinking. In mainstream philosophical thought the postmodernist trend is still the vogue, and its conclusions (but ‘it’ is not a whole, or a movement) are not for everyone. Nevertheless, Zerzan seems to know his theory better than most and renders a beneficial service by pointing out some of the assumptions in the world view on which civilisation’s sometimes sorry state of affairs relies.
Having said that, I don’t think his is the final word (for starters it is not quite accurate), and his Future Primitive has yet to look like an alternative to me. Even if his model would be correct (and you suppose that his information is out of date) it sits on its haunches with the slightly mysterious smile of a myth, there on the periphery of the world’s present context. I am a third into his book (Running on Emptiness) but have seen no attempt to suggest viable present alternatives other than some nice-sounding phrases about intimate involvement and sensual experience. You may review my observations on my blog martismo.blogspot.com - the last 3 or 4 entries refer. Largely, he is trying to unravel what we have here in civilisation. Fair enough, so that’s where his valuable efforts have gotten me thinking.
The nuanced view would have been helpful, but as I said I think he gains more by taking the hard line. It’s not about strengthening his argument so much as it is about making people aware.
Zerzan must be the first explicitly anti-civilisation author I’ve read, but the theme goes deeper and further back than that. The romanticists (including Rousseau) all tried to circumvent reason and find solace in nature. There are several themes on that path, wholeness is just one of them, nature, the child, the folly of power (and I think by extension civilisation - Shelley’s poem Ozymandias refers). The path, in fact, leads to the postmodern present and Zerzan’s thought is perhaps not an immediate extension of the postmodern mainstream, but he is out of shooting distance from it either, and with echoes of romanticism.
Comment by marts — 9 March 2005 @ 1:36 PM
Iâ??m sorry for taking so long to get back to thisâ?¦
Marts:
Iâ??m so glad you mentioned Percey Shelley, heâ??s my favorite poet. I have a book called Earth Prayers, which mainly consists of appropriated indigenous prayers to various natural forcesâ?¦I donâ??t think it’s necessary for we-who-would-worship-the-land-we-live-upon to steal like this, I think we can look to our own tradition and call upon, for instance, Shelleyâ??s â??Ode to the West Wind.â?? Or Keatsâ?? â??To Autumn,â?? which I have never been able to read without crying.
Being that youâ??re a fan of old Mr. Z, I strongly recommend Derrick Jensen, Chellis Glendinning, Paul Shepherd, and the websites http://www.primitivism.com and http://www.greenanarchy.org if you havenâ??t stumbled across them yet. Again don’t get me wrong…Zerzan’s as good a starting point as any–as are the Romantics!–I just want to point out that there’s a much broader tribalist/indigenist/anti-civilizationalist critique beyond him.
Jason:
I purposefully didnâ??t say â??horticulture.â?? The form of cultivation practiced on Easter Island could be termed horticulture. The Iroquois practiced horticulture, even a pretty good form of it (3 Sisters gardens), and still we see strong evidence of environmental damage near their settlements.
I said, rather â??permaculture/integrated agricultural systems,â?? by which I meant agriculture designed to mimic and function exactly as an ecosystem. On Tikopia such a system is still functioning after 3,000 years; thatâ??s a 5 square mile island supporting 1200 human beings with an intact ecosystem.
I have no idea if such a system is million year sustainable, butâ??what we need right now is a way to feed and sustain incredible human population densities while still maintaining intact habitats for as many other forms of life as possible.
6 billion hunter-gatherers would be an ecological disaster. Moreover it would be incredibly irresponsible to introduce that many humans into the wild as primitivist suggest. In fact forget 6 billion; letâ??s assume a rapid civilizational collapse causing 95% casualties in North America.
That leaves us with 15 million newly-made hunter-gatherers in the US alone, far larger than carrying capacity. In such a case you really will see olâ?? Hobbesâ?? War of All Against All as these desparate survivors compete with each other (and us!!) for the few remaining resources.
If, instead, we have intact systems for 1. feeding/provisioning lots of humans and 2. preserving, benefiting, and providing habitat for as many other forms of life as possible, we will have the basis to sustainably feed all these people, so that:
1. If civilization comes down rapidly there will be an infrastructure ready to take its place, or
2. If civ. does not come down rapidly, we will be creating an alternative infrastructure capable of a) incrementally replacing it, a la Daniel Quinn and/or b) mitigating some-to-much of the damage it causes by providing a refuge for plants and animals of all sorts including humans from its ravages.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 12 March 2005 @ 1:56 AM
Actually Marts I just looked over your blog a bit. I have to change my reccomendation. Read Daniel Quinn (Ishmael, My Ishmael, The Story of B and Beyond Civilization; the most important 2 being My Ishmael and Story of B, to my mind); he answers a great number of your objections to Zerzan.
Also, my problem is not that Zerzan takes the hardline re. his critique of civilization–it’s destroying the Earth, it’s got to stop, either on its own; by direct action; or by incremental transformation.
Rather my problems are 1) his portrayal of life outside civilization and 2) his refusal to respond to anyone else working in the same vein with anything but hostility. I’m thinking in particular of his attacks upon Noam Chomsky and Hakim Bey, for example.
I have a problem with both of their solutions-to-the-problem (that is, anarcho-syndicalism and Temporary Atuonomous Zones, respectively), but I’m incredibly grateful to both of them for helping me to understand the problem. And I don’t have a problem with either of their solutions as long as I’m not forced to participate. Zerzan’s approach, in which any Way but his is utterly and unequivocally condemned, strikes me as very similar to the insane mentality of Civilization, which is built on forcing everyone everywhere to live the One Right Way.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 12 March 2005 @ 2:37 AM
Yes, 6.5 billion foragers would be an ecological disaster. But then, so would 6.5 billion horticulturalists, or even 6.5 billion agriculturalists just using plows and animals. In fact, anything less than total petroculture, with 6.5 billion people, would be an unmitigated disaster. If we’re going to stick to that argument, then we need to keep on doing what we’re doing, only moreso, because anything less than total, maximal expansion is a disaster, too. The Great Depression happened because we only expanded at 75% of our capacity for a few years.
But there’s nothing stopping me, or you, from doing it. And the cultural construction of food is too powerful to break on a massive scale. Germans starved to death in the 1800s because there was no rye, just an overabundance of white bread they were exporting to Britain and France. Nothing at all to eat. For this reason, once it starts, it won’t stop until the population is low enough where foraging has become a viable alternative. So I’m more expecting a 99.999% fatality rate, with the only survivors being those who are willing to consider tree bark and roadkill “food,” because they’ll be able to tap the resources no one else is willing to eat.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 March 2005 @ 10:50 AM
“If we’re going to stick to that argument, then we need to keep on doing what we’re doing, only moreso, because anything less than total, maximal expansion is a disaster, too.”
No. Because 6.5 billion petroculturists is the biggest disaster of all.
One way or another petroleum civilization is going to end. You are convinced that nearly everyone will starve to death for their construction of food.
I doubt it.
Look at the US population: it is, right now, 25% rural. That’s 75 million people who already have, or are near enough to to move that way without too much of a nudge, a construction of food which absolutely does include roadkill.
If you don’t believe me, go to rural America. I wasn’t kidding when I said roadkill; in West PA it’s a pretty common practice to take home deer found dead on the road. Since a huge portion of this rural population already either already hunts, or spends enough time around people who hunt to consider it a more than acceptable way of getting food, it will not be very difficult for them to transition to hunting and foraging. We can hope that they will all gladly starve to death, but this is far, far, far too much of a leap of faith for me.
To some extent there is an available source of food for a lot of these people, in the tens of millions of cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens already around.
Now, permaculture (again, using that word very specifically, however it fits with your typology), allows us–and with the examples of Brazil and Tikopia we already know this–to feed and provision very large pop. densities (Tikopia: 800 people/square mile) while maintaining an intact nonhuman ecosystem as well.
If civ. comes down abruptly, we can expect this wave of new hunter-gatherers. They’re already there in rural America. We can, therefore, expect massive competition over resources. That is to say, war.
If we have intact permaculture systems created at this time, we have much less to worry about, even than if we had a competent knowledge of hunting, because weâ??ll have far less territory to defend. Just thinking strategically itâ??s wise. Remember my Napoleon quote when I was kicking ass at Risk, â??He who defends everything defends nothingâ???
Moreover, such a strategy probably could support that many people, or even many, many more than that. So in the event of an abrupt collapse we already have the basis for a new ESS (am I using that term correctly?) to avert the WOAA by helping others to feed themselves in this manner. Of course things will still be pretty hairy for a while. But the more people we convert, and in this case, literally save, the more we can save; the more we save, the more we will all be protected.
But then letâ??s say there is no collapse, or rather, we cannot expect a collapse for 100 years or more. That means we have to incrementally build a new system, a la the Quinn model. Here again permaculture works. Building permaculture communities, where we are, nowâ??I mean starting now now now now now, because things with Iran and Venezuela are heating up, China is creating a coal shortage and threatening war with Taiwan, and things look pretty damn close to explodingâ??is the basis from which to build either Future Primitive or the New Tribal Revolution.
There’s another reason I prefer it to foraging. And that’s this: I know how to garden and landscape; I’ve done both of these things.
The fact is, there’s not nothing, there’s a huge something stopping you and me from foraging. To wit: We have no experience or base of knowledge in terms of foraging of any kind whatsoever. I can identify maybe 7 or 8 edible plants in our geographic region [Western PA]. With a decent field guide, maybe double that.
Meanwhile, there is far less stopping us from permaculture-ing. Not the least of which is the fact that it requires far less land than foraging.
You know of course that I’m not arguing against foraging. I’m arguing against it as the only viable strategy; and against it as the strategy which I should pursue.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 12 March 2005 @ 2:38 PM
Hi, Janene & all,
Janene –
You wrote: The ESS always applies to individuals within a group. So you caanot talk about the the behavior of one population towards another, only about the individuals within a population. (The ESS is fundamentally a description of evolutionary behaviours/traits so it can never be applied to a group).
Yes, it does apply to individuals, but couldn’t we also say it applies to cultures since the kinds of behaviors those cultures favor strongly influence whether the culture itself will be stable and therefore affects its members’ probability of survival? Couldn’t ONE person doing something be essentially an ESS for that person while a whole culture doing it could be lethal?
Jason –
You wrote: Germans starved to death in the 1800s because there was no rye, just an overabundance of white bread they were exporting to Britain and France. Nothing at all to eat. For this reason, once it starts, it won’t stop until the population is low enough where foraging has become a viable alternative. So I’m more expecting a 99.999% fatality rate, with the only survivors being those who are willing to consider tree bark and roadkill “food,” because they’ll be able to tap the resources no one else is willing to eat.
“Nothing at all?” That sounded sarcastic. As you said, those Germans HAD food… They exported it to Britain because it profited their princes more to do so rather than to let the people eat it at home (maybe b/c the princes were related to the British royalty, as many European princes were then?). As is often the case, even among today’s awful famines in Africa, etc, the problem wasn’t supply but distribution, complicated (created?) by a distinctly unegalitarian social system.
I don’t think our population could suffer a “99.999% fatality rate” without slipping to zero b/c it would leave most of the survivors in groups too small to survive long-term even if they knew the techniques and were willing to eat roadkill. 90% or even 95% is much more likely.
Very few things could cause such a catastrophic death rate without also obliterating the ecosystem the survivors would need to exist. Being at the top of the food chain, humans are far more susceptible to ecosystem damage than many simpler lifeforms are, so this “obliteration” doesn’t mean the extinction of life on Earth, just what keeps US alive. I don’t think a natural plague could do it b/c the super-lethal diseases (like Ebola) tend to also be so fast-acting they burn themselves out before spreading very far. Something bioengineered might, but such lethality is probably only possible due to full-scale nuclear holocaust or another massive asteroid strike like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. (The latter might be survivable.)
Steve –
Your reference to Tikopia is very interesting. Obviously, such a small island could never support 1300 people without a really stable system. How does it work? Can you point us to sources that talk about it? There’s an organization in Kansas that’s trying to promote such practices on the American Plains using mixtures of native & imported plants and the principles of ecological succession. I think Jeannine Benyus writes about them in Biomimicry but I can’t find my copy.
earthcitizen.blogspot.com
Comment by Gus — 12 March 2005 @ 2:46 PM
Steve –
I bascially lean to your way of thinking; I think it is possible/necessary to make the changes gradually & see some form of permaculture as important. However, I’m not sure a sudden collapse would promote what we hope for, even with a fair %age of the rural population already hunting.
There’s two reasons for that: 1) Most of those areas already have far more people than they can support without modern agriculture if a transition to permaculture doesn’t happen before a collapse. While they’d be able to live off locally stored food for a while (depending on time of year and other conditions), the animal population cannot support full-time hunting in most places, so having many people willing to hunt doesn’t help much. 2) Large numbers of people fleeing the cities would likely overwhelm them for various logistical & humanitarian reasons beyond food. I doubt most communities in the face of a general disaster would suddenly turn away fellow citizens in need at gunpoint … for a while anyway. Even if that’s a short while, it might be enough to eliminate their own food supply (in fact, noticing such a reduction would probably trigger the xenophobia).
That probably wouldn’t change even with a lot of permaculture. Our society is so interwoven that we are usually willing to help strangers and in fact have long been encouraged to do so, so it would take some time to change that behavior. Of course, there are some communities that are isolationist, but those are already fairly well known and often pride themselves on being armed to the teeth, so average refugees aren’t likely to stumble into them. (The Amish are the other end of the spectrum — isolationist but not an armed camp. I wonder how they’d fare in the face of a refugee flood from DC, Baltimore, or Philly?)
The key is to make any diaspora from the cities gradual enough that it can be absorbed, which requires time and the creation of permaculture IN the cities — rooftops, alleyways, vacant lots, median strips, anywhere possible. A start toward that (besides the necessary one of changing attitudes) involves extensive changing of zoning & building codes.
Comment by Gus — 12 March 2005 @ 3:21 PM
Hey Guys –
[quote=”Gus”]Yes, it does apply to individuals, but couldn’t we also say it applies to cultures since the kinds of behaviors those cultures favor strongly influence whether the culture itself will be stable and therefore affects its members’ probability of survival? Couldn’t ONE person doing something be essentially an ESS for that person while a whole culture doing it could be lethal?[/quote]
The only way I can really answer this is ’sometimes’….
Let’s say we could use the same logic to analyze a culture as a whole, but we would need to look at the specific point of analysis and follow the argument through — start to finish — before we could be comfortable with its validity.
If, in the specific case, you were trying to anaylze what a culture does — literally as a single culture, with no internal variance (at least that needs to be addressed in the analysis) as compared with another, distinct, single culture (with no internal variance…)
Are you familiar with Ricahrd Dawkins’ [u]The Selfish Gene[/u]? This is a must read… if you have read it already consider his discussions of both the gene complex as a single functional unit and his discussion of group adaption/evolution….
Steve –
Can you give us some links on permaculture? ( I know Gus already asked
)
The things you are mentioning here actually concern me a little… I have thought of permaculture as a philosophy, almost, of ‘naturalized gardening’ with specicif understanding of plant interrelations etc etc…. but you are implying that it is some sort of alternative agriculture that enables hig pop densities… is that really what you meant? Can you explain a little bit of why and wherefore? And why would we want such a thing?
On the flip — my other concern about permaculture has been and remains the implication that we can know enough to build and maintain entire ecosystems by our will….
I like to think of permaculture (or what I thought was permaculture) as a tool to use on a degraded system… to introduce some diversity, help it recover, and then WALK AWAY and let the system evolve from there….
Janene
Comment by Janene — 13 March 2005 @ 8:53 AM
Hi, Janene –
my other concern about permaculture has been and remains the implication that we can know enough to build and maintain entire ecosystems by our will….
We have seen too much of that, haven’t we? That is also a concern of mine, but I think we DO have
a good knowledge base and the intelligence to observe what happens, so trying it isn’t likely to be dangerous provided we do it with the clear recog. that we aren’t the only ones living here.
Since we’re PART of the ecosystem, we can’t just “walk away.” While the “modern” system of domination of nature clearly isn’t good for other lifeforms — and therefore not for us long term either — we CAN create a system in which we consciously SHARE Earth with other lifeforms. I think a lot of the problems we’ve seen have occurred because we believed we were disconnected from and not responsible to Earth as a whole and could therefore “walk away.” We need to learn how to consciously participate and nurture without controlling or assuming Earth belongs to us, and I think there’s a lot of leeway in there for us to be creative and technological.
Comment by Gus — 13 March 2005 @ 5:39 PM
Hi
Steve–
Thanks very much for your tailored recommendations. After reading JZ it will be helpful to get an alternative view.
Out of interest, one of the essays I read is a postscript to Future Primitive in which he also talks about ways to overcome agriculture as a means of subsistence. He mentions permaculture but only as an interim solution while humankind moves away from civilisation. Cultivation within cities is another way.
Regarding the question of a collapse of civilisation, I am inclined to think it will not happen too soon. I foresee several large scale global developments prior to any sort of collapse - the rise of China as a superpower must play itself out, as must the current self-destructive behaviour of the U.S. in the Middle East (Chomsky told me lots of things I didn’t know). Something tells me that the U.S. has overreached itself and it’s maybe too late to turn around now. To maintain itself it will start compromsing itself because its focus of effort is - literally - stuck.
Gus–
I can’t agree more about the sort of black box thinking you’re talking about. As responsible humans we need to realise that the changes we bring about will ultimately affect us as well, that we’re part of the eco-system. It’s such a simple concept, and yet probably leading back to Descartes’ call for a mind/body, man/nature dichotomy and the ensuing scientific enlightenment enterprise it was comfortable to see ourselves apart from everything else. The crust of the earth and its atmosphere have to some extent become outcomes of a long human experiment from which we cannot walk away now.
Comment by marts — 13 March 2005 @ 6:38 PM
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