- Chuck

I cannot for the life of me figure out why living in an agricultural society would absolutely require expansion and conquest.

Thanks, Chuck. My biggest problem has always been, at how basic a level do I start? And I’m constantly forgetting to flesh out parts that, to me after all these years, seem obvious–but, obviously, aren’t. This is one of them, and as I look around I see it’s a fundamental premise in a lot of my writing that deserves a full treatment in and of itself. So that’s what I’m going to do. This week, you’ll all be treated to an article on why constant growth is a necessary implication of farming, as directly as things getting wet is a necessary implication of rain.

As far as I can tell, any society - no matter what its method of putting food in its mouth - that believes that the world belongs to them will by nature overrun the earth. As a corollary, any society - no matter what its method of putting food in its mouth - that believes that they are only a small part of the world and have no more claim to it thatn any other plant or creature will naturally remain in a balance with the world.

I would disagree, and I’ll elaborate on why in that promised article, but the gist of it comes down to this. How you put food in your mouth determines a range of things you can believe. Very few are such psychological supermen as to hold the kind of cognitive dissonance in their brains as to live as an agriculturalists, and simultaneously believe that they are part of the rest of the world. Perhaps enough to lead some kind of small innovation, but not enough to build an entire society on.

What precluded this action was not that they were hunter/foragers, but the knowledge that the world does not belong to them.

That’s certainly Daniel Quinn’s belief, but it turns out the !Kung do believe the world belongs to them. We can debate how much of this story is aboriginal, and how much it is influenced by Muslim and Christian missionaries, but from actually studying the beliefs of these various “Leaver” cultures, I can’t say I’ve found much ideological difference to back Quinn’s assertion up. Ethnocentrism is universal; every group believes itself superior to all others. All believe they have a unique destiny in the world. So if it’s not ideology that divides us, what is it? I think it’s opportunity. I don’t think any group–of any species–would hesitate to conquer the world if it could. Natural selection itself seems to me to be a delicate balance of each species’ will to conquer against the others; evolution seems driven by everyone constantly trying to take over the world, and always failing. The past ten thousand years are an object lesson in the horrors that unfold when one actually succeeds in that. The will is important; the actual attainment of that will is catastrophic.

I surfed in some time a few weeks from Wikipedia (I had to know who this “Jason Godesky” was). I read several dozen articles here and was greatly impressed. It’s good to be among kindred spirits. Now, down to business.

In the above post (which is extremely well written), agriculture seems to me to be married unalienably to the idea of expansion. I cannot for the life of me figure out why living in an agricultural society would absolutely require expansion and conquest. As far as I can tell, any society - no matter what its method of putting food in its mouth - that believes that the world belongs to them will by nature overrun the earth. As a corollary, any society - no matter what its method of putting food in its mouth - that believes that they are only a small part of the world and have no more claim to it thatn any other plant or creature will naturally remain in a balance with the world.

The !Kung complained of the long working hours during the drought… yet, even during the worst desert drought in human memory, nothing was stopping the !Kung from overrunning their pastoral neighbors and slaughtering each and every one of them. Nothing was stopping them from working 8 and 10 hours a day and exploding their population so as to ravage the tribes around them and expand. What precluded this action was not that they were hunter/foragers, but the knowledge that the world does not belong to them. It seems to me that if a society that was agricultural had a deep understanding that they were not kings or gods, they could regulate themselves perfectly, much like the !Kung (or indeed any hunter/forager group), who regulate themselves by only obtaining the food that they require.

As far as I can see in my admittedly narrow world-view, it is not horticulture or pastoralism or hunter/foraging or even agriculture that is killing the world. Rather, what is killing the world is the idea that the world belongs to US, us being whatever group is raping our Home with no regard for the sanctity of life.

I see no reason why a hunter/gatherer society could not decide that the world belonged to them and “go on the rampage” by slaughtering their neighbors. They could just as easily reproduce with the increased food intake from their dead neighbors’ land. They could just as easily form armies and have class divisions and labor divisions. (You’re all hunters, you’re all weapons makers, you’re all conquering warriors, the women will all be gatherers and breeding machines, we’re all priests, and he’s the king etc.) What precludes them from following that course of madness is that they do not have the peculiar and dangerous belief that the world belongs to them.

I am proud to be one who loves the agricultural farm life, but I am also one who would be happiest being in balance with the Universe. Diminishing returns be damned, I’ll be in my fields, growing the 3 sisters: pole beans, corn and squash. My other nine fields will lie fallow and burgeon with life, the soil having a full decade to replenish itself after my plow has passed through. My table will be graced with venison and fish and mushrooms gathered in the forest as well as cornbread and beans. There is no one right way to live, but the ways that survive are those that are in balance with the world. I seek nothing but peace and balance.

- Chuck

I guess what I’m saying is that perhaps agriculture is not the root of the problem, it just contributed to the expansion of the root of the problem — centralization and hierarchy (both positive feedback loops, just like agriculture). I’m not sure that without the latter two, one would see the intensification being taken to this level.

In my thesis, I will be defining civilization primarily as a reinforcing feedback loop of multiple other closely-linked reinforcing feedback loops — primarily hierarchy, centralization, and division of labor. Childe’s criteria for civilization are either directly one of these three self-perpetuating and intensifying loops or are a subset of them. Division of labor accounts for two of them (standing armies and full-time specialization), centralization accounts for most if not all of them, and hierarchy accounts for centralization and the exceptionally insidious class structure.

One of my postulates is that agriculture is not necessarily the only means of food production that can be centralized. As we have seen with the Kwakiutl, they maintained a chiefdom without having “agriculture”, per se — and I would posit that this was due to the plentiful and easily centralized source of fish nearby. A while ago, Engineer-Poet spoke of a means of food production that was supposedly scalable to feed large numbers of people… after which you said that the problem was not feeding these large numbers of people. This set me off thinking.

I’ve read the (excellent) article The Oil We Eat, which seems to be a significant source for a lot of what you write. I won’t disagree that agriculture as described in this essay is not the easiest way to facilitate centralization or constant expansion, but I do think that perhaps there might be a few other ways to do this that we’ve not seen. Hydroponics, Seed balls (used destructively), organic methods of farming, and other potential sources for food production can also be centralized.

Now, what I suggest is this: that either agriculture be redefined as any method of food production that is easily centralizable, or that agriculture as framed in anthropology and in traditional usage is just one of the many possible means of centralized food production, one that was used for this particular brand of civilization. I don’t think that all of the above methods of food production are all past the point of diminishing returns, either — particularly seed balls, which is an innovation that could be incredibly dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. No plowing, no irrigation, no fertilization (when employed with Fukuoka’s natural farming techniques) and huge yields (equivalent to or greater than industrial agriculture).

I think this is an important point to make about agriculture, and for a number of reasons. One, I think it might shed light on a couple of the deeper problems with civilization, that of centralization and hierarchy. Jeff Vail talks about these in his book A Theory of Power — and makes a strong case that these are the “true evils”. Centralization (including a centralized form of food production) allows and facilitates huge resource consumption, as does hierarchy. As we discussed in Jeff Vail’s thread over at IshCon, agriculture is ONE of those huge resource consumptions, and ONE of the means that hierarchy/centralization uses, but is far from the entire picture. Leading to my second point: The earth’s ecosystems would not be nearly as degraded if it were not for the OTHER resources we’ve consumed, in order to furnish the greed of the elite in the hierarchy (pharaohs, kings, the merchant class — whomever it is, throughout history). Computers, cars, pyramids, skyscrapers, large stadiums, and all of the items mass produced for consumption that fill our huge waste dumps — these are not due to agriculture, they are due to centralization and hierarchy-enforced mass production.

Third, and perhaps the most crucial point, is a word on the practical side (which is seemingly where many primitivists, anarchists, and Marxists get completely lost and ineffective). In the transition to another system of living, we’re not going to be able to go back to a hunter-gatherer like world. The Earth is too depleted and too overpopulated for this to be a practical solution for anyone other than the elite — those who can purchase vast tracts of land in undeveloped areas, who have the time and money to study primitive skills, and a number of other criteria that put this option far out of the reach of the majority of humans on this planet. Now, it’s just common sense that in order to solve the hierarchy-agriculture loop, we have to counter the loop. If we cannot get rid of horticulture/agriculture due to the current geographic/monetary/ecological restrictions, we must get rid of hierarchy. We must effectively make sure that our food production does not lead to a gradual re-development of hierarchy. Conversely, if we want to get rid of hierarchy, an effective way to do it would be to get rid of centralized food production of any form — which, in this case, means decentralizing agriculture.

The bottom-line answer to civilization is that we must stop the centralization, the constant expansion, and the hierarchy. Jeff Vail talks about a network of several small, independent nodes in what he calls rhizome.

Rhizome acts as a web-like structure of connected but independent nodes, borrowing its name from the structures of plants such as bamboo and other grasses. By its very nature, rhizome exhibits incompatibility with such critical hierarchal structures as domestication, monoculture-agriculture, division of labor and centralized government. Unlike hierarchy, rhizome cannot suffer exploitation from within because its structure remains incompatible with centralization of power. It provides a structural framework for our conscious organization of memes. Each node in a rhizome stands autonomous from the larger structure, but the nodes work together in a larger network that extends benefits to the node without creating dependence. The critical element of a world that focuses power at the level of the individual, that can meet the demands of our genome while providing the flexibility and potential to achieve greater goals, remains the small, connected and relatively self-sufficient node of this rhizome structure. In human terms, such a node represents an economic and a cultural unit at the size preferred by our genome: the household and the tribe. Functionally self-sufficient but not isolated, cooperating but not controlled, the rhizome economy, combined with a self-awareness of control structures, provides the real-world foundation of stability and freedom.

What these nodes look like to me are small, egalitarian communities — ecovillages. To someone else, they might look like a hunter-gatherer tribe; to another, a Temporary or a Permanent Autonomous Zone. An important thing about rhizomal nodes is that they can all be different, providing a strong and long-lasting network of diversity. I really feel like this vision reconciles most, if not all, of the supposedly divided ideologies critiquing civilization.

The theories and the practicalities are edging ever closer, in my mind. As civilization as we know it enters its final hour, it remains to be seen what the human race will be capable of. I have hope and faith that we will be able to transform our present dark realities for a bright future.

Peace,
Devin