Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael is, undoubtedly, the most widely read work of primitivist philosophy ever written. It won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship in 1989 for $500,000–the single largest prize ever awarded to a work of fiction. It is taught in schools, which is where I discovered it, and where it turned a devout Catholic boy into the primitivist writer you read today. Quinn’s thesis talks about a “Mother Culture,” in analogy to “Mother Nature,” as an emergent, self-defensive property of every culture. Our particular Mother Culture essentially presents us with the challenge: “Take it or leave it.” Those who follow our Mother Culture thus become “Takers”; the others are “Leavers.” Quinn makes a surprising challenge: if we want to solve the problems facing our society, why don’t we look at societies that don’t have these problems, and see if we can isolate their causes that way?

Thomas Malthus was one of the most influential thinkers of all time. His father knew Hume and Rousseau, and his own paper–An Essay on the Principle of Population–forever changed the way we think about populations and food supplies. It has informed food security policies worldwide, and provided the basic underpinnings of our modern concern with overpopulation. In The Origin of Species, Darwin called his theory of natural selection an application of the doctrines of Malthus in an area without the complicating factor of human intelligence. Yes, Malthus’ work has been a major underpinning and influence on everything since. It’s a shame he was so incredibly wrong.

As we saw in the second thesis, natural selection is a tautology: anything that possesses some trait that makes it more likely to propogate itself, is more likely to propogate itself. Played out over a sufficiently long timeline, this can easily explain the origin of species. It was an explosive idea; not because it was theoretically lacking, nor even for lack of evidence. It was not even explosive for what it ruled out. Rather, it was explosive for what it allowed: namely, a world with no intelligent designer. The opposition came primarily from the most fundamentalist of religious organizations. Evolution does not preclude the existence of G-d, but neither does it require it. It was this that made it “evil,” because it removed the existence of life itself as a proof for the existence of G-d.

The concept of progress is actually rather new. Most prehistoric and ancient peoples saw history as a constantly repeating cycle, incompatible with any notion of advancement or degradation. The first conceptions of linear time are found only in the historical era. Confuscius, the Greeks and the Jews all believed that the world was, in fact, becoming worse. In this, they did concieve of history as linear, but as the opposite of progress. The Greeks held that the first, “Golden Age” had been the best era, with each succeeding age diminished from its predecessor’s glory. In Judaism, the “Fall of Man” in Genesis paints humanity in a fallen, exiled state. Later Jewish prophets outlined a messianic and eschatological timeline which extended this into an on-going societal free-fall that would end only by divine intervention with the Messianic Age. This final hope of the Messianic Age sowed the first seeds of the idea of progress.

Humans are social animals, and also capable of abstract, independent thought. The combination requires some form of social standards. Bees think with a single hive mind, and solitary animals do not encounter one another often enough to require a rigid system of morality and ethics. Without social norms, however, human society would break down. We have evolved in such societies, and require other humans to live. A single human, on his own, has little chance of survival.

The original draft of the Declaration of Independence outlined the “inalienable rights” of all men as including “life, liberty, and property.” Benjamin Franklin convinced Thomas Jefferson to change the wording to “and the pursuit of happiness,” simply because it sounded better, but the Lockesian philosophy Jefferson alluded to has remained the cornerstone of American thought. John Locke was one of the great Enlightenment philosophers, one of the first to espouse the idea of “natural rights.” He was, for his time, incredibly radical in that he was among the first to assert that individuals have rights that derive from something more fundamental than the whim or a monarch ruling by divine right. Locke narrowed down these rights to three basics: life, liberty, and property. During the French revolution, one philosopher defined the differences between liberals and conservatives as one of priority: to conversatives, property rights are more important; to liberals, life and liberty. While few would argue Locke’s point on the first two, the right to property remains problematic, at best.

In 1833, Charles Lyell introduced the name “Holocene,” or “Recent Whole,” for our current geological epoch, stretching back only 10 or 12 thousand years. This makes the Holocene an incredibly young geological epoch, the shortest by far. The International Geological Congress in Bologna adopted the term in 1885, and it has been the accepted terminology ever since. The preceding geologic epoch was the last ice age, the Pleistocene. It lasted for two million years, and while it was marked by significantly advanced glaciation, this was not the unremitting state of affairs. The Pleistocene had regular interglacial periods, during which the weather would turn warmer and the glaciers would temporarily recede. These interglacials typically lasted an average of 10 - 20 thousand years. In short, the “Holocene” is a perfectly typical interglacial. The Pleistocene–the “last ice age”–never ended. We’re still in it; a warm spell, yes, but in it.

Today is World Population Day. 2005’s theme focuses on gender equality, and the need for equal access to education and health care. After all, population growth decreases as education rises. After all, look at Italy; they’re actually facing the problem of their population not growing quickly enough. And by all estimates, population will peak soon, at about 9 billion. No wonder “World Population Day” is re-focusing itself on something like gender equality–overpopulation just doesn’t look like the huge catastrophe all those doom-and-gloom types were saying back in the ’60s. But, looks can be decieving….

CNN says Birmingham is being evacuated.

“> DEVELOPING STORY

Birmingham, England, police evacuating the city after intelligence suggested some type of threat, the switchboard operator said.”

Can’t find out anything else yet. I just emailed a British friend of mine to find out just what the hell is going on over there. It’s starting to give me that same “Something frightening is happening right now and something utterly horrible is going to happen because of it” chill I had on 9/11/01.