Methods of Freedom: Interaction Without Hierarchy
by Benjamin ShenderOn my previous post on freedom and enslavement to the civilized system I alluded to methods of obtaining this freedom, and several people have since wondered about details. I could simply pull a Quinn and say “be creative,” but that is somehow unsatisfying as an answer. So, instead, here is example one.
Civilization means hierarchy. They feed off each other, and never is one found without the other. A concentration of surplus, which is a requirement of civilization, always leads directly to hierarchy. And, hierarchy can only be sustained by a denial of privileges to a lower class, otherwise, why would they obey? This denial is only possible through civilization. Indeed, some people have gone so far as to refer to them as being nearly synonymous.
This ultimately means that civilization can be effectively undermined by replacing hierarchy. Without it, civilization cannot maintain itself. So the question now becomes: what earthly good does that do us?
Replacing hierarchy on a grand scale is beyond our abilities. Also, any violent or non-violent revolution directed against hierarchy would only serve hierarchy by acknowledging their power. After all, if they are the ones you are trying to get that power from, it means they have the power.
However, if you merely do not propagate hierarchy in your own life, then you have, at least partially, freed yourself from that hierarchy. All of this is accomplished by merely denying it. There is no “fighting” of hierarchy that can be effective. But if you simply refuse to acknowledge its power it becomes powerless.
What is the alternative to hierarchy? Egalitarianism. How is this accomplished? With great difficulty if you were not born to it.
The first step is to watch your use of language. Any use of language that puts one person above another without justification of superior ability in that instance should be eliminated. So, saying that Bob is better shot is fine. Telling blonde jokes is not. I know it is hard, but nobody said it was going to be easy. Take it as an opportunity to learn new, funny jokes.
Next, you have to stop leaving people out of the equation. Essentially this means that oligarchies, dictatorships, and even democracy can no longer be your primary means of decision making. The alternative is consensus. Formal Consensus, is not necessary. But some form would be appreciable. Formal Consensus does not mean that everyone has to agree. It means that everyone has to agree that the current plan is workable and best that is available. This is achieved by taking a possible solution and adjusting it to meet any and all concerns presented. The solution once it goes through this process should be acceptable to everyone, even if not universally adored. This is not the same thing as compromise. In compromise, no one gets what they want. In consensus, everyone gets what they want.
And then you have to start calling people on this. This one is hard. But this kind of thing has to be done in groups. When someone slips up, you need to remind them, kindly, that they were behaving civilized, and that such behavior is inappropriate.
Beyond that, it is more little things. By not behaving civilized, people around us will begin to treat us in that way. Luckily, behaving in an uncivilized way amounts to flawless manors by civilization’s reckoning.
As I read it, this set of guidlines seems to be aimed at making life less civilized while we continue our scrubby existance in its grasp. This seems to be the only option for bettering our lives, as any off the grid “mini collapse” will be conquered by neighboring areas, as pointed out by Jason. However, I wonder if your comments still hold up POST collapse. Specifically, the blonde jokes. Understandably, the survivors of civilization are going to be the civilized, and it will take time to make them “wild” again. Therefore, it’s not as if, post collapse, survivors instantly become egalitarian… though it seems that evolution will favor those that elect to do so.
My question is this. Do you feel that you would re-assert your “no blonde jokes” proposition in context of a post-civilzation egalitarian society? It seems to me that “neighboring culture jokes” could serve the goal of cultural diversity, tradition, identity, among other things. So, is it ok to have cultural understandings that one group of people is lesser without justification— if this understanding is sustainable, and probably reciprocal? After all, post-civilization, I don’t believe it to be possible for one society to ENACT their cultural hatred of their neihgboors, and exterminate them. What are your opinions, Ben and others?
Comment by Anonymous — 13 December 2005 @ 10:03 PM
Just to make sure we are on the same page, “blonde jokes” are an example of a larger group of jokes, comments, assumptions and the like. Remember, us white folks can go into a drug store and buy flesh-colored bandages that match our skin tone.
But, yes. Any culture that makes jokes belittling a segment of their own society due to gender, perceived race, or class is not egalitarian. Those jokes are how we transmit values of supression to each other and our children. Stop telling them, and these views will slowly receed. Granted, having been brought up in this fashion we will never be free. But if we watch ourselves, perhaps we’ll be free in a couple generations.
Now, joking about the sheep-loving jerks over the next ridge…well, they just aren’t very bright, so why would they be offended?
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 13 December 2005 @ 11:35 PM
It’s well documented that Arabic speakers hate freedom, that’s why we spend so much money trying to kill them all.
If all the Arabs in the West were eradicated and deported, there would no longer be an Arabic subculture among us… would the above meme still result in subversion on THIS hemisphere?
Perhaps civilized propaganda is a neighboring issue that’s slightly different.. in that it’s spawned by the elite in order to split their slaves against each other or to provide legitimate justification to do things counter to the prevading morality… ? I’m not sure.
Comment by felix — 14 December 2005 @ 12:12 AM
Actually, and this is no small nitpick, hierarchy is found outside of civilization. But it depends on your definition. If you want to define hierarchy as “that which only exists in civilization” then you’re clear. But commonly accepted forms of the word hierarchy are present in chiefdom societies. From the link:
So, hierarchy is not dependent upon civilization but civilization is dependent upon hierarchy.
You seem to miss the biggest piece of the picture as well — having a community is essential to interaction without hierarchy. People we are truly friends with we are typically in a relationship of equals with. Interacting without hierarchy is then a process of simply making friends with people and interacting the way you would without a formal power structure or without indoctrination to that formal power structure. It is this latter which you touch on by calling for awareness of how we are relating to those around us and replicating the extant social power structures of civilization, as those perpetuate and reinforce the more entrenched material power structures.
Other influencing factors include sustenance methods, group size, and decision making processes.
Comment by Devin — 14 December 2005 @ 7:18 AM
Chiefdoms are even more hierarchical than states in some ways, but chiefdoms also inhabit the fuzzy border regions of civilization. A lot of chiefdoms are usually considered civilized–like Cahokia, for example, which at its height had a larger population than [i]London[/i]. And there’s a question as to whether the chiefdom is really a stable state of social organization, or merely a transitionary state on the way to full-blown civilization (making the chiefdom a civilization embryo?).
I was thinking the same thing as Anonymous, above. Where the two groups are separate, insulting jokes can be a primary means of establishing group identity and cultivating tribalism, in its usual sense. The problem is when those groups aren’t quite so separate. Even if we were to follow the crazy plan Felix suggested hypothetically, we’d still be in the same, globalized system with Arabs.
Tribalism is great, until you have to live with them. That’s a very odd situation, granted, but that’s when tribalism goes from adaptive to destructive.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 14 December 2005 @ 10:36 AM
I’m wondering, maybe it’s not so much the animosity as the power to do something with it. If you have too much animosity within a tribe, granted, it’ll probably eventually split it up, but I think rivalry is ok so long as no one group/person has the power to subjugate the rest.
Comment by Raku — 14 December 2005 @ 12:20 PM
I was actually considering Chiefdoms to be “civilized-wannabees.”
I guess you’re right. I didn’t talk about community. I just kind of assumed it was inherent…hmmm. Is that a good sign or a bad one? And with those communities not liking those on the outside keeps them together (which works best when you legitmately couldn’t destroy them, doesn’t apply to our current case). But when a sub-group is hated, that’s a problem. That causes division and seperation. At that point your own a resource concentration away from racism, subjegation, and possibly full-blown slavery.
As for other factors of walking away…this was kind of intended as being the first in a series. This time I was just talking about interacting with people without stratification. Next time I’ll talk about another thing you can do. And then another. Maybe I’ll do sustenance next just to make Devin happy.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 15 December 2005 @ 12:08 PM
The only problem with the hypothesis of chiefdoms being embryonic civilizations is that it’s an untestable hypothesis. One can look at every chiefdom that’s evolved into a civilization and say that there’s some pretty strong circumstantial proof, but any chiefdom that hasn’t changed into a civilization can be justified within the confines of the theory by simply claiming that enough time hasn’t elapsed for the necessary changes to occur.
This was a very insightful article.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 15 December 2005 @ 3:35 PM
Civilizations are all built through the exploitation, such as enslavement, of at least one underclass, and hierarchy is simply the most efficient mechanism for transacting that exploitation.
Transitioning to sustainability, defined by the ending of exploitive relations with the earth and all its inhabitants, threatens civilizations and their hierarchical methods of control.
Stop the exploitation, in all its manifestations, and the hierarchies are ultimately doomed [Neither victims nor executioners be]. But they’re not going to go gently.
– Rick
Comment by Rick — 15 December 2005 @ 4:21 PM
Why is it this group seems to deny the possibility of an egalitarian, sustainable, civilization that retains some complexity? If civilization means hierarchy then what would the above be called?
Tribes or groups that you are describing that are only concerned with their own freedom will most likely repeat the history of the last 10.000 years only faster. i.e. “Those dumb sheep-herders on the other side of the ridge should be pushed out to improve our deer and elk harvests.�
Comment by Bob Harrison — 16 December 2005 @ 2:38 PM
Hey Bob –
No I wouldn’t call that civilization… I usually refer to it as ’some third thing’ (that we have never seen before.)
I hold out hopes for that possibility, but it really IS an untried and unknown possibility, so it is impossible to PROVE that it can happen, unless and until we do
Janene
Comment by Janene — 16 December 2005 @ 4:41 PM
If humans are hardwired to reproduce themselves to the point of overshoot, like rabbits or yeast, then we are subject to bloom and dieoff, just as they are.
William Catton in Overshoot, says that the current exuberant expansion of human flesh has been brought about by a one-in-a-billion convergence of the “discovery” of a relatively underpopulated western hemisphere and the discovery and exploitation of oil, the most versatile energy source on the planet.
That era of convergence is about over.
If there are post-dieoff human survivors, and there are likely to be, I think, they are likely to be living in some sort of tribal arrangement with limited technologies and little need for hierarchies of exploitation, that is, they’ll be living within their means and not making too much more trouble.
We are probably talking about a timeline of the next 100/150 years, outside our own lifetimes but incredibly quickly by historical or [even more] evolutionary standards.
In the meantime, the trick is to manage the powerdown and dieoff and get as many of our own and our friends’ (our tribes, if you will) genes successfully into that post-petroleum, Olduvai future.
Whether that future will more resemble Paleolithic hunter-gatherers or Middle Age Europeans or bucolic mid-19th century Americans is anybody’s guess. Probably some of all of them, in various places.
If the sustainable human population worldwide in a resource-depleted, environmentally degraded world is one or two billion, and we’re currently at six billion and climbing, it’s pretty clear that war, pestilence and famine are going to have a field day in the near term.
Fasten your seatbelts.
Rick
Comment by Rick — 16 December 2005 @ 5:53 PM
I think there might be hierarchies left with collapse. A little of it depends on how precipitous collapse is. I imagine there might be clans with demented people as leaders like Dennis Hopper in Waterworld promising them greatness and the rest eating it up. I read an essay and it described a scenario of post-collapse where you are harvesting tubers (potatoes I guess) and a fascist clan comes along and demands you give them their food. And they might kill you I think. If you don’t defend yourself, you’ll end up dead. I watched a movie called Black Robe about a missionary traveling with the American indigenous people. They encountered an indigenous tribe of assholes that beat them for no reason and low and behold they had a Chief. They had barrier walls and wood structures it looked like out of saplings. I have read that some American indigenous people were a little imperialistic. Afterall, they had nations. I also heard though that the pioneers dubbed these certain people Chiefs even if they weren’t to sign their land treaties. There might be some asshole, hierarchal tribes though in collapse. Possibly, even in the majority, through survival of the fittest or most aggressive. Hopefully, most survivors will learn some lessons from the collapse though.
Comment by planetwarming — 16 December 2005 @ 6:54 PM
Janene:
That there has never been an anarchist society is the most common dismissal of the concept. However it is not certain that everything that’s of value has already happened. History hasn’t ended yet.
Civilization is defined by dictionary.reference. com as:
An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.
Just because an anarchist civilization would be a new event doesn’t make it impossible or barbarian(uncivilized).
Comment by Bob Harrison — 16 December 2005 @ 7:13 PM
Except there have been hundreds, thousands of anarchist societies. But our ethnocentric viewpoint won’t let us see that they are truly anarchist. All the extant forager groups and tribes throughout history have been anarchist. Also, you’re using a very ethnocentric definition of civilization. See Jason’s posts on What is Civilization? and The Meaning of Civilization for more.
Comment by Devin — 16 December 2005 @ 8:32 PM
Devin:
Yes there have been anarchist societies, and many tribes could be so described. What we don’t yet have is an example is an egalitarian civilization.
Thank you for pointing me to Jason’s posts on the subject. I hadn’t seen them. Obviously, a complex and egalitarian society would fail the last four of Childe’s primary criteria. I would also hope it would fail Jason’s definition of civilization as “a complex of coercion, domination and terror.â€? Both Childe and Jason’s definitions are based upon looking at civilizations that are based on hierarchy. For the benefit of those readers that haven’t read Jason’s other posts it would be less confusing to use the term hierarchical civilization when that is what is meant.
However, I think the premise of hierarchy is not necessary to the concept of civilization. (If, rather than establishing the casting of pebbles, Pericles had designed a consensus-decision-making process that incorporated all Athenians, would Athens no longer be considered a civilization?)
Wikipedia offers a minimalist definition of the term: “a civilization is a complex society.� According to this definition and the definition I offered above, an egalitarian civilization is not an oxymoron.
My reason for being concerned about this issue is because I don’t think enough thought is being directed toward how small egalitarian tribes or groups will respect and cooperate with each other. Even after a collapse there will be a need to think globally. War and freedom are not compatible.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 17 December 2005 @ 2:20 AM
Hey Bob –
Devin already answered most of your first post… but you will also not that I didn’t say that a ‘third thing’ was impossible — just impossible to [i]prove[/i] as functional.
However, now that you have given it a name, there is some scientific evidence to suggest that anarchy is unable to function amongst millions of people. I’m sure you have seen some of the discussions here on Dunbar’s Number. Dunbar’s Number suggests that egalitarian/anarchistic societies start to break down when the population exceeds the level where individual members CAN interact as individuals. Basically that as you approach 150 people, the human brain becomes incapable of keeping track of all of the other members, leading to objectification, stereotyping, and therefore stratification (hierarchy).
On civilization… why would it be useful to strip the word ‘civilization’ of all of its defining characteristics? I mean, you could call ALL vegetables ‘beans’ but then you would cease to be able to distinguish beans from peas. I mean, yeah, sure they are related, but the words that distinguish them increase our ability to communicate effectively.
On Tribal Relations… The Appalachian Confederation comes to mind
Janene
Comment by Janene — 17 December 2005 @ 11:46 AM
What about the excavations at Çatalhöyük?
These indicate a neolithic city with a population of 8,000 hunter gatherers. In regards to egalitarianism at Çatalhöyük: “The people appear to have lived relatively egalitarian lives with no apparent social classes, as no houses with distinctive features (belonging to kings or priests, for example) have been found so far.”
This would seem to contradict the idea that as you approach 150 people society leans towards objectification, stereotyping, and therefore hierarchy.
Comment by Lope — 17 December 2005 @ 1:24 PM
Janene:
As usual you and I seem to be close to agreement in principle, but differ semantically. My reason for not liking the archaeological definitions for civilization is that for most of us not coming from that background it is not intuitive. Although I do not at this point consider myself a primitivist, these archaeological definitions make me one. I am not against civilization according to its general meaning as long as it doesn’t include hierarchy, private property, lock down of food, wage labor, or other methods of oppression. It can have some rational complexity as long as it is environmentally sustainable. Obviously I am against this civilization and realize it cannot be reformed, but I don’t feel comfortable stating that I am against civilization in general.
I am aware of Dunbar’s Number, and having some experience in groups that work by consensus, I know that even that number is impractical for the basic group size. A partial solution would be very similar to that described in ‘The Appalachian Confederation’. Rhizomes could be created by urban or village groups forming counsels similar to the tribal counsels, which could form confederations.
That this would work is not proven in either case. The prevention of oppression within the groups is dependent on the character of the individual members. The functioning of the rhizome is dependent on the cooperation of the nodes. Without these qualities the rhizome will be as fragile as a cartel.
Another problem that exists for either type of rhizome is how to coordinate the usage of the commons. Although this may not be a problem initially after a drastic collapse, the tragedy will arise eventually and if not resolved cause another collapse. This problem requires a global solution.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 17 December 2005 @ 5:56 PM
Lope:
Thanks. I had not know about Çatalhöyük and found the information fascinating. It seems these people managed to do what we can’t 8000 years ago. An egalitarian society that large and living that close together is quite an accomplishment. It seems they put up with the inefficiency of living in a village in spite of remaining essentially hunter-gatherers for cultural reasons. There is speculation that these people created much of their culture and moved into the town BEFORE they took up agriculture.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 17 December 2005 @ 6:14 PM
Hey –
On Catal Huyuk… I’ll have to do some research on that. I did a major research paper on Mesopotamian (+Anatolia, the Levant,the Zagros Mntns etc) Neolithic developments, and based on what I learned then, I would contest the assertion of ‘no social classes’.
Catal Huyuk (and other early neolithic villages) certainly were far less rigid and stratified than the later develpment of al Ubaidian and then Sumerian cultures… but that makes perfect sense when you understand that Catal Huyuk was a horticultural village as compared with later, full-on agriculture in the south. (They were horticultural not pure H-G)
There is also some question over how much time it takes to move from egalitarian nomad to horticultural ‘Big Man’ to agricultural civilization. Specifically, is there a lag in the memetic components of these structures? When does specialized emphasis becomes specialized exclusiveness? When does a ‘favor’ become a command? And how do you determine any of this from archaeological remains? They use standards to try and give archaeologists some structure to thier assessmnents… but also, keep in mind, that any object that is unexplicable gets a coin toss: heads it is a ‘religious object’ tails it is a ‘game’.:-)
Hey Bob — one of the (again) mechanical structures that we can draw on to deal with the tragedy, as well as any fragility in a rhizome network is drawn from game theory combined with selfish gene theory… if we can build communities (and network those communities) with an emphasis on long-term benefit, we can leverage our biological tendancy toward selfishness. (not the negative, ‘accusatory’ selfishness, but the ‘at the end of the day, I am most concerned about me and mine. As long as they are ok… then I can think about you’ If you know what I mean) This could well be the most daunting piece of the task that we face… How do you imbue modern americans (for the gods sake!) with an awareness of ‘forever’? This might be one place where a collapse could help a lot. Once you know that the cavalry will NEVER come riding over the hill, then you ‘get it’ that your life and well being is TOTALLY DEPENDANT on the life and well being of your community. Period. At that point, you don’t need to jump a big hurdle over the whole ‘trust’ issue, because you no longer have a choice…
Janene
Comment by Janene — 17 December 2005 @ 7:42 PM
Janene, you write:
I find an interesting implication here; that every time and everywhere, chiefdoms become civilizations. That this is unavoidable, that this happens semper et ubique.
If this isn’t what you meant, sorry. If it is, you should examine the logic of your faith in this idea. As I said earlier, the only problem with the hypothesis of chiefdoms being embryonic civilizations is that it’s an untestable hypothesis. One can look at every chiefdom that’s evolved into a civilization and say, “There’s your evidence,” but that’s circumstantial. Likewise, any chiefdom that hasn’t changed into a civilization can be justified within the confines of the theory by simply claiming that enough time hasn’t elapsed for the necessary changes to occur.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 17 December 2005 @ 9:43 PM
Hey Chuck –
You’re asking the same sort of questions that I mean to be implying.
You cannot answer the question ‘Do ALL cheifdoms become civilization?’ without getting a firm understanding of, and technique for determining, what point in development represents the change.
Let’s look at it another way… if we were to be able to answer the above question, then we would be able to look at a series of chiefdoms that had existed, but NOT become civilization. IF some of them had resisted the shift to civilization, we might be able to identify features that can tell us that.
So no, we will never prove without a doubt that cheifdoms always lead to civilization… but if we could answer these more fundamental questions, we might be able to prove that it does NOT. Its that whole ‘proving a negative’ thing.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 18 December 2005 @ 10:45 AM
One also must consider that there will inevitably be a transition between a hunter-gatherer society and a civilization, and that all civilizations at some point could probably have been classified as chiefdoms. You can’t just poof a civilization into existence. The helpful distinction to me seems to be to look at the point at which social stratification begins to occur and stay away from that. The idea that chiefdoms are closer to civilization on the whole social organization spectrum is enough for me to be skeptical of chiefdoms.
The problem comes in when we try to include the idea of progress in this whole cultural evolution thing. Then we start to see the spectrum of societies as a line going from most primitive or least advanced to most advanced, with advanced being a value judgment. That’s the myth of unilineal cultural evolution — that all tribes are just primitive chiefdoms, and all chiefdoms are just primitive civilizations, and certain civilizations are more advanced than others, etc. This is just an ethnocentric view where the society we live in today is by default the more advanced and “better” society. Multilineal cultural evolution is the predominant paradigm today among anthropologists.
I think that’s all we know enough to say at the moment. I’d like to see the questions Janene poses explored, but I’m afraid any exploration of that will lead to tentative conclusions at best.
Comment by Devin — 18 December 2005 @ 4:12 PM
Every culture has some complexity. “Sustainable” and “egalitarian” are precluded by the definition of civilization, which we’ve discussed before, first with, “The Meaning of Civilization,” and later refined with, “thesis #13.
Now, complexity is fine. Every culture has some level of complexity. But complexity does not a civilization make. Most of us would be uncomfortable referring to an Aborigine “civilization,” and with good reason. But the theological complexity of the Dreamtime puts the wankery of Thomas Aquinas to shame.
The things we usually associate with”civilization”–music, art, philosophy, technology, science, mathematics, etc.–have nothing in the least to do with civilization. They all date back to the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, and they’re all four times older than civilization. They’re universal to all human societies, civilized and primitive alike. What’s unique to civilization is war, hunger, poverty, oppression, corruption, bureaucracy, disease and theft.
We would be, but the dynamic equlibrium of the firs two million years of our existence would belie such a notion that this is “the norm.” This is a brief abberation in the history of our species; we should not make it out to be more indicative of our inherent nature than it is, simply because we happen to be unfortunate enough to live through it. It is still the most minor blip in our history as a species.
Sigh. See thesis #13, where I write of precisely that definition:
An anarchist civilization is a contradiction in terms. Three of Childe’s five defining criteria of civilization is class structure, concentration of surplus, and state-level political organization. A large-scale anarchist society could be very complex (it would have to be, to allow humans to live in such a scenario where they are so maladapted–just like fish would need a great deal of complexity to live in space), but it would never be a civilization.
I do not believe such a society would be possible, though. As I wrote in thesis #13:
It’s a simple mathematical fact that as a population grows, so too do the number of troublesome encounters between people. How should such conflicts be resolved? Humans simply cannot sustain communities hundreds of times larger than they are adapted to, without significant abridgements of the egalitarianism and freedom to which they are adapted in those societies.
That’s redundant. The term “civilization” comes from the Latin civis for city. How can you refer to a civilization with no cities? The term must be reclaimed from simply a synonym for “good,” because everything inherent in it is anything but.
You’re using the term simply to mean a complex society. There have been many complex forager societies. Most of us have an intuitive understanding that they are not civilizations, though. That intuitive understanding is quite correct. It is only when pressed for a formal definition that people reduce “civilization” to a synonym for “society,” because it is only then that the stark ethnocentric assumptions of the term become apparent.
Well, they’d cease to be a civilization in short order. Spreading around decision-making tends to de-centralize the wealth–and that tends to break up cities. Once Athenian culture no longer had a city, yes, it would have ceased to be a civilization.
Oh, but it is! Every society has some amount of complexity, so how complex is “complex”? Where’s the cut-off point? You’ll see in thesis #13 that I also defined civilization in terms of complexity–but not with such a strange, fuzzy cop-out. Rather, I suggested that a civilization is a society that pursues increasing complexity as the solution to all its problems. Complexity can be measured in the number of social roles, as well as anything else, and new specialists can often solve your problems. But seen in a certain light, elites are simply a type of administrative specialist. We cannot concieve of more than 150 persons, and hierarchy allows us to simplify a highly populated world into stereotypes and ranks, rather than complex, nestng relationships. A highly populated world needs hierarchy.
What about them? That quote was either taken out of context or made by someone with little to no background at Çatalhöyük. I usually think of Çatalhöyük as the birthplace of oppression and hierarchy. Their society was very hierarchical.
Finally, are chiefdoms incipient civilizations? It’s hard to say–like you mentioned, it’s something of an untestable hypothesis, isn’t it? I don’t know. In some ways, chiefdoms are even more hierarchical and oppressive than civilizations. Some anthropologists have suggested that the chiefdom is an unstable state that must move to either civilization, or collapse back down, but as you say … it’s a fairly untestable hypothesis. The theory is sound enough and well-argued, but theories are a dime a dozen. I don’t know. I don’t trust chiefdoms, I know that, and I feel pretty comfortable lumping them in with civilizations as an embryonic form, but no, I can’t say with any certainty that every chiefdom must be unsustainable.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 December 2005 @ 11:40 AM
I guess many primitivists are against hierarchy, but it would be nice if the more experienced ones would take a leadership position in creating primitive tribes besides just doing the teaching of skills at wilderness survival skills. I appreciate this writing, but I wish this website might use its popularity to organize tribes for reality and not just focusing on the theoretics of collapse and civilization and how much better lives primitives have.
Comment by planetwarming — 20 December 2005 @ 7:56 PM
Jason: I hope you are recovering well from your fall. The following are responses to some of your responses to my posts here:
In civilizations or, if I must, complex societies which historically have occurred after and outside of hunter-gather societies the above accomplishments have been considerably more intense and diverse. Not mentioned above and of extreme importance is the availability of stored human knowledge due to printing, and other means of information storage. The individual in such an environment has access to an immensely greater diversity of human interaction, ideas and life choices. These advantages are greatly diminished by hierarchy and competition.
With the exception of bureaucracy all of these can exist in any society, unless you are going to define hunter-gatherers as a society without these qualities. None are necessary qualities of a complex society although they are for your definition of civilization.
Are you saying that a city must be hierarchical or are you defining cities that way? Why would de-centralized wealth, held as a commons, break up the city?
This is an over-simplified and therefore erroneous application of a principle of evolutionary psychology known as Dunbar’s Number or the monkeysphere. The fact that humans have the ability to easily track and relate to that number of people with little conscious effort doesn’t mean we cannot relate to more. We have the ability to conceive of reality from the perspective of even an unknown other. We can emotionally feel compassion for strangers. Although many of our mental functions are hard-wired and have changed little in the last 10,000 years, our brains are capable of developing new functions without the need for evolving them. Modern humans develop soft wired mental abilities that hunter-gatherers do not. I would say that a highly populated world could avoid hierarchy. Neither of our statements is testable.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 20 December 2005 @ 10:08 PM
Hey Bob –
That’s true, Bob. But are we racing? If civilization speeds up and increases the number of discoveries/ innovations/art forms that we have available to us, but at the same time makes our lives more difficult/unpleasant/unfulfilling… then is that really a boon?
If civilization had never started, the existant hunter-gatherers might only now be discovering how to make cotton into cloth. But what is wrong with that?
Evidence does not support you here. H-G had scarcity and conflict and occasional genetic disorders and illnesses. But ALL of them are on a totally different scale than what you find in Civilization. Conflict is not War any more than a broken arm is death. Diseases — the real endemic diseases that civilization contends with — are herd animal diseases that jumped to humans. Without domestic animals, that never would have occured. Genetic Disorders generally led to early death (infanticide oft times) so the occurance was reduced by natural selection. Other illnesses would have been largely the same… the rare case of a ‘real’ disease popping up and wiping out a village — and then going extinct itself for lack of hosts, late-life genetic diseases, certain abberations like the brain disease among … who is it? the New Guinea ‘cannibals’.
Again, the science does not back you up on this. There is not enough data (that I know of, and IMO) to conclusively prove Jason’s point, but what data there is, does support him. For example, Dunbar’s Number was applied (or accidentally hit upon?? not sure) by a manufacturing company in New Jersey. They have created psuedo egalitarian structures in each of thier factories, and conscientiously tracked the individual factory ‘population’ so that they can build a new facility and sub divide older ones to keep the population between 75-150.. what they have found is that each time that population begins to approach the 150 mark, the effective operation of the facility begins to decline. Malcolm Gladwell discusses this in detail in The Tipping Point
Another science to consider here is game theory. Studies on the difference between single-iteration interactions, and infinite iteration interactions. It is ‘easy’ to be a complete asshole on the street of a major city — because the people around are people you can reasonably expect to never see again. Sitting down with your family (especially extended family) over a holiday meal, you would never feel that ‘freedom’ — because you know you will be back there again within the year. You could counter by talking about your ‘feelings’ for you family… but the same would be true if we were talking about your ‘hated’ uncle Ed. (Or your coworkers at a job you plan to keep, or club members, or neighbors…)
Janene
Comment by Janene — 21 December 2005 @ 9:46 AM
Janene:
I was not comparing civilization as Jason defines it and the condition of human life for hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago. I detest this hierarchical, oppressive, competitive and materialistic, society as you do. It would be great to go back to the past and change the present, but I don’t think that will be possible. I was comparing a future sustainable, egalitarian, complex, society (this is difficult to state when I can’t say civilization) to a future of bands of H-G.
Dunbar’s number was proposed by Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist. He derived it from studies by paleontologists on non-human primates. He derived the number from comparative neocortex size. Gladwell did popularize this concept as the upper limit of the number of people that an individual can treat as truly human. People who have worked in egalitarian organizations have experientially learned about these optimum group sizes long ago. Gladwell’s conclusion that humans can’t consider more as truly human is not acceptable. If that is true for modern humans, then we must change this characteristic. .
Comment by Bob Harrison — 21 December 2005 @ 11:26 AM
Planet, I suppose you missed this bit? This site is run by the Tribe of Anthropik. No, we can’t go setting up tribes for you, but we have one of our own. This site is in its initial stages still, just like our tribe. We’re laying a theoretical foundation, so instead of having to have the same arguments over and over again, we can just point people to the appropriate thesis.
Once that’s finished (and we’re looking at late January for the completion of that phase), this site will begin to move more towards current events and commentary from the worldview we’re laying out here, and also following our tribe’s progression in real time, so you can get a glimpse of what the tribal life is like. That’s the much more important work, in my mind; all this theoretical wankery you see now is merely to prepare for that.
The advantages of printing have come at a great cost, though: literality. It has changed the way we think, and the way we remember, on a very basic level. Pre-literate peoples were capable of feats of memory that seem superhuman to us today, because our faculty for memory is so immensely diminished. Also, literality has given us a perception of the world as unchanging or static which is patently untrue. It’s given us a concept of “literal” truth: the idea that there are static facts separate from all perception or opinion. Primitives tend not to harbor such ideas.
So, we can write things down … but we can’t remember. And it has made our concept of the world static, rather than the fluidity that follows from orality. So, I’m not sure if the impact of literacy on human knowledge has been, on the balance, positive or negative. The benefits, as you point out, are great. But the cost–a cost few even know we paid–has been tremendous, as well.
But this is a fine example that the benefits of complexty are rarely as unambiguous as we imagine. We should evaluate the pros and cons of any new bit of complexity, rather than simply accept it uncritically as “good.”
Finally, your distinction is unnecessary–there have been several complex hunter-gatherer societies. The two are not a paradox. It’s merely that all the complex ones were easily wiped out by the more complex civilizations that encountered them; only the least complex forager groups still survive today.
A common assumption, but simply not true.
Because people only live in cities when they must–when someone else controls the wealth, and forces them to live in the city to have some part of it. The crowding, pollution, and stress of city life have, at all times and places, motivated anyone who could afford to move away from any city to do so almost as soon as they are able. You can hear this sentiment echoed by modern Manhattanites yearning for “upstate,” just as much as in Greek poetry. Humans don’t like cities. Never have. They move away from them in droves whenever they are able. Cities swell only durng economic downturns. The last big migration to the cities in the U.S., for instance, was the Great Depression.
Actually, that’s exactly what Dunbar’s Number is. We can easily track somewhere around 12. 150 is our effective limit.
Only by making one of our 150 “persons” a stereotype that we can identfy the stranger as.
Not if we’re talking about a neurological function. You can’t exceed your hardware. Anyway, you’re talking hypotheticals, and I consider my case on this already proven with thesis #7.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 December 2005 @ 11:51 AM
Bob … you realize at this point, you’re pointing to Dunbar’s Number and saying that humans are flawed and we just need to be better than we’ve ever been before–better than our brains will physically allow.
That’s assuming that it’s “good” to have egalitarian societies of thousands or millions of people. Why? Why is it better to have large-scale egalitarian societies (that are impossible with humans), rather than small-scale egalitarian societies (which are not only possible for us, but are in fact the natural state to which we are perfectly adapted)?
Your desires are sounding increasingly utopian and self-defeating, in that they make the same essential mistake as civilization: a denial of human nature, and founding an entire society on the premise that humans are inadequate and should be “better” than they are. A society maladapted to its members; fitting a square peg in a round hole.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 December 2005 @ 11:56 AM
Hey Bob –
I’m not certain exactly what this was in response to… art and technology? If so, then are you saying that we NEED to continue to develop at the staggering rates that we have in recent history or else… what?
I am well aware of Dunbar’s Number, where it came from and so forth… my whole point was that not only was this a theoretical upper limitation, but that there is also supporting evidence in practical application of the idea, including a chapter in the Gladwell book.
If, on the other hand, you agree that ‘People who have worked in egalitarian organizations have experientially learned about these optimum group sizes long ago’, why would you suggest that we ignore that science and just ‘assume’ that we can apply the same mechanisms to communities numbering in the thousand, tens of thousands, and beyond?
Janene
Comment by Janene — 21 December 2005 @ 4:51 PM
Thus spake Jason: “No, we can’t go setting up tribes for you, but we have one of our own.”
Have you thought about franchising your concept? I’d be interested in the Anthropik Tribal Franchise for the PNW, depending on the fees of course.
If you can develop a turn-key system, there could be thousands of dollars of revenue in it for you.
Comment by Peter — 21 December 2005 @ 6:26 PM
Jason: You said:
I don’t believe that Dunbar’s number limits the number of people that we can value as human. Yet, if so, we should try to change that. I don’t believe that we are perfect. We are not incapable of self-improvement. Although we are limited by the physical capability of our brains, I don’t think we have as yet approached that limit.
The strongest reason is that more people would need to suffer and die to create the conditions for tribal societies. Some of us are capable of emotionally reacting to the suffering and death of large populations without seeing this as just something statistical. I realize we may have no choice in this matter, however I would hope that the approach of this calamity will cause a swift enough change in common beliefs to mitigate the extent of the collapse.
I would enjoy experiencing a utopian tribal society as you describe here with plenty of food, no war or competition for resources, long disease free lives etc. I don’t think “natural state� is a meaningful concept for humans or that we (members of this society) are “perfectly adapted� to tribal life.
I realize I am going against both the concepts of Daniel Quinn and many people here to deny than humans are “naturalâ€? like all other species. I believe that this is the only reality and therefore everything is natural. What makes us “unnatural”, if by that you mean not following the rules of nature, is that we are the only species that has learned how to beat natural selection. The rules of this game are that each species try to increase as much as possible. Each must compete with other groups or species for resources. This competition and other environmental factors create stress. Balance is reached when a species is limited by the deaths due to stress of individuals that would be capable of reproduction. The reward for living in a stressful condition is improvement of the species through natural selection.
Humans have “won� this game as no current competitive species can limit them. Some are beginning to realize this is a short-lived win due to environmental collapse. For as long as humans lived as H-G, if there was no shortage of food, violent deaths, or rampant disease, as you claim, then there was no stress and no natural selection. Intentional limitation of population is either intentional or random selection, but not the natural selection required for natural evolution. This will continue to be true whether we limit population in a complex or in a simple H-G society. The alternative is competition and for humans probably war.
An evolved human characteristic that although not unique, is stronger than in other species is non-evolutionary adaptability in mental functions. We do have hard-wired mental functions and emotional responses that were genetically evolved and therefore are like those of H-G’s. A module that enables us to understand language is one of these. The module responsible for Dunbar’s number may be another. The human brain also creates soft-wired functions during development in what we call the learning process. Examples are modules that without our conscious attention can automate many of the functions needed to read, type, play a musical instrument, ride a bicycle, or drive a car.
Although a modern infant could be as well adapted as a H-G infant if H-G parents accepted and raised him, we (modern humans) don’t have the necessary software to make that happen. It is not likely that adult modern parents could acquire this knowledge and the means of transmitting it to their offspring accurately even if they studied modern H-G’s. It will take a few generations before new H-G’s are adapted and even then they won’t have the millenniums of handed down knowledge our ancient ancestors had.
I would never try to defend the values of this civilization or civilization as you define it. I am with you on the side of rhizome vs hierarchy. I would prefer as simple a society as possible but not at the cost of human genocide. As I wrote above I do not deny human nature but seemingly do perceive it differently than you. As a Buddhist I believe that we have infinite potential, but are a long way from manifesting it. Because of our adaptability being the square peg in the round hole is one of our talents.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 21 December 2005 @ 6:32 PM
That’s fair. You’re welcome to believe anything you like. This particular belief is the direct contradiction of fact, but many people believe such things.
No, you are reacting to the death of “humanity.” You care nothing for the billions of people who will suffer–you’re physically incapable of it. So, to get around that, there’s an abstract concept in your head–”humanity”–that is something you can have concern for.
But once you remember that “humanity” as such doesn’t exist, but as an abstraction of billions of real people, things start to come undone.
But your “concern” for our current billions has nothing to do with primitivism. Die-off has nothing to do with our idealism; our idealism is a reaction to die-off, not a cause of it. Primitivism allows for something positive to come out of collapse. Billions will not die for primitivism. Billions will die because the earth cannot support billions; and in the course of that, primitivism will be the only viable positive vision left to embrace. But you can no more blame the horrors of the die-off on primitivism, than you can blame the deaths from a natural disaster on the charities that come afterwards to try to rebuild.