Thesis #29: It will be impossible to rebuild civilization.
by Jason GodeskyPrevious collapses often set the scene for another “rise” to civilization. The fall of Rome shapes the Western imagination’s idea of collapse, with the descent into the barbarism of the Dark Ages, the long gestation of the Middle Ages, and the final rebirth of “civilization” in the Renaissance. However, as Greer points out in “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse,” [PDF] the Western Roman Empire suffered a maintenance crisis, not a catabolic collapse. So the question remains, is this a collapse, or the collapse? Are we merely facing a momentary downturn in a new sine wave of complexity, or does this collapse represent the end of civilization once and for all?
In Of Men and Galaxies, Sir Fred Hoyle obviously confuses civilization for intelligence, but that error notwithstanding, the following observation speaks to one of the essential problems that will face any civilization that will hope to succeed us:
It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.
It is important to remember that the various facets of complexity are inextricably linked, one to another. As Joseph Tainter remarked in “Complexity, Problem-Solving and Sustainable Societies“: “Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.” He further oberseved in Collapse of Complex Societies:
A society increasing in complexity does so as a system. That is to say, as some of its interlinked parts are forced in a direction of growth, others must adjust accordingly. For example, if complexity increases to regulate regional subsistence production, investments will be made in hierarchy, in bureaucracy, and in agricultural facilities (such as irrigation networks). The expanding hierarchy requires still further agricultural output for its own needs, as well as increased investment in energy and minerals extraction. An expanded military is needed to protect the assets thus created, requiring in turn its own sphere of agricultural and other resources. As more and more resources are drained from the support population to maintain this system, an increased share must be allocated to legitimization or coercion. This increased complexity requires specialized administrators, who consume further shares of subsistence resources and wealth. To maintain the productive capacity of the base population, further investment is made in agriculture, and so on.
The illustration could be expanded, tracing still further the interdependencies within such a growing system, but the point has been made: a society grows in complexity as a system. To be sure, there are instances where one sector of a society grows at the expense of others, but to be maintained as a cohesive whole, a social system can tolerate only certain limits to such conditions.
Thus, it is possible to speak of sociocultural evolution by the encompassing term ‘complexity,’ meaning by this the interlinked growth of the several subsystems that comprise a society.
So, complexity is a function of energy throughput, and all the facets of complexity are interlinked. The question of whether or not a civilization will be capable of rising again is a question of how much energy will be available to it.
First, we must understand what kind of collapse it is that we face. A prolonged maintenance crisis like the fall of Rome would allow time for adaptation, but it is more likely that we face a sudden, catabolic collapse. The difference, as Greer explains in the paper cited above, is driven by the sort of diminishing returns on complexity that we have already discussed at length. Rome faced a maintenance crisis. It was beyond the point of diminishing returns, but the ecology and resources available in Europe were still sufficient to support a civilization. Rome collapsed under its own weight, moreso than from any kind of environmental stress or resource depletion. Thus, its collapse centered primarily on scaling back complexity and breaking down into smaller, more manageable kingdoms. In this scenario, energy throughput is reduced because complexity must fall to a more economic level. It is the price of complexity that is driving the process, so it levels out at a lower–but still civilized–level.
That is not the case with catabolic collapse. Catabolic collapse takes place when reductions in collapse are driven by a shortfall in energy throughput. That can be the result of desertification, sustained drought, loss of agricultural land, massive mortality from war, famine or disease, climate change, or a necessary fuel source’s production peaking. While it is true that our complexity has passed the point of diminishing returns (see thesis #15), and we are dealing with the cost of that, we have not yet shown many signs of a maintenance crisis. Rather, the perils we face–such as global warming, mass extinction (see thesis #17), and peak oil (see thesis #18)–are causes of catabolic collapse. Our shortfalls in complexity will likely be triggered by shortfalls in energy throughput. As Greer describes the process:
A society that uses resources beyond replenishment rate (d(R)/r(R) > 1), when production of new capital falls short of maintenance needs, risks a depletion crisis in which key features of a maintenance crisis are amplified by the impact of depletion on production. As M(p) exceeds C(p) and capital can no longer be maintained, it is converted to waste and unavailable for use. Since depletion requires progressively greater investments of capital in production, the loss of capital affects production more seriously than in an equivalent maintenance crisis. Meanwhile further production, even at a diminished rate, requires further use of depleted resources, exacerbating the impact of depletion and the need for increased capital to maintain production. With demand for capital rising as the supply of capital falls, C(p) tends to decrease faster than M(p) and perpetuate the crisis. The result is a catabolic cycle, a self-reinforcing process in which C(p) stays below M(p) while both decline. Catabolic cycles may occur in maintenance crises if the gap between C(p) and M(p) is large enough, but tend to be self-limiting in such cases. In depletion crises, by contrast, catabolic cycles can proceed to catabolic collapse, in which C(p) approaches zero and most of a society’s capital is converted to waste.
Of course, many of the survivors will want to rebuild civilization. The nature of catabolic collapse, however, will leave them with precious little to start with. As a self-reinforcing cycle, catabolic collapse is as unstoppable as the anabolic growth that currently drives us into ever-greater complexity. Both are self-reinforcing feedback loops, and both must run their course before any other direction can be taken. So we need not consider the case of an “interrupted” collapse, where civilization is rebuilt from the remains of the old. This will not be a return to the Dark Ages; it will be a return to the Stone Age.
How we be so sure of this? The current state of civilization is dependent on resources that are now so depleted, that they require an industrial infrastructure already in place to gather those resources. When coal was first used as a fuel, it could simply be picked off the ground. Those surface deposits were quickly used up. When those were gone, coal mining began. It was more costly, but as coal became a necessary fuel, the cost was justified. The shallowest mines were exploited first. As they ran out, miners turned to deeper and deeper mines. Today’s mines are often hundreds of feet below ground, with access tunnels that must burrow through miles of earth. Mining so far below the earth is a dangerous job, made possible only by industrial machinery for ventilation, stabilization, and digging. We can fetch this fossil fuel only because we have fossil fuels to put to the task.
Again, the issue of peak oil leaves significant quantities of oil still in the ground. But it is deep in the earth, or under the sea, and often of a poorer quality, requiring more refinement. We can drill and refine this oil only because we have industrial equipment to build rigs and power refineries for the task. Any interruption in our civilization’s supply of fossil fuel would require any effort to rebuild civilization to start from scratch. Catabolic collapse is precisely such an interruption.
Civilization, as we have seen, is only possible through agriculture, because only agriculture allows a society to increase its food supply–and thus its population–and thus its energy throughput–and thus its complexity–so arbitrarily. That level of complexity provides the agricultural society the ability to achieve other levels of complexity, such as crafting metal tools, state-level government, and advanced technology. Civilization only began when agriculture became possible, but does that mean that civilization can only appear based on agriculture? Yes, it does. Every culture must have some means of gathering food, and every means of gathering food can be placed into one of two categories: those where the people produce their own food, i.e., “cultivation,” and those where they do not. The latter is referred to as “foraging.” There is an enormous diversity under that heading–far more than deserves such a bland, umbrella term, but all such forms share a number of things in common. Because the amount of food they consume depends on the amount of food available in their ecosystem, there is a caloric limit of how much they can consume. They cannot raise their food supply, because their food supply is not under their control. Cultivators can be further subdivided between those who operate above, and below, the point of diminishing returns. Below the point of diminishing returns, cultivators are called horticulturalists. Horticulture also places a caloric limit–however many calories can be produced below the point of diminishing returns. To produce more than this would require working above the point of diminishing returns, at which point they cease to be horticulturalists, and instead become agriculturalists. Agriculturalists can increase the number of calories they produce simply by increasing their inputs–thus, only agriculturalists can arbitrarily increase their energy throughput, so only agriculturalists can start a civilization.
Given that, how plausible is agriculture after the collapse? Again, all but impossible. Plants, like any other organism, takes in nutrients, and excrete wastes. For plants, those are nutrients they take out of the soil, and waste they put into the soil. In nature, what one plant excretes as waste, another takes in as nutrients. They balance each other, and all of them thrive. But monoculture–planting whole fields of just one crop–sets fields of the same plant, all bleeding out the same nutrients, all dumping back in the same wastes. It is precsely the same effect as filling an empty room with people and sealing it completely off. Eventually, the entire room will be full of carbon dioxide, and there will be no more oxygen. Monoculture does to topsoil what locking yourself in a garage with your car engine running does to a human. Koetke’s “Final Empire” highlighted the importance of topsoil to life on earth, and the devastating impact agriculture has had on that topsoil:
In 1988, the annual soil loss due to erosion was twenty-five billion tons and rising rapidly. Erosion means that soil moves off the land. An equally serious injury is that the soil’s fertility is exhausted in place. Soil exhaustion is happening in almost all places where civilization has spread. This is a literal killing of the planet by exhausting its fund of organic fertility that supports other biological life. Fact: since civilization invaded the Great Plains of North America one-half of the topsoil of that area has disappeared.
As that happened, we also invented ever more powerful petrochemical fertilizers to offset the death of the soil, giving the illusion that all was well. The Dust Bowl arose because our innovation was outpaced by the devastation. We quickly got back on top of it, leading us to the current situation. The Great Plains are essentially a desert. We grow most of the world’s corn on a thick layer of oil we have laid over its soil, long ago bled to death by the first wave of farmers in America. In “The Oil We Eat,” Richard Manning dramatically illustrated how much our “breadbasket” now relies on oil when he wote:
Corn, rice, and wheat are especially adapted to catastrophe. It is their niche. In the natural scheme of things, a catastrophe would create a blank slate, bare soil, that was good for them. Then, under normal circumstances, succession would quickly close that niche. The annuals would colonize. Their roots would stabilize the soil, accumulate organic matter, provide cover. Eventually the catastrophic niche would close. Farming is the process of ripping that niche open again and again. It is an annual artificial catastrophe, and it requires the equivalent of three or four tons of TNT per acre for a modern American farm. Iowa’s fields require the energy of 4,000 Nagasaki bombs every year.
Iowa is almost all fields now. Little prairie remains, and if you can find what Iowans call a “postage stamp�? remnant of some, it most likely will abut a cornfield. This allows an observation. Walk from the prairie to the field, and you probably will step down about six feet, as if the land had been stolen from beneath you. Settlers’ accounts of the prairie conquest mention a sound, a series of pops, like pistol shots, the sound of stout grass roots breaking before a moldboard plow. A robbery was in progress.
The Fertile Crescent was not always a cruel joke. It was turned into a desert by agriculture in the very same way. At the moment, 40% of the earth’s surface is covered in farmland; most of that is no longer arable after being farmed for so long. Of the 60% that remains, most of it was never arable to begin with–that is why it was not farmed. The domesticable crops are a small subset of all the plants that exist, and they are disproportionately cereal grains, making them both small in number, and lacking in diversity. They tend to be low in nutritional content, and extremely tempermental, requiring very specific climate and soil conditions. Beyond simply lacking the soil they require, they will not have the climate they require, either.
In thesis #6, we made reference to Ruddiman’s “long Anthropocene” hypothesis, arguing that the Holocene interglacial was artificially extended by the deforestation caused by early agriculture. If Ruddiman is right, then an interruption in agricultural production would result in the resumption of hte Pleistocene ice age. However, that case is complicated by the more recent trend of global warming. Mounting evidence suggests that the massive increases in the scale of anthopogenic atmospheric change introduced by the Industrial Revolution may not simply have offset the earth’s natural cooling trend, but may have begun to reverse it. Regardless of which scenario follows the collapse, ice age or global warming, the one thing that will not be possible is a continuation of the status quo. No matter what follows, we will see the end of the Holocene, and with it, the end of any climate capable of supporting agriculture on any significant scale.
We are therefore talking about a complete break with the end of our current civilization. Whole generations will pass before it becomes feasible again. What, then, of the distant future, when another interglacial occurs, or when global warming stabilizes? Will we be able to rebuild civilization then?
After the passage of millennia, the soil may well heal itself, and the necessary climate may return. In that scenario, agriculture may be possible in those same areas, and under the same conditions, that it first occured. Flood plains at a given climate are necessary. It needs to be an annual flood, and it needs to deposit new soil, to compensate for the depletion of the soil on a regular basis–but not so regular that the fields are flooded while the crops are still growing. And, they will need to exist in areas where domesticable plants live. All in all, a very precise set of circumstances already.
If agriculture does begin in such areas (and there can only be a dozen or less in the whole world), they will find themselves limited below a ceiling we did not suffer. In the course of our civilization, we used up all of the surface and near-surface deposits of all the economically viable metals on earth. The simple physical property of pounds per square inch will limit the technology of our little kingdoms to the Neolithic. No plow, however ingenious, can ever be made out of rock. In some directions, complexity will be allowed to flourish. In other directions–particularly lever-based machines, tools, and weapons–we will be very tightly circumscribed by the lack of any feasible materials. That limitation on technological complexity will necessarily limit all other forms of complexity, as well–as discussed above, while some levels can gain complexty at the expense of others, that can only happen within certain parameters. This is why the Neolithic never saw state-level governments; only with the beginning of the Bronze Age did we see that development. Likewise, the lack of metals will continue to limit technological development after the collapse–and by limiting technological development, it will limit all other forms of complexity.
The role of human ingenuity is marvelous, but not all-encompassing. Not every problem can be solved simply by the application of wits. Ambition and wits existed in plenty throughout the Paleolithic, yet we never developed the technology or complexity necessary to build a civilization, because complexity advances as a single thing, and always as a function of energy. The lever and the wedge are ultimately necessary–in the form of the plow and the sword–but these are not effective unless made of a material that can withstand sufficient pressure. The only such materials on earth are metals now buried so deep underground that only an industrial infrastructure can fetch them.
Our future Neolithic kingdoms will thus be constrained by problems of scale inherent to such low levels of complexity, lacking the technology to communicate quickly or easily, without effective weapons to suppress rebellion, without complex bureaucracies to administer large territories. They will effectively be limited to small city-states, incapable of expanding beyond that for the same problems of scale that inhibited so many of the civilizations of Mesoamerica, but moreso.
There is the minor question of civilization’s waste, however. While mining the earth for metals may not be possible, mining our waste may be far more feasible. Of course, unattended metals rust quickly, and become unusable after a generation. However, our landfills preserve the garbage within remarkably. Might potential future civilizations mine landmills for new metals? There is, of course, an inherent limitation to such a proposition, in that the rate of that resource’s replenishment is zero. Even fossil fuels have some replenishment rate. Any such resources will quickly be depleted–such a civilization might have a chance for a brief flash of glory, barely entering something akin to a Bronze Age level of complexity before burning itself out.
With the passage of gelogical ages, though, this will pass. Fossil fuels will be replenished, and metal ores will rise to the surface. After ages of the earth have passed, and another ice age comes, and then an interglacial, then, if there are still humans so far into the future–this is a matter of at least tens of millions of years, far longer than humans have so far survived–then there might be another opportunity to rebuild civilization then, but that will be the first chance we have after this collapse.
One more to go! Momentus!
Comment by planetwarming — 19 January 2006 @ 11:57 AM
The one everyone’s been hoping to sink their teeth into since I first posted the list. First thing out of Devin’s mouth was how he expected to take this one on. So, fire away! But, if you’ll permit me an addendum, this is what I said in a thread last night:
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 January 2006 @ 11:59 AM
Hi Jason,
Anthropik.com has been a wonderful treasure. Thank you.
I don’t have anything to offer in terms of rigorous academic feedback. Intuitively, I feel you are really on to something with this series of theses.
Please excuse me if I start to ramble. I’ll try to be ruthless in my editing.
What I would like to offer is a bit of a vision for the future. This idea occurred to me after reading a number of your works on this site.
What if, having lost the ability to use physical materials for creating an “advanced” civilization, humanity now has the opportunity to develop itself in other ways? No longer being able to depend on physical technology such modern communications and computer chips.
Granted the survivors still need to figure out how to eat. After that is accomplished, what then?
From my own life, I’ve discovered in myself the ability to work with “life force” energy. When I “run” energy, people can feel it directly and it can relieve pain or encourage the others body to heal. Whether the person is with me physically or lives thousands of miles away.
Could this type of personal development be part of the future of humanity?
Other examples.
I’ve started posting interviews on my web site. The interviews are conversations with a couple of men I’ve had the great fortune to get to know. Each of them uses “unusual” skills.
One is a private security contractor in the Middle East. The other is an accomplished animal and man tracker. (His tracking and awareness skills are considered to be at the same level as African trackers that live in the bush. As evaluated by people who work in the African bush.)
Granted, these guys are grounded in physical skills and have trained their physical senses to high levels of sensitivity.
They have also learned to be constantly curious about everything that goes on around them.
Yet, at some point they go beyond the physical/mental and use those “intuition” to literally stay alive. Or, to know things that go beyond what modern science can explain.
An elder from the Bering Sea region told me once that his people used to communicate with other peoples all the way down the West Coasts of North and South America, generations ago. He’s taken to calling it the InnerNet.
Maybe this agriculture thing will be seen as a short distraction in the development of human potential?
Maybe it will be a gift to not be able to rebuild our technological, agricultural civilization. Assuming we can feed ourselves after it’s all over and still have a bit of time to spare. Will future generations have the chance to explore these other areas of human potential and development? Maybe even build a “civilization” based upon them?
As they used to say on Monty Python - “And now for something completely different.”
Thanks for your patience,
Eric
Comment by Eric — 19 January 2006 @ 1:09 PM
Eric — bingo.
Once thesis #30 comes online, I’m going to start editing for a book. Meanwhile, you’re going to see a lot more on this site about all the possibilities that open up for us, once this nightmare is finally over.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 January 2006 @ 1:17 PM
The nice thing is we can begin developing that potential, now, while we prepare physically for collapse.
I’m looking forward to your upcoming thoughts on what’s next.
Eric
Comment by Eric — 19 January 2006 @ 1:34 PM
Jason,
Why do you see humans as passive creatures that history happens to, rather than active beings that create it?
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 19 January 2006 @ 1:42 PM
Why cannot a future civilization recycle all the metal we have digged up and are now using?
Comment by Tom — 19 January 2006 @ 1:42 PM
I don’t. Some systems are self-reinforcing, and must reach their natural conclusion before “free will” comes into play again. Two seconds before you splatter on the ground is too late to contemplate your free will–you should have done so before you jumped out of the plane without a parachute. Some processes–like civilization–take longer. As I’ll be discussing in thesis #30, after the collapse, this process will be over, and free will will become a significant force again. Once you’re back on the ground, you can choose which direction you’re going to walk, or if you’re just going to sit on the ground–but you can’t choose to do anything that’s impossible, like walk into the past. Nor can you do anything you lack the resources for–you can’t walk down into the earth without something to dig with (at least not very far). Now, you can focus on those limitations and wonder why I’m being so pessimistic, or you can look around and notice that the field is still open with infinite possibilities.
Some kinds of invention are bound by resources available. Some things are possible, and some things are not. The field of things that are possible is infinite, but that doesn’t mean that everything is possible.
So, I don’t see history as something that happens to people. People do actively create history. But history has consequences, and sometimes you get the dumb luck of being the generations whose choices are severely limited, because of the choices your ancestors made. It’s not a matter of determinism–it’s a matter of consequences.
I addressed that in the article, where I wrote:
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 January 2006 @ 2:00 PM
Approximate, current US copper distribution:
1/3 in situ
1/3 in landfill
1/3 in circulation
Comment by JCamasto — 19 January 2006 @ 2:12 PM
Hey, I’ve since changed my mind about the general thrust of the argument. That was how many months ago?
I wrote the general argument out recently in just a few sentences:
I think there are some important elements to point out, however — it’s not as simple as the argument above. Resources don’t deplete all at once, although some of them can deplete more rapidly than others. Collapse unfolds on a timeline of decades, most typically — and while there is no limit to how fast a society can collapse, it would seem that civilization will take a while to come down. This isn’t the argument, of course, but I do think it’s important to say.
If you’ll also recall the comments I made on Thesis 13, where I wrote the following:
I went on to say that although aggregate complexity is still decreasing, certain regions of the world might still be able to increase in complexity. While this is generally in agreement with everything you’ve been arguing, to me this means that civilization all around the world is NOT collapsing in the apocalyptic horror we’re so used to seeing in Hollywood movies. The reduction in complexity comes on the order of the global system, not necessarily the local one. What the collapse might look like in asome countries might just be the cessation of luxury imports. While you might argue that in a peer polity system, every aspect of that system must collapse in tandem, I would say that as long as we’re terming collapse as a decrease in complexity this does not mean that it will be necessarily catastrophic. What I mean is that a decrease in complexity in some parts of the world can and will be handled without turning into our typical vision of collapse.
Finally, the definition of civilization that we’re working with is that of settlements of 5,000 or more people. While it might be capped at a level of complexity of the Neolithic, a civilization could continue to exist (and will, in my opinion) at this level for quite some time. Thus, I would add some nuance to the argument and say instead of it being impossible, that “civilization will be extraordinarily difficult to maintain, and will be capped at a level of complexity of the neolithic, never becoming the global mostrosity that it has become today.” That doesn’t really make for a good title to your thesis, however — and I’ve seen you make these arguments elsewhere, so I understand where you’re coming from — it’s just that I’m not sure other people will be able to get what you’re saying because of the lack of nuance.
If you notice a pattern, so much of my critique of what you’ve been writing has more to do with how you say it rather than what you’re saying. Adding more nuance, and acknowledging that there are other ways of seeing these things, even if you disagree with those perspectives, would be very helpful for these theses, I think. Another way of saying what I just said is that just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Life isn’t about who is right or wrong, it’s about who we are and where we’re going. you’ve said it yourself, although in different words — the intellectual justification for who we are isn’t as important as the person itself.
I think that’s all for now.
-Devin
Comment by Devin — 19 January 2006 @ 2:41 PM
Then we understand one another perfectly.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 January 2006 @ 2:55 PM
Echoing Eric, the “undiscovered country” lies between our ears. I advocate sensory deprivation flotation tanks, where one floats on/in a small sea of warm, ultrasaline water in a darkened room, as an outstanding way to begin your explorations. The majority of brainwave activity functions simply to overcome gravity, and a float tank releases those brainwaves for other uses. John Lilly, credited as the inventor of the float tank, learned to communicate with dolphins, for example. Gives us something else to do when the lights go out.
Happy trails,
Rick
Comment by Rick — 19 January 2006 @ 3:05 PM
“Any interruption in our civilization’s supply of fossil fuel would require any effort to rebuild civilization to start from scratch.”
I was much more taken with–and persuaded by–this essay than I expected to be, given the word “impossible” in the title of the essay. It seems thorough and evenminded to me.
The above sentence is a sentence I lingered hestitantly on, though; and after thinking a little while I realized what my hesitation about that statement is. It implies that all of civilization, as a whole, is at the level of consumer as regards fossil fuels. And although admittedly I have no source to cite that that isn’t the case, it seems reasonable to think that militaries might have stockpiles of fuel in order to maintain a presence in the event of a wider, civilian collapse.
Also, providing governmental powers have the foresight to prepare, they might militarize oil-production–which wouldn’t stem off the effects of catabolic collapse for the masses, but might allow a narrower, streamlined, militarized head of civilization to go on living.
Of course, that hypothetical ignores other probabilities like bottom-up revolt.
I guess what I’m saying is, is that it might be worthwhile to analyze the collapse in terms of segments of civilization. Chances are the upper hierarchy will screw the lower in order to keep the upper running.
Comment by Matt — 19 January 2006 @ 3:58 PM
Strategic reserves might fit what you mean here, but they are limited and, as a rule, unrefined. There really isn’t anything the upper class can do to change the situation overly much. They might concentrate their resources to carve out a small fiefdom here or there, but these will be the exceptions–not the rule. They wll also be shortlived, barely surviving their creators.
I like a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but collapse makes the elites largely irrelevant. They seem to be spending most of their efforts simply on seeing to their continued survival, rather than carving out kingdoms in the rubble.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 January 2006 @ 4:30 PM
It seems to me that most of the elites everywhere prefer the hunter-gatherer lifestyle or at least its best attributes to anything else.
Hunting was the sport of kings and off-limits to peasants all over the medieval Europe.
Let us not forget, today we are the elites. I wonder how many Third-World peasants are having discussions on the advantages of hunter-gatherer lyfestyle.
People with spare resources, spare time and ability to learn will be disproportionately represented among the ancestors of hunter-gatherer tribes of 2106.
Comment by _Gi — 19 January 2006 @ 8:26 PM
I wonder if you have any idea about how much metals are there in our wastes, and left-over detritus.
We’ve mined many millions of tons deep out of the ground and deposited it right on the surface for easy access.
Some of the metals do not rust. Gold, silver, platinum, titanium. They were mined from very deep mines, where no primitive could have touched them, and now they are on the surface. Others rust or corrode only very slowly or only by some rare chemical processes, like aluminum. The energy expended to smelt all of the aluminum from the ores is forever out of reach to a primitive kingdom, but most of the metal will still be available.
There are orders of magnitude more metals now on the surface of the earth than ever before in its history.
I think you are underestimating all the hard work the civilization has done to pull the metals out of the depths and refine them.
I think future civilizations will advance much farther than the Neolithic kingdoms.
Comment by _Gi — 19 January 2006 @ 8:42 PM
…
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These are some of the issues I’m interested in exploring, from a practical level now more than theoretical. I’ve done some limited “psychic” experiments on my own, with a moderate degree of success, but would like to find a more collective and interactive experience.
In terms of preparation for the inevitable catabolic collapse, it’s probably all I can do. Of course, I could go to wilderness survival school (after paying lots of $$ and time I probably cannot afford, even being an American middle-class elite as _Gi says) but the opportunities to use said wildnerness skills, even if they could be kept up with practice before the collapse, would probably be somewhat limited during the confusion that ensues while the collapse is happening.
Better to plant the seeds (so to speak) for the next phase of human existence. Any thoughts?
Comment by slomo — 19 January 2006 @ 11:56 PM
Jason, this went longer than I realized. Delete as you see fit. Maybe it would be more appropriate elsewhere?
Hi slomo,
I’m not sure where to start in offering thoughts. The potential seems infinite. Making discussion difficult to launch. Though fruitful once underway.
I hope it’s helpful.
====
Here’s three examples of non-physical skills you could develop:
I. In the short book I published on my web site , The Spiritual Secrets of a Navy SEAL, a retired Navy SEAL told me about how he uses his spiritual (for lack of a better word, not religious) development and skills doing Contract Security work in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This guy uses very unusual techniques to keep his team and clients alive. Unusual by “normal” standards.
And by safe I mean avoiding rocket propelled grenades, suicide bombers and ambushes.
II. The gentleman I interviewed for the audio download “Hunted by a Psychopath” has been tracking, trapping and hunting since age 7 or 8. Not just for recreation, this guy is obsessed with tracks. The audio is about how a guy with a deer rifle trailed him one evening when he was a kid checking his trap lines.
Here’s a more relevant story he told me the last time I talked with him. He was driving down the road with a mutual acquaintance. Doing about 60 mph and said, “Hey, that looks like a weasel trail.”
The acquaintance told him to pull over and prove it. So, he did. They even found the tracks of some kind of weasel or another.
Sure, he knew that a weasel would likely be found there. Just because it was a place weasels would like to be. But he said, there was something else going on, as well. An intuition that the track was actually there.
He also told me about being frustrated during an Elk hunt one day and having three cedar trees literally send an Elk to him the next day.
We’re going to record that one for the web site for download.
I think I’ve finally convinced him to work with me to develop a course on how to learn to do what he does. He is in a constant state of learning. He’s like some kind of human 3d audio/visual recording device.
One key to his abilities is that impossibly inquisitive mind. You would not believe his ability to question what is going on in his environment.
My guess is our ancestors were more like him than like your average modern city dweller.
III. My story. I can sense and hold energy vibrations that people can feel directly. Whether in my immediate presence or not. This energy can relieve pain or encourage the body to heal itself.
Though that’s just the door to the possibilities being opened a tiny crack. Healing is just the start and most obvious application. The other guys are using “energy”, too. They just don’t experience it that way.
====
Which aspect interests you?
The people in I. and II. can tell you new stories from every single day of their lives about using these “skills”. The man in II. usually tells me three or four whenever I call him. Just from the morning of the day I call him.
There are common threads in all three of our stories that you might miss by not getting all the details because of the shortness (yeah, you should see a long one
of this comment.
Physical awareness or awakening your physical senses is one key the three of us share. Another is regular, active forms of meditation. And a third is frequent exposure to nature.
Don’t mistake any of the above for idealistic New Age fantasy. At least not in cases I. and II.
The people in question live much closer to death than I ever have.
In case I. it is in the context of human warfare. In II. it is in the context of hunting and trapping. You should have seen the guy at the fur store in Anchorage we stopped in during a business trip. My friend was describing the geographic location, season harvested, general health, and sex of the animal the pelt came from. For every species in the store.
The proprietor was amazed (and agreed with his assessments). He even asked my friend for industry contacts for quality furs as we left.
OK. I’m rambling. Second hand at that. I apologize both for the length and brevity of this comment. So much to say, so little room to say it without dominating the thread.
You do have time to develop the ability to do the physical skills. It is possible learning them from a book. If you can’t find a teacher or class, a friend to learn them with can be a great help. Don’t underestimate the power of two people trying to accomplish a mutual goal.
Make sure that you immerse yourself in nature at the same time. Get those instincts to come alive.
Plus, you do have to actually get out there physically. Which ever ones you chose to start with, reading doesn’t get you there.
Eric
Comment by Eric — 20 January 2006 @ 1:31 AM
You know I wrote an article on this. You are correct. Many metals will be available to us. And you may be the first to try melting titanium with a wood fire and plowing a field with a copper plow.
The point I make is that the advanced metal alloys will be beyond us. And the easy to bend metals are, well, easy to bend. Copper, gold, silver, alluminum, etc are useless for farming. The metals we will have are good for conducting energy and making pretty things. Niether of which will create a civilization.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 20 January 2006 @ 1:42 AM
There were extensive and tyrannical agricultural civilizations in the Americas that were not based on metalworking (except for gold and copper, entirely for ornament).
If we collapse to the level of the Aztecs and the Maya, nothing has actually improved and the hunter-gatherer lifestyle remains out of reach. Most of those people were malnourished serfs at the mercy of egomaniacal thugs armed with clubs and obsidian blades. The exact differences between that scenario and some guys in Kevlar with Armalites are of scale alone, not ultimate quality of life. Class-based exploitation, torture and war remain. Whether you have your heart ripped out atop a pyramid or are eaten away by white phosphorous is not really much of a difference.
If someone can convince me that our civ (including everything down to Neolithic kingdoms) really will get staked through the heart and will never get up, I’ll be the first to cheer. But it seems to me that the collapse will not go all the way. The only sure way out of the endless nightmare that surrounds the human race is _extinction_.
(I’m a different Eric, by the way)
Comment by Eric — 20 January 2006 @ 2:15 AM
Alright, I don’t think I disagree as much as I thought I would, as I think my first impression was merely semantic differences. I would wholeheartedly agree that industrial civilization will be gone for at least 10’s of millions of years, but systematic and hierarchical domination could still play out, even without metals (which still be around, if low in iron). More to the point “the undiscovered country is between our ears.” Just because it is a mental power and takes a more refined consciousness doesn’t mean it can’t be used for domination or ego-serving purposes. There are enough spiritual teachers out there with powerful, palpable psychic energy that still play out petty games of manipulation and power to prove that psychic development does not always entail spiritual development (osho for example).
Psychic warfare and domination would probably be even more insidious than guns and bombs. I’m not saying this will happen. I’m just saying that in order to escape the cycles of domination and repression, a change must occur in our collective consciousness, not just our technology.
One more thing, I hate to troll, but I had just finished reading the Greer essay when I surfed over here, and I couldn’t help remembering that he used the Roman Empire as his first example of catabolic collapse, which you said it wasn’t.
“The collapse of the western Roman Empire, by contrast, was a catabolic collapse driven by a combined maintenance and resource crisis”
The resource crisis being the lack of easily conquered, wealthy neighbors to annex.
Comment by limukala — 20 January 2006 @ 3:09 AM
One criticism I would like to make is you did not make any mention of Pastorialism. Pastorial nomads manage to live in the harshest enviroments, from the Artic Tundra to the Sahara desert and the Mongolian steppe. Anywhere a forager can live a pastorialist can, except on the ice pack, but that wont be around much longer anyway. Pastorialists live at a higher population density, and a higher complexity level than foragers. It is more energy eficient to reapeatedly drain an animal of milk blood and wool than to kill it and they matain an exclusive predator role. There beasts of burden and wagons alow them to carry more cultural artifacts and children than foragers vus going through the cycles tribal warfare more quickly. And the adapt more quickly to a changing enviroment than agriculturalists. The richer pastures can even suport settled or semi-setled pastorialists. Lactose intolerance may be the first thing to go in the next stage of human evolution.
Also I think you might be be underestimating the abilities of agriculture to return. Once the aswan dam is breeched and the Yangze dykes are eroded rich soil shall return to these areas very quickly. Also the heavy aluvial soils and clays of places like europe seem to be more resistant to destruction than elswhere. In these places it only take a few years after changeover for new organic farms to become viable. Acording to Guns Germs and Steel there have been 10 independent discoveries of agriculture in the last 10,000 year of wich noticably: New Guinea, Sahel and USA do not at a quick glance seem to fit the stereo type of the anualy flooding river valey. The things most likly to prevent a return of agriculture are rising sea levels or a new glacial period, in which case Pastorialism will prevail, Both will create new rich soils when they receed.
Also I think you under estimate the future ability to recycle scrap metal. Even if the Iron rusts it is simply returning to its natural state as iron ore. Acording to colapse the vikings made use of Bog Iron with as litle as 1% ore in it! Also sipler societes should be very good a using small scaterd deposits of scap metal. But when the scrap metal is finaly recycled down to dust baring an asteroid colision etc, the Neo-neolithic will last for the rest of Earths history. There shall never be another industrial revolution not even in a hundred million years. For the siple reason tha newly revealed deposits will be used up before there is enough for an industrial revolution. Every ten thousand year or so somewhere in the world, an earthquake or land slide will reveal a new deposit of iron or coal. And it will keep a city of full of blacksmiths or poters going for a few centuries. And then ten thousand years later it will hapen somewhere else. Human consumption will never alow it to acumulate the amounts necesary fo an industrial age.
China is often cited by historians as an example of a long lived and continuous civilisation that maintained a high level of complexity without colapse for over two & a half thousand years. Could anyone please tell me the primitivist growth calapse responce to this?
Stephen Wordsworth.
Comment by Stephen Wordsworth — 20 January 2006 @ 5:03 AM
Ill just add that I think a pastorialist will likely make the trasition to agriculture more quickly and willingly than the original forager-agriculture transition. And although pastorialism is not quite as good a lifestyle as foraging it is still much better than agriculture.
In the long history of the neo-neolithic the human race will likley split up into many diferent species being spread so far across the globe.
Stephen Wordsworth.
Comment by Stephen Wordsworth — 20 January 2006 @ 5:22 AM
I live in a heavily settled area of the country, so it’s not so easy to get to the deep wilderness on a regular basis. However, I do live near a state park of moderate size, that is about as close to “wilderness” as exists for a hundred miles. I walk there with my dog almost every day. In the six years I have been there on a regular basis, I have noticed a change for the worse. The woods, as degraded as they were six years ago, have become a lot sicker. Just an intuition…
Comment by slomo — 20 January 2006 @ 11:00 AM
Gold and silver are too soft to make anything useful out of–that’s why we only use them for jewlry. Platinum is rare, and titanium requires extremely high temperatures to work–much higher than is possible from a wood-burning fire (which is what we’ll be stuck with, without fossil fuels like coal).
Of the economically viable metals that remain, they corrode very quickly if they’re not carefully preserved. Whatever we don’t specifically take care of (which won’t be much–maybe a few heirloom swords or guns) will be gone after the first generation. Mining the landfills is a possibility, but that was already discussed.
Cahokia was extensive, but its tyranny was limited to a few miles’ radius from Monks’ Mound. The Mesomaerican and Peruvian civilizations found themselves greatly constrained by geography–and that was in the Holocene. As I pointed out, soil infertility will negate the possibility of agriculture in the near term, and climate change will negate it in the long term.
To collapse to the level of the Aztecs or the Maya would require the resources that were available to the Aztecs and the Maya. The soil now is even poorer than when it brought down the Mayans. So, we can’t collapse to the level of the Aztecs or Mayans, for precisely the reasons I outlined in the article.
But, importantly, when they do, they’ll be very tightly capped. They’ll be small, short-lived, and exceptional.
You’ll recall I took issue with Tainter’s application of his own theory, too.
Indeed, because I do not distinguish between pastoralists and agriculturalists. Pastoral cultures require contact with agricultural societies to be sustainable. Thus, they are an epiphenomenon of agriculture. Without agriculture, there will be no pastoralism, either.
No, rusted iron can’t be reworked.
It collapsed several times that I can think of–the Warring States period, the Mongol invasion, the warlords of the late 1800s and early 1900s–and I’m no expert on Chinese history, either.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 January 2006 @ 12:19 PM
Ran Prieur linked to this thesis, with some commentary. I’ll answer his points here.
It does, but it only rebuilds it annually in flood plains. That’s necessary in order to keep up with monoculture, in order to give early agriculturalists a start. If there is a solid break–as I argue there will be–then we’ll need to start from square one, and to do that we’ll need all the factors that the first farmers needed, including flood plains. The soil will heal itself everywhere within a century or so, but monocropping will kill it in a few years–too quickly for the Second Agricultural Revolution to keep up. So, the Second Agricultural Revolution, like the first, will need flood plains.
“No-till agriculture” is horticulture, which is sometmes also called “hoe agriculture.” Horticulture cannot arbitrarily raise its level of complexity, because of the limits on production. Permaculture is the same. Ergo, no, they cannot drive a pattern of conquest. They are limited by the same kinds of factors that limited Cahokia and the tribes of the Pacific Northwest.
There won’t be many areas protected from moisture in an age of massive climate change, and we’ve also concentrated most of our iron in cities that cluster into more moist areas (there arent’ too many cities in the middle of the desert). Aluminum has been discussed previously here, and upthread. Basically, the metals that will survive are the metals that aren’t useful for tools or weapons. And, again, living off of waste means exploiting a resource with a replenishment rate of