Methods of Freedom: Subsistence
by Benjamin ShenderPeople have to eat. Unless you happen to be a breatharian. But the vast majority of us have to eat. Indeed, in many ways food shapes the foundation of our culture. After all, humans first began to organize into bands to facilitate hunting. Specifically to weight the odds in our favor. Since then many of the developments we are most proud of stem from this one innovation: egalitarianism to increase the odds of individual survival. No other living primate lives in this way.
As living humans we rely on a daily or near daily intake of food. As such, much of our activity is geared to assuring it’s supply. In civilization this means either farming your own or working many hours every week in order to trade for it. (The specific medium of exchange is unimportant for the purposes of our current discussion.) The kind of methods used to obtain food also affect the way a person perceives the world. A farmer rules the land. A permaculturalist is a steward of the land. A forager lives with the land. These views are inherent consequences of the methodology. After all, a farmer must labor long hours to pull food from the ground. He must fight with other animals constantly in order to keep his crops. It is not surprising they think of that land as their possession, and of themselves as rulers of it. Permaculturalists must encourage certain plants to grow together to each other’s benefit. They allow and even assist other animals in joining their gardens. A view of stewardship is only to be expected. A forager controls none of the land. It grows as the gods will, and they do their best to obtain what they want to eat. The ease with which this is done surprises many, but it is one of the main reasons that foragers are left with no choice but to see themselves and the land they live on as being intrinsically connected. So, with this in mind, it is easy to reach the conclusion that a person changing their way of obtaining food would, consequently, change their view of their place in the world.
Beyond this, is the concept of locking and unlocking the food. As long as we in civilization rely on the mechanisms of civilization to obtain food we contribute to, maintain, expand, and are slaves to those mechanisms. We are still farmers, rulers of the earth, and slaves. A very important step, although a dramatic one, to obtaining freedom from civilization is to free oneself from the products of farm labor. Considering the number of people likely to try, there is ample food growing randomly with no help from any human hand. The question is only if a person has the skill to know it. Dandelions grow everywhere in suburbia, and are tastier and more nutritious than spinach. Yet we go to the store to buy salad greens? Freeing yourself from farmed food needn’t be an overnight affair. There is no rule that says it’s an all or nothing game. Next time collect and rinse (several times, it is suburbia after all) your own salad greens. Collect your own fruit to supplement your purchases. Go get your own nuts. Collecting your own honey is considered advanced and not recommended for beginners.
Once an individual has progressed beyond the need of civilization in order to obtain the basic level of sustenance they are that much freer. After all, civilization no longer holds the threat of starvation over their head. And, without that threat, civilization’s siren call is much less appealing.
I love your way of taking things that are assumed and implicit in almost all primitivist writings (but never actually stated) and stating them in a clear, concise manner. If one didn’t really examine your writing, they’d end up finishing a piece of yours with a, “Yeah, so what?” attitude, missing the point entirely. You’re making the points that everyone else assumes have already been made, but were never properly explored.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 3 February 2006 @ 11:44 AM
Civilization doesn’t always hold ’starvation over people’s head’, but rather the choices in how we live & how much we conform to our particular system determine that. There are still pockets of civilization that won’t bat an eye when energy depletion causes the techno-civlization most of us live in to come crashing down. Sometimes it appears that foraging is not merely a rational means to survive, but rather the magic solution to “Freedom”. Freedom involves more than just having food in your stomach. Purpose and meaning in our lives, hopefully will consist of more than just surviving a few extra years. Freedom ultimately is– peace of mind, and for some people this has meant laying down their life for family, ideals etc., not merely surviving the plague, global warming, civilizations collapse. IF peak oil was 100hundred years from now, and no real likelihood of civilization collapse was upon us–would the methods of freedom still be the same?
After reading much of the practical knowledge & history presented on this site, it appears that the desire to escape the constructs of the world in its current techno-industrial form remains the undercurrent & foraging, survival etc. are just topics along a materialistic path. Material reductionism even in its more simpler forms is not really the balm that calms the existential dissonance that humans struggle with, is it?
Comment by bubba — 3 February 2006 @ 2:04 PM
Yes–they would just be hopeless. Civilization cannot allow anything besides itself to exist, and it cannot be defeated–it can only kill itself. Fortunately for us, it’s doing just that.
You can never be free so long as you are dependent on another. The whole is more than that, but the foundation is food in your belly. Without that, nothing else matters. Once you have that, peace, community, egalitarianism and all the rest follow all on their own.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 February 2006 @ 3:52 PM
So food in the belly, without the help of a civilization–will naturally progress into a state of egalitarianism, peace, community?
Hmm, Although certainly civilization & heirarchal systems provide ample ammunition to the destruction of such concepts, merely removing it, isn’t likely to entirely remove those issues from the table.
Human beings cultures may strongly influence much of their behavior, although internal psycho-biological drives for power must exist at same primal level. Although the degree to which the need for power exists, likely varies greatly within individuals.
I’m dependent on others to help create my subjective reality, to learn. To feel free is also to feel connected to someone, some group at some level. Being alone with a full belly, indefinitely will not be a fulfilling type of freedom for many. I would posit that very few humans would enjoy a life of healthy foraging without other humans to socialize with. Nature’s silence may be her own remark, but that is only part of the puzzle in the quest for peace of mind. Although, I can’t argue with the point that an empty stomach is a bad start to any venture, whether physical or philosophical.
Comment by bubba — 3 February 2006 @ 4:13 PM
Left to ourselves, we naturally form egalitarian communities. It’s our default configuration. In fact, civilization has to expend significant resources to stop us from organizing ourselves in such a fashion–and they can do that because they control the food.
If they don’t control your food, their threats become hollow. If they’re not spending massive energy to keep you organized in an unnatural, hierarchical state, then egalitarianism just happens all by itself, because that’s our natural state–the same way that if you take a fish out of water, it will react very badly. Put it back in the water, and assuming it’s still alive, it will swim off happily.
Nietzsche argued that the “will to power” is the essential driving force of every human being. I disagree; I think it’s more akin to a mental illness that afflicts those who have been powerless and have never known freedom–they want power, because it’s the closest thing to freedom they’ve ever known. All the great dictators were powerless, and often abused as children.
That’s not a dependence. If it hadn’t been them, it would’ve been someone else. Or no one else, and simply the experience of loneliness itself that created you. But more importantly, nothing in your past can ever be a dependence–it’s in the past. Dependence is always a creature of the present and the future.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 February 2006 @ 5:40 PM
I don’t know about the authors, but that’s accurate for me. If civilization was guaranteed to last another hundred years, I’d still want to leave it.
No, but these things are inseparable. Everything psychological has its physical manifestation.
Comment by scruff — 3 February 2006 @ 7:09 PM
Ok, my turn to respond to bubba:
Sure it does. If you were stripped naked and thrown in the woods how long would you last? Probably not too long, unless you’ve studied up on how to survive. Most people in all countries could not survive without civilization. Period. The culturally defined concept of food comes from farms. Not from the earth. One of the main reasons that so many primitivists have jobs is because of food. Same with anarchists. Same with many people that would rather have nothing to do with business of any size. You can’t tell me that civilization isn’t threatening us with starvation if we leave. That’s the number one argument I hear from people. “But, you’ll starve.”
Not that I know of. Any where in particular you were thinking of?
Starving people are hardly free. First things first. Do you have food? Do you have water? It’s back to Maslow. You can’t self-actualize if you’re hungry.
They would and they are. You do know this is number three in a series that is far from complete, right? The methods would be the same even if civilization wasn’t about to cave in on itself. Although getting the cultural space to practice them would be difficult.
I am alive. Because of this I cannot even begin to come to terms with my existence and the spiritual worlds without first handling my material needs. When I’m well fed and rested I can think about these things at my leisure. When I’m overworked, hungry, malnourished, and living in a way that every particle of my body says is wrong and unhealthy, I’m unable to think clearly and reflect. Civilization causes that dissonance. Obtaining freedom from civilization requires that we be completely independent of it. This independence does not remove our need to eat, drink, and breathe. So, one of the principle steps to obtaining freedom from civilization (and the ability to correct that dissonance) is to be able to obtain your necessities of life without civilization.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 3 February 2006 @ 8:05 PM
I have increasingly enjoyed the content of this site . I’m a child of the American establishment , business as usual, and I fear that I am too old to convert to primitivism . Although I’ll be caught up in it , the collapse of industrial civilization is a once in a species event . Too exciting to miss!
Comment by Dale — 4 February 2006 @ 12:23 PM
Never too old, my friend, as long as you can gather a group of folks around you. It’s about community, in many ways. Good luck to you!
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 4 February 2006 @ 12:35 PM
I think it’s more appropriate to say that you can never be free if another is controlling you. Members of an egalitarian group or tribe might well be dependant on each other. The very strength of an individual’s dependence on the tribe could threaten h/her freedom.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 4 February 2006 @ 1:36 PM
We’re dependent on our society, but the ability of others to control you is a function of your dependence on them. The difference between depending on an aggregate group and depending on a single individual is all the difference.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 February 2006 @ 1:47 PM
If anyone, an individual, a group, or society in general, furnishes something we are dependent upon, they then have potential power over us. It is only when or if they can effectively use this power to control us, and then do so, that we lose our freedom. People can and do have relationships that include dependencies without control. There also are powers not due to dependencies that can be used to destroy freedom. Not being under control or restraint is what determines freedom. Absolute freedom would be a lack of restraint by anyone or anything, an impossible quest.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 4 February 2006 @ 4:45 PM
If someone has power over you, they’re going to use it, sooner or later.
Dependency on a society is a very different thing. Everyone is dependent, and no one has power over everyone else–everyone is equally dependent on the group as a whole, but no one is dependent on any one other person. No one has power, so no one can attempt to assert control.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 February 2006 @ 6:09 PM
“If someone has power over you, they’re going to use it, sooner or later.”
This would be a great ideal to strive for, but not as likely as the first premis due to the prisoners dilema. This will not be the sitution unless ALL members of the society are determied to make it so.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 4 February 2006 @ 7:19 PM
Hey –
I’ve been pondering this for a day now, and I think you are looking at it backwars, Jason.
I think that being dependant on the society as a whole — ie treating society ‘as a whole’ — is exactly where we are now. No individual person has control over whether I eat tomorrow, or the next day, etc…
Yet, within my family, we are certainly dependant upon one another. At different times, the dependancies have been stronger in one direction or another — certainly Ian has been more dependant on Jim and I than vice versa — but over our lifetimes, it all evens out.
I think, in a tribal setting, it is the same way. No one person has absolute dependancy on any other single person, but they do have shifting dependancies with each other individual in the group. And they CAN because they all have strong interpersonal relationships with each other (even in the case of a ‘bad’ relationship, it is still a ’strong’ relationship, if you know what I mean).
Prisoner’s Dilemma is a good argument for all this — but prisoner’s dilemma with infinite iterations, not one off. In an infinite iteration dilemma, there can be no ‘abstract force’ that everyone is relying on — it really is the certain knowledge that I do you a favor today because I KNOW that tomorrow you will return the ‘favor’. If it was some mythical group then certainty could never be achieved.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 4 February 2006 @ 7:51 PM
I’ll agree with Bob and Janene. But I think I’ve seen Jason say this before, and so I’ll add this:
Once you have come of age in a foraging society, should you decide that something is wrong with that society and wish to leave it there is no physiological imperative that keeps you from doing so. You already have all the knowledge that you need to survive, at least until you can connect with some other group out there.
In this way, if a society becomes dominated by one person or one group over the rest of the people, the rest of the people can be like “screw this” and walk away.
In this society, however, power and domination are entrenched because even though we would like to leave this society, we do not have much of an ability to do so.
I would also like to say that being dependent on people you know and trust is completely different than being dependent on millions of people you don’t know OR trust. Removing dependencies is not fully possible, but if I am to be dependent on someone I’d like it to be someone who I know I can depend on.
- Devin
Comment by Devin — 5 February 2006 @ 2:57 AM
What do you mean choice? I have to conform or I get in trouble with my civilisations policing force. If I don’t pay my taxes they will punish me, if I don’t have a proper permit for whatever it is I want/need to do (be it fish/drive/live in a house) they will punish me.
My civilisation has full time policing force to keep me repressed and in line and make sure I economically support the system and whatever vision it’s fullfilling (in this case never ending economic growth). And I can’t leave it because it is policing everywhere. If I try and build myself a home in the woods it will be illegal and they will arrest me, if I kill a deer for food, it is illegal unless I have a very special permit and they will arrest me (UK). Therefore they bind me to their way of life through coercion and policing.
Comment by Roxy — 5 February 2006 @ 4:46 AM
Civilization will certainly attempt to keep its strangle hold on its inhabitants. But we certainly have choices, even if they are not choices that you find easy. Such as leaving the UK? Even within a system or repression, a certain amount of non-comformity or outright rebellion has existed in the tomes of history.
America for example, originally fighting for “liberty” became one of the harmark slogans/ideals. I just find that few people are will to take a stand anymore. Modern culture has softened us up so much that we “feel” we have no real choices. Although Techno-Civilization may provide dissonance that causes chronic stress, unhappiness etc. it also provides lots of short term hedonistic pleasures that make it easy for most to hand over their liberty to it.
In terms of some of the responses to my previous comments–
My intent was to rely the fact that peak oil etc, will have a much smaller effect on some pockets of more self-sufficient areas. Contrary to popular belief 1st world nations don’t provide all the food to every 3rd world country. Last I heard 1/3rd of the world still did no have sanitation, plumbing, or electricity in their homes. India is a good example, of a country in the process of “progress” although the majority of its inhabitants live in squalor with no modern tech’s.
In response to starvation being ‘held over the heads of its inhabitants’. I see this as partly true at best. Certainly at times throughout history some civ’s have definitely used food control as a power control. And sadly, this may happen again in the US/UK to some degree, who knows? But the process of LIVING itself, holds many things over our heads. Borrowing from physics it appears will all live in a state of superpostion of possibilities to some degree. Looking for a more healthy, equal, and self-sustaining culture is admirable & may become a neccessity for continued exisitence (well, it will eventually–but the time frame is still a bit shaky) but the certaint outcome remains elusive in the world.
I disagree, the will to power or in my opinion and that of some other theorists, William Glasser, M.D> for example propose Power as one of the basic biopsychological needs. Although it may be very true that power is a mental illness of sorts, and often the extreme pervasions of power come from people who often had a vacuum of feeling control & power in the lives–this does not in itself mean that the desire for power is not a basic drive. It appears to rear its head in heirarchal systems–but this is merely a product of s system that enables power to mass within a few. The limited opportunity for the ‘will to power’ to manifest itself in the extreme is likely another good argument for a self-sustaining foraging system. History presents so many examples of the striving for power over others, that
its hard to say it hasn’t been a main driver in many events within civilizations. I suppose we don’t have a long history of non-heirachal civ’s to look at to reflect upon how things may be without the rigid systems in place.
Anyway, I’m getting long here…Thanks for all your comments and I look forward to reading more about the Methods of Freedom as they are presented.
Comment by bubba — 5 February 2006 @ 11:09 AM
Being poor does not make someone self-sufficent, or unreliant on civilization. It simply makes them bottom rung slave of the system. There is no place on Earth that can farm sufficent food for it’s populace without the use of oil-based fertilizers and oil-based machinery (even if this machinery was simply built and maintained with oil). Peak Oil doesn’t just mean that we cannot drive, or that all of our electricity will go away. It means we starve to death. Indeed, India could never support it’s populace without imports. Most third world nations cannot. It’s a simple issue of over population, too many people on too poor land.
Ultimately the term “more self-sufficent” is null. If a place is not completely self-sufficent and isolated the collapse will take them as well. Third world nations are utterly reliant on first world nations as surely as first world nations are utterly reliant on third world nations. First world nations supply a sizable amount of thier food (although not all), most of their machinery, medicine, and their seeds (I consider this last to be particularly discusting).
If one day civilization disappeared what would you eat? If you decided that today was the day. Today I’m abadoning civilization. Would you know what to eat? Probably not. Most people can’t even get this far. Without civilization, without farming, most people believe that they will starve. They cannot leave civilization because they won’t be able to eat. I’d call that holding starvation over our heads. “Fine, you can leave. But, what would you eat? Food only comes from farms, you know that.” It’s a great fiction. Food is culturally defined. Civilization says that only farming can make you food. How could you leave? This is what I mean.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 5 February 2006 @ 12:37 PM
Is that a different Roxy, or did Roxy move to the UK and start spelling civilization with an s?
Comment by Devin — 5 February 2006 @ 5:34 PM
Hmm, its abundantly clear that life is about food, and clearly non-farm food is the path to freedom. Yet, producing food isn’t really a good idea, because it involves guarding an area that can be raided, or taking by civilization. Also my culture defines food to be things such as subways subs & pizza, thus I’m screwed.
Hunting is a fun hobby, but hell I’ll forget to do that when I get hungry–or perhaps the game will be scared off from the massess raiding whats left of the wilderness when the food suppyly gets short. Chickens, goats, and raising rabbitts isn’t good either–since once again it really doesn’t compare with foraging.
Peak oil will mean starvation, although the good news is only 99.5% or so will die. We can watch the green movement chase its tail for the next 5years+?? Trying to manipulate energy ratios that involve oil production anyway most of the time.
Maybe the real issue is, its difficult to have one ‘foot’ in civilization (jobs, starvation hanging over our heads etc) and one foot tentatively testing out the self-sufficiency ideas–foraging (while hoping to not get killed during the mass die off and the chaos that would ensue following) and while picking berries, and eating dandelions I can hope that whats left of the power groups don’t let too many nukes fly, fighting for whats left of the black gold? Hmmm, I seriously need to find a cool myth to believe in, or have some sort of religious revelation, since the last few years of preparing for ’stuff’ has been quite the downer “)
Well, at least I have a full stomach currently, it may not be freedom–but at least it provides my the glucose & glycogen to keep me truckin’ until the good times/bad times begin?
Comment by bubba — 5 February 2006 @ 9:31 PM
I wouldn’t worry too much about people raiding the forests. They won’t think of it. They never do. This is not the first time a civilization has collapsed. Traditionally people will eat each other before they become foragers. They flock to the cities, and they die there.
Nukes are a concern. But, no point in worrying. I’m relying on people continuing with their current posturing. Basically, just hoping that they all remain balless until there isn’t any fuel to shoot them anymore. Other than that, just hope that you’re far enough away from the strikes. Radiation disipates to non-lethal levels very fast. Although collectively, survival would be a questionable proposition, especially if the composition of the atmosphere is sufficently altered. Personally, I’m ignoring this possibility because there isn’t much that I can do about it. So, just prey that our leaders are scared enough to not attack, because they’ve already proven themselves stupid enough to use them.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 5 February 2006 @ 9:47 PM
Devin: the Roxy we know and love signs her posts “Raku.” This is a different one.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 6 February 2006 @ 1:17 AM
Yeah that’s right I’m the Roxy you don’t know and don’t love
(not yet anyways) 
But I’ll post as Roxy UK from now on so everyone knows just which Roxy it is.
Comment by Roxy UK — 6 February 2006 @ 4:33 PM