But the archaeological evidence shows that these are clearly personal residences for a single family and servants. I mentioned this as short-hand because everyone in this discussion with some familiarity with the subject manner should be well-acquainted with the evidence I’m referring to.

The discussion has reached a whole new level now, I can see. Once people pull out the special kind of knowledge that “those in the know” know about, with the secret handshake and the exclusive club and all.

Still, that doesn’t invalidate what I said. I said nothing about more than one family living in a home, simply that the homes might be built based on the size of the family that was to inhabit them:

built houses, the size of which depended on the size of the family they were intended to house

It was carefully enough phrased that it would be difficult to find evidence that would invalidate the alternate conclusion. I must admit that the conclusion of “difficult to find evidence” would of course be limited by my fundamentally lower intellect, as you have pointed out. Still, I would love for you to educate me on the evidence that would distinguish between the two.

The Australian aboriginal elders also aren’t anything like a hierarchy. They have nothing we would recognize as “authority.”

Yet again you can educate me. Why is it that the aboriginal elders are responsible for the law, and dealing out justice? This would, to me, seem to be a form of “authority”.

And one final opportunity to pass on your wisdom, for I doubt I could take too much more educating in one day:

this is not the only way to raise your kids. There are ways to respect your children’s autonomy and raise them in a healthy manner.

How do I prevent my children from running on busy roads, whilst “respecting their autonomy”, and also whilst not using my power as an adult?

The boundaries of your potential solution must incorporate the facts we are discussing creatures that have only a superficial grasp of language and little if no grasp on consequences.

“Most notable in these definitions is a lack of the concetps: “rigidity”, “fluidity”, or “connection”. Now, implicity in these definitions is a lack of fluidity, increased rigidity, and abusive or dominance-based relationships/connections.”

Oh not at all.

“1. The increasing world-wide integration of markets for goods, services and capital that attracted special attention in the late 1990s.”

More integration = “increased connectivity worldwide” as I said.

“2. Also used to encompass a variety of other changes that were perceived to occur at about the same time, such as an increased role for large corporations (MNCs) in the world economy and increased intervention into domestic policies and affairs by international institutions such as the IMF, WTO, and World Bank. 3. Among countries outside the United States, especially developing countries, the term sometimes refers to the domination of world economic affairs and commerce by the United States.”

Obviously the virulently anti-free-market policies of the IMF, WTO, US, EU, and World Bank have applied statist and economic power to raise cost-of-entry, centralize global control… blah, blah, blah.

The globalizing process that is currently underway brings to attention the extreme rigidities already ingrained in places of power. But ultimately globalization is always a good thing, because “globalization” only means greater connectivity. That’s why the vast majority of those of us in the “anti-globalization” movement were really fucking pissed when we were started being called that. We’re not against globalization, we’re against THEIR limited “globalization” wherein the rich get connections and the poor get locked in place. But such wouldn’t be a full globalization because it operates on restrictions to global integration (national borders, corporatism, etc) To go all Wittgenstein and analyze our word use, what would you call a Mass Society spread across the entire planet? Globalization. I’m aware of the connotations, but for god’s sake, let me use the word as it really means lest I be made incapable of using any word at all to refer to conceptual vectors rather than present cultural context.

“1) the nonlinearity of which you speak exists or will/can exist”

Sigh. Increased degrees of possible interrelation between subjects, increasing interaction and increasing mobility makes for non-linearity. A cell phone in Peking can set off a Flash Mob in Boston.

“2) the nonlinearity of which you speak will produce more fluidity”

What do you call a bunch of particles closely interacting relative one another in a non-linear fashion?

“wtf?”

Heh. Think it through. Or just read the 15 and my response to Godesky.

“Doesn’t this mean that globalization (by my definition(s) above) works against anarchy by allowing the reigning corporations to relocate their workers to countries more amenable to the corporations’ needs?”

Well, is the WTO/IMF/US/etc bad for workers and against Anarchism? Most decidedly yes. But that’s not the point.

Is *Globalization* set against Anarchy? Hell no. We want to break down borders and make trade freer (Anarchy, according to a friend of mine, is simply Free Association). Think about that example you’ve given. What’s inherently wrong about a business (very different from a corporation) relocating to be more efficient? Nothing. The problem in this example is that there are local inequalities that are reinforced by external rigid structures. There are borders. Corporations are allowed to cross them with impunity, but workers are not. Of course, even so, Thomas Freidman’s ramblings about rising tides would still be right (the relocation means that *on the whole* things would be better for workers globally even if American workers dipped in living standards a bit) were there not other particularly closed, non-integrated and anti-connection systems at work with one another. Power always functions by cutting off connections. Globalization is simply the vector of increasing connections globally.

“In fact, it seems like much of it is exactly what Anthropik has been encouraging”

Some yes. But consider the factory workers struggle to regain control of their industry and change the way it functions to a more fluid social structure. Ultimately a positive thing that one could say is both a collapse and a staving off of collapse. There’s a bunch of complexities there, but Godesky’s hardline is the complete rejection of the industry rather than struggling with and inside of it.

“Nevertheless, I accept that I have limits.”

In these sorts of complex matters there’s no absolute bar or limit at a certain point (and how could there be? it’s not science it’s abstract aggregate statistics) there’s just a long petering out. But there’s always a way. Finding it can be more “difficult” than just accepting the broadest paths, but it’s still there to be found. To be trite with the Mr. Rogers Anarchism, you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it. Of course you probably won’t. But the paths are still there.

“Of course there are complex things going on with this split. But, I’m inclined to think that when you say that, you’re implying that the “pragmatism” side has “issues”.”

I was just idly musing as to the delicious complexities involved on both sides. Not making underhanded attacks. As an aside I think it would be worth looking into why our society has a split between some who associate only/mostly negative things with “pragmatism” and some who associate only/mostly negative things with idealism.

For instance only a few days ago I was in an academic debate between a pile of Marxists and Anarchists. The Marxists kept claiming *they* were pragmatists, and that claim only served to reinforce the divisions and hostilities of both sides.

“What do you see as the critical difference in systems between “Free societies” and those that morph into “Civ-esque cultures”?”

No critical difference (at least with primitive societies). It’s just statistics. Freedom tends to reinforce freedom, but mistakes can be made and become endemic. Physical rigidities beget social rigidities.

See in particular:

5. Individuals flourish with increase of dynamic connections.
6. Understanding is not dependent on process but capacity to experience.
7. Physical limitation inspires social oppression.
8. Spatial limitation ingrains social hierarchy.

As well as my further summary of “the mistake” that historically demolishes empathy in my response to Godesky.

“Also, do you have any concrete examples of each society?”

??

Um. Romans and the Kalahari? Corporate PhDs and Hackers?

…If you’re asking me whether Anthropologists have definitive evidence regarding the initial differences between those societies that then took up agriculture and the bad civ hierarchies (along with the good tech fluidities) and those that didn’t feel the need to. Well there’s ultimately no real surviving evidence anywhich way. But basic praxeology and psychology makes the logic pretty clear.

“I don’t want you to feel you have to tread old ground.”

That’s all I’ve been doing in this thread. Again and again. Even the 15 were just summaries.

“Yes it does. That’s what every famine or war in history has been about.”

Sigh.

You would agree that there are times in which a farming society has to work harder but can still feed its people? Sometimes there is violence due to cultural and psychological rigidities. Sometimes not. Sometimes they just end up fucking less and that ends up taking care of things.

That shit does happen. In which case No, increased difficulties do not fucking equate violent die-out.

“Whether you want to survive the collapse or improve the chances of escaping massive die-off, the next step is the same: form tribes, remove our dependence on civilization, take up permaculture, get off industrialism.”

Remove our dependence upon civilization is pretty much the core of where you and I skip arm and arm together down the yellow brick road. But parts of “industrialism” can be useful if not more effective in this process. Solar panels are still increasing in effectiveness past all predicted limits, wind and the like are still viable. Some factories and the like can still lower costs and ease the process. The ways in which we dissolve the industrial system we’ve got are absolutely critical. Simple rejectionism isn’t enough.

And fuck tribes. Such insularity is the last thing we need during a time of collapse. Small group identity and competition will lead to so more goddamn much violence. We should be looking for global unity rather than idolizing our immediate relationships.

“Two billion is twice William Catton’s estimate of a sustainable human population. I don’t know what that number might be, but two billion sounds very high to me.”

And I think Catton’s estimate is high. But there’s different degrees and types of “sustainability”. Long, long, long term… I want no more than 3 million on the Earth, living without industrialization or agriculture. But, and here’s the key, I don’t want Humanity’s population to fall below 2 billion. What’s that they say, ‘primitive socialism on Earth and a free market in the heavens’? Space is a great big dead playground to expand into and fuck up our own millions of mini-biospheres as we like. Evolve and move on. Leave the Earth behind as a save-game.

“If they stop being farmers, then they’re abandoning civilization and rewilding.”

I agree that if someone stops being a farmer, moves to the “city,” plants a garden, works in a factory building solar panels and becomes a hacker they’re re-wilding. I disagree as to whether they’d be abandoning civilization.

“And that’s the problem with globalization, not the rigidity of the global culture that’s happened to form, but the fact that any global homogeneity is destructive.”

Since when is “globalization” fundamentally about homogeneity?! Haha!

Interconnection does not equate the emerging dominance of a single rigid informational structure.

“Homogeneity is death.”

Yup.

“And today, the world is far more homogeneous than it once was. Nearly half the world’s languages are in danger of dying out: half of the world’s diversity of thought, feeling and relationship, ways of relating to particular ecosystems, will soon be gone.”

I utterly fail to see how you can blame opt-in WiFi modems for what was done by coercion and genocide. Two fucking different things. Connected tenuously by some context, yes, but different fucking vectors and different motivations.

Furthermore our interconnection is generating and dissolving culture faster than ever before. A greater diversity of possibilities is being explored. We’re evolving faster.

We should archive and remember those cultures that are dissolving away, and we should work to fight the unfair, non-free-market, coercive aspects sometimes behind their destruction, but cultural preservation for its own sake is not a good thing.

Diversity is meaningless without context. Likewise it’s worthless without use. It’s just a means to an ends of effective integration.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I haven’t heard a single idea yet that would slow down collapse that didn’t come down to unicorns, fairy dust and happy thoughts.”

You can understand why your ridiculous stubbornness to see very real engineering realities as infeasible leads me to suspect ulterior psychological motives.

“a slower collapse means more suffering, more loss of human life, more destruction of the ecosystem, and diminished prospects for human survival or for the rest of the more-than-human world.”

Whereas a fast collapse would mean a greater prospect for human survival?!! Yeah, let’s just start with the smashing of shit today and go bust up some bioweapons lab in the haste.

“Humans who have their needs fulfilled show remarkably little interest in advancing technology.”

Our needs aren’t just water, food and air. And there’s always room for improvement with regards to contact with society and the material world. Wild feral human beings desire these. Even if cultural structures can somewhat domesticate them.

“A long, protracted collapse will mean more nuclear power plants that will haunt the post-civilized world for millions of years”

Extraction isn’t really an issue with such material, we’ve got pretty much the same amount harvested today as we’ll have then. It’s where we’ll put it. Longer term we have a better chance seeing it somewhat contained. Short term it’s just all over the fucking place.

“it will mean more global warming, more poisoned air and water.”

True. But not by so much. The gasoline we’ve got will be seeping all over the fucking surface. The poisons we’ve already harvested will be released one way or another. Sure we’re going to make more, but the percentages will be small compared to what’s already on the surface (that is to say, ready to enter the biosphere upon collapse).

“It will mean 200 species dying out every day for a much longer time.”

Those 200 are dependent upon the current virulent expansion of humanity. A slow collapse will necessarily mean a slowing if not reversing of the onslaught while we build our permaculture cities and the like.

“Because traditional anarchist struggles are in pursuit of utopian thought experiments. We’re building off the only tried-and-true social principles humanity has.”

Tried-and-insufficient.

“Absolutely.”

Well I’m glad you’ve made a complete reversal of your original statement that egalitarianism is entirely about behavior rather than psychology! That was quite a preposterous statement and I’m glad to see you’ve learned from it! We’re making good progress here.

“The “softer” kinds of hierarchy have been noted and we’re talking about those, too.”

Forgive me if I simply cannot believe, given the Anthropologists I’ve interacted with and the papers I’ve read that the full breadth of studies you’re relying on have a full anarchist’s recognition of subtle power structures. Particularly when you, as a fundamental outsider and however you may protest deeply tied to our civ’s context, are cataloging behavioral characteristics. Psychological rigidities and social controls between individuals are very fucking sneaky things.

“Then you need to read more about hunter-gatherers. I suspected you didn’t really know what you’re talking about. No, Bushmen kids are not bossed around. Nobody has the right to tell anyone what to do, not even kids. Parents can cajole, entreat, bargain, or persuade, but they can’t command.”

Let me state this as clearly as I can:

There are hunter-gatherer societies that boss around their kids. Fact.

There are also some rather idealic fucking awesome hunter-gatherer societies that kick so much ass you can see it from LEO. Fact.

So fucking what? I was with the primitivist surge in the ninties, I’m all about learning from that shit and enacting it in the modern world.

But such awesomeness is not inherent to their situation.

And because they tend to survive in isolated pockets today from all those other societies that have embraced the variety of the civ mistake and endeavor I am strongly inclined to conclude that they are the outliers. The societies that held it together instead of taking advantage of this particularly facilitative glacial age and blundering their way through an interworking hodgepodge of technological progress and social regression.

They’re great. But despite the decades of primitivist lies, half-truths and wistful interpretations, that’s not the inevitable state of humanity minus our recent tech.

And the other tribes, the ones who started fucking around with metallurgy and rows of carrots? They weren’t so fucking stupid, evil or wrong afterall. They were grasping at something important. And despite their mistakes they’ve given us hope, they’ve put us on a road that fucks with our social rigidities. A road that, so long as we remember the lessons and realities of the other tribes before this great endeavor, will ultimately have no conclusion but the permanent eradication the demons that have bothered us for eternity.

“This has not been observed in any forest, ever. Only in captivity, with regular feeding schedules.”

Now on this I don’t have good authority or research, but seriously. I’ve seen that shit on nature documentaries in the wild. Now maybe they set it up or lied to us, but I never got that impression.

“You seem to be considering hierarchy as an “evil force”"

It is

“and only looking at the most negative aspects of it.”

There aren’t any other aspects. Not where consciousness is involved.

“I think hierarchy as inhuman.”

Some small hierarchies are very “human,” in the biological sense, very core to our species identity and survival. But we can dissolve them.

“A wise elder and the young fool is an hierarchy of knowledge, one that I’m sure you’d readily acknowledge exists in many cultures. Just as egalitarianism can exist distinctly across many social factors so can hierarchy.”

“Hierarchies” of passive data or passive matter don’t really matter. When hierarchies (or better phrased) rigidities are applied to consciousness, a part of us turns into machines and shit gets awful for everyone. When a wise elder tries to impose roles and structures between him and the young fool, that’s bad. But giving advice or offering a helping hand? That’s “hierarchy” the same way a painted rainbow with purple above red is “hierarchy.” That is to say, not really (in this social context).

“The key to egalitarian society is not obliterating individuality or denying the uniqueness of each individual, but in multiple dimensions of power.”

There’s some of the awesome you’re trying to get across, but a multiplicity of power (although “egalitarian” by some definitions) is not an ideal thing in the least. Consider the husband/wife structure pretty common in our society whereby the wife and the husband both have a whole bunch of psychological avenues of power over one another. Now in a lot of the relationships we might know these chains of control are more or less equal, but they’re still chains.

The old adage: “anarchy is not equalizing things out to five milli-Hitlers of power each.”

The entire world can only produce a certain amount of food (which will be declining with the decline in fuels) and farmers are already seeing more profit to be made in organic fuels than food. Given a choice between food with minimal profitability sent to developing countries and grains for ethanol, for example, at a much higher margin, the farmer is going to move to the profitable activity, not keep on producing food just because that’s what he’s always done.

Actually, small farmers, family farmers, DO grow food because that’s what they’ve always done. They certainly aren’t in it for the money.

Corporate farms on the other hand might decide to pull out of food production completely due to the disparity in market price between fuel and food. And that sounds like a really good way to start a war of revolution, not avoid one.

If our cars start seriously competing with our stomachs there will be starvation in the streets of the first world.

Who was it that said that any society is three meals away from revolution?

JimFive

A increase in the difficulty posed by feeding 6.5 billion people does not equate an immediate die-out through starvation (or equivalent processes like violence).

Yes it does. That’s what every famine or war in history has been about.

The key is that on a slow collapse we still CAN feed the whole 6.5, it just is rather harder, leading to a decrease in birthrate because the population has other concerns.

That’s the best case scenario. I’d like that to happen, but I’m not sure it’s possible. More likely, it will be a little from column A, and a little from column B. Some amount of tribal formation and permaculture will rise up to meet the cataclysmic failure of civilization as collapse accelerates on itself. But that’s academic. Whether you want to survive the collapse or improve the chances of escaping massive die-off, the next step is the same: form tribes, remove our dependence on civilization, take up permaculture, get off industrialism. If we could do enough of that, maybe we could escape die-off. I doubt it, but I’m going everything I can to reach that anyway.

My ideal global population is around 2 billion and I want to accomplish that by further deepening Globalization and Mass Society until there aren’t anymore anti-contraceptive cultures/individuals/memes on the periphery filling the holes left by those of us who choose to abstain.

Two billion is twice William Catton’s estimate of a sustainable human population. I don’t know what that number might be, but two billion sounds very high to me. But I can guarantee that clinging to mass society and globalization is a guarantee for the suicide of the human species. If we’re going to avoid die-off (and it’s not at all clear that that’s still an option), then it will only be by abandoning globalization and mass society in favor of localized, bioregional, human-scale society.

Or they stop being farmers? As is happening. (And corporations diversify.) They don’t have to respond rigidly.

Well that’s precisely our point. If they stop being farmers, then they’re abandoning civilization and rewilding.

What you’re objecting to our “Global Culture” has to do with its rigidity not its globalization.

Not even a little bit. There’s really no behavior that isn’t destructive when everyone does it. Flushing your toilet at 9:26 AM is not a problem. If everyone flushes their toilet at 9:26 AM, then we’re all in deep shit. Literally. Which is why I reject Kant’s categorical imperative—everything is bad if everyone does it. And that’s the problem with globalization, not the rigidity of the global culture that’s happened to form, but the fact that any global homogeneity is destructive. It undermines the diversity that is the essential source of all resilience and strength: biological, ecological, sociological, you name it, it’s diversity that makes us strong. Homogeneity is death. And that’s what globalization is: homogeneity. The post-Alexander Hellenistc world was far more homogeneous than the pre-Alexander pre-Hellenistic world. And today, the world is far more homogeneous than it once was. Nearly half the world’s languages are in danger of dying out: half of the world’s diversity of thought, feeling and relationship, ways of relating to particular ecosystems, will soon be gone. Half of all our strength, gone. We’ll be half-dead.

But Godesky can’t stand anything smacking of a slow, managed collapse because even if the endpoint is the same it’ll mean compromise and engagement with the system instead of instant personal gratification.

Yeeeeeeah, that’s it. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I haven’t heard a single idea yet that would slow down collapse that didn’t come down to unicorns, fairy dust and happy thoughts. Nor would it have anything to do with the fact that a slower collapse means more suffering, more loss of human life, more destruction of the ecosystem, and diminished prospects for human survival or for the rest of the more-than-human world. Gotta be the personal gratification thing.

Plus people tend to like technology and if given time to prepare or weather through they might salvage more tech than he would like and maybe even continue the progression to more fluid tech.

People don’t tend to like technology; I think the Lower Paleolithic would be enough to prove that. As they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” That civilized folk seem to like technology really just shows how needy civilized folk are. Humans who have their needs fulfilled show remarkably little interest in advancing technology.

But you seem to think this is about what I want. I’d actually like to see some technology make it. I’d like the internet to still be around. I’d like to have some electricity for things. But if it doesn’t work out that way, I’m also OK with letting those things go, because getting to be a human being is a lot more important than the toys. The question isn’t what technology I “like,” but what technology works.

But a sudden and violent collapse would almost certainly hurt the biosphere worse than a slow and more managed collapse.

Incorrect. Sudden and violent collapse would hurt First Worlders most of all. Most of the world would be better off, since they’re already in collapse. The rest of the non-human world would begin immediately to heal itself. Really, humans in the First World are the only ones that would really suffer from a sudden and violent collapse. Everything else—including most humans—would range from “slightly worse than the status quo, and then much better than anything we’ve ever dreamed” to “finally the long nightmare is over.”

A long, protracted collapse will mean more nuclear power plants that will haunt the post-civilized world for millions of years; it will mean more global warming, more poisoned air and water. It will mean 200 species dying out every day for a much longer time. It will mean dead and acidic oceans, and what E.O. Wilson called “the death of birth.” It will also mean more suffering for humans: a few more decades to spend in collapse for most of the world, and an even bigger First World population to suffer collapse when it finally does happen. It will mean more people with bigger footprints creating more damage, leaving less of a world behind them as collapse becomes bigger, scarier, and more bloody with each passing day.

The sooner and the quicker collapse happens, the less destruction it will entail. The longer it takes, the more destruction it will entail, for humans and for everything else.

Perhaps you could explain to me why traditional anarchist struggles, actions and pursuits are trivial compared with Anthropik’s survivalism.

Because traditional anarchist struggles are in pursuit of utopian thought experiments. We’re building off the only tried-and-true social principles humanity has.

Bill Gates can share his material wealth to create a surplus of social wuffie. If his intentions were the shrewd acquisition of social power/standing and the psychological vectors of control that come with it we would hardly call the situation egalitarian. His intention matters. Psychologies matter. Power is and has always been ultimately about psychology not the allocation of material stuffs.

Absolutely. And you know what? No anthropologist calls a Big Man society egalitarian. They figure prominently in anthropological discussions on the rise of hierarchy. So you have a lot of catching up to do to get to the level the conversation’s at. When we call the Bushmen egalitarian, we don’t just mean that they lack political offices. They also lack the “Big Men,” the people who wield what’s called in anthropological jargon attained authority (it’s a lot easier to say than all of what you just said, and since we’ve discussed it so much, that helps a lot; as I mentioned, you’ve got some catching up to do). When we say they’re egalitarian, that’s what we mean. The “softer” kinds of hierarchy have been noted and we’re talking about those, too. The means by which hunter-gatherers defuse even the most subtle forms of hierarchy are truly amazing in their elegance. By simply “cursing the meat,” they eliminate the possibility of concentrating “social capital.” The very act itself destroys any “social capital” you might have built up!

Kids aren’t bossed around? I highly doubt that.

Then you need to read more about hunter-gatherers. I suspected you didn’t really know what you’re talking about. No, Bushmen kids are not bossed around. Nobody has the right to tell anyone what to do, not even kids. Parents can cajole, entreat, bargain, or persuade, but they can’t command.

Because of constraints on information children are fundamentally put in a position where their will is going to be intermittently overruled by those stronger and with supposedly (and mostly) greater knowledge.

You would think that, wouldn’t you? Well, being civilized and all, anyway. Have you ever read Sorenson’s “Preconquest Consciousness“? I highly recommend that you do. It very effectively shows why this isn’t necessarily the case, and a few other things, besides.

Power structures become instinctive (albeit not at the level of black hawks and riot cops).

Yes, the civilized family hierarchy does become the basis of civilization’s overall hierarchy. The Roman Emperor was the Pater Patriae, and we typically understand the State through the family metaphor. Tribes are also families, but they’re not hierarchical in nature. That, too, goes down to the nuclear family level.

Power structures DO exist and even physical coercion does take ‎place, even in the
“healthiest” of primitive societies.

Name one among the Kalahari Bushmen.

The two of us are standing in the forest watching some wolves around a carcass. One wolf eats before the others, or even with certain other members, but other members are driven away until these first eaters have had their fill.

This has not been observed in any forest, ever. Only in captivity, with regular feeding schedules.

I would take this to be a scenario that is devoid of any interpretive elements, so far, would you agree?

Absolutely. You can plainly see in that scenario that there’s a hierarchy, and had it ever been actually observed in the wild, it would be good evidence.

You look at this scene and want to draw the conclusion that the first-eating wolves are being magnanimous to their fellows by eating first, because they need to be strong to ensure the survival of their fellows.

No, I’m talking about a very different scene: the one that’s actually been observed in the wild. Had you read the article I linked to and recommended earlier, you would have read this, for instance:

When canids hunt as a pack, they can, because of their focused attention and close cooperation, act much more as an integrated system than any group of chimps or lions, where the individual that makes the kill and can maintain possession of the carcass, or take it over by force, will get “the lion’s share.” In wolves each pack member can accept greater risks when attacking, because, when injured, the needy will be fed by the other pack members. This cooperation and risk sharing not only among close relatives, but among individuals bonded as mated pairs or by lasting friendships among individuals of the same gender, is the central feature of canid pack living. …

The second phase of feeding starts when the wolves have reached a cozy place for a rest some distance from the kill, or when they get home to the den. They then regurgitate the large chunks, sharing with those that did not participate in the hunt, especially the pups and their babysitter, and carefully go over what they brought home in their stomach shopping bags. What had been carried communally, such as a leg of a prey, too large to swallow, is cut down to size, and pulled apart in a “tug of war,” with “real growls,” but actually quite playfully, and very different from the fighting over a kill, e.g., in hyenas. The pack at the den can process its loot in peace and spend time resting and digesting.

That’s what’s actually been observed. That, to me, suggests that the wolf pack is essentially egalitarian, and that it has developed an egalitarian strategy because it works so well. If there’s any idealism to it, we’d never know. It certainly looks pragmatic.

This isn’t a matter of me projecting egalitarianism where it doesn’t fit; this is a matter of sloppy research methods. You’re observing hierarchical relationships in a hierarchical, captive wolf pack. The problem is, you’re projecting it into the wild. You set that scene in the woods. That scene has never been observed in the woods. In the woods, the scene that’s been observed is much different. So it’s not a question of my projection, but of your ignorance.

You seem to be considering hierarchy as an “evil force” and only looking at the most negative aspects of it.

That’s a fine projection, but no. I think hierarchy as inhuman. It’s very bee-like, though, and works great for bees. But humans, like wolves, evolved in an egalitarian context. For such an animal, hierarchy is maladaptive. It’s not prima facie evil, but it is taking a fish out of water.

A wise elder and the young fool is an hierarchy of knowledge, one that I’m sure you’d readily acknowledge exists in many cultures. Just as egalitarianism can exist distinctly across many social factors so can hierarchy.

You probably don’t realize this, but this is one of the most tired old arguments around here, so I hope you won’t mind if I copy and paste from an older article, rather than type up this same argument yet again:

The key to egalitarian society is not obliterating individuality or denying the uniqueness of each individual, but in multiple dimensions of power. If we look at any one dimension, we might see a de facto hierarchy of influence emerge. The most respected shaman, for example, wields much more power in spiritual matters than a young, untested shaman. However, shamanic power is not the only dimension of power. There is hunting skill, oratory, tool making, or any number of other dimensions. The elder shaman is unlikely to also be the best hunter, and neither will likely be the most accomplished tool maker. Even an individual who does not dominate any dimension may wield more overall influence than even the most accomplished hunter, by averaging higher across all dimensions; a “jack of all trades” can have as much influence as a “master of one.” When we overlay all these dimensions of power into a single graph, in an egalitarian society we are left simply with a bi-directional graph. In a hierarchical society, there are very few dimensions of power, and even those there are, are concentrated into the hands of the few. The website “They Rule” illustrates this nicely by allowing users to navigate the small, exclusive oligarchy that controls nearly all political and economic power in the modern United States.

This is the dichotomy we face: hierarchy versus everything else. Rhizome, cellular organization, the tribe–whatever we call it, it represents at least some part of the enormous diversity possible outside of hierarchy. It is home to nearly the entire range of possibilities. Any type of graph except the pyramidal command structure will do—anything that fosters the emergent complexity of the world, rather than smothers it.

So yes, the wise old man vs. the young fool presents a hierarchy. So does the swift young man vs. the crippled old man. Who’s on top of that society’s hierarchy? You might say they take turns being on top, or you might more accurately say that neither is on top. It’s egalitarian, but egalitarianism does not require unique personal strengths to be ignored. In fact, when we value others—when societies are small enough to value others—egalitarianism follows naturally, because we recognize that while some are better at some things, in the ultimate analysis, we all balance out about the same.

Your esteemed mentors and professors at your college were your superiors in terms of knowledge and social standing, so higher up in the hierarchy, yet you still had respect for them didn’t you?

Certainly not as “superiors,” but I did respect their knowledge and learning. Yet that respect had to be maintained in spite of the inherent animosity of the hierarchical relationship.

In the same way you can have benign power structures in families. I don’t respect the decisions of my children to run onto busy streets, I assert my superior knowledge and wisdom to restrain them by using my position of authority within the family. If that makes me a sicko then so be it, better to be a sicko than a fool with dead children.

As I pointed out to Gillis above, this is not the only way to raise your kids. There are ways to respect your children’s autonomy and raise them in a healthy manner. You should also read “Preconquest Consciousness,” or Jean Liedloff’s Continuum Concept, or observe how Kalahari Bushmen raise their children. The perverse and dysfunctional nature of most civilized families, rooted in hierarchical power-relationships, is the ultimate root of civilization’s perverse and dysfunctional power dynamic. It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way. Unfortunately, most people just assume that it has always been this way, and it can’t be any other way. That assumption shuts down the question of how it could be otherwise. I’ll bet it never even occured to you that it could be otherwise, much less that it has been, is now, and in fact is the far more common way, am I right? It’s utterly pathological, but don’t take it too hard; all of us have been driven more than a little psychotic by the way we live.

As for taking everyones view into consideration, do you let three year old children dictate how the budget is to be set? Ever find yourself with a cupboard full of “froot loops” and not a bit of good food in sight? Allowing members of a group to dictate beyond their knowledge & wisdom would seem to be the swift path to dysfunctionality and destruction.

It would seem like that if you’ve spent your whole life being told that mom & dad/teacher/the professor/your boss/the president/insert your favorite authority figure here knows best, wouldn’t it? But have you ever put that assumption to the test? Have you ever bothered to go and try to find out? Obviously not. Most people never do, and that’s rather the goal. But now your unexamined assumptions are staring you right in the eye. Read Sorenson, and even Liedloff. It doesn’t work the way you’ve been told.

Rather that there is an age where a child begins to feel they have outgrown their position in any hierarchy and for whatever reason other members of the group aren’t ready to shift structure.

This doesn’t happen in most societies. They recognize when a child’s role in society has shifted; not their role in the hierarchy, but their role in society. Being a child or an adult in a tribe means something, but it’s not a change in social power. Rather, it’s more often about taking on responsibilities, and perhaps recieving some special initiations that mark the onset of those responsibilities. But there isn’t a greater say, or even a greater respect, that comes along with that, just a different role.

The Australian aboriginies have had tribal elders for quite a while IIRC, but they don’t appear in their paintings and there are no monuments to these people. They have their authority and they aren’t driven by the ego considerations that you would project onto them as “necessary” to qualify as hierarchical.

The Australian aboriginal elders also aren’t anything like a hierarchy. They have nothing we would recognize as “authority.” Words don’t mean more just because they come from an elder. They have a different role, with different responsibilities, but a tribe’s decision making can be influenced as much by an infant as by an elder. The only greater influence they wield is if they can make a convincing argument. The only thing they can convince people to do is what they already want to do. They actually are depicted in aboriginal rock art, but not as hierarchs, because they’re not. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of aboriginal society, a typical projection of European dynamics on aboriginal society.

To set the record straight I’m not a degreed student of archaeology.

I just have a bachelor in anthropology and computer science, not archaeology specifically, but here we are talking about the origins of hierarchy and agriculture. It’s something I’ve read up on. From your responses, I’m getting the creeping suspicion that you have no idea what you’re talking about in this area. Is that correct?

…with the proviso that the further back in time we go the more uncertainty there is about any conclusions we can draw.

Yeah, except that’s not true. If you knew what you’re talking about, you’d know we actually have a great deal of very solid evidence that points to some fairly clear conclusions. It’s statements like this that make me suspect you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Take for instance your conclusion that with the advent of agriculture we see larger houses attached to granaries, pointing to some form of hierarchy. This is a possible conclusion, but not the only one. It is equally possible that these were egalitarian societies that communually built houses, the size of which depended on the size of the family they were intended to house. Then again, maybe the people in the smaller house were higher up the social ladder and for this reason didn’t have to put up with their inlaws?

From the summary description I gave, those would be possible interpretations. But the archaeological evidence shows that these are clearly personal residences for a single family and servants. I mentioned this as short-hand because everyone in this discussion with some familiarity with the subject manner should be well-acquainted with the evidence I’m referring to. You obviously are not. So again, do you have any idea what you’re talking about?

On top of this, community gardens probably wont be capable of supplying grains and meats on the scale that larger communities will desire, so, combined with a shift to farmers markets, farmers will be in a better position to supply the commodities that are needed.

That would make it much more disastrous, yes. Even more land put to monocropped cereal grains will make agriculture even more of a catastrophe.

Of course. What you’re objecting to our “Global Culture” has to do with its rigidity not its globalization. Globalization in the sense of increased connectivity worldwide

What is globalization?

1. The increasing world-wide integration of markets for goods, services and capital that attracted special attention in the late 1990s. 2. Also used to encompass a variety of other changes that were perceived to occur at about the same time, such as an increased role for large corporations (MNCs) in the world economy and increased intervention into domestic policies and affairs by international institutions such as the IMF, WTO, and World Bank. 3. Among countries outside the United States, especially developing countries, the term sometimes refers to the domination of world economic affairs and commerce by the United States.

As far as I am aware, these are the 3 “expected” defintions of globalization. You may want to take that into consideration in the future. Most notable in these definitions is a lack of the concetps: “rigidity”, “fluidity”, or “connection”. Now, implicity in these definitions is a lack of fluidity, increased rigidity, and abusive or dominance-based relationships/connections.

increased non-linearity, which is the same thing as fluidity.

I understand that there is [b]some[/b] correlation between nonlinearity & fluidity, however, there is no required causation (per current mathematical thought). At this point, it falls on you to prove:

1) the nonlinearity of which you speak exists or will/can exist

2) the nonlinearity of which you speak will produce more fluidity

Neither of these should be accepted at face value, as there no safe assumption between nonlinearity & fluidity.

The problem with breaking down into ‘local cultural autonomy’ is that it creates net rigidities (when compared to a globalized anarchy). Personal relationship structures are more ingrained, societies are less capable of reforming around a social cancer because they have less society at hand to act as antibodies, there’s less room for spontaneous creation/adaptation/evolution because regional clusters have less resources, etc, etc… Basic systems dynamics. It’s pretty easy to see.

Honestly, this just damn near struck me speechless. I think my most articulate response is:

…….

wtf?

…….

But Godesky can’t stand anything smacking of a slow, managed collapse because even if the endpoint is the same it’ll mean compromise and engagement with the system instead of instant personal gratification. Plus people tend to like technology and if given time to prepare or weather through they might salvage more tech than he would like and maybe even continue the progression to more fluid tech.

You’re making an awful lot of personal judgements here, aren’t you? You don’t think it’s possible that Jason believes it isn’t an option because he can’t see a way thru the assorted physical, technical & systemic? Interesting.

Perhaps you could explain to me why traditional anarchist struggles, actions and pursuits are trivial compared with Anthropik’s survivalism.

I would think by now, it would be pretty obvious that I’m “not up to snuff” on “traditional anarchist struggles, actions and pursuits”. Trying to not speak out my ass, I did a quick google search. So, I’m going assume that you’re refering to some mixture of the following:

strikes, marches, protests, demonstrations, boycotts, occupations

or

fighting to get rid of the system that causes the problems which people fight again.

or

seek the root causes of societal problems.

I wouldn’t call any of these trivial (at least, not necessarily, some of them like strikes & demonstrations can be situational, speaking of which….).

I came across this bit:

“Consider yourself how foolish and inefficient is the present form of labour organisation in which one trade or craft may be on strike while the other branches of the same industry continue to work. Is it not ridiculous that when the street car workers of New York, for instance, quit work, the employees of the subway, the cab and omnibus drivers remain on the job? . . . It is clear, then, that you compel compliance [from your bosses] only when you are determined, when your union is strong, when you are well organised, when you are united in such a manner that the boss cannot run his factory against your will. But the employer is usually some big . . . company that has mills or mines in various places. . . If it cannot operate . . . in Pennsylvania because of a strike, it will try to make good its losses by continuing . . . and increasing production [elsewhere]. . . In that way the company . . . breaks the strike.” [Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism, pp. 53-54]

Doesn’t this mean that globalization (by my definition(s) above) works against anarchy by allowing the reigning corporations to relocate their workers to countries more amenable to the corporations’ needs?

Anyway, it’s a little difficult for me to say why any of these activities are necessarily more (or less) trivial compared to Anthropik’s statements. But that’s primarily because there isn’t really any mutual exclusivity. In fact, it seems like much of it is exactly what Anthropik has been encouraging: community building, sustainable (or at least much, much more sustainable) permaculture/gardening/etc, providing support for potentially culture-changing media….

I hope you can see where I’m having difficulty in understanding why you keep complaining about Anthropik and then turn around and say we should be doing things….that Anthropik has been encouraging. It’s a little perplexing.

It’s the utilitarianism. I suppose I could do to cover this point in depth, I’ll make a note to put together a rigorous deconstruction of utilitarianism and how it’s utterly incoherent.

Don’t misunderstand me to think I’m talking about utilitarianism. I’m talking about limits.

It’s really weird the way that framing of the debate Godesky used has split people. I mean I could argue that your stance is in fact subject to all the negative connotations you have with “idealism.”

You could, but it would be a mistake, as I don’t have an enourmous amount of negative baggage for idealism. Nevertheless, I accept that I have limits. I don’t accept them uncritically, but I do accept them.

But truth is I think there’s a sharp cultural element. Most of my folks see that self-acknowledged split and they think you’ve just given up the debate in a particularly drastic and catastrophic crash. “I mean pragmatism? How much more depraved, inane and despicable can you get?” Godesky’s readers see that split and they get all comfortable and smug. “Fucking idealists. Off in their own little world, willfully divorced from reality.”

Now, those are fighting words. That’s not an exageration, and it’s not meant to be funny. I’m very serious about that. I’ve cooled down a lot since first reading it (benefits of having this discussion over the ‘net). But, yeah, them’s fightin’ words.

You seem to be willfully indulging in wild speculation and making baseless value judgements left & right. It’s very frustrating.

Without really delving into it I get the impression there’s some seriously complex things going on with all the roots of this split. It’d make for a wonderful investigation…

Of course there are complex things going on with this split. But, I’m inclined to think that when you say that, you’re implying that the “pragmatism” side has “issues”.

Well, the best forager cultures don’t. Free societies heal wounds and institute aggressive anti-bodies to psychoses of power. But enough fail (in consequence of their physical and social limitations) to be a problem and eventually morph into Civ-esque cultures repeatedly.

Okay, so, talk to me more about this. What do you see as the critical difference in systems between “Free societies” and those that morph into “Civ-esque cultures”? (and don’t say freedom or lack of hierarchy w/o a lengthy explanation of what leads to the divergence, that’s a cop out)

Also, do you have any concrete examples of each society?

If you already have urls (by yourself or others) that you feel explain these points sufficiently, feel free to post those. I don’t want you to feel you have to tread old ground.

Egalitarianism isn’t something going on in the mind, it’s a pattern of behavior. I don’t need to know what people are thinking to know if they’re acting in an egalitarian manner or not; I can just observe them. Same goes for any other animal.

William’s response to this covers my thoughts on the matter perfectly:

If his intentions were the shrewd acquisition of social power/standing and the psychological vectors of control that come with it we would hardly call the situation egalitarian. His intention matters. Psychologies matter.

To better illustrate the rift:

The two of us are standing in the forest watching some wolves around a carcass. One wolf eats before the others, or even with certain other members, but other members are driven away until these first eaters have had their fill.

I would take this to be a scenario that is devoid of any interpretive elements, so far, would you agree?

I look at this scene and see some wolves that are ascendant over other