Had a commenter in the last post say that humans always over-consume. When I said that commons had been stable for as long as centuries they answered that this was true, but that those families produced too many kids.
Humans change how they do things. Once we didn’t fly. Once there had never been democracy. Once there had never been kings. Once there were no domesticated animals. Once there were no monotheisms. Once there we no… (insert a million examples.)
If we assume that human nature is always bad or good, we’re fools. Human nature has a lot of range and is very dependent on conditioning.
Right now all the usual fools are screaming that there aren’t enough children being born.
So… we know that sometimes humans don’t over-produce babies and we know that sometimes, very long periods, humans manage commons.
Is there some way we can put those two things together at a reasonable replacement rate? Can we find a way to have a relatively stable non overconsuming good society to live in?
Can we change culture so that over-consumption and display is regarded with revulsion? Certainly there have been cultures like that.
Change is possible and because change is possible better worlds are possible. Because change is possible, worse worlds are also possible.
But we operate on the assumption that human nature allows for good outcomes because if we operate on the assumption that it doesn’t, then all that is left is to sit back and wait for extinction. And if we assume no solutions are possible, and they are, well, we won’t find them, having already written them off.
Intellectual honesty is “I don’t know if we can find a better solution but I also don’t know that we can’t, and I do know that humans have often found new ways of doing things.”
A better world is easy enough to imagine. And that’s the first step to change: find a pole star and navigate by it. We chose “let’s organize our society around greed” as a polestar and it changed the world. Now it’s running us off a cliff.
Perhaps there are other polestars which would work better?
Humans generally change societies radically after a crisis. But when they do so, they reach for the ideas that are hanging around. If those ideas aren’t good ones (neoliberalism in the 70s, for example) humans will turn a crisis into something worse by choosing a cure that is worse than disease.
So the job is to make sure good ideas hanging around. Eric Anderson has suggested a land ethic. Make your suggestions in the comments.
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Feral Finster
If you want a different ethic, then you need different incentives. Even the Soviets knew that.
If altruism were rewarded, we’d all be altruists.
Ian Welsh
I’ve been intimately involved with incentives in previous jobs. They always produce perverse behaviour and have to be treated like radioactive rocks.
That our society doesn’t rewards altruism doesn’t mean that’s true off all societies. It, in fact, is not.
Bob
Unfortunately, there is no collective entity called “we” that can decide what path to take. I highly doubt that changes in the past were decided by the collective. The enclosure was carried out by a small group of people intent on grabbing for themselves what the larger mass couldn’t prevent them from grabbing.
Were any social changes brought about by a broad consensus? The mechanism doesn’t even exist (please don’t suggest that voting means anything).
Did any comittee meet to discuss whether or not to domesticate certain animals? Did the mass decide to accept rule by kings? Did “we” decide to form the insurance industry or sacrifice a virgin for a good harvest?
As far as I can tell there has never been any mechanism by which the collective has chosen this or that course of action.
Such a mechanism does not exist now. If there was, the overwhelming majority is not even interested enough in the state of our societies and civilisation to have meaningful overview of reality. They certainly wouldn’t even know where to start thinking about power, energy, consumption, pollution and all that.
The zeit of the geist or something like that, sets the tone, the social egregore, demons or cosmic flows or aeons maybe? “We” are just here for the ride.
That’s not to say it’s useless to think about what might constitute useful actions, positive values, meaningful resistance and so on. But there is no deliberate and conscious way to effect change on such a massive collection of 8 billion apes.
Ian Welsh
Of course there is. Marx, Christ, Confucius, Smith and many many others have created movements and ideas which changed how we lived.
I’m always amazed at the amount of learned helplessness in my comments and among my commenters. Nothing can be done is damn near the universal cry.
mago
Fraternity, equality and the right to life.
Nurturing and cultivating natural resources for the benefit of all.
Protecting rather than exploiting the voiceless and dependent e.g., the elderly, the young and animals.
Contextual rather than rigid rule based justice systems.
Compassion, kindness and respect for others.
These are a few possible examples, thinking off the top of my head.
It’s possible. It’s happened in the cycles of existence.
Believing the lies and propaganda that we’ve been swimming in leads to nihilistic and cynical thinking. Sadly, the smarter you think you are in some ways makes you dumber.
Learned helplessness as our host terms it.
There are better ways and pathways rooted in traditional wisdom. Too bad we’ve gone so far astray.
spud
hudson covers the history of keeping the bankers out of government, and what’s known as debt jubilees.
we can expand the open spaces much much more. a society where almost all people can be considered well off, produces fewer children. no need to over produce children like in a poor country when the parents know half may not make it into adult hood.
the rich and the powerful always under estimate human curiosity and the ability to innovate.
they believe they have merit, and that their genes are superior. they have nothing but contempt for the lower classes, and they mostly believe in eugenics.
but all one needs to understand what its like to try to catch mice. humans are better at evading then even mice, once they are forced into survival mode.
solar generators and e-bikes are a form of evasion. that form, will only gain more followers, as time goes on. this will of course enrage the rich.
solar powered fans, solar powered air conditioners.
https://www.walmart.com/search?q=solar+powered+window+fans
https://www.walmart.com/search?q=solar%20powered%20air%20conditioner&typeahead=solar%20powered%20air
Feral Finster
@Ian: “Human nature has a lot of range and is very dependent on conditioning.” – I. Welsh
I am simply agreeing with that statement. Incentives are one way to achieve that conditioning.
different clue
@Bob,
I voted for Abdul el-Sayed in the Primary. I will vote for Abdul el-Sayed in the Election.
If that makes you mad, then that makes me happy.
Jan Wiklund
The rock-bottom reason why good solutions are possible is that cooperation produces higher yields than cheating and violence. It’s for that reason social animals are more evolutionary successful than lone hunters. We know that, both theoretically (Robert Axelrod: The evolution of cooperation, 1984) and practically (Frans de Waal, The bonobo and the atheist, 2013).
Sadly, humans are more inventive than is good for them. There are always a lot of fools who think they can cheat the system. 99 percent of them fail but the last percent succeed, for pure statistical reasons – or better provisions from the start – , and make a lot of mischief by mass-projecting their success.
People have always tried to counter the 1 percent by inventing moral systems. Sadly, these are too moralistic to convince. We need more facts about the usual failures of those who try to cheat the system, to make it stick that most of them fail. Particularly good examples would also do. Make them seem ridiculous!
Mark Level
I have been in Mexico for nearly a week; now I am in the Yucatan Peninsula where I am planning to stay.
I see that the conditions promoted by the government here are generally better for the majority. Something like the New Deal continues to exist here. One obvious example– for gasoline, Pemex is the standard (though as I have moved South, there are other alternatives, some may be private.)
At every service station, there are men or women who pump the gas for you, a jobs program. This is something (being so old) that I used to see in the US when I was young, up to more or less the mid-70s. When we get to a nice (not top shelf, but decent) restaurant, there are men or women with flags who direct you (politely) how to park– not too close to the curb, mind you. I assume this is a way to enforce mores of politeness. (More the sociological term, a standard widely assumed of basic cooperation with others.)
Not to say that there isn’t corruption here, or crimes of opportunity. Currently I’m staying at a good hotel while I seek to rent a place for 6 months or so nearby. I have 3 good choices, am taking my time to pick one. I have to stay at a good hotel as 6 days in, me & my buddy (who flew back yesterday) were victimized by an attempted crime. We were tired after days on the road the 5th day, in the small burg of Coatzacoalcos we stopped at what seemed to be a decent hotel. Nice pool, restaurant, beautiful jardin (garden) surrounding the 4 sides of the hotel with birds, greenery.
Only 3 people saw my card; a pair that checked us in, and the waiter in the restaurant; we left the next morning satisfied on the surface. When we gassed up, suddenly the Credit Card I used was blocked, for my “safety” by the Credit Union in NorCal I still use. I’m not complaining, luckily I have my 2nd, more secure American Express card, which I used as a fall-back. High security, and they’re not gonna yank it, and leave me begging a family member or my Financial Adviser to send me an emergency $2K.
I had to contact a trusted professional in the US to set up a conference call with my CU (credit union.) Tomorrow we will have a follow-up, as I have to stay in a pricier hotel until the “5 days” for the CU to send me a new card. That’s 5 days in the US, it may be longer here. I’m hoping not . . .
In any case, took a large amount of pesos out the next day in the next city we were in, Ciudad del Carmen, gorgeous place, a peninsula on the way to the triad of cities I’m looking at: Merida, the resort town; funkier and poorer mostly than the reputation it has a resort & party spot, Progreso, right on the beach where I was yesterday, and Valladolid, where I originally wanted to stay but is a bit inaccessible by the roads . . .
International travel isn’t easy, luckily I had a lot of experience in Mexico when younger. It has changed a lot as I haven’t been here since c. 2008, much more developed. I’ll write a future post later, earliest problema was when my buddy, the skilled Navigator for most of the way, missed where he had put our money for a toll (he has occasional mental fugues, it was in his pocket), this was the only time we were in a seriously bad situation.
As “gringos”, we got a pass; surprisingly this is a place where the Police are calm, measured and not abusive. I had a cop with a semi-automatic to accompany me across four lanes of traffic on the other side of the toll booth to the admin building. I still had $$$ on me (now I have only pesos) and I bargained with another cop there to exchange money. Something I’d done the day before with a guy at a gas station, got a better exchange rate than at the official Casa de Cambios. He might’ve gotten a $2-3 advantage with me, well worth it. In the meantime my friend found the pesos he’d misplaced, and was directed in a friendly way with support to the side I was on.
We had to go back North a bit, use a “Retorno” to get back on the mainline and continue. I forgave my friend as he’d done an excellent job of navigation up to that point; it was a hiccup and not a serious problem. In the US, the cops would’ve likely insulted us at least, issued a ticket for an infraction, etc.
My friend had traced a route for us that went entirely through safe zones, lowest threats, level one and two, using not just a State Dept. map but also better information from a UK website. We had something for protection on the way. Not a knife or gun but bear spray. But I have run across no gangs, and where I am now it is very pacific and safe.
I’ll dilate more later on the advantages of Mexico, assuming things continue to go mostly well. I blame the Credit Card problem on bureaucracy, which under Capitalism is pretty bad. I found the Mexican Embassy in Albuquerque to be pretty lousy as well. They demanded a ream of paperwork to prove my financial solvency to live here. And not just a Zip file from my computer, I had to print 2 years of records from my credit union, which even while still in Santa Fe preparing to leave was a hardship. When we got there, the lower level guy was ready to approve us, BUT his Supervisor was “sick”, could we wait 3 days there to start the trip?
Uhm, no. I can easily prove it here. I had hoped to purchase a Permanent Status level Visa, but have to have $3 million to buy that. I can buy a 4-year Visa here, and am close to either the Guatemalan or Belize border when I have to leave, which won’t be for awhile.
Only 2 little hassles on the road in over a week, both can and have been resolved, well the 2nd nearly so. Everyone we’ve interacted with has been muy amable (add an i after the m if you can’t decode the word). I had the most fear and negativity in Texas, but met a great humanitarian who helped with a minor issue, changing our license plate, at an AutoZone. With my New Mexico plate I blend in here well; my Spanish is very solid. I had a cop stop me en route due to no front plate, I told him we don’t have them in Santa Fe (true) and paused for him to see the back plate. It has a red and green Chile on it, that’s Santa Fe (& South of the border) food culture.
I’ll end on a positive note with that. We had kept on my previous license plate from Minnesota until we were within 25 miles of the border. LOTS of Border Patrol, next to no ICE as we approached it. Border Patrol were friendly and nice. When we left the US, only asked one question, “Are you both citizens?” “Yes.” Through in seconds.
Across the border the only brief hiccup was show you’re vehicle is registered. My buddy had to rifle thru the glove compartment for a couple of minutes, finally found my car insurance and the Mexican official accepted that (as his English may’ve been limited.) One and done.
I have a decent-sized check to open a bank account here from closing my Santa Fe account, need to get a local address first. Checking after the weekend to see if my current hotel can provide that, likely it will work. Despite the small setbacks I remain hopeful and should be established very soon. And my mood has lightened and I am far less paranoid about daily interactions since leaving the Belly of the Beast.
From the Travel Journal of Marco del Nivel; aka Mark Level.
Bob
@dc
It doesn’t make me mad. He supports the existence of the vile genocidal entity though. No one who would act against the way things are will be able to do so within the existing system.
If you take comfort in voting for something, that’s your business. If you think that will bring about change, that’s your prerogative. That’s one clever way the ruling class prevent the masses from ever doing anything meaningful. They provide you a pacifier (which in English we call a dummy).
Meanwhile, Marx was one bloke who provided inspiration for various small groups to seize power in their respective states and to rule thise states apparently according to Marx’s recommendations. How did that involve a broad consensus any more than the enclosures or capitalism? Small groups of men seize the reins of power and they act in their own interests. The public at large is propagandised to follow.
The possibility of societies where the masses all partake in determining the way society is managed isn’t indicated by that. At least to me.
GlassHammer
Ian,
You have spoken at length about meditation and mental strengthening, I think that is either a precursor to a positive change or… occurs simultaneously with a positive change.
I have too many contacts that tell me, “I am thinking of several dozen things at once all the time so I can’t focus like I used to.” Its nearly impossible to change when mental focus is that poor.
Carborundum
Completely agree that humans don’t always over-consume / over-populate. I have spent some time thinking about many of the examples I recall from my anthropological training and ongoing experience as political economy cog – a couple of thoughts:
1) Not infrequently, the cultural practices that come to mind primarily serve to reduce inequality. The impacts on total system consumption are frequently more by-product than direct objective. I suspect that the impact on system consumption is often times pumped up and used as part of the overt narrative “sell” to mask the primary egalitarian function (particularly when these practices bump up against modern states).
2) One of the really key questions is the extent to which these cultural practices are known in conditions like our current one (i.e., in contexts dominated by complex, post-industrial societies edging closer to / careening past carrying capacity)? I can think of some examples, but not any at meaningful scale that don’t ultimately depend on the authority of state institutions, which is a significant limiting factor given the extent to which these institutions are currently non-responsive to impulses towards moderation.
Relatedly, it’s important to remember that societies don’t *require* crisis to undergo significant change. (Though I think crisis is probably required for change to be rapid.) The largest part of the systemic undoing of the post WW-II system was very intentionally and patiently fostered by a fairly small number of actors. And yes, they did this specifically by making sure that the ideas “hanging around” the political economy were ones conducive to their aims. The more people understand this, the less likely they are to assume positions of helplessness.
sbt1942
The manager at the “eco-institute” where I live and work asserts that independence – and voluntary interdependence – comes much closer when one lives in a humble home with a big garden. Many problems just melt away (well, that’s his assertion anyway). Based on what I’ve done and seen, I feel like I’m convinced.
Ditto on the solar power generators, ebikes, and of spreading kindness, all mentioned earlier. I believe the latter of these three is within all our powers to cultivate.
Eric F
Yes, exactly.
And by my reading – Graeber & Wengrow’s ‘Dawn of Everything’ is a good example – our species has done this kind of reset before.
I’m thinking about how the Haudenosaunee (Iriquois) peoples worked purposely to prevent another Cahokia.
Similarly, what we have right now is an excellent example of what to avoid.
Fortunately, we know some things about what the Haudenosaunee did and how their system worked.
Unfortunately, it’s not very common knowledge.
spamned
Surprised no one has mentioned Garret Hardin’s famous essay “The Tragedy of the Commons”
I learned of this culture making argument from my son while he was attending a small aggie school in SoOregon as a natural resource major…(they also taught him that the only way to save land, trees, rivers, PEOPLE was to put a price on them)
There have been other anthropologists who have challenged Hardin’s thesis (deeply inserted into our milieu) and the conclusions it comes to about ‘human nature’…
https://sustainability.shiksha/ecological-economics/tragedy-of-the-commons-hardin-critiques/
Feral Finster
Funny, i was reading Bob’s first post and questioning whether he was a Marxist. I guess he answered my own question.
Funny that Ian brought up Marx as his first example, as if Marx taught nothing else, he taught that values, politics, culture, etc. are all superstructure, dependent on the base of economic relations and technological abilities.
Marx would say that he didn’t and could not change anything, rather changes in the means of production made change inevitable, whether he or any of us wanted it or not. (Lenin and the development of concept of the vanguard party, not to mention Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism all came along, because the change didn’t take place as predicted).
Ian Welsh
Marx’s ideas changed the world, and if he didn’t really believe they might, he wouldn’t have bothered publicizing them or working hard for socialism, which he did.
And he’s wrong about material circumstances changing everything.
Confucius died believing he had failed.
Ian Welsh
There are managed commons in Switzerland which have existed for 800 years.
Managed commons are quite stable: they collapse most often under the pressure of elites or outsiders. (Enclosure being the most common way, people pushing into a managed commons being the other.)
Eric Anderson
Ian, I’m not saying we cant change. I’m saying we have little power over when and how it occurs. We’ll survive the crash as a species. And the surviving generations will not walk away without a moral/ethical imprint. I’m not saying it’ll be a land ethic — that would be nice of course. But, it’ll be different than it is now at an epigenetic level.
I’m saying, we won’t reinvent until after the crash. It won’t be prevented. It’s baked in.
And in a different vein of argument. Again, yes. There are examples of ecologically sustainable cultural arrangements. But what I’m talking about can’t be studied because the arc of the super-predator exhausting the prey (our entire planetary resource base) is too long. Pray tell … how does one design that study???
And over the arc of human history, the norm has been overconsume. The rare exception is sustainability. Rare enough, that these exceptions literally prove the rule.
The reinvention of the reptile brain, the only thing that separates us from red in tooth and claw,, is only accomplished by deprivation so severe it forces the sentient species’ neocortex to override the reptile brain to survive.
We call these overrides morals and ethics.
Eric Anderson
And it’s not learned helplessness Ian. It’s a cold grasp on biological science and human psychology.
As you keep mentioning, we’re at the end phase. The vultures are ripping the social norms apart in a mad bloody scramble to enclose everything.
In short, we’re going the opposite direction at exponentially increasing speed.
And here’s the other reason that might look like learned helplessness, but is really just pure rage: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fG_2oPLarG0&pp=0gcJCWoCo7VqN5tD&ra=m
Tool — Aenema
Ian Welsh
Eric,
disagree on it being rare. It’s common, for centuries at a time. Literally 800 years in some cases.
Agree that change won’t come before collapse. But when that happens the ideas on the ground matter: if they are “it’s impossible not to overconsume, we can’t change because we’re just stupid monkeys”, well, that’s what you’ll get.
Eric Anderson
Cuz moms gonna fix it all soon.
Moms comin round to put it back the way it oughta be.
Brian M
The problem, well, a problem, is that we (in the West, generally, and in the US in particular) live in a world where we have decided that money/wealth represents value. We have constructed a system where everything is measured in money and traded for money, making the acquisition of money necessary. Indeed, it is the primary concern for the vast majority of people. Those that don’t have enough need more to survive. Those that have more than enough need more to keep up with each other.
The world is full of excellent ideas. Good thinkers with compelling arguments for how we might transition to a sustainable world, albeit at a different level of technology and lifestyle, but sustainable and with a good quality of life.
Good ideas, like seeds, need fertile ground in which to grow. In a culture where money and profit is paramount, where we are (practically from birth) taught to worship wealth and aspire to have more, always more, it is very, very hard to find that fertile ground for ideas that will, necessarily, result in some level of sacrifice. In a culture of ever more, convincing people that less is for not just the greater good but their own good is a tough ask. Going without, making do with less, third-party politics, and hundreds of other examples can all sound good in theory. But try to execute them in the current culture and you soon find yourself at a disadvantage relative to those who are pushing on the status quo full speed ahead.
In a way, what you have is a Gresham’s Dynamic where current bad values/culture drive out new good values/culture. Our system rewards, I would argue selects, for narcissism and sociopathy. A willingness to push the acceptable boundaries (laws, culture, regulations, values, conventions, etc) beyond their limits creates an advantage in a world that measures financial results (quantity) rather than moral results (quality). Those who try to change the system by voicing new ideas, no matter how good, in the hope of creating a new system are at a decided disadvantage within the system that currently exists. It is very hard for them to gain the traction necessary to generate the momentum required to successfully change the culture.
That said, crisis breeds opportunity. If/when things get bad enough, desperate people will begin to open up to ideas that were previously considered self-defeating. As the current system and its values fail to meet people’s needs, values change and what was previously difficult to impossible can become possible. Can we create ideas and plans and systems that are wise enough and practical enough to be ready to go when that opportunity arises?
For the most part Marx, Confucius, Smith, Christ and many others were not successful at changing the systems in their own times. The systems changed later, when existing systems faltered and people went looking for new answers and options. Those people had put ideas in place to be found. Eventually they were (some to the good, others not so much, most a mixed bag). Under normal conditions, it is incredibly hard to actually change existing systems, from either the outside (because you can be denied access and reach) or the inside (because you can’t get inside unless you share the insiders’ views). But conditions eventually change. Define the ideas, concepts, values, and systems that can lead to a better world when the current systems fail.
different clue
Ian Welsh has referrenced the Land Ethic which Eric Anderson has referred to in the past.
I don’t know if this is the same Land Ethic, but a working active productive conservationist / ecologist named Aldo Leopold thought about what a Land Ethic would be and involve. He wrote an article about that which was one of the chapters in his book A Sand County Almanac.
Here is a link to a pdf of that chapter.
https://faculty.lsu.edu/kharms/files/leopold_1949.pdf
Eric F has referrenced the Haudenosaunee as a possible source of foundational thinking about what an eco-bio all-beings-together shared survival ethic would like like and offer as a starting point for a population of billions to think forward from.
Some Haudenosaunee authors wrote a book once called A Basic Call To Consciousness: the Haudenosaunee Message to the Western World.
Here is the message itself which , as I remember, introduced the book.
https://www.silene.ong/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Declaracio_Haudenosaunee_1977.pdf
Here is a pdf of the text of the address itself as delivered at Geneva , Switzerland in 1977.
” A Basic Call to Consciousness ( the Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World)
https://www.ronliskey.com/docs/a-basic-call-to-consciousness-address-to-the-western-world-by-the-hau-de-no-sau-nee.pdf
It is all worth reading. For some guidance on putting Spiritualism into a “land ethic”, the chapter entitled: “Spiritualism: the highest form of political consciousness” is worth reading nice and slow. It goes from page 7 to page 13.
About Garrett Hardin .. . I remember reading Tragedy of the Commons long ago. And I remember reading all the vitriolic condemnation of that essay. But the essay did not say the tragedy was inevitable, and it did not call for division of the Commons into individually owned Private Properties. What it suggested as a way out of the tragedy was ” Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed On” , a set of culturally embedded sustainability-maintaining practices by everyone in that Commons System which could be enforced against and imposed upon any self-maximizing individual who attempted to overuse the Commons relative to everyone else living within that Commons. I have noticed that many malicious people deliberately leave that out in order to disinterpret and discharacterize Hardin as calling for individualized divisionist privatization.
Theo Haris
The best idea I’ve come across, which mystics and holy people all over the world for millenia insist is not only an idea but an ontological reality, is that there is only one human being on this planet, in 8 billion bodies; that we are all cells in the body of humanity.
If we brought up our children with this notion, then there would be no Other to harm, since the one we harm when we misttreat others is our own self. There would be no abstract “future generations” to suffer from today’s choices – it is still us who will experience the future, the One Human that inhabitants this planet and comes of age gradually through experience and assuming responsibility.
No enemy, no ubermensch, no exceptionalism, no underlings, only our restored primordial unity.
Jan Wiklund
The most convincing theory about why inequality actually diminished between about 1930 and 1980 is that this was the flourishing time of trade unions. Ordinary people combined against the profiteers and forced them to renounce some of their profits.
This was not footed in individual ethics but in the understanding that doing it together would help better than trying to do it alone.
Since then the whole media world has combined to make “doing it alone” the only business in town – with predictable results.
I believe nobody is fooled any longer. It is only about overcoming the fear of taking the first steps back to a more realistic view. Plus, of course, that organizing is more difficult in a rentierist society than in an industrialist one.
mago
Theo Haris: only our restored primordial unity.
Just that
Have you been studying Samantabhadra’s aspirational prayer?