Rationalizing, Storytelling, and Narrative-Generating Apes
First off, before I get started with the heavy stuff, I hope that you and yours have had a wonderful holiday season and I wish you a Happy New Year! OK, now onto less celebratory and more serious material.
There are people who want to cling to civilization because this is the only life they've ever known. Then, there are others who realize that this way of life CANNOT be continued, period. Attempting to continue this set of living arrangements WILL cause the extirpation of our species, along with countless other organisms. Even if we attempted to end civilization right now, there is no guarantee that there is a tomorrow for our species. Let's say an EMP takes out the electrical grid in the USA, which proceeds to end industrial civilization as we know it. Over the following months, billions of people would die from starvation, disease, predatory behavior, and other issues caused by collapse. Climate change would possibly be stymied for a short period of time by the massive amount of aerosols released from burning of wood and plastics caused by millions of people trying to stay warm and cooking any available food, but once these aerosols are washed out of the atmosphere, climate change would be supercharged with the additional carbon dioxide produced along with an absence of aerosols from fossil fuel burning (the aerosol masking effect). Ultimately, we're in a double bind, which means that most people will probably decide to live in as much comfort as possible until the end. I have little doubt that some people will go against the grain and follow a more ecological path, especially those who understand ecological overshoot. Trying to predict a precise outcome, of course, is a fool's errand; too many interconnecting and interacting processes are involved.
Nate Hagens did another Frankly (#51) just before the end of December which goes a little bit into some short-term predictions if you can read between the lines. Despite his preview, I didn't see this as being all that dark. I mean that what he talks about here is pretty much what has been predicted for quite some time, it is just now beginning to be realized. Of course I understand that it is rather dark for "the holidays" of the season, but this podcast is about reality, not fantasy bedtime stories. He also did a two-part series with Canadian Prepper with this second video being the more important video from my perspective. Again, I think trying to focus on specifics is fraught with hazards; it's better to look at general trends and trajectories to make sense of what is going on. Geopolitical maneuvering being what it is, outcomes could be wildly different than first imagined. I think MANY people miss a lot of these geopolitical moves that are ongoing. Since few people actually comprehend overshoot and its symptom predicaments, many folks are willing participants in a broad range of schemes and narratives designed to funnel money into the coffers of the power brokers (the "elite"). How many people have bought an EV or purchased something because it was "green" or because they thought they were "fighting climate change" or some other noble cause?
All of this leads me to a video with William E. Rees who describes how we are rationalizing, storytelling apes who create a story and then buy into the narrative, actually believing in it even though it isn't tethered to any biophysical reality (economics and other anthropocentric subjects are prime examples). We see this time and again with all of the "clean," "green," "renewable," and "sustainable" products and services available which in reality don't fit into ANY of those categories, we see it in a broad majority of so-called "solutions" that don't actually solve the predicaments or problems they are marketed for (think of climate change "solutions"), and we see it in the constant "jobs and growth" tropes which only promote "the economy" and ecological overshoot in reality. War is yet another anthropocentric activity that can be added to the list. Still, there was a bonus question saved for the end and William answered it the same way I did a few articles back.
Once one understands how this storytelling process works, one can also understand how the marketing, advertising, and propaganda industries work. Recently, another great story was weaved about mice and men by Tom Murphy in this great article with 3 key paragraphs below, quote:
"Even those who acknowledge the poly-crisis miss a key truth: it’s a meta-crisis. All the identified problems that constitute the “poly” stem from a single “meta.” The attitude of separateness from the community of life, the sense of superiority over other species, and self-praise over artificial accomplishment is what allowed the ugly profusion of poly problems. Those problems cannot be solved under the flawed mindset that led to the predicament in the first place.A failing of the mouse story as an analog to modernity is the temptation it may foster to force a one-to-one mapping of the silo onto fossil fuels, while in fact the silo represents much more than just that. Human cultures had already stepped very far from the evolutionary contract well before the recent introduction o fossil fuels, stretching back to the beginning of grain agriculture. Civilization has flirted with unsustainability ever since—now in its final, global act.
Modernity is not time-tested, evolution-approved. It will fail. The question becomes: how do we respond to the failure? Should we cling like mad to modernity and let the failure escalate to even greater violence? Or should we encourage the bold among us to arrange a quiet, early exit to start exploring new ways to live?"
"(I) agree that 'modernity will fail' but disagree with Murphy's definition of the 'meta' which I'd say is vastly less ideological, and vastly more intrinsic to, the reality of simply being alive - in adherence with the Maximum Power Principle, the 4th Law of Thermodynamics, we are following the biological programming that underpins all life.
There has never been any 'choice' and no shifting of ideology could ever have solved our predicament. Indeed, the attitude of 'separateness' raised here is, (outside of fantastic imagining) of course, an ecological impossibility - nothing survives without habitat yet all the same, this pervasive narrative remains the dominant #zeitgeist for now.
Nonetheless, in view of humans' hubristic and anthropocentric capacity to vastly inflate their own sense of agency, I think it's important to recognize that this illusion of 'separateness' is an emergent result of the brief and extraordinary energy surplus from which 'progress' has been made, rather, than as a by-product of wayward decision making by 'bad humans'.
Now, for my own story; when I was on my fall trip earlier this year, I spent a considerable amount of time outside due to the great weather for most of the trip. I took notice of how unusually quiet it was; especially at one location (Moncove Lake State Park in West Virginia) where I was the only camper in the entire loop I was in. However, I figured it was just my imagination or perhaps it is often like that at that location during that part of the year (that was the first time I had ever been there). Perhaps there was more reality to it than I gave it credit for at the time. The first two culprits that came to my mind were H5N1 HPAI (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) and the insect apocalypse (which is rather noticeable to anyone traveling these days). It doesn't look like West Virginia has had much bird flu, although from this it doesn't look like wild populations are being monitored. It is rather obvious from several reports (here and here and here) that HPAI is still a force to be reckoned with, but this doesn't mean much for Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia where I spent the bulk of time. The demise of insects, on the other hand, does seem to merit at least part of the blame for this issue as can be seen here and here. Where I had to only wash the windshield 2 or 3 times during this entire trip, I remember 20, 30, 40 years ago where I had to wash the windshield 2 or 3 times every day!
Now, onto a quote from Carl Jung which I very much identify with and I am sure that many of you will find equally accurate:
“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”"The Ik are a people of northern Uganda who live at what must surely be the extreme of deprivation and disaster. A largely hunting and gathering people who have in recent times practiced some crop planting, the Ik are not classifiable as a complex society in the sense of Chapter 2. They are, nonetheless, a morbidly fascinating case of collapse in which a former, low level of social complexity has essentially disappeared.
Due to drought and disruption by national boundaries of the traditional cycle of movement, the Ik live in such a food- and water-scarce environment that there is absolutely no advantage to reciprocity and social sharing. The Ik, in consequence, display almost nothing of what could be considered societal organization. They are so highly fragmented that most activities, especially subsistence, are pursued individually. Each Ik will spend days or weeks on his or her own, searching for food and water. Sharing is virtually nonexistent. Two siblings or other kin can live side-by-side, one dying of starvation and the other well nourished, without the latter giving the slightest assistance to the other. The family as a social unit has become dysfunctional. Even conjugal pairs don't form a cooperative unit except for a few specific purposes. Their motivation for marriage or cohabitation is that one person can't build a house alone. The members of a conjugal pair forage alone, and do not share food. Indeed, their foraging is so independent that if both members happen to be at their residence together it is by accident.
Each conjugal compound is stockaded against the others. Several compounds together form a village, but this is a largely meaningless occurrence . Villages have no political functions or organization, not even a central meeting place.
Children are minimally cared for by their mothers until age three, and then are put out to fend for themselves. This separation is absolute. By age three they are expected to find their own food and shelter, and those that survive do provide for themselves. Children band into age-sets for protection, since adults will steal a child's food whenever possible. No food sharing occurs within an age-set. Groups of children will forage in agricultural fields, which scares off birds and baboons. This is often given as the reason for having children.
Although little is known about how the Ik got to their present situation, there are some indications of former organizational patterns. They possess clan names, although today these have no structural significance. They live in villages, but these no longer have any political meaning. The traditional authority structure of family, lineage, and clan leaders has been progressively weakened. It appears that a former level of organization has simply been abandoned by the Ik as unprofitable and unsuitable in their present distress (Turnbull 1978)."
It is important to note that Turnbull's accounts of the Ik may be inaccurate as general qualities and reflect instead the qualities of the group during the famine and drought at the time. Considering that this was 5 decades ago, one can only imagine what kinds of conditions await people now with global conditions (especially with climate change) far worse. Here's the last quote for now, detailing the properties of collapse:
"There is, first and foremost, a breakdown of authority and central control. Prior to collapse, revolts and provincial breakaways signal the weakening of the center. Revenues to the government often decline. Foreign challengers become increasingly successful. With lower revenues the military may become ineffective. The populace becomes more and more disaffected as the hierarchy seeks to mobilize resources to meet the challenge.
With disintegration, central direction is no longer possible. The former political center undergoes a significant loss of prominence and power. It is often ransacked and may ultimately be abandoned. Small, petty states emerge in the formerly unified territory, of which the previous capital may be one. Quite often these contend for domination, so that a period of perpetual conflict ensues. The umbrella of law and protection erected over the populace is eliminated.
Lawlessness may prevail for a time, as in the Egyptian First Intermediate Period, but order will ultimately be restored. Monumental construction and publicly-supported art largely cease to exist. Literacy may be lost entirely, and otherwise declines so dramatically that a dark age follows.
What populations remain in urban or other political centers reuse existing architecture in a characteristic manner. There is little new construction, and that which is attempted concentrates on adapting existing buildings. Great rooms will be subdivided, flimsy facades are built, and public space will be converted to private. While some attempt may be made to carry on an attenuated version of previous ceremonialism, the former monuments are allowed to fall into decay. People may reside in upper-story rooms as lower ones deteriorate. Monuments are often mined as easy sources of building materials. When a building begins to collapse, the residents simply move to another.
Palaces and central storage facilities may be abandoned, along with centralized redistribution of goods and foodstuffs, or market exchange. Both long distance and local trade may be markedly reduced, and craft specialization end or decline. Subsistence and material needs come to be met largely on the basis of local self-sufficiency. Declining regional interaction leads to the establishment of local styles in items such as pottery that formerly had been widely circulated. Both portable and fixed technology (e .g. , hydraulic engineering systems) revert to simpler forms that can be developed and maintained at the local level, without the assistance of a bureaucracy that no longer exists.
Whether as cause or as consequence, there is typically a marked, rapid reduction in population size and density. Not only do urban populations substantially decline, but so also do the support populations of the countryside. Many settlements are concurrently abandoned. The level of population and settlement may decline to that of centuries or even millennia previously. Some simpler collapsing societies, like the Ik, clearly do not possess these features of complexity. Collapse for them entails loss of the common elements of band or tribal social structure - lineages and clans, reciprocity and other kin obligations, village political structure, relations of respect and authority, and constraints on non-sociable behavior. For such people collapse has surely led to a survival-of-the-fittest situation, although as Turnbull (1978) emphasizes, this is but a logical adjustment to their desperate circumstances. In a complex society that has collapsed, it would thus appear, the overarching structure that provides support services to the population loses capability or disappears entirely. No longer can the populace rely upon external defense and internal order, maintenance of public works, or delivery of food and material goods. Organization reduces to the lowest level that is economically sustainable, so that a variety of contending polities exist where there had been peace and unity. Remaining populations must become locally self-sufficient to a degree not seen for several generations. Groups that had formerly been economic and political partners now become strangers, even threatening competitors. The world as seen from any locality perceptibly shrinks, and over the horizon lies the unknown.
Collapse, huh? What is it good for?…
ReplyDeleteAccording to French historian Emmanuel Todd in his article The Death of Protestantism Explains Western decline - The Post, the West has been in social collapse (which we can all see) for a while: "the vaporisation of Protestantism in the United States, in England and throughout the Protestant world has caused the disappearance of what constituted the strength and specificity of the West......we are now approaching “stage zero”, whereby religious belief loses all influence within the Western world.”
ReplyDeleteIn other words, due to loss of religion, Western societies no longer have their traditional cultural structure (which has been the whole point of "development" in the 20th Century), and we individuals have become atomised from each other, such that there is no societal structure that can provide an acknowledged leader, a hierarchy, levels of responsibility, a "manual" of behaviour, how everyone relates to each other, and how to get things done.
We will be copying the Ik very shortly.