Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Making dinner without a microwave, as they did in Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, 800 years ago (when the city was larger than London)? Maybe. But living without greed? Priceless. Maybe we should ask. (Photo by Cahokia Mounds Museum Society)
Apres Nous le Deluge. And Then What?
Opinion is divided about what la Marquise de Pompadour meant, when she said (perhaps to her lover Louis XV), “Apres nous, le deluge [After us, the crash].” It was either, “You know, we’re making a really big mess of things, and everything is probably going to go to hell after we’re gone.” Or, on the other hand, she may have meant, “So what? We’re going to be gone. Where’s the cake?”
Among people who believe that the Industrial Age has started to come crashing down around our ears, there is a roughly similar divide: between those who see nothing after le deluge but extinction of the human race; and those who think some of us will survive. But then what?
In my conversations about the possibilities of starting over, about ordering life to minimize the love of money, love of growth and love of self that have destroyed us, I hear a lot of jeers about “human nature.” There’s nothing to be done about it, I am told, greed is hard-wired in our genes, along with war, and violence and class, and reverence for authority, and all the traits that got us in trouble before and will do so again, no matter how hard the contrary lessons. All we will do after the crash, this argument goes, is do it again.
I have a couple of reservations. First, anyone who thinks that anything is “hard-wired” in the genes or in our brains is afflicted with the “universe-as-machine” virus and is thus part of the problem. People infected with this bug believe that since organisms have moving parts, and engines have moving parts, then obviously we ought to be able to not only comprehend how organisms work, but apply them to our purposes.
Second, making sweeping statements about human nature (that are true and useful) requires sweeping knowledge of human nature. Or at least, awareness that the traits we share with our BFFs do not necessarily represent a profile of the human race. There are people, for example, who do not like Facebook.
I have for many years been an admirer, and an amateur student, of a race of people who flourished on this continent for more than ten thousand years without most of the things that are claimed to be essential expressions of “human nature.”
A partial list of the things they did not have: money, banks, police, jails, religion, war (as we know it), bosses, schools, jobs (as we know them), stores, entertainment (that they did not make themselves), mental illness, addictions.
I can feel the scorn rising, so let me disavow any intention to perpetuate the Noble Savage meme, or to recommend that we mimic Native American life. But I do have a question that seems to me worth answering:
We white Europeans are the proud inheritors of a culture that has pretty much dominated the world for five centuries, and in the process has blown up its own culture and the world it stands on. Is it possible, do you think, that we could learn a thing or two from people who flourished here, where we Americans live now, for 12 millennia?
I think so. During the next few months I propose to share with you a thing or two I have learned over a few decades that seem to me to open up vast possibilities for life without greed, without war, without regimentation, and so on. My point is not that we should live as they did, but that we can live better than we have done. My premise is that human nature does not dictate how we live; it’s the other way around.
NEXT IN THIS SERIES: The Thunderbird Site, the most astonishing testament to life without greed that I have ever seen.
Tom, human nature is as varied as the humans who are part of nature, so I don’t think we can state emphatically that human nature has certain definable qualities. That being said, we know that genes play a significant role in who we are and how we respond to our environment. The genes that influenced the natives of this continent may or may not have been passed down to today’s humans, I’m not sure. But if they weren’t, then it’s possible that humans today don’t have the same inclination to behave as those people did. It’s an interesting thought experiment and I look forward to reading your essays on the topic.
Still, I’m of the mindset that it doesn’t much matter because no humans will survive what’s coming. I’ve read your book Tribulation a couple of times. It’s a great story and one to which I really relate. But, when the nuclear power plants begin to melt down then there will be almost no way any of us survives. That’s assuming that the nuclear weapon enabled governments of the world don’t decide to end it all first.
Ah well, we can still live today and I’m going to my best until I can’t.
To be clear, I am not making the case that human nature has certain qualities, but that it does NOT have the qualities often attributed to it — greed, for example. And I’m afraid you’ll have to count me a skeptic about the determinative role of genes, and our understanding of how they work. I still haven’t got over the revelation that the folks who “successfully mapped” the human genome did so by labeling 70% of the genes as “junk.”
Excellent! Though it’s too late, it’ll be a wonderful thought experiment.
I consider myself a mostly big picture determinist, but we are undoubtedly where we are today, due to a dominate ideology which has spread and infected the majority of the planet. If we had restrained ourselves somewhat we might not have been here for a couple of centuries while still enjoying the most important benefits of techno industrial civilization – like effective antibiotics. Maybe solutions could have been discovered in that time? This did not happen because we have adopted neo liberal capitalism or had it forced on us or were tricked – all of it and more. Nowhere has it been more embraced than in the US and it is one of the main factors why they are so far down the path of collapse and much further along with cultural collapse than any other western country IMO. Neo liberalism is not the sole explanation for that, since every country has their own past and cultural peculiarities, but Neo liberalism has brought out the worst in us. If we were trying to intentional fuck up everything it’s the go to ideology and has really torn the sole out of the average American. It’s happening in Canada too, but at a much slower pace – it’s just not as brutal. One of my favourite people I have learned from is American psychologist, Sheldon Solomon. He said “America has become a petri dish of psychopathology”. He’s a great communicator and I have found some satisfying answers from reading and listening to him. We all want answers eh?
Here is a 15 min video of him.
Afraid of the Dark: Humanity at the Crossroads | Sheldon Solomon
“Published on Feb 23, 2015
Humans manage existential terror by embracing cultural worldviews that afford a sense of meaning and value, and hope of immortality. Efforts to transcend death underlie our most noble achievements; however, they also foster our most ignominious proclivities, including: disdain for and hostility toward people with different beliefs; indifference to, or contempt for, the natural environment; and, the mindless pursuit of money and stuff—which, if unchecked, may render we humans the first life-form to prune their own branch from The Tree of Life. Prospects for the future of our species will be considered in light of these ideas.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuJhD5TkX-0
Let’s not blame Human Nature but rather Survival Traits. To grow, in population and other resources, is to succeed. Stable state societies will fall to the advances of growing ones. To grow is to defend yourself against others growing. I would not just call this a White or European or Western problem, but an agricultural empire problem.
James, I don’t totally disagree, but the point is the ideology is western and just happens to be the flavour of the month. Neo liberal capitalism was only ushered in starting in 1980 with Reagan-Thatcher. Look at every graph since then. The Chinese and Indians (1/3 of the global population) have incorporated the core tenants of it into their societies later and look at their astonishing growth in all areas. It’s the difference between the guy drinking 3 beers a night and the guy drinking a 24 pack and causing major trouble. For 15 years I was the 24 pack guy – a fucking glutton who was a menace. I haven’t been that way for 19 years. As part of my sobering up, I have become an amateur expert on addiction and the neo liberal mentality is identical. Rewards regardless of the harm to self or others. The others growing? It was our elite master who did everything they could to ensure that. They sold globalization as a world wide free market utopia – The World Is Flat – one big happy family. No need for competing empires – everybody grows. You didn’t see the Carthaginian shipping their boat building factories to Rome because the labour was cheaper. Why would the west have all their tech manufacturing shipped to China if they were worried about the “agricultural empire problem”? This new breed of Corporation that the ideology spawned doesn’t recognise any country or empire – just uses them. Nation states are just tools to them.
Survival Traits are part of human nature. Strip away the thin veil of civilization and they will come out and party like it’s 1999………. BC
I see the appeal of Infinite Growth now. Why it’s so hard to get “You can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet” through people’s heads.
If tribes or societies grow to stave off being overrun by another society, it’s only a temporary solution, because conflict is still inevitable. Only the parties to the conflict are now bigger and closer together, and those wars are no fun!
OK, what about Option 2, we all agree to stop growing? Good luck with that.
The paradigm of Infinite Growth is the workaround. We all expand simultaneously! Thanks to globalization, we can prey on the weak from great distances, and import resources we used to fight our neighbors over. (Money helps this greatly.)
It may be impossible, but if it’s the only way to avoid terrible conflict, then most of us will readily believe in it.
We have a word for uncontrolled and unlimited growth: cancer. Is it not the case that after the growing empires absorb the steady-state competitors, they fall to the cancer within? Does nature not teach that growth is appropriate to a season, after which other things become more important?
Is it true that western society, it’s actors and facilitators can be seen as a totality?
When history is honestly reviewed, it certainly appears that western society has long been a story of a crazed and decadent elite manipulated by behind-the-scenes psychopaths who hate the people and planet they savagely pillage. The majority of Europeans have long acquiesced to the role of clueless victims, far and away from any role in shaping anything besides their chains.
Perhaps because of this depleted existence, Europids regularly fantasize about exotic people and cultures, too often projecting all the qualities that they cannot find in their own. Alas, pity those so elevated by the slaves, for their own humanity must be set aside to meet those expectations.
If we look back before the advent of empire, before the invention of state religion, before the establishment of corporate criminal governance, we find our ancestors lived lives with art, music, deep spirituality, and significance. The journey whereby this was lost is a story most horrific.
It makes me wonder, if this outsized veneration of alien culture is simply a longing for the return of our own.
Except there are 400 nuclear power plants that will go critical in the weeks after tomorrow. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/7301-400-chernobyls-solar-flares-electromagnetic-pulses-and-nuclear-armageddon
Not to mention abandoned wells that will be BP on steroids. 27000 abandoned ones already in the gulf, and all the active ones that will not be closed down properly come the crash, much less monitored.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/27000_abandoned_oil_and_gas_we.html
Not to mention the fires that will burn unabated over the chemical dumps and nuclear dumps.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0628/New-Mexico-fires-threaten-Los-Alamos-nuclear-weapons-lab-again
Oh and by the way climate change with all the storms of Hansen’s grandchildren and wet bulb temps too hot for plants or humans to survive.
Since we cannot know for certain the outcomes for every location on earth, it seems as reasonable to assume from scanty evidence and imperfect precedents that there will be survivors, as to assume there will not.
If there are survivors they will likely go insane. They will have to climb over mounds of stinking corpses (who will bury everyone). I wouldn’t wish survival after the collapse of industrial civilization on anyone. It will be IMO a curse. Thus the realization that climate change is heading us towards extinction is to me the best possible outcome.
I gather you live in a city. In which case, I agree with you.
Nope Tom, I live very rural. Climbing over mounds of people was meant metaphorically. If however in our town of 100, 90 died in the first round of death, the 10 remaining would have their work cut out for them and their world view upended.
We are all going to die anyway, die off or not. We are mortals. Get your mind around that if you can. No one survives. It is never a question of survival, but always how long you survive, how you die and if you leave progeny. Nothing more. Death begins with life.
Tom, when you open your essay with the pejorative “jeer” it’s a bit unfair. I personally have become convinced that biologically, humans have been fated to overshoot and it’s not a jeering conclusion, to me it’s tragic. Tragic because we can see what we are doing, but are powerless to overcome the basic genetic imperatives that drive us to overshoot.
Of course, people cooperate. The finest example of that is an army (just like ants).
As far as the “noble savage myth” – you seem to subscribe. Not to denigrate any indigenous or primitive people, but it is simply a fact that 1. In continents all over the world they drove dozens of species of megafauna to extinction, with simple weapons long before agriculture. 2. They burned forests, transforming the landscape in negative ways (reducing biodiversity). 3. They most certainly did have money, shells and seeds and beads have been used as currency long before Europeans came to dominate, and many tribes accumulated and displayed ostentatious symbols of status (from feathers to furs to jewelry) – they had slavery, rape, war, addictions (coca, tobacco, alcohol) mental illness (they called it wetiko), inequality, sexism, genocide, sacrifice, torture, and repeated collapse all over North, Central and South America. This is all in archaeological record; it’s not speculation. To say they didn’t have religion is absurd. Religion (belief in fantasy aka denial) is a universal cultural attribute of being humans and was expressed early and often in “sacred” figurines, drawings and other sculpture, and ritual burial of the dead.
I hope as you examine the record your mind will be open to objective reality. It’s actually just as patronizing to idealize other cultures as it is to dismiss their value as primitive.
It’s hard to know how to respond to a shotgun blast that first mis-characterizes what I have written and then dismisses what I have not yet written.
I’m still scratching my head to understand what pejorative jeer I opened the essay with. My intent was to use the quote to open the question: what happens after le deluge? It may have been too cute by half — I’ll give you that — but it was not intended, nor do I know how you can read it as, a jeer at anybody.
“Of course, people cooperate.” I simply do not know to what that refers.
I am not a newcomer to the “archeological record.” Many years ago I learned how scant it is, and how subject to instant, breathtaking revision. For example, the “simple fact” that human hunters wiped out the megafauna is not a fact at all but a highly contested hypothesis. Many of the “simple facts” you cite are flat wrong, others are very much open to discussion. Did you notice, by the way, that I am proposing to discuss North American tribes?
To paraphrase you: I hope that as you read the essays that I have not yet written, your mind will be open. We’ll have much to discuss.
Tom, you wrote: “I hear a lot of jeers about “human nature.”
It was your characterization of people who accept biological inclinations that are genetically embedded – as people who “jeer”, rather than simply present an alternative viewpoint that happens to have support from evolutionary biologists. Our brains are hardwired, neurologically, for certain traits, regardless of how much we might wish we could behave differently.
“Shot-gun blast” and “mischaracterizing” are more personal slights.
The “highly contested hypothesis” is only that in the same way evolution is highly contested by creationists.
Let’s be specific about which of the other facts I cite are wrong.
The North American indigenous people did not war? They didn’t take slaves? They didn’t torture their captives? They didn’t use money? They didn’t express status with material possessions? They didn’t have religion?
Which one of those do you take exception to?
Okay, got it. You wrote that I opened my essay with that, and it’s about halfway through. So: I wrote that I hear a lot of jeers about human nature, and you read that everything I hear said about human nature is wrong? Seriously, do you not get the distinction? I hear a lot of jeers about climate science, too. I was characterizing people who jeer, not people who believe one thing or another about human nature.
But we’re picking nits now. I’m not going to have a lengthy argument right now on the content of essays I have not yet written. I am going to write them, and then if you disagree with their content, we’ll discuss.
Gee whiz, Tom Lewis. Your replies to that guy at his wit’s end (excellent moniker he choses for himself) are examples of patience carried to an extreme I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t read it myself. I commend you for that.
But I appreciate you much more for the quality of your writing. I get what you are up to on this blog, and it is the consistent clarity of your thought as expressed through prose that shows how deeply you care about clear communication that keeps me coming back for more. I missed you during your recent hiatus. So very glad you’re engaged again.
Thank you. Witsendnj is the handle of Gale Zawacki, from whose excellent blog http://www.witsendnj.wordpress.com I learned all I know about the agony of trees before the onslaughts of climate change and ozone pollution. She has not been happy with my work of late, but there’s still time before the lights go out.
***The “highly contested hypothesis” is only that in the same way evolution is highly contested by creationists.***
Evolution has actually been highly contested by many respectable scientists and scholars. (Questioning evolution doesn’t automatically make you a creationist, by the way.) No one in any case has been around for billions of years to make careful observations of how life might have ‘evolved’, nor has anyone been able to replicate the whole process of evolution under controlled conditions or even with computer-simulated models.
“There are people, for example, who do not like Facebook.”
Good, but I’ve been seeking “kindred spirits” who actually loathe FB, as well as ALL other narcissistic media, and find it(/them) abhorrent as a literal manifestation of ALL that is “wrong” with “our” species. I’ve had little “success” to date. More fool me. (Though SOME of it can be downright hilarious, as illustrated by Chris Hardwick.)
I know, in my “gut,” that I should [probably] NOT be weighing-in here, on this topic, but after a couple of days and a couple of re-reads (of EVERYTHING above), I am unable to “stifle” myself. First, I want to be clear that the following is NOT meant, in any way, to be disrespectful to you, Mr. Lewis, or your “beliefs” or those of anyone else, for that matter. Furthermore, I really am looking forward to reading your forthcoming presentations regarding the topic to which, I think, you allude.
I concur that not “all humans” are, or should be, considered as being cut from the same cloth. In other words, there ARE “psychopaths/sociopaths” (a dime a dozen) and there ARE “true” altruists (a MUCH rarer breed), and a myriad of “variation” in between. I’m glad to see that you are not a newcomer to the “archeological record” and I readily concede that you are more well versed in this subject than I. However, I now must ask, “Have you actually been there (thousands of years ago) and done that?” Again, no disrespect intended, but is not this current article and those forthcoming based merely on the interpretations made by one or more “researchers” which, in turn, are based on THEIR “analysis” of scant-few artifacts and other somewhat “anecdotal” information? Are there not dichotomous perspectives proposed from “other researchers” whose “conclusions” were drawn from exactly the same “evidence?” Why would one “story” (regarding an ancient past) be more acceptable to you, or anyone else, than some other, perhaps antithetical, “story?”
In an effort to be “clear,” have you, or anyone else reading/commenting here, EVER “wondered” WHY so many alleged “professionals” (e.g., PhD’s in Physics, Chemistry, etc.) disagree with the overwhelming “evidence” (and science) that AGW is real and that “human” activities are the predominant, causative factor? True, their number may not be “legion,” but it’s greater than “a few.” How… Why is this even possible? Yet, this dichotomy DOES exist and in “full view” of CURRENT, observable, testable “evidence.” In light of this, just how “reliable” can any account of any past period in the history of the planet (or even just “our” species”) be?
Colinc,
You have found another, and we are infinitesimal, like my fellow INFJs, who despise and do not Facebook. That I don’t even own a “dumb phone” and only have a land line seems to cause people no end of discomfort.
Had a conversation with a young man who hands out towels at the gym this week, Jesse, one of the many Dominicans coming for the streets paved with gold, who got the job via his tio Jose, and didn’t believe me when i said people were addicted to these gadgets. Well it’s like an heroin addict (and I love it these days how many people “tell” me how addictive maryjane is (yet I tell them I’ve used with it never leading to stronger ones) denying he’d love to mainline all the time.
“In an effort to be “clear,” have you, or anyone else reading/commenting here, EVER “wondered” WHY so many alleged “professionals” (e.g., PhD’s in Physics, Chemistry, etc.) disagree with the overwhelming “evidence” (and science) that AGW is real and that “human” activities are the predominant, causative factor? True, their number may not be “legion,” but it’s greater than “a few.” How… Why is this even possible? Yet, this dichotomy DOES exist and in “full view” of CURRENT, observable, testable “evidence.” In light of this, just how “reliable” can any account of any past period in the history of the planet (or even just “our” species”) be?”
Glad you raised this point as it has been one I’ve raised time an again to these so called “professionals” and “experts”. I constantly ask those I meet what evidence would they need to deem the situation real and that we don’t have 100 years.
My “friend” Mr. Kay above called me bitter, but did not attempt to understand that I would not deny that I am, but didn’t attempt to understand why I am bitter. Well, being a witness to this horror and I’m in complete agreement with kathy above regarding not wishing survival on my worst enemy.
That being said I think Mr. Lewis’s current attempt at this topic is interesting and I’ll be following it, but I’ll be using my daily interactions with people to provide me with more of a reality check to any fantasy filled potential future.
Yesterday, my local librarian Kendra at the Forest Park Branch of the Queens Library looked me in the eye and said, “Things are getting better.” I asked what things and she grew uncomfortable (yes, i can be patient and kind at times, but I don’t cope with fools very long), but couldn’t answer. I had inadvertently left my library card there and she emailed that she had it. So, now I had a way of contacting her and I said I’ll send her 1 piece of bad news for every 1 piece of good news she good news she could provide (the week DeBlasio got caught with his pants down claiming full innocence). So, I sent her the Desdemonia Despair piece on the collapse of the Blue Fin Tuna (and this was reported by the Japanese no less I believe) and it’s been radio silence ever since.
This should be an interesting exchange on Daily Impact over the coming weeks.
I have decided to fully come out of the closet and start using my full name.
“This should be an interesting exchange on Daily Impact over the coming weeks.”
Indeed, it may very well be quite interesting! ;)
Mr Lewis, I think you really should co-author a book (at least) with Jared Diamond, who’s also very much into the issue what the modern world can learn from traditional societies. :)
When I read your article above, I immediately suspected it was going to provoke some rather vehement responses. Turned out I was right. The fascinating question here (for me) is why there would have been such responses at all. The only reason I can think of is injured pride. When you’re used to the idea that your cultural heritage is the one to rule ’em all, you naturally balk at the idea that any other cultures could have anything positive to offer that yours couldn’t or didn’t have. One thing one may try to do in this respect is pull others down to the same level as oneself. “There you go, they’ve nothing to offer, they’re just as rotten as everyone else.” Understandable to some extent, actually.
Understandable as it may be, though, it’s of course hardly commendable. The premodern Chinese have for centuries seen themselves at the center of the Universe. But they never came up with anything like Buddhism, a foreign system of thought which was to exert an overwhelming influence on China’s culture. This culture would have been a much poorer thing without it. I for one am glad China wasn’t so proud of herself as to pooh-pooh Buddhism.
There is another question I find most fascinating: why it is the West alone, and not China or the Muslims or whoever, that has given rise to the chimera we know as modern industrial society, with all the sorry consequences we now know it’s leading to. Personally I have been very much persuaded that one answer may well lie in a very interesting feature of all mainstream Western religious thought. But that’s another story, which I might cover in a future post.
This is an interesting comment on human nature, the culture and the decisions, good and bad, that people make. However, it does not explicitly take into account that these decisions and their implementation are very dependent on the services provided by the existing infrastructure. This infrastructure is irrevocably aging as it uses up limited natural resources and produces damaging material wastes. The decisions people will be able to make will dependent very much on what services that still remain.