For over 200,000 years Humankind has made every effort it
can to escape its “primitivity” and thereby flourish. These efforts include
choosing:
·
Food production over hunting and gathering;
·
Metal over stone tools;
·
Vehicular conveyance over foot travel;
·
Cities over movable campsites;
·
Surplus wealth accumulation over subsistence
economics;
·
Tribal state politics over small band
egalitarianism;
·
Science and reason over myth and religion;
·
Hydro-power and fossil fuels over human and
draught animals;
·
Democracy over autocracy;
·
Nationalism over empire:
·
Globalism over nationalism; and
·
Capitalism over socialism and communism (ongoing).
Now, with the West in a state of full-fledged modernity, many non-Western nations on the verge of joining them, and all the others working hard and
dreaming to follow and enjoy the fruits of modernity, there is a big problem.
The West, swaddled in all its financial and material wealth,
is suffering from angst, anomie, and xenophobia. Capitalism has led to
unsustainable economic inequality and ecological decline tipping points that many
believe are immune to reform and amelioration. Many of these points have been reached
or surpassed in some parts of the world.
Non-Western nations on the verge of or beginning to solidify
their own modernity, as well as the poorest nations envious and hopeful of some
day following the more-developed
ones, are beginning to see the White Western Way for what it really is – neo-colonial;
imperial; self-serving; rigged against them; hypocritical; morally hollow; and ecocidal.
The solution almost all nations are just now seriously
beginning to call for is reform while ameliorating the decline and crash of
capitalism and its lethal poisoning and climatological disturbance of the
environment.
How should Humankind reform and ameliorate its impact on
itself and the planet? There are many good ideas out there, some of which are
being successfully implemented. But no-one knows if they will work. Regardless,
we are right to make the efforts anyway on the slight chance that Humankind and
the environment can retain some level of humaneness and livability.
This extended essay is a look at some things to consider as
we approach and suffer through the coming collapse; and during which we are
forced to peer out from our houses at our neighbors and ask: What must I, we,
do to survive?
First, I will present which collapse of all the
possibilities I think is preferable and most likely to occur. Then I will look
at going local socially, and finally at the personal aspects of the rebuilding
and resetting our “modern” psyches that collapse recovery will require. That
is, a change in our psyches that have been consumerized, depersonalized, and
morally calcified by religion or economic theory, or morally hollowed out by
secular modernity. If you’ve ever felt like a shell of a person, you will
understand what I’m getting at here.
As reforms and ameliorations pick up pace and kick in, it is
becoming clear that if they work, and
that is a big if, they will not allow
Humankind to return to near unrestricted crony consumer capitalism. Nor will
they allow us to continue to live and think of our individual lives within the
dreamy, progressive panorama of savagely competitive nationalism; or allow us
to return to our hip, chic lives besotted by the myths of consumer abundance
and personal exceptionalism pumped through to us by our computer and TV
screens.
Humankind will have to revert to thinking of “being” human
as something local, very local. Race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and political
and economic ideology cannot be jettisoned. They will have to be “shrunk” to
what can be accommodated locally and individually, and into something that will
work in our forging relations with other local groups.
Along the way there will come those who want to, through
persuasion or force, consolidate groups along the lines of those old familiar
divisions – race, nation, etc. - that helped propel modernity. Such occurrences
will not be inherently bad. What will be telling is if we return to complex consolidated
societies, will we do so based on what we learned from the errors of the ways
and means of our first go at modernization.
However, for now, let us consider collapse and the preemptive
going local that has already begun.
Brave New World, 1984, or The Handmaid’s Tale?
Which is the greater future Americans should fear, asks
Andrew Postman in the Guardian essay cited below: “an information-censoring,
movement-restricting, individuality-emaciating state” as depicted in George Orwell’s
1984 published in 1949; or “a
technology-sedating, consumption-engorging, instant-gratifying bubble” as
described in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World, published in 1932? Let us also throw in for consideration Margaret
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale published
in 1985, another dystopian novel set in a near-future totalitarian theocracy or
theonomy that overthrows
the U.S. government.
Regarding the choice between Orwell or Huxley, Postman,
quoting his father, New York University education professor Neil Postman’s
book, Amusing
Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985),
says its Huxley’s future that warrants more attention:
“What Orwell feared
were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there
would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read
one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of
information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we
would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the
truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be
drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a
captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.” –
N. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
As for Orwell, many wonder how someone as committed to
democratic socialism as he was could have written a book like 1984 where social totalitarianism
triumphs. Irish author and book reviewer Martin Tyrrell, reviewing a 2019
biography of Orwell, explains:
[Orwell’s]
break with the pacifist left [for the sake of supporting the British effort in
World War II] did not imply any break with socialism. Orwell remained a
socialist the rest of this life, advocating to the end a radical programme of
state ownership and income equality. … Like most socialists, Orwell reckoned
that socialism would eventually deliver enough to meet all needs. And like most
socialists, he believed that there would be a gruelling interim before this
happened … [one that] might last a century. Technology appalled him.
Mechanisation would bring leisure, and leisure decadence (read sexual
deviance), a debasement of taste….
…
Orwell
ends Nineteen Eighty-Four with
an unambiguous message of hope, one that is plain to see. That message is the
Appendix. It is not in the Appendix. It is the Appendix itself.
This is
the Appendix Theory first propounded, as far as I can see, by Margaret Atwood
more than fifteen years ago. Atwood suggested that dystopian novels should
always end on an optimistic note. Just a glimmer. No glimmer and we wilt and
give up. More than a glimmer and we walk. The Appendix – “The Principles of
Newspeak” ‑ is, she says, the glimmer in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Publishers wanted Orwell to axe it and he
refused. This is allegedly because the Appendix is the part of the text that
lets us see that Newspeak (and the Newspeakers) did not win.
…
“Every
line of serious work that I have written since 1936,” comments Orwell in “Why
I Write”, “has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism
and for democratic socialism as I understand it.” … Orwell himself was unhappy
that his writings were being seen as hostile to socialism. He remained right up
to his death a socialist, a believer in the desirability of a planned economy
based on substantial public ownership, as well as a democrat who thought that
this desirable system could be established by an elected government. His
concern for democratic socialism was that it might be hijacked by totalitarians
and thereby cease to be democratic.
The essays cited below by Postman and Tyrrell have much to
offer us as we try to understand and navigate the coming collapse of essentially
uncontrolled capitalism and the destruction of the environment through
ecological geocide. I have
written on my blogs recently about the coming collapse of capitalism and the
environment, and what I think will come after. See here,
here,
and here.
I have also often quoted a University of Oregon economics
professor of mine from the ‘70s, the late David Milton: “The world is globalizing and tribalizing at the same
time.” See also neotribalism.
Localizing
According to James Fellows essay, also cited below, we can
now, on the verge of a nation-state capitalism failure and its attendant
environmental collapse, add to Milton’s globalizing and tribalizing a third
-izing - we are also simultaneously localizing.
The last essay by Jonathan Franzen also recommends going
local, both as a practical matter and as a means of retaining hope.
Maybe of the three, localizing shall prove the more
sustainable than globalizing and tribalizing. That remains to be seen.
The world’s wealthy and powerful have a lot at stake in
keeping us focused on tribe, race, nations, and the consumer products of global
capitalism. There are also a lot of guns locally, in the US and elsewhere, that
could be called to action by the elite to defend capitalism as something
religious and patriotic.
And from our thoroughly modern, rugged individualism we Americans
are especially proud of, we have come to not know or trust our local neighbors very much; and some of
those we do know we wish we didn’t and could get further away from. Brother-
and sisterhood, as in the French Revolution notion of fraternité, seem to take a far distant second place to most
American’s money, property, and stuff, all of which have come to be
sanctioned, legitimized, and considered ‘natural’ and rightful by their
interpretations of Christianity, race, patriotism and capitalism. Thus
localizing will have its challenges.
Nevertheless, my recent renegade anthropological musings
about a coming reset of Humankind to local, personally accountable communalism
line up well with Fallows’ essay. If there is a more than simple wishful basis
for hope for those like me who insist on one, the ideas in Fallow’s Atlantic
piece and those of Robert Reich, also listed below, may just provide it.
A question remains though: How big and ugly must collapse be
to force Humankind further down this new localizing path, and make us stay on
it?
If we do stick to that course, how do we not, eventually, once again head off on
the fatal path toward the false glory of warring city-states, tribal-states,
nation-states; and once again toward the alienation and self- and planet-destructiveness
of a new modernity?
How big and ugly must collapse be, indeed. Surely it will
take something more powerfully motivating (and frightening) than intellectual
reasoning, conventional politics, or economic and political science to make a
majority of us choose, grow, sustain, and defend our new localizing
strongholds.
Perhaps it must become a matter of surviving collapse not an
intellectual choice among best options - a proverbial, metaphorical two-by-four
of catastrophe between the eyes to get the mule’s attention.
To think, for three centuries we secular-scientific inheritors
of the Enlightenment have been divided about which of the following is the most
powerful driver of Humankind: reasoned deliberative choice and persuasion
(politics); education; techno-economic determinism; or genetics.
The real motive force, the essence, the foremost drive
underlying being human, may after all prove to be the personal shock and awe of
self-inflicted social and ecological trauma.
This is different from deliberative
choice, formal education, the influence of technology and economic factors, or
genetics. Prehistorically and historically, Humankind’s actions in response to
shock and awe catastrophe is fight, flight, or cooperate for no other reason
than to survive. That is to say: Humans do anything that pleases them
repeatedly until it starts to hurt real bad or they exhaust the supply of things
they’re doing it to. Then, they reset through turning on each other, fleeing,
or cooperating. If you can. If not? Oh well. Monkeys, gorging themselves drunk
and sick on the overripe pickings of one fruit tree after another, come to
mind.
Homo sapiens sapiens, don’t
phone home. There’s no-one there. Home is here. Find or create local, humane,
Earth-sustaining meaning and purpose for your selves and your local communities.
~ ~ ~
by
Andrew
Postman
February
2, 2017
The
Guardian
~ ~
~
by
Martin
Tyrrell
January
9, 2019
Dublin
Review of Books
~ ~
~
by
Robert
Reich
September
8, 2019
The
Guardian
~ ~
~
by
James
Fallows
October
2019
The
Atlantic
~ ~
~
by
Jonathan
Franzen
September
9, 2019
The
New Yorker
Individualizing
As we have discussed above, Humankind globalizes,
tribalizes, and localizes (GTL). Many are also individualizing. We acknowledge
and render under GTL that which is GTL’s, but we, as the building blocks of
social organization and the locus of living the beliefs and values of our
respective cultures, must also cultivate a personal strategy for coping and
flourishing through finding meaning and purpose in our individual lives.
How, in what way, do we do that now in the later stages of
modernity and its attendant and inevitable collapse of capitalism and the
environment?
Absurdism
“In philosophy,
"the Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to
seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human
inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational
universe. As a philosophy, Absurdism furthermore explores the fundamental nature of the Absurd and how individuals, once becoming conscious of the Absurd should respond to it. The absurdist philosopher Albert Camus stated that individuals should embrace the absurd condition of human existence while also defiantly continuing to explore an search for meaning
“As beings looking for meaning in a meaningless world, humans have three ways of resolving the dilemma. Kierkegaard and Camus describe the solutions in their works, The Sickness Unto Death (1849) and The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), respectively – suicide; religion; acceptance. Kierkegaard chose religion. Camus chose acceptance.” – Adapted from “Absurdism” in Wikipedia
“As beings looking for meaning in a meaningless world, humans have three ways of resolving the dilemma. Kierkegaard and Camus describe the solutions in their works, The Sickness Unto Death (1849) and The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), respectively – suicide; religion; acceptance. Kierkegaard chose religion. Camus chose acceptance.” – Adapted from “Absurdism” in Wikipedia
Perhaps Absurdism should be part of the first day of any
university natural and social science course. Well, maybe not. That would turn
away a lot of potentially good physics, chemistry, biology, and anthropology students.
Maybe it should be discussed at the beginning of upper
division or graduate seminars. Key point, don't you think? If we cannot find
bigger ultimate truths, let's move forward and tackle things one
question/problem at a time. Embrace the absurd and nevertheless find meaning
and joy in our individual lives.
In a recent exchange of letters, a friend recently asked me
if I was still on what she thought was a quest to find “the meaning of life.” I
replied that I once thought that anthropology was on track to find a “meaning
of life.” You know, an extension of the Enlightenment notion that through
reason and science Humankind could find solutions to human problems and
progressively and significantly improve human living. I did not mean arrive at
heaven or utopia on earth, rather achieve the best we could given our
imperfections and the vagaries of life.
Thanks to my friend and others I know and trust, and my own further
reading and thinking of late, as I’ve described in my recent blog posts, I’ve
given that pursuit up as an impossibility. That is, I’ve given up on the
possibility that there will ever be an absolute truth, a
probabilistic-predictive Anthropology that will also, finally, reveal a meaning
of life. That said, I have not given up on the possibility that Humankind could
come up with a global moral system and civilization that could provide the
foundation for the pursuit of such a meaning of life. See here,
here
and here.
I have since hunkered down to the personal level of Socrates
and Viktor Frankl where I am convinced that the only “life meaning” we can know
is that of our own individual life and that supporting our daily interpersonal
actions.
As I’ve recently written, science and reasoning still stand
foremost among my revered methods of solving problems and establishing
provisional truths. And, the use of reasoning especially, for more often than
not Stoically managing my emotions.
But I’ve concluded that though science and reasoning may be necessary, they are not sufficient for a life well lived or as a guide
to the meaning of life, giving us our purpose for living. If they were
sufficient on their own, Humankind would have done far better than it has since
the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. We would not now, three
hundred years later, be facing capitalist economic and ecological collapse and
the psychic hollowness and angst will consequently live with.
So, Stoically, I focus only on that which I control, the
personal pursuit of the four cardinal virtues - courage, justice, temperance,
and wisdom - and I provide support to activist efforts to forestall or
ameliorate ecological disaster and bring about democratic socialism.
Friends, family, books, birds and music fill up the rest of
my dwindling time alive. And in this global cosmopolis, even with the daily
sometimes hourly peaks and valleys of elation and self-loathing of modern human
living, I am, overall, reasonably happy.
My friend then asked: “Is the problem of Absurdism that
without an answer to the meaning of life that we are happy with, we have no
guidance or direction and so feel lost and doubt our own ability to provide
that guidance from within ourselves? Must this answer/direction come from
outside?” My friend continued: “For
many of us and for some centuries that answer seemed to be yes hence our
invention of a bunch of different gods/goddesses/religions, etc. It’s a
relief to accept this. It takes the burden of building our own moral
code off of us. It provides us with a way to make the ‘right’ decisions
and behave the ‘right’ way even if that way runs counter to our own wants/needs/or
sense of justice. If we reject religion (as apparently the Absurdists do) we
are back in that scary place where we have no guideposts and no direction so we
set off again on the quest for an answer.”
“Inside for me,” I answered. Absurdism seems to me to replace
external guideposts with internal, personal ones. Abrahamic religion and
science and reason never took the burden of building a personal moral code from
me, though I flogged them for all they were worth from hopes they would. They
were too simple, too lacking in something, and did not reach and stick in my
emotional core.
Nature has come closest of all to doing that for me. But
even She doesn’t show all her cards nor promise absolute truth and meaning. I
take that to be a good thing. A truth in and of itself. One that puts the
burden of finding truth and meaning, and doing good or evil, on the shoulders
of each of us. It is here that a meaningful, useful anthropology of Humankind
can only be found, if at all. And it is here that we will survive and flourish,
or become extinct sooner rather than later.
My friend continued:
I read
with interest the writings of those who have sought the Absurdist answer and
applaud when they seem to have gotten to a place they find satisfactory. Lots
of folks, reading their work, seem to agree with them. I am pretty sure I do
not, though I do find nuggets of value there.
My
response to the big question is: "Who the hell knows?” Maybe there is
meaning to life, the universe and everything, maybe not. At any rate I
don't think we have achieved a large enough data set nor the intellectual
capacity to even approach an answer. So, just now at least I think the Absurdists
have reached a good place. Without seeking ‘resolution’ (whatever THAT means)
let's find joy and meaning in our own life.
Long
years ago my first anthropology professor said that sometimes when looking for
an answer we are asking the wrong question. Is it possible that is what is
happening here?
“I think so.” I replied. We may well be asking the wrong
question(s).
I love it when I’m in Nature and just look, listen and feel,
and let the non-answer swim in through my senses and around inside me. It’s
this kind of vague, unasked question, my attentiveness, that somehow,
mysteriously leads me to build my own truths and meaning for my life. I am not
answered. I am, somehow, gently led.
