Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.
- Lewis Carroll
Modernity: A
historical category marked by the questioning or rejection of tradition; the
prioritization of individualism, freedom and formal equality; faith in
inevitable social, scientific and technological progress, rationalization and
professionalization; a movement from feudalism (or agrarianism) toward
capitalism and the market economy, industrialization, urbanization and
secularization; the development of the nation-state, representative democracy,
public education, etc. - From Wikipedia based on Michel Foucault 1977
This
is a detailed continuation of my recent lyrical essay, “The
Fatal Myth of Human Progress.” It covers the connections between U.S.
politics and environmental protection in the late 20th Century. It
also discusses what actions and supporting stories Humankind must come up with
as we near ecological and economic collapse.
By Nathaniel Rich
Photographs and Videos by George Steinmet
The New York Times
Photographs and Videos by George Steinmet
The New York Times
August 1, 2018
The
above exposé is a good late 20th Century history of how the U.S.
missed perhaps its best chance at ending its environmentally destructive ways,
and leading the rest of the world to do the same before it became too late.
The
Ronald Reagan and John Sununu types in
power at the time, the 1980s, were not going to do that. Passing legislation
containing environmental pollution restrictions on U.S. industry would go
against their small government, free enterprise credo. To them, the scientifically
established risks of continuing to produce ever more CO2 to the
detriment and perhaps end of Earth’s life-sustainability were worth taking. Here
is what they did:
“After the
election of 1980, President Ronald Reagan took office and considered plans to
close the Energy Department, increase coal production on federal land, and
deregulate surface coal mining. Once in office, he appointed James Watt, the
president of a legal firm that fought to open public lands to mining and
drilling, to run the Interior Department. ‘We’re deliriously happy,’ the
president of the National Coal Association was reported to have said. Reagan
preserved the E.P.A. but named as its administrator Anne Gorsuch, an
anti-regulation zealot who proceeded to cut the agency’s staff and budget by
about a quarter. In the midst of this carnage, the Council on Environmental
Quality submitted a report to the White House warning that fossil fuels could
‘permanently and disastrously’ alter Earth’s atmosphere, leading to ‘a warming
of the Earth, possibly with very serious effects.’ Reagan did not act on the
council’s advice. Instead, his administration considered eliminating the
council.”
…
“When the beaten
delegates finally emerged from the [Noordwijk Ministerial Conference of 1989]
conference room, [the Sierra Club’s Daniel] Becker and [environmentalist Rafe] Pomerance
learned what happened. [Yale nuclear physicist and Science Advisor to President
George H. W. Bush, D. Allen] Bromley, at the urging of John Sununu and with the
acquiescence of Britain, Japan, and the Soviet Union, had forced the conference
to abandon the commitment to freeze emissions. The final statement noted only
that ‘many’ nations supported stabilizing emissions — but did not indicate
which nations or at what emissions level. And with that, a decade of
excruciating, painful, exhilarating progress turned to air.”
Sununu, White House Chief of
Staff under U.S. President George H. W. Bush, had thereby prevented the signing
of a 67-nation commitment to freeze carbon dioxide emissions, with a
reduction of 20 percent by 2005. In doing so, he singled himself out as a force
for starting coordinated efforts to bewilder the public on the topic of global
warming and changing it from an urgent, non-partisan, and unimpeachable issue
to a political one.
Here is what Rich’s article says happened
after that:
“More carbon has
been released into the atmosphere since the final day of the Noordwijk
conference, Nov. 7, 1989, than in the entire history of civilization preceding
it. In 1990, humankind emitted more than 20 billion metric tons of carbon
dioxide. By 2017, the figure had risen to 32.5 billion metric tons, a record.
Despite every action taken since the [1979] Charney Report* — the billions
of dollars invested in research, the nonbinding treaties, the investments in
renewable energy — the only number that counts, the total quantity of global
greenhouse gas emitted per year, has continued its inexorable rise.
“Like the
scientific story, the political story hasn’t changed greatly, except in its
particulars. Even some of the nations that pushed hardest for climate policy have
failed to honor their own commitments. When it comes to our own nation, which
has failed to make any binding commitments whatsoever, the dominant narrative
for the last quarter century has concerned the efforts of the fossil-fuel
industries to suppress science, confuse public knowledge, and bribe
politicians.”
Also
interesting in the article is the claim that Exxon and others in the private
sector were at one time receptive to the inevitability of some form of less
carbon policy and laws. They stood ready to retool and redirect their
industries away from oil, natural gas and coal if they were going to be forced
to, if for no other reason than to keep their operations profitable. It seemed
they simply could not deny the science, much of which they had produced, unlike
the politicians of the time.
However,
I may be reading more into the private sector’s response to the science than is
there. I doubt they were going to retool and redirect for any reason other than
profitability, like a sudden attack of moral conscience. Maybe corporations did
and still do have a conscience. Why, the Supreme Court not long ago ruled they
are no different from individual citizens when it comes to giving money to
politicians….
The Nature of
Political and Economic Behavior
Regrettably,
we humans are so much like sheep; we seem to need strong leadership. As
Bertrand Russell put it: “Most people would rather die than think and many of
them do!”
Even
when we humans do think, many of the damaged or weak-minded among us think
badly; and/or follow the bad thinking of immoral leaders in office, in churches
and mosques, and in the media. Some who are severely damaged and/or weak take
up an AR-15 to ‘argue’ their point of view and help win victory for their race,
ethnic group, or religion in a misapplied Thomas Hobbesian, social Darwinian notion
of a war of all against all.
We
have become ‘free’ and self-infatuated to the point of being a lethal danger to
ourselves. The Internet has been a blessing and a curse, an enhancement of our
living and dying.
We
are strange creatures living in strange, ever more dangerous times.
Where
are the West’s Ghandi’s, Confucius’s, Mandela’s? We had Socrates, Darwin,
Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, FDR with their warts and all. Still, all along
and up until now, the rich and powerful control the rings in our noses and
content of most of our minds.
Watch
The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu TV. It is a three-season story of U.S. ecological
collapse followed by theocratic tyranny. It reminds me of what most sensible,
thinking people said before the Nazis came to power in Germany and Trump was
elected U.S. president: “It could never happen.” However, it did then, and it
could again in an even worse manner as portrayed in this TV series.
Genes and Neurons
Many
like to claim humans are inherently, by their nature, tribal and laden with genetic
tendencies we are unable to overcome or ameliorate. Some cite the hive and
colony behavior of bees, ants and termites. Let us recall that ant behavior was
the expertise of Harvard and later Duke University biologist E. O. Wilson, the father
of sociobiology (here
and here)
in the 1970s.
The
last common ancestor between ants and humans lived 610 million years ago. It
would be difficult to find a less appropriate species than ants on which to
base, by analogy or any other comparison, a genetic deterministic understanding
of Humankind. Nevertheless, since the 1990s many in the science community and
large numbers of science writers and members of the U.S. public have accepted a biologically deterministic view of human nature.
I
do not think analogous ant-like genetic mechanisms had anything to do with the
GOP deep-sixing the anti-carbon science of that time and this, or the
motivations of the voters who kept and still keep the immoral bastards in
office. GOP politicians are driven by
their lust for power and wealth. Their constituents enslaved by the delusions
of power and wealth achievement Republicans feed them and they, the weak-minded
as well as the smarter, willingly opportunistic constituents, accept.
In
both instances, leaders and followers, the beliefs and values held and
associated behaviors acted out are taught and learned. They are not, during
political campaigns or on election days, percolating up from the chemistry of
our genes (E. O. Wilson and others) or from prehistoric pseudo-moral codes some
claim (Jonathan Haidt) are also somehow in our genes, and still jerking us
around since the Pleistocene.
If
sociobiology and neuroscience ever overtake the power of learning as the
predominant driver of what we think and do, in the minds of our leaders and the masses, it will grow and hasten
our inhumanity toward each other and further embolden and empower the tyrants
and zealots among us. We will become ‘free’ from our conscience and absolved in
our law courts of personal responsibility for our individual and societal
transgressions. Worse still, we will be ‘freed’ from the responsibility of
crafting our moral systems and behavior by reason, teaching and learning and
based on experience. Gradations of crime culpability will be adjudicated based
on levels of biochemical penetrance arising from our alleles. We will be able
to claim our genes make us human and drive our actions. Our beliefs, values, and
behaviors will become ancillary side effects, symptoms, and post hoc rationales for what our genes
direct us to do. Justice shall be served upon our bodies, not our behaviors.
Freedom, free will? Pfft.
Of
course, there is a genetic component within us. However, the only thing we
control is the non-genetic part of our nature - nurturing, teaching, learning.
After all, when you burrow down to the chemistry of the genes and neurons you do
not find behavioral scripts, you find potentials. In addition, those potentials
are developed and expressed, for better and worse, by the embodied minds of
persons in society. Stories and myths set the direction and lead this
development and expression of our humanness. That is what I will always fight
for and place all my bets on for our future survival and flourishing – learning
over biology.
Science and Myth
For
“science” see here. In
particular, I am referring to the “scientific method.”
See here for “myth.”
Science
has delivered Humankind its greatest factual and technological achievements so
far imaginable. At the same time, our political and economic leaders,
capitalizing on these achievements over the past two-and-a-half centuries,
have led us to the precipice of an ecological abyss. An imminent cataclysm we
have helped them create along the way through our acquiescence, labor and
consumption. See here.
While
we, all members of Humankind, now stand looking down wide-eyed and fearful into
the toxic wasteland of our future, the best the world’s mightiest and
wealthiest can do, regrettably, is order the band to once more strike up “We
Can Work It Out (Through Science, Technology And Politics As Usual),” and play
on.
Credit: Getty Images
Reinventing
Religion
However,
some among us, the huddled masses on the cliff, are not willing to swoon and
dance to the same old song any longer. Some want to rebel against those that
have led us to this dead-end. Others think that rebellion alone will not be enough
and say we need to reinvent religion to save ourselves. Consider the following:
By Sumit Paul Choudhury
BBC Future
August 2, 2019
“‘Consider the ‘Witnesses of
Climatology’, a fledgling ‘religion’ invented to foster greater commitment
to action on climate change. After a decade spent working on engineering
solutions to climate change, its founder Olya Irzak [system architect at
Off-Grid Electric and the founder of Frost Methane] came to the conclusion that
the real problem lay not so much in finding technical solutions, but in
winning social support for them. ‘What’s a multi-generational social construct
that organises people around shared morals?’ she asks. ‘The stickiest is
religion.’
“So three years
ago, Irzak and some friends set about building one. They didn’t see any need to
bring God into it....” ... “‘We hope people get real value from this and are
encouraged to work on climate change,’ she says, rather than despairing about
the state of the world.”
What!?
Beginning
with the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, the money and power controllers
in the West commandeered science and is technological fruits. In applying this
knowledge and technologies to the greatest needs of the greatest numbers of
Humankind, our leaders have failed to deliver. Worst of all, they have spread
their formula for progress and civilization globally and bum-rushed the lot of
us to the verge of extinction.
Let
us turn to religion, some say. Seems to me it was religion, through its notions
of human superiority, exceptionalism, progress, and perfection under the
guidance of gods that, when condoned and coopted by those holding power, helped
lead us into the mess we’re in.
Is
not the definition of insanity at its most fundamental, doing the same thing repeatedly
yet expecting different results? No, a reinvention of religion is not what we
need. Unless it is something for all of Humankind akin to the last rites Catholic
priests administer to dying individuals, saints or sinners.
The
time for reform has passed. Fast-track revolutionary civil disobedience
inspired by the fear of impending catastrophes is our only real hope to avoid
extinction. Nevertheless, even that might fail. “We’re fucked. Fight anyway!”
say many of those in the Extinction
Rebellion.
There
is no way or time for the wealthy and powerful to slam the gears of
consumer-crony-capitalism into reverse; retrofit and redirect technology and
manufacturing; redistribute wealth more equitably throughout the world; and
still have their air conditioning, iPhones, football, quiche, makeup, skinny
jeans, and shiny cars. Religion and “We Can Work It Out” will not allow the
world to have its consumer crony capitalist cake and eat it all too.
The Hope of
Reversibility
In
response to my recent essay, “The
Fatal Myth of Human Progress,” my brother-in-law in Uganda, Peter Kiondo,
asked: “Is there any hope of reversibility when this creature (humans) is only
interested in short-term (single lifespan) solutions while its population
increases uncontrolled?”
That
is the most important question of our present and future. Should we
have hope regardless of how dire the future appears? Abraham Lincoln, Viktor Frankl, Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King,
Jr. and many others were convinced we must.
What
exactly is it we fear and hope we avoid? In his 2019 Lapham’s Quarterly essay, “Hell
Breaks Loose: Searching for Hope in a Blazing World,” Henry Freedland, writer
and former senior LQ editor put it this way:
“Late in life Charles
Darwin reflected on the state of the world, ‘whether there is more of
misery or of happiness; whether the world as a whole is a good one or a bad
one.’ He felt that the continual propagation of species indicated that
‘sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule,
happiness.’ But his belief in the power of evolution—‘that man in the distant
future will be a far more perfect creature’—did not come without a sense of
remorse about the possible destruction of earth. ‘It is an intolerable
thought,’ he wrote, that ‘sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation
after such long-continued slow progress.’
“Darwin’s fear was of an external
destructive force, a possibility posed by physicists in his day around which
there is now scientific consensus: ‘that the sun with all the planets will in
time grow too cold for life.’ But his fear of possible exogenous annihilation
refracts in my mind to a fear for the beings alive now. He hoped we wouldn’t
die in a freeze from above; I’m praying we can save ourselves from the fiery
pit below, the one that we humans are installing on our crusty surface. I’m
praying we can fight for the possibility of making it to the death of the sun.”
Reversibility
Much
of the science I have read says that even if we went to zero carbon today,
there has already been enough carbon released to raise the earth’s temperature
by a catastrophic 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.
If
we stay at the same level of carbon emission we’re at now the increase would be
five or more degrees of increase, by century’s end, leading to an utterly
lethal cataclysm. That answers the reversibility part.
Hope
Will
the wealthy and powerful throw their golden goose, their cash cow we call crony
consumer capitalism into reverse; that is, retool and reinvent their
manufacturing, and more equitably share their wealth before the world
experiences environmental and economic collapse?
I
don’t think the wealthy and powerful of the world have the will to abandon the
myth, the story that drives them and the masses, and justifies our staying on
the fatal course we are on. To abandon the myth would be a sacrilege to most of
them.
They
and the masses are drunk on and addicted to the myth of progress they believe
leads to flourishing and paradise here on Earth, and forever in Abrahamic heavens.
To
abandon the golden idol of capitalist modernity would be to admit failure, to
gore a now sacred belief. That is, the belief in our exceptionalism above all
other life forms and our sense of entitlement to dominate Earth and freely
reproduce to please God; and to brutally compete with rather than equitably
share with our fellows based on a mistaken, misplaced notion of Darwin’s
biological theory - Social Darwinism.
There
is one good use religion can now be put to. As we stand on Apocalypse Cliff, we
can choose to consider ourselves a form of sacrifice. We can choose to throw
ourselves downward, figuratively not literally, as offerings not to Mammon but
to the only real God we’ve ever had but the Abrahamic religions have led us to
forsake - Gaia, Mother Earth. She who gave each of us life and who is now
forced to take us back home, into her womb to be reborn as what we cannot know.
Or, we can fight and create a new story.
A New Story
With
each passing year, I am becoming less enamored with the reason and science
aspects of the Age
of Enlightenment. Both of these major ways of human knowing will nevertheless
always be extremely important to me personally. I will continue to value them
both as Humankind’s greatest means of discovery and problem solving despite
their limitations. And as a Stoic, reasoning, as a means of mediating the
influence of my emotions on my behavior, is especially indispensable for me.
So,
you ask, what are the shortcomings of science? Science has yet to go beyond the
greatness it has achieved in terms of knowledge discovery and material problem
solving. It has not gone further and begun providing a means for establishing a
new global moral system and the stories needed to support such a credo. I agree
with Sam
Harris and Michael
Shermer (also Shermer),
reasoning and science could and should help us do that.
Regrettably,
there has been and remains so much pushback from mainstream Western philosophy,
the Abrahamic religions, uber-nationalists past and present, and within science
itself that a global science-based morality is unlikely to become more than a
dreamed of ideal. An ideal eloquently and legalistically worded in the
conventions, protocols and resolutions of the United Nations, yet significantly
ignored or undermined by the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nations.
Consequently,
I have become more enthralled by the Enlightenment’s story making and story
telling than its reasoning and scientific methods. In particular, I find the Enlightenment
story of “progress,” a belief in the improvement of individual and group
wellbeing, far more motivating than the reasoning and science the Enlightenment
promised would carry us toward that betterment. But it’s not the content of the
progress and potential perfection of Humankind myth I’m taken by. It is story-
or myth-making and telling itself I now see as the greatest power humans
possess. In addition to myth-making and telling, reasoning and science remain
as crucial methods for creating, testing and legitimizing the stories we live
by. But, in the short term, reasoning and scientific facts seldom trump the
myths and stories in the minds of the masses. And in democracies the masses
matter. After all, the short term, an individual life, is all those among the
masses have. Day to day, feeling good has the edge over knowing well.
Understanding
and leading human beings using the standards and methods of reasoning and science are necessary
but not sufficient. At one time not long ago I thought it was both. But among
the many things that the control of the American people currently wielded by
the Republicans, a minority party, and the fact that a critical number of the
electorate put Trump into office is 2016, one thing really grabs me. That is,
the failure of a majority of scientific polls and the reasoning of the majority
of great minds in the U.S. to foresee either unlikely political transformation happening,
or the existential threat they now pose. Voter emotion, political story telling
and gerrymandering defied our best science and reasoning and both happened. The
GOP and Trump now rule and our existential threat worsens by the day. A
critical number of the U.S. electorate didn’t rely on the arguments of reason
or the evidence of the natural, political and economic sciences in deciding on
how to cast their ballots. They relied on their emotions and the GOP and Trump stories
and myths that soothed those emotions.
Emotion
and story telling were ignored by the standard model science and reasoning
experts, and decisively by the Democrat Party in its treatment of a large portion
of the electorate in 2016. They were certain their vaunted “reasonable person”
of law and “rational
man” of economic science would vote for Clinton. They misunderstood the U.S.
electorate.
My
point is this. I am gradually yet cautiously taking up a mode of thinking among
those in the absurdist or
existentialist camp.
Human behavior defies understanding by science and reasoning alone. The
Life-threatening mess we have gotten ourselves and the planet into, despite our
best efforts at natural, political and economic science and reasoning, is
nothing other than absurdity brought about by our believing in and living by a
bad story – the story of human exceptionalism and inevitable progress through
the political use of science and economics.
The
greatest motivator is our emotions and the stories and myths that address them.
See here,
here,
and here. The creating
and telling of stories that address emotions, all of them, especially fear, is
that which is in the greatest need of Humankind’s attention, understanding and
guidance. I am in search of a better story for myself personally and, as an
anthropologist, for Humankind. I’m far more hopeful of coming up with one for
myself than one for all of us.
What to Do
What
is there to do beyond practicing political and economic science, and
encouraging the electorate to use reasoning versus emotion in assessing
candidates during political campaigns and selecting among them on Election Day?
Of course, we have to do these things. Throwing in the towel on the modern standard
model of politics and economics would be far worse and likely lead us faster into
autocratic, theocratic slavery and civilizational collapse.
But
until a critical mass of humans accepts that we made a grave mistake in the Early-Mid
Bronze Age by turning
our back on each other and willingly trudging off under the yoke of autocratic
Mesopotamian kings; then meekly, with our gaze upward, yearning and praying for
the heavens of the Abrahamic religions; and most recently with our shoulders
back and heads aiming even higher toward the social and material modernity
comfort myths crafted by the Enlightenment rationalists, scientists, and
industrial inventors, we shall remain doomed to ecological and economic catastrophes
and an eventual apocalypse.
Politicians
and economists are not Humankind’s leaders. They are highly trained, mental tool-bearing
functionaries; the former armed with language and legal knowledge, the later
with numbers and mathematics. Both have rational models and accompanying myths
to appeal to our reasoning and
emotions. But above all, our emotions and myths are our leaders.
Kierkegaard, Camus and the other existentialists are
correct. Modernity is an incomprehensible absurdity, but each of us must do our
best to make it better one human encounter at a time.
Going Forward
What
should guide and inform our way forward and what exactly should we do? I think
a new, better story is needed. One that is an honest admission of what we are
as sentient beings and what we can realistically expect to become. Essentially,
we are flawed, fearful primates capable of greatness, but only when we are led
to produce the greatest good for the greatest number.
The
promises of heaven, modernity, and nationalism, especially libertarian politics
and laissez faire economics, have
failed at addressing our most basic human need and trait – a mutual respect for
each other inherent and expressed in communalism.
I
know of no certain way to get there. Reform seems unlikely. The powers that be
must first see the incarnation of their myth go up in flames, from within
and/or without, before changing course. A total breakdown, complete with every
horror imaginable - here and there, unevenly, sporadically, fast and slow -
followed by a total reset from the very bottom up may be the only possibility.
That
is, the only possibility of a return to the social norms of our hunter-gather
past. Not a return to the organic kumbaya communes of the 1960s. I’m thinking
of a new, improved approach to local communal living; one that avoids the flaws
that doomed the various communal movements of the 20th Century.
Those efforts failed primarily because their inhabitants willfully joined and
brought along their mythic before the Fall Garden of Eden, noble savage notions of
total, unaccountable individual freedom of thought and action.
I
am envisioning a new commune-ism that ecological and economic collapse will
have forced on all Humankind. Where we turn to our neighbors for support and
put our notions of individual freedom, greed, lust, and entitlement second to the survival and flourishing of our local group that protects and sustains
our individual lives, and to the flourishing of peaceful relations between
neighboring groups.
It
will take a lot of the suffering and horror of the apocalypse to humble us
enough for this. It will also require us to self-repress our infatuation with
material things, our appearance, and our desire to outshine and cuckold each
other. In short, it will require a willful forsaking of most of the major
hallmarks of being modern, and what it means to be human will have to be
redefined.
Right
now, before the apocalypse, what this new way of human life would be like is
almost impossible to imagine, much less speculate as to whether it would work
or not.
At
best, it will succeed for a significant number of local groups and new, larger
social groupings where new and better institutions will emerge and be sustained.
At worst, the groups that cannot shake the mental chains of modernism will
annihilate or enslave all other groups. And autocrats, divine and otherwise, will come to
rule once again like they did in Mesopotamia. And Humankind will once more take
the fatal path to a new modernity.
During
the Great Recovery from modernism, each individual in each group will have to
choose to support the autocrats among them or each other, again.
Postscript -
Absurdity
My
anthropology and personality have finally led me to Absurdism. All ‘modern’ roads
lead to Kierkegaard.
I am beginning to understand dimly. May Spinoza’s heaven help me if I continue
and ultimately fail to understand and accept your views, dear Søren.
“What is the Absurd? It is, as
may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my
reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well do the one thing
as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act
and yet here is where I have to act... The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the
absurd, is to act upon faith ... I must act, but reflection has closed the road
so I take one of the possibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do
otherwise because I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection.” — Søren
Kierkegaard, Journals, 1849
…
“Kierkegaard describes how such a
man would endure such defiance and identifies the three major traits of the
Absurd Man, later discussed by Albert Camus: a rejection
of escaping existence (suicide), a rejection of help from a higher power, and
acceptance of his absurd (and despairing) condition.” – From “Absurdism”
Wikipedia
When
I began this blog nine years ago I named it Being Human: Our Past, Present and
Future in Nature. I did so with the idea in mind that there was something to be
gained for myself and others from understanding how we became human, what being
human means at present, what kind of humans we are likely to become, and more
importantly what might and should we aspire to become, in the future.
I
was optimistic in my early blog posts. During the ensuing years I have made
considerable effort to fill in the holes in the knowledge of Humankind I had
acquired through anthropological training and from working in various fields;
and through reading and discussing being human with others that mostly included
retired freethinking professionals in the U.S. and Africa.
I
confess to a quest for the various gists of our human nature. Having little
hope for the speculation of evolutionary and moral psychology to reconstruct
them out of thin air or sociobiology and neuroscience to drill down to them in
our neurons and cells, I rely on the theories and evidentiary methods of
anthropology, ethnographic and nonhuman primate analogy, and the philosophical
analyses of science and history.
Franz Boas, the father of cultural
anthropology, won me over on the paramount importance of deep fieldwork
fact-finding. But the grand theory focus of his armchair predecessors still has
a bit of a hold on me.
So
far, most of my gists of human nature and the arc of prehistory and history
remain few and fuzzy; and I regard that as a good thing being a strong tabula rasa leaning person.
But
it’s hard to shake the dream in the back of my mind of a true, reliable, probabilistic-predictive
science of Humankind, an Anthropology. That is, despite the fact that my own
discipline gave up the pursuit for good in the 1960s when they opted for cultural relativism,
detailed particularistic studies, and problem solving over grand theories and
essences.
I
suspect there are many other anthropologists who think like this in academia,
yet they dare not speak up from deep in the groove of their tenure tracks. Some
of the older anthropology professors, a few of the best, do turn to
generalizing and do it well. Marvin Harris (a cultural materialist, techno-economic
determinist whose views you might like), Clifford Geertz, David
Bidney (here,
here),
and Bernard Campbell come to mind.
I
guess I simply enjoy taking the long view and hope it will point to a
destination Humankind is heading toward more readily than trying to see the
future one case study, one Haidtian mythical moral code, or a neuron and gene
at a time.
The
main realization I have had through all this is that Humankind has taken a
cultural evolutionary path from which it has often strayed, and has thereby missed
opportunities for correction, survival, and sustainability. Having done so,
Humankind now faces the high likelihood of causing its own extinction, and
experiencing the serious degradation or end of Earth’s life sustainability.
All bets are off, the future is too close to call. Regardless, retain hope and take all actions
necessary for Earth, Life and human survival.
Further Reading
“The
Strange Persistence of Guilt,” Wilfred M. McClay, The Hedgehog Review, Spring 2017.
They Tyranny of
Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism by
Pascal Bruckner, Princeton University Press, 2006 (English translation, 2010).
The View From Nowhere
by Thomas Nagel,
Oxford University Press, 1986
The Myth of
Sisyphus by Albert
Camus, Vintage Books, 1955.
The Spell of the
Sensuous: Perception and Language in the More-Than-Human World by David Abram, Vintage Books,
1996.
The Uninhabitable
Earth: Life After Warming by
David Wallace-Wells, Tim Duggan Books, 2019.
Logos: The Mystery
of How We Make Sense of the World by
Raymond Tallis, Agenda Publishing, 2018.
The Age of
Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and
Power by Steve
Fraser, Little, Brown & Company, 2015.
Beyond Good and
Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future by Friedrich Nietzsche, Vintage Press (1989), 1886.
The Wretched of the
Earth by Frantz
Fanon, Grove Press, 1963.
Kierkegaardian
Reflections on the Problem of Pluralism by Aaron Fehir, Lexington Books, 2015.
Kierkegaard’s
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Translated
by David F. Swenson & Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press (1941),
1846.
The Present Age: On
the Death of Rebellion by
Søren Kierkegaard, Harper Perennial (1962), 1846.
Food, Energy,
Water and the Climate: A Perfect Storm of Global Events?, by John Beddington,
CMG FRS, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government, UK, 2009.
____________
* - “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific
Assessment,” Report of an Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate,
Woods Hole, Massachusetts, July 23-27, 1979, to the Climate Research Board,
Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Research Council.
