The beautiful film, Koyaanisqatsi, begins its panoramic tale of modern civilization with the launch of a rocket, which, like Icarus, begins its journey towards the great heights of heaven with so much promise. But, like Icarus, the rocket won’t make it — the wax will melt, the wings will fall, and it will plummet back to Earth. This is Koyaanisqatsi, “Life Out of Balance” in the Hopi language, and a great metaphor for our modern civilization.
There is a growing need to talk about why we’re in this mess and how we got here. Is habitat-destruction and toxification simply an aberration that began in the last couple of hundred years with the industrial revolution or has access to easy energy just accelerated the tendencies of an already aberrant humanity? And if these are aberrations, for what other animals pillage and rape their habitats, what does a real, earthy humanity look like?
Perhaps one of the greatest cultural falsehoods of the contemporary mythos is the story of Progress. We see it inscribed into all the civilized stories of humanity: Evolution, we are often told, follows a linear progression towards more and more advanced species, like humans. Or, human knowledge is increasingly more advanced and closer and closer to truth than ever before. Or, technological progress is inevitable and the dream of all humans. And, once we’ve made a technological acheivement, we can never go back. Endless Growth, Endless Ascent.
This is not only wrong, but it’s also laced with incredible hubris, a hubris that denies the validity of cultures that have lived sustainably, that have not sought to develop increasingly advanced technology. If we are looking for visions for a “sustainable and just world,” it is incredibly important to look outside of this toxifying, earth-destroying culture (which knows nothing about sustainability) to cultures which are models of sustainable life-ways.
The aboriginal peoples of what-is-now-called “Australia” are a great example of sustainable human cultures. It is estimated that they have been living in that land for anywhere from 40,000 to 70,000 years. That’s an incredible amount of time, especially considering that industrial civilization is less than 200 years old! We can also look to the First Peoples of the “North American” continent as teachers in sustainability, for many of these tribes have lived in their places for thousands of years without damaging the land. (It should also be noted that indigenous peoples have been devastated by this Unsustainable Culture and continue to be threatened by it — these Teachers for the rest of us are being erased, destroyed, killed.)
According to David Abram in his tremendous book, The Spell of the Sensuous, one of the aspects of indigenous cultures is that they don’t follow this linear view of the world where history can be plotted along a line of forwards (progress) and backwards (regress). Rather, all things come in cycles and seasons. There is a great round — the rise and fall of the sun every day, the turning of the seasons every year, the life of each person from birth to adult to elder, with each movement in the cycle having significance and meaning.
One of the things I notice in much of the discourse in environmental and climate movements is that the myths of progress and high technology are still here. There seems to be a fundamental and unquestioned assumption that computers, cell phones, and even electricity are with us to stay, or that cities are with us to stay, or that air conditioning and grocery stores are with us to stay, or that human populations of 6 billion+ are with us to stay and that we can somehow make, by force, all of these things sustainable if we try hard enough, if we power them with solar panels and windmills and do them “organically.” This seems like an awful lot of effort to prop up things that have never been sustainable and that have never existed, even in analog, in sustainable, indigenous cultures.
One of the biggest counter-arguments to any critique of progress and technology and modern civilization is the claim: We can’t go back, and why would we want to go backwards? The implied assumption is that many indigenous lifeways are “backwards” because they didn’t develop technology, but maintained simple tools for hunting, gathering, and horticulture.
Paul Shepard, in his eminent psychological work, Nature and Madness, reverses the story of progress. He says that if we look at the indigenous human societies, we see a complete, mature, full humanity. This is a maturity, Shepard claims, that falls into immaturity and hierarchy with the advent of agriculture and domestication of plants and animals. This movement continues throughout the history of civilization and onto the industrial age. From this perspective, a move towards sustainable lifeways, towards remembering our indigenous pasts, which all of us as humans share even if we’ve been cut off from it by many generations and thousands of years, is not a regression, is not “going backwards.” It’s a return home, a return to our humanity, a return to life in balance.
These dire times of ecological devastation and collapse should stimulate deep questions about who we are as humans and what we really value in life. Is it the internet and iPhones, or the relationships we have with each other? Is it zoos and discovery channel specials or is it relationships with our more-than-human brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers? Is it air conditioning and out-of-season tomatoes or is it the run of a river unimpeded by dams and air? Is it jobs we hate but tolerate or clear air all the way to the horizon (and beyond)? Is it pavement and sidewalks and concrete block or is it meadows allowed to teem with the buzz of life? “Do you really believe you are an animal?” Gary Snyder asks. Right now, this may be the most important question we can ask ourselves.
Glimpses of Return:
- Afterculture: An Anthropology of the Future: A wicked-cool art project envisioning what a post-civilized culture might look like
- Evon Peter of Native Movement speaks at PowerShift 2007
- The College of Mythic Cartography: For thoughts and essays on discovering wild ways of living — alertness, awareness, and sensitivity to our environs.
- Anthropik’s Thirty Theses on Human Life and Civilization: thoughts on the values of the biosphere and the civilization’s inherent conflicts with these values
- Rewilding Primer in Green Anarchy Magazine
- Wildroots Collective: Some folks practicing “primitive skills” outside of Asheville, NC
- Film: Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance
- Film: (The Perhaps Too-Dated) Walkabout
- Film: What a Way To Go: Life At the End of Empire
Suggested Reading:
- The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
- A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen
- Nature and Madness by Paul Shepard
- My Name Is Chellis and I’m In Recovery From Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning
- Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
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The interesting thing about evolution is that species are adapted to specific conditions - if the conditions change, those best able to adapt to changed situation will continue to survive. The changing habits, the preference of certain characteristics and traits allow species to go with the flow. It is about changing how the species interacts with its environment, NOT changing the environment to go back to the conditions which make life the most comfortable. And yet that is exactly what we are doing. The difference here is that we created this problem and we are not powerless to at least mitigate it. And yet western civilization is completely unwilling to change itself to adapt to the problem it created. Seems like we should be candidates for the next Darwin Awards.
The earth can only support a few tens of millions of people using hunter/gatherer lifestyle. What happens to the rest if we get rid of technology? And who gets to be in the “lucky” 50-60 million? Also, the transition period would likely be even more destructive to the environment than putting improved technologies in place.
I find this discourse to be scary and incomplete. It offers no hope, no solutions other than destroying most everything humans have built, leaving behind millions and letting them suffer and die. This is not helpful to environmentalists - it questions our very existence as a species, it cherishes only a chosen few cultures, and alienates environmentalists from the general public. Culture is very important, and many people don’t recognize that. But it’s also something fluid and dynamic. While in the past, some societies have done some things better than others, there is no time I would rather live than right now.
Some technologies are certainly harmful, but I think your characterization of technology is limited. Past societies used just as much technology as we did - tools, agriculture, boats, etc. What point in history is it OK to use technology to be sustainable? It’s impossible to determine. Rather, what’s different now is the way we make decisions about which technologies to pursue - no longer for the benefit of society, but for personal gain, “pure” science, and other elitist/individualistic motives.
If we want a solution that gets at the heart of what you’re talking about - valuing each other rather than technology - we need not return to the distant past, or even the near past of the fifties. We need a participatory or deliberative democracy, a “strong democracy,” built upon community involvement and shared responsibility. We don’t have to force a strong democracy, because it builds upon the values that people already hold and the local communities we live in. A strong democracy will support the technologies that support it - whether wind turbines, green roofs or community centers. We don’t have to be Luddites to value the presence of other humans, nor should we have to reinvent the wheel. We do need to be careful how we approach these questions, though, or we will slip into a theoretical world that never existed.
Also, a technology that was sustainable in one age can become unsustainable in another. Horses were a relatively sustainable mode of transportation, however higher population density created a lot of disease in many US cities in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Today nobody would advocate returning to the horse as a substitute for the car, instead we talk about hybrids and/or maglev trains.
R Margolis,
The Earth does have a carrying capacity for humans. We have exceeded it — overshoot. What happens after overshoot of a population? Collapse. This is natural. I don’t glory in the suffering of humans, but starvation is already rampant and no increase in production of food will mean that there will be any less starvation. There’ll just be 9 billion people with a few million starving, just like now. That’s not an improvement.
The reduction of human populations should also be viewed from a more-than-human perspective. Less humans means more wolves, more black bears, more whales, more salmon, more wild animals. These animal nations would celebrate to be allowed to thrive once more.
And hybrid cars! OMG. those aren’t close to being sustainable:
http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188
kai,
yes, it is scary and limited in its range — i’m offering a very brief critique of industrial civilization, which has been expounded upon in countless works (a few of which I mentioned and I encourage you to check them out, I especially want to encourage you to look up psychologist Chellis Glendinning’s book. I can link you to some articles by her if you’d like… she offers this critique in a much more eloquent way than I do).
yes, this does question our existence as a species. what is is that our existence is meant to look like? in what context did we evolve and how did humans live on this earth for most of their time? it wasn’t like it is today. and if we didn’t survive in this way for most of our history, then we’re probably doing something wrong. our destruction of the natural world is indicative of this. and this doesn’t just mean that surface level things are wrong… like that we get electricity from coal and nuclear power. it means everything is potentially wrong — sidewalks, grocery stores, shopping malls, electricity, etc. these have to be questioned if we really want sustainable lifeways. things are dire, and we’re all searching for answers and solutions and action-plans. but if these “solutions” are constructed without periods of deep questioning of everything, then they won’t solve anything.
in terms of technology, certainly all cultures have used some tools. stone age folks used stone and bone tools. not all societies have used agriculture, and i think that needs to be mentioned. not all societies have domesticated plants and animals. and many of the sustainable cultures that existed did not not do these things. that doesn’t mean that small scale plantings of a horticulture and perma-culture variety can’t be done.
i would say that “technologies” are fine so long as every person knows how to construct them and can do so with renewable materials found in their bioregion. i have no clue how solar panels work. i can’t mine for gallium here (nor would i be able to without massive machines and explosives). i have no clue how to build a computer from scratch, nor do i have the metals and toxic chemicals required for semiconductor construction in this region. if your local community can build a computer or a solar panel from materials you can gather in your bioregion, more power to you.
also, your response seems to indicate that i am preferring a select few cultures to the vast majority of cultures. i think this is false. again, modern homo sapiens lived on this planet for a few hundred thousand years before the advent of agriculture, domestication, cities, and specialized technology. there were countless cultures that existed in these times. when i mention aboriginal australians, i’m not talking about One Culture, i’m talking about a multitude of cultures. if i recall correctly there were something like 200 languages spoken in that area. in this country, there are countless cultures that have been erased from existence. in my region, there were the sissapahaw, the ocaneechi, the eno cultures that existed (at the least! it’s hard to know because those cultures have largely been destroyed). that’s at least 3 cultures where now there is one, and if we looked at all of the united states we would see hundreds of cultures pushed off and replaced by Monoculture (though some native cultures do still, fortunately, exist though in struggle).
i think it’s very hard for contemporary americans to fathom a completely different and sustainable way of living… the ways of living practiced by these indigenous groups. the general cursory response is that my way of thinking is an idealized, romanticized notion of the past that never existed. i’ve heard this response made, often, by those who have never done any research into these things. i’m not suggesting a past utopia, i’m suggesting a past with an integrated culture that worked, that lived in relation to the land, and guided people through the various stages of life (which euro-american culture does not do. e.g. mid-life crises).
in terms of hope, you’re right. i offer no hope, because there is no hope. there’s only honesty, despair, and picking up the pieces. i’m speaking as honestly as i can here. i think this way of living is fucked up. i think cars are fucked up. i think lawns are fucked up. i think pavement is fucked up. i think computers and the toxics required to build them are fucked up. i think having food under lock-and-key is fucked up. ecological destruction isn’t a superficial problem, we need to question everything — EVERYTHING — in order to have true healing. that’s what i want to suggest.
Evan
…well…before I would even consider Kraft Eriche’s Extraterrestrial Imperative (e.g., human civilization leaves Earth for other planets) before I would advocate collapse. I might even consider geo-engineering to buy more time…
Yes we need to get population stable. However, once that occurs, you can consider a far future where human civilization would not be bound to a single planet. Now I probably sound too weird, but maybe a little more practical than just reverting to a low population that scrounges a living.
Evan, I just don’t see the point of all this.
I completely agree that things would be a lot better in many ways if there was magically a few million humans, instead of a few billion, and if we were all living closer to the Earth.
But guess what: that is NOTHING like the world we live in and having our heads in the clouds with this primtivist fantasy land is not much better than having your head in the sand and not believing in global warming.
I find no joy WHAT-SO-EVER in thinking about the death of BILLIONS of people after which some happy vision like this can somehow (quite unbelievably if you ask me) emerge.
I frankly find the idea of art work glorifying that path to the future to be disgusting.
[Not to mention that this specific art work you link to is RIFE with border-line racist appropriation, sterotyping, and hyper generalization of the indigenous cultures of the land now called America.]
Getting close to nature again is critical.
Questioning the role of technology is essential.
This glorification of collapse, even a hint of it, greatly distracts from and undercuts your main (and valid!) points about being extremely cautious in our relationship with technology.
It has extremely violent undertones, and as always when there is violence in the world, it is less likely that computer savvy bloggers will be the ones suffer.
It is a bit sick I think to sit in our enormous place of privildge and even slightly glorify “collapse”.
If and when the collapse comes, I for one hope to be trying my best to support all of us trying to survive, not breaing out the kazoos and party hats.
I can’t help but think your perspective if you lived in Somalia, Darfur, or even New Orleans, would be quite a bit different.
Juliana,
Thank you for your comment.
Brian,
I don’t want to take collapse lightly, though I speak rather flippantly about it. I feel that collapse is already here and happening. Rainforests are undergoing collapse. Glaciers are undergoing collapse. Permafrost and Ice Sheets are undergoing collapse. Coral Reefs are undergoing collapse. Wild Salmon Populations are undergoing collapse. Watersheds in the southeast are undergoing collapse. Old Growth Forests are undergoing collapse. Wild Ecosystems everywhere are undergoing collapse. The Climate is undergoing Collapse. This is all awful, awful, awful beyond words. We live in a time of great Suffering, inescapable Suffering and Collapse. It’s not that the prospect of Collapse appears on the horizon, but that we are living in it.
I feel that what the primitivist perspective offers in these times is a needed critique of fundamental assumptions about technology and society as well as carving out possibilities and ways humans can once again return to the fullness of human life in relation to our more-than-human brothers and sisters.
I don’t want to turn this into an ideological divider, or to indicate that anything that’s not “primitivist” in nature shouldn’t be done. I only want to ask questions and provide alternative possibilities. In talking with friends in my community, I have found that opening up a dialogue that goes deeper than talk of “Solutions” has been, in its early stages, incredibly valuable. The other night, a discussion on cars came up as talk began about what happens as we turn away from fossil fuels. A number of folks talked about prospects of hydrogen, and I interjected asking why Car Culture is so valuable that we would want to keep it going? These are the questions I try to ask in my community, and I’m trying to bring these into the larger “Youth Climate Movement” discourse. Among my community, these conversations feel like they will lead to deeper, longer-lasting transformation of our lives.
I think grief and celebration can be interwoven. As we undergo collapse, can we sob and weep for all the suffering whilst taking joy in the emergence of new communities, new lives, and new relationships? I’d like to think we can.
I hope this clarifies my motivation for this post a bit. I do apologize that my posts do have a knee-jerk/flippant feeling. I do not wish to be insensitive and uncaring.
in good heart,
Evan
For a sort of middle road in all this, take a look at Bill McKibben’s most recent book, Deep Economy. He actively questions the idea of “growth,” especially in regards to whether it should be the fundamental goal of economies, and comes to some interesting and valuable conclusions.
Take a look:
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Economy-Wealth-Communities-Durable/dp/0805076263
A few years ago, just before climate activism became all the rage, I wrote an pamphlet called “New Directions in Radical Ecological Action” on some of these topics, essentially a rejection of the misanthropic environmental radicalism of the 80’s and 90’s and a call for a radical environmentalism as deeply rooted in social justice as an ecological worldview.
You might find it interesting…
the .pdf is here:
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/special/Publications/NewDirections.pdf
Brian,
Thank you for the pamphlet. That’s great stuff.
in good heart,
Evan
Evan,
I’ve been waiting for someone to write a post about this for awhile now. Thank you.
go back to the old email version. your new way does nothing for me…..