A Quiet Revolution

Our culture has failed us on multiple levels and is in dire need of change. One way (but not the only way) to bring about this change is through a quiet revolution in our own lives.

Modern humans are overly specialized, disconnected from each other, not terribly happy, toxified from industrial poisons, relate poorly to the natural world, and are be driving the planet towards the mass extinction of most complex life.

If this is true, you may be asking -- then why the hell are we continuing down this path?

The simple answer is that our complex society has grown very good at growth and self-defense, and that there are few viable ways to disconnect from this complexity. Unless you're inclined towards throwing yourself off of the nearest cliff to eliminate your carbon impact, there is no way to 'opt out'.

As Daniel Quinn likes to say, "Our culture has locked up all the food." This is also true for shelter, water, clothing, and social relationships. So much of our lives in this culture revolve around working at a specialized job we don't like to pay for basic subsistence, luxury items that our culture insists are essential, and interacting with people who are doing much of the same thing. Even if your idea of 'opting out' involves voluntary simplicity, finding the essentials to support yourself (food, water, clothing, shelter and human companionship) is no simple matter. They are all locked up to one degree or another.

Moreover, a communal life based around voluntary simplicity is a threat to a complex society that has eliminated all viable alternatives to itself through 12,000 years of expansion and genocide.

Yes, communes and kibbutzes do exist. A few isolated hunter-gatherer tribes exist. But the exception does not disprove the rule.

There are various ways that our culture deals with people who are not enraptured with America's SUV culture. The simplest way is that access to the essentials for life requires money, which can only be accessed through theft (risky) or doing work that supports the larger culture (like making burgers for people too busy to do it for themselves).

This is reinforced by how we raise our children. Our schools prepare students to become good employees and consumers, teaching practical skills like 'How to Balance a Checkbook' and 'How to Fill out a Job Application'. Advanced students are taught 'How to Start Your Own Business'. Teaching students how to build a home from primarily native materials, grow a garden suited to their bioregion, or gather wild plants with medicinal or beneficial nutrients would be considered *impractical* and would likely get a school shut down. Young people in our society are expected to go to school, get a job, get their own place to live, and start contributing to society (just like everyone else!).

Our culture has become very good at enforcing social norms with only the implied threat of violence. The social norm is, 'everyone works' and 'only well-educated people have the luxury of enjoying their job'.

If an adult decides that, once they've made it through this indoctrination, they still want to simplify their lives in a meaningful way ... the challenges are still pronounced.

There is not enough open land nor enough expertise for more than a tiny fraction of people to go back to living off of the land without purchasing property. Arable land is not cheap, and neither are the taxes need to keep it. Purchasing arable land as a community is difficult because building a cohesive community must allow for the patient development of community decisionmaking. Experience in developing these sorts of communities is something that we do not find in great abundance today -- failure rates for intentional communities approach 90%.

Even moderate simplicity, such as working less hours and spending more time on other pursuits (such as raising a family, political activism or growing your own food) has its own challenges. Perhaps rather than explaining them, I'll simply ask some leading questions:

A) How many middle aged political activists have trouble making ends meet, when they discover they are no longer healthy (no health insurance!) and willing to live in a 2-bedroom apartment with 5 people (who keep rotating in and out). But they have little salable job experience, no savings, hefty student loans, and aren't very good at moving up the promotional ladder via office politics.

B) How many two-parent families cut back to 1 income in order to raise their child(ren)?

C) Is it more cost effective to make your own soap, raise your own corn, bake your own bread ... or to work a few more hours at work and simply buy these items at the supermarket?

The answer to these questions is: A) Too many to count on one hand! B) Very few! and C) Wonderbread isn't real food!

Our culture is very good at channeling people into behavior that serves to support the culture. I make this point because a frequent (and biting) charge from right-wing friends of mine is that 'If you believe in all this hippy stuff, why aren't you doing XYZ!?!'

The simple answer is that it is difficult. It is particularly difficult if you're not young, healthy, childless, debt free, and in a supportive family or community environment.

The larger answer, however, is that it is essential to keep trying. The logic of the marketplace, where the value of an action can only be measured by its opportunity cost, is destroying the ability of the planet to support complex and diverse life.

This is a quiet revolution. It will not change the face of the problems facing our society, and our world. It is, nonetheless, essential to simplify your life to the extend that you're able to -- and then keep on pushing.

Our lives have not been improved by this massive degree of complexity and specialization, but they will improve as we turn towards spending more of our time on pursuits that bring us joy.

Tools

As somewhat of a primitivist, I'm also pretty attached to certain pieces of technology for work/fun and also for medical necessity.

I guess I've come to accept that there's a balance to be maintained.



So when I came upon the ultra mega ninja stick 2000 (the marketing guys are coming up with a name, this is the working title), I wasn't sure what to make of it. It radiated power -- an ancient, primal, slightly skunky sort of power. I began to back away from the ninja mega super stick ...

That's when it attacked.



I don't want to bore you with the details, but I fended off the attack with my new jedi ninja super ultra mega sword. The mayor gave me the key to the city and not-too-subtle hint about the marital status of his daughter. You know, the usual hero stuff.



The blade no longer smelled like primal skunk, so I took it home with me. Being a magical blade, it fit perfectly (of course!).



The bad part about being a hero is that when you return home, your problems at home haven't been solved by a lower ranked hero. I had a patch of brambles to clear out.

This was a vexing moral problem. Do I use the primieval power that drains the soul of all nonbelievers within a 50 mile radius and condems them to a life of agony (I forgot to mention this part before, my bad). Or do I use the Black & Decker tool powered by 50 million year-old dinosaurs and ferns, which emits CO2 into the atmosphere, thus dooming us all to a really crapy 22nd century?



I think I made the right choice.

Tiny Home Design -- Input Appreciated

See also: Materials

A Very Sick Culture

A few things I ran across today remind me that we have diverged very, very far from anything approaching rationality.

"I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste."

A blurb about the movie Crude reminded me that this mother fucker was almost made Obama's Treasury Secretary.

"My message on this topic is clear and direct. We are at a crucial moment in human history. 2009 is to climate change what 1939 was to WWII. Poland has been invaded – the Arctic is melting, the bushfires are burning, the droughts are strengthening and the floods are sweeping away communities. There is only one question you have to ask yourself: “what will I tell my children?”

This article is right on point. We have already passed the climate tipping point; the question now is whether we will merely precipitate a massive shift in the Earth's climate, or whether we will cause the extinction of most complex multicellular life.

By 2100, perhaps half of the planet will have entirely new climates to which no current species on Earth are adapted. We don't have to go down this road. We can stop digging up coal, sucking oil out of the Alberta tar sands, and develop a sane energy policy which produces less toxicity and less greenhouse gasses.

But the people in charge are virulently opposed to this, because it they fear any change which might result in a loss of power or wealth for them. They are the same class of people who took all the land, and killed our native forebears ... they killed the ones ones who dared to fight back, or be born free from indoctrination.

They sold the land back to the broken, the afflicted, and to those who did not fight back. They sold the land back with conditions attached, with a price -- make the land productive. Make a profit. Or else we take the and back and leave you cold and destitute, lying in the gutter.

The Rockafellers, Fords and Carnegies of this world have already taken our pride, the fruits of our labor, and most of our self-respect. They have divorced us from the price of a job well done. They found a way to make even more profit by taking the land back from our ancestors, finding them new and better places to work called factories. Very efficient! Coal smoke is good for you! Our 50 page book of regulations will make the workplace more fair! It was far cheaper to work a man (or a woman, they're not picky) for bare subsistence wages -- then profit anew from their rent, heat, car, food and medical bills.

The Union Carbides, Dow Chemicals and Monsantos of this world have already come for large portions of our lives. We live in a toxic stew of carcinogens, mutagens and neurotoxins. We eat carcinogens, mutagens and neurotoxins. We drink carcinogens, mutagens and neurotoxins ... with a dash of prozac, birth control hormones, and all the other drugs that wash into the sewers and find their way back into our drinking water. They kill us quickly, sometimes. Sometimes they kill us slowly. Most often of all, they simply make us suffer from unexplained illnesses that are caused by (or exacerbated by) the toxins they produce in enormous quantities.

And now their conglomerated power comes for the lives of generations to come. There is great profit to be had! And so they lie, they trick, they deceive. The blood of the trickster god Loki flows in their veins. They are wounding the planet's air, water and land in a staggering display of hubris. They are destroying the ability of this planet to nurture the complex web of life that sustains all living things.

Do we listen?

Do we accept the creature comforts they throw at us
listen to their lies
and accept that the Earth is simply too big to worry about?

There is no attic to hide in
we cannot ride out the coming storm

If no one stands up for us
if we do not stand up for ourselves
then there will be no generations left to curse our names.

Despite this chorus of anger, I am left inspired by another author, who writes:

"The situation is so immense, so mind-numbingly complex and difficult, so lost in the labyrinth of humanity’s perverse perceptions, that I’ve now moved beyond any notion of being “optimistic” or “pessimistic”. I will simply continue to fight as creatively and as hard as I can, and hope that my own perception is wrong."

In this sense, Derrick Jensen is quite correct. We are indeed at the "endgame". 10,000 years of cultural domination by the food hoarders, money lenders and lawgivers of this world have brought us to the precipice.

What do we do about it? I don't know.

But like most things in life, imperfect action beats sitting on your butt trying to come up with "the perfect plan".

A Hidden Talent

I have a talent for driving people insane.

Sorry, J. I didn't mean to turn you into a gibbering bobblehead like that.

Forest Largesse

This is the fun time of year for gardens.



And although my foraging skills are rudimentary, it's hard to miss blackberries.

Rockhopping

I paid a visit to Gooseberry Falls today. A few differences from my previous visits:

1. It's fall, so the water is pretty low.



2. I was wearing flip flops, which are not helpful when rockhopping changes into rockclimbing.



3. After 3 years without much physical activity, I'm pretty damned weak now. It makes a difference with my sense of balance, too. I actually slid off the side of a few rocks while hopping across the river.

But I still had fun :)

Specialization

From consumer appliances that save time and energy (dishwashers, self-cleaning ovens and microwave ovens!) to objects which help us multi-task our time (tapes to learn French in your sleep, meals on a stick!) to experts that help us manage our lives (accountants, pet psychologists, house cleaners, financial planners!), we’re all focused on efficiency. The end goal is to specialize so effectively in one particular task that you become expert at it – everything else can be parceled out to the lowest bidder.

What do we achieve, as a society, from this specialization of time? We have the highest standard of living in the world when measured in strictly material terms. The marketing departments of many Fortune-500 company would have us believe that this is the entirety of human motivation and satisfaction.

But many people realize that this is not the end goal of their lives. They want to spend more time with their families, or time pursuing the parts of their life that provide them with the most joy. But somehow, these other demands seldom seem to win out in the end. The demands of professionalism, careerism, and intense specialization are such that most people seem unable to voluntarily fall behind the rest of the pack.

Many years ago, Follett wrote that orders are disobeyed when they go against human nature (Follett. The Giving of Orders. Classics of Public Administration, pp. 37-43). This is also true for our daily activities, which are increasingly being managed by a host of specialists. The more complex our social structures become, the more they rub up against human nature.

Specialization is a form of technology, and like any technology it creates a disconnect between people and the appendage/skill that it took the place of (McLuhan. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man). A society that intensely specializes creates a rift between common sense (intuitive human nature) and the rules necessary to manage a complex society.

For example, common sense argues that local conditions should have bearing on who receives government benefits intended to help people who are temporarily down on their luck. (June, the single mother who everyone in town knows is a hard worker, deserves preference over the lazy bum Joe who never pays his child support on time). But complex bureaucracies cannot abode decisions like this to be made at the local level, as it would create disunity within the system. This is one example of how human nature and specialization can conflict.

This creates a deeper conflict, because the essence of human life is work -- work with meaning, purpose, and direction. Much of this work rubs against the grain of human nature (Gatto. The Underground History of American Education). Very few tasks in our society today have anything more than an abstract sense of meaning, purpose, and direction.

Even professions considered to be filled with meaning and purpose, such as education, are increasingly abstracted. Modern teachers do not produce students who can read and analyze complex works, they teach proscribed curricula that produces students capable of getting 70% of multiple choice questions right on their tests. There is overlap between these two goals, but the overlap is abstract and not terribly satisfying -- as evidenced by the fact that over half of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years.

This unhappiness with jobs that purport to be of service to others is not isolated to education. It is endemic in many professions.

McKnight notes a common refrain from young people, many of who ask him some variation of: “Can you tell me what good work needs to be done in America? I thought that professional training would lead me to good work, but it has led me to live off some people who don’t need me and others I can’t help."

McKnight notes that many service-oriented jobs, such as teaching and nursing, have a deep tendency to identify additional human needs in order to fund their own continued growth. This creation of deficiency in other people is also troubling to many people:

"The politics for a new definition of legitimate work in America may grow from the confluence of citizens angered by the professional invasion of personhood and young professionals disillusioned by lives wasted in the manufacture of need. The possibility for this politics requires an economy that can provide legitimate work for all those people who do not want to make a living by creating deficiencies in their neighbors.” (McKnight. The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits.)

Quinn is also critical of our drive to create more programs, stating that:

“Programs make it possible to look busy and purposeful while failing. If programs actually did the things people expect them to do, then human society would be heaven: our governments would work, our schools would work, our law enforcement would work, our penal systems would work, and so on. When programs fail (as they inevitably do), this is blamed on things like poor design, lack of funds and staff, bad management, and inadequate training. When programs fail, look for them to be replaced by new ones with improved design, increased funding and staff, superior management, and better training. When these new programs fail (as they invariably do), this is blamed on poor design, lack of funds and staff, bad management, and inadequate training.
This is why we spend more and more on our failures every year. Most people accept this willingly enough, because they know they’re getting more every year: bigger budgets, more laws, more police, more prisons—more of everything that didn’t work last year or the year before that or the year before that.” (Quinn. Beyond Civilization.)

It is important to note that humans did not always live this way. The story of other ways of living is a blind spot in our society. We are taught to believe that our culture is wonderful, that many people wish they could live like us, and that cultures more primitive than ours simply aren’t smart enough to build grain silos and organize standing armies.

But these societies often had something that we did not -- a sense of purpose, meaning and joy.

This is not intended to idealize a highly complex subject, but I do believe that the we need to recognize that human needs are generally not fulfilled by intense specialization. For every professional athlete who deeply loves their ability to do nothing but throw basketballs into metal hoops, there are a stadium full of people who derive very little satisfaction or joy from their own work.

Specialization is something that humans have practiced for all, or most of our history. Men and women had different roles within a family, just as older people had different roles than teenagers within a tribe. Based on studies of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies in the 20th century, other specializations were also common -- such as tribal chief, medicine (wo)man, or 'that guy Joseph who is particularly adept at tracking wounded wildebeasts through the spring monsoons'.

There is a distinct difference, however, between specializations which are based on common sense and those which are based on organizational efficiency. It is common sense that not every member of a tribe can learn about the 11,000 plants and animals common to a bioregion, and that someone may specialize in maintaining a 'database' of this knowledge. However, it rubs against human nature when an 11,000 page rulebook determines whether or not a particular medical procedure will be covered by your insurer. Those whose job it is to tell sick people that, no, they cannot see a doctor or have a procedure performed -- these people are on the short and unhappy end of the organizational hierarchy stick.

This type of specialist did not used to exist:

"Hunter-gatherer societies ... contain no more than a few dozen distinct social personalities, while modern European censuses recognize 10,000 to 20,000 unique occupational roles, and industrial societies may contain overall more than 1,000,000 different kinds of social personalities." (Tainter. The Collapse of Complex Societies).

What we have, then, is a drive towards complexity that makes our lives less joyful.

This is the definition of insane or stupid ... I forget which one :P