'Ishmael' Trilogy by Daniel Quinn

[AxelHeyst]

I was highly influenced by Joseph Tainter’s book ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’, which is relevant to this thread. Also by John Michael Greer’s white paper on his Catabolic Theory of Collapse, easily found by searching.

There’s the ‘civ doesn’t lead to maximum human and all-life flourishing the way we like to think it does’ argument, and then there’s the ‘civ isn’t really going to pan out, regardless of whether we think that’s a good or bad thing’ argument. I happen to find both arguments persuasive.

I went back to the beginning of the thread and was encouraged to see Jacob write that Ishmael/etc was part of the philosophical groundwork for ERE. I feel like I’m in the right place.

—

I also find many of these arguments to be highly anthropocentric - meaning, we tend to only discuss if civ is good/bad for humans. Non-human life should weigh in to the calculus as well, I think, and not only because species extinction is a worrying trend for all the other organisms that include us. If having civ means that the salmon, the rainforest, all those species have to go, then I don’t want civ. I know that asteroids have wiped out a lot of life in the past; doesn’t mean I’m cool with trading a hundred-odd species for WalMart.

I know there’s the argument that civ doesn’t have to mean the salmon have to go, that we can just tune and tweak civ to be sustainable. I *work* in that industry (sustainable development). I’m on the inside. I’ve given my career to that idea. And I think we’re kidding ourselves.

[AxelHeyst]

@c_L, I completely agree that we shouldn’t engage in self-species hate. It is hard to face the facts of human destruction and not go through a phase of self- hatred, I think most people who engage with this material have to go through that phase. Some get stuck in it (Bill Hicks, anyone?). Some get vocal in that phase, and then stop being vocal after they've found peace so we only hear the voices of species hate. I’d like to go on record as an anti-civver who does *not* think humans are a disease/virus/etc.

[steveo73]

Examples of massacring the environment include but are not limited to the extinction of hundreds of species per day, destruction of much of earth's forests, acidification and overfishing of the oceans and heating of the earth's climate.

I don't see things as being this bad especially in the context of humans past. We also now have clean water and lots of food and roads and TV and NETFLIX etc.

My take is that we are consistently making the environment worse and it's going to get worse.

I think the opposite. I think over time we tend to improve the Earth for our habitation. Sure some animals die off. I don't like that. I can also see all the great stuff that progress has created. Around 1960 there were something like 4 million people killed in China via famine. Now China is a thriving country.

We have made massive improvements in health care and technology including cars using much less fuel and safer fuel.

Is life really better than it was 20 years ago? I disagree that the answer is obviously yes. We have more and cheaper technology, is that the definition of life being better?

This is subjective but when I was a kid we had no Internet. We were reasonably well off and we had 2 TV's. One was this tiny black and white TV and another this massive but small screen colour TV.

According to the anti-civ people this is not true. Yes h/g would have "changed their environment" but calling what they did the same thing as what we are doing is a misnomer.

I get this but it's a theoretical debate. The end result is the same. Australia had some huge animals (Kanagaroos and others) and it is commonly believed that the aborigines quickly killed them off. That was anti-civ life. They killed each other off as well. They died earlier. There is a tendency to glorify humans that weren't civilised but it's a really pessimistic view of society today and a really optimistic view of non-civilised societies.

This is a good point. Though I don't think this is a popular opinion among anti-civers, I think capitalism is a great innovation. I have some problems with the way we're employing it currently, but overall it's fucking amazing system of integrating and co-operation amongst people who never even speak, much less see each other. What's frustrating is trying to set up any kind of shared space/ tool arrangement. I'd be happy to share most of the tools I own with other people, because I'd like access to tools that I don't actually need to use that often. I also need very little personal space and would like to share common/ cooking/ bathroom spaces with others to minimize cost and resource usage, but these arrangements are hard to come by. I thought this was a sad hippy problem, but it seems like h/g were remarkably good at this kind of sharing, in their way.

I get this but it's really that capitalism isn't funding your specific requirements well probably because not enough people can work together without a monetary incentive. Capitalism is amazing though. Anyone aiming for FI is relying on capitalism.

There are examples of radical environmentalists who do not do these things. I do agree that the mainstream environmental movement is more talk than action. Even radical environmentalists (at least American and European ones) generally travel by plane and car. This doesn't make what they are saying untrue, though it would be more inspiring if they would lead by example.

The hypocrisy annoys me. You can't preach one thing and practise another. To me it does make what they are stating untrue because it's not clear cut. Don't believe the hype train of environmentalists. The world is a lot more complex than they would have you believe and our knowledge is far from clear cut and unchanging.

[steveo73]

But they dont really help answer the question at hand, what do we do, given the fact humans are soon reaching a huge pivot point.

Why are we reaching a huge pivot point soon ? This sounds to me like some of those doomsday cults. There needs to be a lot more to this than just subjective beliefs.

[classical_Liberal]

@Steveo73
Peak oil, the associated population overshoot, and climate change. I'm much less of a doomer than most on here, but to ignore these massive problems and assume they will not require a huge shift is overly optimistic, IMO.

[fiby41]

https://youtu.be/IiP2y20e8Xc

[steveo73]

@Steveo73
Peak oil, the associated population overshoot, and climate change. I'm much less of a doomer than most on here, but to ignore these massive problems and assume they will not require a huge shift is overly optimistic, IMO.

I went to uni years ago. Peak oil was meant to happen in the year 2000. I still haven't seen anything to state that climate change is an end of the world scenario.

I also think that human beings are amazing. We tend to improve our environment in amazing ways consistently over time.

So on one side we have this extreme pessimism towards human society and our impact on the environment whereas on the other side we have the facts in relation to how well humans tend to evolve our environment over time. If you couple this with the obvious care (despite not changing our behaviours) that people in general have towards the environment I think the pessimism is massively overblown.

[classical_Liberal]

https://youtu.be/IiP2y20e8Xc

I like that the video tries to show that we should not self hate for simply evolving into what we have become. We are part of nature, what we do is natural.

At about 3 minutes in, this video starts talking about the "overkill" hypothesis for extinction of large mammals at the end of the last Ice age as if it is fact. I'd just like to point out that this is a perfect example of how a theory has developed in the archeological community that has no real evidence. They try to correlate human expansion with the death of these animals despite that fact there is zero evidence that humans even hunted most of these animals. The entire profession has the same personal beliefs about humanity and purposely excludes anyone who thinks differently. It's considered sacrilege within the anthropology profession to consider any other possibility, only a few brave souls try. There is a staggering amount of geological and biological evidence that massive climate change and flooding took place at the same time these megafauna died off, and virtually no anthropological evidence humans did it. Evidently our mear presence is enough proof for the anthropologists? As a matter of fact, the climate change itself explains why humans actually moved into these new geographic areas.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/ ... 013854#_i2 (paywall for most of it)

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... te-change/

https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontolog ... extinction

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994902/

[steveo73]

@classical_liberal - that is interesting however there are a couple of points I'd make:-

1. My understanding was that climate change has caused mass extinctions in the past.
2. One of those articles listed the extinction of Australian megafauna as being caused via humans. I should add that this was pre-civilisation humans. Humans just doing what they do.
3. It shows how significant climate changes have occurred in the past.
4. Why do we so readily blame humans for climate change today and in particular we blame climate change for sporadic abnormal weather events (when we've seen a lot worse in the past). This to me reeks of that self-loathing or tribalism type behavior.
5. None of these points change my optimistic view of the future. Humans have done remarkably well in evolving our habitat. Our standard of living tends to be moving upwards over time and at a pretty rapid rate. I don't see this stopping and humans devolving anytime soon. In stating that I think climate change alarmists/anti-civs have a real perverse desire to see humans devolve. Oddly enough as stated above I don't think many of them would actually like the world that they envisage. Maybe that is why they don't actually walk the talk.

A little off topic but I think we can continue to evolve and take better care of the environment. I live a life that is much more aligned to I think one where human beings have less impact on the environment. I eat less meat and more plants. We have one family car. I try and live locally. I use solar power. I don't over consume. I'm hopeful that as we evolve more people will start heading down the same path that I'm on. I think a lot of people adjust their behavior over time when they are educated on why we should live a life that is more sustainable and in tune with our environment.

[Jin+Guice]

The most interesting thing to me about the anti-civ movement is the reminder that the way our society is currently constructed is a departure from how humans lived for most of history. Even though I know it's true, it's helpful to me to read about how working 40 hours a week is not humanity's natural state nor does it spring from some natural law.

I'm currently reading Diamond's "The World Until Yesterday," which is not an anti-civ polemic. It's actually kind of confusing reading it if you read his classic essay on how agricultural was mans' biggest mistake. TWUY contains interesting anecdotes of the ways that h/g and various stateless societies differ from ours, both the good and the bad.

Even if it could be proven that h/g was definitively better than our modern lifestyle, we couldn't go back to it. The more interesting thing is examining how other societies differ from ours, how we might incorporate things we perceive as better and examining our own cultural beliefs (many of which we are not aware of because they are ingrained in us from birth).

The whole thing would be a lot less dire without the impending eco-collapse. Frankly, I think people like Jacob/ MMM and Mark Boyle/ Dan Price/ Daniel Suelo are doing more to address the material problems and likely fallout than most others. Whether or not you believe in all or parts of the eco-collapse, I still think there is something to be learned from the "anti-civers" (not all of them are actually anti-civ, notably Quinn says that he isn't), even if you prefer civilization.

@c_L: I do wish there was less bias in the discussion because I'd like to know what characteristics all people share. For example, from the Diamond book, it seems like all people experienced some form of war, but the anti-civers would have us believe otherwise when it comes to h/g.

[classical_Liberal]

Even though I know it's true, it's helpful to me to read about how working 40 hours a week is not humanity's natural state nor does it spring from some natural law.

Confirmation bias is nice, so I get why you'd be attracted to this theory wrt preciv lifestyle. Though, anything before recorded history is just a theory. As you stated below those theories can be heavily biased. I tend to think the real difference between "work" now and 10,000 years ago is that there was no true distinction between work and leisure. It's this distinction that is a modern concept, mostly due to the recent advent of industrialization and specialization. Today people go on hunting and fishing trips for pure leisure. If hunting and fishing is the a primary source for food, is this work or leisure? People garden and forage for leisure. Was foraging work or leisure in 7000BC? If a group went on a multi day hunting trip 10000 years ago, should the entire time be considered work based on today's standards? When making comparisons in history, we are running into the same problems we do when we hold historical figures up to the standards of todays culture. You just can't reasonably make true comparisons.

If we, as a society, can get away from this distinction I think we'll be happier for it. This is the major goal of ERE for me, at this point in my personal development. When you make music is it work or leisure? Does it really depend on if you get paid? Today probably not so much, because life's basics are so easily obtained once ERE takes hold in a person's mind. However, in 7000 BC, a failed hunting trip could mean starvation. I think it's important we continue to realize how much civilization has given us, even if it's caused a lot of harm as well.

[steveo73]

@classical_liberal - great post. I especially like the idea of ERE being related to removing the distinction between leisure and work.

I do jiu-jitsu for fun but also because it keeps me fit. It's also great to learn something hard in detail. To me this is a leisure activity though. Interestingly some of the guys at the gym want to be professional fighters. Some of them train full time. This can take the pleasure out of the activity. So sometimes the line between leisure and work can be unclear.

I also think civilisation has been great for mankind and I'm not at all pessimistic regarding humanities future. Going back to a pre-civilisation society to me would be absolute madness and I bet people's happiness would drop off a cliff edge.

[AxelHeyst]

I think what I like about critiques of civilization is that it gets our heads out of the box of not being able to think of anything significantly different. Basically what @J+G just said. If we’re not prepared to think outside of what we accept as “the way things are”, well use mostly the same cognitive tools to solve our problems as what caused/created our problems.

(Edit)Similar to how this article critiques the nuclear family and points out that it’s a new invention. That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that I shouldn’t build a nuclear family myself. But I certainly appreciate being exposed to the idea that there is more than one option as I approach planning my own relationship to family.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ke/605536/
(/edit)

I appreciate @c_Ls point about bias. I’ve noticed that, engaging in discussions around this, I’ve become more defensive of an ‘anti-civ’ perspective than I was previously, even though the only thing that changed was entering a bit of a debate about it. (By the way, I highly recommend the book “Being Wrong” to all humans).

To the point that we can’t go “Back” to pre-civ, yes. I like a lot of what’s in this article on a Post-Civ perspective, although some of it is going to be phrased more aggressively than most will find palatable:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library ... ation#toc1

In particular it rejects the Primitivist notion that we ought to reject all civ and adopt all h/g unreflectively, for many of the reasons already pointed out. Take what’s good from pre-civ, throw out the rest. Take what’s good from civ, throw out the rest. Integrate and synthesize.

[Jin+Guice]

Confirmation bias is nice, so I get why you'd be attracted to this theory wrt preciv lifestyle. Though, anything before recorded history is just a theory. As you stated below those theories can be heavily biased.

It's hard for me to defend a field I'm only interacting with on a very shallow level, but it does seem like anthropologists might know something? There are plenty of intact h/g societies that anthropologists were able to study as well as observational notes from cultures with writing that "discovered" them.

It's this distinction that is a modern concept, mostly due to the recent advent of industrialization and specialization. Today people go on hunting and fishing trips for pure leisure. If hunting and fishing is the a primary source for food, is this work or leisure? People garden and forage for leisure. Was foraging work or leisure in 7000BC? If a group went on a multi day hunting trip 10000 years ago, should the entire time be considered work based on today's standards? When making comparisons in history, we are running into the same problems we do when we hold historical figures up to the standards of todays culture. You just can't reasonably make true comparisons.

Interesting question. This is how I understand work for h/g: Any activity required for survival or material enrichment that requires energy. So it includes getting food, making shelters and all the steps of making and using tools but doesn't include sleeping, sitting around or hanging out with friends/ family. I had assumed this is how those asking questions about how much h/g worked viewed it too, but maybe I'm wrong?

I have no idea if h/g distinguished between work and leisure. If they didn't I don't agree that this is a negative distinction. I think it's good to designate different time/ space for different activities and acknowledge that you do some activities that you don't necessarily "want" to do to survive or in service of doing activities that you do "want" to do.

If we, as a society, can get away from this distinction I think we'll be happier for it. This is the major goal of ERE for me, at this point in my personal development. When you make music is it work or leisure? Does it really depend on if you get paid?

I definitely consider making music work. It's easy for non-paid workers or voluntary workers to fall prey to the idea that something is "not work" because they chose to do it and/ or don't get paid. Not treating artistic work like work because it's "fun" and "you chose to do it" are huge mistakes!

Today probably not so much, because life's basics are so easily obtained once ERE takes hold in a person's mind. However, in 7000 BC, a failed hunting trip could mean starvation. I think it's important we continue to realize how much civilization has given us, even if it's caused a lot of harm as well.

I agree that the narrative that civilization is purely harmful is untrue. I think part of the reason that the anti-civ people throw down so hard against civilization is because the currently accepted social narrative is that civilization is great and a definitive and massive improvement over what came before (USA #1 bb!!!!!!!). One movement imagines all the problems with pre-civ life with none of the benefits. The other imagines all the benefits with none of the problems. I think the interesting thing is to 1) look at sweeping generalizations that can be made (zero incidence of diabetes among h/g for example) from the limited historical record and 2) Attempt to understand and imagine how the world we evolved in biologically is different from the world we inhabit currently (as a result of cultural evolution).

[steveo73]

I think part of the reason that the anti-civ people throw down so hard against civilization is because the currently accepted social narrative is that civilization is great and a definitive and massive improvement over what came before (USA #1 bb!!!!!!!). One movement imagines all the problems with pre-civ life with none of the benefits. The other imagines all the benefits with none of the problems. I think the interesting thing is to 1) look at sweeping generalizations that can be made (zero incidence of diabetes among h/g for example) from the limited historical record and 2) Attempt to understand and imagine how the world we evolved in biologically is different from the world we inhabit currently (as a result of cultural evolution).

I don't know dude. Do people seriously believe pre-civilization was better. I mean you would have died typically a lot earlier and had a lot tougher life. I can't believe anyone doesn't think that civilization hasn't improved their well being significantly.

I can just picture these anti-civ's complaining about civilization on their computer telling people how bad civilization is in their temperature controlled houses eating plentiful food.

It doesn't pass the smell test to me.

I think people would be better off focusing on their life and trying to improve what is lacking in their life.

[AxelHeyst]

If anti-civ people didn't think pre-civ life was better... why are they anti-civ? No one holds an opinion just because they want to be an irritating dbag. (Well, except for trolls. But we wouldn't know anything about those people, would we?)

The whole premise of criticism of civ is the idea that you *wouldn't* have died a lot earlier (life expectancy, if you got past ~6yo, was about the same as it is now, according to mounds of evidence) and you *wouldn't* have had a tougher life. There is evidence to these points. The evidence is not bullet-proof, and as @c_L points out, there might be issues with bias.

The First Worlder's who are anti-civ, sitting in their temp controlled houses, are comparing a picture that's being painted of pre civ life (good life expectancy, pretty chill life), verses the stress and dis-ease of first world life (skyrocketing mental health issues, skyrocketing health issues like diabetes as a result of all that plentiful food, and etc), and watching the news about all the horrendous suffering happening to billions outside of the first world (suffering on a magnitude not possible in a pre-civ life) that is a direct result of the mechanism of global civilization.

My own history with crushing loneliness and depression caused primarily by lack of social meaning and community was one of my first-hand experiences that led me to question the benefits of civilization. Netflix and A/C couldn't fill that hole in my soul, and the knowledge that Netflix and A/C came at a staggering human and environmental cost made me reject them.

Everyone here is trying to focus on their life and trying to improve what's lacking. Pro-civ people think "more civ would be better". Anti-civ people think "less civ would be better". I'm not sure it really matters what we think - we're all going to go about building our lives in the way we see fit, informed by our own biases of how the world works, and civ is going to do what it's going to do.

I'm not agitating for the collapse of civilization... I just happen to think it's going to collapse under its own weight eventually, and then we'll have something else. And whatever that new thing is, well, it might be better than what we've got now. Or not. History's weird.

[theanimal]

Your points aren't mutually exclusive.

Yes, people do believe life was better. There have been plenty of observations on h/g as J+G mentioned and almost all of them conclude with the notion that people only worked (acquire/prepare food, build shelter etc) less than 20 hours a week. This is even the case in the harshest environments, such as the desert. The rest of the time was spent in the community making music/crafts/stories among other things. Marshall Sahlins has a book describing the hunter gatherer economy if anyone is interested in going further.

Modern society and civilizations in general worship at the altars of stability and certainty. The hunter gatherer life is the opposite. With that comes the negatives that everyone always loves to mention, but there are plenty of positives that are usually ignored. Community, competence, culture and resiliency exist in far higher forms than what is found in almost any community today.

The part that gets me is how people act like pre civ humans are a different species and living in the dirt. Noting any positives of the previous lifestyle isn't allowed either because then you instantly are romanticizing and believe in the idea of the noble savage or whatever. Civilization has great benefits. It's nice to survive the first 5 years of life and not die from illnesses. But to dismiss the notion that there were any positives from the life that most humans lived for most of our species history is foolish.

[classical_Liberal]

There have been plenty of observations on h/g as J+G mentioned and almost all of them conclude with the notion that people only worked (acquire/prepare food, build shelter etc) less than 20 hours a week. This is even the case in the harshest environments, such as the desert. The rest of the time was spent in the community making music/crafts/stories among other things.

Not to be a dick here, but two posts above J+G stated the last sentence is actually work, in his opinion. This is my point. What is work in h/g? For an anti-civ socialist anthropologists (ie all of them), it's whatever they want it to be to push their agenda. The entire idea that h/g only "worked" 20 hours a week is speculation and opinion, not science. Everyone is entitled to this, but they need to label it as such, particularly when they have letters like PhD after their name.

In general, I do agree that some things would probably have been better in h/g. This idea of a strong "tribe" is probably the biggest, this is an opinion of mine.

[AxelHeyst]

Can we agree that "work" and "leisure" time is probably an invention of modern times? We're probably arguing about splitting hairs between activities that h/g wouldn't really even see a distinction between. Our idea of "work" comes with a lot of baggage: a boss, uncomfortable shirts, tedium, bad coffee, having to pretend we don't want to murder Larry two cubicles over... what we think of as "work" is so different from what life was like (whether it was fun and puppies or red in tooth and claw) that it's perfectly meaningless to even discuss.

I wonder how much of the "h/g only worked Nhrs/week" rhetoric is science journalism's attempt to spice up the results of actual anthropologists. Speaking of, @c_L, I'd be interested in being pointed towards information about the socialist bias in academic anthropology. I haven't been exposed to enough reputable criticism of the criticism of civilization. (In particular I wonder if their anthropological research informed their socialism, or if their socialism informed their research.)

[classical_Liberal]

Can we agree that "work" and "leisure" time is probably an invention of modern times?

Yes, my original post on the matter stated exactly this. We try to frame everything into the context of our current existence. H/g life was too different to try to fit into our current cultural framework. Just like you can't say an ancient Roman was a "bad" person for owning slaves. In the context of their culture everyone owned slaves, you can not make the comparison directly. You could maybe compare this person to modern cultural morality by how they treated their slaves though.

I haven't been exposed to enough reputable criticism of the criticism of civilization. (In particular I wonder if their anthropological research informed their socialism, or if their socialism informed their research.)

There really isn't any from academia. Because they all have the same believe set and actively root out anyone who thinks differently. The fact there are not any dissenting opinions, in a field where hard evidence is hard to come by, should be the biggest red flag of all. You'll have to seek this knowledge on your own and choose whether or not you'd like to believe it. I've pointed out a couple samples in this thread, enjoy the rabbit hole.