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Is civilisation a pyramid scheme?

Yes. The bottom layer is being laid by us   2 votes - 20 %
Yes. But we will overcome the Bush dynasty   0 votes - 0 %
Yes. This episode is a global pyramide scheme   2 votes - 20 %
No. The world is getting better   1 vote - 10 %
Whatever we make of it   5 votes - 50 %
Yes. Only Halliburton shares will go up   0 votes - 0 %
No. Halliburton shares will only go up   0 votes - 0 %
 
10 Total Votes
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Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? | 150 comments (150 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 6)
Our deficit-based money IS a pyramid scheme.

Sooner or later there aren't enough assets for new IOU's to be issued against, or energy to create those assets, or liquid fuel for those assets.

That's where we are pretty much at, and I'm two years bid, five years offered on a hedge fund/credit derivative/ private equity merry-go-round - precipitated meltdown.

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 10:42:05 AM EST
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 4)
This diary and Privileges: http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/3/5/290/06967 begin to summarise the deep fault lines in Capitalism.

Are the social and economic structures we have built too rigid for the big earthquake that may arrive at any day?

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 10:51:44 AM EST
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 6)
to answer the question:  yes

any model that depends on perpetual growth for success is a pyramid scheme... finance capitalism as we know it, or indeed any capitalist model that relies on the magic of compound interest, future discounting, and evergrowing markets to snowball (illusory) profits, is a Ponzi scheme.  why this isn't obvious to everyone is a great puzzle to me.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 12:39:25 PM EST
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
Either your second paragraph doesn't have anything to do with the first, or you're equating civilisation with financial capitalism.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 01:41:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 3)
hmmm well, what else is our present phase of civilisation based on?

but more to the point, finance capitalism seems more and more to me like the logical end state -- or more pessimistically, just the latest release of the software -- for the historical dynamic of "civilisation".  i.e. a new pseudorational ideology that justifies/perpetuates the regime of accumulation and the core/periphery dynamic needed to support a parasitical and idle elite, monumental construction, massive resource hoarding and concentration, grotesque displays of status and the other markers which we recognise as indicating "high" culture.

the ethic of perpetual growth predates capitalism;  it's built into the imperial model.  empires must grow -- acquiring fresh periphery to loot -- or their overheated cores collapse, they can no longer offer the outrageous profit margins in loot and luxury which command the allegiance of their mercenary armies, or support the lifestyle to which their elites feel entitled.  so capitalism often seems to me merely a fresh ideological paint job, replacing Divine Descent, Apotheosis, or their watered-down descendant Divine Right as the legitimating myth of the regime of elite accumulation and the core/periphery Ponzi scheme.  

industrial technology ups the ante; by extending the supply lines and multiplying human effort by cheap energy, it sets the core/periphery game on Fast Forward so that the looting/pithing of the periphery now achieves in a few decades a degree of damage and mayhem that, using more primitive tools, would have taken centuries.  but the essential regime of accumulation, hoarding, conspicuous consumption and exterminism doesn't seem to have changed much.

no pyramids w/o slaves -- including pyramid schemes.  and no skyscrapers without energy slaves;  no energy slaves (cheap fossil fuel) without immiseration and displacement and warfare.

the civitas or imperial city (in contrast to the market town which has a more symbiotic relationship with agrarian realities) is a microcore, draining its periphery.  but now we have "progressed" to the global-imperial megalopolis that drains the entire world, its dragnets (literal and figurative) liquidating biotic systems and enslaving peasants worldwide.

the "civilised" -- that is, those who are committed to the priorities and purposes of the imperial city and "high" culture -- are at perpetual war with their periphery, whether it be the smallholders just outside the walls, or the unfortunate Iraqis whose oil is required to keep the lights on and the elevators running.  I'd say without too much sense of rhetorical exaggeration that slavery is written into the structure of any building with stairs too long for an average resident to climb, as much as it was written into the design of Queen Cleopatra's barge.

...or so I would argue based on the evidence currently available.  Bookchin insists that the polis as a healthy and symbiotic human institution and lifeway is distinguishable from the civitas and is recoverable.  I am only halfway through his argument and have not yet decided whether I find it convincing.  maybe he will convince me that civilisation -- a human life based in cities -- can be achieved without theft, murder, slavery and warfare.  he will have some uphill work to do so, but I'm still reading.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 04:02:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 4)
1)    Government in service to ordinary people is evil and incompetent.
  1.    "Lower taxes", or lower wages, or possibly both can solve all economic problems.
  2.    "Investment" is a magic elixir and must always have first priority for public policy.
  3.    The poor are to blame for systematic poverty and nothing can really be done about poverty.
  4.    Everything would be fine if government would just leave "industry" alone.
  5.    "Private Property" is so obviously sacred that even asking for a definition makes the asker deeply suspect.
  6.    People who don't accept 1-6 might be well intended, but they are really just stupid and making things worse.

Ideological dogma over reality, meet self.

by MarekNYC on Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 04:27:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 6)
I don't think financial capitalism is a logical end state of anything. My own narrative about this is that financial capitalism as we know it was made possible by the rapid and sustained economic expansion in the Renaissance [recovering from the collapse of 14th century Europe] and that the cultural change that brought made it look like growth was the outcome and financial capitalism the means when in reality it was growth that made financial capitalism possible.

Please point me to a culture without a parasitical elite and grotesque displays of status.

You say the ethic of perpetual growth is built in to the imperial model, and I would have to agree with you, but at various historical points there have been choices over whether to embark in Empire or not, and this has sometimes been resisted, or empires have decided it was not worth their while to continue expansion.

Now you decry the civitas but embrace the market town which has its own supply network, except that you call the supply network of the civitas a dragnet, and you say the supply network of the market town is a symbiotic relationship. I have some news for you: the market town will lead to specialisation and division of labour and a permanent population in the market town which you would then would go on to call a parasitic elite.

The only way you are going to avoid division of labour and specialisation is by reducing all communities to the size of a family, all economic activity to subsistence, and by suppressing trade. I will take the city any day.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 05:36:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
The difference comes about when the king and the army are introduced. And their introduction was a prehistoric phenomenon occurring IIRC between 8000-5000 BC
by bil on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:29:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
Do they  develop or are they introduced. As far as I can tell societies are shaped to a large extent by the physical realities of the technology (in the broad sense) and resources available to them.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:32:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
The king and the army are not universal phenomena, and it is the mercenary army or the standing army that becomes a drain on the resources of the whole through the centre.

On the other hand, the alpha male was not a prehistoric invention dating back 7 to 10 thousand years. It's much, much older.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:38:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
They're not universal? Is there one place on this earth they do not control?
As for the alpha male, the King and army are still an introduction, not a necessity. Nor is biology destiny. Nor are such concepts as the alpha male "real", that is simply a concept used to make a simple picture of our given reality.
by bil on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 09:26:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
You're going to have to be a bit more specific about what happened 7k-10k years ago, and especially what social organisation was like before "kings and armies".

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 09:45:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
It's my impression that first there was a village organization, then the introduction of somewhat larger agglomerations with permanent dwellings, a somewhat larger population, intensive agriculture, but no walls yet. And then something happened. The domestication of the horse, invention of bronze weapons, population pressure, I don't know.
After this we find walls, very hierarchical societies, kings, priestly religions, organized conquest and so forth. The present era, in other words. And I think we ahve to recognize that this is a particular historical phase we are passing through (hopefully) in order to combat the ills it brings, save the benefits, and bring about change.
by bil on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 10:07:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
Well, the domestication of the horse is a Eurasian phenomenon (actually excluding South Asia) and happened quite late (4000 to 2000 BC) in comparison to your 8000 BC - 5000 BC transition period. I suppose you really intended to refer to the Bronze Age?

(legend for the map here)

Agriculture did develop between 10000 and 5000 BC.

The earliest known wall is in Jericho and dates from the 8th millennium BC:

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, 8350 BC to 7370 BC. Sometimes it is called Sultanian. The site is a 40,000 square metre settlement surrounded by a stone wall, with a stone tower in the centre of one wall. This is so far the oldest wall ever to be discovered, thus suggesting some kind of social organization, even if based on charisma. The town contained round mud-brick houses, yet no street planning. The 400-2000 dwellers used domesticated emmer wheat, barley and pulses and hunted wild animals.

The difference between a town and a city seems to be division of labour and organised government, and the first cities seem to date from the Bronze age (e.g., Mohenjo-Daro). But metalworking (copper) is much older than that, so apparently that didn't require or lead to complex social organisation or division of labour?

Now, to call the last 5000 to 10000 years "a particular historical phase" seems a bit much. And consider that "kings" were replaced by "republics" in various places around 500 BC. Though maybe by "kings and armies" you meant "states" (see the map above).

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 10:49:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
The republics in turn replaced by kings. And coming down to the present where the most we have progressed to is an oligarchy held in precarious check by some proto-democratic institutions.
But the point I think I am trying to make is that, yes, what we call states are still variants of the original king & army, with supporting religious belief that we have had for the past 8, 10 thousand years or so. And it's the attitudes that have been formed by those thousands of years which are hampering our progress.
Oh, and also on alpha males, it's really the betas that are the problem. They're the supporters of the regime.
by bil on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 04:02:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 2)
...You're going to have to be a bit more specific about what happened 7k-10k years ago

Agriculture happened.

Once a food surplus is achieved you have to have a place to put it (pottery), a way of telling whose it is ("writing"), someone to keep track of it all (bureaucrats) ....

and an annual, all-together-now, 'making of the whoopie' to make sure the seeds germinate ... at least that's the excuse and

LO!

Religion is born.

A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run

by ATinNM on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 08:18:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
And agriculture happened because of the Younger Dryas event and the convenience of using cereals to avoid starvation.
When major climate change took place after the last ice age c.11,000 BC much of the earth became subject to long dry seasons. These conditions favoured annual plants which die off in the long dry season, leaving a dormant seed or tuber. These plants tended to put more energy into producing seeds than into woody growth. An abundance of readily storable wild grains and pulses enabled hunter-gatherers in some areas to form the first settled villages at this time.

The practice of agriculture first began around 8000 BC in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia (part of present day Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Jordan which was then greener). This region was home to the greatest diversity of annual plants and according to one study 32 of the 56 largest grass seeds.

The first crops to be domesticated were all crops of edible seeds, wheat, barley, peas, lentils, chickpeas, bitter vetch and flax. These plants were all readily storable, easy to grow and grew quickly. They had to undergo few genetic changes to be of use to farmers, their wild relatives remaining easily recognisable to this day. Crop domestication took place independently in geographically distant human populations.

In China, rice and millet were domesticated by 7500 BC, followed by the beans mung, soy and azuki. In the Sahel region of Africa local rice and sorghum were domestic by 5000 BC. Local crops were domesticated independently in West Africa and possibly in New Guinea and Ethiopia. Three regions of the Americas independently domesticated corn, squashes, potato and sunflowers.

Humans in many different areas of the earth took up farming in what is, set against the 500,000 year age span of modern humans, a very short time. This is the most convincing evidence that global climate change, and the resultant adaptations by vegetation, were the cause of the beginning of agriculture.



"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:35:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
I had a suspicion that empires are not so natural as they appear to us, Western conquerors.
by das monde on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:15:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
I think you're wrong (wiki).

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:26:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
The meme of empire must be evolving. It cannot be the same before Alexander the Great and Julius Cesar, and after them.

Besides, other memes of governing might have been more competative at other times or locations.

by das monde on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:38:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
You're going to have to give a precise definition of "empire", then, and find a name for all the things that the wiki's list of "empires" calls "empire". Then we can compare it with De's implicit definition of "imperial".

Sigh, nominalism.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:45:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 4)
Please point me to a culture without a parasitical elite and grotesque displays of status.

There is too little information to be conclusive, but some people consider Minoan civilization to be remarkable for its almost completely unmilitary character.  Furthermore, the Cretan "palaces", such as Knossos, might not in fact have been centers of monarchial or theocratic power, as there was no effort to glorify any one person or even group of persons as rulers or elite (other than, perhaps, goddess priestesses).  The so-called "throne room" (so named by discoverer Arthur Evans) was hardly "fit for a king".  And the complex itself, lacking fortifications but endowed with a thousand interlocking rooms and storerooms and extremely sophisticated plumbing (including flush toilets and bathtubs) and courtyards, was less a castle than a resort cum warehouse cum factory cum office building.  An ancient club-med/community center/city hall?

I agree, the world norm has always been hierarchy, exploitation, and oppression.  But it's nice to dream that ancient Crete supported one society that beat the odds and came up with something fairer, egalitarian, without repression, slavery and warfare.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 09:44:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
In the book "Collapse", Jared Diamond consider the example of Tikopia island, where people lived for several centuries sustainably. Not only they kept the population constant, they even set aside the pleasure of having pigs (due to their degrading behaviour).

The Edo era Japan was peaceful 200 years, actually. But the role of elites was clearly not modest.  

by das monde on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 09:07:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 3)
one problem with the challenge is that the Euro/Anglo (and indeed the imperial Asian, the imperial Roman, the imperial anyone) tradition is not to recognise any culture as a legitimate "culture" unless it has elites, accumulation, and grotesque displays of status :-)

so I could point to hundreds of indigenous cultures, worldwide, who lived for centuries or millennia in their native biomes with distinctive, highly-adaptive culture and languages without developing the imperialistic virus -- only to be enslaved, slaughtered, hunted for sport, driven off their land, exterminated by the imperially-infected shortly after first contact.  but the "civilised" would not recognise these people as "cultures" precisely because they did not live in cities, construct monumental architecture, impose theocratic control, wage wars (thus "creating history"), accumulate, enslave, etc. -- and precisely because, having destroyed them and their ways of life, it is necessary for us to salve our consciences by pretending that they were inferior and of no account, and that what we have built over their dead bodies is somehow worthier, superior to anything that came before.  [even as we shoot ourselves in both feet with ever-increasing accuracy.]

all such people are dismissed as "barbarians," "savages," "heathen," "primitive," etc. by the allegedly superior "civilisation" -- whether it be the Romans enslaving the Germanic tribes or the Conquistadores massacring S American indigenes or my own British ancestors machine-gunning the "bloody wogs" and hunting Australian Aborigines.  and despite all the first-hand testimony of original Anglo explorers in N America for example, who report with amazement on the health, robustness and happiness of the indigenes -- despite the serious "problem" reported by the early colonial administrators, of Anglo colonists running away to "join the Indians" (particularly those captured by and then "rescued from" the Indians, who often persisted on running away repeatedly to rejoin their "captors") -- we perpetuate the myth that their lives were miserable, full of disease, hunger, hardship, fear, ignorance and violence -- in other words the life of the slums of our own cities.  [in other words we may be repeating the myth of our own elites, the myth that all kings have recited to all commoners:  without our elites and their way of life, we would be lost, we would be miserable, hungry and cold;  without the king's divine blessing the crops will fail and the wells run dry :-)]

so I would say that history is absolutely chockfull of examples of people who did not take the elite accumulator route, but like decent folks in a neighbourhood being invaded by drug dealers and mafiosi, they didn't stand much of a chance when the wheat/beef marauders showed up;  and since the winners get to write history, these people are defined out of history as "non-cultures," their achievements (particularly in permaculture, plant breeding, and sustainable livelihood) belittled and denied, their languages and oral traditions deliberately extirpated (the kidnapping and brainwashing of indigenous children by the colonisers is well-documented).

Bookchin explores some of these themes in Limits of the City, and Mike Davis is very good on the dynamics of the global capitalist city in Planet of Slums (his analysis of Los Angeles as an imperial city, particularly its role in stealing water from a huge surrounding area [incidentally destroying several ancient indigenous settlements] is found in City of Quartz).  I find Bookchin far too sentimental about the Athenians, but he gets a better grip on his subject in The Ecology of Freedom, if one can persist through the initial series of hectoring Introductions.  Derrick Jensen tackles the Pleistocene Overkill Hypothesis in Endgame I... and as to alpha males, primatology is fairly clear on our closer genetic relationship to less warlike monkey-shaped animals than to the baboons whose behaviour "civilisation" most closely models.

in many non-imperialist cultures, status is displayed by generosity rather than accumulation, so that elites are gift-givers rather than parasites (see "gift economy" and potlatch before it was corrupted by Anglo interference).  kingship is a non-concept (no semantic place holder for it) in most indigenous languages;  "big men" are temporary and situation-specific.  even "property" -- that "universal" of imperialist culture -- is unknown to many cultures, usufruct being a far older (and less destructive) substitute.  in some Native American languages there isn't even a verb "to have" (as in "own") -- one does not say "I have an axe" or even "I have a brother," but "I live with an axe," "I live with a brother."  the Wintu people didn't have verbs of coercion, like "take someone someplace" or "make someone do something."  where in English we would say "the mother took her child into the sunny place," the Wintu would say, "the mother went with the child into the sunny place."

hereditary kingship, propertarianism, accumulation, universal abstract money, and the totalitarian control they enable seem to be a very specific cultural development, and a curious one at that.  it's not unique to Euroland;  we have plenty of evidence of imperial "civilising" tendencies in the S Pacific (King Kamehameha comes to mind), Asia, Africa, S America.  it seems adaptive in the short term, i.e. it enables conquest and expansion in a big way;  but the conquest and expansion are so patently self-defeating in the long term (the life cycle of empires, now seen in fast-forward on crack) that the longterm adaptive value of this development seems dubious at best and one has to wonder whether it's one of those evolutionary "wrong turns" that leads a species to a dead end...

whether specialisation leads inevitably to hierarchy is yet another of those vexed questions;  speaking from within a hierarchical culture, we are trained from birth to evaluate all things in hierarchy, to believe that of any two things that are not identical, one is bound to be of greater "value" or rank or status.  but there are degrees of specialisation in many non-imperial cultures, and much debate rages over whether these represent "ranks" or "castes" in the sense that we, the hierarchy-afflicted, perceive them, or whether our anthropologists merely project our own obsessions onto neutral data sets.  

the idea that early (non imperialist) people did not have trade has, frankly, been debunked long long ago.  there was extensive trade between humans wherever two tribes, bands, or language groups happened to encounter each other;  certainly we find N American artifacts in S American sites, and vice versa.  another myth of imperialism is that empires are the only way to engage in commerce, i.e. if it were not for our elites and their enslaving, violent ways we would never see a foreign artifact in our short, miserable, boring lives.  

dear me, where is kcurie when we need her/him/them?


The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 02:29:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
Okay, you have addressed "the myths of empire". Do you care to address what I am saying?

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 02:47:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
one problem with the challenge is that the Euro/Anglo (and indeed the imperial Asian, the imperial Roman, the imperial anyone) tradition is not to recognise any culture as a legitimate "culture" unless it has elites, accumulation, and grotesque displays of status :-)
Are you saying I would not recognise any culture as a legitimate "culture" unless it has elites, etc? If so, allow me to be offended. If not, this paragraph is a non-sequitur.
all such people are dismissed as "barbarians," "savages," "heathen," "primitive," etc. by the allegedly superior "civilisation" -- whether it be the Romans enslaving the Germanic tribes or the Conquistadores massacring S American indigenes or my own British ancestors machine-gunning the "bloody wogs" and hunting Australian Aborigines.
Because, of course, the Germanic tribes were not Indo-European marauding cattle herders and farmers like the Romans were, nor the Incas an urban empire. What exactly is the point you're trying to make about "barbarians"? That they were fundamentally different and better than the peoples that took them over? And didn't the Germanic tribes end up overriding the Romans and installing themselves as rules of the romanised populations they took over?
in many non-imperialist cultures, status is displayed by generosity rather than accumulation, so that elites are gift-givers rather than parasites
Okay, cool, so status is compatible with non-imperialism. Surely that means that it's the imperialism and not the display of status that is "grotesque" in your initial comment.
hereditary kingship, propertarianism, accumulation, universal abstract money, and the totalitarian control they enable seem to be a very specific cultural development, and a curious one at that.  it's not unique to Euroland;  we have plenty of evidence of imperial "civilising" tendencies in the S Pacific (King Kamehameha comes to mind), Asia, Africa, S America.  it seems adaptive in the short term, i.e. it enables conquest and expansion in a big way;  but the conquest and expansion are so patently self-defeating in the long term (the life cycle of empires, now seen in fast-forward on crack) that the longterm adaptive value of this development seems dubious at best and one has to wonder whether it's one of those evolutionary "wrong turns" that leads a species to a dead end...
It seems to be adapted to economies of scarcity. The problem is that these cultures are incapable of operate properly in an environment of abundance: they always operate in scarcity mode (hence, maybe, the insistence that economic theory is about allocation of scarce resources and that abundant resources are outside economics, with the result that externalities and depletion of natural capital are not properly accounted for until they become a problem, that is, they cause scarcity).
whether specialisation leads inevitably to hierarchy is yet another of those vexed questions
Yes, it is another of those vexed questions that I didn't pose. What I did was to reply to your distinction of city = bad vs market town = good and your contention that city dwellers necessarily exploit the farmers that the "good" market town will necessarily develop a permanent (exploitative?) population and (evil?) division of labour. At the intersection of division of labour and the fact that human communities develop status systems there may or may not be "hierarchy", but that was not my point. Or perhaps it was.
the idea that early (non imperialist) people did not have trade has, frankly, been debunked long long ago.
Again, did I ever say that? This is again something that was not even under discussion since you opposed the "market town" to the "imperial city". So, again, a non-sequitur.

I also find it takes patience to make it through your hectoring.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 03:15:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 6)
oh dear, this exchange seems to be becoming acrimonious.

and I do think M is being a bit slippery as well :-)

having said Please point me to a culture without a parasitical elite and grotesque displays of status. -- when it is common knowledge, surely, that many such cultures have existed and some are still hanging on by their fingernails -- does seem to me to suggest that these cultures are somehow being defined out of the category "culture."  otherwise it would be no challenge at all, since any quick survey of ethnography or field anthropology would reveal the wealth of literature (and the longstanding academic and political squabbles) over the world's non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures.  not all of which are cultures of abundance, btw.  but all are cultures of reciprocity, gift exchange, and other "sharing" mechanisms rather than hoarding and hierarchical control.  and the way the challenge is phrased seems to indicate either an unfamiliarity with the literature which I didn't find credible in someone as widely literate as M, or a disinclination to view these people as "real" cultures.

I don't think I ever said that a division of labour would inevitably lead to authoritarian hierarchy, or that skilled craftspersons were the same thing as parasitical elites.  we seem to be talking past each other, somehow.  I do believe it is possible for the town to be symbiotic with the rural bioregion; but not when it becomes the traditional imperial core, importing negentropy and exporting entropy.

The only way you are going to avoid division of labour and specialisation is by reducing all communities to the size of a family, all economic activity to subsistence, and by suppressing trade certainly seems to me to imply that early (subsistence horticulturalists, nonimperialist, kingroup organised, more generalist than specialised) humans did not engage in trade -- and since this is a common misconception (certainly one that I was taught in school: that first nations people lived in isolated bands with no communication, no long range commerce, and no knowledge of a larger world) I felt compelled to refute it.

It also assumes that I wish to abolish specialisation, which (again) is not a goal I ever intentionally advocated.  It also seems prima facie to assume the nuclear family (a recent invention) as the earliest unit of human survival, when the tribe, kingroup, band or village has afaik historic primacy.

There isn't really any contradiction between subsistence farming (meaning that one can subsist, i.e. survive independently by one's own efforts) and trade;  surpluses can always be traded -- without losing autonomy.  That's been going on for millennia.  Some of the Peruvian highland cultures had a whole separate caste of persons whose specialised function was to trade surplus and luxury goods with neighbouring polities;  but that trade and its currency were kept strictly and absolutely isolated from the subsistence economy necessary to ensure food security... What kingship/empire/hierarchy/colonialism introduces seems to be labour without food security, with elites controlling not only surpluses but all production;  whoever controls the food supply controls our lives, which explains a lot about ADM and Monsanto...

anyway, the day job requires my mental presence so I can't dig as deeply into this wrangle at present as I might like.  I note in passing that crosscultural studies are very subversive of established order;  every regime has a burning need to naturalise its own features -- be that the regime of male supremacy, white supremacy, the supremacy of city dwellers over peasants, the supremacy of my religion over yours, my empire over your colony...  which means that assertions about "human nature" and about history bear very closely on the foundations of our ideologies.  the book Threatening Anthropology is very interesting on this topic.  what we believe is "natural" conditions and limits what we believe is possible;  enlarging our notion of what is possible is directly threatening to elites who (for good reason!) want us to believe that things either have always been just as they are now, or are getting better and better every day.

in fact one of the troubling questions that engage our attention today is somewhat similar to the old election-year rhetoric:  "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?"... are we better off than we were 10,000 years ago?

certainly many of us are wondering whether our (putative) grandchildren have any hope of being other than far, far worse off than we ourselves...  which again brings us back to a crisis of confidence in the narrative of Progress and Civilisation...  are we "progressing" and if so, towards what?  did we take a wrong turn some millennia back?  are our (mostly male) elites stereotypically unwilling to ask for directions or consult a map?

I have already read (and liked) the major works of Jane Jacobs, -- perhaps the most fluent, passionate, and inspiring defender of cities -- and have a few years invested in the literature of "Livable Cities" and similar optimistic attempts to render the industrial civitas sustainable.  perhaps M would do me the reciprocal courtesy of reading Hornborg (Power of the Machine), Bookchin (Ecology of Freedom), or even the recent Declaration from the 2006 conference on Food Sovereignty... for a glimpse of another -- lateral or tangential rather than diametrically oppositional -- PoV on the relation of city and country, farmed and "wild" land, commerce and non-market economies, which I find it hard to represent adequately in brief comment form?

as to finance capitalism being a side effect of imperial growth, I suspect it's both -- an outcome and a rationalisation.  certainly people who wax misty-eyed over the "birth of freedom" and entrepreneurial ineguity and capital investment in Euroland tend to glide tactfully over the enormous influx of gold and silver looted by main force and exterminist policy from the New World, and the essential role of slave labour in enabling the profit margins and the resource stripping that fuelled the nascent industrial age.

As Peter Linebaugh points out in a scathing review of the recent movie 'Amazing Grace'

What passes for 'the civilization of the west', to use the traditional but absurd phrase, is the direct result of the unpaid labors of millions of African proletarians, a fact so fundamental that it is the beginning of all modern history as Franz Fanon taught us long ago, and hence of our understanding of the world. The movie reduces this fact to the sugar cube. However, this historical premise of modernity applied to all European wealth and treasure because wealth in one form quickly turned to other forms by the alchemy of trade and money. Thus that sugar and rum, that tobacco and coffee, the staple products of the slave's labor on plantations, was transmuted into the infrastructure - the bricks and mortar, the bridges and roads, the ports and factories of the industrial revolution, and these in turn were represented by stocks and bonds, by paper and debentures, and the chits of the gambling table.

The movie shows us the young William Wilberforce gambling against the Duke of Clarence, a royal pipsqueak, who runs out of cash and must play by the rules of the club which say that, even if at a loss for money, he may wager any other possession he might have with him. "Bring me my nigger," he commands. The illusion of the entire social system shatters at this point as the Afro-British coachman enters to be traded at the gaming table of White's (one of the exclusive clubs of Pall Mall). Wilberforce in shocked naiveté concedes his hand and withdraws in a huff. Where did he think money came from? The trees?

I suppose our squabble here could be reduced to a cartoon version:

D:  show me a city and a 'civilised' lifeway that is/was not founded on slavery, immiseration, and theft.

M:  slavery, immiseration, and theft we have always with us:  we may as well get the benefits of urban culture out of them!

as an unregenerate Leftist (and one semi-literate in the outer layers anthro and paleo and ethno cross-cultural studies) I reject the naturalisation of hiearchy, elite accumulation, etc.  I'm not sure where this leaves us...  though if we accept that dominance/hierarchy cultures are an automatic response to scarcity (not supported by the literature, but let's entertain the idea), the future looks grim:  the imperial model embodied in capitalism exhausts resources at an accelerating pace, thus creating artificial scarcity and intensifying the preconditions for imperial/hierarchical strategy.  sounds like a positive feedback loop to me :-(

I think this whole wrangle is connected to the topic that Nomad and I touched on weeks ago and meant to get back to one day -- how much of our present "industrial civilisation" can we hope to preserve, if we accept the goal of living within our planetary means as a worthier one than exterminating (whether by MIHOP or LIHOP) bios of people so that we can keep up the Growth Myth a while longer?  I think I'm coming around to the idea that we can't afford cities -- by which I mean large imperial energy-sink cities with monumental architecture, etc.  at the heart of Jacobs' and Bookchin's (and many other people's) inquiry right now are questions of scale and limits.  what "civilised" lifestyle is possible without (a) cheap fossil fuel and (b) slavery, expropriation, genocide, etc.?

Some people point to the fact that there are more human beings alive today than ever before, and this means Success, and should be credited to Civilisation, Progress, and Capitalism.  OTOH in terms of absolute numbers, more human beings than ever before are living with fear, hunger, thirst, lack of shelter, fear of arbitrary violence, etc. -- and those who are not, are largely enjoying that privilege at the direct expense of those who are.  And even those in the affluent West don't seem to be particularly happy, if we use antidepressant sales, murder and suicide rates, and self-reporting in response to public surveys as rough indicators.  Capitalism understands Growth as in Quantity, but is curiously mute on Quality... and now I've worked my way back to Pirsig (!) and it's time to stop this and get some "real [meaningless technocratic] work" done...

I am sorry to quarrel with Migeru;  no personal animus is intended in my ramblings.  I'm coming into contact with new ideas, or deeper readings of ideas I've met before, and struggling myself with these questions -- becoming very urgent in our time -- of whether my own urbanised/industrial lifeway can be rationalised (I fear it cannot) and what I can do about that.  and where we are going and why we are in this handbasket :-(

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 05:11:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 4)
the supremacy of city dwellers over peasants

I happen to prefer city dwelling to rural dwelling. Some people prefer the reverse. But the problem with your analysis is that you are hosting up rural dwelling food producers as somehow superior to everybody else. Even more, you posit a pre modern agrarian lifestyle as a 'natural one'. That makes no more sense than calling my home a 'natural' society. Your understanding of 'nature' and 'natural' are just a variant on old Enlightenment constructs, no more, and no less, than the concept of 'Progress' that you deride.

But all societies are a question of values and technology - they are human creations. That's true of the Native American hunter gatherers, that's true of Native American small scale agricultural communities, and that's true of the serf and nobiligy society of eighteenth century Poland, the industrial urban one of the turn of the century Ruhr, and the service one of modern day NYC.

The technology imposes constraints - a society where you need one hundred people to produce enough food for one hundred and twenty has less options available than the one where that same hundred can feed one thousand.

Those choices can be good or bad, and what is good and bad is a question of values as well - i.e. not natural, but a social construct. We can build pyramids to our rulers, have more leisure, construct cathedrals and temples to the glory of our gods, mass armies, provide health care, build McMansions, provide education and running water, fashionable clothing, research history, produce sitcoms - all choices.

Within your commentary you amalgate the question of one important constraint - energy in a future without large scale use of fossil fuels, and that of what constitute good choices within those constraints. But they are two completely different matters.

by MarekNYC on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 05:54:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 2)
I happen to prefer city dwelling to rural dwelling. Some people prefer the reverse. But the problem with your analysis is that you are hosting up rural dwelling food producers as somehow superior to everybody else. Even more, you posit a pre modern agrarian lifestyle as a 'natural one'. That makes no more sense than calling my home a 'natural' society. Your understanding of 'nature' and 'natural' are just a variant on old Enlightenment constructs, no more, and no less, than the concept of 'Progress' that you deride.
De Anander's comments in this thread actually reminded me of a the literary genre "contempt of court and praise of village" [Spanish: "menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea"] which was very popular among the courtier elite in the late Renaissance, and which involved looking back on the mythical Arcadia and romanticising rural life (sometimes they even dressed up as peasants and went to frolic in the fields while the real peasants toiled).

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 06:14:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 3)
ah, the good ol' "latte liberal" meme?

my family goes back on both sides to peasant and yeoman farmers and fishers, sorry, no courtiers (at least not with paternity acknowledged).  the closest we get to aristocracy is a Thane, a kind or rural Big Man or squire, way way back on the paternal side.  the other side is "peasants all the way down."  I suppose family history (oral and written) may explain some of my political thought processes and sympathies.

somehow the experiments I've done in sustainable living -- like using a manual composting loo for 18 months, living without a car, conserving water and heating gas, vegetable gardening, eating local food in season etc -- don't strike me as quite equivalent to dressing up in shepherd costume and frolicking at the Petit Trianon or the Spanish equivalent :-)  but ymmv.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:48:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
ah, the good ol' "latte liberal" meme? (none / 0)
said one latte liberal to another latte liberal.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:27:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 3)
I just grepped carefully through my posts on this thread and find that I never used the words nature or natural except when criticising the attempts of elites to naturalise their privileges.  (sigh)  I wish folks would argue with what I actually typed, but that is a common complaint :-) and according to Migeru I am not always arguing with what he actually types either...

FTR I make no claims of more or less "natural" standing for human cultures.  [we can play semantic games with the word "natural" until it's perfectly "natural" to destroy the temperate climatic balance or to wage nuclear war -- so fuhgeddaboudit.]  my questions are about more or less happiness, more or less freedom, more and less egalitarian sharing of resources, more or less potential longevity for human social organisations, more or less violence, slavery, authoritarianism, control, torture, etc.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:54:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 2)
I just grepped carefully through my posts on this thread and find that I never used the words nature or natural except when criticising the attempts of elites to naturalise their privileges.[...]my questions are about more or less happiness, more or less freedom, more and less egalitarian sharing of resources, more or less potential longevity for human social organisations, more or less violence, slavery, authoritarianism, control, torture, etc.

for the historical dynamic of "civilisation".  i.e. a new pseudorational ideology that justifies/perpetuates the regime of accumulation and the core/periphery dynamic needed to support a parasitical and idle elite, monumental construction, massive resource hoarding and concentration, grotesque displays of status and the other markers which we recognise as indicating "high" culture.

Some of the Peruvian highland cultures had a whole separate caste of persons whose specialised function was to trade surplus and luxury goods with neighbouring polities;  but that trade and its currency were kept strictly and absolutely isolated from the subsistence economy necessary to ensure food security... What kingship/empire/hierarchy/colonialism introduces seems to be labour without food security, with elites controlling not only surpluses but all production;  whoever controls the food supply controls our lives, which explains a lot about ADM and Monsanto...

btw, can we observe a distinction of terminology between agriculture, the tradition of the ploughed field and the (varying degrees of) monocrop, vs horticulture or permaculture, both of which were practised with high sophistication by many non-imperial type people?

There are value judgements throughout that imply the 'noble savage' vision of the world. No, you wouldn't put in those words, vocabularies change, but that's what it amounts to. For you the society where people have to work in the capitalistic economy or starve equals slavery - even those with redistribution that actually makes the choices less stark. On the other hand where you have to work as a food producer in a non-capitalistic agrarian economy - that's a laudable society. City dwellers providing goods and services  are 'parasitical' upon the resource producing 'periphery'. The agriculture of the 'ploughed field' is imperialist and bad, 'horticulture' and 'permaculture' practiced by 'non imperialist' cultures, good. Small kinship based communities good, large political units bad. Non-indigenous 'imperialist' cultures vs. non-imperialist indigenous ones.

If it weren't for those type of value judgements I could read you as just an extreme pessimist, but they are there.

by MarekNYC on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 09:49:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 3)
first off, I don't refer to indigenous people as "savages," and secondly, I don't regard gift economies or  similar reciprocal networks as "noble" (implying some kind of moral superiority or conscious, righteous refraining from the temptations of bad behaviour).  the question is, are they practical and what problems do they solve?  what I ask myself is how long those cultures endured in their biomes, how healthy the people were, how much or little coercion and control they experienced in daily life;  and some of these answers are accessible from field anthropology, journals of first contact, or living memory.  those answers do not support a Hobbesian view of preindustrial life.

being "made to work as a food producer in a non-capitalistic agrarian economy" is not, in fact, anyone's idea of a good time -- nor did I ever suggest it was.  monocropping and field agriculture do seem to be correlated historically with corvee labour (for both irrigation and monocrop cultivation), taxation, tribute, and control of [usually hard wheat] grain stores by a kind of evolving priest/king caste.  this type of field labour is not an "alternative" to city life -- it's the original basis of city life.  I don't see what is unreasonable about preferring the type of agriculture practised by some N Am indigenes, i.e. "food forest" tending and dense polyculture.  it's a lot less backbreaking labour and it doesn't impoverish the soil, and provides a more varied diet.  it's also quite adequate (modern experiments confirm the extremely high productivity per acre of intensive polyculture) to feed a fairly large population, unlike gatherer-hunter methods which require more hectares per person than we have left.

and yes, the ploughed field is a "bad" form of agriculture in many ways -- "bad" meaning inefficient or spendthrift -- in that it reverses carbon sequestration, and over time impoverishes the soil ecosystems on which all our lives depend.  in combination with industrial equipment, neurotoxins (pesticides) and artificial and longhaul overkill "amendments," it's agricultural suicide.  "bad" and "good" here have everything to do with our long term survival prospects.  our culture will live longer if we don't kill the soil.  that seems to me a working definition of "good".

so the question still remains for me, in what ways have non-imperial, indigenous cultures been more successful in staying power or sustainability than imperial cultures which tend to crash-n-burn regularly (not to mention in personal liberty or democratic decision making traditions) and why?  and what lessons in adaptive behaviour could we learn from them now that the borders of imperial aggression have pretty much run up against each other, i.e. every square mile of the planet's surface is claimed by an imperial core?

is imperialistic behaviour adaptive?  or maladaptive?

"nobility" (or "glory" for that matter) have nowt to do with it.  it's a soft landing I'm hoping for, nothing more.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 10:33:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 2)
"made to work as a food producer in a non-capitalistic agrarian economy" is not, in fact, anyone's idea of a good time -- nor did I ever suggest it was.  monocropping and field agriculture do seem to be correlated historically with corvee labour (for both irrigation and monocrop cultivation), taxation, tribute, and control of [usually hard wheat] grain stores by a kind of evolving priest/king caste.

That's the social organization. How about minus corvee labour, taxation, tribute and control by a priest/king caste? It's still not anyone's idea of a good time - or is it?

it's also quite adequate (modern experiments confirm the extremely high productivity per acre of intensive polyculture)

Productivity per acre, how about productivity per hour of manual labour? And how practical is it when you add in the much larger amount of infrastructure you'd want - running water, electricity, schools, hospitals, telecommunication networks, decent housing, libraries, transport infrastructure - plus the industrial, administrative and service economy infrastructure necessary for such things for the six plus billion people in this world?  

by MarekNYC on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 11:35:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 4)
You do realise that importing negentropy and exporting entropy is the definition of a living organism.

in fact one of the troubling questions that engage our attention today is somewhat similar to the old election-year rhetoric:  "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?"... are we better off than we were 10,000 years ago?
Maybe, maybe not. But it appears that 10,000 years ago we invented agriculture because to avoid the fate of most other large mammals in Eurasia, namely extinction. For some reason I find it really hard to accept the narrative that agriculture is the root of all evil. If anything, it's the root of food security. Our problems stem from elsewhere.
as to finance capitalism being a side effect of imperial growth
There you go again. I never said that but to you "growth" is necessarily imperial, and you have not understood what I've said about finance capitalism in this and other threads. To be very brief, the growth I am talking about is the radiation phase after the 14th century collapse. Maybe a mention of the Lotka-Volterra equation wouldn't be out of place either, imagine that the red line in the chart is humanity and the black line its renewable resource base. Growth in this context has nothing to do with the cultural mode that we call imperialism, or with core-periphery, but maybe it does have a connection with (neg)entropy.
I suppose our squabble here could be reduced to a cartoon version:

D:  show me a city and a 'civilised' lifeway that is/was not founded on slavery, immiseration, and theft.

M:  slavery, immiseration, and theft we have always with us:  we may as well get the benefits of urban culture out of them!

Cartoon indeed. I don't know, maybe the Mayans had a 'civilised' way of life that was not based on slavery, immiseration and theft (given your positive reference to the Peruvian Highland Cultures).
I reject the naturalisation of hiearchy, elite accumulation, etc.  I'm not sure where this leaves us...  though if we accept that dominance/hierarchy cultures are an automatic response to scarcity (not supported by the literature, but let's entertain the idea), the future looks grim:  the imperial model embodied in capitalism exhausts resources at an accelerating pace, thus creating artificial scarcity and intensifying the preconditions for imperial/hierarchical strategy.  sounds like a positive feedback loop to me :-(
You see, in The Ape and the Sushi Master, while completely demolishing the "human exceptionalist" view of culture, etologist Frns de Waal also makes some points about hierarchical structures being nearly inevitable, and not only among humans, which are quite shocking from an egalitarian leftist point of view [one of his best quotes is "put a bunch of left-leaning professors with an egalitarian ethos in the same room and watch a hierarchy develop: it's automatic"]. As you point out, in some cultures the "big man" position changes with context, and indeed there are two ways to look at our own culture. One is to say that it has only one hierarchy and that that comes from somehow, by institutionalising the natural hierarchy of status arising in one situation, extrapolating it to all realms of community life; the other would be to recognise that we, too, are active in multiple realms in our community life and that the status system in each of them is different. One of the features of blogs like this [and of the entire open-content/creative commons movement] is that the status system is a gift culture: the more you give to the community the higher the status. And you and I have enough experience in academia to see an entire parallel status [and hierarchy] system separate from the "main" societal one.

The reason for my frustration with this exchange ("acrimony") is that there are a number of assumptions in what you write (growth = imperialism = city = parasitism) which 1) I want [you] to make explicit; and 2) seem to me unnecessary (though maybe true historically, that I can't argue with absolute certainty) and, most of all, unhelpful, because we're not in 9500 BC, deciding whether to invent agriculture and what social organisation is going to work best for our first permanent settlement in the very long term, but we're in 2000 CE and we have to think about how to get to where from here. I wonder whether you saw my exchange with Nomad on the issue you mention of how much of the current civilisation can be made sustainable, where I pointed out that you have to take into account and utilise the modern knowledge base, and moreover that there are certain advanced technologies that one would like to deploy for a sustainable, prosperous lifestyle and that are impossible without certain economies of scale and a modern industrial base (like, for instance, how are you going to manufacture the advanced materials you need for solar panels, or wind mills? Certainly not in a smithy.) Cue in technopolitical's constant quip that we're so wasteful because we're just very bad at making things.

So, yes, I suppose I have to say that we might as well get the benefits of urban culture [literacy, vaccines, antibiotics, industrial capacity] while we have them and put them to good use, all the more so if one believes that a Lotka-Volterra-like collapse like in the chart above is likely in the coming century. Once the tipping point for a die-off is exceeded it doesn't matter whether the reason was lemming-lie behaviour or an "exterministic" culture (to use Stan Goff's term). And, really, considering I was born after the 1970's oil shocks, I really feel like I am not responsible for exceeding the tipping point, and that at some level it is irrelevant whether exterminism was the cause, or just a narrative more palatable to leftists than just plain human stupidity. What I am responsible for is for what I do about the consequences of living after the tipping point.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 06:09:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 3)
You see, in The Ape and the Sushi Master, while completely demolishing the "human exceptionalist" view of culture, etologist Frns de Waal also makes some points about hierarchical structures being nearly inevitable, and not only among humans, which are quite shocking from an egalitarian leftist point of view [one of his best quotes is "put a bunch of left-leaning professors with an egalitarian ethos in the same room and watch a hierarchy develop: it's automatic"]. As you point out, in some cultures the "big man" position changes with context, and indeed there are two ways to look at our own culture. One is to say that it has only one hierarchy and that that comes from somehow, by institutionalising the natural hierarchy of status arising in one situation, extrapolating it to all realms of community life; the other would be to recognise that we, too, are active in multiple realms in our community life and that the status system in each of them is different.

I'm going to finish one more book before I do a diary on the final death of my leftist idealism over the past few years stemming from acceptance of evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology. I think that is all that is standing between your views and deanander's.

In my (newish) universe, the cultures humans are able to create can be used to either amplify or retard the base "desires" innate to our pesky brain stems. I have no other starting point now that I reject the "blank slate" concept.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:08:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (4.00 / 3)
I think you might warm up (as I have been reluctantly) to Bookchin in this realm.  He's a fairly doctrinaire human exceptionalist, but with some interesting twists that almost undermine the position.

I always thought the "evolutionary psychology" crowd tended to undervalue and underreport symbiotic and cooperative, mimetic and reciprocal organisations in evolving biotic systems;  at least when I dipped into the lit a while back it struck me as being over-enamoured of "Nature red in tooth and claw" and rather grimly determined to see all mammalian hardwiring as base and selfish (reading mammals as reptilian, you might say).  But this doesn't jibe well with many decades of field observation of mammal social behaviours, in which kingroup selection is at least as important as individual survivalism, and deep reciprocal bonds are observed between individuals and between individual and pack or kingroup...

What are they up to lately, the evo psych gang?

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 08:03:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
I already put the Bookchin book into my queue. I've been reading mostly pop science books on the topic, I haven't dove into the "state of the art" in the field. Dawkins' explanation for his view that altruism and cooperative behavior is a form of selfishness makes sense to me, as does his explanation for how various behavioral traits (for any variable from total violence to complete non-violence) get selected for and in what proportions in a given population. Nothing I've come across yet reads as "nature is 100% violence all the time" which, again just referencing Dawkins writings all the way back in the 70's, is a very poor reproductive strategy for an entire population.

Even with that I'm not very optimistic for a couple of reasons. The first can be summed up as "locking horns with nuclear weapons is not a stable survival strategy" and the second relates to the burden of consciousness and the very delicate (and thus difficult to achieve) balance needed to make and keep humans happy.

I'll rant further some other time.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 11:22:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
might want to look up the debates between Dawkins and Gould.  excellent reading :-)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 08:48:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
Does it boil down to this?

However, as Sterelny says, these disagreements are not adequate to explain the antagonism and in Chapter 12 (p. 123) he gets down to the more philosophical ones. "Dawkins is an old-fashioned science worshiper" he states (and lines up with him), while "Gould's take on the status of science is much more ambiguous. ... In Gould's view, science is irrelevant to moral claims. Science and religion are concerned with independent domains."

That might be enough to explain Gould's issues with sociobiology, which I will look into more this evening.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu Mar 8th, 2007 at 05:03:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
One of the features of blogs like this [and of the entire open-content/creative commons movement] is that the status system is a gift culture: the more you give to the community the higher the status. And you and I have enough experience in academia to see an entire parallel status [and hierarchy] system separate from the "main" societal one.

That brings up a really interesting and key issue:  What kinds of hierarchy are "alright" (and even necessary), and what kinds are noxious.  (See ATinNM's comment below that There is nothing necessary wrong with "Heirarchy." )

Maybe a key distinction is that between "power-created/enforced hierarchies" and "gift-generated hierarchies"?

I wonder whether you saw my exchange with Nomad on the issue you mention of how much of the current civilisation can be made sustainable, where I pointed out that you have to take into account and utilise the modern knowledge base, and moreover that there are certain advanced technologies that one would like to deploy for a sustainable, prosperous lifestyle and that are impossible without certain economies of scale and a modern industrial base (like, for instance, how are you going to manufacture the advanced materials you need for solar panels, or wind mills? Certainly not in a smithy.)

Could  you indicate what diary that exchange was in?

For what it's worth, I am finding this acrimonious exchange extremely informative, challenging and stimulating.  I'm glad I got ring-side tickets!  ;-)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 09:01:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
What kinds of hierarchy are "alright" (and even necessary), and what kinds are noxious.

I'd say that given that a status system is unavoidable, it's the hierarchies that are out of context that are noxious. Like, for instance, listening to Stephen Hawking's ideas as if he were an authority on the future of mankind because of his groundbreaking work in Cosmology.

Could  you indicate what diary that exchange was in?

This one in Jerome's Fossil Fools story.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:23:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 0)
maybe the Mayans

Er... Incas.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:40:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Abandon bad models (none / 1)
You are deceived by modern biology, specifically evolution theory, which correctly notes that species evolve, but which, by focussing on too narrow an aspect of the process and using a model borrowed from 19th century English capitalism, completely misses the truth about how biology, in the large, actually works.  

How long do you have to wander outside the lab to realize that biology has been studied completely upside down?  Indeed, competition DOES happen, but it is only possible because MOST biological activity is co-operative.  

Do not trust energy transformation theories beyond their limits.  Even where it is true, it may not be telling you what is important.  It may tell you what is possible (or not  possible) but not what is desirable, or even what living systems seek.  

And that co-operative activity is what most biologists never look at, with the result that their theories are fine for creating frankenfoods, but are no use to us at all.  We have to start THINKING.  

Any economic model based on counting trade markers will just get us killed.  This is not how sustainable people think, and it is not how ecologies function either.  

We have to open our discourse WAY beyond the boundaries of imperialist/unsustainable patterns.  

And, really, considering I was born after the 1970's oil shocks, I really feel like I am not responsible for exceeding the tipping point, and that at some level it is irrelevant whether exterminism was the cause, or just a narrative more palatable to leftists than just plain human stupidity. What I am responsible for is for what I do about the consequences of living after the tipping point.  

Guilt is not the issue.  No guilt!  Exterminism vs. stupidity:  For whatever reason we have chosen death, not all peoples have done so.  Can we unchoose it?  What would it take to even WANT to unchoose it?  

Some humans are likely to survive.  What would we WANT to be carried into the future?

by Gaianne on Tue Mar 20th, 2007 at 11:13:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
I don't think I ever said that a division of labour would inevitably lead to authoritarian hierarchy, or that skilled craftspersons were the same thing as parasitical elites.  we seem to be talking past each other, somehow.  I do believe it is possible for the town to be symbiotic with the rural bioregion; but not when it becomes the traditional imperial core, importing negentropy and exporting entropy.
You have equated city with empire with parasitism and apparently archaeologists studying early setltements seem to reserve the name city for towns where there is evidence of division of labour.

Anyway, the town also imports negentropy and exports entropy from its surrounding bioregion. To claim otherwise is to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The question is whether the situation is sustainable once one takes into account the Sun's negentropy input into the bioregion.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 06:53:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? (none / 1)
the way the challenge is phrased seems to indicate either an unfamiliarity with the literature which I didn't find credible in someone as widely literate as M, or a disinclination to view these people as "real" cultures.
In other words, you misunderestimate me because you misoverestimate me.
dominance/hierarchy cultures are an automatic response to scarcity (not supported by the literature, but let's entertain the idea)
I did not say anything about automatic, I said adapted.
people who wax misty-eyed over the "birth of freedom" and entrepreneurial ineguity and capital investment in Euroland tend to glide tactfully over the enormous influx of gold and silver looted by main force and exterminist policy from the New World
Again, I invite you to dig in the ET archives for my comments on that particular bit of Spanish history...
I think I'm coming around to the idea that we can't afford cities -- by which I mean large imperial energy-sink cities with monumental architecture, etc.
I have long wanted to write a diary about "glory", motivated by some remarks by a friend of mine about "the glory of mankind".

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:12:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (4.00 / 3)
... the world's non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures.  not all of which are cultures of abundance, btw.  but all are cultures of reciprocity, gift exchange, and other "sharing" mechanisms rather than hoarding and hierarchical control.

The vast majority of humans who ever lived did so in "non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures", so if you are right, then that sentence is one of the most hopeful things I have read in a while.  Because it implies that human society can once again be organized in such a way that does not posit self-interest and greed -- Homo economicus =  Homo avarus -- but rather generosity and cooperation -- Homo economicus as Homo benignus -- as the prime incentives/motivations that drive human co-existence.

In other words, a civilization in which people get up and go to work not to make money to obtain things and a "better standard of living", but in which people get up and go to work to contribute, to be creative, and to give to others, knowing that their needs will be taken care of because everyone else is doing the same.

I've dreamed about this, but wrote it off as irresponsible idealism.  But what you are saying, it seems, is that this was actually the norm and the default for tens of thousands of years.  Is that right?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:31:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (none / 1)
But what you are saying, it seems, is that this was actually the norm and the default for tens of thousands of years.  Is that right?

I feel like being a devil's advocate here because, as much as I'd like to believe that, there is no historical record of it. And the reason is not that history is written by the imperialistic winners of wars, but that history is written by literate people [hence civilised, hence city-dwelling].

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:36:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (4.00 / 2)
Good point:  Writing is a product of civilization.

And yet

any quick survey of ethnography or field anthropology would reveal the wealth of literature (and the longstanding academic and political squabbles) over the world's non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures

all of which, DeAnander continues,

are cultures of reciprocity, gift exchange, and other "sharing" mechanisms rather than hoarding and hierarchical control.

What this says to me is that we are at a point in history where we recognize and treasure the fruits and benefits of civilization (e.g. writing, science, surfing, etc.), while at the same time have evidence that what drove that civilization until now -- "hoarding and hierarchical control" -- is not what drove human (pre-civilizational) society until very recently.  And what drove most of human society before -- "reciprocity, gift exchange, and other 'sharing' mechanisms", if what DeAnander  says is true, or at least the impulses of generosity that underly them -- could be harnessesed to move civilization to a next level -- a post- acquisitive-economy -based civilization.

Thesis: non-hierarchical, sharing/giving-based pre-civilization

+

Antithesis: hierarchical, hoarding/controlling/appropriating-based civilization

=

Synthesis: less-hierarchical, sharing/giving-based civilization

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 08:23:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (4.00 / 3)
Society 1.0

Decentralised but disconnected. Anarchy?

Society 2.0 (now)

Centralised, but connected. Hierarchy?

Society 3.0

Decentralised but connected. Synarchy?

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 08:34:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (4.00 / 4)
it's just a phase we are going through?

nice thought.

on a lighter note

I've often said that if intellectual property lawyers had been dominant in our late prehistory, we'd never have got past the stone knife stage...

The debate over who was here first started about the same time that Columbus was first arriving in the New World. In 1590, a Spanish Monk named Friar Joseph de Acosta reasoned, after much examination and comparison, that most of what was in the New World simply walked over from the Old World. He postulated a land connection between northeast Asia and northwest North America, even though that area was completely uncharted in his day. In the post-Revolutionary War United States, the scientific community was discouraged from looking into the issue so that they wouldn't inadvertently give any kind of legitimacy to the Native Americans or to their claims to the land the Europeans were stealing. [emphasis mine:  politicising science is nothing new!]

By the early 1900's, the archeological community had been looking and was generally in agreement that Native Americans had been in the country no more than 4,000 years. Then, in 1908, George McJunkin, the son of former slave parents, found the first Folsom Point. At the time, he was working as foreman on the Crowfoot Ranch near Folsom in northeastern New Mexico. He was also an amateur fossil collector, arrowhead hunter and naturalist. One day after a flash flood he came across some strange looking bones sticking out of the side of Wild Horse Arroyo. They were a local curiosity item until Carl Schwachheim came over from Raton and took a look at "McJunkin's site." He got in touch with Jesse Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History. Figgins visited the site in 1926 and organized a full excavation for 1927. That's when the actual Folsom Point was found. Radiocarbon dating places these artifacts at 10-to-11,000 years old.

  pop history web site

was chatting with a colleague today who said the archaeology/paleo-ethnography world is buzzing with the new notion that the chronological spread of Folsom Point technique may not have indicated the movements of "Folsom Point People" (as it has been interpreted for quite some time by academics raised in a culture of ownership, patents, etc -- plus in some cases lingering infection with racial/genetic superiority memes) but the free dissemination of a new idea/technology via visiting, trading, ceremonial warfare and the usual intertribal contacts.  "hey that's a cool idea, let's try it!" is mostly how we refined and invented and improved our techne.  monkey see, monkey copy, monkey improve :-)  same goes for small farmers sharing and improving and further specialising seeds.

what this means about the current state of intelprop Enclosure and monopoly control I shudder to think.  good thing there were no C&D letters when we were working on stuff like pottery glazing :-)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 09:04:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (4.00 / 3)
the chronological spread of Folsom Point technique may not have indicated the movements of "Folsom Point People"

D'UH'oooooo, ya THINK?

It's called:  Trade Networks.

(Now if Egyptologists would figure-out graffiti is not a reliable dating methodology .... )

A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run

by ATinNM on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 10:08:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (4.00 / 4)
it's just a phase we are going through?

nice thought.

Come on, you yourself encouraged this renascent optimism in me with your comment that

what we believe is "natural" conditions and limits what we believe is possible;  enlarging our notion of what is possible is directly threatening to elites who (for good reason!) want us to believe that things either have always been just as they are now, or are getting better and better every day.

We all agree it is our responsibiltiy to make things get better in fact, and not just in the rhetoric and ideology of those you call the "elites" (I prefer "entrenched interests" myself, because in my book you and I are both members of the "elites", but whatever: I think we are both referring to the same forces of inertia and reaction).  And to do that, we have to enlarge our notion of what is possible, as you say, and for me my notion of "the possible" has not really included the idea of a "giving/sharing-based industrial economy": I took self-interest, hierarchy and "hoarding" as you say, as unalterable givens of human nature in any society, however it may be organized.  While I note (and must look further into) Miguel's reference to the The Ape and the Sushi Master and Millman's mention of evolutionary psychology's descriptions of humans' inevitable "base 'desires'", I remain hopeful, and optimistic, that humans -- with courage, imagination, and perseverance -- will prove creative and resourceful enough to overcome the entrenched interests (including whatever destructive tendencies and instincts we are genetically programmed with) to keep the baby of civilization while throwing out the bathwater of imperialism and the rest of it.

Nice connection of the new Folsom Point technique "monkey see, monkey copy, monkey improve, monkey disseminate" hypothesis to Intellectual Property, Enclosure and Monopoly issues.  More evidence that pre-civilizational humanity can teach contemporary imperial-civilizational humanity how to achieve a non-imperial civilizational humanity.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 10:24:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (none / 0)
And yet

any quick survey of ethnography or field anthropology would reveal the wealth of literature (and the longstanding academic and political squabbles) over the world's non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures

And yet, you said tens of thousands of years, which is outside the realm of ethnography.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 7th, 2007 at 04:46:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (none / 1)
Of course it is possible. All you need is to heavily tax wealth and redistribute the proceeds to stamp out material deprivation.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 07:40:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (4.00 / 2)
ah, but wealth that comes from where?  the whole point of the Linebaugh review was that the wealth of the affluent British anti-slavery philanthropist was generated by the very system of slavery and expropriation that he deplored.

as long as wealth comes from accumulation by force, i.e. by forcing the market/finance economy into the indigenous and subsistence economy, it is achieved by scarcity and precarity creation.  I don't see how "redistributing wealth" solves the problem -- it becomes ouroborean very fast, like "waging war for peace."

redistributing land maybe -- now we're talking.  but that would vitiate the most essential operating requirement of the wealth-accumulating system:  the utter dependence on the money economy of all persons below the elite, so that their labour and obedience can be commanded.

btw, can we observe a distinction of terminology between agriculture, the tradition of the ploughed field and the (varying degrees of) monocrop, vs horticulture or permaculture, both of which were practised with high sophistication by many non-imperial type people?  it would make discourse a bit easier if we could separate these two practises which have very different impacts on surrounding biomes.


The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Mar 6th, 2007 at 08:19:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Is a generosity-based civilization possible? (none / 1)
redistributing land maybe

Thanks for pointing out the obvious, that land ownership is wealth.

I'd venture that more blood has been spilled over land reform than over anything else since the invention of agriculture.

the whole point of the Linebaugh review was that the wealth of the affluent British anti-slavery philanthropist was generated by the very system of slavery and expropriation that he deplored
Guess who wrote this, and in what year:
The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country; and less so, perhaps, in this country than in some others. The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry, but of conquest and violence: and notwithstanding what industry has been doing for many centuri