Sometimes when you win, you really lose.
– White men can’t jump
I had previously sounded off in comments on this blog that resistance does not accomplish anything. I was wrong. Resistance can accomplish plenty under the right circumstances. While studying the American revolutionary era, a sudden flash of clarity drove home to me the stupendous successes of the radical democrats of that age. Common people exuberantly entered the political process, first by pushing their way into the formerly elite Committees of Correspondence and by organizing themselves into militias in a shockingly egalitarian way. How’s this for amazing? One captain was asked how many men he had under him; “none,” he replied, “but there are 90 men who command me!” Farmers, millers, artisans and shopkeepers insisted on having a voice regardless of rules and tradition. Then, as soon as the old order fell, ordinary Pennsylvanians had much say in the creation of the state constitution and together with the gentry made it a visionary document embodying strikingly altered practices. A far more inclusive political process than had ever existed among them came into being within months of independence! In addition, people had the good sense to resort to extra-legal solutions when necessary; they were bold enough to interpret laws their way. Militias refused to march against neighbors when ordered to defend the interests of land speculators; they reasoned it would be against “the Very Spirit of our Laws & Constitution.”
When the people realized they could not stop the new American elites from legislating self-serving policies, they put in place resistance networks that were quite able to block their enforcement. Bouton’s Taming Democracy describes in detail the rings of defense circling communities. The first ring was staffed by county revenue officials who thwarted ruinous tax collection. The second ring consisted of county judges who refused to prosecute delinquent taxpayers and tax collectors. Juries acquitting the accused and sheriffs who refused to make arrests made up the third and fourth rings. Fifth ring meant stopping tax collection, foreclosures and auctions through non-violent protests. Violent protests and independent-minded militias completed the circles of resistance. During the 1780s, these protective networks shielded local societies from the excesses of depredation, and gave people an outlet for their efforts to create a more just society. While imperfect, they were for a time so successful that the collection of taxes ground nearly to a halt. (It is useful to remember that those taxes went to pay the gentlemen holders of the war debt IOUs who had created the tight money policies under which the people were suffering.)
It was this very success that was their undoing. Both the power of the local resistance and the people’s outspokenness in the political arena panicked the elites enough to change their minds and begin plans to restructure constitutions, take away local self-governance via top-down political appointees, remove states’ ability to modify contracts and issue currency, and do away with militias’ independence. Through such means and yet others, they pushed democracy way back.
The people’s resistance provided the motivating energy to those feeling threatened by it. Resistance provokes counter-resistance, and the more successful resistance is, the more it alarms and energizes the opposition. Hence the saying, “what you resist, persists.” The civil rights movement energized white supremacists. The environmental movement energized “wise use” anti-conservationists. Decades of official anti-fascist denunciations energized skinheads and neo-nazis. Greens have energized anti-Green opposition. Climate activism has energized climate deniers. Just as in the days of yore, successful radical democrats energized the Federalists who under the guise of democracy amplified the backlash and built it into the Constitution.
Many fed-up people in America and elsewhere long for a powerful movement which would put massive pressure on the elites to effect big changes. Be careful what you wish for! Considering that the odds are stacked in the elites’ favor, why give them the gift of extra umph by our resistance? We need that energy for us; why give it away to those who will use it against us?
And that leads to the million dollar question: if not resistance, then what?
May 14, 2011 at 4:06 am
Someone once paraphrased Bucky along the lines of, “If you want to make dinosaurs extinct, don’t fight them, just design an antelope.” Maybe that’s a helpful pointer here?
May 14, 2011 at 7:07 am
leavergirl and Shaun,
The only trouble with that quote is that no one “designed” an antelope, they evolved. This, and your point (leavergirl) on resistance just strengthening an already powerful enemy, point out how deep this predicament is and how far we have to go to realize a new way of dealing with these situations.
We need to hold onto our attention and our energies and not squander them in opposition. We also need to swim in the sea of evolving structures where intention and consequences are linked, but not as we imagine them to be.
May 15, 2011 at 9:14 am
To be fair to Bucky, he was an engineer designing things. I think what he meant is that if you want to behave differently, you gotta come up with some alternative.
All the same, the alternative’s got to emerge, otherwise it’s a contrived thing and people will keep falling off the designers’ wagon… maybe that’s why nobody’s building domes anymore to live in.
I like the swimming imagery, Antonio… that has been coming into my dreams lately, also. Swimming in the livingness… more on that, in another post.
May 15, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Another thought that came to me, while discussing things with Mark today. Might the moral of your American revolutionary story change if viewed from the perspective of the ‘elites’? They might consider that their resistance was very successful indeed, and hasn’t yet provoked any overwhelming counter-resistance..?
May 15, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Shaun,
They’ve been playing the elite/aggrandizer game. If we take what they consider “winning” as a goal, then we just become the next new face of oppression.
leavergirl,
Looking forward to reading about swimming in livingness!
May 15, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Yeah, i really think i should read that book (“Taming Democracy”). Local library system doesn’t have it. My most recent comment in the last post mentioned the Grange institution…i wonder if the book gets into that; Granges probably came later, but partly as a ‘community resistance’ focal point against the elitism, classism, etc-ism, right? At least that’s what i was told.
Antonio, good to see your solid force for good thought here whenever you write. Reminds me i need to catch up with reading at YOUR blog too. How goes the art, i wonder…
What’s this i been hearin about the demise of the geodesic dome? All i’ve heard is that they’re hard to keep from leaking…what else is wrong with ‘em? Too expensive? They sure seem like the kind of thing i’d want to be in in an earthquake or weather disaster, if the vast majority of it isn’t glass. I miss Bucky. Seems like he was born too soon…the world sure could use him now.
May 17, 2011 at 4:41 am
Hi,
Can we reprint your articles?
Best,
Alex
———————-
Ed. note: I gave permission to reprint articles, so keep in eye on these inteldaily.com folks.
May 17, 2011 at 10:00 am
Shaun, clever!
I am working it out, what fun. More later.
Jay D, he does not get into Granges, but I have been reading up on the Farmers Alliance, and at that time of history, 100 years later, those are the resisters of the age…
Domes are not too expensive, they are just awkward to live in, the spaces are not very human-friendly. Works well for greenhouses though…
May 18, 2011 at 9:13 am
On inteldaily, rev. dave pointed out that:
May 18, 2011 at 11:30 am
I am afraid I do not see the force of your argument. Persistence and resistance have no necessary causal relation. Some things persist whether you resist them or don’t. Gravity, for instance. Even if you escape it by living in space, your absence does not negate gravity’s existence and persistence.
Or for a non-physical example, take injustice. The brutal sadistic stupidity of prison guards adding their personal spite and petty tyrannies to society’s decreed punitive measures. Who gives guards either the right or the power to withhold decent comforts and dignity from persons who are being punished already by incarceration?
No one–ignorant and hateful guards surge into a power vacuum left by our collective neglect and the absence of proper monitoring. The brutality and stupidity persist whether the prisoners resist or not. Guards continue to abuse and steal from prisoners and frequently withhold even the meager rights prisoners have with perfect impunity from just punishment themselves.
Resistance from the right quarter–namely public observers and inmate ombudsmen who have clout in the form of withholding pay and promotion from sadistic guards–could cause that form of corruption to clear up.
But then, so would enormous raises in pay and gov’t requirements to hire only people who have Xty-five hours or more of training in basic psychology, plus proper peer group debriefing under the supervision of psychologists on the lookout for the dehumanizing effects of being a prison guard.
Resist and oppose? Or support the offenders–guards AND prisoners–by assessing the underlying needs of both and meeting them. Both groups require rehabilitation and re-integration into the human family.
Speaking of being human, what’s the argument for failing to provide the teachers, caretakers, and mothers of this world with the basic training, essential supplies and equipment for raising children? Oh, that women do all that instinctively, right?
Well, men instinctively fight too, but are there or are there not refined, scientific and proven effective methods of fighting? Ever better ways to hurt, maim, kill? Lots of shiny little cluster bombs left lying about to kill the enemies’ children and destroy the civilian capability to grow food, yes?
So why exactly is it not considered a government’s primary duty to supply its women citizens with all the best possible scientific methods, supplies, first rate equipment and standard housing for the purpose of guarding and growing life?
See, there’s always piles and hemorrhoids worth of money to spend on war, but spending money on children, that’s too tame. Not enough blood and guts, explosions and killer joys. Too much babyshit and vomit, bottlewarming and food prep. Dull. KP assignment is a punishment for men.
What the world spends on war in one week would feed the whole planet for a year.
And the real kicker is that all that money is totally wasted because the armies are totally incompetent. Sure, sure, they can deliver death to your doorstep in 4 minutes by ICBM. But they cannot get water to an area within 4 days. FOUR DAYS!
And that is when a tsunami or a hurricane strikes a COASTAL PLAIN easily accessible BY WATER! Pacific rim Dec 26th, remember? No carriers, no water tankers, no NUTHin for four whole days.
FOUR DAYS to get water to your occupation troops? That’s downright pitiful, that is.
On a scale of A to F that is a Z minus.
And I don’t want to hear any candy-assed whinging about “well, we did not have the permissions to move about in international waters, blah, blah, blah.” Why the eff did you not have those agreements already in place and waiting, diplomatic dimwits? Did you ever hear the phrase “strategic thinking” you PF’s?
What’s more, that self-serving little whine don’t have a leg to whimper on when it comes to New Orleans and the coastal plains of the Mississippi. What’s your big excuse there, boys? Too busy picking your noses and dreaming about oil rig erections?
See, what would really work for coastal defense is exactly what the Big Boys do not want to happen. Swarming behavior is the best possible method for meeting a threat whether it is a natural disaster or a man-made one. Distributed networks are best for all kinds of power: electrical, water, and invasion resistance. That means independent decision-making by small groups with local commanders. It means unpredictable methods of attack and defense, by people with local knowledge engaging in local actions. It means widely distributed, well-secured, and 24-hr guarded caches of arms, equipment and supplies. That means jobs for a hell of a lot of people to do the guarding, and training them to be alert to threats.
That means civil defense training and regular drills for ALL CITIZENS including women and children in schools and hospitals and nursing homes and prisons. And a massively armed, threat aware, awakened, trained, independent THINKING populace is way too frightening for the PTBbos to even contemplate. They know that it would mean the end of their centralized power sources and the death of their sacred cash cow. Water, solar thermal, bike parts & CD supplies would be a lucrative sideline for every little shop from Juno to Biloxi. No longer the privately owned Milky Way of the superrich. No, the MICs do not like the thought because they are way too smart.
But the armies are way too stupid to see the homeland defense advantages of a tough, resilient fabric of overlaid supply and information networks that can re-route around obstacles the way the Internet routes information flows. They cannot get their tiny little minds around the thought that guerillas on bikes are less conquerable than gorillas in fossil-fueled tanks. The armies and the police and the prison guards are lumbering dodo-complacent dinosaurs, content to be guided from On High by their Superiors who are happy to deploy them as shit-scrapers and cannon fodder–just as the rich have always done since their arrogant ancestors began conscripting peasants and scorching fields for their personal glory.
Oh, and by the way, civil defense training for women and children would mean having to build, supply, staff and maintain emergency creches and shelters for displaced persons. A mini medical clinic at every fire station, stocked and staffed 24-7. How horrible! That would mean less money for building SPORTS ARENAS! Goddess forbid!
And pets! And livestock! Horses and ponies and pigs and chickens and guard dogs and grain-guarding cats and who knows what all. You mean, we would have to plan to protect mere ANIMALS!!!? Shovel horse shit? Clean horse troughs? Why–it’s as bad as KP! A job fit only for women!
Of course, the fact is there is no effing excuse whatsoever for the consistent, deliberate and excessively prolonged neglect of the needs of women and children and life. There is a reason for it. But no excuse.
May 18, 2011 at 11:30 am
I will post more on this topic in the near future, but I wanted to note rev. dave’s thoughts here, because it seems to be common to assume that to check a tyrant is through resistance. It’s been my experience that tyrants are rather canny at dealing with resistance, and that it is a strategy with many disadvantages. I also don’t think we are free while the tyrant is looking uneasy over our shoulder. We are free when we don’t have any tyrants hovering. Neither do I think that armed rebellion is a particularly useful strategy (for reasons outlined well in the Logic of power I by Holloway). Of course, there may be occasional exceptions to this… for example, the settlement of Cayonu in neolithic Turkey.
May 18, 2011 at 11:45 am
“Distributed networks are best for all kinds of power: electrical, water, and invasion resistance. That means independent decision-making by small groups”
Right on.
As for shoveling manure, I know plenty of very helpful men who shirk it not. I am hoping you won’t get carried away by current peeves and stay more or less on topic. No excuse for the neglect? Of course. So let’s figure out how to outmaneuver the forces that like it that way, nah?
Oh, and of course some things persist whether humans resist them or not, gravity being a prime example. (scratching my ear) Um… yeah, so? I am talking about power relations among humans.
Can such problems be fixed by ombudsmen and other remedies the system offers? Call me a cynic.
May 18, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Well, I was trying to explain that power imbalances between men and women persist regardless of resistance or non-resistance. So do power imbalances between racial groups of less than equal numbers, like mostly white prison guards and mostly people of color prisoners.
The persistent power of information/goods hoarding and racially chauvinist dominator groups is like gravity–it never goes away. It is a constant, relentless pull. It can always be counted on. Resist or don’t resist–you eventually lose anyway. The history of every peasant revolution shows just that. It is wired into the human psyche by simian biophysiology–hormonally patterned, legally reinforced, and inescapable. All triumphs over it are temporary and limited in scope.
White domination is already losing out to fast-breeding Asian and Latin populations. That’s merely a numbers game. But male domination, being cross race biologically based, will always recur. Any resistance is short-lived and ultimately futile. Resist and the power-holders’ grip tightens. Don’t resist and they never let go.
What we need is a kind of ballistics of power, describing what arcs above patriarchy are possible to launch, what range and duration they can achieve before they are inevitably dragged down again. How much force is needed in the closed chambers and does rifling the bore of the barrel impart a spin to the project to make it fly true and straight?
150 years of squandering fossil fuels like wastrels on a spree has barely enabled women to gain a fingernail-hold on real power. Feminist scholarship, about 55 years old could be deep-sixed almost overnight. What hope when the fossils are exhausted? The only real hope is that coalfire pollution will cause widespread human sterility and endocrine disruptors will continue to reduce male sperm counts.
Like electrical power, centralized political power is dangerous and expensive to generate and maintain. To dilute and distribute it doesn’t help women very much. Men at wells and in board rooms still hog it for themselves. Only when women own, control, and administer large chunks of the foundations of power–land, water, food, fuel, shelter, manufacturing, decision-making–will we effectively weaken men’s hold. 67% ought to be about right.
A little dollop of power now and then can give everyone a pleasant buzz. Concentrate it and feed it to the addicts and you get the world we have today. Lace it with accountability and it becomes downright repulsive. Like adulterating cocaine with white pepper instead of flour or sugar or chalk.
It’s the pure unchecked power, like prison guards and police that is so intoxicating and delicious. Who guards the guardians? It is this vasopressin-mediated urge to define territories, seal them off from the rest of society and control the inmates behind closed doors (or in separate suburban dwellings) that does the pernicious damage.
If criminal offenders have to be visibly integrated into society instead of being locked away out of sight and mind–if society took seriously its responsibilities to retrain, vocationally and socially rehabilitate offenders, and spent the money and time on the trained personnel it takes to do so–then there would be so much less profit to be made by the privateers of prison construction, wouldn’t there? We would only have people helping people be better people–and that is not nearly as sexy as locking people up and humiliating them.
Truly, there is a sexual charge on this, I am not making it up. Are you aware of the recent attempts by military inventors to create an oxytocin nasal spray or “trust perfume” to make their secret operatives seem more attractive and trustworthy? Not content with having sexualized prisons and militarized healing, men are now trying to weaponize love.
If women live in houses that are not One Man’s Castle, but conjointly owned spaces shared among equals, then the ability to negotiate and navigate the shoals of human relationships–at which women excel over men in general–becomes a source of real power with real consequences in terms of goods and services for those who are skilled at it. Mouth trumps fist, to put it crudely.
If armies are not centralized and trained like industrial robots to dehumanize the enemy and do anything the overlords command, but trained to see, think and act independently, that makes it *so* much harder to manipulate people at the ballot box, and at the supermarket. Distribute power in one arena and it leaks over into others. That is why education for girls is so dangerous to religious warlords, Yale men, and Texas state legislators.
If people can combine to get lower prices for better goods, that seriously cuts into the profits of say, some box store that routinely ships inferior warped lumber to Wyoming and keeps all the good stuff for their home store in Florida. They charge the same or higher price for the shoddy stuff. If random lottery assigned which state got the good lumber, how long do you think the rotten profiteers would stay in business? Suppose no more captive consumers, but informed, savvy buyer groups.
Deception and secrecy are critical factors in the success of dominators, thieves and other power brokers. Financial information has to be kept quiet for inside traders to maintain centralized power over market values. Imagine no more mortgages, just people jointly owning farms, roads, hospitals and housing stock the way they now own stocks, shares and bonds–except a real physical property with real local market value anchors their investment–not an airy fairy paper statement of “business worth” in some hypothetical futures market.
It is just barely possible at this time to erect a political superstructure that raises humanity above the level of our gonads for, maybe, half a century. Local systems of governance for commons such as water, air, land, housing spaces, excrement processing facilities, and so on can only do so much. The commons of air and watersheds, education and fuel supplies need regional oversight.
Six regional Congresses per nation composed of 2/3rds women might have a slim chance of diverting trillions of dollars away from war and into wells–away from death and into life.
It is possible now for a limited window only to create viable infrastructure systems that support whole people at the village and tribal levels–not just broken ex-warriors and their rich overlords. Schools, maternal care and gardens. Rock-solid, durable. defensible and ecologically sound mothering compounds, group housing, and clustered community facilities such as baths, laundries, bakeries, breweries, kitchens, fabric sheds, infirmaries and clinics at every fire station.
We could, by feverishly working together, build and keep decent large caravanserai for migrants, displaced and homeless people. We still have the resources to set up walkable local spaces for entertainment, arts, education, libraries, and publishing outlets. Armies could plant whole forests in one day. It will never happen, of course.
Even if such infrastructure systems were ever built and funded for operation, you would still find that men mostly lord over them and women mostly do more than their share of the work. But socially equitable political systems cannot be built on a foundation of permanent poverty and deprivation.
There is a faint chance that by severely limiting the scope, authority, budgets, and boundaries of these local infrastructures and by greatly increasing the burdens of communicating openly, demonstrating responsibility, and documenting accountability, that enough men might leave these positions in disgust to allow women to fill the power vacuums that are left. Remember: power constrained is power poisoned–diluted, weak, and distasteful.
Beyond one or two 25-yr generations, though there will be a male-led backlash and clawback of power. I would lay you ten-to-one odds on it: same as the ratio of testosterone in men compared to women.
As long as men are in control of 90% of the world’s resources, there will never be peace or justice. As long as patriarchy has been around–what, 5000 years give or take a few decades?–men have always favored their own in-group, always worked together diligently to shut out women from power-sharing arrangements, always thrown their weight into ever greater wars, racial oppression, and territorial grabs. That’s 200 generations if you posit a 25-year span as one generation. How much proof do we need?
I am sure there are plenty of men who shovel horse dung. They are not the ones holding political office, though, are they? Ex-president Jimmy Carter being a notable exception.
I do not expect anyone to agree BTW. I’m just calling it the way I see it. Thanks for listening.
May 19, 2011 at 10:26 am
gkb, i don’t see much to not agree with in what you write…except is the patriarchy only FIVE thousand years old?! Feel free to read this blog’s archives and Leavergirl’s other related writings less in the form of blog posts. I’d love to hear your take on her and our thoughts on getting from here to there (beyond civ as we know it). Surely the old foundations will not serve us… As you’ll see if you read back, i am especially suspicious of any solutions that don’t address the matter of the sheer scale of things…how the bigger systems get, the less that crucial “human” values remain intact. If someone assumes good small things are large-scalable as if they were mere manufactured products, that tells me the person is lacking the learning from a key lesson of history.
May 20, 2011 at 9:47 am
I would like to urge, challenge, appeal to, plead with all readers of this post to give special attention to Leavergirl’s last line, “the million dollar question” of “if not resistance, then what?” Could anything be more crucial to think together on, more important to do to make the blogosphere worth its cyberspaciness, than to focus on this what sort of social strategy to take up?! Gkb started taking a crack at it, which is good to see. I’m all about this aspect of things…if we were to leave Babylon, and i for one am determined to do so, how and where would we leave TO?! If everyone weighs in on this and we stay with it, we might actually precipitate some sort of sane response to this runaway train we’re on, this collective vehicle to a dark tunnel that’s going so fast that we all seem at a loss as to how to get off…
I offer to pay special attention to any answers to this question that come in, ‘million dollar’, or more or less; will take any responses that come in over the next days into account, help to see if synthesis is possible and contribute to the mix if i can.
May 20, 2011 at 12:05 pm
“Resist or don’t resist–you eventually lose anyway. The history of every peasant revolution shows just that. It is wired into the human psyche by simian biophysiology–hormonally patterned, legally reinforced, and inescapable.”
Isn’t that defeatism? And how do you know that we once were not more like bonobos rather than chimps? And patriarchy is a blip in the history of the sapiens. Just like civ.
Cretan women were powerful without fossil fuels. So were women among the Cucuteni. Also among some Indian tribes. That shows, does it not, that biology is not destiny?
You are right, dominator power is the most addictive thing there is… an argument could be made that the Drug War is meant to distract from that realization. The oxytocin spray was until recently available on the internet for about 60 bucks. They say it’s on back order. But other types are available by prescription. It does not make the user appear more trustworthy. The user trusts others more… wouldn’t that be a detriment to spooks and warriors?
“Imagine no more mortgages, just people jointly owning farms, roads, hospitals and housing”
I have been imagining it, and it makes a lot of sense.
“I am sure there are plenty of men who shovel horse dung. They are not the ones holding political office, though, are they?”
Pitting women against men is a one way street to more bondage. We are in this evolution game together; it is the overlords who are served by the endless divisions, don’t you think? We can learn to work together again. It’s already happening. Holding political office means little anymore. Dung though… now there is the wave of the future for those who want to survive!
May 20, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Thank you, Jay D, for steering us more towards the query at hand. Let’s focus our thinking… and get this nut cracked.
May 25, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Shaun, here is my thinking in response to your and Mark’s query, whether the elites may not consider their resistance as very successful indeed, and not provoking overwhelming counter-resistance.
Resistance is an asymmetrical strategy. Underdogs rarely win. The elites win often; after all, they have most of the wealth and power at their disposal. They use their vast resources to proactively “manage” the resistance provoked. As they dig themselves in further and further hoarding more and more wealth and power, eventually their system topples, but it may take centuries.
What do you think?
June 5, 2011 at 10:12 am
[...] fathers” in the limits of who constituted a free “man” and the whole Hamiltonian counter-revolution that set the course back on track for the rule of money instead of an inconvenient rule of law. [...]
June 21, 2011 at 8:43 am
I think you’re right – the elites have been digging in further and further, and making successful underdog resistance less and less likely. And also right that their system inevitably topples under its own logic, but that they are too busy defending themselves against rivals and rebellions to look deeply at that.
Or maybe it’s more that the logic of violent control actually wins out and crushes over ways of approaching life in the high-energy-availability period of history that is now waning, but that as the energy required to maintain that top-down control becomes harder and harder to source, more and more gaps open up for the kind of guerilla dissent that you discuss in your latest post. Physically, the globalised system presents more and more vulnerable bottlenecks as it becomes more and more stretched. And it has less and less energy to spare to crush incipient alternatives. And culturally it becomes more and more vulnerable to alternative worldviews as it is able to provide a desirable life to a tinier and tinier fraction of the world’s population.
The great challenge to us all though, as we know only too well, is that the dominant system is so degrading our natural environment, and slaughtering so much of our biodiversity, that there is less and less left available to anyone, even as the mainstream crumbles, in fits and starts.
So what do we do? I think my dear friend Mark Boyle said it well, in his response to my recent post:
“we would be wise to just follow our intuition at each moment, and these moments combined will bring us to our destiny, whatever they are.
Is the world as we know it fucked? Of course! Is that a good or a bad thing? Neither, just is. So what is the purpose of us standing up for what we believe in if it is fucked anyway? To compliment what Berry and Wellstone said, I’d said the point is ‘we don’t know what the point is, we just know it is in our hearts and souls to do it’. “
Let’s trust to that strange wisdom that we seem to be able to access, which is deeper than that in all our brains’ analysis, and see where we end up. It certainly makes me feel truly alive, if nothing else
I find that it’s quite useful to remind myself from time-to-time just how stymied my brain is by coping with everything that’s happening in our world. Once I remind myself, I think there are two possible responses to that:
i) To pretend that it’s not true, ignore the bits that confuse me and press on with the bits that seem to make sense until they run up against reality with an unpleasant bang.
ii) To decide that my brain, useful though it is, just isn’t up to this one, and to take advice from a different part of the human condition!
June 22, 2011 at 9:12 am
A fitting close to the thread, Shaun! And I would add that when we take advice from other parts of us, we do not leave the brain out. Useful strategies can make all the difference. After all, standing up for what we believe just because it’s in the heart can get our heads cut off.
I tend to think that the logic of violent control began way before the times of high energy access. It seems it began in Mesopotamia some 6,000 years ago, as the brutality shown on their reliefs attests. The economic collapse the elites are, strangely, so assiduously promoting, will help with such things as pollution and degradation of the living systems, but not with the problem of power. I do not fear a world made by hand. Neo-serfdom, however, is not my cup of tea.
Thank you for pitching in!
June 22, 2011 at 10:11 am
True dat
I guess it’s the all-encompassing nature of the domination that requires high-energy – the globalisation so destructive that it leaves no corner of the Earth where anyone can sustainably ‘drop out’
June 22, 2011 at 11:23 pm
I have a hunch… that every committed worldview necessarily has lacunae… places that are invisible to the holders of that particular way of perceiving reality. Oh, I think that old tale about the Patagonians being unable to see European ships is a myth. But it is a compelling story because we know it’s all too true… and the more overcommitted a particular way of viewing reality is, the less able to see. And what is more overcommitted than dear ol’ civ?
It is in those places that are not visible, not legible, to the old paradigm, that the new can grow. Um? It is up to us to find them.
June 23, 2011 at 6:10 am
I agree, and I’m working on it, but my point still stands too.
Those lacunae do exist, but the mainstream is now so vast and destructive that it seems likely that it will still blindly destroy them, possibly without even knowing of their existence, whether through climate change, competition for resources/space, death of critical species, pollution or whatever. This has already happened, of course, to the many natural communities already lost.
The new can grow, as you say, and we can tend it, but can it be sustainable when the very fabric of life on Earth is being torn?
There are philosophical responses to that predicament of course, depending on one’s perspective:
A human life is not designed to last forever; we just do what good we can; maybe we heal a little of the damage done; maybe we hope against hope that our example inspires vast numbers of others to… (What? If we don’t know how to stop the slaughter and destruction, how can we inspire others to?)
Some of these philosophical answers may be good ones, and as yet I have nothing better to put in their place, but a future for (higher life? Life itself??) on Gaia is a big thing to give up on, no matter how we dress it.
Especially knowing that our species, and our culture, is causing it. There are few beings with more power over this situation than you and I, yet still we appear helpless. I have a hunch that this is a misconception
xx S
June 23, 2011 at 7:08 pm
It *is* a misconception!
No giving up for me. But we gotta do it soon… You know, people talk of how prudent predators (animals that hold back from destroying their habitat) do not exist. But that’s not true… pathogens and parasites have often turned around and made an adaptation to coexistence rather than keep killing their host. So… I remain, yours truly, in service to Gaia, for better or for worse, till death do us part, neither optimistic nor pessimistic… simply in the game for the duration. Best game in town!
July 15, 2011 at 6:39 pm
On prudent predators, I think it was JM Greer whose work (I suspect it was in “The Ecotechnic Future”) pointed out to me the difference between R-Selected and K-Selected species, as defined by ecology.
Roughly, R-Selected species such as dandelions tend to maximise control of resources and growth rate, even at the cost of inefficiency and unsustainability. They tend to do well at colonising disrupted or untouched areas, and are often seen as ‘weeds’ or ‘pests’. K-Selected species such as oak trees, on the other hand, tend to maximise efficient use of resources, even at the cost of limits to growth rate and birth rate. These species tend to come into pre-eminence in mature ecosystems.
And R-selected species tend to be good at adapting to sub-optimal conditions, allowing them to quickly colonise new territories, but in so doing they often prepare the ground for the later dominance of K-selected species, if the natural process of succession is allowed to run its course towards the local variant of a mature ecosystem (often a forest), in which the efficient use of resources is more important than being quickest to grab what is available.
What *is* interesting about humans is that we seem to be a rare example of a species that acted as though we were K-selected for most of our history, but then developed culturally towards more R-selected behaviour patterns. Perhaps this is a hopeful sign, as a cultural trait can surely change much more rapidly than a genetic one..?
July 19, 2011 at 3:58 pm
“Perhaps this is a hopeful sign, as a cultural trait can surely change much more rapidly than a genetic one..?”
That was also the point of Daniel Quinn where the realization that it is one culture among many that needed changing created a hopeful, doable proposition, at least in theory.
The ecological pattern I was thinking of is co-evolution or co-adaptation… certainly something that happened many times in our species’ past, all the way down to mitochondria… if we use the speed and flexibility of cultural change to our advantage, then certainly, co-adaptation remains a possibility.
And Quinn’s notion of Leavers, as well as TTs and permaculture seem all to be aiming in that direction. The question is… what is the next radical step?
August 17, 2011 at 3:28 pm
From somewheres on the web:
“One of the first things you learn in the martial arts is that you shouldn’t push too hard in any direction, because a skilled opponent will use your own force against you. What most people do when pushed is try to push back harder, and a martial artist will fuck them over twice as hard from there as he could have if they hadn’t pushed at all.”
May 1, 2012 at 9:07 am
And just off the press re pre-MayDay riots in SF: “Various witness accounts say a group of between 50 and 100 people moved down Valencia St. smashing windows, throwing paint balls, and even attacking an unsuspecting police station. The cops were apparently not prepared to make mass arrests and were slow to respond to the chaos, though it quickly broke up.”
Well, there you have it. One of the reasons open resistance does not work. Piece of cake for the PTB to sabotage it.