How in the World Did We Get in this Mess?

So, we evidently started out as a social creature that self-organized in to pretty egalitarian communities. Given that fact…just how the heck did we end up here?

What follows is a synthesis of theories: that presented by Chris Harman in his book A People’s History of the World, that presented by one of our fellow Evolvers and one of Reality Sandwich’s writers (the one who’s work brought me to RS, in fact) Charles Eisenstein in his wonderful book The Ascent of Humanity (the full-text of which is available for free at this link, btw. Mr. Eisenstein is trying to get by like the rest of us, but is big enough to try to live by his ideals. He will, however, no doubt gleefully take a donation or five, which he has a link for at the site ^_^), and Daniel Quinn from his book Ishmael. These theories, when synthesized and combined with an understanding of meme theory, give what I believe is the best and most likely scenario for how we came to be in this place.

Long, long ago, in a time and place far, far away, we were nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes. We ate what was provided by nature, and were intimate with its secrets. Evidently, food was so plentiful that we didn’t even bother to store it. Sure, you might go hungry for a day or so, but it was inconceivable that no food would be found for long enough to cause severe starvation (generally speaking, modern hunter-gatherers still feel exactly this same way, in fact). If that were the case, and food were beginning to become hard to find, the tribe would move its camp until it found more fruitful hunting and gathering ground. (Eisenstein)

However, in a few places people lived near very plentiful food supplies. In virtually every place that agriculture spontaneously arose (as opposed to being imported), in fact, the people had access to vast natural fields of grains. It was possible for them to harvest more than enough food, very easily, and from a source which grew so rapidly that they did not have to move. They began permanent settlements there -- building structures, accumulating material objects, etc.

Unfortunately, the Universe had a surprise in store for them…Climate Change. (Harman)

As the weather patterns began to shift, the staple foods would not grow as well. A sense of desperation began to set in, combined with an attachment to the place they had been living. The meme of ‘this is the land of our people for generations’ had been born from the act of being stationary for so long. Reluctant to leave behind what they thought of as their heritage, the people instead racked their brains and came up with an idea: Over the generations, they had accumulated a vast knowledge of the plants they ate. At the very least, they had figured out that if they planted seeds, plants would grow, and that plants needed water. (Harman)

Thus was born a change in the way of life. No longer would they rely upon the bounty of nature; they now would attempt to take matters in to their own hands, and shape nature to be closer to their needs and purposes. They broke Earth, planted seeds, tended plants, and found ways to get water to those plants in spite of the changing weather meaning a lack of rain. (Harman, Quinn)

The role of nature had also shifted in this change; where before she had been the source of plenty, she now began to be more of an adversary; something from which what you needed had to be wrested with sweat of the brow and toil of the muscles. Now she was the fickle, moody entity that might take an entire crop in a single night’s flood, and leave the village starving for months…for, once the technological fix was in, it also became an unavoidable necessity. Our tool became our Master, as so often has been the case. The number of people sustained by an agricultural system far exceeds the number that could live on the un-worked land.

Without the crops, there was not enough for everyone to eat no matter the bounty of the surrounding countryside. (Harman)

This fact -- that of Nature becoming as much a foe as a friend -- had two basic effects: one, it reinforced a meme that had been slowly growing since the inception of fire -- that of man’s separation from the Wild (in the Light of the Fire, surrounded by the noises and mystery of the Darkness of Night, one part begins to be Safe, Home…and the other Wild and Dangerous, Alive with Prowling Mysteries. It is the basic duality first given form beyond simply night and day); at this point the Wild turned in to Nature itself, at least to a degree. (Eisenstein)

She gave with one hand, and took with the other.

The other effect was the perceived need to begin measures that would insure the survival of the community in the face of natural disaster. (Harman)

Agricultural production actually allowed a surplus far beyond what was needed for actual survival. In fact, the surplus was so large that it almost became a problem. Eventually, someone was elected, presumably on their merits, to take charge of managing the surplus. They were to keep track of it, ensure its safety, and make sure everyone was contributing an equal share of their surplus to it.

In exchange, they no longer had to work. They were allowed to live off of the surplus of those who were. (Harman)

But this job became even more complex. As the surplus grew, and as neighboring tribes began to learn of it, and as some persons hosting ‘greedy memes’ began to cheat it, it became necessary to have both have more ‘overseers’ as well as some way to protect the surplus, and to ensure everyone contributed evenly towards it.

In fact, during times of hardship especially, the instinct was to consume the entire surplus. This was a disastrous scenario for early agriculturalists. A reasonable part of the surplus had to be guaranteed as seed for next year’s planting. Eating all of it, no matter how hungry any individual was, would mean starvation for the entire community. And any family, no matter how hungry, had to keep contributing to it, for the survival of the whole.

So, the best at hunting and fighting were allowed freedom from work, in exchange for their expertise to protect that which everyone else had sowed and reaped. (Harman)

At this point, you begin to have three distinct classes, although they are not consciously differentiated from each other quite yet. You have the class that produces the food, the class that protects the food, and the class that keeps track of the food. Jobs tend to be kept in families at this point, because it is easier to master a task that you grow up doing, and also because genetics does play a part. There are the occasional ‘black sheep’, as it were, and the Integral mind sees that a place should be made for them and respect given…but there is great Truth to the adage, “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

As previously mentioned, the agricultural model is amazingly efficient. It allows a surplus the likes of which mankind had not previously seen. The various classes each get their share, and everyone is doing swimmingly.

At this time, the producers and supervisors still had mostly equal control and essentially common ownership.

So, what happens when you fast-forward a few generations?

Well, due to the availability of food, the population grows. (Quinn) As the population grows, the need for more people who oversee the surplus grows. (Harman) Eventually, a point is reached where those who collect, exchange, and protect the surplus have grown to such a level that the center of the community can’t actually be used for crop cultivation.

Well, it could, as we are beginning to believe with the Transition Town movement…but, at this point, the meme of separation was really starting to come in to its own.

The city was the Home of Man, more and more. It was outside the city that was the Wild. In the city, however, everything was arranged to man’s liking. Fire now spread its light at every corner. A new class, barely visible at this point, was beginning to claw its way to the surface of the noetic ooze -- those who exchanged and transported the surplus. Although tiny at this point, they would grow through time into the great bourgeoisie, who have, in our day, largely wrested power even from the owners.

Here in the city, aesthetic beauty and human use was the law of the land, and the landscape was crafted to fit our sense of balance and art as well as practical needs, rather than the processes of Nature. As such, the actual production of food had to be moved to the outside of what was considered the center of the community. The ‘country’ began to arise as a meme, as a concept which differentiated the place where the food was grown as opposed to the idea of ‘the city’ where its growth and surplus was managed, exchanged, and kept safe.

This very process began to further reinforce the meme of separation. As we acted upon that idea we manifested it, and created a world where it appeared even more true. This was prior to any real written language. It is known, generally, as the preliterate period. Basic markings were beginning to be used to keep track of the surplus, but no real written language. Therefore, all history was still being passed down by oral tradition, which is unreliable at best. Given a few dozen generations or so, people forgot how they had once lived. Daniel Quinn refers to this as “The Great Forgetting”. As all humans do, however, they sought to explain their world. The meme of separation gets stronger, and new memes which support it are given rise. Ideas such as humans being special above the rest of the world, and about humanity’s rights over the natural order begin to seem logical in this environment. (Eisenstein)

Concurrent with this was another “forgetting”. Those who supervised the surplus and controlled the warriors also forgot how they obtained their positions. You can imagine a young fictional character observing the society in which he lives. Many people work hard in the fields, and bring their food to his family. They give honor to his family, and his family does not have to work. His family is allowed to eat when others are hungry. Everyone seems to obey and do as his family says to do.

“Why?” This individual might ask his family.

“Because it has always been this way, for as long as anyone can remember,” Would likely be the answer, “It is our duty to safeguard the people.”

“But why?” The question would still remain. Given the general belief in spirits, it might begin to seem logical that the current order had been dictated to man by a spirit or god. Yet more memes arise which explain and simultaneously strengthen the new order.

As far as we can tell, the first granaries were also the first temples. The place where the surplus was stored was also the place of worship, and those who took care of it were the first priests. It is around this time that organized religion first begins to spring up as well. The priests were the source of life, as they gave seeds to begin each year’s planting. Everyone had to give some of what they made back for next year. Humans began to worship at these altars almost as an alienated recognition of their own power and accomplishment, as much as a celebration and worship of the Divine. (Harman)

Once these memes were created, of course, they began to spread themselves, and reinforce even more the new way of life (which no longer seemed new, just the way it was).

These separation memes, those of man being separate from and ‘above’ the biosphere and the intra-separation of class that was beginning to arise, comingled. If man was separate from the biosphere, and also separate within his kind; then the idea that people who work closest to the Earth are themselves ‘less than’ those who are the most separated from it. In virtually every case, where first the ‘Chief’ or ‘Priest’ classes were given power by the people to take care of the surplus, eventually the surplus became for the Chief or Priest -- a radical switch that occurred because, over time, everyone forgot how the system had come about in the first place, then came up with ideas about ‘specialness’, ‘dirtiness’, ‘divine mandate’, ‘uncouth and vile masses’, etc.

They were in power because they were better, not because they had been put in that position by the community.

Now, you have a wholly new society, culture, and system of production/survival. A dominator hierarchy of upward-flowing surplus, where the many serve the few and the few live in decadence while the many wallows in squalor. As these memes are actualized and manifested, they seem even more true because the world around us appears to reflect them.

So what happens when you fast-forward a few more generations?

Well, the success of agriculture at producing a surplus continues. More and more people are able to survive. The cities grow larger, needing more land to cultivate for food at its edges. As the society grows in number and size, it begins to bump up against other humans still living ‘the old way’. These people appear to be ignorant of the ‘true nature of the world’; and, what’s more, they seem to swim in the very thing the agriculturalists have tried to separate themselves from.

Some of these ‘primitives’ admire the apparent accomplishments of the larger society, and become hosts for the various memes themselves. Others move away. Some try to fight back, and are destroyed because their population cannot at all compete with the numbers supported by agriculture. (Quinn)

It is due to the population supported by the agricultural mode of production that the memes spread so rapidly. Some would argue that this success is evidence of the truth and usefulness of that meme. I personally tend to disagree, as the numbers supported by that system (most especially when combined with the meme of ‘be fruitful and multiply’ with no limits on it) make it unstable and unsustainable in the long run. It is a short-term gain, in terms of the life of a species…and is about as logical as saying that cancerous cells are the most successful ones in the body because of the rapidity of their reproduction.

You can have hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of years living sustainably and in responsible balance with the ecosystem (which, yes, means you gotta put up with being uncomfortable a bit sometimes, and not always having everything you want at the touch of a button)…or you can have about twenty-thousand years, give or take, before you have serious global issues knocking on your doorstep. The idea that these problems can continuously be avoided through a further advance in technology seems like a fool’s game of running ahead of a moving train laying the tracks. The first law of technology is that all technology creates new problems, and the second is that those problems will require a yet higher level of technology to fix. At some point, it seems best to just count your blessings.

But that’s just my opinion, and I digress.

And so we find ourselves here, in this time. Most of this probably took place between ten to fifteen thousand years ago, and set in motion a process which we continue today. But we have started to bump up against the edges of our container. The hope now is for technology to once again come to our aid and allow us to expand the boundaries of that container, and allow a greater yield in the areas we already have. I believe that, first, we need to examine exactly what we are doing, and ask ourselves why we are doing it. What meme are we pursuing here, and does it serve us at least as much as we do it?

The idea of Progress? What is progress? Evolution? What do we mean by that?

I believe we need to come to a more mature conceptualization of ourselves, and our place in the World and Universe. I believe we need to reexamine our ideals about what it means to be human, and what it takes to live a happy and contented life. I believe we need to tell ourselves new stories, actualize more healthy memes, and begin to truly reintegrate our kind back in to the rest of Nature in a mature and healthy fashion.

This world was not created by stupid or greedy people, although it cannot be denied that people hosting greedy and stupid memes helped shape it. This world was, in large part, created by desperate people doing their best to ensure their survival and that of their family, as best they knew how based upon the memes they hosted. They actualized those memes, and changed the world around them.

As we actualize the memes we are creating here, we will build a world that will embody them. As people see the effectiveness of that world, they will begin to believe those memes as well. When they believe them enough, they too will actualize them. We can build a better world, together, I truly believe we can.

We built this one, didn’t we?

Image used courtesy of FreeFoto.com, and used under a Creative Commons license.