A Hill Top on the Caja del Rio

(Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) are proposing a major electrical power line to cross the Caja del Rio plateau. There are three primary concerns: one is the damage to a unique natural area (a concern which the proposal has only very weakly addressed and which is intended to have little influence in decisions); two, it is an area with great cultural significance to the surrounding indigenous people’s Pueblos; and three, violations of existing legally established use restrictions. Specifically rejected from consideration are the objections to the Nuclear Mission of LANL and the NNAS and the broader aesthetic and spiritual values of the place to humans generally. I wrote this in 2011 after an evening on the Caja; it is not unique to either my time on that land or to many others who go there for respite from a challenging world.)

There are times when the world is best seen from the top of an old lava flow tens of miles from the nearest collection of humanity; here, long history collides with the present moment in unpredictable ways. At certain moments 2 million years ago this spot was alternately sending forth red splatters of rock, like giant Roman candles, and andesite lavas, flowing up from vents and long vertical cracks, coming from deep in the molten mantel!

The rock tells the story. Following the ascending volcanic dike to its crest, a wall of the red pebbly splatter rock lay hard against the cold andesite lava that had long ago flowed up and poured out building this hill and flowing into the surrounding basins. But, the land is now only a collection of clues – if that is how one sees it. Or it is what it is: hills and valleys, temporary streams and canyons.

As I walked and scrambled up the broken piles of rock toward the top of the old dike, a mule deer whistled below telling all and sundry that I was there. A few minutes later it whistled again and then once more. I had seen her tracks, quite fresh, in a hidden curve of the dike wall lower down and wondered how nearby she might be. The sound was shockingly familiar, like the hands-clasp whistle that my son uses to call his dog; and for a moment I searched the valley below me with binoculars looking for some other human walking in this remote place. (Later, as I returned to my evening spot, the deer hopped out of hiding, crossed the valley and disappeared into the tiny trees of an adjoining hillside. I watched its hindquarters disappear into heavy cover, and then, like the closing scene from Harry and the Hendersons, parts of several deer appeared briefly in the spaces between the trees and just as rapidly disappeared into the tall brush.)

I sat on the top of the tall hill, sat on the lava that had been, all those many years ago, 2000º F, pushing up out of the earth making a terrible mess of this place – it would have been catastrophe for the plants and animals living here. The serenity and beauty of the present moment would not let me delve too far into the conflagration that visited, and built, this place millions of years ago, hundreds of square miles and hundreds of volcanic vents like the one upon which I sat.

The serenity and beauty of this place and this moment also formed a mansion of experience in which to contemplate the present conflagration that was “flowing” in from only several miles away….and from millions of “vents” spread, literally, over the whole surface of the earth.

Not to be too dramatic, though perhaps unavoidably: the lights from Los Alamos shine down on this place. Oppenheimer, Groves, Teller and many others have seen this landscape from their physical and intellectual aerie as they plotted the potential futures of the world: the atomic and hydrogen bombs born on the pyroclastic ash-flows from a super-volcano! But this was not on my mind more than as the recollection of the previous color of a well known room; no, from this hilltop, looking out over the valleys and hills of this old volcanic shield, seeing the lights of Los Alamos to the west, Santa Fe to the east, the glow of Albuquerque to the south, it was the class war of the worlds that came into focus.

Sitting there at the crest of the long volcanic dike as the sun was setting, a geological feature called a ‘hog back’, my lack of being alone was more than palpable; it was reality. The doe just down the hill was, without question, giving my presence her attention; this was the center of the range of a mountain lion that I had once caught napping in a shaded canyon; had seen tracks and scat nearby. Though unseen, coyotes were coming out to hunt all around me and would sing to me later in the evening; and all the smaller mammals: skunks, cottontails, jacks, the various rats and mice. I listened for them, watched the changing light define and undefine the land shapes in which they were certainly walking, stalking and secreting themselves.

Ravens flew in, two by two, calling to each other, swinging by overhead to have a look and treating me to the whoosh whoosh of their wing beats. I was of little interest, too far from their cliffs and had no visible long gun, a recognition that they make most readily. Other than their occasional sounds the rest was an embracing silence.

These partners in the experience of the moment were also part of my considerations. I was with companions in this place – not far away from “real life” under the twinkling lights. I was here, on purpose, to be with the creatures of the desert hills. I was here to feel my life in communion with theirs, seeking a different context. I was here to be free of language, to be hungry for every sound, every sight of movement; here to be free of level floors and paths, to walk on the uneven earth; here to be free of comfort, to feel the cold wind, to have to shield my eyes from the low angled sun.

I sat on the hilltop and felt my way through the wash of sub-verbal ideas: the 100 thousand people in the valley east, west, north and south were an anxiety, an empathy, as I looked around beyond the low hills; their lives, hopes and dreams, rushed by like a super-speed fast-forward, all montaged together as in a bad movie; reaching out beyond the hills, beyond the Rio Grande Valley, beyond the western high plains to the coasts and on over the oceans.

A billion voices in the whoosh whoosh of the raven’s wing flew the wordless thoughts through my mind (to be read as a single burst, like the spark from a steel on flint): humans possess biological capacities that have been adapted into very powerful designs, and have lost control of the power that changes the world around them; and some humans had collected to themselves such vast power that a madness has been created in them beyond all help. All the behaviors, instincts and feelings that matter have been swept aside by domination of physical spaces, ability to carry out almost any desire, domination and control of other people, feelings of omnipotence and omniscience: the madness of power over others rather than the communion of common purpose.

The human species is ultimately flawed. The primate social pattern of domination, long since obsolete as an adaptive device, continues to be expressed in our economics and politics; and is now imbued with physical and organizational powers thousands, even millions, of times that which both enforced and inhibited the actions of our ancestors. We adapt, in our expectations and behaviors, to our present powers and the conditions that surround us and yet still feel about and act on them with the emotions of a tribal primate.

For all the complexity in the human world, our situation comes down to a class of humans acting in every possible circumstance to advance their interests without regard to the costs that are inflicted on living others and the future. As long as there is a significant surplus of material and services available, the native design of human species will move some of its members to try and collect that excess to their control. This creates the basis for an escalating process of wealth accumulation with primate hierarchical social patterns transforming into aberrant power-dominated class systems.

This process can take on a hundred different forms, and so confuses us. Those who follow this course as capitalists claim that it is the socialists that are making trouble and the communists say that it is the capitalists who trample people’s rights to the right kind of wealth. So-called Christians team up with capitalists and another set of Christian beliefs finds more commonality with socialists, yet both act with antagonism toward atheists or Muslims. And on it goes.

The one “religion” that seems to cut across all of these lines of difference is excesses of power and wealth: the obscenely rich may fight among themselves, but it is mutual understanding of their common relationship to the rest of humanity that draws them into communion for the maintenance of wealth, power and privilege: the actions that are needed to extract an abundance of wealth from the labors and fears of the human herd are a blood-bond for the elite.

The elite of Roman abused the common folk. The elite of Europe abused the common folk, first at home and then abroad in their colonies. The elite in the old Soviet Union abused the common folk. The elite in China have and are abusing the common folk. The elite in the US are abusing the common folk. The elite in India are abusing the common folk. The elite of the major institutional religions abuse the common folk. And in places where the common folk are not being abused, the elite are preparing conditions of the global economy to abuse them. When there is sufficient stored and tradable excess converted to private wealth, 10, 20, 50 times greater than basic need meeting, this will always be the outcome.

If life can’t be imagined except within the circle of the distant lights, the whole package of “goods” must be accepted: mining, smelting, manufacturing, retailing; economic growth, progress, wealth accumulation and power; the overcoming of meaninglessness with the meaningless.

How is it possible to live without the light switch, without unlimited access to TV, refrigeration, wifi, year round 70º F regardless of ambient temperature, unlimited choices and supplies of food and ‘consumer goods?’ Who and how many would give these up willingly? And in these questions lies the understanding of the elite; who and how many would willingly give up the power to have and do as they wish, to live with impunity, and what actions would be taken to maintain such power?

It is easy to say that wealthy and corporate interests have leveraged their increasing control of economic and political institutions to the point that the primary legal foundation of the US and much of the world must be broken to accommodate them – these foundations, as habits of practice and expectations, have already been bent as far as they will go. It is what we, as a people, accept as correct and honorable, applied consistently and to an extreme – an extreme that we never intended – that is the essential engine driving us to this place.

Like all movements we have our prophets: Henry George, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, C. Wright Mills, E. F. Schumacher, Hervé Kempf, Joe Bageant, Noam Chomsky, David Cay Johnston, Chris Hedges, Chris Glugston, George Monbiot, Herman Daly, Bill Mckibben, Derrick Jensen and dozens of notable others, most you will never have heard of, like Coralie Koonce who has written very readable, and scholarly, books bringing all of the issues together. And there are many many more, completely ignored by the media and the “world of influence”, who work everyday to better understand and to better inform their fellows of the grave danger and the hard choices that the immediate future holds. (I apologize if I have left out one of your favorite prophets, my point in making a compact list is that there are many – enough to make up the rooster of a baseball team or of a representative body.)

It is so clear a summary of their work, and that of my companions on the hilltop, that great wealth must not be in private hands; human hands must belong to the same class – the human class. And the amount of wealth extracted and sequestered outside of the movement of environmental processes must be reduced to the barest minimum. Humans must take less from the total energy flux and material cycles. The human pleasures of life, and there are many, must and do come primarily from communion with our fellows, both human and non-human; we must again learn to distrust inventions of behavior and objects that separate us. All of this and more will come, if it comes at all, with the greatest of effort, pain and great luck.

* * *

As I sat on the hilltop all of these thoughts went through my mind as movements of emotion, as wordless sensations guided by the far away city lights. But, what was real was the doe below me in the cactus meadow. We were both occupying the same space in the desert hills with our similarities and differences. She was about 170 pounds, young, strong; sharp eyes, ears and sense of smell; fleet of foot and dangerous with sharp hoofs. She knew the terrain, the plants, where to find water, the dangers from mountain lions, coyotes, and humans. I am 170 pounds, old and strong enough, in a weak sort of way (I could not hop across the 200 meters to the trees on the near hill in a few seconds). I have weak eyes that need prostheses; my hearing has been damaged by years in noisy places; I can still smell things placed under my nose. I know the area in a general sort of way. I can be dangerous and very fast using human tools. I can build a fire. I can think ahead. My delicate feet are cased in good boots; my cold-prone head is cased in a wool fleece cap. My hairless, thin-skinned body is cased in wool and out-door approved synthetics. I have, in my motorcycle panniers, food, water, emergency sleeping bag, flashlight, cameras, campstool and other useful items. And, unlike my companions here, I can leave this place if I wish.

The doe belongs here. Her lineage almost certainly goes back thousands of years in this general area, perhaps 1500 generations. 1500 generations for me would include the episodic pulses out from the African cradle, the cave painters of southern Europe, the explorers of the west Asian steppes and the intrepid probers at the Beringia passage to North America. Not only do I bring the ideas and concerns of the present intellectual world to this hilltop, but also the generational history of a good part of the earth; where I belong is a matter of conjecture.

The deer should whistle a warning again and again, louder and louder, until all can hear it.

Looking at a Lifestyle 3

“It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” ― Gautama Buddha

 

In the second essay of this series, I offered the thought that ‘we’ need to more competently develop the capacities of pre-adaptation: making adjustments to our habits and expectations in response to future events rather than only responding to the conditions, albeit new ones, that are immediately before us. But, of course, knowing how we will be living in the future is a substantial difficulty; cue, Mr. Berra.

 

The first steps are, of course, to accept that there can be predictable futures and that responses in the present are needed to mitigate future dangers. Competent sources of knowledge and prediction need to be recognized and empowered. Then, as with any journey of consequence, we must have a clear idea of destination in order to decide a route.

 

To begin we must reorient ourselves with a diametrical turn in our most fundamental comprehension of our place in the world. Our dominating response to the most challenging issues today continues to be: “What ‘new things’ can we invent to defeat the unfortunate consequences of what we have done?” But the question must be: “What does the biosphere require to retain and regain integrity and stability?” The focus must be on the systems and processes that have evolved and maintained the biophysical structures of the earth over billions of years, not the short-term needs of an economic or political calculation. To put it bluntly: If the human ‘we’ is only able to focus on how to maintain our present ways of life and parochial thinking, then ‘we” will not survive; the conditions for complex life on the earth’s surface could well be compromised by our failures for thousands (perhaps millions) of years. I realize that this sounds overly dramatic, especially given the ease with which most people live in the developed world, but an increasing number of the most sober and serious thinkers** in all relevant areas of study are either at this level of concern or rapidly moving in that direction.

Here are three conditions of a long-term survivable future; a ‘place’ we need to get to. We actually know them, even as we don’t want to recognize them!

• The human animal needs to use far less of the earth’s productivity: perhaps somewhere around 10% of the present use. Reducing the human use to the ‘one earth’ measure of the Ecological Footprint tool will be woefully inadequate to allow the biosphere to reorganize into a healthy, self-maintaining system that isn’t continuously challenged by human activity. Such a use rate would still be orders of magnitudes greater than any other species has ever used in the history of life on the earth.

• A near net-zero exchange relationship within ecosystems: even with a reduction in the use of the earth’s productivity, the way humans use what they take from the environment and what is returned to the environment must be in homeostatic ecological balance – as is, and has been, true of every other species of living things for billions of years.

• Absolute accountability for actions in the environment: feedback systems that make human economic/political/social structures and actions directly accountable to ecological conditions and events in the manner of all other organisms. The powerful human adaptations** that have made possible, for many generations, the ‘defeating’ of ecological conditions, require inhibition and regulation; must be directly responsive to their effects on the living space.

Our present human world seriously violates all of these conditions; we are not a functioning, integrated part of the biophysical systems that sustain and allow complex life on this planet and it is increasingly clear that the universe will not be bent to puny human will (make note of exceptionalism from The Enlightenment). All of the narrowly focused economic, social and political narratives and arguments that massively dominate the discussion of our human future are devoted to very short term and ultimately distracting actions that ignore, deny or are simply ignorant of these realities.

* * *

What would the human world look like as people fulfilled these conditions? How would societies be structured? What political and economic systems would support those conditions? How could social, political and economic systems be made directly responsive to environmental conditions and changes rather than the immediate perceptions of economic need and political advantage? There are only a few ways that these conditions might be met, only a few; that is the nature of biological fitness. I am proposing one option that seems possible; others should be proposed.

Since it is often assumed that ‘we can’t get there from here’, that some form of conflagration will be required before humanity will begin to make the needed changes, we can’t know how we will pass through the changes as human made ‘realities’ ultimately collide with Biophysical Reality. We cannot know what form of situation will precede our potentially adapting to environmental reality, but informed thought and preparation now is essential.

I will begin with the assumption of a population of about 4 billion people; any population much less than that in the next 100 years could only be the result of catastrophic destruction of human societies and the earth’s biophysical systems resulting in some unthinkable post-apocalyptic scenario completely beyond the scope of our potential influence.  (the next and last essay in this series takes on the thorny issue of population reduction).

With such a large population in some continuity with the past, all the present issues of human nature and limitations, economic dependencies, political aspirations, nation states, business interests, ethnic and ‘racial’ confusions and more would still be with us; we would not be living in wickiups, or sod houses, in tribal communities, plowing our fields with mules. It would not be a luddite world; we will remain industrial, technological societies. The changes that our species must make will have to come from more fundamental aspects of ourselves; otherwise, we will very rapidly repeat all the behaviors of our history.

• The most fundamental change would be to return the natural, biophysical world to its role as the primary informing source for our actions.

• An economic system designed to distribute compensations based on contribution to the material productions and stability of society rather than extracting and concentrating society’s production of wealth.

• Hierarchical systems of social valuing that depend on contributions to values of respect, honesty, social stability and an informed population.

• Our expectations of how we are to live a ‘proper life’, need to come from our ecological relationships, replacing the anthropocentric “stories of us” that dominate the present time.

It is essential to understand that any coherent system must have an informing source: in the living world that ‘source’ is the evolutionary process mediated through the designs surrounding and functioning by the DNA/RNA/protein nexus; in the human world, as it separated from the living world, our coherency was mediated by the stories that we told ourselves. These stories were, for hundreds of thousands of years, almost entirely based on our relations with the immediate ecologies in which our communities lived; were therefore closely related to and responsive to biological processes. We adapted ways of restraining and regulating stories so that while they might seem quite fanciful to an observer, they were instructive and integrating of actions in the environment. But, as, increasingly, our own stories came from our imagination and were less and less restrained and regulated by the biophysical reality of an ecosystem, we lost our way as a functioning part of earth’s systems.

The essential condition of competent response to a world of still large human populations will require a reattachment to ecological feedback with extensive measurement, evaluation and enforcement of environmental data (the only other way is to live in direct and immediate individual sensory contact with the environment as small populations of essentially hunter-gathers). Without immediate, controlling feedback from the world’s ecosystems, we would certainly use our powers of long-term avoidance of environmental consequences to quickly recreate all of the present devastating ills, just as we have done in the past when faced with more local failures of environmental services. We have clearly demonstrated in the last 10 to 20 thousand years that Homo sapiens sapiens cannot be trusted to act in the world without the environment as a dominant external informing source.

 

This all leads me to a radical, frightening and very unsatisfying conclusion: Humans must find a way to create a computer based system to which they give up major aspects of what we have come to see as our proper powers of control over ourselves and the world. Such an ‘intelligent’ computer system would have to be untouchable by any human agency once set in place.

 

We have tried to use stories of moral authority. We have tried laws. We have tried regulation. And through it all we have gone in 10,000 years, not even a wink in evolutionary/geological time, from stone tools to structures attempting to fuse simple atoms in the manner of the interior of the sun… Gone from a million or so people to 8 billion and increasing… Gone from functioning stable biophysical environmental systems to dangerous levels of new chemical species from pole to pole and disrupted biophysical systems endangering the present assemblage of life… and we are not fazed; we are continuing on with the same methods: growth and change, more energy production, more intervention.

Since we will not, cannot, restrain ourselves with any devices of our own control, we must use what we do, invent and implement, to find a way that will be effective in restraining and regulating us. It seems that such an option is sitting there in front of us: artificial intelligence, sophisticated computer and measurement systems with actionable powers over economic and physical operators.

To be clear, I hate the idea. But, I have a correspondent who is thinking of another option; eugenics (with the full range of the new genetic methods) to change the very nature of the human mind and native behaviors that would allow for our survival as a new species, manufactured in the manner of wolves turned into domestic dogs. There is a point in survival when it isn’t survival at all! It is more than beginning to appear that we must consider the difference.