Clugston’s Question – Essay Three

(essay one, essay two, essay four)

We know, more or less, the basic form of the conditions under which the human species would need to exist for the present global ecology to return to something like its “natural” state and from which it could continue processes and rates of change typical of earthly biophysical and evolutionary process (required to avoid catastrophic environmental collapse): a few hundred million people, perhaps up to a billion, with a per capita total energy use of a few thousand calories (Kcals) per day.  With care, humans could become again part of a balanced ecosystem. 

This says nothing about the economic or political design, but these too would need to be sustainable, adapted to the biological and physical realities of the species and environment, but whether such designs would satisfy our current prejudices is pure conjecture. 

Working from the proposed result to how that result might be obtained, I and many others have concluded that “you can’t get there from here,” while at the same time realizing that some form of this future is inevitable.  A major difficulty is the apparent need for a high percentage of the world’s people to recognize the present danger and to begin to act in long-term rather than in short-term interest.  This apparent requirement flies in the face of the fact that animals cannot act individually in long-term interest – that would be like steering a car for the curve that is coming a mile ahead.  Long-term interest is a property of evolutionary change and it does this by the counter-intuitive device of killing off short-term failures (perhaps with long-term potential) and sustaining short-term successes (utterly without regard for future possibilities).  Sometimes it works to apparently “create” a particular group; look at birds. But it is not a design that retains particular species; sustaining the meandering DNA linage is the long-term project of the Living System of Order.

There is no question but that humans will make great changes in their behavior in response to the coming pressures.  We feel them first as economic and social, but the pressures are really ecological.  And so we respond economically, socially and personally when it is only the unperceived ecological consequences that ultimately matter.  

Unlike other animals the vast changes that have taken place in the behavior and physical structure (the bodily extensions of machines) of our species have not come from the Living Order, but from a new and powerful adaptation – a system of order new to the universe (or at least to our region of the universe).  Its actions are behavioral rather than changes in cellular designs, and its information selection, storage and implementation is through a complex, largely language based, system that I call Story.  It is in this Consciousness System of Order that the designs of our behaviors are formed and so it is an understanding of this system of order that is required to clearly see our predicament. In the simplest rendering, when the DNA is changed the organism is changed; for humans, when the Story is changed the behavior, in the broadest sense, is changed. 

We have obviously known this for a very long time and are pretty well practiced with the frontal assault form of Story changing: advertising, propaganda, social psychology of attitudinal change and expression.  These are, for the most part, of “competing interests” design; ‘he said, she said’ on a grand scale.  No matter what we do to ‘educate’ the multitude as to the long-term species and biospheric interests there will be competing interests presenting opposing and tangential views with just as much presence and production value as our message.

As was hinted at the end of the second essay in this set, there would be great advantages to finding and bringing into our tool box aspects of the Consciousness System of Order that could substantially aid in recovering a balanced relationship with the ecology and not doing so with the horrors that await the fullest expression of the present Madness under stress. 

I can imagine only one way to accomplish this; it is to live the Story that can be successful as well as to tell it.  The power of the Consciousness Order is to imagine events and processes that do not exist and to then seek out, from the opportunities of reality, the means to assemble the imagined.  We have in our present world built impressive epistemological tools from formal logic to scientific behaviors.  With these tools guiding imagination and, vitally, a devotion to recovering a personal relationship with the biology of our bodies and behaviors, some significant amount of our imaginings could be workable. 

Living these imaginings would not only test them and give authority to their presentation as needful, but would enhance and fulfill individual lives.  Every person reading these words is a biological entity – more than any other quality – and yet we ignore and deny this reality to a remarkable degree (why is the subject of other essays).  We will never recover our relationship with the biophysical environment without first recovering our specieshood; humans would remain physically alive and in the perpetual Madness characteristic of our time.  It is disheartening the distance we have to cover and heartening that almost everyone I have ever talked to about this, conservative, liberal, nihilist, Pollyanna have recognized the sense of “unrightness” in their lives and its deep connection to their lack of connection to a real physical/biological gratification.  This assertion requires a fully developed argument, but not here. 

I believe that a real movement to live the Story can spread sufficiently far and fast that the generational changes in human behavior required for our sustaining existence, while not driving the biosphere to collapse, are possible.  There are many practical considerations as well as the forming design of the Story to be lived; and I see that this series of essays that I envisioned as three will become four. 

There are an increasing number of models.  Twenty years ago I went through the card catalog at the local library under ‘wealth.’ There were many feet of books on the shelves delivering, unquestioningly, advice on how to get it, and one lone little volume questioning its value as a human motive for life (Wealth Addiction by Philip Slater, 1983; the gist of it).  While questions about the virtue of wealth and the dangers of greed have long been a part of human thought, they have not been a part of the present operative Story in our dominate society. 

But today, on the Internet especially, the Story of the simple life, the sustaining life and its fulfillments are more and more commonplace.  Statements and arguments that laud such sentiments are more and more commonly made without the need for comment (John Ross, for example).  In the sixties some people moved by a recognition of universal biological motive tried living the life without the Story.  Result being that the attempts usually ended quickly.  Perhaps we have a better chance this time.  

There is one more major consideration and that is the actual need for action and the increasing clarity of the danger, but that too is for next time.

The Morning Papers

After my morning perusal of the “papers,” actually these days an electronic stroll from my local online newspaper to the exotic offerings of New York, London, New Delhi, and other points east, west, north and south; after this eclectic reading (and some listening and watching) I have come away in need of a metaphor for the state of mind obtained (though, not willingly).  The best I’ve come up with – and for which I will settle – is a person trying to repair an old spring driven watch while being set upon by irresistible distractions.  Imagine the person, magnifying loop in place (tunneling the vision to the important detail), bent to the task of delicately arranging the gears, growing a comprehension of the complexities of the timing and balance of events that move the hands to tell the time, and doing this work with bees, horse flies and grasshoppers buzzing and hopping around the table; and a large dog tugging at one leg, while various other creatures of underdetermined lethality slither in and out of close and closer proximity. 

I am by inclination and training (I suspect in response to inclination) a scientist.  Epistemological design and statistics actually thrill me: that cleverly organizing events, measuring carefully and thoughtfully, and the respectful analyses of the numbers can reveal the processes behind the events is a thing of beauty.  But I am also by inclination and practice an artist (having spent most of my life struggling to make images, both evocative and beautiful). I like my science beautiful.

I also like my news to make sense; it does not.  And so I have to write my own.  This morning I read: that some person in Pasadena is having the local Pasadena news stories written in India, “all” about Barry McCaffery, Mumbai, Obama’s advisor and cabinet picks, troubles that Scotland Yard is having with the arrest of an MP, John Travolta’s egotism (I still can’t believe that is the same person from “Welcome back, Kotter”), Thailand, will India attack Pakistan, and more. 

The human cognitive process wants to put all of its experiences together into a coherent whole – like back when we lived in a ecologically coherent world where events might be distant in both time and space but ultimately related in ways that benefited humans to know about.  Its like seeing the teeth on the timing wheel of the watch and realizing that they look like the spines on the grasshopper legs or thinking that Travolta’s egotism might have something to do with McCaffery’s egotism.  But this just starts to get crazy and crazier making.  

It is no wonder that so many people who write this stuff are nuts. Even if you try to be thoughtful, honest and deeply insightful; how can you be when the information you are trying to process is stirring your brain like a chemical lobotomy? 

Ok, now I feel better, but I still want it all to make sense.  And deep down I know that it all does if I can fight through the craziness long enough to see it

Clugston’s Question – essay two

(essay one, essay three, essay four )

I think that odds are very long that, as a species, there is a “we” that can stop or even slow down the exponential pattern of our changes and the ecological devastation that will result.  But that said, I can ‘imagine’ a dramatic reconnection with reality though the agency of our own body’s Living Order connections if a design of Story can be formed and spread.  The powers of the Consciousness System of Order (CSO) have brought us to this pass and the powers of the CSO can reconnect us to the biophysical reality.  It is worth a try.

The way I see it, the present construction of living arrangements in the biosphere face 2 major dangers: (1) rapid (in evolutionary/geological time reference) changes in climate and (2) disrupting chemical and structural contributions to fragile biophysical systems originating from human activity.  Since the natural sources of rapid climate change are almost completely beyond our influence and tend to be unpredictable, the second danger is what should concern us.  To concretize the abstract: we face super-volcanoes, asteroids and human intervention into biophysical systems.  The first two are certain to happen on a time of scale of 100s of thousands to 10s of millions of years.  The third is in process this moment and accelerating toward an increasingly dangerous climax within the next 10 to 50 years.

We are 100% powerless in the face of a super-volcano.  We are 99.99% powerless in the face of a large asteroid or comet.  But 100% powerless against something that has a .0001% probability of occurring within any 100-year period is not so bad.  But being seemingly powerless to influence our own actions, actions that are, by the largest consensus of scientists and thinkers in history, certain to drastically change the living order of the planet and create an extinction event equal to an asteroid strike is not credible.  There should be some “we” working on it. 

The obvious “solution” to the problem of using too much of the earth’s capacity as resource for our productions and toilet for our wastes is to immediately use much less, then study the capacity to determine what we can effectively use, design our various human systems within the limits defined and monitor carefully to make sure that we don’t overdo.  This is exactly the process of coming into ecological balance and has been going on every moment for nearly 4 billion years (adaptation and evolution in biological systems accomplish these things). 

Humans found a way around this Living Order process for a part of a second on the geological clock and sprang up like a time-lapse movie of a field of mushrooms and may very well die back just as quickly.  But the adaptation that facilitated this often terrible and now dangerous growth of our species and our technologies is perhaps the most magnificent arrangement of matter and energy in the universe.  It is a fully formed system of order on equal footing with the Living System of Order and the Physical System of Order as a source of its own probability structure of occurrences.  It is the CSO that has delivered the planet to this moment and there are only two possible outcomes: either humans apply the capacities of the Consciousness Order to the solution of the problems that we have created or the Living Order and Physical Order will respond massively and rearrange the table; ultimately, we have no idea what form this might take as species go extinct, as materials are released into the environment, as new disease vectors respond to changing conditions and as humans make uninhibited efforts to squeeze every last calorie out of photosynthetic product. 

We also don’t know what form the application of our practical understanding of the Consciousness Order will produce.  The elites may construct a new species concept in which they should survive – have the responsibility to survive and carry on the species.  The vast multitudes would have been a mistake that humans made over the last few thousand years and, as terrible as it may be, they would have to go (die), and quite quickly, since biospheric destruction is a function of per capita resource use.  I am confident that such plans are in consideration. 

Another option is for the “advanced” nations, meaning wealthy and holders of technological preeminence, to engage in massive programs of education for all the world’s people.  The elites in this case would give up their wealth to these projects.  Especially women would be educated in especially health matters – a proven way to put population growth under human control.   A massive redistribution of land would also be vital and the localizing of economies with foundations on local agriculture.  Everyone would have to produce, by their own efforts, some large part of their sustenance.  The goal would be to re-form a cultural Story of ecological balance as a primary forming experience of cultural life rather than the ‘human domination of the living space’ as the forming experience.  Populations would be reduced through normal death and women’s selection of birth rates (informed by a cultural Story of small families and supported by economies that do not rely on large families for work and protection especially in old age).

It would be possible in this model to rather quickly reduce the total earth use rate to below one earth and at the same time reduce the worst and most ecologically destructive aspects of poverty.  There would be great advantages to the process that could bring this about; and great difficulties, not the least of which would be absolute rejection of these ideas as deeply criminal by the short-sighted criminals who now feed off of our future.  The next essay in this series will look at more of the details. 

There is nothing inherently impossible about having a global Story of ecological balance; it would be much more reality based than our present Madness.  But there would be great resistance from those who are hardened into the present Story of the individual right to use the world in any way that makes a profit.  It could be done in about a generation with enough effort and if an element of the elite don’t sink the whole project by engineering wars and other conflicts, economic and local environmental collapses and other destructions to isolate and remove populations.

Thankful

I am thankful that my ancestors removed all those pesky Indians from the land so that they could have it and I could get what is really a whole bunch of free stuff.  Some of my direct ancestors did it with their own hands, so the story goes, when they were violating some 1763 line drawn through Virginia. 

I am thankful for all those people who are working in slavery so that my shoes can cost one thousandth of my income. 

I am thankful for the oil companies for confusing me so that I don’t have to be concerned about carbon dioxide accumulations in the atmosphere. 

I am thankful for the PR people who have made al Qaeda a household name and focus for my fears – don’t know who I’d have to hate and fear without their help.

I am thankful to the media for being so fucking stupid. I don’t feel challenged or inadequate or anything when I read the paper or watch TV.

I am thankful for the media again for reducing my attention span and therefore easing my workload – I could go on for many more thankfuls, but I am so bored…to death… with this. 

So lastly, I am thankful for the Internet and for blogs so that I can publish this trash. 

Actually, Thanksgiving has always pissed me off – since I played an Indian in the 4^th grade and tried to get into character.  I’ll be thankful tomorrow, thank you very much.

Clugston’s Question

(essay two, essay three, essay four)

In a brief email correspondence with Chris Clugston, a thinker and analyst doing important work in summarizing our current state, He presented this question: “One final issue to ponder--and I ponder it a lot--assuming that the mainstream possesses the capacity to grasp the significance and gravity associated with our predicament, what are the chances that we will willingly give up the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed, and to which we feel entitled, and voluntarily agree to the drastic reductions in population level and living standards required to get us to sustainable levels?”

That is the question: Even if we know within reasonable levels of certainty what is happening and the high probability outcomes, is the human species, as presently organized, capable of responding with the goals of sustaining itself and at the same time acting to strengthen the damaged ecologies upon which all life in this planet depends (primarily by leaving them alone)? 

We will certainly respond to the changing conditions: we are doing so in spades right now with wars and economic manipulations, with attempted elite hording of what seem like essential materials; with all the “normal” responses of an animal being stressed in its environment.  If this is how it is to go, then Mr. Clugston’s concern is clearly answered with a resounding, ‘NO,’ followed shortly by a planetary wailing. 

For me the question resolves into: Is the Consciousness System of Order capable of organizing human action? How has this worked in the past? And what are the conditions available today to function this possibility? 

A bit of prolog: All organisms and, to a very large extent, the human organism function in the Living System of Order.  That is, the DNA/protein nexus “judges,” stores and implements the information flow that we associate with evolution, behavior and change.  A few species, primarily of mammals and birds, very imperfectly spread some ‘change’ from nervous system to nervous system by observation, thus bypassing genetic judgment and process.  This process is still very much under the control of the Living Order.  Humans on the other hand have evolved an adaptation that completely sidesteps the DNA/protein nexus.  We “judge,” store and implement information flow in a system of order of completely different design, but just as powerful (more powerful in many ways) as the Living Order.  I call it the Consciousness System of Order and its information nexus Story.  

The Living Order is embedded in reality the way a jellyfish is embedded in the sea – it is continuous with it.  The Consciousness Order, however, began embedded in reality, but had the capacity to become self-referencing and thus able to design actions that looped away from intimate contact with the real – what we call imagining – and return again.  It is possible to imagine what “cannot happen” in the Living Order or the Physical Order, but then to actively pursue a means to make the imagined real (a human “cannot touch” a rabbit 20 feet away from him, for example).  The power that this conferred to the human species is almost unimaginable, especially since the “DNA” of this system of order was Story that could be passed from individual to individual and down generations mediated only by the rules of Story (what makes the study of linguists so interesting and important). 

The greatest “power” of the Consciousness Order, however, is not that it can give the human species great speed of action and control of reality, but that it can “overcome” reality.  By referencing its own imaginings as the basis for the next imagining, as though the previous imagining were reality itself, a consciousness constructed “reality” bubble can be formed in which communities can form complex relationships with their environment based almost entirely on illusions held by the communities as “reality.”  This design of action bypasses inhibitory (homeostatic) mechanisms and functions on positive feedback systems.  Such a community can become very powerful for several generations until “the Real reality catches up with them;” until the soil is salinated, until the wells run dry, until the slaves revolt, until the economy bubble bursts, until, until… 

Organizing idea and acting outside of reality is how we define insanity for individuals.  In this case we primarily mean community reality and so the idea is a bit compromised, but the concept is clear: consistently acting in reality is sane, consistently acting outside of reality is crazy.  But our whole human existence today (our cultures, our technology, our beliefs, our economics, our politics) is all pretty much free of The Real.  We treat reality as a negotiable item in our imaginings.  I simply call this the Madness: shorthand for the fully self-referenced cultural reality maintained in Story several degrees removed from biophysical reality.  There is no way for the individual human whose experience is only the self-referenced “reality” to know the difference, except for the fact that we, each and everyone, are also based deeply in the Living System of Order and feel its tugs every instant.  This can also drive us personally crazy. 

There.  That is my starting point for how to understand our possibilities.  The next installment will take this argument further, but for the moment my answer to the question is: I think that odds are very long that, as a species, there is a “we” that can stop or even slow down the exponential pattern of our changes and the ecological devastation that will result.  But that said, I can ‘imagine’ a dramatic reconnection with reality though the agency of our own body’s Living Order connections if a design of Story can be formed and spread.  The powers of the CSO have brought us to this pass and the powers of the CSO can reconnect us to the biophysical reality.  It is worth a try; I didn’t have anything more important to do today anyway.

More of Chris Clugston's work can be found here:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46564

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46243

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46276

We Have to Decide

We have to decide where we stand; even if we don’t even know that there is a decision to be made.  Everything we do supports our decisions so we should at least know what it is that we are deciding about.  If you wear alligator leather boots, then you support killing alligators for boots.  If you buy foods that are made from genetically modified plants or animals, you support the genetic modification of living things for commercial purposes.  If you drive a car, you support adding green house gases to the atmosphere, you support mining, oil drilling, corporate monopoly power and all the social disruption to which the automobile contributes.

Our best argument to deny this clear reality is that we have no choice.  I use it myself.  It is 6 miles from my house to a place I often go.  It may be cold, or may be raining, or I maybe don’t feel well, so I drive rather than ride my bike. But I do so in the certain knowledge that I am agreeing with and supporting a terrible and destructive force in the world.  One of my sons has used a bicycle as his only means of personal transportation for many years, riding in the rain and in the winter as well as on those beautiful “why would you go any other way” days.  He had decided not to have a car and so had no choice but to walk or ride.

It appears to me that the only way to limit many of the destructive things we do will require reversing the choice situation to having no option but to walk or bike, no option but to use unmodified foods, no option but to treat other living things with respect even as we continue to use them for food and materials.  But just how is it possible to construct a social and economic world with those incentives?

One part of the solution is belief.  We are a creature of belief; we design a set of imaginings that organize the events and processes of our world – and we usually think that that is how the world really is.  These beliefs can often be changed, sometimes into an opposite form, with little change in the appearance of our lives. But belief is both powerful on the one hand and very flexible on the other.  Beliefs must be changed, but that alone will not suffice.

The only way to stop people from driving cars is to not have cars.  The only way to have organic (truly organic) foods is to grow and raise food with great personal attention to its production.  The only way to “impose” the humane treatment of animals is to make the quality of animal life material in the quality of our own.  I began my growing up this way on a farm in central Ohio.  I am not Amish, but when I grew up the differences between that way of life and my own was not so remarkably great. 

Later in Florida, no not that Florida, but dirt farming Florida, we plowed with a mule.  It may seem strange to say it, but we got to know him.  The mule worked really hard, but so did the man.  The mule’s happiness mattered.  A successful farmer did not mistreat his animals.

But even this “return to the farm” will not get us to where we need to go in our present dilemmas. There is no question that if everyone – nearly everyone – had a little plot of soil that they had made fertile with their own efforts and from which they expected to produce some significant portion of their own food and essential materials like leather or wood for construction or heat, there is no question but that the world would be very different economically, socially, structurally and metaphysically. 

But this cannot be done and the reasons that it cannot be done should be a clear warning. First, there are just too many of us. There are places where a hectare (100 meters by 100 meters) would be enough for a couple of people.  In other places much more space would be required.  And many places where people presently live there is little arable land at all. 

Almost all the world’s most useful land is occupied with people, either directly – the land is being lived on – or is “owned” and used in some private way by people whose actual ’home range’ is somewhere else.  Much of the earth’s land has been damaged.  The mechanics of distributing equitably the world’s arable lands would be daunting.

About half the world’s people don’t have a clue about how to take care of themselves.  They couldn’t raise a carrot, make bunnies bred or find a wild spinach.  The “successful” half of the world would be useless in such a change; worse than useless, a burden. 

There is little social structure left that could support such changes.  It would all have to be learned the hard way. 

I don’t know this for a fact, but it is my guess that the best seeds and livestock for this kind of personal sustainability are either gone or in short supply.  How to increase amounts or rediscover them within the time frames required could be a problem.

The complete Madness of the present economic design would rather kill off billions of the earth’s people than give up its domination of the planet, partly from the Madness and partly from the total inability to imagine another way of doing things.

However, even though this cannot be done for the reasons listed, it will be done by hook or crook, and at great cost.  There really is no other way.  People will have to learn to and actually take care of themselves with their own personal energy. 

There will not be a return to the farm though, not in the little farmhouse in the field with chickens in the yard.  I can see keeping some communication technology and energy infrastructure. A new economic paradigm that used computers for “currency facilitated” barter could develop that didn’t require a completely abstracted wealth token.  Meaning could be retained in material and food rather than giving it up almost completely to numbers on a piece of paper. 

And perhaps the new beliefs of those who survive the transition might include a healthy skepticism of ease.  There are Amish who hang their chairs on the wall thinking it a sin to sit when there is work to be done.  This craziness seems a small and non-bitter price to pay to avoid the creeping changes that have led to our present situation in which one of our options is to kill off half the world’s people as a way of surviving.

Religion’s Role

This is not the time to talk about religion in a thoroughly analytical way; which means that it is exactly the time that we must do so.  It is a basic human rule: subjects that the culture makes off-limit or excessively stylized are exactly the subjects in greatest need of cold-eyed examination.  The “God” religions and the rejections of all things religious as with Christopher Hitchens seem nearly equally misguided to me.

The first thing that we need to understand is that religion and spirituality have always been a vital -- even defining -- part of human culture.  The second thing is that institutional religion -- what we usually mean when the use the word -- has taken on social/cultural designs quite different from the roles that religion and spirit have long served in human life.  The third thing is that religion has less to do with God and more to do with prescriptions for behavior.  This is easily seen in such assertions as, "if you act in that way, then you must not believe in God."  Such a statement is a condemnation of an action; the strength or nature of belief can't be known, so this is only a strong statement of the speaker’s belief that the action is wrong.

Religion is mostly about right and wrong.  Spirituality is about the feelings of attachment to the whole universe with all its powers, mysteries and possibilities.  The two need each other and humans require them both, but the confusion of the two has, for a long time, been a source of great misery.  When belief takes the form: "my feelings of purpose and attachment require that I act in this way," religion and spirit are combining in a long successful and natural way.  Of course, there are issues and adjustments to be made, but nothing like when the belief takes the form, "my feelings of purpose and attachment require that you act in this way."  This statement, too, has a long history, very often with bloodletting in it.

But if the right and wrong of specific actions could be avoided, people of all religious traditions could commune easily on the pleasures and terrors of the spiritual: life, death, meaning, hope.  Religious wars are fought over whether to “believe in” a cross or a star, not over the universal sense of the possible.

Part of the design of religion is to give great force to prescriptions of right and wrong.  By making the spiritual feelings of acceptance and value conditional on following the rules, by making the spirit a property of the particular religious institution, the ordinary person is said to only be able to obtain the pleasures and protections of the spirit by being a member of the Holy Order of the Natural True Believers.  This allows the spiritual power of the prescriptions of right and wrong to be controlled by religion, more especially institutional religion.  When spirit is absorbed by the institution and taken away from the person as an essential and personal ingredient of their life, the "church" is transformed into a political tool, first and foremost intent on its own protection as an institution and only secondarily the custodian of souls.

People of different religious traditions cannot meet on the level ground of spiritual communion when values are controlled by prescription -- the spirit starves.  In this circumstance belief must become fanatical to drown out both the questions from within and dangerous differences from without.  And true believers become more and more easily moved by the unscrupulous who are drawn to use them as a source of power.  

This has happened over and over, accompanied by great tragedy, to many religious institutions in our history, with the greatest tragedy of all being the loss of the personal spirit.  In our hundred and fifty thousand years on earth as Homo sapiens, it is the fulfillment of the personal spirit -- the feelings of purpose and attachment to other humans, to all life and to the universe itself -- that has been the vital force in human existence, not our wars or our buildings or our science.  And it is only that melding of religion as a powerful force for prescribing behavior and an independently powerful spirit that will give us a future in what are certain to be trying times ahead.