Civilisation, Culture, Idleness and even War.
After work today, I wound up watching a bunch of squirrels for a few minutes--two of whom were fighting over a tree and chattering at each other in that distinctive squirrel fashion. (It sounds like a more natural, animalistic version of that styrofoam squeak.) It raised a lot of thoughts.
See, I find it very intersting to watch wild animals fight. Now, I'm not talking about watching a leopard take down a gazelle, and I really don't want to see what happens when a polar bear decides a half-ton walrus looks like lunch. What I'm talking about are those intraspecies skirmishes over territory that are rarely actually violent.
Mind you, they can be. They can even be lethal. (Although I wonder how many cats that do the maiming in fights are victims of human-incurred trauma.) But that is extremely, extremely rare. Hell, even injury in your average territory skirmish is practically unheard of. Of course, there is reason to expect that death is unusual in the intraspecies territory skirmishes of another wild animal--wild humanity.
I don't want to get into that can of worms too deeply at the moment, suffice to say that this really made me consider many of the things I have been made to understand about warfare at the hunter-gatherer level, and about squirrels. If the likelihood of death (or of killing) is low, then doesn't warfare cease to be so terrifying? No wonder people in primitive societies are reported to view it as somewhat fun--without the fear, it becomes a question of intimidating people into staying out of your territory, without actual use of force. (Yes, homicide is more likely in primitve societies than in our own. Unless you take into account our economic system and the fact that most of our diseases are induced by a system that "benefits" only a small and priveleged minority. And most of those homicides are going to probably be killing the adulterous guy in your tribe, or the really annoying fellow you can't get along with. Also, sometimes it's the only real 'punishment' for certain heinous and antisocial crimes.... all this needs to be taken into account.) The idea warfare could be fun seems to clearly be a part of this tradition. Hell, how many of us didn't dream of war as children? I know I often imagined (and thought) myself a warrior. The ability and willingness to defend our territory is normal--the willingness to use violence to kill the undefended in order to somehow profit is not.
Anyway--I'm getting off track.
At work, I was reading about the idleness factor--that is, the idea that life is not fundamentally busy, but fundamentally 'lazy'. The less energy you have to spend to survive day-to-day under normal conditions, the more efficient your lifeway, and the more likely you are to survive when things are horrendously lean. Even bees spend 80% of their time loafing! (And Aesop's story about the ants and the grasshopper is an excellent example of trying to hold one entity up to a standard which is wildly inappropriate for it, but appropriate for another species. The way a grasshopper lives is different from an ant, and in trying to moralise with them for the edification of humans, Aesop fundamentally misses the point.)
Of course, humans are more culturally driven than other animals--being less 'hard-wired' for certain behaviours (what sort of houses to build, what sounds to make and songs to sing) means we get a huge amount of latitude to do nearly whatever we want. But where a beaver trying to be a beaver outside of its natural range is going to fail, humans have access to tools which allow us to use great amounts of power to try to force our own values onto the world around us.
Rather than expanding slowly and evolving as we go (if we aren't adapted for our new environment), we are capable of moving quickly (and, in civilisation, monolithically) forward with non-functional models. Architecture is an excellent example--rather than using the materials we have at hand to build structures which will most provide us comfort in our immediate environs, we cling to traditions which are inappropriate to new climes and require huge amounts of energy/power/force (which translates to effort on our part) to keep comfortable. We move in materials, which means more work, and we endanger the Earth by constantly using more than can be replaced. Obviously, this cannot go on forever, and short-sightedness in this regard undermined Rome, blasted Easter Island, and wiped up the Mayan civilisation.
That is, unsustainable ways of life require much more work to flow 'uphill' and fight against Nature (the Dao, The Way Things Are, etc). Humans are capable of using culture to invert basic principles of life until making a living under normal circumstances is exhausting (agriculture) and under harsh circumstances, impossible. (Famine is a problem for the civilised only.)
Obviously, this isn't meant to be a critique of culture--like symbolic thought, it is inherent to us. It's important to note that for most of human history, culture was capable of working WITH the Way of Life, and of producing people who were generally happier, healthier, and more connected with their communities than any person you or I have ever met. The point is, the thing is intensely malleable, and we must learn to look at our cities as products of our culture. We most reject the civilised culture that is destroying our lives and the planet and begin to create new cultures, rooted in each other, in our experience of the world.
We cannot hope to create a Lifeway in sync with natural rhythms that is not based on actual experience. That is a great problem of civilisation--the insistence on 'one truth' which invalidates and overrides any other experience. It is necessary to have the one truth in order to keep everyone in step and following the rules that are clearly a deviation from a larger order. When we observe the natural world and take our experiences for granted as true, we become capable of creating a culture based on the real world and real human experience.
I think that's what I find disturbing about civilisation--it is a departure from cycles, spirals and organic order in favour of a linear, one-way ticket nowhere. Of course, linear time is subject to a beginning and, thankfully, an end. We will step back into the spiral whether we want to or not.
Some people think squirrels are stupid and forget where they bury their acorns--which has the fortunate side-effect of planting future generations of oak trees. Or the squirrels are very wise, and know to plant seeds as well as to eat them, to ensure that there will always be oak trees and always squirrels. The species evolved together--the issue is not, as decent rational people want to think, the intelligence behind the ordering, but the functionality of the ordering. Whether it is ordained by an intelligence or one of thousands of lucky balancing acts that keeps nature turning so beautifully, it is the fact that it works and continues to work and will continue to work that makes it laudable.
It's time we stop talking about abstractions and start talking about what seriously works, and what's worth investing our time into. I'd rather be poor and have time to spend with my friends and projects than have a ton of money and less time to invest in my community. I am sick of seeing people putting their money where their mouth is--we need to start doing that with our time. Time is like all the things we need to live (or perhaps it is more accurate to say that time is like all parts of the tapestry that makes up livingness)--there is enough. There is not a scarcity, nor is there too much. Nature abhors a vacuum, and she knows no idea of waste. If it exists, it is used, a part of the cycle, spinning together in shocking perfection.
See, I find it very intersting to watch wild animals fight. Now, I'm not talking about watching a leopard take down a gazelle, and I really don't want to see what happens when a polar bear decides a half-ton walrus looks like lunch. What I'm talking about are those intraspecies skirmishes over territory that are rarely actually violent.
Mind you, they can be. They can even be lethal. (Although I wonder how many cats that do the maiming in fights are victims of human-incurred trauma.) But that is extremely, extremely rare. Hell, even injury in your average territory skirmish is practically unheard of. Of course, there is reason to expect that death is unusual in the intraspecies territory skirmishes of another wild animal--wild humanity.
I don't want to get into that can of worms too deeply at the moment, suffice to say that this really made me consider many of the things I have been made to understand about warfare at the hunter-gatherer level, and about squirrels. If the likelihood of death (or of killing) is low, then doesn't warfare cease to be so terrifying? No wonder people in primitive societies are reported to view it as somewhat fun--without the fear, it becomes a question of intimidating people into staying out of your territory, without actual use of force. (Yes, homicide is more likely in primitve societies than in our own. Unless you take into account our economic system and the fact that most of our diseases are induced by a system that "benefits" only a small and priveleged minority. And most of those homicides are going to probably be killing the adulterous guy in your tribe, or the really annoying fellow you can't get along with. Also, sometimes it's the only real 'punishment' for certain heinous and antisocial crimes.... all this needs to be taken into account.) The idea warfare could be fun seems to clearly be a part of this tradition. Hell, how many of us didn't dream of war as children? I know I often imagined (and thought) myself a warrior. The ability and willingness to defend our territory is normal--the willingness to use violence to kill the undefended in order to somehow profit is not.
Anyway--I'm getting off track.
At work, I was reading about the idleness factor--that is, the idea that life is not fundamentally busy, but fundamentally 'lazy'. The less energy you have to spend to survive day-to-day under normal conditions, the more efficient your lifeway, and the more likely you are to survive when things are horrendously lean. Even bees spend 80% of their time loafing! (And Aesop's story about the ants and the grasshopper is an excellent example of trying to hold one entity up to a standard which is wildly inappropriate for it, but appropriate for another species. The way a grasshopper lives is different from an ant, and in trying to moralise with them for the edification of humans, Aesop fundamentally misses the point.)
Of course, humans are more culturally driven than other animals--being less 'hard-wired' for certain behaviours (what sort of houses to build, what sounds to make and songs to sing) means we get a huge amount of latitude to do nearly whatever we want. But where a beaver trying to be a beaver outside of its natural range is going to fail, humans have access to tools which allow us to use great amounts of power to try to force our own values onto the world around us.
Rather than expanding slowly and evolving as we go (if we aren't adapted for our new environment), we are capable of moving quickly (and, in civilisation, monolithically) forward with non-functional models. Architecture is an excellent example--rather than using the materials we have at hand to build structures which will most provide us comfort in our immediate environs, we cling to traditions which are inappropriate to new climes and require huge amounts of energy/power/force (which translates to effort on our part) to keep comfortable. We move in materials, which means more work, and we endanger the Earth by constantly using more than can be replaced. Obviously, this cannot go on forever, and short-sightedness in this regard undermined Rome, blasted Easter Island, and wiped up the Mayan civilisation.
That is, unsustainable ways of life require much more work to flow 'uphill' and fight against Nature (the Dao, The Way Things Are, etc). Humans are capable of using culture to invert basic principles of life until making a living under normal circumstances is exhausting (agriculture) and under harsh circumstances, impossible. (Famine is a problem for the civilised only.)
Obviously, this isn't meant to be a critique of culture--like symbolic thought, it is inherent to us. It's important to note that for most of human history, culture was capable of working WITH the Way of Life, and of producing people who were generally happier, healthier, and more connected with their communities than any person you or I have ever met. The point is, the thing is intensely malleable, and we must learn to look at our cities as products of our culture. We most reject the civilised culture that is destroying our lives and the planet and begin to create new cultures, rooted in each other, in our experience of the world.
We cannot hope to create a Lifeway in sync with natural rhythms that is not based on actual experience. That is a great problem of civilisation--the insistence on 'one truth' which invalidates and overrides any other experience. It is necessary to have the one truth in order to keep everyone in step and following the rules that are clearly a deviation from a larger order. When we observe the natural world and take our experiences for granted as true, we become capable of creating a culture based on the real world and real human experience.
I think that's what I find disturbing about civilisation--it is a departure from cycles, spirals and organic order in favour of a linear, one-way ticket nowhere. Of course, linear time is subject to a beginning and, thankfully, an end. We will step back into the spiral whether we want to or not.
Some people think squirrels are stupid and forget where they bury their acorns--which has the fortunate side-effect of planting future generations of oak trees. Or the squirrels are very wise, and know to plant seeds as well as to eat them, to ensure that there will always be oak trees and always squirrels. The species evolved together--the issue is not, as decent rational people want to think, the intelligence behind the ordering, but the functionality of the ordering. Whether it is ordained by an intelligence or one of thousands of lucky balancing acts that keeps nature turning so beautifully, it is the fact that it works and continues to work and will continue to work that makes it laudable.
It's time we stop talking about abstractions and start talking about what seriously works, and what's worth investing our time into. I'd rather be poor and have time to spend with my friends and projects than have a ton of money and less time to invest in my community. I am sick of seeing people putting their money where their mouth is--we need to start doing that with our time. Time is like all the things we need to live (or perhaps it is more accurate to say that time is like all parts of the tapestry that makes up livingness)--there is enough. There is not a scarcity, nor is there too much. Nature abhors a vacuum, and she knows no idea of waste. If it exists, it is used, a part of the cycle, spinning together in shocking perfection.
posted by SBG at 2:26 PM
1 comments
