After my last post, many if not most of you are probably thinking I’m a poseur new tribalist, a cultural imperialist, and many other nasty things. This is simply not true. Wthout trying to do what the mod forbid, I will first say this about the comment that got my topic moved to the Humanure Basket. I was referring to cultural conflict of ideas in that one - how if the memes in one culture are of any value, they will survive. It did not matter to me was ours or not. But I was overlooking how stupid people are getting nowadays. Since that is now cleared up, let me ge to the meat the matter: How much of a new tribalist am I? I believe in many of their basic theses: How we have abandoned many of the good parts of pre agricultural life, but I also recognise the virtues of some of high technology, which can be done sustainably: There was this one guy I found out about on the MIT website that was working on a way to concentrate sunlight times 1000. If he can do that, then our nation
. If you want respond to that one, look at the next thread I post in - the one on what would happen if the collapse never came. I am a technogaian with new tribalist influences, in that I see totalitarian agriculture as evil. My solution? An network of villages and small town that are interlinked by the web, with hubs, where there are people who control the more advanced technology. No I am not talking about castes. People are free at an early age to choose whether they want that role. The hubs are where you will find those who know to work and maintain the machines, their families, those who defend the hubs, buildings for festivals, when people from the other communities come over to to trade and feast. People can join, but to avoid ecological overshoot, it can’t be too easy. But they can sign up for temporary membership - you know, a school, where people can conduct research and share it with their home community if they so choose. The basic purpose of me saying all this is to specify one way that high tech can
work alongside ecology. Oh shit, have to get off. Sorry if I wanderered.
‘Poseur’ is a French word for ‘one who poses a question’. It is not equivalent to the English word poser.
Besides that nitpicking, all I have to say is that your idea sounds prone to eventual stratification.
Such is really only temporary, because once they reach the point where technology is advanced enough that the technology once available to what becomes the upper class of this society, they will have a harder time keeping power. In the meantim, two things are needed. A lack of concern or proselytism on the part of the technos or a shared cultural identity on the part of those who give aid to the technos. That way, exploitation is kept to a minimum. What do you think?
goldenerasuburb-
hey.
I know you just really want to have a genuine conversation on this idea of extremely advanced technology in a village environment.
I still don’t understand how this conversation belongs here. I can’t say the conversation doesn’t deserve airtime, somewhere - I know folks that love this stuff. Ran Prieur would surely find this fascinating, he talks about these kinds of issues often, I think. He has forums at his site. Other folks of that ilk surely would love this.
But why would you think a pack of rewilding animists would care about your neotribal high technology vision?
Where do you see the animism in your notion? Do you understand the relationship the word animism points to? How does that connect to your idea?
Part of running this board involves reducing signal-to-noise. If it doesn’t concern animistic rewilding, don’t post it here. If you just want to use us guinea pigs to find holes in your argument, that doesn’t feel very respectful of our time and bandwidth here.
If you have anything to post about animism, please do. This thread to will probably shortly end in the humanure bucket, as it stands.
I welcome you, yourself, to this forum, as you seem genuine and sincere in general. This particular subject just doesn’t belong here though. Does this make sense? Do you see the disconnect here?
Please say yes. 
I posted this her because I was afraid that after the last post, my opinions would be misconstrued. So I posted this to clarify. As for animism, It does factor in. Another part of this that I may have forgotten to add is that living machines (biotech) would be more sustainable than Drytech, the type we have now. Machines that are grown. How does that have anything to do with Animism? Drytech often requires the pillaging and raping of the land to get the materials needed to make it, land which has a spirit according to you. I personally am not sure yet. Land which people live off on and on. Biotech, though requiring drytech to get off the ground, is a lot more sustainable. It is healthier for all life than advanced drytech. But of course it does raise some interesting questions, which would not need to be brought up had Biotech not advanced that far: Do these living machines have souls/spirits? Are they worth caring for outside the context of their use? I will attempt to answer these qustions in the context of animism: If everything has a soul that is indistinguishable from the physical body then why not. And once you have answered that question, the other one is pretty much obvious. See, it does apply. But then there is the next question: Why is this needed? If sustainability can be done without this “stuff”, then why make it at all? Think about it this way: We have done our planet a lot of harm, so much that it would take a long time to heal without a high level of technology. If it were used to that purpose, then the repentance for our past thing would go a lot better with the spirits. That and the threat of something extra planetary striking Earth is ever present. That is why such high technology is neccesary. But without being in touch with out nature, it would be history repeating itself. THAT is where animism comes in again. Animism, the belief that every thing has a spirit indistiguishable from the flesh, will be a balancing factor between high-technology and connection with nature. Now do you get it?
Such is really only temporary, because once they reach the point where technology is advanced enough that the technology once available to what becomes the upper class of this society, they will have a harder time keeping power.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh yea, did I mention ha ha? Thank you for the laugh. I just imagined how incredibly well the dispersal of advanced tech has helped our population of get rid of social classes. 
Biotech, though requiring drytech to get off the ground, is a lot more sustainable.
You know what else is even more sustainable? Nature that isn’t fucked with by inefficient and complex machinery.
We have done our planet a lot of harm, so much that it would take a long time to heal without a high level of technology.
And how is technology supposed to do anything to help? It’s hurt precisely because of the high level of technology we’re using now.
That and the threat of something extra planetary striking Earth is ever present. That is why such high technology is necessary.
You have some premises there, and a conclusion, but I don’t think they matched up. These things don’t require complex machines to fix, but instead proper understanding of balance and a bit of work. Controlled fires and seed-balls are going to do a lot more to fix our ecosystem than some fucking machines.
golden-
I will attempt to answer these qustions in the context of animism: If everything has a soul that is indistinguishable from the physical body then why not. And once you have answered that question, the other one is pretty much obvious. See, it does apply.
Sigh. This doesn’t feel so sincere.
And my mind continues to boggle at why you think you’d get any constructive conversation here on this topic. I offer incendiary_dan’s response as Exhibit A.
And my mind continues to boggle at why you think you'd get any constructive conversation here on this topic. I offer incendiary_dan's response as Exhibit A. Smiley
takes a bow
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!Oh yea, did I mention ha ha? Thank you for the laugh. I just imagined how incredibly well the dispersal of advanced tech has helped our population of get rid of social classes.
It’s getting close. I might be sounding technophilliac, but the internet is a perfect example of how it helps. Before the internet, the media had a lot more power to control what information you got. Though admittedly it hasn’t brought us total abolishment of classes, this is more because people
are social climbers, as is shown in this excerpt from a book I once posted:
Consider (oncer again) the Northwest Indians whose lavish use of cultivated wild plants is now coming to light through the work of the geograpeher Douglas Duer. A Kwakiutl household might have it’s own saltmarsh garden for cover roots or silverweed roots (nutritional delicacies) and might tend plots of wid berries or edible ferns. In hard times- when sya the salmon weren’t running, the family family might eat the entire harvest. But often the food would serve the family’s interests mroe obliquely. Being a gastronomical delight, it could be swapped for candlefish oil, and sometimes crates of garden grown food were paired wiht other foods and handicrafts to fetch a prised copper shield,. Often such exchnages took place between villages, orchestrated by big men, but nonzero sumness also swelled up within villages. A household might “give” a food to a needy neighbor, with a view rom future reciprocation. In the meanwhile, the giver, in addition to having garnered an IOU, enoyed soem status elevation. And families constantly in a position to give enjoyed chronically high status, like philanthropists.
At the hunter–gatherer level of subsistance, things are a lot more egalitarian, because they have to cooperate or die.
At the village level, status climbers have a little leeway, since there is food enough to stay in one place. But once the cultivation technology is available, inevitably some status seekers will convince their communities to produce a larger surplus. When they begin to influence other villages, and the villages unite under one of these status seekers, a cheifdom is formed.
Extrapolate those trends. More cultivation tech, more power concentrated in the hands of a few. Cities emerge, then civilizations. They pursue unfetterd growth up to the point where they collapse, where a new set of civilizations rise to take it’s place, building on what the past civilizations made. Eventually, you reach where we are now. We have expanded so far we are on the verge of ecololgical catastrophe, and to adapt, a sustainabity movement emerges. Our technology, particularily infotech and munitions tech, is becoming widespread enough that the leaders have a harder time consolidating their power. This twin currents + possibly Molecular Nanotech if allowed to develop further, can resut in something close to utopia. Of course things can go wrong many ways. I will get to why it is still a good idea to develop this technology further later in this post.
You know what else is even more sustainable? Nature that isn't fucked with by inefficient and complex machinery.
Biotech not innefficient. The machines made of it would be organisms in their own right, surely complex but not inefficient. Unless you are referring to something [u]other[u] than energy usage. Any way, Nature is not all peach and bananas. If you were really for abstaining from manipulation of nature, you would not use fire, you would not use tools. And you would likely be dead very shortly. Yes I am aware of the distinction between tools and tech, but it is still in a sense messing with nature. Tools don’t do as much harm to the environment, and technology need not harm it either. Biotech needs not metals or wood or anything else like that. It needs genetic materials and and people to utilize them, not to mention the equipment for them to utilize said genetic materials. As for why such would be needed, I’m getting to that.
And how is technology supposed to do anything to help? It's hurt precisely [i]because[/i] of the high level of technology we're using now.
A lanscape poisoned by radioactive waste will not be healed by planting things. The plants would never sprout. On it’s own, the land would take ages to heal. The same is true for any extreme level of pollution. Special microbes can be engineered to eat away at landfills, then die after they have spread to a certain point. They are working right now on ways to fix the ozone layer. All of these things can help the environment, but only if the technology exists. Your next question is probably going to be 'Why do we need this stuff?" Well if the rebuttal to your last question doesn’t work, then I must note the obvious fact that this planet will not last forever, and by the time it does die, if the only planet we ever inhabited was this Earth. then what will it have all been for? Every good thing and bad thing we’d ever done on this planet would have no effect, because we’d be dead -gone - forgotten, probably never even heard of. And until knowledge emerges of sentient species on other worlds, we can only assume that life on Earth is unique. That is why life must be spread. No I am not talking about growth in the sense of the cancer cell, I am talking about growth in the sense of the orchid: You grow multiples in case one is destroyed. Now do you get what I’m saying?.
...then I must note the obvious fact that this planet will not last forever, and by the time it does die, if the only planet we ever inhabited was this Earth. then what will it have all been for? Every good thing and bad thing we'd ever done on this planet would have no effect, because we'd be dead -gone - forgotten, probably never even heard of. And until knowledge emerges of sentient species on other worlds, we can only assume that life on Earth is unique. That is why life must be spread. No I am not talking about growth in the sense of the cancer cell, I am talking about growth in the sense of the orchid: You grow multiples in case one is destroyed. Now do you get what I'm saying?.
I get it. I hear that you do not understand animism, though you profess to. I hear that you see the Earth as a vehicle for the far more interesting anthropocentric drama of your own life. I hear that you do not feel a sense of belonging to this world. That you see the ‘neotribalism’ as just another (social) technology to enable you to embark on narcissistic voyages of the mind.
This conversation has reminded me of a scene near the end of the movie Mansfield Park, based on the Jane Austen novel, where a beautiful woman engaged to the youngest son of a family reveals the extent to which her love of society, rank, and appearance supersedes all other factors. She does this by talking matter-of-factly of the death of her alcoholic future brother-in-law currently lost in a fever, and (though sad) the future practical benefit conferred his family and her husband to be.
I don’t know you goldenerasuburb, but at the very least I can tell you simply don’t belong here at this time. If ever you change your mind about the value of your relationship to the earth as an end unto itself, you’ll have a lot to talk about with other folks here. Until then, enjoy the rest of the internet.
I’ll continue even though this is rightly in the Humanure Bucket.
Broken down into those three responses:
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You basically disproved yourself there. I don’t even know how you thought that was building up your argument, but thanks for doing my work!
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Biotech is inefficient. We prefer elegance and simplicity to complexity, because increasing complexity requires larger investment, and therefore diminishing returns. I studied biotech for a year, and as interesting as it was it was far more energy intensive than the tech we propose. All one needs to gather food and build shelter is a knife, and time to find the materials. Your prattling on about how one needs to manipulate the environment is a strawman, as nobody said anything against manipulating the environment (I even mentioned positive ways to do so), and I don’t think any of the intelligent people on this site would.
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Plants and fungi can in fact clean up toxins in the environment, including radiation. Read up, there’s a good thread about bioremediation in the Health and Wellness forum.
so how many air filters do we have to make to clean up after the manufacture of so many airfilters?
I watched a video a couple of months ago, of a guy who ranted a bit about humanity’s interaction with the planet. I can’t remember who the guy was, but I do remember it was more of a comedy skit than anything. However, I came away thinking he had hit some truth in his words.
As a species, we are so bent on assuming that Earth will forever be slave to us humans. Having put ourselves on a pedestal as almighty masters of the universe, we’re somehow under the impression that the planet depends on us to take care of it. Think about that for a second. As far as we know, Earth has been around looooong before humans existed to give it a name. It is naive to believe we will continue to exist as a species long enough to see the planet die. On a planetary scale, human beings are quite insignificant. Sure, we inflict a lot of damage. But the planet (possibly with a lot of help from us) will find a way to cleanse itself of us.
Just look at civilization. From the planet’s perspective, we must appear as nothing more than a disease, an infectious, viral plague that is doing much more harm than good for the planet’s health. The planet will kill most or all of us off before we even know what has hit us. Basically, the idea is that the planet will outlive us. How long we are PERMITTED to remain here is entirely up to the planet. Contrary to what scientists like to believe, human beings are not in control.
Oh geez, I could go on a 24 hour rant about science now. Science and scientists piss me off more than religion, and I despise religion. Always pretending to know something about the universe, and all we ever discover is that we don’t know a damn thing about anything, yet we go on prancing around the universe as if we know what the fuck we’re talking about.
Woodsman, your right, we are brought up in a society that believes it is above the earth. This idea is everywhere. When civilized people talk, they speak as though they aren’t animals at all, but are some special race above them. Just look at our religions. You can boil the most popular religions (Christianity,Judaism,Islam,Buddhist) all down to one belief: The world is inferior. Rise above it. Live like a slave and you will be rewarded in the after life.
Now I’ve got nothing against transcendetalism, but often times we forget the beauty that is right in front of us. Society as a whole tries to force us to believe that the earth is a cold, dark, scary place, and that we should run from it and rise above it. Which, of course, is a pack of bullshit.
I’m always wondering what is going to happen to the internet after the crash, and it really perturbs me. It would be kind of a shame to lose all these technologies, I mean, humanity came so far to create computers and whatnot. I believe the internet could still be maintained in a post-civ world, and I think it could be used as a primary means of cross tribe/town communication instead of messengers. However, we as humans would definitely have to come up with a much better organic way of doing it. I mean, each community would have to only have a few computers, these computers would have to be maintained with a hybrid of old electro parts and new organic parts. And there would have to be a group of people dedicated to maintaining the network. In the end, I think it would just be better to destroy computers, and I think they’ll just become a nuisance.
V-rus, if we rewild and become rooted in our various bioregions, do you think we’ll find much relevance to a vast network? If we have genuine communities we live in, do you think we’ll still need internet forums like this?
Just saying, when the civ shit hits the enviro fan, a lot of people are going to be isolated from relatives in far off places. I think people will still try to maintain the internet, and some will just try to keep the computers running. Think of all those people who spend hours nerding it up; IT guys, MMO players. I think there will be a lot of people who’ll try to keep things up and running.
My other feeling on the subject is, it just seems kind of a waste to forsake all our technological knowledge when we go back to nature. Of course, I myself wouldn’t mind leaving behind the computer.
How fast do you think “the civ shit will hit the fan”? I seem to see that happening already; I see signs of it going on for a century or more now. Why do you think people would end up isolated from their relatives and home places?
As one of the aforementioned nerds (I work for an IT department, and I do play an MMO), I know what you mean about desire. But collapse seems to me to tell us all about the gap between desire and ability. You seemed to say earlier not just that some people would want to do this, but that we should do it. I don’t think we should forsake all of our technical knowledge, either, but what value do you see in the internet that a real, feral community doesn’t meet? I loves me my internet, personally, but only because it fills in poorly what I hope to one day find abundantly in a real community. It provides me a crutch, and as much value as I might see in a crutch right now, I don’t know what value I’d have for one once I’ve learned to walk again.
Hurrah! The internet is a little bit like candy. If you keep it around, it’s hard to resist, especially when it’s more conveniently available then ‘good food’ (meaningful social interaction).
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that as soon as my lease is up, I’m not ever going to live by myself again.
One other, more critical, response to Jason’s (and v-rus’s) posts:
I don’t believe we can predict exactly how TS will HTF. It definitely could be quick – nuclear war, or worldwide crop failure. While it hasn’t happened yet, it’s possible: we’ve seen massive continental crop failures in recent history, like the Dust Bowl in the U.S., or various Russian wheat crop crises, and as long as trends in monoculture, genetic engineering/plant gene pool thinning, global warming/drought, and topsoil erosion continue, we will continue to increase the risk of a plummet in global crop production (as though enough people weren’t starving already). A massive die off could happen in an identifiable “event.”
Or it could be slow. Civilization could just continue to dissolve, or break apart in a series of small “quakes”, as it becomes more and more costly to maintain.
Well, every collapse so far has looked slow to historians looking back on it, and felt quick to those living through it. Certainly, most people today wouldn’t call our society mid-collapse, but it sure seems that way to me. But even the quickest collapses took place over a period of 10 years or so. It takes a few days to drive across the country. So if people end up isolated from their homes and families, it seems to me that would only happen if they wanted to isolate themselves from their homes and families.