Civilization Returns

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance
#41

But I’m talking about ways of complexity, not magnitudes. How do different societies deal with the complications that arise from interaction (social or natural interaction)? It’s human to be complex because it’s human to interact. It’s human to interact because (last time I checked) humans are alive, and that’s what living things do - they respond. I don’t think I’m debasing the term or diluting its meaning by saying that just by the fact that we are alive, we are complex. What I’m doing is trying to redirect the meaning of the term to something that is more qualitative than quantitative, and since it’s not matching the sense in which you’re using the term, I think you’re missing my meaning.

One way (the Leaver way, if you will) for dealing with the complexity that comes with life is to embrace and internalize the complexity, on an individual and social level - to become part of it; to develop one’s whole self and each member of one’s society; to be able to do many different things and respond in many different ways.

Another way is to reject, and deafen oneself and others to, the meaning of external interactions; to disallow holistic and sustained interaction; to impose a single function upon everything and everyone, for the purpose of building a machine that is no less insensitive/closed to interaction. It’s a false and ignorant, though also complex, mechanism, and (as I think I phrased it) it “distracts” us from reality.

#42

Well, I recused myself from the word “hard-wired” and chose to see a tendency to explore the edges of complexity. I’m not smart enough, or haven’t studied the issue enough, to flesh out what I mean by ‘tendency to explore the edges of complexity’.

The level of complexity settles.

I disagree. I think it is a social technology to deal with edging-complexity in sustainable ways, and I think this is why we have art and music and dancing. Rather than explore edges of food complexity, or energy density, we enter into other activities, rather than settling.

It’s funny, because when we consider ‘natural complexity’ in a comparison to human complexity, it almost seems that certain of these unsustainable practices are actually expressions of ‘simplicity’. I’m not entirely convinced that civilization actually represents complexity, even though it emphatically touts itself as such. Practices such as agro-forestry, for example, are extremely more complex than TA. I mean, how really complex is ‘our’ society? it’s top down, it uses as few resources as extensively as possible, and prefers homogeony over diversity. sure, it’s widespread, but at it’s core, it’s simple. I think the very reason that none of us built our own computer means that our society is confusing specialization with complexity. Density with variety. all societies specialize, but we’ve only increased the amount of people were are specializing for. Having reached out to thousands of people, it allows the society to increaase it’s density of energy use, but makes it’s daily tasks more simple. Overall, is the entertainment society (‘civilization’), more complex than the hunting society? I don’t think so. If you took an inventory of tasks that everyone in the society combined does, it makes sense the largest society would appear to be more complex. But if you took a mean of complexity, and looked at the average day-to-day activites of the average citizen, you will find that society to be less complex, as I see it.

Even pre-refridgeration, the lives of the citizens were more complex than post refridgeration. 80 years ago, a considerable amount of time and energy was put into canning, drying, and preparing for the winter.

I suppose that you find more hammock swinging in the 40-hour workweek than you see in the 24-7 workweek of other societies. the repetition, doing the same task over and over, is more exhausting than walking all hours of sunlight. I think not using oneself to the fullest is more exhausting than doing all you can with all you have all day long, and into the night.

A lot of people will intially think that ‘leaving’ is making your life ‘more simple’, but as many of us have discovered, ‘leaving’ society, and giving up the specialization of billions for the specialization of dozens, makes our lives more complex, but less dense. What we do day to day becomes much more complex, but our energy intesity goes down. task complexity and variety increases as we leave ‘civilization’.

#43

Yes, I’d say specialization is one way in which we’ve made the experience of life more one-dimensional instead of more complex and responsive. As such, it’s one way in which we’ve removed ourselves from the process of evolution - but I’d say the driving force behind devolution is technological saturation.

(On a side note, I have a friend who does not believe that we are more or less removed from evolutionary conditions. He refers to a kind of social Darwinism: “we compete against each other.” But from a purely survival-and-reproduction take on evolution, socioeconomic standing makes little difference. Not only that, but class mobility is stagnating. Even an extraordinarily adroit person, born into the right (that is to say, wrong :P) conditions, can only get so far. In addition, it seems that there is a general trend of more socioeconomic privilege correlating with fewer children (& vice versa), and moreover, that kind of socioeconomic upper hand has less to do with genetics than it has to do with familial history, aka blind luck.)

Hmm, is economics (the kind that generates specialized productive activity) a kind of technology? It’s a system that extends our natural capacity, in much the same way that a machine extends our “reach” into the world - but instead of being built of cogs and gears, an economic machine is built of human “believers.” I’ve thought for some time (and have yet to come to a truer-ringing view) that economics has replaced religion as the “opiate of the masses” (for lack of better words). The poor majority have the economic engine forced upon them, and to cope they tell themselves they are happy - nay, lucky - to serve it; the elite (no less caged) pursue the manifestation of economic ideals/abstractions that are a kind of Holy Land or Utopia.

#44

Well, there are a vew versions of economics out there.

There’s the workingman’s version of economics, where you get a job, you pay your bills, and be happy to be allowed to do any of these things in the first place.

Then you have the investing version of economics, where you having capital to play with, you are smart enough to read the market, and should be happy to not have to work, and live on residuals.

That is why you have the latter having so much voice over the state of our economy. They are fighting for their right to not work, thus the massive tax cuts.

Then you have cronyism economics, where you have lots of capital, and convince the congress that without you, there would be no economy. I would say these people could be seen as the ‘mythmakers’ of the economy. They set the agenda, because most people in congress thinks they are serving the middle class, and without capital making jobs, no one has anything to be happy about.

That’s why our economy is so shallow. THe larger it gets, the few the people are who write the myths, the fewer people out there who can even conceive to compete with multi-nationals.

The local economic option, and the gift economy option, are insulated from the brutal cycle above. These social technologies provide something otehr than price as a motive to buy and as a motive to work. In the local economy social technology, the motive is to reduce footprint, to support your neighbors. This leads to what a classic economist would call ‘price inflation’ but they refuse to see the more money you make by reciprocating this technology, rather than being a one-dimensional consumer who msut buy at the lowest price, because your income is that marginal. That’s what is frustrating about classic economics, they assume incomes like 100,000 a year is marginal, that only the super-rich need not live budgeted lives.

But $100,000 is only marginal without relationships. The cost of buying a home is around $150,000, then you add in the real estate, which could make it just at that price, or up to a million dollars in Sillicon Valley. The cost of building a home is around $50,000. That is what it would cost you if you participated in a gift economy, where you and your neighbors would reciprocate and build each others homes, cutting out the labor.

You can see the marginality of a $100,000 income when you pay everyone to do everything for you, when you have no parents to watch your children while you go hunt and gather $$$, you have no friends to help build your home, when you are completely tied into the specialization grid.

But I think I have had a full life over the past few years on about $10,000 of income. That is because of my participation in the gift economy, where giving pays as much as receiving.

Because I spend some of my time foraging and guiding, I haven’t had the same expenses as the do-it-yourself crowd. Not only do I need to earn as much money as they, but I have connections that was previously only thought to be only had by capitalists, even though I am much assuredly labor.

It’s not true, though, that the economy is stagnant, if anything, it’s OVER liquid. Anyone who is poor can study and become an upper-middle class doctor or lawyer or technology professional. Getting into the super rich, well, they are fighting to keep you out. To even get to that stage of mythmaking, they would have to give up a serious piece of their influence to allow only a few in their club. If they double the amount of people in their club, the club itself disappears. So you could say, a good strategy to ‘taking down’ these hurtful mythmakers would be to accumulate wealth of your own, and write your own myths. But that miracle-talk there. Anybody got some leftover miracles they’d like to ‘gift’?

so becuase the economy is liquid, and because the consumer still ahs infinite choice in limited markets, the only way to legally sidestep everything is to create small markets where social technologies like local and gift economies take precedence over marginal, limited market technologies.

We all have a strong vote, and that is the vote we make with our dollar. Or yuan. Or euro. ( I don’t know if you noticed, but it may soon be time to cash out those old piggy banks before us currency is worth nothing).

When you and your neighbors live in a fully reciprocating market, currency may not even be needed.

So to sum up my treatise here;

A natural progression of economic social technology would be to go from marginal markets (one dimension-price), to local markets (two dimensional - price and source) to gift markets (three dimensional - price, source, reciprocity). Once the loop is closed, then things like specialization can flourish.

There is a lot, lot more to say, but this is just a peek at the answer to some of your questions.

#45
I'm not entirely convinced that civilization actually represents complexity, even though it emphatically touts itself as such. Practices such as agro-forestry, for example, are extremely more complex than TA. I mean, how really complex is 'our' society? it's top down, it uses as few resources as extensively as possible, and prefers homogeony over diversity. sure, it's widespread, but at it's core, it's simple. I think the very reason that none of us built our own computer means that our society is confusing specialization with complexity.

I tend to see things this way as well. Civilization is a homogenizing force that tends to destroy complexity rather than create it. Wild ecosystems are infinitely more complex than farms or cities or computers or transportation grids.

Think about how many species we are seeing go extinct as civilization expands into every nook and cranny of the globe. That’s a loss of complexity. Think of how many species exist in a corn field v.s. a wild forest. Another loss of complexity. Before Europeans came to North America there were over 500 distinct and unique languages and ways of life adapted to every little bioregion on the continent. Now there is one language and one basic life-way. Same can be said for Australia, and these are just two examples out of many more.

A lot of people will intially think that 'leaving' is making your life 'more simple', but as many of us have discovered, 'leaving' society, and giving up the specialization of billions for the specialization of dozens, makes our lives more complex, but less dense. What we do day to day becomes much more complex, but our energy intesity goes down. task complexity and variety increases as we leave 'civilization'.

Yeah, I’ve consistently found this to be true in my experience of rewilding. Doing a job where you follow the rules, get a paycheck and go to the grocery store in order to eat, is simple as hell (and here I mean “hell” litterally) whereas having a personal and peer relationship with countless individual plants and animals from hundreds of different species in order to secure one’s sustinence is an infinitely more complex way to get food.

I often find it overwhelming to contemplate the level of complexity I’m learning to relate to in order to rewild.

And I’ve consistently found that the biggest barrier we civilized folks tend to experience in rewilding is our inability to “think outside the box” and respond with spontenaity and flexibility to our life and circumstances. We get stuck in conditioned and patterned thoughts, feelings, and behavior and have trouble breaking out to experience and respond to the world as it is.

#46

I can see a lot of confusion starting here from the imprecise use of the word “complexity.” Complexity is really quite simple, you can count it up. It just means the number of elements in your society. No more, no less. That simple measure has a lot of implications, yes, but that’s all the word itself means.

Now, you can be highly effective without being complex. A lot of examples are being thrown around here of “complexity” that are nothing of the sort. They’re not complex at all, but elegant, which is what you call a solution that simultaneously maximizes effectivness, while minimizing complexity.

These are all terms that are very easy to use imprecisely or misunderstand, but it’s really worth the effort to guard against falling into that temptation. A little bit of imprecision here is all it takes to send you going in circles for years to come. Trust me, that’s exactly what it did to me, I’m just trying to spare you what I had to go through.

#47

At the same time, a direct relationship with food sources makes the process of transforming food from “still allive” to “on the table” less complex (as well as less oblique). Yes, it requires greater personal sophistication, and that is where the complexity lies (as I alluded to in my musings on “embracing and internalizing” interactive complexity). But the way the grocery-store society gets food is still complex in its technical sophistication (i.e., there are electrically-powered refrigeration units that need to be moved around on trucks running on diesel engines, etc.) as well as its economic mediation (the levels upon levels of “middle men”, if you will).

It’s a trade-off of two basic “ways” of complexity (as I see it, for what that’s worth), and it seems to me that one way encourages sustainability and self-sufficiency, while the other denies it.

#48

That’s the Websters definition, and so that may be all it means to civilized folk, who see society as an exclusive humans-only club. The general consensus is that “more civilized” = “more complex”. But imagine: if you lived in a truly wild setting, and if you counted your animal and plant peers as part of your society (and to varying degrees, most h-g people do), then how many such “social elements” would you have to navigate? By your definition, the “uncivilized” are greatly more complex, even though they don’t have as many social elements (institutions, businesses, class levels; and also the linear elements of fish to boat to packer to shipper to grocer to eater) within their human groups.

So a society’s degree of complexity depends on what you choose to count as its elements, which depends on non-numerical things such as values and beliefs. It’s qualitative, too. What one person says is complex (based on counting) could be what another person says is simple (based on counting), because different things “count” for those two people, respectively.

#49

man, I think the word (meaning) I dislike the most is civilized.
Or civilize.

#50

It depends if you count society as what it has to offer an individual, or what the individual has to offer society.

If you took a group of 150 people, living off the land, and say their daily life has 150 ‘units’ of complexity, then you have a society with 22500 units of complexity.

If you have a group of 5,000 people, each with 50 units of complexity, then you have a society with 250,000 units of complexity.

Which society would you say is more complex? It’s clear that it is a choice between metrics, and not easy to definitively say which is more, depending on your point of view. I could even further develop these theoretical statistics, and wonder aloud, why is a society that is 33 times larger only 10 times as ‘complex’.

I think this little exercise might just prove that complexity is a red herring, and perhaps, ‘thinking of an elephant’, as Lakoff has warned us against.

I think energy intensity and land use, waste output and amount of recycled materials, are a much more accurate and useful calculations in determining the sustainability and survivability of a cultures ability to continue on, or ‘come back’.

It’s possible now that a below replacement-rate birth rate world, using hydrogen and wind and solar energy, using highly efficient electronics, operating on a an expanded gift and local service economy, practicing agro-forestry and bio-instensive gardening, could in fact, be sustainable, and be fascist, socialist, libertarian, or an oligarchy.

In the end, the complexity is a matter of the individual choices a society makes, regardless of how those individuals are compelled, coerced, or otherwise convinced, as far as complexity, really has little bearing as to what that society is to it’s surrounding environment if you have a lack of materials recycling, and responsible, sustainable horticultural practices.

So what we’re trying to accomplish in rewilding in ourselves is not just ‘don’t think of an elephant’ but to cultivate that ‘third way’ social technology as well.

It’s a holistic approach, and there are spokes on the wheel that remain to be discovered, as I have discovered on my own personal journey.

It’s easy to get swept into conversations about the meaning of the word ‘is’, and the depth in which these meanings can be explored can create a simplfied specialization in any conversation.

#51

I guess I’m not sure what your point is Jason, or what kind of error you’re conserned about people falling into. Just what is your practical consern about how people are discussing and using the word “complexity” here?

It seems to me that if complexity is just a matter of numbers, then 500 distinct languages and hundreds of bioregionally-based and uniquely different adaptive strategies (diverse cultures, technologies and economies based on caribou hunting v.s. salmon fishing v.s. three sisters gardening v.s. whaling, etc.) in north america (pre-columbus) compared to just a few languages (with one being paramount) and one basic cultural, economic and technological regime destroying, assimilating and supplanting all of them (post columbus) is a net reduction in complexity.

It also seems to me that the extinction of species also speaks to a net reduction in complexity. I guess it just depends on where you draw the line as to who makes up our community. Do we include only humans? What about the cows and chickens that feed us and the dogs that live with us? If we include them, then what about the wild species that “non-civilized” people depended on daily?

Maybe “complexity” just depends on where one stops counting?

#52

Ya’ll are confusing complexity with diversity.

#53

How so?

To me, hunting and gathering wild foods is both more diverse and far more complex undertaking than is punching a time clock, cashing a paycheck and then shopping at a grocery store. Also, a wild ecosystem is both far more diverse and complex than a domesticated farm or an economic system. So therefore a society that lives in direct daily contact and interaction with such complexity is potentially both more diverse and complex than one who doesn’t.

It may be that the complexity of the “primitive” is mostly wired into their brains and found in their social and ecological relationships, whereas the complexity of the “modern, civilized” is mostly wired into their computers (i.e. found in their external technology), but that doensn’t necessarily make one more complex than the other, it just makes the complexity of one easier to see from the outside.

For instance, read the ethnography of the Tiwi h/g’s of North Australia and try and understand their kinship and marriage structure…vastly more complex than the nuclear families or hierarchy structures of civilized societies.

However, if folks think some of us are using these terms improperly, how about showing us some definitions that clearly delinieate that? I’d be intersted to see how that works out.

#54

Yes! I have been trying to figure out a way to express just that idea, and all I could muster was “external” and “internal” complexity, but what I think I meant was externally/internally evident complexity.

Thank you, now I have come to a plateau of peace on this issue.

#55

Hmm, it really depends on context. I was thinking of the global economy, and specifically a situation such as working in a sweatshop and having very little other choice.

#56

To be honest discussions like this one are the part of Rewilding that I just don’t get. I’ve been attempting to read each post here but I don’t think I have the intellect for it and I get lost in the academic approach.

I really don’t see complexity and diversity as being synonymous but I also am not prepared to defend that here, so I apologize for jumping in unprepared and interrupting.

#57

well, this topic I feel presents the most difficult ideas, I mean, how would one try and talk about this with someone, and lets just say, civilization does come back (which idk, I don’t think it really will, but I have an almost religious belief on this one, and I don’t know about the real academic reasons, except for like desertification and all that… so we’ll see eh?
But anyhow, lets say civilization does come back, it makes it difficult to talk about this with someone in that context that it does, because then it would be like… well you know… what’s to stop civilization from running over tribes again?
So better to make it that it doesn’t raise up again =P

#58
I really don't see complexity and diversity as being synonymous

I agree with you Heyvictor and Jason too. I just don’t care enough to add anything to this particular conversation. Haha.

#59

And yet you did add something to this particular conversation, didn’t you Scout? Interesting…

I guess the place where this discussion gets real (for me) is when people assume that rewilding is somehow simpler than living in civilization, and therefore should be “easy” to learn. I mean hey, “cave-men” and “savages” did it, right?

A lot of people out there think they can learn a few skills, run off into the wild (like Chris McCandles, who is dead because he underestimated what it takes to rewild) and maybe spend a season or a year living in the woods and they’ll be “wild”. Then they get out there, get their ass kicked around a bit and come back thinking “wow, primitive life is really hard”, in other words maybe it really is “nasty, brutish and short”, since it can’t be that they just didn’t grasp the complexity and enormity of the task of rewilding…that they just didn’t adequately prepare and do the “work” necessary to achieve their goals…after all, primitive life is supposed to be “simple” right?

#60

What about variety as a term instead. It is , after all, the spice of life.
If tribal societies of humans were so superior why couldn’t they stand up to the European onslaught?

  1. A lack of clarity of the overall picture ( a myopic world view).
  2. Pent up resentment from ages of infighting ( to them the white man was no more “the other” than the neighboring ancient rival)