13 Responses to “A Better Way Of Making A Living For Humanity”

1. 

   mimik
   Jan 07, 2009
   

   Chuck,

   There is already a lot happening in the ‘tribal’ direction that you describe.  Check out The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins, a permaculturalist like yourself, and go to http://www.tansitionus.ning for information about the movement, the many United States groups forming, links to websites.

    

    

    

   
   
2. 

   js_starman
   Jan 07, 2009
   

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   For those interested in reading more about the philosophical underpinnings of this idea you should read Noam Chomsky’s Chomsky on Anarchism.    He reintroduces us to the idea and historical contexts of Social Libertarianism (roughly tribalism as defined above).   Many times as pointed out in this book forming a tribe can cause violent and deadly reactions from the Man.

   I wish this was as easy as finding a few like minded friends.

   
   
3. 

   LL
   Jan 08, 2009
   

   NO NO NO NO NO. You are so completely wrong with this theory.  There is no end to plentiful cheap energy.  There is plentiful cheap energy around, called solar, nuclear, and other things.   We do not have to cut back on our lifestyle, we have to expand our horizons.  People are now the keepers of the species. They need to preserve biodiversity, actively, and presereve the ecology and manage what has become almost a managed eco-system. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not.  And, we have to figure out a way to manage this Garden of Eden.   It is caleld a Garden, not a wilderness for a reason.  We are the caretakers.

   Take for instant the expanding dessert lands in the middle east.  How insane is that the dessert is bombarded by totally free energy from the sun, and we don’t invest in solar energy technology to pump up water and desalinate and turn the dessert into productive land?  Because wars are nonsensical and foster negativity like this instead of creativity.

   So you are wrong. Going back to a tribal culture is not the answer, technology is our only hope.  It is far too late to go back, you can only go forward.

   
   
4. 

   shireen
   Jan 10, 2009
   

   chuck, thank you for the interesting article. but it makes a big assumption that people can control their greed, envy, hate, ignorance etc. if we go back to tribalism. technology, money, etc are not the roots of evil. wherever man is is where you will find evil bloodshed and corrution. tribal societies are all over history, and they have bloodshed and corruption too. the problem today is not overpopulation nor is it a lack of resources. it is an inquitable distribution of wealth and concentrated power in the hands of a few corporations, a corporatocracy. 

   we do have some whacked out belief systems: that humans evolved from apes and africans are at the bottom of the evolutionary line while europeans are at the bottom is whacked out. the belief that some humans should submit to other humans is whacked out. the belief that a bunch of fat, wealthy, morally-bereft people (the government) can make laws for the rest of us is whack. the belief that the oppressors can go in and liberate the oppressed is whack.

   first let us ask: what is the purpose for humanity? if it is only material, and we are mere animals fighting for survival, then i guess we can say that the fittest are doing a good job at wiping out the weak.

   
   
5. 

   shireen
   Jan 10, 2009
   

   OOOPS. TYPOS! i meant to say that europeans are at the top of the evolutionary line.

   ok, folks, that line is in a context – look up one comment

   
   
6. 

   Nathan
   Jan 14, 2009
   

   Great, I’m definately going to check out Culturequake and the other resources you give. I’m so sick of “green” and “eco-friendly” (especially “green”). It’s refreshing to hear about other people working towards something better.

   You express these ideas very clearly; I’m glad to have some better terminology to go along with these ideas (e.g. tribalism).

   My partner and I are at the point now where we’ve tried to give up our consumer/”Homo modern” living as much as we can.. and we’re learning permaculture and farming so one day we can be part of a successful tribe. We have a lot to learn and experience.

   
   
7. 

   nntripp
   Jan 14, 2009
   

   Great, I’m definately going to check out Culturequake and the other resources you give. I’m so sick of “green” and “eco-friendly” (especially “green”). It’s refreshing to hear about other people working towards something better.

   You express these ideas very clearly; I’m glad to have some better terminology to go along with these ideas (e.g. tribalism).

   My partner and I are at the point now where we’ve tried to give up our consumer/”Homo modern” living as much as we can.. and we’re learning permaculture and farming so one day we can be part of a successful tribe. We have a lot to learn and experience.

   
   
8. 

   sebastian
   Feb 06, 2009
   

   Couple of comments,

   Firstly: I am totally for permaculture and working locally.
   Secondly: I also believe the future is in moving forwards: not backwards.

   Regarding some ideas presented:

   Tribal better than group: Chuck Burr, I would advise you to read more about anthropology. War is not an unnatural phenomina, it results from several different situations: 1. when there is movement/change in the ecological makeup that was not the result of adaptation. 2. when the environmental conditions naturally concentrate resources in one location 3. when resources are not a shortage, but people reproduce quicker than the resources. There are more situations for sure.

   Some 50,000 year old groups in Paupau new guinea still live in large groups of 5,000 that have plenty of resources, have been farming taro root in agricultural fields for at least 40,000 years, bordered by infirtile land which causes the bordering smaller tribes, whose numbers are more around 150, to raid, rape, pillage those who live in the larger colonies. 500 people is also the minimum genetic pool required to maintain a species, some tribes whose numbers are less than 500 have traditions to meet and exchange partners, others raid, rape and take women to obtain breeding.

   If you want to talk about avoiding wars, then the best way to achieve this is to have poor spread-out resources. Once there is an exaustion of resources, there is less to fight over. If the resources are still mainly in one place, then there is something to fight over. Temprorary boons of resources create exceptionally war-less periods, but they are then followed by intense war as resources dwindle to an increasing population. But in general, war is and has always been present – today, and also in tribal times.

   Regarding someone elses comment about techno is the solution, or we must ‘control’ the garden. There is a great danger here, and also a large oversight that this line of thinking falls into. Native peoples, who live in poor economic conditions, generally starve off (or go to war) until there are only just enough people to match their environment. Once the population dies down to sustainable levels, the amount of work that people need to do to “control” their environment is zero. It controls itself, and inface, by excersizing more control, you need to do more work; there are more things that can break down, more parts that need maintaining, more animals that need your intervention – it becomes a mangement nightmare… a spiral without end. Instead, and this is where I agree with permaculture, it is about the inteligent design of systems, so that our work is only about making key changes/modifications to systems that are inherently self-sustaining. Less human work = more surplus free time = more potential for enjoyment + technological research / system improvements.

   Technology helps in the transformation-efficiency of resources. So yes, we can terraform places, or capture energy that would otherwise be lost, and thus increase densities, but every new system requires more energy to maintain it, and thus far, none of our technological inventions are self perpetuating: we haven’t made self-reproducing, self-repairing, self-refueling inventions yet [IE artificial life]; and thus, all of our tools are still only extentions of ourselves. They can’t replace an eco system.

   Yes, we can increase our sustainable energy production levels [btw uranium is also finite],
   Yes, we can decrease our energy consumption needs,

   I think the future is going to be a hybrid of both of these paths; a refocussing of technology, and a consolidation of our social-networks. I think populations will decrease to lower levels in some areas, but this will be a direct-function of the carrying capacity of that location + trades/goods and services from other locations + technological applications [which includes animal husbandry].

   For example, if tomorrow the US and EU were to loose 50% of all their oil imports, I would expect the two places to suffer in different ways.

   The US has vast open space, but relies entirely on high-consumption fossil fuels. The car and the airplane don’t run very well without oil, so they stop working. The direct result is that the country becomes fractalised. Food production can be easily recovered by becoming local, but the nation as a whole becomes far harder to integrate into one coherent easy-travel land area. You get far more towns than cities, and the country disperesses into many vast smaller villages around agriculoturally viable locations. In cities wars, famine erupts; or in any other area that is not wealthy enough. Wealthy areas would persist because their power would ensure the movement of goods to them with what remaining oil there is.

   In EU the situation is reversed. HIgh population densities in a small space, but with exceptionally dense infrastructure. This probably would mean mass starvation across all of Europe, but those who manage to survive would have far greater mobility than in the US. The coherency of the EU would be stronger because trains have already been setup between all the major countries and they are far more energy efficient. Without imports from eastern europe or abroad though, the EU would die off far more people than the US simply because there is far less space around and far more imports to exports for necessities than in the US. Like in the US though, wealth concentrations will persist and retain control.

   As the situation reaches 99% oil reduction, perhaps sustainable energies will replace a more sizeable amount… maybe 10% maybe 20% — there is huge discussion on this matter as to how much we can produce in a sustainable mater, and I am sure once need outwieghs cost, this is when we will finally see what we are actually capable of doing here.

   Long story short, there is an innevitable scenario for famine and war being built, simply because whenever a population booms, it must decline. If you check the historical record, this was the case in every single past geographic event. It is true in all animals, and all past human movements, and also in physical systems; we obey the same laws as all the universe.

   The trend we see again and again in nature is: After a sharp rise, comes a decline, generally to lower than the holding capacity, and then it increases again — only the second time it rises, it doesn’t overshoot again, it stabelizes at a lower sustainable level. This is assuming, ofcouse, that no factors are changing anymore. Stabelization won’t mean and end to war though, because there will always be local areas that simply produce it.

   Now I am not a fatalist, I don’t see the past as being an unbroken chain. But I think it is essential to really know what the pattern is that we are in, if we ever hope to change it. And we really need to understand what technology is, and what control is, and what war is and why it occures, before we can even hope to changing it. The real challenge is, incorporating philosophical ideals, onto organic amorphic human cuktural systems. Environment already dictates culture, we see this very clearly. All religeons are primarily forged on past-evolved cultural wisdom that meant survival. Culture is a ’selected for’ or ’selected against’ evolutionary phenomina. Changes to culture have reinforce reality, if they don’t, they won’t be selected-for, evolution will wipe them [the culture] out.

   As an example: If we can see that all goods must be shared, ie, the banning of property, of profit, of ownership. And we have this vision that if we can share all surplus then we will have equality and thus an end of war: then there needs to be a shift in culture that is prodominant enough that it is taken as wisdom and ahered to by all. But don’t forget that if we share all the surplus, then there will always be excess, and when there is excess, there is growth. Population increase matches increase in production. So really we need to find a way to curtail our very own reproductive rate.

   Ultimatly it could be that evolution will do this for us. As we choose to reproduce at a later and later age, we are naturally selecting against faster reproductive cycles. All kinds of factors change in a species to match conditions, humans have changed sizes in different parts of the world by as much as 9-15% over the last 50,000 years – all based on local variations of food availability, age of death etc. we are very much a species in motion; there is nothign ‘fixed’ about our evolution; and I can assure you that the next 100 years are going to be highly selective… for good or for worse, we are in for a tough time.

   http://chedal.org

   
   
9. 

   schedal
   Feb 06, 2009
   

   Hi Chuck, nice post.

   Man, I have tried to post two times alrady and both times I lost all my comments! First time cause I was not logged in, and the second time cause I hit apple+right arrow key which deleted all my words… sniff!!!

   I will try again, sigh…

   Tribal size: Chuck, I would advise for you to read more about anthropology; because your assumotions about tribe size = sustainable are simply not historically accurate. Many large indigenous populations, some reaching well over 5,000 individuals, have been highly sustainable and non-war like. In the mountains of paupau new guinia, several such populations have been living like this for 50,000 years farming taro. Ironically, they are preyed upon by small 150 member war-like tribes who live on the fringes of the larger group and ‘kill’ off the peaceful farmers, and yes, they eat them. We can judge it as ‘imoral’ but really they have been doing this dance for at least 50,000 years and there has been great stability in ecology, population levels and wealth. Without the people being killed off by the fringe tribes, their numbers would climb too high and colapse the eco system, and if the outer tribes didnt eat from the inner tribes wealth, they too would die.

   In natural systems, disturbance generally creates momentary growth, extermination of species and damage to the long-term carrying capacity of the eco system and then it is followed by steep colapse, famine and/or war and then stabelization at [a now permanently lower] carrying capacity. The period of time durring the ‘boom’ is plentiful for the species that is booming, if they are at war, they tend to take few losses, and then when they are colapsing, they fight themselves or succumb to disease. Once they reach stability, there may be some persistent warfare. War tends to collect around areas where there is a change in resource density, and it tends to become less the more poor the area is.

   So if you wanted to remove the conditions for war, we would need to live in a world where everyone had all the same resources, was all very poor, the landscape was hemogineous, and no one person/group could outperform/relocate in relation to another. (for the record: I am a total pascifist, but this doesn’t mean I make an ilussion about the conditions for war)

   Culture is as much a selected-for evolutionary catalyst as any. Religeons are froth with evolutionary selected ideologies. Ideals must match the reality of the situation, or evolution will simply select against them.

   Technology and animal husbandry allow us to achieve more wealth from areas than we could otherwise. Agreed, no question about it. They also allow us to compete with other animals/species for resources we couldn’t otherwise; thus promoting our growth, and their exterminations. Technology is but an extention of us though, technology does not reproduce, self-heal and self-refuel itself. Technology is dependant on human intervention, human care, and human application.

   To suggest that humans should “manage” the land is very dangerous, as it can lead to a boom, followed by a massive bust. Here I agree with Permaculture completly. If you look at history, of humans, all animals and even physical systems: Systems will stabelize until they match the carrying capacity. If I can set up a system that is self-maintaining, then I have less and less work to do, means that I have more and more free time, which means that I can do more research into new improvements. If I am controlling everything, then there is an ever increasing level of things that can go wrong in my system because it is increasingly more susceptable to failure, because the complexity is increasing expontentially. Imagine if we had to make robot insects to replace the insects, robot birds to replace the birds, robot pigs to replace the pigs… evolution has already carved out 4,500,000,000 years of evolutionary development in the form of organic self regulatin, self motivated, self actuated, self selecting individuals. It is to our advantage to stimulate these processes, not replace them. We should be working to create eco systems that create positive-human conditions, not controling the processes.

   This is not to say technology is not the way to go, it is an important aspect, and we will still only be moving forward in this area with time, but we need to apply more design-science to the equasion; and especially: eMergy accounting [looking at the embodied energy of systems instead of the cost=supply/demand of a product].

   BTW uranium is not sustainable, it is absolutly finite and far less energy productive than oil or gas.

   As for creating a new moral path, I think the apparent plurality of our views is doing just that. The future will be plural, because we are now many, and from many will come many ideas. It is essential that we all develop different cultural ideas as to what will work; and the more we can be educated, the more succesful our different ideas will become. As oil runs out, it is from the pluraility of ideas that more and more successful models will develop.

   Personally, I am still looking for my tribe too.

   
   
10. 

    schedal
    Feb 06, 2009
    

    BTW, spreading surplus so that all people get all surplus isn’t really a solution because this would just lead to population increase; which again would lead to disbalance, extentinctions and then war+famine as the population out-stripped their resources because of growth.

    The one thing I see changing currently is humans are reproducing at an older and older age, and living longer. This is a good trend, and as we are selected for this trait, it will mean better stability in numbers because it makes our species less likely to rapidly scale up when we have a surplus.

    We can try and influence population sizes via education, but really its the environment that does and will dictate numbers.

    
    
11. 

    xray
    Feb 08, 2009
    

    The greatest untapped potential is within the the full activation of the human brain, just as the enlightened ones have shown by example, anything is possible – It’s more than luck there is one still alive with the ‘lost key’ of Evolution, Vibhuti = http://www.psproof.com

    
    
12. 

    Claude Gelinas
    Feb 28, 2010
    

    Quite simply, we need to transition from mere consumers to gardners.

    Once we’ve changed our relationship to our world, everything will align itself with this powerful —and engaging— paradigm.

    
    
13. 

    Twyford Geo6
    Mar 10, 2010
    

    Thanks for posting this, lifted my day.

    
    

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