Will our civilization survive and thrive or collapse and descend into chaos? That is the essence of a number of e-mails I have gotten over the last few months. The number seems to have picked up with the election of Donald Trump. I wonder why? The letters and e-mails I used to get were more along the lines of "how do we save our society?" to "how can our society survive?" to "can any kind of society and civilization survive?" Today the dominant question seems to be: "when will society collapse and how bad will it be?"
There has been a definite trend in the mood of these questions which I attribute to the continuing pile up of evidence that none of our institutions are really working anymore, a subject I have observed in the past. So it seems that more people are coming to the conclusion that something is definitely wrong with our social system if not our collective minds. For much of the history of this blog I've commented extensively on both.
My own opinion (for what it is worth - about as much as you are paying to read this) is that our whole social system (globally) is on the brink of a major and dramatic transition. The argument I make is based on systems theory, but then so have been all of my previous observations and I suspect long-time readers are apt to realize I've got a pretty good track record when it comes to pointing out large-scale trends (in the downward direction).
The transition of which I speak is one in the sense of the major transitions in evolutionary history, from pre-organic chemistry to life, from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, from single cells to multicellular organisms, etc. Human society is itself the result of such a major transition, the evolution of hyper-sociality in our genus that has led to tribes, towns, cities, and so on.
Transitions of this kind are not radical, sudden revolutions so much as gradual reorganizations of existing systems that makes a collective of previously independent systems more fit as a collective, cooperating structure. That is not to say the transition might not be triggered or pushed ahead by the event of some catastrophe. The transition from reptile dominance to mammalian and bird dominance in the megafauna was hastened along (in geological time scales) by the extinction event that wiped out the non-bird dinosaurs. As I have describe several times in these pages, I suspect that a general collapse of our current neoliberal capitalistic system (or variations on capitalism as we find, for example, in China), which I think will result in a collapse of most institutions will bring civilization to its knees or lower. It is likely to result in massive decline in the populations around the world (which is a euphemistic way to say massive dying).
But the collapse of this society is not as bad a thing as it might seem, except, of course, to those of us who end up being part of the population collapse. I know this is cold, but the fact is that the way this society works is exactly what is causing the problems.
The collapse of the economic system may actually be brought about by forces associated with climate change (coupled with decline in free energy resources). It isn't hard to imagine such a scenario. We may even be witnessing the beginning stages with the horrendous costs in lives and property due to this hurricane season (and just so far). Climate change, in the form of major disasters, will be extremely costly. It will be even more costly when we finally get that we have to adapt - as in moving Miami hundreds of miles inland and north. Where will the resources come from to accomplish this? With net free energy resources already on the decline how will we accomplish the work needed?
While not dismissing the possibility completely, I don't think humanity will disappear completely. I don't even think some kind of social structure will disappear. It will just be an extremely diminished version of what we see today. But therein lies the opportunity.
Complex adaptive and evolvable systems (CAES) collapse when their governance infrastructures fails to regulate their behavior. Humanity's governance system is wide of the mark when it comes to meeting the criteria of sustainability. Our governments are incompetent in part because they are very poorly designed to manage the complexity of the modern world. But also they are incompetent because the individual decision agents making them up are themselves incompetent. They are simply not sufficiently sapient. Exhibit A: Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). What a complete idiot. Exhibit B: Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), head of the House Science Committee!!!! These guys and most of the Congress are totally out of touch with reality. How did they get to be elected - Oh wait, I forgot the President too.
There are lots of examples of CAESs that have managed to evolve relatively competent governance subsystems. Cells do it. Brains do it. It isn't impossible. But it is hard and as a result of long-term evolution it has to be tested repeatedly in the world stage of selection. There are some examples of corporate or non-profit organizations that have been long-lived because they take their governance seriously and the top management are not out to rob the place blind and make an escape.
The design of government is the result of a long evolutionary process that has been going on since the Stone Age. We've tried just about every kind of configuration and function. Most have reflected a social hierarchical structure, but in the absence of real sapience these hierarchies have devolved to power relations rather than service relations. A wise structure is based on the executives and supervisors taking the position that they work for those who do the actual work. They are supposed to provide them with the vision and tools, not boss them around. Ordinary human beings just don't get this.
Modern democracies are built around the neoliberal idea of individual autonomy (a secular version of "free will"). In the west this means blatant individualism, in the extreme, libertarian sentiments - another failing of low sapience. Hyper-sociality, a characteristic of high sapience, is based on cooperation, altruism, selflessness, and a sense of belonging to something bigger and more important than the individual. Democracy among low-sapients cannot work. It doesn't work. Just look at the evidence in front of your eyes. The average human being today is out for "numero uno". How much of this is because there are simply too many of us and we all feel we are in competition with each other? I offer arguments that suggest that while population density tends to bring out the worst in us, the fact is that the worst is IN US.
What about the transition? I have argued several times that high sapient people (and there are a few in this world despite the madding crowds) will tend to be more adaptive to changing conditions such as climate change and a collapsing society. They will also have the capacity to find one another and form social units that can actually work. They are the hope of the genus. They form the basis for an incipient new species of Homo that stands a chance to survive the collapse and construct a better governance subsystem.
The collapse of human social systems will mirror the collapse of the reptilian dominance 65 million years ago. Something positive will emerge from it.
So, as we go into the darkness of winter we take heart in knowing that there will be a turning point in the solstice and an emergence into the light of spring. We humans can make a transition to a better social organization. It will be a necessity. We now know that the system that has evolved thus far can be improved greatly.
There is a branch of libertarian thought that believes our high sapience behaviour is thwarted by government. Those billionaires who follow Ann Rand have perverted a basic idea. An ideal that personal liberty is important not that my personal liberty is more important than yours. It is not that less rules are needed but that the need for less rules is important.
Here in southern Idaho, the home of "small government" repugnacons, we had a local town out law the simple act of pumping your gas and then paying for it. It was pretty much ram rodded by the local gas station owners, both of them. They own the vast majority. From my libertarian perspective they are free to choose this so why force the one small guy with his two pumps attached to the feed store to change. Should it not be his choice? After all he is the one who would suffer the loss.
I would like to be able to drive a small electric, four wheel buggy, based on bike technology. Top speed fourty miles an hour. This is purely my desire to not add to climate change. Unfortunately this is illegal. In many parts of the country it is illegal to collect rain water, put up a cloths line, or have an off grid house. Liberty in not some racist, authoritarian, sexist sect. It is our desire to be free from (I love this phrase) our "capitalist overlords"!
Posted by: Dennis Mitchell | September 22, 2017 at 10:16 AM
I need to edit my rants better. This English thing is hard. I'm much better at grunting and shaking my head.
Posted by: Dennis Mitchell | September 22, 2017 at 10:20 AM
Dennis,
My basic arguments against libertarian thinking comes down to some questions about "what kind of animal are we?" and issues of scale and density.
The former issue relates to the question of hyper-cooperativity in human beings. We are not merely eusocial animals. We are hyper-social and everything we have ever accomplished has been through cooperative behaviors. That means humans are always faced with sacrificing some of their own self-interests in order to promote the collective interests.
Liberty, from a systems perspective, is a matter of how dense and interconnected the system of agents is. If people lived on intervals of one square mile, they can build any damn kind of house they want to, anywhere they want to. Their decisions are not going to subject their neighbors to hazards like fire spreading. When they live right next to each other it is a different matter. You need building codes in order to help prevent disaster spreading through the community.
Now I will be the first to admit that governments, occupied with human beings, are not likely to find optimal solutions to coordination problems. They may very well over-step their responsibilities and impose rules and regulations that, to them, seem like good ideas, but, in fact, stifle freedom unnecessarily.
The problem is not that we should not be trying to determine reasonable and helpful governance structures. It is that the decision agents that have to do so are incompetent at doing so. So they over-react.
Is the question "big government" or "stupid government"?
Our society, even out in the boonies, is dense, and complex. Too many different desires competing for too few resources. What you are observing is a system's natural tendency to seek an optimal steady state. Unfortunately the human agents who have to carry out the work of governance are simply incompetent to do so, in most cases.
Libertarianism assumes that humans can make rational decisions, or that even if they don't their actions need not harm others. The former is clearly not the case (lots of recent psychology backs this up). The latter is also not the case since societies are so dense.
I'm pretty sure sapience means that people are willing to accept that they are not unboundedly free to choose whatever path they think is best for them. Truly sapient beings are willing to cooperate for the good of the social group. That doesn't mean they bend over and accept every decision without appeal. But a society of sapient beings should be able to discuss issues and find resolutions
Good luck with the transportation argument. I get your reference to the capitalist overlords, and I am no fan of capitalism, but don't forget that the maximizing of profits is also a libertarian belief.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | September 24, 2017 at 04:24 PM
Agreed, I look at libertarianism as an ideal. Maximizing profits is a corruption of the ideal. Our hyper cooperative behavior is the foundation of liberty. Are people forced to cooperate, manipulated into cooperation, or do they get to choose? When I was in junior high, I was manipulated into saying the pledge of allegiance. I'm happy to say when I quit by my choice I was not forced, but how many parents would force their kids? Language often labels out misunderstandings. I am using the label "Libertarian" outside modern usage.
I consider myself a conservative, because I think we should conserve stuff. Save some oil for future generations. Leave some wild areas untouched.
Thanks, I value your response.
Posted by: Dennis Mitchell | September 25, 2017 at 10:32 AM
In the realm of do as I say not as I do, I consider myself an extreme environmentalist. The only charity I support is a bunch of lawyers called Advocates for the west. I hate the convoluted bureaucracy and the need to fight every little step in court. What a horrible waste. I'm working from the perspective of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I am tired of getting an offer of a free tote bag with each pledge always accompanied by yet more return address stickers. The constant push for "eco" vacations from the Sierra club, seems counterproductive. Flying around the world and global warming don't mix.
Posted by: Dennis Mitchell | September 25, 2017 at 12:08 PM
George, America is finished, it was long ago killed off by private corporate interests. Dollar denominated debts are never going to be paid off, they will be hyperinflated to continue to benefit the 1%, the corporate owners. America started off as anti imperial, but has since become the most violent, degenerate, bankrupt empire in recorded civilization.
Witness the top to bottom brutalization of American life. Some people are just snapping and literally using machine guns to randomly mow down other Americans attending a concert (Las Vegas shooting). Anything to get a cathartic release and then die.
You simply have to understand this. Even people around the world have a hard time understanding this, despite their long standing anti Americanism. They fear the resulting vacuum.
Posted by: dolph | October 05, 2017 at 03:55 AM
Hi George
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and giving the space to meditate about the times we are living.
I am not going to meditate about the current political and economic situation, as what is happening is just a reflection of much bigger, and deeper problems. Instead, I prefer to go into a possible, rational, and functional analysis of why is everything going down. I prefer to dig looking for the possible roots. Reason and evidence has already told me that this system has no way to avoid the collapse. It was doomed from the beginning, it was our task to find the second “stage”, something we as world society, are not even close to begin to figure out yet.
Once again, I would say that our Civilization has no future. It is a system without a purpose, not exactly without a purpose, but a system with an unsustainable purpose. That in the end is very much the same. We will somehow descent into chaos, understanding as chaos a system with patches on top of patches. But it will be a very slow process, just as Venezuela. No matter how bad things are, people will keep on believing that things will get better in the future, and keep on trying to keep their way of living, lowering the standard as required, keeping the minimum. Hoping. Not being able to accept that today is definitely much worse than yesterday, and that tomorrow will not be better than today. The signs of this decay are always somewhere “away” for the average person, so in a practical way, non-existent.
Our system is already collapsing, why nobody (or most) cannot accept it? It is not a question of when, the question is how it will affect each one of us (and our children). The sixties and the seventies were probably the best moments in our history, with half of the population of today, and everybody much happier. Since then, we have been falling. Decaying, collapsing, imploding. We are apparently better today, but that is just an illusion (based on smartphones and social networks?).
I define our problem, our real problem, as the lack of a sustainable purpose. The “reason why” of our existence as species. The reason for humans to live and exist. Without a clue about our purpose, we will keep on doing and living based on what I call the “Third Floor” concept of the Universe. That is, we are building all kinds of (social) structures from the third floor up, without knowing what are the first and second floors, both mainly related with the purpose of the system we live in and the purpose of ourselves as species and part of that system. But, as I can see, most have not even noticed that we are in the third floor. Or have never wanted to know about the other levels below, as that would certainly require digging into very profound questions, whose answers would change all our understandings, thus, challenging the basis of our system and social structure. Those who have been able to peek into the underground of our system, have opted to ignore what they have seen, as everything we accept as the correct and right thing (the paradigms) would fall apart.
We mostly live to do what has always been done. In essence, just keep on doing more of the same. The average human lives every day just to assure the next. It worked in the past, with fewer of us, but logically, with so many of us around, a system thought just for a few, has to fail, as we overshoot. A basic concept fully within the reach of understanding of all humans, that only requires to take the time to analyze our system. But due to our limits of design, this basic understanding is outside of reach to the average intelligent human, which is not sapient, just because it cannot be sapient. Only intelligent. The bathroom metaphor by Asimov, gives a good idea about why our system is doomed considering “infinite growth”, just one of our basic paradigms, but certainly not the only one that is wrong from the roots.
Our system, our society, is built on top of rules, conceptual systems, like laws, principles, constitutions and rights. And religious principles. The paradigms. All the rest of our society is made up and put into operation, taking these conceptual systems as the ruling basis and the guides.
None of these paradigms withstand the test of sustainability, and that is basically to find the answer to a very simple question: if all humans practice whatever is the concept being evaluated, is it possible to keep it in practice, forever, and/or for all humans at the same time? The basic sustainability questions.
For example, a 200 m2 house for everyone (the American dream), the average in USA, is it possible for all humans on earth lo live in a house of that size?. Will it ever be possible? Without going into details, I guess not. The same for cars, is it possible for all humans to have two cars, and one of them being a 5.7 lts engine, 450 HP Ford 150XL, I guess not. The same goes for University degrees, the same goes for plane flights, the same goes for income, and an extensive list of etc. Most of the pillars of our society, the paradigms we live our entire life for, are totally impossible to be achieved by everyone, even though, the entire world keeps on pursuing them. Being so easy to know, after a very basic analysis, that they are an impossible. We all live trying to reach those paradigms, unable to accept that they are an impossible task, and in the meantime, we just need the system running for ourselves, to use our personal shot, to try to hit the target of wealth and success. The modern American dream.
We live in a society without a purpose other than serving itself. Ruled by everyone´s personal interests, every generation trying to reach the paradigms, without taking care of the future generations. It all about “me”, “now” and “here”.
Any system without an external purpose, has no reason to exist. Although it could exist for a while, in the end, it will implode, and disappear. As we are experiencing today with our society. We have been for so short time on earth, just the blink of an eye in Earth´s history, that whatever we have done and achieved so far is not a sign of being in the correct path. Even though it may seem we are in the way, we are following a mirage. The more we go, the more difficult it becomes to “undo”.
On the other hand, as long as we keep on explaining the systems of the Universe as the result of Gods, we will never learn more about them than what we can get out of simulations, that try to predict the behavior of the systems, without knowing the mechanics behind. Simulations are just sophisticated guesses. In the very bottom, not too different from the sorcerer of the past.
How is that we keep on simulating, instead of looking for useful understandings, without gods, without guessing?. In the very bottom, the scientific method is a sophisticated way to give some more secure way to guess on some specific processes.
Why we keep on guessing, without really knowing? why things are the way they are? Maybe just because the answers may only come from understanding the first and second floors. We keep on thinking about going to outer space, without knowing where we are standing.
The only way to learn is to understand the real mechanisms behind the Universe. As long as we keep on using Gods to explain what we cannot understand, nothing will be learnt. Evolution is the God of the modern scientific world.
From my point of view and understanding of Nature and the Universe, systems do not evolve. Evolution is a way to explain what we see, but certainly not the only one, but more than that, it has so many holes as a theory that it should have been abandoned a long time ago, and began to look seriously for other explanations. This situation is another way to show how a society of followers cannot act in a sapient way. Intelligent, brilliant, but not sapient.
Evolution has an exception, intelligent systems, as they can evolve. Their evolution is what explains the evolution of systems that cannot evolve. But there are some limitations, evolution of intelligent systems is not “per se”. Being humans one of them, our intelligence is not enough to evolve. Because of the way we function, because of the requirements of our nature to work properly, not all humans are able lead this process to a big scale, as a society. As long as we keep on believing we are equal, there will be no evolution, as the space required for the leaderships needed to lead the changes, will never be allocated. We could evolve, but for the time being, and based on our paradigms, the only way is a collapse of the system, as the only option that would give some space for the natural leaders to show up and lead the required steps to evolve as society, or at least as small groups. On the other hand, an evolution of our society would require a radical change (in relation to what it is today), that nobody in this society is open to face and accept.
If in our society there is a functional reason for all systems we have created and developed, why it is so difficult to see the same in the Universe? In ourselves? Why we cannot see the need to understand our purpose, and the Universe´s purpose. At least look for rational and logical answers, if everything we create as systems, has two defining characteristics, purpose and functionality. Why we cannot see the same in the Universe? In ourselves? Why it is so accepted a mysterious randomness that leads to nothing useful? All we have today are patterns, without a clear explanation. All the scientific knowledge can be resumed in one expression “patterns”, without a real clue about why. Not even close. Always guessing.
Because of this lack of understanding of the Universe, our society is also not tuned with our nature, with our purpose. More than that, it goes in a way that totally denies our nature.
Ergo, the system, our system, our society, is totally unsustainable.
It is the only unsustainable system on earth. To be noted.
And we are all invited to see it fall.
Posted by: Godofredo Aravena | October 17, 2017 at 11:42 AM