The Ecology of Freedom

[Jim Cross]

This has been a nice dialog, Jim. Thank you.

Thanks. We probably should have more of these but for some reason we get off on the wrong foot. I'm probably as much or more to blame for that than anything else.

[Lou Gold]

This has been a nice dialog, Jim. Thank you.

Thanks. We probably should have more of these but for some reason we get off on the wrong foot. I'm probably as much or more to blame for that than anything else.

It takes two to tango. I think we did better here. I liked it.

[ParadoxZone]

Hi Lou,

I'm really enjoying this thread and learning a lot from it. If the below is simply a repetition, apologies from me too. It might be a useful rewording.

Thus, I find the so-called tentative approach of 'way-searching' potentially more useful than a possibly more fundamental 'truth seeking' but what do I know?

Is a both/and approach appropriate here too? In other words, if truth can be ascertained more precisely, might the tentative way-searching be improved or sped up when fundamental truth(s) are more accurately arrived at? (I think we might all agree that something needs to be sped up.)

In other words, if truth can be better approached and more widely understood, wouldn't that, in itself, allow for fundamental rules/ethics/organisational structures to become established. Whichever way is preferred, some evidence needs to be firmly grounded and understood.

This comment is, in part, also motivated by an answer to a question that was answered fairly recently (after some prompting) about what "we" should or should not do about indigenous cultures. I wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer and am beginning to understand why.

Is a both/and approach appropriate here too? In other words, if truth can be ascertained more precisely, might the tentative way-searching be improved or sped up when fundamental truth(s) are more accurately arrived at? (I think we might all agree that something needs to be sped up.)

YES INDEED if if one understands 'way finding' as a polar opposite of 'truth seeking" and CERTAINLY NOT if one understands 'way finding' as an auspicious arrival at an interdependent co-arising as when the student and teacher meet to create each other or when one stumbles upon a combination of 'might' and 'right' that works. Often 'not knowing' is the door to discovering these new meetings. But a BIG YES that our language often traps us in duality and yields the aphorism that "The spoken tao is not the Eternal Tao." Perhaps what we can seek is a tentative balance in a never-ending process? I guess the bottom-line for me is that neither a fundamental ontic or a singular hierarchical ascent is a certainty and both should be held with an open-minded skepticism.

This comment is, in part, also motivated by an answer to a question that was answered fairly recently (after some prompting) about what "we" should or should not do about indigenous cultures. I wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer and am beginning to understand why.

'Indigenous' means "originating or occurring naturally in a particular place." Nature, in an effort to prepare for change and uncertainty, constantly pushes for diversity, which is why we must use 'weed killers' to maintain broadcast crop monocultures. Alternately, the best way to tend a garden always depends on the place where one gardens.

So, how might 'wayfinding' be applied, how might one mix cultivated and wild and diversity?

I once read about indigenous potato cultivation in the Andes where there can often be unseasonal shifts in the climate which are hard to predict. The strategy was to plant vertical plots on the mountain slope, one of the selected cultivars and the next left to wild varieties, alternating across the slope. In the case of damaging unseasonal weather like an early frost there would be still be some wild varieties that survived, provided food and new cultivars and across time this could keep changing in an ongoing adaptive process. This is what I would call 'wayfinding' and it also reveals a 'fundamental truth' of change in dynamic systems.

The author of the 'American Land Ethic' Aldo Leopold famously noted, "The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save the pieces." I think what he says about plants and critters also applies to human cultures. You can check out his rich collection of quotes here.

HI Lou,

Thanks so much for your reply.

I'm hopping in here as your discussion with Jim seems to concluded on this thread.

If you reply to this then please bear in mind that I probably won't reply. I'm trying to clean up my act and I've been involved in too many threads recently so it's getting too fragmented for me. So, if you do reply, I'll glean whatever L I can from it and move on.

The part of Lao Tzu about an underlying truth is a specific recollection I have - I have a distinct memory of pointing that out to someone. That could have been a translation/interpretation issue in the authors part. in other words, I'm quite confident that's not me misinterpreting the English words that were written - it seemed very clear at the time.

The other part about the march coming to some conclusion - I suppose that's much more likely to have been something I brought to a specific passage or the book as a whole.

The "Be Calm - Be Clear" is especially helpful right now. They seem to co-arise for me. I'm not quibbling with the rest either. I'd like to think I'll have the opportunity to read in more detail the whole thread sometime.

Thanks again.

[Lou Gold]

HI Lou,

Thanks so much for your reply.

I'm hopping in here as your discussion with Jim seems to concluded on this thread.

If you reply to this then please bear in mind that I probably won't reply. I'm trying to clean up my act and I've been involved in too many threads recently so it's getting too fragmented for me. So, if you do reply, I'll glean whatever L I can from it and move on.

The part of Lao Tzu about an underlying truth is a specific recollection I have - I have a distinct memory of pointing that out to someone. That could have been a translation/interpretation issue in the authors part. in other words, I'm quite confident that's not me misinterpreting the English words that were written - it seemed very clear at the time.

The other part about the march coming to some conclusion - I suppose that's much more likely to have been something I brought to a specific passage or the book as a whole.

The "Be Calm - Be Clear" is especially helpful right now. They seem to co-arise for me. I'm not quibbling with the rest either. I'd like to think I'll have the opportunity to read in more detail the whole thread sometime.

Thanks again.

No problem, PZ. May you attain the calm clear integration that allows you to move forward. Happy trails to you.

[Lou Gold]

Recent advice from the Elder Brothers of the Santa Marta

Interesting article begins with:

When news of the COVID-19 pandemic came to the white-clad peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia, nobody was very surprised. The Kogis, Arhuacos, Wiwas and Kankuamos, four Indigenous groups who reside in the region and refer to themselves as the Elder Brothers, had already received numerous warnings of viral diseases from their spiritual guides, the Mamos, and their female counterparts, the Sagas.

Trained since birth in looking toward nature for guidance, these spiritual mentors of the Sierra Nevada predicted an emerging pandemic and other ongoing crises decades ago. The Mamos warned that the Earth would be plagued with “unknown illnesses” — along with climate change and water and food shortages — as a consequence of the environmentally destructive practices of the “Younger Brothers,” meaning non-Indigenous society. According to the guides, humanity must return to the Law of Origin, the original instructions on how to live harmoniously with other life-forms on the planet, or be subjected to increasing levels of crises.
....
For decades, the Mamos have been sharing warnings of the dangers of excessive consumerism, environmental destruction, and potentially irreversible consequences to outside communities. In 1990, they opened their territory for the first time to outsiders. They invited a BBC film crew, led by director Alan Ereira, to produce a film on their ominous messages for the planet, titled From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning.

Nearly 30 years later, and surveying the global landscape, the Mamos say they feel as though outside communities have yet to receive their message. They reinvited Ereira to produce another film on the subject, Aluna, released this year. They also launched their own communications collective, Colectivo de Comunicaciones Zhigoneshi, and various documentaries, including the series Palabras Mayores (“Elder Words”) in 2009.

[Ben Iscatus]

The Younger Brothers are putting their fingers in their ears and saying they can't hear their Elders.

[Lou Gold]

The Younger Brothers are putting their fingers in their ears and saying they can't hear their Elders.

I agree, Ben! It raises for me an intriguing question:

Is this another aspect of some metaphysical. bottom line? Why are peoples such as the 'Elder Brothers' who live simply but not in dysfunctional poverty considered as primitive or less developed? What is the evolutionary/developmental consciousness model that is 'tree-like' with a higher crown, deeper roots and stronger trunk? Are aperspectival and multiperspectival the same? Why are Buddhist monastics or Christian contemplatives or Western philosophers considered as more evolved than Kogi mamas? Is this just a matter of conquest/dominance/history-writing/philosophising or is something else involved?

[Lou Gold]

Here's another interesting review stressing the significance of the "indigenous theme".


James C. Scott, an eminent political scientist at Yale whose 2017 book “Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States” also ranged across fields to challenge the standard narrative, said some of Graeber and Wengrow’s arguments, like his own, would inevitably be “thrown out” as other scholars engaged with them.

But he said the two men had delivered a “fatal blow” to the already-weakened idea that settling down in agricultural states was what humans “had been waiting to do all along.”

But the most striking part of “The Dawn of Everything,” Scott said, is an early chapter on what the authors call the “Indigenous critique.” The European Enlightenment, they argue, rather than being a gift of wisdom bestowed on the rest of the world, grew out of a dialogue with Indigenous people of the New World, whose trenchant assessments of the shortcomings of European society influenced emerging ideas of freedom.

[Jim Cross]

Lou,

Here's an article by the authors themselves that seems to sum up their argument.

https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/

However, I'm still not buying their argument yet. If you read down to Section 4, they write:

Perhaps most striking, in terms of political reversals, were the seasonal practices of 19th-century tribal confederacies on the American Great Plains – sometime, or one-time farmers who had adopted a nomadic hunting life. In the late summer, small and highly mobile bands of Cheyenne and Lakota would congregate in large settlements to make logistical preparations for the buffalo hunt. At this most sensitive time of year they appointed a police force that exercised full coercive powers, including the right to imprison, whip, or fine any offender who endangered the proceedings. Yet as the anthropologist Robert Lowie observed, this ‘unequivocal authoritarianism’ operated on a strictly seasonal and temporary basis, giving way to more ‘anarchic’ forms of organisation once the hunting season – and the collective rituals that followed – were complete.

For some reason, they seem to think this seasonal behavior (which I noted among the San in previous comment) supports their argument. But, in fact, what it does is show "coercive" forces needs to come into existence as soon as the population increases beyond a certain size. The fact that it vanishes when the season is over indicates again that the "state" comes and goes based on population size.

They also make arguments for egalitarian "mini-states" in various parts of the world.

To take just one well-documented example: around 200 AD, the city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, with a population of 120,000 (one of the largest in the world at the time), appears to have undergone a profound transformation, turning its back on pyramid-temples and human sacrifice, and reconstructing itself as a vast collection of comfortable villas, all almost exactly the same size. It remained so for perhaps 400 years. Even in Cortés’ day, Central Mexico was still home to cities like Tlaxcala, run by an elected council whose members were periodically whipped by their constituents to remind them who was ultimately in charge..

I'm dubious the evidence supports this interpretation. Just in what they wrote, there are 120,000 people. How many "comfortable villas"? For an egalitarian society, I would assume we would need around 10-12,000. My guess would be either there was a population decline or most of the population wasn't living in the villas. At any rate, trying to guess social and political structures from archaeological evidence is close to a Rorschach test. You are likely to see what you want to see.

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

Here's an article by the authors themselves that seems to sum up their argument.

https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/

However, I'm still not buying their argument yet. If you read down to Section 4, they write:

Perhaps most striking, in terms of political reversals, were the seasonal practices of 19th-century tribal confederacies on the American Great Plains – sometime, or one-time farmers who had adopted a nomadic hunting life. In the late summer, small and highly mobile bands of Cheyenne and Lakota would congregate in large settlements to make logistical preparations for the buffalo hunt. At this most sensitive time of year they appointed a police force that exercised full coercive powers, including the right to imprison, whip, or fine any offender who endangered the proceedings. Yet as the anthropologist Robert Lowie observed, this ‘unequivocal authoritarianism’ operated on a strictly seasonal and temporary basis, giving way to more ‘anarchic’ forms of organisation once the hunting season – and the collective rituals that followed – were complete.

For some reason, they seem to think this seasonal behavior (which I noted among the San in previous comment) supports their argument. But, in fact, what it does is show "coercive" forces needs to come into existence as soon as the population increases beyond a certain size. The fact that it vanishes when the season is over indicates again that the "state" comes and goes based on population size.

They also make arguments for egalitarian "mini-states" in various parts of the world.

To take just one well-documented example: around 200 AD, the city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, with a population of 120,000 (one of the largest in the world at the time), appears to have undergone a profound transformation, turning its back on pyramid-temples and human sacrifice, and reconstructing itself as a vast collection of comfortable villas, all almost exactly the same size. It remained so for perhaps 400 years. Even in Cortés’ day, Central Mexico was still home to cities like Tlaxcala, run by an elected council whose members were periodically whipped by their constituents to remind them who was ultimately in charge..

I'm dubious the evidence supports this interpretation. Just in what they wrote, there are 120,000 people. How many "comfortable villas"? For an egalitarian society, I would assume we would need around 10-12,000. My guess would be either there was a population decline or most of the population wasn't living in the villas. At any rate, trying to guess social and political structures from archaeological evidence is close to a Rorschach test. You are likely to see what you want to see.

Thanks for the great "preview" article.

You say:

For some reason, they seem to think this seasonal behavior (which I noted among the San in previous comment) supports their argument. But, in fact, what it does is show "coercive" forces needs to come into existence as soon as the population increases beyond a certain size. The fact that it vanishes when the season is over indicates again that the "state" comes and goes based on population size.


G&W are NOT arguing against population size bringing forth autocratic forms. They are arguing against the deterministic notion that population increase-and-density is not reversible by showing that the Lakota shifted based on population-and-control exigencies of a seasonal buffalo hunt. In other words, an inexorable developmental march toward larger and larger populations and the state form of high density is not true. Indigenous peoples could CHOOSE to shift back and forth.

I'm dubious the evidence supports this interpretation. Just in what they wrote, there are 120,000 people. How many "comfortable villas"? For an egalitarian society, I would assume we would need around 10-12,000. My guess would be either there was a population decline or most of the population wasn't living in the villas. At any rate, trying to guess social and political structures from archaeological evidence is close to a Rorschach test. You are likely to see what you want to see.

Your math seems off by a magnitude. You are suggesting villas of 10 people, which is not enough for a single extended family, whereas 200 people could easily comprise a comfortable small town or villa. Shifting from a city of 120,000 to 600 comfortable villas is not as preposterous as you suggest. But, yes, "You are likely to see what you want to see."

Skepticism is, of course, good science but in order to avoid inertia dogma one must loosen the preferred story or interpretation to admit other possibilities and diversity into the mix. Nature, being well prepared for change, resists monocultural cropping of plants and ideas.