A DIFFERENT TAKE ON THE APPARENT CHAOTIC NATURE OF TAKING TOO MUCH POWER

Which Suggests Floating and Breathing Instead of Sinking Like a Rock.

What follows is a rambling response to Nate Haggen’s Great Simplification Frankly # 88, available here.

Nate,

I have been following your Great Simplification podcast since it’s inception and have watched most of your interviews with guests and most of your Frankly’s. You definitely have had some interesting guests and topics that have helped me in trying to figure out how to shape my own experiments with simplification. Lately, to borrow your term, I have frankly been a bit troubled by some of the conclusions and suggestions you seem to be focusing on, maybe because it seems to me by focusing on them, you might be missing a key cause of why we are experiencing the “chaos” unleashed on the planet today. There also may be a tendency to divert attention away from where I think it should be focused. What follows is my attempt to explain what my concerns are, for you to use or lose, as you certainly see fit.

You open this week’s Frankly with the proclamation “the world is full of chaos – we have tariffs, and AI, and Russia, NATO, Ukraine, Europe, US, war, interest rates, and gold, and bitcoin”. You conclude the list of what you consider chaotic happenings with “poverty, inequality and polar vortex and climate and biodiversity loss, and polarization”. Then you point out why these things are happening – “The way we're acting today is downwardly caused by the collective emergence of this power dynamic. Combine humans with a lot of energy surplus and the default path is what's happening now. That doesn't mean that’s who humans are. It means it's how our social comparing primate nature is out of context of our small, bands on the Savannah, of a hundred, 150 people thrust into this world with massive, material surplus and with digital claims on top of that, and now AI turbocharging the whole thing.” Not to quibble, but I have different take on the things you bring up that I believe suggests a very different response or path then what I think you are proposing.

To start, I have been reading an assortment of stuff lately trying to come to terms with all the crap going on, and somewhere I came across a discussion of what chaos is – and basically it was described as something that is a surprise. My old Webster’s dictionary has one definition that for me that sort of captures that idea – “the confused, unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms”. Tariffs, computer programs, Nations and Regional names and boundaries, war, interest rates, the manufacture of gold, or digital currencies – also do not seem too surprising in our insane world, even though they may come out of the later evolving human end of primordial matter.

The opening of your list of chaos examples are all projects, and tools, things that have been well thought out, planned, designed, built or drawn or declared or unleashed, and regulated. They are human inventions, inventions in one form or another that have been around and used in various places at various times around the world. I don’t believe their use has been necessarily universal, continuous, or inevitable. But through the years, when a few people in a society came together and figured out how to corner the market on power, these tools were used and basically unleashed to control the rest of the population, so that the power-elites could hold onto, and increase the amount of power they could access and hoard. Of course, the power elites came up with other stories to convince everyone else that is the way things had to be.

When you take a look back at the historical, archeological, and anthropological records you find that societies where those tools were constantly used, were governed by an elite group of people. See David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING, or James C. Scott’s SEEING LIKE A STATE, or John H. Bodley’s VICTOMS OF PROGRESS for examples. The forms of governance and the motivations behind the governors varied some depending on ecosystem constraints, or individual preferences, cultural norms, etc. After using those sorts of tools of control, eventually side effects like “poverty, inequality, polar vortex, climate change, biodiversity loss, and polarization” could be observed. So even these somewhat more confusing consequences to me are not very surprising, or what I would consider chaotic. You have had a number of guests on your show (Peter Turchin is a recent example) who have put together some good models that can be used to predict these results. The models of course may have some limits in predicting when or where or to what extent those things will show up, but in the end, in one form or another, they do. And eventually, the society or civilization that unleashed these tools, collapses, or fades away, or morphs, or revolves.

Your synopsis seems to suggest that the “chaos” is created as a “default” of mixing apparently simple brained humans evolved to live on savannahs in small groups of 150 people or less, where too much energy results in jolts of dopamine triggered joy that keep them numbed out. Often times I have heard you suggest that a possible trigger of this default as being the “agricultural revolution” where these simple humans figured out how to domestic plants to grow high volumes of grain, and make the first power bars. I used to believe that story myself, and when I did, it was pretty depressing. If we humans are really that simple brained and can’t control our energy craving, then it seems like we fools should have gone extinct long ago, and if nothing else are doomed to that outcome soon. But I think it’s fortunate that that hasn’t happened, nor do I believe we are we doomed to experience it, yet.

My take on that story was dramatically changed after I read Graeber and Wengrow’s book THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING, which delves into the origins of the story’s we have been told about the apparent chaos we our experiencing in the world today, and in the past. I believe that THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING really unpacks the idea that humans inevitably had to go from small egalitarian hunter gatherer tribes, to complex hierarchical civilizations with power elites always on the top, based on a diet of too many power bars. Their findings suggest a much richer history of assorted sorts of organizational structures, used around the globe, that resulted in very different societies from what our current global top-down power sucking society looks like. Sure, there were some societies, those dominated by power elites of one sort of another that looked similar to what we have today. But that is far from the only story. I think I have heard you mention the book THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING on a couple of your podcasts, but have been disappointed that it was never discussed in more detail on your show. Maybe it’s time to invite the author David Wengrow, on for a look inside that alternative narrative.

I personally think we humans actually evolved with a much more highly developed brain that allowed for great flexibility in how various groups of humans survived in a plethora of variable ecosystems and changing climates. I think some of your guests, Ian McGilchrist in his discussion on impacts of left and right brain functioning, where he points out how in the past, much like in the present, complex societies of hierarchical design are inevitably dominated by the left-brain thinkers. Bill Plotkin also unpacks in his discussion about human psychology how the rise of power elites was not a result of domesticating grain, but rather a result of figuring out how to basically domestic the people, and force them to get rid of the cultural practices humans had been using for hundreds of thousands of years to develop communities guided by wise elders that remained in harmony with the earth, and not succumbing the greed based diet of consuming it to obtain more power. But then again, maybe this is just my utopian wishful thinking at play.

To bring my take on your Frankly to a close, I thought I would highlight a couple of your suggestions, and point out some possible alternatives that might want to be looked at or considered. You suggest sort of a “rock bottom” analogy as a path to dealing with the “chaotic” consequences of living in a top-down power-driven world. At first glance, tossing some rocks in the river, building a foundation, developing some anchors, and eventually perhaps diverting the flow of the river, could change the direction of our civilizational practices. But when I attempt to analyze this suggestion using the right hemisphere of my brain, it seems to me this might just be another same old story as told by the dominate left brain. Maybe it is just my own left brain – former civil engineering trained – take, but this sounds like one more attempt at building another structure or tool, a dam or a dike or a wing dam, to stay in control of the chaos, to keep our power over nature in place. And what happens when these few “wise” rocks, the anchors get a taste of the power bar. Will they heed the advice from the old apparently wise power-eliter Lord Acton that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and give up their power harnessing the river via their dam and let the rest of the rocks have some autonomy, or will this just be one more round of the same old power play?

I suggest a different analogy in regards to finding ourselves next to a raging river. I heard this story in a presentation by Margaret Wheatley back in 2012 at a conference at St. Kate’s in St. Paul. (https://ecologicalleadership.blogspot.com/search?q=hopi) Wheatley explained it was a wisdom prophecy from the Hopi Elders regarding the state of the planet they found themselves in. And it goes something like this:

Here is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid, who will try to hold on to the shore. They are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore. Push off into the middle of the river, and keep our heads above water.

And I say see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves, for the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt. The time for the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves. Banish the word struggle from you attitude and vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. For we are the ones we've been waiting for.

In 2018 I finally took this suggestion to heart. I stepped back and looked at my life where I spend my days working for the State Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, where I calculated pollution emissions from our top-down hierarches dominated way of life, and concluded there must be something better to do with my life. So, I took the leap my luxuries allowed me, and retired and tried simplifying my own life as best I could. And I have found that floating in the waters around me, with my head above the surface, makes life much more enjoyable, than sinking to the bottom, and trying to hold my breath, while I wait for enough people to plunge into the depths, to change the coarse that the power-elites have dictated for us.

And so, I will continue to try to practice the suggestions of yours I really do like. The first will be to continue to focus on the best of humanity and the amazing world we are so fortunate to find ourselves in. And I definitely will also do my best, as you suggest, to avoid tweaking or supporting the current psychopathic lead, top-down power sucking system we find ourselves stuck in once again.

And feel free to stop by if you ever find yourself biking near Frederic and I’ll give you a tour of my experiments in simple living and share some of the goodness I have found.

Be Well and Keep Your Head Above Water, Where It’s Easier to Breath!

Tom

From Jablon Gardens – Where Morethan Apples Are Mostly Free-Grown.

Frederic WI