Breeding Politics

Breeding Politics

SEARCHING FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD

by Ethan Stein

OUTLINE

Breeding Politics is a search for a sustainable world. Since such a world does not exist, this must be instead a search for a reasoned and rational world-view – a world-view that should, in some positive way, relate to a 'sustainable world'.

It is undeniable that the world is the sum of everyone's world-view, of everyone's thoughts. And it is undeniable that in order to bring about a positive change in the world, it is necessary that the change occurs first in our thoughts and mental processes.

What are the elements of a sustainable world? A sustainable world, surely, would be organic, stable and harmonious, these three being at the center of Nature's system (see Endnote 1). Without these three elements, is it possible to conceive of a sustainable world? And further, for a sustainable world to exist, must not humans locate themselves within Nature and not outside Nature (as is presently the case)?

Interestingly enough, the human record shows that the evolution of sustainability had earlier occurred repeatedly and this quality had been present, with few exceptions, in all the vast number of pre-industrial societies which we are acquainted with.

Yet today this quality has withered away, victim of a whole slue of forces, most of which are presently considered to be 'progressive'. These 'progressive' forces can be listed: the ending of the wide-spread isolation that human communities previously enjoyed, competition-driven technological changes, the adoption of short-term survival strategies (in lieu of long-term survival strategies), a desire to modify the contemporary world without understanding all the relationships or understanding the natural prerogatives, among others.

Today, in some quarters, there is much angst for the so-called 'traditional' world. This angst is not without foundation. However, it must be understood that there is an important and a direct relationship between what is genuinely 'traditional' and the reality of 'sustainability', and this requirement removes much, if not all, of the 'sheen' associated with many worlds otherwise considered as being 'traditional'.

In order for a society to be considered to have acquired the status of 'traditional', it must have evolved a sustainable relationship with its environment. Otherwise, it is merely antiquitarian, classical, pre-consumerist or simple/primitive, but not genuinely traditional. A genuinely traditional society is anything but simple or primitive – its relationships are exceedingly complex as they must exist within the realm of interdependence with the rest of the natural world.

A genuinely traditional world, one which has achieved a sustainable relationship with its environment, is something way ahead of the short-sighted 'modern' world, even if the 'modern' world has acquired the power to destroy any traditional world a thousand times over.

The 'modern' world's ability to destroy may be its most outstanding quality. This ability to destroy is what gives the modern world its 'strength' ('force'), it is what makes the modern world so attractive, so appealing. (And it is what makes the modern world so dangerous.)

Of course, this is not what people faced with a choice of worlds imagine. They imagine, instead, that the modern world makes all manner of miracles possible: a cosy climate-controlled weather-proof home with a lawn and cars in the garage, a cosy climate-controlled personal vehicle which handles like magic, a network of all-weather roads where traffic flow is regulated by 24-hour automatic lights, the ability to travel almost instantaneously to distant lands, the ability to communicate instantaneously with people everywhere, a condition where all work is accomplished without recourse to muscle power, the prospect of almost anyone 'improving' one's situation through education and hard-work, a limitless supply of near-free energy. The up-side seems endless and at the time there did not appear to be any down-side.

Now, however, we can see the down-side very clearly: near universal social dislocation, destabilisation of atmospheric chemical balances, widespread landscape mutilation and species and ecosystem extinctions. What first seemed a 'birthday party' with 'gifts for all' has instead turned out to be a universal 'snuff party'.

The energy required in the developed world just to air-condition in the summer and heat in the winter is likely to be more than enough to itself cause climate change. The energy required in the developed world just to mow the lawns and blow the leaves is unsupportable in the context of a stable environment. Any analysis of energy use in the developed world leaves one feeling hopeless. And to this has to be added the environmental burdens arising from the aspirations of the vast hordes of the upwardly mobile in the developing world.

Furthermore, the strength in the democratic system of political organisation turns out to lie more in its abilities to prevent entrenchment than to actively select the best. This can leave us with a massive vacuum of leadership which in times of crisis can be most debilitating.

Meditations on these and related topics have led to a number of interesting conclusions:

As in the case of physical characteristics, culture also exists within a process of evolution. Cultural characteristics are based on the selection of characteristics within the context of survival. Under natural conditions, this interaction takes place within the complex relationship that exists between competition and sustainability. Furthermore, under natural conditions the relationship between competition and sustainability produces balance and order.
Intelligence is a product of natural selection (i.e. competition). However, at a certain stage in the growth of intelligence, intelligence and competition become mutually antagonistic. This results in what appears to be a self-defeating proposition: Intelligence, a product of competition, will create conditions wherein sustainability is lost, thereby undermining and endangering the entire natural order and creating the prospect of history developing a cyclical profile.
There appears to be a law of survival (that people will do whatever it takes to survive). If so, then this will eventually interject itself into the process and necessarily sweep away the confounded and obsolete aspects of intelligence (such as residues in the form of creationist myths and opposition to benign population control).
It is only a question of time before the realisation of the antagonism between intelligence and competition makes its presence felt. This is because the negative aspects of the alliance between competition and intelligence are rapidly becoming manifest.
Alternatives to competition have been seeking birth for a long time now, beginning several thousand years ago. Yet the strength of competition is such as to cause a message of universality, tolerance and love to be widely perverted to one of bigotry, intolerance and militant nationalism.
The present economy is based on the destruction of Nature. To save Nature an entirely new and different sort of economy has to arise, one which has many elements in common with the traditional agrarian economy of earlier pre-industrial times. This is because economies which support cities and consumerism are resource-heavy and destructive to the environment.
If the entire planet cannot maintain the standard of living that has lately developed in Industrialised countries, then this standard of living is itself unsupportable, as it is not possible (or moral) to prevent others from seeking what some possess. And if the lifestyle that has lately developed in Industrialised countries is not compatible with a stable and flourishing Nature (which it is not – especially when applied to the entire population of the planet), then this lifestyle must be characterised as being the result of misguided values and policies.
We must not lose sight of the fact that whatever exists, even the things that appear incongruous, is the result of survival strategies playing themselves out, and therefore it is urgently necessary for us to understand and appreciate both the driving forces as well as the scale and scope of the problem.
That the environmental crisis will eventually and inevitably lead to the establishment of one or more new eco-friendly religions which is/are based on the preservation of nature. And also, that various existing religions, which at present have either totally sold out to 'modern economics' and 'industrial development' and/or have yet to grasp the fundamentals of the environmental catastrophe (or which pay a notional 'lip service' to nature), will, under pressure of this catastrophe, develop (or rediscover) hitherto unknown, ignored, dormant, under-evolved, etc, environmentally friendly 'roots'.
Whichever means (or combination of means) arise that move us away from the present morass (of economy based on the destruction of Nature), the law of survival (that people will do whatever it takes to survive) will eventually bring this about. If for no other reason, this would be due to the fact that intelligence has unlimited potential and the seeds of its growth are inherent. The law of survival ensures that a workable alternative to competition will ultimately arise and proliferate.

Why call this Breeding Politics ? It so happens that breeding politics is simply an expression that came into my mind years ago. As I saw it, there were (and are) politics associated with Nature. At every possible level, Nature is filled with politics. And Nature cannot be disassociated with the breeding process. Evolution is in essence a political process.

The leopard needs to get up a tree with its kill, for this it needs super powerful claws. There is a strong direction towards acquiring super powerful claws which is driven by the daily process of survival. On the other hand, the cheetah needs to possess feet which can fly across the ground and so there is a daily process for keeping the claws as small as possible. In fact the cheetah has gone so far as to abandon retractible claws, and has acquired feet which have more in common with dogs than cats. All of this is the result of a daily struggle playing itself out.

Mimicry and camouflage both are pure politics. How can one account for the development of a preying mantis which looks exactly like an orchid, except as politics playing itself out? The same applies to non-venomous snakes which have acquired the appearance of their venomous cousins. The list is endless.

One observes the antics of the hermit crab who decorates his shell so artistically. Surely that is not art for art's sake but art for the sake of some form of politics? In the natural world, males, females and infants alike are all adept at politics. Is there anything about the male lion that is not politics? The females may conduct their politics in an altogether different time-frame, but nevertheless, they too are highly political. Even infants, who seem to be so vulnerable and so helpless, exist in a world of politics. There are politics surrounding the capture of the more productive teats. Early hatchlings survive at a higher rate than late hatchlings. The child learns how to manipulate the adult. All these factors mean juveniles are introduced to the Art of Politics at a very tender age. After all, broadly speaking, politics may be defined as "the arts associated with survival". In fact, the very process of survival is a political act.

One can argue that politics require a conscious awareness of one's self-interest, otherwise it is simply instinct or genetics. But such an argument only serves to maintain the barrier we've chosen, for our own psychological reasons, to erect between ourselves and the rest of Nature and does not appear to be supported by any particular logic. What we humans call politics, Nature calls survival. The process is identical and makes use of the same elements.

Our world is undeniably very bleak, today everything is topsy-turvey. In a world where traditionally order is established by size and strength (not by courtesy and mutual consent), the advent of intelligence has resulted in a challenge of massive proportions. It appears that intelligence is to be built up assidiously and at great cost and must inevitably transit a phase in which it is so incomplete as to be a danger to the group, even if it conveys benefits to the individual.

There are those who argue that humans are selectively headed for extinction and that all our present turmoils are merely inevitable steps in a process that is inevitable.

I see no evidence that humans are headed for selective extinction, yet at the same time feel that we are individually and collectively doing all we can to bring this (and worse) about, so I set out to try to find if there was any 'method in the madness'.

The findings mentioned above would seem to me to be of importance. And while they don't offer any hope that we'll be spared great horrors in the coming years (the facts available to us today indicate the following: the glaciers will melt, the oceans will rise, billions upon billions will be dislocated, nature will be further devastated), still they do indicate a direction, a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. We will eventually 'get our heads together' because that is inherent in the process, and as and when that happens, the healing can and will begin.

(Of course, this presupposes that we don't manage to 'achieve' runaway greenhouse status. If that happens, then of course all bets are off. [see Endnote 2])

At present we appear to be entirely obsessed with wealth-creation, innovative technology and the zealous pursuit of extravagance and pleasure, i.e. consumerism, all of which are, in one way or the other, inevitable consequences of competition and opportunism which, in turn, have managed to gain great merit in our eyes even though they cannot co-exist with mutual respect and cooperation. However, these 'false values' (wealth-creation, innovative technology and consumerism) are rapidly exposing themselves as being suicidal and once this begins to sink in, we should begin to start seeing some positive changes.

I understand that many will not find this prognosis satisfying. From my perspective, while I believe I've managed to find something positive, I had no idea that it existed when I began investigating and I don't think I was particularly predisposed to finding 'silver linings'. But the commonly held idea that humanity will destroy itself didn't seem to match all the available data. Yet, if humanity wasn't to destroy itself, then, as suggested above, some sort of a mechanism had to exist which would prevent this happening, as we seem to be doing just about everything we can to bring this about, i.e. to destroy ourselves.

Perhaps we are 'lucky' to be living in a post-Darwin-Russell world? After all, it is after much confusion and misdirection that we have finally come to understand the mechanism that creates the design of the living physical world. Now, however, we need to utilise the gains acquired by this understanding towards a different, though allied, goal. We need to take our understanding of the mechanism that lies behind the developments which take place in the biotic physical world and use it to acquire an understanding of the process and the opportunities for change as they pertain to the more psychic cultural world. After all, both worlds – physical as well as cultural – exist withing the context of pressures associated with survival.

Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself, so I'll leave it to you to join my exploration as recorded in the chapters given below.

I would mention to the reader that these essays do not follow the lines of an academic study. The reason for this is that when I started writing I had no idea where it was going. As mentioned in the first chapter (Prologue), when I started writing I was primarily interested in what was happening to our feathered friends, the birds. And although the scope widened almost immediately, I still had no idea where it was heading. It was only some 20 years after I started writing, that I began to perceive the basic themes emerging. Perhaps some day I will attempt to pull these ideas together and give clearer expression to their 'logical order', but for the moment, they are as described above - a number of arrows all aimed in the direction of a single target. This 'target' is the basic question: How can humans live on Earth without making a mess? And what are the determining factors?

The reader should feel free to browse the list of chapter titles and read in any way that appeals. On the other hand, there is a 'flow of ideas', so it does make some sense to approach them sequentially.

I would also mention that this is very much 'a work in progress', so any feedback would be much appreciated.

Endnote 1: The notion that sustainability is basic to Nature's system will not find any serious challengers. However, as it is possible that some will challenge the notion that stability and harmony are basic to Nature's system, this inclusion should be justified. With regard to 'stability' the reader is referred to the essay entitled Nature is not… where this matter is explored. In order to regard 'harmony' correctly, we need to adjust our view, to ensure we are viewing the living domain from a comprehensive perspective, one which is free of individualism. Harmony in Nature is brought about by the fact of interdependence.

Endnote 2: The greenhouse gasses locked in the perma-frost lands in the polar regions are now being released as these lands warm as a consequence of global warming.

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Full navigable list of Chapters:

(also available at left of webpage, see link "table of contents")

Basic social mechanics

Time, consciousness and responsibility

Hurdles