We Are Here

WE ARE HERE

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it. Friedrich Nietzsche

Kaufmann, Walter. 1967. Basic Writings of Nietzsche. trans. and ed. p. 714.

If we don’t blow ourselves off the face of the earth in the struggle for diminishing scarce resources, humanity will survive. We are a powerfully resourceful and inventive animal. However, if we don’t address the issues below then in the long run it will be same old, same old. We will repeat what all animals do and what is particular to us humans.

As an expression of life, as a representative animal and as ourselves, we are exactly how we would end up. We are not dysfunctional, as some would have it. We did not take a wrong turn in the past, ten thousand years ago at the agricultural revolution. We are not a cancer on the earth and we are not disconnected from our environment.

There are several natural factors that have aimed us at this particular moment in human history, where population pushes against resource availability, where as a social animal we stand against each other, where we are immersed in an environment of our own creative making and where our brilliance threatens us.

We are exactly where we have to be. It is the nature of the beast. Every life form, amoeba, oak tree, aphid, mouse, will make as many of their kind as the resources in the environment permit. And they will use those resources until they are no more and they either die out or relocate to more resources.

We are no different. We have population density because we can. Unlimited growth is written into the code of life. In the universe’s ironic wisdom, not only are we driven by this code, but also it feels good. And, oh my, we know it feels good. So we mate and we do what we can to be able to mate.

And as any lifeform will do, we will use all the resources available to us both for propagation and for enduring in the present. Here enters the second prong of overshoot – population pressure. We are devouring our environment as fast as we find ways to use it.

As David Price states in his great essay that all should read:

“All species expand as much as resources allow and predators, parasites, and physical conditions permit. When a species is introduced into a new habitat with abundant resources that accumulated before its arrival, the population expands rapidly until all the resources are used up.”¹

Price is defining the process of overshoot, the convergence of the dual population issues of density and pressure. (See also Catton, William. 1980. Overshoot. University of Illinois Press. Chicago).

Overshoot as noted is a characteristic of life itself. Another critical aspect defining our present situation is territoriality/tribalism. Many organisms define territory. The song of birds, the scent of dogs, the deed of homeownership each expresses marking of territories. As a social animal, our territories extend beyond solid things. Our groups are part of our territory. Our congregation, a clan, a tribe, and a nation these and others commandeer loyalty, energy, and defense if deemed necessary. This need for and protection of our social groups is a critical part of being human. Important to note the threat to any of these does not have to be directly physical. (See bibliography US and Them at the end of the essay)

The infant human’s need for attachment is well documented. This need evolves with the advent of language and self into a need to belong. There is voluminous evidence for attachment needs of all humans cross culturally. There is evidence for the behavioral and emotional results of various kinds of attachments. The need for identity is closely related to attachment. Here there is also significant research available as well as research on the disturbances of poorly formed identity. (See bibliography ATTACHMENT at end of the essay)

I am using the generalized term tribalism to indicate this human need for social identity and its protection. Tribalism dictates the stresses that limited resource create whether they are real or imaginary. When the physical scarcity of resources raises its ugly head, whether it is land, wood, oil, food, or mates, the group looks beyond their boundaries for more.

Support of the group is not particular to the human animal; however, we have several unique takes on it. We create group identities, boundaries of belonging of all sorts that are not physical or directly related to physical survival. A threat to our group(s) is a threat to our stability psychologically, socially and also perceived as physically.

Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God.

(-Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author (1903-1998)

Benjamin Spock, Decent and Indecent (1970), quoted in Rebecca Davison and Susan Mesner, eds. The Treasury

Of Religious & Spiritual Quotations: Words to Live By (Pleasantville: Reader’s Digest, 1994), p. 224.)

William Bridges indicates four ways we are embedded in our world – identity, engagement, orientation and enchantment. (Bridges, W. 1989. Transitions. Addison-Wesley. N.Y.) (See also my essay for a more in depth description of these aspects - http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/03/transitions.html) Disruption of these especially our enchantment, our way of seeing the world, our way of making sense of the world and our place in it, is a serious threat.

Some atheists and other critics of religion like to use the analogy of a crutch for religion – which it is something that the weak use to get them through otherwise difficult situations. The implication is that, if they were stronger (like us) they could dispense with the crutch and walk independent and free. [But] you cannot pull a crutch from underneath a cripple and expect him or her to walk. Rather, they will fall and then probably blame you for the accident. The real point is more profound but perhaps more discouraging: religion for the religious person is like culture for the cultural person – it is glasses, not crutches. And these glasses are not prophylactic – they do not help the person to see “better.” They make seeing at all possible. Maybe an ultimate analogy for culture in general and religion in particular is not glasses but the very eyes themselves. You could not expect to pull someone’s eyes out and have them see better, any more than you could expect to take away someone’s culture and have understand and act better.

Eller, David. 2010. “The cultures of Christianities.” In The Christian Delusion edited by John W. Loftus. Prometheus. N.Y. pg. 44

In may seem that I am targeting religions as the bad boy of group cohesiveness and group violence. Religion, spirituality and their many facets and manifestations have been an interest of mine for decades so I have more sources for them. There is considerable literature around these issues. (See US AND THEM in the bibliography). Nationalism, tribalism and other exclusionary groupings have contributed to violence against the other across human history and human cultures.

Religion creates unchallengeable aspects – such as salvation or submission – that are as proprietary as a deed to a home. The group and the individuals of the group must defend these unchallengeable aspects for continued belonging and stability.

The postulation of invisible, undetectable effects that (unlike atoms and germs) are systematically immune to confirmation of disconfirmation is so common in religions that such effects are sometimes taken as definitive. No religion lacks them, and anything that lacks them is not a religion, however much it is like a religion is other regards. Pg. 164. Dennet, Daniel. 2006. Breaking the Spell. Viking. N.Y.

A fourth and particularly human issue is our manipulation of the environment both physical and social. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, we are a powerfully creative and inventive animal. Our abilities in using the natural environment and manufacturing devices of all kinds to facilitate our living more easily in the moment on the earth is our particular tool for survival. The eagle has its eye sight, its soaring, its talons as tools for survival; ours is in part our technological ability (I believe we have an even more profound ability that allows enculturation of all humans, see: http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/05/self-talk-human-adaptation.html).

These abilities carry with them a flaw, a flaw that may well be fatal. We are not designed to consider the long term. We are designed to be aware of the immediate; the tiger in the brush, the viper in the tree – immediate dangers and fears – the fight or flight response. Only particular and a limiteds number of members of a group see into the distance.

Consider it this way. If humanity is seen as a person who is 100 years old, the first 99 years of her life would have been spent as gatherer and hunter. She would have only one year to adapt to the changes in family structure, living arrangements, child rearing and all the other pressures and stresses that the shift to agriculture brought. This same 100 year old person would have five or six days to adapt to the enormous changes brought about by the industrial revolution. And less than a day to adapt to the mass of information made available by electronics.

Each adaptation moves us further away from the original social and physical environment of our emergence. Is it bad or wrong? This is not the criteria. There is no fault. Each accommodation comes from necessity and is the best we know at the time. At the leading edge of human history is an accumulation that expands and deepens the knowledge of our travels. (From my essay: http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2010/05/superman-plays-with-kryptonite-dice.html)

We are burdened with a belief in our specialness which we think manifest as our seeming control of the environment. This control is an illusion founded in perhaps arrogance, short sightedness and hubris. The evidence that it is an illusion continues to manifest itself and is given proof by the convergence of the many issues facing humanity at this point in time. Ozone depletion, acid rain, nuclear waste, oil spills, population predicated on a nonrenewable resource, radiation in the air, radiation in the water, medicines in our drinking water, depletion of clean water globally, melting of glaciers and ice caps the list goes on and on.

We simply do not account for unintended consequences. One of the powerful unintended consequences is our distance if not mental and emotional divorce from the living environment. We are absolutely connected to our environment, an environment of our own making, mechanical timings and straight lines. By losing our awareness of and embeddedness in the living environment, our sense of specialness blinds us to the true connectivity of all things. This imperils our very existence. And it is cumulative.

A fifth aspect of our humanness that threatens our existence is inequality.  When humans groups grow beyond the gatherer/hunter size, a disparity evolves.   The stronger, “richer”, sometimes smarter will hold higher assess to resources and reproduction.  As groups grow in size, the disparity grows along with it.

Five natural aspects of life and being human have been named: population, resource consumption, tribalism, unintended consequences of our “genius” and inequality.

How to accomplish this “social engineering” while being fair and not dictatorial should be the immediate debate and exploration. How do we enjoy the pleasure and sensuality during procreation and separate the pleasure and sensuality from procreation? When do we instill these behaviors and attitudes while protecting the young from power-over? How do we assess technological applications without stifling creativity and inventiveness? How do we reemerge our enchantment into the web of life and celebrate that connection? If these issues demand development of politics, economics and even religion, how do we protect against tyranny?

I have thought about these issues for decades. I don’t know.

****************************************************************************

¹ Price,David. 1995. Energy and Human Evolution. Originally published in “Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies”, Volume 16, Number 4, March 1995, pp. 301-19. See original at: http://www.dieoff.org/page137.htm or http://www.mnforsustain.org/price_d_energy_and_human_evolution.htm

US AND THEM

Dennet, Daniel. 2006. Breaking the Spell. Viking. N.Y.

Avalos, Hector. 2005. Fighting Words. Prometheus. New York.

Berreby, David. 2005. Us and them: understanding your tribal mind. New York: Little, Brown and Co.

Cumpsty, John. 1991. Religion As Belonging. University Press of America. N.Y.

Docker, John. 2008. The Origins of Violence: Religion, History and Genocide. University of New South Wales.

Douglas, Tom. 1995. Scapegoats: Transferring blame. Routledge. N.Y.

Ellens, J. Harold. 2007. The destructive power of religion: violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Gaylen, Willard. 2003. Hatred. Public Affairs. N.Y.

Larsen, Stephen. 2007. The fundamentalist mind: how polarized thinking imperils us all. Trade paperback. N.Y.

Newberg, Andrew. 2006. Why we believe what we believe: uncovering our biological need for meaning, spirituality, and truth. Free Press. N.Y.

Prothero, Stephen. 2010. God is not One: The eight rival religions that run the world- and why their differences matter. Harper. N.Y.

Rozenblit, Bruce. 2008. Us against them: how tribalism affects the way we think. Kansas City, MO: Transcendent Publications.

Rue, Loyal D. Religion is not about God. Rutgers University Press.

Schimmel, Solomon. 2008. The tenacity of unreasonable beliefs: fundamentalism and the fear of truth. Oxford University Press, USA.

Spock, Benjamin. 1970. Decent and Indecent. Quoted in Rebecca Davison and Susan Mesner, eds., The Treasury of Religious & Spiritual Quotations: Words to Live By (Pleasantville: Reader’s Digest, 1994), p. 224.

Volkan, Vamik. 2004. Blind Trust. Pitchstone. Virginia.

Wellman, James. 2007. Belief and Bloodshed. Rowman and Little. N.Y.

Wentz, Richard. 1993. Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion. Mercer University Press. Georgia.

ATTACHMENT

Abrams, D., Hogg, Michael, Marques, J. 2005. The social Psychology of Inclusion and Exclusion. Psychology Press. New York.

Bruhn, J; Philips, B.; Levine, P; and Mendes de Leon, C. 1987. Social Support and Health: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland Publishing. N.Y.

Donaldson, F. 1995. “Belonging: That Bargain Struck in Child’s Play. ReVision. V. 17. No. 4. p. 25-34.

Fajans, J. 1985. "The Person in Social Context: The Social Character of Banning 'Psychology'." In Person, Self, and Experience. Edited by G. M. White and J. Kirkpatrick. Univ. of California Press. Berkeley.

Main, M. and Weston, D. 1982. "Avoidance of the Attachment Figure in Infancy: Descriptions and Interpretations." In The Place of Attachment in Human Behavior. Edited by C. . Parkes and J. Stevenson-Hinde. Basic Books. N.Y. Pages31-59.

Lynd, Helen Merrell. 1965. On Shame and the Search for Identity. Science Editions. N.Y.

Parkes, C.M. and Stevenson-Hinde, J. 1982. The Place of Attachment in Human Behavior. Basic Books. N.Y.

Prior, Vivien and Glaser, Danya. 2006. Understanding Attachment and Attachment Disorders. Jessica Kingsley Pub. London.

Reite, M. and Field, T. Editors. 1985. The Psychobiology of Attachment and Separation. Academic Press. New York.

Sroufe, L. Alan, and Fleeson, June. 1986. "Attachment and the Construction of Relationships." Relationships and Development. Edited by W. Hartup and Z. Rubin. Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Hillsdale, N.J.

Williams, K, Forgas, J. von Hippel, W. 2005. The Social Outcast. Pschology Press. New York.

May 2011

Self Talk - the Human Adaptation

This was written several decades ago. It is a shortened version. It is a different direction than most of my essays presented here.

SELF CONSCIOUSNESS:

THE HUMAN ADAPTATION

(There may be some confusion how I use/mean the term “self consciousness” especially the somewhat loaded term “consciousness”. The concept I am trying to convey is the self-talk, the internal talk that all of us do. Sometimes it seems like a broken record, this we call ruminating. It is “programmed” in multiple verbal and non-verbal ways from birth onward. Some of it is not even talk but “feelings” because it was communicated in the preverbal developmental period.)

HOMO spiritualis - In search of meaning

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The miracle said 'I" and then was still

lost in the wing-bright sphere of his own wonder:

as if the river pause to say a river,

or thunder to self said thunder,

As once the voice had spoken, now the mind

uttered itself, and gave itself a name;

and in the instant all was changed, the world

two separate worlds became -

Conrad Aiken. Collected Poems.

The development of a complex and learned communication system in humans coupled with the highly developed feedback systems of our brain has made us a highly adaptable animal. Humans can be placed in any wide variety of environments and a way will develop for surviving in that environment. Along with learning a physical survival system, a way of human interaction will also arise.

So often the importance of language is placed solely on the exchange of information between people. This is only one side of the coin. I want to emphasize that the internal monitoring that our language ability allows is an equally important adaptation for human survival. Self-consciousness allows the developing human to learn acceptable ways of being and to have an internal monitor to regulate our behavior.

For adaptive survival, the eagle has the talon and keen eyesight, the porcupine it’s quills; we have the internal dialogues that are a coupling of our complex feedback systems and language. We have self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness is the process that allows the child to learn about and adapt to the most necessary, most complicated, and potentially most dangerous component of our environment - other humans. The human child must spend many years learning how to live. Most important are not the raw data of physical survival, but the intricacies of social behavior and acceptance.

Early in human life we “learn”, in many ways and on multiple levels, acceptable social modes of behavior. Self-consciousness is the comparative process that allows us to monitor, mediate, modify, or inhibit our individual behavior to obtain social membership. Self-consciousness generates guilt when our individual behavior is incongruent with the social behaviors we were taught. Guilt is a powerful regulator of our activities.

The human child is taught these ways of being through the family and immediate social environment. This learning begins at birth with some evidence of the emotion of shame being generated as early as 18 months. The primary teaching begins in earnest with the arrival of language ability around two years of age. A child is taught how to be angry, how to display their gender, what is valued, what is acceptable. This teaching is both verbal and nonverbal. The monitoring and constricting of behavior to conform to these teachings is accomplished by our internal self-talk feedback system. Thus it is the convergence and co-evolution of the brain’s feedback activity and language that allows for our wide range of environmental and cultural adaptability.

Do other animals have something akin to self-consciousness? Perhaps. Do other animals have communication? Yes. It is the evolutionary leap of our sophisticated language that makes such a huge difference. Survival information for all life forms is stored and available through genetic inheritance and mutation. Language metaphorically becomes the genes of a new evolution. Language adds a new dimension to this process of storing and retrieving information. Language does not supersede the genetic information system but mediates, modifies, and extends.

How do I propose that spirituality arises from self-conscious-ness? The truly revolutionary aspect of self-consciousness is that it allows us to step out of the moment. In essence, it allows us to alter our involvement with time and space. We can shape in our imagination the past or future and we can rearrange or recombine our mental contents in space.

Self-consciousness is experiencing the experience. Once again, if asked if you are happy, you must step outside whatever your particular state in order to assess that state. Self-consciousness puts us “beside” our self, looking at our self. We interrupt and manipulate time and space. In doing this we seemingly step outside the flow of life, outside the immediate. We live not in the moment. Using our self-consciousness we can rekindle and resentiment the past or we can dream and project the future. We are the director and producer of our own dramas by manipulating the sets of events, people and things.

Being in the flow (grace) is a normal and necessary state of life. Time and space are outside the awareness of other animals. They are enmeshed within it. They have no codifying language system to couple with their feedback processes to be aware of time or space, as we know it.

Self-consciousness appears to work contrary to being in the flow. The very functioning of self-consciousness interrupts and manipulates time and space. Our mental mediation of time and space seemingly outside the flow of life generates at our core a sense of separation. We are “beside” our self. This sense of separateness is subtle. If unchallenged it is at the very most a nagging feeling - a predisposition. It is a seed of doubt.

This feeling of being outside is illusory; we cannot be outside the flow and be alive. Illusion or not, this does not keep the seed of doubt, the sense of separateness, from being a main experience of all humanity.

In the best of all possible worlds this sense of being disconnected would remain subtle and far from awareness. However, the necessities of socialization amplify the aloneness. The growing child can hardly avoid dissonances and contradictions in the learnings of the social environment. Parents are not necessarily consistent either individually across time or between themselves. Depending on the individual and the environment, this illusion of disconnection is magnified in our attempts to fit into the social environment. The more dissonance the greater is the craving for belonging, hence unity.

Self-consciousness is a double-edged sword. It is our tool for meeting our need to belong in the social fabric. It allows for the monitoring of the behaviors that support membership in the social setting. On the other edge in functioning to allow us to step out of time and space, it generates at our core a feeling of separateness at best, alienation at worst.

So our most powerful adaptive tool, self-consciousness, drives us to seek unity. It drives us to find the present moment, a place without time or space. It moves us to search for the experience and the experiencing of unity with the cosmos, with the whole. This feeling of separateness, of being outside, comes up against our broadly defined living need of being in the flow, of belonging in the familial as well as the existential sense. Energy and tension are generated. Human life becomes a search, a quest towards being back in the flow, towards belonging, towards unity. This is the root of spirituality.

A FUN ASIDE

The creation myth in the Old Testament is a beautiful metaphor for the spiritual quest that self-consciousness brings to us. With the eating from the tree of knowledge, we come to know of ourselves. We see our nakedness. We are beside ourselves. We are banished from the garden. This is the ultimate not belonging. This is descriptive of the existential and illusory separateness that is particularly human. This has been called original sin.

Adam and Eve are exiled before finding and eating from the tree of immortality, eternal continuity. Humans are forced to face limitations, losses and death. The unfolding, evolving self can become and may continue to become more self-aware as we learn to pass through life's transitions and changes.

Not belonging with its painful feeling of shame is both bane and blessing. Shame is hurtful and hurting, often destructive. Arising from our very human need for belonging, shame can create new forms of belonging, supporting our survival and continuity.

In a relevant and soulful statement, John Lee Hooker, the blues singer and musician, said that the blues began when God told Adam and Eve to get out of the garden. Thus begins our search; a uniquely personal and human quest towards unity, towards soul.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS PLUS

Flexible social interaction and the broad range of environmental adaptations are emphasized as the primary adaptive advantage of self-consciousness. This reflective function and our other self-referential activities produce two other very human results. The first being technology. Although shared in a minimal way with other animals, technology is most highly developed in humans. The second, spirituality, might easily be noted as the defining characteristic of humanity although it may be a by-product of the referential process. It may also be our next step on the evolutionary road.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS: TECHNOLOGY

Self-consciousness seemingly allows us to step out of the ongoing experience of time and space. Whether we ruminate over a recent slight or recall in joyful detail a long past pleasant experience, we have removed ourselves from immediate time and space. I believe the ability to as it were step out of time and space and mentally manipulate structures and functions is at the root of technological developments.

I am defining technology as a process of modifying time and/or space by structural transformations, functional analogs, and inputting energy. These modifications are usually compressions of time and/or space but may involve expansions.

As an example, gathering and hunting was a means of subsistence for 99% of human history. It required space in square miles and fluctuated with nature’s rhythms across time. With the development of agriculture, space requirements became measured in acres and time was bounded by a specific growing season. Transportation technologies are also easily seen as examples of this definition of technology.

Technological development can be social or physical and usually involves both. Technology is one of the identifying characteristics of humanity and is a result of the same activities of manipulating time and space that determine self-consciousness.

Two modes for finding unity.

The ego has a stimulus range. It is the experiences outside this range that are the pathways to the cosmos, to the white light, to unity. The existence of a stimulation range of the ego comes from the evidence of various ways the White Light or unity is experienced. One path is the through meditation or fasting or sensory deprivation or depression. This is the “too little” end of the range. The ego needs a level of stimulation to keep it from “eating on itself”. When low input of stimulation is coupled with ritualized processes (chanting or yogic body positions or concentration on a point in space) then the underlying processes are made accessible.

When the ego receives too much stimulation in the form of whirling dervish dancing or continual sexual stimulation or psychoactive drugs or depression then it overloads and lets go of its control. Here the White Light or Cosmos explodes into experience.

Notice I have put depression in both the low and the high input. There is the depression that is the dark night of the soul where existence shrinks to a point of nonexistence. There is also a depression that is an overwhelming brain chatter. Both of these occur under perceived duress and with the loss of the ability to use earlier adaptations successfully to manage the duress.

Each person’s ego range is unique to them as well as to their experience at the particular time. The experience of the White Light can be a conscious quest or an involuntary eruption bypassing the controls of the ego.

(I don’t imagine these two modes as a continuum with individual ego in the middle. More like an island in which two oceans meet. Metaphorically, like Terra Del Fuego where the Atlantic and Pacific come together.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPORTIVE READINGS

Aiken, Conrad. 1970. Collected Poems. Oxford University Press, N.Y. p.714

Baumeister, Roy. 1986. Identity. Oxford U. New York.

Benyakar, M; Kutz, I; Dasberg, Haim; Stern, M. "The Collapse of a Structure: A Structural Approach to Trauma." Journal of Traumatic Stress. V.2. No. 4. 1989. p. 431-449

Bishop, D. 1995. Mysticism and the Mystical Experience. Susquehanna University Press. Toronto.

Boyden, S. 1992. Biohistory: The Interplay Between Human Society and the Biosphere. Parthenon. Paris.

Brazelton and Cramer. 1990. The Earliest Relationship. Addison-Wesley. N.Y.

Bridges, W. 1989. Transitions. Addison-Wesley. N.Y.

Bronson, Gordon. 1982. "Structure, Status and Characteristics of the Nervous System at Birth." Psychobiology of the Human Newborn. Edited by Peter Stratton. John Wiley and Sons. N.Y.

Catton, William. 1980. Overshoot.. University of Illinois Press. Chicago.

Clark, Wilson. 1975. Energy for Survival. Anchor Books. N.Y.

Cohen, Mark Nathan. 1977. The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. Yale University Press. New Haven

Cook, N. 1986. The Brain Code. Methuen. N. Y.

Deikman, A. 1966. “De-automatization and the Mystic Experience.” Psychiatry. V. 24 #4. P. 324-338.

Eccles, John. 1989. Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self. Rutledge. N. Y.

Emde, R. N. 1984. "Levels of Meaning for Infant Emotions: A Biosocial View." In Approaches to Emotions. Edited by Scherer, K; Ekman, P. Lawrence Erlbaum. London. Pages 77-108.

Fox, N. 1985. "Sweet/Sour - Interest/Disgust: The Role of Approach - Withdrawal in the Development of Emotions." In Social Perception in Infants. Edited by T. Field and N. Fox. Ablex Publications. Norwood, N.J.

Fox, N and Davidson, R. 1984. "Hemispheric Substrates of Affect: A Developmental Model." In The Psychobiology of Affective Development. Edited by Fox, N. and Davidson, R. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. New Jersey.

Frijda, Nico. 1988. "The Laws of Emotions." American Psychologist. V.43. No. 5. 349-358.

Frijda, Nico. 1987. The Emotions. Cambridge University Press. N.Y.

Green, M. 1978. Eating Oil. Westview Press. Boulder, CO.

Gruen, Arno. 1988. The Betrayal of the Self. Grove Press. N.Y.

Herman, J; Perry, J.; van der Kolk, B. 1989. "Childhood Trauma in Borderline Personality Disorder." American Journal of Psychiatry. V. 146:4. p. 490-495.

Izard, Carroll E. 1977. Human Emotions. Plenum Press, N.Y.

Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie . 1985. "The Aftermath of Victimization: Rebuilding Shattered Assumptions." In Trauma and Its Wake edited by Charles Figley. Brunner/Mazel. N. Y.

Khan, M. Masud R. 1974. "The Concept of Cumulative Trauma." . The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Volume 18. Pages 286-306. International Universities Press. N. Y.

Kegan, P. 1982. The Evolving Self. Harvard University Press. Cambridge.

Lewis, M. 1992. Shame - The Exposed Self. The Free Press. N.Y.

Luria, A. R. 1973. “The Frontal Lobes and the Regulation of Behavior.” In Psychophysiology of the Frontal Lobes. Edited by K. Pribram and A. Luria. Academic Press. N. Y.

Lynd, Helen Merrell. 1965. On Shame and the Search for Identity. Science Editions. N.Y.

Miller, Alice. 1990. Drama of the Gifted Child. Basic Books. N.Y.

Odum, Howard T. and Odum,Elisabeth C. 1976. Energy Basis for Man and Nature. McGraw-Hill Book Co. N. Y.

Olds, J. 1977. Drives and Reinforcements: Behavioral Studies and Hypothalamic Functions. Raven Press. N. Y.

Ridley, M. 1994. The Red Queen. MacMillan. N. Y.

Reader, A. 1995. “The Internal Mystery Plays: The Role and Physiology of the Visual System in Contemplative Practices.” Alternative Therapies. V. 1. No. 4. P. 54-63.

Sperry, Roger, 1990. “Forebrain commissurotomy and conscious awareness.” In Brain Circuits and Functions of the Mind. Edited by Colwyn Trevarthen. Cambridge Univ. Press. N. Y.

Starhawk. 1987. Truth or Dare. Harper and Row. San Francisco.

Tuchman, Barbara. 1978. A Distant Mirror. Knopf. N. Y.

van der Kolk, Bessel. 1988. "The Trauma Spectrum: The Interaction of Biological and Social Events in the Genesis of the Trauma Response." Journal of Traumatic Stress. V.1:3. pp. 273-290.

Watzlawick,P.; Weakland, J; and Risch, R. 1974. Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. Norton. N.Y.

It is natural

A beaver dam is part of the natural environment. The CO₂ being released into the environment by the burning of fossil fuels is a part of the natural environment. Automobiles are part of the natural environment. The space shuttle is a part of the natural environment.

Some of these statements are bound to ruffle a few enviro and eco feathers.

Many people believe that humans are not separate from the web of life but are an integral part of it. Yet, they arbitrarily draw lines eliminating some human activities as not natural.

We protect the bald eagle with its sharp eyes, high soaring and sharp talons. They would celebrate these genetic tools. We would defend the beaver’s right to build dams. We could argue that it is an ecological process of enrichment and regrowth; not destructive and besides it is the genetically determined tools that have evolved. There is probably no animal or plant that we would demean for the tools it uses to be effective and survive. These tools allow it efficacy and control.

Yet we humans do nothing more or less than the eagle and the beaver. We use our evolved faculties in the same way. Although I don’t consider tool development and use to be the defining factor of being human, it is obviously a component or off shoot of the faculties that have evolved in the generation of our species. All humans make and use tools.

Most of our tools and activities have analogs (similarities) in nature. When the impatiens flower has gone to seed, the structure holding the seeds is under tension. The slightest jarring will spring the structure open, exploding the seeds far from the plant. This is only one of many mechanisms that life uses to spread itself into new environments. How in the long run is the space shuttle different?

Many plants will release chemicals into the soil around them to discourage, if not kill, other invading plants. There are many insects that use various methods to protect themselves and their territory; i.e., camouflage or poisons. And, of course, there are urine markings of territory by dogs and other animals. How does this differ from fences, deeds, copyrights, patents, and wars to protect territories that we humans use?

Perhaps for some people they can hold the distinction between humans being a natural, integral part of the natural environment and some but not all of there activities also being a part of the natural environment, I get confused where to draw the line. More importantly by separating some of our activities from our naturalness, we move it away from us. It allows us to throw up our hands in dismay. It allows us to deny responsibility.

This is the rub. If we do not accept that all we do is a natural outcome of our innate abilities, then we can claim a lack of control, an inertia to the technological process, an innocence to whatever the outcomes of our activities. This attitude I believe prevails among the many peoples of the industrialized nations. It provides a subtle shift that allows non-responsibility.

There is a popular fiction among many environmental thinkers that if we could only live more naturally, things would be better. This usually means some minimal use of tools - from gathering and hunting to rudimentary agriculture. This is both a denial of our inherent aptitude and a move away from responsibility for all of our behavior.

It is not my purpose here to say all technology is good or bad. This is mute question if it is natural. The environment both locally and globally respond to our activities just as it does to prairie fires from lightening strikes, the natural rhythms of global climate or the earth being struck by a large meteor.

Responsibility is at the core of this essay. We are an incredibly successful animal (thus far) with genetic tools that allow powerful change. We have all the drives for species survival and reproduction of any other animal. We deny in a subtle way that we are part of nature by denying that are various means of survival are part of the ongoing evolution in nature. This allows a blind spot that is very dangerous, because we can shirk responsibility saying, “the devil made me do it.”

Next:

If we accept the whole of our participation on the earth taking responsibility for it as part of our powerful survival abilities, this raises several questions.

1. What are our tools that are the equivalent of the hawk’s eyes, talons and soaring ability?

2. If we assess a danger to our impact on the earth how do we choose an approach or measure for sustainability?

3. Are there clues that we must rein in our technology and become responsible for it?

Just Say I

I am polluting our ground water by using the natural gas from fracking. I am creating havoc in the oceans by spilling life-killing oil. I am also plasticizing the oceans. I am also limiting or eliminating species after species in the ocean, on the land, in the air. I am putting my medicines into the rivers and the water supply. I am greedily creating food sources that only I control. I am removing the topsoil. I am gouging huge holes in the earth. I am burning coal and creating nuclear waste for thousands of years to come for my flat screen television, my computer and my DVD player. I am putting mercury and acids into the air, water and life. I am melting the ice caps and the glaciers. I am heating the planet to drive my snowmobile, my wave runner, and my four-wheeler and to drive to any damn place I want. I am using many people to cater to my many whims.

I saw the DVD “What a Way to Go” yesterday. It was very well done in listing the freight train laden with our woes coming straight at us. The many speakers continually said, “we are doing this” and “we are doing that”. They must have been talking about me. Because I am aware of these things and more and I keep doing it.

The New Middle Ages

We will go kicking and screaming down the path to the new Middle Ages as fossil fuels desert us. With the decline of available energy, those of most of us who have sat at the top of the energy pyramid will become the new peasants. With the popular view of the Middle Ages as a brutal and dirty time filled with famine and disease and at the mercy of armed overlords. We cringe at the thought.

With great sadness, we must recognize the direct connection between present day population levels and the use of fossil fuels in food production, medical procedures, medicines and hygiene. With the fall in fossil fuel availability there will be a reduction in population. Population soared with the industrial revolution and the development of industrial, fossil fuel based agriculture. It cannot be sustained.

I will try not to reinvent the wheel. There are many well researched and written works on these issues. I provide references to works that underline points I am making. (See both POPULATION and PETROLEUM PRODUCTS listings in the bibliography.)

We need to celebrate our inventiveness and wonderment. We must also recognize there will be losses of people that will evoke great grieving. There will be losses of dreams. There will be great stresses causing both physical and emotional pain. We must honor these in each person. We must not get trapped in these, seeking a control through blaming others or ourselves, through seeking scapegoats or self-flagellation. Humans have a history of this during times of great losses (black death of the Middle Ages). We must beware.

The Middle Ages have been given somewhat of a bad rap. Yes, there was little buffer from year to year for the bulk of humanity against hunger and famine. Medicine was primitive and poorly conceived. Hygiene was not understood. And yes, there were the rich that controlled and took from the poor. Most of humanity worked very hard to make daily living work.

However, let me suggest that this future without fossil fuels may not be significantly different from present once we work through the inevitable losses and grieving. In an Excel spread sheet I created in 2000 looking at the per capita use by country of petroleum, natural gas and electricity, some 75 to 80 per cent of the population had very little use of fossil fuels. Many people today work hand to mouth and lived on the edge with hunger, low energy accessibility, poor water resources and fragile shelter. What is in process is the great leveling of globalization. Many of us will be joining the peasant class.

Through history there seems to be a distribution of wealth and privilege that looks something like:

0.1% Dynastic Oligarchs

1% Administrators (in today’s world - CEOs, Presidents, Fed chairman, etc.)

10 to 15% Functionary Workers (this would be most who are reading this now)

80 to 90% Peasants (Wage Slaves in debt-bondage)

[I had presented something like this to one of my mailing lists and it was modified close to what I am presenting by someone on the list. I did not keep their name. I thank them.]

Today is no different. As I indicated globalization is the new leveling and pathway to peasanthood given the peaking and ultimate depletion of fossil fuels and other resources.

Comments about work and worker control in the Middle Ages are quite interesting.

“ . . . By 1338 Florence was importing 10,000 lengths of cloth while manufacturing 80, 000. . . .

The banking and commercial techniques of the merchant capitalists of Florence effectively enslaved the majority of the thirty thousand textile workers of the city. Describing such medieval conditions, Arnold Hauser in The Social History of Art wrote that

The raising of the output demanded a more intensive exploitation of the available labour, a progressive division of labour and the gradual mechanization of labour methods, by which is to be understood not merely the introduction of machines, but also the depersonalization of human work, the valuation of the worker purely in terms of the output achieved. Nothing expresses the economic philosophy of this new age more trenchantly than precisely this materialistic approach, which estimates a man according to his achievement and the output according to its value in money - the – which, other words, turns the worker into a mere link in a complicated system of investments and financial yields, of risks and of profit and loss, of assets and liabilities.

. . . The assembly-line system of today is criticized in that the workman is only a cog, an element separated – in effect, alienated – from the final, complete product. The Florentine textile workers were alienated, too, and for the same reasons. And they had the added frustration of the entrepreneurs’ refusal to let them form an association. Their bosses knew only too well what power such organizations could offer, for their own power was itself largely founded on the associations or guilds of the Florentine ruling classes.

In order to hold this urban proletariat in check . . . introduce(d) . . .the truck system, which consisted in granting advances in goods or money to be repaid later in work, the goods themselves being, of course, generally overvalued. This chained the workman to his employer.“

Pg. 104-105. Gimpel, Jean. 1975. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. Penguin. N.Y.

What I find absolutely fascinating is that the “truck system” (the company store of “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford) is at work today. Buy, buy, buy. Credit cards, house loans, new cars. Right after 9/11, the president of the United States of America was telling people to buy, buy, buy. Can you quit your job with all this debt? Do you think this is free will? In 2007, $149 billion was spent on advertising in the United States alone. Psychologists, ad people, sociologist get paid top money to convenience you and I to buy, buy, buy on credit.

Another interesting comparison is environmental concerns. We are gouging the earth, polluting the oceans, messing with the ground water, perhaps changing the climate, creating plastic beaches by plastic debris in the oceans and creating all kinds of toxic as well as nuclear material. The past had its own salting of land from irrigation, pollution of rivers and fouling of the air from burning as well as serious resource depletion. Here are two interesting pieces from history. The first is earlier than the Middle Ages.

“Population, fueled by agriculture, rose in an upward moving curve. In a repeating ecological pattern, our growing numbers exhausted the land, strained and polluted the water, depleted the forests, and crowded people into unhealthy conditions. Under these pressures, some people relocated using their feet, the wheel and domesticated energy in the form of animals. Or they died of starvation or pestilence or killed each other off.

One of the early Church Fathers, Tertullian (c. A.D. 160 - 240), commented on the effects of human enterprise on the earth: “Farms have replaced wastelands, cultivated land has subdued the forests, cattle have put to flight the wild beast, barren lands have become fertile, rocks have become soil, swamps have been drained, and the number of cities exceeds the number of poor huts found in former times . . . Everywhere there are people, communities - everywhere there is human life!” To such a point that “the world is full. The elements scarcely suffice us. Our needs press . . . Pestilence, famine, wars, [earthquakes] are intended, indeed, as remedies, as prunings, against the growth of the human race.”

(Gies, Frances and Gies, Joseph. 1994. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. Harper Collins. N.Y. p. 6.)

The second is directly in the Middle Ages.

“The building of thousands of furnaces in hundreds of medieval forests to satisfy the extensive demand for iron was a major cause of deforestation. . . . From the very beginning, the fuel used was charcoal, the black porous residue of burned wood. . . . The extent of the damage caused by iron smelters to forests can be appreciated when one realizes that to obtain 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of iron it was necessary at that time to reduce approximately 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of iron ore with as much as 25 steres (25 cubic meters) (883 cubic feet) of wood. It has been estimated that in forty days, one furnace could level the forest for a radius of 1 kilometer (over a square mile.)”

Pg. 79. Gimpel, Jean. 1975. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle

Ages. Penguin. N.Y.

It is the scope of the changes and environmental degradation that makes this a very different human experience. It is global.

A misconception of the Middle Ages was that it was a time of no learning or creativity – a dark ages. However:

“Over the past forty years, historians have increasingly recognized that technological development “took off” in the medieval and early modern West . . . The “dry” compass, mechanical clock, firearms, and the printing press – all medieval inventions . . . More mundane inventions including new agricultural methods, the wheelbarrow, the spinning wheel, the chimney, and eye glasses, had significant and long-lasting effects on European society. Medieval people also adapted older technologies, such as the watermill and windmill, the stirrup, and gunpowder, to new uses.”

Pg. 111. Whitney, Elspeth. 2004. Medieval Science and Technology. Greenwood Press. London.

“Watermills proliferated in the Middle Ages. As early as the late eleventh century, southern England had over 5,600 mills in approximately 3,000 communities. By about 13000, England had over 9,000 watermills and at least 3,000 windmills. . . . By the fourteenth century, Paris had sixty-eight mills less than a mile from the center of the city. . . .

. . . During the High and late Middle Ages, water-driven mills were adapted to pound hemp, saw wood, make paper, grind grain and pigments, sift flour, strip bark, press grapes for wind and olives for oil, tan leather, forge iron, , prepare cloth, and power bellow used in furnaces. Of these, fulling cloth, the process which cleaned, strengthened, and tightened the weave of woolen or linen cloth, probably had the most sustained economic impact. . . . “

pg. 116-117. Whitney, Elspeth. 2004. Medieval Science and Technology. Greenwood Press. London.

Many of these techniques and technologies will be available to us to provide food, clothing, tools and housing. We will be able to mine the carcass of civilization for many decades. Metal and materials already extracted and processed wait our turning them into useful tools.

We can go kicking and screaming into the new peasanthood or we can plan and learn. We need to assess what medicine and medical technologies can be carried into this new world of less per capita energy. We need to not lose the reams of knowledge that have been gleaned by the hard work of research by tens of thousands of us learning about our world and how it functions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ball, Warwick. 2010. Out of Arabia. Olive Branch. Great Britain.

Brimblecombe, P. and Pfister, C. (editors). The Silent Countdown. Springer-Verlag. N.Y.

Cipolla, Carlo. 1967. The Economic History of World Population. Penguin Books. Baltimore, MD.

Clark, Wilson. 1975. Energy for Survival. Anchor Books. N.Y.

Catton, William. 1980. Overshoot.. University of Illinois Press. Chicago.

Chefurka, Paul. 2007. Population The Elephant in the Room. http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html

Cohen, Mark Nathan. 1977. The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. Yale University Press. New Haven.

Gies, Frances; Gies, Joseph. 1994. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. Harper Collins. N.Y.

Gimpel, Jean. 1975. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. Penguin. N.Y.

Hauser, Arnold. 1951. The Social History of Art. Routledge and Kegan Paul. London.

Le Goff, J. 1980. Time,Work, & Culture in the Middle Ages. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.

Mollat, M. 1986. The Poor in the Middle Ages. Yale. New Haven.

Newman, F. 1986. Social Unrest in the Late Middle Ages. Bhinghamton. N.Y.

Odum, Howard T. and Odum, Elisabeth C. 1976. Energy Basis for Man and Nature. McGraw-Hill Book Co. N. Y.

Pfeiffer, Alan. 2003. Eating Fossil Fuels. New Society. Canada.

Postan, M. 1973. Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy. Cambridge.

Price, David. 1995. Energy and Human Evolution. Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. Volume 16, Number 4, March 1995, pp. 301-19

Ross, S. John . 2008. Medieval Demographics Made Easy. http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

Steinhart, Carol E. and John Steinhart. 1974. The Fires of Culture. Duxbury Press. Mass.

Steinhart, John and Carol Steinhart. 1974. “Energy Use in the U.S. Food System”. in Science 184:307-316, 19 April.

Tuchman, Barbara. 1978. A Distant Mirror. Knopf. N. Y.

Watzlawick,P.; Weakland, J; and Risch, R. 1974. Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. Norton. N.Y.

White, Lynn. 1978. Medieval Religion and Technology. Univ. of California Press. Berkeley.

Whitney, Elspeth. 2004. Medieval Science and Technology. Greenwood Press. London.

PETROLEUM PRODUCTS

Petroleum Products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_product

ProductsfromPetroleum http://peakoil.com/consumption/things-you-didnt-know-were-made-of-oil/

POPULATION

Chefurka, Paul. 2007. Population The Elephant in the Room. http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html

Catton, William. 1980. Overshoot.. University of Illinois Press. Chicago.

Cipolla, Carlo. 1967. The Economic History of World Population. Penguin Books. Baltimore, MD.

McCluney, Ross. 2004. “How Many People Should the Earth Support?” from Humanity's Environmental Future: Making Sense in a Troubled World. SunPine Press, Cape Canaveral, Florida

Pfeiffer, Alan. 2003. Eating Fossil Fuels. New Society. Canada.

Steinhart, Carol E. and John Steinhart. 1974. The Fires of Culture. Duxbury Press. Mass.

Steinhart, John and Carol Steinhart. 1974. “Energy Use in the U.S. Food System”. in Science 184:307-316, 19 April.

Here are some of my blog essays of interest perhaps.

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/02/curmudgeon-report.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/01/energy-in-real-world.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2010/05/superman-plays-with-kryptonite-dice.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/03/do-lemmings-grieve.html