Industrial Technology is a Death Cult
Does modern technology serve us? Or do we serve it? Ben Warner asks who is in charge: the machines or us. For more on different types of their relation to the society, read this.
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![[The Ohio River Speaks] Shitting Geese, Omega-3s, and the Arithmetic of Atrocity](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Shitting-Geese-Omega-3s-and-the-Arithmetic-of-Atrocity.jpg)
[The Ohio River Speaks] Shitting Geese, Omega-3s, and the Arithmetic of Atrocity
The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, and fourth part of Will’s journey.
By Will Falk / The Ohio River Speaks
Sometimes I ask the Ohio River questions. And, sometimes she asks me. West of Salamanca, New York, a few miles before the Kinzua Dam traps the Ohio River in the Allegheny Reservoir, I sat in a kayak listening. She was speaking, but I did not understand.
The water was slow. The river’s face was smooth. And, the surface reflected a blue and white mosaic created by lazy cumulus clouds drifting across the sky. She pulled me ever so gently downstream. The sensation was powerfully familiar, but I did not know why.
A mother merganser swam with her five chicks along the closest shore. I smiled at what looked like exasperation on her face as she tried to keep her children moving in the same direction. For a few moments, she anxiously eyed a space downstream where a bald eagle had disappeared into the trees. When she looked back, one duckling had gone one way and one another. The other three didn’t know who to follow.
My mind slowed to match the river’s pace. The random, anxious firing of disparate images that form my moment-to-moment consciousness throttled down until my thoughts almost disappeared entirely. They were replaced by the fullness of my experience of the river. The sun, glinting off a passing dragonfly, left a trail of turquoise light. Bugs skimmed the surface, and appeared to me like the tips of invisible pens writing disappearing messages that only the bugs could comprehend. On the edge of my vision, I saw a splash and the telltale ripples of a leaping trout.
The enchantment continued until a wedge of passing Canada geese pointed right at me. They swept low and the goose flying point shat. The shit slapped my plastic kayak – a direct hit. The honking geese laughed. And, I did, too.
***
I knew the metaphors she presented me with were meaningful. What could be more meaningful than being shit on? But, I wasn’t sure what the Ohio River was trying to communicate until a few days later.
I was listening to an interview given by agricultural critic Richard Manning, author of Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization and other great books. Manning was asked about the global food shortage and whether there would be enough food to feed the world’s human population over the balance of the 21st century. Manning answered no and pointed out how we are already failing to do so “drastically.” He explained that the people who say we are not failing often assume that humans need a certain amount of calories per day (2000 is the most common number). They multiply this number by the world’s total human population. Next, they calculate the total caloric value of the planet’s corn, wheat, and other grain production. Because the total caloric value of agricultural grain production is greater than the calories they claim are needed by humans, many people declare there is no food shortage.
Manning argued, however, that 2000 calories of carbohydrates are not adequate daily nutrition. He pointed out that high carbohydrate diets are, in fact, making humans sick, and that most humans are not getting the nutrition we have evolved to need. Omega-3 fatty acids are one of the most important things missing from most human diets. Omega-3 fats are vital for brain health and, thus, for achieving human potential.
A major problem, however, is that the world is running out of this essential nutrient. Omega-3 fats primarily come from animals, especially cold-water fish. Manning mentioned a study conducted by British scientists. I found the study titled “Is the world supply of omega-3 fatty acids adequate for optimal human nutrition?” by Norman Salem, Jr. and Manfred Eggersdorfer.
Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are the most important Omega-3 fatty acids for human health. The study’s abstract stated that “EPA and DHA originate in the phytoplankton and are made available in the human food chain mainly through fish and other seafood.” However, “the fish catch is not elastic and in fact has long since reached a plateau.” These acids do occur in vegetables, but “vegetable oil-derived alpha-linolenic acid, though relatively plentiful, is converted only at a trace level in humans to DHA and not very efficiently to EPA, and so cannot fill” the gap in human need for EPA and DHA. The study “concluded that fish and vegetable oil sources will not be adequate to meet future needs, but that algal oil and terrestrial plants modified genetically to produce EPA and DHA could provide for the increased world demand.”
The realities of human nutritional needs, fish population collapses, and human population growth confronts us with a series of choices. We can attempt to provide all humans alive today with adequate nutrition. And, in the attempt, exhaust cold water fish, turn the oceans into algae farms, and violate the very DNA of terrestrial plants, while creating mutant plants to serve us. We can work to reduce human population to a point where humans and cold water fish can both thrive and exist. Or, we can do nothing. And, the most privileged among us may enjoy adequate nutrition – for a time – while more and more humans fall victim to malnutrition, while fewer and fewer of us may realize our full human potential.
I remembered the trout I saw leaping near the Allegheny Reservoir. I remembered the ripples whispering with the trout’s passing. I thought of other fish who provide Omega-3 fats: the mesmerizing schools of mackerel twirling like underwater whirlpools, the once mighty runs of red salmon who made so much noise swimming upriver you could hear them a mile away, and the hardy cod who call the deep, cold seas of the North Atlantic home.
***
While I was trying to understand the Ohio River’s message contained in these experiences, I went looking for information on her fish, specifically. I landed on the Ohio River Fish Consumption Advisory Workgroup’s website. This Workgroup is a “multi-agency workgroup consisting of representatives from the six main stem states (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia) as well as the US EPA and the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission.”
The website featured rows of photos of fishermen holding up individual fish of different species. Under each photo, text described how often each species can be eaten and the chemical reason for the advisory. Under a photo of a walleye, for example, the text read “1 meal per month – PCBs.” Under a photo of a sauger, the text read “1 meal per month – Hg.” Under a photo of a white bass, the text read “6 meals per year – PCBs.” But worst of all, under the photos of both a common carp and a channel catfish, the text read “Do not eat – PCBs.” PCBs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency “belong to a broad family of man-made organic chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons.” Hg is mercury.
This made me nauseous. But, probably not as nauseous as eating a common carp or channel catfish would. I wondered how it made the fish feel. I wondered how the chemicals made other animals who eat the fish feel. Mergansers eat fish. Bald eagles do, too. Canada geese are primarily herbivores, but they occasionally eat fish. Hopefully, they observe the advisories and eat less than one meal per month or 6 meals per year.
As I thought of all these creatures, I sensed I was getting closer to understanding the Ohio River’s meaning. That’s when the familiarity I felt while floating in my kayak came back to me. The first physical sensations I ever experienced must have been those I felt floating in my mother’s womb. But, I’m not just my mother’s son. I spent the first, most formative years of my life drinking the Ohio River’s water. I am the Ohio River’s son, too.
But, that wasn’t all of it. The Ohio River pushed me on. My memory drifted farther into the past. Floating was likely our oldest ancestors’ first activity. Floating is familiar because the first motions of Life on Earth began in the movement of water. I saw the primordial oceans receding, glaciers melting, and the Ohio River being born. The Ohio River is a mother. She is also a daughter of the Earth.
Her voice became clear then. I understood what she was saying. On the kayak trip, she showed me her children – mergansers, a bald eagle, a dragonfly, and shitting geese. A few days later, she drew my attention to global problems confronting humans, fish, and her kin, the oceans. To understand these problems, I delved into studies describing the extent of global destruction and found the fish advisories. Then, as I considered the pain industrial poisons cause the Ohio River’s children, she evoked the familiar sensation of floating in a mother’s womb.
The key was the word “familiar.” The Ohio River was asking me for news of her family. She gossips with her sister, the Mississippi, when she joins her near Cairo, IL. But, the Mississippi only offers correspondence from around North America. She listens to her cousins in the global water cycle, the clouds. Clouds and rivers speak similar, but not the same, languages. Sometimes the wind brings tidings from the oceans. But, the wind talks too fast and never stays long. With access to global information at my fingertips, she wanted my help.
Her questions may have been clear all along. Perhaps, my heart prevented me from hearing.
***
The news, of course, is heartbreaking. The 2018 Living Planet Index and Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet Report found that on average the abundance of vertebrate species’ populations monitored across the globe declined by 60% between 1970 and 2014. The study’s authors explained that humans are causing this decline through overexploitation of species, agriculture, and land conversion. This means that, in just 44 years, humans have destroyed more than half the world’s vertebrates. Things are worse for global freshwater species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish which have declined by 83 percent between 1970 and 2014, equivalent to 4% per year since 1970.
This is the arithmetic of atrocity. Every year, due to human destructiveness, the Ohio River’s family grows smaller and smaller.
The 2016 version of the Living Planet Report found that almost half (48 percent) of global river volume had been altered by flow regulation, fragmentation, or both. The authors noted that completion of all dams planned or under construction would mean that natural hydrologic flows would be lost for 93 percent of all river volume.
Most of the Ohio River’s sisters, like she is, are held captive by dams.
Just like the numbers are grim for the animals who live in water, the news is gut-wrenching for the global water cycle. Water is being poisoned on a massive scale. For example, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization states that every day 2 million tons of sewage and other effluents drain into the world’s water. Industry discharges an estimated 300-400 megatons of waste into water bodies every year. And, globally, it is likely that over 80% of wastewater is released back into the water cycle without adequate treatment.
The water forming the Ohio River’s body and the bodies of her relatives is being poisoned.
I read these statistics out loud to the Ohio River. I’m not sure how I thought she’d respond. I waited for several days. Nothing came through my dreams. Inspiration was absent. Writing about other aspects of the river failed. For the first time, the Ohio River had nothing to say to me.
Will Falk is the author of How Dams Fall: On Representing the Colorado River in the First-Ever American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem. He is a practicing rights of Nature attorney and a member of DGR.
What is Permaculture and How Is It Relevant?
In this video, Boris Forkel explores five different forms of human society: agriculture, horticulture, pastoralism, hunter-gatherer, and industrial culture.
By Boris Forkel
In this lecture, we will cover a wide range of 10,000 years of agricultural history. Starting with the initial question “how old is human culture” we argue that humans have been living in a wide range of different cultures, long before some of them started applying agriculture about 10,000 years ago. We distinguish 5 different human cultures, according to the way they get their food and basic resources: Hunter/gatherers, horticulturists, pastoralists, agricultural, and finally industrial culture.
Agriculture of different character developed in some places in the world, and some forms are more destructive than others. The form of grain monoculture that developed about 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent has proven to be the most aggressive one, it is spreading very fast and with it the agricultural society, the people and their genes. It also causes the most devastating consequences for ecosystems. Europe was already ecologically badly damaged towards the end of the Middle Ages, by agriculture and the mining and extraction that was needed to fuel countless wars between European lords and kings.
The Issues with Agriculture
Environmental problems caused by agriculture are not a new phenomena. As a consequence, the European people had a large pressure to expand. The conquest of the Americas is the most recent disaster of this clash of cultures that has been going on for 10,000 years. The American Holocaust is the greatest mass murder in human history, the annihilation of at least 500 unique cultures, languages, peoples and world views that will never come back.
Since “unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture” (Robert Combs), and “Culture” means “enacting a story” (Daniel Quinn), we continue exploring some of the myths of agrarian culture. The question “why we are doing all of this” leads us back to biblical times and a spiral of violence that started with early agrarian empires and their efforts to conquer and colonize the middle east.
Following the development of apocalyptic thinking that originated in the ruined and deeply traumatized societies the empires and their wars left behind, we discover that “authoritarian religion and technocracy are not opposites, but part of a continuum” (Fabian Scheidler).
Transformation through Technology
Finally, we enter the 20th century. Central to apocalyptic thinking is the complete destruction of the old and the creation of a new, better state. To replace the heavenly state for the souls heard by the Last Judgment comes the belief in a transformation of the world through technology. Nature, which is perceived as brutal, raw, wild, imperfect is to be replaced by a better system, created by man.
This is what we are currently doing with our modern capitalist economy. In modern times, especially in the 20th century, the mega- machine, into which agricultural culture had evolved, once again gained enormous momentum through the input of the newly discovered energy sources fossil coal and oil. Also the destructiveness gained enormous momentum which we can see in climate change, ecocide, critical state of freshwater resources etc.
As we know, the 20th century brought new weapons and new wars. A particularly important man, who‘s inventions shaped our recent history, was Fritz Haber. He developed the process of ammonia synthesis in 1909. Ammonium nitrate is the basic material for explosives and also chemical fertilizers. The 20th century was marked by an explosion of human population that planet earth had never seen before. Fritz Haber inventions indeed broke the planetary boundaries by artificially producing more nitrogen than there would be naturally. This was the birth of modern industrial agriculture.
Ecological Restoration
After we have covered all these startling facts, we can finally start thinking about solutions. But we have to learn that “The political system cannot be counted on to reform agriculture because any political system is a creation of agriculture, a co-evolved entity. The major forces that shaped and shape our world –disease, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, trade, wealth– are all part of the culture agriculture evolved. (…) Just as surely, agriculture dug the tunnel of our vision.” (Richard Manning).
We‘ve probably understood during this lecture that the dominant culture, the civilization that is based on agriculture, inevitably leads to colonialism and conquest, and ultimately to the destruction of all life on this planet. That is the history, the present and that will be the future. But the future is ours, and we can change it. We can stop the destruction, and we can build alternative, life-centered cultures with structures and institutions that are based on cooperation, mutual understanding and respect. Whatever happens, the future must be an age of ecological restoration.
After millenia of agriculture, war, colonialism and suppression, all of us are, over generations, severely traumatized by all this violence. We went crazy and thought that we have to conquer and subdue nature and change the world fundamentally with our technology. All peoples who stood in the way of the expansion of agrarian culture were either destroyed or robbed of their land, their spirituality, their culture, and traumatized by violence and oppression, so that they became equally insane. (This is what Jack Forbes called Wétiko disease in his brilliant book Columbus and Other Cannibals.)
Why Permaculture?
I want permaculture to become a remedy that helps us to recover from this delusional state, so in the last part of this lecture we get to know permaculture, its founder Bill Mollison and its basic principles and ethics as a viable alternative. Coming to an end, I want to answer the initial question “Why do we need permaculture?”. Do we want an era of collapse, the apocalypse? Or do we want to take the chance and be protagonists of a new age of ecological restoration?
You may know the slogan swords to plowshares. It comes from the bible and has been used by movements for peace for a long time. But even they did obviously not understand that no lasting peace is possible within agricultural culture. Any peace movement that fails to recognize this must fail. Because whoever has plowshares will soon need swords. Actually, the plowshare itself is already a sword that injures the earth. It is the same analogy as explosives and chemical fertilizers, pesticides and chemical weapons. But we obviously had to break the planetary boundaries first to see these connections.
The more I think about it, the more permaculture becomes a new peace movement for me. So I would like to answer the question “Why do we need permaculture?” as follows: Agriculture is permanently at war (against nature and other people). Permaculture offers the chance for lasting peace.
Boris Forkel is a radical environmentalist, social rights activist and permaculturalist located in Germany. You can learn more about his work on his website BabylonApocalypse.org.
Authoritarian vs. Democratic Technology
In this 1965 thesis, Lewis Mumford describes the organizational structure and functioning of industrial civilization. Mumford warns that the modern systems of technology (technics) ultimately undermine human freedom and the biological integrity of life on Earth.
Authoritarian and Democratic Technics.
“DEMOCRACY” is a term now confused and sophisticated by indiscriminate use, and often treated with patronizing contempt. Can we agree, no matter how far we might diverge at a later point, that the spinal principle of democracy is to place what is common to all men above that which any organization, institution, or group may claim for itself? This is not to deny the claims of superior natural endowment, specialized knowledge, technical skill, or institutional organization: all these may, by democratic permission, play a useful role in the human economy. But democracy consists in giving final authority to the whole, rather than the part; and only living human beings, as such, are an authentic expression of the whole, whether acting alone or with the help of others.
Around this central principle clusters a group of related ideas and practices with a long foreground in history, though they are not always present, or present in equal amounts, in all societies. Among these items are communal self-government, free communication as between equals, unimpeded access to the common store of knowledge, protection against arbitrary external controls, and a sense of individual moral responsibility for behavior that affects the whole community. All living organisms are in some degree autonomous, in that they follow a life- pattern of their own; but in man this autonomy is an essential condition for his further development. We surrender some of our autonomy when ill or crippled: but to surrender it every day on every occasion would be to turn life itself into a chronic illness. The best life possible-and here I am consciously treading on contested ground- is one that calls for an ever greater degree of self-direction, self-expression, and self-realization. In this sense, personality, once the exclusive attribute of kings, belongs on democratic theory to every man.
Life itself in its fullness and wholeness cannot be delegated.
In framing this provisional definition I trust that I have not, for the sake of agreement, left out anything important. Democracy, in the primal sense I shall use the term, is necessarily most visible in relatively small communities and groups, whose members meet frequently face to face, interact freely, and are known to each other as persons. As soon as large numbers are involved, democratic association must be supplemented by a more abstract, depersonalized form. Historic experience shows that it is much easier to wipe out democracy by an institutional arrangement that gives authority only to those at the apex of the social hierarchy than it is to incorporate democratic practices into a well-organized system under centralized direction, which achieves the highest degree of mechanical efficiency when those who work it have no mind or purpose of their own. The tension between small-scale association and large-scale organization, between personal autonomy and institutional regulation, between remote control and diffused local intervention, has now created a critical situation.
If our eyes had been open, we might long ago have discovered this conflict deeply embedded in technology itself.
I wish it were possible to characterize technics with as much hope of getting assent, with whatever quizzical reserves you may still have, as in this description of democracy. But the very title of this paper is, I confess, a controversial one; and I cannot go far in my analysis without drawing on interpretations that have not yet been adequately published, still less widely discussed or rigorously criticized and evaluated. My thesis, to put it bluntly, is that from late neolithic times in the Near East, right down to our own day, two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: one authoritarian, the other democratic, the first system-centered, immensely powerful, but inherently unstable, the other man-centered, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable. If I am right, we are now rapidly approaching a point at which, unless we radically alter our present course, our surviving democratic technics will be completely suppressed or supplanted, so that every residual autonomy will be wiped out, or will be permitted only as a playful device of government, like national ballotting for already chosen leaders in totalitarian countries.
The data on which this thesis is based are familiar; but their significance has, I believe, been overlooked. What I would call democratic technics is the small scale method of production, resting mainly on human skill and animal energy but always, even when employing machines, remaining under the active direction of the craftsman or the farmer, each group developing its own gifts, through appropriate arts and social ceremonies, as well as making discreet use of the gifts of nature. This technology had limited horizons of achievement, but, just because of its wide diffusion and its modest demands, it had great powers of adaptation and recuperation. This democratic technics has underpinned and firmly supported every historic culture until our own day, and redeemed the constant tendency of authoritarian technics to misapply its powers. Even when paying tribute to the most oppressive authoritarian regimes, there yet remained within the workshop or the farmyard some degree of autonomy, selectivity, creativity. No royal mace, no slave-driver’s whip, no bureaucratic directive left its imprint on the textiles of Damascus or the pottery of fifth-century Athens.
If this democratic technics goes back to the earliest use of tools, authoritarian technics is a much more recent achievement.
It begins around the fourth millennium B. C. in a new configuration of technical invention, scientific observation, and centralized political control that gave rise to the peculiar mode of life we may now identify, without eulogy, as civilization. Under the new institution of kingship, activities that had been scattered, diversified, cut to the human measure, were united on a monumental scale into an entirely new kind of theological technological mass organization. In the person of an absolute ruler, whose word was law, cosmic powers came down to earth, mobilizing and unifying the efforts of thousands of men, hitherto all too autonomous and too decentralized to act voluntarily in unison for purposes that lay beyond the village horizon.
The new authoritarian technology was not limited by village custom or human sentiment: its Herculean feats of mechanical organization rested on ruthless physical coercion, forced labor and slavery, which brought into existence machines that were capable of exerting thousands of horsepower centuries before horses were harnessed or wheels invented. This centralized technics drew on inventions and scientific discoveries of a high order: the written record, mathematics and astronomy, irrigation and canalization: above all, it created complex human machines composed of specialized, standardized, replaceable, interdependent parts-the work army, the military army, the bureaucracy. These work armies and military armies raised the ceiling of human achievement: the first in mass construction, the second in mass destruction, both on a scale hitherto inconceivable. Despite its constant drive to destruction, this totalitarian technics was tolerated, perhaps even welcomed, in home territory, for it created the first economy of controlled abundance: notably, immense food crops that not merely supported a big urban population but released a large trained minority for purely religious, scientific, bureaucratic, or military activity.
The efficiency of the system was impaired by weaknesses that were never overcome until our own day.
To begin with, the democratic economy of the agricultural village resisted incorporation into the new authoritarian system. So even the Roman Empire found it expedient, once resistance was broken and taxes were collected, to consent to a large degree of local autonomy in religion and government. Moreover, as long as agriculture absorbed the labor of some 90 per cent of the population, mass technics were confined largely to the populous urban centers. Since authoritarian technics first took form in an age when metals were scarce and human raw material, captured in war, was easily convertible into machines, its directors never bothered to invent inorganic mechanical substitutes. But there were even greater weaknesses: the system had no inner coherence: a break in communication, a missing link in the chain of command, and the great human machines fell apart. Finally, the myths upon which the whole system was based-particularly the essential myth of kingship-were irrational, with their paranoid suspicions and animosities and their paranoid claims to unconditional obedience and absolute power.
For all its redoubtable constructive achievements, authoritarian technics expressed a deep hostility to life.
By now you doubtless see the point of this brief historic excursus. That authoritarian technics has come back today in an immensely magnified and adroitly perfected form. Up to now, following the optimistic premises of nineteenth century thinkers like Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, we have regarded the spread of experimental science and mechanical invention as the soundest guarantee of a peaceful, productive, above all democratic, industrial society. Many have even comfortably supposed that the revolt against arbitrary political power in the seventeenth century was causally connected with the industrial revolution that accompanied it. But what we have interpreted as the new freedom now turns out to be a much more sophisticated version of the old slavery: for the rise of political democracy during the last few centuries has been increasingly nullified by the successful resurrection of a centralized authoritarian technics-a technics that had in fact for long lapsed in many parts of the world.
Let us fool ourselves no longer.
At the very moment Western nations threw off the ancient regime of absolute government, operating under a once-divine king, they were restoring this same system in a far more effective form in their technology, reintroducing coercion of a military character no less strict in the organization of a factory than in that of the new drilled, uniformed, and regimented army. During the transitional stages of the last two centuries,the ultimate tendency of this system might be in doubt, for in many areas there were strong democratic reactions; but with the knitting together of a scientific ideology, itself liberated from theological restrictions or humanistic purposes, authoritarian technics found an instrument at hand that has now given it absolute command of physical energies of cosmic dimensions. The inventors of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and computers are the pyramid builders of our own age: psychologically inflated by a similar myth of unqualified power, boasting through their science of their increasing omnipotence, if not omniscience, moved by obsessions and compulsions no less irrational than those of earlier absolute systems: particularly the notion that the system itself must be expanded, at whatever eventual cost to life.
Through mechanization, automation, cybernetic direction, this authoritarian technics has as last successfully overcome its most serious weakness: its original dependence upon resistant, sometime actively disobedient servo-mechanisms, still human enough to harbor purposes that do not always coincide with those of the system. Like the earliest form of authoritarian technics, this new technology is marvelously dynamic and productive: its power in every form tends to increase without limits, in quantities that defy assimilation and defeat control, whether we are thinking of the output of scientific knowledge or of industrial assembly lines
To maximize energy, speed, or automation, without reference to the complex conditions that sustain organic life, have become ends in themselves.
As with the earliest forms of authoritarian technics, the weight of effort, if one is to judge by national budgets, is toward absolute instruments of destruction, designed for absolutely irrational purposes whose chief by-product would be the mutilation or extermination of the human race. Even Ashurbanipal and Genghis Khan performed their gory operations under normal human limits
The center of authority in this new system is no longer a visible personality, an all-powerful king: even in totalitarian dictatorships the center now lies in the system itself, invisible but omnipresent: all its human components, even the technical and managerial elite, even the sacred priesthood of science, who alone have access to the secret knowledge by means of which total control is now swiftly being effected, are themselves trapped by the very perfection of the organization they have invented. Like the Pharaohs of the Pyramid Age, these servants of the system identify its goods with their own kind of well-being: as with the divine king, their praise of the system is an act of self-worship; and again like the king, they are in the grip of an irrational compulsion to extend their means of control and expand the scope of their authority. In this new systems-centered collective, this pentagon of power, there is no visible presence who issues commands: unlike Job’s God, the new deities cannot be confronted, still less defied. Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated.
Do not misunderstand this analysis.
The danger to democracy does not spring from any specific scientific discoveries or electronic inventions. The human compulsions that dominate the authoritarian technics of our own day date back to a period before even the wheel had been invented. The danger springs from the fact that, since Francis Bacon and Galileo defined the new methods and objectives of technics, our great physical transformations have been effected by a system that deliberately eliminates the whole human personality, ignores the historic process, overplays the role of the abstract intelligence, and makes control over physical nature, ultimately control over man himself, the chief purpose of existence. This system has made its way so insidiously into Western society, that my analysis of its derivation and its intentions may well seem more questionable-indeed more shocking-than the facts themselves.
Why has our age surrendered so easily to the controllers, the manipulators, the conditioners of an authoritarian technics?
The answer to this question is both paradoxical and ironic. Present day technics differs from that of the overtly brutal, half-baked authoritarian systems of the past in one highly favorable particular: it has accepted the basic principle of democracy, that every member of society should have a share in its goods. By progressively fulfilling this part of the democratic promise, our system has achieved a hold over the whole community that threatens to wipe out every other vestige of democracy. The bargain we are being asked to ratify takes the form of a magnificent bribe. Under the democratic-authoritarian social contract, each member of the community may claim every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus he may desire, in quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority: food, housing, swift transportation, instantaneous communication, medical care, entertainment, education. But on one condition: that one must not merely ask for nothing that the system does not provide, but likewise agree to take everything offered, duly processed and fabricated, homogenized and equalized, in the precise quantities that the system, rather than the person, requires.
Once one opts for the system no further choice remains.
In a word, if one surrenders one’s life at source, authoritarian technics will give back as much of it as can be mechanically graded, quantitatively multiplied, collectively manipulated and magnified.
“Is this not a fair bargain?” those who speak for the system will ask. “Are not the goods authoritarian technics promises real goods? Is this not the horn of plenty that mankind has long dreamed of, and that every ruling class has tried to secure, at whatever cost of brutality and injustice, for itself?”
I would not be little, still less deny, the many admirable products this technology has brought forth, products that a self-regulating economy would make good use of. I would only suggest that it is time to reckon up the human disadvantages and costs, to say nothing of the dangers, of our unqualified acceptance of the system itself. Even the immediate price is heavy; for the system is so far from being under effective human direction that it may poison us wholesale to provide us with food or exterminate us to provide national security, before we can enjoy its promised goods. Is it really humanly profitable to give up the possibility of living a few years at Walden Pond, so to say, for the privilege of spending a lifetime in Walden Two? Once our authoritarian technics consolidates its powers, with the aid of its new forms of mass control, its panoply of tranquilizers and sedatives and aphrodisiacs could democracy in any form survive? That question is absurd: life itself will not survive, except what is funneled through the mechanical collective. The spread of a sterilized scientific intelligence over the planet would not, as Teilhard de Chardinso innocently imagined, be the happy consummation of divine purpose: it would rather ensure the final arrest of any further human development. Again: do not mistake my meaning.
This is not a prediction of what will happen,but a warning against what may happen.
What means must be taken to escape this fate? In characterizing the authoritarian technics that has begun to dominate us, I have not forgotten the great lesson of history: Prepare for the unexpected! Nor do I overlook the immense reserves of vitality and creativity that a more humane democratic tradition still offers us. What I wish to do is to persuade those who are concerned with maintaining democratic institutions to see that their constructive efforts must include technology itself. There, too, we must return to the human center. We must challenge this authoritarian system that has given to an under dimensioned ideology and technology the authority that belongs to the human personality. I repeat: life cannot be delegated.
Curiously, the first words in support of this thesis came forth, with exquisite symbolic aptness, from a willing agent but very nearly a classic victim of the new authoritarian technics. They came from the astronaut, John Glenn, whose life was endangered by the malfunctioning of his automatic controls, operated from a remote center. After he barely saved his life by personal intervention, he emerged from his space capsule with these ringing words: “Now let man take over!” That command is easier to utter than obey. But if we are not to be driven to even more drastic measures than Samuel Butler suggested in Erewhon, we had better map out a more positive course: namely, the reconstitution of both our science and our technics in such a fashion as to insert the rejected parts of the human personality at every stage in the process. This means gladly sacrificing mere quantity in order to restore qualitative choice, shifting the seat of authority from the mechanical collective to the human personality and the autonomous group, favoring variety and ecological complexity, instead of stressing undue uniformity and standardization, above all, reducing the insensate drive to extend the system itself, instead of containing it within definite human limits and thus releasing man himself for other purposes. We must ask, not what is good for science or technology, still less what is good for General Motors or Union Carbide or IBM or the Pentagon, but what is good for man: not machine-conditioned, system-regulated, mass-man, but man in person, moving freely over every area of life.
There are large areas of technology that can be redeemed by the democratic process, once we have overcome the infantile compulsions and automatisms that now threaten to cancel out our real gains.
The very leisure that the machine now gives in advanced countries can be profitably used, not for further commitment to still other kinds of machine, furnishing automatic recreation, but by doing significant forms of work, unprofitable or technically impossible under mass production: work dependent upon special skill, knowledge, aesthetic sense. The do-it-yourself movement prematurely got bogged down in an attempt to sell still more machines; but its slogan pointed in the right direction, provided we still have a self to do it with. The glut of motor cars that is now destroying our cities can be coped with only if we redesign our cities to make fuller use of a more efficient human agent: the walker. Even in childbirth, the emphasis is already happily shifting from an officious, often lethal, authoritarian procedure, centered in hospital routine, to a more human mode, which restores initiative to the mother and to the body’s natural rhythms.
The replenishment of democratic technics is plainly too big a subject to be handled in a final sentence or two: but I trust I have made it clear that the genuine advantages our scientifically based technics has brought can be preserved only if we cut the whole system back to a point at which it will permit human alternatives, human interventions, and human destinations for entirely different purposes from those of the system itself. At the present juncture, if democracy did not exist, we would have to invent it, in order to save and re-cultivate the spirit of man [sic].
Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford made signal contributions to social philosophy, American literary and cultural history and the history of technology.
This article was originally published The Johns Hopkins University Press in Technology and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter, 1964), pp. 1-8.
Featured image by KennyOMG, CC BY SA 4.0. Inline image by RW Kenny, CC BY SA 4.0.
Are Indigenous People Backwards?
Are indigenous people backwards? Do they really need to be ‘rescued’ from their primitive way of life and introduced to this wonder of human civilization? Or is this a racist simplification?
In this piece Chris challenges the notion that civilization is the ultimate way of life — a notion that has been used to justify genocide against indigenous people for a long time.
By Chris Straquez
The Woe-nders of Civilization
Civilization: the pinnacle of human progress and ingenuity, a myriad of machines and buildings transforming landscapes as proof of MANkind superiority.
Do you need water, food, energy? We got it! For a price, a modest price, these are accessible for everyone (restrictions will apply). You know you want to be here with us—and who wouldn’t? Just ignore the trail of blood and corpses that lie behind of it all and you can reap the benefits of the civilized; everything will be fine and dandy.
We, the civilized humans, are being honest here, no exaggeration, just facts, alternative yet still facts: we are so great, even people from the countryside and indigenous reserves dream of living in our super modern skyscrapers, our theme parks, and especially our humongous and incredible malls.
Are you looking for sneakers with heel lights, fake dog vomit, or a hundred different flavors of whatever shit you want to inhale, inject, eat or consume in whatever fashion you feel like… Guess what? We’ve got it!
Are you lost? Do you feel lonely? An impending feeling of being misunderstood drowns your existence? Are you worried about your physical appearance? Does your skin color have a pesky pigmentation? Should I go on or do you know what we are talking about? You do not have to be particularly smart to understand; as the great poet Axl Rose said: “if you got the money, honey, we got your disease.”
Tell your local shaman or whoever prepares those funky herbs to stop using mumbo-jumbo whatchamacallits because civilized humans have the meds backed up by science done scientifically by scientists who do scientific and technological stuff. We can bring this to you, you can be civilized, just like us, and I do hate being repetitive but are we not great, unique, awesome?
Now, stand-up comedy aside (along with credits to the late, great George Carlin), let me ask you: how many times as a city-dweller have you seen or heard advertisements, politicians or even neighbors not only expressing but embodying such ideas? This is a long-standing, well-oiled propaganda machine to makes us constantly think that being civilized is the best of the best and any other lifestyle is a mistake that must and will be rectified right away. Using force if needed, no hesitation whatsoever.
Are Indigenous People Backwards?
Over generations, tribal peoples have developed complex systems to live well, together, on their land. They may be poor in monetary terms but tribal people living on their own lands are rich in other ways. They have good reason to be proud of their communities and their way of life. Such is the case of the Dongria Kondh tribe whose homeland is in the Niyamgiri hill range in Odisha state, India.
Niyamgiri is an area of densely forested hills, deep gorges and cascading streams. To be a Dongria Kondh is to farm the hill’s fertile slopes, harvest their produce, and worship the mountain god Niyam Raja and the hills he presides over, including the 4,000 metres Mountain of the Law, Niyam Dongar.
On 19 March 2003 Vedanta Alumina Limited applied for environmental clearance from the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to construct an alumina refinery project in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.
Vedanta Resources is a London-listed, former FTSE 100 mining company founded by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, who remains its Chairman and owns more than 50% of the shares. Had the mine gone ahead, the Dongria would have suffered immeasurable loss; their present good health, self-sufficiency and, identity as a people would have been damaged. The detailed knowledge of their environment would have been destroyed. A large proportion of the benefits would have gone to one man: Anil Agarwal.
For a decade, the 8,000-plus Dongria Kondh lived under the threat of mining by Vedanta Resources, which hoped to extract the estimated $2 billion-worth of bauxite that lies under the surface of the hills. The company planned to create an open-cast mine that would have violated Niyam Dongar, disrupted its rivers and spelt the end of the Dongria Kondh as a distinct people.
All the above in the name of ‘progress and evolution.’ However, whose progress and evolution is seldom directly addressed. I notice it is easy to understand that anything that deviates from this direction tends to be labeled as ‘backwards’ a word we tend to use to disqualify and minimize subjects and matters. One of the meanings of such words implies something ‘towards the direction that is opposite to the one in which you are facing or opposite to the usual direction.’ Do you oppose companies and governments that exploit your land? That is certainly not in the direction we are going so we might as well force our way through.
Another meaning goes like this: ‘returning to older and less effective ways.’ What calls my attention is not returning to older, say, traditional ways, but rather calling it ‘less effective.’ Effective at what? According to who? Looking through the lens of Industrial Civilization means that mountains cannot be exploited fast enough. This is what Civilization has done for most of its existence: perfecting exploitation for the benefit of an elite group of people.
Deviate and We Retaliate
The Dongria Kondh tribe inspired millions when they won a ‘David and Goliath’ battle against mining giant Vedanta Resources. The tribe vowed to save their Niyamgiri Hills and their self-sufficient way of life.
They believe that their right to cultivate Niyamgiri’s slopes has been conferred on them by Niyam Raja, and that they are his royal descendants. They have expert knowledge of their forests and the plants and wildlife they hold. From the forests they gather wild foods such as wild mango, pineapple, jackfruit, and honey. Rare medicinal herbs are also found in abundance, which the Dongria use to treat a range of ailments including arthritis, dysentery, bone fractures, malaria and snake bites.
These people have detailed knowledge of the land they are deeply connected to, like many other indigenous people, such as the Jarawa who have detailed knowledge of plants to eat and use for medicinal properties. However, Jarawa’s neighbors, the Great Andamanese, were brought into the ‘mainstream’ by the British and robbed of their land. They were decimated by disease and are now completely dependent on the government. Alcoholism and diseases such as tuberculosis are rife. These are illnesses that come from a civilized setting not from indigenous ways of life. Go figure!
Are these people “backwards”?
Now the Dongri Kondh lands and lives are under threat again. Their leaders are being harassed by police and imprisoned under false charges. The Dongria feel the government is trying to destroy their community in order to allow mining.
We don’t want to go to the city and we don’t want to buy food. We get it free here. – Malari Pusaka, Dongria Kondh
The Dongria Kondh grow over 100 crops and harvest almost 200 different wild foods, which provide them with year-round, rich nutrition even in times of drought. Life expectancy now is around 60 to 65 years.
Before it was 80 to 90 years. It’s because before [our access to our forest was restricted] we ate tubers, fruits, and other forest products, whereas now the Soliga diet is bad. –Madegowda, Soliga
The Soliga people are another ethnic group of India. Its members inhabit the Biligiriranga Hills and associated ranges in southern Karnataka, mostly in the Chamarajanagar and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu. Many are also concentrated in and around the BR Hills in Yelandur and Kollegal Taluks of Chamarajanagar District, Karnataka.
The Soliga people are one among the few remaining forest-dwelling tribal people in and around the forests in southern India. The forests of BR Hills have held people for time immemorial. Burial sites excavated from several areas nearby date back to 3000 years ago to the Megalithic period. These sites characteristically consist of Dolmens, a circular arrangement of large stones with a central pit, walled off by granite slabs. Although, it is not known if these belong to the ancestors of the present Soliga tribe, having lived here for generations, the Soliga people have an intricate understanding of the flora and fauna.
“You keep talking about this primitive people but I see no development, progress or superiority whatsoever. They think an invisible being gave them the right to rule over land. Isn’t that just backwards?” I’m glad you ask yourself that. It is not like the civilized worship Gods… Well, we do, but it is usually the imported kind because we do love foreign products like that.
No techno? No bueno!
Tribal people’s lives are not static or ‘stuck in the past’ – they adopt new ideas and adapt to new situations just as we all do. It is prejudice to think some peoples are ‘modern’ whilst others are ‘backwards’. This prejudice is used to justify displacing indigenous peoples and push them into the ‘mainstream’ – on the assumption that ‘experts’ know what is best for them.
It’s crazy when these outsiders come and teach us development. Is development possible by destroying the environment that provides us food, water and dignity? You have to pay to take a bath, for food, and even to drink water. In our land, we don’t have to buy water like you, and we can eat anywhere for free. –Lodu Sikaka, Dongria Kondh
Different paths of “development”
One of the wonders of North-East India is an innovative technique developed by villagers to construct bridges and other useful structures out of living aerial roots of rubber (Ficus Elastica) trees. For dozens of years, they train and manipulate the growth of aerial roots, such that with time, they thicken and stiffen and become structural members. Most bridges and structures can be found in Meghalaya state, and lately root bridges were discovered in Nagaland state as well.
In summary, labelling people ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’ is a propaganda strategy. A striking example of this was the argument that mining company Vedanta Resources used to defend the impact that their mine would have on the lives of the Dongria Kondh. The Dongria are united against the mine, they distrust and reject Vedanta’s claim that the company will bring development. Instead the Dongria choose to live their own way of life on their land.
A Vedanta spokesperson said:
‘As enlightened and privileged human beings, we should not try to keep the tribal and other backward people in a primitive, uncared-and-unprovided-for socio-economic environment.’
“In (theft) exchange of their resources we will install our marvelous industrialized food system that provides everyone products with (few) nutrients and (poor) ingredients our body does (not) need?” Sound market logic.
Indigenous peoples’ lands are still being stolen, their rights violated and their futures destroyed. Vital laws protecting their land rights are in constant threat under the flag of progress, the mark of Civilization. Only indigenous people should decide and control what, if any, changes they want in their lives. If living in harmony with the land is ‘backwards’ or ‘primitive’ then perhaps we should step back, listen and observe what is happening around us. We might be surprised what we will find when we look back on the destruction left behind by the “progress of civilization.”
Sources:
- https://www.survivalinternational.org/not-primitive
- https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/dongria
- https://jlrexplore.com/explore/on-assignment/soligas-people-of-the-forest