Olduvai Theory Shows its Age

"The Olduvai theory states that industrial civilization (as defined by per capita energy production) will have a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years (1930-2030). The theory provides a quantitative basis of the transient-pulse theory of modern civilization. The name is a reference to the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania." - From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

2030 is getting closer, and the question of whether Olduvai theory will go the way of Mathusian Theory as another discredited doomsday theory is becoming increasingly important.

I would argue however, that these doomsday scenarios should not be so easily discounted. I would argue that both Malthusian Theory and Olduvai theory are sound in the premise. As critics have noted, they did not account to technological improvements, but the technological improvements have not changed the basic premises and problems of these theories. Technological marvels have succeeded only in buying us a little more time to dig our graves a little bit deeper.

Malthus wasn't wrong that food production and population growth are at odds with each other, biologists see this tension in ecosystems everywhere. That Malthus did not foresee how fossil fuels could temporarily super-charge agriculture does not render his concerns unimportant.

That Olduvai Theory seems to have set the death knell of industrial civilization a little to early does not mean that finite resources will not run out. So pretend that a miscalculation invalidates the premise is juvenile and indicates a fear of the premise being attacked.

Why do we dismiss these theories so easily? Is it because we believe that they are wrong? Or is it because we are terrified that they are right?

On the Dangers of Complexity

Parallel processing, meaning the ability of a computer (or a human brain) to perform multiple actions at the same time, is the litmus test of a processor's power. This draws attention to a major danger. Increasing complexity requires increasing processing power- and currently the human brain is not upgradable.

This means that the capabilities of our tools is now vastly superior to our ability to keep them all straight in our minds. We are leaving broken fossils of our virtual selves all across the Internet and in a multitude of company records. Our own personal virtual network of programs and sub-routines engaged on our behalf is beyond the ability of brains to manage.

We carry notes books full of passwords, because we aren't supposed to reuse them. Everyone needs a filing cabinet now, because the age of paper just keeps stacking up.

We are disappearing within our own abstract organizational structures.

To quote Tyler Dirden, "The things you own, end up owning you."

We end up over stimulated and in need of mind numbing entertainment in order to function. Stimulate and then sedate, rinse then lather and repeat.

Transhumanism tells us we need to upgrade ourselves in order to keep up. The Amish suggest a slower response. The rest of us are caught somewhere in the middle, with the bleeding edge driving complexity forward as we flounder to keep on top of all the changes.

Every time a new petition appears complaining about the new Facebook layout is a cry for help. People like to understand the world that they live in. Every time the ground moves under their feet, the become novices, helpless against the world once more. The increasing complexity coupled with arbitrary change and supposed progress is destroying our ability to cope with the world we live in. And so we post impotent Facebook petitions and rant on blogs nobody reads.

We need to walk away and re-take the real world, the one we can effect with our hands. We need to get dirty again. The real world can be learned over a life time, and changes in that real world follow understandable rules. The concept of a 'game changer' is very rare in the real world. 

The horse and buggy still works just fine.

Saturday Thoughts: Professional Fighting VS. Actual Fighting

I was reading the paper recently, something that I do only occasionally, and I stumbled upon an article arguing the pros and cons of different scoring systems for mixed martial arts sporting competitions. This struck me as reaching to a central problem in our culture- we want somebody else to decide.

Of the mixed martial arts competitions out there, the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is arguably the biggest. It uses a complicated judge run scoring system to determine what happens whenever there is no clear winner- which is often in recent years. This, however, was not always the case.

In the first several UFC competitions, there were no judges and- in fact- the competition trumpeted this as a positive thing. A doctor was at ringside and could stop the fight to prevent permanent injury. A refereee was in the ring to prevent illegal blows. A corner could throw in the towel for the fighter if they feared for his ability to defend himself. That was it. The fight went until a fighter was knocked out, tapped out, or the fight was stopped by one of the afformentioned officials for safety's sake.

The argument for judges, derives from the desire by TV producers to put a time limit on fights so as to prevent a fight from running outside the time alloted for the television slot. Once a time limit is added, there seems to be no way to avoid judges. And once judges are added, fighters can begin to work the clock and act aggressive rather than fight effectively in order to please the judges.

A simple solution would be to add the time limit; and then score both fights with a loss on their record if the fight goes the distance without a clear winner. The problem with this is that, domesticated culture wants a winner and doesn't like systems that are self-running. Domesticated culture needs to see oversight and managers and judges- these things validate our view that world needs to be managed and ruled.

Because after all, if things can manage themselves, "Oh my gosh, what will our Kings and Priests do?"

Word of the Day: Steward

Domesticated humans are told that they need to be good stewards of the earth and the land. In modern parlance, the word steward is used to mean a caretaker. And under this usage of the word, being a steward of the earth would mean being a caretaker for the earth, protecting it for harm and making sure everything is as it should be.

Under the older usage of the word, a steward is a servant who is charged with acting on behalf of the rightful ruler, either for day to day affairs or during an absence or because the ruler is too young or to infirm to make decisions on their own. In other words, the steward is a place holder until the proper ruler once again is making decisions.

The newer usage of the word is ridiculous when applied to the earth and domesticated humans. Asking domesticated humans to care for the earth and protect it and keep things as they should be, is analogous to charging an abusive husband with the task of acting as caretaker for his battered wife. A better analogy would be that of an abusive adult child put in charge of  being caretaker for his aging abused parents.

The older usage suggests something more interesting, because it points to the illegitimacy of domesticated human rule. The older definition of steward suggests that domesticated humans do not own the earth, do not rightfully rule it as their propaganda would suggest. They are not the rightful heirs to the throne, but pretenders to that position.

This of course begs the question, to whom then does the earth belong? There are many answers here, but the Free Path suggests that the earth belongs to itself.

No True Barter?

I read recently that there has never been a true barter economy where money did not exist. The argument was put forward that there was always a medium of exchange used to measure value of the items being exchanged.
Currencies range from cigarettes, to yak dung, to carved sticks, to coins of precious metal, to paper money. Some currencies have inherent value- yak dung can be burned as fuel, cigarettes can smoked. Others do not, such as paper money, and their value is entirely symbolic and based only upon the survival of the system that uses that currency.

The dangers of currency are many.

If a currency does not decompose or otherwise expire in some way, then that currency will tend to accumulate into the hands of a few. Since money can be used to acquire more money, those with money will tend to use their money to get more money.

And thus an elite will form. An entirely symbolic or fiat currency is susceptible to shocks and panics since it exists only because the people believe that it does.

The primary danger of currency is that there is always a danger in a currency economy that people will transform from a citizen mindset to a consumer mindset.

I don't not know if I believe that there has never been a true barter economy, but whether or not this is the case a community planner looking to avoid the pitfalls of currency must assume that this assertion is so. A community planner who is designing an intentional community must do so assuming that currency will appear within the community, whether official or unofficial.

One method of controlling the form currency takes is the state sanctioned currency. Tally Sticks and Spartan coins are both excellent examples of this. By requiring that taxes be paid in the official currency, Lycurgus of Sparta and King Henry of England, forced the use of unpopular currencies.

Usury- that is the charging of interest on loans (or in modern terms, the charging of unfair interest) is something that civilizations throughout history have fought against. The Ancient Hebrews viewed any usury as criminal, since it allowed a man to profit without doing work himself. This allows for money to accumulate and for the rise of the banking and credit card systems. If a community planner wishes to curb these impulses, they must find a way to address the need that creates money-lending and loan sharking.

Loan sharking and money lending appear when people cannot get the basics that they need to make a living or improve their condition on their own and by their own labor. Mortgages are necessary in the first world, because almost nobody can afford to buy a home outright. Loan sharking in Bangladesh was noted to be a problem for the very poor, because they could not get raw materials for their craftwork without access to currency.

People without access to the tools they need, will turn to any other viable means of getting them. Therefore you need to be sure people have access to the proper tools needed. Members of your community must be able to craft a life from nothing, in the sense that they must step out into the world and be able to craft a life from the natural world around them, requiring nothing from your society if they choose.

Taxes as a weapon are another problem that must be addressed. The original South African diamond minds were reported worked by local African tribesmen, who worked just long enough to buy pots and rifles and the few modern conveniences they wanted before returning to the tribe. To secure a more reliable source of labour, the Diamond minds convinced the governments to institute taxes that must be paid in the official currency (a strategy that work for Lycurgus and Henry as mentioned above), therefore requiring the tribesman to seek employment to pay taxes created for the purpose of forcing them to work.

It is worth noting here that solving one problem may cause others, and one technique may work in one situation, but cause all manner of disruption in another. A planner must examine the situation carefully and likely also be willing to admit error and change when the situation isn't working.

Wealth and elitism are another notable problem that currency can create. The consequences of elitism is the marginalization and misuse of whole segments of the community.

Nations and communities throughout history have used different tools to combat this problem. 
Lycurgus of Rome cast heavy iron coins that he had quenched in vinegar to make them impossible to reforge. In doing so he made made money an arduous heavy burden, rather than something a person would wish to flaunt. The Haida prevented accumulation of wealth by having pot latches where people competed to prove their greater generosity, but still suffered from elitism based upon said generosity.

The important point here, is that currency is useful to facilitate trade and exchange between individuals. The danger here, is that currency can be used as a weapon by those who have it against those who do not. A smart community planner needs to craft a system of exchange (including either an planned "unofficial" currency, or an official currency) that allows for the exchange while protecting against the dangers.

Book Review: "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn, Part Two (Guns, Germs, and Steel)

Jared Diamond argues in his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel", that the locations where agriculture- and (by his assertions) civilization- arose is largely determined by geographic placement. Implicit in his argument is the assertion that those cultures that could become agriculturalists, did become agriculturalists. This assumption is ambient in the language that Diamond uses, even as he denies it directly in the text. his language screams of the idea that civilization is chapter two in the story of humanity.

This addresses one of the central arguments that Daniel Quinn makes in his novel "Ishmael"- which is that civilization is not chapter two in a story to which hunter-gatherer tribes were chapter one.

Diamond asks, several times in the text- what stopped cultures with the same intelligence as other cultures from developing agriculture. Diamond further feels the need to prove that these non-agricultural cultures were in fact intelligent. What Diamond does not ask, is whether these people were happy with their way of life as hunter-gatherers and tribalists. Implicit in the questions Diamond asks and the questions he does not ask is the assumption that hunter-gatherers must subconsciously want to become agriculturalists.

This assumption runs counter to the historical primary records. Virtually wherever tribal peoples were encountered by civilized people, the tribal people resisted to the last ditch against becoming assimilated/conquered into a civilized way of life. Even those that were agriculturalists to a lesser or greater extent resisted the way of life on offer by civilized people.

And in fact, civilized people found themselves having to fight a rear guard action against defectors from their ranks joining the ranks of the tribalists. This phenomenon became so common that a name for it entered popular culture- going native.

In his novel Ishmael, Daniel Quinn points out that animals in captivity are naturally more inquisitive than those in the wild, because they can tell to a greater or lesser extent that something is wrong. And like a dog trying to scratch an itch, they begin to work at solving the problem. Quinn's argument is that progress is not some inevitable thing that humans should do or were meant to do, but something that the social inequality of civilization drove them to do, in an effort to ease the suffering their own way of life was causing them. Civilized cultures expanded and conquered the world using the tools their agriculture gave them in a desperate attempt to ease their own psychic suffering.

If you have not bought and read Ishmael yet, do so now.

Book Review: 'Ishmael' by Daniel Quinn Part One

I have worked at many jobs in my life, in large part due to my outright malice towards domesticated culture. Amongst the jobs that I have held is the job of book seller. Amongst the list of accomplishments from this job of which I am proud there is this: I have personally sold roughly 650 copies of Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael in my three years as a book seller.

This book is the seed from which many open minds have sprouted, it is brilliant and life changing. So rather than give a single review of it, I am going to examine it in detail and extrapolate from it my conclusions and how this book relates to the Free Path.

let us begin.

Teacher seeks Pupil

Must have an earnest desire to

save the world. Apply in person

That is the ad that begins the novel. That is where everything starts and where we shall start. This quote is on the back cover of the book, as well as on the second page of the first chapter. What does this say to you? Does it seem trite? Do you think the writer must be a charlatan? Are you intrigued? Are you daring to hope? The narrator is all of these things and more.

The ad explains several key things to us. The ad is not a fancy advertisment full of images and flashy type, just a simply classified ad. The ad is asking the reader to think big "earnest desire to save the world". The ad is about understanding something "Teacher seeks Pupil".

The sense of the ad is one of an outsider with a special knowledge, and strangely a knowledge that is not easy to give away. After all the teacher is advertising in the classifieds not in a full page ad, there is no heavy advertising budget behind this project.

It is an interesting idea- knowledge of how to save the world that is hard to give away. In James Redfield's "Celestine Prophecy", a shadowy vaguely governmental group is after the secret to stifle it. Here the secret is being given away and the teacher is evidently having difficulty doing so at all.

Why would it be hard to give away information on how to save the world? Perhaps for the same reason that is hard to give away information on how to lose weight- because the truth is unpopular and people will more readily buy an appealing lie rather than a stark truth?

And this is where Ishmael begins.

If you have not read and bought Ishmael you should do so now.