Conscious Cultural Evolution
Understanding Our Past,
Choosing Our Future
Alexis Zeigler
Ecodem Press
Charlottesville VA, 1999
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
CHAPTER ONE
The Second Great Leap ...........................................................................................................................7
CHAPTER TWO
At The Roots of Meaning........................................................................................................................11
The Power of Culture ..............................................................................................................................15
CHAPTER THREE
The Strength of the Land........................................................................................................................24
Cultural Evolution Has Been Driven by Ecological Limits..................................................................31
CHAPTER FOUR
Work...........................................................................................................................................................38
Building Motivation ..................................................................................................................................42
CHAPTER FIVE
The Machine.............................................................................................................................................55
Can Technology Save Us?.....................................................................................................................59
CHAPTER SIX
Science and Diesel..................................................................................................................................66
Cultural Selection: The Unseen Master of History..............................................................................70
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Sins of the Father.............................................................................................................................81
When God Tells Lies ...............................................................................................................................86
CHAPTER EIGHT
Silence.....................................................................................................................................................100
Non-Conscious Evolution Creates Structural Poverty in America..................................................104
Barcode ...................................................................................................................................................123
The Selection for Beliefs.......................................................................................................................124
CHAPTER NINE
The Place of the Lesser Ones .............................................................................................................131
Non-conscious Evolution Is Destroying the Environment................................................................135
Edge.........................................................................................................................................................142
The Industrial Inferno Effect .................................................................................................................146
Elegance .................................................................................................................................................154
2
The Inferno Effect and Cultural Selection ..........................................................................................156
CHAPTER TEN
Angels......................................................................................................................................................164
Liberationist Beware..............................................................................................................................166
PART TWO
CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Journey to a Foreign Homeland ..........................................................................................................193
What Is Conscious Evolution? .............................................................................................................198
CHAPTER TWELVE
Relaying Foundations ...........................................................................................................................206
Ending Structural Poverty.....................................................................................................................209
Repairing Simplicity ...............................................................................................................................218
Cooperatives ..........................................................................................................................................221
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Building Outside of Present Imagination ............................................................................................226
Guerilla Macro-Management................................................................................................................228
Delancey .................................................................................................................................................231
Vertical Money........................................................................................................................................234
Regime ....................................................................................................................................................240
Motivating................................................................................................................................................241
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Real Myn .................................................................................................................................................244
Liberation Fulfilled..................................................................................................................................248
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Knowing...................................................................................................................................................256
The Social Technological Revolution.................................................................................................260
Amanda ...................................................................................................................................................268
A New Science.......................................................................................................................................272
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lines of Power........................................................................................................................................279
A Conscious Society or a Dead Planet...............................................................................................281
My House ................................................................................................................................................284
Mom, Where do Social Movements Come From?............................................................................285
Finding God ............................................................................................................................................287
From Divine to Conscious Association ...............................................................................................288
Home .......................................................................................................................................................291
Community..............................................................................................................................................295
3
BENEDICTION ............................................................................................................. 298
APPENDIX
The Applicability of Piagetian Developmentalism to a Theory of Culture......................................300
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 308
INDEX ............................................................................................................................ 321
4
Introduction
This book is an attempt to find realistic, broad-based solutions for the most
pressing problems of our time. It is divided into two sections. The first develops a theory
of cultural selection that explains how human societies develop destructive institutions
such as racism, sexism, and ecological blindness. The second part explores how we
can consciously direct our cultural evolution toward environmental sustainability and
social justice.
Interwoven with these sober matters is a more personal story. Although I take
some of the prerogatives of a storyteller in presenting personal material, there is no
fiction in this book.
The term “they” is used in this book as a gender-neutral pronoun instead of “he”.
5
Invocation
Sitting by the pond. Swallows swoop down quick, close to the water, like
feathered arrows in smooth flight. Skip like a stone off the top of the water, turn straight
up to brush off gravity, turn again and glide a little slower on a higher plateau.
Dragonflies buzz as they swerve and bank, clattering like insect biplanes making one
last hunt as light is fading. Shadows move in the muddy water, leave a ripple and a
mystery of the creatures down there.
Light slowly evaporates in the warm summer evening, as time sleepily forgets its
duty and the evening stretches out endless. One by one the animals quiet their scurry.
The doves settle in the tops of the tall pines, cooing soft chorus through the twilight. The
squirrels settle in their nests over in the scrappy oaks along the side of the field. This
hawk who lives here lets fly his last mournful cry, for whom I do not know. Even the
mosquitoes abate, to contemplate this space between worlds. The warm air melts away
my skin, until the ether is rushing in like a mighty river to fill all these empty places. The
separations among all these beings washed away in a gentle flood, all that never was
for an endless moment filled in. Here there is enough.
6
PART ONE
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
CHAPTER ONE
The Second Great Leap
The animals have lived by the rhythms of the seasons for thousands of years,
their adaptation guided by the steady hand of evolution, the trial and error of countless
generations. Animals have adapted by slowly changing their genetic code, the shapes
and forms of their bodies, and their genetically predetermined behaviors in order to
survive in their environments.
As human beings came to be less dominated by genetically predetermined
behavior, our adaptation came to be more a result of learning from previous generations
rather than changing our genetic code; we became cultural beings. Though we still live
among animals, we have become different from them. Thousands of years ago, we took
a Great Leap from biological to cultural evolution. Cultural evolution moves with
lightning speed compared to biological evolution and has allowed humans to populate
and dominate every corner of our world.
For tens of thousands of years, human societies have evolved by a process of
non-conscious cultural evolution.1 Our cultural evolution is non-conscious because,
1
The term non-conscious is chosen over subconscious because subconscious implies
that we are aware of something at another level of consciousness. We are not aware at
any level of consciousness of the forces that guide the evolution of our society.
7
although we as individuals are intelligent beings who can plan for the future, we are not
consciously aware of the cultural evolutionary forces that shape our society.
Cultural evolution and biological evolution are very different, but one thing they
have in common is that they are both reactive. They only respond to changes in the
environment as they arise. Animals do not evolve thicker fur in response to the
knowledge that their environment is going to grow colder in the future. Their fur thickens
in response to their environment as it grows colder.
Human culture is the same way. The evolution of our beliefs and our political
structures occurs in response to stressors as they arise in the economy and ecology of
our society, not because we possess knowledge of future changes. We will examine
this idea more in future chapters. The reactive nature of non-conscious cultural
evolution is at the root of ecological unsustainability among large human societies.
Whether or not their final undoing is political or military, the underlying reasons for the
demise of most large human societies have been ecological.2
Some small agricultural and gathering societies have practiced a more conscious
evolution, and some modern societies have employed a degree of conscious economic
management. While industrial society is focused on short-term profit, some societies
have been mindful of the impacts of their actions decades or even hundreds of years
into the future.
What makes the difference between societies that practice conscious evolution
and those that remain at the mercy of non-conscious evolution? The purpose of this
book is to try to answer that question and apply that answer to the issues of our time. If
we could learn to consciously guide the evolution of culture on a large scale, that would
represent a second Great Leap, a historically unprecedented change in how human
beings adapt to their environment in large social units.
Why is it important that we achieve a more conscious evolution? We are
presently playing out a script written by past human civilizations. We can see this in two
sets of global crises currently facing us. The first is a crisis of social justice. That the rich
are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer is not simply a cliché. In our time a
2
There is a strong predilection among historians, philosophers, and social scientists of
all stripes to believe that human history is driven by ideas and beliefs. As a result,
ecological factors are often overlooked. In his useful book on the history of soil and its
degradation, Daniel Hillel sums up this oversight: “Throughout the history of civilization,
the pressure of increasing population has led to the careless exploitation of the world's
most valuable soil and water resources, and at times to their rapid destruction.
Superficial observers of history who ignore the role of environmental factors may
ascribe the defeat of an empire to moral decay, cultural enfeeblement, lead poisoning,
or lack of military preparedness -- when actually the main contest had already been
decided by the abuse and degradation of vital resources” (Hillel, 1991).
8
small percentage of humanity is gaining control over the vast majority of wealth and
productive power of the planet Earth, as enormous numbers of people are in fact
growing poorer in spite of increased economic growth.3 The polarization of wealth
undermines democracy worldwide. Polarization also fosters ecological unsustainability
as the rich are separated from the ecological impacts of their actions and the poor dig
their eroding soil ever deeper simply to survive.
The other crisis of our age is an ecological crisis. The basic form of human
cultural evolution has not changed for thousands of years. We live in danger of being
destroyed by the same blight that early civilizations faced, though now the scale of our
mistakes is much grander. Attempts at corporate greenwashing notwithstanding, we are
living in an age of planetary, cataclysmic, ecological decline. Middle-class Americans
are cushioned from this decline by technologically sophisticated industry and
agriculture. We are not aware of the worldwide erosion of topsoil as we consume our
prepackaged meals; we barely notice growing extremes of weather as we sit in our airconditioned domiciles.
Ignorance notwithstanding, the scale of our environmental crisis is unparalleled in
human experience. The “greenhouse effect” is going to make itself unmistakably visible
in the next fifty to one hundred years.4 The current decline in the number of species is
unprecedented. Forests are dwindling precipitously. Everywhere we look, our global
environment is taxed.
Our ability to produce food is approaching its limits. The world fish catch peaked
over a decade ago and has since degenerated. There has been a net decrease in
global grain production per capita in recent years, a dramatic reversal of historic trends.5
Whatever estimates one accepts concerning the rate of degradation of the environment
or the depletion of resources, it is clear that we are facing limits to our economic growth
within the closed system that is our planet Earth.6
3
In the past century, industrialization improved the standard of living for many people,
albeit at an unsustainable ecological cost. Beginning in the 1980s, the global debt crisis
began to undermine living standards, and many nations grew poorer. In the 1980s,
nearly 50 countries across the globe suffered a net reduction of economic activity and
wealth (Brown, 1993, p.5, 15-16). Brown also notes the crisis we have reached with percapita declining grain harvests.
4
There is no shortage of literature documenting the “greenhouse effect.” One
particularly useful book is Albert Bates’ Climate in Crises.
5
Brown, 1993, p.13
6
The issue of unending growth within a finite Earth was raised in the early 1970s by the
Club of Rome and their Limits to Growth. A more recent book, Beyond the Limits
9
We have enough. Our problems are social, not technological. We can support
the needs of all of humanity forever, not by using new machines, but by learning to
consciously direct our cultural evolution.
That is not what we are doing. We are stealing our planet from our children.
Individually, we can save money in bank accounts for our children and our
grandchildren and think that we are taking care of future generations. As a society,
however, we are not saving for future generations; rather, we are incurring enormous
debts. Here again, we are looking at the difference between the ability we have as
individuals to plan and the inability of large social groups to prepare for the future. That
is the impact of non-conscious cultural evolution. We must achieve a more conscious
evolution. The stakes are high.
continues that line of thought. The Limits to Growth studies have used computer
modeling of the Earth's productive capacity, economic and population growth, and
pollution “sinks” (pollution absorbing capacity). One of the most provocative insights
10
gained from these studies is that even dramatic
increases in energy availability would
not significantly change the long-term picture of growth within a closed system. If one
limit is removed, we simply encounter other limits. We must find a means to gracefully
make a transition to the reality of living within a closed system or face dire
consequences. That's physics, not politics.
CHAPTER TWO
At The Roots of Meaning
In 1734, several small ships sailed from Europe carrying a cargo of migrants
from Salzburg, Austria. They were sturdy farmers, Lutherans fleeing religious
persecution in their homeland. Landing on a river bank bluff upstream of Savannah,
Georgia, they named the place Ebenezer and began to carve a new life out of the
rugged land. But the land was not to be easily tamed, and about a quarter of them
succumbed in the first few years to the siege of heat and insects that swelled out of the
Georgia swamps.
A little more than a hundred years later, one of my great-grandfathers traveled
inland about twenty miles and built a log cabin and a small farm. The log cabin stood
just behind where the old house on our farm now stands. Ever since my greatgrandfather claimed that land, my family has lived there.
The Salzburgers of Effingham tended to stay put. They didn't travel much, nor
move to other counties. By the time I came along, folks had developed a saying in the
county: “You can't throw a rock without hitting one of your kinfolk.” That was pretty near
true. Our preacher used to play a game now and then to show people how connected
we all were. Every year or so when some older couple was celebrating a wedding
anniversary or some such event, the preacher would ask them to stand. Then he would
ask everyone immediately related to them to stand. Then he would ask everyone
immediately related to anyone standing to stand. One more round and the only one not
standing would be some open-mouthed visitor from up north somewhere.
The land and the generations were woven together in a never-ending web. You
knew people: their family that came before them, down what road was the place they
called their own. You knew people's weaknesses, how they were likely to seem
awkward to folks who didn't know them. You knew what people had done to help each
other out over the years, and how they had swindled somebody a long time ago for
personal gain. There was a kind of comfort in that weaving of people, time and place, as
if a piece of you extended out across the county and carried on with the people back in
time and forward in their lives.
11
When I was growing up, most of the people were still farming. There were some
things that the old-time farms in the county all seemed to have in common. One of the
most noticeable was the lack of any artifact representing any of the last several decades
of industrial progress.
They weren't called farms though, it was always a “place.” It was the Helmey
place, or the Zipperer place, or the Zettler place. The places each had their own
character that ran with the family that lived there. I suppose our place was a little more
cluttered with old junk than some of the others.
God was around a lot. As far as Dad was concerned, God was out in the fields
making sure we worked hard enough, watching everything we did, and even everything
we thought to make sure we did it right. And when we did something wrong, it was like
Dad was talking for God in telling us so, just to do us the favor of keeping us straight on
what God might be thinking.
Dad took night classes to be a Baptist preacher, but Mom stayed with the
Lutheran church that was traditional to the family. Generations of our family are buried
in the Lutheran graveyard. Lutherans are staid; they sail through life like a ship too big
to be bothered by small waves, dead steady on the deck no matter what the storm. And
if there is a storm, well that would be the Baptists. Southern Baptists figure Satan as a
prominent fellow, sneaking around trying to do his business in secret. The Baptist God
is the Old Testament god of wrath and judgment. Better watch your step.
While the rest of the world was in a hurry to go some place else, we were still left
where we had been. While the rest of the world had gone to wearing sneakers, Dad still
wore his hard sole department store shoes: scuffed and cracked ones for working on
the farm, shiny black ones for church on Sunday. It wasn't tee-shirts with soda and
baseball names printed all over them folks would wear, but cotton button-up shirts that
left a weathered triangle of skin on the chest.
There was a certain comfort in living in a place where folks had settled down a
while. When you got bogged down or in a bind, you knew you could count on the kinfolk
and neighbors to show up like a disorganized army to help out, or at least give a lot of
advice.
When people spend that much time living and talking in the same place, they
start to think pretty similar. It seemed like a new story worth telling only came along
every decade or so. In between, those same stories that had been around for a while
got plenty of exercise. You could pretty well figure what opinions folks would have about
things, given that there were only so many opinions to go around and folks had to share
quite a bit.
At school we started to run into folks that thought differently about things. Rich
folks - rich compared to us anyway - had started moving in from town, and Yankees
moving down to get away from that horrible cold up there. In class they talked about
“neighborhoods,” about streets with crossing guards and these important rules people
12
were supposed to live by. It was hard to imagine people who lived with so much
concrete where the trees used to be; it seemed pretty different. Kids from the
neighborhood world didn't know how to hunt and fish as good as we did. They went to
movies, and they bought things. A true Salzburger sweats anytime they spend more
than a dollar, so we never learned how to spend money. Which was just as well, as we
would have run out pretty quick even in a penny candy store.
They seemed to have rules for everything, like they were always indoors and not
trying to track dirt on the floor. Even if they were outside, it seemed like a part of them
was still inside trying to keep everything clean. We never really paid all that much
attention to the rules, because it seemed like for the most part nobody had gotten
around to writing them yet. As for whatever rules we did come into contact with, it was
only in keeping with the spirit of things that these were ignored as well.
It was like that with the fire department. Some folks just down the road had
gotten a volunteer fire department together. They asked my father to donate an acre of
land out on the highway to build a station. He thought about it and donated an acre right
near the house instead. He figured if he was going to give them an acre of land he had
just as well have a fire department close to the house to show for it.
The fire department had two old pumpers. The oldest dated back at least several
cultural revolutions, which meant it fit in pretty well. It was a parade-style fire truck, with
big rounded fenders and a long narrow front end. It had brass bulby things sticking up in
various places, some of which had uses we were familiar with. That long front end
concealed a motor with twelve cylinders all lined in a row. How so much engine could
result in so little forward motion was always the subject of some discussion.
The dispatch system for the fire department was a siren on a pole. You could
hear it pretty well riding the top of a trailer in the hayfield on a summer afternoon.
Sometimes folks gave good directions, but as often as not you just drove out of the fire
station and looked for smoke.
There were very precise rules concerning what age a person had to be to
participate in fire fighting, and at what age they would be allowed to drive a truck. These
rules were, of course, completely ignored. We had skinny farm boys wearing big floppy
fire coats, looking through the steering wheel, arms spread wide holding on like a ship's
wheel in a storm. Of course the neighborhood folks from school wouldn't have
understood. But there was no one to tell us any different, so we did it our way.
If you weren't driving a fire truck, you had to pass them on the road and wait at
the fire for them to make their patient way there. Our main pumper was younger than
our parade pumper. The motor was better, though the pump didn't really work, but you
can't have everything. Then there was the converted gasoline truck. Always felt a little
uneasy spraying water from that one onto a fire.
Our parade pumper was an old soldier a little loose in the mind. Every once in a
while some wires would fall down on the exhaust manifold and the insulation would burn
13
through. Then the big brass siren would wind up its incessant screaming warning of
approaching enemy warplanes. Wasn't a switch you could find would make it stop. The
old soul could only be set to rest by climbing up under the hood with a pair of wire
cutters.
We specialized in false alarms and dumpster fires. Forest fires were common
too. Fire in a Southern forest is usually a slow and nibbly beast. Unless a
strong wind comes up, such a fire will just patiently munch its way through the pine
straw and bushes. Such a fire isn't at all like the Hollywood fires that leap through tree
tops and devour entire continents. But sometimes we would go out and wack down
some mischievous little grass fire near some imported Yankee's house. They would
come out and thank us with gratitude approaching religious rapture for saving them from
the burning Godzilla that was descending on them. Of course, we knew that even if we
had stayed home and finished out the ball game such a pesky little fire would have no
more than singed their rose bushes. But we figured it unnecessary to burden the public
with such technical details of fire fighting.
14
The Power of Culture
Cultural evolution is a long-term process. In the short-term, the dazzling parade
of politics and personalities compels our attention. We are not particularly aware of
cultural evolution, and yet it may well be the most powerful force on the planet
influencing how we live, individually and as a society.
Cultural evolution is the guiding force that creates our society, our beliefs, our
political structures. It creates the social environment we grow up in; it sets the stage for
the kinds of relationships we are likely to have with the people around us. It influences
the choices we make about what kinds of productive processes to use in our economy.
Cultural evolution guides the development of racism and sexism; it guides the creation or destruction - of ecological awareness in our society.
In order to understand cultural evolution, we have to learn to see culture itself.
We have to be able to see the extent to which our beliefs are learned and not innate,
inevitable, or a product of “ human nature.” We have to be able to step outside of some
of our deepest unconsidered and unquestioned assumptions about why people think
and act as they do.
It is not easy to see our culture from the outside, because it is so much a part of
who we are as human beings. We spend most of our lives among people who have
grown up in the same culture and who share a lot of our own cultural conditioning.
Within the context of our own society, our core beliefs and attitudes are not challenged.
So many people within our culture agree with our basic assumptions so much of the
time that our own culture becomes invisible to us.
Our cultural conditioning reaches deep inside of us. Culture is everything we
learn as a group. It is a set of shared norms, behaviors, laws, and material things that
groups of people large and small develop together. If a group of people has a common
way of burping, then that way of burping is culture. How we build our furniture and our
houses, how we dress our bodies, what we think about nationalism, war, food, and
sexuality are all pieces of culture. All of these beliefs evolve. Culture creates a large part
of who we are. Our learned behaviors are the greatest piece of who we are as human
beings.
Culture is also a system -- an active, adaptive process that seeks its own survival
and prosperity. Culture makes use of us as individuals; it conditions us to behave in
ways that are beneficial for the society at large. Just as the cells and organs of a body
must cooperate closely for the common good, so individual people must cooperate if the
larger society is to survive and prosper. Culture teaches us cooperation largely without
our knowledge or consent. We are often unaware of our role in larger cultural systems.
15
In order to understand cultural evolution, we have to separate from our own
beliefs, our own culture, to look as outside observers on the beliefs of our society and
other societies. The point is to be able to understand how and why particular beliefs
evolve. In order to reach that understanding, we have to let go of our own prejudices
and preconceptions about why people think and act as they do.
Beliefs about food in different cultures offer one example. In the U.S., we tend
to believe that insects are gross and disgusting and should not be considered food
under any circumstances, short of the threat of starvation. We don't think of this belief
as culture -- we think of bugs as innately gross and disgusting.
If we look at humanity across time and across the world, however, we find that
most cultures throughout most of history have considered insects to be good food, just
as we consider french fries or pizza to be good food. Most human cultures have eaten
bugs and liked them.7 This is important because if we want to understand why some
cultures eat insects and other cultures eat pizza and french fries, we have to understand
that none of these foods are innately gross or good. What we eat is a cultural choice,
one that we make as a society.
There are other cultural choices that we are likely to feel even more strongly
about, such as those pertaining to sexuality. In Western society, we have a tradition of
thinking that premarital or extramarital sex is wrong. Many Americans feel that sex is a
significant ethical and spiritual issue. But if we look at cultures across the world, we find
that Western society is near the conservative end of a spectrum of sexual
restrictiveness.8 Other cultures throughout the world hold a wide variety of attitudes
toward sexuality. Most cultures accept premarital sex as perfectly normal.9 Historically,
7
“[The] abomination of insects and other small invertebrates [as food] by Europeans
and Americans is the exception rather than the rule” (Harris, 1985, p.156). Milk is
another example of a food some cultures find tasty and others find distasteful. To
people from some other cultures, milk is a bodily secretion, as appealing to drink as cow
saliva (Harris, 1985, p.130).
8
The Semai in Malaya are one culture that offers us a mirror of the learned nature of
our own sexual attitudes. Their attitudes toward sexuality would seem outrageous to a
North American “[T]he east Semai are ... casual about the sexual activities of children,
who sometimes play overt sexual games. A boy may, for instance, pretend to copulate
with a girl, using a corncob as a penis, while watching adults whoop with laughter”
(Dentan, 1968, p.62).
9
“From available evidence ... it seems unlikely that a general prohibition of sex relations
outside of marriage occurs in as many as five percent of the peoples of the earth ... The
bias of our own highly aberrant traditional sex mores has ... distorted the analysis of
sexual restrictions ...” (Murdock, 1965, p.264).
16
most cultures have accepted multiple marriages - polygamy - as perfectly normal.10 And
yet in our culture polygamy is considered both illegal and immoral. If we are going to
understand why some cultures practice polygamy and other cultures practice
monogamy, why some cultures are permissive and others are very restrictive, we need
to be able to step back from our attitudes about these beliefs. We have to accept that
other cultures are very different, that it is not innately right or wrong for any society to
hold any particular belief.
Religion is another area that people feel strongly about. If we look across the
spectrum of human cultures, we can see how our own beliefs are learned, how even our
deepest self is shaped by our cultural experience. All human cultures have some form
of spirituality. For people living in large, stratified cultures, God, Satan, Heaven, and
Hell may be a central part of daily life. For traditional Christians, God is present
everywhere, involved in and judging the daily affairs of human beings, handing down
punishment on the wicked and prosperity on the virtuous. In other cultures, people may
believe in spirits who cause sickness or do favors when asked properly, but God and
Satan do not exist for them. They perceive themselves differently in their spiritual
relationship to the greater universe. The gods are not far-away, unreachable powers,
but rather accessible spiritual beings embedded in the plants, animals, and artifacts of
daily life. If we are going to understand where our deepest beliefs come from, we have
to understand that we as a society create those beliefs. We have to be able to look at
the beliefs of other cultures past and present and accept those beliefs without
prejudging them.
The Social Animal
Culture creates us as human beings, but it is not just an individualized process. A
culture tries to create people who will behave in a manner that is profitable to the
society at large. A culture uses people’s need to be respected by their fellow humans as
a tool to mold identities.
“Love is such a fundamental need that people go where the love goes just
the way the roots of a plant turn toward water and the leaves turn toward light.
Our culture trains us to take certain roles by putting the love in that direction and we just grow that way!” Barbara Sher11
10
“Some form of plural marriage [polygamy] occurs in 90 percent of the world's cultures”
(Harris, 1975, p.312).
11
Sher, 1979, p.17
17
Human beings are social animals. It is a vital lesson when looking at human
history that people will literally do anything to gain the love and respect of their fellow
humans. The anthropological record is full of cultures that demand extreme selfsacrifice from people in order to gain respect. A number of American Indian cultures
engaged in “sun dances” where the dancers pierced sticks through the muscular flesh
on their chests, tied these sticks to a pole, and then danced around the pole until the
sticks ripped through the muscle. All over the world, people have mutilated themselves,
or deprived themselves of food and shelter to gain the respect of their fellow human
beings. There are examples reaching from the Natchez of North America to India,
where people take their own lives to conform to cultural dictates.12
As people will destroy themselves to conform to cultural mandates of appropriate
behavior, so too people define their own well-being in terms of cultural values. Crosscultural studies have been conducted that ask people to rate their own happiness. One
might expect people in wealthier countries to rate themselves as happier than people in
poor countries. Surprisingly, self-rated happiness in human societies does not correlate
with the overall wealth of a society, but rather with the wealth of the individual relative to
the rest of their own culture. Thus a poorer person in the West may be very rich
compared to someone in a developing country, but the Westerner is likely to rate
themselves as unhappy if they are poor compared to the people around them. Likewise,
a person in a less wealthy country may be very poor by the standards of industrialized
countries, but if they are well-off compared to the people around them, they are more
likely to rate themselves as happy.13 Cross-culturally, people consistently rate
themselves as happier than the class below them, and less happy than the class above
them, regardless of their absolute wealth. But the voluminous consumption of Western
society does not bring happiness, only social respect brings happiness.
Social acceptance and respect in every human society are tied to appropriate
behavior, and the need for social acceptance is the deepest, most pervasive human
drive. Culture can thus use our need for social acceptance as a means to influence our
behavior. In Western society, the accumulation of wealth stimulates economic activity in
our hyper-productive economy, thus wealth is tied to social acceptance. In all cultures,
access to sex is tied to social acceptance, thus sexuality is used by culture to motivate
us to do what is beneficial for the culture at large. We will discuss this in more detail in
another chapter.
12
For examples of culturally induced self-mutilation, see Jorgensen, 1972, and Holler,
1995. For an example of suicide induced by cultural norms, see Hudson, 1982, p.332.
For an argument that questions the “voluntariness” of suicide induced by cultural norms,
see Daly, 1978, p.113-133.
13
Durning, 1992, p.39
18
Parallel Evolution
Even if we accept the power of culture to make use of our social needs to
influence our deepest beliefs, how do we know that there is a common or universal
process of cultural evolution? Because of the existence of parallel evolution.
With biological evolution, natural selection operates on the same principles
whether it is occurring in Australia, Antarctica, or Asia. The animals may look different,
but the process through which they evolve operates similarly all over the world.14 On
distant continents one can find very similar but unrelated animals filling similar niches. In
Australia, for instance, biological evolution has produced a plethora of marsupials that
mimic in form the animals on other continents, including rodents, herbivores, and even
large marsupial lion-like carnivores (now extinct). Though the animals look different,
natural selection has guided the evolution of animals in similar niches on distant
continents along parallel paths.
Cultural evolution operates by a process of cultural selection which, like natural
selection, is similar no matter where on earth is it happening. The strongest evidence for
a consistent process of cultural selection all over the world is what anthropologists have
referred to as parallel evolution. Parallel cultural evolution refers to the spontaneous
arising of similar cultural institutions in very distant places. Examples of parallel
evolution include male supremacy, social stratification, and the ecological
unsustainability of large societies. Parallel evolution indicates both the existence and
the power of an underlying evolutionary force that shapes human culture.
Male supremacy is one significant example. Human beings lived for tens of
thousands of years in hunting and gathering cultures.15 It is impossible to know exactly
what such groups were like, but studies of modern gatherers indicate that our ancestors
probably lived with relative egalitarianism between the sexes. Male supremacy probably
did not exist for tens of thousands of years.16
14
It is commonly assumed that natural selection results from the life and death
extremes of “the survival of the fittest.” It is more accurate to say that natural selection
results from some animals leaving behind a greater number of offspring than others
(Wilson, 1975).
15
Anthropologists refer to them as hunter/gatherers. Most hunter/ gatherers are more
dependent on gathering than hunting. I use the term gatherers for the sake of brevity.
16
Some of the most intensively studied gathering groups include the !Kung in southern
Africa, (Lee, 1979) and the Mbuti (“Pygmies”) in central Africa (Turnbull, 1962).
19
Now male supremacy is ubiquitous, often taking extreme forms. In China up until
mid-twentieth century, they used to bind women's feet, leaving them crippled for life. In
some areas of India, women were expected to kill themselves when their husbands
died. In modern Iran or Saudi Arabia, women are often not allowed to show their faces
in public, being compelled by law to wear veils. All over the world, political leaders are
overwhelmingly male. Worldwide, women earn less than men and own less than men.
Women are subject to violence at the hands of men far more often than the other way
around.17 In our own culture, sexism is not simply a primordial holdover. Granted, the
status of women has improved in the last few decades, but sexism is an institution that
continues to re-create itself.
Male supremacy is a powerful cultural institution which arose spontaneously in
hundreds, if not thousands, of places all over the world.18 This clearly indicates that
some underlying evolutionary force has a tendency to create male supremacy. I would
argue that male supremacy is in no way natural or inevitable to the human species.
Thus, this global recurrence represents the spontaneous creation of male supremacy,
or parallel evolution.
Similar patterns of parallel evolution can be seen in the political development of
human culture. The evolution of agriculture and the creation of state-level societies all
over the globe indicates patterns of parallel evolution.
Before the growth of Western colonialism, pre-industrial state-level societies
arose in isolation from one another in distant places. These states were characterized
Although men and women may not have completely equal power in these societies,
they are much closer to equal than in ours. An interesting discussion of non-male
supremacist cultures can also be found in Rianne Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade
(Eisler, 1988). Another very well documented book on this issue is Charlotte O'Kelly’s,
Women and Men in Society (O'Kelly, 1986).
17
Daly, 1978
18
Male supremacy is inescapable in the ethnographic literature. One well known
ethnography with a very strong male-supremacist flavor is Napoleon Chagnon’s
Yanomamo: The Fierce People (Chagnon, 1968). While this ethnography is famous in
anthropological circles, personal discussions I have had with people who have spent
time among the Yanomomo have lead me to believe that he significantly exaggerated
the male supremacist aspects of their society. A more balanced account can be found in
Allen Johnson’s The Evolution of Human Societies (Johnson, 1987, p.101-130). Male
supremacy consistently surfaces in other ethnographies in the form of polygyny (one
man having multiple wives) (Middleton, 1965) (Malinowski, 1984) (Gould, 1969) (
Hudson, 1982) (Hart, 1960) (Gilbert, 1987) (Pospisil, 1963) (Kuper, 1963).
20
by the existence of standing armies, centralized leadership, and established political
bureaucracies. In Mesopotamia in the Middle East, the Indus Valley in India, the
Yellow River valley in China, the highlands of central Mexico, and in South America,
states arose.
The cultures that preceded these states were diverse, and yet consider the
commonalities of ancient states. Some human cultures have lived with a relative
equality of the sexes, but all early states were strongly male-dominated. Some human
cultures have lived without any specialized weapons of war, but all early states were
highly militarized. Human beings the world over hold a wide diversity of spiritual beliefs.
But in every early state, the paramount leader was considered a divine being, a god, or
a descendant of God. Many human cultures had a high degree of awareness of the
ecological balance. But all large scale human civilizations appear to evolve by a means
that makes them blind to the ecological impacts of their actions. This is only the
beginning of a long list of patterns among human societies, large and small. Given
these similarities, there must be consistent reasons for the development of similar
beliefs in diverse cultures around the world.19
If we are ever to gain any conscious influence over the evolutionary forces of
culture - this unseen power that not only creates sexism, but also drives our society on
an unsustainable path - we will need to understand that evolutionary force.
The Illusion of Conscious Control
Culture has the power to create institutions of racism, sexism, ecologically
unsustainable production, democracy, war, and peace. What guides the evolution of
these cultural institutions that have so much influence over our lives? What creates
culture?
It's not a question most people tend to ask. When we do think about it, we tend to
think that we consciously guide our own society. This is a pervasive view in academics,
19
“I believe that the events leading up to the emergence of agriculture in various
regions of the world demonstrate remarkable parallelism, and I believe that this
parallelism not only permits but demands that some common underlying force or factor
be found operating in all world regions, not necessarily to the exclusion of local
variables, but in conjunction with those variables” (Cohen, 1977, p.vii.). “In my opinion,
the origin of the state was neither mysterious nor fortuitous ... [I]t was not a unique
event but a recurring phenomenon: states arose independently in different places and at
different times. Where the appropriate conditions existed, the state emerged” (Carneiro,
1970, p.733).
21
the media, and politics. It is apparent when we read history, and we hear about how
Plato or Napoleon had an idea that had particular impacts on the development of
society. We talk about the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, inventions and leaders,
and how culture changed in response to this philosophy or that idea. In modern times,
the politicians, pundits and preachers talk about personal responsibility, values, and the
moral integrity of particular leaders - again with the strong message that we guide the
evolution of our society through our conscious choices.
Academics interpret history to make it seem like they can change the course of
society, if only people will support their philosophies and ideas. Politicians claim that
their policies have created positive changes, and that bad things happen as a result of
their opposition's ideas. Leaders of all stripes try to make it appear that they are at the
cutting edge of change, that they are leading society forward. As they try to gain public
support by making their roles seem indispensable, leaders tend to reinforce the idea
that we guide the evolution of our society with our conscious ideas.
For these and other reasons, we tend to believe that we have conscious control
of our culture. It is a deeply held belief throughout our society, one that is quite obvious
and intuitive to us, as people once thought the earth was flat. If we look across the
horizon, the basic line of the land is flat. It is inescapable, it is obvious, it is clear, and it
is wrong. Our belief in conscious control is like that. We can see that, if leaders make
conscious choices, if we as a society hold certain beliefs or philosophies, then that has
large historical impacts on how society changes.
As with the flat earth, however, there is a reality beyond immediate perception.
The bigger reality is non-conscious cultural evolution, and it is not obvious or
immediately visible. In spite of the enormous impact male supremacy has throughout
the world, we do not know where it came from or why it continues. We ascribe our
freedom and democracy to the wisdom of the founding fathers, but we do not know
what guides the creation of democracy or slavery in human society. Cultural evolution
creates the core institutions of our society outside of our conscious awareness or
influence. Cultural evolution operates like a silent machine deep in the heart of our
culture. It is very powerful, but it is not conscious or ethical. It simply drives our culture
forward without our being aware of its profound influence.
In order to achieve a more conscious evolution, we will need to be more aware of
cultural evolution. We will need to learn how to see the machine and how it operates, to
learn how to guide it consciously. In order to do that, the first thing we will need to do is
to learn to let go of our illusion of conscious control. Our illusions make use feel secure.
The truth is often less orderly than the ideas we create to bring us comfort.
Our illusion of conscious control is reinforced by politicians and vested interests
who want to take credit for progress and prosperity. We do not have nearly as much
control as we would like to believe. Our survival may well depend on our ability to
22
understand the unseen forces of cultural evolution, disseminate such understanding
widely, and act on it in an organized way.
23
CHAPTER THREE
The Strength of the Land
Living things like southern land. They fight each other fiercely for the smallest
piece of it. Leave a patch bare and the green leafy residents will move in hastily. Yellow
pines grow tall and straight, smooth sappy bark stretching high up into the sky, each
topped with a thick bushy mushroom cap of green pine needles. Those pines are
straighter and taller than anywhere else I have ever seen, their needles are long. Their
trunks grow thick and strong until even a person with long arms cannot reach around
them.
The pines don't form a solid canopy like a hardwood forest, but a high green
carpet with holes. None of the sunlight that slips through those holes goes to waste
though, because it is hungrily consumed by the thicket of palmettos, berry bushes, and
myrtles below. You can't just walk through a southern forest; the ground is grown up
with a solid wall of brush. The only way to move through it is to go under like a rabbit or
over like a squirrel.
In the fields too, the land is rich. The soil is made of sand turned black by the
long-time residence of the plants. Along the edges of the fields are the swamps. My
ancestors cleared the land like that, as far into the edge of the swamp as they could, till
the soil got too wet and soft to farm. Near the swamp was where the soil was richest;
that was where everything grew best. Until we got too much rain, that is. Then that rich
soil would just turn to dark oatmeal. You would sink past your knees if you tried to walk,
and there was no thinking of driving a tractor through it.
Through the summer the corn would grow thick until it closed the light out
between the rows like a forest that shades out the bushes below. We grew the old time
horse-corn on stalks that were twice as tall as the new hybrids. Dad had saved the seed
since old times. Every year he would go through and pick out the best ears in the fall.
Then in spring we would shell those ears by hand to use as seed. We couldn't even use
a simple hand-crank sheller, because it would break the eyes of the kernels he said.
There were always a few blue and purple kernels mixed in. Dad would say that was
Indian corn. I always wondered if that seed really did come from Indians, if he really
knew or if he was just saying it, but I had no way to know for sure.
24
The soybeans would start out as little green sprouts in the spring, separated in
wide rows. In the heat of the summer, they would grow up past your nose with blackgreen leaves, closing up the space between the rows until they made a solid nest to
catch the falling sunshine.
We always planted the garden near the swamp where the soil was rich. We had
a strawberry patch that we didn't pay all that much attention to. But that was all right
with me on account of the strawberries went wild and made a strawberry plant carpet
that covered the ground. Then you could just lie right in the middle of that soft carpet,
eat berries, look up at the sky and wonder; what do rich people do for fun?
The small animals loved the land too, moving into every space that wasn't
already taken up by someone bigger. The jumping spiders were like that, moving in
under the big live oak tree at the farm where a hundred years of rusting farm equipment
was slowly sinking under a tangle of vines. There was more than one kind, but you
could tell they were all some kin to each other, on account of they all shared a certain
character. Different ones had different colors, patched over furry little bodies. Most small
things tend to be pretty timid around bigger things, always running away to hide, which
makes some sense when you stop and think about it. But jumping spiders figured it out
that most people weren't much interested in catching spiders. When you visited their
home, a spider would always come out and greet you like you were a welcome guest. It
would move quick, then stop, like an impatient cat stalking a bird. It would fuss and
scurry about like that a bit, then stop and look up at you with eyes that were much too
big for the rest of it. It would pick up its two front legs - or arms, whichever they were and swing them about a bit. Whether it was waving or just minding its spider business I
can't say for sure. If you got too close, it would live up to its name, jumping like a
bullfrog to a safer distance. The spiders didn't seem to take it personal though; once
they got a little distance they would go right back to looking at you like you were the
strangest thing they had ever seen. They were friendly critters, convinced that the world
wasn't such a bad place, quite sure that there wasn't all that much to be afraid of.
It wasn't just in the wild places that the small critters would move in. They took a
liking to our house as well. The bumble bees had claimed our porch as their own. The
porch was a good place to sit in the heat of the day. With enough focused effort you
could convince yourself that it really was cooler there. As long as you sat real still, you
wouldn't sweat much. The air would stick to your skin like warm duct tape challenging
that mental discipline.
The bumble bees, like jumping spiders, didn't seem to mind visitors. They were
unlikely creatures, like somebody put wings on a freight engine. You never had to sit
long before one would come flying home in the mid-afternoon heat, wobbling and
bobbing about like an overweight drunk, high on the bee nectar of life. Its stubby little
legs would be so covered with pollen that it couldn't fold them up tight against its body,
but rather left them sticking out like fluffy yellow landing gear. It would tipsy its up and
25
down way, buzzing around the porch like some exaggerated ballet dance. Then it would
amble its way up to its hole it had carved into one of the posts. (Technically, I suppose
these were carpenter bees, but we never were much for technicalities.) It would find its
hole, sure as a stumbling drunk can find home in spite of themselves. Then it would
proceed to wiggle its way in. Meanwhile, its big and fluffy legs didn't really fit, so a fair
amount of the pollen got scraped off and drifted down in the faintest yellow rain. I never
understood how, after they bored a hole straight into the wood no bigger than their
bodies, they managed to turn around or socialize or do anything at all in those holes.
But every year there were still bees, so I figured they must be doing something in there.
And like true Southerners, they occupied the same place for years on end. I have little
doubt that great-grandchildren bees are now doing their best wiggle into the same
narrow holes.
There was one summer when the rain didn't come for a long time. The corn and
beans showed it first, their leaves curling and then wrinkling up as they gave up hope of
making anything more than a handful of shriveled grain. As the land got dryer and dryer
still, everything was wilting down, looking pale and tired. The big ones faired better, the
tall trees with their roots deep in the ground. But a lot of the smaller creatures don't
make it through a time like that. With no rain and the grass all turned brown, there
weren't many bugs for the jumping spiders, and then less spiders to eat them. With the
flowers all shriveling up, the bees could search far and wide for their nectar, and some
would never come home. It was hard times for many small things.
We were close enough to the city that you could pick up the rock-and-roll stations
on the radio. I was listening when I got home and the disk jockey gave the weather
report. There were some clouds supposed to come in a day or two, maybe bring some
rain. But it was a weekend, and the disk jockey let out a big “booo” for clouds, saying
how much he hoped it would be sunny so folks could play that weekend.
Even if she was harsh at times, mother nature still fed the wild animals. Our
interest in them wasn't always as friendly though. All young male children where I grew
up were provided at a precious young age with artillery of a scale that far outsized us.
We were supposed to hunt, so we did. Of course, we had long been drilling for the day
when we could hunt with BB guns and what not, and with these we thoroughly pelted
each other. But such weaponry was non lethal to anything but vanity.
Getting real weapons was a rite of passage. In the early years of elementary
school I was given an old 12-gauge shotgun that had been in the family since biblical
times. The wear and thinness of the metal concerned me some, but I was firmly assured
that it had not blown up yet.
The recoil from such a weapon was generally more than an upright posture could
withstand. Nonetheless, me and my cohorts of similar scale proceeded to launch a
campaign of destruction on small animals. We would hunt the small birds that landed,
then flittered quickly, swooping along from one myrtle bush to the next in the fence
26
rows. Our weapons were far outscaled for the task, but any real game was too much the
wiser.
The adult hunters taught us to overcome sympathy for what we were killing. In
the fall the blackbirds would come through. They would load the big pecan trees down,
like overproduced fruit that was going to break the limbs. They would squawk and caw
till it became such a clatter you could hardly hear anything else. Uncle Paul and uncle
Sheddy would come over to shoot doves, and one of them would go out and point a
shotgun up in the trees. They wouldn't even aim, but when they fired, eight or ten or
more birds would fall, some just wounded and still flapping. Then we would kill them.
We ate blackbirds sometime, but mostly they just shot them to watch them fall. Like it
was some great mystery to see them up there, and killing some brought the mystery
down so we could touch it.
I would be talking to the guys and one of them would let it slip out, it was hard to
learn how to kill. But we were bored, and we were supposed to, so we did. We didn't
talk about it much.
After we had practiced on small birds for a while, we started hunting animals you
could eat. Deer and big animals were for adults. Squirrels were for new hunters. In
areas where squirrels are hunted, they get wise. They will hold still when you watch
them, then run as you lift the gun. They will even come down the tree to run across the
ground. In a tree, a squirrel can outclimb a fox. But guns climb trees. On the ground, a
squirrel can outrun a hunter and his gun. They figured out what was happening.
Most folks figure animals as stupid, or at least as not having any feelings like
people do. Most folks don't spend much time with animals. I was out hunting squirrels
once, where they had been hunted a lot before, where they knew what this hunt meant.
I came across two of them running through the trees together. It was not hard to figure
that they knew each other. I shot one of them down, like I was supposed to. Then the
other turned and ran back toward me. It ran all the way down the tree to my level so it
could look at me, lash its tail and bark squirrel talk, mad at me for shooting the other
squirrel. That squirrel knew I could kill him. He left me thinking for some time.
We hunted and fished, and as long as we cleaned what we brought home, Mom
would add it to whatever she was cooking. Mom could cook a meal that would make a
King jealous. Given that she was feeding several farm boys, it was just as well. Dinner
was at noon, and that was the big meal. We would rest some after dinner, then work in
the afternoon. In the evening, we had a smaller meal for supper.
The center of a meal was always meat from the farm. There would be meat and
vegetables from the farm, and rice from the store, blueberry pies from the berries that
grew in the yard, huckleberry and blackberry turnovers from the berries that grew in the
woods and along the edges of the fields. Whatever game we brought home would be
there with the meat from the farm. Wild game always tastes stronger than anything
27
people grow. Sometimes we would mix the two, like putting deer meat in with the
hamburger to give it some of that wild flavor.
We hunted a lot of different things, but of anything a farmer ever pointed a gun
at, the hardest to kill was a crow. Crows did do some damage. They would walk
carefully down a row of freshly sprouting corn, pull each sprout up as they went, and eat
the seed at the bottom. But from the way farmers talked about crows you would think a
crow could mow down a hundred acres before breakfast.
The crows had some organization among them, and they used it in their defense.
They would sit a crow up in a tall pine on the edge of the field. Dad called that one the
watch crow. The watch crow would keep an eye out, and at the first sight of any
approaching danger, it would call out to the other crows feeding in the field. At that point
they would all make a hasty retreat, cawing a cacophony of warnings to each other or
insults to farmers -- I never knew which.
But it was possible to let the crows outsmart themselves. Crows, like other
hunted animals, learn to recognize the sight of a gun. Walking with a gun, you could
consider yourself lucky to get within a quarter mile of them. But many was the day we
would spend hours on end driving the tractor across the fields making diesel smoke and
dust. These were prime picking times for the birds. Plowing ground or raking hay would
send a wave of panicked grasshoppers and crickets fleeing the micro-genocide. Cattle
egrets would glide down soft on lace-white wings and chicken walk in their southern
belle way through the fleeing hordes, deftly snapping up the doubly unlucky insects. So
intent were the egrets in their pursuit that one had to be careful not to run them over
with the tractor.
If a crow wanted any piece of the harvest, it would have to get accustomed to the
presence of tractors, which they did. But while the egrets strolled blissfully across their
graced pasture, the crows knew their place was different, and would keep a keen eye
on the farmer in the tractor seat. You could set a shotgun on the running board. And
since you weren't holding it the crow would not recognize it. With the tractor in low gear,
you could creep across the open field. The crow would watch, but not fly, having seen
this circumstance before and known it to be safe. When the tractor got close, you lifted
the gun. The crow would fly, but not in time to escape its final surprise.
If crows’ intelligence - which they seemed to have plenty of - could be used
against them, their attachment to their fellow crows could be used with even more
effect. If you could ever wound a crow, you could tie it down in shotgun range from a
blind, the wounded crow would call, and the others would come. Somehow in such
circumstances the crows' senses failed them long after they should have known the
danger. One after another they would come.
Sometimes the relation of people to animals becomes a kind of war, arising a
passion that takes no real assessment of the damage. It never seemed like the crows
did so much damage as to rightfully provoke a war, to justify such energy expended in
28
their destruction. But they did somehow insult the dignity, offend the power, of a farmer
putting hard labor into the soil. I heard it many times, when a person decided to put a
living being in their iron sights, somehow it was always in self-defense, no matter how
diminutive the animal. I've seen it other places too, where people act out what they are
feeling, but some part of them doesn't feel right about it, so they say it is self-defense.
I thought I had come to know the land and the animals pretty well. But as sure as
you come to know something, somebody is going to come along and show you how
much you don't know. I decided to go exploring one day on the far side of our property
where our land crossed the road. I took a shotgun with me, not so much to hunt, but just
in case an opportunity presented itself. I crossed the road and went far back into the
woods, hoping to circle the property line and come back out on the road a ways up.
Some spots were thicker than others, but with the tangle of bushes and vines it was
never easy walking. I was bearing left and then right trying to avoid the thickest places.
After a while my pretty good sense of direction could make no sense of my direction. I
thought I knew where I was, then I didn't. I stopped and looked around to get my
bearings. I wasn't sure which way to go. I took my best guess and headed that way with
as much confidence as I could muster. But the thick bushes soaked up my assertion
and dispersed it, leaving me crawling this way and that. It was hardly any time at all
before I broke out of the thick brush and into a small clearing. At first I was glad to have
an opening, some relief from the bushes that were caging me in so tight. Then my mind
and body were washed over in a sinking fear as I realized that this was the same
clearing I had been at before. I had gone in a circle. Now I was no longer uncertain
about where I was, but rather quite sure that I was lost.
There isn't much useful to do with a good state of panic when you are standing in
the middle of woods so thick you can hardly walk, nothing to do but look. The smooth
bark of the pines was so familiar, the branch of every kind of bush I had seen before.
These plants had always been friends, their soft green always a blessed cushion from
the hard edges of the big world. The land was a friend, here where the animals lived,
animals flesh and blood like me. But there I was, supposedly the supreme animal, hot
and tired and getting hungry, and the land was not going to feed me. I could not eat the
trees. I could see no food among the woody bushes. Even my shotgun, such powerful
steel, able to reach out and bite the soft flesh of these creatures, was of no use. Even if
I could find an animal to kill and eat, it would not be a meal -- not a meal like I was used
to. In that moment I could not understand how the animals lived there. I could see then
how much different we had become, me and the animals, in spite of shared blood.
After a while I realized that there were some old ruts sunk among the bushes and
trees, ruts from a road that had been there long ago. With some effort, I was able to
figure out where the road went when it was a road. I figured that if I followed the ruts in
one direction or the other, I’d have at least a fifty-fifty chance of getting to somewhere
the road used to go.
29
The ruts carried me out to the road, the asphalt of civilization that I had no taste
for, now come to save me from the wild. I did not want to believe that I needed the
asphalt to save me.
I crossed the road back into familiar woods that would take me to the farm.
Through the woods I walked, and out into the field where a Native left his arrowhead,
chipped carefully out of stone, left there for me to find. Even they knew the forest like
the animals, able to find food, shelter, and solace among the plants on this land. Only I
was the stranger, me and my kin, living from our machines and asphalt.
I knew when I got home there would be supper, of rice and bread from the store,
meat and vegetables from the farm. We were good hunters, and we carried weapons
with a much longer reach than the Native's bow. I wanted the land to feed me, but the
wild food we took from the land with our powerful weapons was only a garnish to our
dinner that came from the farm and the store. We had tamed the land, changed the
land. We could live no more hunting on this land. The Native people had to find all of
their food on this land. They had no grocery store to turn to when they could not gather
their meal among the trees and woody bushes. They could only live more sparse and
spread out than we lived now, to find what food was there, even on rich land.
I have been back to these places many times now. The blackbirds don't come
back to the pecan trees in such numbers anymore. I don't think it is the hunter’s gun
though, but a more deadly innocent predator. There are a lot of houses around now, big
yards where trees and fields used to be. A gun kills an animal once. Usually their kind
can come back. Developers take away the animals’ land and food, and kill them forever.
And while the innocents sit inside their new air-conditioned homes watching the evening
comedy, they don't see the bumble bee swaggering home, they don't know when its
missing. They don't think about the blackbird, or feel the growing heat.
30
Cultural Evolution Has Been Driven by
Ecological Limits
The culture into which we are born determines who we are as individual human
beings. We learn from our culture what is good to eat, or gross, when sex is good or
sinful, whether God is an individual being or a group spirits, whether God is an angry
father or a benign spirit.
Culture has enormous influence over us. The question then becomes - what
creates that culture? What creates all of our beliefs about food, sexuality, God, and
other aspects of our culture? What guides the evolution of the culture around us?
The laboratory for researching that question is the past. Humans have lived in
large and small cultures from the pack-ice on the north pole to the sands of the Sahara.
As biologists study and compare the evolution of many animals to understand the
principles of biological evolution, so we can look at the history of human cultures to
understand the principles of cultural evolution.
To understand our cultural evolutionary past, we first have to dispel some of the
misunderstandings that are quietly woven into our understanding of history. We imagine
that we consciously guide the evolution of our society. Inextricably linked with this
illusion of conscious control is the notion of progress. According to the mythology of
progress, we have developed socially and technologically from a dark and difficult past
to a more comfortable present and perhaps a brighter future.20 A more realistic look at
cultural evolution does not put modern society at the pinnacle of progress, but rather
sees our modern situation in the context of a long history of population growth and
ecological change. The social sciences tend to avoid the real reasons for cultural
evolution, because they make people uncomfortable. But we need to understand the
past, whether or not it is flattering. The truth of the matter is that our distant past was not
so difficult as we imagine.
Human beings evolved in gathering and hunting groups. Some gathering groups
have survived into modern times. Gatherers tend to live in small bands that move
20
According to H.G. Wells: “With modern times we come to the growth of the republics
and to the splendors of the Grand Monarchies. The new democracies of France and the
Americas come into being. Napoleon Bonaparte blazes through his extraordinary
career. Life is revolutionized by mechanical inventions. Science shows the way to a new
ease ... Let the reader ... see the true measure and transitoriness of all the conflicts,
deprivations, and miseries of this present period of bleak and painful, and yet, on the
whole, of hopeful change” (H.G. Wells, 1956, flap and conclusion).
31
around in a limited area, taking wild plants and animals for food, clothing, and shelter.
This means of subsistence was practiced by our apelike, pre-human ancestors, as well
as by humans for tens of thousands of years until the development of agriculture.21
The lives of our gathering ancestors were not “nasty, brutish, and short” as is
sometimes imagined; they were in fact quite healthy. Height is one measure of nutrition,
that is, people who have good nutrition tend to be taller. The height of human skeletons
reached a peak some thirty thousand years ago. It is only in very recent history that the
average height of human beings in developed countries has reached the “high point”
that it reached tens of thousands of years ago. Dental health is another measure of
nutrition. The average human being died with fewer teeth missing thirty thousand years
ago than in Roman times.22 Marshal Sahlins coined the term the “original affluent
society” in referring to gatherers.23 They were skilled at living healthily in their
environments.
As far as the quality of a gatherer’s life is concerned, there is much we cannot
know about people who lived thousands of years ago. But there are gathering and
hunting groups still in existence that have been studied. Such groups include the ! Kung
and Hazda in Africa.24 The ! Kung live in the Kalahari Desert in Bostwana and Namibia
and are one of the most well studied groups of modern gatherers. The !Kung have
practiced hunting and gathering into modern times. In the last few decades, their culture
has been greatly impacted by the larger cultures around them and they have shifted
away from their traditional lifestyle. But it is interesting nonetheless to examine what
their gathering life was like.25
21
The durability of gathering as a means of subsistence is noteworthy. Industrialism has
lasted a couple of hundred years. Agriculture has been around for a few thousand.
Gathering lasted for tens of thousands of years. While we are impressed with our
technology, its durability is quite unproven.
22
Harris, 1978. p.18-19
23
Sahlins, 1972, p.1-41
24
The “!” in !Kung indicates a click of the tongue that does not exist in our language.
25
“Between 1958 and 1981 the hunting and gathering economy collapsed in
Bushmanland where Ju/wasi [!Kung] now depend for their living on welfare and cash
with no subsistence activities developed to replace hunting and gathering” (Marshall,
1984, p.54).
32
The !Kung lived in small groups -- bands -- that ranged from four to thirty-four
people when they were actively gathering and hunting. There were much larger
gatherings during certain times of the year and for certain events.26
The !Kung had a very wide diversity of plants and animals from which they could
gather food. They were astute biologists and could name hundreds of local plants and
animals, many of which they knew to be edible.27 Of this inventory, only a few plants
and animals made up the bulk of their diet, but the others were available if the more
common ones should fail in a given season. One ethnographer who studied the !Kung
of southern Africa wrote that they have no significant lack of any significant nutrient.28
The diversity of the food supply of gatherers stands in contrast to subsistence
agriculturalists who depend almost entirely on one or two staple crops. This brings us to
one of the odd lessons about gathering societies: they had a more stable food supply
than the agriculturalists who followed them. In the area where the !Kung lived as
gatherers, neighboring agriculturalists had a greater seasonal body weight fluctuation
than the !Kung themselves. For subsistence agriculturalists, there is a harvest season
and a lean season. For the !Kung, there is a harvest season of different foods all the
year round. When drought or other hard times struck, the agriculturalists turned to the
bush to look for food, where the !Kung already lived with relative stability.29
The !Kung were peaceful people. The social fabric of their society, as with all preindustrial societies, was kinship. They established kin relations across bands to
maintain peaceful relationships. They would even create kin names for people who
were not actual kin in order to establish a relationship.
“The applying of kin terms (to people beyond their actual kin) means to the
!Kung that they are not strangers but that they belong together and should
accord each other polite, respectful behavior, as they would to kin ... and take
care not to give offense. Methods by which the !Kung help to keep peaceful
relations amongst individuals within a band, methods such as meat sharing and
gift giving ... are employed also with name-relatives and have worked for peace
in inter-band relationships. Our informants never heard of a fight between bands
in the Nyae Nyae area, even from the old, old people.” Lorna Marshall30
26
Lee, 1979, p.56
27
Lee, 1979, p.159
28
Lee, 1979, p.203
29
Lee, 1979, p.302-303
30
Marshall, 1976, p.200
33
Even if one accepts that gatherers were physically healthy, it is hard to imagine
camping in the wilderness for a lifetime. Without our institutions of literature, education,
and art, mustn't they have been simple people, or at least bored?
Rather, it is a richness different from our institutions that they found. Many
anthropologists have commented on the intensity of the social life of the ! Kung and
other similar cultures. Their lives were neither boring, nor unpleasant, nor simple.
“The !Kung are the most loquacious people I know. Conversation in a
!Kung encampment is a constant sound like the sound of a brook, and as low
and lapping, except for shrieks of laughter. People cluster together in little groups
during the day, talking, perhaps making artifacts at the same time. At night,
families talk late by their fires, or visit at other family fires with their children
between their knees or in their arms if the wind is cold.” Lorna Marshall31
The art, music, and play of the !Kung were rich and diverse, as with any healthy
human culture.
“The children play all their waking hours, free play and structured games.
The adults also play games.” Lorna Marshall32
They spent a lot of time making music, playing, traveling from band to band and
socializing.
“The !Kung are a music loving people. Most of the time someone in a
!Kung encampment is making music. People sing to their babies to soothe or
entertain them. They sing to enliven their tasks and their games. They sing at the
waterhole and in leisure hours by their fires. Everyone sings, and almost
everyone plays an instrument. Although some are more talented as musicians
than others, and some take more interest than others in playing and singing well,
none are specialists in any of the several repertories of music, and no one
performs before others as musicians in European culture perform at concerts
before an audience. People sing and play for their own delectation, and all
participate to some degree in all aspects of the musical life.” Lorna Marshall33
31
Marshall, 1976, p.289
32
Marshall, 1976, p.313
33
Marshall, 1976, p.363
34
Their rich social life was central to their culture, and to personal identity.
“[T]he !Kung are dependent for their living on belonging to a band. They
must belong; they can live no other way. They are also extremely dependent
emotionally on the sense of belonging and on companionship. Separation and
loneliness are unendurable to them. I believe their want to belong and be near is
actually visible in the way families cluster together in an encampment and in the
way they sit huddled together, often touching someone, shoulder against
shoulder, ankle across ankle. Security and comfort for them lie in their belonging
to their group free from the threat of rejection and hostility.” Lorna Marshall34
Out of Eden
Our world has changed a lot since people lived in gathering cultures. We can't go
back, and I am not sure we would want that. But it is important to understand that, from
the beginning, it has not been “progress” that has pushed our cultural evolution. Our
distant past was neither physically, socially, nor spiritually miserable. We did not
develop agriculture and civilization to escape starvation, drudgery, and brutality. The
truth of our history is more complicated than that, and less flattering.
If it hasn't been progress driving humanity forward, then what has brought us
here? If our ancestors were comfortable and happy, then why did they change? If one
could name a single factor that has influenced the course of cultural evolution more than
any other, it would be the changing relationship of human beings to the environment
that supports them - in a word, ecology. As we are reluctant to examine the ecology of
our own time, so we have trouble seeing the role of ecology in our history. But our
ignorance does not reduce the power of ecology to influence our cultural evolution.
Ecology has been an unseen, unknown, but enormously powerful force driving
the evolution of human societies. It operates largely outside of human consciousness.
The ecology of cultural evolution is that population growth and resource depletion have
caused societies to evolve from smaller, more egalitarian societies to the large, stratified
societies we live in today.35
34
Marshall, 1976, p.288
35
There is very strong evidence that population growth has been a driving force behind
a great deal of human cultural evolution (Harner, 1970, p.67-86) (Boserup, 1965)
(Boserup, 1981) (Wilkinson, 1973) (Harris, 1978).
35
Gatherers, for instance, tend to have extremely low population densities. The !
Kung, for instance, had about one person for every 10 square kilometers.36 The wild
plants and animals growing in the semi-desert where they lived probably could not
support many more people. The !Kung lived in a semi-desert. Richer environments can
support more gathering people, but populations of gatherers remain limited by the
availability of wild foods.
Pre-industrial cultures practiced a wide range of population limiting techniques,
but populations still grew. As they did, people turned to smaller plants and animals that
occurred in greater abundance, but were harder to gather. This is referred to as “ broad
spectrum” hunting and gathering: instead of hunting deer or bison, people might start
hunting rabbits, or even snails or lizards. Instead of just digging up the largest roots they
can find, they might start relying more on smaller roots or seeds that take more time to
gather but occur in greater abundance.37
It is yet another one of our myths that gathering groups somehow had to “invent”
agriculture because they did not understand the nature of plants and seeds. They lived
in nature every hour of every day of their lives. They knew it with an intimacy that we will
never possess. They knew quite well about the nature of reproduction of plants and
animals. Gatherers knew how to plant seeds; they chose to not practice agriculture,
because it involved more work and they simply didn't need it as long as population
densities remained low.
The population densities of early gatherers grew over time. As human
populations grew beyond the level that broad spectrum gathering could support, our
ancestors began to invest more effort in manipulating the wild plants and animals. They
replanted, weeded, and otherwise tried to see to it that wild plants produced more. Over
time, this manipulation of wild plants and animals developed into domestication and
agriculture.38
Agriculture was adopted independently in hundreds of places all over the planet
earth. It was not “invented” in one place and then spread. The development of
agriculture thus represents a pattern of parallel evolution. Repeatedly, human beings
learned how to domesticate plants and animals for food. Agriculture can support many
times more people on a given area of land than can gathering.
At first our predecessors practiced simple forms of agriculture such as slash and
burn farming. They would burn sections of the forest and plant in the ashes for a few
36
Lee, 1979, p.41
37
Rindos, 1984, p.173-174, Harris, 1993, p.161
38
Population growth is believed to have pressed gathering cultures to shift to agriculture
(Boserup, 1965) (Spooner, 1972).
36
years. This kind of agriculture is still practiced among small cultures such as the
Yanomamo in the Brazilian Amazon.39 Slash and burn farming can be sustainable if
there is enough forest and few people, which is often not the case in modern times.
Population continued to grow. Over time agriculturalists started to practice more
intensive forms of agriculture. They dug trenches to channel water and irrigate crops.
They domesticated large animals and pulled plows with them, thus creating plow
agriculture.
It is part of our cultural mythology that a settled agricultural life decreased the
workload of our forbearers and gave them more leisure time. The opposite is true. The
evolution to more intensive forms of agriculture followed a pattern of increasing labor
inputs. Starting with gathering cultures like the !Kung, we can see that their economy
demanded much smaller labor inputs than what was to follow. They worked only a few
hours a day to maintain themselves -- a paltry workload compared to what was to
come.40 On average, subsistence agricultural peoples work harder than gatherers.
Slash and burn horticulturalists work harder than gatherers, but not as hard as plow
agriculturalists who have to exert great effort hoeing and plowing the fields, as well as
building and operating irrigation works.41
Agriculture demands more labor for a return that was in some ways less reliable
than gathering. Plow and irrigation agriculture demands still more work. In spite of these
disadvantages, many human cultures all over the world adopted agriculture in order to
feed their growing populations. To what degree were they conscious of the long-term
effects of their choices? While we cannot know for certain, it seems that they were
largely unaware of the greater implications of the changes they were undergoing. It
appears that cultural evolution becomes less conscious as human cultures get larger.
This is a point to which we will return.
39
Chagnon, 1968. Regarding slash and burn farming in New Guinea, see Rappaport,
1968.
37
40
According to one ethnographer, “even the modest subsistence effort of 2.4 workdays
per week was more than enough to provide an adequate diet for the !Kung ...” (Lee,
1979, p.272).
41
Harris, 1993, p.253
CHAPTER FOUR
Work
We had a smoke house down at the farm behind the old house where the family
used to live. The smoke house was small and square, with a steep rusty tin roof like a
tiny church. Along the walls were shelves with canned vegetables that had been sitting
there for years.
We used the smoke house to smoke meat sometimes. Dad would seal up some
of the cracks in the wall with croaker sacks - at least that was what we called the burlap
bags that cottonseed meal came in. Dad sealed some of the bigger cracks, though
there was so many cracks between the weathered boards that there was no hope of
sealing them all. There was a little fire pit in the middle of the room. He would hang the
meat over the pit, and build a fire under it. He’d use some fat-lighter to get some corn
cobs to smolder. Fat-lighter comes from old pine stumps. It's wood soaked through with
dried sap, with a waxy shine when you crack it and a sharp smell that bites your nose. It
is also wooden gasoline, good for starting any fire you want. He would put fat lighter and
bits of other kinds of wood, depending on what he wanted the meat to taste like, but
mostly he used corn cobs to make the smoke. We would go in there every once in a
while to keep the fire going, and the meat would hang over that smoky little fire for a few
days until it was smoked. We bought meat that was smoke flavored just to see what it
was like, but it was nothing like the meat smoked in the smoke house.
There was a table in the smokehouse, big as a card table but round. It was thick
and wooden, with stout legs. It was made from a single slice cut crosswise out of a tree
so the rings of the tree ran around and around the table. Dad said that was from one of
the big Cyprus trees that used to be on the land. Grandpa had to sell them in the
depression for next to nothing, just to get by. We still had Cyprus on the land, down in
the swamps growing straight and tall, their roots forming up into knees that stood above
the swamp water. Some of those trees got near as big as the big pines, but none like
that slice of Cyprus that made a table in the smoke house.
Dad grew up in depression times, and it seemed like it stuck with him. He was
never one to waste anything, and he was always prepared to make it on his own if he
had to. I think that was why there was so much junk lying around the farm from all the
past times, in case we ever needed it. He saved big piles of fat-lighter stumps in the
field, even though we didn't have a wood stove anymore.
38
Dad worked hard on the farm. He didn't have time to just watch us kids without
working, so we had to work along side him. He never paid us much attention directly;
we were just supposed to keep up. A lot of the time that meant sitting on the fender of
the tractor. It wasn't bad; there was a light that was sturdy enough to hold on to, but you
had to make sure and keep a grip. Sometimes Dad and the tractor would be working
long and hard, and holding on took some effort. There was once when I was very small
when he had left me on my fender seat for a long time. They were working hay, pulling
the hay trailer around the field while the field hands threw the square bales and stacked
them high on the trailer. Now I never was one to fall asleep at the wrong time, but at that
particular time, I did. I must have just slid right off the back of the fender, because the
next thing I knew I was lying flat on the ground watching the hay trailer move over me. I
just lay still, not having gathered together enough good thinking to figure out anything
better to do.
They didn't notice my absence at first. I just lay watching as the long trailer
passed overhead; then the axle came by and just cleared my nose. I was just about to
see sunshine again when they finally saw that I wasn't on my perch. With a lot of fuss
and bother they stopped the tractor and came and grabbed my shirt by the collar and
hauled me out from under the trailer. They seemed awfully thankful that I had managed
to fall to the inside of the wheels and not get run over, which, when I stopped and
thought, did seem like a pretty good thing.
We grew grain and hay in the fields using the tractors, but we also grew a lot of
vegetables on the farm to sell at the farmer's market. We would get up early in the
morning to go picking, when the dew was still thick in the grass and making our feet all
wet. The little spiders that lived in the yard probably liked the dew even less. It sprinkled
over their webs and left them shining like perfect lace Christmas decorations scattered
across the yard. Pretty as it was, I suspect it interfered with their bug hunting.
We would go out into the fields to pick squash, okra, beans, sweet corn. We had
wooden bushel baskets that we would haul down the row. At the end of the row we
would throw them onto the truck, stacking them up to be taken to the market.
Some things provided more reward in the picking than others. We would pick
cantaloupes and watermelons by driving the truck through the field as slow as it would
go, with one person standing on the back catching melons. Everyone else would be in
the field throwing melons at the person in the truck. Try as we might, one or two melons
always got dropped and broken open. Then we didn't have any choice but to eat what
we could on the spot.
By late summer, you could start to feel a little tired looking down the rows of
ragged plants that had seen a lusty spring long past. Tomatoes especially just seemed
to go on producing forever. There were always spotted and blemished ones that got left
behind when we were picking. As the hot sun wore away another summer, there would
be more and more blemished tomatoes scattered over the ground that you would have
39
to pick through to try to find the good ones. But then once a year, when the tomato
patch had pretty much given most of what it was going to give, a particular annual
altercation would break out.
Me and my brothers would be picking, getting a little short-tempered at the
predictability of that work, when somebody would make a little toss. We would take a
quick look over at Dad, who was never much for such fooling around. But I guess
tomato wars were somehow in a different category of acceptable behavior among farmraised father's sons, because he would just move on along and pretend not to notice.
Ammunition was infinite, close at hand, and smelly. What followed was certainly one of
the messiest events known to humankind, except for certain brawls that have occurred
in watermelon fields. It would not be long before me and my brothers were all
thoroughly bathed in putrid tomato juice. When we finally dripped our way home, Mom
displayed her mother-of-multiple-sons nerves by not immediately calling an ambulance.
The Great Tomato War was an unusual event, but it helped give a person something to
look forward to the next summer when the days starting getting long and hot.
There were some kinds of tractor work that took us into the woods. Every once in
a while Dad would decide that he needed a new road through the woods. He would put
the rotary mower on the back of the tractor. This wasn't my favorite kind of work, but
seeing as how it was my duty to sit on the fender, I did. The blades on that mower were
like the blades on a big lawn mower, but they were mounted on pivots so they would
fold back when they hit something solid. Dad would take the mower and drive through a
new path in the woods. The very small bushes would just get wacked down. With small
trees, he would drive up to the tree in low gear and push against it with the front of the
tractor. The tree would bend some, and the tractor would start climbing, the front end
getting lifted on the bent tree until the tractor was nearly vertical. Then the tree would
give way, and the front of the tractor would come down to the ground. The tractor would
move forward and the blades of the mower would start to beat on the small tree. The
blades would fold back as they hit solid wood, shattering off pieces till it wore away. The
tractor would be shaking and rattling till you thought it was going to explode. I'd be
sitting up on the fender, fingernails gripping rust and talking to God.
There was a lot of work to be done with the tractors. It wasn't long before I
graduated from the fender to the seat. I wasn't old enough to be able to change the
gears, but I could steer, and I could mash the clutch and make everything stop. So they
would set me up on the seat, and put it in gear for me. I would rake hay, just steering
around and around the big hay field all afternoon, till my knees and the tops of my feet
got sunburned. And when I was done, I would jump down on the clutch, and make
everything stop. Then I would pull it out of gear, and go on about to what else needed to
be done.
There was always plenty to be done, but in between working Dad liked to talk
about the old-time people. He would tell stories about how they plowed with mules,
40
about how the barnyard was laid out and where the old buildings stood. There were a
lot of things around the farm left from the old times, rusty implements around the barn
and jars of faded vegetables in the smoke house. I always wondered what life was like
back then. I would be moving quiet through the old house, and it seemed like the old
folks were still there watching, feeling comfortable in their home.
I could sense the old-time people at the church too. In the graveyard generations
of our family were buried, one after another starting with the old thin tombstones
rounded on the top, leading up to the newer thick tombstones, square and polished.
Sometime in between Sunday school and church, I would wander out there, walking on
the sparse grass and sandy soil between the markers, careful not to step on any
graves. I was never sure if I believed in superstitions about what happened if you
walked on graves, but I could see no reason to cause unnecessary trouble.
I never knew Grandpa on Dad's side of the family. He died before I was born.
Beside his grave and Grandma's was a few small, old tombstones. I asked Mom about
it, and she told me that, when Dad was small, before my other aunts and uncle were
born, he had three other brothers and sisters. One of them died. Then a week later
another died. Then six months later another died, leaving only Dad. Mom said that after
that Grandma never wanted to be left alone, not for any reason.
Dad didn’t tell us about his siblings who died. For all he said about what folks did,
he never said much about how they felt. He just worked, and as we got older, he
worked us hard and told us how good we had it, how much harder he had to work, how
much stricter his father was. He seemed like he was on his own somehow, separate
from the family and everyone else, separate from everything except the work and God's
judgment that he wasn't working hard enough.
When I got older, sometimes I wanted to find a clutch for the machine that was
driving time, jump down on it and make it all stop. It seemed like life was going by, and
something was getting left behind. I didn't know what, just something empty inside, like
some old wrong that could never be made right.
41
Building Motivation
As the populations of our ancestors grew, easily accessible resources were
depleted. People turned to agriculture to feed themselves, even though this involved
more work. As populations continued to grow, people turned to more intensive forms of
plow and irrigation agriculture.
That is what happened materially. At a social level, these material needs created
a cultural need for a means to motivate people to work harder. Methods of building
motivation and unity among large groups of people hence became the strongest force
shaping the social structure and belief systems of all large human cultures. This need to
build motivation has become embedded in our cultural fabric though centuries of history.
The Intensification of Production
We can trace the beginning of the evolution of motivational schemes to small
cultures as they stand at the beginning of the long road we have traveled. The purpose
of building motivation is to increase production. Anthropologists refer to increasing
production within a given productive process as intensification. Intensification means
working harder to get more. If a farmer goes out into their fields and tills the soil deeper,
pulls more weeds, spreads more fertilizer or manure, then they are intensifying their
productive effort and they will produce more. For human societies with growing
populations and the depletions that result, the issue becomes how to motivate people,
how to create a social organization that encourages each member of the society to
intensify their production.42
With each step along the cultural evolutionary ladder, people had to work harder.
How do you motivate large numbers of people to work harder? There are a number of
schemes that human societies employ. Not surprisingly, the motivational approaches
human societies use across the globe evolve through a parallel set of stages. For the
purposes of this discussion, I will be referring to these motivational strategies as
volunteerism, cheerleading, coercion, and individualism. Each of these strategies is
present to some degree at each level of cultural evolution. Each strategy is present in
42
This discussion of intensification has been adapted from Marvin Harris’ Cannibals and
Kings (Harris, 1978). This is Harris’ most significant book. See also Allen Johnson’s The
Evolution of Human Societies (Johnson, 1987).
42
our modern industrial society. But each stage of our cultural evolution holds one of
these strategies as a defining characteristic of that era, as we shall see. Social
stratification and male supremacy are the results of these motivational strategies.
Volunteerism
The beginnings of intensification of production can be seen in gathering cultures.
Most human cultures throughout most of history have practiced polygyny -- one man
having multiple wives. The opposite -- polyandry, or one woman having multiple
husbands -- is rare. The beginnings of polygyny can be seen with gathering groups. In
some gathering groups, good hunters would have more than one wife. The ! Kung were
primarily monogamous, but good hunters among them sometimes had more than one
wife. Polygyny was even more common among desert-dwelling Australian aborigines.43
Among gatherers and other small cultures, women often had a higher social
status than in Western society. There are a significant number of small cultures,
including some settled agricultural societies, who had female deities.44 Why did
polygyny become so common, and why is polyandry so rare? Because men were being
rewarded with increased sexual access for intensification behavior.
In gathering societies, women are the primary gatherers and men are the primary
hunters. This division of labor is very consistent among gathering groups, but it is not
enforced with the weight of law and economics that is used to maintain the divisions of
labor in more stratified societies. This division of labor is primarily rooted in the
necessities of child-rearing and hunting in the circumstances under which gatherers
lived. Primitive hunting using bows, spears, and other similar weapons involves a great
deal of mobility since wounded animals must be chased over great distances. Men do
not bear or breast-feed children, and are thus more suited to hunting.
If we look at gathering societies in terms of their growing populations within their
natural ecosystems, we can begin to see why it is the hunters (men) rather than the
gatherers (women) who might end up having more than one spouse. I would contend
that intensification and the pyramidal nature of ecosystems are the original causes of
polygyny. Ecosystems have a lot of small plants and small animals at the bottom that
form a broad base, fewer larger animals further up the pyramid, and very few large
animals at the top. A culture that relied on larger animals at the top of that pyramid to
43
Australian aborigines practiced polygyny (Gould, 1969) (Spencer, 1927). The !Kung
practiced a small degree of polygyny, though the women did not seem to prefer it.
44
Eisler, 1988
43
support itself would be very susceptible to ecological stress. As an ecosystem becomes
stressed, the few large animals at the top are reduced in number most quickly. If you
were a member of a tribe living by digging roots and hunting deer, you would reduce the
number of deer much more quickly than you would reduce the number of roots, or the
number of rabbits. As the number of deer was reduced, the nutritional intake that the
group was accustomed to receiving from that source would be consequentially reduced.
Gatherers responded to the depletion of huntable animals by creating a system
of social and sexual reward. They rewarded good hunters with more than one sexual
partner. Meat obtained by male hunters has consistently been idealized as the best kind
of food by human cultures across the globe; thus it has played a significant role in our
cultural evolution.45 Vegetarianism and veganism are viable options in modern society,
but it is important that we understand the choices of our ancestors on their own terms.
Returning to our earlier examples, the ! Kung live in a semi-desert, and practiced
a small degree of polygyny. The inland Aborigines in Australia live in a harsher
environment where hunting is more difficult, and polygyny is more common. The
gathering cultures where men hold the most power are the Innuit (Eskimos) who live
entirely by hunting. From the beginning, men have been the primary target of
motivational schemes intended to intensify production.
It is worth noting that male supremacy has spontaneously arisen among
hundreds of cultures all over the globe.46 The sexual reward system that provided good
hunters with more than one wife was the beginnings of voluntary intensification, or
volunteerism. Society provided a sexual reward for hunters to work harder. Meat is
always shared in gathering groups; thus the increased labor of these individuals
improved the nutrition and health of the group. In this first stage of volunteerism, society
provides a reward and simply allows people to seek that reward.
Cheerleading
45
Some anthropologists have suggested that humanity's long historical infatuation with
meat is an indication that modern vegetarianism cannot or should not be widely adopted
(Harris, 1985). It is interesting to note that even more than meat, some gatherers
idealize honey. Clearly, they are simply idealizing rich food - rich food plays a more
prominent role in a world without grocery stores. Suffice it to say all humans need and
seek a full and balanced diet, and we are not limited by the preferences of our
ancestors.
46
The most comprehensive book I have found concerning cross-cultural gender
patterns is O'Kelly, 1986.
44
The second stage of intensification is cheerleading. As human societies began
practicing small scale agriculture, leaders became more prominent. But these leaders
do not have any coercive powers, or even any clearly defined class status. Their
function seems rather like that of community cheerleaders. One such culture is the
Siuia of Bouganville in the South Pacific. In the words of a Siuia:
“Hiding in your houses again; copulating day and night while there's work
to be done! Why, if it were left up to you, you would spend the rest of your lives
smelling yesterday's pig. But I tell you yesterday's feast was nothing. The next
one will be really big.”47
This man is trying to rouse people to work in preparation for a feast. Many small
scale agriculturalists have competitive feasts with each other. These feasts are
organized by ambitious men who want to gain the status of leadership. An ambitious
young man will talk to his friends and family and try to get them to support him in
throwing a feast. He will go through the village, rousing people out of bed, getting them
to work harder in preparations for it.
One village will hold a feast, and challenge another group to come to their feast
to see how much the first group can give away.48 It is a question of social status to give
away the most, to provide the largest feast. The group invited to a feast has a limited
amount of time to try to reciprocate with a larger feast. The leader of the village that
wins the competition by hosting the largest feast will be called a “big man.”49 (Among
other things, the competitive giving of feasting shows us that greed and acquisitiveness
are not human nature, but rather learned behaviors in more stratified societies.) The
cheerleaders of competitive feasts are always male. These leaders are intensifiers of
production, and they may also be military and spiritual leaders.50
A “big man” is not like a wealthy person in our society who gets paid more, gets
a bigger house, or anything like that. If anything, a “big man” gets paid less, eating the
47
Harris, 1978, p.106
48
The Kwakiutl in the northwest coast of North America practice one of the more wellknown forms of competitive giving, the potlatch (Codere, 1970).
49
Many cultures practice some form of competitive feasting, such as the Yanomamo in
Brazil (Chagnon, 1968, p.102).
50
The name “big man” is appropriate given that the early Intensifiers of production were
always male (Douglas, 1935, p.361-369).
45
crumbs of the feast after everyone else has finished. But he does get two rewards. The
first reward is social respect; the second reward is sexual access, often in the form of
multiple wives. Social respect and sexual access to multiple partners have long been
very closely linked in our cultural evolution.
The purpose of competitive feasting is the intensification of production.
Intensification becomes much more possible with the advent of agriculture. There are
only so many wild animals one can hunt or roots one can gather, but with agriculture
one can till more land for a greater return. Agricultural outputs are not as limited as wild
plants and animals.
Subsistence agriculturalists often depend on one or two staple crops to survive. If
there is a crop failure one year, the yield of their planted staple food may be greatly
reduced. In order to insure that they have enough food in bad years, subsistence
agriculturalists have to plant more than enough in good years. Some cultures idealized
the sight of rotting food as a symbol of wealth in order to assure there would be enough
in the lean years.51 Primitive agriculturalists also tended to have more dense
populations, settling down in villages, unlike their nomadic gathering predecessors.
Agriculturalists had faster rates of population growth than gatherers. All of these factors
created a constant incremental demand to intensify production.
Within a culture practicing the “ big man” system, both the individual seeking to
be a leader and the people supporting him are seeking social status. The overall effect
of this is to raise the level of production, thus increasing, or at least maintaining, the
standard of living of the group as a whole in the face of population growth and the
ecological depletion of important resources.
Coercion
As the populations of small scale agriculturalists continued to grow, they
intensified their agricultural production from simple forms of agriculture - such as slash
and burn - to more labor intensive forms of plow and irrigation agriculture. The
development of these new forms of agriculture corresponded with the creation of
greater social stratification.
It would seem that the intensification of production and the creation of taller
social hierarchies was not simply a coincidence. The correlation between social
stratification and heightened production was first pointed out by Marhsal Sahlins who
studied several societies on islands in the South Pacific, including small agricultural
societies and larger, more stratified chiefdoms. He found that the larger, more stratified
51
Malinowski, 1984, p.169
46
societies were more productive and had more intensive redistributive networks.52
Creating new motivational schemes is what led to the development of social hierarchy
The development of highly intensive forms of agriculture corresponded with the
evolution of state-level societies. If we look at state-level societies -- the ones we refer
to as civilizations -- we see that there is a parallel pattern in the circumstances that led
to their creation.
In trying to understand what led to the formation of the state, anthropologists
have identified a few key variables, including the presence of storable foods, such as
grains -- as opposed to foods that rot, such as yams. The ability to store food allows a
centralized political authority to gain more power by storing more food.
Early states were also ecologically circumscribed, i.e., they lived in a fertile area
that was surrounded by an infertile area, such as a river valley. Civilizations developed
in the Yellow River Valley in China, the Indus River Valley in India, and along the
Tigris and Euphrates in the middle East.53 Apparently agriculturalists living in those
fertile areas went through a period of gathering, and then primitive agriculture. They
intensified production with volunteerism and cheerleading, consistently pressured by
population growth. As their populations grew in these fertile areas, there was no other
place to go because the land around them was infertile.
Warfare played a key role in the formation of states.54 As human cultures
became more settled and population more dense, the frequency and severity of warfare
increased. “Big men” became war leaders. War represented a strong selective force
that tended to add to the power of “big men.” Warfare greatly increased the severity of
social stratification and male supremacy. Warfare and other stressors cause people to
rely more on leadership.55 Warfare forces small cultures that might prefer to remain
more egalitarian to band together in larger, more stratified social systems for their own
defense. Even in our own time, warfare has been the key to increasing executive
power.56 Warfare strongly selected for the development of state-level societies. As
militarism grew in a circumscribed area, one culture began to take over another until the
smaller social units in a circumscribed area were consolidated under a centralized state.
52
Sahlins, 1958
53
Harris, 1978, p.101-126
54
Carneiro, 1970, p.733-738, Harris, 1978, p.101-126.
55
Clastres, 1987
56
Schlesinger, 1973
47
For the individual members of these societies, the state grew more demanding
and burdensome. But because they were surrounded by infertile land, they had little
choice but to stay and farm the irrigated land under the control of the state. That led to a
new form of intensification -- coercion. Early states were highly militarized and male
supremacist. By means of a standing army and a standing police force, the state had
the power to coerce people to work harder.
The states with the most powerful centralized governments were those that had
irrigation agriculture, which allowed centralized political powers to use the control of the
water works to enforce their will.57 In areas of the world where fertile land was more
dispersed and rainfall agriculture dominated, states were much slower to form. This
latter situation was the case in Europe, where there were many small and diverse
societies long before states formed, and state formation came only after long periods of
warfare.58
Larger human cultures also reversed a longstanding tradition of our species
regarding population control. The practice of primitive forms of birth control, infanticide
and abortion were nearly universal among small cultures, but states actually started
seeking population growth. For the state, more people meant more workers and more
soldiers. States became pro-natalist.59
The continuous ecological pressure of population growth pushed the evolution of
culture forward. The growth of population and the development of social stratification is
not simply a historical correlation, but rather a causal one. Social stratification was
created to increase production and military power. Human societies didn't make these
choices consciously, but rather were pressed into them by ecological circumstances.
57
The affects of irrigation agriculture on cultural evolution has been examined by Karl
Wittfogel (Wittfogel, 1970).
58
Harris, 1978, p.101-103
59
For a discussion on the politics of pro-natalism, see Margolis, 1984.
48
Individualism
There were a few civilizations that traveled the long path from the health and
freedom of gathering, to the relative health of small-scale agriculture, into centralized
but still largely free chiefdoms, descended into peasant/ slave states, only to turn
around in the end and develop democracy. In these states, instead of restricting civil
liberties more and more they began to create more civil liberties, to allow more freedom.
This was the process that led to the development of Western democracy.
Democracy is growing in the late twentieth century. It would behoove us to know
what causes democratic freedoms to grow or contract. Democracy is the outgrowth of
yet another motivational strategy to intensify production, but results from a dramatic new
set of circumstances.
The development of Western democracy occurred in the United States, Europe,
and going further back, in Rome, Greece, and Crete. In each of these societies,
varying degrees of democracy came after a period of slavery or monarchy.
The Greeks and Romans evolved from having a monarch, to a certain degree of
democracy, and then back again to monarchy. How did it happen that they evolved
from less freedom to more freedom, then back again to less freedom? What was the
motivational strategy that drove the transition to democracy?
If we look at the development of the Western democracies, we find a parallel set
of circumstances. What happened in these societies -- with the Romans and Greeks in
particular -- is that they went through the cycles of population growth and intensification,
evolving into centralized chiefdoms or monarchies that were organized for intensification
of production and military protection. In response to continued population growth and
ecological stress on the land, they started to sail the oceans and conquer the lands of
other peoples, opening new sources of resources to these centralized states. Imperial
power began to bring home the fruits of plunder. A mercantile class began to grow more
powerful, based on the wealth of trade, and challenged the landed aristocracy.
Over time, colonialism brought in more and more resources and the
mercantilists became more powerful than the established, land-owning aristocracy.
Slaves and peasants cannot become entrepreneurs, neither can they buy very much. It
became in the interests of the mercantilists for more people to have more freedom to
produce and consume more and bolster the economic growth of the society. Civil
liberties began to expand outward, first to the mercantilists, then to the males of the
dominant ethnicity, and then, to some extent, to slaves, women, and people of minority
enthnicities. In some cultures this process went much further than others.
This process of spreading out civil liberties became a new form of intensification.
A lot of resources were coming into these civilizations, but there was still a great deal of
49
population growth and resource depletion. The demand for intensification of production
and the creation of social motivation remained ever present. The new motivational
strategy was individualism.
When a society is met with a vast new input of resources, it becomes desirable to
have a large number of people working harder to achieve social status. Then everyone
has the opportunity to become a “big man,” or even a king, each serving as an
intensifier of production, each living on their own estate. Provided the resources are
available, individualism drives production more effectively than volunteerism,
cheerleading, or coercion. Individualism becomes a self-propelling, self-reinforcing
process whereby many members of society are provided the resources and given the
incentives to increase their production and consumption of goods. Economic activity
then becomes self-magnifying. The more people work, the more wealth they generate,
the more the whole system drives itself forward.
Crete provides an example of this pattern. On the island of Crete there was an
ancient civilization that has been studied only recently. Around 2,000 B.C., Crete
became a small, state-level society with a centralized political structure that was not a
highly militarized.60 This was in part because Crete is an island; the sea served as a
moat. Ancient Crete developed its wealth by mastering trade on the Mediterranean Sea
-- which they alone commanded. This brought them great riches in trade. Even the
poorest members of society appear to have been reasonably well-off. They were also
highly democratic and egalitarian, so much so that their works of art and political
records left from that time do not even bear the names of the people who created them,
and there are no statues of great leaders.61 This stands in stark contrast to civilizations
with which we are more familiar. It would appear that the great wealth brought to Crete
allowed its citizens to develop individualism and democracy to a great extent.
Greece is another example. Ancient Greece is well-known as the birthplace of
Western democracy. But before the Greeks had democracy, they had kings.62 The
Greeks never were as tightly organized as other civilizations, so these kings were more
like chiefs ruling over leagues of tribes.63 The Greeks were not circumscribed; their
agriculture occurred over a wide area. But over time population pressure pushed them
to try to colonize surrounding areas.64 This colonization began around 750 B.C. In time,
60
Eisler, 1988 p.31
61
Eisler, 1988, p.33-36
62
Fine, 1983, p.34
63
Fine, 1983, p.29, Frost, 1971, p.7
64
Kitto, 1984, p.69,81
50
colonization and trade brought home wealth, and a new class of mercantilists vied for
and took power.65
By 500 B.C., Greece was entering its democratic era. Trade created new
markets and wealth. As this new wealth grew and spread, civil liberties and democracy
were extended beyond a select class to more people. More and more people were
motivated as intensifiers of production.66 The expansion of colonialism and the
democracy it purchased brought forward an unprecedented intellectual expansion.67
The ancient Greeks have ever since been renowned for their science, including the
basics of modern math, geometry, and astronomy. Greek democracy never spread far
enough to include slaves and women. There were several classes of Greek slaves, and
the higher classes had nearly as many rights as a working-class person today.68
Eventually Greek democracy fell prey to increased militarization and warfare after 300
B.C.69
The ancient Romans are an example of a limited evolution toward democracy.
The Romans, like the Greeks, went from monarchy, to democracy, then back to
monarchy again. Starting in 500 B.C., the Roman Empire lasted nearly a thousand
years in some form. It was early in the Roman empire that democratic institutions
reached their peak. Before the rise of the Roman Empire, Roman monarchs were very
powerful.70 As the Roman empire grew, a measure of democracy grew with it, although
it never developed as far as in Greece. The Romans conquered and brought home
wealth from as far away as Britain, Spain, and northern Africa. At its peak, Roman
colonialism was so profitable that for a time native Romans were allowed to not pay
taxes at all.71
One measure of Roman individualism is that the Romans created the “family
farm,” perhaps for the first time in history. Most subsistence agriculturalists prefer to live
in villages and walk out to their fields. The Romans developed family farms with family
65
Frost, 1971, p.26
66
Fine, 1983, p.62
67
Frost, 1971, p.27
68
Frost, 1971, p.72-78, Kitto, 1984, p.131-132
69
Fine, 1983, p.105-109
70
Africa, 1974, p.45-47
71
Africa, 1974, p.140
51
houses more separate from each other, as we are familiar with in modern times.72 After
the “collapse” of Roman “civilization,” the outlying colonies simply reverted to villagebased agriculture.73
One function of family farms was no doubt that they served as a distinction of
social status - an important consideration in a stratified, individualized society. We might
also conjecture, knowing the social richness of village life, that family farms might
actually cause people to work harder because they are not socially distracted. If such
were true on a larger social scale, it would serve the purposes of the intensification of
production.
Another result of Roman individualism was the growth of democracy. There was
in pre-Christian Rome a plebeian, or citizens', assembly. In the early empire, the
Plebeian Assembly had the power to veto acts of the state senate and, for some time,
had the power to pass laws that were binding on all Romans. Roman law also allowed
for the rights of citizens to have a trial and appeal when accused of a crime.74
When plebeian power was at its peak, Rome was still a “limited democracy,” in
the words of one historian.75 There were probably several reasons for the limitations of
Roman democracy. Even though Roman imperialism brought home great wealth at
times, in general Rome was poor relative to other democratic states. Poverty became
especially acute in the later empire.76 This poverty was a substantial burden in the home
state.
The Romans were also highly militarized. They were expansionistic; they
practiced severe brutality in their conquered lands.77 The Roman system of slavery was
also more harsh than Greek slavery. Slavery was so much a part of Roman society that
it served to stifle the development of markets and technological change. Slave labor
was so cheap that the Romans never even used water mills to grind their flour, only
slave-driven hand mills.78 Unlike the Greeks, the Romans never developed significant
72
Lewit, 1991, p.44
73
Lewit, 1991, p.85-86
74
Africa, 1974, p.50-53
75
Africa, 1974, p.60
76
Brown, 1988, p.94, Africa, 1974, p.254
77
Africa, 1974, p.137-141
78
Salmon, 1968, p.253
52
institutions of scientific investigation. This again, can be seen as the result of slavery
and the resulting repression of wages and markets.79 In the later Roman empire, limited
democracy collapsed under the weight of slavery, poverty, and warfare. Rome again
was ruled by an absolute monarch.
The development of democracy in Europe and the United States followed some
similar patterns to its development in earlier civilizations. In both the U.S. and Europe,
agriculture was rainfall-based, thus political power was more dispersed from the start.
In Europe, there were kings before the rise of democracies. Democracy began to
develop as the booty of colonialism flowed to the home states and into the hands of
new mercantile classes. Population pressure and ecological stress continued and
production was intensified with the development of individualism and democracy.
In the U.S., great reserves of resources were acquired by the conquest of the
North American continent, as well as colonial development later on. In spite of the
abundance of resources released by the conquest of new lands, ecological depletion
and population growth created constant pressure.80 The depletion of easily accessible
firewood is in part what led to increased use of fossil fuel, even in the U.S. where wood
was plentiful.
Individualism got a boost of dramatic new proportions with the expanded use of
fossil fuel and the industrial revolution. The use of fossil fuel effectively created
resources on an entirely new scale by making it possible to extract natural resources in
new ways. In the case of the U.S., individualism started with a select class of white men
and has since dispersed a great deal as a result of the explosion of resources released
by the use of fossil fuel. As political and economic power has dispersed, we have
developed an entire society of individual “big men” and now “big women” -- an entire
society of intensifiers of production. The economic growth that has resulted is
unprecedented.
Democracy and Ecology
In modern times, we cherish our democracy and civil liberties. We are proud that
we have extended these liberties to a larger and larger circle of people, to include
women and minorities who at other times had less power and freedom. But we have to
understand that it was not simply conscious choice driving this process of expanding
civil liberties. I would not go so far as to say that conscious choice has no influence in
79
Africa, 1968, p.96
80
Wilkinson, 1973, p.147-172
53
the matter; history is not that simple. But the economic effects of large numbers of
individuals intensifying their production based on a vast new availability of resources
cannot be ignored.
There are many things that influence the course of history, but some factors are
more influential than others, economic and ecological forces being the most powerful
and persistent. The historical descent into slavery that humanity experienced was not a
choice, nor was the evolution from that slavery back to democracy. Both were the result
of changing economic and ecological circumstances that we have not consciously
understood or chosen. We must understand that, because our present level of
democracy is based on a very high -- and ever growing -- level of resource
consumption. As more and more people make use of those resources, produce more
and buy more, we consume more resources, the economy is driven forward, and civil
liberties expand. The question then becomes -- can our democracy sustain through a
substantial decline in resource consumption? To the extent that we follow the patterns
of history, the answer to that question is clear. As with Greek and Roman democracy,
they went from autocracy, to democracy, and back to autocracy or monarchy as their
colonial success and resource base declined.
We are facing growing ecological stress. Some resources will be limited as a
result of depletion, others as a result of pollution and its mitigation. This ecological
stress will tend to increase poverty. Our response to poverty is likely to be a decrease in
civil liberties in order to maintain social control. If we follow the ruts of history, we will
constrict civil liberties as our resources are constricted. These are not things we think
about much while we are out shopping, but that does not weaken the forces of history.
The decline of civil liberty will be inescapable if our cultural evolution remains nonconscious.
54
CHAPTER FIVE
The Machine
Dad used to cut pulp wood for the local paper mill, which meant that folks called
him a “pup-wooder”. That was before my time, but like the other aspects of our heritage,
the pieces of a “pup-wood” operation were still scattered about the farm.
Out in the cow pasture was the boom truck they used for lifting logs onto the log
trucks. It was the kind of truck with big round fenders and an engine hood that narrowed
toward the front. On the back was the boom platform. There was a steel pipe sticking
out from the platform and hanging by a cable so as to serve as a crane pole. You sat on
a steel seat with a single cylinder Wisconsin motor beside you. The pole was lifted by a
friction drive that tugged on the cable down by your feet. For us though, the boom was
the cannon barrel of a tank as we fought across wide battlefields to win the Great War.
Up by the house in the pea field was the small bulldozer that they used to pull
logs. We drove that all over too through great explorations and battles, though it never
moved that I ever saw. There were two log trucks. One was up by the house until
someone bought it, I couldn't figure why. The second was down at the farm. We got the
message somehow that because we were young we were supposed to go out and
vandalize something. We busted up the old truck a bit. We even went out in a
neighbor’s field and busted a few watermelons, but it wasn't very satisfying. Dad found
out, though he didn't seem to know quite what to make of it.
There were old saws from the logging days under the sheds. There were
chainsaws that ran off of the same kind of big single cylinder motor as was on the boom
truck. We looked them over a bit, poked them a few times, but never could figure out
how anyone lifted them.
There was another saw mounted on a cart. The cart had a steel boom that stuck
out in front, with a big circular blade maybe three feet across - like a sawmill blade - out
on the end of the boom with long belts coming back to the motor. You could move it
around with some effort on account of it had wheels, but how anybody ever held onto it
once that big blade bit into solid wood was hard to figure.
Of course, we had an ax or two laying around too. Dad even explained to us how
they used to cut down trees with just an ax, then split the entire tree lengthwise using
nothing but the ax and wooden wedges. All that just to make rails for fences.
55
As me and my brothers were getting older, we got into the wood cutting
business, but this time it was to sell firewood to the rich folks in town who burned it for
pretty. Anybody who burned wood for heat cut it themselves.
We got a newer chain saw. One person could carry our chainsaw, so it was an
advancement over what Dad had used to cut “pup-wood.” Dad had gotten a newer
pickup truck for the farm, so we took the old pickup truck and adapted it for firewood
cutting. The truck was better than what Dad had used to cut “pup-wood,” though it didn't
have brakes, and there was little plants growing where there was still floorboard, and
you could see the ground where there wasn't floorboard. We put a thick piece of wood
in front of the radiator to protect it. We would drive the truck out in the open to build up
some speed before we hit the woods. The old truck was made for hauling more than
racing, so it was kind of lazy about speed. But if you gave it enough space, it would pick
up to a fair gallop. We needed to be going pretty fast on account of the bushes were
real thick and an empty truck doesn't have much traction. We would hit the bushes at a
good speed and crash in amongst the trees like a mad bull tearing through a fence.
Once we had gotten as far as we could, we would commence to cutting down trees
around the truck, trying not to hit the truck with any more of them than we could help.
Then we cut the trees up into firewood-size pieces and loaded them on the truck. At that
point, we had enough weight to have enough traction to push our way out. Given the
lack of brakes on the truck, we was always careful driving back to the farm to leave
enough room to circle in front of the sheds till we stopped.
As broken-down as our equipment was, I imagine we still cut more wood than the
old-time folks. When our great-grandfather had come on the land, he had built a lot
cabin with nothing but an ax. I imagine a mule and a crosscut saw were a technological
revolution the generation that came after him. Then we had a truck and a chainsaw,
which made us downright sophisticated compared to what came before us.
We got a lesson in fast wood cutting when Dad decided to clear some more
farmland. The land he wanted to use had a good stand of pines, so the timber would
more than pay for pushing up the stumps and clearing the land. He was long out of the
wood cutting business, so he hired a logging crew to come cut the trees. They rolled in
their equipment on big trucks that had more tires than you could count, kicking up dust
and running around like everybody was in a hurry. First they sent in what they called a
feller-buncher. It was like a large front-end loader with a big steel claw in the front. At
the bottom of the claw was a thick steel blade pushed by a hydraulic cylinder. It cut
through full grown trees like pruning shears through a rose bush. The man driving that
machine could snip off trees, grab them with the claw, and then just drop them where he
wanted them.
The green carpet of tree tops lifted high in the air on those strong trunks was
falling like scissors slashing through a precious picture. I knew the fox-squirrel that lived
in that forest, big as a cat, sleek black like a panther as it would lope across the land.
56
And the deer that snuck nervous through the bushes there, and the quail that ran on the
crackling leaves at the ground. I supposed they would run, but I knew that each animal
had its own place in the forest, and there was no new place for them to go.
The feller-buncher was followed by the grapple skidders. The skidders took a
beating wrestling over trees stumps and broken limbs all day. They were big
swaggering machines, every square inch of painted steel was scratched and dented,
the thick, hard tires were cut and gouged all around, and black greasy oil was dripping
down slow like thick blood from a wounded animal. The skidders would wade through
the falling forest, crushing down anything in their path like big iron elephants. They had
hydraulic grapples on the back of the skidders that could just reach down and grab a log
without the driver ever getting out of his seat. Then when they had a few logs in the
grapples, they would put the machine in reverse and shove the trees backwards
through the bushes. The limbs at the tops of the trees were no match for those big
diesel engines, and they would crack and snap sounding like a jet liner was crashing
through the trees.
The skidders took the logs up the hydraulic boom truck, which was pretty
different from the truck we had in the field with its little steel pipe for a crane. The boom
truck reached out far and grabbed the big trees with a hydraulic grapple, then set them
on the trailers of the diesel log trucks that were there waiting, human hands never
having touched those trees made into logs. They tore through forty acres in a few days
like that, leaving us all shaking our heads at how fast they could move. They said that
some of the fellers even had air-conditioning in the cabs of their machines. But I knew
from being jostled and shook all day driving tractors, running a machine is work, even in
a cab.
The last link in their operation was an old black feller with a chain saw. His job
was to climb around the trucks as they were being loaded and trim off any limbs or
loose bushes that was hanging off the truck to cause trouble. I watched him. His job
was hardest of all, working the chainsaw in the hot sun, trying to stay out of the way of
the big impatient machines. When everybody stopped for lunch, he sat to himself. He
had a fair sized sweet potato wrapped up in tin foil. I suppose his wife or somebody had
cooked it for him. He took it out and ate it, and that was his lunch. It wasn't hard to figure
watching him eat his sweet potato, whether the machines come or go, working man still
works.
I could understand how a crosscut saw cuts down a tree faster than an ax, how a
chainsaw is faster than that, how a farmer or a logger needs good tools. But it was hard
to figure, once the loggers had laid low a forest, took all that thick carpet of living things
and chewed it up into splintered wood and mud, left nothing but a pile of mostly empty
hydraulic oil buckets and the smell of diesel blowing through the air, who is it that is
better off for cutting down forty acres of trees in a few days? And then you go to eat in a
57
restaurant in town and watch folks throw away whole fistfuls of paper napkins, and you
just have to wonder.
58
Can Technology Save Us?
Technology is a powerful force affecting humanity. With it we have produced a
bounty of spaceships and microchips, more food than ever before, and atomic
weapons. We have created gargantuan machines that dig, cut and crush wood and
minerals at a rapid pace. If we wish to direct this power in socially beneficial directions,
we must understand the place technology has held in human history.81
Many people believe that technology can solve our ecological problems. At the
same time, we don't really know what causes technology to change. We have this idea
of progress, that once people found enough leisure time they started innovating and
building gadgets to make life more comfortable and secure. We tend to think that
technological innovation leads cultural change like a master leads their dog. This is in
keeping with our belief in conscious control, and is no less than an article of faith for a
great many people. This idea that we represent the pinnacle of progress is flattering, but
historically inaccurate.
Technology is not simply an outcome of progress. Historically, technology has
been pushed forward by the changing relationship between people and the
environment. These changes can be seen to occur through a series of stages.
The starting point is equilibrium. If we look at animals in their natural
environments, we find that they have many behaviors that are intended to maintain a
balance with the natural environment. The tendency of birds or other animals to mark
and defend a territory is an attempt to create an area that is large enough to sustain a
family. Such animals may only mark their territory when they are reproducing, and they
may vary the size of their territory according to the density of food and other resources
available. There is a tendency in biological evolution toward reaching an ecological
equilibrium between the supply and demand of needed resources. For an animal to try
to acquire more than it needs would be a maladaptive waste of energy, and less would
not suit either.
Culture is always changing. But other than in our growth-based industrial society,
cultural evolution seeks equilibrium in a similar fashion to biological evolution. Many preindustrial cultures intentionally limited their population growth to seek equilibrium with
the availability of natural resources.
81
I am using the word technology in this context to mean mechanical, not social,
technology. Social technology is a general term I am using in this book to indicate an
understanding of culture, its evolution, and conscious evolution.
59
Under conditions of equilibrium, humans tend to use the resources that are most
easily found, processed, and consumed. Given a choice, people will pick the largest
berries, dig the shallowest roots, and hunt the biggest, least wary animals. If needed
resources are easily attained and adequate in volume, a society is not under any stress
and technology tends to remain static. No extraordinary new inventions are created.82
As we will see, technological change often comes at a price. As long as people are well
fed by one means, they don't have any good reason to create an new one.
Population growth and ecological stress have pushed human societies to alter
their social organization. Perhaps it is not too surprising then that these same factors
are what precipitated the great technological revolution of which we are a part.
When population growth and ecological depletion begin to cause a decrease in
the standard of living, the first stage of technological change is initiated. This first stage
is intensification of production within the existing productive process. If there are more
mouths to feed, the gatherer will gather more, the hunter will hunt further afield, the
subsistence farmer will plant more.
Up to a certain point, the more one invests in a productive effort, the more one
increases output of a usable product. If you plant more grain, all other things being
equal, you get more grain at harvest time. But when a given resource is producing
about as much as it can, then working harder yields less and less return. When a hunter
hunts increasingly scarce animals, they start to get less meat for each hour they spend
hunting. When a farmer tries to get a piece of land to produce beyond the capacity of
the soil and the technology at hand, then more work will not yield a greater harvest. This
is referred to as the “ point of diminishing returns.” Pushing beyond this point can
degrade the resource to the point that additional effort only yields less return.
When and only when a culture has reached a point of diminishing returns within a
given mode of production is there sufficient incentive to “ invent” a new mode of
production. It is only when naturally occurring plants and animals have been exploited to
their maximum capacity that gatherers invest the extra effort needed to for agriculture. It
is only when the fallow periods of a slash and burn horticulturalists have become too
short that they have any reason to invest the effort in constructing irrigation works for a
more intensive form of agriculture.
When a culture has reached the point of diminishing returns within its existing
methods production, then it seeks new technologies. What this means is picking the
smaller berries, digging the deeper roots, and hunting the animals that are smaller,
faster, and smarter. It also means planting berry bushes and root crops, and
domesticating animals.
82
This description of technological change is taken from an extraordinary book, Richard
Wilkinson’s Poverty and Progress (Wilkinson, 1973).
60
This is a consistent pattern in technological development that is important to
understand because it applies to our society as much as any other. Resources that are
used first include those that: (a.) are the ones that are most easily attained; (b.) require
the least technological complexity to process; (c.) require the least labor to process; (d.)
require the least energy to process; and (e.) are of high quality. As a result of
population and economic growth, these resources become more scarce. Other
resources are substituted for the now increasingly scarce resources. These substitutes
consistently: (a.) are more difficult to obtain; (b.) require more technological complexity
to process; (c.) require more labor to process; (d.) are often of inferior quality; but (e.)
occur in greater volume in the natural environment.
Some examples will make this clearer. The way Europeans have clothed
themselves over the centuries represents one instance of the advantages and costs of
technological development.83 Animal skins were the first form of clothing used; they
were easily accessible and easily processed into high-quality garments. To this day they
are considered the highest quality of clothing. (Though the ethics of wearing fur in the
modern context are another matter.) When the population grew and the supply of skins
ran short, people made a transition to wool. Wool required more labor and energy
inputs and more complex technology to produce a garment that was inferior, but
because it could be supplied in greater quantity to meet the needs of growing
populations, the change was made. People had to work harder to keep themselves
clothed and warm, but there simply weren't enough wild animals around to supply the
increasing numbers of people with clothing.
When the population had grown further still and the land used to graze sheep
was needed to grow food, a transition was made to the use of cotton. By that time,
cotton was being imported into Europe from colonies all over the world. Once again
more complex technology and more energy and labor inputs were required to produce a
garment that was considered inferior at the time. People had to work still harder for their
clothing, but they had little choice. Population growth and ecological pressure caused
the change.
The most recent transition has been to synthetics. Now it takes a lot of oil and
very complex machinery just to make a piece of cloth. Large volumes of fossil fuel
energy have been -- and continue to be -- substituted for human labor. While specific
synthetics have qualities that are suited for specific uses, many people still prefer silk,
wool, and other natural fibers. What was once readily available with little effort is now
produced by an enormous mechanical infrastructure. While we do not work as hard as
people did in the early industrial revolution, our decreased workload now comes at the
price of an enormous consumption of energy and other resources.
83
Wilkinson, 1973, p.127-137
61
The same situation can be seen in the production of food. First, humans ate the
foods that were the easiest to obtain and process. When these food sources were
overburdened by growing populations, people moved on to those food sources that
required more labor and more complex technology. Gatherers knew how to plant,
though they chose not to. People who practiced slash and burn horticulture knew that
they could produce more by working harder and developing more intensive agriculture,
but why would they?
We mentioned earlier how workloads increased rather than decreased as human
cultures went from gathering, to slash and burn horticulture, to plow and irrigation
agriculture. But some of the highest workloads shouldered by any society were seen
during the early industrial revolution.
“One can gauge the scale of their drudgery by one of the first pieces of
corrective factory legislation passed in Britain in the early nineteenth century. It
limited children of twelve years and under to an eighty-four-hour week.” Barbara
Ward84
That is how hard people had to work to support themselves and the social
hierarchy to which they were subject. Early industrial society was greatly
technologically advanced over what came before it, but only at significant costs in
energy and labor. In more modern times, we have reduced our workload to forty hours,
plus domestic labor. That is still more than gatherers or some small-scale
agriculturalists work. Our technology has enormous costs in the resources that we
consume as we dig deeper and cut faster.
The development of machines follows the same pattern. Resources that are most
easily accessible and require the least complex technology are used first. Then as each
resource is depleted, a technology is “invented” to exploit less accessible resources.
The truth of the matter is that technologies are repeatedly “ invented,” but if there
is no depletion or market generated demand, these technologies are ignored. Steam
power was developed at least as far back as 63 A.D. in the ancient city-state of
Alexandria.85 Steam engines in various forms were again developed in pre-industrial
Europe. But it was not until there was a demand for them that they were actually used.
This demand came as a result of the depletion of forests ( firewood) and easily
accessible coal.
After the forests had been depleted, and after easily accessible coal near the
surface of the ground was used up, coal mines were sunk deep into the ground. But
84
Ward, 1979, p.117
85
Africa, 1968, p.51
62
flooding was a major problem. Various kinds of pumps were tried, but steam-driven
pumps finally provided the solution. “Rotary steam power appeared as late as it did not
because of the difficulties of invention, but because it was not needed earlier.”86
Our notion that conscious inventions come along and revolutionize human
society is clearly erroneous in the face of history. A human society has to be good and
ready before any revolution happens. The history of ancient civilizations clearly
indicates that it is not “invention” that drives technological change, but rather demand.
“From a technological viewpoint, the Greeks and Romans could have
produced an industrial revolution by utilizing the knowledge of steam, air
pressure, and meshing gears which was squandered on temple miracles and
gadgets for the state. The recently recovered Antikythera computer dispels any
doubt about ancient mechanical aptitude. Although they did not use fossil fuels,
the Greeks were aware of Near Eastern oil fields, where some deposits had
accidentally ignited and burned for years. Long before Eli Whitney, the Romans
manufactured interchangeable parts for items to be assembled elsewhere. An
orientation toward mass consumption would surely have encouraged industrial
research and the development of new techniques and better metals and fuels.
However, the agrarian population was desperately poor, and wealth was
concentrated in the cities ... The purchasing power of free men was too low to
warrant mass production of nonnecessities, and thus science was not stimulated
on a broad scale. Since science cannot exist in a vacuum, the impetus for an
industrial-scientific complex was prevented by the social and economic structure
of ancient society.” Thomas Africa87
It is demand that drives technology forward, not “invention,” and demand is very
much influenced by the level of economic centralization in a society. In Rome, for
instance, wealth was concentrated among a ruling class. As a result, markets and
technology were stalled.
As we mentioned earlier, states with irrigation agriculture developed some of the
most powerful and centralized governments because these governments were able to
control the irrigation works, and thus the people. This is why Europe and not China
was the birthplace of the industrial revolution. China was well ahead of Europe in
technological development prior to the industrial revolution. But the centralized
government of China was so intent on taxation and control that markets were
restrained, hence technology was restrained. European agriculture was rainfall based;
86
Wilkinson, 1973, p.121
87
Africa, 1968, p.96
63
thus political and economic power were more dispersed, and technology was able to
grow.88
The same phenomena can be seen in more modern history. The United States
has been a driving force of technological development. South America has a similar
endowment of resources, but has had far less technological development. What made
the difference? The U.S. economy from the beginning was based on rainfall agriculture.
Southern slavery notwithstanding, wealth, economic power, and civil liberties were
dispersed. South America, on the other hand, has suffered from a concentration of
wealth among elite families. There was slavery, but long after slavery was abolished,
many workers continued to live under slave-like conditions such as Latifundia where
workers are held in debt-servitude on plantations. This constriction of wealth and civil
liberties to elite classes slowed economic and technological change.89
Historically, technological change was driven primarily by the need to access and
process more inaccessible resources as easily accessible resources were depleted.
With industrialism, however, market forces have come into play that are not always
ecologically generated.
The industrial era has seen a massive new influx of resources coming to the
West from colonialism and the growing use of fossil fuel. Being the cradle of economic
empire, European democracies and the United States have turned increasingly toward
individualism and the dispersion of civil liberties. This has created a market for
technological development largely independent of direct ecological factors. Ecological
factors still play a significant role in the development of our society, but they are
translated into economics. If trees become more scarce, we experience that as a rise in
the price of two-by-fours. That scarcity in turn spurs the development of two-by-fours
made out of plastic and steel. But a great deal of modern technological change is more
the result of market demand than ecologically induced resource substitution. Markets
have the power to drive technology forward with a great ferocity, as the computer
industry demonstrates.
Some would even claim that market-driven technology has the power to
overcome our ecological problems. As resources become scarce, so the argument
goes, other resources will be brought into use, and prices will adjust according to supply
and demand - thus technology will naturally solve the limitations of resource scarcity.
The problem with this is that we don't understand how our new technologies increase
energy and resource consumption. We are aware of robotic assembly lines and other
technological changes, but we are not aware that large amounts of energy and
resources replace workers. Each increment of modern mechanization has meant a
88
Harris, 1978, p.233-270
89
Harris, 1974
64
substantial increase in energy consumption.90 Factory workers are replaced by large
electric motors and complex machinery, but we are not aware of the hidden costs.
Our food production follows the same pattern. Gatherers might invest one calorie
of energy to get ten or twenty in return. Small agriculturalists might invest one calorie to
get five or ten calories’ worth of food. In industrial society, we often invest ten or a
hundred calories of fossil fuel to get one in return.91 We read about new farming
technologies, from gene splicing to hydroponic greenhouses. But we are not aware that
new technologies usually come at the expense of greater energy, capital, and resource
expenditures.
The final reason that technology alone cannot solve our ecological problems is
that technology, like the rest of non-conscious culture, evolves reactively. Historically,
technological change grew out of depletion. Now technology is pushed forward by
depletion and markets, but it is not shaped according to any conscious planning or the
demands of sustainability. It is true that as oil becomes more scarce and/or pollution
becomes more plentiful, we will be inclined to move to other energy sources. But by
that time the damage from the overconsumption of oil will have been long done. There
is a large lag time between when pollution is created and when its impacts are felt
economically, especially on the global scale. Technology will react to the greenhouse
effect and species extinction only after it is much too late.
We already have the technology to live sustainably. For thousands of years, we
have had the technology to live a simple, sustainable lifestyle. Now we have the
technology to live a more complex and sustainable lifestyle. We have only to construct
the social technology that will allow us to create a conscious society that can use the
mechanical technology that we already have.
90
Ward, 1979, p.128-130
91
Pimmentel, 1984
65
CHAPTER SIX
Science and Diesel
When I was small, I would look at the big world around me. It came to me how
much science had changed the world we live in. Everything we had was made by
people. The food we ate came from science, came from a diesel steel tractor and
chemical fertilizer. The boards wrapped around my house to keep me warm came from
science. Caveman aint had no sawmill. The paint on the walls and shoes on my feet
and pavement underneath, these things were all made from science. I could see that
power, cutting shaping creating this human world.
Then I saw little children starving on T.V. I saw trees falling down and rain
washing gullies. We are in trouble now somehow. I remember thinking, all that power in
science, take the power of science to the starving children and the falling trees.
As I got older, they took me to science. I liked science. It was a place a mind
could run hard and fast and prove itself. I was smart in school. I made the grade. I
thought about being a scientist, a researcher of some kind. But that mountain had
already been climbed a long way up, and lots more people climbing up it. I wanted a
different mountain to climb.
I liked to fix things, too. Anytime I got a new gun, or a mechanical thing of any
sort, I would take it apart first thing. I would go in my room, and with butter knives for
screw drivers and nails to drive out pins, I would take it apart. I would stay up late in the
evening, fingers getting sweaty and oily from handling the parts. I would put the
machine back together. Then in the days to come I would be using it, and my mind's
eye could see the parts inside, sliding through their machined channels, pivoting with
tight clearance on the pins. I would carry my mind into the machine, boilers and engines
as time passed, feeling the heat and listening to the sounds as the steel talks, hearing
what it has to say about the pressure and motion inside.
Taking your mind into a machine, you have to separate what is supposed to be
from what is. When they build the machine, they have an idea of what is supposed to
happen, how it supposed to work. But they can't think of everything, and they don't.
Over time the parts wear, and the machine starts to do what it was never supposed to
do. Then you have to look, feel, and think about what is really happening inside the
machine. You have to think about how all the parts work, about how the different parts
66
push and slide against each other, and what part could break to give you the
information that the machine is giving you in how it acts when its not working right.
I thought about the starving children on T.V., the trees falling down, people using
up the land, using up too many things. It seemed like it was all part of the same problem
somehow. Like somewhere, way back behind it all, something was broken, like a broken
part in a machine. It seemed like a problem that needed be fixed, like this was a
mountain that really needed to be climbed.
I always wanted to figure out a better way to do things, but in school they always
wanted me to do things their way. In the sixth grade we had a teacher; all the boys
thought she was pretty. She was teaching us how to find common denominators
between two fractions. We were supposed to multiply each fraction by 2/2, then 3/3, and
so forth. Then we were supposed to look at each of these sets of fractions and find a
common denominator. I figured out pretty quick that instead of doing all that you could
just multiply the denominators against each other and then reduce if you could. It was a
much quicker way. I was proud and showed it to our teacher that everyone admired.
She said I was doing it wrong, that I had to do it the long way because that was the way
it was supposed to be done. I was growing less and less fond of the way things were
supposed to be.
I was suspicious of reading. It seemed like another one of those tricks they play
at school to get you to do something for them while they are saying it's for you. But I
thought about it for a while, and I finally figured I was reading for me, so I started
reading a lot.
I slung a hammock between two pines in the yard where I would lie and read. I
watched the sun fall through the sky with the change of seasons. A mockingbird came
to keep me company. It would call its endless singsong chatter, and I would try to notice
when it repeated itself. I never found that moment. I would call back, with the best birdvoice I could muster, but the mockingbird was never all that impressed with my efforts,
and only occasionally lowered its dignity enough to engage with me in conversation. But
it must not have been too insulted at my imitations, for it always came back another day
to chatter-sing me through the dusty pages.
I had found my mountain to climb. Me and my mockingbird, taking science to the
hungry children. I wanted to take my mind's eye into the social realm. It seemed like that
was where I was needed, in the realm of the trees that were falling too fast and the
starving children on television, to see inside the machine and find what was wrong.
I took my mind's eye into the classroom. I read the books about how to fix these
problems, about how to help people learn. I read about the tools and techniques that
people developed from a hundred years ago, about how to teach children how to read
and write, about how to make school a fun and interesting place. I read educational
theory. That was where the split started to show itself, the split between what people
say they are doing and what they are really doing.
There were things that people had come up with a long time ago to help children
learn, like Cuisenaire rods to help kids learn math. The rods were colored, each color a
different length that represented a different number. As a kid stacked and unstacked the
rods, the rods gave a direct visual image of adding and subtracting and other
mathematical operations. Everything I read about these rods said that they worked well.
67
There were a lot of kids who had trouble learning math, I could see them all around. It
seemed like a good way to get them to learn.
But it was an old trick now; it had been around for a long time. This was one
piece of the puzzle that began to fall into place, the puzzle about how machines and
society are different. When you find the broken part in the machine, you fix it. If a kid
can't learn to add and subtract, then that is a broken thing. And here was a solution.
Except that was not the way things were supposed to be, to learn that way. We were
supposed to be learning the way they said.
If a machine isn't working, then when someone finds a solution, it gets put to use.
But in school, they said they wanted us to learn, but they were not using these tools that
had been around for so long. Why would they not use good tools, tools that worked?
Why would the machine of school be allowed to run so badly for so long without anyone
fixing it?
They could see me, all the people around, that I was a fine upstanding young
man. I made the grade. I helped out at church. I got along. I did not get into trouble. But
inside, my mind was splitting. Everybody wanted to go to a good college if they could,
so they could get a good job and a wife and a house of their own. Inside, that was
mattering less and less to me, like it was stopping to matter at all. I was whittling down
to the bone of the philosopher's asceticism, where nothing mattered at all but finding the
broken part.
I was looking for the broken part, and my mind was going further and further
away from the world around me. I was building a whole new world in my head, and
living there alone. My angel would come and visit. And sometimes Emerson and
Thoreau, and all the heretics of the ages would come calling in my mind. Dusty book
voices speaking from far away, talk to me, but they couldn't be with me. They were too
far away, too far in a strange land.
My mind made pictures. Like I was a ship, broken off from the fleet some time
ago, sailing now on an endless ocean, with no idea of where any port might be. I
wanted someone, some sight of land somewhere, to come and tell me that I was doing
this right, that this voyage had some meaning, some direction, some destination. But
what I had was a cold sweat of uncertainty, on the other side of a chasm of no crossing,
living in a reality of my own creation.
I would take what comfort I could from being among the people at school.
Listening to their idle chatter, let their warm presence dry some of the sweat from my
skin.
I would read big names from Harvard and Oxford, these mystical and far away
places. It was like there was this long list of people who are supposed to know things.
These guys were at the top. And then all the professors and teachers in all these other
universities were a little further down the list of people who know things. And then all the
students in all those schools. And further down the line was a lot of adults. And then
there was me, sitting and thinking, wearing nothing but ragged shorts and less than two
decades of living. It seemed like I was right off the end of the list of people who were
supposed to know things.
I wasn't supposed to be someone who knew things, and yet most of the big guys
didn't seem to be making sense. Why weren't they looking for the broken part?
68
Sometimes people are talking about something, and you don't have enough
information to understand them, so they don't make sense. Maybe I just didn't
understand what they were saying. Maybe, but that didn't seem to answer it really.
Sometimes people just plain don't make sense, like they do it on purpose to
make themselves look smart or to not talk about something they don't want to talk
about. I would go to all the libraries in the area, and bring home armloads of books.
They would dodge and turn around reality, talk on endless pages about things that don't
really matter to anyone. But they wouldn't just try and figure out why we are in trouble. I
never could be sure, in my crazy in my own head reality, why things were so different
from the way they were supposed to be.
I remember one day, sitting in a hammock and reading. It was just after I had
graduated high school. Something started to shift in my mind, and the sky started
falling. Like some big puzzle with huge pieces floating all jumbled up, suddenly all these
pieces started falling into place in a whole new world. All these thoughts coming to me,
thoughts I couldn't think before because my mind wouldn't let me in school. When it
hurts too much, we will not think, we will not think what hurts. It hurts too much to
understand the jailer, so a prisoner will not think it. My mind moving outward, all over
the world people living behind bars of steel and ivy, where they don't think certain things
because it hurts too much, hurts too much to think outside of the way things are
supposed to be. And then all the people who are not supposed to think at all, people
learning hard and fast how to be stupid so they don't make their jailer mad. Know your
place, and if your mind is not your place then we can do without it thank you. All these
people all over the world, not thinking what hurts and not even knowing it.
I was looking at the way these big guys talked, how they all talked the same.
Talking to make themselves look smart. They are human too, sweating the same chill
sweat of uncertainty and judgment at night. And then I had one answer at least, for why
I would fall so low on that list of people who know things, and still see what they do not.
My madness is become my freedom. I have no mentor. I have no jailer.
69
Cultural Selection: The Unseen Master
of History
Human societies all over the world face infinitely varied circumstances. Human
cultures subsist in the deepest jungle, on parched sand and on floating ice. There is no
doubting that the evolution of these diverse cultures is influenced by the peculiarities of
their circumstance. And there is also no doubting the unmistakable parallel patterns of
cultural evolution, including the global occurrence of male supremacy, social
stratification, and the arising of state-level societies.
Cultural evolution operates by a process of cultural selection.92 Cultural selection
is the means of non-conscious decision making that creates parallel patterns in human
societies. It is the process by which our core cultural beliefs are created. The suggestion
here is not that cultural selection is a precise process that all human societies
everywhere have always followed. Rather, the suggestion is that the selection of beliefs
is a similar process regardless of the time and place in which it occurs, just as natural
selection is a similar process regardless of the time or environment in which it occurs.
Cultural selection is the fulcrum of non-conscious cultural evolution, and it can be seen
in history and in present time.
Cultural selection occurs through a set of stages. Hence:
Stage One: Cultural Predisposition
As we pointed out, social structures and technology tend to remain static in times
of ecological equilibrium. In such times, a society will live by its traditions and change
will come slowly.
Established beliefs and institutions also serve to influence how a society
responds to stressors as they arise. Every human society responds to changes based
on its traditions, and every society makes opportunistic use of existing institutions for
new purposes.
Opportunism is a word biologists use to describe when animals make use of
past behaviors for new purposes. Flightless birds may use flying motions as a mating
dance rather than creating an entirely new motion. Culture is opportunistic as well.
Every significant institution in human culture has a function, and cultures make
opportunistic use of existing institutions, fulfilling new functions with old institutions.
Sexism grew out of sexual reward and intensification, but many people make a lot of
92
The term “cultural selection” is used by other authors, for instance in Gary Taylor’s
Cultural Selection. Cultural selection in Taylor's book simply means the survival of
ideas. Taylor discusses the limitations of memory. To remember some things means we
must forget or not remember other things. He discusses how memory is fought over in
culture. The way in which the term cultural selection is used in this book is unique.
70
money using sexual symbolism in advertising. The advertising industry made
opportunistic use of preexisting cultural tendencies. In the process, old institutions take
on new forms. The established structures of human societies create a kind of cultural
predisposition to how they respond to changes.
Stage Two: Precipitating Stressors
The most powerful spurs to change in human societies are economic and
ecological stressors. Sometimes dramatic changes happen quickly in response to
immediate events, but most often change occurs in response to an extended period of
incrementally increasing stress.
In the last chapter we examined how ecological stressors pressed our ancestors
to intensify production, and then to alter their technologies to meet the demands of
growing populations. In more recent history, we have become more separate from the
direct effects of ecological stress. Ecological stress is now manifested in inflation. If a
mineral becomes more scarce or pollution control becomes more expensive, the price
of the final product goes up as a result. In modern times, economic stressors play the
same role within cultural evolution that ecological stress has played throughout history.
This is true whether or not the economic stressors are caused by ecological changes. In
U.S. history, significant political shifts often occur as a result of depressions and
recessions. These are the stressors to which our cultural evolution responds.
In our class-based society, stressors can also be class-specific. The upper
classes have more political influence than the lower classes. Economic stressors that
affect the upper classes have greater influence on the spoken aspects of culture. The
banning of birth control one hundred years ago was the result of class-specific
stressors. This will be discussed further in Chapter Ten.
Stage Three: The Rise of a Social Movement
As economic and ecological stressors arise, social movements arise and begin
advocating solutions. We can only speculate about the nature of social movements in
prehistoric times. Social movements are observable in societies whose history has been
recorded.
Social movements make use of our cultural predispositions to advocate solutions
to new stressors. These solutions generally consist of the reestablishment or
strengthening of past strategies, with some modification. Ever since the times of the
ancient Greek and Roman Empires, leaders have periodically espoused returning to
traditional values or higher ethics in response to social problems. We are rarely
conscious of the unspoken economic purposes of these values and ethics when
adopted on a broad scale. A call for the return to sexual chastity, for instance, most
often marks a renewed round of intensification of production.
71
Stage Four: A Focal Stressor
After an extended period of precipitating events and the arising of a social
movement, there is usually a dramatic event that becomes the final catalyst for change.
Riots, wars, or the deepening of recession often serve as focal stressors. Leaders and
movements make use of the social reactions to focal stressors to advance their
agendas.
Stage Five: Political or Social Changes
Finally a political or social shift occurs, nominally in response to the focal event.
Perhaps there is an urban riot in a major city, and this riot serves as the rallying point for
more welfare spending or more law and order. Or perhaps someone rails against
recession “caused” by the incumbents and gets elected. Or they rally against the enemy
in response to real or feigned attack, and the country goes to war. New leaders come to
power, signaling a turn in the political tide.
Stage Six: A Change of Circumstance
After a social or political change has occurred in response to the focal event,
there is some change of circumstance. Changes of circumstance that affect people's
standard of living are the most powerful. Economic and ecological changes hold great
influence. We can see this in how human cultures have responded to ecological stress
in the past by creating social stratification and male supremacy. In the present, whether
or not people have jobs, enough to eat, and reasonable shelter, whether their situations
are improving or deteriorating strongly affects their thoughts and actions.
The changed circumstances people face may or may not actually be related to
the political or social changes that have occurred. As far as cultural selection is
concerned, it does not matter.
Stage Seven: Divine Association
After the change in circumstance, there comes a change in belief. The people
who will change their beliefs are the people who have benefited from the change in
circumstance. The way in which people will change their beliefs is in the direction
espoused by the social movement. Most people don't change their deepest beliefs
readily, but they do change. The shifts in the belief system of society at large tend to be
incremental. The ideas we choose to follow are not random; they are intimately
connected to our established cultural predispositions.
72
The process of internalizing beliefs is a critical component of cultural selection.
This process is intimately linked to children’s tendency to think in terms of cosmic
justice. The following chapter is dedicated to examining these concepts more closely.
The process of internalizing beliefs is linked to our innate patterns of thinking.
Many people, perhaps all people, carry the childhood belief that events in the world are
connected to the greater forces of good and evil in the universe. We carry a sense that
these greater forces are in turn connected to our own actions. Deep down we tend to
believe that good fortune in the material world is associated with morally and rationally
correct behavior. Cultural selection operates through this sense of cosmic justice. We
tend to think that material success follows moral correctness, and material failure
follows moral impropriety. (A very transparent example of the belief in cosmic justice
and magical thinking is the tendency of some people to believe that AIDS is the result
of the moral turpitude of homosexuals. The connection is not rational, but rather
involves a sense of cosmic justice.)
When an improvement in circumstance follows the actions of a social movement,
then we are inclined to believe that movement to be morally and rationally correct. We
associate the change of circumstance with the leaders of the social movement and with
the correctness of their actions in the eyes of God, whether or not we use those words.
A belief is perhaps crystallized when it reaches this internal level, when we are
convinced a leader's actions are right because good things have happened.
The association that societies make between prosperity and the actions of social
movements is circumstantial. We make the association mentally whether or not it has
any justification in reality. Our material prosperity is tied to our sense of divine will, as if
God grants economic benefit on the virtuous and material ruin on the sinful. The
association between prosperity and moral correctness becomes a divine association.
Divine association is a blind, unthinking, and circumstantial association between events
in the world that may or may not be rationally connected. It is at the heart of what's
wrong with non-conscious cultural evolution.
This tendency to divine association does seem to be universal to some degree.
Prior to the rise of Western secular society, every human society has traditionally had
supernatural explanations for their core structures. This is highly suggestive of the kind
of thinking that is used in divine association. In Western society, the tendency to divine
association is as strong as ever, but it has been transferred to different social
institutions.
A Vignette
A simple vignette about the process of cultural selection would be useful.
Racism is a belief that can be strongly felt, leading to acts of petty discrimination on a
daily basis and murder and warfare at other times. How would such a belief arise? It is
an important question if we are ever to be our own masters.
Imagine a small nation. This nation had existed for a long time. It was
mountainous and blessed with natural resources - forests, fertile valleys, and abundant
water. There existed in this nation a minority culture of indigenous people who had lived
73
in the mountains for thousands of years practicing a semi-nomadic lifestyle of gardening
and hunting. The dominant population of the country knew of the indigenous people, but
their land was rugged and they were left in peace. As time passed, the population of the
nation increased. A profitable logging industry developed, and many people came to
have jobs cutting down trees, transporting them, sawing them up, building with wood
and exporting lumber.
As population grew, more and more trees were cut. At first the land of the
indigenous people was left alone. There were enough trees elsewhere and there were
traditions and laws that gave the indigenous people's land some protection. But then the
economy fell into recession, and loggers, sawyers, and carpenters could not find
enough work. For many years, there had been a town drunk living in one of the major
logging towns. He would stand in the tavern and give speeches about social problems
and their correct remedy. He was a fellow who never felt very good about himself, and
he liked to think of himself as a great leader to make up for his visible failures.
For years he had pontificated about the fate of the nation and the changes that
needed to be made, but now the tavern was full of unemployed people. One day the
drunk hit upon the idea of blaming the indigenous people for the nation's woes. He
stood on a chair and pontificated about how many trees stood on their land, about how
they were strange and dangerous people who committed immoral acts in their forest
villages. He said that they should all go and civilize those savages and give them
morality. All of their trees were going to waste, rotting away while your children go
hungry.
For years this comical drunk had been met with jeers, but that day he was met
with applause. He was exhilarated, and went on and on while the crowd cheered. Soon
people were talking to each other, printing up leaflets, arranging public speeches for this
former town drunk - who had gotten a decent suit in the meanwhile. A movement grew
up, our town drunk traveling with a loyal band of followers from logging town to logging
town stirring the people to act. By some combination of bullets and ballots, this former
town drunk found himself in the government of this nation, and pursued a campaign of
violence against the indigenous people. The dominant population moved in and took
their land, their trees, their lives.
The resources coming from the land of the indigenous people gave a small boost
to the economy. For this and other reasons, things got better for a while. More people
had jobs, food to eat, and a place to sleep. Everyone talked of what filthy uncivilized
brutes the indigenous people were. It was clear to everyone that the campaign to civilize
the savages was a right and proper endeavor, pursued by a great and pious nation.
In his position of leadership, our once town drunk had many mistresses, illegally
fired members of the government, and broke many social customs. It was almost never
mentioned in the newspapers that our great leader was only recently a drunk, and his
illegal and improprietous acts were quietly brushed aside. But in another couple of
years, the economy took another downturn. Once again, thousands of people had no
work, no reliable way to get food or shelter. Suddenly, the papers ran stories about our
town drunk, about his past, and about how he was breaking the law.
In a tavern in the capital city, there was another drunk. He would stand up on the
tables and rail about the nation that bordered to the north, about how they were brutish
and uncivilized people ...
74
This vignette is certainly simplified, and it represents only one of many possible
ways that economic or ecological changes can manifest themselves as a belief. The
central component of cultural selection is the process by which people get feedback
through the social system about their actions. Specifically, in our vignette, the economy
improved after our drunk-turned-leader led an attack on the indigenous people and took
their resources. The improvement in the standard of living of the dominant population
occurred only in small part as a result of these actions. But even if the economic upturn
were totally unrelated, the outcome would be the same. The racist belief that the
indigenous people were less than human would become established because a social
movement arose espousing that belief, and then the standard of living of the dominant
group improved. The people whose standard of living improved would be the ones to
hold racist beliefs. These people would associate their material gain with the divine will
of God.
The Repression of Social Awareness
Cultural selection is not an extraordinarily complex phenomena. Politics aside,
understanding cultural selection is certainly less complex than building a computer or a
space ship. How is it that relatively simple aspects of social evolution can remain so
unrecognized?
Every human culture, from the very small and simple to the very large and
complex, is partly conscious and partly non-conscious.93 People in a gathering culture
may have spiritual explanations for why they don't hunt particular animals, or why they
only kill a certain number. They may be conscious of only the spiritual explanation, or
they may be consciously aware of the conservation value of not overhunting. Our
society consciously discusses some issues. But other issues, such as poverty, are
discussed only in mythological terms. (We will discuss the causes and concealment of
poverty in Chapter Eight.)
This dichotomy between what is spoken and unspoken, seen and unseen,
remains just as prevalent in our own society in spite of the ascendancy of science and
social science in our time. A number of theories in the social sciences recognize this
dichotomy, by speaking of the “manifest and latent” or “emic and etic” functions of social
institutions.94 These terms refer to the spoken versus unspoken functions of cultural
institutions.
There are a number of reasons why a large part of culture remains unspoken.
Understanding and overcoming the factors that repress social awareness is crucial to
our survival in this age.
93
As I said in an earlier footnote, the word “non-conscious” is chosen over
“unconscious,” because unconscious implies that certain awareness is embedded in the
unconscious mind, whereas at issue here are aspects of culture of which people are
usually not aware at any level.
94
Macionis, 1987, p.18, Harris, 1993, p.113
75
One reason human culture remains non-conscious is cultural dissonance.
Psychologists speak of “ cognitive dissonance.”95 Cognitive dissonance refers to
situations in which a person is faced with an internal contradiction. The classic studies
charge students to see a movie, then show the same movie to others for free. The
students who pay for the movie will give the movie better reviews than the ones who
saw it for free. It would cause some degree of internal friction for people to think they
paid for something that was not worthwhile. Herein lies part of the explanation for why
so many organizations, from fraternities to the military to medical schools, “haze” their
members so severely. If they make their members pay very dearly to become part of the
club, then those members will value the club highly and defend it fiercely.
Cognitive dissonance often occurs when people do something they know is
destructive or dishonest. They may develop an internal conflict (dissonance) between
what they have been told is right and their own actions. As a result of this dissonance,
they may create explanations - rationalizations - that make it all make more sense.
Cognitive dissonance is very unpleasant - even mentally incapacitating at times. We
often lie to ourselves or generate rationalizations to ease the pain of dissonance.
At the cultural level, people are often faced with circumstances that generate
dissonance. Cultural dissonance is cognitive dissonance on a greater social scale. It
occurs when groups of people are pressed to do things that are contradictory to their
society’s beliefs. For instance, it is a belief of the Hindu faith that life is sacred. Cows in
particular are venerated as sacred animals. Hinduism is a faith held by many people in
India. In some areas of India, it is of significant benefit for farmers to have more female
cows than male cows. Given that the sexes are born in even numbers, that leaves the
farmers to either raise unneeded male cows or break a strongly held tenet of their faith.
What they in fact do is very carefully and subtly alter circumstances to see to it that the
male calves don't get as much to eat. Thus male calves die more often. The farmers say
that male calves are not as strong as females, and the pain of dissonance between a
spiritual ethic and practicality is eased.96
An even more pointed circumstance of cultural dissonance arises for mothers in
cultures that practice infanticide. Infanticide has been practiced by most pre-industrial
cultures throughout the world. Cultures who value males very highly may kill female
infants. Many pre-industrial cultures chose to kill children to limit population growth.97 In
many of these circumstances, there are established cultural explanations for why such
children die. In thirteenth century England, for instance, infants were suffocated by
“overlaying” when their mothers “accidentally” rolled over onto them at night.98 This was
a time of severe food shortages when infanticide was practiced in spite of prohibitions
against it. In other cultures, there are spiritual explanations for why particular children
die. They say the children were weak or possessed by evil spirits. Such explanations
alleviate the dissonance that arises from having to kill one's own children.
95
Feldman, 1987, p.632
96
Harris, 1993, p.113
97
Carr-Saunders, 1922, p.197-242
98
Harris, 1978, p.258
76
Killing calves in contradiction to one's faith, or killing one's own children,
generates great cultural dissonance. For people to admit openly that they are killing
their sacred calves or their own children would cause enormous emotional disturbance.
As a result, such acts are clothed in false explanations. The real reason for what they
are doing becomes a piece of non-conscious culture. Cultural dissonance is social
cognitive dissonance. It occurs when groups of people collectively experience cognitive
dissonance as a result of established frictions within the society. The social response is
to generate false or mythological explanations for people's actions.
There is enormous cultural dissonance in our own society as well. The greatest
dissonance is attached to the most politicized issues, such as poverty or ecological
decline. In our culture, we say that we don't want poverty and we're trying to get rid of it.
But structural poverty holds the price of labor down, and consequently holds inflation
down as well. Both of these are integral to the functioning of our economy in its present
form. Like the institutions in other societies which generate dissonance, we have
created false explanations for why people are poor in order to alleviate our own cultural
dissonance.
The actions of vested interests also serve to repress the development of social
awareness. In contemporary society, there are numerous large and powerful vested
interests. As they pursue their various political and economic goals, they create
information in the public forum, and seek to repress or create doubt about information
that contradicts their own position. The tobacco companies, for instance, have spent a
great deal of money over a span of decades trying to repress and distract from public
information concerning the health effects of cigarette smoking.
The oil companies are presently going to great lengths to create misinformation
concerning the global warming. They have been successful at creating doubt
concerning the information generated by climatologists. They are hiring “experts” and
creating advocacy groups to disseminate the message that the greenhouse effect is
only a theory, that it would be too costly to mitigate this problem.99 The reality is that
there is virtual unanimity in the scientific community that the greenhouse effect is a very
serious problem and mitigation should begin immediately.
In this age of cynicism, these things don't come as much of a surprise to most
people. The less obvious issue is “technical consistency” in the realm of social
technology. Technical consistency means you can't build a personal computer until
other people have spent a great deal of effort inventing the components - integrated
circuits, transistors, resistors, and other forms of electronic technology. A gasoline
engine could not be built until someone figured out enough about electricity to make a
spark plug. People living in simple agricultural societies cannot build bulldozers or
televisions because they do not have all of the infrastructure and complimentary
technologies that are required to create such complex machines.
In social-technological terms, we are a primitive society with no complimentary
social technologies, and now we need to build some very fancy machines to deal with
the ecological and social crises of our time. Social technology, like mechanical
technology, is complimentary. Different forms of cultural, political, and economic
awareness support and inform one another. But vested interests, cultural dissonance
99
Gelbspan, 1995, p.31-37
77
and other factors serve to repress specific pieces of social awareness. One set of
vested interests generates misinformation to create a political distraction from the
economic realities of structural poverty. Other vested interests create distractions from
the destructive impacts of forestry, mining, or oil consumption. The net effect is that
complimentary pieces of social technology are repressed, and the general level of
political and cultural understanding in our society remains underdeveloped.
Culture also remains hidden because of the effects of hierarchical child rearing
practices. Raising children under conditions of artificial hierarchy pushes them into
divine association as they interface with powerful political institutions as adults. Divine
association causes culture to be hidden because we don't question the gods, we don't
assess their actions critically or put ourselves on an equal intellectual footing with them.
The next chapter is devoted entirely to this subject, so we will not discuss it further here.
These are some of the reasons that a lot of our culture remains non-conscious, “latent,”
or hidden.
The Reactive Nature of Cultural Selection
Cultural selection is entirely reactive - it only responds to stressors as they
arise, not to future planning or conscious awareness. The belief systems and core
structures of human societies tend to remain relatively static in times of non-stress. This
has enormous implications for the future of the human species.
Cultural evolution is similar to biological evolution in this regard. A species of
animal living in a climate that was growing gradually drier would develop special organs
and behaviors to conserve water and to go without drinking for longer periods of time in
order to live in a dry climate. But the changes would occur over time; the animal would
adapt through natural selection. The animal could not alter its genetic code based on
the knowledge that the climate was going to grow drier in the future. It could only wait
until stressors arose and then respond to them.
The evolution of human beliefs operates on the same non-conscious basis. Our
belief systems only respond to stressors as they are felt in our society. The problem is
that, particularly with ecological degradation, the stressors are only felt long after the
damage has been done. This is the core of the unsustainability that has plagued every
human civilization.
There are enormous political implications stemming from the non-conscious and
reactive nature of cultural selection. The wisest president in the world may enact the
most sagacious policies in history, and if the price of oil goes through the roof and the
economy goes into recession, the tendency to divine association will cause us to
believe that the president's actions were rationally foolish and ethically wrong. As a
culture, we react to what has happened regardless of whether what happened is the
result of previous acts or purely coincidental. Because cultural selection is so powerful
and so blind, it precludes the possibility of rationally planning for the future on a societal
level.
78
Cultural Selection and the Active Creation of Social Problems
Individual acts of crime or abuse can have enormous impact on an individual's
life. But we do not readily recognize that many of these “ problems” are actively created
by the evolution of core structures in our society. The physical and sexual abuse of
women is a case in point. The history of polygyny and sexual reward indicates
remarkable parallelism all over the world. It is consistent in male supremacist cultures
that: women's bodies are highly sexualized symbolically; women's personal, political,
and intellectual power is constrained through various formal institutions and social
norms; certain kinds of abuse are tacitly accepted; and sexual access for men is
associated with financial or military success.
One anthropological study has correlated the existence of gender stereotypes in
human societies with wife beating, child beating, and rape.100 In the U.S., individual
acts of rape and abuse are publicly decried. But the sexual reward system actively
drives our modern economy forward, and this sexual reward system daily recreates the
institutions of male supremacy even as we bemoan their effects. While we may decry
individual acts of abuse, these acts of abuse are predictable outgrowths of the core
institutions of male supremacy.
Likewise, a stratified and intensified culture selects for aggressiveness. A culture
that holds an ethnic group or class in a disadvantaged position actively selects for
racism. A culture that selects for aggressiveness, selfishness, or sexualized identity in
turn makes it much more likely that people will play out those behaviors on each other
at an individual level. Our lack of recognition of such simple realities stems from the
cultural dissonance that is involved in examining the real functions and impacts of the
core structures of our society.
Our belief that we are in conscious control of our society is the greatest illusion
of our time. We think that our society is directed by the values and beliefs of its people
and its leaders. In a limited sense this is true, but in the greater span of time it is our
most dangerous illusion. Our belief in conscious control causes us to try to solve social
problems by trying to affect how people think and act toward each other. But cultural
selection operates like a silent machine deep in the heart of our society. We may decry
sexism, crime in the street, or prejudice against the less powerful, but many of the
social ills we struggle against are the inevitable outcomes of powerful economic
structures that we find very useful in other regards. We must find a way to discuss these
matters openly and seek informed solutions outside of the constraints of our own
dissonance and mythology.
Cultural Selection and Political Power
100
Eisler, 1988, p.188
79
In trying to address broader social problems, the most relevant question is not
so much why powerful people abuse their power, but why so many people acquiesce to
or support such abuse. There will never be a shortage of idiots on podiums spouting
pious destruction, but the real question is why so many people follow them. Why do so
many people blindly follow mass cultural trends? Why are we as a society so blind to
our future? Tyrants and robber barons only hold power because so many people stand
behind them.
Cultural selection is the process that determines whom the masses will follow.
Even though cultural selection is not consciously understood by many, it is understood
well enough by a few to be manipulated. Most of the power that leaders hold comes not
from direct intimidation of their followers, but rather by manipulation of cultural selection.
Leaders manipulate cultural selection by trying to provide material benefits to their
followers, by trying to take personal credit for positive changes in circumstance, and by
trying to blame negative changes of circumstance on their opposition. The tendency to
divine association is very important here. Even in our age of science, leaders are
symbolically closer to God. If a leader can convince a broad group of people that their
standard of living has improved as a result of the leader's actions, then those people will
tend to believe that the leader's actions are correct in the eyes of God. On the flip side,
woe be unto a politician seeking reelection in a time of recession. It does not matter if
the recession was caused by factors totally outside of the politician's control; the political
challengers will blame the incumbent for the decline. And a great many people will
believe that the incumbent is rationally, ethically, and spiritually at fault.
Vested interests wait on the sidelines for recessions and other stressors. Then,
at the right moment, the moment of potential change created by the stressors, they
jump in and try to convince people that their opposition is wrong in the eyes of God and
Progress. Each side takes turns, leaping in and out of the limelight of political power.
Televangelists, industry spokespersons, leaders of popular movements, and
spokespersons of business and moneyed interests all take part in this process. The
opportunistic manipulation of cultural selection is the taproot of political power.
While we may wish for the final victory of one class or philosophy over another, in
the greater sense, it is the blind watchmaker of cultural evolution who made the
classes. It is not inevitable that we should be divided into classes. “ Human nature” did
not build human culture. Humans the world over are biologically very similar, but human
cultures are very diverse. It is not plausible that such diversity could be born of a
consistent “nature.” Over time the process of cultural evolution is very powerful. Cultural
evolution can take our biological similarity and build slavery or democracy, freedom or
dictatorship out of it. Culture influences each of us deeply and all of us together. We will
never create ecological sustainability or social justice until we become our own masters,
until we gain conscious control over the culture around us that influences us so deeply.
80
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Sins of the Father
Dad worked a lot. He didn't do much with us kids. Maybe it was because Dad
was so busy that one of my cousins on my mother's side took me in some when I was
still in elementary school. His name was Jay, and we fished a lot. Jay was older than
me, and I never asked him why he spent so much time with me. In the South, people
don't say much about what they feel; you just see in what they do. Especially with men - boys that is, no matter how old you are -- they help each other out a lot, they just don't
make much fuss about it.
Jay was old enough to have a boat and a truck. We would go down to the river,
sometimes even out to brackish water. His boat was kind of sluggish by local standards.
When it was just me and him, it would get up out on top of the water and trot along,
reluctantly but willingly, like a tired dog that still had to find its way home. But if you got
too much refreshments in the boat, it would just settle down and wallow and complain
and never get anywhere real fast.
Sometimes when we were out fishing, we would happen upon a big alligator,
which in the proper circumstances was enough to unnerve a mind trying to fish too early
in the morning. Jay was always real casual about alligators, but we had an interaction
with a gator one afternoon that adjusted Jay's attitude.
We were fishing on a canal, just working our way along slow. The gator was up
ahead, steady retreating and keeping its distance nice and polite like. We were in an
aluminum jon-boat. I don't know exactly how big the gator was, but it was clear he was
longer than the boat. I was trying to raise a serious discussion of the matter, arguing
pretty hard that a gator had a right to be left alone and maybe we ought to turn back.
But Jay was solid Salzburger stock; we were going to fish, and that gator would just
have to accommodate. I was opposed to asking such accommodations of something
with so many teeth, but didn't have sufficient seniority to win the case.
We continued along with our peaceful retreating standoff, until we rounded a
bend and made the difficult discovery that this particular canal was actually a dead end
and we had successfully trapped the gator at the end of it. One of us was trapped
anyway, because it was clear we had no time to consider a retreat ourselves. The gator,
to its credit, came to a solution that saved face for everyone. First it submerged,
81
disappearing completely under the surface of the water, which did not improve my
feelings about the situation at all. Then it went under us, giving the boat a good rock just
to make its point. Finally, it surfaced on the other side of the boat and steamed on to its
gator business, at which point even Jay had to agree that it was a fine thing to fish in
one place for a while.
I fished a lot, on the pond at the farm as well as on the rivers. We fished any day
but Sunday. I didn't understand why, but we weren't supposed to fish on Sunday. Of all
the temptations the devil could lay before a country boy's soul, going a whole day
without fishing in the summer was pretty hard. But the church folks seemed pretty clear
about it.
We went to Church every Sunday. It was a big white church, with a steeple taller
than the tallest pines, which is pretty tall. Me and George would play out front of the
church under the trees and talk about what they said in church. Me and George went
way back, being friends since before we started school.
In church they talked about faith, about believing in God the father who you could
trust to make everything right if you just had enough faith. They talked about being
good, about not saying bad words, about doing things right. They talked about people
who were horrible poor in other countries. They took up collections for the Christian
missionaries who were helping those folks. They talked about Jesus living in the desert
and not having anything, about how the poor will inherit the earth. But then everybody
drove their best car to church, and wore their best suits, and tried to look anything but
poor. I couldn't say why exactly, but it just didn't seem right to talk about such horrible
poor people while you are wearing your best suit.
Going to church meant being on the right side of things. Southerners are teamminded folks -- you are supposed to be on the right side of things. Being Christian was
important, though standing up for your family was even more important. Whenever the
kids would start to arguing, they could be acting real mean, saying all sorts of things
about each other. You could say the lowest, meaning, ugliest things, and it was still just
words. But when you got tired of words and was ready to fight, then you said something
about the other feller's family. That was like hitting a switch that said “fight”; there was
no more talking about it then. You just didn't talk about somebody's family unless you
meant business.
At school too you were always supposed to be on the right team. Like all schools,
our high school had a mascot. Ours was painted two stories tall and just as wide in a
mural covering one wall of the school gym - a rebel soldier. We were the Rebels, and at
every football game, as the football players walked on the field, in front of them would
march the band, and in front of them would march somebody dressed in the grey wool
of a Confederate soldier. Folks took the team thing pretty serious. When a football
player from the other side got hurt on the field, some of them weren't respectful at all,
but rather they would stand up and cheer and shout things about finishing him off.
Southerners make good soldiers. They’ve got the team thing figured out. They know
who's side they're on and what to think about the other side.
I got along pretty well in school. In part that came from what I had learned from
Mom. Mom was raised pretty poor. I suppose it taught her some things.
Mom had a lot on her hands. There was me and my two brothers and my sister,
and sometimes we pushed her pretty hard doing things she told us not to do. Dad didn't
82
make any money on the farm, and some years lost a fair amount. That meant Mom had
to support the whole family and then some by teaching school. She did all the cooking
and cleaning too. It wasn't no TV dinner cooking either, but home cooking at every
meal. We put up most of our food in jars and in the freezer. We rendered lard from the
pigs that we grew. It was a lot of work.
Dad didn't make it any easier for Mom either. He had grown up hard times,
depression times. Sometimes he was fine, but sometimes he would just get mad in an
instant and start acting like he was another person, like somebody you never seen
before. You never knew what would make it start.
There is a lesson in Christian teaching about discipline, about accepting your
circumstance and bearing it with your own focused regimen. Mom had a mastery of that
discipline that was extreme. She never lashed out at anyone, though she certainly might
have had cause to on many occasions.
I suppose I learned that discipline, learned how to go about what I needed to do
and not react to people poking at me, and took it to school. Maybe I was expecting the
teachers at school to act with the same temperament as Mom, but a lot of them were
closer to Dad's way of doing things. They had God on their team, and you were going to
remember that. Each teacher had their own way of doing things. Most of them had us
stand up and say the pledge of allegiance. Quite a few had a class prayer in the
morning. I suppose they wanted to check in on God and make sure they had his
attention, figuring they might just be needing him to back them up during the day.
As students, we weren't completely without recourse. If we had a teacher who
was stepping too far out of line, some of the boys would take it upon themselves to
straighten him out. There was all sorts of things we did to help even out the odds.
Sometimes we would bring fishing crickets to school. You could buy them by the
hundred as fish bait. Then we would turn the crickets loose in the class before the
teacher got there. Hundreds of crickets would crawl into every crack and crevice in the
building and start chirping up a storm. Wasn't anything anybody could do to make them
stop at that point. The crickets would chirp for days while the teacher tried to maintain
authority and we smiled politely.
The boys from the agriculture class had the best trick. They were crawling
around under some of the trailers that were attached to the school doing electrical work.
They took a radio under the trailers and wired it into the intercom system. The whole
school was serenaded for a week while the batteries ran down -- nobody could figure
where it was coming from or how to make it stop.
Only ultimate authority can provoke ultimate rebellion, otherwise nobody gives a
damn. The ultimate authority in our school was the principal. His name was Little
Napoleon, or at least that was what we called him. He was short and mean and wore
sunglasses so nobody ever got to see his eyes. He ruled over the faculty with an iron
fist, which was a favor that got passed along.
I never had any trouble with him except once. We had a couple of teachers who
had better sense than to get too caught up in the whole authority thing. They weren't so
excitable as some of the others. But push come to shove, it was clear whose side they
were on. It was one of my favorite teachers who got me in trouble with Little Napoleon.
We did a model United Nations one year. We went to a college nearby and stayed there
for days. There were kids from schools all over the area. A couple of kids represented
83
each country, and we pretended to be at the U.N. It was a good thing. We were
supposed to go to see a play one evening, but we went out walking around instead. It
didn't seem like a big deal at the time.
A few days later, I was called into the principal’s office and sat face to face alone
in a room with Little Napoleon. I suppose God was on his side too, though I didn't ask.
He reminded me about that play. I didn't have any argument with him. I knew we were
supposed to go, but I didn't figure anybody would mind all that much if we didn't. I was
respectful; I had learned long ago how not to fight. But somehow that only seemed to
make him mad. He commenced to getting madder and madder, saying how we had
defamed the school name and what not. I had no argument about what we had done,
but I whatever I said, however I said it, he just seemed to keep getting madder. I
couldn't figure it at first -- I was pleading guilty and wasn't talking back at all. He kept
yelling about it for quite a while, until finally I started figuring out what he wanted. He
wanted me to be afraid, or to lower my head, or to otherwise show some shame. After
no small amount of listening to him yell, I still couldn't give him what he wanted, so he
gave up and let me go.
I was not who I was supposed to be in that place. I started being more careful
after that. I would walk the hall, holding my head straight and my jaws tight. I knew,
push come to shove, I just couldn't quite give them what they wanted.
I worked with some other kids who put together the school newspaper. Little
Napoleon had to see the layout sheets before we sent them to the printer. He would
strip out a lot of the material from the layout, and we would have to lay it all out again. It
was a little hard to figure at first what his criteria was. His daughter went to school, so
any songs dedicated to her were taken out. Anything critical, or just plain thoughtful,
was taken out. There were things that we could have talked about. Our county had the
highest teenage pregnancy rate in the country one year, though we certainly couldn't
talk about that. After a while, we figured out how to make it through the censorship. We
started writing from a little more of a distance, disguising criticism with historical allusion
and metaphor, an age-old trick. Little Napoleon seemed stronger on authority than
history, so that scheme worked pretty well.
Dad wasn't short on authority either. He had grown up hard, and maybe that was
part of where all the hardness came from. It seemed like the past always had a grip on
Dad. You could see it in the farm machinery. It was all old, held together with electric
fence wire and cracked welds, but still he held onto the old ways. In a way Dad's
particular-ness fit that old machinery pretty well. He nursed that rusty equipment along
with a patience far and above what most people could muster.
Dad was particular. Like when we put new siding on the house from some sheets
of wood he got cheap somewhere. We would trim them and set them up, take them
down and trim them again, over and over till they fit just right. In years to come, other
carpenters always looked at me funny because I would set the nails halfway into what
we were putting together, in case we needed to pull the nails to change it.
Dad was used to long hot hard hours of farm work. It would make you tired to
look at the old Ford diesel, pulling long days through the fields. It always amazed me
how iron machines would just go and go, like they never feel that kind of tired that gets
down in your bones. Dad would be driving, one arm on the fender, turned around
looking forward and backward at the same time to make sure he didn't plow out
84
anything with the cultivator. It was a trick I never learned as well, and had quite a few
plowed-out corn stalks to show for it. But Dad was a master of his art, the art of smalltime farming. He could plant the longest field and hold the row dead straight, and he
was proud of it.
Dad had taken up with the Baptists. The hard loud preaching of the Baptists
appealed to Dad. He had preacher friends, each with their own row of vegetables in the
garden. I never saw Dad preach, save a few sermons in the field about hoeing, but he
did take some pride in giving the blessing at reunions and church gatherings. He was
asked to do that, folks knowing that he had studied it. He never was the center of social
conversation much, so that was his time to shine.
Dad was always fond of sayings. He would have me and my brothers out hoeing,
long rows that stretched out across the field, the sandy soil polishing the blade of the
hoe to shiny metal. “Chinaman say a heap of hands make light work,” he would say.
And we would be working along, sliding the hoe just under the surface of the soil,
breaking up the crust, cutting the weeds off at the root. The sun would be climbing,
building up heat until you just couldn't stand it anymore. Looking out across the fields
that seemed like they were just too big for people to hoe, I would think “Chinamen sure
work hard.”
Dad was the political one in the family. He was county commissioner for three
terms -- 12 years -- but that was before my time. In my time, any local politician that was
wanting to get elected would come to Dad. Dad wouldn't go out and campaign for them
or anything, but I guess they figured what Dad would say to the other folks while we
were standing out front of the church on Sunday was important.
Dad had strong opinions about various political folks in Washington. Some folks
thought that it was a good thing that Jimmy Carter made it to the white house, a Georgia
man in such a high place. But Dad was going to have none of that. Carter was giving
the country away to the communists, giving away the Panama Canal for no good reason
at all. And spending too much money making up deficits. Dad was real impressed with
Reagan. I heard it from Dad, then from other folks when they were talking about
Reagan, like he was something different than anything that had come before. They
called him “God's own president.”
85
When God Tells Lies
Why are human societies so stupid? It is a fair question. There is significant
evidence to indicate that many, if not all, human civilizations have been unaware of their
own future and have degraded their environments. Human beings are capable of
behaving with intelligence and forethought. Human cultures are often blind. At the
societal level, we make decisions with a reactive kind of evolution. Our society operates
as a non-conscious and unthinking system that cannot see its own future. We must
understand this blindness.
Many people have recognized the power of economic and ecological factors to
influence the political structures and belief systems of human societies.101 The
connection between economic structures and belief systems is irrefutable, but no one
has ever explained how economic changes manifest themselves as changes in belief.
Cultural selection builds that bridge. The fulcrum of cultural selection is divine
association -- the point in the evolution of culture where beliefs change.102 When and
why do people make divine associations in the political process? When is divine
association a blind process, and how can we make it a more conscious process? These
are important questions if we are to ever escape the ruts of history.
Developmental psychology illuminates the process of divine association,
particularly the work of Jean Piaget. At least one political scientist has alluded to the
political implications of some of Piaget's ideas, but no one has pursued that perspective
very far.103 Piaget is to developmentalism what Freud is to psychology, a grand
patriarch with significant flaws who had a formative influence on the development of the
science. One of Piaget's most noteworthy flaws is that he studied almost exclusively
male children. These and other issues concerning the applicability of Piaget's ideas to a
theory of culture are discussed in an appendix.
Piaget made a few significant discoveries that are as substantial to
developmentalism as the subconscious is to psychology. These discoveries include:
1. Children are not simply naive little adults. Children think in ways that are
fundamentally different from adults. It is not simply that they have less information than
adults The way they organize information is fundamentally different.
101
Karl Marx is one of the most noteworthy thinkers to identify the connection of
material (economic) change and social and political structures. More recently,
anthropologist Marvin Harris has pursued this connection in the name of “Cultural
Materialism.” While the connection of economy and belief is unquestionable, no one has
ever demonstrated how that connection is made.
102
Divine association is a phrase that I created.
103
Shawn Rosenburg is the person to whom I am referring. He is quoted in this chapter.
86
2. Children's intellectual (cognitive) development occurs through stages. There has
been some debate about this idea, though the evidence for identifiable stages of
development is strong.
3. Children's intellectual development does not happen spontaneously, nor does it occur
primarily in response to adult teaching or the formal lessons offered by the larger
society. The primary factor driving children's intellectual development forward is the
social interaction that children have with other children and adults. This is enormously
important in the context of understanding culture, because it means that children's
intellectual development can be manipulated by influencing the kind of social
relationships they have with other people and social institutions.
4. The child mind is the foundation of the adult mind, emotionally as well as
intellectually. Divine association is very natural for children. A culture's tendency to
divine association is very much influenced by the child mind inside of every adult in that
society. Over time, nothing influences the character of politics in a human society more
than child-rearing practices.
Centration
One interesting thing about Piaget’s ideas is that he didn't just describe what he
saw; he created a logical framework that tied all of the pieces together. The center of
this logic is the concept of centration. (The reader should note that the word centration
has been substituted for Piaget's original term “ egocentrism.” Some developmental
texts use the word centration.) Centration is the inability of children to separate
themselves and their own mental processes from the external world.104 Piaget
organized his entire theory of development around the concept of centration.
One perspective on centration is that it is a lack of differentiation or separation
between the self and the larger world. From this perspective, childish centration is not
egoism or narcissism; rather it is how we think before we learn to separate our
individual self from the greater universe. Some more transparent examples of centration
in children involve asking a child to take a perspective other than their own. One classic
experiment involves taking a model of several mountains and asking a child to describe
what scene would look like from other perspectives. A doll can be placed on the other
side of the model and the child asked to describe what the doll sees. Small children
consistently say that the doll sees what they see. Small children cannot conceive of
another perspective.105
Children project their own thoughts and feelings onto the world around them.
Children do not establish boundaries between their own thinking and the larger world.
Small children confuse the boundaries between themselves and events in the world.
104
Piaget originally used the word egocentrism rather than centration. He later regretted
the use of that word, because it so strongly implies egoism. I use the word centration in
the place of egocentrism because it is less likely to provoke such confusion.
105
Piaget, 1967
87
They do not recognize that they are separate and independent from the world around
them.106
In children's minds, their own thoughts and the world at large remain
undifferentiated. They do not recognize that their own perception is simply that. When a
child is out walking, they might think the sun or moon is following them, because they
can see it moving through the trees. They do not recognize that the moon is an object
over which they have no influence. They have not learned that the moon exists
independently of their perception. Children may project their emotions onto others. If
asked to get a gift for an adult, they may give the adult a present the child would like.
They do not recognize the thoughts and feelings of the adult as separate from their own.
Another perspective on centration is that it is an adaptive strategy of children as
they face the world on their own terms. Small children do not have a lot of information
about their world, nor much social power. They are very dependent on the adults
around them for emotional and physical support. The intellectual patterns of children
tend to simplify their universe and seek security. These intellectual patterns provide
children a measure of emotional security in a world they do not understand very well.
Centration allows children to feel secure in the larger world. They tend to see the
world as benign and ordered. Their internal thought processes are assumed to be part
of that order, in what we as adults would consider magical thinking. Parents are aligned
with the cosmic order. Children take security in their place in their allegiance with this
higher order. As adults, we carry this child mind inside of us.
Moral Development
Intellectual development is pushed forward by social relationships. The nature of
social relationships changes greatly over the course of a lifetime. Studying a group of
people for a lifetime would be a very time consuming affair. To create a more useful
laboratory, Piaget chose to study a set of relationships that evolve more quickly -- he
chose to study children's games. (He mostly studied boys’ games mostly, see the
appendix.)
The game of marbles was popular in Piaget's time. As children learned the game
of marbles, they traversed from being entirely ignorant of the rules of the game, to being
at the bottom of a hierarchy, to being at the top. This allowed Piaget to study the
impacts of the social relationship at each stage of the game on how children think.
Piaget believed that children's attitudes toward the rules of the game of marbles
mirrored their attitudes toward rules in the society at large. Thus, he used this study as
a foundation for his theory of moral development.
Children passed through three general stages in their understanding of the rules
of the game.107 A child of four would likely be in the first stage. If they were given some
106
“The knowledge that we are thinking of things severs us in fact from the actual things
... [For the child] words would be bound up with things and to speak would mean to act
directly on these things. Inversely, external things would be less material and would be
endowed with intentions and will” (Piaget, 1929).
88
marbles, they would tend to play with them in whatever way suited their immediate
desire and with no knowledge of the social conventions of the game.
The second stage occurs when children start to play the game with each other
and learn the rules from older children or adults. In this stage, children of seven or eight
would be lorded over by children of eleven or twelve. The younger children may not fully
understand the rules of the game; they accept and are dependent on older children to
explain the rules. This stage is marked by the tendency to see the rules of the game as
absolute and of divine origin.
The third stage occurs when children reach the top of the hierarchy and are no
longer lorded over by anyone. This stage is marked by an understanding of the
consensual nature of the rules. Children in the third stage understand that the rules
were created by ordinary people and can be changed as long as all the players agree.
The tendency to see the rules as unchangeable and of divine origin has its roots
in the centrated mind of the child. According to Piaget, adult coercion of children tends
to reinforce their tendency to centrated thinking. Adults handing down rules from on high
reinforces the child's tendency to see those rules as absolute, as emanating from a
divine source. “The coercion exercised by the adult or the older child is therefore
inseparable from the unconscious [centration] of the very young child.”108
Overcoming centration involves separating the self from the external world. But
as long as the child is subject to the coercive relationships of adults or older children,
the voices of adults mix with the child's own internal thoughts and remain
undifferentiated. The adult's voice is internalized by the child.
“So long as the child does not dissociate his ego from the suggestions
coming from the physical and from the social world, he cannot cooperate, for in
order to cooperate one must be conscious of one's ego and situate it in relation
to thought in general. And in order to become conscious of one's ego, it is
necessary to liberate oneself from the thought and will of others.” Piaget109
The development of a clear understanding of the rules of the game of marbles
has to await the time when the child is able to engage with other children on an
egalitarian basis. The intellectual understanding of the rules is dependent on the social
relationships which the child experiences. This is a key point. This is why looking at
something so simple as the game of marbles is useful. In other areas of life, we have
superiors over us throughout development and into adulthood. With a child’s game, the
child is able to experience the full gamut, from being fully ignorant, to being at the
107
Piaget's stages have been criticized as being too rigid. Some developmentalists see
growth occurring through a more continuous process. Piaget himself stressed that these
stages were concepts that should not be taken as rigid or restrictive, but those words
have gone unnoticed and his theory of stages is often interpreted with a rigidity that he
never intended. Making the stages rigid concepts misinterprets their original meaning.
108
Piaget, 1965, p.93
109
Piaget, 1965, p.93
89
bottom of the ladder of knowledge and power, to being at the top. In the case of the
game of marbles, this full evolution is completed by the time the child is 11 to 15 years
old.
“How is it that democratic practice is so developed in the game of marbles
played by boys of 11 to 13, whereas it is still so unfamiliar to the adult in many
spheres of life? ... [I]t must not be forgotten that the game of marbles is dropped
towards the age of 14-15 at the latest. With regard to this game, therefore,
children of 11-13 have no seniors. The following circumstance is important. Since
they no longer have to endure the pressure of play-mates who impose their
views by virtue of their prestige, the children whose reactions we have been
studying are ... able to become conscious of their autonomy ...” Piaget110
It is the egalitarian and cooperative relationships that children have with their
peers that cause the child to evolve beyond centration.
“The major factor contributing to the decline of [centration] ... is social
interaction, particularly with one's peers. The child who wishes to communicate
and be understood must adapt to the informational needs of his listener ... He
must, if he is to be understood, begin to identify the referents of pronouns in his
speech and to link events in proper causal fashion reflected in his syntax ... He
will come in contact with others who will challenge, offer rebuttal, and demand
clarification. Logical proof and verification will be sought in social exchange ...
The desire and movement toward socialized thought not only facilitate the
development of logic, but also serve to prevent the child, or even the adult, from
a pathological subjectification.” Hugh Rosen111
“Cooperation, then, forces upon the child an awareness of the need to
justify his own point of view, to substantiate his perspective, so that the child
becomes aware simultaneously of both his own point of view and that of
other[s].” Shawn Rosenburg112
The Absolute Rule
One manifestation of centration is that small children often understand the name
of something and the thing itself to be one in the same. An apple and the word “apple”
are the same thing and have always been. We could not, according to a small child,
decide to call apples anything but “apples.” The name and the thing are understood to
110
Piaget, 1965 p.76
111
Rosen, 1977, p.51-52
112
Rosenburg, 1988, p.61
90
be absolute and eternal realities.113 The name of a thing was handed down by a higher
cosmic power. This is the result of the child's centrated understanding of the world.
Small children also conceive of rules as eternal realities. Rules descend from on
high and are part of the absolute cosmology of the universe. We cannot, according to
the logic of the centrated mind, change the rules. Believing in absolute rules also has
the character of divine association. Children tend to think of rules as descending from a
divine and eternal source.114
The absolute rule occurs as a result of adult power exercised over the centrated
mind of the child. Even when adults are lenient in their child-rearing attitudes, any rules
that the adult hands down are inscrutable to the small child. Children cannot understand
why they must wash their hands or not play in the street, or why they should go to bed
when they do not want to. These rules descend from on high. The child's centrated mind
condenses this “on high” to a kind of greater cosmic order, an absolute universe in
which the child has a place. Their place is, in effect, at the center in terms of how they
think.
The young child who is subject to parental authority accepts his feelings “as
having universal validity ... The child left to himself ... accepts everything his mind
entertains and when subject to his parents without question adopts what they say as
ultimate law ... For a time the rule is considered sacred ... It is held to be immutable,
perennial, and the product of adults, who are viewed as omniscient and incapable of
error ...”115
At a particular stage of development, “rules are conceived of as sacred and
unalterable ... In his view, rules originate from either his father, government officials, or
a divinity. They are eternal and immutable.”116 The child tends to hold “mystical feeling”
toward adult authority. “Each for himself, and all in communion with the 'Elder': such
might be the formula of [centrated] play.”117
The authority under which children live is the root of the absolute rule in adult
society. It is the stereotypical bureaucrat who sees the rules of their organization as
unchangeable to accommodate individual needs, as if the rules were written by a higher
power. The absolute rule is fiercely applied to some issues.
For example, many cultures throughout the world accept nudity as normal. For
them, the public exposure of human genitals is perfectly normal. If we step outside of
our cultural training, we can see there is no particular reason we should have to wear
113
Piaget referred to this tendency as nominal realism.
114
Piaget referred to this tendency as moral realism. “We shall therefore call moral
realism the tendency which the child has to regard duty and the value attaching to it as
self-subsistent and independent of the mind, as imposing itself regardless of the
circumstances in which the individual may find himself” (Piaget, 1965, p.111).
115
Rosen, 1977, p.102-103
116
Rosen, 1977, p.106
117
Rosenburg, 1988, p.177
91
clothing. The prohibition in our society against nudity is not just a law; it is an absolute
rule. This social norm carries such weight that it is part of people's sense of cosmic
order. It is rooted in the absolute rule of the centrated mind. We often look at laws and
traditions that have been around a long time as absolute rules. Established traditions
are often seen as something greater than consensual agreements, as if they were
written by some higher power in a faraway age.
The absolute rule both simplifies and provides a sense of security. From that
perspective, we don't have to understand why rules were enacted or might need to be
changed. We are relieved of that responsibility, and we feel secure believing that
someone higher and wiser created the rules that govern our lives.
Cosmic Justice
Another characteristic of centration is the tendency for small children to believe
in cosmic justice -- that justice and punishment are part of the greater order of the
universe.118 Piaget's studies involved telling children a story about a child who stole
apples. On the way home, the child crossed a bridge and a rotten plank broke. The
children are then asked whether the plank would have broken if the child had not stolen
the apples. If you do something wrong, is there some greater cosmic force that might
punish you? The younger the child, the more likely they were to say yes. This is a kind
of magical thinking. Parents often reinforce this kind of thinking in their children.119
Cosmic justice is another manifestation of centrated thinking. The small child sees the
universe as one connected whole; they do not differentiate their own thoughts and
actions from events in the larger world. It makes sense to them that doing something
wrong could cause the larger universe to punish them, or being good might bring a
reward from the larger universe.
A sense of cosmic justice is common in our society. The belief that God or the
IRS will get you if you step out of line is all too ordinary. It is a kind of thinking that is
strongly magical. It is a sense that there is some greater force in the universe that will
“strike you down” if you do the wrong thing. The other side of the coin is the belief that
good behavior will be rewarded with good fortune. Religious organizations and other
institutions reinforce centrated thinking by promising their followers cosmic rewards. The
actions of such institutions reinforce divine association in our society at large.
Divine association is rooted in our tendency to believe in cosmic justice. We tend
to believe that if our leaders are doing the right things in the eyes of God and the
greater cosmic order, it will bring us prosperity. When we are not prospering, we tend to
think that our leaders are not behaving appropriately in the eyes of God and the cosmic
order.
118
Piaget's term was “immanent justice.”
119
Piaget, 1965, p.251-262
92
Magical Thinking
Children often make magical connections between events in their world. Magic
in this sense means making connections between events in the world with no rational
basis. The earliest origins of magical thinking probably arise for an infant as a result of
the responsiveness of their parents to their needs.
“Every cry of the baby leads to an action on the part of the parents, and
even the desires it can least express are always foreseen. In short, if the baby
can barely distinguish its own movements from the movements outside itself,
there must be for it a complete continuity between its parents' activities and its
own ... the conduct of people towards it gradually gives the baby the habit of
command. The parents, like the parts of its own body, like all the objects that can
be moved by the parents or by its own actions (food, toys, etc.), make up a class
of things obedient to its desires ...” Piaget120
If we search our memories, we can usually find beliefs or petty habits we had as
children that we thought had magical consequences. Perhaps we believed we made
things move by staring at them, or we influenced other people by thinking in a certain
way or saying certain words. “Step on a crack, break your mother's back” is one
childhood rhyme that demonstrates magical thinking. According to Piaget, such
childhood magic arises from the lack of a boundary between the self and the world.
From the centrated mind it is natural to think that what happens in one's mind can affect
what happens in the larger world, because the two are not distinguished as separate.
“At the root both of magic and of conviction without proof lie the same
[centrated] illusions, namely, confusion between one's own thought and that of
others and confusion between self and the external world.” Piaget121
When adults are put into a situation of great fear or anxiety, they are likely to
seek security, they are likely to regress to childhood thought patterns. Numerous
studies of anxiety among adults show that when people are afraid they are likely to use
childhood patterns of magical thinking.122 Magical thinking comes as a result of thinking
from the centrated mind.
120
Piaget, 1929, p.153-154
121
Piaget, 1929, p.168
122
As for Piaget's opinion of the matter, under a title heading of “Spontaneous Magical
Ideas in the Adult,” he wrote, “the weakening of the sense of personality leads to
realism and the realism to more or less clear magical ideas.” “With the adult, realism still
remains in imitation, in fear and in desire, and this realism, although of infinitely smaller
extent than that of the child, is still enough to bring out certain clear cases of ... magic”
(Piaget, 1929, p.162).
93
“[M] agical thinking does not appear only in young children ... Rather, such
thinking is apparently part of a 'normal' adult's repertoire and ... can be found in
all segments of the population. It appears that most adults succeed in
suppressing such thinking and do not express it openly. However, under certain
circumstances, particularly those that entail a threat to the person's physical or
psychological integrity, his or her control over such thinking weakens, resulting in
a greater frequency of occurrence.” Giora Keinan123
This is further evidence that the child mind lives inside of the adult, and that one
of the functions of centrated thinking is to provide security, especially when we are
threatened.
Hierarchy is the Bridge from Child Mind to Adult
Centration is part of adult thinking and is selectively applied to different
circumstances. We are most likely to apply centrated thinking to situations that make us
anxious, or when we are held in deference to an institution of higher power.
As we grow up in Western society, there are certain institutions that hold power
over us. This power remains over us from a very young age and persists into adulthood.
Social institutions hold power over us, just as our parents held power over us as
children. For people in highly stratified cultures, hierarchical relationships to institutions
mirror the natural hierarchy between small children and adults.
The reader will remember that intellectual patterns of development are propelled
by social relationships. In the game of marbles and elsewhere in life, not only what we
think but also how we think is strongly influenced by our social relationships with people
and institutions. Hierarchical relationships are likely to evoke childhood thought
patterns -- the logic of the centrated mind. Peer relationships are the means by which
centration is overcome. If the peer-level relationships that would allow the individual to
grow out of their centrated perspective are not present, then childhood thought patterns
are frozen into place into adulthood. In stratified cultures, the way of relating to higher
powers that a child develops when it is small is frozen into adulthood.124 When an
individual is kept in a subservient relationship to an institution, they tend to think about
that institution in a centrated way.125 This is because the development of their
intellectual perspective is dependent on the nature of the relationship.
123
Keinan, p.48-55, Odier, 1956.
124
“Certain features of child morality always appear to be closely connected with a
situation that from the first predominates in childhood {[centration] resulting from the
inequality between child and adult surroundings which presses upon him} but which
may recur in adult life ...” (Piaget, from Rosenburg, 1988, p.176).
125
"Social constraint - and by this we mean any social relation into which there enters an
element of authority and which is not, like cooperation, the result of an interchange
94
Adult centrated thinking is selectively applied. While non-centrated thinking may
be applied to institutions we understand and have access to, we are likely to apply
centrated thinking to particular institutions when we are held in deference those
institutions.126
The fables we tell children are tailored to fit their natural tendencies to centration
and magical thinking. The idea that Santa Claus knows if you're naughty or nice fits
well with how children think. In adult culture, the omnipresence of God in Christian
teaching, the polarization of God versus Satan or Freedom versus the Evil Empire
evokes centrated thinking. The belief that there is only one perfect mate for each
individual in the world is a centrated thought; it assumes a well-ordered universe with
each individual having a place in it. The belief that AIDS could be caused by a moral
fault of gay people comes from the centrated mind; it assumes a magical connection
between individual acts and the will of some higher power. When you play the lottery
and think that this is the special time and all the stars are lined up and it is your time to
win, that is the centrated mind talking. When you can't find a job and you start to think
that there is some greater reason why you can't find a job, that is the centrated mind
talking. When you have stolen some small thing from work and you feel compelled to
make amends because the universe might punish you, that is the centrated mind
talking.
Many decades ago, the idea was first suggested that childhood emotional
experience has a significant effect on adult life. It was heresy at the time; now it is
common knowledge. Childhood intellectual development is also carried into adulthood.
Though this fact is not common knowledge, the implications of the matter have not gone
entirely unnoticed.
“The importance of [centration] is that it is a form of thought which is not
limited to childhood or adolescence, but is found in adult thought as well.” Shawn
Rosenburg127
“The direct and fundamental relationship between [centration] and
cooperation goes to the core of social life and has the most far-reaching
implications for the organization of society ...” Shawn Rosenburg128
between equal individuals - has on the individual results that are analogous to those
exercised by adult constraint on the mind of the child. The two phenomena, moreover,
are really one and the same thing, and the adult who is under the dominion of unilateral
respect for the “Elders” and for tradition is really behaving like a child” (Piaget, 1965,
p.340).
126
“[T]he stage of autonomy may have been attainted in connection with certain rules,
even though the child's relation to other, perhaps more complex rules, may still be at the
level of heteronomy” (Rosen, 1977, p.108). Heteronomy refers to being subject to
external domination, which reinforces centrated thinking - thus centrated thinking is
selectively applied.
127
Rosenburg, 1988, p.50
95
The knowledge that childhood ways of thinking are manipulated by society at
large, and that these patterns are carried into adulthood, is yet another repressed
technology. Like ecological history, it makes us uncomfortable.
The perpetuation of centrated thinking into adulthood is not accidental. The
manipulation of childhood cognitive patterns is very important to the functioning of our
present cultural system. While we may speak of democracy in our society, the reality is
that we hold children and young adults in hierarchical relationship to political institutions
throughout their development. This causes them to think about those institutions from
the centrated mind. The primary purpose of institutional education in America is to
perpetuate the patterns of centrated thinking into adulthood. This is why school, even
universities, are not democratic. This is why order takes precedence over real
education.
Culture’s Opportunistic Use of Centration
Divine association has its roots in the child mind. Stratified cultures perpetuate
childhood centration into adulthood. They do this by keeping the hierarchical social
relations of childhood in place throughout development and into adulthood. In less
stratified cultures, it is common for young people to take on adult roles much sooner in
life. In egalitarian cultures, by their mid-teens a young person may be playing adult roles
within their society. While there may still be some deference to “elders,” it is of a very
different character than the obedience to hierarchy that is demanded in more stratified
cultures.
Culture makes opportunistic use of our psychological tendencies. Just as
flightless birds opportunistically use flying motions in a mating dance, so culture uses
our psychological predispositions to get us to behave in a manner that is profitable for
the culture at large.
The opportunistic use our society has made of centration is integral to
intensification. A strong sense of allegiance and unity of direction comes as result of the
absolute rule and cosmic justice. The belief in the cosmic correctness of the team,
country, or productive unit creates a powerful social force. When this force is directed
toward intensification and warfare, society becomes more powerful and productive.
The historical ruts worn by the choices of our ancestors are clear enough.
Centrated thinking can be seen in ancient civilizations as they underwent the stress of
decline. Among some ancient societies there was a great shift toward superstition,
fanatical supernaturalism, and messianism toward the end of their time. This is well
documented in the case of the ancient Romans. The Romans and other early
civilizations suffered greatly from environmental degradation that they seemed unable to
see or address.
128
Rosenburg, 1988, p.58
96
Toward the end of the Roman Empire, court astrologers were hired as the
primary source of political guidance.129 The entire society came to be dominated by
occultism. The Romans trained themselves to surrender their rational thinking to their
centrated mind in times of stress. This grew out of intensification and the need to drive
the machines of production and warfare. But it leads to a strong collective blindness.
What appears to have happened in all of the early human civilizations is that
political leaders were able to gain short-term payoffs from military exploits and
unsustainable production. But because people associate the fruits of such exploits with
the divine will and cosmic justice, the ability of the greater society to examine the
situation clearly or to consider alternative solutions was very limited. You don't question
God. Every leader of every highly centralized early human society was worshiped as a
divine being or a descendant of a divine being. Including the Caesars of Rome. To refer
to the King as “my lord” is no accident at all.
In modern times, some of the less appetizing social movements in the modern
world have also relied on centrated thinking to bolster their efforts. They have done so
by recruiting very young people as activists and soldiers. The Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia were extremely violent. They killed up to a third of the population of their
country after they came to power. Mao Tse Tung's Red Guard was excessive, though
not so much as the Khmer Rouge. These movements relied on very young people,
often children in their early teens. This is because the patterns of centration are ready
building blocks for a kind of supernaturalistic thinking that we call ideological extremism.
Every culture has had some form of spirituality. On the surface it would appear
that modern industrial society in modern times has ceased to have a spirituality. Does
that mean that our human need for a spirituality, this consistent tendency for the last
hundred thousand years, somehow simply vanished in the last several decades? I think
not. Rather, we have transferred our spiritual tendencies to other social institutions.
Others have noted how psychology and other social sciences moved into the vacuum
created by the decline of religious institutions in modern times.130
Large and powerful institutions in our time fulfill the role previously fulfilled by
organized religion. We take security in our place of employment, in our country. Our
organizational associations are a source of identity and support for us. We apply a kind
of centrated and spiritualistic thinking to large institutions and political affairs. Though
our spiritual tendencies have become less visible than when we put on robes or danced
around a fire circle, our spiritual tendencies have not disappeared. Rather, they have
been transferred over to other institutions.
Compared to ancient civilizations, Western nations have loosened the
centralization of power to some degree by separating church and state. But, in general,
politicians have little hesitation about bringing divine symbolism into their campaigns.
Spirituality has been sublimated to some degree in Western society as scientists have
taken over from preachers as the people who define our cosmology. But the way we
relate to larger institutions remains very similar. We perpetuate centration into adulthood
in our society as did ancient civilizations.
129
Africa, 1968, p.81
130
Braginsky, 1974, p.30
97
Adult centrated thinking makes society more conforming, less socially aware, and
more powerful. These are the consistent tradeoffs our species has faced for a long time
now. The challenge we face in modern times is learning how to think more intelligently
about our future as a society.
The Politician's Playground
“[S]ocial reality, in general, and particularly the present international
reality, are among the things we least understand. It is easier for us to talk about
the movements of the stars and about physical and chemical phenomena than
about social and international facts, which command our attention constantly ...
We are not adapted psychologically to our social state, and this is the basic fact
we must begin with ...” Piaget131
The maintenance of social hierarchy throughout the life of children and into
adulthood maintains childhood thought patterns into adulthood. These thought patterns
are selectively applied to different situations. People are most likely to apply centrated
thinking when dealing with institutions to which they have a subservient relationship. At
those times, adults find themselves in a situation similar to what they faced in childhood,
namely looking up at something more complex than they can understand and more
powerful than they can challenge. Political situations are most likely to provoke intuitive
or magical thinking.
Centration is a politician's playground. It creates a situation that is highly
exploitable by leaders who can guide divine association with the words they speak.
Leaders can associate themselves with material gains and try to associate their
opposition with material losses. They gain supporters by manipulating short-term
payoffs. These payoffs operate within cultural selection to influence people's thinking
enormously. The associations people make have a divine character about them. This
divine association in the political arena is the root of our society's blindness to its own
future.
The effect of perpetuating centration into adulthood is to effectively shove how a
society “thinks” about political issues toward a blind form of divine association.132
Spirituality has an important place in any healthy culture, but the effect of larger
numbers of people engaging the political institutions of their own culture from a
centrated mind is not a constructive form of spirituality. Divine association represents a
submissive and non-thinking relationship between individuals and the political
institutions of their society. Centration is conforming and obedient; it easily takes on the
cultural clothing of submissive spirituality.
131
Piaget, 1973, p.132-133
132
“In our opinion these [centrated] beliefs have their interest because the same
phenomena reappear in adult mental life and because the psychological facts lead by a
series of intermediate steps to metaphysical systems themselves” (Piaget, 1965, p.75).
98
We expect God to speak to us though the institutions of our society and let us
know if we are doing the right thing or not. A politician in times of economic growth
almost cannot lose regardless of who they are or what they do, and a politician in times
of recession cannot win no matter what they do. We expect God to let us know when
they are stepping out of line. When things are economically good, we think that is
indicative that we are doing the right thing in God's eyes.
We are living in a time of prosperity that is stolen from our children. The
information we receive through the short-term economic changes misinforms us. We
make a divine association between prosperity and God's will, but in our time God is
lying to us.
The intensification of production makes opportunistic use of centration. In doing
so, human societies trap themselves. By tapping the centrated mind, we have chosen to
create a more directed and powerful society. But in doing so, we have created a society
that actively selects against social intelligence. This is a large part of why human
societies are stupid.
99
CHAPTER EIGHT
Silence
Down at the farm, the sheds with all the equipment sat out in front of the old
house. Beyond the sheds was the cow pasture, and at the edge of the cow pasture was
the fish pond. The pond had a few tall pines standing around it like stately guardians in
the open field. Across the pond there lay the foundations of a couple of old buildings.
There's no stone in those parts to be found for miles, so all there was left of the
foundations was a few rotten beams and scattered pieces of crumbly dark wood.
Judging from the rotten wood, the two little buildings were each only about twice as big
as a living room, and square. I asked what those buildings were. Dad especially liked to
tell stories of the old time people, what they did, where they built different things, but he
didn't seem to have much to say about those buildings. I was told that black people had
lived there. I asked why black people lived there. I asked if our family had ever owned
slaves. Nobody seemed to know. Nobody talked about it.
Dad had several brothers and sisters, but being the oldest male in the family, he
had inherited the whole farm. The rest of them went off to do other kinds of work, which
may have been just as well as the farm never made any money.
My Uncle Paul took to fixing washing machines and appliances. Uncle Paul kind
of took us under his wing from the start. Me and him hit it off especially. He seemed to
love us like his own. He had two children, but they were older and had moved out on
their own, so maybe he was looking to fill a space. He was always more cheerful than
his brothers, though I never knew why. His face was round but not fat, and he had a grin
that wrinkled up skin beside his eyes all the way up to a cotton baseball cap. He wore
workmen’s clothes, plain blue or green shirts and matching trousers. He was a cheek
and ear grabber, but he wasn't mean about it like some.
Uncle Paul's hands had seen a lot of hard use. The skin on his fingers was
always dry and cracked. He drove a truck, but now that he was a town dweller his truck
wasn't nearly as rusty as ours. He had all his tools in the back, the metal turned black
with age, wooden handles worn smooth. I would watch him as he worked. He would be
muttering as he handled the tools about the history and habits of this particular kind of
washer, insights bought at the price of years of looking at the undersides of appliances.
He always seemed a little shaky with the tools, but I never saw him fail at what he was
trying to do. I did let him take a splinter out of my hand once. He had his old pocket100
knife, sharpened till the blade pitched way back from the original edge. He dug and
pried at that splinter like it was a stuck screw in a washing machine housing, and after a
while he got it. I didn't ask him to take out any more splinters after that.
Me and Uncle Paul used to fish down at the pond a lot. He bought me my first
fishing rod. He forgot and left the price tag on it, one dollar sixty nine cents. I caught a
lot of fish with that rod. The fish in the pond at the farm got fed every day, and they liked
it. When you walked around the edge of the pond you could see the wakes in the water
as dozens of fish swam behind you to come get food. Me and Paul never liked to work
too hard for our fish, so we would go down to the pond and throw out the fish food. With
all those fish swarming around, we were sure to catch some. We would fish for catfish in
the summer when it got good and hot. Catfish like it hot.
Me and Uncle Paul hunted too, only we hunted different than other folks. I figured
Uncle Paul must know something special. When I hunted with other folks they would go
sneaking through the fields and the bushes, being quiet and trying to sneak up on
something. But me and Paul would just drive his truck into the woods and sit. He would
give me his .22 caliber rifle, which was a pretty small gun for shooting much of anything.
We would be right out in the open and talking and all, but I was sure he knew what he
was doing. We never killed anything that way. Then people would be talking about how
much Uncle Paul liked to sit in the woods, and I commenced to feeling some concern
about his skills as a hunter. But then again, I liked to sit in the woods too.
My other uncles went to work at the plants in town. They drove back and forth to
work every day in their trucks, though I can't say I ever saw them haul anything. One of
them worked at the paper mill. He was more cheerful than Dad too, and he would stop
by pretty regular. We were always lending things back and forth and helping each other
out. The only time I ever saw any of my relatives fight was over money. Not taking it, but
giving it. Every once in a while, Dad would help out one of his brothers or give them
something, and they would decide they wanted to give some money in return. Dad
would not take money for anything he gave or did. And when it happened the other way
around, none of my relatives would take money for anything they did either. When
somebody would try to give somebody money to pay for a favor, they would start to
arguing. It was pretty friendly as arguing goes, but they would stick to it, almost like they
wanted to test how far they could go. After a while they would be serious hollering and
pulling out money and throwing it on the ground and insisting that they be allowed to
pay for being helped. They would get worked up till you thought there was going to be a
real fight over it. But no matter how much anybody hollered, nobody took money for
helping.
Folks looked up to the city jobs at the plants in town. It was a steady income if
you got one of those jobs. Dad stuck to farming, and he figured my older brother would
fill his shoes. My brother took to it. He could drive a tractor in his sleep, and would
rather most times. He ran the machines hard, and Dad ran him hard. But it came clear
after a while that there was no making a living farming anymore in those parts. It was
hard to figure who was still growing all the food for everybody, but it wasn't going to be
farmers in that county.
My brother worked for a while trimming trees with the tree surgeons. One of the
fringe benefits was that they gave you black leather boots that laced all the way up to
your knees so you could swagger around in front of your friends. The tree crews weren't
101
supposed to use steel spurs because they scarred up the trees, but they were
contracted to the power company, so the power company boys would give spurs to the
tree surgeons. The spurs were long steel bars that ran down the inside of your leg and
hooked under the heal of your boot. Sticking inward toward your other foot there was a
strong steel spur. You had to be careful walking not to poke the spurs into your legs. To
climb trees, you wore a long belt that went around the tree and then around your waist.
You would wrap the belt around the tree and then commence to jamming the spurs into
the wood, taking a step up each time. Folks who were good at it could just walk right up
a tree. When you were new to it though you tended to slip and slide and wobble on
those spurs, cutting up the bark on the trees all the while.
I worked with the tree surgeons a little, though I didn't last as long as my brother.
It was worse work than anything we ever did on the farm. You had to walk up those tall
pines on those slippery spurs until you were way up in the sky. Whenever you came to
a tree limb that your waist belt couldn't get over, you would have to take it off and put in
over the limb. Meanwhile you would be trying to balance on those two spurs stuck only
about a half an inch in that crumbly bark. My brother slipped once when he had the belt
still attached. He slid down the tree a bit and put one of those spurs firmly into his leg.
He healed up alright though.
Sometimes they would send you up dead pines right next to the high voltage
lines. The trees had to be taken down piece by piece from the top so they wouldn't hit
the lines. We would walk up those tall pines with the spurs kicking off pieces of dead
bark and wood till we made it to the top. The tall trees would be swaying and cracking in
the wind, the high voltage wires just over beside you humming. You would have to cut
the top out of that tree piece by piece. Then you would tie a rope and swing out through
the air to another tree. If a rope broke or a spur slipped at the wrong time, you would
die. They had to pay a little more than farm work wages just to get people to do that
work.
The company wasn't real good about replacing ropes when they got old and
frayed. Sometimes when it went too far the boys would get together and build a fire.
They would bring their frayed ropes and leather strapping and burn them. Then they
would just stand there and look at the foreman until he got them safer equipment.
Still they managed to have some fun with it. The power company boys would
drive up to the “Men Working” signs that the tree surgeons had posted and get out their
marking paint. One of them would jump out of the truck and spray a big question mark
on the sign. Then they would jump in the truck, drive up to where the surgeons were
working and slide the truck around in circles at high speed, spinning wheels and kicking
up dust until you could hardly breathe. Naturally, the surgeons would return the favor.
My brother worked with the tree surgeons for a while, but it was hard and
dangerous and he moved on. He worked for a while at the plywood plant in town. There
he was working with the black folks, handling sheets of wood as they rolled out of the
mill, with heat and steam and fumes swirling all around them. He didn't last long there.
Every once in a while, the plants would put out applications. Filling in an
application was really just a formality though. If you had a relative who had been
working at the plant for a while, they could get you on. When they opened up jobs at the
airplane plant, my uncle was already working there. My brother went to work riveting
together airplanes. It was hard work and he never seemed to like it all that much. It was
102
indoors and there was no tractor driving involved. But it was steady, and he stuck with it
a long time.
There were a lot of black folks in the county when I was little. We hired them to
come work some in the fields. The other farmers hired them some too, though nobody
ever got paid more than a couple of dollars an hour for doing farm work. As I was
getting older, there were less black folks around. Maybe they were moving into town; I
don't know for sure. The white folks were moving out of town by the hundreds and
thousands, that much was for sure.
Dad's opinions about black folks were clear enough. He explained to us how
Martin Luther King was sent by the Russians to destroy the United States, how Jesse
Jackson was bought and paid for by the same folks. Dad talked about it, though he
didn’t do more than that in my time. I got the feeling that he used to do more than that.
He had a closet full of Lester Maddox posters. Lester Maddox was a politician from
years ago, famous for his “Axe Handle Restaurant” where he gave out axe handles for
keeping the black folks in line. Dad was county commissioner in those times. He quit
being commissioner and went to work in Atlanta about the time of integration. I asked if
Dad had quit because he didn't like integration, but nobody seemed to know. Nobody
talked about it.
I thought for a long time that times had really changed, that the younger folks
thought different than the older folks about black people. One day I went down the road
to talk to a friend from way back. Some guys I knew were standing around their trucks in
a field, holding shotguns. They had been dove hunting. They were talking about all the
problems in the city, the crime, drugs, shootings and what not. One of them started
talking about a story he had seen in an old edition of the county paper. The paper dated
back to the early part of this century.
In the story, a black man had been accused of raping a white woman. He knew
some people were after him, so he ran. A lynch mob caught up with him in the far end of
the county. They decided to burn him at the stake. They tied him up and stacked
firewood around him. When they lit the fire, he struggled and broke loose. They shot
him - thoroughly.
One of the guys said how that is what they need now, that kind of justice. The
others agreed: that would straighten things out.
Some things had changed. Most all the younger folks worked in town. They got
paid better than folks used to get paid. They had trucks that weren't all rusted out and
houses that looked like the ones up north.
If black folks and white folks was mad at each other, they didn't fight about it. The
boys at school would fight each other some, but it wasn't usually white and black
fighting against each other, and it was never more than two fighting. I got the sense that
white folks and black folks were competing with each other, to see who got the good
jobs and who got the bad ones, but nobody talked about it.
103
Non-Conscious Evolution Creates
Structural Poverty in America
In the 1990s, one can walk the streets of any major American city and see the
price of structural poverty in the homeless and destitute people who live on the street.
What our society believes about unemployment, poverty, low income families, and
other less powerful members of our society has a direct impact on the lives of millions of
people.
Historically, American attitudes toward poverty have shifted back and forth
between believing in individual responsibility and social responsibility. The belief in
individual responsibility says that poverty is caused by the deficiencies of poor people
themselves, such as laziness, unthriftiness, or a lack of belief in God. The belief in
social responsibility says that poverty is caused by unemployment and the economic
dislocations of a mass industrial society, that poverty is a social issue that needs a
social remedy, that we as a society are responsible for taking care of the less fortunate.
In the last two centuries of American history, there are ten fairly distinct swings in
popular belief from individual responsibility to social responsibility and back again.
Needless to say, both attitudes are always present in various groups within our society,
but these swings represent what is dominant in the political arena and in the media. The
shifts from individual to social responsibility clearly demonstrate the reactive stress-andresponse pattern of cultural selection.
Unspoken Reasons for Social and Individual Responsibility
Individual and social responsibility each exist for unspoken reasons. The
unspoken reason for individual responsibility is wage restraint, and also inflation
restraint. The wealthier classes in particular desire wage restraint because they are
more likely to own businesses where wages represent a major expense. Wealthier
people also dislike inflation because it makes their large mounds of money grow smaller
each year.
“[The poor] inhibit demands for higher wages among the employed
members of the working class. The poor do this by putting pressure on the group
of under-skilled and underemployed workers who are one step above them in the
class hierarchy. The poor make this group expendable if they push too hard for a
larger slice of the pie. The existence of the poor puts pressure on those just
above them to conform and work hard. And this pressure gets transmitted
through each successive level of the labor force, dragging back the entire wagepush emanating from the working class.” Marvin Harris133
133
Harris, 1975, p.489. Also: “[O]ne can understand why a system ostensibly dedicated
to “welfare” continues to have such a corrosive and dehumanizing effect on its clients ...
104
Politicians pretend that they are trying to reduce poverty through various job
training programs, “enterprise zones,” and what not. We as a society are not really
interested in eliminating poverty though. It is part of the non-conscious nature of our
culture that we deceive ourselves about these matters. The truth is that the poor serve
as a brake on wages and inflation. This is structural poverty, and it is purposefully
maintained within our society for that purpose. In economic terms, low wage
employment, underemployment, and unemployment serve the same function of limiting
wages. At the time of this writing, there are more people underemployed than
unemployed. The urban decay and elevated prison population of our time remain
indicative of the role of structural poverty, whether it is based on unemployment or
underemployment. Poverty in the U.S. is maintained by limiting economic growth and
activity. The punitive nature of poverty is maintained by making social services difficult
and degrading to obtain.
The unspoken reason for social responsibility is the maintaining of a peaceful
and loyal social order, especially when peace and loyalty are threatened. Whenever
there is social unrest or successful organizing of new political organizations, our society
is likely to respond by trying to ameliorate the dissatisfaction. In their examination of “the
functions of social welfare,” Francis Piven and Richard Cloward have noted that social
welfare expenditure tends to decline gradually until the poor start generating resistance.
This resistance might be rioting, as in the early 1990s. (More about this shortly.) Or it
may be political organizing, as with the socialist and communist movements of the late
1800s. In response to this resistance, social welfare spending is increased and over
time resistance gradually declines.134
Individual and social responsibility represent two countervailing forces in our
society that exist in balanced tension: individual responsibility ( wage restraint) seeks to
increase poverty, and social responsibility (social order) seeks to decrease poverty. In
[I]t is clear that the welfare system deliberately intensifies the psychological significance
of the narrow gap between poverty incomes and the lowest incomes of the working
class. By demeaning and humiliating the poverty class, the welfare system makes it
possible to keep the lowest paid working-class jobs a mere notch ahead of the poverty
income. If the people on welfare were not punished for their “failure,” the morale and
discipline of the working class would collapse. Millions of people might opt for welfare
rather than the low-paying monotonous jobs they now hold. Yet the millions who are
unemployed or underemployed through no fault of their own cannot be left to starve
without risk of massive unrest. The function of welfare therefore is to prevent people
from starving while at the same time making their life-style undesirable to the people
who are just one step above them. AFDC does this by making it impossible for ablebodied males to receive welfare supplements to their own wages and at the same time
to participate in the raising of their children within an nuclear family household. By
destroying the nuclear family among the urban poor, AFDC transmits the stern warning
to those tempted to withdraw from the labor market: you will not starve, but you will live
without your self-esteem” (Harris, 1975, p.490).
134
Piven, 1971. Piven and Clowards’ works are all excellent sources for unspoken
causes of events in American history.
105
times of business intensification when there is no effective political resistance, the scale
tips toward creating more poverty and a belief in individual responsibility. Business
intensification corresponds to what Kevin Phillips has referred to as the “heyday
periods” of “Republican Business.”135 These are periods when society adopts a probusiness attitude, when business interests hold an unquestioned dominance of the
political affairs of the country and social spending decreases. Over time tension builds.
When poorer groups begin to become more politically organized, then the scale tips
toward providing more social services and a belief in social responsibility. In periods of
both individual responsibility and social responsibility there is still systemic “need” for a
certain amount of poverty in our society to serve as a brake on wages and inflation. The
level of structural poverty is purposefully regulated in our economy, a subject we will
discuss more later on.
We are going to look briefly at each of the ten transitions in American history
from social to individual responsibility and back again and examine what caused these
transitions.
The Colonial Period -- Social Responsibility
Whether one considers attitudes toward poor people in Colonial America to be
benign or harsh depends on where one lays the emphasis. Colonial towns went to some
lengths to take care of their citizens. Poor people were seen as unfortunate, not morally
faulty. The dominant attitude was thus one of social responsibility, although strangers
and newcomers were excluded. “The most noteworthy fact is the apparent readiness
with which the colonists accepted responsibility for so many of their indigent; they did
not allocate blame for poverty nor, for the most part, did they punish or isolate the
needy.”136 Much help was given in the form of mutual aid. Towns came together to build
houses and provide for their citizens if misfortune came. Some colonial towns had a
town cow that was kept to provide milk for people who could not provide it for
themselves.137
The colonial attitude toward needy people outside of their communities was more
harsh. There were many laws restricting immigration for fear that newcomers would
become a public burden.138 In some towns, a citizen was supposed to notify public
officials if they planned to have a visitor for more than a few days, lest such guests
somehow become dependent on the support of the town. Unwelcome travelers were
“warned out,” sent away, and if they came back they could be whipped or fined. Ship
135
Phillips, 1990, p.56-58
136
Tratner, 1989, p.25. This is a very useful and clear book on the history of social
welfare.
137
Komisar, 1977, p.140, Mencher, 1974, p.47
138
Komisar, 1977, p.15, Tratner, 1989, p.18-25, Mencher, 1974, p.45-46
106
captains had to provide bond for passengers lest they become a public burden. Laws
were passed that provided for the strict exclusion of unwelcome travelers from social
assistance.139
Transition I: Laissez-faire -- Individual Responsibility
Industrialism got off to a slow start in the United States. The policies of England
toward the colonies did not encourage the development of manufacturing. England
preferred that the colonies supply raw materials and not compete with the British
manufactured goods, particularly textiles.140 The post Revolutionary War period brought
some stresses to the colonies, adjusting to the impacts of the war itself and economic
independence. Immigration accelerated, greatly swelling the population of the United
States.141 Whereas the colonies had been generally hostile to newcomers, now the
burgeoning cities found themselves inundated with more and more immigrants.142 Relief
for the destitute often accounted for the greater part of public expenditures.
There was a deep shift beginning in the early 1800s toward individual
responsibility. In this period, the cities were growing, and large numbers of poor people
and immigrants were increasingly crowded in slums. Reproductive rates were high.
Although large-scale mechanization of agriculture had not yet occurred, the
displacement of farm workers to the cities also added to the pressures of increasing
numbers of people in need of assistance.143 In keeping with the Colonial ethos, taxes
were raised to try to provide relief for the growing number of needy people.144
Laissez-faire economics was becoming more popular, particularly among the
wealthier classes. This was the age when political economists Adam Smith, David
Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus argued that social assistance was morally wrong and
unwise economic policy. We would not know the names of these people today were it
not for the political usefulness of their ideas in their time. Malthus was a strong advocate
of sexual abstinence as the cure for poverty.145 This is a clear indication of individual
responsibility and a correlation with other periods of business intensification.
139
Tratner, 1989, p.20, Komisar, 1977, p.15, Mencher, 1974, p.46
140
Mencher, 1974, p.134
141
Bruchey, 1988 p.24
142
Mencher, 1974, p.136, Tratner, 1989, p.46
143
Miller, 1962, p.172-205
144
Tratner, 1989, p.45
145
Carr-Saunders, 1922, p.197. This is a racist, but useful, book.
107
The shift to a dominant philosophy of individual responsibility occurred in
response to a depression that began in 1819. This depression lasted into the 1820s,
and served as a focal stressor.
“Many advocates of relief and work programs appeared to see eradication
of poverty as a matter of urgent individual responsibility -- the poor themselves
were blamed for their state. Perhaps most important, public responsibility for
relief and assistance was increasingly questioned. Rising taxes for assistance to
the poor and the growing influence of the popularized doctrines of such
European laissez-faire political economists as Adam Smith reinforced the
taxpayer's growing discontent. Industrialization, population growth, depressions,
immigration, and even a number of food riots so dramatized the problem that a
“hard line” was accentuated in revised public and private programs designed to
deal with poverty.” Joe Feagin146
One event that marked the transition was the publication in 1824 of a report in
New York called the Yates Report. According to the Yates report, no able bodied
person between the ages of 18 and 50 should be given any public assistance. New
York was a leader in many of the changes that occurred concerning social welfare.
Many other states adopted similar legislation in the years to come.147
A great number of people came to believe that the poor were responsible for their
condition. The harshness of the political economists and other public spokespersons of
the time is striking.
“The only cause of such poverty, it was assumed, was individual
weakness. As Nathanial Ware, a social philosopher of the early nineteenth
century, saw it, the able-bodied man who begged or received public assistance
was beyond redemption, having sunk to the level of a mere eating brute.
“Humanity aside,” reported Ware, “it would be to the best interest of society to kill
all such drones.” Walter Tratner148
Cultural selection brought laissez-faire into the limelight. People were willing to
accept the murderous aspects of laissez-faire because they found a significant material
benefit in this new philosophy. The belief in laissez-faire served to undercut social
services, thereby reducing the tax burden, disempowering the poor, and restraining
demands for higher wages. Through the process of divine association, the wealthier
classes came to believe that the benefits of wage restraint and economic growth
accrued to them because of the cosmological correctness of this new philosophy. Were
it not for the operation of cultural selection in this form, Adam Smith would have faded
in obscurity like so many other drunken tavern philosophers.
146
Feagin, 1975, p.30
147
Tratner, 1989, p.54
148
Tratner, 1989, p.51
108
Transition II: The Civil War and Reconstruction -- Social Responsibility
On the whole, the 1800s were overshadowed by a belief in individual
responsibility. The federal government of that time did not provide social services, only
local governments did. The Civil War and Reconstruction represent a limited transition
toward social responsibility.
The Civil War came as the result of a long period of growing stress between the
industrialized North and the agrarian slave society of the South. At root, the war was
over which social system would gain control of the Western part of the nation. The state
of Kansas was a flash point.
“The flow of Southern slaveholders and Northern anti- slavery men into
Kansas produced a sharp conflict, with savage episodes of guerilla warfare.
Steps were taken in both sections to send forward settlers to hold the country,
the Emigrant Aid Society in the North being especially diligent. They went well
armed ... The conflict, therefore, dragged on, arousing ever-keener feeling
throughout the country.” Allan Nevins149
As the Civil War exploded out of this growing tension, it became the focal
stressor that tipped the balance toward social responsibility. Suddenly, the country was
faced with destitution and acute need on a much greater scale. The direct costs of the
war were staggering; it killed 600,000 people. “Thousands ... in the South died of
exposure, epidemics, and sheer starvation ...”150 The net result of the Civil War as it
concerns social welfare is that the number of people in need and the intensity of their
need greatly increased.
During the war, the North was direly concerned with the need to recruit soldiers.
It would not have worked well for recruitment if potential soldiers saw veterans and their
families being treated harshly. It became a matter of military necessity to be more kind
to the destitute. And destitution was a problem. Inflation drove food prices up, in some
cases doubling them, and poor people were greatly stressed to make ends meet.
“Warnings of unwise giving were forgotten as public and private agencies showered
assistance on the needy ...”151
The disruptions caused by the war created a great need for public assistance.
After the war, the Freedmen's Bureau was established by the federal government to
provide relief for blacks in the south. It lasted for six years after the war.152 Although the
149
Nevins, 1970, p.206
150
Miller, 1962, p.239
151
Tratner, 1989, p.73
152
Tratner, 1989, p.78
109
war itself was gruesome, it had some progressive impact on the development of social
welfare in the United States. The U.S. Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the
American Red Cross, was created during the war.153 There was greater coordination
among the states in providing relief after the war than there had been before.
The softening of attitudes toward the poor was, as much as anything, a political
matter. “The War gave the North a body of veteran soldiers who held great voting
power. They presently began to demand pensions from the government, and
obsequious politicians ladled out the public money to them with eager carelessness.”154
The philosophy of social responsibility consolidated in Reconstruction after the
Civil War. The social tolerance of the Civil War and Reconstruction period did
successfully purchase a measure of loyalty and social order. In as much as it did so,
social responsibility was accepted as the cosmologically correct response to the
situation.
Transition III: The Gilded Age -- Individual Responsibility
The stresses that had so affected the country early in the century became more
acute in the period after the Civil War. Cities grew larger and had great numbers of
destitute citizens, and immigration brought a steady flow of impoverished people.155
Although increasing industrialization brought some benefits, it also brought significant
social stresses. Industrial accidents were common and wages were low. The economy
was polarizing as wealth became centralized in fewer hands.156 Labor unions had not
yet gained substantial political power. This was the time when the “ procreative
imperative” - the dictum that women should have children - came into prominence, as
business leaders wanted more workers to keep the price of labor down.157 These
factors combined to keep wages depressed.
A shift toward individual responsibility occurred in the 1870s. The focal stressor
that served as a catalyst for the changing of beliefs was the depression of the 1870s
and its aftermath. The election of 1876 represented a significant political shift in this
country.158 The republican party (progressive at that time) brought to power by Lincoln
was swept away by the conservative Democrats under Rutherford Hayes. The
democrats blamed the stresses of the time on their opposition, and took take credit for
153
Tratner, 1989, p.74
154
Nevins, 1970, p.229
155
Blum, 1981, p.477-480
156
Mencher, 1974, p.235
157
Margolis, 1984, p.43
158
Blum, 1981, p.402-415
110
economic growth after they came to power. This transition marked the end of
Reconstruction. This was the launching of a period of pro-business politics and
individual responsibility that Mark Twain christened “The Gilded Age.”
The late 1800s saw a rise in “charity societies.” These organizations believed
that giving relief directly to the needy, “outdoor relief” as it was called, only encouraged
their moral degradation and dependency. They also thought that the methods by which
aid was given were inefficient and “unscientific.”159 Public relief, it was said, was
“poisonous to the poor.”160 The charity societies were particularly opposed to
pensions.161 They saw it as their role to provide moral uplifting rather than material aid.
They saw material aid as spiritually and morally destructive to the people who received
it.162 The charity societies were under the leadership of wealthier people, often the
wives of businessmen. They sought to make “the socialistic and communistic theories
now being energetically taught to the people” a thing of the past.163 They were
instrumental in stopping “outdoor relief.” The charity societies caused many city
governments to stop giving general relief.
The industrialization of America that occurred in the late 1800s was seen as a
triumph of science. But science all too easily put on the clothes of contemporary
prejudice. Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism had a significant following.
“If we do not like the survival of the fittest, we have only one possible
alternative, and that is the survival of the unfittest. The former is the law of
civilization, the latter is the law of anti-civilization ... The unfit must be eliminated
as nature intended.” Herbert Spencer164
The attitudes of the time were represented in the manner in which the poor and
unfortunate were treated. Poverty was seen as a moral fault, the result of vice and
intemperance.165 The states had a mixture of poor relief measures. The county
poorhouse had become an institution in most states. These institutions were poorly
funded, unsanitary, and punitive by design. In some cases, the poor were auctioned off
to the lowest bidder. The result was that a person would take charge of the county
poorhouse and try to operate it as cheaply as possible, regardless of the impact on the
residents. People only turned to such institutions at a point of most dire need. The poor
159
Mencher, 1974, p.274
160
Mencher, 1974, p.305, Tratner, 1989, p.200
161
Mencher, 1974, p.303
162
Mencher, 1974, p.283,287, Tratner, 1989, p.89,90
163
Tratner, 1989, p.87
164
Tratner, 1989, p.83
165
Mencher, 1974, p.269
111
were to be given a lesson and not treated too kindly.166 Some counties even used their
poorhouses and poor farms as penitentiaries for convicted criminals.
The individual responsibility of the Gilded Age consolidated with business
recovery after the depression of the 1870s. The economic growth that followed in the
1880s evoked a divine association that consolidated a change of beliefs. This lasted
until the depression of 1893, when a new set of stressors ushered in the Progressive
Era.
Transition IV: The Progressive Era -- Social Responsibility
The Progressive Era had its roots in the deepest period of business
intensification in American history, the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. In the Gilded Age,
the capitalist was the hero of the day, or at least he bought the podium. Wages were
depressed; little relief or social services were provided for the poor. These represented
ongoing stressors that were deepening, and the resistance was deepening as well. The
focal stressor that issued in the Progressive Era was the depression of 1893 and its
aftermath.167
In the late 1800s, labor was becoming more organized. Alternative political
movements, such as socialism and communism, were gaining more of a following. The
socialists and the IWW ( International Workers of the World, or Syndicalists) reached
their zenith in this period.168 This was also the time of the “ muck rakers,” social
advocates exposing abuses and corruption in government and industry.
By the turn of the century, our society's attitude toward the poor was beginning to
shift. In the 1890s, there were a number of articles and studies indicating that poverty
was caused by unemployment, not moral failure.169 (This is precisely the kind of
information a society will ignore until there is a political need to notice.) The Progressive
Era was a time when social welfare was greatly expanded in the U.S. In 1909, Teddy
Roosevelt hosted a White House Conference on Dependent Children.170 Coming out of
that conference was a bill to improve health care for mothers and young children. The
medical establishment launched a vehement attack against the measures, calling the
bill's supporters “endocrine perverts (and) derailed menopausics.”171 The medical
establishment had fought for many years to keep women out of medicine, and they
166
Tratner, 1989, p.54, Mencher, 1974, p.149,280
167
Zinn, 1980, p.247-290. Howard Zinn’s Peoples’ History of the United States is a
highly acclaimed and well documented alternative history.
168
Zinn, 1980, p.314-349
169
Tratner, 1989, p.94, Mencher, 1974, p.299
170
Tratner, 1989, p.194
171
Tratner, 1989, p.198
112
were successful. To this day, the paucity of midwives in our society remains a legacy
these earlier times.
The charity organizations were strongly opposed to any expansion of social
welfare expenditures, based on the argument that it would undermine the moral
character of the recipients. In spite of opposition, aid to mothers was established, which
was to become AFDC ( Aid to Families of with Dependent Children). Workers were
pressing for social insurance, and by 1913 workers’ compensation had been
established.172
The settlement house movement arose. Settlement houses were established in
traditionally poor neighborhoods. Many middle or upper class people, mostly young,
came to live in the settlement houses to have direct contact with people in need and
seek solutions to their problems. The settlement house movement was similar to the
charity society movement in that it sought to bring rich and poor into direct contact, but
the settlement house movement sought social reform rather than spiritual uplift.
Hundreds of settlement houses were established, and they left their mark on the
development of social welfare.173
Notwithstanding ongoing opposition, the Progressive Period represented a
substantial shift to social responsibility. The progressive movement was able to take
credit for economic growth in the first decade of the 1900s, thus evoking a divine
association that caused a shift in belief toward social responsibility. From the turn of the
century until the economic difficulties of the mid-teens, the economy and the belief in
social responsibility were relatively stable. Economic instability starting in the mid-teens
ushered in yet another transition.
Transition V: The Roaring Twenties -- Individual Responsibility
The first blow that began the shift back toward individual responsibility and away
from social responsibility was the money panic of 1907.174 By 1914, America was in
another recession. The political organizing that had issued in the Progressive Era lost
momentum. By the late teens, the socialists and the IWW were not as strong as they
had been. The settlement house movement had grown in the Progressive Era. The
creation of the United Way and other professional social services greatly weakened the
settlement house movement. This, in fact, was part of the purpose of the United Way, to
undermine more progressive organizations.175 There was a transition to individual
responsibility in the 1920s. World War I served as a focal stressor and a closing point
172
Mencher, 1974, p.305
173
Tratner, 1989, p.147-172
174
Bolino, 1966, p.468
175
Tratner, 1989, p.147-167
113
for the Progressive Era of the early 1900s. As with many significant social shifts, World
War I started in a recession.176
By the 1920s, doctors, psychiatrists, sociologists, and social workers had
established professional associations. Psychiatric social work became prominent.
Whereas the settlement house workers had sought to find and eliminate the social
causes of poverty, the social workers of the 1920s no longer concerned themselves with
social reform. Rather, “they operated on the premise that an individual in need had the
strength and inner resources which, if freed from the shackles of fear, inhibition, and
other psychological impediments, could overcome his or her difficulty.”177 The business
prosperity of the “ Roaring Twenties” provided the divine association that caused a
changing of belief toward individual responsibility.
Transition VI: The New Deal -- Social Responsibility
The New Deal grew out the Great Depression that started after the stock market
crash of 1929. The depression brought unemployment and hardship to millions of
people. But even as the depression deepened into the 1930s, little relief was offered.178
The preceding philosophy of individual responsibility was still dominant in spite of the
obvious cause of people's unemployment. Meanwhile, social unrest was growing.179
Communists, socialists, and other workers' groups were organizing and protesting, often
without the cooperation of established union leaders.
Organization of relief for the poor remained largely at the local level, and was
entirely inadequate for the demands resulting from the depression. Franklin Roosevelt
pushed for relief and Social Security, but many of his programs were under-funded or
cut off by Congress after they started.180 The Works Progress Administration, or WPA
as it was called, was a New Deal program that used federal money to build roads,
schools, bridges, libraries, and other public facilities, and thus created jobs. In 1937,
WPA rolls were reduced by half; Roosevelt was intent on maintaining a balanced
federal budget, and conservatives relentlessly attacked relief as degrading to its
recipients.181 Perhaps because of the lack of federal spending for relief and Roosevelt's
176
Zinn, 1980, p.353
177
Tratner, 1989, p.231
178
Komisar, 1977, p.44-67, Tratner, 1989, p.249-265
179
Piven, 1979 p.41-180, Zinn, 1980, p.368-397
180
Komisar, 1977, p.67, Tratner, 1989, p.260
181
Komisar, 1977, p.61,67, Nossiter,1990 p.16. If you only read one book on social
welfare and structural poverty, Bernard Nossiter’s Fat Years and Lean is the one to
read.
114
fixation with a balanced budget, the economy took another downward slide in 1938.
This finally prompted more significant spending on New Deal programs.182
In the end, it was not the New Deal, but spending on World War II that pulled the
economy out of depression. The war created employment at a level that exceeded the
number of people thought to be unemployed before the war.183 It is a pattern that dates
back to Roman times that governments are often more sympathetic toward the troubles
of the people in time of war in order to coax popular support. In World War II, this meant
a strong shift to social responsibility and social services. The “ welfare state” as we
know it has its roots in this period. Roosevelt was pro- union, and the unions gained
strength during World War II.184
By the time the war was over, the Great Depression was a thing of the past. The
prosperity and social peace of the postwar period provided a divine association with the
social responsibility of the New Deal. The war had issued in a new age of economic
management under the hand of the Federal Reserve. The economy received ongoing
stimulus from expenditures aimed at the Military Industrial Complex, a term coined by
President Eisenhower. This country experienced its most consistent period of economic
growth from World War II to the 1970s. After the war, the sense of social responsibility
was so strong that in 1946, President Truman sought to pass a “ Full Employment
Act.” The bill stated that “The Congress hereby declares that it is the continuing policy
and responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practicable means ... to promote
maximum employment, production and purchasing power.”185 This stands in stark
contrast to historical periods of individual responsibility.
Transition VII: The Cold War -- Individual Responsibility
In the 1950s, a limited transition was made back to individual responsibility. The
U.S. economy was strong coming out of World War II. But by 1950, the Korean War
had begun. War is often a spur to inflation, and the Korean War was no exception.186
War inflation served as one stressor that caused people to question the New Deal. By
1952, Eisenhower was able to campaign successfully against the “New Deal
bureaucrats.”187 By this time, the Cold War had begun in earnest and served as
another stressor. The Korean War added fuel to the fire of Senator Joseph McCarthy's
182
Nossiter, 1990, p.25
183
Nossiter, 1990, p.34
184
Nossiter, 1990, p.37
185
Nossiter, 1990, p.44
186
Kirkland, 1969, p.541
187
Nossiter, 1990, p.69
115
crusade against communism.188 Eisenhower was also able to capitalize on the
anticommunist sentiment of the times.
In the 1950s, the popular attitude was that the rising prosperity would lift
everyone, and poverty was virtually ignored in the public forum. There was not sufficient
civil unrest among poorer groups to garner public attention. Given the economic growth
of the postwar period, and the lack of political organizing among poorer people, it was
politically possible to expand social welfare spending some and ignore whoever got left
out.189 Social workers turned their attention away from the social causes of distress and
instead focused on individualized casework. There was a resurgence of punitive policies
surrounding social welfare spending. The right of caseworkers to retract assistance was
established.190 “Suitable home” rules were established whereby families receiving ADC
( AFDC) were forbidden to have a man in the house. Children were removed if a social
worker considered a family “unsuitable.” Some social welfare agencies engaged in
midnight raids of homes to see whether there were men secretly sleeping in the house.
Some men abandoned their families so the family could receive assistance.191
As a result of World War II, a close relationship between the defense industry
and the government developed. The Military Industrial Complex has become one of the
primary tools politicians can use to stimulate economic growth and reward their political
supporters. This intentional economic stimulation fits with Keynesian economic
practice, which came to dominance in the postwar era. The onset of the Cold War
meant that weapons expenditures were to remain a large part of the federal budget.192
Increased military expenditures in response to the Cold War gave the economy an
ongoing boost. This prosperity created a divine association in support of Eisenhower's
policies and served to consolidate the shift to individual responsibility in the 1950s.
There are some who would argue that a great deal of the stress surrounding the
Cold War was manufactured. Again, we are confronted with the consequences of the
blind nature of non-conscious culture. It does not matter whether the stressors are
manufactured or publicized beyond their true scale. If the public can be convinced that
the stressors are real, and if they are convinced that a political movement has repaired
them, then there will still be an association between that movement's policies and the
circumstances that follow the actions of that movement. As far as non-conscious culture
is concerned, manufactured stressors have the same effect as real ones.
Transition VIII: Civil Rights and The Sixties -- Social Responsibility
188
Zinn, 1980, p.420
189
Tratner, 1989, p.278
190
Tratner, 1989, p.292
191
Komisar, 1977, p.75-77
192
Nossiter, 1990, p.207
116
The period from the mid 1960s to the 1980s was a period of social responsibility.
What underlay the social responsibility of this period?
Significant social stressors were building in the 1950s. Increased mechanization
of agriculture and industry created a substantial urban migration in the 1950s. Large
numbers of southern blacks as well other infringed groups moved to the cities in search
of jobs.193 The rolls of ADC (AFDC) grew significantly in the 1950s and 1960s,
particularly in periods of recession.194 This growing urban poverty started generating
significant social unrest.195 Riots were occurring in many American cities by the early
1960s.
Social movements arose in response to these stressors. The Civil Rights
movement grew in the 1950s and early 1960s.196 It was soon to be followed by the
Black Power movement, the anti- Vietnam War movement, the Women’s Movement,
and other political movements.
The shift to social responsibility in the 1960s occurred over time. One could
name numerous focal stressors. A small recession in the late 1950s was instrumental
in bringing John F. Kennedy to power.197 As the social unrest and social movements
grew, there was an increased response to social issues. Clearly, the social order had
been disrupted. Increased social spending would help ameliorate these tensions, thus
the “ War on Poverty” and “ Great Society” programs were initiated.198 It was clear that
people in power were being strongly influenced by social stressors.199 Martin Luther
King's famous march on Washington in 1963 received presidential support.200
The economy turned around shortly after Kennedy's election. The recession that
brought Kennedy to power was quickly overcome. The general trend of post- World War
II prosperity continued through the 1960s until the mid-1970s. This prosperity was
divinely associated with liberal policies initiated by Kennedy.
The social unrest of the 1960s was to some degree ameliorated by increased
social spending. The more forceful or violent social movements, such as the Black
Power movement, were repressed.201 To some degree, the social movements of the
1960s have been incorporated into the mainstream society. (Though there is great
193
Zinn, 1980, p.451
194
Tratner, 1989, p.282
195
Zinn, 1980, p.450-451
196
Zinn, 1980, p.440-459
197
Nossiter, 1990, p.80-81
198
Piven, 1979, p.270
199
Blum, 1981, p.822
200
Zinn, 1980, p.448
201
Zinn, 1980, p.530-535
117
debate about their historical impact.) Inasmuch as increased attention to social issues
helped ameliorate social unrest, the policies of the Kennedy era were associated with
decreased tension. The stressors of the 1960s were significant, and as a price for
amelioration, the transition to social responsibility was deep.
Transition IX: Reaganomics -- Individual Responsibility
A powerful shift in beliefs and policies toward the poor occurred with the election
of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Reagan Revolution was a classic evolutionary belief
shift; all the pieces fell into place.
The most significant stressor leading up to the Reagan era was the runaway
inflation of the 1970s. The “ stagflation” of the 1970s got its name because high inflation
persisted in spite of recession. As is the case with divine association, President Jimmy
Carter was associated with stagflation, though the causes were largely out of his hands.
Stagflation came as a result of Vietnam War inflation, oil price hikes, the growth of
corporate oligopolies and monopolies, and strong unions. Oil prices were the largest
single factor pushing inflation upward.202 These factors together amounted to
unprecedented inflationary pressure that did not respond to traditional deflationary
policies. By the late 1970s, Carter was willing to use stronger deflationary policies to
induce the recession of 1980 in his attempt to control inflation. The 1980 recession,
however, served as the stressor that cost Carter the election.203 A social movement of
re-invigorated conservatism arose around Reagan, the effects of which are still
prominent in American politics.
Reagan was able to use the Iranian hostage crisis as a focal stressor to make
Carter look bad in the eyes of God and the electorate. (This notwithstanding contacts
Reagan may have had with the Iranians to urge them to hold the hostages until after the
election.)204
When Reagan came into office, he and the Federal Reserve pursued a set of
deflationary policies that pushed the economy into the worst recession since the great
depression. Reagan's economic policies intentionally increased the level of structural
poverty in the economy to break the 1970s stagflation. According to Martin Feldstein,
chairman of Reagan's council of economic advisors, “it pays to deflate the economy in
order to reduce inflation no matter how large the required temporary increase in
unemployment ... A very large increase in unemployment may be justifiably incurred to
achieve a small permanent reduction in inflation.”205 The primary purpose of inducing
202
Nossiter, 1990, p.129
203
Nossiter, 1990, p.115
204
Sick, 1991
205
Nossiter, 1990, p.145
118
recession and creating unemployment was to invigorate wage restraint. More
specifically, to break the political will of the labor unions. “The role of economic
downturns in taming labor, by raising unemployment levels and lowering wages, had
long been recognized.”206 “Douse the economy in cold water long enough, and labor
will succumb.”207
Of course, by the nature of non-conscious culture, none of this was part of the
public debate. The realities of structural poverty are very clear and accessible, yet they
are consistently sidestepped in the public debate. Vested interests and the cultural
dissonance serve to keep simple realities repressed. The effect is a repression of
economic awareness in our society that makes finding alternatives very difficult.
The Reagan era has been a time of business intensification. (The Reagan era
includes President Bush's term, and in cultural terms, up to the present.) The pattern of
intensification remains similar across thousands of years and across hundreds of
cultures. These patterns include increased social stratification, the idealization and
glorification of wealth and status, and an emphasis on sexual chastity as the basis of
sexual reward. In the U.S., the emphasis on sexual chastity is seen through the
campaigns against homosexuality and access to abortion. All of these elements were
and still are present in the Reagan business intensification cycle.
The Reagan era began with the initiation of strong recessionary policies to curb
inflation by increasing structural poverty. A wave of cultural beliefs were created to
ameliorate cultural dissonance and make these changes fit with our cultural
predispositions. Then, in time for the 1984 elections, economic stimuli were applied in
classical Keynesian fashion to boost the economy. Given that the Republicans are
supported by upper-middle class and wealthy voters, defense spending was increased
to provide rewards for this group.208 Reagan also decreased taxes on the wealthy.
Unemployment was brought down some for the 1984 elections.209 The improvements in
economic circumstance evoked a divine association with Reagan's policies, and the
beliefs of those who benefitted shifted toward the philosophies espoused by the new
conservatism.
Economic growth was purchased with deficit spending on an entirely new scale,
something Reagan himself had harshly attacked in the 1980 elections. But divine
association is essentially supernaturalistic in nature, and economic growth is felt to be
right in some greater cosmic sense. This kind of thinking does not incorporate ethical
greyness or complexities. The economic shifts of the Reagan era were large, and the
effects on all of society were powerful. The magnitude of the shift of beliefs in our
society is proportional to the scale of the economic transitions that have occurred.
206
Mattera, 1990, p.34
207
Mattera, 1990, p.35, quoting from Bowles, 1983, p.111.
208
Caldicott, 1986, p.32-34, Nossiter, 1990, p.162-164
209
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1988, p.364
119
Transition X: Urban Blight -- Social Responsibility
The election of President Clinton in 1992 represented a transition toward social
responsibility, but not a deep one, compared to other shifts in American history. In the
greater scope of history, this transition is eclipsed by the larger movement to individual
responsibility beginning in the Reagan era. It is nonetheless instructive to look at this
most recent historical ripple.
The Clinton ripple had its roots in the social unrest that was growing under
Presidents Reagan and Bush. The social stressors among women and poor people
were being felt, and this had prompted George Bush in 1988 to champion a “ kinder,
gentler, nation,” thus issuing a clear call to temper the harsher edge of business
intensification.210 Bush was also attempting to mitigate social distress with a call for a
renewed charity, or a “thousand points of light.”211
Charity as a method of social distress mitigation dates back hundreds of years. In
the U.S., voluntary charity was most popular with the charity societies in the Gilded
Age of the late 1800s. The annual meeting of the charity societies was referred to as the
Conference on Charities and Correction.212 One can judge their attitude concerning
poverty from the use of the term “Correction.” Thus charity has and continues to serve a
crucial role as a politically safe escape valve for some of the social pressures created
by structural poverty.
By the early 1990s, social unrest and a sense of unease were growing.
Newspaper headlines like these were common:
“Dixon Imposes Curfew on Mt. Pleasant Area as Police, Youths, Clash for a
Second Night: Skirmishes, Looting Spread Under Cloud of Tear Gas” Washington Post,
May 7, 1991
“Melee Erupts in East L.A. after Deputy Kills a Man,” Los Angeles Times, August
4, 1991
The key players in causing the Urban Blight transition were women and the
urban underclass. These groups were key not so much in terms of votes cast, but in
how they tipped the balance of wage restraint versus social order. Enough social
disorder and voter discontent was generated among these groups to cause our society
to seek social order.
The Urban Blight transition occurred in response to the stresses generated in the
Reagan era of business intensification. Our society has been polarizing, with the rich
getting richer and the poor getting poorer.213
210
Kole, 1989
211
Ingwerson, 1989
212
Barrows, 1888
213
Mattera, 1990, p.14-16, Phillips, 1990, p.8-13
120
Women were also a significant political force. The Reagan era, as part of its
campaign of intensification, had reinvigorated the ethos of sexual purity and sexual
reward. The unspoken reason for the “Right to Life” movement is the escalation of
sexual control and the sexual reward system. But women have remained employed in
large numbers, and were not interested in returning to traditional roles.214 The election
of governor Douglas Wilder in Virginia as far back as 1985 indicated a clear limit on
how far the sexual reward system could be pushed.215 Wilder won as a black man in a
conservative state largely because he ran on a pro-choice platform while his opponent
ran on an anti-abortion platform. The Anita Hill versus Clarence Thomas hearings also
drew attention to sexual harrassment issues.216 The growth of homelessness and
crime were also gathering public attention.
A pivotal stressor that selected for change was the recession of 1992. Although it
was not as severe as some in the past, it was sufficient to provoke a popular rap song,
“Hard Times,” that was harshly critical of Bush.217 All of these social and political
stressors created a mood for change. The focal stressor was the L.A. riots of April-May
1992 after the acquittal of the policemen who beat Rodney King.218 The system of
American culture had clearly drifted a little too far in the direction of business
intensification and wage restraint. We the system would correct our culture by
purchasing a little more social order with improved attention to social issues. Thus
President Clinton.
Clinton's election did not represent a true shift in societal beliefs. The greater shift
toward polarization that began in the Reagan era is continuing. It was rather more a
historical ripple than a real shift.
The greater structural shifts in our economy are often much more powerful than
presidential politics. The reductions in social spending with which Reagan is credited
were in fact initiated by Carter. Carter's intentional recession was similar to policies
initiated by social democratic governments in the 1970s in Western Europe.219 In the
late 1970s, President Carter's economic aides wanted to induce a severe recession to
break inflation.220 On the other side of the coin, government spending on social
programs increased more under President Nixon than any other president in American
history. Nixon even proposed a guaranteed national income, though it never passed
214
On the relationship of employment and women's roles in American society see
Margolis, 1984.
215
Newsweek, 1985
216
Freivogel, 1991
217
Gannet News Service, 1992
218
Armstrong, 1992
219
Brown, 1988, p.11
220
Nossiter, 1990, p.115
121
Congress.221 Clinton in turn presides over a period of individual responsibility and
economic polarization, regardless of how he may feel about that.
221
Tratner, 1989, p.322,306
122
Barcode
Oppression no longer needs the club or the gun. Everything has been
commodified, racism velvetized. We can pin you to the ground with a dollar bill, silent
and nice. Everything you need, you cannot buy without my dollar bill. You cannot even
buy your self-respect.
What anybody feels, nobody knows, nobody talks about it. In this place emotion
is but a little ice dust scraped up as we skate this hardened reality, gliding over depths
we refuse to recognize. We stand in ignorance about what moves so far below. But the
darkness does not go away for the lack of attention. Our silence only makes it grow.
And if we were to see, to shatter that hardened consensus that will not let that
reality exist at all, we would in that moment stand so weak in view of our peers. This is
in the land where the white man has ridden the back of black for so long now. The cold
steel rage behind the bullwhip turned bar code comes back to haunt the white man. It is
no accident that in this place a person does not cry, will not speak all the hidden anger,
will not ask what hurts. To hold the power over them we put on our armor of power, and
seal away from the sun and air a greater part of ourselves.
123
The Selection for Beliefs
We can see, then, nine distinct transitions - and a ripple - from social
responsibility to individual responsibility and back again. The periods of individual
responsibility correspond to periods of business intensification, when business interests
held dominance in the political arena. These are periods, like the present, when the
poor are blamed for their poverty. In these periods, social science focuses on
biological and individual causes for poverty and crime. Sexual restraint is promoted.
As an advertisement in mock spray paint on billboards across America in the mid 1990s
reads, “Virgin, teach your kids it's not a dirty word.”
The periods of social responsibility, with the exception of the Colonial Period,
began when social unrest and effective organization of alternative political movements
threatened the existing social order. In those periods social sympathy and spending
were increased to ameliorate social tensions and take the wind out of the sails of the
populists, communists, socialists, etc. Social science concerned itself in those periods
with the social causes of crime and poverty.
Each historical transition lasted until a political movement was able to arise and
take advantage of a new set of stressors to unseat the established belief, by which time
the old belief was divinely associated with the existing stressors. The moving back and
forth from social to individual responsibility can be seen as the tipping of the balance in
between those factors that select for wage restraint versus that those select for greater
social order through increased social spending.
The Creation of Cultural Mythology
We do what every culture does when faced with cultural dissonance: we create
mythology to ease our discomfort. In those historical periods when structural poverty is
being increased in our society, we have accelerated the generation of mythology to
ease the discomfort of cultural dissonance.
The Reagan era is a notable example. In the Reagan era, a broad movement
was initiated that included social scientists, politicians, writers and commentators. In the
social sciences, theories that pointed to the biological or personal (rather than social)
causes of crime and mental illness were reinvigorated. News magazines turned their
attention to the failures of social tolerance, with titles like “How About a Swift Kick” that
suggested that the removal of “moral authority” from our society has been
“devastating.”222 And “America's cultural elites” have attacked the religious, moral, and
222
“Time and again, strong authoritarian figures with strict disciplinary regimes have
proven that they can inspire kids growing up in the most desperate circumstances. The
question is, why do these programs remain isolated, relatively rare - and mostly private?
... It is impossible, of course, to pinpoint the precise moment when moral relativism
became acceptable public policy ... The moral consequences of programs like welfare
124
legal foundations of American society. This moral failure was then linked to poverty,
violence, crime, poor school performance, drugs, and AIDS.223
Indian farmers who kill their calves create cultural explanations to ameliorate the
emotional contradictions. We do the same thing to escape cultural dissonance. We
create cultural explanations that avoid an open recognition of the fact that poverty is
intentionally regulated in our economy. While we often see our opinions as separate
from history, it is important to recognize the selection process that underlies our beliefs.
Vested interests have made use of cultural selection to advance their agendas, the
result being a cyclical recurrence of particular beliefs.
“ It would be a simple and inexpensive problem, indeed, to erect shelter
and provide food, clothing, nursing, and care for the unfortunate and worthy sick
and infirm poor, were it not for the vicious, debased, and designing, who,
unmindful of their obligations to society and the State, crowd eagerly to the front,
the first to seize upon and appropriate its benefactions. In the dispensation of
public benevolence, the really helpless and unfortunate should receive primary
consideration, and the able-bodied, indolent, and degraded be eliminated from
their association ... The evils of heredity enter largely into the consideration of all
questions pertaining to the dependent and criminal classes.” Dr. Charles S. Hoyt,
President's Address, Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and
Correction, 1888224
were never considered ... The effects of a virtue-free society have been devastating -but we don't seem quite ready to accept the alternative. Few politicians are comfortable
using words like “right” and “wrong,” especially when the subject is sexual
irresponsibility (which remains the surest predictor of criminality, ill health, and welfare
dependency among the poor)” (Klein, 1993, p.30).
223
“The nation's cultural elite, apparently, does not want a serious discussion of its own
complicity in the nation's moral ills. It does not wish to face the fact that many of
America's most pressing problems today -- poverty, violence, crime, low scholastic
achievement, drugs, AIDS and many health problems -- are traceable to recent changes
in behavior, changes for the worse” (Novak, 1992, p.238).
“We are now confronting the consequences of this policy of moral ‘neutrality.’
Having made the most valiant attempt to “objectify” the problems of poverty, criminality,
illiteracy, illegitimacy and the like, we are discovering that the economic and social
aspects of these problems are inseparable from the moral and psychological ones. And
having made the most determined effort to devise remedies that are “value-free,” we
find that these policies imperil the material, as well as moral, well-being of their intended
beneficiaries -- and not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We have, in short,
so succeeded in 'de-moralizing', as the Victorians would say, social policy -- divorcing it
from any moral criteria, requirements, even expectations -- that we have 'demoralized',
in the more familiar sense, society itself” (Himmelfarb, 1992, p.120).
224
Barrows, 1888
125
“House G.O.P. Proposes 'Tough Love' Welfare Requiring Recipients to
Work” ... “[T]he Republicans staked out a position that portrayed the nation's five
million welfare families as an indolent lot in need of a moral tonic.” New York
Times, November 11, 1993225
In short, the creating of cultural mythology to relieve cultural dissonance has
long been practiced in our society. The immediate political ramifications are serious, but
even more serious is the repression of social awareness that results. This repression
makes it impossible for our culture to operate on a conscious basis.
Poverty and the Business Cycle
The transitions back and forth between a dominance of individual versus social
responsibility are strongly influenced by the business cycle in American history. Our
economy is much more stable than it used to be. Nonetheless, it has long been true that
we go through alternating times of economic growth and recession or depression.
In times of economic growth, wages tend to rise, and consumption rises. In
response to more people buying more things, business investment rises, and more
money is invested in factories and services. Inflation can occur in response to greater
consumption. As long as profits are good, business leaders find it easier to placate
workers with higher wages than to fight them. As long as the economy is growing,
cultural selection operates against challenging the dominant political philosophies of the
time because the “information” that the public is receiving is that things are good.
Business leaders and politicians are heroes, regardless of what laws or customs they
break. (Unscrupulous activity among investors and business leaders is a constant in our
society. But it is only in times of recession or depression that laws are likely to be
enforced against powerful people.)226 At some point growth can become overaccelerated. Production moves ahead of consumption, there has been excessive
investment in dubious enterprises, and inflation is growing.
The stock market crashes that have occurred at the beginning of some of our
worst recessions and depressions were the outward manifestation of problems that
were building for a long time. The crashes came after an extended period of investment
unsupported by solid money or a growth in sales. Overproduction, overinvestment, and
corruption in boom times can lead to a fragile economic situation that eventually
shatters with a crash of the stock market.
With the onset of economic recession or depression, unemployment rises,
consumption falls, and prices may fall. Whereas workers were once in a strong
bargaining position, now they are undermined by the general economic malaise. Wages
are driven down. Historically, the cycle was turned around gradually as poor
investments were wiped out, prices fell, and business gradually picked up again.
225
Deparle, 1993
226
Bolino, 1966, p.466
126
In more recent history, the federal government has taken a much more active
role in managing the economy. When the economy starts overheating, the government
and the Federal Reserve take an active role in purposefully slowing growth. In periods
of growth, consumption is high, investment is high, wages are rising, and inflation is
rising. When the Federal Reserve feels like inflation is getting too high, it increases
interest rates by means of the prime lending rate, and tightens the money supply. This
slows the rate of investment and economic growth. The Federal Reserve thus reduces
economic activity to hold inflation down. This reduced economic activity creates more
unemployment and may create a full-blown recession.227
The Federal Reserve and the government also stimulate the economy in times
of recession. When the economy has slipped too far into recession, the Federal
Reserve makes more money available to banks for investment by lowering the amount
they must hold in reserve. The Federal Reserve lowers interest rates by means of the
prime rate to stimulate investment and expenditures. The Federal Government may
increase expenditures on social or military programs, often deficit-financed. These
expenditures create more demand for more products, and thus stimulate growth in the
economy.
The Big Secret that Isn't
The people who manage our economy watch all their little indicator dials and try
to achieve steady growth. They seek to avoid excessive growth that would bring
inflation, and most of the time they seek to avoid severe recession. To counteract
inflation, the Federal Reserve intentionally slows down economic growth and activity,
and this generates unemployment. When inflation is severe, they may even seek to
intentionally induce a severe recession, as happened in the early 1980s. Unemployment
and wage restraint are structural to our economy. These are the tools the economic
managers use to keep inflation down. Many people from many walks of life are familiar
with these facts.
“Under Ford's efforts to fight inflation with unemployment, joblessness in
American climbed to 9 percent ...” Walter Tratner, Historian228
Not only that, but the level of unemployment that is seen as necessary to hold
down inflation has increased. It is the most astounding testament to the power of culture
that the relatively simple factors of economic management in our modern economy
could be so completely hidden in the public debate about “family values,” “personal
responsibility,” and “welfare reform.” While the political forum is dominated by
discussions of what to do about poverty, the economic managers of our society proceed
227
Nossiter, 1990, p.158
228
Tratner, 1989, p.318
127
to increase and decrease structural poverty to match what they deem appropriate to
keep their indicator dials where they want them.
“Unemployment for the unskilled, for minorities, for individuals at the
bottom of the income heap, is programmed.” Sidney Weintraub, Economist229
While the public is consumed in this non-conscious debate about the War on
Drugs, the Personal Responsibility Act, and Workfare, the economists are so very
familiar with structural poverty that they even have an acronym for it, the NAIRU.230
NAIRU stands for NonAccelerating Inflationary Rate of Unemployment, or the level of
unemployment that is necessary to hold inflation down. While you are walking down the
street in New York or Chicago, that is NAIRU you are trying not to trip over. That is the
solid black wall of non-consciousness surrounding us and making us ignorant of the
most simple facts about our world.
“David Stockman, Reagan's budget director and a candid witness to
some events, told the Chamber of Commerce early in the new administration:
unemployment is ‘part of the solution, not part of the problem.’” Bernard
Nossiter, Journalist and Author231
In the steady growth period after World War II, it used to be believed among
economic planners that three or four percent unemployment was the NAIRU -- the
optimum level for restraining inflation. In the business intensification period of the
Reagan era, it was decided that six to eight percent NAIRU was the optimum level.232 In
the last few years, wages have been sufficiently repressed that it is safe in economic
terms to allow more employment without fear of inflation. Thus the NAIRU is once
again thought to be lower. If unemployment starts falling too low, the Federal Reserve
will purposely induce a recession to push it back up. These simple realities are
completely absent in the public debate about poverty. It is the big secret that isn't a
secret, a reality that is invisible in the awareness of the general public.
Pricing Power
The level of structural poverty needed to keep inflation down has increased
because of the growth of large corporations. Pricing power refers to the ability of large
corporations to increase prices at will.
229
Weintraub, 1978, p.10
230
Epstein, 1996
231
Nossiter, 1990, p.147
232
Nossiter, 1990, p.147
128
“[T]he law of supply and demand, the ten commandments of economics,
had been at least partially repealed by the power of giant corporations and large
unions. Free to some extent of market restraints, these powerful entities enjoyed
a measure of discretion in setting wages and prices that most textbooks ignored.”
Bernard Nossiter233
What this means is that powerful corporations are able to set prices with less fear
of market competition. As they set their prices higher and thus drive up inflation, those
folks watching the dials turn up the one that says structural poverty. Wages are
repressed to offset the inflation created by large corporations and the concentration of
wealth in the upper classes. Poor people are the casualties of the struggle to hold
wages and inflation down without challenging the power of the corporations. It is an
unspoken game, though it is played with intent. It is probably true that given our existing
social institutions, if we were to seek full employment with good wages, we would end
up with strong inflation. But we are capable of something very different.
Structural Poverty and Social Awareness
There is a great deal of discussion in the media and popular culture about crime,
about social and personal responsibility. There is also some discussion about
unemployment, but the obvious connection between the two is often not made.
Newspapers will run columns side by side, one story about the Federal Reserve limiting
the money supply, and thus increasing unemployment. The other story right next to it
will be a discussion of the need for crime prevention and different ideas about law
enforcement, personal responsibility and the need for more prisons.
All classes in our society commit crime. But poorer people are much more likely
to be perpetrators or victims of larceny and violent crimes. Poorer people are much
more likely to be imprisoned for crime than middle- or upper-class people.234 The level
of violent crime in our society follows point for point on a graph with unemployment, and
unemployment is intentionally set by the Federal Reserve. There is a plethora of
research indicating that unemployment causes poverty and poverty causes violent
crime.235 The U.S. has a consistently higher level of violent crime than other Western
nations, because we maintain a higher level of structural poverty in our society. Minority
groups in particular are likely to suffer very high rates of both unemployment and violent
crime.236 These are basic, simple facts. Yet culture has enormous power to shape our
minds in defiance of the most glaring realities.
233
Nossiter, 1990, p.91
234
Carlen, 1988, p.4-7
235
Harris, 1993, p.457-458, Rossi, 1989, p.201, Rossi, 1980, Statistical Abstract of the
U.S., 1988, p.158, 382.
236
Hacker, 1992
129
There are a number of reasons why our culture does not consciously look at
structural poverty. First, there are vested interests. Big business, the Federal Reserve,
and for that matter the large unions, are not necessarily interested in a conscious public
discussion of structural poverty. In a more conscious discussion of the issues, big
business and the economic managers of our society would be more directly held
responsible for crime in the streets, and that they do not want. The big unions would be
held responsible, historically speaking at least, for boosting their own wages with little
concern for the broader social impact of adding to inflation.
Second, structural poverty generates enormous cultural dissonance. It would be
very uncomfortable for society at large to openly discuss structural poverty, to openly
confess that we use poverty as a tool of economic management. For these reasons, our
culture remains unaware of simple facts.
The immediate result of our lack of consciousness concerning the matter of
structural poverty is that we are not even discussing at a broad social level any realistic
solutions to structural poverty. But the real damage goes much deeper. As a result of
the aforementioned factors that select against our conscious understanding of structural
poverty, our culture as a system actively selects against a generalized economic
awareness and in favor of a mythologized social ignorance. In order to repress the
cultural dissonance of structural poverty, the level of economic and political
understanding in our society is repressed. That makes it impossible to pursue informed,
democratic decisions on a broad scale. Political manipulators are left holding the power
in this vacuum of awareness. The cumulative effect of the issue-specific repression of
social awareness is that our society operates as a non-conscious system. This puts our
entire society at great risk. It is the basic reason why our belief system evolves in a
reactive manner, the reason we have headed headlong down the path of ecological
non-sustainability.
130
CHAPTER NINE
The Place of the Lesser Ones
We used to work the fields in the spring. We would hook the old Ford diesel up
to the turn plow. The turn plow dug deep in the soil, pulling the dirt in thick strips, flipping
it over and laying it like ice cream layers of brown, yellow and black soil across the field.
The scent of the soil welled up and bit your nostrils, distinct and unforgettable from
many springs past. The diesel tractor was as steadfast as any farmhand could be,
working steady pulling the heavy plow all day long.
I think all the talk of God's wrath and hellfire affected me more than the others. It
seemed to make the world fragile for me, a world of falling trees and starving children
on television. I worried about the burning diesel fuel and black smoke billowed out into
space. I worried about the soil being torn up and worked so hard year after year. I don't
know what the worry was, but maybe we were using up too much, tearing up too much
now in a fragile time.
We decided to open up the small fields on the farm to make them bigger, to try to
be more like the big farms that were making it. The field my great-great grandfather had
first cleared when he built the log cabin was the field by the sheds, still plowed every
year now since that time. We took the fence down between that field and the cow
pasture and plowed right across the boundary. The cow pasture had been grass all
along, the top of the soil covered in its soft green carpet and patiently paced over by
generations of cows. The soil in the cow pasture was brown and loose when the plow
lifted it up and turned it over. Then the plow hit the old field, the field that had been
plowed for so long now, and the soil bleached lighter and fell tighter, more just sand
than soil. I saw then that we had been taking more from the soil than giving, putting
back just chemical fertilizers that melt away, for a long time now.
After the soil was turned, it would lay until it was time to plant. It would crust over
with a thin hard shell and soft dirt below. When it came time to plant, Dad would set the
first row carefully, perfectly straight by his eye, which he had a good eye for. The tractor
would roll across the plowed ground, breaking the crust, laying seeds in neat rows with
the planter.
We would come back and spray with herbicides. If it was poison, it was poison
we were bathing in. There was no way to work the sprayer, to keep it running, and
131
unclog the nozzles when they clogged without getting spray all over you, soaking down
your skin and your clothes until you were dripping wet. We were lucky in a way, that our
farm was not too big. Our spraying was over pretty quick. The boys on the bigger farms
had to keep spraying longer to cover the land. Their fingernails would turn yellow from
the chemicals. Then, when they had been spraying a lot, their nails turned purple.
When the corn was still small, we would come back with the smaller cultivator.
When the corn got bigger, we would come back again with the bigger cultivator, working
that tireless diesel across the field. By then the summer heat would beat down on the
dusty metal, making your bare skin sweat with dust sticking to it till your legs and arms
turned black.
Finally the corn would get too tall and thus be relieved from our incessant
mechanical pestering. The corn and what weeds were left would race for a place in the
sun. Together they would reach up high and crowd out the light from the ground below,
like a mature forest of trees that shades out the bushes in a magical playground below
the leaves and stalks. The leaves of corn and weeds in the bottom land down near the
swamp would be thick and black-green, lifting the dark character of the soil up into the
air.
In the fall, all the lush leaves would fall away brown and crackly, leaving the
stalks and corn drying as the light once again reached down to the ground it had not
seen since the winter before.
Most farmers had combines that shelled the corn off of the cob and only kept the
kernels. But we still had an old-time corn picker that trailed behind the tractor, with a
trailer that was attached to catch the ears of corn. The corn picker was a big, rusty,
dinosaurial machine with a long-neck conveyor that reached out over the trailer behind,
complete with a brontosaurus-head metal chute on the end that spit the corn into the
trailer. It was also as moody and cantankerous as one would expect of an animal that
wanted to quit a long time ago. Sometimes it picked corn; sometimes it just complained.
The corn picker kept the whole ear of corn -- kernels, cob and cornshuck. We
had two wooden trailers built on the frames of old cars that lumbered and creaked along
obediently behind the corn picker. They were cabbage trailers back from when they
grew more vegetables for market and the black field hands worked the farm. Now the
cabbage trailers were corn trailers, catching the corn and moaning and wobbling back to
the corn crib.
The corn crib was the favorite spot on the farm for a lot of animals. The squirrels
and the raccoons and the rats all seemed rather fond of the spot. But they only ate their
share of the mountain of corn we piled there, and left plenty for the cows.
We worked hard in the fall, building a mountain of corn in the corn crib. Then
through the winter and the spring we would haul the corn back out one trailer at a time
to be ground up and fed to the steers. It was hard work, shoveling the corn that had only
recently been laid in there, piling it high on the trailer to haul it to the hammermill.
One day, my brother was working the pile up high, pushing corn to the rest of us
on the ground where we were shoveling it onto the trailer. He was always an energetic
sort about his work, and he was pawing corn down with his hands like a mad dog
digging up a rat hole. We were down below trying not to get whacked in the head by the
raining ears of corn, shoveling corn into the trailer, and trying not to think too hard about
all the other things we would rather be doing.
132
Snakes have a particular meaning for Southerners. Snakes carry a biblical sense
of evil -- an incarnate terror that might well set Satan himself aside right at the base of
the Southern mind. Ever since we were too small to remember, we were told about
snakes. And about once a year we would kill a rattler that looked like it could eat
anybody too young to vote. You saw them in the swamps, in the fields, in the woods.
And then they crawled right down into the base of your brain and displaced whatever
fear of death might live in the deepest recesses of your being. The unexpected sight of
a snake in too close a proximity to one's body could provoke adrenaline induced feats
defying gravity and future bodily integrity.
On that particular day when we were shoveling corn, we were far too absorbed in
not being too distracted to notice any revelations or threats that fate might throw us
through the dirty light. But then my brother, without knowing it, found a coiled chicken
snake with his hand and flung it just like an ear of corn flying head-high toward us
working below. Now the snake had been minding his own business, sleeping peacefully
among the ears of corn. And it was a harmless, if now uncoiled and very long airborne
chicken snake. Neither it nor any of us would have chosen the circumstance, but there
we were, faced with flying terror incarnate with no warning whatsoever. We commenced
to constructing new exits through the loose boards in the crib walls. My brother, still
unaware of the chaos he had induced below, turned to see himself looking down a
tumbled cornpile with no one in sight but one dazed reptile. As to whether all of us ever
fully recovered from having seen the greatest terror our universe had to offer right at
eye level was the subject of some speculation for years to come.
After we had loaded the corn onto the cabbage trailer, we would drive the tractor
over to the barn. The trailer would creak and complain its way along behind the tractor,
lazy loaded down with more corn than it wanted to carry. We would hook the tractor up
to the hammermill. The tractor preferred to roll through the clean air and sunshine in the
fields, and tended to get steamed up over having to sit still and spin the hammermill. So
Dad would put a garden hose in the top of the tractor radiator and just let water dribble
all down the front of the tractor to keep it cool. Wasn't till years later that I learned about
the idea of putting antifreeze in a radiator. The hammermill itself was a nervous
machine, spinning inside far too fast for sensibility. It would explode in a nervous fit with
every ear of corn that it ate with a symphony of rattles and clanks, leaving us constantly
certain we were about to be impaled by flying steel hammermill parts. But somehow the
thing never completely came apart, and managed to keep eating whatever we threw
down its throat.
We kept the ground corn in a big bin in the barn, mixed some supplements in
with it, and fed it to the steers. We brought the steers into the barn in the fall. We would
take them away from the herd and keep them in stalls. The first week or two was always
troublesome, as the newly weaned steers bellowed to their mothers and their mothers
bellowed back till everyone was sore of heart and throat. But finally they would give up
their incessant auditory petitioning and settle down to eating themselves senseless on
rich corn feed.
We kept the steers there in the barn for some months. How many we had varied
from year to year, depending mostly on how many calves had been born to the herd. By
next spring, the steers were ready for market. There might be a dozen or less; ours was
not a real big farm. It was funny to think about all the work of the past year, from the
133
tractor working hard pulling the turn plow through the soil tilled for so many years now,
to all the spraying and cultivating, then picking and storing corn, grinding corn and
feeding steers every day through all the winter. All the diesel and sweat boiled down to
these young restless animals loaded onto the trailer for market.
I came to think later that cattle farmers actually had something in common with
their predecessors -- moonshiners. Before my time, there were moonshiners in the
area. Dad even found a still once. A still was a homemade distillery used for making
moonshine. Sheriffs and other law-abiding types don't like them. When Dad found the
still, he didn't know who it belonged to, and it was trespassing on our property, so he
called the sheriff. They came and took the still away, but left Dad with the mash. The
mash was barrels of fermenting grain that someone had planned to make into
moonshine. Dad fed that mash to the hogs, but it turned out to be a terrible mistake. Our
hogs were unworldly animals, never having been exposed to the sins of spirit-laden
grain. Like any new drunk, they couldn't hold their liquor. They ended up falling down on
top of each other in a stupor, and some of the little ones died under the weight of their
parents' indulgence.
The thing moonshine was good for was making a real small corn plot profitable.
Grain was near worthless if you just tried to sell it. The big farmers could make it by
growing so much grain that they finally in the end made a profit. But what was a small
farmer who has only a little grain to sell supposed to do? Moonshine was one answer to
that question. An acre of corn might only be worth a few dollars sold as corn, but liquor
was worth a lot more. It was like taking all that corn and boiling down to a precious liquid
that finally people would pay good money for. Then that small farmer with the acre of
corn could make some money for his small bushels. It was like that with the steers. We
were just boiling down a lot of grain that wasn't worth much until we had something
people would pay more money for.
134
Non-conscious Evolution Is Destroying
the Environment
Liquids and solids do not burn; only gases burn. If you look at a match when it is
burning, you’ll see a small space between the flame and the burning match stem. The
heat from the flame causes the cellulose in the match stem to break down, releasing
flammable gases. These gases mix with the air and then burn above and around the
match. If a room in your house catches fire, the fire will heat the furniture and other
materials close to the fire. This will cause the release of flammable gases that will burn,
generating more heat, causing the release of still more flammable gases. As long as
fuel is available, fire is a self-reinforcing loop. It will grow and grow in intensity, heat
releasing flammable gas, generating still more heat.
Natural resources are the fuel of our industrial economy, and ever increasing
consumption acts as fire. The inferno effect is a self-reinforcing loop that has become a
powerful force in modern times. The loop starts with increased production of goods in
our industrial society. Goods are advertised and then consumed. Accelerated
consumption generates economic activity and wealth. This wealth acts as economic
heat stimulating further production. In the presence of an adequate supply of resources,
economic activity can become a veritable inferno, feeding on itself with unstoppable
intensity. The inferno effect operates on cultural selection to guide our belief system
toward an idealization of consumption.
“The people of the United States are in a sense becoming a nation on a
tiger. They must learn to consume more and more or ... their magnificent
economic machine may turn and devour them. They must be induced to step up
their individual consumption higher and higher, whether or not they have any
pressing need for the goods or not. Their ever-expanding economy demands it.”
Vance Packard's The Waste Makers, circa 1960237
The inferno effect is the consumption of enormous amounts of resources in our
industrial economy. But more importantly, the inferno effect is the political and social
results of moving a huge volume of resources through our economy. Specifically, most
employment in our modern industrial society is dependent on artificially (culturally)
accelerated consumption. This consumption is not connected to meeting our actual
needs.
Economic and ecological stressors are most often pivotal selectors in cultural
evolution. In this case, any significant cooling of the inferno effect would result in a loss
of employment. Such unemployment would have enormous political consequences. Yet
we have no choice but to eliminate the inferno effect, either by conscious choice or by
the inevitable forces of physics as we reach the limits of our global support systems.
237
Packard, 1960 and 1965, p.6
135
The inferno effect strongly influences our belief system; it represents one of the
greatest challenges we face in modern times. The inferno effect is the cultural basis of
the ecological crises of our time; it is the heart of the industrial machine. Our survival will
depend on our ability to understand and influence the inferno effect.
Food
The inferno effect has impacts that are both intimately personal and macrocosmic. Our decisions about what to eat, what kind of house to live in, and what kind of
transportation to use are influenced by the inferno effect.
Let us look, then, at something we all share -- our need to eat. Without food, we
get hungry in a matter of hours. Over the longer term, the quality and quantity of food
we eat influences health and well-being. Cultures all over the world eat an incredible
variety of different foods. Why does our culture like particular foods?
One set of theories explains that human cultures tend to idealize foods that fit
within their ecosystem and to abhor foods that might be tempting but would be
destructive to harvest or grow. Thus Hindus have made cows sacred because cows are
integral to their ecology and economy. Some Middle-Eastern cultures abhor pork
because attempting to raise swine in their arid climates would be destructive. Following
this theory, human cultures eat what is most easily gathered or produced, and avoid
what is difficult to produce. Thus Americans eat beef instead of grasshoppers because it
is easier to produce beef on the abundant lands of the North American continent.238
Anthropologists call this idea “ optimal foraging theory”. In North America, however,
there has been another silent player that has significantly influenced our food choices,
and that is the inferno effect.
The diet of the average American has changed substantially in the last hundred
years. In the 1800s, the average American ate in a similar fashion to many people in
less developed countries today. The historic American diet consisted primarily of grainbased starches. Meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables were consumed in lesser
quantities than they are today. As the economy grew, wealth increased, and
transportation improved, Americans in the early part of this century began to consume
more meat and dairy products, as well as more fruits and vegetables.239
American food habits are intimately linked with the productivity of our agricultural
system. Like so many aspects of industrial society, matching production with
consumption has been a chronic historic problem. Beginning immediately after the Civil
War, farmers began to increase production faster than the market for food products was
growing. Agricultural production grew as a result of land expansion, improved
transportation, and the Homestead Act that pushed farmers westward onto new land.
Consumption grew with population, but not nearly as fast as farm productivity. This
circumstance put farmers of the period into dire economic straights.240 These problems
238
This is a brutally short sketch of a larger theory. See Harris, 1985.
239
Gilboy, 1968, p.91
240
Cochrane, 1979, p.94-94
136
were exacerbated by the economic policies of the 1800s. Prevailing powers enforced “
tight money” policies -- limiting the money supply in order to limit inflation. The wealthier
classes favored tight money policies, but these policies served to limit income and
consumption for the population at large.
The agricultural depression of the late 1800s continued for decades as farmers
rose in protest movements including the Grange, the Farmers Alliance, Greenbackers,
and Populists. These movements sought more expansionistic economic policies that
would benefit farmers. Toward the close of the 1800s, farmers were at various times
allied with workers' movements. Although they never succeeded in creating a viable
third party, many of the reforms that these movements sought were enacted within a
few years of the issues being raised. Such reforms included the regulation of railroads,
popular election of U.S. senators, the graduated income tax, and rural free mail.241
There was to be no direct relief for farmers though. The philosophy, law, and
scale of government in the 1800s was less interventionist than it is today. This is true of
many aspects of social welfare and public policy. As applied to farm policy, the
government let the farmers fend for themselves.
After the turn of the century, the economy grew more quickly. Combined with
immigration, this caused consumption of agricultural products to grow more rapidly.
Farmers experienced a period of prosperity that lasted from the turn of the century until
the 1920s. There was little change in public policy toward agriculture and food in this
period.
Beginning in 1920, farm prices started falling as the U.S. ended its involvement in
World War I relief efforts. Prices and farm income did not recover until World War II.
For the farmer, the Great Depression began early.242 With farmers left out of the
national prosperity of the 1920s, there was again pressure for government intervention.
As a result, support for cooperatives was increased and farm credit was extended. By
1933, the government started offering direct price supports by purchasing agricultural
surpluses. These surpluses were dispersed through school lunch and food stamp
programs. By the late 1930s, policies were put into place that attempted to limit the
amount of land planted, thereby limiting production.243
In the progressive period in the early twentieth century, government started to
become more active in many social spheres. An optimism prevailed that problems could
and should be solved by public intervention. In this climate, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) began giving nutritional advice. Their first food chart was published
in 1917 and consisted of five food groups that were thought to provide essential
nutrients. Scientists were discovering the role of vitamins and other nutrients. By 1933,
concern that everyone should receive an adequate supply of nutrients led the USDA to
expand their food chart to twelve food groups. By World War II, they had paired it down
to the “Basic Seven.”244
241
Buck, 1920, p.198
242
Cochrane, 1979, p.100-101
243
Robinson, 1989, p.16
244
Haughton, 1987, p.169-175, Shremp, 1996, p.84
137
From the beginning, the USDA’s role was primarily to help farmers. Giving
nutritional advice was secondary. Given the prevalence of diseases resulting from
nutritional deficiencies in that time period, ranging from scurvy to rickets, it was in
everyone’s interest for the public to consume a better diet. Farmers helped fund
nutritional research because, as scientists discovered the nutritional value of the food
they were producing, such research proved a valuable marketing tool.245 Thus, it
seemed that everyone’s interest was served by nutritional advice and research. The
public could learn how to avoid diseases of malnutrition, and farmers received
government support for marketing their products.
World War II solved the problem of agricultural overproduction by creating a
huge need for exports. Agricultural production soared during the war.246 Food was
rationed domestically and farmers were given financial and technical support by the
government to increase production. Farmers were again prosperous.
By the 1950s, the “ green revolution” was in full swing. After the war, farmers had
sufficient money to invest in mechanization as never before. Improved seeds, fertilizers
and other modern technologies were causing production to grow rapidly. Thus began a
long, uninterrupted period of overproduction in American agriculture. The collective
effect of rising production was falling prices. The more the individual farmers produced,
the more they could sell. But the more they collectively produced, the more they
overloaded the market.247
From its inception, the USDA and other organizations involved with nutritional
research and education were inextricably intertwined with agricultural interests. In 1958,
a funny thing happened. (Remember 1952-1958 was a conservative period under
Eisenhower.) In the midst of a sustained crisis of agricultural overproduction, the USDA
altered the “Basic Seven” food groups to the “ Basic Four” food group chart that was to
last for decades. Half of that chart was made up of animal-based foods. The timing is
unmistakable. Even mainstream historians cannot help but notice that “[the] relationship
between food guides and their assumptions and the food supply is particularly
interesting ... [T]he Basic Four was constructed considering U.S. food supplies.”248
Why was the Basic Four so important to farmers? Half of the Basic Four food
groups are animal-based foods: meat/eggs and dairy. Animal foods effectively
concentrate agricultural overproduction. It takes a lot of grain to make a hamburger or a
bowl of ice cream.249 If American farmers tried to dispose of their surplus production by
convincing people to eat more pancakes and corn muffins, they would not get too far.
245
The history of the politics of fat and health are very well documented in Patricia
Hausman’s Jack Sprat's Legacy: The Science and Politics of Fat and Cholesterol
(Hausman, 1981, p.28-30).
246
Shremp, 1996, p.77
247
Cochrane, 1979, p.137-140
248
Haughton, 1987, p.172
249
Durning, 1991, p.14, Pimmentel, 1984
138
But condense that grain by feeding it to a cow, and it becomes meat and ice cream.
Then people will consume, and pay for, a lot more grain. Some people who have
studied the history of nutritional education are more blunt about the connection between
agricultural over-productivity and dietary advice. According to some, the lobby made up
of “meat, dairy, and egg industries and their academic and political allies [has] not only
influenced our nation’s food and nutrition policies, it has determined those policies”
(emphasis in original).250
What about the health effects of a diet that is centered on animal foods? Overnutrition, rather than malnutrition, has become the devil of American health. We know
now that the elevated fat intake of the American diet is directly linked to the two leading
causes of death in the U.S., heart disease and cancer.251 Nothing in America kills more
people than fat. Were the people who promulgated the Basic Four aware of the
negative health effects of a high-fat diet?
It was discovered in 1908 -- more than eight decades ago -- that high fat intake
induces arteriosclerosis. The “discovery” has been made repeatedly over the decades
since that time. But these discoveries “went virtually unnoticed by nutritionists” for
decades.252 As we discussed in the section on technological change, demand drives
change much more than invention. As the steam engine was invented over and over
again before it was used, so the knowledge concerning the health effects of a high-fat
diet were suppressed because of the economic desirability of disposing of American
agricultural overproduction.
Could it be that people are simply naturally drawn to high-fat diets if such food is
available? To some extent, it is probably true that human beings have a biological
predisposition to eat sweet and fatty foods. This would have a clear evolutionary
advantage. Gatherers who have been studied tend to be healthy, but there is not a lot
of rich food in their environment. By seeking out rich food, they could maximize their
chances of survival. They ran little risk of arteriosclerosis; there was simply not that
much fat available. It may be true that, given our predisposition to like rich food, the
average person would tend to overeat when provided with an abundant supply of ice
cream and other such things. But what has happened in Western culture is something
quite different. Rich foods, which are almost exclusively animal-based, are idealized in
American culture to a great extent. Protein in particular is believed to be needed in large
quantities for good health. High protein diets are thought to be healthy, important for
bodybuilding and general well-being. This idealizing of protein is a cultural practice, not
a biological reality. The favored foods among gathering cultures are meat and honey.
Likewise, we Americans consume sugar readily because we like the taste. But we have
not idealized sugar as we have protein. Why? Because protein, traditionally at least,
comes from animals. Animal-based foods concentrate agricultural overproduction, thus
feeding the inferno effect in our industrial economy. Sugar has no such economic
impact.
250
Michael Jacobson in Hausman, 1981, p.16.
251
Statistical Abstract of the United State 1988, p.77
252
Hausman, 1981 p.26, p.96, Robbins, 1987, p.208-211
139
The meat and dairy industries lobbied successfully for the four food groups chart
and dietary education that emphasized the importance of consuming rich animal foods.
But to say that the meat and dairy industry simply asserted their own vested interest is
to miss a deeper truth about culture. Cultural selection is powerfully influenced by
employment, by how different social changes affect the level of employment. The Basic
Four served to dispose of agricultural overproduction, thus alleviating a serious
economic problem. Vested interests had their way, but only because they had economy
on their side, and some degree of biology. It is difficult to say exactly how information
travels throughout a large culture, but there is no doubting that the economic effects of
the Basic Four were pivotal in causing Americans to believe that they needed large
amounts of animal protein to stay healthy. Cultural selection was thus pivotal in
creating the protein myth as well as causing the suppression of information concerning
the health effects of high-fat diets.
The creation of the protein myth occurred in a period in American history when
there were a lot more farmers. Recently, the Basic Four has been replaced by a
pyramid that emphasizes grains and de-emphasizes rich, animal-based foods. The
Food Pyramid was stalled by protests from the meat and dairy industries, but finally its
proponents prevailed.253 Why did the Food Pyramid have to wait so long? Just as
tobacco regulation and a fuller recognition of the health effects of cigarettes had to wait
until the middle class stopped smoking, the pyramid had to wait until the number of
farmers in this country had decreased to below 3 percent of the population.254 Corporate
agriculture is still a powerful force, but not nearly as powerful as was the agricultural
lobby when farmers were much more numerous.
As a result of American accelerated consumption of agricultural products, the
U.S. consumes seven times as much grain per-capita as some poorer countries.255
Even though the United States has one of the most productive agricultural systems of
any nation on the earth, the feedstock of this consumption is not all generated
domestically. In the last decade, the U.S. has in some years actually imported more
food than it has exported, thus representing a net drain on world food resources.256
The dominant force in the last century determining the development of beliefs
about a healthy diet was not the maximization of human health. The dominant force was
the inferno effect, which caused the condensation of agricultural overproduction into
animal-based foods, bringing more wealth to farmers. It ameliorated, to some degree, a
vexing economic problem of agricultural overproduction. Cultural selection operating on
the economic results of a generalized increase in fat and protein intake created the
protein myth. This was possible in large part because the health effects of excessive fat
intake are degenerative, and show up only over a long period of time.
253
Burros, 1992
254
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1988, p.377, Hausman, 1981, p.235
255
Brown, 1981, p.105
256
Stang, 1994
140
I suppose to some it may seem odd to say that our culture's evolution is guided
by forces that are little concerned with our own biological well-being. But that is a
consistent pattern in cultural evolution, and one that is important to understand. Cultural
selection is not a conscious process. It is blind and reactive. It responds to pressures
as they arise. In the case of the protein myth, the pressure generated by agricultural
overproduction exceeded the resistance of long-term health degradation or the voices
that were ignored. There was clear evidence decades ago concerning the health effects
of high fat intake. Cultural selection suppressed the social dispersion of that knowledge
and created the protein myth instead. We must be clear about the price we are paying
for non-conscious cultural evolution. The inferno effect threatens our very existence.
141
Edge
Getting a driver's license was a right of passage, exceeding in emotional
importance marriage and the birth of a first child. Most folks got their license the first day
they were eligible. Like with so many things, I was a little out of step and took a bit
longer. But the big day did finally arrive. It was a hot August afternoon. The courthouse
had no air conditioning, and the summer was at its thickest. I walked into the room
where the state trooper was who came by the county courthouse once a week to
administer tests and give licenses. As best I could tell, he was one of those folks who
kept a large calendar at home with big red X's marking off the days until retirement. He
was supposed to be finished at three o'clock. As I stepped into the room, we both turned
our heads slow and steady to look at the clock on the wall -- two minutes before three. I
had not yet taken the written test or the driving test. I approached his desk with as much
fortitude as I could muster under the circumstances. He had beads of sweat standing at
attention on top of his smooth head. He took the form from my hand and looked at me
real stern.
“Son, what does a stop sign mean?”
“Uh -- stop.”
He signed the paper granting me a license.
“Don't tell anyone I did that.”
A machine is a machine. Mostly they do what you tell them to and don't have
unnecessary opinions. The automobile is a machine, but in a young Southern man's life
it can come to hold a substantial place in the heart. Nobody ever had all that much
money, but every bit of money and affection a fellow could muster was likely to be
expended painting and waxing, polishing vinyl and rubber, crawling under the hood
tuning performance to a razor edge of perfection. To slide in behind the wheel was the
sweet essence of freedom. The guys would drive into town. They would cruise slow up
and down the street, the big motor hitting moody and uneven, thumping power into the
ground through the headers till the folks on the sidewalk could feel it in their feet. They
would drive by the folks walking on the street, power under the hood and shine on the
outside that even the proudest had to pay homage to.
George was always a trend-setter in the motorized department. He got a dune
buggy made from a Volkswagen Beetle. Beetles make good dune buggies. You take the
body off, cut the frame to shorten it a little, put some big tires on the back, and hop-up
the motor for the grand result of a machine that will go places you really would be better
off not going. With the engine sitting right over the back wheels giving them traction and
nothing for weight on the front you can go places that four-wheel drive trucks can't.
George could shift four gears on his dune buggy without the front wheels
touching the ground, and he did. We went out one day, traversing the swampy Southern
mud down a gas line in a remote area. We got so far back in the woods that it seemed
like we had to find a new way out rather than turn back. We came up on a creek and
examined it closely, wondering how deep it might be. With the dark tea-colored water
that flows through a Southern swamp, you can never see the bottom. We finally
decided, based on what information I cannot recall, to make a go of crossing this creek.
142
So we got a running start and hit the water. Much to our surprise, the front end of our
vehicle disappeared entirely as we entered the dark and discouragingly deep water. We
dumbstruck passengers surged through the murk in our vehicle of doom, muddy water
just about chin high as we sat in the seats. Why the motor didn't drown instantly I don't
know, but for some reason the beast lurched up the bank and out of the muck. And so
we continued, scooping mud and grass out and off of ourselves and our bespeckled
chariot.
And then the railroad tracks. Surely they lead somewhere. But if we straddled the
tracks with the wheels, we could be a pinball in the path of a freight train. So we rode on
the side of the rail bed. That was working alright for a while, me keeping watch in the
back for a predatory freight train and George driving and watching forward. Then the
bank started getting higher, and steeper. Before we knew it, we were looking down at
trees instead of up -- not the place you want to be without planning it. With the bank
getting so high and steep, our chariot of fate started slipping down the loose gravel as
we begged and pleaded our way forward. George reintroduced himself to God, not
having spoken for a while, assured him that it was only a casual oversight, really. And if
he could see fit to help out a little in a tight spot, why there was just no telling how
Christian and proper a fellow could become. More than a few rocks slipped over that
ledge and down into the trees, but we newly rejuvenated Godfearing Christians made
our way through to where the bank wasn't quite so high and a road that led the way to
civilization and other places where God doesn't figure quite so prominently.
By the time we got to high school, we were taking bigger chances. It is in the
absence of freedom that its value is most strongly felt. So it was at school. I never got
along well with school. They always said wait till next year, wait till high school, then it
will get harder. Mostly it just got more boring. Tedious as school was, the real problem
was who was in charge. I would come home and roam the farm and the forest as I
chose, master of my own evening's destiny. Then next day it would be back to the
corridors of incarceration. It always seemed that the least smart and most insecure
teachers were the harshest masters. Some of them would stand in the hall between
classes, and poke you with their power just to show you they could. I would obey in
where I put my body, but I would not obey in where I put my mind. I would walk those
halls, the evening master shackled, jaws clenched tight lest words of defiance rush
forward. No one talked about power, neither students nor teachers. But it was all too
clear that I was not alone in my frustration. It was a chariot of liberating annihilation that
would set us free.
The bell would ring and that shit was over. I would not be the driver, but neither
would I be subject to further tyranny on a long bus ride. A sprint to the parking lot, a turn
of the key and three hundred two cubic inches of fury were at our disposal. V - 8 engine,
four cylinders each side, straight pipes out the back. You could hear the barking growl
hitting each side with crisp mechanical precision. We would have our bloodletting of the
soul in stereo. They built that machine before the age of gas mileage and pollution
control. The engine would pull as much fuel down the four barrels of its carburetor as
you asked of it and turn it into hot. On the road in a cloud of black blue smoke and rage,
unfathomable power exploding from the iron soul of that machine. The power pinned
you back in the seat and fuck them all. That cannonball carrying the once gentle souls
of American youth would not slow down for anyone, no matter whose side of the road
143
we claimed as our own. Death had no petition is those proceedings, none but final
judgement.
Leapfrog was the game, get in front of someone and slow down, swerving to hold
the road. Once they get a break they will surge up beside you and then it's the drag,
acceleration well into three-digit velocity, down any necessary path until someone else
holds the lead -- at which point they slow down and we do it all again. Courage and
stupidity were blood brothers.
Sometimes when we took the wrong side of the road, someone would not get out
of the way in time. With head-on collision immanent, brakes would lock, then break lose
and pull to the side within a hair's breadth of destiny. Then tomorrow, we do it again. My
brother once put two garbage trucks in the ditch so he could claim his half of the road
right out of the middle. They didn't seem too happy about it, but he proceeded along his
way before they had a chance to register their opinion.
We were coming home one day. There was a light misty rain; there were patches
of fog. We had the Mustang; the engine was still strong. The tires were bald, no slack
money for such luxuries. We were playing leapfrog. We had put away the last
competitor, slowed to about 90. We came up on a rise and a slower car. My brother was
driving. He took the other lane, as usual, without looking. But out of the mist there was
another car. My brother floored it, on instinct, and the Mustang responded with a
shouting growl and a surge of speed. But there was no time for the other car to get to
the shoulder even if they wanted to. In an instant everyone was on the brakes, sliding
toward impact. My brother pulled hard right and we started spinning end to end, down
the shoulder and into the ditch. The far side of the ditch was a steep dirt bank, and a
driveway crossed the ditch. The car hit the steep dirt bank as it spun, first the front, then
the back, then catapulted upward by the sloping dirt bank of the driveway. I was down in
the back seat, hearing rending metal like a hundred sledge hammers hitting beer cans,
dirt and tree limbs slapping the windshield. We spun end to end full around in mid-air,
and came down among the trees.
The back end of the car was propped up by the gas tank, broken lose, spilling a
full tank's worth under the car, the motor still running. My brother turned it off, and we
got out. We went home, called the insurance company. We could only afford liability,
and as we thought, that was of no help. The car was on our land at that point. So we got
the big tractor and dragged it home through the woods, before the police could find it.
Inside of a couple of weeks, my brother had another Mustang, and we were back to the
game.
It was as if fate got sleepy for a while in Effingham county and left us be. Only
one died when I was in school. Butch was running his motorcycle in the rain, stretched
out till you feel the wind pushing hard in on your skin like someone's hand pressing firm
to resist your passage. He didn't see the truck stopped in the road because of the rain.
They say he died fast.
Fate woke up the year after I graduated. Skip had the fastest car around -- so fast that
he would go into town and slide the car in circles, barking rubber and widening eyes,
right in front of the police station. Then he would fly out of town and they couldn't catch
him. Or maybe they didn't really try because it was too dangerous. He did it one day and
they decided to give him full chase. He stretched out his fine-tuned machine for all it
was worth. He had good tires, but at a fast enough speed a normal tire can simply throw
144
itself off the rim because it's not made to take that kind of stress. He lost a tire and went
into the trees. The car hit the trees so hard that the motor came out of the car and
continued along without the rest of the car. They picked his body up in pieces. Several
more died that year. I did not know them very well.
145
The Industrial Inferno Effect
Human beings have always produced goods beyond strictly utilitarian need.
There has always been some amount of art and play in every hunter’s bow and potter’s
decorated jar. But in modern times, the production of non-necessities has increased
dramatically. Since World War II in particular, the inferno effect has taken on entirely
new proportions.
The industrial revolution has provided a massive new source of energy in the
form of fossil fuel. The application of this energy through new mechanical
technologies has made production possible on a new scale. In economic terms, this is
not entirely a good thing. Being able to produce goods is not terribly useful if people
don't buy them. Matching the production of goods with the consumption of goods has
always been difficult in industrial society.
In America’s history, we have been through periods when production and
investment would grow, but over time production would outrun consumption. Inventories
would climb, then the economy would slip into recession or depression. As a recession
proceeded, slowly business would pick up again, and then the cycle would repeat.
The first deep depression in the United States occurred in the 1820s. Again and
again after that, there were repeated boom and bust cycles as production and economic
activity would grow rapidly only to collapse in depression. Serious depressions occurred
in the 1870s, 1890s, and 1930s.
The consumer society was born in the 1920s. Wages, production and the
common standard of living increased. Women’s roles were expanding as they moved
into new areas of employment.257 Americans consumed appliances, houses, and cars
like never before. Advertising came of age as a powerful force in the industrial
economy.258
That all came to an end with the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was the most
serious the industrial world had ever seen as business activity fell dramatically and
unemployment soared. The effects were felt throughout much of the world.
Relief from the Great Depression arrived with World War II and the growth of
Keynesian economics. Keynesian economists came to see increased expenditure by
government and consumers as a means of economic stimulus. This led to policies of
more plentiful money supply in contrast to a history of “ tight money.” World War II
brought about a massive increase in government spending. The result was a dramatic
increase in economic activity that lifted the country out of the depression. As World War
II was ending, some economists were alarmed that once the economic stimulus of war
was removed, the economy would fall back into depression.259
257
Tentler, 1979
258
Norris, 1990
259
Nossiter, 1990, p.33-45
146
The inferno effect has been around in a modest form for a long time, but after
World War II the heat was permanently turned up in American society. We had
intensified production on an unprecedented scale, now it was time to intensify
consumption. This was achieved by a number of means. Domestic consumption leaped
upward after World War II. People saved a great deal of money during the war. After the
war, this money was released in a flood of consumption.260 President Roosevelt was
also pro- union, so unions gained in strength and wages were higher. This created more
buying power.
The Military Industrial Complex was another source of economic stimulus. Prior
to World War II, the U.S. never had a standing army on anything like the scale we have
now. Rather, we relied on constructing an army once war had started. Now large
outlays for the military are ongoing. These military expenditures serve as an ongoing
economic stimulus, and have been used politically as such.261
The federal government grew to a new scale as a result of World War II, and has
remained large ever since. The federal government is now large enough to have
significant economic weight in our economy, however it chooses to use it. The postwar
period has also been marked by the growth of the Federal Reserve, which served as a
powerful tool of economic management in our society. In general, the Federal Reserve
has pursued monetary policies that promote steady economic growth. All of these
factors combined to make the postwar period an unprecedented time of steady growth.
Now the inferno effect reigns supreme in our industrial economy.
Transport
Transportation is another area where our choices have been intimately and
extensively influenced by the inferno effect. Transportation in the U.S. is dominated by
the automobile. Why do Americans like cars so much? The standard answer among
historians is that we like cars because they are so convenient compared to mass
transportation. To say we like cars because they are convenient is like saying we like
beef hamburgers because they are good food. Other cultures abhor beef. Other people
in other cultures do not idealize cars the way Americans do. We have chosen cars for
reasons other than convenience, as the historical evidence attests.
Gasoline fueled cars first became commercially available in the U.S. in the
1890s. In the early years, electric battery cars were actually more popular than gasoline
cars, but over time gasoline cars proved superior, especially over long distances.262 The
first cars were expensive playthings of the rich. These cars cost one to several
thousand dollars -- a very substantial sum in those days. A man by the name of Selden
patented the gasoline car in the 1890s. A few automakers were producing expensive
260
Nossiter, 1990, p.45-46
261
Caldicott, 1986, p.31-35, Nossiter, 1990, p.76-77, 204
262
Fink, 1975, p.16
147
cars for the rich under the Selden patent. They were making healthy profits, they were
wealthy, and they wanted to maintain the automobile as land-roving yachts for the
rich.263
In 1908, Henry Ford produced his first Model T, which cost nearly one thousand
dollars. Some of the other partners in the Ford enterprise wanted to make expensive
cars for the wealthy. Ford had a passion for making inexpensive cars that would be
affordable for the common people. In a few years, Ford took full control of the
corporation. He created a moving mass assembly line. (This production style was
named “Fordism” and has been copied by the makers of autos and thousands of other
products.)264 Ford was able to mass-produce cars and lower the price. By the 1920s, he
had lowered the price of the Model T to below three hundred dollars.265 His scheme was
quite successful. For a number of years, most of the cars on the road were Model T's.
Ford’s passion for making cars popularly available was so strong that he was selling
cars at only a few dollars profit per unit, though he was quite wealthy nonetheless. Ford
was successfully sued by stockholders for not running his company as a profit making
venture.266
Ford spent years fighting the Selden patent, and in the end he prevailed in the
courts. Ford became a popular hero because of his passion for producing for the mass
market against the elitist car-makers. Ford also paid high wages in the 19-teens, and he
was seen as a hero fighting against the corrupt railroads.267
To understand how the auto conquered America, it is useful to look at the
experience of European countries. In Europe, as in the U.S., horse-drawn tramways
were installed in cities in the mid 1800s. The streets of the time were generally
constructed of rough cobblestone or mud, and the carriages were constructed with
solid, non shock-absorbing tires. Given these factors, one can understand the
usefulness of carriages gliding along on smooth steel rails. In Europe, concessions
were granted to private companies to install rail on public roads. These concessions
had sunset provisions in them. After forty or fifty years, the rail and other fixed property
would become public property at no cost to the public. While in operation, the tram
companies were subject to regulation by local governments concerning scheduling and
fares.268
263
Davis, 1988, p.1-5, Fink, 1975, p.29-30
264
Fink, 1988, p.40
265
Davis, 1975, p.120-122
266
Seltzer, 1928, p.104-109
267
Rae, 1965, p.73-79, Kay, 1997, p.146, Norris, 1990, p.162-164. Jane Holt Kay’s
Asphalt Nation is an excellent book about automobile dependence and how we can
overcome it.
268
An excellent analysis of European versus American trolley development can be
found in Tramways and Trolleys by John McKay (McKay, 1976, p.89,18-19).
148
In the U.S., tramway concessions were granted on an open-ended basis.
Tramway and trolley companies were subject to little or no regulation. When electric
trolleys were introduced in the late 1800s, they spread rapidly in large American cities
and were used as transportation by all classes of people.269
In Europe, local governments were more under the influence of local elites who
slowed the development of electric trolleys because they thought the overhead wires
were ugly. In time, the electric trolley proved its utility. By World War I, electric trolley
development in Europe had equaled that in the U.S.270
At the turn of the century, the U.S. had a train and trolley system that was far
ahead of that in Europe or anywhere else in the world. Even as auto ownership
increased, train ridership increased to its peak in 1920. But the rails in the cities and
across the countryside were privately owned by corrupt and self-serving rail companies.
The railroaders' greed spelled the demise of rail in the years to come.271
Electric trolleys were built on a large scale in American cities in the late 1800s.
Developers would buy large tracts of land near a city. They would install water and
sewer lines, then they would build a trolley line to their private development. They
proceeded to make handsome profits from selling lots, and from charging high fees for
the only form of public transportation available -- the trolley. There was some degree of
popular rebellion against the profiteering trolley companies, but local governments were
seen as so weak and corrupt that public ownership was not a viable option.272
The divergence of the U.S. and Europe began in the 1920s. By this time, the
European concessions were expiring and trolleys were becoming public property.
Though the car had a substantial impact on European society as it did in the U.S.,
public transportation remained in heavy use in Europe.
The U.S. underwent a transition in the 1920s. Sales of automobiles had been
growing rapidly before the 1920s, but such growth was only sowing the seeds of greater
change. America was transformed in the 1920s. At the beginning of the decade, a
minority of people owned autos. By the close of the decade, the majority of Americans
owned cars. Autos very quickly took over the cities and transformed settlement patterns
beyond the cities. Before the car, houses were built along fixed trolley lines radiating
from the center of the city, thus leaving large open spaces between the trolley lines. The
car allowed houses to be built anywhere. By the 1920s, governments were building
water, gas, and sewer lines, as well as maintaining roads. Thus automobile
subdivisions were in effect publicly subsidized. The trolley owners, on the other hand,
had to finance utilities to their suburbs with private money. This situation was no doubt
affected by the public disdain for the corrupt trolley companies. The progressive
269
McKay, 1976, p.92
270
McKay, 1976, p.198
271
McKay, 1976, p.195, Kay, 1997, p.177
272
McKay, 1976, p.199-200
149
movement of the early 1900s embraced cars as a popular and scientific advancement,
and a counterweight to the corruption of rail and trolley owners.273
The inferno effects of the auto are of pivotal importance. Immediately after World
War I, the U.S. entered a brief but serious recession. Spending on autos served as an
economic stimulus that pulled the country out of the recession and into the “ roaring
twenties.” The production and use of autos stimulated production in the steel, wood,
rubber, oil, metals, and glass industries. The steel and plate glass industries were
revolutionized, as they developed continuous production techniques to meet the
demand created by the auto industry. By the mid 1920s, automobiles represented the
largest industrial sector in the country as measured by value of output.274 Economic
historians point to two factors driving the boom of the 1920s: auto and housing
construction. Given the car's impacts on housing, it could be said that the automobile
was the driving force behind the booming economy of the 1920s. One auto historian has
stated as much.275
Commentators were talking of “ gasoline rabies” among young people.276 One
study in Muncie, Indiana found that the average family in the mid 1920s owed more
money on its car than its house.277 This obsession with the auto was in part caused by
its impacts as an economic stimulus. In the words of one General Motors official of the
time, “As a consumer of raw materials, the automobile has no equal in the history of
mankind.”278
The auto was instrumental in creating the consumer culture of the twentieth
century. Advertising demonstrates this consumerist transition. Advertising in the 1800s
focused primarily on extolling the virtues and values of products. Products were not sold
on the basis of providing a person greater social acceptance. In the early 1900s, the
auto makers started advertising heavily. By the late 19-teens, automobile advertising
consumed most of the advertising space in magazines.279 Auto ads started to focus on
associating social status and acceptance with car ownership. Thus social status and
consumption were linked forever after in our industrial economy.280
273
Kay, 1997, p.144-180
274
Seltzer, 1928, p.4-5
275
Rae, 1965, p.87-90
276
Kay, 1997, p.170
277
Davis, 1988, p.1
278
E Magazine, p.38
279
Davis, 1988, p.6
280
This represented a significant change in American business and culture. James
Norris has documented this transition in his academic book Advertising and the
Transformation of American Society, 1865-1920 (Norris, 1990, p.158-160).
150
The final factor cementing the domination of the auto in America was the actions
of General Motors, oil, and rubber industries to undermine public transportation.
Starting in the 1930s, General Motors financed a bus company called National City
Lines (NCL). NCL proceeded to buy trolley lines across the country. GM meanwhile
promoted “motorization” -- the conversion from trolleys to buses -- as the wave of the
future. NCL bought the trolleys not to run them, but to destroy them and replace them
with buses. NCL continued this practice for decades. Three separate federal
investigations were launched, one of which resulted in a trial. The conspirators were
fined $5,000 dollars for their actions.281 In the end no one was able to reign in GM and
NCL, and trolleys across the country were dismantled.282
Cars are not just convenient; they are a cultural choice we made for specific
reasons. We have to understand why we have ignored the costs of the auto. The costs
of cars were evident from the beginning. By the 1930s, more than thirty thousand
people were dying every year in auto accidents.283 Auto accidents have in fact resulted
in more than four times as many American deaths as all twentieth-century wars
combined.284 Consider the enormous political upheaval created by the Vietnam War.
And yet nearly as many people die each year in auto accidents as American soldiers
who died throughout the entire Vietnam War. Instead of condemning the enormous
destruction it causes, we idealize the car. It is clear that other factors are influencing our
belief system. Never in the long history of rail have more than several hundred
passengers died in rail accidents in a single year.285
Automobiles kill and injure people in other ways as well. Auto pollution is
believed to be a contributing factor in the dramatic increase in asthma in recent history.
There was more than a 50 percent increase in asthma cases among preteen children in
the 1970s. While part of this increase is probably due to increased physician awareness
of asthma, pollution is clearly another major factor. This is indicated by the fact that
asthma is significantly higher among urban youth than rural youth.286 The American
Lung Association has estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 people die each year
from the effects of air pollution as a result of asthma and other illnesses. This is twice
the number of people who die in auto accidents, and still our culture persuades us to
idealize the car.287
281
Sale, 1980, p.252
282
An excellent, very entertaining source of information on the GM affair, including
interviews with some of the now elderly people who were involved in the matter is the
film Taken for a Ride, created by James Klein and Martha Olson.
283
Bureau of Census, 1975, Q224-232
284
Kimbrell, 1989, p.C 3. This is an excellent article from the Washington Post.
285
Bureau of Census, 1975, p.740
286
The American Asthma Report, 1989
287
Earth Island Journal, 1990, p.4
151
Auto usage generates other forms of pollution as well. The Exxon Valdez oil
spill resulted in a great deal of public attention. But, according to Greenpeace
estimates, every two and one half weeks, home mechanics dump as much oil down
sinks and sewers as was spilled by the Valdez.288
While there is much conscious debate in our society about privatization of all
kinds of services and government functions, unspoken cultural selectors are strongly
affecting what our society considers appropriate to socialize. Socialization in this sense
means that the whole society pays the bill for a certain service, thus making it more
universally available. Automobile transport is socialized in the U.S., receiving
government support in the form of road construction, subsidies for oil exploration, and a
host of other incentives. Estimates of the real cost of gasoline if these supports were
removed vary from $4.50 a gallon to $7.50 a gallon or higher.289
While automakers may use the notion of technological advancement as a selling
point for each new year model, it is clear that factors other than technological progress
are guiding the development of our transportation choices. Cars in the early 1970s
were less fuel efficient than in the 1930s.290 The costs of cars are hidden and large.
Given the health and environmental expense of autos, we are not compelled to
idealize cars. Other industrialized countries rely more on mass transportation. Trolleys,
trains, buses, bicycles, and high-speed trains make up but a partial list of the many
forms of transportation available to us. Why are Americans so enamored of their cars?
Some of the reasons are visible. Cars are convenient; the railroads were corrupt.
Vested interests destroyed the trolleys.
The hidden variable is economic stimulus. All variables are not created equal,
and economic stimuli consistently overpower health, safety, and sustainability. Cars
serve as a powerful stimulus in our inferno economy. The first car-boom occurred in the
1920s. Again in the 1950s, a boom was driven in large part by autos and the dispersed
housing construction that they make possible. The direct economic effects of the auto
are substantial. In the U.S., one out of every six workers is employed by auto-related
industries.291 The production and maintenance of cars also results in the consumption
substantial quantities of oil, steel, aluminum, plastics, lead, and other materials. This
economic stimulus influences our belief system.
European countries have not idealized cars to the same extent because they are
not as dependent on the economic stimulus of the auto. In general, European countries
have a much stronger government and social safety net in the form of social programs
than the U.S. As a result, they can afford to have less aggressive economic growth and
higher unemployment, while still maintaining high standards of living and social order.
In the U.S., we have weaker government and a very weak safety net. We are compelled
288
Schaiffer, 1990, p.15
289
Kimbrell, 1989, Sale, 1980, p.253
290
Brown, 1979, p.49-54
291
Kimbrell, 1989
152
to maintain aggressive economic growth or risk social unrest. The car serves this
program of aggressive growth.
Cars are a status symbol. The mimicry of the rich and respected has always
been an integral part of the intensification of production. In small farming villages,
people worked harder to try to gain a piece of the status conferred to the “ big man.” In
attempting to emulate the “big man,” people worked harder and intensified their
production. Likewise, everyone in our culture knows where to find the letters BMW. Our
emulation of the wealthy causes us to intensify our production as we work harder to pay
car payments, insurance payments, repair bills, and health costs. The car in turn
transforms economically idle barrels of oil, minerals, and other resources into active
wealth and economic power. A gallon of oil in the ground is economically worthless.
Pumped up and burned, that oil generates money, jobs, votes, and beliefs. The
intensification of production and consumption influences cultural selection, causing us to
idealize the auto and ignore its costs. This is the inferno effect in action.
We will never overcome the ecological catastrophe of autocentrism until we
understand its sources and displace its functions. We have to create economic activity
that is not dependent on the inferno effect.
153
Elegance
There were a lot of tools around the farm from times past, times before gasoline
and electric power came to replace the force of the human hand. Human muscle is so
much less persistent than the machine, and so much smarter, it only makes sense that
hand tools would have to be more elegant. Elegance is not the heavy application of iron
force. Elegance is art, fine cut metal set in close tolerance, free to move but not slop,
enough material to brace the shock but not weigh the motion. Most of all, it is elegance
of concept, enough thought, enough patient effort, to do what needs to be done, and not
burden down the task with excessive material or thoughtless force. We live in the age
when gasoline has washed away elegance.
Gasoline machines have changed their appearance more than their character.
The iron of machinery used to be exposed for the eye to see, now it is covered over in
candy-colored plastic in the cars and machines that everybody drives. But the naked
force beneath the plastic clothing has not changed. Everything has gotten bigger, but
every economy of scale is a dis-economy of energy.
The old tools speak to a time when, for lack of greater mechanical power,
elegance was the only option. The farm was a lesson in the old time ways. There were
hand-held auger drills from before electric drills came along, back from when they used
to pin the barns and buildings together with wooden pins instead of steel nails. The old
auger drills had wide T shaped handles. If you sharpened them right, they would bite
their persistent way through any piece of wood without making you work too hard. They
were good for boring pretend oil wells in the dirt too, but Dad never thought highly of
that use.
There were old crosscut saws on the farm. A crosscut saw is a long toothy steel
blade with a handle at each end. Two people draw it back and forth, kind of like a
forester's version of a game of seesaw. We practiced on rotten logs at the farm till we
were pretty good at it, which was just about enough wood sawing as far as we figured.
The old farmhouse where the family used to live was full of gadgets and
mysteries. Old letters left in a pile -- one could only imagine what secrets they might
contain. Me and my brothers used to go in there every once in a while, and plunder for
hours through pots with holes, dusty books, and old papers that didn't live up to our
television-induced hopes of intrigue. There were old gizmos from when people first
started getting more inventive than careful. The result was things like an iron hand crank
potato peeler that involved a lot more effort than result. Though we peeled a fair pile of
potatoes with it, just to make sure somebody hadn't missed something.
The old house was just out in front of where our great-great grandfather first built
a log cabin. The old house was built in the late 1800s. The family lived there without
running water or electricity until the 1960s. When they brought in electricity, they could
not string the wires through the walls, because the walls were already built. So they
stapled the thin wires on the outsides of the walls, thin wires carrying small power to
lamps, glowing down on them late in the evening as the old folks sat and rested from a
hard day’s work in the fields.
154
We couldn't afford to hire anyone to fix things, so we had to do it ourselves.
That's how we came to be electricians. We would string up wires to run electric fence
chargers or whatever else we needed to run on the farm. Working in the old house
always stirred the dust settled down on top any flat surface. It was an acrid and familiar
dust, ghost dust with a smell like other old houses in those parts. We learned how to
pull wires in a new house too. Only then it was not dust that met the nostrils, but the
gassy smell of new plastic covering heavier cables.
The old house, like many of its kind, had a main fuse box that ran on 30 amps.
The whole house would run on about 30 amps. In a new house, one circuit would be
thirty amps. The whole house would run on 200 amps. In our time, we had so much
more power than the old-time people, going so much faster and moving so many more
things around, tearing up so much more ground. Still I had to wonder, for all that power,
how much did if affect how people felt?
It’s like now we have put so much power in such small places that it has affected
us. You can buy a chainsaw that cuts right through a tree. No one uses a crosscut saw
anymore. Funny thing is, instead of making it so you can do more, in some ways it
makes it so you can do less. You forget how far you can walk, or ride a bike, or how big
a tree you can cut with an axe or a hand saw. The distances get longer; the boards get
fatter. You don't even realize that you can do it another way. And when the machine
isn't there, all you are left with is the strong impression that it is too thick or too far to do
it on your own.
155
The Inferno Effect and Cultural
Selection
The implications of the inferno effect in our society are staggering. A tree in the
forest may have some personal meaning to someone, but it does not exist in economic
terms. Once a tree is cut and turned into paper, it has economic value. As resources are
processed and consumed, they generate economic activity. The owner of the forest
makes money and spends it, generating economic activity. In purely economic terms, it
does not matter what is done with the resources; as long as they are bought and sold,
the effect is the same. As far as the evolution of our industrial culture is concerned, it is
beneficial if resources are expended inefficiently, or even destroyed outright. Such
destruction serves as economic heat, stimulating the further extraction of resources and
generating still more economic activity. There are other factors that influence how much
resources we consume, but the inferno effect selects for the absolute maximization of
resource destruction.
The more barrels of oil we burn, the more dollars change hands, the more
economic activity is generated. Society as a whole grows richer as a result. John
Manyard Keynes is the most well known economist to suggest the link between
increased consumption and the growth of wealth in society as a whole:
“[T]he growth of capital depends not at all on a low propensity to consume
but is, on the contrary, held back by It ... [M]easures for the redistribution of
incomes in a way likely to raise the propensity to consume may prove positively
favourable to the growth of capital.” John Manyard Keynes292
The inferno effect serves as a powerful economic stimulus, because of the
enormous productivity of our industrial economy. As a result of the power of our
machines, we can extract resources on a huge scale. The resources themselves thus
292
Keynes, 1960, first published in 1935 p.373. Keynes was arguing against the
“classical” economists, who favored saving money as an economic and moral
imperative, what we would now call “tight money” policies. Keynes favored redistribution
of wealth and increased government spending, even if it had to be deficit-financed, as
an economic stimulus. With the threat of socialist and other popular movements arising
in the 1930s, social science decided to follow Keynes and advocate the redistribution of
wealth. Keynes suggested redistribution would serve the same functions as socialism
without so much disruption to the existing economic system (Keynes, 1960, p.378). With
the business intensification of the 1980s and 1990s, economics has once again turned
toward frugality as if it were a new insight. Macro-economic frugality, then as now, is
based in a power struggle regarding whether capital will be scarce and largely
controlled by the upper classes (as advocated by classical economist) or more evenly
and widely distributed.
156
become very cheap, and the more of them we use in our economy, the more economic
activity we generate. We take those economically nonexistent trees and turn them into
multiplying money. We believe it is a good thing because cultural selection tells us it is
so.
Shelter
We have looked at how the inferno effect influences our choices concerning food
and transportation. The inferno effect also influences housing and energy use.
Concerning housing, the kinds of shelters human beings use vary enormously, as does
the amount of space considered necessary and appropriate to house one person.
“A most striking aspect of housing when considered comparatively is its
extraordinary diversity. There must be many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
distinct kinds of dwellings, varying in form, shape, materials, size, spatial
organization, and in what meanings, if any, they communicate, and how dwelling
and larger milieu are linked and used.” Amos Rapoport293
Village peoples build an extraordinary diversity of shelters. Some African
cultures build round houses that are placed in circular fashion. The houses are thought
of as human beings and are named after parts of the body. The house may be thought
of as a womb.294 Some villagers build square houses in rows that develop into grids as
the village expands, as Westerners would find familiar.295 Other villagers, such as the
Wichita Indians of North America and the Yanomamo of the Brazilian Amazon, built or
build a large round common house for dozens of people to live in.296 Each family would
have a space inside the large communal house.
The ideal housing of North Americas follows consistent patterns. Stretching
across the continent, there is an endless spread of houses. Consider for a moment how
consistent these houses tend to be. They are most often set apart from each other at a
significant distance. They are generally squarish, and made to maximize the
appearance of wealth to the casual observer.
In our society we idealize large houses. It is not at all uncommon for a North
American to live by themselves or with one other person in a house with eight or more
rooms. The mansion with fifty unused rooms is our ideal. Each house also has its own
appliances and utilities. The amount of resources consumed to construct, heat and cool
individual large houses is enormous.
293
Rapoport, 1990, p.14
294
Bourdier, 1985, p.155-174
295
Oliver, 1987, p.46-48
296
Oliver, 1987, p.60, Chagnon, 1968
157
In the long history of our species, this fetish of ours is quite strange. Gatherers
built simple, temporary shelters out of branches, leaves, and brush as available.297 The
brush shelters of the ! Kung of southern Africa were very small houses where a family
would sleep. Likewise the well-known igloos of Eskimos.298 Villagers might put a family
in a house the size of your living room. It was not necessarily because they could not
afford the time or resources to build anything larger. It’s that they never idealized large
personal structures as we do. They also had social skills we lack that allowed them to
live more closely with one another.
It is easy for us to look at how we live and simply think of it as ordinary and
natural. But our housing patterns are an anthropological anomaly. People all over the
world have chosen to live in all kinds of shelters, in many different forms. In our society,
we idealize freedom. But are we all freely choosing the same thing? Or are we
conforming to cultural pressures? Why have we idealized large, personalized housing?
A complete answer to that question would be beyond our scope here, but there are a
couple of ways that our housing choices relate to the inferno effect and intensification.
An enormous amount of resources are used to build individualized housing.
Construction and the industries that support it are a significant part of our economy. Our
housing choices also fuel the inferno effect by means of the ongoing energy inputs
expended to heat and cool our homes. Let us consider for a moment the “discovery” of
home insulation as it relates to the inferno effect. Historically, houses in the United
States have been built with wooden boards for an outer wall, and boards or plaster to
form an inner wall. Such a house is virtually uninsulated. Millions of people still live in
such houses, often heated with fossil fuel.
As much as we might think about the matter, we would probably imagine that we
only recently started insulating houses because we only recently figured it out. But that
is not the case at all. One could put nearly any fluffy organic material in the open wall
cavities and the attic of traditional wood frame houses and dramatically improve their
insulation value. The Masai in Africa stuff leaves in the walls of their houses to serve as
insulation. Other cultures have used dried seaweed or other materials.299 Are we really
so much less bright that we could not have figured that out a long time ago, or are there
other factors at work?
In modern times, the average modern home in the United States is built with a
wall about four inches thick, usually insulated with fiberglass. Insulation is rated by Rvalue. The higher the R-value, the higher the insulation. The average modern U.S.
home wall has an R-value of about 12. To increase the insulation value of the house
several fold would require only a fraction of the money normally spent on small
aesthetic details.300
297
Turnbull, 1962, p.64-65
298
Oliver, 1987, p.16-23
299
Oliver, 1987, p.68,171
300
Apart from writing books, I work as a “jack of all trades.” Among other things, I build
houses. The information presented here is based on that experience.
158
There is clear evidence that other, thermally sound forms of housing have long
been ignored in favor of housing that stimulates consumption. One interesting example
is straw bale housing. Nearly one hundred years ago in the American West, some poor
farmers who could not afford scarce wood started building houses out of straw bales.
Straw buildings were also built in the southeast. Some of these houses are still standing
today, and much to the consternation of some carpenters, straw bale construction is
experiencing a modern revival. A straw bale wall has an R-value of forty or fifty, about
four times that of a standard house. Straw bale houses are also more fire retardant, and
more resistant to insects than traditional wood-frame houses.301
So if straw houses were so nifty and warm, why did people build so few of them?
Straw advocates say that straw bale houses represented a low-status form of
construction, while wood houses represented a more respected form of housing.302
As far as culture is concerned, the gates of choice are wide open. We could have
idealized any form of housing, from large round communal housing to small huts, from
straw bale houses to uninsulated wood frame houses. That leads us again to the central
question, why have we idealized large, personalized, poorly insulated houses? I think
there are two primary answers to that question -- status differentiation and the inferno
effect.
Large houses serve as a clear symbol of wealth and status that most Americans
seek to emulate. For something to be an effective symbol of status differentiation, it has
to be inaccessible to most people most of the time. I don't live in a mansion, and neither
do most of you. And when you and I see someone who does, we know they have more
money than we do. We idealize personal mini-estates -- suburban housing -- that mimic
the wealthy estates of European nobility. That is why the houses are set apart.
The purpose of an intensifier of production and consumption, be they “ big man”
or yuppie, is to be a model of appropriate behavior and a symbol of the rewards
bestowed upon people who practice that appropriate behavior. Thus wealthy people
with large houses in our society serve as symbols of the rewards ordinary people can
expect, in some measure, if they intensify their own production.
We idealize a form of housing that maximizes resource consumption, both in
constructing and in daily living. Is that the result of cheap energy, or evolutionary
“intent”? Some of both perhaps, but to the extent that the hidden machine of cultural
selection actively seeks to destroy our future environment, we must understand it and
gain control over it. Our idealized housing accelerates consumption. A lump of coal in
the ground does not exist economically. A pile of coal burned in a stove or power plant
generates wealth that then multiplies its way through society. Cultural selection
301
Straw bale houses are fire retardant because the straw is packed very tightly when it
is bailed. There is not enough air inside of the bales to allow the straw to burn. Wooden
houses, by contrast, have hollow walls or walls insulated with low density material such
as fiberglass. The relative openness of the walls in a wooden house makes them more
susceptible to fire. Straw bale houses are stuccoed inside and out. This stuccoing seals
the bales, and, combined with the density of the bales, makes it difficult for rodents or
insects to live in the walls.
302
Out on Bale, 1037 E. Linden St., Tucson AZ., 85719.
159
responds to that wealth and we believe that a form of housing that requires large
ongoing inputs of energy is good. The inferno effect is a powerful and hidden factor
affecting intimate choices about how we live.
Energy
Our use of energy in industrial society has been guided by the inferno effect. We
have already touched on this point as regards the use of energy for automobiles and
warming our large, private houses. We use energy in many other forms as well. One
large use of energy in our society is electricity. The predominant source of fuel for
generating electrical power in the U.S. is coal -- with nuclear, oil, gas, hydropower, wind
and solar making up the rest.303
The electric utility companies have historically sought to increase the
consumption of electricity. Traditionally, electric utilities made money off of each
kilowatt-hour they sold. The more they sold, the more money they made. Electric utilities
have actively promoted the consumption of electricity by encouraging people to install
electrical resistance heating -- a highly inefficient and expensive form of heating -regardless of how well their homes were insulated. They would offer cut-rate mortgages
through banks based on houses being built without a chimney -- so the house would
always have to use electric heat in some form. They would offer electricity as if it were a
wholesale item, cutting the price per unit for customers who consumed more, thus
encouraging consumption. They have and continue to encourage the construction of
houses with all electric appliances. The list could go on for quite a while.304
At this point in history, many electric utilities have ceased trying to maximize the
volume of electricity they sell. Now, many are offering electricity as a service rather than
as a commodity. This allows the utilities to offer real conservation as part of that service
without committing financial suicide. This conservation approach is financially feasible
only in states with the appropriate regulations.305
A sizable minority of electric utilities still operate on the principle of volume sales.
Their favorite sales item now is air-source heat pumps with electrical resistance backup
heating. Especially in cooler climates, this is a very inefficient source for home
heating.306 Heat pumps are a little more efficient than poor quality air conditioners. The
utilities as a matter of public relations say they are supporting conservation by
promoting the use of air source heat pumps instead of air conditioners. At the same
303
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1988, p.547
304
Fuel Oil Magazine, Sept. 1989, p.44, Rauber, 1991, p.39-41
305
Lovins, 1985, p.19. Amory Lovins has had a significant impact promoting
“negawatts,” electricity that is “generated” as a result of being conserved rather than
expended.
306
Wobler, 1994, p.6-7
160
time, they are quite clear that they want to increase their “market share” of the winter
heating market, in spite of the costs in inefficiency.
Home appliances are also responsible for the consumption of significant amounts
of energy as well. While advertising literature from electric utilities often waxes poetic
about the convenience and inexpensiveness of electric appliances, it is clear that
technological change has been guided away from efficiency by the inferno effect and
cheap energy. The average refrigerator made in the 1940s was more efficient than the
average refrigerator made in the 1980s.307
In our energy use patterns, we can see a marriage of convenience between
vested interests and the inferno effect. Electric utilities can, in the proper regulatory
climate, profit from promoting electricity consumption. Meanwhile, the coal that they dig
up, burn, and sell as electricity stimulates economic activity and generates jobs. (In this
case the number of jobs generated is limited. Conservation can actually generate more
jobs, but cultural selection is a reactive, non-conscious process that responds to
existing effects rather than potentialities.) This economic stimulus affects our belief
system via cultural selection and we idealize consumption.
The Preservation of Unnatural States
We idealize symbols of wealth that are scarce or tend to self-destruct quickly,
thus needing constant replenishment. We idealize big houses that are hard to heat, with
new paint and large, well-trimmed, weedless lawns. The fact that it takes a lot of work to
maintain such a lawn is precisely why we idealize it. We idealize the shiny and new
precisely because nothing stays shiny and new for long. Newness is an effective symbol
of wealth because only the wealthy can afford to constantly replenish it.
We fill our houses with furniture that is supposed to look a certain way, and
discard it when it does not. We discard an old washing machine because it is old, or
because it is the wrong color. We accelerate our consumption at every turn. We buy
cars, jet skies, boats, and other recreational items. We have a cultural belief that we are
supposed to be clothed in certain ways, and this belief leads to a large consumption of
clothing items. This is not simply because we can afford it; it is a belief in our society
that new is better. These beliefs are the result of cultural selection operating on the
economic effects of accelerated consumption.
Is it really true that we try to waste as much as possible because it generates
more economic activity? There are several ways of looking at the inferno effect as it
operates within our culture. One is that the inferno effect actively selects for the
accelerated consumption of resources -- that it operates as a self-reinforcing loop
continuously magnifying the exploitation of natural resources. By this way of looking at
it, the inferno effect actively seeks the maximal destruction of natural resources.
Another way of looking at it is simply that energy is cheap, and we have had little
motivation to aggressively conserve. By this way of looking at it, our culture does not
actively seek to destroy resources but rather simply allows their destruction. Even
307
Alternative Energy Sourcebook, 1990, p.189
161
though expending resources generates economic activity, those resources still cost
money to the person buying them. The consumer thus has some incentive to conserve.
Culture is a nonlinear, and all of these factors come into play. The inferno effect actively
seeks to destroy resources as fast as possible. All these other factors affect our level of
consumption, but it is the inferno effect that is the least understood and the most
destructive.
The Politics of The Inferno Effect
To say that the inferno effect created our drive for all of the material things we
desire is not to say that these are not “real” needs. They are culturally defined needs,
and we are cultural beings. That makes them quite real. But at another level they are
symbolic transferences of other needs. We want to be loved and respected, and our
culture symbolically ties the attainment of material wealth with that love and respect. We
are deeply cultural beings. The association between wealth and social acceptance
holds enormous power. We seek wealth and status because our culture tells us to. We
idealize consumption in this society not because it is human nature, but because it is
the lifeblood of our economy. That is our nature.
Even though the messages of culture are powerful, there is also the possibility
that we could re-educate ourselves to want different things. I am certainly not the first to
advocate such an idea. We are going to achieve sustainability only if we can
simultaneously change both our beliefs and our economics. If we only change beliefs,
the economics will not automatically follow. If a lot of people started conserving on their
own initiative without any other changes in society, unemployment would escalate, and
the cultural systems would operate to quickly correct that.
Our economy is growth-based, and this growth is based on the inferno effect.
Political success in this country is determined by the ability of politicians to take credit
for economic growth. Any significant slowdown of the inferno effect would mean a
reduction in growth, economic activity, and employment. Cooling in the inferno effect
without creating other sources of employment would be political suicide. Our economy
is completely dependent on the inferno effect; the greater fraction of employment is
directly tied to artificially elevated consumption. Anyone who tried to cool the inferno
effect within the present structure would be politically lynched rather quickly. The
economic and political results of the inferno effect are sufficient to drive the process
forward with great force regardless of the impacts on the environment, our culture or our
long term health. At this point in our history, virtually our entire economy is constructed
to fuel the inferno effect.
Because of non-conscious cultural evolution, we have gotten ourselves trapped.
We are trapped in an economy whose structure and health is completely dependent on
an enormous flow of resources. Political stability within the present structure is
dependent on the inferno effect. It is a very peculiar thing we have done. We are
destroying resources on an enormous scale for short term political reasons. These
reasons are pitifully small when one looks at the greater picture and what is at stake.
For the sake of winning the political support and cultural backing of personalities and
162
companies presently existing we are destroying resources that will never again be
available to the thousands of generations that will follow us. We are taking out
enormous loans on the future, using up resources that our children will have to do
without. We are filling the pollution sinks, so that generations to come will have to be far
more careful about the pollutants they generate. We are doing all of this quite blindly,
because cultural selection tells us that our present economic system is right in the eyes
of reason and God. It is imperative that we develop a more conscious evolution.
163
CHAPTER TEN
Angels
When I was still very young, an angel came to me. When the midday sun
relented its searing siege, the sand on the road would release its sharp hot bite and
settle at blood body warm, I used to walk with Angela beside me. So proudly I would
show her across the fields. Day after day she never tired. I would tell her what all the
plants were, how they got there, all the stories of the Old Place. I would show her the
iron plows and tractors, the rusty bent steel and chain, the old time tools. She would
come out to the pond with me, where time would stop in the eternal evening and big fish
would swim for our wonder in the shallow water.
At night when no one was there, Angela would be there with me. She was tall
and broad across the shoulders, more strong than beautiful. Every night she was there,
offering the forbidden unthinkable touch of another human being. I dare not believe but
only imagine. Close my eyes and let the whole universe flow into the secret silent
chamber in my mind. There to make the impossible world where they cannot see. She
came and set my soul at ease. Each and every night, from then for all these years to
come, she came and made it okay -- and I slept.
And when they strapped my undomesticated self in the hot stale and
overdressed classroom, my mind falling fatigue in Orwellian silence and stuffy shallowbreathing uniformity, my mind would slip away to the place where Angela and I could
meet. We kindled fire and rage, passion and compassion to meet their cotton-minded
quietude with struggle. There we could be for each other as no one was, touch and feel
and be all that was not.
In the movies and in the music, I heard and saw what was not to be touched, not
to be found in this real world. There was someone else's Angel, with smooth skin
surrounded by hair rolling waving down to sit with bitter kindness on a collar falling
across the sacred and untouchable. There other people sang of Angels lost and found,
all in a world so far away as only to be reached by pure imagination. They sang to me
across the air waves, of melancholy and hope, hope against hope that someone could
reach me here.
164
I brought Angela there in times of struggle, fear and loneliness. She stood with
me, bore me through the struggles. I took her with me in her faithful companionship to
the hell on the other side where the mind gives way.
And she is with me still, now in times of so much greater peace. I used to wonder
if Angela was a suitable companion, composed of the ether that wants so dearly to be
real. But it is fine now; she comes to remind me that there is still tranquility beyond the
lost moment. More than anything, she made it alright to love, to leave aside the selves
of brick and sharp steel, and construct a self of my choosing. She was the only being
who ever loved that self.
I could have touched someone, someone real, if I would have given them myself,
surrendered my mind. Angela and I built a different place.
xxx
I go out sometimes, and patch people's houses. People who the government is
not going to help, people whose kin have no help left to give. I was working on one old
house, a big old lap-board farm house, tall and stately in its day. Now its stateliness was
betrayed by the cracked paint and trash scattered in the yard.
There was an older woman, a few kids, a middle age fellow with a rough beard
and Southern pride. Their bathtub had stopped working, old galvanized steel pipes so
rusted they had closed shut like clogged arteries. I asked the man to take me to the
hardware store for parts. We climbed in an old car, far too big for its purpose, with paint
that used to have color and doors that creaked when you open them. We were riding
and he started talking to me, telling me he has to talk, tell me his troubles, or he might
go crazy or kill somebody.
He is telling me about a woman he knew and fell in love with. How she was the
perfect woman, and they the perfect match. He explained to me about how he loved her
pure and strong, and about how she killed him. Since she left him, he never recovered.
His life is all but destroyed now, hanging on the edge.
And when you and I dance this life together now, and I hurt, it is not always clear
what is mine, and what is yours. We dance together, then we spin apart without control.
This great pain arises in me, and I say you made this pain. This is not my old pain, not
my pain for when mother did not have the time, not my pain from when they left the boy
alone because boys are tough and don't need love, not my pain from when the wouldbe friends saw a weakness and leapt in merciless attack. We dance apart together now,
and I say this my pain is yours?
I can walk down the street, and if I am in a particular place in my mind, the pretty
symbols introduce themselves, and then walk inside. I want you to help me, I want you
to save me, I think I want you to love me. You have power over me, the power to take
me to heaven or send me to hell, no matter what you know or intend.
I suppose, under the proper circumstances, I might resent that power, it might
make me angry. Like when Sara used to go jogging. She was born in a body that looks
like the ones in the catalogs, with the long blond hair, gentle curves shaping smooth
skin. And the man drives by to spit on her.
165
Liberationist Beware
All over the world, men have more power and privilege than women. Women are
constrained economically, politically, and sexually. Why is our world dominated by men?
If you toss the question to the average person, you are likely to get answers
relating to fixed traits such as male aggressiveness, male physical strength, or human
nature. Some say women, because they bear children, are natural caretakers and not
as interested in political affairs. Another common explanation is that male supremacy
arose among a specific people -- such as war-faring pastoralists -- who then spread it
all over the world. Such explanations are inadequate. If male supremacy were related to
fixed traits such as physical strength, then there would be no cultures that practiced
gender equality. Men and women have had equal or nearly equal power in many
societies. Fixed traits do not explain why some cultures are highly male-supremacist
and others are not. And physical strength cannot be said to have much bearing on who
is elected to political office or appointed CEO of a corporation.
Male supremacy did not arise among one set of people and then spread. On
every continent on the earth, male supremacy arose spontaneously in dozens if not
hundreds of different cultures. Male supremacy represents a pattern of parallel
evolution among many human cultures all over the world.
Why would so many cultures in so many places choose to give more power and
privilege to men? Part of the answer lies in understanding where we stand at the
present time in relation to the greater cultural evolution of our species. Gatherers lived
for tens of thousands of years in relative balance with their environments.308 As
populations grew, gatherers spread themselves all over the world. Humans who find
themselves crowded seem to much prefer dispersion over warfare.
In more recent millennia, our earth started to become more crowded. Human
cultures turned to the intensification of production to meet the needs of growing
populations. Our world is so dominated by men at this point in history because large
and powerful cultures all over the world stand at the end of a long history of
intensification and warfare. These powerful cultures have overrun many of the smaller,
more egalitarian cultures. Even though male supremacy is ubiquitous in our time, there
is nothing “natural” about it at all. It is the outgrowth of a specific set of ecological
stressors occurring in parallel fashion all over the world.
In Western society, women have in recent decades regained a greater measure
of power and equality. We must understand our descent into male supremacy, as well
as our recent partial reemergence from it. Our descent into male supremacy was not a
conscious choice; neither was our reemergence. If we do not develop a more conscious
308
This “relative balance” of gatherers probably included the extinction of many species
of larger animals (Diamond, 1992). However, gatherer populations appear to have
remained relatively stable in size and healthy in stature for tens of thousands of years,
while agricultural and now industrial society has yet to create a stable civilization for
more than a few hundred years.
166
cultural evolution, it is likely that we will again descend into harsh forms of male
supremacy.
The Roots of Male Supremacy
We understand history or we live as its slaves. The long history of male
supremacy begins with gathering cultures. Studies of gatherers indicate that men and
women in many such cultures had near equal power and privileges.309 Such was true of
the ! Kung who live the Kalahari in southern Africa and the Mbuti (Pygmies) who live in
the Ituri rainforests of central Africa. In cultures such as these, men and women have
separate roles -- men hunt and women gather -- but such roles are not strictly or
punitively defined. Women may participate in net-hunting, as among the Mbuti, or they
may kill small animals while they are gathering. Men may gather while they are hunting.
Women have the strongest positions in gathering cultures where both men and women
both hunt and gather.310 Women hold a significant economic role in such cultures.
In gathering societies, shamans or healers are more likely to be men, but
women are not necessarily excluded from these roles. The ! Kung practiced night-long
healing dances during which healers would dance for hours until they fell into a trance
and proceeded to heal people. Some of these healers were women.311 In gathering
cultures, women may participate in the decision-making processes of the group. Men
take care of children. Some people are recognized as being more attractive than others,
and people everywhere adorn their bodies, but there is not a hierarchy of attractiveness
based on access to particular clothing or adornments. People devote considerable time
and energy to sexual intrigue, but there is no institutionalized hierarchy of who is most
sexually attractive.312
Even though men dominate the more “political” aspects of society even among
gathering cultures (such as leadership and healing), anthropologists have pointed out
that it may be a Western bias to look at such domination as male supremacy.313 Public
power in gathering groups does not convey the privileges that it does in Western
society. In gathering cultures, power of any kind is limited, and women have
considerable influence. Men and women hold power in different spheres. Whether such
represents true equality is not clear.
309
O’Kelly, 1986, p.23. This is a well written, comprehensive book providing extensive
cross-cultural perspectives on women’s roles and male supremacy.
310
O’Kelly, 1986, p.21
311
Katz, 1982. Richard Katz’s Boiling Energy, Community Healing Among the Kalahari
Kung is an amazing story about traditional healing.
312
For an interesting account of !Kung society, including sexuality, from a woman’s
perspective, see Marjorie Shostak’s, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman
(Shostack, 1981).
313
Harris, 1993, p.350
167
The Planters of Seeds
A significant male bias has historically operated within anthropology, both in the
gathering of ethnographic information and in its analyses. With the growth of academic
feminism, it has become clear that among horticulturalists and small-scale
agriculturalists, some are patriarchal, but some societies are also egalitarian in regard to
gender or close to it. In some neolithic societies, female deities were worshiped and
women held more power than in recent times.314 Those were the times before
population growth and warfare pushed such cultures into ever-escalating degrees of
intensification. In the absence of the need for intensification or warfare, women are
likely to hold stronger positions in society. We discussed the Cretes earlier in the
context of the growth of democracy and individualism. They are an example of a culture
in which women held a strong position. In their case, the sea served as a moat, so they
were not highly militarized, and they were relatively wealthy as a result of trade.315 They
worshiped female deities. There is significant evidence that many small agricultural
societies held women in relatively high esteem before modern colonial contact.
Women held the strongest positions in small cultures that practiced long-distance
warfare. This was the case among the Iroquois, who traveled hundreds of miles to fight
with distant foes. While the men were gone on distant travails, women were left in
charge of the home village. Women appointed and could remove the village (male)
elders who made decisions. While this is not equality, it is a much stronger position than
women hold in many other cultures.316
Among the Nayar of Kerala India before the twentieth century, men were longdistance warriors. Women formed and organized large, extended families. In
patriarchal cultures, women’s sexuality is tightly controlled. Among the Nayar, women
could take lovers as they wished. A man would come to stay with the woman’s family,
and any children would belong to the woman’s group. In anthropological terms, the
Nayar were matrilineal (descent traced through women) and matrilocal (men reside in
women’s residence after “marriage”).317 A child might not know their biological father,
314
Eisler, 1987
315
Eisler, 1987
316
O’Kelly, 1986, p.48
317
Women hold much stronger positions in cultures that practice matrilocality. Under
such circumstances, women and their mothers, sisters and other relatives form a
powerful core. Men cannot afford to abuse women under such circumstances. In such
cultures, divorce tends to be easily available, and people are not terribly concerned with
chastity, sexual control, ritual precision, or who has fathered a particular child. Women
hold the least power in cultures that are patrilineal (decent traced through the men) and
practice patrilocality (women come to live with man’s family after marriage). In this case,
a core group of male kinsmen hold power. In patrilocal cultures, men often marry young
168
but that didn’t matter because they were well taken care of within the women’s family.318
Women were free to take more than one “husband,” thus making the Nayar one of the
few cultures to practice polyandry. Women held great power in this arrangement, but
men were still the primary decision makers.319 Women’s roles were prominent, but male
political and military roles still held more power.
Other small-scale farming cultures are highly male supremacist, such as the
Yanomamo of the Brazilian Amazon. The Yanomamo have become known as the
“fierce people” as a result of the use of that term by their most prominent ethnographer,
but the degree of male domination and fierceness in that culture has probably been
exaggerated.320 Nonetheless, Yanomamo do value fierce men who can defend the
group against intimidation and violence from other groups. Yanomamo men raid other
villages to try to steal young women to take home as wives.321 Wives are likely to be
beaten.
Among other small farming societies who are militarized and ecologically
stressed, women may be subject to extreme abuse. Among some cultures, such as the
Hagen of New Guinea, women who step out of the social roles ascribed to their gender
are subjected to gang rape by men.322
Why are some horticulturalists male-supremacist and some not? The central
defining factor of women’s status in all human societies is their economic role. If
women are central to the productive processes of a culture, their roles are likely to be
strong. If women are economically marginalized, their roles are weak.323 There is a “
breadwinner effect” in human cultures.324 The one who brings home the food or the
money has a lot more power. This is true in primitive societies as well as in modern
wage-earning societies. Even if women do not hunt or earn wages, they still work quite
hard and their roles are significant for the survival of the family and the society. But if
their work is confined to the domestic sphere, their political power is constrained.
women who come to live amidst the patrilineal clan who offer her little solace or
protection (O’Kelly, 1986, p.42-43). As most human cultures in the world today are
male-supremacist, most cultures traditionally have practiced patrilocality (Harris, 1993,
p.282).
318
Jeffrey, 1992, p.34
319
Jeffrey, 1992, p.39
320
Chagnon is the most well-known ethnographer of the Yanomamo (Chagnon, 1968).
But a more balanced account of the Yanomamo can be found in Johnson, 1987.
321
Johnson, 1987, p.101-130
322
O’Kelly, 1986, p.54
323
Chafetz, 1984, p.13-22
324
Harris, 1985, p.241
169
War is another critical factor that influences the status of women. In cultures that
are peaceful or practice long-distance warfare, women hold a higher status. The
Yanomamo practice warfare with groups close by. They must be constantly vigilant for
surprise attacks. Stronger groups route weaker groups and chase them away from their
life-sustaining gardens. Under such circumstances, the survival of the group becomes
dependent on the fierce male leaders and warriors.
Many historians ascribe the cause of war to simple crowding or the presence of
stealable food, such as storable grains. Many groups of people live at very high
population densities without practicing organized warfare, while other more dispersed
groups do fight in an organized manner. Primitive warfare has other impacts that may
act as hidden causes of warfare. When small groups fight with each other, they create a
“no man’s land” between them. These areas serve as natural preserves for wild animals
(thus preventing over-hunting) and allow the forest to regenerate from slash-and-burn
cycles.325 And among states, war serves the colonial purpose of gathering natural
resources from far and wide. War is not simply a response to overcrowding.
Regardless of the causes of war, there is no doubting that it degrades the
position of women in human societies. Among the Yanomamo as among many warring
cultures, female children are devalued and sometimes killed. Some have suggested that
female infanticide and male fierceness form a cultural-ecological complex that serves to
limit population growth by limiting the number of women.326 This kind of functional
description of harsh institutions to some people sounds like a moral justification for such
institutions. But there is an enormous difference between understanding the world as it
is, and making it different. The former, in fact, makes the latter possible.
It is important to go beyond establishing simple correlations to understanding
causes. Women’s social status correlates with their economic roles. When men are
glorified as warriors, women are particularly degraded. But how do these institutions of
male supremacy evolve?
As we pointed out in an earlier chapter, some male hunters in gathering
societies have multiple wives. This was true but rare among the ! Kung, who were
325
Vayda, 1968
326
Many pre-state, pre-industrial cultures tried to limit their population growth. (This is
discussed further in another chapter.) They did this through abstention, prolonged
lactation, abortion and female infanticide. In a subsistence culture, extra children are not
just an inconvenience or a financial burden, they can compromise the ability of a mother
and family to support their children. From a population-control perspective, limiting the
number of males does not effectively limit population growth, especially in a culture
where men have multiple wives. Limiting the number of women, however, does limit the
rate of population growth. A man can father many children, but women can only bear a
limited number. In the absence of modern contraception, population is much more
effectively limited by limiting the number of women rather than men. Thus we see
another ecological role for primitive warfare. Male supremacy, warfare, and female
infanticide come to represent a complex that serves to increase a society’s competitive
advantage, intensify production with sexual reward, and limit population growth (Harris,
1977, p.56-62).
170
egalitarian, more common among Australian groups ( Arunta, Tiwi) who relied more on
hunting for food and who were more male supremacist. Those cultures who are entirely
dependent on male hunters -- such as the Innuit (Eskimo) -- are the most male
dominated of gatherers. This rewarding of male hunters with greater sexual access has
its roots in the more fragile ecological place of animal foods. It is also the very
beginnings of male supremacy.
Gatherers become farmers to feed growing populations, and cheerleading “ big
men” arise to spur people to intensify production. These “big men” are not wealthier; the
only reward they receive for their efforts is social respect and greater sexual access via
polygyny. Sexual access and social status are so closely bound together that they
become inseparable.
“Big men” are also war leaders. Warfare especially seems to require powerful
motivational systems.
“Men that in family-level societies would be taught restraint or expelled
from the group, among the Yonomamo gain extra wives and a following of men.
But, being [fierce], they are truly fearless and expose themselves and those
around them to danger: despite efforts to restrain them, they lose control and
maim or kill other men, bringing the wrath of their victims’ families down on
themselves and their close relatives and inflicting on everyone the costly
consequences of a state of war. There is seemingly no alternative, since less
combative groups are bullied and exploited by stronger groups who covet their
women or want to displace them from their lands.” Allen Johnson327
Among cultures who live in a state of war, the ability of a group of people to
motivate and mobilize warriors can determine its survival. The warrior’s reward is social
respect, and multiple wives and lovers. Women are disempowered and are taught to be
submissive. One could imagine that a culture could send both men and women to
battle. Even though men are somewhat stronger on average, the presence of women
warriors would create an advantage of numbers. But among pre-industrial cultures that
engage in ongoing warfare, warriors must be trained to be aggressive, arrogant, and
fearless. If one gender was going to serve as a sexual reward for another gender, it
would not work for a culture to train both genders to be warriors. Consistently, human
cultures have trained only men to be warriors.
As human cultures grew beyond the level of small scale horticulture and
agriculture, they began to form large tribes, clans, and states. State-level societies
formed classes and castes, and social hierarchy solidified. It is among state-level
societies that women’s roles are most constricted. In traditional Moslem societies, the
practice of Purdah confines to the household compound for all of their adult lives. If a
woman ever has any contact with a male non-relative, she is considered sexually
impure and must be killed to save the family from disgrace.328 This is but an extreme
327
Johnson, 1987, p.129. This quote also makes the point that I made in an earlier
chapter, that social “problems” are often functional aspects of culture, the lesser of evils
in a non-conscious system.
328
O’Kelly, 1986, p.92
171
representation of a trait that all male supremacist societies share. If women’s sexuality
is to be a reward, it must be controlled. Thus as human societies become male
supremacist, they become concerned with female virginity and sexual chastity in
marriage. While women’s sexuality is tightly controlled, men have sexual access to
multiple women through polygyny or promiscuity (the expectation that men are
supposed to “sow their wild oats” while women should remain chaste). Whereas
matrilineal cultures are often not concerned with who fathered a particular child, among
highly patriarchal cultures, the slightest hint of adultery can bring death to a woman. It is
no coincidence that the Moslem practice of Purdah and the severe restriction of
women’s freedoms occurs in the context of very large-scale polygyny. The harems of
powerful Moslems have included hundreds of women.
The drive to control women’s sexuality can also lead to significant manipulations
of women’s bodies. Clitorectomy is practiced in Central Africa so as to control women’s
sexuality and to “make them marriageable.”329 The lips of a woman’s vagina may be
sown shut to ensure her sexual purity until marriage, and then cut open for intercourse
and childbirth.
In class-based societies, women’s bodies are decorated and manipulated to
inflate their value as sexual rewards. Decoration may be as simple as makeup or the
filing of teeth. Highly male supremacist societies may also engage in crippling
modifications to women’s bodies in the name of sexual purity and beauty. The bound
feet of Chinese women were painfully deformed, being the size of a small child’s feet.
These shriveled feet were seen as beautiful “lotus hooks,” symbols of purity and
eroticism.330
Young women are consistently idealized as sexual partners in patriarchal
cultures. Young women are less powerful than their husbands, especially when their
husbands are much older than they, which is often the case. Adding to this power
imbalance, young women are often forced to live with their husband’s family where
there are no blood relatives around to protect her. Very young Hindu women have been
bodily mutilated by forced sex in arranged marriages with adult men.331 In Western
European tradition, blond hair symbolizes youth and sexual purity, hence the American
fascination with “dumb,” or childlike, blonds.
Mary Daly has pointed out that in highly male-supremacist cultures, the mutilation
of women’s bodies occurs in the context of an obsessive fixation with ritual detail.
Footbinding, genital mutilation, and Indian Suttee -- whereby a woman is supposed to
kill herself when her husband dies -- are all carried out in the context of rigid,
obsessively detailed ritual.332 This obsession with detail may help the practitioners of
harsh rituals shield themselves emotionally from what they are doing. But ritual
obsession and the tendency to see rules as absolute and emanating from higher power
329
Daly, 1978, p.157-160
330
Daly, 1978, p.135
331
Daly, 1978, p.120
332
Daly, 1978, p.131-133
172
are characteristic of centrated thinking as we discussed in a previous chapter. Human
cultures perpetuate the centrated intellectual structures of children into adulthood in
order to foster the intensification of production. Male supremacy develops in
conjunction with intensification. Centrated thinking causes people to relate to the
powerful institutions of the state and tradition as they related to their parents. Thus we
see centrated thinking manifest in the institutions of male supremacy.
As societies grow larger, ecological depletion forces them into ever escalating
strategies of intensification driven by social and sexual reward. Women are decorated,
their sexuality is controlled, their power is constricted, they are taught to play supportive
roles to male power. Young girls and even children are idealized as sexual partners
because they are least powerful. Women’s virginity and chastity become paramount
concerns while men practice polygyny or promiscuity. Men’s status and self-respect are
tied to their ability to have sex with desirable women. Sexual access for men is
symbolically tied to behaviors that are profitable for the society at large, whether that
behavior be hunting, cheerleading, war, or the aggressive accumulation and
expenditure of money.
What about matriarchy? Have women, at least in some places, taken on the roles
we associate with male leadership and power? Although women have been shamans,
leaders, and queens in many cultures, there is no such thing as a matriarchy in which
women hold the kind of military and economic power that men hold in strongly
patriarchal cultures.333 Beliefs about gender roles are tied to mens and women’s
economic roles. Because women bear children, from the beginning men were in the role
of warrior and politician when interfacing with other cultures. As cultures grow larger in a
more crowded world, these non-domestic roles become more important for the survival
of a culture. Because of the importance of male roles, men become the focus of
intensification of production. Women have always been tied to reproduction and thus
have never occupied the economic and political roles that men have occupied. That is
the reason there is no such thing as matriarchy where women hold the kind of power
that men hold in patriarchal societies.334 Belief grows out of economic roles.
The Industrialization of Supremacy
Male supremacy is alive and well in modern society. Are male supremacy and
the sexualization of women in modern society really products of intensification? Many
factors influence the evolution of male supremacy, but intensification is pivotal. Any
major social change is dependent on a successful social movement that can establish
a divine association between material benefits and their ideologies. If and when a
social movement establishes a new round of intensification and a divine association
with new wealth, there will be a drive to push women into the role of sexual reward.
333
Eisler, 1987, p.XVI,XVII
334
Chafetz, 1984, p.22
173
If male supremacy is being daily recreated as a product of intensification, if
beliefs concerning women’s abilities are dependent on their economic roles, in periods
of intensification we could expect that: (a) women would be decorated and sexualized;
(b) their sexuality would be constricted and controlled while men would practice
polygyny or promiscuity; and (c) women’s political, economic, and interpersonal power
would be curtailed. We would further expect that as intensification slackens and/or
women move into more prominent economic roles that: (a) the sexualization of women’s
bodies might begin to ebb; (b) they might have more sexual freedom and easier access
to divorce; and (c) they might be seen as more physically and intellectually capable.
In the history of the United States, these predictions are more or less accurate.
The caveats are that the American economy is dependent on constant growth, thus
American society is more or less in a constant state of “intensification.” Intensification
has no clear boundaries, but rather takes on many forms and degrees. One can
nonetheless see in American as well as global history how social stratification and male
supremacy are the result of motivational strategies that human cultures employ to
encourage people to work harder, fight in wartime, and conform to social norms. In U.S.
history, women have always been sexualized, but the form and degree of such
sexualization can be seen to change in response to economic factors and
intensification. Changes in the legal and political rights of women in response to
economic changes are even more stark in American history.335 Adding to the complexity
of the situation is that, in the twentieth century, the sexualization of women began to be
used to intensify consumption as well as production. This adds impetus to the
decoration of and sexualization of women. This is why women have gained so much
ground legally and politically even as they continue to be sexualized, pornographed,
and sold on the hood of little red sports cars.
The evolution of male supremacy in U.S. history can be seen to travel through a
set of stages corresponding to structural changes in the American economy. These
stages overlap with, but do not completely correspond with, the stages of evolution of
beliefs concerning social welfare.
Colonial Times: Women at Work
We often look at the past as being a dark and oppressive time while progress
has brought us greater wealth and liberty. In America, we tend to think of the Puritans
and colonial culture as being oppressive to women. The truth is that women held a
stronger position in colonial America than they did in later times.336 Colonial society
was definitely patriarchal, as men held firmly the reigns of church, state, and business.
But women were integral to the colonial economy, as men and women worked side by
335
Margolis, 1984, p.7. Maxine Margolis’ Mothers and Such is an excellent overview of
how women’s roles have changed as a result of their changing place in the American
economy.
336
Johnston, 1992, p.2, Margolis, 1984, Flexner, 1975, p.9
174
side growing food and raising children. Colonial Americans did not look upon childrearing as the exclusive domain of mothers, but instead saw it as the responsibility of
both parents to raise children.337 Women were not constricted to the household but
rather worked and moved outside and inside of the domestic sphere. The Puritans
even had laws against domestic abuse, including verbal abuse, that applied to both men
and women. Men and women were prosecuted under these laws.338
Women’s sexuality was not highly constricted in colonial times. Ideally, men and
women were supposed to remain virgins until marriage, and adultery was decreed
immoral and illegal.339 But colonial culture also recognized human sexual fallibility and
accepted it with a somewhat relaxed attitude. It was considered acceptable for a man
and woman to sleep together if they were intending to be married. Many brides went to
the altar pregnant, and there was little social stigma associated with doing so.340 This
circumstance prevailed for the duration of the 1600s and 1700s.
Women were considered the “fairer sex” and were thus decorated to a greater
extent than men.341 But given their vital and active economic roles, women’s dresses
remained non-constricting and simple compared to other periods in history, even among
the wealthy elite.342
The Early Victorian Era: The Frail Housewife
337
Margolis, 1984, p.18-19, Johnston, 1992, p.6
338
Gordon, 1978, p.370
339
The question arises concerning polygyny versus monogamy. Why would a culture
choose one or the other, and then fiercely defend its choice? This is not a matter I have
researched for this book, but I suspect the answer lies in the form of agriculture and the
level of political development of a society. In small societies without the protection of a
state, agriculture often centers around a village that can protect itself from bandits or
“barbarians.” Such villages are more likely to practice polygyny in accordance with their
degree of male supremacy. Once a state has grown up around such villages, if they are
practicing rainfall agriculture, the state may seek to disperse villages into nuclear family
farms. This would serve to intensify production by pushing people onto new lands and
away from community social life. This was the case among the Romans as they spread
their empire and protection across new lands -- likewise the states of pre-industrial
Europe.
340
O’Kelly, 1986, p.126, Gordon, 1978, p.363-372, Haller, 1974, p.94
341
Banner, 1983, p.3
342
Steele, 1985, p.52
175
The 1800s saw the rise of the Victorianism and changing roles for women.
Beginning in the early 1800s, American industry and cities began to grow rapidly. While
women were economically central to colonial agrarian economy, they began to be
marginalized in the industrial economy. While the man went off to work for wages, the
woman stayed home, took care of the children, cooked and preserved food, washed
clothes, and took care of the house. Some factories tried hiring entire families to work,
but that proved impractical.343 Reliable birth control had not yet been developed and
birth rates were high. It was impractical for women to abandon their mothering roles for
the sake of paid employment. Poorer women worked in higher numbers than middleclass women, making whatever provision they could find for child care.
In as much as we presume our beliefs to be our own sacred choice, we live in
ignorance of history. Economic transitions that marginalized women, not personal
choice, created new beliefs about women and women’s roles. In the early 1800s, a new
set of beliefs that put women firmly in the domestic sphere were created. Historians
writing about this time refer to the rise of the “cult of womanhood” or “ cult of
domesticity.”344 In the early 1800s, the writers of sermons, newspaper columns, and
books of social advice began extolling the “natural” role of women in the domestic
sphere. It is a rarity among human cultures for women to be the exclusive caretakers of
children.345 But as America was moving toward a wage-earning society, beliefs were
created and espoused that women were the natural caretakers of children and that the
man’s role should be minimal.346 Women were elevated to a domestic pedestal, where
they were to maintain the home as a refuge from the moral dirt of the larger world.347
The new domesticity saw women as fragile, apolitical, unintelligent -- or at least
unworldly -- and in time, asexual.348
In the Puritans era, women could own and inherit property; they could vote in
some elections and states.349 In early Victorian times, women lost what legal rights they
had. They became legal dependents of their husbands; they were no longer able to
inherit property, and their husbands owned their wages. Legally, they suffered “ civil
death” upon marriage. They were not able to sign legal papers or serve on a jury.350 The
legality of a husband beating his wife was established in 1824 with the establishment of
343
O’Kelly, 1986, p.133
344
Johnston, 1992, p.16-22
345
Margolis, 1984, p.15
346
Margolis, 1984, p.33-39
347
Johnston, 1992, p.18-19
348
Gordon, 1978, p.382, Haller, 1974, p.99
349
Women lost the right to vote in New Jersey in the early 1800s (Johnston, 1992,
p.14).
350
O’Kelly, 1986, p.131, Flexner, 1996, p.58
176
the infamous “ rule of thumb” by the courts. This doctrine allowed a man to beat his wife
with a whip as long as it was no larger than a person’s thumb.351 Legalized beating is a
clear indication of the contraction of women’s power. It cannot be seen as coincidence
that the timing of this legal doctrine corresponded to women’s decreased economic
roles.
As we said, intensification has no clear boundaries in our society. Nonetheless,
the 1800s were a period when the forces of growing industrialism were especially
strong. In keeping with women’s role as sexual reward, the focus on women’s beauty
increased. Preachers and writers told women that “God meant women to make the
world beautiful,” that it was a woman’s sacred mission to be a “priestess of beauty.”352
Women were told that “beauty is particularly a female perfection,” that “woman
embodies the ideal of beauty,” that their role was to “beautify the earth.” Art came to
“locate the highest beauty in the human form and to define women as by nature more
beautiful than men.” The leading women’s magazine of the time proclaimed that “it is
woman’s business to be beautiful.”353 As we pointed out in an earlier chapter,
technological development has through most of history come at the expense of harder
work. As people were being pressed to work brutally long hours in dangerous and dirty
industrial work, the focus on women’s beauty escalated greatly and the notion of
romantic love swept through American culture.354 These changes were not consciously
made. The prevailing political powers of the early Victorian era succeeded in
establishing a divine association between their beliefs and new industrial growth. Thus
Victorian notions of women’s innate domesticity and of personal responsibility
concerning the poor became entrenched.
A new ideal of feminine beauty rose to prominence in the early Victorian era, and
this ideal served to constrict women’s power. As women were being pressed into
domestic service, the ideal of beauty became the submissive, fragile, willowy woman.
Women were never supposed to eat in public; they were supposed to be thin and
delicate.355 The beautiful woman was supposed to be pale and stay out of the sun, and
she was expected to faint easily. The embodiment of these ideals was more likely to be
found among the wealthier classes. As these privileged classes serve as a model within
the process of intensification for society at large, they are likely to exhibit more extreme
forms of a social ideal. The ideal of frail beauty thus found its apex among wealthy
women who were said to compete to be the most sickly. A wealthy female writer of the
time recounted conversations with her lady friends in which “you had to be ready with
351
Elman, 1996, p.43
352
Steele, 1985, p.105
353
Banner, 1983, p.9-10
354
O’Kelly, 1986, p.131
355
Banner, 1983, p.45-56. Lois Banner refers to the early Victorian ideal of feminine
beauty as the “steel engraving lady” after the lithographic process by which she was
created in print.
177
illnesses -- the worse they were, the more operations you had to your name, the higher
you ranked.”356
In the 1820s, anatomy courses were being banned from women’s education.357
Whereas colonial society was somewhat relaxed about premarital sexuality, the
Victorians became strongly concerned with virginity, chastity, and masturbation. As is
the pattern in male supremacist cultures, the double standard remained. Men were
expected to fulfill their strong sexual urges through extra-marital affairs or liaisons with
prostitutes. Women were supposed to be chaste, to be the protectors of virtue, and to
possess little or no sexual urges. This circumstance did not arise uncontested. A
convention of women at Seneca Falls in New York in 1848 is marked by some
historians as the beginning of the American feminist movement. That convention was
attended by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other women who were to become the leaders
of the feminist movement in the Victorian era. The demands adopted at Seneca Falls
included: the right to vote, property rights, and access to education and the professions.
The convention also demanded an end to the “moral,” meaning sexual, double
standard.358
The Late Victorian Era: The Buxom Mother
Industrialization was creating a “ demographic transition” in the United States.
Families were shrinking as people had fewer and fewer children. Large families are
economically helpful on a farm. Children can contribute to agricultural work, and a large
family is more likely to prosper. As the American economy moved toward wage labor,
children became less valuable. They stayed at home in a longer period of dependence.
They might work eventually, but on balance they became much more burden and much
less help. A family with ten children on a farm can put them to work. A family with ten
children in the city in the Victorian Era was simply more likely to go hungry. As a result
of these changing realities, birth rates began to fall in the 1800s.359 This kind of
demographic transition has occurred in many countries as the have shifted from
agriculture to industry and wage labor.
Women were using abortion to limit the number of increasingly costly children
they bore. By law and custom, abortion was acceptable up to the point of “quickening” -when the fetus first moved. Pills and patent medicines that were said to induce abortion
were sold widely in the mid-1800s. Clinics opened in the cities where women could go
to have their menstrual periods “unblocked” if they had stopped.360
356
Banner, 1983, p.56
357
Flexner, 1975, p.26
358
Banner, 1974, p.41
359
Johnston, 1992, p.18-19. Margolis, 1984, p.31
360
Mohr, 1978. James Mohr’s Abortion in America is readable and well-documented.
178
Pre-industrial cultures often sought to limit population growth for (sometimes
unspoken) ecological reasons. As state societies reach a level at which they are
capable of conquering and consuming other societies, then they become pro-natalist,
seeking to maximize the numbers of laborers and soldiers. As America was conquering
its own indigenous peoples, moving westward, and building industry and empire, so our
culture became pro-natalist. The wealthier classes in particular were intent on
maximizing the growth of population. It was God’s law to have children, and immoral to
interfere with conception in any way. This became what anthropologists have referred to
as the “ procreative imperative.”361 It also spelled trouble for abortion, birth control, and
women’s sexual freedom in America. The pro-natalist and racist tendencies of the
powerful classes of the Victorian Era were bound together in a philosophy of Social
Darwinism. The upper classes became very concerned that the lower classes, darker
races, and Catholics might overwhelm them by having more children.362
The pattern of increasing abortion in Victorian America bears some similarity to
what has occurred in other industrializing countries. As a society moves toward wage
labor and children become much more costly, women turn increasingly to abortion. Over
time, contraception takes the place of abortion, and birth rates continue to fall.363
Abortion increased throughout the 1800s among the American middle class. By the late
1800s, contraceptives were more available and were being widely used. Birth rates
continued their steady decline. All of this was not to the liking of pro-natalist forces
among the upper classes.
Beginning in the mid-1800s, the American Medical Association (A.M.A) began to
use the abortion issue as a means to build a social movement to increase the power of
doctors. At that time, doctors did not hold the respect and power in society that they
hold now. In the early 1800s, most people relied on herbalists, homeopaths, patent
medicines, folk-healers, and midwives for medical care. The A.M.A. was formed to
consolidate the power of doctors and thereby take command of the health care market.
Because of their highly conservative position in society, doctors were not practicing
abortion. Many potential customers were going to other health care practitioners to get
abortions. In trying to legally restricting abortion, the A.M.A. was trying to restrict the
activities of their competition so they could gain greater control over the health care
market.364
As doctors moved from bloodletting to a greater understanding of bacterial
infection and the discovery of antibiotics, they were able to more effectively treat their
patients. This earned them a greater measure of respect. Over time, medical doctors
were able to effectively exclude all other practitioners. Doctors were also starting to give
social and spiritual advice. They did not hesitate to offer their strongly held, “scientific”
opinions on social issues of the day, and their opinions tended to be consistently
361
Harris, 1981, p.84, Margolis, 1984, p.13-15
362
Mohr, 1978, p.128,167, Gordon, 1978, 387
363
Mohr, 1978, p.244
364
Mohr, 1978, p.34-37, 160-161
179
conservative. The A.M.A. harshly criticized women’s suffrage and campaigned
ceaselessly to keep women out of medicine.365 The A.M.A. needed a moral cause to
bolster its movement, thus the anti-abortion crusade was well suited as a movementbuilding device. The real motivations behind the restriction of abortion were hidden from
American consciousness by vested interests and by the cultural dissonance arising
from the moral complexities of abortion.
The A.M.A. made steady gains in restricting abortion through the mid-1800s, but
it was not able to consolidate its gains in enforceable law until the conservative
resurgence of the post- reconstruction era (remembering the Hayes election of 1876).
In 1873, the Comstock Act was passed that banned abortion and contraception
advertising.366 That same year a popular book was published that claimed that
education made women sterile, as many doctors had long claimed that any worldly
activity would negatively affect women’s fragile reproductive organs.367 By 1880
abortion was illegal all over the country and abortionists were being prosecuted.368
The A.M.A. claimed that abortion was unsafe. Abortions that went awry and
caused injury or death were used in the popular media with great effect.369 Even as
doctors were campaigning against abortion, gynecological surgery with all of its
attendant risks was growing. Doctors began performing clitorectomies in the late 1800s
to “cure” women of masturbation and continued performing them well into the 1900s.
The correlation with the use of clitorectomy to restrict women’s sexuality in other highly
male supremacist cultures is noteworthy. Ovariotomies were also performed on
thousands of women to cure them of “hysteria” and all manner of vaguely defined
emotional illnesses.370 The willingness of doctors to substitute invasive gynecological
surgery for supposedly unsafe abortions belies their argument that they opposed
abortion on moral grounds.
In the Victorian era, doctors began to espouse the idea that men have a limited
amount of semen which they must conserve.371 This is a remarkable parallelism to
other male supremacist cultures. In traditional Hindu India, men believe that it takes
“forty days and forty drops of blood to make one drop of semen.” Some cultures believe
365
Mohr, 1978, p.168
366
Mohr, 1978, p.196
367
Banner, 1974, p.18
368
Mohr, 1978, p.230
369
Mohr, 1978, p.180
370
O’Kelly, 1986, p.130, Gordon, 1978, p.388, 410, Johnston, 1978, p.57
371
The more severe forms of male semen conservation correlate with anti-natalism;
they serve as a means of population limitation. Semen conservation, though espoused
by some, did not become a widespread belief in the U.S. because of the dominance of
pro-natalism. Male doctors were very concerned with restraining women’s roles in
society, thus semen conservation served a psychological/political function for them.
180
that if a man expends too much semen, he will die.372 By this way of thinking, women
become the thieves of men’s vitality, threatening to consume and weaken their male
partners.373 This set of beliefs has the effect of alienating men from women and
lowering women’s social status. Such parallelism among diverse societies is a clear
indication of the consistency of the underlying cultural evolutionary forces at work in
creating our beliefs.
The procreative imperative also explains American attitudes concerning
homosexuality. It is a pattern of pro-natalist societies to suppress non-procreative sex.
Non-procreative sex was suppressed in Victorian America, and the control of
masturbation became a near obsession for some.374 The Soviets and other cultures
have suppressed non-procreative sex during periods in which they were trying to foster
population growth.375 Once the institutions of sexual repression are established, they
become part of our cultural predisposition, and thus can be hard to change.
Even as the A.M.A. and other forces were making substantial advances in
restricting women’s sexual and reproductive freedom, the decoration of women reached
unprecedented extremes. By the mid-1800s, upper-class women were wearing
enormous, street-sweeping dresses. It was difficult to move about in such clothing, and
impossible to work. Women throughout society attempted to mimic this ideal form and
were ridiculed if they didn’t. Feminists attempted to change the ideal of women’s dress
by introducing “bloomers,” baggy pantaloons that reached to the ankle. Feminist leaders
were ridiculed until they decided they had more important battles to fight and
abandoned the bloomer costume.376
The development of women’s clothing through the 1800s correlates with
women’s economic roles. At the beginning of the century, women were still employed in
agriculture and their dresses were modest and allowed mobility. As women were driven
out of economically useful work and their role as sexual reward became more
prominent, their dresses became increasingly elaborate and impractical. This
impracticality peaked in the mid-1800s. By the late 1800s, women were being employed
in larger numbers as laborers in textile mills, as teachers in schools, and in other sexsegregated fields of employment. As women’s employment grew, their dresses shrank
and allowed them more mobility.377
By the late Victorian Era, the glorification of women’s beauty had reached an
apex. Late Victorian art was absorbed in a “religion of beauty” that celebrated the glory
372
Harris, 1993, p.361-363, quote from G.M. Carstairs.
373
Gordon, 1978, p.374-393
374
Gordon, 1978, p.384, Banner, 1974, p.16
375
O’Kelly, 1986, p.275
376
Flexner, 1975, p.78-79
377
Steele, 1985, p.52
181
of romantic love.378 It was no longer a willowy, frail figure of the early Victorian era that
they worshiped, but rather the buxom and plump goddess revived from ancient times.
Naturally, the shift from the frail and sickly beauty of the early 1800s to the sturdy
woman of the late 1800s occurred gradually. The buxom beauty wore a corset that
squeezed her waist to as small as 18 inches.379 Such “tight lacing” could and did
damage the internal organs of some women, but cultural ideals often ignore such costs.
Corsets squeezed a woman’s mid section so that her organs were pressed upward and
downward. The effect was to make her hips and breasts look larger. By the 1870s,
doctors were advising that women should be heavy to remain healthy.380 Doctors also
suggested that corsets were needed for “support”. The voluptuous late Victorian beauty
was also blond, which from classical times symbolized childlike innocence and purity.
Why did the ideals of beauty change? Why did the slight woman of the early
1800s give way to the buxom woman of the late 1800s? The willowy, frail beauty of the
early Victorian era served as both a representation and a justification for women’s
exclusion from wage labor. Women were simply too weak to work. Instead, they were
supposed to serve as an “inspiration to men” in their beauty.381 Given the procreative
goals of the A.M.A., the doctor’s advice concerning healthy weight explains why the
buxom woman came to be idealized. As the procreative imperative became a
paramount concern of the wealthy classes, so the childbearing woman came to be
idealized. The breast and hips of the late Victorian ideal of feminine beauty bear a
striking resemblance to the fertility goddesses of other pro-natalist cultures. Women
were supposed to be having children, and the shape of the childbearing woman became
the ideal. The corseted upper-class matrons did their duty as role models.
Sporty Gibson Girls and Flat-Chested Flappers
In the late 1800s, women began to turn Victorian moralism against itself.
Women became a powerful force in the “ social purity” movement. The Women’s
Christian Temperance Union battled alcohol consumption, while other women fought
prostitution and male sexual license. The image of women’s moral purity had been
used by conservatives to keep women out of the “dirty” world of politics and business.
But in the late 1800s, women started using this imagery of purity to demand more
control over their own bodies. They started demanding that men adhere to a stricter
sexual code and not see prostitutes. Most significantly, they started asserting that
women had the right to decide when and how often they would have sexual intercourse
in marriage. As birth control was uncertain, this amounted to a substantial assertion for
378
Anderson, 1994
379
Steele, 1985, p.162-164
380
Banner, 1983, p.113
381
Steele, 1985, p.106
182
a woman to decide how many children she would bear. It is ironic that women in recent
decades have sought to strengthen their social power by demanding the right to
liberalize sexuality, whereas one hundred years ago women increased their personal
power by seeking the restriction of sexuality. While facing a powerful conservative
movement that was bent on restricting women’s roles, women chose to direct the forces
of social purity in a manner that would benefit them.382 Women in the social purity
movement used Victorian ideas to gain more control over their bodies and reproductive
processes. Suffragists used Victorian purity to suggest that if women were given the
vote, they would purify politics and end corruption.383 These movements made great
gains in the progressive period after the turn of the century.
In the late 1800s, many women -- including many suffragists -- supported
restrictions on abortion, or at least did not oppose them. Women chose to focus on
suffrage and property rights and not concern themselves with the ban on the
dissemination of contraceptive information or abortion. One could argue that they did
so because sex is a personal and interpersonal choice over which they could exercise
some control regardless of the law, whereas voting and property rights were legally
defined rights that could not be subverted. Evidence for this argument comes from a
female doctor who practiced in the late 1800s. Dr. Mosher surveyed a number of her
female patients concerning their sexual lives. Based on this and other information, it is
clear that while Victorian moralism was pushing toward sexual restriction, real behavior
was another matter.384 The Mosher survey indicated that most women enjoyed sex and
sought and experienced orgasm in their marital relationships. Marital couples had
intercourse a couple of times per week on average. Other doctors reported that, in spite
of the Victorian notions of women as asexual, many husbands and wives sought the
sexual pleasure of simultaneous orgasm. In spite of the banning of abortion and
contraceptive information, birth rates continued to fall steadily from the early 1800s until
the post World War II “ baby boom.” All of these factors clearly indicate that, in spite of
Victorian sermons, couples were remaining sexually active and choosing the size of
their families. Thus conceding defeat to the Victorian notion of sexual restriction did not
necessarily constitute a surrender for most women at a personal level, and women
leaders chose to use the belief in women’s moral purity to advance more substantive
legal rights.
Throughout the 1800s, women’s employment was slowly increasing. Married
women were not supposed to work, but young unmarried women were working in
increasing numbers. They worked in gender-segregated jobs of nursing, elementary
school teaching, and textile manufacturing. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, the
growth of industry was creating steadily greater employment opportunities for young
382
Degler, 1980, p.279-297, O’Kelly, 1986, p.141. Degler’s book contains an
unfortunate amount of subjective commentary, but his analysis of women’s role in social
purity movement is interesting.
383
O’Kelly, 1986, p.140
384
Gordon, 1978, p.403-420. This is an article by Carl Degler. The same information
can also be found in his book.
183
women. Textile manufacturers preferred women as employees because they could be
paid less and were more docile.385 Writers of women’s history have pointed out that
changes in women’s roles came slowly after women’s employment had been increasing
for many years.386
The progressive period at the turn of the century marked a new era for women.
They were employed in unprecedented numbers, and their social roles and dress norms
were changing. The bicycle craze of the 1890s facilitated the use of more functional
dress for women.387 Women began moving in unprecedented numbers into higher
education and many professions, although the A.M.A. remained effective at keeping
women out of medicine, and midwives were in steady decline.388 Likewise, women
gained ground only very slowly in the legal profession. In other professions and fields of
employment, women gained steadily.
Women were attending college and participating in sports in unprecedented
numbers. It was in this environment that the Gibson girl became the American ideal of
feminine beauty. The image of the Gibson girl was created by Charles Gibson, an
illustrator for Life magazine. The Gibson girl was “tall and commanding, with thick, dark
hair swept upward in the prevailing pompadour style ... Her figure was thinner than that
of the voluptuous (late Victorian) woman, but she remained large of bosom and hips.”389
Drawings of Gibson girls often depicted them outdoors or at sporting events. The
Gibson girl was seen as more assertive than Victorian women, but still in the feminine
shape of motherliness. The athleticism and independence of the Gibson images were
appreciated by feminists. Gibson girls were apolitical; they were never shown attending
political events. The Gibson girl was still corseted, though not tight-laced like the
Victorian woman. The Gibson ideal of beauty was representative of the new roles
women held in education and employment. Economic growth boomed after the
depression of the 1890s, and the progressive movement was able to establish a divine
association between this growth and new beliefs, including new attitudes about
women’s roles.
The suffrage movement came alive in the progressive era. The suffrage
movement had been active for decades, but progress was slow.390 Women were
winning the right to vote state by state, but only a minority of states had granted such
provisions by the 19-teens. A concerted effort on the part of suffragist activists was
made in the 19teens to get a federal amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.
Radical feminist groups and more mainstream women’s organizations were united in
385
Tentler, 1979
386
Flexner, 1975, p.62
387
Banner, 1974, p.45-60
388
Johnston, 1992, p.56
389
Banner, 1983, p.154
390
Flexner, 1996, 241-285
184
the struggle for suffrage. Women spoke, practiced civil disobedience and were arrested.
The more radical suffragists were under the leadership of Alice Paul.391 She led the
militant wing of the suffragist movement, enduring repeated terms in prison for civil
disobedience. When she and other suffragists went on a hunger strike in prison, they
were force-fed by prison guards. Although many people were not originally sympathetic
to the militants, their treatment at the hands of officials brought great attention to their
cause.
The suffragists were opposed by the established political party machines who
feared the unpredictability of large new voting blocks. Business interests also feared
that voting women would use their power to agitate for greater workers’ rights.392 Their
fears were not entirely unfounded. As early as the 1830s, women textile workers had
led militant labor strikes in Lowell, Massachusetts.393 Women had been largely
excluded by many of the male-dominated unions, but women’s political activity in the
late 1800s and early 1900s made business interests nervous that women might use the
vote to advance the cause of workers’ rights. (Remember that the socialists,
communists and unions were very active in the progressive era.)
The suffragists were also opposed by liquor interests who feared that, because
the social purity movement was anti-alcohol, women’s suffrage would bring greater
restriction to the consumption of alcohol. The liquor interests gave secret financial
support to wealthy women who were leading the anti-suffrage movement.394 As these
covert donations became public knowledge, charges of impropriety were directed at
anti-suffragists.
In 1920, the suffragists finally prevailed, and universal suffrage was passed,
granting women the right to vote. But few revolutions live up to the high expectations of
their proponents. Women did not vote in large numbers at first, and when they did vote,
they voted like their husbands. The women’s movement splintered after the passage of
suffrage under the pressure of the conservatism of the 1920s.395 Women continued to
be employed in increasing numbers in professional and nonprofessional jobs through
the 1920s, but changes in women’s political rights stagnated.
After the turn of the century, movies were becoming popular. The first female
sexual archetype of the movies was the Vamp -- from Vampire -- the conniving
seductress who stole men’s vital bodily fluids.396 Thus Victorian sexual restriction found
its expression in early movies, but the Vamp did not last long. The sexuality of the Vamp
391
Flexner, 1996, 255-266
392
Flexner, 1996, p.286-299
393
Flexner, 1996, 50-56
394
Flexner, 1996, p.293
395
Degler, 1980, p.328-329, O’Kelly, 1986, p.142
396
Manvell, 1998, p.21, Sterling, 1984. All references to American film are taken from
these sources.
185
was hidden and indirect, but by the 1920s sexuality was becoming more openly
expressed in American society. As heroines became more overtly sexual on the stage,
the Vamp faded from popularity.
Many people point to the 1920s as a period of sexual liberation for women. The
Flappers were young women who flaunted the old restrictive roles of women and
practiced a more indulgent lifestyle. They were young, they stayed out late, they danced
and smoked, and they became an ideal of beauty. Change in actual behavior was more
gradual, but changes in mainstream social mores seemed sudden.397 The Flapper was
young, flat-chested, and thin. Given America’s longstanding idealization of women with
large breasts and hips, why would a thin woman be idealized? To answer that question,
one has to understand the role of the Flapper in the changing economy of sexual
reward.
While the restriction of women’s sexuality in a male-supremacist culture has long
served the cause of intensification of production and pro-natalism, in the 1920s
industrial society suffered from a new and unique affliction: overproduction. The
Roaring Twenties fostered a new consumptive ethic of unprecedented proportions, and
the sexual liberation of the Flappers served to glamorize a new culture of
consumption.398 (One will remember from our discussion of the rise of the automobile
culture that advertising came of age in this time. Advertising began using direct and
explicit sexual imagery, and it also tied sexuality to wealth and social respect. By the
1920s, cars were often advertised with attractive, wealthy women in the picture.) The
intensification of production requires that women’s sexuality be restricted so it can be
reserved for the purposes of sexual reward. The use of sexuality for the intensification
of consumption, however, requires an ethic of indulgence. By the 1920s, birth control
technology had become reliable and birth rates were still falling. Youth had long been
idealized because of the powerlessness of young girls, but now youth took on a new
meaning. The young girl became the image of the sexual partner before marriage, the
playmate whom one could wine and dine and dance with in the midst of new wealth.
Thus the flat-chested flapper served as image of indulgence without the responsibilities
of marriage and family. The liberalization of sexuality served to boost consumption in
the “Roaring Twenties,” and in the 1960s and beyond. As beliefs respond to prosperity
via cultural selection, so sexual mores have relaxed in times of greatly expanding
consumption.399 Regardless of the human desire for freedom -- sexual or otherwise -- it
is underlying structural changes that most often decide whether such desires will
succeed or fail.
Depression, War, and Baby Boom: Mom Comes Home
397
Gordon, 1978, p.426-435
398
O’Kelly, 1986, 144
399
Consumption expanded in the Victorian Era as well, but the growth of a culture of
consumption in the 1900s has been on a much different scale.
186
Throughout the 1920s, women continued to gain ground in the professions, in
employment, in their relative rate of pay, and in higher education. But the Great
Depression, even though it ushered in the progressivism of the New Deal, dealt a death
blow to women’s advancement. As the labor market contracted, women were pushed
out of employment in favor of male “breadwinners.” As always, poorer women were
more likely to work simply to survive, but women’s representation in many professions
declined. Many companies and the federal government developed explicit policies
against hiring married women.400 If the decline of women’s power and rights among
ancient societies does not serve as an adequate warning of the powers of nonconscious culture to restrict human freedom, the Great Depression must be taken as a
more recent cautionary tale. The number of female dentists, doctors, and college
presidents all peaked by 1930 at levels not seen again until very recent years.401
Women’s roles stagnated throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Women remained firmly
restricted in the domestic sphere from this period until the 1960s. These changes were
driven by non-conscious forces that no amount of moralizing could have stopped.
In the late 1920s, bare-breasted women could be seen in American movies,
women kissed women on the big screen, and sexuality was more explicit than it had
ever been.402 In the 1930s, the Flapper disappeared as an icon of beauty. In the
movies, explicit sexuality made a dramatic retreat. A “production code” was imposed on
Hollywood in 1933 that specifically banned open sexuality in movies.403 The
sexualization of women returned to the familiar territory of childhood innocence. Judy
Garland and Snow White were popular. Breasts and hips again became symbols of
female attractiveness, but the attractive woman was not so buxom as the late Victorian
sexual icon.
It should come as no surprise that, as women were pushed back into the
domestic sphere, the motherly figure would once again be idealized. But why was the
depression idol thinner than the Victorian one? The idealized images of the upper class
-- the images that all of society is supposed to strive to attain as they work harder -- are
always inaccessible. In pre-industrial cultures, fatness was a sign of wealth because
only the wealthy could afford to be fat. As industrial society became more prosperous
and cheap, fatty foods became more available, it was no longer a sign of wealth to be
fat. Rather, thinness became more inaccessible. Thus the new ideal moved to the
thinner, but now motherly, feminine figure.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to hold President Hoover divinely responsible
for the depression. Improvement under Roosevelt was slow, but he did manage to
channel increased social assistance toward the needy, thus creating a more positive
divine association with his own administration’s beliefs. The reversion of women’s roles
toward Victorian standards was not so much the result the New Deal agenda, but rather
400
Margolis, 1984, p.210
401
Banner, 1974, p.257
402
Sterling, 1984
403
Banner, 1983, p.282
187
an effort to reinvigorate a traditional form of sexual reward in response to a substantial
stressor.
Women were employed in large numbers during Word War II to help with the war
effort. This did result in an advancement for women’s position in society, but not as
dramatically so as one might expect. Women often worked in sex-segregated areas,
and were pushed out of many jobs after the war. The reason women did not gain more
ground is probably because warfare itself is both a tremendous stressor and the most
focused form of intensification. Women were needed both as workers and as sexual
rewards, thus their social power did not advance too far. The presence of women as
sexual reward is not highly visible in the movies because, as the men went off to war,
audiences were largely female, and they were not to be enticed seeing women as
sexual rewards.
The buxom, innocent, blond was becoming a sexual icon. Rita Hayworth was
tall and shapely and became a popular presence in World War II cinema. On her heals
came Marilyn Monroe, who’s shapeliness, childlike movie roles, and blond hair gave her
a place perhaps unparalleled in American sexual imagery.404 The sexual idols of this era
have been referred to as “mammary goddesses.”405 There was no doubting that
woman’s place was as mother in the home.
After the war, the government offered generous benefits in the form of home
mortgages and other supports to veterans. These supports had the effect of shifting
some of the cost of raising children onto the public sphere.406 World War II and the
New Deal also served to increase wages and wealth among most people. Women were
firmly planted in the domestic sphere. As a result of government financial support,
higher wages, and female domesticity, the country entered the famous post-World War
II “ baby boom.”
Liberation in the 1960's
Some have said that the modern feminist movement has its roots in World War
II.407 After the war, women’s employment receded, but never again to the low levels
prior to the war. Structural changes in the economy after World War II were drawing
women into the labor force. The expansion of the service and information economy was
creating increasing numbers of “ pink collar” jobs open to women. Postwar inflation
combined with high expectations of consumption made it difficult for a one-income
family to maintain a “middle class” standard of wealth. By 1955, women’s employment
404
Baty, 1995
405
Banner, 1983, p.283
406
Harris, 1981, p.83
407
Johnston, 1992, p.170
188
had exceeded the level it had reached during World War II.408 These jobs were,
however, highly gender-segregated and lower paid.
By the mid-1960s, books with feminist themes were being widely read. Betty
Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique captured a wide audience in 1963. Kate Millett and
other writers published best-selling books with feminist themes.409 The steam for a new
feminist revival was building.
As during the 1920s, there was a notable change toward sexual liberty, although
this liberty still included the focused sexualization of women’s bodies. Sexual images
returned to their late 1920s level of explicitness, and then beyond. The Flapper did not
return, but rather thin, large-breasted, and sexually aware idols took her place. Brigitte
Bardo and Sophia Loren became famous, as did some very thin “super-models.”
As in the 1920s, sexual liberation was widely used in advertising. Economic
growth continued throughout the postwar era, pushed forward by war and cold war,
military spending, and sexual reward. Postwar growth was the political underpinning of
John F. Kennedy’s rise and the liberalism of the 1960s. This growth provided the divine
association that supported the changes in beliefs about women.
By the late 1960s, a new feminist movement had burst onto the scene. Why has
this feminist movement proven so powerful and long lasting? Because women are
employed in larger numbers than ever before, their fertility is lower, and effective
feminist organizations have created a successful social movement.
The double-digit stagflation of the 1970s brought Ronald Reagan into power in
the 1980s. Like other conservative movements, the Reagan movement attempted to
reinstate domestic women’s roles. Why did the Reagan revolution fail to bring about
significant restrictions on women and women’s sexuality? Because the service and
information economy had not contracted, and women’s employment and feminist
organizations had grown. The new sexual restrictiveness quickly found its limits.
Politically, the election of the black Democrat governor Douglas Wilder on a “prochoice” platform in the otherwise conservative state of Virginia was a warning to the
Republicans.410 Since that time, the Republicans have tempered their stand on abortion
restriction. The old forces of sexual reward continue to grind against the new economy
of female employment and non-domesticity. The struggle remains non-conscious,
hidden as always by cultural dissonance and vested interests.
Sex, Intensification, and the Future
In male supremacist cultures, men are taught to be competitive and egotistical.
They are given less nurturance, and taught to rely more on status than cooperative
support. Some believe that boys are more independent and need less attention than
408
Ryan, 1975, p.319
409
Banner, 1974, p.229-234
410
Newsweek, 106:46,1985
189
girls. Boys are taught to associate love and status with sex and sexual domination.
Traditionally, psychology has portrayed sexuality as a subconscious motivation in many
human actions. In male supremacist symbolism, however, sex and social respect
become essentially the same thing. While sexuality may be a strong drive, it is arguable
that the drive to be socially accepted is even stronger. When these drives are
consolidated, sex and sexual access becomes the means and method of social
acceptance for males. Women in male supremacist cultures are taught complimentary
nurturing roles, and/or sexual submission.
Sexual mores in human cultures are influenced by the process of intensification.
As males are the focus of intensification, the sexualization and restriction of women
serve the purpose of sexual reward. A reward is not a reward if it is freely available; it is
only a reward if it is restricted. The sexual reward system selects in favor of the
restriction of women’s sexuality so it can be used as a reward. Men are supposed to
behave in ways that are beneficial to a larger social movement; women are supposed to
fill complimentary supportive and domestic roles. Through the sexual double standard,
men have access to real or symbolic multiple lovers. The double standard and the
restriction of women’s sexuality have declined as women have moved into the labor
market and expanded their legal rights. The need to boost consumption has also
favored the liberalization of sexuality, as sex is used to sell all manner of products.
The abortion issue has become the flash point in the struggle over women’s roles
and the sexualization of women. As with so much of culture, the unspoken realities are
hidden by thick layers of mythology and cultural dissonance. The pro-life movement
was established and is still supported by the Catholic church. Just as the A.M.A.
needed a moral cause on which to build its movement one hundred years ago, so now
abortion serves as a moral cause on which the Catholic church is trying to maintain
itself as a movement. The Catholic church has lost much of its traditional role in our
society; it has lost much of its previous power and support. The use of this potent moral
issue helps an otherwise receding organization retain its vigor.411
Many of the women who seek abortions are very young. A real understanding of
teenage pregnancy in our own time is important in addressing the abortion issue. The
majority of teenage pregnancies in modern America are fathered by men in their
twenties, as women with limited economic opportunity try to use the values of family to
gain the allegiance of a male who has superior earning power.412 A realistic approach to
reducing abortion among young women would include increased sexual education and
sexual awareness, and fostering economic opportunity for women.
Restricting sexual awareness while ignoring the economic situation of women
serves to increase the likelihood of unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions. Instead
of addressing the real causes of abortion, the pro-life movement seeks the now age-old
practice of restricting sexual awareness and openness in society at large. Why would
the pro-life movement take actions that increase rather than decrease the demand for
abortion? Because the unspoken demands for sexual reward and intensification take
precedence over the moral consideration of abortion itself. Sexual reward demands the
411
Paige, 1983, p.51-52
412
Males, 1993
190
restriction of sexuality, particularly the sexuality of the more “virtuous” female sex.
Female sexuality must be maintained as a reward for appropriate behavior, not freely
available.
This reality is further demonstrated by the fact that the backbone of the pro-life
movement is made up of working-class women. Less wealthy people have more to gain
from the intensification of production and further economic growth. More comfortable
classes have little to worry if the economy cools off.
The pro-choice movement is supported by women who are likely to be wealthier,
more mobile, and more independent than pro-life women. These demographic
differences in the two respective movements point to the more personal reasons why
different women take different sides on these issues. According to Kristin Luker,
working class women see themselves in a position of limited economic opportunity. For
them, to seek the support of a wage-earning man -- a man who can earn a great deal
more than they can -- is more desirable than a life of low-wage work. Especially in the
context of cultural mores that value families, to seek the allegiance of a man and raise a
family is a desirable and respected option. The sexual liberalization of contemporary
America -- the sexual liberation associated with the pro-choice movement -- is a threat
to these women. It weakens their security in their allegiance with their husband. If a
husband is constrained and guided by cultural mores that value marital chastity and
supporting a family, what a pro-life mother has to offer her husband is more valuable
and more secure. Women who are more economically independent, in contrast, fiercely
defend their right to have full control over their reproductive processes. In the absence
of abortion, a woman who wanted any career other than motherhood would lose her
control over that choice if she became pregnant. Pro-choice women are likely to be
more mobile and to live in a cultural environment that is more sexually liberal and
supportive of non-traditional families. The values of each group can operate as a threat
to the other, culturally, morally, and economically.413
Structural changes in human cultures do not automatically create changes in
belief, nor do economic changes “determine” changes in behavior. Rather, economic
and ecological changes create the conditions under which particular social movements
are more or less likely to succeed or fail. Even with substantial economic change, fate
still lies in the hands of effective social movements. Without the suffragist movement,
women would not have earned the vote even if each and every one were employed.
Although changes of belief come in the wake of successful movements, such
movements are not likely to succeed if economic and structural changes are working
against them. We tend to see the visible and conscious aspects of culture; we see the
actions of social movements and we believe that the changes in the larger culture
come as a result of the conscious actions of movements and leaders. Those who would
seek the liberation of women in male-supremacist society must beware: the machine of
non-conscious culture has the power to crush or bolster movements in spite of anyone’s
yearnings for freedom. Were it not for the growth of women’s employment, women
would not have gained the vote. Were it not for the economic growth of the 1920s and
1960s, women’s sexuality would still be repressed, abortion and the dissemination of
contraceptive information would be illegal, and we would be living in a very different
413
Luker, 1984, p.219
191
world. The gathering and horticultural women who lost their power to male-supremacy
were no less powerful than women today; the women of the Victorian era were no less
wise than we are. We have no greater conscious control over the structural changes
occurring in our society than in the past. We live at the mercy of the machine.
Will women hold onto their rights? Will women’s freedoms continue to expand, or
will we at some point recede back into the male-supremacist darkness from which we
have only partially emerged? As long as women are employed in large numbers, as
long as their employment and relative wages grow, it is likely that women’s movements
will find the support they need to expand the political and cultural power of women. It is
likely, however, that the mounting environmental crises of our time will put increasing
pressure on our industrial society. It is a certainty that social movements will advocate
traditional patterns of intensification and unification in response to these stressors.
Future intensification drives will attempt to re-invigorate sexual reward and male
supremacy in response to the economic effects of ecological stress. If our culture
continues to operate on a non-conscious basis, they may well succeed.
192
PART TWO
CONSCIOUS
EVOLUTION
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Journey to a Foreign Homeland
In the old South, people don't travel that much. You can see generations in one
yard. There's the old farmhouse, the house-trailers of their children's families, the other
house-trailers of the grandchildren. A trip to another state would be like a trip to China
for some folks. Of course that's all changing now.
I left Georgia on a bus with more trepidation than destination. It was a big journey
-- way north to Virginia. It was hard to imagine how they survived the cold.
The bus was late getting to the nowhere stop in the rolling green hills of central
Virginia. There was an old farm house in sight, so I walked over to it. There was an old
fellow with deformed ears rocking slowly in his chair on the porch. “Nearest phone five
miles thataway,” he said. I walked a while -- it wasn't five miles -- and found a little
cluster of houses, ordinary little square lapboard houses that ought to contain a few
ordinary folk. I knocked on a couple of doors and got no answer. Then I knocked on
another door, and a short, old woman opened the door slowly. Looking past her, I could
see the house was completely packed, without an inch to spare from floor to ceiling,
with dolls -- just like some kind of horror movie. Biggest doll collection in the whole
world, she says. Though I had some general misgivings about the situation, I asked to
use her phone, and did so with no ill effect.
193
After a short wait on the grassy shoulder, I was picked up by a fellow wearing
loose clothes that had the fit and fashion of those worn by an older sibling from a few
decades back. After a detour to a gas station to pick up a candy bar, I was delivered to
my very first intentional community. I stepped out of the truck and walked toward the
well-tended white farmhouse. As I rounded the corner of a building, I met a large hairy
man wearing a hot purple miniskirt, a tight blouse, and metallic purple eye liner. I stood
for a minute and thought; This is not the South anymore.
Twin Oaks was the name of the place, and it is still there.414 It’s about a hundred
people living in large dormitory-like buildings. Each person gets their own room; other
than that, everything is public. There is one big dining hall where folks eat dinner. The
residences also have kitchens where people eat when they want to.
People have to fill a weekly labor quota. All of the work is divided into work areas,
each with its own budget and manager. These managers make decisions. The
managers are grouped into councils and at the top is a three-person board of planners.
The planners serve on eighteen-month staggered terms, so there is a new planner
every six months or so. The planners and managers are just ordinary community
people, with no special privileges because of their positions. The planners make most of
the ongoing administrative decisions. Given the size, the community operates with a
high degree of democracy.
Twin Oaks is an income-sharing community. All the money that is made from the
various businesses goes into one pot, and then everybody decides how to spend it.
Almost all income-generating labor is done on the property. Twin Oaks is virtually an
enclosed society unto itself. It has its own culture, its own holidays, and a socially
intense environment. The culture is modern day progressive.
The labor system at Twin Oaks is very flexible compared to what most people
have to live with. You can choose your work from what is available, and record your
time on honor. When you are sick, you record your sick time, and no one tells you
otherwise. You take labor credits, an hour for an hour regardless of the job. Every kind
of work is covered in the labor system, including making money, cooking and cleaning,
and taking care of the kids.
To say the word “commune” makes some folks jump out of their skin. Twin Oaks
has had several members over the years whose parents have sent “deprogrammers” or
law enforcement officials after their children to “rescue” them from the “cult.” There are
cults in this world, but Twin Oaks isn't one of them.
Cults tend to have a strong leader. They take in people -- often very young -- who
are troubled, and give them support from the group. But in the process, they cut off their
members from their friends and relatives. This has the effect of making the individual
completely dependent on the group. At the same time they cultivate an ideology of
superiority -- that this group has the big answer to what's wrong with the world. This has
the effect of further isolating the members from the outside world and creating a sense
of group identity. The problem with all of this is that people may find it difficult to leave
414
For more information about intentional communities, see Communities Directory: A
Guide to Cooperative Living. This book is a directory of over 500 intentional
communities, available through Twin Oaks Community/ Communities Directory, 138
Twin Oaks Road, Louisa VA. 23093, or call (540) 894-5126 during business hours.
194
the cult or to grow beyond the ideology of the group. This leads to abuses that are well
known. Twin Oaks has no designated leader, and exerts no particular control over who
people turn to for support. There is no central ideology of superiority.
On the one hand, communal living is in some ways a very different lifestyle from
mainstream living. In other ways, the two are indistinguishable. Sharing one's income
with a large group of people, living and working on one piece of land and recording your
labor hours by an honor system -- these things are different from the mainstream. An
acceptance of openly gay and lesbian couples, of people wearing strange clothes, these
are things that people are not necessarily accustomed to in the mainstream. On the
other hand, communards eat junk food and listen to popular music, drive to town
occasionally to watch movies, and love to travel. The social atmosphere is middle class
and reserved. Working class noisy people stick out like a sore thumb -- not quite Utopia.
Living on a commune is like taking your life and hitting the fast forward button.
Because the community is income-sharing and because almost all of the work is done
right on the property, the environment is socially intensive. Whomever you are going to
fight with or fall in love with, it will happen a lot more quickly in community. Some people
manage to be reclusive. But for the social animal, community is the greatest playground
you can find. You can work with, talk to, and have lunch with people you know well,
understand, trust, and are close to. You can take a walk with somebody you are
attracted to without it having to mean anything.
Twin Oaks has its own holidays. Anniversary is one of the big ones. One part of
anniversary is fantasy. Everyone puts suggestions into a box. Then a crew of people
picks among the fantasies and surprises the entire community by making one fantasy
into a reality.
One year there was the thirty-foot banana split. A long narrow wooden trough
was made for the occasion, and filled with all manner of sticky sweetness. Then the
salivating crowds were informed of their fate. Eating utensils were not to be allowed.
What followed was similar to what has been known to occur at particular county fairs
that support pie eating contests or other such improprieties. All were proceeding to a
blissful gustatory overindulgence, until someone snuck in a spoon. That required, of
course, immediate ice cream punishment. Which, as one might expect, dictated
chocolate sauce retribution. So goes the folly of silverware untimely applied.
Treasure hunt was another tradition. Riddles were written from tidbits of the past.
The children lead as each riddle was solved. Each riddle lead to the location of a new
one. At the end of this long chain of riddles lay a treasure chest full of sweets.
Community children, like most others, are not the masters of their passions, and would
scream utter dejection at a riddle falsely solved or sweets misappropriated. They did not
feel but rather live the joy of finding that humongous treasure chest.
We created other holidays to remake ones that had gone sour. Love is such a
precious thing that people can give to one another, in so many different forms. Saint
Valentine had a soft heart they say. But business has bought Saint Valentine, packaged
him in all these images of what you and me have to look like before we can love each
other. Go to them, give them money, and they will sell you back this piece of yourself.
In our community, Valentine's day became Validation day. Cards were made with
care, one for each person. Each person was then invited to write in everyone else's
card, but you couldn't look at your own. Tell them the best you can think, of time spent
195
and work shared, of respect built and love grown -- disguise a flirt if you dare. Write it
down for time to preserve. And then on the appropriate day, each person is given their
card. All the good things that no one ever said because they might get embarrassed are
set there in print. People pack away those pieces of paper for when they are cold and
alone, then they take them back out and remember who loves them.
Community allows people to build social connections at new levels. You can go
places you never could have imagined existed, places the rock solid reality of
mainstream America has never seen. We all carry an emotional self, mostly hidden
deep away inside. In community, you can take those hidden away places and bring
them out into the light of day. A lot of people have ideas about community, about wild
orgies of people sleeping with each other in reckless abandon. Truth of the matter is
that the sexual practices of communitarians aren't particularly different from the norm in
our time. But the emotional self that can come alive in community is something different.
There is so much vitality tied up in our sexuality. It's not the biology; it is the emotion. So
much vulnerability, so much power, so much love to give and take when the doors are
really open. It is one of the greatest lessons of this life to learn how to open those doors,
those closest most intimate doors, with people we are not sleeping with. Community can
help create that environment.
Some holidays could get out of hand, especially when they involved tomatoes. It
was fall equinox, and the tomatoes lay tired and vaguely putrid on the flat ground, after
a long summer under the hot southern sun, beaten by storm and wind, trampled under
foot by visiting hippie-go-yuppie wanna-be gardeners, awaiting a final winter's rot. A few
hundred yards away, the peaceful village gathered to celebrate the changing of the
seasons. They spread a feast on the tables, and like the citizens of Pompeii, they went
about their joyful business with no thought of impending disaster. The children danced
their insatiable lust for being alive. Burning warm in the amber sun of summer ending,
they tossed sandbags and each other through the air. Like crickets chirping mad
mindless song, unaware of the raging storm approaching, the band played the old
songs from smoky bars and bad trips, clipping one hesitation off beat like this lifestyle
put to jazz.
Amidst the naive and joyful frolic was a smallish red foam ball, being hurtled
through the air and soundly thwacked by roguish youth in a pitiful and thoroughly
enjoyable imitation of baseball. Through some dark and mysterious means, a significant
quantity of vaguely slimy rotten tomatoes had been placed in the midst of the
unsuspecting crowd, like terrorist bombs waiting to rain chaos on what was civilization.
Though I will have to say, picking tomatoes is not my favorite work.
Standing hip-cool and proper to the rear of the baseball batter were the womyn
who would have been ladies in another age, liberated and loud but still moving with a
poise and grace that most men would find hard to muster. Like the cool electric breeze
that ripples and sparks out in front of a thunderstorm, a red flying tomato, completely
indistinguishable in flight from a small foam ball, exploded on impact with a bat. Gooey
red shrapnel found its way to an amazing number of places. The womyn cast down an
indignant look from another age on the innocent pitcher. (Pitching isn't my favorite
position either.) So certain of the peaceful calm of the afternoon were the peace-loving
and proper that they stood their ground, quite sure that such events would not be
repeated. As certainty always brings folly, a few pitches later yet another tomato guerilla
196
explosion sent its red putrid terror across the innocent crowd. And as the storm rolls in a
juggernaut after the innocent warning of a breeze, tomato pitching at many didn't-wantto-be-batters escalated with unstoppable certainty. It was clear when the water balloons
appeared that this was to be the bitterest of soft projectile war, with instant alliances and
splinter factions throwing chaos after conflict. Adulthood evaporated that afternoon,
sizzled away like water drops falling on a red-hot fry pan. Any remaining conspiracies of
maturity and dignity were hunted out, tried, found guilty, executed, purged, and
cremated. Participation was not optional.
Dusty, who had full justification for acting like a small child, given that he was
one, found his way to the roof of the wood shed. Water balloon in hand, he peered
down to find the unimaginable fortune of his father's round head perched unsuspectingly
below. Through some miracle of cosmic communication that prevails in such events, the
entire crowd became aware of the circumstances. A cheer broke out, to incite the
completion of this event. And there Dusty's father, completely befuddled at why so many
people were looking his direction and making such a fuss, met his fate.
Matt approached me, comrade and adopted blood brother, a peace-loving soul,
weary at the very thought of conflict. He came to me to put in my hands his water
balloon. I looked him dead stern in the eye and said, “Matt, that was really stupid.”
Thereupon he got a piece of his education on top the head.
That afternoon the storm turned loose its drenching nourishment, and fulfilled our
sticky souls. At times like that, if you are paying attention, reality cracks open a little bit.
All the prim and proper reasons, the brittle stern adultness we carry down the street, all
for what? When the amassment of power is taken out of human relationships, there
finds a life not imagined, where the children run free as if real war had never existed.
197
What Is Conscious Evolution?
“Surveying the past in anthropological perspective, I think it is clear that
the major transformations of human social life have hitherto never corresponded
to the consciously held objectives of the historical participants.” Marvin Harris415
We have identified many of the patterns of cultural evolution. Parallel evolution
proves the existence of a universal process of cultural evolution that guides human
cultures all over the world. We examined how human cultures respond to population
growth by intensifying their production. Intensification underlies the creation of social
stratification and male supremacy. These are the transitions to which Marvin Harris is
referring, and they are not the result of conscious intent.
We have looked at the ways that culture becomes hidden through cultural
dissonance, vested interest, and hierarchical child rearing patterns. We examined how
culture makes use of centrated thinking to drive intensification by perpetuating
childhood thought patterns into adulthood. Centrated thinking causes people to readily
make divine associations between social events, thus making cultural selection a
machine deep in our culture with no consciousness and no driver.
Non-conscious Evolution Is a Global Pattern
If you put a person on a deserted island and left them there, what would happen?
What would happen if you put many people on an island? An individual left on an island
might live out their life, but many human cultures seem to self-destruct if left to their own
devices in an enclosed environment. This is the result of non-conscious cultural
evolution. History has conducted such experiments.
Easter Island was one such experiment. It was settled by Polynesians
sometime around 400 A.D. The population grew and a centralized society arose.
Monumental statues weighing up to 270 tons were constructed, hauled to the beaches,
and set upright. The population peaked around 1300 A.D., and then mysteriously
collapsed. The first Europeans to come upon Easter Island were greeted by these
monumental statues, and the astounding mystery of how they were constructed. The
Easter Island that Europeans first discovered was barren of trees, covered only in
sedge and grass. “When the Europeans arrived, the native animals included nothing
larger than insects -- not a single species of bat, land snail, or lizard.”416
It is reasonable to suggest that the Easter Islanders went through a cycle of
population growth, intensification, depletion, technological development, and decline.
415
Harris, 1978, p.288
416
Diamond, 1995, p.64. Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee is a very useful book.
198
The severity of the degradation on Easter owes to the fact that it is a fairly small island,
so that neither people nor animals could flee the pressure of growing human
populations.
How unique is Easter? Henderson Island is also a very remote island in the
Pacific. Until recently, it was believed to have been uninhabited. But then archeological
exploration discovered that the island had been occupied by Polynesians for several
centuries in the past. They also discovered six different species of birds that had likely
been made extinct by Henderson's inhabitants.417
“The Pacific contains at least eleven other “mystery” islands besides
Henderson, islands that were uninhabited on European discovery but that
showed archeological evidence of former occupation by Polynesians. Some of
those islands had been settled for hundreds of years before their human
population finally died out or left ... Given the widespread evidence for
overexploitation of wild animals by early Polynesians, not only Henderson but the
other mystery islands as well may represent the graveyards of human
populations that ruined their own resource base.” Jared Diamond418
There is significant evidence to indicate that all large, early human civilizations
practiced ecologically unsustainable methods of production. The Maya and Aztecs in
Central America, the Inca in South America, civilizations in Mesopotamia in the
modern Middle East, the Indus River Valley in India, and the Yellow River Valley in
China all depleted their resource bases and collapsed as a result.419 There are
indications that human cultures placed in an ecologically circumscribed area such as a
river valley or an island where their ecosystem is enclosed, as the planet Earth is
ultimately enclosed, will grow into stratified, state-level societies that destroy
themselves because of non-conscious evolution.420 Non-conscious evolution is a global,
parallel pattern among large, stratified societies. Such societies are organized in a
manner that represses the development of social technology. The price of this
repression is eventual ecological collapse.
We have become part of a world culture, with a global economic system, and this
global society continues to evolve non-consciously. The lessons of history are
inescapable. On Easter Island or Henderson Island, some of the people may have
known what was coming and they were not able to do anything about it. We are in that
417
Diamond, 1992, p.325
418
Diamond, 1992, p.325
419
“The collapse of Classic Maya civilization in Central America, and of Harappan
civilization in India's Indus Valley, are other obvious candidates for ecodisasters due to
expanding human population overwhelming its environment” (Diamond, 1992, p.335).
420
“Up to 30 world civilizations have collapsed because they neglected to look after
their topsoil. At present rates of erosion, the world is losing 7% of its topsoil (25 billion
tonnes) every year” (Dauncey, 1988, p.218).
199
situation again, only the price is much higher now. We have made the planet Earth our
island. We are doing what they did.
Non-conscious evolution exacts an extraordinary price. It separates us from an
awareness of the long term effects of our actions. Non-conscious evolution is causing
an ecological catastrophe in our time as we transcend the limits of our global
environment.421 This is an extraordinary reality that is in a sense an unreality to us. God
tells us every day through our prosperity and power that what we are doing is right. We
are unaware that it is God talking through a process of non-conscious evolution that is
lying to us.
Are There Sustainable Societies?
Given all of this, the question then becomes -- how can we do it differently? Are
there human societies that have lived sustainably? Can we apply what we learn from
them to make modern society sustainable?
There are human societies that have practiced sustainable lifestyles. The most
noteworthy are gatherers. In our time, we tend to think in very short spans of time. But
gatherers lived for tens of thousands of years within the same mode of production and
with very slow population growth.
In modern times, some societies have lived sustainably. Although the ecological
awareness of American Indians and other pre-industrial peoples is sometimes
romanticized, it is true that some pre-industrial cultures did develop very sophisticated
conservationist practices. Chief Seattle of the Duwanish tribe is often quoted these
days, speaking of how “every part of the earth is sacred to my people.”422 And how “all
things are connected ... Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, He does to himself.”423
Jared Diamond, an anthropologist looking at these issues states that, “we are
only beginning to realize how sophisticated the conservationist policies of so-called
primitive peoples actually are. For instance, well intentioned foreign experts have made
deserts out of large areas of Africa. In those same areas, local herders had thrived for
421
When people imagine such a decline, they often think of it in terms of one very
sudden “big bang” event. The reality is that it is likely to be more gradual. Our ecological
demise is likely to take the form of increasing stress and distress among the lowest
classes that then creeps up the socio-economic ladder as ecosystems weaken and
pollution increases. This is in effect already happening, and if we continue along our
present path, will continue to happen.
422
Diamond, 1992, p.317
423
Robbins, 1987, p.381. Robbins’ book Diet for a New America is an useful and
important look at the animal-based diet of Western society.
200
uncounted millennia by making annual nomadic migrations, which ensured that land
never became overgrazed.”424
If we look more closely at the anthropological record, we find that many small
pre-industrial and pre-colonial cultures based their social decision-making on the
predicted long-term ecological impacts of their actions. One of the clearest indications of
this is the population-limiting activities of small cultures. Long before the advent of
modern birth control, pre-industrial cultures used many methods to limit population
growth, including sexual abstinence, prolonged lactation, induced abortion, infanticide,
and other methods.425 In 1922, Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders published an extensive
survey of population limiting activities of pre-contact peoples. In speaking of the Murray
Islanders, he noted that some cultures limited the number of children they had “lest the
food supply become deficient.”426 Many of these peoples limited the number of children
they had to two or three. In the case of the Sandwich Islanders, some would rear only
one.427
Many people, scholars included, tend to believe the Malthusian notion that preindustrial peoples had many children, and that their population growth was only limited
by high death rates.428 Malthusian ideas are not anthropologically accurate. The
distortion in part comes from looking at pre-industrial cultures after colonial contact.
After colonial contact, many societies suffered a collapse of their traditional culture,
including traditional population-limiting activities. As a result of the contact with Western
powers, many indigenous peoples fell into poverty, with high birth rates and high death
rates
The anthropological record at the point of contact tells a very different story. If it
is normal in a culture for women to have only one, two, or three children, then that is a
clear indication that they expect those children to survive. Carr-Saunders points out that
limiting population growth among pre-industrial peoples was a practice that was
424
Diamond, 1992, p.318
425
We consider infanticide barbarous in our time. But it is important to be aware of how
different are the circumstances other human beings face and how that influences their
choices. The truth of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of human cultures
have practiced infanticide. We have access to safe contraception and abortion;
prohibiting infanticide makes sense in our culture. But for most other people throughout
history, infanticide was one of the few means they had to keep both their families and
their entire societies from starving to death. As noted in the text, pre-industrial cultures
did use other forms of birth control such as abstention and prolonged lactation, but
these are not reliable means of limiting population growth over the long run.
426
Carr-Saunders, 1922, p.220
427
Carr-Saunders, 1922, p.219
428
See for example the discussion of the theory of “Demographic Transition” in Brown,
1987, p.20-24.
201
“everywhere present.”429 We can only surmise from this that many human cultures lived
in relative ecological stability and consciously chose to limit their population growth to
protect the living standards of future generations.
Richard Wilkinson has pointed out that “sometimes population is limited explicitly
to prevent the food supply from being threatened ... Although there are many societies
where people are fully aware of the importance of limiting population in terms of the
food supply, there are also a great many societies where numbers are effectively
regulated by populations conscious only of cultural or ritual reasons for continuing the
all-important practices.”430 Many cultures were openly aware of the need to limit
population growth in order to restrain the drain on the food supply. Other cultures were
not as conscious about it in a rational sense, but rather offered spiritualistic
explanations for why they limited population growth. In either case, limiting population
growth is a conscious ecological choice.
The impacts of population growth in any given culture would be decades or even
hundreds of years into the future. Choosing to limit population growth is choosing to
look many years into the future. The focus of our own society, in contrast, is not
decades into the future. If we have a focus at all, it is much more short-term.
What Makes the Difference Between
Conscious and Non-conscious Evolution?
The long-term focus of smaller societies indicates a kind of conscious
evolution.431 It represents the creation and evolution of cultural institutions whose
429
Carr-Saunders, 1922, p.222
430
Wilkinson, 1973, p.34
431
Other writers have used the phrase conscious evolution, although they tend to give it
a different meaning than I do. In their book New World, New Mind, Orenstein and
Ehrlich see non-conscious evolution primarily occurring as a result of the perceptual
limitations of human beings. They are concerned about how our culture influences our
perception and how we are not very aware of that. They are especially concerned with
our tendency to notice things that change and to ignore things that don't. I don't see this
perceptual failure of noticing change and ignoring stasis as being nearly so central to
non-conscious evolution. There are other factors, such as cultural dissonance, vested
interest, and hierarchical child rearing systems that influence what we notice. Their’s is
still a very worthwhile and readable book.
The other author that I am aware of using the phrase conscious evolution is
futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, founder of the “Foundation for Conscious Evolution.”
Her approach is more philosophical and spiritual. She speaks of “Evolutionary
Spirituality,” of the development of state religions (Christianity, Islam, etc.) as being acts
of conscious evolution (Hubbard, 1998). My beliefs about what constitutes cultural
evolution are more specific, as are my beliefs about what constitutes conscious
evolution.
202
purpose is to insure the well being of the group hundreds of years into the future. Many
human cultures before colonial contact with Western powers had such a conscious
long-term focus. On the other hand, the ecological track record of many indigenous
groups is no better than that of the “white man.” Which brings us to the question: what
makes the difference between those societies that evolve consciously and those that do
not? Jared Diamond makes a suggestion.
“[S]mall, long established, egalitarian societies tend to evolve
conservationist practices, because they've had plenty of time to get to know their
local environment and to perceive their own self-interest ... [D]amage is likely to
occur when people suddenly colonize an unfamiliar environment ... or when
people advance along a new frontier ... or when people acquire a new
technology whose destructive power they haven't had time to appreciate ...
Damage is also likely in centralized states that concentrate wealth in the hands
of rulers, who are out of touch with their environment.” Jared Diamond432
There are a few characteristics that underlie a society's ability to develop a more
conscious evolution. These characteristics are smallness, stability over time, and a lack
of strong social hierarchy or vested interests, and are manifest in a future time
orientation as measured by population limiting activities.
Those cultures that practice non-conscious evolution would seem to be larger,
stratified, and rapidly expanding into new technologies and new territories. Larger
societies have invariably evolved along a parallel process of intensification that has
created stratification, and that stratification has served to separate individuals from a
conscious awareness of culture and politics. As we said earlier, the intensification
makes opportunistic use of centration. As a result, people tend to see the larger
institutions of their society as godlike. They do not look at these institutions rationally or
critically, but rather with deference. Larger societies tend to be more stratified and that
stratification tends to create cultural unawareness, as well as cultural dissonance and
vested interests.
In smaller societies, people see the impacts of their actions on the environment.
People experience the feedback loops between their own actions and the ecological
impacts of those actions. The culture itself can then operate as a system that is
conscious and problem-solving in its orientation. In larger cultures, people are
separated from the impacts of their actions, and the error-correction process is
defeated. The instability over time of larger cultures prevents people from seeing the
impacts of their actions.
Can We Create Conscious Evolution in Modern Times?
“The potential exists for a new kind of educated evolution, which we call
conscious cultural evolution, or conscious evolution, to supplement unconscious
432
Diamond, 1992, p.335-336
203
cultural evolution. There is nothing magical or bizarre about conscious evolution,
it is a step already being taken by some. But we need to teach our children about
what is “natural” in our evolution and what now needs to be changed.” Paul
Ehrlich and Robert Ornstein433
There are some cultures, mostly small, who practice conscious evolution. There
are some cultures, most of them fairly large, that practice non-conscious evolution. The
question is: how can we in modern times move toward a conscious, sustainable, and
socially just form of cultural evolution? In the short term at least, the world is not going
to become small again. But we can achieve a more conscious evolution.
In a large society, the gap between the individual and the core institutions of the
society is quite wide. There are large industries, corporations, and government
institutions, all of which are enormous. In the face of those institutions, the individual
invariably feels and is in fact small. In any large culture that has a history of
intensification, the individual has been trained to look upon large institutions with a
godlike awe.
If we can't make the large society go away, how can we get people to operate
more consciously within it? The answer to that question is going to lie in the creation of
another level of social, economic, and political culture that comes in between the
individual and the large institution. There is in fact a call throughout our society for a
rebuilding of community. In this regard our collective intuition may be working well.
We have to make sense of the large institutions in some way. We have to
incorporate them into our thinking and into our identities. By rebuilding community,
people would be able to experience democracy and their own power at a level where
they can see the effects of their own actions. They would be visible players, active and
effective participants in an organization in which they have some influence.
We have to become conscious participants in the economy and structure of our
society. None of us really participate in the economic decision making of our society.
We are all beggars at that table. If we were not only culturally but also economically
empowered by community economics and community culture, we would become more
aware of the effects of our own actions, we would become more empowered. Rather
than having a parent-child relationship with large institutions, we would relate more at
the level of adult to adult. We would approach our collective social problem solving with
a conscious, rational, and critical assessment. This will not happen automatically. It will
not grow spontaneously out of community-based economic structures. It will require
conscious effort, a social movement, and the conscious creation of a new belief
system.
So many of the problems we face today result from reckless environmental
exploitation and human oppression that bring quick payoffs, but with bitter long-term
repercussions. A popular awareness of how leaders manipulate cultural selection
would make the politicians’ games less effective, and make investments with longerterm payoffs more viable. We would be aware that quick prosperity is not always in line
with God's will.
433
Ehrlich, 1989, p.202
204
The effect of conscious evolution would be to forever banish the internal whip of
the master from the minds of people, and to actively foster a much more complex social
awareness there in its place. Social control in large societies is not based nearly so
much on active coercion as it is on the internalized fears people hold. By actively
constructing culture on an accessible scale, we would have the power to consciously
create our own identities, and then to use our social awareness to influence the larger
world. We would be much stronger people.
We are capable of this leap. We are capable as a large society of understanding
how our large institutions work. We are capable of consciously, critically and rationally
assessing the actions of those institutions and not simply associating the effects of
those actions with what happens to us economically. We are standing at an
extraordinary historical window. We are capable of stepping through that window. On
the other side of that window is conscious evolution. On this side of that window is the
predictable path of history.
205
CHAPTER TWELVE
Relaying Foundations
I had joined the community a few months after visiting. There had been a recent
exodus of people who knew how to fix things, so my timing was good. Anyone who
knew which was the business end of a hammer got attention. Growing up, I had always
played second fiddle to two not consistently helpful siblings. I watched a lot, and held
the nut on the other end of the bolt while someone else tightened it. But I didn't get to do
big projects myself. On the commune, I started building and fixing a lot of things myself,
and turned out to be pretty good at it.
One of the first things I helped build was a house for visitors. I had helped build a
few sheds and things back on the farm. My partner in this visitor house endeavor had
built a deck or two. Under the circumstances, that was good enough.
We were building a smallish house on the site of what used to be a pig pen. We
started digging for the foundation, and started finding forks. We found one fork after
another, and sometimes other kitchen utensils. It had us scratching our heads pretty
serious, wondering what kind of well-mannered pigs these must have been. We started
making an orderly little pile of silverware, just to keep track. After a while, somebody
came along and suggested that maybe the pigs didn't really have that much to do with
the matter, and that maybe all them fine utensils was dropped accidentally in the food
scraps that came from the kitchen. Which, of course, was what we thought all along.
There was a bowling ball too that the somebody had tossed in the pig pen as a
toy. Word had it that the pigs had no end of fun pushing their bowling ball around the
pen. We pushed it around a bit too, though I couldn't quite see what the pigs got out of
it. But we left it in the crawl space in remembrance of their presence.
We hired out the block laying for the foundation, figuring we wanted to start on
something that was built by someone who at least thought they knew how to do this
kind of thing. That still being a southern county, the feller we hired had the same last
name as near half the people in the county. When he wasn't yelling at them, he worked
with his two sons. He was teaching them the trade. They liked Reagan. “Reagan's really
got the economy moving,” the father would say while he was huffing and puffing in the
hot sun.
With block laying, you set up the corners first, then pull a string between them,
and then set the line of blocks using the string to keep you straight. You slather the
206
block below with mortar, then slather one end of the block you are about to lay. Then
you set the block in place, and tap it with the back end of your trowel to get it to set
right. One of the young fellers had it close, but every time he laid down a block, he
would thump on the block with his balled up fist to get it in place. His father would look
over at him and yell, “Son, I told ya, never use your body as a hammer.” Which, I had to
think, has a lot of application beyond block laying.
There were several construction projects happening in the community at that
time, so there wasn't really enough tools to go around. We would get up early and
borrow power tools from the other sites. They would come over later in the morning,
wondering what that familiar sounding noise was all about whilst we tried to look
innocent. Being new to the idea of building something people were actually going to live
in, we were never all that good at keeping things straight or square or any of that. We
got a sledge hammer and renamed it our 'precision adjustment instrument,’ useful for
adjusting things that weren't quite where they belonged. But we kept at it, and in the end
we had something that, for the most part, looked like a house.
After we built the visitor house, I moved on to other things. I would go out
sometimes, and patch people's houses. People who the government was not going to
help, people whose kin had no help left to give. I would fix leaking pipes and roofs,
patch holes that let the cold in, or do whatever needed to be done. Sometimes the
sheetrock had fallen off the walls because they didn't put it up right the first time.
Sometimes a fire would get loose from the flue pipe of a wood stove that wasn't put in
right. I would grab people from the commune to come with me and help. There was one
old woman in a trailer whose water wasn't working, so we fixed it. She had some
money, but she was sick and had to spend it all on medicine. There was another young
woman with a family, living in a little rough wood house like an old barn. There were
holes in the floor big enough for the kids to fall through. Nearby her was another old
woman living in a small house. She had collected cardboard and nailed it up so she
would have walls on the inside, painted and trimmed it up real careful to look nice.
Another young woman lived in a trailer with kids. She hadn't had running water for a
long time. The trailer was a mess, inside and out. The pipes were split, frozen out from
end to end. We spent some time on that one, stringing in new pipes and fixtures. We
got it all hooked up, but then the septic tank was blocked, so we weren't done yet. We
dug up the access hole and fixed that too. Mostly you feel like you aren't really making a
difference, like you have to just do it for yourself because it is such a small thing in
these people's lives, given all the obstacles they have to face. But this woman got
inspired by our work, and took to cleaning the whole trailer. By the time we made our
last trip, she had set it right, end to end.
Coming back home to the commune, you would think we were pretty well-off. It
was comfortable, and we had enough money to buy what we needed and then some.
There was no mistaking it though, if you added up the numbers, we were poor. If you
took all the money the community had and divided it up among the people instead of
sharing it, then we had less than some of the people whose houses we were fixing. It
worked because we shared resources, we took care of each other, we each didn’t have
to buy everything for ourselves like most people do these days.
Even though the community was poor by some measure, we managed to travel a
fair amount. Traveling to big cities was new for me. I had seen poor folks in the South,
207
but never had I seen them like in the big cities. I remember a black man in Washington,
D.C. He was sitting with a milk crate, some rags and shoe polish. He was a middle-aged
man. His simple clothing was neat and proper set about his shoulders. The features of
his face were strong and dignified. The wealthier, whiter people walked by, all in a hurry,
many of them younger. Set among the quick clicking heels, his dignity cut like a knife
through this picture, cut like a knife through this lie that he is lower than these people. It
made me feel crazy to sit and watch him.
Traveling on the train, you see them sitting on their porches, in the landscape of
scattered trash blowing through the streets and broken down cars. All day they sit, while
the quick clicking heels keep walking, and the sharp edges go dull. It is all peaceful
now, with the men in blue uniforms to keep it that way. No one is hurting anyone; still
somehow people are getting hurt.
There was never any problem with unemployment in the community, any more
than there is unemployment on a family farm. People owned like it was their own, fought
over it some, and swore to see it through. You could lay a single cigarette butt on the
path, and within a few hours it would be picked up. The trash was not left to lay.
In the cities, I’d see people laying in the street, human trash cast aside for the
wind to blow along the sidewalk. They have no kin and its not my fault. In this time we
have whittled down the connections, splitting off the village from the family, the family
from the soul, until the splintered pieces are left alone to fare as they will. Nobody can
tell me that there is not work to be done, work that could pay a person with dignity to
earn their livelihood. But the machines do the work, business gets bigger, and the quick
clicking heals make the money. They really got the economy moving.
208
Ending Structural Poverty
The United States has a high level of poverty compared to other industrialized
countries. Perhaps many people have accepted the human cost of poverty as
inevitable, but the fact of the matter is that many other countries do not suffer such
large-scale social ills. Conscious evolution would allow us to eliminate large scale
poverty in our society.
At the time of this writing, poverty is not much in the public eye. The mid 1990s
have seen steady economic growth and some decrease in unemployment, poverty, and
violent crime. Poverty is not a being talked about because the present probusiness
political movement has successfully created a divine association with its philosophies
and greater cosmic will. Thus the public is led to believe that cutting taxes, reducing
social services, and deregulating business is for the greater good. This is a blind
association created by a successful social movement, not an objective reality.
In spite of the lack of public interest, poverty remains very present in our
economy. It can be seen in the underemployment, suppressed wages, elevated prison
population, homelessness, and urban decay in our society. Even though we ascribe the
causes of crime, teenage pregnancy, and drug abuse to individual moral choice, at
the social level these problems are inseparable from poverty and a lack of economic
opportunity.434 Our society expounds a litany of messages to poor people and minorities
about personal responsibility. These messages serve to distract us from the true causes
of social ills and thus alleviate our cultural dissonance, but such arguments do not
affect the true causes of poverty in our society.
Poverty is structural to our economy. It is not inevitable, rather it is a crude and
non-conscious (for the general public) mechanism that is used to manage our economy.
We discussed earlier how the Federal Reserve uses monetarism to manage our
economy. Monetarism means using the supply and cost of money to regulate the
economy. At the low end of the business cycle, they increase the supply of money and
decrease interest rates to spur growth. At the high end of the business cycle, they
restrict the money supply, increase interest rates, and thereby increase unemployment
and poverty in order to control inflation. This is in keeping with their belief in an optimal
level of unemployment, or NAIRU.435 If any social program ever did begin to reduce
poverty, the people who manage our economy would find the little dial that says
structural poverty and turn it up because unemployment and underemployment have
the purpose of limiting wages and inflation.
434
For an excellent explanation of the economic roots of teen pregnancy, see Males,
1993.
435
As we said earlier, NAIRU stands for the NonAccelerating Inflationary Rate of
Unemployment, or the level of structural poverty that the economic managers deem
necessary to keep the economy balanced.
209
Monetarism is the rule of the economic jungle.436 It pits the classes against each
other in a competition to see who is going to control inflation. To control inflation, wages
and prices have to be limited. Either the corporations control inflation by limiting prices,
or wealthy people limit their incomes and pay higher taxes, or the lower classes limit
inflation by sacrificing wages and quality of life. Economy influences belief. The
economic competition between the classes is the root of hostile attitudes in our society
toward poor people. We have a political democracy in this society. But economically, we
do not have a democratic means of resolving divergent economic interests. Instead we
have an anarchistic struggle for power.
Some European economies have created more conscious means of economic
management, which we will look at shortly. At those times when more conscious
economic decision making has failed, these European economies have reverted to
monetarism as a bottom-line form of management under divisive circumstances.437
Conscious evolution would allow us to develop more sophisticated and conscious forms
of economic management than monetarism.
Demand Management
From a purely economic perspective, poverty is a very solvable problem. A
conscious economy would seek to displace the function of poverty, thus making it
economically unnecessary. The function of structural poverty is to limit inflation. There
are means to accomplish that end.
Wages and prices are the most significant factors influencing inflation in our
economy. While monetarism seeks to moderate inflation by regulating the supply of
money, inflation can also be moderated by more directly limiting wages and prices. This
is referred to as Demand Management (DM), or Incomes Policies. DM seeks to limit
inflation not by driving a sizeable segment of the population into poverty, but by directly
limiting wage and price increases. This can be accomplished if business and labor
436
"The trouble is that at the present stage of development of organization, decision
making in the various institutions is to a large extent uncoordinated. The fixing of prices,
wages, taxes, exchange rates, and so on is not a coherent system because the various
decision makers can have different intentions ... This being so, it is not surprising that
the economies are not working well. We have lost an old, largely self-adjusting system,
and the new, complicated system has not yet developed coherent methods of
adjustment." (Kristensen, 1981, p.129). He is referring to the inflation of the 1970s and
the collapse of traditional Keynesian economics because of the stalemate between
unions and corporations. In the 1980s, that stalemate was resolved.
437
Even Western European countries with a much higher degree of economic
cooperation that the U.S. turned increasingly to monetarism in the 1970s when oil price
shocks and other economic strains fatigued their cooperative processes. “Under
conditions of high-level employment, the social contract [between business and labor]
could be more successful as a device for allocating the gains from economic growth
than for sharing the burdens of a retrenchment in real wages” (Flanagan, 1983, p.672).
210
agree to limit prices and wage increases. Another approach is to pass laws that limit
wage and price increases. Yet another approach is Tax-based Incomes Policies, or
TIP.438 TIP would offer tax incentives to companies for not raising wages too high,
and/or tax breaks to workers to compensate for inflation. TIP would have the advantage
of making use of the existing taxation system to manage the economy for the common
good.
Various forms of DM have been used in other societies. DM has only been flirted
with in this country. In the 1960s, President Kennedy approached the unions and the
steel corporations and asked them to limit their wage and price increases. They
complied to a degree.439 In the early 1970s, Nixon enacted wage and price controls to
try to counteract inflation. They worked while they were in force, but they were scrapped
fairly quickly.440
DM is old news in economics circles, and tried and failed technique from the
1960s and 1970s. But the limited application of DM in the U.S. is the result of not of the
ineffectiveness of these measures, but rather politics. DM is vehemently disliked by big
business that does not want to be told how much it can charge for its products. Large
unions and well-paid workers have also consistently undermined DM efforts in the U.S.,
Canada and Europe by demanding inflationary wage hikes.441 The self-serving actions
of these entities have left us with no alternative to monetarism and structural poverty. In
general economists seem to have a strong bias in favor of business and corporations.
They have done their part by contributing to the bad press about DM.
In spite of the bad press, DM can and does work. As a result of effective DM
measures, some societies simply do not have structural poverty like the U.S. does.
They do not have widespread homelessness, rampant crime in the street, and a
sizeable fraction of their population imprisoned. It is interesting to look at how they have
achieved these ends.
In the post- World War II era, Sweden created one of the most conscious forms
of economic management in the world. They developed a forum where representatives
of unions, business, banking and government could all meet and come to agreements
about production levels, price increases, and wage increases. This system worked well
when their economy was based on manufacturing and most workers felt a similar
interest. This was also a period of constant economic growth, and that seems to make
such consensual economics easier. In more recent history, the transition to a service
and technologically oriented economy has divided the interests of Swedish workers.
This combined with the economic stresses of the last several decades has undermined
Sweden’s consensual economics to some degree, but they still practice a more
conscious economic decision making than crude monetarism.442
438
Weintraub, 1978
439
Nossiter, 1990, p.94
440
Nossiter, 1990, p.132
441
Schiff, 1971, part 1, p.8,39
442
Ahlen, 1989, p.330-346, Schiff, p.25-34, Flanagan, 1983, p.301-362
211
Germany, Norway, Austria, The Netherlands, and Denmark have also
developed methods of economic planning that are much more conscious than those in
the U.S.443 These countries have also brought together labor unions, business leaders,
and economic planners in roundtable discussions. In the United States, we have never
developed a cooperative economic management process, and as a result we have
come to rely entirely on monetary processes. It has been suggested that an economic
round-table in the U.S. could eliminate structural poverty.
“One way forward could lie in taking a new look at the Keynesian solution.
Government, union, management, and consumer representatives might meet in
a “grand assize” to assess the scale of resources and production required to
satisfy present claims and also provide sufficient income and work for every
citizen.”
“In more expansive times, the representatives of industry, in both Sweden
and the Netherlands, did negotiate with government the annual wage bill on a
synchronized basis, in order to keep demand from outstripping likely production.
The periodical meetings in West Germany at which representatives of the unions,
management, government, and the central banks come together to analyze the
economy and its prospects have had something of the character of a “grand
assize.” In the fifties and sixties, common understanding of what the economy
could and could not afford was one element in West Germany's remarkable
record of social peace, agreed deployment of labor, and growth of new industry
... The relative paucity of these illustrations shows how far mixed economies are
from any effective practice of genuine demand management, but the reasons for
the weaknesses also give a clue to where a second set of reforms, that are also
more far-reaching, might be introduced to strengthen the central idea of a ‘social
compact.’” Barbara Ward444
Unions
Unions are an important part of our economy. Unions have caused the wage
scales for all workers to go upward.445 If one looks at the history of labor relations in this
country before the unions became strong, the picture is dismal. Workers were exploited
and abused in the 19th century to a much greater extent than they are now. Large
segments of the American population lived in poverty. Infant mortality rates were much
higher; life spans were shorter. Improvements in the standard of living of the average
American are in large part the result of the abilities of unions to push the wage scale
upward.
443
Elvander, 1990, Flanagan, 1983
444
Ward, 1979, p.137
445
Mattera, 1990, p.100
212
Unions are a significant component of any DM plan. Given that powerful unions
have in the past undermined DM efforts, one might be tempted to think that weaker
unions would make DM more possible. The facts tell the opposite story. The European
economies that have achieved the most advanced DM practices have very strong
unions compared to the U.S.
How do stronger unions make DM more possible? In the European countries that
have more cooperative forms of economic management, unions have much stronger
cultural and legal support than in the United States. As a result, unions in Europe tend
to be more solidly rooted in the society. International studies have shown that in
countries with strong, broad-based unions, workers have accepted lower wages
because they have a stronger social safety net in the form of their own organizational
power and government social programs. In the European context, unions have a
different role than in the U.S. In Germany, for instance, “there is a set of legislated and
judicial restraints on union activity that seems generally to have reflected a design to
encourage the development of trade unionism as a democratic social counterweight to
big business while stunting its development as an economic heavyweight.”446
In countries where unions are weaker, such as the United States, unionized
workers have pushed for higher wages.447 Within our present method of economic
management, that results in greater structural poverty as a brake on inflation. European
workers have more security and are less compelled to maximize their power on a dollarper-hour basis. Stronger support for unions could, at least in part, represent an
alternative to structural poverty as a way of limiting inflation.
Unions have also done their part to undermine cooperative economic
arrangements. DM efforts in Western Europe have often been undermined by workers
getting pay hikes that are inflationary.448 Even in Western European countries with a
long history of economic cooperation, highly paid workers have been unwilling to
cooperate with lower paid workers in limiting their own wages for the greater good of
society. The Swedish system fell victim to this problem.449
There is a plethora of information in the economic literature regarding the
inflationary effects of unions, but this indicates the bias of economists as much as
economic reality.450 This bias becomes more clear as one sees how little research is
done concerning the pricing power of corporations. Oligopoly and monopoly
corporations can often set prices and people have no choice but to pay the price
demanded. Drug companies, for instance, can often set prices as they wish. Consumers
446
Flanagan, 1983, p.297
447
Brown, 1988, p.32
448
Flanagan, 1983, p.653
449
Ahlen, 1989
450
For information regarding the inflationary impacts of unions and wage growth, see
Nossiter, 1990, p.91, Flanagan, 1983, Schiff, 1971, Weintraub, 1978, Kristensen, 1981,
Holden, 1987.
213
have no choice but to pay what is demanded. Large corporations can set their prices
with little fear of competition. The rise of prices in particular sectors of the economy is
indicative of the lack of effective competition in those sectors.451
The U.S. is the least unionized country in the Western world, and unions tend to
get bad press in the U.S. The service economy and other factors have greatly
undermined unions in the U.S., especially since the Reagan era. If we are going to
develop a more cooperative form of economic management, unions need to have a
different role in our society. Rather than being beleaguered organizations defensively
fighting the power of business, they need to have a more secure and less narrowly selfserving role. The kind of unionism that would foster economic cooperation would be
large scale unions with a broad base, including lower paid workers. Such unions could
become a kind of economic democracy for lower paid workers.
An alternative solution is “ works councils,” organizations that include nonunionized workers in bargaining with businesses.452 Works councils have received
mixed reviews. On the one hand, works councils could create more organization among
workers. This might increase worker influence in the bargaining process. But, in the
presence of a weak union movement, works councils might also serve to weaken
unions further without necessarily providing an effective counterweight to powerful
businesses.
At present in the U.S. there is no organization of workers that could represent
them even if there were a forum for discussing cooperative economic management.
Unions that represent small numbers of highly paid workers are not a remedy to that
problem. It would be in everyone's benefit to develop a more intelligent, less anarchistic,
more cooperative form of economic management in our society. Broad-based unions, or
some other similar social institution that is beholden to the interests of a large number of
workers, would be a vital part of achieving a higher level of cooperation.
Small Business
There is strong evidence to indicate that small business is the employment
backbone of the industrial economy, in the United States as well as other Western
nations.453 When such claims first came out, they were heresy. Though there are critics,
the contention that small business generates more jobs than big business in our society
has become widely accepted.454
451
Nossiter, 1990, p.92
452
Gould, 1993, p.261
453
Birch, 1987, Dennis, 1994, p.23
454
For criticisms of the idea that small business generates more jobs than large, see
Davis, 1994.
214
The growth of large corporations in our time is not necessarily caused by the
higher efficiency of larger organizations. There are other factors that strongly influence
the creation of large corporations - factors that have nothing to do with the efficiency of
their production, the number of jobs they create, or the costs and benefits society as a
whole reaps from their existence.
Large corporations have easier access to capital. Money is to some degree like
other commodities. If you are getting a whole lot of it, you can most often get a better
price. Interest rates for large corporate loans tend to be lower, and they are easy for
corporations to get.455 As a result, large corporations soak up a lot of the capital
available in the financial markets, leaving only the dregs for small business.
Another substantial factor that has selected for the development of large
corporations is cheap energy. As long as it is very cheap to ship products across the
world, local companies have no advantage in transportation costs. As the economy
becomes more globalized, cheap energy plays an increasingly significant role. Cheap
energy allows corporations to move production facilities to countries where wages are
low or regulations are weak and ship their products to distant markets.
Small businesses tend to have flatter wage hierarchies. The workers tend to get
paid more relative to the managers and administrators at the top. Redistributing income
to more egalitarian levels has been shown to generate more jobs in developing
countries.456 Economic vibrancy would appear to be more easily attained in a society
that has a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. The modern economic miracle
countries of South Korea and Taiwan have traditionally had flatter wage hierarchies
than other countries that have remained economically stagnant.457 Supporting small
businesses over large corporations would tend to generate more jobs with less inflation,
the needed ingredients for ending structural poverty.
Progressive Taxation
Taxation is a central part of our economic system, and it must be considered in
the context of any discussion of DM. We are living in a very stratified, vertically oriented
economy. Large corporations are getting larger, the rich are getting richer, and money
travels from poor to rich in our society as we buy the products of these large
corporations. In this top-heavy economy, growth does not benefit ordinary people;
rather it serves to make the rich richer. Our survival depends on developing a more
455
Solomon, 1978, p.137
456
Tokman, 1975, p.49-80, Cline, 1972
457
George, 1977, p.41-43. The relationship between the dispersion of wealth and
economic vibrancy is in keeping with the idea of individualized intensification we talked
about earlier. The dispersion of wealth throughout society fosters both democracy and
economic growth. Historically, that growth has taken the form of unsustainable
production. But that can be changed.
215
equitable, conscious society where social technology is not repressed by powerful
vested interests and cultural dissonance.
There are democratic and peaceful means of achieving greater equity, and we
have made use of them in the past. Up until the Reagan era, the U.S. had a
progressive tax system, meaning wealthier people paid higher taxes, and poorer people
paid lower taxes.
Apart from redistributing wealth, this progressive tax system also served to
mitigate the business cycle. Progressive taxation tends to cushion the business cycle,
because in periods of high growth, more people move into higher income tax brackets.
As they pay more taxes, that pulls money out of the economy and cools growth and
inflation. Conversely, as the economy goes into a slump, people move into lower tax
brackets. This leaves money in the economy and keeps the economy from slumping too
far.458
As a result of the weakening of progressive taxation, the poor have gotten poorer
and the rich richer in the 1980s and 1990s.459 This is inflationary, as the wealthy spend
their new wealth on nonessential items and with less concern for price.460 This becomes
a positive feedback loop. As the expenditures of the wealthy spur inflation, we further
increase structural poverty by suppressing wages. The more the wealthy spend, the
more structural poverty must be increased to compensate. Progressive taxation will
have to be bolstered if structural poverty is to be eliminated.
Shortened Workweeks
Another way of distributing the economic heat so that it keeps everyone a little
warmer is to shorten the workweek. It is an irony of our economy that some people are
pressed to work more than they want, leaving little time for family or community, while
other people can only work part-time or not at all. Shortened workweeks serve to create
employment and redistribute wealth. The overworked get more leisure and the
underworked get jobs.461
458
Nossiter, 1990, p.191
459
Mattera, 1990, chapter 1, Phillips, 1990, p.8.
460
The idea that spending at the top of the socio-economic spectrum is more
inflationary than spending at the bottom of the spectrum because wealthy people spend
their money more freely is my own. Intuitively, I imagine it to be true. Unfortunately, I
have not been able to find an academic economist willing to say so. There is a distinct
lack of any such class perspective in economic literature. For now, this idea will have to
remain an unsubstantiated contention.
461
German Brief, 1993, Industrial Relations, 1987.
216
Shortened workweeks have been tried in Europe, and have been advocated in
the U.S. and Canada.462 The creation of shortened workweeks in Europe has caused
disputes between unions and corporations about whether a shortened workweek means
less wages, which has in fact been the case. In the context of our economy as it is
presently organized, less wages means less security and less power. But in the context
of a more cooperative economy, there would be many other sources of security and
power. For instance, if workers owned or managed a company, then reduced
workweeks -- even if it meant less money -- might be acceptable because workers
would have a much higher overall level of security.
462
Brandt, 1995, p.130
217
Repairing Simplicity
I moved on to fixing other things. The plumbing in the community had been
pieced together with whatever they could find in the good old days. There were places
where there wasn't any grass because the underground pipes broke so often that the
grass could never grow back before it got dug up again. There was even one spot
where they had managed to curl the pipe around a fair amount so as to leave a lot of
pipe in a small area, and then they built a woodshed over it. That pipe would break, and
we would have to haul all the wood out of the woodshed, tear out some of the framing,
and try to dig up the water line. Every time an underground pipe would break, the tank
would drain down and all the water would be gone. With no water for showers or
drinking or anything, I never had too much trouble finding help. The pipes would break
in the spring and the fall when the ground was shifting with the change of temperature.
Sometimes we would build a fire beside the cold muddy hole as we dug and took turns,
one person working and one thawing.
After a while, I started having dreams about shiny new pipes. New pipe isn't hard
to buy, but we still had to put it in the ground. At that point in time, I was introduced to
the community backhoe. It was an ill-kept, dirty yellow machine like you might see on a
road construction project in a county where the tax base is made up largely by Yankee
speeding tickets. I had met quite a few moody machines in my time, but this one was
not to be outdone by any of them. It would take an hour or two of hooking up jumper
cables, kicking and swearing to wake the beast up. It would cough a few black puffs of
diesel smoke, sputtering and swearing machine talk as it woke up. After it was awake
and making a racket, it still wouldn't move. You could put it in gear and swear at it some
more, but it would just hold stubborn and still, spitting hydraulic fluid at you like a mad
camel.
Finally, with enough coaxing, it would move. It would crawl along laboriously,
complaining about every move, till you got it in place to dig. It would keep on drooling
and spitting hydraulic fluid and oil, sometimes taking aim at you and sometimes just
oiling up whatever was around. In spite of all the complaining, the hydraulics were still
strong. The long boom would reach out and then plow a trench in the ground, tearing
through anything that got in the way, including water lines, telephone lines, electric
lines, and what not.
It was such an obese machine set so low to the ground that you would think it
couldn't get any lower, but it seemed to have a special proclivity for falling into whatever
hole you just got through digging. I would try to lift the machine out of the hole using that
unstoppable hydraulic boom. But it was a spiteful animal, and the hydraulics would
weaken as the big yellow beast slowly sank in the oily mud, the diesel engine thumping
a low chuckle all the while.
It wasn't hard to figure that leaking oil all over the place wasn't good for anybody,
so we got rid of the backhoe. But it was a disagreeable beast right up until the end, and
refused to climb onto the flatbed truck that was brought to haul it away. We wenched it
onto the truck, where the hydraulics sagged as the machine settled into a pouting lump
of ill-tempered iron as it was hauled to its resting place.
218
There's a fair amount of hand work to be done laying water lines, even when you
have a machine. You still have to dig around other buried lines and things you can't get
too close to with the machine. Scratching through Virginia clay and rock wears on tools
pretty hard. We shoveled with shovels that had three or four inches of steel worn off the
point till the end wasn't round like a shovel any more but rather had a big valley in the
middle. We picked with pickaxes where the long steel spikes had been worn down to
short nubs. The worn tools reminded me of the thresholds in the old house back on the
farm where an inch of wood had been worn away just by people walking on it.
The handles on the community’s tools were worn oily smooth, wrenches scarred
and blackened from many years of use. We didn't have all that much, but we put what
we had to good use. In the community, we lived with a number of people in one house
rather than everybody having their own house. It makes a plumber's mind tired to think,
but there must be a half a mile of pipe for every person living in a regular subdivision. In
the community, we flowed a lot more water through a lot less pipe, used a few washing
machines for a whole lot of people, and generally got by sharing things. But using things
a lot does wear them out faster, especially if they weren't built very well in the first place.
Most of the folks in the community came from that neighborhood world where they
taught you more about crossing the street than swinging a hammer. Being a resident
expert on the matter, I soon became something akin to the community mechanical trash
man, cleaning up years worth of broken pipes and wires. All through the week I would
cut out and replace leaking and broken fittings and drop the old ones in my tool box. By
the end of the week, the tool box would be full of corroded metal fittings. I would dump
the toolbox at the barn, pouring out rust and dust from the depths of time and half-witted
plumbing.
We had a barn where we stored building materials. It was of an ordinary
ramshackle sort, painted red like a barn should be. The community was set up, part by
intent and part by accident, so that nothing went to waste. I would sort through the
leftover materials. The iron, copper, and brass fittings went to the machine shop where
they would be sorted, anything useful kept, everything else sold to the smelter. The
small screws and bolts went to the woodshop to settle in among the wooden boxes of
screws that were already there. Whenever you needed parts, you could sort through the
boxes where new screws were mixed with worn and used ones from a long time ago
and find what you needed. The bigger bolts went to the auto shop to settle in among
new bolts and old greasy ones lying uncomfortably next to each other in well ordered
trays. Scrap paper and cardboard was moved to sheds where it was stored to be
recycled. It wasn't far to take it, each thing to its place, all just a few steps away.
Anything that could be used would likely be. People were constantly building
things, using whatever material happened to be around. You could lay a hundred dollars
in a public place, and it would stay there; nobody would take it. But there were a few
things that weren't nearly so safe. A chocolate bar left in a public area wouldn't last ten
minutes, and neither would a good two-by-four.
We worked, but we didn’t work too hard for the most part. We were our own
bosses, nobody telling us what to do. We set our own hours. And when the day was
over, my mind would be too tired to focus, a little too restless and alone to sleep, I would
go and sit in the hammock shop. There on the couch, I would take up residence on the
sidelines like a team mascot. I knew all the people well who would come and go in a
219
slow trickle. We would sit and talk. Talk is television to those without. But on this show I
knew the actors, I could reach out and touch them. We would stay up late, and secrets
would slip out and run around the edges of the walls like mice. I came to know more
people in greater depth than I could imagine. Too many mice left to run around inside
one mind, and they start to gnaw holes and foul the place. But then I talk to you and
learn my secrets are not so much mine. Sometimes for no reason at all you get so
scared that you think you are dying. So many places I thought I was alone, I go and find
you there. As insight drips slowly through the floorboards and even the mice fall sound
asleep.
220
Cooperatives
If we could overcome our political factitiousness enough to enact DM measures,
then we could eliminate structural poverty in our society. DM, however, does not
significantly change the structure of power and ownership in our society. Worker and
consumer owned cooperatives are going to be an important part of a more conscious
economy. Cooperatives alter economic relationships at a deeper and more powerful
level.
Worker control over businesses can make those businesses much more
responsive to real human needs. Large corporations are often insensitive to the needs
of local communities. Many corporations will sell or dissolve a business, at tremendous
cost to the workers and their communities, even though the business in question is
making a profit. It simply may not be making enough profit -- as much of a return on
investment as they might get somewhere else. Worker cooperatives put the control of
the business in the hands of the workers themselves.463
Many would be surprised to realize the number of cooperatives already in
existence in the U.S. In supplying electrical power, telephone service, farm tools and
products, cooperatives are already a significant part of our economy. Other schemes
that involve workers more in the control and ownership of business include ESOP's
(Employee Stock Ownership Plans), profit sharing, and worker management. There are
already many such programs in operation, and they are growing.464
Research on cooperatives in the United States indicates that they are both more
productive and less inflationary than ordinary businesses. The prices of goods and
services provided by cooperatives tend to be lower.465 If the greater part of our economy
were organized into cooperatives, that would serve as a substantial brake on inflation.
Cooperatives and worker-managed businesses are also dis-inflationary for
similar reasons that strong, secure unions are dis-inflationary. If workers are constantly
worried that the business they work for -- a business in which they have no control -- is
going to sell out or shut down, then they want to seek maximum wages. If workers have
some control over the future of the business, as is the case in cooperatives, then
workers are less compelled to maximize their wages.466 As with unions, more future
security means workers are more able to negotiate and moderate wage increases.
Although it is difficult to quantify, I think it is true that cooperatives are culturally
different from privately owned profit-maximizing companies. The difference comes back
to the psychology of the organization and the means of motivation it uses. The
463
For a fascinating account of the largest worker-owned cooperative complex in the
world, see William and Kathleen Whyte’s Making Mondragon, 1991.
464
Dauncey, 1988, p.145
465
Rofsky and Thompson, in Friedman, 1981. See also Zwerdling, in Friedman, p.202.
466
Kristensen, 1981, p.148-151
221
motivational systems in traditional capitalism are primarily deprivation based. There is
the fear of poverty, or the fear of being unloved and disrespected because we are seen
as poor. Traditional business relies on the cultural symbolism that only more and more
wealth can buy social respect. But the needs people are trying to meet in playing this
game cannot really be met with material wealth. Because they are not met, the cycle is
never-ending.
Businesses that involve workers more in ownership and management, like
cooperatives, are more directed to meeting human needs. They rely less on deprivationbased motivation. This is partly why cooperatives are less aggressive in the business
sense. Their leaders are not obsessively trying to meet needs that can never be met.
But in an economy that is consciously organized to meet human needs, we do not need
such aggressive competitiveness nearly so much as we need businesses that can fit
within a greater cooperative framework. What, in the end, is the global prize for winning
the game of economic competition but a front row seat to view our own ecological
destruction? Cooperatives can be more easily directed toward meeting human needs,
rather than relying on deprivation-based motivation as is common in our present
society.
Conservation and Recycling
Economic growth in our present economy invariably means escalated ecological
destruction. That, however, is not inevitable. Conservation and recycling programs
have made some headway in recent years. These programs are still hampered by
tradition and the underpricing of virgin resources. In economic terms, conservation and
recycling are important because they can create economic growth that does not cause
greater ecological destruction.467
“The Project Independence Solar Task Force in the United States has
suggested that a serious national program of manufacturing and installing solar
heating and cooling equipment in the nation's buildings to cut down oil imports
would create more than a million new jobs ... Improving insulation in buildings
467
“[T]the means for achieving success in two critical areas of public policy -- the
reduction of unemployment and the elimination of waste in the use of finite resources -appear to go hand-in-hand. This is reinforced by the ample evidence available both of
the efficiency and cost effectiveness of energy conservation measures, and of the
potential numbers of jobs which would result from their adoption” (Hillman, 1985, p.i).
“Recycling in fact tends to substitute human energy for fuel or electricity. This is
borne out by the fact that recycling creates jobs. Canadian studies indicate that six
times as many jobs are created by recycling as by landfilling. Many of these jobs would
be attractive for unskilled or semi-skilled workers, who represent the hard core of the
structurally unemployed -- a major problem in the inner cities” (Elkin, 1991, p.239). See
also Dauncey, 1988, p.216.
222
also generates a lot of work. The American Institute of Architects has estimated
that a conservation program for new and existing buildings would create from half
a million to more than a million direct jobs ... Materials conservation achieved by
recycling paper and metals, legislation for returnable containers, and the use of
city refuse for fuel or compost also creates jobs. All these conservation schemes
could stimulate the demand for labor while actually reducing resource
consumption -- an almost classic definition of uninflationary growth.” Barbara
Ward468
Conservation and recycling create jobs while reducing the overall consumption
of resources.469
Green Taxes
Even with the expansion of cooperatives and the development of conservation
and recycling, the market will continue to favor depletion as long as virgin resources are
not priced at their real, long-term value. At present, the market “externalizes” a great
deal of the price of our consumption. Electricity is cheap because we are not paying the
full long-term costs of coal. We are not paying for cleaning up the pollution caused by
coal burning, nor are we paying for the cost of creating new energy sources when the
coal is depleted. The same is true of most of the things we use. We are not paying the
full price of cleaning up; we are not paying for the transition to sustainability. We are
externalizing the price onto the next generation, onto foreign countries, and onto the
environment itself.
If prices are adjusted to reflect the real long-term costs of resources, the market
can begin to correct for our ecological destructiveness. Green taxes are the means that
some countries have used to move the market toward real pricing of resources.470
Green taxes would tax virgin resources and consumptive commodities. These taxes
could be revenue neutral, meaning other taxes could be reduced so the net tax burden
was equal. Coal and oil would be taxed, solar and other renewable energy would
receive incentives. One such program called “ fee-bates” is already being promoted in
California. In this program, expensive and consumptive cars are taxed and that money
is directly applied to rebates on efficient cars. In some such programs, the rebate is
higher for people trading in inefficient old cars.471
468
Ward, 1979, p.127
469
Bartelmus, 1994, p.94,95
470
Hawken, 1993, p.75-90. Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce is well worth
reading. See also Brown, 1993, p.189-192.
471
One such program is being promoted in California, see Union of Concerned
Scientists. Fee-bates are also promoted by Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass
Colorado.
223
Apart from being an ecological necessity, green taxes are potentially both
inflationary and socially regressive. If the cost of energy and resources are increased, in
the short run that will cause prices to rise. In combination with decreases in income
taxes used to offset increases in green taxes, we would have a recipe for inflation.
Green taxes could also be socially regressive in nature. For wealthier people, the
money they spend on energy, food and other necessities is only a small fraction of their
overall budget. For poorer people, increased costs for home heating, transportation and
food would be a burden.
Solutions for the socially regressive aspects of green taxes would likely lie with
decreasing taxes that the poor already pay, such as sales taxes. Green taxes would aim
to be revenue neutral, especially for poorer groups. Money from green taxes could also
be applied directly to improved social programs designed to offset the impact of new
taxes on people with low incomes. Green taxes must be accompanied by strong disinflationary measures such as those outlined in this chapter.
Because the real costs of our consumption are deferred to future generations,
energy and other resources are very cheap for us. As long as energy and resources do
not bear their real costs for consumers, no amount of moralizing will convince people to
conserve. We have to make the monetary cost of resources equal with their real longterm cost, and we have to be mindful of the immediate social costs of doing so.
A De-Intensified Society?
The drive to intensify, unify, and create motivation in human society caused
fundamental transformations in how people live. These forces acting incrementally over
the course of history created social stratification, male supremacy, militarization, and
ecological self-destruction in large human societies. Intensification also has fostered
the practices of hierarchical child-rearing, thus leading human societies toward a blind
faith in divine association in political affairs. This has the result of stalling the
development of social technology in perpetuity.
The social costs of stratification are obvious enough to lead many people to
advocate a more egalitarian, human-scale society, with worker-owned cooperatives as
the means of production. Cultural selection adds to these desires for equity a deeper
understanding of the influence of economic structures over our belief systems. The
connection between material change and belief will probably always exist, but we can
make that connection more conscious and less blind. It is sensible to see social
changes that bring material benefit as good things. But the connection need not be a
matter of blind faith.
When people are able to use their social understanding to affect their material
circumstance, then will have conscious control over cultural selection, then we will have
a social technological revolution. We will be able to organize to meet human needs, and
that meeting of needs will in turn select in favor of social awareness rather than against
it. When people are more aware of cultural selection, they will not blindly associate
material gains with God’s will, they will not be so easily bought off with short-term
political payoffs.
224
In the end, we are going to have to create not just a cooperative and just society,
but some form of social organization that can successfully compete with the large scale,
intensified, and stratified social organizations that already exist. We must create a
powerful new form of conscious unity that brings people together through elevated
social awareness, not blind faith. We must use that awareness to influence the
ownership of production. Structural poverty has always been part of the industrial
economy. The struggle over the price of wages and the concentration of wealth is
thousands of years old. The social sciences are not going to lead the change, and
economic growth is not going to affect structural poverty. We are capable of
understanding our world at entirely new levels, and using that understanding to finally
eliminate structural poverty.
225
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Building Outside of Present Imagination
Some people undertake to journey to community, to create a life outside of what
most people imagine. It is a space outside of the rushing mainstream, a place where
people take the time to stop and talk to each other. In that place, people create a
different reality between each other, and in that reality seek their truer self.
It was that way with some folks who came to the community. One was John
Carson, a young precise fellow with glasses sitting crisply on his face. He had been
working at a job making computer chips, inspecting them under a microscope for the
tiniest flaws. He had an eye for everything I could not see. We were walking once, and
he came upon a tree stump. A rather short, rotten, and generally un-noteworthy tree
stump by my reckoning. But as he examined it he became transfixed by colors melting
into each other, contours deep and complex, textures dripping wet with artistic
possibility.
He watched people, silently, like some observer from a foreign planet. The
intensity of his observation was unnerving to some. He was as curious about the hue
and contour of the human character as he was about the physical world. He had passed
through life thus far like a bird sitting on the window-sill, watching everyone go about
their important business. Always watching, rarely speaking.
Not long after coming to the community, he hatched -- into Ferret, the
effervescent person-animal. The shirt properly set about lightly squared shoulders gave
way to skin. Clean blue jeans with straight, crisp seams gave way to long flowing skirts
that would make a southern belle jealous. Proper silence cracked loose, fell to the floor
and shattered into tiny irretrievable pieces, leaving an impish grin in its place as he
cackled and chattered to an approving audience.
I have little doubt that Ferret might have stayed in his den, John sitting quietly on
his perch, gathering a lifetime of insights only to be shared with death in the end.
Instead Ferret got loose, and the quiet bird grew into a noisy parrot, perched on a high
place, telling loud and roguish stories late into the evening.
He was one of many who came out into the sunshine from their little holes in the
ground. With so much public judgement swept away, so much freedom for people to be
226
who they are, people grow texture, contour and color that otherwise would have
remained unseen for a lifetime.
227
Guerilla Macro-Management
We are living in an age of wholesale environmental degradation. We face an
extraordinary challenge. We may or may not actually succeed in confronting this
challenge gracefully. If we are going to stand any chance of transforming our ecological
Armageddon, we are going to have to imagine the unimaginable. We are going to have
to envision what would be required to make a transition in our global economy - our
modern society - to sustainability. We have to conceive of what it would take to get
there whether or not we ever actually do it.
The inferno effect represents a self-propelling, enormously powerful force in
modern industrial society that is consuming the planet. The inferno effect is not our only
environmental problem, it is not the only issue we face. But it is perhaps the most
significant. It is the driving force behind countless other environmental problems. It's the
reason we consume so much.
In recent times, energy conservation and recycling efforts have made a great
deal of progress. This is certainly a good thing. But efficiency does not address the
fundamental issue of the inferno effect. Even as we produce goods more efficiently,
employment is still based on the artificially elevated production and consumption of
goods. If a factory makes more shoes with less energy, that's a good thing. But if the
average American thinks they have to buy a new pair of new shoes with no thought of
whether the old ones are worn out -- even if those shoes are produced with less energy
-- the equation of the inferno effect has not changed. The amount of resources we
consume is still growing insatiably in spite of increased efficiency because of the nature
of our consumption-driven economy.
How can we influence the inferno economy? The obvious answer from an
environmental perspective is that we need to reduce consumption. But we can't just
reduce consumption; we have to create jobs at the same time. We have to displace the
inferno economy with sustainable production. Reducing consumption and creating jobs
at the same time is going to require a level of social organization above and beyond
issue-oriented politics.
How can we displace the inferno economy? Part of the answer to that question is
going to lie in redirecting production and consumption to a local level in order to rebuild
community. There are calls to rebuild community coming from all quarters in modern
time. As much as we may cherish the social richness of community, the interconnection
that allows people to support each other and remake extended families, these social
relationships are dependent on the underlying economic structure. If people have to
move to find the jobs, move they will and community be damned. If the larger culture
places more value on status, distinction, and separation than on community and
identifying through a group, most people will follow the dominant message and seek
status at the cost of community.
Cultural Selection Creates our Values
228
What is the origin of these messages that encourage people to seek status and
separation? Cultural selection operating in our inferno economy creates consumptive
values. The most significant lesson of cultural selection is that our economy has a
strong influence on our belief system. We consume so much because we think we want
to. We think we made this choice to be a materially oriented society because people
naturally want to be rich. These beliefs are as obvious to us as the Earth being flat.
When we think of people using less, we think of how greedy people seem to be.
We see the tenacious attachment of people holding on to their wealth, and we take it as
a statement on the greediness of “ human nature.” We as humans are extremely
malleable beings though. It is only in hierarchical cultures that there is a compulsion to
acquisition.
There are human cultures that praise people for being violent and aggressive,
and cultures that reward people for being nonviolent. There are human cultures that
praise and accept people for being humble, others that praise people for being
egotistical and greedy. The beliefs of gatherers offer us a mirror to look at our own
tendency to think of greed as human nature.
“To be stingy, or farhearted, is to hoard one's goods jealously and
secretively, guarding them “like a hyena.” The corrective for this, in the ! Kung
view, is to make the hoarder “give till it hurts,” that is, to make him give
generously and without stint until everyone can see that he is truly cleaned out.
In order to insure compliance with this cardinal rule, the !Kung browbeat each
other constantly to be more generous and not to hoard ...”
“But deplorable as they regard the fault of stinginess, the !Kung's most
scathing criticisms are reserved for an even more serious shortcoming; the crime
of arrogance ... A stingy person is antisocial and irksome, but an arrogant person
is actually dangerous because, according to the !Kung, “his pride will make him
kill someone.”” Richard Lee472
If we could develop the capacity to consciously choose our attitudes about such
matters, we would have a great power in our hands indeed. Our beliefs evolve as a
result of the impacts those beliefs have on the productive processes of our society. In
our society we reward people with status, praise, acceptance, symbolic and real sex for
working hard, making money, accumulating money, and consuming. Cultural selection
and the inferno effect reinforce our “greed.” Our “greed” has bought us the most
powerful economy on the face of the earth. The power lies in culture. If we can
consciously alter the culture, we can get people to do things we might have otherwise
imagined impossible. Not that this will be easy. But make no mistake, a culture that
idealized voluntary simplicity would invoke that behavior just as powerfully as our
culture invokes acquisitiveness. The reason we have not done that already is not
because it runs counter to “human nature,” but rather because it would be economic
and political suicide within the present structure.
472
Lee, 1979, p.457-458
229
Economic localization may be a means to bridge the gap between our present
economy and a society of conscious evolution. If localization can create employment
fast enough to offset the loss of employment from more materially simple living, and if
we can resist political reprisals, then we can indeed create a culture that values material
simplicity rather than acquisition.
Our social needs are the pathway our society has into ourselves. Directing
emotional needs is the motivational system of cultural evolution. Most especially
through our sexuality, our society uses our need for love and acceptance as a means
to direct us toward actions that are profitable for society as a whole. As much as we are
passive consumers in how meet our material needs, we are passive participants in how
we meet our social needs. In a society of conscious evolution, we would cease to be
emotional beggars, taking it as it comes from the greater society around us. We would
seek to meet our material and social needs in a more conscious and direct way. Our
culture would cease to operate on a deprivation-based motivation system. It would be a
more conscious, more elegant system. We would meet our needs more directly. Finding
a way to consciously choose our cultural values would make us far more adaptable
beings.
230
Delancey
Sometimes when I write, I have a sense of something inside, and I look for an
image of what I am trying to say. When I find that thing, I hold it in my mind, turn it
around slowly and tell you what I see as it turns.
I was looking for a picture of the deepest meaning of this place, and her image
came to me, an image of the other way. Here to find a lover of the soul.
xxx
Delancey came to the community in the usual way, not having finished college
and looking for something different. She had moppish hair that hung down sheepdoglike. She would hide behind that hair; you might think it was shyness, but it wasn't really.
She said what she was supposed to say and became a member.
I didn't get to know her for quite some time. But I had developed a trade from
quite a young age as a professional berry picker, so our paths were bound to cross. In a
blackberry patch, of course.
She had a striking face with distinct features. Broad shoulders, strong all the way
down. We were sitting one evening out on the steep hill where the berries grow, as the
light was fading. I was looking at her profile, noticing her form. Something inside said,
clearly, no -- and I would not see that in her anymore. Many times I heard people say
how attractive she was. It always caught me by surprise. I would not see it.
xxx
In the fall Delancey and I made increasing persimmon and paw paw expeditions
to the far reaches of the known world. Paw paws come in first. They grow wild, on small
trees with big tropical leaves, on the silt flats in river floodplains. The fruits grow large as
a pear, sweet and creamy like a mango. We would canoe the river, climb the banks with
mud squishing up between our toes and briars resisting our landing. We would gather
paw paws from the ground and shake them down, collect them in buckets to carry
home.
Persimmons come in later. Persimmon trees will take most any pasture as their
home. The fruits are very bitter till they ripen. They will stay on the trees, slowly drying
to candy confections well past the new year. We made many persimmon expeditions
late into the fall. The bicycle is the craft of choice for persimmon expeditions. We would
ride to the dry pastures, with sparse tall grass and mixed with weeds and old bits of
cornstalk from years past. To be careful you have to pick them up off the ground to
avoid the bitter ones, but once you get good at it you can tell which ones are really ripe
and pick them off the tree. When we had nibbled our fill of sticky fruit from around the
slippery seeds, we would ride home on the rolling hills, gliding down the long hills in
sweet pointless freedom.
There is a hard side to living such a different life. There is the judge inside,
always so ready to condemn you for not being more than you are. In the mainstream,
231
you have badges and suits of honor to tell you who you are. Lying in the grass eating
the fruits of wild labor on a fall evening, ever so wise but not so educated, you have to
be pretty damn sure of who you are. She was stronger than me that way, present in the
moment, maybe because the moment was what she had. I liked to think there was a
kind of magic in sweet wild fruit, magic that could make things better.
Even after the raccoons had eaten the last of our justification for exploring, me
and Delancey would ride our bikes on the long back roads. She was strong; she could
ride fast. I had to remind her that, though I was sure I could keep up, it was strictly a
matter of personal preference to not ride quite that fast.
She liked to chase the leaves as they were blowing across the road on a strong
wind, swooping down like a wheeled hawk to snatch them from mid air. We would keep
score, to see who could catch them best.
xxx
Delancey and I went down to Springtree Community to visit Jon. He grows fruit
trees -- apples, persimmons, paw paws. He grafts them himself, in tidy orchards that
flow down a river of fruit in the fall, till you drink yourself full of cider.
We were coming home with our two-wheeled transportation. She got ahead of
me a bit, like happened sometimes when she rode faster than I could really see a
justification for. I came to a fork in the road, but she was long gone. I looked around
some, then proceeded down one of the roads. She must have taken the other road, on
account of it soon became clear that we weren't traveling together anymore. I went
along on my way, but there turned out to be an awful lot of persimmon trees on this
route. And some big ones too. Of course, that slowed down my progress quite a bit.
Before I knew it, the whole day had worn away and my trip wasn't over yet.
I straggled in that evening, well fed for my efforts. She had come looking for me,
driving around trying to figure what could possibly keep a person so long. She was like
that. She watched out for people, tried to make sure you were alright, even if you never
really could do that for her.
xxx
She had a way of sneaking up on me at parties. You could sit by on the side in
the dimly lit room of bodies moving with rhythm, letting the heavy drumbeat come inside
and push your blood while your heart ran free around the crowd and danced with the
unsuspecting, watching people as each put their own character to motion. Delancey
would come and with no warning claim co-occupancy of my big padded chair. There we
would sit, breaking the simple rule that adults are not supposed to touch each other.
xxx
I went to get her once when she wasn't feeling well. I was trying to get her to take
a walk, but she was reluctant. I persisted until she finally relented to my harassment.
We walked up the gentle hill on the gravelly path, then into the forest. We walked
through the leaves piled thick as they flowed around our legs like deep crackly water.
232
We talked about life, about how long struggle must go on. Pain has a way of
pulling down the barriers. All the reasons for self-protection, all the means of hiding
washed away in a flow of sweet clean fall air and leaves washing by, to the simple
sacred self laid bare. Then we talked to each other, like nothing left to lose.
We walked a circle in the forest, out toward the road, then coming back again.
We crossed the creek valley and headed up the ridge to the graveyard. There the old
trees stand tall and dignified, each out separate from the other to show their distinction,
forming a solid canopy above, clear space below like a magical forest playground.
She was always curious about Margaret -- Margaret who fell into a deep
depression some years ago. Her friends stayed with her and helped her for months.
She seemed to be getting better. Then she took a car and a vacuum cleaner hose out
one night. Now we stood by her grave and talked about struggle.
We left the graveyard and headed across the pasture. Daylight had faded. We
lay in the thick grass and watched the moon rising.
We stood and walked down the steep slope. She fell back like she wanted to be
alone for a moment. Under the peaceful moon-glow, alone is not so alone. Like an
accident that strikes tragedy into the lives of the unsuspecting, I was hit at the knees in
a tackle that sent us both rolling long through the grass. Pivot and return to engage in
almost mock combat, trying to wrestle those broad shoulders to the ground. Such a very
strong soul.
xxx
In this age of machines we think of people like mass-produced things. Either they
are straight and clean, perfect squared and true like tool steel, or they are crooked and
broken. But we are not of the world of machines, we are of the world of living beings.
Out in the forest, there are some trees that grow straight and tall and some of those
may grow old. But it is the lot of most of them and us that the light is uneven and the soil
stony in places. Storms come and break down even strong branches. The great ones
struggle on, turn and bend with the pressure and struggle, reaching always toward the
light. The old ones that hold the greatest beauty are the ones who have faced struggle,
twisted, broken, and kept growing, the deep roots and broad strong trunks of character.
233
Vertical Money
Community allows people to spend time together. This may not sound terribly
important compared to the economic and ecological implications of the decisions we
make in our larger society. But the reality of the matter is that our culture uses our
social needs to drive the economy forward. Particularly through the sexual reward
system, we are trained to seek all of our most intimate and powerful social support
through channels that are culturally legitimized. If we can find a means to overcome the
cultural programming that shuts us down to receiving support from other sources, we
can short-circuit the reward systems of the mainstream culture and create alternative
systems of social support.
A community of more direct social support is only possible if it is built on an
economic foundation that will support it. Enlightenment devoid of appropriate economic
underpinnings is a castle in the sky, and likely to fall down quickly.
One aspect of rebuilding community economically is going to involve shifting at
least some production to more labor-intensive processes. At present, we have very
capital-intensive economy. Labor is expensive compared to energy and natural
resources. Instead of having people make our toys and our tools and all the other things
that we consume, we have big machines that spit them out. The energy it takes to make
the steel and the plastic and the computers that run the machines is cheap. The labor,
by comparison, is expensive. Market forces responding to these costs have caused us
to invest a great deal of resources and money in machinery and less in labor. That
situation is different in less-developed countries. Their production is often more laborintensive.
Why are we going to have to shift to a more labor intensive economy? Because
it actually takes an enormous amount of energy to replace each worker in most
production processes. It may be profitable in a capital-intensive economy to replace an
auto-worker with a robot, but on average it requires a great deal of energy to do so.473
We can't afford to continue down that road. We don't have that much energy and we
cannot afford the pollution that results from using up so much energy. The inferno effect
is an open-ended, self-reinforcing loop. Our planet is a closed system. By nature, these
systems stand in contradiction to each other. The fact that the Earth is a closed system
in unchangeable. The open-ended nature of the inferno effect is changeable.
One thing that may help in our transition to a localized economy is to maximize
the impact of the multiplier effect at the local level. The multiplier effect refers to the
behavior of money in an economy. When a dollar is spent in an economy, it is always
re-spent. If you go to the store and buy something, the store owner is going to spend
that money on something else. The person that the store owner gives their money to is
going to spend that money yet again. Each time that money is spent, it multiplies its
impact throughout the economy. That is the multiplier effect.474
473
Ward, 1979, p.128-130
474
Case, 1989, p.596
234
In a capital-intensive economy dominated by large corporations, multipliers are
limited and vertically oriented. If you go to a large chain store and spend your money,
that money immediately goes to corporate headquarters in a distant city. It may go to
pay a commercial debt, in which case the money is effectively taken out of circulation.475
In any case the money travels vertically and does not change hands very many times.
That money does not generate a lot of economic activity. As machines instead of people
make our tools and our toys and our money travels vertically into the hands of rich
people, we are caught in a cycle where we have to use up more and more stuff to
maintain the same level of employment.476 We have to consume more and more
resources simply to keep the economy afloat. And that is what we are doing, without
consciously planning it, without knowing the impact our actions will have on our
children's lives.
The Horizontal Economy
We could redirect production and consumption to a more localized level. Our
consumption would have a much greater impact on employment through the multiplier
effect with far less destruction of natural resources. If you spend your money with a
local farmer instead of at a big chain store, it is fairly likely that the farmer will respend
the money locally. That money would change hands in the local economy over and
over again and generate a great deal of activity before leaving the local economy. The
money spent and the resources consumed from local producers can create more jobs
with less ecological destruction. If the localization of consumption were combined with
other cultural changes directed toward sustainability, then it could be very powerful.
There are a number of “buy local” campaigns around the country.477 The primary
purpose of such campaigns is “ import substitution.”478 They are trying to get
governments or other entities to purchase goods from local producers. While these
campaigns are worthwhile, they do not aim at actually reducing consumption as such.
That will require a deeper economic and cultural restructuring.
475
Banks do extinguish money (Greco, 1994, p.8-13).
476
A greater flow-through of resources is required in centralized economies to maintain
employment, thus fueling the inferno effect. This is represented by the fact that
centralized economies require a lot of capital - perhaps tens of thousands of dollars
depending on the particular sector of the economy - to create a single job (Solomon,
1978, p.137).
477
These are most often pursued by city governments, such as St. Paul Minnesota and
The “Oregon Marketplace” in Eugene (Morris, 1983). See also Rocky Mountain Institute,
Economic Renewal Program.
478
Sandro, 1995, p.199-225
235
There is another invisible factor that might be very useful to us in converting to a
more sustainable economy. There is actually a great deal of money in what we consider
poor neighborhoods. People who have studied poorer neighborhoods have found that
the money flow tends to be vertical there as well. The way people spend their money
results in the money leaving the neighborhood quickly.
“The important features of a poor neighborhood are, first, the discrepancy
between the aggregate expendable income of the neighborhood and the paltry
level of its commerce, and, second, the discrepancy between the considerable
tax revenue the neighborhood generates and the low level of benefits it receives
in public services and welfare. In both cases, the neighborhood exports its
income ... Its present internal commerce is dependent, as is its level of public
services, on commerce and personnel outside the neighborhood.” Milton
Kotler479
“One neighborhood in Washington, D.C., determined that a fast-food store
collected $750,000 a year in revenue from local customers and exported from the
community more than $500,000. An older, ethnic neighborhood in Chicago found
that of the $33 million it had deposited in one local savings and loan association,
only $120,000 had been returned in loans. The rest was being lent outside the
neighborhood, in many cases outside the city itself.” David Morris480
“Fast food is big business ... But what really happens to a community with
the arrival of the uni-burger? Our analysis shows that perhaps three-quarters of
the money it spends at its burger emporium will leave the community.”
Christopher and Hazel Gunn481
Local wealth could be redirected by a social movement that understood cultural
selection, a movement that undertook to consciously create a new set of values in
coordination with economic changes. If this social movement were in a position to take
advantage of the psychological and cultural effects of the economic impacts of that
redirected wealth, that would be conscious cultural selection.
There is tremendous untapped economic power even in poorer neighborhoods.
There is a lot of money that could be redirected. That redirecting could have social,
political, and ecological benefits. If we could do it in a way that would move production
toward sustainability, that would displace the capital intensive economy. We could move
toward more labor-intensive production. We could eliminate the enormous resource
consumption of the capital- and machinery-intensive economy. We could eliminate the
enormous transportation costs of the global economy that ships products all over the
planet.
479
Kotler, Milton quoted from Morris, 1975, p.69-70.
480
Morris, 1982, p.77
481
Gunn, 1991, p.25
236
Local Currency
Local currencies could be useful in rebuilding local economies. There are two
basic kinds of systems being experimented with in countries all over the world. One
system is called LETS and there are many variations on it.482 LETS stands for Local
Exchange and Trading Systems according to some people. LETS is a computer-based
barter system. People sign up to be part of a network. As people exchange goods, a
computer account keeps track of credits and debits among all the people in the network.
I might bake you a cake. You accept that cake and we exchange a certain number of
units. I would be credited a certain number of units for having baked the cake; you
would be debited a certain number of units for having received the cake. Our accounts
would read as such. You would at some point have to put those units back into the
system by providing goods or services to someone else in the system. Exchange
happens throughout the network. People are allowed to go a certain amount into “debt.”
It is a zero balance system. All the debits and credits balance out. There are hundreds
of these systems around the world.
Another kind of system is printed alternative currency. Local currency is paper
money printed by a local organization. It is legal in almost all of the states in the U.S.
Local currency has to be intelligently managed. It has to be supplied in the proper
amounts. It has to be backed up by a solid organizational expertise. There are less
alternative printed currency systems than there are LETS, but printed currency does
seem to have some advantages over LETS. The primary advantage of printed currency
is that it is more familiar. It is similar to printed national currencies.
Alternative printed currency is something that often strikes people at first as odd.
They are accustomed to national currencies; they are doubtful about locally based
currency. However, in this country and in other countries, in many other places and
times throughout history, local currencies have operated effectively. That is essentially
all we are talking about is a small scale currency -- a currency that will operate on the
level of a town, a city, or a few counties.
Under the proper circumstances, local currencies can have a miraculous effect
on a local economy. Thomas Greco, in his book New Money for Healthy Communities
recounts a story about a German town during the Great Depression of the 1930s.483
Schwanenkirchen was a mining town, and there was only one mine that supplied most
of the work. Because of the depression, people weren't buying coal, and the mine was
shut down.
Some people elsewhere in Germany had the idea of starting an alternative
currency. The fellow who owned the mine decided to use this alternative currency to
open his mine. He called the workers together, told them of his plan, and they agreed to
482
Information about LETS can be found on the world wide web at http://www.unet.com.gmlets.
483
Greco, 1994, p.58-59.
237
be paid in alternative currency. They started working, accepting the local currency, and
taking it to the local stores. There was no other money in town; the local currency was
the only money available. The stores had little choice but to accept it, so they did. They
took it to their suppliers, who in turn were under pressure to accept it because this was
the only money that was at hand. So they accepted it. Many of them in turn took it back
to the mine and bought coal with the local currency. At that point the money had come
full circle.
Before long, the town was alive again. People were working, paying off their
debts, and buying food and other things at the local stores. The currency started to
spread to other towns and began to have similar effects. The story was described in
American papers as “The Miracle of Schwanenkirchen.”
Meanwhile, the national banks in Germany got nervous. They decided they didn't
like this local currency and managed to bring the entire program to a halt.
In a situation where there is a demand for it, local currency can have an
enormous impact on a local economy. Local currency might well compliment a
movement that sought to redirect the flow of wealth horizontally into a local economy. In
combination with the building of a new cultural ethos -- motivational systems that do not
rely on the exploitation of any gender, class, or race -- such a movement could have a
great impact.
Localization and Employment
If we localize our economy in order to address the inferno effect, the question
then becomes how many jobs can we create how quickly? Can we generate jobs
quickly enough to offset the losses of employment that will be caused by reductions in
consumption?
The question of quantifying how many jobs can be created by localized
production is not easily answered. If you buy your tomatoes from a local farmer instead
of a chain grocery store, how many jobs are created and how many lost? As far as
industrialized countries are concerned, such information does not seem to exist. Some
research has been done in developing countries concerning the employment impacts of
small and local businesses.484 The research has shown that some small businesses
survive regardless of the growth of large business in the same sector of the economy.
484
Research in developing countries demonstrates the benefits of small scale
production. At least in some segments of the economy, smaller production facilities
using appropriate technologies create cheaper products and more jobs than larger
industries. Appropriate technology has been defined as simply the “optimum use of
available resources,” including human resources (Ginneken, 1984, p.8). Appropriate
technology can mean anything from very simple to complex technologies. The point is
to consciously choose technologies that are sustainable and meet human needs.
Numerous studies in developing countries have demonstrated the benefit of
consciously choosing small scale production and appropriate technologies (International
Labour Office, 1978) (Lipton, 1993, p.1515-1548) (Bhalla, 1981) (Ginneken, 1984).
238
Small bakeries for instance are found in every economy regardless of whether or not
there are larger bakeries.485
Farms have been shown to be more efficient on the small scale. Small farms
not only produce more food per acre than large farms; they also create more jobs per
unit of capital and land. This has been found to be true of farms in many different
countries.486 In many other industries, such as shoe-making, small businesses have
been found to create products at a lower cost and generate more jobs than larger
businesses.487
The evidence is indirect, but it seems very likely that converting some sectors of
our economy to local production would generate more jobs than would be lost. We will
not be able to convert our entire economy to small-scale production quickly. Industries
such as mining or energy production tend to be large scale and will be difficult to
convert. Recycling and conservation -- which generate a great deal of employment -dramatically reduce the need for these heavy industries. Some industries, such as food
or clothing production, are easily converted to the small scale.
The employment created by small businesses could be the backbone of a
politically viable localization movement. Widespread localization could become a kind of
guerilla macro-management. We could take charge of our own economy. Economic
management is presently dominated by wealthy and powerful people. They will be the
last people to see the need for pressing economic activity downward in scale. We will
not succeed by just conserving resources or dropping out of the “rat race,” we have to
pro-actively create new culture. Localization of production and consumption, along with
conscious cultural changes, has the ability to move us toward sustainability.
485
International Labour Office, 1978, p.61
486
Lipton, 1993, p.1515-1548
487
Ginneken, 1984
239
Regime
We live under the Regime. It is not safe in this age to show too much love. It
could be a sign of weakness, of vulnerability. But we want it anyway. So we pass
affection like secret spy messages, hidden from the most careful watch. I have sat with
the boys, and talked pistons and pushrods, catfish and board feet. The obvious is
invisible. We chose to come together, to be here with each other, and pass secret spy
messages, little notes written in invisible ink, swearing blood bonds.
We move around each day, in this rural place where the world still turns slowly,
where the cows graze down the asphalt weeds before they multiply and get out of hand.
Under the watchful eye of the Regime, I pass notes to Mr. Jon on the corner and Ms.
Smith at the counter. My notes say I need you, today I need you just a little bit, give me
shelter from the wind that blows from too far away, take a little of my offering to you. Let
us write in invisible ink, we are not alone.
Here in our village I see you so very often, but the eyes of the Regime still peer
down on us. So we pass secret spy messages. I see you so often, like an infatuated
child, I cannot get enough. I see you on the path and in the shop. Let me write with
invisible ink the bread that I made, let me tell you that I care. Here in this village we
have formed the concrete and built the machines so we can work together. While I
grease these gears with my sweat, I will be looking through the dusty light, and passing
you secret spy messages with one eye.
I pass you little notes under the garden lettuce leaves. We sit at the table and I
blow secret steam symbols off my soup and let them brush gently across your face.
When evening comes, sometimes the twilight rolls in like gritty fog and quietly grinds
away the sharp edges of vigilance. The guards of the Regime doze with their full bellies,
and in sleepy tones I sing into your eyes the frightful truth of my need.
And tomorrow in our village where we see each other so often, we will know then
more code for our secret spy messages. And while we turn the tide of a petty little war
between the carrots and the weeds, my eyes will gently stroke across your face and
speak the code we are ever learning. Here in this village we have passed so many
notes now, my anger has bit you with bitter venom, our fear flowed together when he
got hit in the back of the head and we thought he was dead. You have dug away with
me the cool earth and laid there her body. We each threw in a piece of ourselves, to rot
away and be taken up by the tree roots, spread to the wind, back to the One from which
we come.
I have worked and loved and cursed you so long now, sometimes now when I
send you secret spy messages, I glance over my shoulder and the guard of the Regime
flickers like a bad picture tube. Someday our revolt may yet succeed.
240
Motivating
In the future we will be returning to a past age, to a time when people stop and
talk to each other. We push time faster in this age, to win the race to money and power.
So many come to think they are their jobs, their titles, their status. But the very old and
the very new have something to show us. We cannot afford the race any longer. We are
going to have to find ourselves again in each other.
Redefining the terms of social respect in our larger society would allow us to
create a new motivational system. Getting a lot of people to work together toward a
common goal is not easy. Human societies all over the world achieve that end by
creating social stratification and male supremacy. If we want to change these
oppressive institutions, we are going to have to create a new means to motivate people.
While this may sound like a difficult thing to do, we can short-circuit the motivational
systems of our society. People are driven to work harder to meet their social needs for
respect and love. We jump through all manner of hoops, working for years on end to
meet our own simple needs. We could meet these needs much more directly, but only
in cooperation with other people.
Our needs are not open simply waiting to be met by whatever fulfillment that
happens along. We are often closed to allowing others to have access to us
emotionally. We have learned where and when we are supposed to get our needs met.
Particular situations have a kind of cultural legitimacy, a social sanction that we are
supposed to feel or act certain ways. We can be loud and expressive watching a ball
game because that is appropriate. We can receive emotional support from someone
who fits the cultural definitions of an appropriate lover because that is where our society
tells us it is appropriate to receive a particular kind of emotional support.
If we could create culture that opened people up to meeting their own needs in
more direct social contact -- in the context of rebuilding community -- we could create
new motivational systems. We could meet each other's needs more directly. The trick is
to create enough cultural legitimacy for new social institutions. We are going to have to
create institutions to offer people identity, social respect, and self-esteem through some
other means than making a lot of money and destroying the environment. We need to
create an integrated social movement based on community economics, conscious
cultural selection, and the direct and conscious meeting of our social needs.
New motivational systems will need to be linked with economic reconstruction.
We may not be able to create enough employment and activity simply based on
meeting people's immediate material needs. Our world has grown more complicated
than that. Creating artificial exchange of environmentally benign commodities, or even
some status or public recognition of acts of local economic service, might well be useful
in bolstering local economies. Perhaps a town might choose to create an active
exchange of products locally produced. People might display products and crafts, and
public respect might be attached to such display. If there were sufficient economic
activity that everyone was able to buy some of these products, the effect of such activity
would be to create some economic padding, some non-utilitarian economic activity.
241
Then when there was some economic fluctuation, people would buy fewer nonutilitarian products, but still have money to buy necessities.
Local non-utilitarian products would have to be produced on an ecologically
sustainable basis. Sustainability in this case would have to mean real sustainability:
production that can proceed for thousands of years into the future without any
degradation of the living standards of future generations.
If any of this sounds a bit unlikely, then I would point out that what I have just
described is what we already do. The big houses, big cars, nice furniture, all the
gadgets and yard ornaments, are in fact inferno effect “crafts” -- items of artificial
consumption that stimulate the economy. These items already have cultural legitimacy
as symbols of status. We would have to consciously shape our culture to create
legitimacy for new value systems. We would do well to avoid the social stratification
presently associated with the public display of the inferno effect.
Unifying
Localization and rebuilding community are going to be part of conscious
evolution, for economic, ecological, and psychological reasons. But localized social
systems are not innately benign. The anthropological record is noteworthy on this score.
Many pre-industrial cultures have been xenophobic toward outsiders. In Papua New
Guinea, for instance, there are a great number of cultures. Traditionally, these cultures
had populated the fertile areas of their island to a significant density. These cultures
were geographically close but in some ways quite divergent from each other. There
were many hundreds of languages spoken by the various small groups. A given
language might be spoken by people living within a ten-mile radius. Anyone from that
culture who traveled outside of their own culture, their own linguistic area, would be
killed. Many of these cultures were hostile to each other. Because of that hostility, they
remained isolated from each other for long periods of time. These groups were so
isolated from each other for so long that even languages that shared a geographical
border might bear no identifiable resemblance. Many pre-industrial societies were not
only small-scale, but also isolationist. I don't think that is what we would like to recreate
in building a localized economy.
In own history, localized power has often been oppressive. State's Rights and
racial segregation were based on localized political power. A new movement is afoot to
return power to local authorities under the banner of “New Federalism.”488
Conservatives in particular are enthusiastic about this idea. On the surface, New
Federalism may look like localization, but a significant sleight-of-hand is involved.
You will remember from our discussion of cultural selection and racism that the
people who develop racist beliefs via cultural selection are the people who personally
profit from it. When a group of people in a specific locality establishes a system of
exploitation based on race or class, they benefit from it locally. But people several
488
McClay, 1995
242
states away do not benefit, and may even be harmed. People further away are more
likely to be influenced by ethical arguments.
Looking at the politics of our country, the basis of conservative political power at
present in the United States is upper-middle class and wealthy people.489 The
Republicans benefit from conservative blue-collar workers as well. These workers may
compete for jobs with poorer groups. Both ends of the Republican constituency stand to
benefit from locally invigorated exploitation of the weakest groups of our society. The
return to local power, in this case, is a means for conservatives to pay off their
supporters.
The localization of New Federalism is a localization of political payoffs. New
Federalism does not seek to localize economic power. For all the talk of “big
government,” the lack of talk about “big corporations” is especially notable. The
corporations are at present on their way to becoming our unelected government.
In order to protect minorities in a large society, large scale political and legal
organization must accompany localized politics. This will provide strong and enforceable
protection at a level higher than the operation of localized cultural selection as it is
influenced by the profits of exploitation.
And our world is simply not going to get smaller. The purpose of localization is
not to escape the larger scale, but rather to build a level of conscious culture that serves
as a base of economic power and psychological empowerment. If people were
personally involved in a local level of economic and political culture, it would serve to
create understanding that they could then transfer to larger social systems. This would
help a great deal in overcoming the tendency to divine association that occurs in cultural
selection.
In our present society, the gap from the individual to the large institutions is quite
large. The individual interfaces with the banks, the government, the corporations -- all
very large institutions. As a result, the individual easily feels small and disempowered in
the face of those large institutions. If people could see the impacts of their actions more
at a local level, they could transfer that sense of power to the larger scale. That, in
essence, would be the basis of conscious evolution. At a local level, we would have
conscious culture, including new motivational systems. It would not just be a deintensified economy, but an economy that is organized to motivate and unify people.
489
Phillips, 1990, p.25
243
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Real Myn
When I first moved to the community, I didn't talk right, at least that is what some
of the women thought. Where I had come from, to call a woman a lady was a sign of
respect. But in the community, they told me right quick to not call any female a lady. I
got a little bothered about it at first, figuring they had no right to tell me how to talk.
It seemed that I had come in a time when folks were arguing about such things. It
seemed like the womyn were constantly doing something. They would be having
meetings and little gatherings all the time. They set up womyn's construction crews. Of
course, we borrowed tools from them real early in the morning same as the others.
There were a fair number of regular parties and gatherings for everybody, and
some just for myn, but not as many as for womyn. Part of one building became womyn's
space. Only womyn lived there, and the living room was more or less off-limits to myn.
Most people thought it was a good thing, but some myn felt left out. One fellow started
saying that he thought that womyn had learned intimacy like myn had learned to fix
things, so womyn shouldn't keep all their intimacy to themselves like myn shouldn't keep
all their mechanical skills to themselves. It made for a fair amount of arguing but not
much besides that.
Most myn weren't too concerned about what the womyn were doing. It was only
the new-member myn that got caught unsuspecting. Some womyn get kicked around all
their life, told that they can't do one thing and another, looked down on and lusted after.
Like a lot of folks who get kicked around, most times they don't say much at the time.
But some part of them remembers it. Then they come to intentional community and they
have a chance to say everything they never said, a chance to get mad about what they
never got mad about. Most myn understood it, and accepted some responsibility for the
original insult, but some of the new myn didn’t understand it at all.
There was one Irish fellow by the name of Dan who didn't take it so well. He was
built like an oak tree, tall and broad with a bushy beard. Some of the womyn folk started
to setting him straight. They didn't want to be called ladies, and they sure didn't want to
be called girls. But Dan thought they was being too picky and too pushy and he was
starting to get all worked up about it. There was plenty of woods to absorb a person's
frustration, so Dan decided one day to take a buddy out on the river to go canoeing and
244
get some fresh air to clear his head. Neither one of them had ever picked up a canoe
paddle in their lives, but they were manly sorts and surely it couldn't be that hard. They
paddled and splashed around in circles where the canoes were tied up till they figured
out how to at least make the canoe go in a particular direction. The canoe was pointed
downstream about the time they figured out how to make it move, so downstream they
went. They paddled along, proud of their manly mastery of a new skill, and just set to
enjoying the trees and the water and the air.
They hadn't really thought much ahead about this trip, and it just so happened
that the mill and the dam were downstream of where the canoes were tied. The mill
rises up proud above the water, a stately sight from a canoe. The water in the mill pond
is near still, moving so slow you could hardly tell, till it slips in a foaming rush over the lip
of the tall dam. Dan and his friend were admiring the old mill, basking in the sunshine of
manly skills newly mastered. They were so absorbed with themselves that they just
didn't think at all about the water inching its way across the smooth surface of the mill
pond. They had been basking for a while when one of them finally took his eyes off of
the mill and looked over his shoulder at the dam.
The dam is about two times tall as a person. Big fish wait in the churning water at
the bottom of the dam to catch the confused little fish that get caught unsuspecting in
the fall. There's no fish in that river big enough to catch a person, but there's little doubt
a person would fare any better than a small fish going over that dam.
Dan and his buddy sat there looking over at the lip of the dam, edging closer to it,
and the thought started to settle in like bad food in the bottom of the stomach -- they
really hadn't planned for this part. They quickly mustered up their manly courage and
commenced to try to set the situation right. But they pretty quick come to realize that
their self-inflicted canoe lesson had only involved how to keep a canoe straight, which
they had done right well all the way down to the dam. They didn't have any good ideas
at all about how to turn a canoe. They started splashing about, the canoe moving
nowhere in particular except toward the dam. The water had a hold of the boat, pulling
steady like the unstoppable hand of fate toward the edge of the dam and the perilous
fall below. They settled into a good panic, and commenced to hollering and splashing
up total fury. They were throwing water high and wide, but they weren't learning much
about how to turn a canoe. They managed to get about a half turn in the boat when fate
reached out and grabbed them, snatching the canoe toward the lip of the dam as the
water accelerated toward the final slip over the edge.
They did what any good man ought to do and let loose one final loud yelp that
echoed into silence like life slipping away up the river. The canoe came up on the lip of
the dam and they looked right over, peering down into that unstopping draft of water as
it rolled into the churning cauldron below, ready now to swallow its prey like the big fish
swimming in the dark water. Some days you might think God had a bad sense of
humor, or maybe God just decided at the last minute they had learned their lesson,
because just as they were looking down the gullet of fate, a board right at the lip of the
dam caught the bottom of the canoe, holding it perched right over the fall. There they
sat, staring down into the voluminous water gulping and churning like a hungry animal
below, like watching their own consumption stopped miraculously just before the jaws
snapped shut. They had spent all the noise they had in them and were dumfounded to
understand how their final fall had been suddenly stopped, so they sat quiet and still for
245
a minute trying to understand what had happened. They couldn’t figure it out really, but
they decided it was time to accept the unexpected gift without question. Ever so careful
they commenced to try to nudge the canoe along the edge of the dam like trying to
tiptoe over a sleeping tiger. The board held, and they carefully slid the canoe along ever
so slow toward the bank. They made it to the edge and dragged the canoe up on the
bank. They gathered themselves up and walked toward home, but when they got home
they weren’t holding their heads quite so stiff and high in the air as when they left.
The community was mostly egalitarian, but there was no mistaking that some
people talked a bit louder, and some of these were listened to a bit more than other
folks. It depended who was living in the community at a particular time, but among the
people who talked the most in public meetings, sometimes it was more womyn and
sometimes it was more myn.
The other way people gained respect was by having skills. I had some skills, and
it wasn't long at all before I was teaching different folks to do carpentry and mechanical
work. It seemed there was always a shortage of such skills. The community espoused
an ethic of teaching people things they wouldn't learn how to do otherwise, so myn were
encouraged to take care of children and womyn to do carpentry, woodworking, or auto
mechanics. In the end, it came down to who was willing to take responsibility for getting
a particular job done regardless of who they were, but if it was not the traditional
gender, so much the better.
The problem with teaching people, particularly womyn or other folks who didn't fix
things when they were kids, was that they had to make a lot of stupid mistakes to learn
how to do things better. Everybody has to do it, but if you make mistakes when you are
a kid, it doesn't feel so bad. Its like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle when you are
already all grown up -- you feel stupid. So it goes with people learning how to fix things
and making mistakes -- they feel stupid. And then most of them don't stick with it after
the novelty wears off. At first carpentry is glory, then it becomes sore muscles and
sweat, plumbing becomes mud and sewage and why bother.
Every once in a while one of the trainees does stick with it. Then you have a
womyn carpenter or plumber. When womyn go to a parts store, the guys behind the
counter will not help them. I could go in and ask for a watchmacallit that attaches to the
dohickey under the thingamabob and the guys would tell me what it was really called
and get it for me. But if a womyn didn't know the name of what she wanted, they would
look down their noses and act like they didn't know what she was talking about. I think
they started to get used to it after a while though, because womyn kept coming into
town to get parts and they couldn't afford to not know what their customers wanted. And
then some womyn in the parts store moved from their secretary desks to the parts
counter, and they had a different attitude about it.
Dan settled down after his canoe trip. The womyn's building remained a womyn's
building and after a while people stopped arguing about it. It became pretty normal to
have some womyn fixing and building things, certainly more than there was before.
Even so, there always seemed to be more myn who had more mechanical skills
because they had such a head-start to begin with and so few trainees really stuck with
it. Every once in a while, someone would make a point of reminding people that we
were supposed to be teaching people non-traditional skills and maybe we weren't
measuring up. People stopped arguing and womyn didn't have as many gatherings as
246
they had before. Things settled down, but where they settled was not at all the same
place as where they started.
247
Liberation Fulfilled
“Where our progress hitherto has been warped and hindered by the
retarding influence of surviving rudimentary forces, it will flow on smoothly and
rapidly when both men and women stand equal in economic relation. When the
mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth
and by the calm, slow, friendly forces of social evolution.” Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, 1898490
Women in every society have a human right to equal wages, political power,
food, and shelter. Cultural differences are no justification for male supremacy.
In an earlier chapter, we looked at how women’s position in society is strongly
correlated with their economic roles. Intensification causes the sexualization and
restriction of women in human societies all over the world. How can we secure women’s
rights into the future? How can we guide our cultural evolution toward greater freedom
and away from a reinvigoration of sexual reward?
In developed countries, we must secure an uncompromised position of full and
fully compensated employment for women. In the underdeveloped world, development
needs to target women specifically.
Our Common Future
Unfettered population growth in underdeveloped countries is an ecological
threat for all of humanity. The World Fertility Survey of some years ago demonstrated
that most of the children born to large families in developing countries are wanted
children.491 In poor areas, women have more children to try to insure some will survive
or to improve rural agricultural productivity. Simply improving access to contraception
cannot control population growth, nor can coercion.
The survival of the human race depends on improving the conditions under which
women live. Nothing correlates more strongly to reduced infant mortality in developing
countries than educational and economic opportunity for women.492 And as infant
mortality decreases, so does the overall birthrate as women do not have to have as
many children to insure some will survive. Thus the improvement of women’s
educational and economic opportunities is pivotal to limiting population growth. Only
improving the status of women can break the cycle of poverty and ecological
degradation in underdeveloped countries.
490
Russett, 1989, p.86
491
Lightbourne, 1982
492
Brown, 1987, p.162
248
When women's education improves, they tend to use their new skills to earn
money and spend it on their families. Men tend to use greater education to increase
personal income and expenditures on alcohol, tobacco, or consumer goods.493 In
America, we may think of a family as a unit in which all members cooperate. But just as
some men refuse to pay child support, so some men in developing countries may
indulge their own consumption while their wives and children go hungry.
The male supremacist bias of Western industrial society has undermined the
position of women in societies all over the world. Development policies often assume
that men are wage earners and women are dependent. Such policies create jobs and
export industries that enhance the earning power of men and undermine women's
roles.494 The GDP of a nation may climb, the businessmen and bankers may make
more and more money even as the cultural fabric of a society is shredded. Only
conscious attention to the impact of global development on the positions and roles of
women can bring real improvements to humanity.
Kerala
India is a nation that suffers greatly from the burdens of poverty. In northern
India in particular, religious intolerance, militarism, and male supremacy are bound
together in an ecologically burdened land. Female infanticide is still practiced. There
are hundreds of cases per year of women being killed in “dowry murders.” When a man
and woman are married in northern India, a sum of money (dowry) is paid by the bride’s
family to the husband’s family. This is a common practice in male supremacist cultures.
Women in northern India are sometimes murdered -- often burned to death in feigned
kitchen accidents -- by their husband's family so the latter can lay claim to her dowry.495
If he is not prosecuted, the husband is then free to seek another wife and another
dowry.
As much as poverty is the root of many evils, a society does not have to be
highly wealthy to improve the status of its people. Kerala is a state in southern India that
has broken the spell. Kerala is poorer than the average for India. As recently as a few
decades ago, Kerala was described by observers as a development “problem state.”496
Now, Kerala’s citizens have an average life expectancy approaching those in
developed countries. Female children are valued; female infanticide has been
eliminated. In Kerala, there are more women than men in absolute numbers and in
institutions of higher education.497 There is an extensive health care system, including
493
Ehrlich, 1990, p.216
494
Franke, 1994, p.87
495
Franke, 1994, p.95
496
Jeffrey, 1992, p.6
497
Franke, 1994, p.89
249
care for women and children.498 As one might expect in a society where women have
access to education and health care, infant mortality is low, and birth rates are low.499
The strong position of women in Kerala is in part the result of its matrilineal
history. The matrilineal family is now rare in Kerala, but because the memory of that
tradition lingers, working women are respected. Unemployment, however, is very high
for both men and women, and exceeds 80 percent for women. Women are neither
welcome nor present in significant numbers in politics.500
In the face of dire economic difficulties, Kerala has made outstanding
accomplishments in supporting its people. Women’s advancement in Kerala is mixed,
but remarkable compared to the rest of India. In a world facing an accelerating
ecological crisis, we cannot afford to make everyone rich. Kerala is an important model
of what can and must be done even with very limited resources.
Securing Women’s Economic Roles
In the West as in Kerala, women’s legal, political, and cultural power is
dependent on their position in the economy. Such is the overwhelming lesson of
women’s history in America. In colonial America, women were integral to the agrarian
economy. As wage labor grew in the early 1800s, women were restricted to the
domestic sphere. Beliefs were created that education would damage women’s health,
and women were excluded from professions and politics. As women worked in
increasing numbers, they began to have more success in acquiring property rights,
voting rights, and loosening the Victorian dress code. Women’s presence in
professions and institutions of higher education increased until the Great Depression.
With the depression, women were driven out of the labor market, and change in
women’s roles regressed toward Victorian standards. After World War II, women began
working in large numbers, and, in the 1960s, the new feminist movement burst onto the
scene. Women continue to expand their position in the labor market, and the new
conservatism has not been able to push them back into the kitchen.501 Thus women's
power in society is contingent on their non-domestic economic role and the organization
of successful social movements.
In order to consciously guide our culture toward gender equality, we are going to
have to secure women’s position in our economy. That is not what is presently
occurring. In spite of the gains feminists have made, women remain underpaid by a
substantial margin compared to men.502 With the breakup of the traditional family
498
Franke, 1994, p.V
499
Franke, 1994, p.14
500
Jeffrey, 1992, p.216
501
See previous chapter Liberationist Beware.
502
Gelb, 1987, p.210
250
structure, more households than ever are headed by women. Given women’s relative
rate of pay, this has led to a “ feminization of poverty.”503 Women still work
predominantly in “female ghettos” of nursing, teaching, retail, and clerical work. The
differential in pay between men and women is primarily the result of the lower pay
received by women working in these “pink collar jobs.”504
It has been suggested that women working in traditionally female jobs are in
effect trading job flexibility for lower job security and reduced wages.505 Women need
this flexibility, so the argument goes, in order to bear children. While this may be true to
some degree, I think it is more true that women work in “pink collar jobs” because there
is hiring discrimination in other fields of employment, and because “pink collar jobs”
represent traditional, socially acceptable “women’s work.” Hiring discrimination can be
fought legally, but social roles are not a legal matter. All people, women included, will
limit their own freedom and power to fit within culturally “appropriate” social roles, in
order to gain social acceptance. As we have said before, cultural dictates can propel
people into all manner of self-limiting or self-destructive behavior. In our society, women
are often scorned for being too assertive, or for acting like they have the answers
instead of deferring to a man. We have to make it more acceptable for women to be
integrated fully into the economy. We need to make it socially acceptable for women to
move into powerful economic and social roles.
We also need to address the cultural meaning of child rearing. There are still
many people who argue that stable families need a woman in a domestic role. Enforced
domesticity for women is the equivalent of the “separate but equal” doctrine of racial
segregationists. The historical record is unmistakable. Women will be integrated fully
into the economy, or they will suffer from reduced social power and privilege.
Public support for day-care and child-rearing would help women compete in the
labor market. Public policies that do not assume women will play a domestic role are
vital. Women are tied to childbirth by biology, but men are tied to wage earning only by
culture. Support for men sharing in child rearing -- such as family leave -- would help
level the playing field between men and women in the wage-earning economy. We need
to challenge the assumptions that women are natural caretakers and men are not. More
flexible working schedules for both men and women, as well as working closer to home,
would greatly facilitate the mixing of domestic and wage-earning roles. The possibilities
for such changes are limited within the mainstream economy.
Another important aspect of strengthening women’s position in our society is to
correct archaic laws that continue to penalize women. In spite of the dramatic changes
that our society has undergone, policies remain on the books that discriminate against
women in social security, access to credit and insurance, tax policy, and pension
benefits. Many laws were written assuming women are in domestic, economically
503
O’Kelly, 1986, p.166
504
Tenler, 1979, p.182
505
Giele, 1978, p.111
251
dependent positions. Progress has been made and continues to be made in changing
such laws, but a lot remains to be done.506
Some Western societies have gone farther than the U.S. toward women's
equality, though it remains a goal none have really achieved. Sweden has a long history
of greater gender equality.507 Pre-industrial Sweden was poor by European standards,
and it is only in more recent history that higher incomes have been achieved. In preindustrial Sweden, men were engaged in work that carried them away from the home. In
many cultures, if men are away for long periods of time, women occupy stronger roles,
and such was the case with Sweden. There was little concern with controlling women’s
sexuality.
In modern Sweden, family leave is generous compared to the U.S. Family leave
is provided to both men and women to encourage an alteration of traditional gender
roles, although many men do not take advantage of such leave. People are taxed
individually, not as couples. Thus women’s earnings when they work do not push a
couple into higher tax brackets. This encourages women to work.508 Sweden has strong
redistributive policies. Not only does this mean there is no structural poverty as there is
in the U.S., there is also no prostitution on the American scale. Health care is socialized,
and sex education is universal.
Most significantly, Swedish women’s earnings are closer to men’s than in the
509
U.S. This is the result of a history of stronger roles for women as well as conscious
policies in modern times that seek to integrate women fully into the economy.
Intensification via sexual reward is less prevalent in Sweden. There are fewer ads of
scantily clad women, and young men are said to be less intent on sexual conquest.
Overcoming Sexual Reward
Sexual reward rests on the twin practices of restricting women’s sexuality and
sexualizing women’s bodies. The anti-abortion movement is the modern manifestation
of the forces that seek to restrict women’s sexuality.510 As with many political issues, the
506
Giele, 1978, p.106-121, Gelb, 1987, p.179-198.
507
O’Kelly, 1986, p.182-198
508
O’Kelly, 1986, p.189
509
The relative wages of men and women change quickly enough that specific statistics
are hardly worth quoting, but one book published in 1986 puts women’s wages in
Sweden at 87% of men’s (O’Kelly, 1986, p.190). Women’s wages in the 1980s in the
U.S. inched passed 60% of men’s, and have climbed in the 1990s to beyond 70% of
men’s wages.
510
Paige, 1983, p.151. In as much as the real purpose of the anti-abortion movement is
sexual restriction, the catholics who are the “foot soldiers” of the movement have
252
realities of the abortion issue are hidden by cultural dissonance and vested interests.
The modern anti-abortion is movement is supported by those who would benefit from
intensification based on sexual reward. The evidence for such a connection is strong. A
lot of the money being donated to the modern conservative and anti- abortion
movement causes comes from wealthy businessmen. The American Chamber of
Commerce has also been an anti-abortion supporter through its Political Action
Committee.511 Business interests have long favored growth and intensification of
production over all other concerns.
The supporters of the anti-abortion movement also favor population growth.
Abortion was illegal in the U.S. for one hundred years primarily because business
interests wanted to foster population increase. Modern wealthy anti-abortionist
supporters do not believe in overpopulation, but rather want population growth.512
The grassroots workers of the anti-abortion movement are working class women.
As a class, this group also tends to favor business intensification and economic growth
in the hope that they will improve their class standing.
The other side of the sexual reward is the glorification of women’s beauty and
sexualization of their bodies. Even as women have gained significant ground
economically and politically, they continue to be sexualized in advertising, the media,
and pornography. This tendency shows no signs of abating. The sexualization of
women’s bodies drives both consumption and production. The economic effects of
sexualization affect cultural selection which in turn influences Americans’ beliefs about
women.
We will not overcome sexual reward simply by teaching people to respect each
other. We have to address the underlying economic and political forces that are at work
in the ongoing creation of male supremacy. How can we consciously guide culture at
these many levels?
The first level of defense against the sexualization of women is simply noncooperation. In Victorian times, putting women on a pedestal of beauty was in part a
political appeasement. Even as women were deprived of very real political, legal, and
economic power, they were put on a pedestal of beauty and moral superiority. The
pedestal glorified women’s beauty, but it was also a token position of power in the place
of real power, a source of feminine identity instead of control over money or political
decisions. Men were quick to make jokes about women who were said to dominate men
with manipulation and sexual power. Realistically, sexual power is very limited. But
many women still attempt to make use of such power as it is available to them. Women
try to increase their personal status by maximizing their beauty. Many women are
resistant to de-sexualizing women because they would not want to lose this source of
power and identity. Many women wear pantyhose and makeup to work simply because
it is a cultural expectation they are not willing to fight. Sexualizing women is one of the
become cannon fodder for the business interests who have much farther reaching
concerns than the lives of embryos.
511
Paige, 1983, p.196-212
512
Paige, 1983, p.136
253
causes of misogyny and sexual abuse. Refusing to cooperate with the sexualization of
women’s bodies would buy greater freedom for future generations.
The possibility for dramatic changes in men and women’s roles is limited within
the mainstream economy. Some feminists have advocated substantial restrictions on
pornography.513 It might be possible to restrict the sexualization of women in advertising
or in pornography, but restricting the sexualization of women in the media does not
address the underlying forces of sexual reward. Such restriction would likely lead to
changes in where and how women are sexualized, but without addressing the
underlying cause. Challenging the structure of our growth-based economy is no simple
matter, but in the long run it has to be done. As long as corporations and unseen forces
have control over patterns of employment, and thus the social organization of much of
our society, we cannot choose to mix domestic and economic roles. Even for families
who wish to mix domestic and economic roles, present structures make that very
difficult. And at present, we simply have no control over the creation of cultural symbols,
the creation of values and beliefs, or the common social interpretation of the world in
which we live.
A localized economy would give us chance to influence the sexual reward
system and the traditional roles of women. In a localized economy, we would have more
control over the scale and placement of employment. If work was closer at hand, more
under our control, men could play an equal role in the domestic sphere, and women
could play an equal role in the public and economic spheres. In American society, we
tend to see women as being central to child-rearing. People in other cultures see both
men and women as critical for parenting. There is no objective reason why men and
women cannot equally share domestic and public roles. With worker-owned, workercontrolled businesses -- with a broad-based understanding of cultural evolution and
politics -- we could choose our productive processes as well as our values. Then we
could either de-intensify our society and thus eliminate the sexual reward system, or
focus sexual reward on both genders.
The most gender-egalitarian societies I am familiar with past or present are
modern intentional communities. (This applies to those communities that have chosen
an egalitarian structure. Some intentional communities are quite hierarchical and
patriarchal.) Although intentional communities represent small and very young cultures,
they are localization in action. The ability to rewrite women’s roles is palpable in
intentional community. This is possible because gender roles are equalized to a greater
extent than is possible in most other cultures. Within the culture of a community, wage
labor is eliminated. There is no economic or political penalty for mothers. Although
people bring particular skills with them, there is much more opportunity for men and
women to learn skills not traditionally associated with their genders. Political power is
equally accessible to both genders. Some intentional communities have come very
close to a true equalization of roles.514
513
Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin are two well known feminists who
advocate restricting pornography.
514
Men still dominate in mechanical areas as such skills are learned over the course of
years. Women are economically and politically equal.
254
Realistically, intentional communities in their present form are limited in their
ability to compete with more intensified, focused, hierarchical social systems. It is
perhaps the same dilemma that peaceful village agriculturalists faced thousands of
years ago. How do we compete with male supremacist, hierarchical social organizations
without becoming them? We are not going to do it simply by dropping out. We have to
create active social organizations that have the power to compete, but remain thinking
and aware social systems.
What about the future of women’s roles in the larger society? Women’s power is
largely contingent, in wage-based society, on women’s employment. Through two
different periods in American history, women’s power has declined -- in the early 1800s
and in the Great Depression. Perhaps attitudes have changed to some degree since
those earlier times, but ecological constriction will limit the growth of our economy, and
that is a harbinger for the constriction of women’s rights in the future. Women’s political
power is contingent on their economic position, and yet we practice no conscious
control over our economy. Localization and conscious control over our mode of
production would change the rules of the game.
We may fight in the “culture wars” over modern values, but how could we
possibly hope to direct the values of society if we cannot even direct our own economy
and culture? As we see the flat earth, so we are impressed by what is before our eyes
in the political realm. We may preach the justice of equality, but we will not change
human behavior simply by changing the way people think. We will change people by
changing the patterns of ownership, production, and employment in our society. Then
we will have the power to choose our own values.
255
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Knowing
Late in the fall, Delancey and I had taken a walk, down to where the water pours
over the dam with the steady low roar of a freight train. The old mill rose up stately on its
stone pillars, water still flowing over the dam from when the first farmers cut a hard life
from the forest and stone, still running from when the nation fought against itself and
blood ran over the land. Now the land lay peaceful as we sat on the bridge and watched
the sun settle in the trees beyond the mill. We talked for a while, her seeming hesitant
and unsure.
“I have something I think I want to tell you” she said.
“Well, tell me then.”
“I don't know if I should; it is going to put a burden on you.”
“Well, it’s up to you, but I imagine I can handle it” (She must be pregnant or something, I
was thinking to myself.)
“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“O.K., I promise.”
We talked slowly for a while, her holding back, wanting and not wanting to tell me this
big secret.
“I tried to kill myself Friday night.”
“Oh ...”
“I took a car out to Lawson Land and put the hose from the auto shop over the exhaust
pipe and stuck it in the window. I thought it was supposed to be painless, but I felt like I
was suffocating. I opened the door when I couldn't take it anymore. That's why I have
been sick the past few days. It's carbon monoxide poisoning, not the flu.”
She went on, “It’s hard to lie to people, to my friends.”
“Yea, I can see that.”
xxx
256
Her body was strong, it made no complaint of hard work. Her mind was powerful,
her soul unbound. She had reasons to live.
There was no secret now, part of her wanted very much to die.
She had memories that would come to her, sometimes at night as dreams.
Sometimes she could not remember clearly, the pain was too strong. She would talk,
telling of what she remembered, and then her eyes would roll back, eyelids twitching,
almost passing out as her mind rocked. I wish I knew then what I know now, believe the
unbelievable, don't push memories back in the dark closet of shame with disbelief.
She did not know what had really happened. She had a dream of being pinned to
the floor by her mother while her father raped her. She remembered sailing with her
father, of falling out of the boat while her father sailed away, making a joke as if to leave
her. She told of being held over the edge of bridge by the ankles, as if to be dropped, as
a joke. She told of once asking for a new dress, and being told “you are not worth it.”
She had memories of being drugged and taken somewhere. She remembered being
taken to a room, and tied down to the bed frame; then a number of male relatives raped
her.
She went looking for therapeutic community, traveling around to see what other
people were doing. She went to an osteopath.
She would pull herself out of bed to ride, run, break a sweat, break the spell. The
dark mental fog would consume her for days and weeks at a time. She would fast, trying
to break through the fog.
She was under the care of a counselor, a psychiatrist, and her friends. The
doctors said she was a hard case, that her chances were not good.
There was no secret now. There was time, time to think about what could be
done. I could not understand, for all the power of this age, no one could do anything but
watch. The doctors were guessing, poking in a realm where they held no real
understanding. Why, for all our power, do we not understand this? Why, for all our
science, do we have no answer for this?
We were working together one day. She had asked me to help her build a set of
shelves. We were working on the big wooden box, across from each other. I was
watching her while she focused on a stubborn nail. I was trying to understand, what it
would be like to put that body in the ground? My mind drew blank, I could not picture
anything.
xxx
“Its going to take a long time,” I told her.
“I guess I am finally realizing that,” she said, her eyes turning toward the floor.
xxx
She wasn’t working enough hours to meet community labor requirements, though
she still worked harder than many. We argued for leniency, for an exception, but it was
not to be had. She would be subject of a vote of confidence. I heard the result while I
was traveling. It had been unfavorable. That was a surprise to me.
257
The other people in her support group posted a petition, the formal procedure for
overriding the ten percent blackball. The petition gathered signatures quickly, then the
votes slowed to one short of the necessary majority. There the vote stayed.
I talked to her on the phone, about how anytime the community has tried to do
anything good, fifteen or twenty people have opposed it. That is the nature of a group
where everyone is given a voice. I told her that she was the cutting edge of change, and
that makes things harder.
I cut my trip short and started homeward. As the train rolled its way across the
Midwestern plains, I asked that still solid voice far back in my head, the voice I trust to
see through the fury of the moment and give the most honest answer - can she do this?
The answer came back clearly - no.
Madeline was one of her closest friends. Madeline had been away traveling, and
was due back soon as well.
xxx
Delancey was lying on the hammock shop floor that evening with Dan's head on
her chest. She was telling him that she needed to take some space, that she was going
away. She had two minds talking, dropping code. But Dan was tired, and he did not pick
up on it just then.
He could hear her heart beating.
“I have a heart, remember to tell them that,” she said.
xxx
She left the hammock shop and went to her room. Rachel saw her go up, but
didn’t feel like talking to her at that moment.
About three a.m. that night Dan woke up, his mind having deciphered some of
Delancey's code. He got up and started walking around the community looking for her.
He did not know about Lawson Land, some months before. He saw Rachel making a
late night trip to the bathroom. She knew about Lawson. But Dan was shy about
approaching her, afraid he might unsettle her this late at night. Rachel called out to him,
but he did not hear. I had come in from my journey after two days’ travel then, and as he
was walking around he saw me at a distance, but he was afraid I would not want to be
disturbed. He walked a while longer, then convinced himself he was being paranoid and
went back to bed.
Early that morning, Mary was out jogging on Lawson Land like she sometimes
does. As she was headed out onto the land, a groundhog bolted in front of her and gave
her a jolt. Normally she would not be afraid of groundhogs, but somehow this one
disturbed her, and she turned back.
When Dan woke up, he found Rachel to ask if she knew where Delancey was.
Rachel mentioned Lawson immediately. Deborah, a friend of Delancey's was visiting.
Rachel went to wake up Deborah while Dan made a quick check at the river. Deborah
woke up cursing, and reported a conversation from the day before where Delancey had
bemoaned her oversight of the catalytic converter on her last suicide attempt. They
gathered and immediately went to Lawson.
258
When they got to Lawson, they saw one of the community's trucks there, with a
rubber hose going from the exhaust to the cab. The window was stuffed around the
hose with pillows. The windows were fogged, and the truck was quietly idling. Deborah
and Rachel ran to the cab and swung open the door, to be hit in the face with a wall of
hot exhaust. They grabbed Delancey's body by her broad shoulders and hauled her out
onto the ground. Her body was lifeless, with a small trickle of blood coming from her
mouth. Her body was stiff and swollen.
There were a couple of empty bottles of sleeping pills on the seat, prescribed by
her psychiatrist. She was also on antidepressants.
xxx
We built her coffin out of local wood, sawed on the community sawmill. We dug
her grave, like Carl's, by hand. We dug six feet and then some into the red Virginia clay,
and smoothed the sides carefully. Madeline burned frankincense. A toad leapt into the
grave at the last minute, and we carefully lifted it to safer ground. Her family and friends
came, and we stood in a circle, each to say what we had to say.
There as we stood in the circle, each said their farewell. Her uncle bemoaned the
loss, speaking the words of academic psychology, “we do not know what causes
depression.” As the circle proceeded, it was her father's turn to talk, and he echoed, “we
do not know what causes depression.”
259
The Social Technological Revolution
“We all know civilization is in danger. The population explosion and the
greenhouse effect, holes in the ozone and AIDS, the threat of nuclear terrorism
and the dramatically widening gap between the rich north and the poor south, the
danger of famine, the depletion of the biosphere and the mineral resources of the
planet, the expansion of commercial television culture and the growing threat of
regional wars -- all these, combined with thousands of other factors, represent a
general threat to mankind. The large paradox at the moment is that man -- the
great collector of information - is well aware of all this, yet is absolutely incapable
of dealing with the danger. Traditional science, with its usual coolness, can
describe the different ways we might destroy ourselves, but it cannot offer us
truly effective and practicable instructions on how to avert them. There is too
much to know; the information is muddled or poorly organized; these processes
can no longer be fully grasped or understood, let alone contained or halted.”
Czech President Vaclav Havel, 1992515
Conscious Evolution will represent a social technological revolution, a change
no less powerful and profound than the industrial revolution that has shaken the
foundations of history. Will the social sciences be at the helm, innovating and guiding
our technologies as the physical sciences have energized the industrial revolution?
Unfortunately, the forces that have caused the explosive growth in mechanical
understanding have caused the repression of social awareness. We imagine that
science is above culture, that science leads social change. This is yet another piece of
our flat-earth thinking. Science in general, and social science in particular, is enclosed
by culture. Science is part of the system of society. The powerful historical forces that
we have been examining -- depletion, intensification, hierarchical child-rearing, vested
interests, and cultural dissonance -- have allowed the physical sciences to explode
while social science stagnates. If we are to put conscious social understanding in the
driver’s seat, we must understand how social science has been coopted by culture and
how we can change that.
All cultures have a spirituality, whether or not it is apparent. Spirituality serves to
unify people, to define cosmology, and to create a forum for transcendent experience. In
our culture, powerful social institutions have taken over the roles formally fulfilled by
organized spirituality. Science holds a powerful spiritual role in modern society.
Our ancient predecessors interpreted their world with spiritualistic thinking. As
our mechanical technologies have revolutionized every aspect of our lives, science has
gained great power.
“The suggestion [is] that the scientists, as a body, should take the lead in
helping the rest of us to approach our public affairs in a scientific spirit ... A
515
Vaclav 1992, quoted from Hawken, 1993.
260
beginning at the application of science to the affairs of the world must be made
somewhere ... [T]he scientists are already the men who make the future, in a
very large degree. More than anyone else, they are in a position to extend their
powers, to rescue civilization, if only they will” Bruce Bliven516
As science has become our preferred way of interpreting the world, so we have
social science to interpret the social world. Social scientists are the keepers of the flame
of social understanding in our society, the means by which we interpret social reality
according to our scientific cosmology.
“When we give our undivided faith to science, we shall possess a faith
more worthy of allegiance than many we vainly have followed in the past, and we
also shall accelerate the translation of our faith into actuality.” George
Lundberg517
The Western cosmology puts science above spirituality. But given that science is
so central to the Western mind, it is not surprising that science itself has become a
spirituality. We trust our cosmology to interpret our world. It is at the extremes that the
unspoken functions of social institutions become most visible, so it is the most religious
of scientists who reveal the spiritual function of science in Western culture. As the
possibly autobiographical protagonist in B.F. Skinner's Walden Two writes concerning
behavioral scientists:
“When we ask what Man can make of Man, we don't mean the same thing
of 'Man' in both instances. We mean to ask what a few men can make of
mankind. And that's the all-absorbing question of the twentieth century. What
kind of world can we build -- those who understand the science of behavior?”
“Then Castle was right. You're a dictator, after all.”
“No more than God ...”518
The spiritual function of science will have to change in order to bring about
conscious evolution.
The Life and Death of Ideas
In all science, there are far more ideas being developed than become well
known. There is some process of selection that determines which ideas live and which
die. In this way, the development of ideas is similar to biological or cultural evolution.
516
Bliven, 1970, p.316
517
Lundberg, 1947
518
Skinner, 1948, p.278-279
261
There is an underlying process of selection that determines which ideas (mutations) will
exist in the future and which will go extinct.
There are several factors that select for or against the life of an idea. The
selection for ideas in the physical sciences is based on their testability and
marketability. If an engineer designs a rocket and the rocket crashes, we have some
reason to doubt their theory of rocketry. Even in the more abstract physical sciences,
there is in the end a physical reality against which ideas can be tested. Then there is the
market. The explosion of computer technology speaks to the power of the market to
create technological development at a very rapid pace. Every aspect of our lives has
been revolutionized by marketable mechanical technologies.
The social sciences have no physical reality against which to test their ideas.
Neither are they, in their present form, particularly marketable. As a result, the life or
death of social ideas is left entirely up to cultural and political selectors.
Those ideas that are selected for dominance in the social sciences are those that
serve functions (mostly unspoken) in our culture. The demand for those functions is
recurrent. As a result, particular kinds of social theory are periodically reformulated to
meet political and cultural demands.
Science must maintain its credibility as creator of Western cosmology. Cyclically
regenerated theories are based on a measure of truth and two measures of political
utility. Fundamentally, science is concerned with causality, or what causes things to
happen. Theories that explain social events ascribe the causes of these events in
politically useful ways. Such as:
I. Biological Causality
Social science is selected for that establishes a biological cause for human
behavior. There is a significant recent recurrence of such theories.519 We are living in a
period of renewed business intensification that began with the Reagan era. Profits
have been growing much faster than wages, and the American economy is polarizing.
Increasing structural poverty generates more crime in the street and more prisons.
Biological theories of human criminal or violent behavior release us from social
responsibility, thereby relieving a painful case of cultural dissonance.
The cyclical recurrence of biological theories of human behavior has consistently
corresponded with periods of business intensification. In the latter part of the 1800s, the
U.S. experienced its longest sustained period of business intensification. During that
period, biologically-based theories of criminal behavior were popular.520 To suggest that
criminal degeneration is caused by genetic flaws is only one step removed from
suggesting that such people deserve to die. The biological determinists had their
519
Mednick, 1987
520
Hooton, 1939, Ellis, 1915, Fink, 1985
262
heyday in the 1800s with Herbert Spencer and the Social Darwinists, who openly
suggested that the destruction of lower class people was natural.521
Race is another favorite topic of biologically-based theories of behavior. The Bell
Curve is a recent popular book that suggests a racial basis for intelligence.522 It is the
most recent recurrence of another long cycle of bio-causality. The titles from a few
decades ago are a little more transparent, like The Testing of Negro Intelligence, circa
1958.523 Notice the date. That was a period of individual responsibility under
Eisenhower. One can guess which race was said to be smarter back then.
Gender roles are also explained by biological causality. Freud and the NeoFreudians have for a long time covered the gender angle by explaining human social
roles based on “the dominance of genital modes.”524 This kind of science creates a
biology-based explanation of male supremacy that helps explain and justify genderbased discrimination.
II. Personal Causality
Science that paints poor people as self-destructive is periodically in demand. The
“ culture of poverty,” for instance, focuses on the inability of poor people to delay
gratification, and has been studied extensively. Deferred Gratification Pattern “appears
so frequently in the discussions of the lower class ... that for many researchers it is an
explanation for why the poor are poor.”525
Contrary to the mythology, the “culture of poverty” can be understood as an
intelligent adaptation of poor people to their circumstance. When the availability of
money is unpredictable, people who have a present time orientation -- rather than a
tendency to “delay gratification” -- actually give indications of functioning better in their
environment. Under conditions of long-term poverty and limited opportunity, people who
try to save their money or expect to become wealthier are more likely to end up
frustrated and, statistically speaking, in jail.526 Repeated studies have shown this, but
such information is ignored because it contradicts dominant social beliefs. Thus the
culture of poverty is studied and real social understanding is repressed.
521
Hofstadter, 1959
522
Herrnstein, 1994
523
Shuey, 1958
524
Erickson, 1950
525
Braginsky, 1974, p.116
526
Harris, 1975, p.483-485, Harris, 1993, p.334-336.
263
III. Non-Causality
Science that simply avoids establishing any cause for social problems is
selected for. The greater part of academic social science chooses to approach topics
from a perspective that neutralizes the uncomfortable aspects of the issues. The
following is typical of sociological journals.
“This paper elaborates processes of identity construction and avowal
among homeless street people, with two underlying and interconnected
objectives in mind: to advance understanding of the manner in which individuals
at the bottom of the status systems attempt to generate identities that provide
them with a measure of self-worth and dignity and to shed additional empirical
and theoretical light on the relationships among role, identity, and self concept.”
David Snow527
Homelessness is a serious issue in our time. It has a brutal effect on the lives of
thousands of people, and it hardens us all as we step over people on the sidewalk. I
would propose that both the causes and cures of homelessness are fairly simple to
understand, if we are given real information. But the political content of such information
makes it disruptive. The social sciences have developed an ability to examine red-hot
social issues without even getting warm, without touching their real content. The social
sciences often go to great lengths to avoid discussing the social causes of human
problems.528
“A proportionate relationship such as has existed for some time now
between the volume of social research and the depth of social confusion can only
mean one thing: the aggregate social function of all that research is to prevent
people from understanding the causes of their social life.” Marvin Harris529
IV. Linguistic Elitism
Science is selected for that reinforces the position of the social sciences as an
elite profession. Linguistic elitism abounds. For instance, the supposedly progressive
philosopher Herbert Marcuse writes:
527
Snow, 1987
528
Social causality is distinctly absent from much of the social sciences, and many
people have pointed this out. “While ... traditional disciplinary tendencies are
understandable, they have inhibited our perception of causality ...” Harner, 1970, p.6.
See also Huizer, 1979, p.474-475.
529
Harris, 1978, p.vii
264
“exactness and clarity in philosophy cannot be attained within the universe
of ordinary discourse. The philosophic concepts aim at a dimension of fact and
meaning which elucidates the atomized phrases or words of ordinary discourse
'from without' by showing this 'without' as essential to the understanding of ordinary discourse. Or, if the universe of ordinary discourse itself becomes the object
of philosophic analyses, the language of philosophy becomes a 'meta language'.
Even where it moves in the humble terms of ordinary discourse, it remains
antagonistic. It dissolves the established experiential context of meaning into that
of its reality; it abstracts from the immediate concreteness in order to attain true
concreteness.” 530
Thus we have made a very brief synopsis of the different kinds of social science
that serve political demands within our larger society. The other side of the coin is the
kind of science that is repressed.
I. Social Causality
Social science that establishes social or cultural causality for human behavior is
selected against. Social causality tends to see human beings as fundamentally adaptive
creatures. Many social “problems” come to be seen as individual adaptations to social
institutions with unspoken purposes. Social causality focuses the responsibility for social
problems on those institutions. This lifts the veil of unspokeness, which makes people
uncomfortable.
The now decades-old social psychology of Karen Horney pointed out the social
causes of personal emotional illness.531 Horney pointed out how various aspects of our
highly stratified and competitive society lead healthy people to “neurosis.” This
approach recast “neurosis” as an adaptive response to competitive and stressful
circumstances -- a profound insight. But mainstream psychology would not have that.
According to Horney’s critics, the Social Psychologists' “image of humans as rational,
conscious, and socialized beings is often unconvincing in the light of frequent instances
of disappointing and irrational behavior.”532 Thus psychology that focuses on the
individual has been favored over psychology that focuses on social systems.
II. Plain Speaking
530
Marcuse, 1966, p.179-180
531
Horney, 1937
532
Schultz, 1987, p.341-342
265
Science that speaks in direct, clear language is selected against. Marvin Harris
is an anthropologist whose theories have significant influence on the ideas developed in
this book. One striking difference in his writing as compared to others in his field is that
he has pursued a popular audience. He has written a great deal in plain English. He is
also bitterly disdained among a great number of social scientists. Although I cannot
address the diversity of factors that might be behind this discord, it is clear that he has
deeply offended the rules of his profession and suffered accordingly. Plain speaking
threatens the sense of elitism that academics prize.
III. Ecological History
Ecological history is selected against. Not a lot of ecological history has been
published. What good ecological history exists is not widely known. Ecological history
tarnishes our image of ourselves; it threatens our sense of progress, superiority, and
security into the future. Richard Wilkinson's ecological history is quoted in this book.
Though his work is profound, he is not well known.533
IV. Vested Interests and Dissonance
Theories that challenge corporate interests are selected against. Walter
Goldschmidt, also quoted in this book, did research some decades ago on the social
effects of corporate farming. He found that towns that had family farms had a much
more active community life, including social, civic and church groups of all kinds. Towns
dominated by corporate farms had a less active community life by comparison.
Goldschmidt had his funding cut and his research aggressively squelched by corporate
interests.534
Social research that threatens established cultural beliefs may be selected
against. Riane Eisler reports of an archeological dig being halted in mid-progress. At
that dig, information was being uncovered that suggested that women occupied
powerful roles in some neolithic societies.535 Eisler believes that the research was
stopped precisely because it was making men uncomfortable.
A few examples do not “prove” anything, but I believe these patterns represent
the dominant forces that shape the social sciences. The social sciences are not guided
by the testability or marketability of ideas. Rather, cultural selectors dominate the
533
Wilkinson, 1973
534
Goldschmidt, 1978, p.455-487
535
Eisler, 1988, p.76
266
development of social science. At a deep level, the very processes that create social
science are dominated by timely political demands in our society rather than by
rationality.
Scientific Progress
When science is guided by selectors that support its development, it is
progressive -- new ideas build on old ideas. Someone may spend a lifetime figuring out
a few basic things about how the world works. But then they write it down. Now I can
learn very quickly what it took them a long time to figure out, and then go on to figure
out more. Progressive science allows each generation to stand on the shoulders of
previous generations.
The social sciences are not progressive. The lack of progressivity in the social
sciences is due in part to the lack of testability of social thinking. But more
fundamentally, it is the result of the dominance of political and cultural selectors. The
cyclical recurrence of particular kinds of theories corresponds to the demand for
particular ideas in society at large. Especially as our society swings back and forth from
individual responsibility to social responsibility, (from business intensification to social
order) social science responds and provides appropriate theories.
The lack of progressivity in the social sciences means that these sciences can
continue to evolve by their present means for the next ten thousand years, and the
basic level of social comprehension inside or outside of the social sciences will not
increase. The system of social science is not moving toward that goal.
Every year, millions of young people enter institutions of higher education. If you
are taking a class on biology in a university, it is reasonable to assume that the
information presented represents the latest thinking and investigation of the subject.
Likewise, people assume that the wisest social thinking is likely to be represented in the
courses on sociology, psychology, or anthropology. That is not the case at all. The
practices of established social science select against clarity, linguistic directness,
relevance, and an understanding of causality. We are not aware of the enclosure of
science by culture; an enormous hole in reality has opened up. We think we know what
we do not.
267
Amanda
Amanda came to the community in the usual way, not having finished college
and looking for something different. She was energetic and pretty. She worked and
played hard, jumping into community activities with a fervor.
They were putting together a play. It was no school-child affair, but rather real
adult theater that goes on so long you wonder how they can remember all those lines.
She was working hard, and working on the play. Sometimes she would break down and
cry without warning.
She was moving from one room to another, and then all the work, when the
membership poll came up. The same blackball voting process, and this time the vote
split. Maybe it was the stress, maybe it was old memories, but she stopped sleeping.
She was determined to see the community process happen differently this time,
determined to see it through.
Under the load of stress, old memories coming up, the lack of sleep, reality
started to change form. Metaphors started to grow out of every experience. She took a
canoe trip down the river, and everything she saw began to take on a deeper meaning;
reality started to transform into an unearthly realm. She had read books about
goddesses, and they were with her. Delancey, and her mother, and other abused
women were with her.
She was staying up all night, writing letters to people to tell everyone how she
valued them. She had read books about goddesses. She was a goddess; other people
were goddesses too.
She asked Elena and Jon to stay with her one night. She realized why she was
going manic. She was running from the pain, running from the pain in her body, the pain
below the rational thinking. She had to confront the powerful people inside of her; she
had to confront her father. She had pressed charges against him when she was
eighteen years old.
She went through the layers that night, back to the time she was a teenager, then
a child, remembering all that happened, releasing the pain there. She went all the way
back to when she was a small child. It was a rebirthing.
Still the pain did not leave; still she could not sleep. She could not feel her body.
She would go numb, and then take hot showers and get massages to try and feel her
body again.
They took her into town to stay with a friend. They contacted the sexual abuse
resource agencies in town. They were all trying to help, but still she was not coming
down. She was running in town, and swimming, trying to burn off the manic energy, and
still she could not sleep. She saw street names in town from her childhood, her
childhood hundreds of miles away. She saw the names of people she knew on the
tombstones. She saw blood on the sidewalk, like the blood on the sidewalk from when
she was a child running from her father, and the neighbors would call the police, and
her mother would tell the police to go away.
Her father was a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist. She wanted to write. She wrote
about her mother in school, about how her mother had tried to burn herself to death.
268
The teacher told her it was melodramatic, unrealistic, and she should not write like that
way anymore. She didn't.
Now she was writing constantly, writing a proclamation for the grand global battle
of good and evil that this struggle had become in her mind. She went through it again in
town, the long night of rebirthing, the pain coming through, then the rapture, then quiet.
They were staying with her, and everyone said she should go to the hospital, but
they did not want to go. They did not trust the hospital. But they were fatigued and
running out of welcome in their friend's house, running out of welcome for manic energy
and metaphor, running out welcome for the crying and screaming.
Finally they went to the emergency room. They went in together, Amanda, Jon,
and Elena. The doctor asked Amanda a lot of questions, then left them alone for a long
time. Finally a cop showed up, walked into the room and told Amanda to come with him.
She became frightened and said no. He pulled out his handcuffs and jangled them.
Elena and Jon tried to talk to him, but he was impatient. He became frustrated, and
came back a little later with several more police officers. They asked Elena and Jon to
get out of the way. Elena and Jon asked to be able to travel with her. The police said
no, and then grabbed Elena and Jon, threw them to the floor and handcuffed them, and
took Amanda in handcuffs.
Amanda was not in her rational mind when they got her to the mental hospital.
She thought she was her mother. She gave them her mother's medical history, which
they recorded as hers. They gave her drugs, put her in a room, and left her alone.
Any time she would cry or ask for help, they took it as a sign that she was not
getting better, and gave her more drugs. They told her she was manic-depressive, that
she would have to be medicated for the rest of her life. They were not interested in
hearing anything about sexual abuse, about her struggle.
Elena came to visit. The hospital staff instructed Elena to not touch Amanda too
much because it upset the other patients.
They let her go from the hospital. Before she went to the hospital, she had never
mentioned suicide. Now they had taught her shame, and she was suicidal.
They let her go on condition that she make connection with the hospital where
they were moving. Elena and Jon moved with her.
The new therapist told Amanda she had to stay on the drugs. They told her that if
she stopped taking the drugs, she would flip out again -- this was their psychiatric curse.
Amanda's new counselor tried to put her on Prozac. They were very insistent. Amanda
left the therapist’s office screaming.
Within a month she defied their psychiatric curse and went off the drugs. She had
a few hard days, but they passed, but she did not go back into the mania. She was
working, making money, and getting things together. Elena left to go back home. Jon
stayed with her some more months, then moved on as well. She works now, and goes
to school.
xxx
269
I have come to a therapeutic community, a very rare organization.536 I have come
to this world of madness almost against my will, pulled here by the strands of struggle
that tie us to the ones we care about, pulled here by the past.
It is a large house, with enough room for fifteen or more people. It has a large
kitchen, and everyone shares the space. Right now there are five interns and five
“clients.” The interns are mostly counseling and psychiatric students from Europe. The
interns are people in the midst of their struggles, some living in a dark place in this
reality, some in another reality. They don't just give out drugs here. They stay with
people, stay with them through the struggle. People remain part of the community while
they struggle. If someone flips out, they stay with them. If someone must be restrained,
they do it with human beings, not mechanical restraints. They stay with people, people
stay with the community, while the old pain comes up. They do not repress the pain with
chemicals.
One resident walked up to me, and for a moment I thought everything was
normal. I said “hi” and got a normal “hello” in response, then he slipped. There I stood,
looking into the heart of fear, looking into the eyes of a human being whose mind does
not work. I would speak to him, and for an instant catch him on this side, in this reality
where he could say “hello.” Then instantly he would retreat to the other side, babbling
incoherently in an incessant stream-of-consciousness monologue about nothing and
everything. On the street we would retreat in fear of the him in ourselves. But here he
interacts with people, lives among people as if he were ordinary. They say sometimes
he just lies in bed. Sometimes he walks around, almost without stopping for days on
end. He walks, jabs a sentence into reality, and retreats. His parents say that he was
not abused. He slips in words in the babble about falling off a chair, about being treated
like an object.
Another resident says she slips sometime. I ask her what that is like. Painful she
says. Does she remember what it is like? No. They say she runs around in those times,
completely lost to this reality.
She went through a dark period last summer, thinking about nothing but death. It
would be peaceful, an end to struggle. Now there is light, some hope. She keeps
animals. She says they are the gateway out of her madness. She has rage coming up
now. White hot precious release of the past.
The numbers are small, not a strong statistical sample. But the people who
experience their madness here traverse it as a birthing. They go through it once within
the community and move on.
In the hospitals, they expect people to relapse into their madness, they expect
people to come back. Old memories live like an animal at the back of the mind. The
mind tries to integrate the memories, tries to tie the pieces back together. And if those
pieces can be retied, these become the most powerful people, like the shamans after
their vision quest; great pain brings vision and power.
The chemicals cage that animal at the back of the mind, where it lives anxious
and angry. People stay on the drugs for a lifetime, and the animal breaks loose
periodically to run through a life tearing it to pieces. The hospitals cannot offer love,
536
Burch House, see references. Burch House has since become more like a
mainstream halfway house, but its history is interesting.
270
cannot offer real attention. It is not their kin-people in those beds; there is not any
attention left to give. This our society cannot give community. So we give drugs, these
chemicals that cost several dollars per pill, while the slave masters grow rich from the
chemical slavery.
271
A New Science
The innate complexity of the operation of human politics and culture is not
beyond the comprehension of any ordinary human being.
“Linguist Noam Chomsky has commented on the disparity between the
high level of knowledge on sports talk shows and the superficiality of the
contribution people make when addressing national or international issues, as if
we have already decided that we cannot know enough to make a worthy
response to these issues. Chomsky disagrees: “It seems to me that the same
intellectual skill and capacity for understanding and for accumulating evidence
and gaining information and thinking through problems could conceivably be
used under a different system of governance, one that included popular
participation in important decision-making areas, in areas that really matter to
human life. It does not require extraordinary skills or understanding to take apart
the illusions and deception that prevent understanding of contemporary reality. It
requires the kind of normal skepticism and willingness to apply one's analytic
skills that almost all people have.”” Paul Hawken and Noam Chomsky537
In our age, we have new resources. We have an ability to investigate ourselves
and our past and to communicate information in new ways. Conscious evolution will
represent a new kind of adaptation. The elevation of social understanding among the
greater mass of people will make conscious evolution possible. Elevating social
awareness is going to involve the creation of a new social science.
“The gap between social knowledge and the potentially subversive effects
this knowledge could have upon the functioning of oppressive social institutions
in this society is enormous.” Al Gediks538
Where enough of a market has developed, new science has already developed.
The vegetarian movement, for instance, has uncovered and publicized a great deal of
information about the health effects of a high-fat diet that would have been difficult to
develop without a popular market and support.
Popular psychology has also built an alternative science based on a nonacademic market. Pop psychology survives and perpetuates itself based on the creation
and sale of self-help books, support groups, and workshops. I would contend that much
of pop psychology is far ahead of academic psychology.539 There is a lot of money to be
537
From Hawken, 1993, p.218.
538
Quoted from Huizer, 1979, p.474.
539
The vintage of psychology I am referring to is work such as J. Bradshaw's Healing
the Shame That Binds You, Bradshaw's Family Secrets: What You Don't Know Can
272
made from therapies in the market of mental health. Academic psychologists disparage
popular psychology, but popular psychology lives in a fluid environment. It survives by
its ability to reach and move people. Sometimes it does so with cheap tricks, but it
nonetheless lives in a competitive environment that in general selects for what works.
People pay for and support what helps them.
Where there is a market, science grows progressively. Where there is no market,
we need to learn how to ignore being ignored. Profound social experiments with
alternative energy, therapeutic community, and alternative health care have been
stunted or abandoned because the people conducting them expected more support
from the very institutions they were trying to change. The preceding section describes
Burch House, an experiment in alternative mental health care. Burch House had
enormous difficulty in securing funding from mainstream mental health organizations,
regardless of the efficacy the experiment. Neither did Burch House gain much
recognition. The lack of either financial support or recognition has undermined Burch
House. We must separate our alternative institutions from the need for financial or
spiritual support from traditional institutions.
We must break the status-based assessment of truth that pervades our
hierarchical society. Deference to higher power restricts the development of social
technology. Scientific experts hold a great deal of prestige in our society. We tend to
interpret our universe according to our own mental models. According to our present
cosmology, scientists are closer to God, whether or not we ever use those words. The
social status of a speaker is the only real cultural gauge we have of the importance or
truthfulness of what they are saying. Someone we know may say something profound,
and we may not give it a second thought. But if we hear someone who is famous or well
educated speak, we may take what they say seriously, whether or not their ideas are
well thought-out. We must give up our association between social status and truth. In
the end, the only real means we have of discerning truth is the development of our own
critical consciousness.540
Dispersion of wealth is critical for the creation of democracy. Decentralization of
the right to know is critical to social technological change. A social technological
revolution will have to be decentralized, mentally and physically. Elitism has and will
defeat it. Giving the right to interpret the cosmos to any restricted class or group has
and will defeat the development of social technology. We are going to have to create a
new cultural meaning of truth other than social status.
Conscious evolution would give us the ability to consciously create culture and
cultural legitimacy for ideas. Instead of passively waiting for the approval flowing from
institutions, mother culture, or God, we would be able to create legitimacy and support.
Hurt You , and Nancy Napier's Recreating Your Self: Help for Adult Children of
Dysfunctional Families. For a juxtaposition of such therapy with traditional
psychoanalyses, see pages vii-x in the 1990 edition of Alice Miller's The Drama of the
Gifted Child.
540
For a discussion of the concept and importance of critical consciousness, see Paulo
Freire's, Education for Critical Consciousness.
273
New Fields of Inquiry
Liberating social inquiry from the traditional internal and external constraints
would make it possible to investigate issues in new ways. At present, there are many
areas of social inquiry that are repressed or simply ignored. In an age of conscious
evolution, there will be a great demand for many pieces of information that presently do
not exist.
“Learning has brought disobedience and heresy into the world, and
printing has divulged them ... God keep us from both.” Sir William Berkeley,
Governor of Virginia, 1677541
Investigations into community-level and localized economics would be useful.
While there is a great deal of philosophical discussion these days about small-scale
economics, there is very little hard data. Quantification of the employment-generating
possibilities of localized economics would aid localization.
The means of healing in extreme mental states -- what is traditionally called
psychosis -- is presently a highly repressed technology, and one that we would benefit
greatly from exploring. Traditional village cultures are actually more effective at treating
some kinds of mental illness than modern society.542 Why is it that we can send people
to the moon, but our ability to treat mental illness has actually declined? There is only
one answer to that question, and that is the repression of social technology. Numerous
successful experiments have in fact been conducted in our society using more effective
methods of treating mental illness, but these experiments have been aggressively
ignored by the established marketers of mental health.543
The study and dissemination of information concerning the effectiveness of
midwifery, herbalism, vegetarianism, and other forms of alternative health maintenance
and care could have enormous impacts on our society. The list is extensive. These are
all areas where the flow of information is repressed because of vested interests, cultural
dissonance, or unthinking deference to higher power.
541
Postman, 1969, introduction
542
Warner, 1985.
543
A number of experiments have been conducted in providing support for people
experiencing extreme states of mind, including delusional and psychotic states. These
experiments involve giving people who are experiencing extreme states emotional
support in a community environment rather than drugs. One such experiment is Burch
House in New Hampshire. (See bibliography.) For a discussion of other experiments
involving schizophrenics, see Mosher, 1989. For more information on alternative
approaches to mental illness, see the Process Work Center of Portland and their
“Journal of Process Oriented Psychology.”
274
Reunification
“Science is providing increasing knowledge of the universe, the human
environment, and the human mind -- but people (including many scientists)
increasingly realize that scientific information alone will not solve human
problems. It is beginning to dawn on some that a major factor in our problems is
how we think about the world -- as the deep ecology movement and attempts
both to humanize medicine and to take diplomacy into the hands of ordinary
citizens all indicate. It is possible, we believe, for the rational and the spiritual to
support each other rather than to conflict.” Paul Ehrlich and Robert Ornstein544
We must reunify the spiritual and rational. These have been broken apart in our
time not by their innate incompatibility, but rather by political struggle. In many times
and places throughout history, scientific thinking has been claimed as the exclusive
territory of elite groups. These elite groups have attempted to build social movements,
with science as their ideology. Opposing social movements have attacked these
“scientific” ideologies in attempting to build their own movements.
Even a thumbnail history of the war over science reveals its ferocity. The early
Christians, for instance, opposed science because scientists were part of the Roman
political power structure.545 In Mexico at the turn of the century, a ruling elite called “
Cientificos,” or scientists, ruled the country. They advocated the complete elimination of
indigenous peoples and consolidation of white control. This was, of course, the only
scientific answer to the development needs of Mexico.546 Their opposition disdained
such science.
In American society, science has been used to advance the power of vested
interests, as we mentioned in the discussion of structural poverty. The Social
Darwinists and the Conference on Charities and Corrections in the late 1800s were
both viciously inhumane and highly scientific. The American Medical Association used
science to oppose women’s suffrage and to push women out of medicine. As science
has been politicized, there has been a strong anti-intellectual tradition in the U.S.547
Creationists, conservatives, and some religious groups have battled incessantly against
science. On the other end of the political spectrum, the “ counterculture” of the 1960s
rejected science.548 The spokespersons for the counterculture bemoaned the
544
Ehrlich, 1989, p.192
545
Africa, 1968, p.82
546
Wolf, 1969, p.14
547
Hofstadter, 1963
548
Charles Reich's book The Greening of America and Roszack's book The making of a
Counter Culture were both popular books. Both of these book cast traditional
“technocratic” scientific thinking as destructive if not genocidal. They saw a youthful
275
intellectual objectivity that allowed scientists to build nuclear weapons and the
“alienation” that modern technology caused. “ New Age” philosophies often reject
science in the name of enlightenment.
Witnessing the historical use of science for the purposes of genocide and power
brokering makes it clear that the conflict between spiritual and scientific ways of thinking
is political, not rational. Vested interests claim exclusive rights to a particular “scientific”
way of looking at an issue. People who hold opposing political interests reject that kind
of “science.” In the end, we are left with the notion that a particular kind of scientific
deduction is opposed to other forms of thinking. In reality, these conflicts are the result
of the movement-building aspirations of different groups, not the innate conflict between
rationality and other ways of thinking. The social sciences themselves remain divided by
this political conflict that wears the clothing of an intellectual disagreement.
Toaster Chanting
To reunify the rational and spiritual, it is important to understand the uses of our
various intellectual aptitudes. The uses of different kinds of thinking can be seen in the
ordinary tasks that we face in our daily lives. What would you do if you had to repair a
broken toaster? You might look the machine over, poke it a few times, and then take it
apart to look for broken parts. If you can find the broken part, then you can repair the
machine.
Now imagine that you are asked to solve an ecological problem. A certain
species of bird is not reproducing and you have to find out why. What would you do?
Perhaps you would begin studying the bird and the ecosystem in which it lives. In this
case, you may not find a single broken “part,” but rather multiple factors that are
interacting to cause a certain outcome.
Now imagine that you have to answer the question of whether any form of
consciousness survives our biological death. This question becomes a more intuitive or
spiritual matter.
I would suggest that there is a spectrum of circumstance that we as humans
face, and that our thinking is adapted to this spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are
situations where we can make fairly straightforward, rational deductions. At this end of
the spectrum, we repair simple machines like toasters, where it is clear what is wrong
and what needs to be done. As we move up the spectrum, we move to more complex
situations, such as trying to understand ecosystems or other complex systems. At some
point, we are no longer able to understand in rational detail how something works, and
we start to rely more on intuitive thinking. When it comes to treating sickness or
understanding complex biological processes, often we must rely on intuition as much as
rational understanding. As we move up the spectrum, we get to things that we
understand less and less, such as the nature of the universe, the nature of life and
death, of powers beyond our perception. At this level our intuition breaks over into
liberation to a more enlightened, more spiritualistic kind of thinking in the social
movements of the 1960s.
276
supernaturalism. Intuitive and spiritualized thinking allows us to reach beyond our
rational mind to grasp things we don't understand completely. Many scientists who have
made great discoveries have confessed that it was largely an intuitive process. In a
stable culture, spirituality serves as a means to incorporate larger realties and to
intelligently adapt to a world we do not understand fully.
The cultures of prehistorical peoples were more spiritualized. They had fewer
rational explanations for their world. In modern times, we have developed a more
rational understanding of more pieces of our world. But these different kinds of thinking
are not in themselves contradictory at all. We are led astray when, for political reasons,
we are tricked into using the wrong kind of thinking in the wrong situation. Then we end
up chanting over broken toasters or treating complex systems like simple machines.
Misapplied rationalitistic or spiritualitistic thinking usually comes as the result of
the actions of vested interests. Some doctors may want us to believe that they have a
rational understanding of our illness when they do not. In doing so, the doctor appears
more in control, which some patients want. The result is that bodies are treated like
broken machines rather than the complex systems. This results in all manner of
unnecessary or inappropriate application of drugs and surgery. Any honest doctor will
confess that most ailments they face have roots outside of the body, in the overall
balance of a person's life. Helping a person reestablish the overall balance of their life is
as much an intuitive as a rational task.
The other side of the coin is the vested interests who manipulate our ways of
thinking for political gain by persuading us to apply spiritualistic thinking to what should
be rational decisions. By moralizing sexuality and making it a matter of public policy, or
by advocating law and order while hiding the true causes of crime, politicians present us
with political toasters. But they tell us these are God’s toasters -- issues laden with
higher moral meaning. Instead of actually understanding the issues, we chant over
these political toasters. We apply centrated thinking and divine association to what
should be rational decisions. We blame one set of politicians for things that are not their
fault, and we think other politicians are correct in the eyes of God because the economy
grows during their tenure. We are taught to apply spiritualized thinking to our political
decisions. Spirituality is a vital part of culture, but God is not a politician. There is no
political or economic body on the face of the earth that does not deserve our dead-level
rational appraisal.
The Death of the Bull
We are capable of creating a real social science. Real social science would be
marketable. It would not necessarily be a money-for-services arrangement; rather it
would be information that people could actually use to affect the course of their lives
and their culture. Social awareness will be selected for when people are able to use it to
influence the feedback loops of culture, in other words, to actually improve their lives.
Social scientists have mimicked the physical sciences and tried to develop
themselves as an elite profession. In the process, they have coopted from ordinary
277
people the right of social understanding, the access to social technology. We cannot
leave the keys to our survival locked in an ivory tower.
Whatever social organizations we develop to transmit social understanding, we
would do better to model them after vocational training, or some form of cooperative
education that is accessible. We would simply seek to transmit understanding to people
through whatever means worked.
We must demand clear and direct language, and inquiry into relevant topics. We
must resist linguistic elitism. “Philosophy” is no excuse for bullshit. If it does not make
sense, it does not make sense. We must resist jargon, inaccessibility, and
manufactured complexities that only serve to maintain privilege. Resistance never
comes without a price. But it is when people refuse again and again to pay that price
that oppression becomes a stone-solid institutional compliance.
We must seek to reunify the rational, intuitive, and spiritual. We need not give our
minds over to the New Age peddlers of divinity and doom that have no basis in logic.
Neither need we give over our mind to the politically dis-objective, aristocratic science of
established “educational” institutions. We can find the balance where our capacities for
rational and spiritual understanding are reunited in understanding our world. We can
develop a respect for the ways of thinking used by people with dirt on their hands. We
can develop means of understanding our social world that is useable, accessible, and
passionate. God never meant for us to be stupid.
278
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lines of Power
Sometimes it comes to you, something you weren't expecting. Some being that
you hold dear is put at risk, by power or arrogance. So many sit aside and watch
injustice done; it is the highest calling to talk back when power threatens what you hold
dear.
They were going to string lines across the land to ship high voltage power that
pops and cracks and menaces the hair straight up on the back of your neck. I sit by my
window every night now, and watch the coal train one hundred cars long. One hundred
coal cars every day rolling down to their power plant. Cutting down a mountain a day to
keep the coal hoppers full. They go to people and teach them to how to spend that
power with night lights, heat, and new appliances. Buy it by the megawatt and burn it
away. More and more and the more the better, another kilowatt, another dollar. Then
they come and say they care about tomorrow and the children and the mountains.
They planned their lines to run where the law said they should, then some people
shouted and they planned a more quiet route. They planned to run their lines through
the watery land; the watery land where the herons found the sycamore, and built a
gangly tree top village, cackling and feuding while the young ones grip the edge of the
nest, flapping to imagine high flight and good times to come. Where the otters live,
scurrying on the banks, they will give you a sideways look, suspicious of your intrusion.
Then in a blink they are in the water, slithering torpedoes never to be seen again.
Where the beavers swim away like damp furry tugboats, slapping the water indignantly
to protest your presence in their peaceful realm. Where the ducks hide under the
branches at the edge, to explode in feathered fury when you get too close, rocketing
over your shaken self. Where the geese parade their flock and honk. They planned to
run their lines where the animals live, because the animals don't fight back.
They planned to run their lines through the black neighborhood, the
neighborhood that used to be five miles down the road where the cooling lake for the
nuclear plant now floods the land. Black people are afraid to speak sometimes, afraid to
invite another abuse. But we went with them to the halls of power, where they told of
having their land taken away and never being paid for it, while the judge shifted
nervously and the stale lawyer crackered.
279
We went out and talked to people, to help them understand that they had some
stake in the fate of the less powerful ones. We hired our own lawyer, though his hair cut
wasn't as good as the other's. We stood up and told their lies, peeled the gift wrapping
and bows off, down to the hard truths about coal black acid in the air and water, about
high voltage cancer and increased market share. Always the hired gun you face, firing
well educated high paid lies shooting truth full of holes. In the end they fell flat though;
money cannot buy passion.
280
A Conscious Society or a Dead Planet
“The planet we are creating is one in which no nation, no race, no culture,
can escape a truly global destiny. There is no choice about this fact. The only
choice available is to recognize it -- and to do so in time.” Barbara Ward549
For tens of thousands of years, human beings have lived in societies guided by
non-conscious cultural evolution. Small human societies practiced some degree of
conscious evolution, but the evolution of larger civilizations is clear enough. Large-scale
human societies are consistently blind to their own future. Their evolution is reactive;
they do not respond to information about the future. This is at root why every past
human civilization has suffered from a degree of environmental degradation that has
contributed to its downfall. Modern industrial civilization evolves reactively as well. Nonconscious evolution is a deep root that underlies the greater social and ecological
problems of our time.
We desperately need to take control of those aspects of our society that we
assume to be beyond our control. Popular understanding is the prerequisite to popular
action. We will never achieve conscious evolution through the benevolent leadership of
politicians or scientists. As long as the greater mass of people feel little control over
their future and have little understanding of the evolution of human culture, they will not
be conscious participants in creating the future.
We must change our methods of production and consumption to more
sustainable forms under conscious control. Our habits of consumption are tied to the
need of our over-productive economy to disperse its outputs, and the course of our
economy is tied to our minds.
Every culture is a system, a structure of interconnected and inter-supporting
parts. We form our identities from the material of the larger culture around us. To build
an alternative society, we must build a self-supporting system, a new culture. As long as
we build it piecemeal, it will not be self-sustaining; the gravity of the dominant culture
will undermine our alternative culture.
While the problems we face are great, we have greater resources, we have more
extensive historical knowledge than our predecessors. We have had the resources to
investigate our past and ourselves. We have a greater means of communicating to
larger numbers of people. We have access to many small, clean, and often simple
technologies that can make life more livable. Our situation is in many ways similar to
what previous civilizations faced prior to their decline, but we have the resources to do it
differently this time.
If we want to break free from the ruts of history, we are faced with the need to
create a new means of social evolution. There are already strong selectors in place that
are guiding us toward the depletion of our environment and the development of an
authoritarian social order. We have to create a movement powerful enough to overcome
549
Ward, 1979, p.264
281
these selectors, a means of change that can set history on a new course. We have the
ability to create such a change.
The fundamental challenge we face is to separate our identity and our thinking
from our cultural overlord, to change the dominant institutions of our world and their
images internalized in each of us. There are more than enough material resources to
build a sustainable world. We have to liberate our minds from the machine.
Conscious Evolution Will Have to be a Social Movement
We have to create a society that contains self-magnifying loops that select for
social awareness. This selection for social awareness will become a self-perpetuating
system, as our present non-conscious evolution is self-perpetuating. An awareness of
the potential of conscious evolution is not the most critical aspect of achieving our
desired ends. Knowledge itself does not convey power, it only provides power when
applied. The achievement of our desired ends will require a social movement, not just
insight.
The Limits of Synergy
It is a deeply held belief in our society that the social ills we face are the result
of greed, selfishness, and a lack of love. This belief grows out of our illusion of
conscious control. We spoke earlier about the illusion of conscious control, about how
we think the ideas of political leaders and intellectuals guide the course of society. Just
as our direct observation tells us undeniably that the world is basically flat, it is obvious
to us that if people would treat each other better, then our social problems would be
eliminated. We expect leaders to guide us in that direction.
We are blind to culture. We are blind to the fact that so many of what we call
social problems are integral parts of our social system, actively selected for and recreated in the daily operation of our culture. The existence of oppressive institutions in
our society is not simply the result of people treating each other badly.
The theory that the world can be changed if people treated each other better
might be referred to as synergy. Synergy refers to an uncoordinated coming together of
individual good will from many different places to change the social order. There is a
piece of truth in this idea. (Just like a great deal of the world is locally flat.) But synergy
is deceptive as a political idea because it negates the importance of getting organized
and creating new structures that stretch far beyond the individual.
Can synergy work? If a lot of people did start treating each other with more love
and decreasing their personal consumption, and if there were no other structural
changes, the culture would respond as a system and correct the error. If we try to save
the environment by reducing our consumption of resources without making other
changes, that will quickly generate a great deal of unemployment, and a new round of
business intensification will be initiated to correct the problem. If out of sympathy for the
282
poor we increase social spending without any other structural changes, inflation will
increase, the middle class will turn against the lower class and structural poverty will be
increased to break inflation. (As happened in the Reagan revolution.) If we treat people
better without addressing the structural reasons why we have created a culture that
treats them badly, we will have the greed and hate back soon enough. Synergy cannot
take the place of effective political organization and structural change in our society.
Enlightenment cannot -- will not ever -- hold power over more mundane and material
structures in our society until someone is willing to get their hands dirty and change
those structures.
283
My House
I thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I have become accustomed to
such events.
I have become a benchmark in people's minds, a reference for their conscience.
Many people have a piece of their mind that thinks this world is in crisis. And when their
lover leaves them, or they flunk out of school, some part of them starts to question their
choices. “If only I were true to my purer self; if only I were true to my principles, no such
folly would befall me.” And then they come to me.
It is a good house I have built, here in this part of the forest where people seldom
tread. It is a good house, but I do get lonely. And so you come to me, sit with me at my
table. You tell me what a fine house I have built. You ask me questions. You ask me to
explain what it is here that I have built. You swear your being to building here many tall
edifices. From here we will launch forth the mighty wave of change that will sweep
across the world, and wipe away the pain in your heart. You swear your soul to this our
revolution. Your eyes gleam with the excitement, the glory of finally facing down
Armageddon. You swear to me eternity.
And then you talk to the professor. You and your lover make amends. The great
crisis of our world is abated finally for yet another day.
You will come again, next week, next month, next year. You will ask me again to
tell you of how we will win the great struggle. You will promise again your soul to the
revolution. I will tell you what I think needs to be done, I will watch the gleam in your
eyes. I will stand alone in my house and watch the sun rise, and feel very old for such a
young man.
284
Mom, Where do Social Movements
Come From?
Social movements arise when people feel threatened or are oppressed and they
arise to seek change. More important, people must feel like they have something to gain
by seeking change. Francis Piven and Richard Cloward have suggested in their
extensive examination of political movements in the United States that movements tend
to arise in times when political alliances are shifting.550 As long as the constituencies of
politicians are stable, they are not ravenously seeking new support from new groups. To
seek new support they would have to advocate for causes that might alienate their
existing constituencies. But when significant structural shifts occur in our society and
established constituencies are undermined, then the politicians in power must seek
support from new groups. That is when large scale social movements are most able to
press their agendas, and that is when they are likely to be the strongest.
Piven and Cloward’s insights also explain the prevalence of synergy, the belief
in the collective power of unorganized individuals. We are living in a time of political
stasis. The powerful political players of our time are relatively secure with their
constituencies; fundamental power shifts are not occurring. Synergy is what we turn to
as something to do when we have no movement. We often tend to see our own
perspectives as if they were timeless, rather than understanding the degree to which we
are influenced by the realities of our own time. If we were living in an age of political
shifts, then political organizing would take prominence over synergy as a tool for
change.
In many situations, people will starve to death without arising into a social
movement to seek redress. For people to arise in a movement, they must believe that
they have something to gain. One of the most pressing tasks of any organizer is to
convince people that they can make a difference.
If so much of our culture is so strongly influenced by non-conscious forces, then
what role is there for the conscious will of social movements to change culture? In the
past, our illusion of conscious control made us blind to cultural selection. In the future,
our knowledge of cultural selection should not make us blind to the importance of
conscious choice.
Structural changes in society create opportunities for social movements, but
people must still arise in a movement if they are to achieve change. Democracy did not
550
“Movements tend to arise when electoral alignments become unstable, usually as a
result of changes in the larger society that generate new discontents or stimulate new
aspirations, and thus undermine established party allegiances. In the United States,
electoral volatility is associated particularly with large-scale economic change, and
especially with economic collapse. When the allegiance of key voter blocs can no longer
be taken for granted, contenders are likely to raise the stakes in electoral contests by
employing campaign rhetoric that acknowledges grievances and gives voice to
demands as a way of building majorities” (Piven, 1988, p.XlV).
285
happen automatically when particular societies found enormous new reserves of
resources. Historically, as new reserves of resources flowed into a society, a mercantile
class arose. This mercantile class then started to challenge the political monopoly of
the landed aristocracy. The economic activity generated by this new flow of resources
operated through cultural selection to cause more and more people to support the
mercantilists. This process over time led to the expansion of civil liberties and
democracy.
If people had not arisen in a social movement to challenge established power,
would landed aristocrats have automatically moved in the direction of expanding civil
liberties for society at large? Obviously not. It is only through the successes of a social
movement that such changes occur.
In more recent history, similar observations can be made. Cultural selection did
not “ cause” or “determine” the resurgence of feminism or the civil rights movement.
Structural changes did occur in our society that allowed these movements to be more or
less successful at particular points in history. But the improvements in the rights and
liberties of women and minorities would not have occurred if successful movements had
not made use of the historical moment. Cultural selection opens windows, and nudges
people and institutions, but people still must create the changes.
286
Finding God
We buried Carl's body here in our village. Suddenly I and we were ordained with
the power to dig a grave. It came time to speak the words of God, to send one among
us beyond. With some fear I realized, we called God down. We stood in a circle and
said our words, cast in the pit each piece of self. I have stood at grave-side when the
preacher called God down, but never have I seen God so clearly as when we ourselves
called God down among us.
Two thousand years ago they took God away from us, took God away to the
pulpit and the Vatican, to the hospital and the asylum, took away our own sacred souls
and left us begging. God in a pulpit, God in Rome talking to the Pope. God changing his
mind every now and again about whether or not women are people.
We have bought our bread with ten thousand years of pyramid building, with the
blood and sweat of people we took God away from. We have bought our bread with our
hierarchies, setting one above another. Then the man above says, “Come here to me,
do as I say, and I will give you your God back to you.” They took God away from you
and hung him on a golden cross that you cannot afford.
God telling you not to make love, or even to love at all, till the man says so. They
take us away from ourselves, take us away from ourselves and offer to give it back only
when we do what they want.
God is a politician in our time. God a Cop and a President talking in our mind,
telling us what is right and wrong. They took God away from us, and put the voices of
Presidents and Generals and a mother's love inside where God used to live. Do as the
voices speak and all that is good and right and powerful will be with you. And the power
and the glory forever and ever Amen.
There is no blasphemy in standing up off your knees and saying God lives here,
down here in the pews and the street. There is no blasphemy in lifting your head and
your mind.
Some people go to meet God. And if you go there alone, you may find it too
much, too alone and strong and afraid. And if we shall go there together, you are God, I
am God, and what we have between us is God.
We run in fear from madness, death, birth, sickness and God. We send the
godoctors to fix our bodies when we are sick, send them to bring back our minds from
where we dare not tread. We send the priests to talk to God and tell us what he thinks,
send somebody bigger than me to go where I fear. And each time they go away, they
take a piece of me.
I want those pieces back. I want to sit with the sick and the mad in each of us
and feel no fear. I want to go to birth and death and look God in the eye.
You are God and I am God. Inside. Before the voices. There is no blasphemy in
reclaiming our souls, our hearts, our minds, our bodies. We can go together you and I,
and claim eternity as our own.
287
From Divine to Conscious Association
If we want conscious evolution, we are going to have to change the way children
are raised in school and in society. Cultural selection occurs as a result of people's
tendency to think supernaturally in divine association, which has its roots in the social
hierarchy to which we subject our children. To remove the artificial hierarchies we put
over our children, particularly in their teenage years, would have a dramatic effect on
our political culture over time. There is tremendous resistance to reforming the
educational system for just that reason.
Our existing educational system teaches conformity, obedience to those in
power, subjugation of ego, and how to be a cog in a larger machine. This process is
integral to creating human beings who will work hard in their position in our stratified
society. The problem is that we are gaining unanimity of direction at the expense of
greater social understanding. Institutional education selects against social
understanding. That is no accident. Social awareness is disruptive and maladaptive
within our existing order.
What would the other option look like? Educational reformers have been solving
the “problems” of education for at least the last hundred years, and they have been
consistently ignored. One early promoter of “active education” was John Dewey. The
principle of active education is simply that children learn by doing. But the unspoken
demands of institutional education in our society actively select against active
education, even though it clearly is more effective.
“I believe that
- education ... is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.
- the school must represent present life - life as real and vital to the child
as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the
playground.
- that education which does not occur through forms of life, forms that are
worth living for their own sake, is always a poor substitute for genuine reality, and
tends to cramp and to deaden.” John Dewey, circa 1897551
The reason educational reformers have been ignored is that our educational “
problems” are not problems at all. Artificial hierarchies are very detrimental to real
education, to efficiently helping people learn new things. But socialization, not
education, is the primary unspoken reason for institutional education. We don't see this
because we don't see culture, we don't see the real purposes of our present systems,
and we don't ask questions about how things could be different.
The institutional arrangement of education -- one teacher with thirty students in
desks in rows inside of a building all day long -- creates institutional relationships. This
kind of education was created in the late 1800s in a period of Taylorism and “scientific
551
Quoted in Archambault, 1964.
288
management” of workers.552 This was a peak period of business power in American
history, a socially regressive time. This was the age of Social Darwinism, when leaders
and pundits were openly advocating that the poor should be allowed to starve to
eliminate the weaker of our species.
It is time we expanded our imagination to think of education that is decentralized,
student led, non-authoritarian, and non-institutional. Piaget referred to such education
as active schooling.
“Psychological research on the development of rational operations and on
the acquisition or construction of fundamental ideas provides data which seem
decisively in favor of the active methods, and which require a much more radical
reform of intellectual learning than many supporters themselves of the active
school imagine.” Piaget553
“Only a social life among the students themselves - that is, selfgovernment taken as far as possible and parallel to the intellectual work carried
out in common - will lead to this double development of personalities, masters of
themselves and based on mutual respect.” Piaget554
Piaget's mention of “work carried out in common” refers to students working
cooperatively in groups as opposed to individually. In many places in this country and
Europe people have created successful experiments that have been based on elevating
the status and power of students in their own education. Denmark has gone so far as to
pass a national law requiring student councils to give students more involvement and
power in their education.555
Summerhill in England was one well-known experiment in student-directed
education. The school was run by A.S. Neill, and it operated with dozens of children for
more than forty years. It had no grades, no mandatory attendance at lessons, and was
run by student self-government.556 Similar forms of education are seeing a resurgence
in this country.557
552
The creation of our modern form of institutional education is well documented in two
important books, Joel Spring’s, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State and
Raymond Callahan’s Education and the Cult of Efficiency.
553
Piaget, 1973, p.94
554
Piaget, 1973, p.110
555
Jensen, 1989, p.151
556
Neill, 1961
557
USA Today, Feb. 7, 1996, p.6D
289
There have been and remain many successful experiments in student-focused
education and student democracy.558 The “academic performance” of children coming
out of non-hierarchical education tends to be as good as or better than that of children
who have undergone traditional education.559 It is indeed one of the greatest ironies of
our time that we say we are educating our young people to live in a democracy while
keeping them in authoritarian social organizations throughout their formative years. It is
no accident. The effect of moving toward empowered education would be to reduce the
tendency of people to apply supernaturalistic thinking to political processes. Apathy and
chanting over political toasters would be greatly reduced.
558
Watts, 1977, Berg, 1968, Deal, 1978. See also Fletcher, Colin, in Burgess, 1980,
Zada, Koblas, in Hepburn, 1983 and Fletcher, Colin, in Jensen, 1989.
559
McCauley, Brian, and Dornbusch, Sanford M., in Deal, 1978.
290
Home
It was the dead of winter, and I knew that it was time again to leave the safety of
home. I practiced my swing, batting about the political balls, winning most arguments,
but arguing with people who didn't want to anymore. There is a time and a place for a
good contest, and a time and place to go play on another field. We had lost Delancey
the previous summer.
We were heading West. There were four adults and one child in a very small car.
We rolled down the windows after we climbed in so they could shove in the rest of our
belongings. It was going to be a long drive.
It started sleeting as we were driving. Pellets of ice were raining from the sky,
coating the road like a carpet of well-oiled ball bearings. We kept slipping along as they
closed the road behind us. The heater wasn’t working very well, and the ice built up on
the inside of the windows until it was a half inch thick. The lines on the road
disappeared under a white carpet, so folks just took to driving where it felt right, at which
point I started to develop a new appreciation for those little stripes of paint. It was more
high speed skating than driving really -- the car was going to travel in whatever direction
momentum propelled it, regardless of what direction the tires indicated. But as long as
you kept the momentum pointed in the right direction, you kept moving.
After twenty-some hours, we arrived at Sandhill, everything in the car frozen and
formed to fit the object next to it kind of like those old vegetables at the back of your
freezer. We weren't likely to thaw anytime soon, as the temperature hovered around
negative twenty degrees Fahrenheit. I moved into a small cabin where the cobwebs
swayed gently back and forth as the wind howled outside. The only source of heat was
an ungenerous little coal stove. You could fill it full of wood, and somehow it would
manage to burn the little pieces and blacken up the big ones without giving up any heat.
Surviving the cold nights meant getting up over and over to built tiny fires. I reckoned
the exercise would keep me from freezing.
Sandhill is another intentional community, a place where people have decided to
live more simply. There is a reason for the name of the place -- it’s a hill, and its sand.
The land had been farmed for decades by people not thinking at all about the future,
until they stripped the soil down to pure white sterile crystal. Now the Sandhill folks take
that sand and grow on it, tilling it with wisdom, turning green plants back into the
ground. In time they have made white sand black again, brought back life from where it
had left.
Sam did a lot of the farming, and he was a true master of his trade. He ran the
old patient machines. Those machines were cast aside decades ago by the farmers
who needed something that moved faster, something that would stir the soil in a wider
swath. With the old machinery you can still see the path of the cultivator sweeps as they
brush along side the planted rows. Sam could comb the weeds from along those rows
like brushing a small child's hair.
It was a good season that year. We walked the rows, hoes in hand ready to slice
the weeds loose from their sustenance, but there were no weeds left. No poisons had
been sprayed on the land to kill friend and foe, plant and animal without regard. The
291
only thing that went after those weeds was Sam and careful steel, combing the last
weed from among the tender seedlings.
The sorghum grew tall that year. Sorghum cane is a Yankee's sugar cane. Back
before things and people could skip and hop across the planet on planes and trucks at a
moment's notice, back when people had to get by with what they could get in walking
distance, sorghum cane was how they made life a little sweeter. You strip the leaves off
the stalks, then cut the stalks and take them to the press. At the press the juice gets
squeezed out. Then you boil down the juice until you get a thick, dark syrup. Some of
the old-timers back in Georgia still boiled sugar cane syrup when I was growing up.
When I tasted sorghum, it was the same flavor I had tasted before.
The Sandhill folks knew their neighbors better than other community people.
“Alternative” and “New Age” people often seem to end up thinking they are better than
traditional people. The Sandhill folks weren't like that at all. They figured that even
though they were making different choices than mainstream folks, that didn't mean they
couldn't get along with them. They had a generously sized front porch on the house,
and it got good use.
I lived there a while and helped them with the farm. In due time, I moved back
east and settled in town near Twin Oaks. We were living across the tracks at that point,
where the rents are cheaper and the people are darker. Each neighborhood is
something like a person; it has its own character. The character of our neighborhood
was the couches. Most every front porch had one. Some of them weren't all that pretty
by furniture store standards, but they were well used. Folks would sit on their couches
and talk to people in the street as they walked by. They watched out for each other
some, at least the ones that knew each other well. Some of them were sickly, and the
others would drop by to take care.
Many times people would tell me it was a dangerous neighborhood. It seems like
they only speak the danger in their mind, and forget the neighborhood. I have lived in
the whiter and wealthier neighborhoods where people know each other behind closed
doors. In a real neighborhood, people know each other on the street. We fear what we
do not know. People who never spent much time in our neighborhood didn't know it at
all. They would see the people were poorer and darker and think it was dangerous.
Since they don't know the neighborhood, they pass curfews and hire more police,
because they know the danger but not the neighborhood.
Every day I would cross the tracks over to where people are richer. I would go to
the halls of ivy and brick where America's privileged earn their university degrees. I
walked among them and tried not to look too out of place.
Sometimes when you are around other folks, you start to feel what they are
feeling without being aware of it. Sometimes I was doing research on campus and I
would just start getting nervous. I couldn't figure out why at first, but then I would start
watching, in the library or wherever I was. Nobody was moving very much, but if you
looked real close some of those students could make a squirrel in the road look calm. It
was like they were scared of something, but no one could quite say what it was. I've
been to schools where they weren't so nervous, but this was a good school, so I guess
that means you are supposed to be more nervous. These people are training to take the
reigns of power, and they know the least about neighborhoods, about community. They
292
know money, and they know that judgement that is watching them, God by a different
name.
I have looked upon other neighborhoods, to get to know their character. I always
wondered, with all those people in the north, what the appeal could be. An invitation
from a friend sent me looking in upstate New York. I walked the neighborhoods there,
among the houses, square, modest, each set aside to itself, some with cracking paint,
others with vinyl siding, each with its own character. I walked down the long streets,
quiet on a weekend morning, still air shattered by an occasional pair of children cycling
noisily along. There was an old man out to trim the hedge, another house with a
lifetime's clutter being set out to sell to the neighbors. The small bushes and flower
gardens fed my hungry eyes with sweet colors. There was a pocket of peace, a city too
small for the violence and fury of the big cities. The houses were modest, but not
desperate. So too the people.
I was walking down to the farmer's market. I descended a long hill, with streams
cutting under little bridges as the water crackled and jumped among the rocks and
leaped down little water falls. It would carry all the wonder of Niagra to a duck with her
little ones, but the locals drove and walked along the road, too unconcerned with the
familiar to notice its beauty.
I made my way down to the big road next to the lake. Here three hundred years
ago there no doubt lay a swamp, with fish and fowl and mud and tall green trees. Now
there is a wide strip of hot black asphalt. They were building a new bridge, adding
pavement and changing the intersection. The cars cascaded in an unending stampede
down their road, panicked as their path is tightened by the construction; they would not
to be slowed.
I waited for a break in the stampede and slipped across the road to the market. I
know I could walk arrogantly and slowly if I wish across the wide expanse of asphalt;
there is enough time. But it is a hostile strip and I am trespasser, so I step quickly like a
thief.
At the market the farmers and artisans have come, and the vendors of exotic
food. A few musicians have come as well, to set the air to rhythmic motion and fill their
music cases with small bills. I talked to the vendors, and bought a few things. The old
and the new mix, the neighbors, organic farmers, and minstrels from a Medieval age.
One moment in the long week, a few hours stolen from time, then the farmer’s
market closed and everyone returned to their cars, squeezed into the terrified traffic,
and drove home.
I walked homeward. There were more people about, milling over their neighbors'
cast aside belongings, watching impatiently as I crossed each street in front of their
idling cars. It is not a bad life in a quiet neighborhood in this town. Their fathers and their
mothers lived it this way. The cars were slower, and the machines didn't think, but the
town was still quiet then, and it was a good life.
It was a long walk, and a misting rain set in. I would not get a soaking, only a
warning to quicken my pace.
It is raining a lot this spring. It is raining a lot and our parents never looked very
far beyond their quiet town. It is raining now, and I do not know if it is mother nature's
rain anymore. They say it will rain more here as our world warms, our world far beyond
this quiet town. Is this our rain, our rain made by the power plants and exhaust pipes?
293
Did we create the weather today, or did the force of nature? We still think small, in a
world that has grown large.
I came home, and not long after I found myself headed for the other end of the
continent. I got the call that Mick had died. He had been sick for a long time, but still it
caught everyone by surprise. He liked to talk, exaggerate some, and no one was really
sure how sick he was. Perhaps he did not know when, but he knew he was dying. He
wrote to his children; he wanted to make amends before he died. They had stopped
speaking to him some time ago; they did not respond to his invitation.
I went to help my sister. She lives right near mom, so we all slept that night in the
house we were raised in. All the neighbors were coming over and bringing food. We
started eating as fast as we could, but there was no hope of keeping up.
They did a reception at the church. The church ladies (they wouldn't want to be
called anything else) put out a powerful spread of food. All the relatives and friends
came. The women were bustling about making sure everything was taken care of. The
men came prepared to fight a polyester war, the disorganized army reunited again to
show its strength.
All the women dress in makeup. All the men talk about hunting, and work, and
sports. They all want good jobs, a house, a nice car, to live a small life in a world that
has grown large. No one breaks the line; everyone walks straight on it.
They support each other; they confine each other. Were it not for the madness I
have visited, I could accept such confinement as a necessary cost of community, accept
it with the intellectual air of someone interested in community for academic reasons. But
I do not accept conformity and quiet repression as an inevitable price of community.
They are more the price of a society that seeks dominion over black people, nature,
women, and lower classes. Conformity is the silence of larger truths unspoken, and a
past that some would rather forget.
The new must learn from the old. We cannot build new community without the
kinship, spirit, and steadfastness of old community.
The old must learn from the new. If community is averse to the darkness of
knowledge, closed to diversity, it will burn in its own white light of denial. We will learn to
think large, to stand with our feet in community and our mind in eternity, or we will die.
Balance in all things.
294
Community
In our time, democracy and industrialism have been driven by individualized
intensification. Industrial society has affected the lives of people in every hidden corner
of the globe. The growth curve of human resource consumption continues steeply
upward. It is clear that we are going to have to find ways to live while consuming fewer
resources.
Individualized society is a very recent and rare phenomena in the history of our
species. The fabric of most societies has been kinship. Kinship defines relationships
and creates intimate and extensive social networks. Throughout the world these kinship
systems have woven together extended families and villages. A sense of kinship shows
through strongly and consistently in ethnographic work from all over the world. It is
difficult for Westerners to understand just how different other societies are in this regard.
In our society, the kinship networks have been greatly weakened. Social networks have
dramatically decreased from what is common for human beings.
In our time, people are becoming more aware of the decline of “community.”
Community has become an ill-defined and overused word. Nonetheless, the
reconstruction of human social networks will be critical to our future.
Community takes many forms. It would not be particularly useful to suggest one
“correct” form of social organization that all people everywhere should adopt. There are
many different ways of living people can utilize to share resources and develop
community.
Community that allows people to share resources makes it possible for a group
of people to have a much higher standard of living using a much smaller volume of
resources. Cooperative social networks allow people to share tools, cars, washing
machines, housing, or whatever. This means that many people can have access to
these resources without the absurd amount of resource duplication currently necessary
to maintain a Western middle-class lifestyle. There is extraordinary resource-saving
potential in community, whatever form that community may take. The more sharing
there is, the more resources are preserved.
The resource-conserving aspects of community are especially relevant to the use
of alternative technology and energy sources. A lot of conventional technologies are in
use specifically because they are cheap and fast to install, even if they are highly
wasteful of energy over the longer term. Many alternative technologies require higher
capital inputs, requiring more effort and resources up front and paying back slowly over
time. Installing a set of solar panels on a residential home, for instance, is often not
economical because the water heating system is not used intensively. But a residential
water heating system can easily support more than a couple of people. If numerous
people are living in that home, it becomes much more economical to install solar water
heating because it is being used more intensively.
Community and Identity
295
If people only interface with large institutions, they may have no sense of
themselves as leaders, as powerful to change or create social organization, events, or
institutions. Community creates a level of social organization that is accessible to the
individual.
Twenty years ago Walter Goldschmidt did a study of farming towns in
California. He compared towns dominated by large corporate farms to towns dominated
by small family farms. He found that in towns where family farms were dominant,
community was much more alive. The people were more likely to participate in local
political and cultural activities -- churches, civic groups, PTA, etc. This study was
repressed because it offended the corporate farmers and their politicians.560
Another study in an American city found that people who participate in civic
groups of any kind, including labor unions or advocacy groups, are more politically
aware and more likely to feel democratically empowered.561 People are more likely to
feel like they can make a difference in the world when they have a level of democracy
and political engagement accessible to them. Community creates empowerment, and in
doing so alters the individual’s sense of their relationship to higher power.
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of community is that it greatly facilitates the
construction of human relationships. The re-creation of community on a much broader
scale would allow us to modify our society's motivational systems, especially sexual
reward. It would allow us to meet our social needs much more directly. It would allow
us to define when and on what terms we can give each other love and respect. That
would be a great power indeed.
Conscious Evolution
Cultural selection is the process of evolution that is in some form common to all
human societies. Cultural selection occurs in response to stress -- economic and
ecological stresses being the most powerful. In response to these stresses, social
movements arise, and political changes occur.
There is a strong tendency for people to associate the material benefits of
political changes with the rational and spiritual correctness of these changes. This is
how our beliefs are created. This divine association grows out of our tendency as
children to think from a centrated perspective, to place ourselves at the center of the
universe. As a result of this centration, we connect events in the larger world with our
own actions through magical thinking. Centration in childhood is perpetuated into
adulthood by hierarchical child rearing practices, as is the norm in industrial society.
Cultural selection is a non-conscious process. We are unaware of what guides
the evolution of our most powerful cultural institutions. We are living in a dark age of
social understanding.
560
Goldschmidt, 1978
561
Rosenburg, 1988, p.77-79
296
Conscious evolution is concerned with taking our conscious thinking minds into
cultural selection. Conscious evolution is concerned with making divine association a
conscious process. This would allow us to consciously choose our belief systems and
cultural institutions on a societal level.
Conscious evolution seeks to create a popular understanding of human cultural
evolution and integrate this information into a social movement. The result would be a
process of culture building that would organize people to consciously construct their
economic, political, and spiritual culture. Culture building would have great power
because it would consciously redirect the connection between material benefits and the
development of higher cultural institutions.
An understanding of cultural evolution allows us to look differently at the crises of
our age. The driving force behind the perpetuation of sexism and poverty can be found
by looking at how they are integral to our greater cultural and economic structures. Our
ecological blindness can be understood in the reactive nature of cultural selection, how
our belief system only responds to stresses as they are felt. Non-conscious cultural
selection cannot respond to the future.
Based on such understandings, we can begin to take the power of cultural
evolution and consciously redirect it toward a more sustainable and just society. We can
begin to practice guerilla macro-management of our economy to redirect it toward full
employment. We can redirect intensification, and by doing so eliminate the factors that
select for sexism. We can develop a cultural evolution that is a thinking process, a
means of cultural selection that does not blindly react but rather consciously responds
to the future and to human needs.
Tens of thousands of years ago humanity took a Great Leap to cultural evolution.
We live in an age of profound change. We have an unprecedented ability to encode and
transmit knowledge. We are able to develop a greater understanding of human society,
transmit this understanding broadly, and use it to build human culture. We are capable
of a second Great Leap to conscious evolution.
297
BENEDICTION
There is magic in community. Each of us unto ourselves, we are not I. When we
come together, we are more than the sum. Something that is not in any of us does rise
among all of us.
Sitting in the dark, facing the heat of the fire. Drumbeat rising. Call across ten
thousand years, through the wind that blows from here to every part of this world. To the
people of yesterday, today and tomorrow, who know the rise of the drum. When what
each knows lays aside and watches, while what we all feel rises, the soul rises. Ah -but we are not alone. The spirits are here, they are drawn to the familiar. Drum rising,
fire leaping, spirits dancing wildly in the shadows. Enter all here who know the sacred
this communion, releasing to the common soul. While we sit in a circle, around the fire,
drum rising high -- something, someone is created, awakened, and is there among us.
Spirits dancing around us, joyous to know that people still remember. There earth itself
does breathe.
I look unto the dark earth, a billion devilish little weeds come to eat at my table.
One who tills the soil alone tills it not for long. In the presence of We, the soil will be
tilled forever.
Cold comes, toothy and mean. I am warm in my house. This house was built by
We, more than a pile of sticks.
Walk on the ground, among the stones - you could count the breaths you could
live among the trees and the rocks without We.
Moving through an old house, the eerie void. Spirits peeking around the corners,
wondering about this uninvited guest. We are so familiar with We, its absence is
striking.
And when it comes time to show who is not We, the reaper will come with the
sickle to cut the stalk, take the grain and winnow away the unclean chaff, the spirits will
hide, and the blood will run. Sometimes the blood runs a river, in the presence of a
smile.
Visiting the sacred temple of the soul. I bring you there, you whom I trust. Tread
lightly in this fragile house. I wish sometimes that the temples were not open so rarely.
Let us open this temple together, come here to find our soul.
298
The sacred lives here. The spirits have danced too many times on this land to let
it lay silent. The sacred will rise, and we will seek We. Do not forsake the magic. It lives
here. Do not think it unimportant. It is your breath.
299
APPENDIX
The Applicability of Piagetian
Developmentalism to a Theory of
Culture
The concept of childhood centration as discussed in this book is based on the
ideas of Jean Piaget. Piaget has been criticized for studying primarily male, Western
European children. The cross-cultural applicability of his ideas has been questioned.
To make the concept of centration such a central part of a theory of culture raises
a number of other questions as well. Piaget's approach was essentially that of microscience: examining the small (individual children) to extrapolate to the large (society). A
lot of other psychologists have used individually based psychological insight to explain
larger cultural or historical phenomena. Such efforts are often misguided. And yet the
applicability of the concept of centration on a macro-level is important. We will examine
these issues in turn.
1. Gender Bias
The definition of centration that is being used in this book focuses on certain
aspects of the original definition. Specifically, centration as it has been used here
focuses on magical/ spiritual thinking, moral realism, cosmic justice, and the idea that
such thinking is perpetuated into adulthood by hierarchical relationships. Especially if
we are including adult magical thinking, the definition of centration becomes very
broad. It is not clear to what extent the patterns of centration are different for men and
women or among different cultures. It is also not clear to what extent the different
aspects of centration represent an unified, interdependent psychological complex
versus individual traits or sub-complexes.
The specific aspects of centration focused on in this book are derived primarily
from Piaget's study of moral development. (See his The Moral Judgement of the Child,
and also The Child's Conception of the World.) The work of Lawrence Kholberg has
eclipsed that of Piaget as the most well-known work concerning moral development.
One of the foremost critics of the gender bias in Kholberg and Piaget's theories of moral
development is Carol Gilligan. It is toward Kholberg that Gilligan directs most of her
criticism.
300
The primary criticism that Gilligan has made of Kholberg and Piaget is that their
studies were based mostly on male children and do not give adequate consideration of
how female children might develop differently. (See her books In a Different Voice and
Mapping the Moral Domain.) In some studies, it appears that women actually regress
after a time on Kholberg's scale.
Kholberg proposes that the highest “level” of moral development is that of
universal ethical standards. Kholberg's overall scheme of development is said to be an
extension of Piaget's work. Piaget’s understanding of moral development grows out of a
larger conceptual framework revolving around the theory of centration. Kholberg's work
is more of a “cookie cutter” set of stages and is not as conceptually grounded as
Piaget's.
Gilligan proposes that women's ethical sense tends to be rooted in a sense of
care rather than universal ethical principles as proposed by Kholberg. Gilligan suggests
that, by the standard of care that is more typical of women, ethics are more situational
and interpersonal rather than being guided by higher universal principle.562 Gilligan
further suggest that psychology and education have been biased in favor of the “male”
approach that values objectivity, individualism, and separation. According to Gilligan,
education in our society effectively discriminates against women. The lives of women
are more characterized by connection and relationship.563 As a result of the biases
against women's perspective, women participate less in school during adolescence.564
Catharine MacKinnon has suggested that Gilligan’s characterization of women
represents traditional, oppressive, feminine roles.565 MacKinnon points to discrimination
cases concerning women who have been denied powerful roles in business. Such
cases have been lost because the defense made effective use of psychology that
suggests that women are “naturally” more invested in relationships, less ambitious, and
more nurturing. It is important to understand social institutions as they presently
function, which is what Gilligan does. MacKinnon points to the world as it should be.
Piaget did focus primarily on male children. In terms of the tendency for girls to
not develop morally in the same way as boys, he thought of girls as “ legalistically
deficient.”566 Kholberg and Freud concur.567
Gilligan suggests that perhaps girls shed centration more quickly than boys.568
Piaget's theory of centration is fairly broad. I have chosen to focus on those aspects of
centration that concern magical thinking and cosmic justice and how that fits into the
562
Gilligan, 1982. p.100
563
Gilligan, 1988, p.XXX - XXXVII
564
Gilligan, 1988, p.XXXVI
565
MacKinnon, 1987
566
Piaget, 1965, p.77-82
567
Gilligan, 1988, p.113
568
Gilligan, 1988, p.133
301
evolution of our society and others. The political processes of Western society, and all
stratified human societies, are male-dominated. It is no surprise then that Piaget's
theory, male focused as it is, would speak strongly to certain aspects of the politics and
evolution of such cultures.
The concepts of centration, magical thinking, and cosmic justice are applied
here in a different context than that of moral development. It is hard to gauge the
significance of the gender bias of Piaget's work as it concerns magical thinking and
cosmic justice in a theory of culture. It is clear that young girls are intellectually
centrated, as are young boys. (I don't think anyone disputes that point, although more
recent studies have attempted to focus more attention on the social and empathetic
nature of small children.)569
In what ways does centration operate differently for girls than for boys? If
keeping children in hierarchical relationship to certain institutions maintains a tendency
in these children to think about those institutions from the centrated mind, in what ways
is this similar or different for girls and women than for boys and men? It seems wise to
simply leave the questions open.
2. Cross-Cultural Applicability
Piaget considered himself to be looking at the genetic roots of developmental
patterns. Given the narrowness of his samples, however, that is a bit presumptuous to
say the least. If the developmental sequences that he proposed were indeed genetically
based, they would be quite similar all over the world because human beings are
genetically similar.
A significant amount of cross-cultural research has been done regarding the
applicability of Piaget's developmental theories to other cultures. Pierre Dasen, who did
a survey of such research, claimed that, “[A] large number of studies ... have ... clarified
the cross-cultural validity of Piaget's theory ...”570 Piaget himself claimed that, “[i]n
general, the developmental stages observed in the societies where our studies were
originally conducted have been observed again in very different civilizations.”571
On the other side of the coin, Jerome Bruner, another prominent
developmentalist, claimed that at least some aspects of what Piaget described as
centration are not culturally consistent. Bruner believed that centration as Piaget
described it does not exist in some cultures, as a result of the lack of individualistic
focus in those cultures.572 I think this comes as a result of Bruner's tendency to see
centration as egoism rather than seeing centration as a principle of cognitive
organization as Piaget intended.
569
Gilligan, 1988, p.114
570
Dasen, 1972, 23-29
571
Piaget, quoted from Dasen, 1977, p.V.
572
Bruner, 1973, p.28
302
Some prejudices are brought to light when Piaget's system of intellectual
development is applied cross-culturally. In cross-cultural analyses, the sequence of the
stages never varies, but the rate and number of people who develop to the “higher”
stages does. Many people in cultures without formal Western-style education never
reach the highest level of development (formal operations), or even the second level of
development (concrete operations).573 The variable that most often correlates with
“high” performance on Piagetian tests, more than any other cultural variable, is the
degree of formal Western-style education.574
It is clear that Piaget's theories as he formulated them idealized Western
scientific thinking. Piaget contended that he was looking for the biological roots of
scientific consciousness, hence the phrase he used to describe his work - “genetic
epistemology.” What is especially odd is that some of these other cultures who do not
do so well on his tests are very similar to the cultures that humans lived in for tens of
thousands of years while our illustrious biologically-based intelligence was evolving. Our
pre-civilized ancestors would have not done so well on developmental tests, yet they
are responsible for the development of our brain.
One answer to this dilemma is that different cultures use different kinds of
thinking depending on their circumstances. Western society, being complex,
individuated, and machine-driven, has idealized the detached logic of “formal
operations.” Formal operations are “operations on operations,” abstraction removed
from reality. Purely logical analyses such as abstract math are not so useful to people
living much more closely with the systems that support them. Gatherers or subsistence
farmers have much less use for such intangible logic. Rather, they successfully apply
intuitive and spiritualistic thinking to many aspects of the world that they do not have
the means to investigate logically.
The studies that have been done to identify the cross-cultural development of
formal operational thinking do not directly test Piaget's theory of centration. Rather,
these studies tend to test very specific manifestations of centration, and are thus one
step removed from the broader theory of centration. From Pierre Dasen's survey, there
are studies that focus on “concept development” among Thai children and “the
development of the concept of speed” among Iraqi children, etc.575 These studies tend
to focus on very specific aspects of Piagetian theory, such as whether children in other
cultures understand that the water poured from one glass to another glass remains the
same in volume in spite of a difference in the shape of the glasses. But, does that really
tell us much about the greater development of centration in other cultures? I think these
studies are too narrow in focus to tell us much about cross-cultural intellectual
development.
There are some studies that have measured centration, though, like the
conservation experiments, they are rather narrow. Such studies measure more what
573
Rosenburg, 1988, p.89
574
Dasen, 1977, p.7
575
Dasen, 1977, p.XIII
303
children think than how they think.576 Centration is an organizing principle of Piaget's
thought, but his theories are very broad; it is hard to know to what extent particular
aspects of development may be dependent on or interconnected with others, in our
culture or others.
It is clear that certain aspects of the broad theory of centration will vary between
cultures. I would contend that some aspects of centration, particularly magical thinking
and the tendency to believe in cosmic justice, do seem to occur cross-culturally. This is
most strongly demonstrated by the macro-visibility of centration's effects, which we will
be looking at shortly.
To really understand the cross-cultural nature of centration, it is necessary to
remove the stigma from non-Western, non-scientific thinking. Spiritual thinking has
served humanity well in many circumstances. Western scientists have for their own selfserving reasons stigmatized other cultures' ways of interpreting the world. It is only
when spiritualistic thinking is politically manipulated that it becomes so destructive, as
we have discussed.
3. The Macro-Applicability of Centration
The patterns of history speak far more strongly than any amount of conjecture. If
we can establish correlations between the structures of significant (macro) cultural
institutions and the psychological patterns born out by micro-focused research, that is
strong evidence that those psychological patterns are having a macro-level influence.
Psychological patterns do not determine cultural institutions; rather they are one part of
a greater process of change. That point bears repeating; psychological patterns do not
create cultural institutions. Rather, human psychological patterns are part of the material
that cultural evolution works with. It is the greater process of cultural evolution that
creates cultural institutions.
What evidence is there, then, that centration has a macro-level influence in
Western society or other societies? What evidence is there that this influence is integral
to the operation of the society, as opposed to simply being incidental or accidental?
Some of the particular aspects of centration that Piaget described may be
particular to male children in Western society, but there is evidence that centration is an
innate human tendency. It may be impossible to draw a line beyond which centration
exists independently of cultural factors. The same could be said with any human faculty,
but that does not change the fact that the faculty itself has an essentially organic root.
Culture operates opportunistically on that root, with centration as with the development
of language. I would not argue that people are biologically predisposed to centration the
same way that they are predisposed to learn language. Rather centration is very natural
to the circumstance of how young children think given the lack of worldly knowledge
they have and the unavoidably hierarchical relationships they experience.
I would make four points regarding the macro-level application of the theory of
centration:
A. Polarization, Condensation, and the Presence of Evil
576
Dasen, 1977, p.257-296
304
Centration as it operates in Western society exhibits itself as a kind of
condensation and polarization of the universe. The centrated mind seeks to simplify the
world and put it into recognizable categories. Polarizing the universe into good and evil
seems largely the result of cultural influences operating on the centrated mind.
The strongest evidence of these kinds of thinking comes from stratified cultures
under stress. The kind of mental condensation and polarization that has occurred in
Western society concerning Communism is a case in point. (As to whether such
“stress” was artificially induced, the point must be emphasized that centration can be
useful to politicians.)
Witch hunting in various forms is common. In many human cultures, it is
believed that there is no such thing as a natural death. Death can only be caused by evil
sorcery. Why human cultures would create such institutions is a separate issue, but for
now suffice it to say that it evokes centrated thinking, and that centrated thinking is used
by the cultural system for particular ends. I would suggest that the common existence of
the pattern of cosmic condensation, polarization, and witch hunting is evidence of the
commonality of centrated thinking, especially under stress.
B. Moral Realism
Moral realism is the tendency to see rules as absolute and unchangeable, as
implicitly or explicitly descended from divine sources. This is a common characteristic of
hierarchical organization, particularly when that hierarchy is maintained over the
developmental span of individual people. Moral realism is the trademark of highly
stratified and bureaucratized social organizations. The complexity of bureaucracy itself
plays into the construction of a world view constructed from the centrated mind. That
complexity looks like something higher beings need to deal with.
In more egalitarian cultures, there may be strongly enforced social norms, but the
rituals and rules of the society are not so much taken as absolutes. While observing
such peoples, many anthropologists have gotten themselves into the situation of
carefully and solemnly watching some ritual event, taking notes on every move of the
participants, assuming that each step of the event is ritually sacred, carefully taught,
and consistent. Then one of the participants belches and everyone rolls on the ground
laughing. The tendency to take ritual acts as sacred and unchangeable, to encode each
step of such acts precisely, to assign such acts divine origin, these are again more
commonly seen among stratified cultures. Needless to say, rituals marked by rigid
consistency and solemnity are almost always male-dominated. The presence of such
realism, in this case connected to ritual, argues for the common existence of centrated
thinking.
C. Leaders as Gods
In Western democracies, politicians try to get God on their side, but they do it
more subtly than they used to. Even as recently as a few decades ago, God was much
more a political player than He is now. Our ancient ancestors were not so subtle.
305
“The Hellenistic world paid a high price for sophistication.
Democracy was passe', and the city- states had been gobbled up by great
nations ruled by kings who were worshiped as living gods.” Thomas
Africa577
It is perhaps the most striking testament to the greater cultural prevalence of
centrated thinking that the leaders of every large, stratified, ancient human civilization
were worshiped as actual gods or the descendants of gods. For example, among the
Natchez Indians of North America, the ruling family was called the Suns.
“The Great Sun clearly commanded veneration. The Natchez believed that
the first Suns were a man and a woman from the Upper World who had come
down to govern men and to teach them how to live better.” Charles Hudson578
D. Spiritual Explanations for Significant Institutions
Another testament to the place of centrated thinking in cultural evolution is the
universal tendency for human cultures to interpret almost all of their significant
institutions with spiritual or mythical explanations. If you ask a person from any nonindustrialized culture in the world why men dominate women, or why religious or political
leaders exist, or why heterosexuality is most desirable, or even why they eat the food
they do, you are most likely to get an answer implying divine will. This is true regardless
of the degree of stratification. Western society may stand alone in offering no
explanation at all, other than the often repeated “ human nature.”
Understanding one's own culture deeply is not something that is easy to do. Most
people throughout most of time have not had the time or the resources to do an in-depth
analysis of their own society. The institutions of the society easily take on the aura of a
far away reality, something above and distant like the world of adults, something big
people somewhere made up. This distance from any real understanding of cultural
institutions again plays into centrated thinking. It's big, it's complicated, leave it to the
big people, leave it to God. At the very least, people are much more likely to employ
more intuitive or even spiritualistic thinking when attempting to explain their own cultural
institutions.
Centration and Divine association
There are a couple of ways in which the individual's relationship to larger
institutions in Western society fits very well with the patterns of centration. First, most of
these institutions are both distant and powerful. This mimics in effect our social
relationships with the world of adults when we are children. To think about larger
577
Africa, 1974, p.109
578
Hudson, 1982, p.208
306
institutions from a centrated perspective is natural for children. It fits well with the
innately hierarchical relationship that small children have with larger institutions.
Another aspect of modern society that reinforces centration is its complexity.
The fact that our society has become so complex again mirrors the social relationships
that we have with the adult world as children. When one is working with complex things,
it is normal to apply more intuitive or spiritual ways of thinking. This in itself is not
necessarily a maladaptive thing, but in the greater cultural system it operates fairly
consistently to evoke centrated thinking. Again, it is the hierarchical relationships to
which we are exposed throughout our development that bridge the childhood centration
into an adult centration.
In pointing out the connection between centrated thinking and divine association,
it is not my intent to say that divine association consists only of centrated thinking. It is
wise to think that things that bring prosperity are good and worthwhile things. That is
perhaps common to all people. But as a culture perpetuates centration into adulthood,
then that wise judgement becomes blind faith. This is perhaps how divine association is
different in different cultures. In less stratified cultures, divine association probably
works more on a simple intuitive level. It is not at all unreasonable to judge things that
bring one good fortune as good things. But in more stratified cultures, the intuition that
connects good or bad fortune with the correctness of political changes becomes less
and less based on information and more on a blind and submissive faith.
307
Bibliography
* Africa, Thomas W. The Immense Majesty: A History of Rome and the Roman Empire,
New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company Inc., 1974.
* Africa, Thomas W., Science and the State in Greece and Rome, New York, John
Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1968.
* Ahlen, (Ahle'n) Kristina, “Swedish Collective Bargaining Under Pressure: Inter-Union
Rivalry and Incomes Policies,” British Journal of Industrial Relations, Volume XXVII,
Number 3, November 1989, p.330-346.
* Alternative Energy Sourcebook, Real Goods, Second Edition, 1990.
* Anderson, Gail-Nina and Wright, Joanne, Heaven on Earth: The Religion of Beauty in
Late Victorian Art, Djanogly Art Gallery, 1994.
* Archambault, Reginald D., John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings, New York,
The Modern Library, 1964.
* Armstrong, Scott, and Wood, Daniel B., “L.A. Tries to Restore Calm Following Police
Acquittals,” Christian Science Monitor, May 1, 1992.
* Banner, Lois W., American Beauty, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
* Banner, Lois W., Women in Modern America: A Brief History, Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, New York, 1974.
* Barrows, Isabel C. (ed), Proceedings of the National Conference on Charities and
Correction, Press of Geo. H. Ellis, 1888.
* Bartelmus, Peter, Environment, Growth, and Development: The Concepts and
Strategies of Sustainability, Loudon, NY, Routledge, 1994.
* Bates, Albert K., Climate in Crises: The Greenhouse Effect and What We Can Do,
Summertown, TN, The Book Publishing Co., 1990.
* Baty, S. Paige, American Monroe: The Making of a Body Politic, Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1995.
* Berg, Leila, Risinghill: The Death of a Comprehensive, London, Penguin, 1968
* Bhalla, A.S., (ed), Technology and Employment in Industry: A Case Study Approach,
Geneva, International Labour Office, 1981.
* Birch, David L., Job Creation in America: How Our Smallest Companies Put the Most
People to Work, New York, The Free Press, 1987.
* Bliven, Bruce, The Men Who Make the Future, Freeport NY, Books for Libraries Press,
1970.
* Blum, John M., and Morgan, Edmund S., and Rose, Willie Lee, and Schlesinger,
Arthur M. Jr., and Stampp, Kenneth M., and Woodward, C. Vann, The National
308
Experience: A History of the United States, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1981.
* Bolino, August C., The Development of the American Economy, Colombus, Ohio,
Merrill Books, 1966.
* Boserup, Ester, Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long Term Trends,
Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1981.
* Boserup, Ester, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian
Change Under Population Pressure, New York, Aldine Publishing Co., 1965.
* Bourdier, Jean-Paul, African Spaces: Designs for Living in Upper Volta, New York,
Africana Publishing, 1985.
* Bowles, Samuel, et. al., Beyond the Waste Land: A Democratic Alternative to
Economic Decline, Garden City, NY. Doubleday, 1983.
* Bradshaw, J., Healing the Shame That Binds You, Deerfeild Beach FL, Health
Communications, 1988.
* Braginsky and Braginsky, Mainstream Psychology: A Critique, New York, Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1974.
* Brandt, Barbara, Whole Life Economics: Revaluing Daily Life, Philadelphia, New
Society Publishers, 1995.
* Brown, Lester, State of the World 1986: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress
Toward a Sustainable Society, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, 1986.
* Brown, Lester, State of the World 1987: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress
Toward a Sustainable Society, New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1987.
* Brown, Lester, World Watch Institute, The State of the World 1993: A Worldwatch
Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society, New York, W.W. Norton and Co.,
1993.
* Brown, Lester, Building a Sustainable Society, New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1981.
* Brown, Lester, Running on Empty: The Future of the Automobile in an Oil-Short World,
New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1979.
* Brown, Micheal K., Remaking the Welfare State: Retrenchment and Social Policy in
America and Europe, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1988.
* Brown, Peter, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire,
Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press 1988.
* Bruchey, Stuart W., The Wealth of a Nation: An Economic History of The United
States, New York, Harper and Row, 1988.
* Bruner, Jerome, The Relevance of Education, New York, W.W. Norton and Company,
1973.
* Buck, Solon, The Agrarian Crusade: A Chronicle of The Farmer in Politics, New
Haven, Yale University Press, 1920.
* Burch House, RFD 1, Box 46, Littleton NH., 03561.
* Burgess T. and Adams E. (ed), Outcomes of Education, London, Macmillan, 1980.
* Burros, Marian, “Testing of Food Pyramid Comes Full Circle,” New York Times, March
25, 1992.
* Caldicott, Helen, Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War, New York, Bantam
Books, 1986.
309
* Callahan, Raymond E., Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social
Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of Public Schools, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1962.
* Carlen, Pat, Women, Crime, and Poverty, Philadelphia, Open University Press, 1988.
* Carneiro, Robert L., “A Theory of the Origin of the State,” Science, August 1970,
p.733-738.
* Carr-Saunders, A.M., The Population Problem: A Study in Human Evolution, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1922.
* Case, Karl E., and Fair, Ray C., Principles of Economics, Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1989.
* Chagnon, Napoleon, Yanomamo: The Fierce People, New York, Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1968.
* Chafetz, Janet Saltzman, Sex and Advantage: A Comparative, Macro-Structural
Theory of Sex Stratification, Totowa, NJ, Rowman and Allanheld, 1984.
* Clastres, Pierre, Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology, New
York, Zone Books, 1987.
* Cline, William R., Potential Effects of Income Redistribution on Economic Growth:
Latin American Cases, New York, Praeger, 1972.
* Cochrane, William W., The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical
Analysis, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1979.
* Codere, Helen, Fighting with Property: A Study of Kwakiutl Potlatching and Warfare,
1792-1930, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1970.
* Cohen, Mark Nathan, The Food Crises in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins
of Agriculture, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1977.
* Daly, Mary, Gyn Ecology: The Meta-Ethics of Radical Feminism, Boston, Beacon
Press, 1978.
* Dasen, Pierre R.(ed), Piagetian Psychology: Cross-Cultural Contributions, Gardner
Press, 1977.
* Dasen, Pierre R., “Cross-Cultural Piagetian Research: A Summary,” Journal of Cross
Cultural Psychology, Vol 3, No. 1, March 1972, 23-29.
* Dauncey, Guy, After the Crash: The Emergence of the Rainbow Economy, New York,
Bootstrap Press, 1988
* Davis, Donald Finlay, Conspicuous Production: Automobiles and Elites in Detroit,
1899-1933, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1988.
* Davis, Steven J., Haltiwanger, John, Schuh, Scott, “Small Business and Job Creation:
Dissection the Myth and Reassessing the Facts,” Business Economics, July 1994.
* Deal, Terrence E., and Nolan, Robert R., (ed), Alternative Schools: Ideologies,
Realities, Guidelines, Chicago, Nelson Hall, 1978.
* Degler, Carl N., At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to
the Present, New York, Oxford University Press, 1980.
* Dennis, William J. Jr., Bruce D. Phillips, Starr, Edward, “Small Business Job Creation:
The Findings and Their Critics,” Business Economics, July 1994, p.23.
* Dentan, Robert Knox, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya, New York, Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. 1968.
* Deparle, Jason, New York Times, November 11, 1993.
* Diamond, Jared, “Easter's End,” Discover (magazine), August 1995.
310
* Diamond, Jared, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human
Animal, New York, HarperCollins, 1992.
* Douglas Oliver, A Solomon Island Society: Kinship and Leadership Among the Siuia of
Bouganville, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1935.
* Durning, Alan, “Fat of the Land, Livestock's Resource Gluttony,” World Watch
(magazine), Vol 4. No. 3, May-June, 1991.
* Durning, Alan, How Much is Enough, The Consumer Society and the Future of the
Earth, New York W.W. Norton and Co., 1992.
* E Magazine, Sept.- Oct., 1990.
* Earth Island Journal, Summer 1990.
* Ehrlich, Paul, and Ornstein, Robert, New World, New Mind: Moving Toward Conscious
Evolution, New York, Doubleday, 1989.
* Ehrlich, Paul and Ehrlich, Ann, The Population Explosion, New York, Touchstone,
1990.
* Eisler, Riane, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, New York,
HarperCollins, 1988.
* Elkin, Tim, and McLaren, Duncan, and Hillman, Mayer, Reviving the City: Towards
Sustainable Urban Development, London, Friends of the Earth, 1991.
* Ellis, Havelock, The Criminal, New York, Walter Scott Publishing, 1915.
* Elman, Amy R., Sexual Subordination and State Intervention: Comparing Sweden and
the United States, Providence, Berghahn Books, 1996.
* Elvander, Nils, “Incomes Policies in Nordic Countries,” International Labour Review,
Vol 129, 1990, no. 1.
* Epstein, Gene, “The Fed's Belief in the NAIRU Could Keep Economic Growth in a
Straightjacket,” Barron's, 76:44, Mar 4, 1996.
* Erickson, Erick H. Childhood and Society, New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1950.
* Feagin, Joe R., Subordinating the Poor: Welfare and American Beliefs, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975.
* Feldman, Robert S., Understanding Psychology, Second Edition, New York, McGraw
Hill Publishing Co., 1987.
* Fink, Authur, Causes of Crime: Biological Theories in the United States, 1800-1915,
Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1985.
* Fink, James J, The Automobile Age, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988.
* Fink, James J, The Car Culture, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1975.
* Flanagan, Robert J, David W. Soskice, Lloyd Ulman, Unionism, Economic
Stabilization, and Incomes Policies: European Experience, Washington DC, The
Brookings Institution, 1983.
* Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United
States, Cambridge, Belknap Press, 1975, 1996. Material taken from both the 1975 and
1996 editions. Page numbers in footnotes may refer to either edition. The numbering of
pages seems to vary by several pages between the different editions.
* Franke, Richard and Chasin, Barbara, Kerala: Radical Reform as Development in an
Indian State, Oakland, Food First, 1994.
* Freire, Paulo, Education for Critical Consciousness, New York, Seabury Press, 1973.
* Freivogel, Margaret Wolf, “Charges Grip Senate,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 12,
1991.
311
* Friedman, Robert, and Schweke, William, Expanding the Opportunity to Produce:
Revitalizing the American Economy Through Enterprise Development, A Policy Reader,
Washington DC, The Corporation for Policy Development, 1981.
* Frost, Frank J. Greek Society, Lexington, MA, D.C. Heath and Company, 1971.
* Fuel Oil Magazine, “Lancaster Marketers Attack Electric Heat Subsidies,” Sept. 1989,
vol 48.
* Gannet News Service, September 18, 1992, Friday. Published in The Detroit News,
Scott Martelle.
* Gelb, Joyce, and Palley, Lief, Marian, Women and Public Policies, Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1987.
* Gelbspan, Ross, “The Heat is On,” Harper's Magazine, December, 1995.
* German Brief, “VW's Four Day Revolution,” Dec 1, 1993, v5 n48, p.1-7.
* George, Susan, How The Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons For World Hunger,
Totowa NJ, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1977, 1989
* Giele, Janet Zollinger, Women and the Future: Changing Sex Roles in Modern
America, New York, The Free Press, 1978.
* Gilbert, Herdt, The Sambia: Ritual and Gender in New Guinea, New York, Holt,
Rinehard, and Winston, 1987.
* Gilboy, Elizabeth, W., A Primer on the Economics of Consumption, New York,
Random House, 1968.
* Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1982.
* Gilligan, Carol, et. al., Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women's Thinking
to Psychological Theory and Education, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1988.
* Ginneken, Wouter Van, and Baron, Christopher (eds), Appropriate Products,
Employment and Technology: Case-Studies on Consumer Choice and Basic Needs in
Developing Countries, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984.
* Goldschmidt, Walter, As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of
Agribusiness, Montclair NJ, Allenheld, Osmun, and Co., 1978.
* Gordon, Michael (ed), The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, New
York, St. Martin’s Press, 1978.
* Gould, Richard A, Yiwara: Foragers of the Australian Desert, New York, Scribner,
1969.
* Gould, William B. IV, Agenda For Reform: The Future of Employment Relationships
and the Law, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993.
* Greco, Thomas H., New Money for Healthy Communities, Thomas H. Greco,
Publisher, P.O. Box 42663, Tucson, AZ., 1994.
* Gunn, Christopher, and Gunn, Hazel Dayton, Reclaiming Capital: Democratic
Initiatives and Community Development, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1991.
* Hacker, Andrew, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal, New
York, Scibner's, 1992.
* Haller, John S, and Haller, Robin M., The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian
America, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1974.
* Harner, Michael J., “Population Pressure and the Social Evolution of Agriculturalists,”
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol 26, no. 1, spring 1970.
312
* Harris, Marvin, Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology, New
York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company Inc. 1975.
* Harris, Marvin, Culture, People and Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology,
New York, HarperCollins, 1993.
* Harris, Marvin, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture, New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1985.
* Harris, Marvin, Patterns of Race in the Americas, New York, W.W. Norton and Co,
1974.
* Harris, Marvin, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture, New York,
Vintage Books, 1978.
* Harris, Marvin, Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures, New York, Vintage
Books, 1978.
* Hart, C.M., The Tiwi of North Australia, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960.
* Haughton, Betsy, Gussow, Joan Dye, Dodds, Janice M., “An Historical Study of the
Underlying Assumptions for United States Food Guides from 1917 Through the Basic
Four Food Guide,” Journal of Nutrition Education, Vol 19, No. 4, August 1987, p.169175.
* Hausman, Patricia, Jack Sprat's Legacy: The Science and Politics of Fat and
Cholesterol, New York, Richard Marek Publishers, 1981.
* Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, New York,
Harper Business, 1993.
* Hepburn, Mary A., (ed), Democratic Education in Schools and Classrooms,
Washington DC, National Council for the Social Studies, 1983.
* Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles A. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class
Structure in American Life, New York, Free Press, 1994.
* Hillel, Daniel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil, Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1991.
* Hillman, Mayer and Bollard, Alan, Less Fuel, More Jobs: The Promotion of Energy
Conservation in Buildings, London, Policy Studies Institute, 1985.
* Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Forbes, V150, Sept. 14, 1992.
* Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, U.S. Department of
Commerce, Washington DC, Bureau of Census, 1975.
* Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, New York, Knopf, 1963.
* Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915, Boston,
Beacon Press, 1959.
* Holden, K., and Peel, D.A., Thompson, J.L., The Economics of Wage Controls,
London, Macmillan Press, 1987.
* Holler, Clyde, Black Elk's Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism, Syracuse
N.Y., Syracuse University Press, 1995.
* Hooton, Earnest Albert, The American Criminal: An Anthropological Study,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1939.
* Horney, Karen, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, New York, W.W. Norton and
Co., 1937.
*Hubbard, Barbara Marx, Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social
Potential, Novato, New World Library, 1998.
313
* Hubbard, Barbara Marx, Foundation for Conscious Evolution, P.O. Box 6397, San
Rafael, CA. 94903-0397.
* Hudson, Charles, The Southeastern Indians, Knoxville, University of Tennessee
Press, 1982.
* Huizer, Gerrit and Mannheim, Bruce, The Politics of Anthropology: From Colonialism
and Sexism Toward a View from Below, The Hague, Mouton Publishers, 1979.
* Industrial Relations, “The Working Time Debate in Western Europe,” Spring 1987, v26
n2, p.201-207
* Ingwerson, Marshal, “Bush Unveils Plan That Encourages Volunteering,” Christian
Science Monitor, June 23, 1989.
* International Labour Office, Appropriate Technology for Employment Creation in the
Food Processing and Drink Industries of Developing Countries, Geneva, Second
Tripartite Technical Meeting for the Food Products and Drink Industries, 1978.
* Jeffrey, Robin, Politics, Women and Well Being: How Kerala Became ‘A Model’,
Oxford, 1993.
* Jensen, Knud, and Walker, Stephen, (ed)., Towards Democratic Schooling: European
Experiences, Philadelphia, Open University Press, 1989.
* Johnson, Allen W. and Earle, Timothy, The Evolution of Human Societies: From
Foraging Group to Agrarian State, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1987.
* Johnston, Carolyn, Sexual Power: Feminism and the Family in America, Tuscaloosa,
University of Alabama Press, 1992.
* Jorgensen, Joseph G., The Sun Dance Religion: Power for the Powerless, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1972.
* Journal of Process Oriented Psychology, Lao Tse Press, 1020 SW Broadway Drive,
Portland, OR, 97201.
* Kaptchuk, Ted and Michael Croucher, The Healing Arts: Exploring the Medical
Pathways of the World, New York, Summit Books, 1987.
* Katz, Richard, Boiling Energy, Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1982.
* Kay, Jane Holtz, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How
We Can Take it Back, New York, Crown Publishers, 1997.
* Keinan, Giora, “Effects of Stress and Tolerance of Ambiguity on Magical Thinking,”
Journal of Personality and Psychology, Vol. 67, No 1.
* Keynes, John Manyard, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,
New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1960.
* Kimbrell, Andrew, “Car Culture: Driving Ourselves Crazy,” Washington Post, Sept. 3,
1989.
* Kirkland, Edward C., A History of American Economic Life, Fourth Edition, New York,
Appleton Century Crofts, 1969.
* Kitto, H.D.F., The Greeks, New York, Penguin Books, 1984.
* Klein, James and Olson, Martha, Taken for a Ride (a film about GM’s actions against
trolleys in America).
* Klein, Joe, Newsweek, July 26, 1993, p.30.
* Kole, Bill, “Kinder, Gentler Has Developed a Life of its Own,” Atlanta Constitution, May
1, 1989.
314
* Komisar, Lucy, Down and Out in the USA: A History of Public Welfare, New York,
Franklin Watts, 1977.
* Kristensen, Thorkil, Inflation and Unemployment in the Modern Society, New York,
Praeger, 1981.
* Kuper, Hilda, The Swazi: A South African Kingdom, New York, Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1963.
* Lee, Richard B., The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society,
Cambridge England, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
* Lewit, Tamara, Agricultural Production in the Roman Economy: A.D. 200-400, Oxford,
Tempus Reparatum, 1991.
* Lightbourne, Robert Jr. and Singh, Susheela, “The World Fertility Survey: Charting
Global Childbearing,” Population Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 1, March 1982.
* Lipton, Micheal, “Creating Rural Livelihoods: Some Lessons for South Africa from
Experience Elsewhere,” World Development, Vol. 21, No. 9, 1993, p.1515-1548.
* Lovins, Amory B., “Saving Megabucks with Negawatts,” Public Utilities Fortnightly,
March 21, 1985, vol. 115, no. 6.
* Luker, Kristin, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1984.
* Lundberg, George A., Can Science Save Us?, New York, Longmans, Green and Co.,
1947.
* Macionis, John, Sociology, Second Edition, Instructors Manual, Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1987.
* MacKinnon, Catharine A., Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1987.
* Males, Mike, Infantile Arguments, “In These Times,” August 9, 1993.
* Malinowski, Bronislow, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, An Account of Native
Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, Prospect
Heights, IL., Waveland Press, 1984.
* Manvell, Roger, Love Goddesses of the Movies, New York, Crescent Books, 1998.
* Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man, Boston, Beacon Press, 1966.
* Margolis, Maxine, Mothers and Such, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984.
* Marshall Sahlins, Social Stratification in Polynesia, Seattle, University of Washington
Press, 1958.
* Marshall, John, M.A., Ritchie, Claire, Where are the Ju/ wasi of Nyae Nyae? Changes
in Bushman Society, 1958-1981, Rondeboach, South Africa, Center for African Studies,
University of Cape Town, 1984.
* Marshall, Lorna, The !Kung of Nyae Nyae, Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1976.
* Mattera, Phillip, Prosperity Lost, Reading MA, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
Inc., 1990.
* McClay, Wilfred M., “A More Perfect Union?, Toward a New Federalism,”
Commentary, Sept. 95, 100:25-33.
* McKay, John P., Tramways and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transportation In
Europe, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1976.
* Meadows, Donella, Beyond The Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a
Sustainable Future, Post Hills VT., Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 1992.
315
* Mednick, Sarnoff A., and Moffitt, Terrie E., and Stack, Susan A., The Causes of Crime:
New Biological Approaches, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
* Mencher, Samuel, Poor Law to Poverty Program: Economic Security Policy in Britain
and the United States, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh University Press, 1974.
* Middleton, John, The Lugbara of Uganda, New York, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
1965.
* Miller, Alice, The Drama of the Gifted Child, New York, Basic Books, 1990.
* Miller, William, A History of the United States, New York, Dell Publishing Co., 1962.
* Mohr, James C., Abortion in America: The Origin and Evolution of National Policy,
1800-1900, New York, Oxford University Press, 1978.
* Morris, David, The Home-Grown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's Future, St.
Paul, Minnesota, St. Paul Department of Planning and Economic Development, 1983.
* Morris, David, and Hess, Karl, Neighborhood Power: The New Localism, Boston,
Beacon Press, 1975.
* Morris, David, Self Reliant Cities: Energy and the Transformation of Urban America,
San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1982.
* Mosher, Loren K., Burti, Lorenzo, Community Mental Health: Principles and Practice,
New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1989.
* Murdock, George Peter, Social Structure, New York, Macmillan, 1965.
* Nader, Ralph, and Green, Mark, and Seligman, Joel, Taming the Giant Corporations,
New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1976.
* Napier, Nancy J., Recreating Your Self: Help for Adult Children of Dysfunctional
Families, New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1990.
* Neill, A.S., Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, New York, Hart
Publishing Co., 1961.
* Nevins, Allan, Commager, Henry Steele, A Pocket History of the United States, New
York, Washington Square Press, 1970.
* Newsweek, “A Black Victory in Old Dominion,” 106:46, Nov 18, 1985.
* Norris, James D., Advertising and the Transformation of American Society, 18651920, New York, Greenwood Press, 1990
* Nossiter, Bernard D. Fat Years and Lean: The American Economy Since Roosevelt,
New York, Harper and Row, 1990.
* Novak, Michael, “Judicial Tyranny,” Forbes, Oct. 26, 1992.
* O'Kelly, Charlotte G., and Carney, Larry S., Women and Men in Society: CrossCultural Perspectives on Gender Stratification, Belmont CA., Wadsworth Publishing Co.,
1986.
* Odier, C. Anxiety and Magical Thinking, New York, International Universities Press,
1956.
* Oliver, Paul, Dwelllings: The House Across the World, Oxford, Phaidon, 1987.
* Out on Bale, 1037 E. Linden St., Tucson AZ., 85719.
* Packard, Vance, The Waste Makers, New York, Pocket Books Inc., 1965.
* Paige, Connie, The Right to Lifers: Who They Are, How They Operate, Where They
Get Their Money, New York, Summit Books, 1983.
* Phillips, Kevin, The Politics of Rich and Poor: The American Electorate in the Reagan
Aftermath, New York, Random House, 1990.
* Piaget, Jean, Six Psychological Studies, New York, Random House, 1967.
316
* Piaget, Jean, To Understand is to Invent: The Future Of Education, New York,
Grossman Publishers, 1973.
* Piaget, Jean, The Moral Judgement of the Child, New York, The Free Press, 1965.
* Piaget, Jean, The Child's Conception of the World, Totowa NJ, Littlefeild, Adams, and
Co. 1965. (First published in English in 1929.)
* Pimmentel, David, Food and Energy Resources, Orlando, Academic Press, 1984.
* Piven, Francis Fox, Cloward, Richard A., Poor People's Movements: Why the
Succeed, How They Fail, New York, Vintage Books, 1979.
* Piven, Francis Fox, and Cloward, Richard A., Regulating the Poor: The Functions of
Public Welfare, New York, Vintage Books, 1971.
* Piven, Francis Fox and Cloward, Richard A., Why Americans Don't Vote, New York,
Pantheon Books, 1988.
* Pospisil, Leopold, The Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea, New York, Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1963.
* Postman, Neil and Weingartner, Charles, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, New
York, Delacorte Press, 1969.
* Price-Williams, D.R., Explorations in Cross-Cultural Psychology, San Francisco,
Chandler and Sharp, 1975.
* Process Work Center of Portland, 733 NW Everett, Box 11, Suite 3C, Portland OR.,
97209.
* Rae, John B., The American Automobile: A Brief History, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1965.
* Rapoport, Amos, Housing and Culture, in Taylor, Lisa (ed), Housing, Symbol,
Structure, Site, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York, Rizzoli, 1990.
* Rappaport, Roy, Pigs For the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea
People, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968.
* Rauber, Paul, “Tennessee Valley Atomic,” in Sierra, Nov/Dec 1991, p.39-41.
* Reich, Charles, A., The Greening of America: How the Youth Revolution is Trying to
Make America Livable, New York, Random House, 1970.
* Rich, William, Smaller Families Through Social and Economic Progress, [Washington],
Overseas Development Council, 1973.
* Rindos, David, and L.H. Bailey Hortorium, The Origins of Agriculture, An Evolutionary
Perspective, Orlando, Academic Press Inc, 1984.
* Robbins, John, Diet For a New America, Walpole N.H., Stillpoint, 1987.
* Robinson, Kenneth L., Farm and Food Policies and Their Consequences, Prentice
Hall, 1989.
* Rocky Mountain Institute, 1739 Snowmass Creek Road, Snowmass Colorado., 816549199.
* Rosen, Hugh, Pathway to Piaget: A Guide for Clinicians, Educators, and
Developmentalists, Cherry Hill NJ, Postgraduate International, 1977.
* Rosenberg, Shawn W. and Dana Ward, Stephen Chilton, Political Reasoning and
Cognition: A Piagetian View, Durham, Duke University Press, 1988.
* Rossi, Peter H., and Berk, Richard A., and Lenihan, Kenneth J., Money, Work, and
Crime: Experimental Evidence, New York, Academic Press, 1980.
* Rossi, Peter H., Down and Out in America: The Origins of Homelessness, University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989.
317
* Roszack, Theodore, The Making Of A Counter Culture: Reflections of the
Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition, Garden City NY, Doubleday, 1969.
* Russett, Cynthia Eagle, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1989.
* Ryan, Mary P., Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present, New
York, New Viewpoints, 1975.
* Sahlins, Marshall, Stone Age Economics, Chicago, Aldine, 1972.
* Sale, Kirkpatrick, Human Scale, New York, Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1980.
* Salmon, Edward, A History of the Roman World from 30 B.C. to A.D. 138, London,
Methuen, 1968.
* Sandro, Phillip H., “Jobs and Buy Local Programs: Expected Employment Effects of
Public Sector Import-Substitution in Chicago,” International Journal of Public
Administration, 18(1), 1995.
* Schaiffer, Robert, Greenpeace (magazine), May/ June 1990.
* Schiff, Eric, Incomes Policies Abroad, (parts 1 and 2), Washington, American
Enterprise Institute, 1971.
* Schlesinger, Arthur M., The Imperial Presidency, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973.
* Schultz, Duane P. and Schultz, Ellen Sydney, A History of Modern Psychology, San
Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.
* Seltzer, Lawrence H, A Financial History of the American Automobile Industry, Boston,
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1928.
* Sher, Barbara, and Gottleib, Ann, Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, New
York, Ballantine Books, 1979.
* Shostak, Marjorie, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, Cambridge, Harvard
University Press, 1981.
* Shremp, Gerry, Celebration of American Food: Four Centuries in the Melting Pot,
Golden CO., Fulcrum Publishing, 1996.
* Shuey, Audrey M. The Testing of Negro Intelligence, Lynchburg VA, J.P. Bell
Company, 1958.
* Sick, Gary, October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald
Reagan, New York, Times Books/ Random House, 1991.
* Skinner, B. F. Walden Two, New York, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1948.
* Snow, David A. and Anderson, Leon, “Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal
Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities,” American Journal of Sociology, volume
92, #6, May 1987, p.1336-1371, University of Chicago Press.
* Solomon, Lawrence, The Conserver Solution, Toronto, Garden City NY, Doubleday
Canada Limited, 1978.
* Spencer, Sir Baldwin, and Gillen, Francis James, The Arunta: A Study of a Stone Age
People, London, Macmillan, 1927.
* Spooner, Brian, Ed., Population Growth: Anthropological Implications, Cambridge, MIT
Press, 1972.
* Spring, Joel H, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State, Boston, Beacon Press,
1973.
* Stang, Patti, Conley, Stephen, USA Snapshots, “Food Exports are Cooking,” USA
Today, July 27, 1994.
318
* Steele, Valerie, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian
Era to the Jazz Age, New York, Oxford University Press, 1985.
* Sterling, Walter (copyright), The Love Goddesses: A History of Sex in the Cinema,
(film) Paramount Pictures, 1984.
* Taylor, Gary, Cultural Selection, New York, Basic Books, HaperCollins, 1996.
* Tentler, Leslie Woodcock, Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in
the United States, 1900-1930, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979.
* The American Asthma Report, as commissioned by Allen and Hanbury's, Division of
Glaxo Inc., Five Moore Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC., 27709, 1989. Further
information from The American Asthma Report, Research and Forecasters Inc., 301 E.
57th Street, 3rd floor, New York, N.Y., 10022, (212) 593-6400.
* Tokman, Vicotr E., “Income Distribution, Technology, and Employment in Developing
Countries: An Application to Ecuador,” Journal of Development Economics 2 (1975) 4980.
* Tratner, Walter I., From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in
America, Fourth Edition, New York, The Free Press, 1989.
* Turnbull, Colin M., The Forest People, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1962.
* Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S Consumption and the Environment, Briefing
Paper, Publications, Department BP, 26 Church Street, Cambridge MA, 02238, (617)547-5552.
* USA Today, “Private Alternative School Thrives Without Structure,” Feb. 7, 1996,
p.6D.
* U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, National Data
Book and Guide to Sources, 108th Edition, 1988.
* Vaclav Havel,”The End of the Modern Era,” speech in Davos, Switzerland, Feb. 4,
1992, at World Economic Forum, excerpted in New York Times, March 1, 1992, quoted
in text from Hawken, 1993.
* Vayda, A. P., and Rappaport, R.A., “Ecology, Cultural and Noncultural,” in Clifton, J.A.
(ed), Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 1968.
* Ward, Barbara, Progress for a Small Planet, New York, W.W. Norton and Company,
1979.
* Warner, Richard, Recovery from Schizophrenia: Psychiatry and Political Economy,
New York, Harper and Row, 1985.
* Watts, J., The Countesthorpe Experience, London, Allen and Uwin, 1977.
* Weintraub, Sidney, Capitalism's Inflation and Unemployment Crises, Reading MA,
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978.
* Wells, H.G. The Outline of History, volume II, Garden City Books, 1956.
* Whyte, William Foote and Whyte, Kathleen King, Making Mondragon: The Growth and
Dynamics of the Worker Cooperative Complex, Ithaca NY, ILR Press, 1991.
* Wilkinson, Richard G., Poverty and Progress: An Ecological Model of Economic
Development, London, Methuen and Co. Ltd. 1973.
* Wilson, E.O., Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1975.
* Wittfogel, Karl A., Agriculture: A Key to the Understanding of Chinese Society Past
and Present, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1970.
319
* Wobler, Gary C., “Marketing to a New Generation,” Management Quaterly, Summer
1994, v 35. no. 2.
* Wolf, Eric R., Peasent Wars of the Twentieth Century, New York, Harper Colophon,
1969.
* Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the United States, New York, Harper and Row,
1980.
320
INDEX
bicycle craze of 1890s ......................184
big men ...........45, 46, 47, 153, 159, 171
blind watchmaker ................................ 80
Bliven, Bruce.....................................261
Brazil ...................................37, 157, 169
breadwinner effect ............................169
Britain.................................................. 51
broad spectrum gathering................... 36
Bruner, Jerome .................................302
Building Outside of Present Imagination
......................................................226
Burch House .............................270, 273
Bush, George....................................120
business cycle...................126, 209, 216
California...........................................296
fee-bates in...................................223
cancer ...............................................139
capital intensive economy.................234
Carr-Saunders, Alexander ................201
cars ...................................................147
accidents ......................................151
and employment ...........................152
and green taxes............................223
as consumer of raw materials ......150
causing asthma ............................151
efficiency.......................................152
pollution ........................................151
status advertising..........................186
Carter, Jimmy............................118, 121
Catholic church .................................190
social darwinists' fears..................179
centration ....................87, 296, 300, 304
and divine assocation ...................307
and institutional education.............. 96
and spirituality................................. 97
application to cultural theory.........304
as politician's playground ............... 98
as security ...................................... 92
ecology of civilizations .................... 97
gender difference..........................302
magical thinking.............................. 92
opportunistic use of ........................ 96
abortion ............ 178, 179, 180, 183, 189
and pro-choice movement ............191
and pro-life movement ..................191
and sexual reward system ............253
advertising................ 146, 150, 186, 189
Africa .... 32, 51, 157, 158, 167, 172, 200
Africa, Thomas ............................63, 306
agriculture .............................46, 52, 168
American history ...........................107
American mechanization ..............138
American overproduction..............139
as depletion driven technology .......62
compared to gathering....................33
dispersion and democracy..............52
energy investments in production...65
intensifiable .....................................46
invention of......................................36
labor inputs .....................................37
Aid to Families of with Dependent
Children.........................113, 116, 117
AIDS ............................. 73, 95, 125, 260
Alexandria ...........................................62
Amanda.............................................268
American Chamber of Commerce
anti-abortion stance ......................253
American Medical Association ..179, 275
keeping women out of medicine ..112,
184
Angels ...............................................164
Arunta................................................171
asthma ..............................................151
Australia ......................................19, 171
aborigines .................................43, 44
automobiles, see cars
Aztecs................................................199
baby boom ................................183, 188
bakeries.............................................239
Barcode.............................................123
Bardo, Brigitte ...................................189
beauty, see sexualization of women
Benediction .......................................298
Berkeley, Sir William .........................274
321
computers .....................64, 77, 237, 262
ancient ............................................ 63
Comstock Act....................................180
conscious evolution...........260, 281, 297
and cultural selection....................204
and guerilla macro-management..243
and structural poverty ...................210
civic participation and empowerment
.................................................296
defined..........................................202
in modern society .........................204
conservation and recycling ...............222
classic uninflationary growth ........223
creating jobs .................................223
not addressing inferno effect ........228
consumption, see inferno effect
contraceptives...................179, 183, 186
not stopping population growth ....248
primitive ........................................201
cooperative economic management.214
cooperatives......................................221
agricultural ....................................137
as less inflationary ........................221
psychology of................................221
worker owned ...............................224
corporate farming, social effects.......266
corporations
dissolving businesses...................221
economists favor ..........................211
efficiency vs access to capital ......215
pricing power of ....................128, 213
struggle to limit inflation ................210
unelected government ..................243
vertical economy...........................235
corsets ..............................................182
cosmic justice................73, 92, 300, 302
cotton .................................................. 61
counterculture ...................................275
creationists........................................275
Crete .....................................49, 50, 168
crime ...........................79, 121, 129, 209
as biologically caused...........124, 262
class differences...........................129
individual responsibility.................209
social causes of ............................124
cult of domesticity .............................176
cultural conditioning ............................ 15
cultural dissonance ...76, 119, 124, 126,
130
polarization of universe.................305
selectively applied...........................95
see also developmental psychology
change of circumstance
in cultural selection .........................72
Charity Societies ...............111, 120, 125
misuse of science .........................275
cheerleading................. 42, 44, 171, 173
Chief Seattle......................................200
chiefdoms............................................46
child mind ................................87, 94, 96
child rearing
sharing ..........................................251
China ...............................20, 47, 63, 199
Chomsky, Noam................................272
circumscription ............................47, 199
Civil Rights Movement ..............117, 286
Civil War....................................109, 136
civilizations, ancient
ecology......................................8, 199
Clinton, Bill ................................120, 121
clitorectomy ...............................172, 180
clothing
patterns of change ..........................61
synthetic..........................................61
Cloward, Richard.......................105, 285
coal..............................................62, 160
and green taxes ............................223
German mine ................................237
long-term costs .............................223
coercion.........................................42, 46
of children .......................................89
cognitive dissonance...........................76
Cold War ...........................115, 116, 189
Colonial America ...............................250
child-rearing in ..............................175
poverty in ......................................106
women's status in .................174, 250
colonialism
and democracy ...................49, 53, 64
communism.......................112, 116, 305
community.........................................295
as source of identity......................296
calls to rebuild...............................204
dependent on employment ...........228
ecological efficiency......................295
economics.....................................204
short-circuting motivational systems
..................................................234
322
Denmark
and Demand Management...........212
education in ..................................289
depression, economic.......113, 126, 146
agricultural, 1800s ........................137
and local currency ........................237
in cultural selection ......................... 71
of 1819..........................................108
of 1870s........................................110
of 1893..................................112, 184
see also Great Depression
development policies
favoring men.................................249
developmental psychology ................. 86
absolute rules ................................. 90
cooperative relationships................ 90
cross-cultural applicability of
Piagetian theory .......................302
games ............................................. 88
gender bias...................................300
hierarchical relationships ................ 94
moral development .................88, 300
stages of development ................... 88
see also centration
Dewey, John .....................................288
Diamond, Jared.................199, 200, 203
divine association.... 72, 78, 80, 86, 112,
113, 115, 116, 118, 173, 177, 187,
277, 296, 306
and centration...............................306
circumstantial nature of .................. 73
making conscious .........................288
DM, see Demand Mangement
domestication................................36, 60
dowry murders ..................................249
drugs .................................125, 128, 209
Duwanish tribe ..................................200
Easter Island .....................................198
ecological equilibrium ......................... 59
ecological limits.............................31, 35
ecological stressors, see stressors
Edge..................................................142
education, active .......................278, 288
student democracy .......................290
education, dietary..............................140
education, institutional ................96, 267
function of "problems"...................288
reforming to overcome divine
association ...............................288
and ecological history ...................266
and science...........................262, 266
and structural poverty ...................209
concerning abortion ..............190, 253
cultural evolution
reactive nature ............................8, 65
see cultural selection
cultural materialism .............................86
cultural predisposition .........71, 119, 181
cultural selection .................................70
and American food habits .............140
and business cycle .......................126
and divine association ....................86
and racism ....................................242
and social movements ..................285
and the inferno effect ....................156
as taproot of power .........................80
awareness of ................................204
conscious ..............................224, 288
consumption idealized ..................135
creating values..............................229
creation of social "problems" ..........79
parallel patterns ..............................19
politician's playground ....................98
reactive nature of ............78, 130, 141
social movements as pivotal.........286
stages of .........................................70
vignette ...........................................73
culture
and food ..........................................16
and identity................................15, 17
and religion .....................................17
and sexuality...................................16
as blind............................................86
conscious and nonconscious..........75
culture of poverty...............................263
Dasen, Pierre ....................................302
day-care ............................................251
Deferred Gratification Pattern ...........263
Delancey ...........................................231
Demand Management...............210, 211
and unions ....................................213
European ......................................212
democracy
and community .............................296
as individualized intensification.......49
importance of social movements ..286
student ..........................................290
demographic transition..............178, 201
323
reactive nature................................ 78
extreme states ..................................274
Exxon Valdez ....................................152
family farms......................................... 52
higher efficiency............................239
Farmers Alliance ...............................137
Feagin, Joe .......................................108
feast, competitive ................................ 45
Federal Reserve ..... 115, 118, 127, 129,
147, 209
fee-bates ...........................................223
feminism............117, 168, 178, 250, 286
and suffrage..................................184
modern .........................................189
see also suffrage, women's
feminization of poverty......................251
Finding God ......................................287
firewood ........................................53, 62
Flappers ....................................182, 186
focal stressor..... 72, 108, 109, 110, 112,
113, 117, 118, 121
see also stressors
food
agriculturalists' ................................ 46
and infanticide ..............................201
and inferno effect..........................136
beliefs about ................................... 16
energy investments in..................... 65
fast food, money collected............236
gatherers'........................................ 33
limits of global production................. 9
meat................................................ 44
riots, 1800s ...................................108
small scale production ..................239
storable...................................47, 170
technology of .................................. 62
food groups .......................................137
Basic Four ....................................138
food pyramid .....................................140
footbinding ........................................172
Ford, Henry .......................................148
fossil fuel .................53, 61, 65, 146, 158
and corporations...........................215
not paying costs............................223
overconsumption ............................ 65
real cost of ....................................152
see also energy, oil
Freedmen's Bureau ..........................109
freedom.........................................53, 64
education, of women .........178, 180, 187
and fertility.....................................248
egocentrism
centration as ...................................87
see centration
Ehrlich, Paul ..............................204, 275
Eisenhower, Dwight ..........115, 138, 263
Eisler, Riane......................................266
electric
cars ...............................................147
trolleys...........................................149
electric utility companies ...................160
electricity, sources of.........................160
Elegance ...........................................154
Employee Stock Ownership Plans....221
employment
and inferno effect ..........135, 162, 228
and localization .....................230, 239
and NAIRU....................................128
and shortened workweek..............216
and small business .......................214
auto-related...................................152
Full Employment Act.....................115
women's121, 181, 183, 188, 251, 255
energy ...............................................160
and capital intensity ......................234
and community .............................295
and green taxes ............................223
and inferno effect ..................146, 228
cost and scale of business............215
electrical........................................160
in technological development .........61
residential use...............................157
see also fossil fuel
Europe
bias in developmentalism .............300
conscious economic management210
democracy in ............................53, 63
dispersed agriculture ......................48
industrial revolution in .....................63
sexual imagery..............................172
shortened workweeks ...................217
social retrenchment, Reagan era .121
steam power in ...............................62
student-led education ...................289
transportation in ............................148
unions in........................................213
evolution, biological...................7, 19, 59
opportunism ....................................70
324
guerilla macro-management ... 228, 239,
297
Gunn, Christopher and Hazel ...........236
Hagen ...............................................169
happiness
and wealth ...................................... 18
Harris, Marvin............104, 198, 264, 266
Havel, Vaclav ....................................260
Hawkin, Paul .....................................272
Hayes, Rutherford.....................110, 180
Hayworth, Rita ..................................188
heart disease ....................................139
height of humans ................................ 32
Henderson Island..............................199
hierarchical child rearing..... 78, 94, 198,
224, 288, 296
high fat diets......................................139
Hinduism ...........................136, 172, 180
veneration of cows.......................... 76
Home ................................................291
homelessness ...104, 121, 209, 211, 264
Homestead Act .................................136
homosexuality .....................73, 119, 181
Hoover, Herbert ................................187
horizontal economy...........................235
and multipliers ..............................235
Horney, Karen...................................265
horticulturalists ..............37, 60, 168, 169
housing .............................................157
as economic stimulus ...................150
insulation ......................................158
Hudson, Charles ...............................306
human nature..........15, 45, 80, 162, 306
as greedy......................................229
illusion of conscious control ..22, 31, 59,
79, 282
import substitution.............................235
Inca ...................................................199
Incomes Policies, see Demand
Management
India ............................47, 168, 199, 249
individual responsibility ... 104, 107, 110,
113, 115, 118, 124, 263, 267
individualism ...................42, 49, 64, 168
Indus River Valley .......................47, 199
industrial revolution .......53, 62, 146, 260
infant mortality...................................212
effect on birth rate.........................248
in Kerala .......................................250
Freud, Sigmund...................86, 263, 301
Friedan, Betty....................................189
Full Employment Act .........................115
Garland, Judy....................................187
gasoline rabies ..................................150
gatherers 31, 43, 60, 62, 139, 167, 170,
200, 229
and agriculture ................................36
and developmental tests...............303
food supply......................................33
labor inputs .....................................37
music and play................................34
population density...........................36
Gediks, Al..........................................272
General Motors .................................150
undermining mass transit..............151
Germany
and Demand Management ...........212
local currency in............................237
unions in........................................213
Gibson girl .................................182, 184
Gibson, Charles ................................184
Gilded Age ............... 110, 111, 112, 120
Gilligan, Carol....................................300
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins .................248
God ... 80, 92, 95, 97, 99, 118, 163, 200,
273, 278, 306
ancient leaders as...........................21
female deities................................168
leaders as .....................................305
Goldschmidt, Walter..................266, 296
Grange ..............................................137
Great Depression ... 114, 115, 118, 146,
187, 237, 255
and women's position ...................250
Great Leap ....................................7, 297
Great Society ....................................117
Greco, Thomas .................................237
Greece, ancient.............................49, 50
green revolution ................................138
green taxes .......................................223
as revenue neutral ........................223
as socially regressive....................224
Greenbackers....................................137
Greenhouse Effect ..................9, 65, 260
repression of awareness of.............77
Greenpeace ......................................152
guaranteed national income..............121
325
and Demand Management...........211
Kerala........................................168, 249
Keynes, John Manyard ... 116, 119, 146,
156, 212
Khmer Rouge...................................... 97
Kholberg, Lawrence ..................300, 301
kinder, gentler, nation .......................120
King, Martin Luther ...........................117
King, Rodney ....................................121
kinship...............................................295
among gatherers ............................ 33
Knowing ............................................256
Korean War.......................................115
Kung (!Kung)... 32, 36, 43, 44, 158, 167,
170, 229
healing dances .............................167
labor intensive economy ...................234
Laissez Faire.............................107, 108
Latifundia ............................................ 64
Lee, Richard......................................229
LETS .................................................237
Lines of Power ..................................279
Local Exchange Trading Systems, see
LETS
local currencies .................................237
localization
and conscious evolution ...............230
and employment generation.235, 238
and New Federalism.....................242
and new science...........................274
and women's rights.......................254
see also community
Loren, Sophia....................................189
Lowell Massachusetts, labor unrest..185
Luker, Kristin .....................................191
Lundberg, George.............................261
MacKinnon, Catharine ......................301
magical thinking 73, 88, 92, 93, 94, 296,
300
see also spiritualistic thinking,
centration
male supremacy....................43, 79, 166
and centration...............................173
and civil death of women..............176
and rape ......................................... 79
and sexual double standard .........178
and wife beating ............................. 79
as parallel evolution........................ 19
attitudes suppressing science ......266
infanticide ............................48, 170, 201
and cultural dissonance ..................76
modern..........................................249
see also population limiting
inferno effect .....................136, 234, 238
displacing ......................................228
effeciency not addressing .............228
inflation ............. 115, 126, 137, 209, 210
and business cycle .......................126
and conservation ..........................223
and cooperatives ..........................221
and Demand Management ...........211
and green taxes ............................224
and progressive taxation...............216
and social spending ......................283
and structural poverty .....77, 104, 127
and unions ....................................213
as ecological indicator ....................71
influencing women's employment.188
see also pricing power, unions,
coporations
Innuit............................................44, 171
intensification 42, 49, 106, 119, 159,
166, 190
and centration .................................96
and ecological self destruction .....198
and science...................................262
and sexual reward 71, 121, 174, 186,
253
and women's position ...................173
centration and ritual ......................173
de-intensification...........................224
effect on women's position ...........168
gender roles ..................................190
mimicry of the rich.........................153
of consumption .............................186
redirecting .....................................297
intentional communities.............194, 295
and women's rights .......................254
International Workers of the World . 112,
113
invention..................................22, 60, 62
Invocation..............................................6
Iranian hostage crises .......................118
Iroquois .............................................168
irrigation agriculture...........37, 46, 60, 63
Journey to a Foreign Homeland........193
Keinan, Giora ......................................94
Kennedy, John ..........................117, 189
326
Non-Accelerating Inflationary Rate of
Unemployment .....................128, 209
Nossiter, Bernard ......................128, 129
nudity .................................................. 92
nutrition advice..................................138
oil
ancient awareness of...................... 63
and cars................................150, 152
companies ..............................77, 151
green taxes...................................223
imports ..........................................222
price and inflation .........................118
real cost of ....................................152
spill................................................152
see also energy, fossil fuel
optimal foraging theory .....................136
Ornstein, Robert........................204, 275
ovariotomy ........................................180
ozone ................................................260
Packard, Vance.................................135
parallel evolution . 19, 36, 42, 47, 70, 79,
166, 180, 198, 203
pastoralists................................166, 200
patriarchy, see male supremacy
Paul, Alice .........................................185
Personal Responsibility Act ..............128
Phillips, Kevin....................................106
Piaget, Jean 86, 89, 90, 93, 98, 289, 300
pink collar jobs ..........................188, 251
Piven, Francis ...........................105, 285
Place of the Lesser Ones .................131
point of diminishing returns................. 60
pollution...........................54, 65, 71, 163
auto...............................................152
cars and asthma ...........................151
electrical production......................223
polyandry ....................................43, 169
polygyny..........43, 44, 79, 171, 172, 174
see also sexual reward, male
supremacy
Polynesians.......................................198
poorhouses .......................................111
popular psychology...........................272
population growth 31, 42, 46, 47, 53, 61,
248
and infanticide ......................170, 201
and women's position ...................248
anti-abortionists favoring ..............253
European infanticide....................... 76
biological explanations for ............263
common explanations...................166
frailty idealized ..............................177
overcoming ...................................248
see also sexual reward, sexualization
of women, polygyny, women
Malthus, Thomas.......................107, 201
Mao Tse Tung .....................................97
Marshall, Lorna .......................33, 34, 35
Marxism...............................................86
matriarchy .........................................173
matrilineality ..............................168, 250
Maya..................................................199
McCarthy, Joseph .............................115
mental health.............................273, 274
mercantilists ................................49, 286
Mesopotamia.........................21, 47, 199
Mexico .........................................21, 275
Cientificos .....................................275
militarism .....................................47, 249
Military Industrial Complex 115, 116, 147
Model T .............................................148
monarchy ......................................49, 54
monetarism .......................209, 210, 211
moral realism.............................300, 305
Morris, David .....................................236
Mosher survey...................................183
Moslem societies...............................171
motivational schemes..........................42
creating .................................241, 296
Muck Rakers .....................................112
multiplier effect ..................................234
Murray Islanders ...............................201
My House ..........................................284
NAIRU, see NonAcclerating Inflationary
Rate of Unemployment
National City Lines ............................151
natural selection ......................19, 70, 78
Nayar.................................................168
Neill, A.S. ..........................................289
Netherlands
and Demand Management ...........212
New Age............................................276
New Deal.................. 114, 115, 187, 188
New Federalism ................................243
New Guinea ..............................169, 242
Nixon, Richard...................................121
and Demand Management ...........211
327
and cars........................................150
Rome, ancient.................49, 51, 63, 115
and centration................................. 97
Roosevelt, Franklin ...................114, 187
Roosevelt, Teddy ..............................112
Roots of Meaning................................ 11
Rosen, Hugh ....................................... 90
Rosenburg, Shawn .......................90, 95
round-table........................................212
rule of thumb .....................................177
Sandwich Islanders...........................201
Santa Claus ........................................ 95
Satan.............................................17, 95
science..............31, 63, 75, 80, 124, 260
ancient ............................................ 63
and linguistic elitism......................264
and social status...........................273
avoiding causality .........................264
biological causality................124, 262
Greek .............................................. 51
progressive ...................................267
reunification rational and spiritual.275
social causality .....................124, 265
Social Darwinism ..........................111
spiritual role in Western society.... 97,
260
testability and marketability ..262, 267
western prejudice to scientific thinking
.................................................303
Science and Diesel ............................. 66
Selden patent....................................147
Seneca Falls .....................................178
Settlement House Movement ...........113
sex
and social acceptance ......18, 46, 230
attitudes in other cultures ............... 16
in Victorian America......................183
making moral issue.......................277
sexism, see male supremacy
sexual abuse...............................79, 121
sexual chastity .119, 121, 124, 172, 173,
180, 252
in Colonial America.......................175
Malthusian ....................................107
sexual liberation ................................168
promoting consumption ................189
sexual reward system ...44, 71, 79, 121,
171, 172, 173, 190, 229, 234
overcoming ...........................252, 254
pro-natalism ..................................181
see also population limiting,
infanticide
population limiting ...............36, 170, 201
as future time orientation ..............203
see also infanticide, population
growth
Populists....................................124, 137
pornography ......................................254
poverty, see structural poverty
pricing power.............................128, 213
prisons...................... 105, 209, 211, 262
pro-natalism, see procreative imperative
procreative imperative .......48, 110, 179,
182, 186
Progressive Era........ 112, 137, 149, 183
progressive taxation ..........................216
protein ...............................................139
psychiatry ..........................................114
Purdah...............................................171
Puritans .....................................175, 176
racism............................................73, 79
and localization .............................242
biological explanations for difference
..................................................263
railroads ............................137, 148, 152
rainfall agriculture....................48, 53, 63
Rapoport, Amos ................................157
Reagan, Ronald ..... 118, 124, 128, 189,
262, 283
and progressive taxation...............216
and unions ....................................214
Real Myn ...........................................244
Reconstruction ..................109, 111, 180
recycling and conservation .......222, 228
reduce need for heavy industry ....239
Red Cross .........................................110
Regime ..............................................240
Relaying Foundations .......................206
relief, outdoor ....................................111
Repairing Simplicity...........................218
Republican Party.......................119, 126
and localization .............................243
Revolutionary War.............................107
Ricardo, David...................................107
riots, American ......... 105, 108, 117, 120
ritual precision ...................................172
lack of in small cultures.................305
Roaring Twenties ......................114, 186
328
Social Psychology.............................265
social purity movement .............182, 185
social responsibility . 104, 106, 112, 114,
116, 120, 262, 267
social science
failure of........................................260
recreating......................................272
see also science
social technology ...... 65, 199, 224, 260,
273, 278
technical consistency...................... 77
see also technology
sorcery as cause of death.................305
South America ............................21, 199
technological development in ......... 64
South Korea ......................................215
Soviet Union......................................181
Spain................................................... 51
spectrum of thought ..........................276
Spencer, Herbert.......................111, 263
spiritualistic thinking ..277, 300, 303, 304
spiritual explanations for core
institutions ..................75, 202, 306
see also magical thinking, centration
spirituality ....17, 21, 45, 76, 97, 111, 179
and conscious evolution ...............297
and cultural selection...................... 80
functions of ...................................260
support of and by science ............275
stagflation..........................................118
see also inflation
state level societies. 20, 47, 49, 70, 171,
179, 199, 203, 306
State's Rights....................................242
steam power ...............................62, 139
straw bale housing ............................159
stressors 8, 44, 53, 60, 65, 80, 108, 109,
110, 112-117, 120, 121, 124, 135,
166, 188, 192
and cultural selection................71, 78
and vested interests ....................... 80
reliance on leadership .................... 47
structural poverty 77, 78, 104, 119, 128,
129, 130, 212, 252
and European economies ............210
and science ..........................262, 275
and taxes ......................................107
displacing function of ....................210
individual responsibility.................104
sexualization of women.....174, 252, 254
1960s ............................................189
and advertising ...............................70
and Victorian dress .......................181
buxom as beautiful........................182
Flappers ........................................186
in spite of gains.............................253
in Victorian America......................177
mammary goddesses of WWII era188
overcoming ...................................253
restriction in 1930s........................187
the Vamp.......................................185
thinness idealized .........................187
shamans....................................167, 173
shoe making......................................239
Silence ..............................................100
Sins of the Father................................81
Siuia ....................................................45
Sixties................................................117
Skinner, B.F. .....................................261
slash and burn.......... 36, 46, 60, 62, 170
labor inputs .....................................37
slavery...................... 49, 52, 54, 64, 109
American.......................................109
small business...........................214, 238
flatter wage hierarchies.................215
generating employment ........215, 239
small farms, efficiency.......................239
Smith, Adam..............................107, 108
smoking...............................................77
Snow, David ......................................264
Social Darwinism.... 111, 179, 263, 275,
289
and science...................................263
social movements .. 124, 179, 189, 191,
209
and localization .............................236
conscious evolution as 204, 241, 282,
297
fallacy of synergy ..........................282
ideological extremism .....................97
in cultural selection .....71, 73, 75, 173
manipulating science ....................275
not predeterminism .......................191
origins of .......................................285
sixties ............................................117
women's........................................250
social needs . 17, 18, 230, 234, 241, 296
see also sex and social acceptance
329
European ......................................149
Truman, Harry...................................115
Twain, Mark ......................................111
U.S. Department of Agriculture.137, 138
unemployment 104, 112, 114, 115, 119,
126, 129, 146, 152, 162, 209, 282
function of .....................................105
intentional .............................118, 127
Kerala ...........................................250
see also structural poverty
unions ..... 110, 115, 118, 119, 129, 147,
185, 212, 221, 296
affect on wages ............................212
and Demand Management...211, 213
and inflation ..........................211, 213
as vested interests........................130
European ..............................211, 213
exclusion of women ......................185
undermining Demand Management
.................................................211
United States ......................49, 107, 135
democracy in .................................. 53
technological development in ......... 64
United Way .......................................113
veganism............................................. 44
vegetarianism......................44, 272, 274
vertical economy ...............215, 235, 236
vested interests ...22, 77, 119, 125, 130,
180, 189, 203, 216
and agricultural overproduction ....140
and cultural selection...................... 80
and energy....................................161
and transportation.........................152
influence on science .............266, 275
suppression of social technology ... 77
Victorian America......176, 182, 183, 250
beauty in ...............................182, 187
childrearing in ...............................176
sexual repression in......................180
women's position in ......................176
Vietnam War .....................117, 118, 151
voluntary simplicity............................229
volunteerism............................43, 47, 50
wage restraint . 104, 105, 108, 119, 120,
124
see also individual responsibility,
structural poverty
war ......................47, 107, 109, 166, 170
and male supremacy ....................171
overcoming .. 209, 215, 221, 225, 283
social responsibility.......................104
wage restraint ...............................104
student democracy............................290
subconscious ..............................86, 190
subdivisions
and transportation.................149, 152
suffrage, women's .. 180, 183, 184, 191,
275
sugar .................................................139
Summerhill ........................................289
Suttee ................................................172
Sweden
and Demand Management ...........211
women's position in.......................252
Syndicalists .......................................112
synergy......................................282, 285
Taiwan
flatter wage hierarchies.................215
Tax-based Incomes Policies .............211
Taylorism, influence on education ....288
technology 10, 59, 62, 63, 64, 138, 139,
146, 177, 198, 211, 260, 281
and ecological destruction ............203
and energy efficiency............152, 161
belief in progress ............................31
conservation .................................295
patterns of change ..........................61
reactive nature of ............................65
rejection of ....................................276
repressed ....... 96, 199, 216, 273, 274
slave-state stagnation.....................52
technical consistency......................77
see also social technology
teenage pregnancy ...................190, 209
Thailand ............................................303
The Machine .......................................55
The Strength of the Land ....................24
therapeutic community ......................273
tight money policies...................137, 146
TIP, see Tax-based Incomes Policy
Tiwi ....................................................171
toaster chanting.........................276, 290
tramways ...................................148, 149
see also trollies
transportation . 136, 147, 151, 215, 224,
236
Tratner, Walter ..........................108, 127
trollies ................................................149
330
women’s employment ...............181, 183
and modern feminism ...................189
decline in 1930s............................187
relative rate of pay ........................250
to secure rights .............................248
WWII and after..............................188
women's rights ..........................248, 250
and child-rearing...........................251
and expected social roles.............251
and infant mortality .......................248
and localization.............................254
as human rights ............................248
correcting archaic laws .................251
dependent on employment...........248
difficulty mixing domestic/ economic
roles..........................................254
intentional community...................254
wool..................................................... 61
Work.................................................... 38
worker-managed businesses
as less inflationary ........................221
workers’ compensation .....................113
Workfare ...........................................128
works councils...................................214
Works Progress Administration ........114
workweeks, shortened ......................216
World Fertility Survey........................248
World War I .......................113, 137, 149
World War II .... 115, 117, 128, 137, 138,
146, 150, 183, 188, 211, 250
Yanomamo..................37, 157, 169, 170
Yates Report .....................................108
Yellow River Valley ...............21, 47, 199
long distance.................................168
see also World War I & II, Civil,
Revolutionary, Cold
War on Poverty .................................117
Ward, Barbara............ 62, 212, 223, 281
Ware, Nathanial ................................108
Weintraub, Sidney.............................128
welfare state......................................115
Wilder, Douglas.........................121, 189
Wilkinson, Richard ....................202, 266
witch hunting .....................................305
women
and deveopmental psychology .....300
and intensification .................173, 174
as legalistically deficient ...............301
as natural caretakers ....................166
as political swing vote ...................120
effects of war ................................170
female infanticide..........................170
gatherers.........................................43
growth of democracy ................49, 53
in Kerala................................168, 249
in medicine....................................112
political organizing ........................185
power in primitive societies...167, 168
rights dependent on economic roles
..................................................169
roles ..... 146, 171, 176, 182, 187, 188
sexual abuse...................................79
Sweden .........................................252
see also sexualization of women,
male supremacy
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
......................................................182
331