Back to our main story, understanding a path for the future on the basis of idea’s like ecology, agroforestry and environmental restoration so we don’t get stuck in the collapse feedback loop of previous civilizations. However, to properly avoid these pitfalls we have to understand the direction we are being pulled in by the forces of globalism, modern “economics” and greenwashing.
What is the most prevalent religion in the modern world? Is it Christianity, Islam or even agnostic/atheism? The answer might surprise you, the largest most powerful religion in the world is Progress. We have a holy trinity of technology, science and economic growth. We have a high priesthood of academia representing a rigid dogma in business and technology. Skyscrapers and colleges are temples to this holy order, and you must not question it’s principles. When I mention science as part of this religion, I am discussing science as a belief, not science as a process of testing hypotheses. Famous figures from the mythology of progress would include Einstein, Edison, Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, Ben Franklin, and even Steve Jobs. The heroic innovator archetype is personified by Iron Man's Tony Stark, who is a wildly popular figure in contemporary culture. The fables of progress include the monkey scopes trial, persecution of Galileo, discovery of plate tectonics, and electricity in lightning by Ben Franklin. All of these fill the role of a persecuted quirky tinker genius who come across some idea where he sees the world so clearly through his divine gifts of intellect and is vindicated, continuing the legacy of progress, usually posthumously. This cult of progress has taken hold of society via the power of industrialization by our exploitation of millions of years of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels. Why do we know more about the surface of the moon and mars rather than the deep depths of the oceans? Why do people float these fantasies about colonizing other planets to escape our own planet, which is infinitely superior at supporting life even in a damaged state, than any other body in our solar system?
The religion of progress is explained much better by John Michael Greer himself whom has several books on the subject including After Progress: Reason and Religion at the end of the Industrial age. My awareness of something so blatantly obvious but hidden in plain sight was illuminated by Mr. Greer. If you have more interest in exploring this subject I encourage you to check out his books, blogs and musings at Ecosophia.
The religion of progress has shaped and molded society to suite its own needs over the past century. The opiates in the form of entertainment, smart phones, and automation over the past few decades has started to severely degrade health, intelligence and psyche of the people of western countries. Entertainment has pushed attention spans shorter and the intellectual focus on science and mathematics that propelled nation states through the industrial, nuclear and space ages has been cast aside for social science and forms of social engineering. We have entered the age of Ubiquity, where the system of social engineering whether controlled by human interest or the simple forces of the market are cutting off the branch they are sitting on.
Ubiquitous Fast food and restaurants has led to a nation of people who can’t cook.
Ubiquitous Cheap high reward comfort food has turned a nation of people into people so fat that they can hardly walk much less run.
Ubiquitous spell/grammar check has created a nation of people who can barely spell or write.
Ubiquitous Maps apps and GPS has degraded map reading and navigation skills.
Ubiquitous temperature controlled environments has led to world of people disconnected with the outside world, suffering vitamin d deficiency, ect.
We have seen a steady trend of society degenerating into a chaotic tribal form with little to no attention span, critical thinking skills, fitness or intelligence. This is leading us in the direction of a glorified cargo cult where we riot and scream at the government or people of authority any time cargo stops showing up. Modern humans are on average are so disconnected from reality they are rarely capable of discerning the how or why of how they are in a certain situation, not that the ever-present propaganda would allow such thoughtcrime. An age of chasing pleasures has made people so physically weak and weak minded that their only concern is that handouts and payments to keep flowing in a house of cards nation that only knows how to throw money at problems. As Americans we are trained that when confronted with hardship we turn straight to what we need to buy to solve any given problem. What pill, what investment, what thing do I need to solve my problems, we rarely consider the actions or self-reflection necessary to solve the crises we find ourselves in. We are a cargo cult.
In world war 2, tribes of hunter gatherers were sudden witness to one of the largest most technologically complex battles in modern history. They suddenly had commandos, supply ships and airfields built on their islands. A whirlwind of sudden access to manufactured clothes, tools, foods and medicine could only be understood in mystical terms. Of course, soon after the end of the war the planes and soldiers stopped appearing on their south pacific islands. Their shaken psyche had not forgotten them, as they tried to summon the cargo gods once more by building woods effigies of planes, clearing land for airfields and adopting various symbols into their culture.
In a way, this is us. We are so removed from the reality of how the resource extraction, manufacturing and shipping sectors function that people are barely mindful of how gas gets to the gas station or food to the grocery stores. In a way for most people it isn’t worth a second thought and might as well be magic. These complex systems and processes are the only thing that separates a nation from anarchy, violence and chaos. It is this “tribal mysticism” in our nation that guides our understanding of technology and our definition of what technology is. But what makes us call one thing technology or an advancement and another primitive and backwards? Will tribes of future people in the heart of America be attempting to build wooden effigies of cars and skyscrapers in hope they will summons the gods of industrial civilization back once more and the wealth that accompanied it?
Technology is by definition, “the application of scientific knowledge for a practical purpose.” With such a broad definition any simple idea or practice could be considered technology but what is more important is what the average person considers technology. I would like to separate the word technology from the idea “technology.” The everyday person when they think of “technology” might think of sports cars, smart phones, computers, jets, or weapons of war. While at the same time the practice of building a terrace by moving dirt, using ecology to expertly plant various trees and shrubs, or using clever balance techniques to move objects too heavy for one person with leverage could also be technology. This is where the Religion of Progress becomes problematic again. Jets, rockets and nuclear power satisfy the vision of seeing humanity as part of a holy upward journey from the caves to the stars. “technology” must be considered “sexy and powerful” within the mythos of progress.
I would like to suggest that outside these boundaries that technology could be considered “subtle” and “efficient” in ways we haven’t quite thought of. For most of the history of agricultural civilizations it has been violent balance of exploiting resources quicker than your competitors and overwhelming them with quality or quantity in wars of competition. As a result we have come to value powerful technology, power meaning as much force in a short amount of time as we can muster, with explosions or a jet engines as an example. However, entire mountain ranges have disappeared to the power of winds and rain, a weak force over a long amount of time. Nothing human being have compares in power to the forces of wind and rain. Nothing humans have built has held up to these forces in the long term, yet the beauty of biology has solved these problems long since before we existed.
the arrogance of progress and “technology” as an idea, is that powerful is sexy. Biology isn’t powerful but it is efficient, durable and well designed beyond anything we have ever imagined and in my opinion, the origin of sexiness itself. A single celled bacterium is more complex than the greatest supercomputers or engineering marvels humans have ever created. The acknowledgement that “technology” and “progress” can have dimensions other than power is “the heresy of progress.” To get past the next series of resource, climate and economic crises the world faces we will have to become heretics. An understanding that humans and our “technology” are not able to tackle the coming crises we face, an understanding that humans along with all the other biology on this earth are the technology we really need to understand. Humans functioning within the ecosystem not as a force for destruction but as a keystone species to stabilize and regenerate ecosystems are what’s needed, and is a heretical paradigm shift. The whole is truly more than sum of its parts.
The changes the future requires are not as sexy as the “technology” of our imaginations. It is the change in the way we see technology itself and the integration of biology and ecology that will drive the basis for a lasting future.
Next week we will discuss the disadvantages and problems with permaculture/agroforestry and what they imply for the way society is organized in labor and health. Can we feed the world this way? Also, we will look for a middle ground and some idea’s for regenerative agriculture. Join us next time for The Oxen of Steel :a journey back into the beginnings of mechanized agriculture and the clues it might leave for us today.