Growing Things

Nothing on the Earth can grow or expand indefinitely. All living systems and the Earth itself are finite. If something grows indefinitely, it is out of control, like cancer.

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We’re beginning to transition our thinking from endless growth to sustainability. At the same time, though, everyone still wants more growth. Our political leaders talk incessantly about “growing the economy,” “growing jobs,” “increasing trade,” “growing productivity,” “expanding markets”—ever more growth! Growth! Growth! …. It’s all part of our particular culture (not of human nature), and therefore part of who we of the modern West are as persons, to want more, to expect more.

The “more” that we want in large part translates into more things. We want to grow things—bigger houses, bigger cars, fancier cars, faster computers, bigger TVs with clearer pictures, “phones” that do everything. We’re also growing more people, bigger cities, more suburbs, bigger box stores, more freeways. It’s all part and parcel of growing the economy.

It can’t continue.  We know that now.  Therefore, we have to somehow bring what we feel, and what we do, and what we want, more in line with what we know.  Is the idea, the goal, of sustainability part of that process? Maybe.

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But where do you start?  You’re addicted to Growth.  Like any addict, you start by admitting the problem.  You reach for a clear-eyed, non-denial of your predicament.

In that vein, we have to start with what we have—that is, an economic and political system that is predicated on growth.  In the system we have, the alternative to growth is stagnation, depression, even collapse.  But endless growth also inevitably leads to collapse at an ever more catastrophic scale the longer it continues.  Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.  We can, in our time, boast the unprecedented achievement of having ramped up the scale of that deadly predicament to truly global proportions.

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Perhaps simply more investment in sustainable technology is the answer. We hear a lot these days about “sustainability.”  What about that?  It’s a little like Ghandi’s reputed answer when asked what he thought about American democracy.  He replied, “it would be a good idea.”

A sad truth of human history, however, is that no civilization has ever been sustainable.  Everything we know tells us that the dynamics of civilization are by definition, by their very nature, unsustainable.  In that sense, it’s like global climate change: We have the data, and the theory, and they’re consistent.  But even so there are still deniers.

In that light, the idea of sustainability is seductive, both because it’s so necessary, and because it is possible to do particular things more sustainably.  And we should when possible.  By all means.  But the addict’s “fix” doesn’t fix his problem, but only temporarily relieves it.  Similarly, the immediate technical fix doesn’t fix, and indeed often exacerbates, the basic problem—especially if it’s seen as a more efficient or benign way to fuel endless growth.  I’ll talk more about that in later posts.

For now, let’s just be clear on this one thing: there’s no such thing as “sustainable growth” in broad terms, at the whole system level.  That’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.  It’s one of the ways that Denial of our basic problem slyly worms its way back into how we view it.  To talk realistically about sustainability (which we have to begin to do), we have to somehow get outside of the paradigm of endless growth.  The dynamics of civilization never have been sustainable, and are not so now.  They are by definition and in reality not sustainable.  They eventually fail.  Later posts will say more about that also.

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What’s the answer?  I don’t know.  No one does.  That’s what we have to work out together.  But as I said, the work starts by facing up to our challenge.  It begins by understanding the profound nature of the problem, and by taking it seriously.

"It is marvellously easy to confuse 'our local culture' with 'universal human nature.'" (Renato Rosaldo 1989 Culture and Truth. Beacon Press, p.39.)

"Sorry, beg your pardon, Western society has been built on a perverse and mistaken idea of human nature.’” (Marshall Sahlins)

What do you think people are really like, deep-down, at the core of their being? Are we inherently selfish, individualistic, rationally self-interested, mean-spirited schmucks with a proclivity for violence motivated primarily by our fear of others who are just like us?  Or, are we rather inherently social beings—cooperative, generous, compassionate, more inclined toward enlightened self-interest than toward narrowly selfish combativeness?

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 Granted, humans have all the above possibilities and capabilities.  They’ve all been amply on-stage throughout history.  The daily news shows us the most awful actions based on fear and hate and bigotry, as well as examples of extreme courage, generosity, and even putting others or the greater good first.  They’re all within us, the shadow and the light.  They’re the stuff of great literature, theater, and other art.  They’re reflected and mythologized in our great religions.  But out of that vast range of human possibility, what tendencies best, most deeply, characterize our human nature?  Most importantly, which view of human nature should we build our politics, our economy, around?

Those are not trivial nor naïve questions.  How we answer them defines who we are and how we live.  They also are unavoidable questions.  As a people, as a culture, we have answered them. How?

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) adopted the first, the shadow, view of human nature.  Much in our present economy and society remains based on his views, and on related ideas of like-minded thinkers who followed.

As one contemporary writer put it, the social philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (of whom Hobbes was one of the earliest and most important) projected the conditions they experienced in the social life of their time, that of early capitalism, onto their understanding of the “state of [human] nature.” Then they read forward this state of nature as defining the “natural law” by which society should be governed—to which, ideally, it should conform.  The upshot of this circular intellectual maneuver was the social ideal of “possessive individualism” that we have today, that conceives of each individual “as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them.”

Thus, a whole social and political philosophy developed, became influential, and endured. It both reflected and helped create cultural reality of the times.  Because we are self-possessing, rational individuals, we form contracts to help protect us from ourselves. This is the contract theory of the state, and the social philosophy by which we live today. For Hobbes, civilization is all that protects us from our own brute nature.  Without civilization, Hobbes famously wrote, the state of [human] nature will force us into a permanent war of each against all, and “the life of man [would revert back to, could only be] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Another important idea that underlies the social order we live by and within today features mechanism.  Hobbes, followed by many other influential thinkers in the Western political tradition, also tried to advance a theory of society and politics based on mechanistic natural science.  Hobbes pointed to fear as the main motive force in human action.  Fear is the inertia that defines the quality of our being.  Later writers in the same tradition focused on self-interest as “the moral equivalent of the force of gravity in nature.”

Based on such notions, we’ve developed an economy that (supposedly), like an “invisible hand,” gathers and guides narrowly competitive self-interest to benefit society as a whole.  Given that view of human nature, it’s a virtuous economy, the most natural economy, maybe in the end even the only possible economy, because of how it automatically, mechanically, augments the individual competitiveness (that in its own view most defines individual human nature) into a social good.

The social and economic system we have today is fundamentally based on those ideas.  Is this what we really want?  Is it necessary because it most truly reflects who we really are?  Is it really working in our larger self-interest now?  Will it serve us well in the long run?

Aspects of the individualism at the heart of the Western political and economic system, that has been part of those views of human nature, has worked to free the human spirit in many positive ways; and we won’t want to give that up.  But do we have to be stuck with the rest of it as well?  I hope not.  Because the system we’ve inherited, based on these ideas, is like a machine designed with no moral compass or brakes.  Now running amuck, it threatens all of us and all of Earth’s other creatures.

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Regarding our original question about basic human nature, I think that the renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong nailed the answer in her book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.  She writes (p.13-14):

“There is no doubt that in the deepest recess of their minds, men and women are indeed ruthlessly selfish.  This egotism is rooted in the “old brain,” which was bequeathed to us by the reptiles that struggled out of the primal slime some 500 million years ago.  Wholly intent on personal survival, these creatures were motivated by mechanisms that neuroscientists have called the “Four Fs”: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and—for want of a more basic word—reproduction.”

We still have our lizard brain, and when activated by immediate stress or danger it can serve us well.  But on top of that ancient lizard brain, we also have the newer human brain.  “Over the millennia,” Armstrong continues,

“human beings also evolved a ‘new brain,’ the neocortex, home of the reasoning powers that enable us to reflect on the world and on ourselves, and to stand back from these instinctive, primitive passions.”

But, she continues, “the Four Fs continue to inform all our activities.” They are meant to be overwhelming when triggered.  They rightly override reason when we’re in danger.  Thus, Armstrong observes, “our two brains coexist uneasily.”  This coexistence can become especially perilous itself when “humans employ their new-brain capacity to enhance and promote old-brain motivation….”

Our present society, however, is based on a basically Hobbesian, reptilian, and thus reductionist, view of human nature.  It foreground the individualistic competitive drive that supposedly (in the individualistic ideology that drives so much of our economic life, and increasingly pervades our social life as well) reflects basic human nature.  Pitting one person against another, each against all, it thrives on fear as a fundamental motivator: fear of failure, of impoverishment, of lacking access to adequate food, shelter, and medical services.  Ultimately fear of death.  The many homeless visible on our streets and in our parks drive the point home.  Let’s be human, and let lizards be lizards.

Along with the physiological development of the “new brain,” another integral feature of human nature also separates us humans from our reptilian ancestors. Lizard and snakes, you might have noticed, are pretty individualistic. You usually find them out hunting or hiding under rocks on their own. A vast evolutionary gulf separates the inherent sociability of humans from the individualism of our ancient reptilian ancestors.

We’ve reached a time in the human journey when we need societies that celebrate our new brain capabilities instead of foregrounding old brain motivators.  We need societies modeled on consciousness and compassion, not mechanics; on our natural human sociability, not individualistic competition and fear. 

Usually, we just see what we see.  As we go about our daily lives (And what else is there?), we typically don’t see ourselves seeing what we see.  In the same way, we feel what we feel.  Period.  That’s it.  We feel it usually without feeling ourselves feeling it.  Likewise, we think what we think with the words and images we have; and as we do so we don’t think about ourselves thinking.  (Unless, heaven forbid, you happen to be a philosopher, linguist, or maybe an anthropologist).

We are, however, reaching a critical time in human history, and world history.  It’s a time when more and more of us need to see ourselves more clearly, more reflexively.  We need to see ourselves more objectively.  We really need to think more about what we think.  At the same time, we’re developing the knowledge and understanding to do just that—knowledge that helps bring ourselves into better focus to ourselves.

The relatively new theory of ourselves as cultural beings is a key part of that knowledge.  Today’s theory of culture is based empirically in close observation of the diversity of peoples and cultures around our ever-shrinking world.  It makes sense of, even explains, that diversity—and much else as well, about being human. As the current widely accepted theory of human nature, it has become grounded in and part of new understandings of the roles of evolution, emergence, and complexity in the organization of the world.

The ancient Greeks, way back at the beginnings of Western civilization, had a famous motto whose enduring relevance has carried it through the ages: “KNOW THYSELF.”  Today’s theory of human culture adds a whole new and rich dimension to how we know ourselves.

Memento Mori mosaic from excavations in the convent of San Gregorio, Via Appia, Rome, Italy. Now in the National Museum, Rome, Italy. The Greek motto gnōthi sauton (know thyself, nosce te ipsum) combines with the image to convey the famous warning: Respice post te; hominem te esse memento; memento mori. (Look behind; remember that you are mortal; remember death.)

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Let me offer another way to think about what I just said.  Look around. You’re seeing through the lenses of your eyes.  But you just see what you see; you don’t see the lens of your eye that you’re seeing through.

Culture is like that: human culture is the lens of the soul.  It’s the lens that we see/experience our world through.  It shapes our experience of the world, usually without our being aware of it.  We just see what we see.

Our empirical knowledge and theories of anatomy, of the behavior of light, and so on, brings the lens of our eye and how it works into focus even as we see through it.  Similarly our current and quite recent empirical knowledge and theory of culture helps bring our culture into focus as we live it.  We begin to “see” our own culture—we understand that we “see” the world through our own particular “cultural lens,” even as we do so.

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But the story of seeing gets even more complex.  Seeing is not only something that the eye does; it’s something that the brain does—or rather, that involves a whole neural system including the brain.  The neural system makes sense of the variations in light and dark, colours and shadings, that the eye registers.  It is programmed to “see” them in terms of patterns and wholes—that is, in terms of what psychologists call gestalts or gestalten.  Without this initial patterning we would experience not the sensible, ordered world we know, but rather, as the psychologist William James famously put it, we would experience simply “one great blooming, buzzing confusion.”

Familiar optical illusions offer one of the best ways to illustrate the gestalt effect.  This picture that you can see alternatively as a vase, or two faces in profile looking at each other, is one familiar instance.

Because such images are perceived as alternative wholes, as gestalts, it is very difficult if not impossible to see both images at once.  Notice also how key elements of the picture remain constant as elements, but nevertheless change what they are—they change what they mean or represent—in the different contexts of the alternate perceptual gestalts.  The “noses” of the two faces, for example, become the “waist” of the vase.  Gestalt shifts illustrate how the “things” that make up the parts of wholes are often less “thing-like” (less context-independent) than we usually take them to be.

Because of this inborn tendency to see in terms of wholes, and to see the parts of the wholes in relation to the wholes they are in, what we call “things” actually are often quite context-dependent.  Even common everyday objects are what they are only because they, and we, exist together in a particular cultural context.  So long as we remain wholly within that context, however, seeing the world through our own cultural lens, it’s hard not to take it for granted and assume that we’re simply seeing the world as it really is.

All this holds true especially in the realms of cultural perception of ourselves and our world.  Culturally-shaped views of human nature in nature, while much more complex than simple visual images, have similarly gestalt-like and holistic aspects.

We normally take the particular “view” we are “in” to represent the world as it “really is.”  That view of things can be very tenacious.  But once it does shift, everything changes, even as all the elements that make up our particular view of reality remain the same.  If we’re focused on the elements, the gestalt-shifts in their overall context can occur subtly, even unnoticed.  (by all accounts, this happened for many people with the rise of Hitler in Germany: all the elements of everyday life remained comfortingly familiar, even as, frighteningly unnoticed, their cultural context changed radically.)

In the realms of culture, as of scientific theory, we speak of “paradigm shift” rather than of “gestalt shift.”  But they are much the same kind of thing.  Gestalt shifts of visual images, though, are relatively easy to experience, and well illustrate the phenomenon and how it works.

Here is another famous image that can be a little more challenging.  You can see either the face of an old woman, or of a young one in profile.  This is one of my favorites.  For me, this image even better illustrates how the gestalt effect compels one to see either one image or the other; and also how, before you learn to make the shift easily, whatever image you see is compelling—is difficult not to see.

If you have trouble seeing one face or the other, the eye of the old woman becomes the ear, and her nose the cheek and chin, of the young one who is seen in profile and turned away from the viewer. If you’re not getting it, try blinking to help your mind make the perceptual shift.

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We find ourselves now in the midst of a large cultural paradigm shift, with our view of ourselves—of our human nature in nature—as its fulcrum. Recent (meaning the last five hundred or so years) Western history holds other examples of paradigm shifts; but you have to go back a ways to find examples of comparable importance.

Perhaps the most notable such paradigm shift is that which often is taken to mark the birth of the modern age and of modern science.  The discovery, contrary to everyday experience and to deep-rooted religious doctrine of the time, that the Earth is not the literal center of all of God’s Creation changed the course of Western history, and of world history, for that matter.  The “Darwinian Revolution” is another one (but we’ll save that ’til later).

When you watch the sun rise and set, or chart the regular revolutions of the stars through the heavens, you “see” these “heavenly bodies” revolving around the Earth.  Before Copernicus and Galileo proved otherwise, most people took what their eyes saw, this naïve view, literally.  They built cosmologies and religious beliefs around what they clearly saw.  The discovery, however counterintuitive, that the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun in the vastness of space launched a major paradigm shift in our view of the heavens and the Earth, and indeed of ourselves.  Now we take it for granted; but it and related discoveries hugely changed the course of Western history and shaped who each one of us, the cultural heirs of that legacy, is today.

Today’s discovery of culture involves a comparable paradigm shift.  The discovery of culture, however, focuses directly on us and our relationships with each other and with the Earth, rather than on the sun and planets and stars and the relationships between them.

Because it is even more intimately about us, and because we’re in the midst of it and don’t have the distance of time to provide perspective, and because we now have more sophisticated and complicated concepts and understandings to work with, our current change-of-mind can be quite challenging to understand and to see.  It will be our task to learn how to better navigate the paradigm shift we are in—to track back and forth between the contrasting visions of who we are—much as we do with the alternative views of the above visual images.  Today’s paradigm shift, in which cultural theory plays a central role, offers new views of ourselves that hold both unprecedented challenges and opportunities in the Human journey.