Welcome to Human Nature Odyssey. A podcast exploring our modern world, our ancient past, and where the two meet.
I’m Alex Leff.
This episode begins the third season of Human Nature Odyssey. Glad to have you here.
Alright, so in the last three episodes of season two, we talked about the history of the left and right political spectrum. The debate between hierarchy and egalitarianism, authoritarianism and democracy that’s been raging over the last 250 years.
But 250 years is nothing compared to the grand scheme of human history.
All the way back in Season 1 of the podcast, we talked about our hunter-gatherer origins and the major shift that happened with the Agricultural Revolution ten thousand years ago.
So you might be thinking, what kind of freakin’ podcast is this, anyway? Are we talking about modern politics or are we talking about hunter-gatherers? Well my friend, this is a podcast where we can talk about both.
In this episode we’re going to try to bridge the gap between our modern political/economic history and our hunter gatherer origins. You ready for this? Okay, hang on tight. It’s gonna be one bumpy ride. Actually it’s not gonna be that bumpy, I’m hoping it’s gonna be pretty smooth and easy.
In 2008, psychologist Jonathan Haidt gave a Ted Talk on how our psychological tendencies can predict our politics. He starts by telling the story of two dudes going to see Michaelangelo’s statue of David.
You ever see the statue of David? You know, the curly hair guy chiseled into marble just chilling in the nude? I saw the David statue with a couple friends in Florence, Italy a couple years ago. It was a heat wave. We waited outside the museum in 100 degree humid Italian heat for over four hours. Was it worth it? I’m not sure.
But anyway, so Jonathan Haidt talks about how two guys, with very different psychological tendencies, feel when they saw the statue of David.
One guy is in awe of the statue’s beauty, and the other is embarrassed by the statue’s penis, just flopped out there for all to see.
Now Haidst says the American political stereotypes would tell us that the guy appreciating the art is more likely to have voted for the relatively socially liberal Democratic candidate, and the guy embarrassed is more likely to have voted for the relatively socially conservative Republican candidate.
Haidt tells the audience this isn’t just a stereotype, it’s reflective of what research has shown, that people who vote for left-leaning, liberal candidates tend to be more open to new experiences (like seeing a naked statue of David carved into marble) than people who vote for right-leaning conservative candidates.
As Haidt explains, “People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on it like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable.”
He quotes researcher Robert McCrae: “Open individuals have an affinity for liberal, progressive, left-wing political views, whereas closed individuals prefer conservative, traditional, right wing views.”
Apparently that’s what the data shows, but this obviously wouldn’t apply to everyone. There are liberals who value tradition and conservatives who seek novelty. And I gotta imagine the point is not really about whether you vibe with Renaissance art or David’s cute lil’ penis specifically, but whether you have an initial draw or revulsion to new experiences. Essentially, what Haidt is trying to demonstrate is that some people have a tendency towards new experiences and others have a tendency towards the familiar.
If that’s true, the debate between liberals and conservatives really seems like a debate between those who value change and those who value tradition.
You ever see Fiddler on the Roof? It’s a musical set in the quiet Jewish shtetl of Anetevka, Russia – not unlike the village my great-great grandparents would have been born in back in the old country.
The story begins with Tevye, a patriarch of the town, breaking the 4th wall and talking directly to us, telling us all about his village, how hard – yet simple – life is, and most importantly: the value of tradition. In fact, he then breaks out into song. Tradition! Tradition. For copyright purposes, I can’t sing the rest of the song and also this isn’t a musical podcast, I’m sorry.
But in this opening song, Tevya explains “Here in Anetevka, we have traditions for everything.” How to sleep, how to eat, how to work, how to wear clothes. Tradition even explains the proper role of each member of the family. The men, he tells us—well sings us—must work and provide for their family and are the masters of the home. The women, Tevye croons, are to raise the children and run the home. Life is hard in rural Russia, especially for the Jewish peasants who were often not welcome, and tradition, Tevye tells us, is how they survived.
Good luck trying to find a culture without traditions. Rituals, customs, roles, expectations. Traditions are like a guidebook for society. Traditions means that new generations don’t have to figure out how to live from scratch.
The concept of tradition is kinda like that dress on the internet. Some might hear it and think, well of course tradition is a good thing – if only we stuck to them. Others might hear it and cringe: tradition? Ugh, feels so restrictive and limiting and backwards.
But regardless of whether you feel a pull towards tradition or not, let’s give the conservative argument for tradition its credit. There’s a lot going for tradition. After all, if you’ve kept traditions over many generations, for hundreds of years, that means it’s had time to work out the kinks and age like fine wine.
Tradition is like chess. The rules have been honed over a very long time. Chess is a fun game because the rules all make sense as a system. I bet if you tried to make up a new boardgame on the spot, it would have a lot of issues that’d need to be worked out. This is called Lindy’s Law, that something already longstanding is more likely to survive far into the future than a recent trend.
For something to become a tradition, it has to have gone through a sort of filtering process that preserves what works and gets rid of what doesn’t. Whatever you come up with today hasn’t had time to cook and mature. Therefore, the systems we’ve inherited should be stronger than whatever cockamamie ideas some hipster came up with last week.
We can see this reflected in nature as well. The older an ecosystem, the stabler it usually is.
Tradition 1. Change 0.
But if you like tradition, don’t get cocky just yet. There’s tradition in nature but there’s also a lot of change. Individual mutations are a necessary part of life. In fact, it’s the only way an organism can adapt.
Okay, that’s one point for change.
When tradition and change both work together, ecosystems are stronger and more adaptable.
So the same is probably true for culture too, right?
Cultures need a balance of tradition and change.
Because some traditions are more sturdy than others. If everyone has a say and different concerns and perspectives can be addressed, I imagine that’s gonna make a pretty good tradition.
But some traditions are built on wobbly legs. A tradition created by kings and aristocrats might work great for kings and aristocrats, but probably isn’t too ideal for the peasants forced to participate.
If a tradition is too resistant to change and other peoples’ opinions, then it becomes more and more brittle until it breaks.
After all, the French monarchy existed for 1000 years but was constantly riddled with peasant uprisings that were ignored or squashed until finally, in 1789, peasants stormed the Bastille, grabbed King Louie the 16th and his wife Marie-Antonoinette, and sent them to the guillotine.
So any society needs a balance of the liberal tendency for change, and the conservative tendency for tradition.
Towards the end of his Ted Talk, Jonathan Haidt remarked on how “liberals and conservatives both have something to contribute… they form a balance on change versus stability.” Haidt then connects this to the wisdom of many eastern religions, like Buddhism’s concept of yin and yang, and two of the main gods in Hinduism: Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the Destroyer.
So we all have natural inclinations to either favor tradition or favor change but we shouldn’t be too blinded by those inclinations. Like, what’s the actual value of that tradition or the value of the change?
‘Cuz here’s a very important question: what exactly are we considering traditional?
SERIOUS ADULT VOICE: All these kids on Tik Tok these days. I’ve never even been on Tik Tok. All my friends post pictures of their kids on facebook. Facebook is good enough for me.
OLD TIMER VOICE: Tik Tok? Facebook? Is that what you whipper snappers are calling it these days? I remember the good ol’ days when Tik Tok was just the sound a clock made and a book was something you read with your face. No, sirree, that’s too much liberal change for me. I know, I know. I’m a bit of a conservative. I value tradition. That’s why I use Myspace.
Traditional conservative values are relative, right? It depends on where you’re starting your history.
Again, it’s like the dress on the internet. What color you thought the dress was depended on the context. The same is true of tradition. So the question is, what is the context of a tradition?
Take something like private property for instance. Is private property a conservative tradition? As my colleagues over at the Crazy Town podcast pointed out in an episode they recently re-aired, up until 1773 most English peasants collectively shared their common spaces, and decided as a community how to settle disputes, who farmed what land, who could hunt what. Then the Enclosure Act of 1773 privatized those commons for the first time. And as you can imagine, while the Lords were big fans of this innovation, it was very upsetting to many peasants.
When you assume that private property is the norm, then calling for the abolition of private poverty sounds pretty dang radical. But in reality, if traditional conservative values just mean being in line with the past, then in the grand scheme of things, private property is the radical new thing that’s been implemented only relatively recently. After all, for most of human history there was no private ownership of land.
So in this case, what would be the conservative move? What would be the liberal move?
What the? Where’s that music coming from? This isn’t in the script…
JEFF: Yes hello, this is Jeff Opolis reporting live for a new segment: The State of Civilization.
What is happening?
JEFF: I’m here to cover the absolutely fantastic news coming out of modern civilization right now.
Really?
JEFF: That’s right. Things are just great. In fact, they’ve never been better!
Uh, what’s going on?
JEFF: You haven’t heard? Well, global literacy is on the rise. Child mortality is at an all time low. Modern medicine has helped prevent or cure countless of once deadly diseases. And there hasn’t been an all out war between the major world powers in 80 years. From space exploration to instant global communication, humanity is achieving more than ever before. Civilization is killing it.
Oh wow, that’s good news. I thought we were in way more trouble than that. I feel like a lot of people are not having a very good time right now.
JEFF: Well yes, there are some downsides, and not everyone can experience the perks, but uh, just don’t worry about it .
Don’t worry about it? What are the downsides?
JEFF: Well, wealth inequality world-wide continues to rise, power is consolidating into fewer and fewer hands, and the entire foundation of modern civilization is built on ever expanding extraction of natural resources that unless seriously addressed at its root causes will inevitably lead to a complete collapse and widespread calamity for the world’s population, the likes of which will be difficult if not impossible to recover from. Life as we know it may come to an end. But hey, I told you civilization was killing it.
Jesus. I mean the downsides seem pretty important.
JEFF: Eh, not really. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it too much. I like to keep things positive.
Yeah, I get it, but you’re a journalist, right?
JEFF: Sure am. Communications degree at Civilization U back in the early aughts. Heh. Those were the days.
I feel like you should look a little deeper into the state of civilization. It would probably be useful information.
JEFF: You know Alex you’re right. I’m gonna get right on that. There’s no scoop too heavy for Jeff Opolis. I’m gonna do some real honest digging and let you know what I find.
Okay, thanks Jeff. I uh, appreciate it.
Man, okay. Where was I?
Oh right. What is tradition? So some things we think are traditional – like private property – are really much newer than we realize.
But just ‘cuz something’s new doesn’t mean it’s bad. Humans are adaptable.
We can adapt to all sorts of things. We can eat kale from our garden or we can eat Doritos. But just ‘cause we can eat Doritos doesn’t mean they’re the healthiest option for us – and that a Doritos-based diet wouldn’t come with some serious side effects. By the way Doritos, if you wanna sponsor this episode please shoot me an email.
Some foods satisfy our biological needs more than others. The traditional Inuit diet of whale blubber and seal meat, or the traditional Polynesian diet of fruits and nuts, are going to lead to much healthier people than diets based on deep-fried fast food and processed sugars.
And, if some diets are healthier for us than others, what if the same were true for societies? Like, what if some economic and political systems are better suited to human beings? For example, all humans like to laugh. A government that bans laughter is probably ill suited to our natural laughing needs, right? A government that allows laughter, that’s probably a preferable government.
But how else would we know which economic and political systems work well for humans? Well, this might be where the conservative inclination can help us out. Is there a tradition that helped humans survive, thrive, and spread across the entire planet? Remember the Lindy effect? Whatever exists for a long time probably means there was a reason it was so successful.
Well what if I told you there actually is a tradition that humans lived in for a long time. And I’m talking about a really long time. Like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years long time.
What? What the heck is this guy talking about?
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans lived in small foraging communities. We evolved as human-beings lived as hunter-gatherers. We were generally nomadic, lived off the land, and didn’t have too many material possessions.
Now you might scough at this. Pffft oh ugh well yeah, hunter-gatherers, come on. What kind of primitive society is that?
Well hold on just one second. I even heard some of you conservatives scough at this. But isn’t that kinda funny? Because if you value tradition – then isn’t it possible that there’s something we could learn from the hunter-gatherer tradition? Isn’t that the wisdom of conservatism? I mean, private property, few hundred years old, that’s a tradition, I guess. But if we wanted to look for a real tradition, something that we know worked for a very, very long time, that some communities still practice to this very day, I mean, I don’t know, seems like hunting and gathering is a pretty fair tradition to look back on.
If you zoom out enough, hunter-gatherers start to look like the real conservatives, and their values are the real traditional values.
And don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m not saying we all pick up a bow and arrow and go become a hunter-gatherer.
Hunting and gathering for all your food requires a far lower population density than a planet of 8 billion people can allow. But what about the kinds of societies hunter-gathers lived in? If small scale foraging societies worked for hundreds of thousands of years, is there anything they could teach us about what economic and political structures are well suited to us as human beings?
Recently, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about his new series on the Revolutionary War. I love Ken Burns and I love Ken Burns’ films. We even went to the same experimental college in western Massachusetts – not at the same time – the dude’s like 40 years older than me. But Ken Burns was telling Joe Rogan that for all of human history there was always this authoritarian ruler until the American Revolution changed that. But that’s not really the full picture. Sure, since the Agricultural Revolution, most civilizations have been ruled from pharaohs, lords, kings. But long before the American Revolution, before the Agricultural Revolution, hunter-gatherer societies were far more politically and economically egalitarian.
Archaeologist Robert Kelly defines egalitarian societies as, “those in which everyone has equal access to food, to the technology needed to acquire resources, and to the paths leading to prestige.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone has the exact same stuff but everyone at least has access to the essentials – and a say in how things are decided.
Now, there are instances where top-down leadership is necessary. We can imagine that in certain emergency situations that require quick decision making, it’s helpful to follow one leader—you don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen, bickering over choices while danger closes in.
That’s what my friend Nic always said when we worked for this theater company. He used those productions as examples for how the whole non-hierarchical egalitarian thing doesn’t work. He made the point that it really helped that we had a boss – a director with a vision who could give clear instructions – without one, nothing would get done. And I agree. That kind of leadership can be very helpful. But there’s a big difference between a director and a dictator.
It’s kinda like how leadership works in sports. Michael Jordan may be the team captain, but he’s not the king. During the game, he can tell you to pass the ball, but he can’t make you do it. And once the game’s over, he’s not gonna follow you home and make you brush your teeth.
But that’s theater and basketball, what about government? Could societies really be that functional without one strong, permanent leader?
Everybody’s got to have a leader, right? In our stories about aliens, what’s the first thing we assume aliens would say? “Take me to your leader.”
But maybe that’s only because that’s what the English colonists said when they landed in North America.
When the English first settled in the land they named New England, like the aliens of our stories, they told the native Alongonquians, “take us to your leader.” But for many of the native people, the answer wasn’t so simple.
Among the Alongonquian tribes, who practiced a mix of hunting-gathering-and subsistence agriculture, some individual people did seem more influential than others. At first, the English assumed these were the Alongonquian kings and queens. But the English soon realized these kings and queens were quite different from the ones they knew back home. In 1634, settler William Wood observed, “The kings have not many laws to command by.” Yeah bro, maybe that’s cuz these weren’t kings?
The Algonquians had a different word for their leaders, that to the English sounded like “sachem.”
As historian William Cronon wrote, “None of these… were the sole speakers for their nation; each nation had multiple sachems… A sachem–who could be either male or female–aserted authority only in consultation with other powerful individuals in the village.”
In 1648, fur trader William Pynchon came to an Alongquian village and reported, “there are several small Sachims of Quabaug, & in all neer places there are other small Sachims. No one Sachim doth Rule all: but I believe they will stick no longer to him than the sun shines upon him.”
So not only were the sachem’s power limited, and shared with others, but, if you didn’t like your local sachem you could leave and go to a group with a leader you prefer.
But from the English perspective, this was not gonna work. It’s like if aliens landed on earth, asked to see our leader, and we responded, “well, you know, we got lots of leaders, and they don’t really speak for all of us.”
That might confuse and irritate the aliens. It certainly pissed off the English. They wanted a single ruler that could be held responsible for all their subjects. So the English passed colonial laws declaring, “…some principal Indian be appointed and declared to be the Sachem of them, to whom the English can report when wrongs are done by Indians.. In case the Indians do not agree…the court may appoint and declare some men to be their chief or Sachem.”
But before the English came in and turned sachems into kings, the sachem leadership had been much more like theater directors and basketball captains. Their leadership was limited, flexible, and temporary.
This kind of loose leadership wasn’t unique to the Algonquian, but demonstrated in hunter-gatherer societies around the world.
And this kind of egalitarianism, as Robert Kelly explains, “requires effort.”
Anthropologist James Woodburn, who lived with the Hadza people of Tanzania, agreed, “Hunter-gatherers are not passively egalitarian, but are actively so. They are ‘fiercely egalitarian’, having to work at resisting their own and others’ tendencies to dominate through rigorously enforced norms that prevent any individual or group from acquiring more status, authority or resources than others.”
But, but, but this is where the classic critique comes in. Okay, okay, I know what this is. Go ahead, tell me how life was just peaches and cream for hunter gatherers with your little noble savage theory.
Well actually, author Christopher Ryan (who we talked to in the last episode) points out how the label “noble savage” didn’t originally mean noble in the sense of being more moral or just, but noble in the sense of aristocratic nobility. Those same English colonists first encountering Native Americans couldn’t help but notice how much more leisure time and personal freedom they had, as well as an unhindered access to the entire landscape. Back in England, if you wanted freedom, free time, and access to land like that, you had to be part of the nobility. Hence the term noble savage.
Because Europe had been a land of kings for so long, these more egalitarian native societies were initially shocking.
But those examples of egalitarian societies may have influenced Europeans more than they would have liked to admit.
In Part 1 of our recent King Is Dead, Now What? Series (episode 12, go check it out) we talked about the French Revolution, when peasants overthrew the 1000 year old monarchy. To debate what to do next, there was a national assembly that divided itself into a literal left wing and right wing of the room, which is where we get the terms left wing and right wing. Terms like liberal and conservative came soon after. Those who sat on the right wing, argued for reinstating the monarchy. Those who sat on the left wing, argued for a more egalitarian society. These left wingers were labeled radicals. ‘Are you guys seriously trying to uphold 1000 years of tradition?! The conservative tendency of honoring tradition did not like that one bit.
But are you catching the irony here?
If we follow the conservative impulse to honor tradition, and go back in time long enough, to incorporate our more egalitarian hunter-gatherer origins, tradition starts to sound a lot like what the so-called radical left-wing was arguing for.
But hold your horses, the left-wing shouldn’t get too giddy just yet either.
Egalitarianism might have worked for small scale hunters-gathers, but what if you’re tryna do large scale civilization?
The right wing of the French National Assembly argued that hierarchy and class are essential to a functioning society.
And I will say, if you look at the history of civilization, that does seem to be the case.
After all, most civilizations, from Ancient Egypt, China, Rome, you name it, relied on a system of the very rich and the very poor. And that wasn’t just an accident but how those civilizations were so dominant.
I mean, think about it, who’s gonna build all those pyramids and fight in all your armies? I’ll tell you right now, it’s not gonna be the rich and powerful. Someone’s gotta do all the menial tasks to keep civilization running. If everyone is well fed and taken care of, why would anyone want to waste their limited time on this earth hauling bricks in the hot sun all day? Poverty is an excellent motivator.
As Patrick Colquhoun, founder of the modern police force in London, wrote in 1806, “Poverty is a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. Without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.”
But not everyone believed it had to be this way. Karl Marx certainly didn’t think so.
Not only did we not need kings, Marx argued, but we don’t even need the wealthy. Inspired by the left-wing calls for egalitarianism, he advocated for a system called communism. As Marx described it in 1875, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That was the idea, at least.
And in 1917, there was the Russian Revolution and communism finally found a homebase in the brand new Soviet Union.
In Part 2 of the King is Dead series, (episode 13, go check it out) we talked about the Cold War, when the Soviet Union tried to prove that communism was superior to that other economic system the West was so obsessed with: capitalism.
But, spoiler alert, the Soviet Union collapsed and communism proved to be no match for capitalism. Why is that?
Maybe capitalism just works better than communism? But, hold on, what do we mean by working? As ancient Egypt, China, and Rome showed us, to win at civilization you need to economically and militarily dominate other countries. To do that, you’re gonna need an unbelievably enormous amount of raw materials to be chopped, dredged, and mined from the earth. To do that most people are gonna have to spend their lives doing the most menial, soul-sucking, dangerous jobs imaginable. If poverty is an excellent motivator, then by concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands, maximizing profit instead of compensating for labor, capitalism is really dang good at, let’s just say, motivating people to do those jobs. Real communism can’t motivate people like that.
If we’re asking which economic model is the best suited for civilization, capitalism may take the cake. And sell it back to you for profit. And add ingredients that give you diabetes.
But what exactly is capitalism? We usually say capitalism began around the time Adam Smith coined the term back in 1776 but there wasn’t really one clear start to capitalism. Capitalism isn’t like communism. There wasn’t a manifesto or a revolution or one day when capitalism was installed. No one really had to try to make capitalism happen. When Adam Smith came up with the term capitalism, he wasn’t inventing a system, he was just describing what he saw happening.
Because in a sense, capitalism wasn’t a change of course from what came before, but just further down that direction.
As authors like Lewis Hyde and Robin Wall Kimmerer have explained, hunter-gatherer and indigenous economies emphasize reciprocity and gift-giving. In contrast, civilizations tend to treat resources and labor primarily as commodities to be bought and sold.
Capitalism, seeing everything as a commodity – or capital – was the path of least resistance, it’s going with civilization’s flow.
The Soviet Union tried to stop that flow and build something else. It was like a big metaphorical dam in the river of capital.
Which is ironic because dam building is a classic civilization move of asserting control. Civilization loves building dams. But dams eventually burst. The forces of civilization’s market economy were too powerful and along with its own internal problems, the Soviet Union collapsed.
A dam is just trying to control the flow of water. It’s not stopping the source of water itself. And likewise, Soviet-style communism was trying to control the flow of capital, but wasn’t addressing its sources – surplus, stored wealth, and hierarchy itself.
Plus, was the Soviet Union’s version of communism even egalitarian?
The Soviet Union was an authoritarian state whose elite class ruled over the commoners. The average person had very little personal freedom. I’m not sure that’s what Karl Marx had in mind. The Soviet Union certainly wasn’t an egalitarian society any hunter-gatherer would want to live in. It goes to show just how hard it is to create an egalitarian society under the confines of large-scale civilization.
Now, capitalism and communism may seem like the ultimate economic beef.
But, hey, guys, listen, I gotta say, I know you’re all focused on the ways you two are different, – like how under capitalism, businesses own the means of production, whereas under communism the government owns the means of production – but uh, I don’t know, you guys might have more in common than you’re willing to admit.
Both of you, capitalism and communism are built on the same obsession with progress. What kind of progress? More technology and more industry, duh! Both you guys love talking about development, modernization, mass production. You didn’t agree who should run the factories, but you were both totally on the same page that there should be factories, and lots of ‘em.
In 1991, around the fall of the Soviet Union, author Helena Norberg-Hodge wrote that “‘Progress’ has reached an advanced stage in many parts of the world. Wherever we look, we can see its inexorable logic at work–replacing people with machines, substituting global markets for local interdependence… In this light, even the differences between communism and capitalism seem almost irrelevant. Both have grown out of the same scientific world view, which places human beings apart from and above the rest of creation; both assume that it is possible to go on stretching natural resources indefinitely–the only significant point of difference being how to divide them up.”
And author Fred Ho how both capitalism and communism took for granted the “inevitability of technocentrism and industrialism… the unquestioned desire to industrialize… just as much as capitalism.”
Just like capitalist countries, the Soviet Union built their own coal mines, nuclear weapons, intensive space programs, and fought their own imperialist wars. I said it all the way back in episode two and I’ll say it again: by the 1980s the Soviet Union was responsible for one and a half times the amount of air pollution as the US was at the time.
In other words, communism didn’t reject the civilizational system – it just wanted to run that system differently.
Communism (whether under the Soviet Union, China, or Cuba) didn’t challenge the idea of industrialization and unlimited growth. But capitalism is way better at generating those things.
But, uh, how’s that industrial expansion and whole unlimited growth thing working out for us?
JEFF: Yes, hello, thank you Alex. I’m Jeff Opolis and this is the State of Civilization. I’m coming to you live with some breaking news.
Breaking news? Oy. What do you got?
JEFF: Well I’m standing here right outside of civilization and there seems to be some significant signs of distress.
Alright, Jeff. What are you seeing?
JEFF: Well, according to the UN Refugee Agency, the number of people displaced from war, violence, and persecution has doubled in the last decade and is continuing to climb. The World Health Organization reports that over 700 million people are going hungry. That’s 1 in 11 people worldwide.
JEFF: Not to mention the damage being caused to the natural world at large. Industrial activity is causing the decline of bee pollinator populations crucial to the existence of fruits and vegetables. The oceans are acidifying. Ice caps are melting. About a fifth of the Amazon Rainforest has been cut down. There’s a giant island of trash and plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas.
The size of Texas?
JEFF: Yes, Alex. Or the size of two Germanys. Oh and also, another headline for you.
Lay it on me.
JEFF: As of 2020 there is more anthropogenic mass than biomass mass on all of planet earth.
Wait, what do you mean?
JEFF: That means if you add up all the weight of human material output like concrete, metal, and plastic then it weighs more than all the organic material, like trees, rocks, and elephants combined.
That’s a lot of human made mass.
JEFF: It is Alex. The global economy is growing at such a rate that even with a switch to renewable energy the world’s resources will face serious depletion by the end of the century—all without halting the rapid decline in biodiversity, if not even accelerating it. Indeed, scientists warn we’re in the midst of a mass extinction of life on earth the likes of which the planet hasn’t seen since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Oh my god.
JEFF: Oh- I’m sorry- I’m being told that- yes, okay – I’m receiving reports that record numbers of podcast listeners are migrating from Human Nature Odyssey to more light and care-free shows like True Crime serial killer podcasts.
What? That made the news?
JEFF: It’s a lot of listeners, Alex. They’ve just completely gone.
Alright, uh, let’s stop here.
JEFF: Are you sure? You don’t want to hear about the increasing stockpiling of nuclear weapons?
No, no- that’s fine. We get it.
JEFF: What about the collapse of the middle class?
Okay, thanks Jeff!
Man, it almost sounds like civilization’s expansion and endless economic growth is leading to the demise of the natural world we depend on, which ironically would lead to the collapse of civilization itself.
Hmm. Capitalism is really freakin’ good at industrial expansion and endless economic growth. But what if those goals are fundamentally incompatible with continuing to exist? What if human and ecological well-being are better goals to have? I’m not so sure capitalism is our best tool in the tool box for those goals.
So, are hunter-gatherers liberal or conservative? Well they’re conservative in the sense that small-scale foraging societies are the ultimate traditional society, and they’re left-wing in the sense that they’re fiercely egalitarian. But obviously, they’re not really either.
It’s tempting to use modern political labels to understand past societies but I don’t think it’s quite right to say hunter-gatherers are like proto-communists. I think we have it in reverse. It’s not that foraging societies are primitive forms of communism. But communism is a clumsy modern attempt to arrive at some of the same egalitarian results our ancestors enjoyed.
So maybe it’s not just about capitalism or communism, left vs right, liberal vs conservative. Like the dress on the internet, our perspective and context shapes what we see – but the dress itself wasn’t subjective. There are some realities that are unescapable. Sure, your perspective might be different based on your context, but that doesn’t change reality itself. Nature has limits and we ignore them only at our own peril.
If industrialization, authoritarianism, hierarchy, and class are all flowing towards our collective demise, then maybe we don’t just need a dam to temporarily stop that river, but try and get out of that river altogether.
Fortunately for us, we have a pretty good egalitarian tradition to draw from. You know, real conservative values. So next time someone calls you a communist for advocating for egalitarianism or an anarchist for being against authoritarianism, you can tell them no, no I’m a hunter-gathererism. If everyone is free and has a say, they’re not gonna wanna do the bs required to build industrial civilization. So Egalitarianism may not be the most effective way to achieve industrial civilization. but industrial civilization as inherently self-destructive (that even communism couldn’t escape) then maybe true egalitarianism might be a wiser choice.
Because the kind of egalitarianism we find in many hunter-gatherer societies might just be essential for our survival.
Thanks for listening.
Until next time, I hope you’ll consider that If we can’t all return to hunting and gathering, how can we adapt that egalitarian wisdom to our present moment? This is where our two-sided psychology can help guide us. The conservative tendency can help recover and preserve what worked for our hunter-gatherer ancestors and contemporaries, while the liberal tendency can help embrace the changes we need now. Seems like a pretty good balance to me. Maybe then we’ll learn how to survive and thrive in the centuries to come.
If you enjoy Human Nature Odyssey please share it with a friend. Leave a friendly review. And come say hi on the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon. There you’ll have access to bonus episodes, additional thoughts and writings, and audiobook readings. Thanks so much to everyone reaching out on the Patreon, adding your thoughts and comments, or suggestions on what I should explore next. It means a lot and your support makes this podcast possible.
Thank you to Tom, Mark, Charley, Nic, Jake, Maren and Asher for your input and feedback on this episode.
This series was made in association with the Post Carbon Institute. You can learn more at Resilience.org
And as always, our theme music is Celestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch. You can find a link in our show notes.
Talk with you soon.