Having taught Computer Science at the college level for a number of years, I've come to apply the analysis-design parts of programming to evaluate different thinkers, ideologies, movements, and theories. The analysis part of programming refers to understanding the problem and what is needed, in a computer using setting, to solve the problem. The design is a logical explanation that solves the problem that a given analysis addressed.
Using the approach has helped me distinguish between utterly bad thinking, ideologies, movements, and theories from those that that have merits but are flawed. I've yet to see anyone or any idea that has addressed a social, economic, or political problem without flaws in either the analysis and the design.
If we take Marx for example, and I lean toward Marx politically speaking, but I struggle with his solution. What Marx observed is that the wealthy used their property (wealth) as a means of obtaining power. And they use their power to exploit and oppress workers and others.
So Marx proposed that to solve the problem of the wealthy oppressing others, we only need to switch places between the workers and owners in the workplace and the government. Thus, workers would rule over all others.
Marx's understanding of Capitalism was more accurate with some forms of Capitalism than with others. For example, what Marx observed about the Capitalism of his day very well describes the relationship that workers have with owners in publicly owned companies in today's economy. And so that is where Marx's thinking has merits.
The problem with Marx's solution is that it was not a game changer. In other words, while Marx would have the workers trade places with wealthy owners, there would still exist one economic class dominate the others.
So Marx understands the problems of some forms of Capitalism. But his solution is wanting. It is wanting not because it is without merit, but because it is not complete enough to create a healthy system. BTW, neither the Soviet Union nor China nor Cuba nor North Korea nor other "Communist" nations followed Marx by empowering workers both at the workplace and in government.
The above is too lengthy an introduction to the article that will be reviewed today. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen (short bios are at the end of the article being reviewed) have written a book called An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. And what is being reviewed here is a portion of the book that has been adapted to be a magazine article (click here for the article). The first paragraph of their article best describes the causes for the environmental and climate change crises that we face today:
'Our multiple cascading ecological crises—including, but not limited to, climate disruption—are the product of human overshoot: too many people consuming too much, beyond the capacity of the ecosphere to handle in our time frame. That means job #1 is accepting limits.'
Now if we stopped there, we might assume that the solution would involve both reduction in consumption, especially by those who are wealthy, and a redistribution of goods so that the reduction in consumption would not harm those in the lower economic classes. A
In fact, if we stopped right there, we could start a national discussion on the subject of what we need to do to ensure a livable future for those who come after us. The first paragraph is so well stated. From listening to Wynton Marsalis one time at a Tanglewood concert, we could paraphrase the first paragraph by saying that we 'swung too hard.' The problem with the current form of capitalism that we employ and embrace is that it always asks us to swing harder. And thus, a trusted system is what is pushing us toward a cliff.
What kind of change is needed? According to Jackson and Jensen, if we reorganize and restructure our communities to be a much smaller size, we could address our problem with consuming too much. And in restructuring our communities, we need to make them smaller. Why do they make that claim.
They make that claim because they have traced our evolutionary process from being hunter-gatherers to the present day. One of the first big changes they noted was when people switched from being hunter-gatherers to raising crops, especially grains, then relationships between people changed from being egalitarian to being hierarchical and hoarding entered the picture. The reason for agriculture causing changes in how people related is because people changed from roaming for food to creating permanent settlements. And technology allowed us to create surpluses, especially in the raising of cereal grains, and the need to control those surpluses produced ownership, and hierarchy.
As we continued down the time line through the Bronze Age, we see societies becoming larger and more complex. And part of that included bureaucracies, armies, and empires. With our advancements in technology came even greater complexity in terms of nation-states, colonialism, industrial societies and so forth.
But our use of agriculture and advancement in technology alone do not cause our current problem. The missing ingredient to all of this is the human capacity for handling an overwhelming number of contacts. According to Jackson and Jensen, the human capacity for the total number of relationships we can handle never evolved past the number that they claim was the number of people in hunter-gatherer communities. And the total number of people in which people can be in relationship with, according to Jackson and Jensen is calculated to be 150 people, which is Dunbar's number (click here and there for an explanation of Dunbar's Number).
But if we are going to be more precise, Dunbar's Number refers to the maximum number of friendships a person can handle. Other numbers provided by Dunbar, and his research is based on studies of primates, include the number of acquaintances, which is set at 500, and the number of people we can recognize, which is set at 1,500. But besides the literal numbers, the human problem of people trying to consume too much is in large part because we live in settings in which the number of people involved in our different areas of life are too great for our neurological capacity to handle.
Besides the scientific rebuttal of Dunbar's Number (click here for that rebuttal), we have to ask if there is any other way to prevent us humans from consuming too much and living lives that swing too hard. After all, if America is any indicator, we find that those who are at least moderately privileged find it very difficult to accept the truth that we are destroying the earth's capacity for sustaining human life. The reason why they find it difficult is because accepting that truth involves admitting that they need to change their lifestyles. The changes required are not changes for the better when they see getting more material goods as being better. Rather, those changes are for the worse because it means expecting less because they will have to share more with those who are less or have no privilege.
And that is one of the problems that the article does not address. How can we get people to accept living in smaller communities when they can't even accept the truth about our ecological problems because that would require that we change?
In addition, what do we really know about the social structure and interactions that took place in hunter-gatherer societies? Is it possible to create smaller communities? Would there be competition and hierarchies between these smaller communities?
Despite the problems with the proposed solution, the analysis is both correct and depressing. It is correct because for us to leave to our descendants a habitable planet, we do have to learn how to consume less. That is especially true if we want to lift more people out of poverty. The problem here isn't just whether we have enough resources to significantly reduce poverty. The problem is whether the amount of waste produced in lifting people out of poverty will become threatening to human life. Or maybe we should replace the word 'whether' in that last sentence with the words 'when will.'
At the same time the analysis is depressing. And that is because of the resistance that those who are privileged and who already consume way to much have to changing and the ominous ecological storm clouds are leaving the horizon as they head straight for us. And that is the first task we have to address. How do we get people to recognize that we need to change? The above article does not help us answer that question because what it suggests is a non-starter in today's world for various reasons. But at least the above article alerts to what might be one of the problems that require a most urgent response.
