Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
Last night Joan Marler of the
Institute of Archaeomythology
— gave a fascinating talk about the likelihood Europe’s first agricultural
peoples had developed writing 8,000 years ago, long before Sumer. It is called the “Danube Script.” The evidence she offered was persuasive to me. But fascinating as this was, the point
Marler made about their farming is what led to today’s post.
These early agriculturalists
apparently farmed successfully in Southeastern Europe and Turkey for many
thousands of years. There is no
evidence of war, certainly none of weapon production or social hierarchies like
those that came later. There is plenty of evidence for their living well beyond simple subsistence, with art, beautiful pottery, solid houses, and decoration everywhere. Speaking
for myself, they represented a wonderful balance between the egalitarian
societies that characterized most hunting and gathering cultures and the
possibilities for settlement that agriculture opened up. It was a balance that lasted a long
time, longer than the time from Socrates to now.
They had developed a deeply
sustainable agriculture unlike the rape and pillage approach of modern corporate
agriculture, that is to farms what the ‘religious’ right is to religion. Based on altars and other
objects found on sites where these communities existed, Marler argued they had
done so by integrating farming into a ritual order – that is, by placing our
utilitarian need for food into a larger sacred context.
Marler’s comments reminded me of
another example from our own continent.
Northwestern Indians had the technology to take nearly all salmon from
any rivers other than perhaps the very largest, like the Columbia. They also had a motive. Dried salmon was an important trade
good in much of the West. Yet despite archaeological records of
salmon fishing for at least 9,000 years, they did not do so. They also enmeshed their fishing into a larger ritual context.
I suspect we will continue to
destroy our world until we, like those tribes and perhaps those farmers of so
many thousands of years ago, learn to subordinate our technological power to
larger contexts of the sacred.
posted October 9, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Commonly the Sumerians are credited with the first written language, given about circa 3500 bce. As a pagan, I do enjoy reading the myths and legends at ETCSL on the Sumerians. All too often it is forgotten that there are still Indus Valley Scripts which are said to predate the Sumerian cuneiform as well, which are still undecipherable. It would be extremely exciting to think and study about writing from 6000 bce.
I did find this Vinča / Danube script very interesting as I also noted some pre-cuneiform pictographic symbols that Sumerians used as well. Perhaps there is hope that we can discover where the Sumerians came from in that far distant past.
I too hope that we as humans can eventually get away from the idea of horde and greed and come to the idea of sustained living, on a global scale. The alternative is pretty bleak.
Great article Dr. diZerega!
posted October 9, 2009 at 6:19 pm
We will either get smart about this, or the planet will rebalance itself. For virtually all of the world’s history, it has done perfectly well without 6 billion plus humans. It could easily reduce the number to 1 billion, or 100 million, or zero.
posted October 9, 2009 at 7:59 pm
One thing to keep in mind about ancient societeis and their apparent harmony with the natural world is population. There were fewer human beings. And it’s possible that those humans maintained a relatively low population density, at least in rural agricultural circumstances.
We probably cannot sustain the current global population and population density and occupational diversity without an agricultural system that yields food in great quantities. “Great,” for earlier agriculture, may not have involved the absolute quantities that today’s agriculture does.
To be clear, I’m not arguing in favor of industrial agriculture. Rather I’m making an observation about changing circumstances over time.
posted October 10, 2009 at 2:07 am
Its true. They always say indigenous tribes are uncivilized compared to western ones… but one thing must be acknowledged. Many of those tribes lived sustainably and survived with abundance. (For others that collapsed see the Mayans and Easter Islanders in Jared Diamond Collapse book.) They had ritual, but they also had a concept of ecology- one that Westerners are just redeveloping after the celtic religions were suppressed for hundreds of years in the west. The 7 generations idea that native americans had was one that we should adopt.
posted October 12, 2009 at 5:09 am
It certainly seems terse to assume cuneiform to be the first human writing when there are so many indecipherable hieroglyphic scripts that went before it. What I’m not sure about here is how ritualistic early agriculture actually was, and I’d be grateful to someone who can enlighten me. Personally, agriculture had nothing to do with religion; it was the most efficient way of producing the biggest yields. Yes, thanks was given to above and beyond but the farming itself was a human endeavour. The same principles can be applied to modern farming techniques, though it’s easy for those in the West to mourn the passing of our planet when we have enough to eat. GM seems the answer to starvation.