The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

https://www.truthdig.com/report/item/chris_hedges_jan_27_column_transcript_collapse_of_complex_societies_2014012

by mgunes • 12 years ago

63 54 12 years ago

truthdig.com

carbocation• 12 years ago

With ghostery enabled, the content of this article is entirely blocked.

911_Inside_Job• 12 years ago

this one too? http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/chris_hedges_jan_27_col...

obblekk• 12 years ago

Works fine for me on Firefox + Ghostery + Disconnect + Adblock

lifeisstillgood4• 12 years ago

Wow.

I kind of agree - but really let's say we listen to our inner doubts, we mutiny and throw Ahab overboard, we are still on a whaler in the middle of the ocean. Now what?

Our (global?) society is on course for destruction on the ocean - but that course is also sailing use closer to the promised land. Every innovation, every step closer to the singularity requires us to move faster, land more sure-footedly. Yes we could balls it all up, start a mindless war that tips the balance, refuse to cooperate in trade or keep the next Einstein in a poverty stricken barro to die of diseases we cure with a single needle.

but then we could not - we could survive on the knife edge - learn how to sail better, close to the wind.

Destruction is not inevitable - it is just somewhere between likely and probable. All the more reason not to give into dsspair - not let Ahabs obsessions distract him from the survival of the ship, but for us to watch and honestly discuss the ships course - and find a way for the whole world to choose together our next course.

(yeah a little too flowery language - sorry. it's late)

MarkPNeyer• 12 years ago

i dig this.

the author laments the hubris and arrogance present in all societies, as if these exaggerations were bugs, and not features.

the arrogance of the leaders and the peddling of hope are there because we are all afraid, and nobody wants to admit it. he talks about the chasm of human reality and how you get burned if you get closed to it, and i agree - it makes sense. i came out burned. i was mad at the world for a while and wanted to tear the whole thing down, but i went back for a closer look because i figured there must have been something i'm missing. there is beauty at the bottom of it, and we can get through it.

there is still new land to be explored - we just can't get there by walking or sailing. the ENTIRE GALAXY awaits us if we can just get off this damned rock. let's peddle all the hope we need and beat our chests all day long; let's spread the gospel to heathen civilizations on other planets if that's what it takes for us to move out of this place and into another one. maybe we're just delaying the inevitable and the end of the galactic civilization will be that much more spectacular when it comes, but it's not as if we can go back in time to change all the "best guesses" our world was built on and the gentle lies that sustain it.

we are now heathens living on easter island. we know our civilization is built on a lie. we can either stop telling that lie and kill each other out of anger over mistakes our ancestors made doing the best they could, or we could all keep telling the lie, keep playing our assigned parts with a wink and a nod, and put fewer resources into enforcing what everybody knows is a sham story, and devote all our efforts into finding the new land we think might be out there over the great waters.

the only way through is forward. the only way out is up.

kposehn• 12 years ago

the only way through is forward. the only way out is up.

And that is going in the quote archive. Nice :)

lifeisstillgood4• 12 years ago

This reminds me of the question of are we some of the last humans to exist (species ends on earth) or some of the first (great golden galactic future)

Either way we won't ever find out - so how we behave is really a matter of faith - not in God but in our descendants ability to keep going up.

I'm voting for optimisim :-)

minimize_me• 12 years ago

"We must go forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always t..."

/watch?v=zGmfiKowrYU

harshreality• 12 years ago

The ecological situation can be improved (damage slowed) by putting resources into it, or encouraging a shift in resource use through laws. Encouraging the onward march mindlessly is not helpful. There has to be some self-reflection and reevaluation of current strategies on how to get to the next technological age, if we are to get there without: nuclear holocaust; human-made plague; trashing our planet so badly we can no longer eat or drink; using up the resources needed for computers and therefore causing computer infrastructure to stagnate and decay just when we need it to run an AI; using up all our hydrocarbon energy reserves and running out of energy that we need to keep up the onward march...

There are many pitfalls that might cause this march into the future to end abruptly and miserably, even if the goal of a new technological era is physically and strategically possible given our current resource constraints. We would do well to avoid falling into a pit along the way, and a social dialogue about possible pitfalls is a necessary part of that.

africanwarlord• 12 years ago

Don't apologize, the flowery language was quite refreshing on a site like this, programmers are usually really poor expositors and can really make you forget how enjoyable good writing is. On this site, you usually only get conciseness without elegance or verbosity without elegance, basically rarely any elegance!

Double_Cast• 12 years ago

Lol, I think you're in the minority. Most of the writing advice I've seen says flowery language comes across as pretentious. I have to agree. A quote from 7th link in a google search on flowery language:

Make clear statements in plain English. Attempts to sound “intellectual” usually result in the sort of vague, stilted, polysyllabic confusion shown in the first two ... [1]

Also, my experiences indicate that the typical hacker is a better expositor than most.

Learn to write your native language well. (A surprising number of hackers, including all the best ones I know of, are able writers.) [2]

The qualities that I personally look for in writing are clarity, conciseness, and impact.

The most important and least difficult is clarity. A lack of clarity might manifest as a reader's overt confusion. But it can also manifest in more subtle ways such as: false equivocation; poor diction; surface analogies; digression; lack of examples; lack of structure; etc. Without clarity, the article is worthless.

After clarity, conciseness is next important. Synonyms might include "efficiency" and "economy". Why say in 1,000 words what one can convey in 10? It's not about shortness per se, but density of information; it shows respect for a reader's time.

Impact is the least important and most difficult. Writing which has impact has an immediacy of experience. It makes for an easy and enjoyable read. The opposite is hiding behind a dense wall of flowery euphemisms.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=flowery+language&rlz=1C1GGGE...

[2] http://wwwu.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/epirker/unix/hacker-howto.html

whydoesitmatter• 12 years ago

I question whether you even read, or worse, understood what Hedges was getting at with this piece. Hedges is essentially saying we should become Marxist, but here you are saying that maybe we can redeem ourselves and survive on the 'knife edge'. Hedges addresses this by quoting Emma Goldman about half-way through. Capitalism can't be fixed with a few patches here and there, it must be abolished and trying to appear moderate makes you no different than the crew members of Pequod who played into Ahab's mania.

The assumption here is that moderation is what has prevented the course of Pequod (and decaying civilizations) from correcting their course. You question what happens when we throw Ahab overboard while ignoring the fact that each passing minute and hour you let Ahab run free, your security and well-being are threatened. Why fuss over what happens when you toss Ahab over when Ahab poses a nearly immediate threat to your well-being? That's just more of the moderation that silently rationalizes Ahab's actions.

Hedges brought up a number of revolutionary thinkers from all walks of the revolutionary left, yet proposed we follow no single system. The subtext being that we need to move away from capitalism, and generally need to move to the left. Whether that's straight up Marxism or more moderate forms of radical schools of thought are secondary or even tertiary. The point is we need to change the course of the ship immediately, or we'll just repeat history for the thousandth time.

lifeisstillgood4• 12 years ago

Oooh an actual reply :-) Thank you - I did miss it however.

Capitalism can't be fixed with a few patches here and there, it must be abolished and trying to appear moderate makes you no different than the crew members of Pequod who played into Ahab's mania.

This may sound silly but is there a common definition of capitalism? It seems rather woolly compared to say, Marxism. Capitalism seems to me to be something we have been doing for tens of thousands of years. Saying "no capitalism is what Marx said it was so that he had something to be against" is kind of backwards. (that may not be what you are saying, but its what I got from the article)

To my mind the biggest difference between capitalism and communism (as practised) has been the use of price as a signalling mechanism (see the way China moved away from a centrally planned model).

Otherwise capitalism seems to have covered a vast vast range of practises over centuries, but perhaps can be boiled down to trade or trade with price as a signalling mechanism.

If this "definition" of capitalism is right, then it seems that it gets fixed often.

BTW, I am in favour of massive change, including the dunking of captains, the fundamentals of our society are creaking and there is a new approach needed. Its just that the next workable approach is not an approach anyone has so far tried, and probably not thought of, (although much more open transparent decision making and information is almost certainly going to be involved thanks to the Internet).

So chucking Ahab overboard when we do not know what course to set after is a bad idea, but chucking him overboard if he threatens to sink the ship is a good idea. We are just disagreeing on whether this current bout of mad behaviour (whatever it may be) is a threat to the ship or not.

Thank for the reply anyway.

pdonis5• 12 years ago

let's say we listen to our inner doubts, we mutiny and throw Ahab overboard, we are still on a whaler in the middle of the ocean. Now what?

We know what happens next, because it's already been tried. What happens when you mutiny and throw Ahab overboard: the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror; the Soviet Union; the Killing Fields in Cambodia. Revolution doesn't work because you can't fight destruction with destruction, and that's what revolution is: destruction.

invalidOrTaken2• 12 years ago

Absolutely, this cannot be repeated enough. And I say this as an unemployed member of the masses, not as a large shareholder with my fingers in a bunch of pies.

This of course raises the question of what is to be done; the answer is: live within your means, be responsible, know your neighbors, and don't be a weird conspiracy theorist.

6d0debc071• 12 years ago

American War of Independence?

Tycho4• 12 years ago

The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month.

lifeisstillgood4• 12 years ago

it's called inflating your way out of debt.

It's not going to stop till the trillion or so it cost to stop the world economy collapsing is about as valuable as the outfitting for the Spanish-American war.

When the Cypriot government tried to take 6% of everyone's bank accounts there were riots in the streets. Our go ernments are doing the same thing, but we blame bankers.

spinchange• 12 years ago

I stopped reading at this point. Beside the fact that a U.S. Treasury bond is not a mortgage backed security, subprime mortgages have not been originated in several years. A discussion about central banking or U.S. monetary policy would be one thing, but this is factually incorrect.

prewett• 12 years ago

This is incorrect just on the face of it. US Treasury bonds are simply government bonds, just like corporate or municipal bonds. They are NOT subprime mortgages. They are NOT mortgages. They are NOT worthless (unless you think the US will default on its bonds).

I couldn't make it past the first page of this article...

ergoproxy6• 12 years ago

I think people are missing the main point. Debt-equity swaps have been a major tool of the Federal Reserve in bailing out TBTF banks. Here's how it works:

I'm a banker. I paid $10B for MBSes in 2007. Big mistake. In 2008, their valuation fell to $0. So I do a swap with the Federal Reserve. I give Ben Bernake my portfolio of MBSes. And he gives me $10B in US Treasury Bonds he's purchased.

I never would have made a dime off my MBSes. But now, the US tax payer is on the hook for paying me $10B in principal plus interest. Meanwhile, the Fed puts "$10B" of MBSes on its books. Doesn't matter that these debts are worth zero. They get to do it...

Right now, the Fed has "$1.5T" of MBSes on their books from doing these deals. Source: http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/19/news/economy/federal-reserve...

I used to be VP of Mortgage Tax and Accounting at a Wall St. bank back in the 90s, and I try to stay up to date on this fiasco. I don't have a problem with what Chris Hedges said, just how he said it: he said it too fast, and it came out wrong. The main idea is still right.

Tycho4• 12 years ago

Technically I suppose the MBS issuers are now a subsidiary of the Treasury. But I'm not sure about the 'worthless subprime debt' part. They're buying good quality MBSs in order to keep rates down and support the housing market, not to take toxic assets off the books of financial institutions.

squirejons4• 12 years ago

The collapse of large nations is a Good Thing for the working class majority: the elite always want large nations, especially large nations with lots of racial, cultural and language divisions. That makes it easier for the elite to control the nation. It's called the 'divide et impera' strategy. That was the founding principle of the USA (see the letter from madison from jefferson wherein madison writes that the divide et impera (divide and rule) tactic is the way to rule america (madison was worth 100 mill in today's dollars when he got his inheritance; jefferson, almost the same)).

When the elite can no longer hold large, divided nations together via violence and or propaganda, the working class majority form smaller, more homogeneous, less divided nations, nations that can be more easily controlled by the workers, and less easily controlled by the elite.

Factions are the friend of the rich and the enemy of the masses.

How do the elite create factions so they can rule? Enlarge the nation; import foreigners, especially those of another race and culture; create propaganda that focuses on identity politics; etc etc.

Of course the centrally controlled dogma of the american edu-propaganda system has programmed us to feel bad about collapse of nations. Oh, it's so sad that such and such nation is breaking up.

But that is an elite-centric propaganda meme. It is always a good thing when nations collapse and fall apart--a good thing from the perspective of the working class majority. Of course the more "educated" you are, the more you take the perspective of the elite--in general.

kazagistar• 12 years ago

We could easily halve the money held by people in the united states, and not affect the wealth of 95% of individuals. And frankly, a lot of the "wealth" in our society is in moving money, and trying to convince people to buy stuff that they don't really need and does not benefit their quality of life significantly.

Not that I think a collapse is particularly likely, but even if one happens, it is very plausible that it won't really be that bad.

spiderPig2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the detailed comment. But could you go into a bit more detail about how the elite actually benefit from factions within a large nation? Like with an example taking today's elite into account.

squirejons4• 12 years ago

well, this strategy was all laid out by the designer of the american constitution over 200 years ago in the federalist papers (the ones written by madison) and his notes on the constitutional convention. Madison wrote that the primary purpose of the structure of the american govt under his constitution was to preserve wealth inequality. Madison wrote that the way to do this was to prevent the majority from uniting and discovering their common interest. The way he proposed to keep the majority from uniting was to create factions in voting districts by creating enlarged voting district (federal districts). Thus enlarged, the districts would have more factions and that would "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" (to quote madison).

Also useful in preventing the majority from using the government against the minority of the opulent was the pseudo-democratic structure of the federal govt (strong checks and balances and separation of powers). This would hinder the ability of the majority to control the government. That would keep the wealth of madsison, jefferson, washington, morris et al., safe from that dirty, brutish mob (i.e., you and me).

The benefit to the elite of factions created by nation enlargement? The elite get to keep more of their wealth.

As the USA grows larger and more heterogeneous with mass immigration, we are less and less in control of our own govt.

Our cultural cousins in the rest of the western nations (canada, australia, UK, scandanavia, france, austria, germany etc) are all smaller and more homogeneous, and so the majority there therefore have more control of their own nations. However, as they elite cram more immigrants into those nations, factions grow and there is less majority control. And of course the elite created the EU along the lines of the USA so as to remove as much power as possible from the majority in those member nations.

einhverfr8• 12 years ago

I am going to take a stab at this. I would look at two things: the first is the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the second is comparing Indonesia (as an American living in Indonesia) to the US.

When Rome fell, the result of the lack of central administration meant that the institution of Roman slavery began to evolve from proprietary rights over other people's actions to proprietary rights over land entrusted to other people. Over generations, the descendants of slaves became peasants with rights over the land they worked, with strong access to common resources. Nutrition improved in the lower classes. Laws were simplified.

Now this took some time. You don't see slavery turn into serfdom during the rein of Theodoric the Great, for example, but it's a general trend in history that during most of the Middle Ages, when power was not well concentrated in the hands of the King (which was the norm until relatively late) that the poor did relatively well.

Another good comparison might be between Indonesia today and the US today. Indonesia has a weak central government, with a very decentralized society. The result is that society runs, at least in the cities, in almost an inverted order to what we think of in the US: everyone but the obscenely wealthy live in gated communities, food production is widely distributed (and a substantial part of fruit and vegetable production happens in the cities). As a result, the diet of those in poverty in Jakarta tends to be rice, tempe, and fresh produce (though access to unpolluted drinking water is a problem, I suppose right now, the US has issues there too at least in some states).

Families are stronger and they become the primary form of support, instead of the government. This means that vertical transmission of wealth happens earlier in life (i.e. invest in your children's businesses because that's your retirement plan), and so forth.

On the whole, the elites in the US today use the power of the state to shape a culture where families are de-emphasized and undermined as a support structure, where we replace people with things as the necessary way out of poverty, and therefore where people are isolated from eachother in order to be made ready for the corporate workforce.

Corporations are creatures of the state. It is unthinkable that corporations could totally dominate the economy if there is no large, powerful state backing them. (BTW, one of the big issues with some strains of Libertarian thought is that if the government's role is reduced to that of enforcing contracts, then it becomes reduced to backing powerful corporations. What are the just limits of contracts cannot be purely found in the limit of a contract but has to be found from wider political controls.)

FD3SA• 12 years ago

Beautifully written and optimistic, but I would like to advise caution. There is only one currency in existence: Power.

Historically, power has been proportional to a willing population. Technology allows power to be decoupled from population, allowing a very tiny minority to exert massive global power. This is the real danger, whether it takes the form of government, corporation, elites or cults.

As power asymmetry becomes more and more pronounced due to technology, the average person becomes far more prone to subjugation. This is the reality we face. This enemy is far more challenging to fight than any historical precedent.

Only time will elucidate our fates.

Tloewald• 12 years ago

Optimistic?

If ever there were an example of "appeal to an irrelevant authority" as a mode of argument, this overlong and histrionic essay would be it. Does it really matter what Moby Dick is about? Arguments should stand on reasoning and evidence, not pretentious allusions.

And then, of course, we get to fascism.

The sad thing is, I pretty much agree with the writer's sentiments, but this essay isn't going to convince anyone of anything.

ergoproxy6• 12 years ago

Chris Hedges took the red pill, and Agent Smith told him, "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I've realized that you are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague."

The Matrix would have been a better allegory to use than Moby Dick, particularly for HNers. Moby Dick might appeal to Harvard-educated, Arabic-speaking, Vermont liberals like Hedges, but most of us haven't read it and don't want to.

It's not that I disagree with any of Hedges' major points, it's just that I find his presentation erudite, pretentious and snobbish.

Economist Kenneth Boulding summed this up more concisely: "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

And if Capitalism is a "plague," what is the cure? Hedges talks about Marxist revolution, but stops short of calling for one, instead falling back on quotations from Shakespeare, and Kant, and Dante, and Black Elk, and Nazim Hikmet.

So, what is the cure?

1. War and revolutions aren't the answer: If they decimate the population, temporarily reducing resource consumption, decreasing the supply of labor so that wages might finally start rising again after 30 years of stagnation, then what? After all the misery and suffering that war brings, we've bought ourselves a few decades with a slightly more equitable wealth distribution, and put ecological disaster in check for a while, but it's only temporary, and our populations will soon grow themselves back into the same problems all over again.

2. Technology? Increased efficiency will only spur increased consumption. It's called Jevons paradox. Technology will only speed things up.

3. Accelerationism... Help the capitalists steal all the wealth and push us over the edge of ecological disaster. Evolution will make sure something else succeeds us.

4. Enlightenment: In the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 56, Jesus said, "Whoever has become acquainted with the world has found a corpse, and the world is not worthy of the one who has found the corpse."

The world is already dead, and there's nothing Chris Hedges can do about it! Whenever something we love dies, we experience mourning. The stages of mourning are--

Denial - Most of the people in the world are stuck in this stage.

Anger - This is where we find revolutionary groups like the Tea Party and OWS.

Bargaining - I think this is where Hedges finds himself. He really thinks there's a way to resurrect the planet--Art, Poetry, Novels--but he doesn't seem sure.

Depression - Lot's of people struggling at this stage. About 800,000 to a million people commit suicide per year.

Acceptance - Doesn't mean you're ever going to be happy again. It just means you're awake to reality.

The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

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