A New Human Culture
If you’ve ever had a conversation with me, chances are, you’ve heard me denounce modern culture and claim that it’s time for us to create a new human culture. This is a very big issue that’s difficult to explain succinctly, so I’ve decided to create this section of the website in order to discuss this idea.
Quick Guide To Creating A New Culture
Permaculture Guide
Eco-villages
Shambhala Shasta
Anastasia’s Dream
Starting With Small Things
Reading List
First of all, one may ask why exactly we ought to create a new culture. What’s wrong with our current culture? Too many things for me to list, really. Anyone can name the many problems, from pollution to overpopulation, from disappearing wilderness and mass extinctions to war, poverty, disease, crime, and so on. The enormity of what is going wrong on this planet is staggering, but all of these problems (along with countless others) are actually all symptoms of one larger problem. And that problems is our culture.
The fact of the matter is that our current way of life is destroying the planet. To rephrase an old adage, bulldozers and pollution don’t destroy planets, human cultures that produce bulldozers and pollution destroy planets. The destruction of soil and forests, the mountains of garbage, the nuclear waste, the weapons of mass destruction… they are all connected, and none of them would come to be without the existence of a culture that creates them. The alleged authorities try to blame the commies or the terrorists or the devil or whoever else they can think of, but the responsibility lies with us all. We all contribute to the creation of our cultural paradigm, and the predicament we are in can be attributed entirely to the inherent wrongness of system of living we have adopted.
There are two distinct systems of living practiced by human beings. The first system, which I call natural culture, has been around for longer than history can accurately state, and was the only form of culture practiced for most of human existence. In this culture, people live together in small groups, make their tools and shelter out of raw materials produced by their environment, and eat whatever food is easiest to obtain, either by hunting, foraging, or (usually) a combination thereof. Practitioners of this natural culture are always very well adapted to whatever conditions they live in, though they are often migratory. Or at least they used to be, back when the land was open to migration. Very few people still practice natural culture, and generally only in remote areas of the world. The reason for this is that the second form of human culture, which I call empire culture, has assumed control of almost every square inch of the globe, assimilating or destroying every natural culture it encounters.
When people hear the world empire, they think of the Romans or the Greeks, or perhaps the British, but that’s not exactly what I mean by the term. Although the Romans, Greeks, British, Babylonians, et al are prime examples of empire culture at work, there is a difference between the cultural practice of empire and the various empire/nations that have grown out of it. Empire culture is a way of living in which humans are organized into a heirarchy, at the top of which sits an emperor and/or a small number of military/financial elites. Under this system, agriculture is the primary source of food, and rather than roving about in small bands, people live together in much larger numbers in fixed locations - cities or towns - under the jurisdiction of authorities who answer up on the chain of command. Where natural cultures focuses on knowledge of the environment and the life systems it contains, empire culture focuses on wealth and the accumulation of material goods. Natural culture is held together by cooperation, while empire culture is held together by coersion. Because people naturally tend to practice (duh) natural culture, military force is required in order maintain empire culture. The bulk of the work that is required to run an empire culture is done by slaves/serfs, and since no one willingly becomes a slave, people have to be held at sword/gunpoint in order to be brought under control. Empire culture is a culture of conquest, dominance, and force.
Suprluses and profits are the main objective of empire culture, the wealth being channelled upwards to the elites at the top. The more complex the society, the more jobs there are to do, and every man woman and child is put to work. But it is not just humans who are forced into toiling for the rulers of empire cultures. Every fragment of the Earth, and all the life that teems upon it, is seized by the force of imperial might and put to whatever use will be most profitable to the controlling elite. Horses, cattle, and oxen have long been the slaves of empires. Even plants are subjugated to the rule of the empire, via the most destructive (in the long run, anyway) element of empire culture: agriculture.
Agriculture, the food system that fuels empire growth, is a practice of coersion. Natural ecologies tend towards diversity, with as many different species of plants growing in a given area as can be supported. Agriculture is the practice of forcing the land to produce a single crop in large quantities. Other plant species that compete with the crop are killed, as are any animals that eat the crop. The homogeny of agriculture is what makes it so destructive. Natural ecologies maintain a delicate balance between a wide variety of species, and when all but one species (like wheat or rice) are killed off, that balance is lost. Agriculture ultimately robs fertility from the soil, consuming centuries of nutrient buid up on just a few years worth of crop production, after which the soil is used up. Without artificial fertilizers, (which are made primarily of fossil fuels) civilized humanity would have starved to death decades ago, because there simply isn’t enough fertile soil in the world to support modern agriculture.
Agriculture is just an extension of the idea that underlies empire culture. It is the idea that the natural world is imperfect, and that it is man’s right and duty to improve it. Empire culture assumes that man is the owner and king of the planet, and that his interests and needs are more important than all other living things. Further, it assumes that among men, a select few are kings, and that they have the right to rule over the rest of humanity. Empire culture rewards those who accept this tenet with material goods and a small taste of this power of rulership, and punishes those who resist it with enslavement, imprisonment, or death.
Empire culture has committed untold atrocities for as long as it has existed, but the biggest problem with this system of living is that it simply isn’t sustainable. Because empires suck as much fertility out of the soil, as much labor out of the people, and as many resources (like trees) from the land as they possibly can, it’s only a matter of time before the well dries up and there is nothing more to take. When this occurs, their only option is to spread, seeking new lands and peoples to conquer.
Written human history (which can be referred to as empire history, dating from about 10,000 BC until the present, and which differs from actual human history, which goes back beyond the implementation of linear time) has been one long dramatic account of the spread of empires. Territories are conquered, native peoples are enslaved or exterminated, forests are cleared, fields are sown, cities are built, and the productive capacity of the Earth is exploited until it is exhausted, at which point the empire spreads further. The eventual fate of every empire is collapse, as nothing that systematically destroys the source of its own vitality can exist for long.
Elaborate accounts of warrior heroes and of the inventive genius of man have propped up the idea of empires ever since the culture began, but nothing can refute the fact that all past empires have fallen, leaving in their wake a trail of destruction. It is folly for us to deny this fact any longer. Empire culture is destroying the living Earth. Forests are disappearing, soils are eroding, water systems are poisoned, and species are dying off in record numbers. Advances in technology, which many people hope will one day save us from these horrors, are only making things worse. If the technology were applied to the task of returning the Earth to her natural state of abundance, we might indeed look to it to help up us out of this jam, but instead the rapidly advancing technology has been applied to extorting the resources of the planet much more efficiently and in greater volume. This is because technology is controlled by those profit from the productivity of empire culture’s exploitation, the elite rulers. These controllers, well aware of the damage they are doing, are unable to stop themselves, addicted to the power and wealth that their irresponsible actions afford them.
But the empire way of life must end. If it is not stopped by the collective will of humanity, it will exterminate itself, like a cancer that kills its host. Nothing that depends on limitless growth to survive can survive long. The question we must now turn to is not whether or not our current way of life will collpase, but how that collapse will unfold. Although we face a distinct possibility of mass human die off, worldwide warfare, and global environmental catastrophe, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the way things go. It is up to us to decide. Not up to Congress, not up to the ruling elite, not up to expert think tanks. You and me. The most powerful decision an individual can make in this day and time is whether or not to voluntarily begin shifting his or her way of life to a form of culture that is sustainable. The more of us who are ready for this shift - willing to put time, thought, and energy into bringing it about - the easier the transition will be.
So what kind of new human culture am I advocating here? Although I personally would be perfectly happy living as a hunter/forager, I know that it’s not possible for our species to return to this way of life, at least not right away. There are too many of us, and there are not enough undamaged ecosystems left on the Earth to support it. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t shift our way of living back to a natural culture.
The beauty of the situation is that we can create any kind of culture we want, provided we keep it within the parameters of sustainability. This automatically rules out a great many preconceptions that we now operate under, so the initial work is in reevaluating our own states of mind, gaining new understandings of how the world works and what our role in it should be. For a people so thoroughly conditioned as modern humans, this is a difficult task, but far less difficult than starving to death.
We must first change our way of thinking, and then we can begin to work out a plan to change our means of living. Treating the resources of the Earth like property and treating the wealth that we convert them into like it’s the most important thing in life is what lies behind the global problem we now face. Natural culture depends on relationships between people and the forces of life around them. Returning to a natural culture will involve shifting our thinking away from artificial things like material products, technology, and the machinations of society (what I call the three ring circus: politics, entertainment, sports) and returning our focus to plants, animals, weather, and soil.
We have been taught to believe that it is society that feeds us, and that we must work for society in order to earn our right to the food. But only empire cultures take the power of procuring food out of the hands of the individual. For by controlling the food supply, the elite control the population. (Of all the powers held over us by the tyrants of our culture, this is the easiest one to take back. Anyone can plant a garden.) In natural culture, every member of society learns at a young age how to go out and find food. If we expose our children not to video games, television, and toys, but to the natural world, their human instincts will kick on so fast that it will be only a short matter of time before they are teaching us how to find food.
Children are the key to the creation of a new human culture. The more exposure to empire culture that a person has in life, the harder it will be for him or her to undo the patterns of thinking that propogate the paradigms of this destructive way of life. Children (particularly those who haven’t yet been put into school) will have a much easier time accepting the reality of life in a natural culture. Our goal as adult founders of this new human culture is to provide a safe, healthy, natural environment in which the next generation can grow to maturity, uncorrupted by the illusions of empire thinking. We are, in reality, only setting the stage for the creation of the new culture. It will be up to our children to dream up the specifics of what kind of culture it will be.
But in order for us to provide them with that opportunity, we must reestablish our relationship with the living Earth, a relationship that has been severed by millenia of depending on artificial systems. It is unreasonable to expect that we’ll be able to feed ourselves completely from the production of our own gardens (at first), but by planting gardens and spending time working in them, we will establish relationships with the living world that will open up new doors of our consciousness. And over time, as we put more love and effort into the land on which we live, it will begin to produce a greater abundance of food for us. It’s not unreasonable to think that within three or four generations, the entire Earth could once again be a garden, abounding with plant and animal life, so productive that humans need not tend to a thing other than walking around and enjoying it.
Many people would call this is sheer fantasy, but it is, in fact, entirely possible. The movement is well underway, having begun decades ago, and having made great strides forward since the arrival of the internet. The movement I’m referring to is known as permaculture, and it is, perhaps, the most viable solution to the enormous problems of the modern world. Far from a flower-power pipe-dream, permaculture is scientifically engineered system of plant cultivation and resource management that imitates the ecological systems of nature. It is has proven its effectiveness all over the world, creating sustainable abundance in even the sparsest of environmental conditions. Permaculture can be practiced in the desert or the forests, in cities or in the suburbs. It is more than just a technique for growing food - it is a way of life and a way of thinking, and it is, quite possibility, the future of humanity.
To learn more about a new human culture through permaculture, read on.