The Myth of Human Supremacy
Page 22
Let’s explore some more examples of democratic and authoritarian technics. Baskets made from reeds would be a democratic technic, because anyone can make them. Obviously, some people can make better baskets than can others, and some people can learn techniques for making baskets which they can choose to share or not share with those around them. But unless you live in an area where there’s only one small patch of reeds who could be claimed and guarded by someone trying to gain a monopoly on basketmaking materials (and even then, you could make them out of bark or grass or some other material), no one can physically control whether you do or don’t make baskets. On the other hand, automobiles are a non-democratic technic. I can’t build one from scratch all by myself. Automobiles require mines (which require forced labor of one kind or another) and mining infrastructures, they require transportation infrastructures, they require manufacturing infrastructures, they require energy infrastructures, they require infrastructures on which to drive your completed non-hand-made automobiles, they require crews to maintain all of these infrastructures, they require military forces to steal, I mean, conquer, I mean, protect and defend, the land where the mines are located, they require police forces to defend these infrastructures from those who unaccountably don’t want these infrastructures on or near their homes, they require managers to keep the whole thing running, and autocrats of one sort or another to tell the military, police, and managers what to do.
Here’s another example. Bows and arrows are a democratic technic. Anyone can make them (albeit poorly at first; I’m not saying there aren’t skills to be learned, and I’m not saying that one person may not be more proficient than another; I’m talking about the capacity to construct and use a piece of technology free of distant control). Can you find materials to make a bow? Can you find materials to make a string? Can you find materials to make an arrow? Unless someone has a monopoly on feathers, you can even fletch it. And if you lose your arrows, you can make more.
Let’s contrast that with guns. Immediately we again run into the problem of mining and smelting the metals. Even if you already have a gun, you still have to get bullets and gunpowder. You (and your community) are not autonomous, but can be controlled by those who have access to the raw materials and infrastructure to create the tools (in this case gun, bullets and/or gunpowder).
Let’s do another. Passive solar is a democratic technic. Anyone can align a home to face the sun. Anyone can collect rocks to store the heat. No one controls the sun (and I can just see the look on the face of a capitalist as he reads this, then jots in his journal: “Note to self: find way to privatize the sun, claim ownership of it, then find way to force people to pay a royalty for each ray of sunshine they absorb. Should be no problem; I’ll pay Congress to pass a law declaring I own the sun and then get the police to enforce it. Get lobbyists on this tomorrow.”).
In contrast, solar photovoltaics, no matter how groovy and “alternative” they may seem, still require all of the infrastructures we mentioned above. They require an authoritarian social structure, with all that implies. They are in no way democratic or egalitarian, and in fact they aren’t even particularly groovy. And they’re incredibly environmentally destructive; take a look at photos of a rare earths mine.
The fact that anyone can make a piece of technology is not sufficient for that particular technics to be democratic. A small wooden plow, for example, would seem part of a democratic technic since anyone can make one, and pull it using his or her own strength. But members of a community being able to make a piece of technology is merely a necessary but not sufficient part of what defines something as a democratic technics. We must never forget that technologies affect our societies, and we must never forget to ask ourselves how these technologies affect our societies. Societies interested in sustainability and self-reliance have always asked themselves how new technologies will affect their communities. To not do so is a fatal mistake.
There are a few reasons we can say that plows underlie an authoritarian technics. The first is that to pull a plow is about as hard as to work in a mine, so plows lend themselves to the capture and use of slaves about as much as do mines. By 1800, about three-quarters of the people living in agricultural societies were living in some form of slavery, indenture, or serfdom, almost all of which could be blamed directly on agriculture. The only reason that isn’t true today is that human slave energy has been temporarily replaced by fossil fuels; when these run out the human slave percentage will return to its former heights. And of course none of this is to speak of the nonhuman slavery upon which agriculture is completely reliant.
Another reason a plow-centered technics is authoritarian is that the product of the plow’s use is food; if slaves are used to grow food for their owners, this means owners control the food supply. Controlling food supply is of course central to authoritarian regimes. The more necessary some product is, the more that control of the product by authorities leads to control of those who need the product; if those in power control my access to Cheez Wiz, they’re not really going to gain a lot of control over me, but if they control real food, they control me.
The authoritarian nature of plows gets worse, though, precisely because of what a plow is designed to do: kill the native life in the soil. As Lierre Keith notes, “Agriculture is biotic cleansing: you take a piece of land, you clear every living being off of it, and I mean down to the bacteria, and then you plant it to human use. So it’s biotic cleansing. The plow is a tool—really, the tool—by which this is done.”
This means plows are part of an authoritarian technics. If biotic cleansing and conversion of a prairie, say, or a forest, to exclusively human use doesn’t constitute the repression by one class of all other classes, I don’t know what does. Just as deforestation harms those humans and nonhumans who live in and rely on the forests to be destroyed, so, too, destruction of prairies, wetlands, rivers (and oceans) and so on by agriculture destroys the lives and ways of life of the humans and nonhumans who live there. Human supremacists may not care, but then again white supremacists don’t care about the effects of white exploitation of other races, and male supremacists don’t care about the effects of male exploitation of women, except, in these cases, where it affects their own entitlement. Human supremacists are the same. And it’s the same imperative.
And now we get to perhaps the most authoritarian part of this whole wretched technics: when a culture destroys its own landbase (through agriculture, through associated urbanization, or through any other means for any reason), it then has two choices: collapse, or take someone else’s landbase. Since cultures rarely choose to collapse, this means once a culture has committed itself to an agricultural way of life—which, by definition, destroys landbases—it is committed to expansion, which means, since someone else already lives there, to conquest. The alternative is starvation. This means the culture must be militarized, with all that implies socially, both internally and externally. I am reminded yet again of Stanley Diamond’s famous quote: “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.” Let’s change a couple of words: Civilization originates in agriculture, which requires slavery at home (and abroad) and conquest abroad.
If you base your way of life on the use of a plow, you have to accept the slavery, ecocide, militarization (which also means a high rape culture), and conquest that comes with it.
You could still argue that the fact that humans invented plows shows human superiority over, or greater intelligence than, other species. If agriculture was such a bad idea, you could ask, how has it spread over the earth, until more than 80 percent of the food that humans consume is derived directly or indirectly from plows? This means it’s essentially feeding 5.7 billion people. How could I call this a bad idea? Don’t I want to eat?
Agriculture has overrun the earth because it provides its practitioners with a potential short term advantage in the application of organized violence. Of course if you convert your landbase into
war machines and into soldiers, you will have a short term competitive advantage in a war with a people who don’t. This doesn’t make you superior, or smarter. It makes you a thief and a murderer, and it makes your way of living unsustainable.
Despite that understanding (or most likely because of it) nearly every list of “humanity’s greatest inventions” includes the plow. Certainly in the top 100. Almost always in the top fifty. Usually in the top few, along with the wheel, the lever, and the screw. Sometimes it reaches the top of the chart, as being one of the inventions that led to all the rest. As one analysis puts it: “The rise of great cultures and empires was based on plentiful [sic] food supply, and that was based on the plow. Wheat, oats, rye, barley, and other grains could not have been successfully grown without a plow. The plow changed the face of the world and habitat for many of the world’s animal species. It was the plow that allowed agriculture to spread across fertile flat lands and push wolves, bears, tigers, and other wild beasts out to the wild and woolliest fringe places of the world.”102
Please note that they’re saying essentially the same thing I am, only they’re saying it like it’s a good thing. And believing that the invention of plows is a good thing is a big part of the problem.
I’m not sure wolves, bears, and tigers would particularly agree. And I’m not sure those humans who also lived in those “fertile flat lands” until they were pushed “out to the wild and woolliest fringes of the world” would be pleased with being forcibly evicted from their homes. Nor would the fertile flat lands themselves be pleased with being murdered (oh, I’m sorry, reorganized). But to a human supremacist, none of the harm caused by this or any other technology matters. What matters is how the technology helps the supremacist. The point of a supremacist mindset is to facilitate—emotionally, intellectually, theologically, physically—the exploitation of others. If some invention serves that purpose, it is a great invention, and a sign of one’s own superiority.
•••
Agriculture is usually presented as the solution to food scarcity. My point here is not so much that this is not true, though it isn’t. Voluminous literature makes clear that human stature, health, and intelligence all decreased with the rise of agriculture. Diversity of diet decreased. Hunger increased. What agriculture did was allow human population to increase, by converting the entire biome to human use. It also led, as we’ve discussed, to increased militarization, increased authoritarianism, an increase in rape culture, the destruction of the biosphere, and so on. It is an authoritarian technic, and has led to ever-increasing centralized control of food supplies. Anyone can catch and eat a salmon from the stream, but the walls in the first cities surrounded not the cities themselves, but instead the grain storehouses, not protecting the cities from “raiders” (e.g., the Indigenous peoples whose land the agriculturalists were stealing), but rather the king’s grain from the hungry people who might have eaten it and thus not been dependent for their very lives upon their Supreme Leader. Controlling a people’s food supply controls them. None of this is the same as being a solution to food scarcity.
But let’s pretend for a moment that agriculture is simply a solution to food scarcity. Let’s compare it to some other solutions, and see which solutions we find more elegant, more helpful, more intelligent, superior.
Some of those living in temperate zones face a food shortage each winter. One approach to this problem is to only live through the summer. This is the approach taken by many annual plants, some insects such as grasshoppers or solitary bees, and many others. Their lives consist primarily of warm and sunny days, as they eat and bask and make love and then leave behind their seeds or eggs for next year. It works for them, and it works for their communities; living only a brief time can sometimes make these plants and animals “first responders” of a sort, who can move in to damaged landscapes and help the land to recover. I’m obviously not suggesting humans (or polar bears) adopt this approach, or even that they could adopt this approach. I’m merely saying it’s a valid approach.
Another approach is to sleep or doze or drift through the winter. This approach is taken by many deciduous plants, and by many mammals (such as the grizzlies we mentioned earlier), and by many fish. Trees often release hormones into streams telling fish when it is time to rest for the winter, and when it is time to become more active in the spring. Hormones from the trees also act as tranquilizers, and then, come spring, stimulants. Wood frogs freeze solid during winter. Their hearts even stop. In the spring the frogs thaw out, and resume their lives.
A third approach would be to stay awake but eat less through the winter. Many beings do this, from mammals to amphibians to reptiles to birds to plants to fungi and so on. Some humans do it as well. The Algonquin peoples called the full moon in February the “hunger moon,” since this would be the month when their food supplies were their lowest. The Cherokee likewise called it the “bony moon.” Agriculturalists have often tried to talk Indigenous peoples the world over into adopting agriculture, but most often the Indigenous peoples have understood what would be lost in this adoption, and refused, only to be forced into agriculture through conquest, the elimination of their foodstocks (such as salmon or bison), and other pressures.
Yet another approach is to follow the food. This is what migratory birds do. It is what anadromous fish do. It is what many ungulates do. It is what those who follow the herds of ungulates do. It is what many whales do. It is what many humans do. Even the Tolowa, living here in salmon paradise, still moved up into the mountains in the summer, and down to the coast in the winter. These migrations are wonderful ways to experience different places while you act as nutrient pumps (with anadromous fish, for example, moving almost incomprehensible amounts of food from the oceans into the waters where they spawn). In the case of ungulates and many others, it is a good way to allow land to rest: bison move in, create wallows, and leave for several years as the wallows become homes for aquatic plants, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and so many others. Passenger pigeons brought in and left vast volumes of feces, which decayed into rich soils (the acidity of which also protected the huge chestnut trees where the birds often roosted; the argument has been made that the eradication of passenger pigeons contributed to the devastation of American chestnuts through changing soil composition and making the chestnuts more susceptible to the introduced chestnut blight). The pigeons would stay a while, gift one forest with these nutrients, and then move on to help another. The forests fed the pigeons in the form of nuts, and the pigeons fed the forests in the form of their feces and their bodies. Everybody wins. Or used to, until this human supremacist culture showed up, killed off the pigeons, and nearly wiped out the American chestnuts.
And the final approach we’ll discuss here is to store food through the winter. This is part of the promise of agriculture. It does store food, but does so in a way that destroys landbases, leads to hierarchies and militarization, and forces its addicts to continually expand or collapse. Let’s contrast that with solutions arrived at by some others to this problem. The Tolowa Indians smoked salmon and jerked meat, and did so sustainably. They did not harm rivers or forests by doing so. In fact, they played similar roles to bears and eagles and ravens and insects and everyone else who eats salmon, in that they carried nutrients in their bodies and then deposited them as feces throughout a forest. This is a vital role in forests, not dissimilar to blood carrying nutrients around the body; it doesn’t matter how many nutrients are in your stomach and intestines if these nutrients aren’t moved to where they’re needed in your body. It’s the same in a forest. Or we can talk about honeybees. Honeybees collect food to last through the winter. And their gathering of this food facilitates sexual interactions between flowers. Gosh, we have a solution that leads to ecological destruction and militarism, or one that leads to the exuberance of sexual reproduction and a literal flowering of the next generation. And what is the superior choice?
Or let’s talk about squirre
ls. They’re known for gathering and storing nuts in the summer and fall, then throughout the winter, digging up the nuts and eating them. A typical gray squirrel needs about twenty pounds of acorns to make it through a winter. Let’s say there are 115 acorns in a pound. That would mean this squirrel would eat about 2,300 acorns in a winter (which, coincidentally or not, is about the same number of acorns produced in a year by a healthy, mature oak of at least some species).
First, since the squirrel hid these nuts, then found them again (partly using smell, but also memory), it clearly has a far better memory than I do. That’s a lot of locations to remember. I can’t speak for you, but whenever I don’t leave my keys in their customary place, I have no memory of where I put them. But squirrels aren’t perfect either; they also sometimes forget. They generally find only a little over 25 percent of their caches. Which sounds about fifteen percent better than I would do. In the case of squirrels, this memory loss—or it could be squirrels playing their part in taking care of the forest’s future—helps the forest. Squirrels plant far more trees than humans do. And it is simply true that squirrels spend far more time planting trees than they do storing food for themselves; to be clear, squirrels spend far more time taking care of the future of the forest than they do taking care of themselves. I’m sure the trees are more than happy to feed them a quarter of their acorns to thank them for their help. To be accurate at all, the book and film should have been called The Squirrels Who Planted Trees, and likewise I probably should have told that simple living dude with the four children that if he thinks not enough trees are being replanted, to take it up with the squirrels. As a side note, squirrels also pay close attention to whether anyone is watching as they hide their food, and if they suspect someone might be eyeing their stash, they’ll make decoy caches in which they only pretend to bury acorns. Scientists have also discovered these suspicions extend far past other squirrels; when the squirrels realized the scientists were disturbing their food supplies, they started making more fake caches to throw the scientists off the trail, or at least waste their time.103