Towards Simplicity as a Solution
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity,” Thoreau fervently scribbled during his time in the woods, of which I’m currently reading about. Who needs the achingly superfluous excesses of modern life when you have your basic needs met and the free time to enjoy life simply with serenity. How much have we over-complicated our lives in these modern times?
What I find interesting is that we assume that life will continue to become more and more complex, and we assume that we can’t resist or stop the onwards march towards complexity. It’s inevitable, we believe. Life processes become more complex through evolution, we believe. We believe it as much because our mythology dictates it to us. Our grasp of history is poor and rose-tinted, and as such we have no idea that there’s a point in which all civilisations reach ‘peak-complexity’ — ie. the point by which further complexity brings costs too great to bare upon the society. The complexities, rather than solving problems, like they used to, now just create further problems of a more expensive nature. It seems to be a malady that infects large civilisations, and comes to a head during times of resource exhaustion. We must innovate, we must find more, we must do more of what we are already doing, we think. But when you’re at the point of diminishing returns, further complexity doesn’t bring respite, it just tangles you further within its web.
I think a lot about the trajectory of the ‘green’ movement, and how for the most part it is now quite fixated on the idea of ‘green energy’ saving the world. There’s lots to dwell upon in that belief. For a start there is hubris in thinking the world needs saving. The world will be fine. It’s humans that might be in trouble. But the point I reflect on most is this idea of green energy being the saviour of humanity. That if only we transitioned towards renewable energy we’ll be fine. The industrial machine can roll on. Green Industrialism is predominant in the mainstream of the green movement. But can we really call the algae growing on the side of a disused nuclear reactor amongst a jungle of concrete and weeds, green? Is this ecological? Or is it just the desperate last throw of the dice from an increasingly desperate industrial society? To ‘green’ the industrial economy would be devastating, perhaps an evolution worse than the industrial revolution itself, as far as the health and survival of humanity is concerned, because it would, at this critical juncture, take us down a route of oblivion and probably past the point of no return. We assume evolution is a good thing — but sometimes you can hit a ‘progress trap’ — ie you can get so good at something you end up creating new problems, that wouldn’t’ve otherwise existed. Imagine a Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer getting so good at hunting they hunt all the animals in the region, and end up starving as a result. It happened.
Mythologically-speaking we’re deficient. A bit like B-12 injections — our version of mythology isn’t of sustenance. And it’s drastically unimaginative. Our myths perpetuate this idea of the onward and upward march of complexity, but tells us that we will prevail in the end. It doesn’t tell us that sometimes we fuck up and can end up being swallowed by the abyss. Our mythologies are overwhelmingly anthropocentric — the ‘natural world’ (something that exists externally to us, in our modern mind) exists merely to supply us with what we require. Old mythologies were animated with the life of the animal and plant kingdoms. The humans were often just another walk-on character. It wasn’t always about us. How different a belief system would you grow up with if you weren’t always put at the centre of the story, but were just another, significant and important in your own way, character in someone else’s story.
The simplistic notion of the greening of the industrial economy leaves little room for the devil in the details. The devil being purged, he goes off alone wrecking havoc without our awareness. Where does all the concrete come from for all those wind turbines? Where do all the rare earth elements come from that power modern technology? How do we maintain our vast road infrastructure without oil and its many products? But more importantly what’s it all for? Why are we doing it? At the very least let’s stop calling it green, because green suggests nature and ecology, whereas all of these developments suggests that the march of the anthropocene will continue, with unforetold consequences. When does someone just say stop to all this madness?
Simplicity can be a vision for the future and if we do it consciously and by design then we can perhaps avoid some of the destruction that comes when simplicity is forced upon you, as happened at the collapse of the Roman Empire. We are trying to control feedback loops we have very little understanding of. The best thing we could do now is walk away, take a step backwards, pause, breathe and think. Backwards and downwards could be a vision for the future, except its sweetness may taste bitter to our overly sweetened taste. It’s a bit like the sweetness of a ripe raspberry, compared to the sickly sweetness of diet coke. One is authentic, one synthetic.
Joseph Tainter’s study of the Collapse of Complex Civilisations has all the lessons we need. The Romans, Mayans, Mesopotamians — they each faced crises and decided to do more of what they already knew in order to try to fix it — and failed. The Romans debased their currency and went to war, the Mayans grew more corn, the Mesopotamians farmed more land leading to salinisation and desertification and we’ll continue to find new ways of powering Industrialism’s insatiable appetite for energy. There’s a sweetspot of complexity, and we’ve surpassed that so maybe it’s time to walk away from the table, and consider treading a path of greater simplicity and perhaps on that trek we’ll find something worth living for and will re-find our place within the grander cycles. Hubris will always meet Nemesis.
