Are We Modern Humans Evolvable?
Expansionist humans have been rising and falling, building empires great and small, for millennia. Meanwhile we moderns continue to degrade a planetary life-support system. A complex, adaptive, dissipative but non-evolvable system, like a whirlwind, can keep on doing so until it is no more. Mutating into a non-viable form of human involved no intent, no meta-reflexive foresight intelligence. Mutating back into a viable form of human, one unlike the one that we mutated from, will involve informed intent. If viability is the target, we need to know where to aim.
“What if we had to change who we are, worldwide, in order to survive?” — Bob Coppock
Evolution might stop humans from solving climate change, says new study
What if we are an expansionist, metastatic form of human turning a planetary larder of fossil fuels and minable metals, minerals and materials into an expanse of future ruins most will die fighting over to see who inherits them (for a time)?
“We moderns are really not good at solving these kinds of problems. “ — Bob Coppock
Few understand that modern humans have a problematique, or what it might be. No national or global institution in the world focuses on exploring, understanding and thinking through the meta-issues of human existence other than from within the consensus narratives that formed them (e.g. industrial growth ideology). The many lists of existential issues/threats facing humankind is evidence that truly serious and deeply disturbing work lies ahead of us. But we’ve known this since the 1970s.
As a species we have not begun to imagine the nature and depth of the trouble we have caused for our ourselves and all life on this Earth…. — Ruben Nelson
There are three quite different forms of civilization: nomadic hunter-gatherers, settled agriculture-based, and techno-industrial. “Implied is that fundamentally new forms of civilization can emerge in human history. There may be hope for us yet that a fourth form of civilization could emerge — a form of civilization able to understand, respect and live within the limits found on this Earth.”
Our K-strategist pre-expansionist ancestors, the prior K-culture form of forager humans, are the context of the expansionist r-culture of our Man the Hunter, agrarian, and industrial forms. Any viable, low-energy industrial/agrarian form will again be a form of K-culture that could include the information content, the flower and fruit, of MTI (Modern Techno-Industrial) society.
In no case has the emergence of a new form of civilization been a conscious, intentional act/project undertaken by our species. Rather, in every case, the transition to a new form of civilization was driven by a new energy source, potentially sustainable if agrarian, and unsustainable if industrial (mining of anything is unsustainable, except for mining salt from seawater by solar evaporation). Some renewables (e.g. wood, peat) can be harvested sustainably.
It was not an optional, chosen process, but selected for — those who resisted agricultural toil were replaced by the many more (e.g. slaves, warriors) that agriculture could support. It was also a very long slow process by modern standards — sixty-five thousand years of expansion for Man the Hunter foragers, ten thousand years for settled agriculture-based overcomplex empire building societies, and centuries for our MTI (Modern Techno-Industrial) form of civilization to rise to great heights of hubris, empowered by fossil fuels.
It’s been a seemingly (to modern humans) long process, no progress implied, towards our dissolution. Our world (view) will end. Whether humans persist, and whether they preserve information of value, the next century to millennium will likely determine (it took the Indus Valley Civilization 600 years to fail).
While forms of culture have evolved over very long periods of time (6.5 million years among hominins), the hope that we can consciously, meta-reflexively and successfully undertake such a project in the 21st Century appears to be illusory.
- Today, there is no serious and organized effort dedicated to changing our non-viable form of expansionist MTI culture. It simply is not on the agenda of any serious and substantial group. (The loose talk of a new “ecological civilization” is locked well within our MTI frames of reference.)
- As of today, the capacity to undertake such work does not exist in any governmental or non-governmental organization or institution in the world, including academic. Worse, no institution aspires to develop a capacity to critically question the MTI consensus narrative. No analogue of the Manhattan Project is being developed to design a potentially viable form of civilization able to persist long term.
- Current research suggests we do not have even a century to get our act of evolutionary personal-to-civilizational deep adaptation together. In short, as of today, it is the case that as William Rees says, “We cannot alter long-standing patterns of either bio- or cultural evolution…” [Ruben Nelson]
Plan A (e.g. Jack Alpert’s plan for three hydro powered megacities) is to transition 8 billion and counting Anthropocene enthusiasts into their opposite form. This may well be the only potentially viable plan.
There is no Planet B, but plans B (should plans A fail) are to consider. The question is, of 8 billion, are there 8 serious and substantial humans who could form one planning group?
Optimum decision making group size has been empirically determined by experience to be in the 7–13 range. Could there be 20 groups of serious and substantial humans who maybe know enough to have an insight/evidenced-based opinion?
The founder population of Māori that took New Zealand can be estimated by archaeogeneticists to have been about 400. So >400 or even less (e.g. Sentinel Island) may be considered a viable founding population provided it is a viable form of human able to persist beyond MTI dissolution and “replenish the Earth” as K-strategists organized enough to identify remnant r-cultures and cooperate to contain them.
What differences might be made if one or more of the Earth’s billionaire’s or governments/NGOs decided to commit to transitioning humanity towards a viable form? We simply do not know. Today, no such person or institution appears to exist. But even if such a person emerged, we need to understand that the collapse/great simplification of MTI cultures is already baked into our future. A ghastly future for most 10 year olds is the overshoot/ debt we Anthropocene enthusiasts are incurring.
A failure of prepared minds to offer a viable alternative to demagogues-with-solutions prior to climax, before the downslope spiral to possible extinction, will be a failure of too little too late, and our overshoot debt will become an extinction debt.
“As a species, we have got ourselves into a mess of living complex messes which we cannot even understand as long as we seek to understand with the eyes, minds and hearts of MTI persons in MTI cultures. However, it may be possible to learn to transcend our formation as MTI persons and cultures and by doing so make reliable sense of the messes we are in, how and why we got here and our prospects for leading ourselves out of the Wittgensteinian fly bottle we are in (if you do not get the reference to Wittgenstein see a short video by Ruben Nelson here.)”
As a species, we have bifurcated into two forms: from 1) a viable K-culture hominin living within limits we, the now 99.999%, split off as a 2) non-viable (long term) r-culture expansionist 75k years in the developing (see graphic).
Unlike a metastatic cancer that always destroys the body it depends on for growth, we MTIed ones will continue to degrade a planetary life-support system until we go extinct, whether in 50 or 50k years, or worse, develop into a sustainable form of Borg-like expansionists.
We cannot go back to living in bands of K-strategist foragers as only a more complex form of civilization can monitor for the reemergence of r-cultures that will, like metastatic cells, expand to repeat the pattern (not if but when). The level of complexity needs to prevent any repetition of empire building, and does not imply that the group size individuals live in be overcomplex. A non-social organization above the band-size of 20–50 needs to exist, but also be minimal enough to be viable long term.
No one needs to “live in” the higher levels of complexity. The non-social group size is in the 7–13 range and may be hierarchical (but not a social dominance hierarchy), while social groups of 20–50 are not — other than to serve ad hoc duties.
The needed organization would be between groups of 20–50 communities of 20–50 community members, a condition that selects for trust. Each group of communities would then have to agree that no group of communities can invade/conquer another group of communities, and if any do, all groups will cooperate to depower the world-be empire builder/expansionist r-culture in the making. Yes, there are details, but this is enough, maybe. Humans don’t get to choose what group size is viable.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
More typing:
One question is, did Wittgenstein get out of the bottle, and if so, did he help one or more other humans to get out? If not, he did achieve the idea of getting out. How many humans today have even the idea of getting out (i.e. of actually walking away from Omelas)? If there are 7–13, have any come to notice the existence of any of the other 6–12?
If so, have they formed a Union of Concerned Elders to plot a pathway towards a viable outcome? So far as I know, if 7 is minimal, there are not enough humans on the planet having the potential to rethink/renormalize, such that someday there could be enough humans on the planet to love and understand it enough to live with it properly as evidenced by posterity’s long-term persistence.
The form of r-cultural evolution cannot be repaired, fixed, turned into its opposite. It is incompatible with K-strategist living. Hubbert’s matter- energy systems worldview is incompatible with the r-culture’s monetary culture/worldview. The r-acculturated cannot even understand that they are not K-strategists, because the textbooks and all experts (including Bill Rees) say humans are. This is the fly bottle.
Why is it that there is no serious and organized effort dedicated [to a viable transition] and that no institution exists that aspires to develop the necessary capacities? The r-acculturated human cannot go against the foundational presuppositions of their form of culture until they realize they are flies in a fly bottle (denormalized animals with no long-term future).
“ It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair 1934.
To extend the fly-bottle analogy, imagine fruit flies, and a larger than one-quart bottle. The initial larder of exploitable food (energy) takes multiple generations to extract and dissipate after the first few flies find their way into the jug. Ten generations (10 days each) on, and all the flies assume that everything is going great in this, their best of all possible worlds.
Some wonder about “other worlds” but no one thinks about how to “get out,” nor do any have an understanding that normal, evolvable fruit flies don’t live in bottles. That the larder will run out of food is one predicament. A cognitive failure to foresee this outcome (to not understand that one’s condition is non-viable) is another.
There are now over 8 billion flies in the bottle, i.e. Plato’s cave. Some like to tell stories of getting out and can Like and Share the idea of an imagined enlightened few who seek to escape and maybe even do, but are thereby captured by other images (e.g. World Transformation Movement), and remain trapped in their social construct/narrative, cut off from Spinoza’s God.
Oh, and is a transition/escape actually possible?
Yes, possible, as we hubris ones don’t even know enough to know that some foresight enabled humans could not walk away, leaving their MTI baggage behind. Can the 99%…? No.
Could 0.0001%? Maybe. Could that be enough to replenish the Earth with K-strategist humans post contraction? I don’t know, but I know how to find out — guess then test — and 25k tests would be better (more likely to work) than a not remotely viable one egg in Earth’s basket or even three potentially viable hydro powered megacities.
And if possible, what are the practical first steps that we captives of MTI sensibilities might undertake to catalyze the process?
Practical steps we flies can take are:
1) Guess: form planning groups of 7–13 members to rapidly design a potentially viable community (e.g. of viable population size given long term human biological limits, i.e. 20–50, range 5–85, 28 average size).
2) Identify potential locations for 20–50 communities (also an observed forager number of bands/camps/communities needed for exogamy and therefore also a needed want).
3) When 20–50 compatible community designs can be detailed, publish them.
4) If any of perhaps 3 billion potential adult heads of household can seriously consider “voting with their feet,” take applications from would-be immigrants who self-select into agreeing with the “rules of the game.”
1) Test: when 20–50 planning groups have potentially viable systemic designs with compatible limits, and there are 400–2500 potential citizens of a group of interacting communities that agree to test a design for both each community and a collection of interconnected communities that agree upon the rules of the game or social contract, then they liquidate all their MTI assets (used to buy a majority of property in an area) and relocate to an area (see step 2 above) that could support 20 to 50 potentially viable communities (total population size 400 to 2500) and auto-organize with input from the 7–13 designers of their community and 140–650 designers involved in designing the 20–50 communities who may or may not be among the citizens who will endeavor to make the group of interacting communities work.
2) When there are another 400–2500 potential walkers-away, a new set of communities will locate next to the first (for mutual support/protection) or found another pioneer group of communities at another site. Doing the math, 25k groups of communities would have a likely population of 25k x 400 to 25k x 2500 or 10 to 62.5 million — figure 20 million provided the population is within carrying capacity on a degraded planet.
Maybe there will be 50 million in Jack Alpert’s megacities. Maybe not. If enough food is stored within each group of communities (watershed management units) to support 10x the long term sustainable population without fossil fuel inputs, then the initial population could be 200 million that would have to agree (which would likely exclude about 8 billion people who self-select out, i.e. would rather die than live like animals without cars or smartphones) to a rapid birth-off to avoid a die-off.
Are there enough potentially viable humans out of 8 billion and counting to form even one group of 28 communities of 28 members (e.g. a watershed management unit) of 784 people? There is no evidence that there are this many humans who could seriously consider trying to get out of the fly bottle (who? me? in a fly bottle?).
What is unpredictable but foreseeable is a collapse of modern humanity’s belief in its consensus narrative. Everyone will want to replace it with another. Many demagogues will crawl (are crawling) out of dark places to provide solutions (tell you who to blame/kill).
If there are better stories in place pre-climax, some people may have enough foresight to not join the marauding horde. What we face is a Great Selection. Zero is a number that can work — be the outcome. Not thinking good or bad — the Gaian system will recover. Humans may not be part of it.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
For involuntary change, join MHEM. The belief that you are a free agent, with free will to choose your future (or get modern humans to choose their future), is error floating on a sea of ignorance in a thick fog of illusion.
[Note: MHEM membership excludes politicians and the recently (<1 year) politically active, including environmentalists. Otherwise, with the exception of the San, Hadza, and Pygmy, all other humans are Modern humans, and acknowledging that such is who and what you are is the requirement for being MHEM. MHEM includes members who celebrate Modern human life and favor the extinction of all life that humans do not value (aka “Hypers”). Hyper MHEM supporters may prefer to join Hyper MHEM. A minority faction views the condition of being a Modern human the way AA members view the condition of being an alcoholic — i.e. non-viable. The author is obviously one of the “Or-nots” after breakfast who seek to “just say no” to the Anthropocene. Both arms of MHEM agree that Modern humans will go extinct — to be replaced by Hypers or Or-nots (or regionally some of each) has yet to be determined (by the nature of things).]