Cultural Physicians
“To achieve sustainability, the world community must write a new cultural narrative that is explicitly designed for living on a finite planet, a narrative that overrides humanity’s outdated innate expansionist tendencies.” — What’s blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial, 2010, William Rees.
A cultural physician is one who seeks to diagnose cultural pathologies and treat them (not a multi-cultural physician treating cross-cultural patients). Since modern techno-industrial (MTI) society is not a pathological, dysfunctional, nor non-viable form of civilization, no one need apply for the non-existent job of turning sick societies towards health, towards viably working long term. If modeling the climate is the problem, because climate change is the greatest threat to the persistence of metastatic modernity on the planet, then “climate modeler” would be top job.
If ecological overshoot is the greatest threat, if the overshoot debt we Anthropocene enthusiasts have so rapaciously worked to incur is the pending cause of our extinction when posterity fails to pay the debt, then “systems ecology” would be top job. All nations would agree to spend thousands of dollars to help systems ecologists better understand, diagnosis our problematique, and prescribe best-guess treatments to renormalize humanity back to living as a viable K-selected form of human able to understand and live properly with the planet. But a thousand dollars x 195 countries is too much ($195,000) for humanity to — the UN need money for human rights research and Sustainable Development Goals advocacy.
But overshoot is the outcome of the emergence of modern human behavior (culture) 75k years ago within a small population in Africa that lead to the Great Human Expansion within and out of Africa about 55k years ago, a remorseless (and unsustainable) expansion that is climaxing this century. The expansionist culture (r-culture) is the pathology in need of treatment by cultural physicians, of which there appear to be none (nor even the idea that there needs to be if humans are to renormalize).
Asking about our diagnosis and prognosis as a form of civilization is apparently not thinkable as we the people of Modern Techno-Industrial culture are presumed to be at the top of a chain of being, sane and sapient, and not a pathological form of denormalized animal in need of treatment/intervention, so asking “what’s wrong with us?” and seeking to offer an honest assessment is not a spreadable meme.
There are too few “cultural physicians,” and if there are any, they work unpaid and mostly ignored if possible, and obfuscated and canceled if not. If necessary, they will be killed, or at least handled with a chain. Everyone’s salary/income depends on not viewing themselves are a pathological form of animal domesticant (rouge primate). We may smile if Pogo has met the enemy, but he is certainly not us.
Collectively we are like Steve Jobs faced with pancreatic cancer (metastatic, aggressive cancer that never just goes into remission, with up to a 10% survivability rate if rapidly and aggressively treated by oncology physicians) who tried dietary changes suggested by YouTube experts. Doing the same and expecting to (believing one can) muddle through to a full recovery is business-as-usual cognition.
Normal K-selected hominins (non-rouge-expansionist form) lived in groups of 20 to 50 (average 28, range 5–85). Regions within which lived related groups (also typically in the 20 to 50 range, total population 400 to 2500) who shared a common language, defined social norms (exogamy is a need and, among normal hominins a want, and individuals traveled to visit relatives in other bands, and if invited, may join them. Larger group size and number of groups allow for too few interactions, and select against trust, a need and, among normal humans, a want.
Into a vast expanse (Africa/Eurasia) of K-culture type humans, the expansionist r-culture form could, on the leading edge of expansion, form larger groups of hundreds who, when push came to push back, would always win (280 aggressive expansionists vs 28 K-strategists). They could scalp a region of resources for the taking (which may include megafauna), and then move on, leaving some of their elders and less enthusiastic members behind to lord over those who were allowed to persist, who would learn the language and r-culture of their conquerors/saviors (the pattern that worked, was selected for, was kill the males and breed the females for our Y-chromosomes tell the tale). Modern humans are the outcome. The reproductive success of expansionistic males began 75k years ago.
Modern Lord Man now lives in 36 megacities and counting. Living in a city of more than 10 million is not needed to denormalize humans over multiple generations. Living in any group larger than 150 (Dunbar’s number) will also denormalize humans, but any city (>5k or by recent norms >50k) or town (>500 or by recent norms >5k) will take fewer generations to achieve non-viability (to exceed critical mass in number and density).
If renormalizing involves living within limits and in groups of up to 50 in an area of up to 50 codependent and interacting communities (per compassionate cultural physician), then modern humans would rather die than live like evolvable animals. Of course, before dying, r-culture types would rather kill first, especially if doing so is profitable.
The modern form of r-culture is a competitive monetary culture, which adds to our list of overcomplexity overshoot pathologies. Related is the condition of lack of trust. The condition of competition selects for mistrust.
Among ‘people of place’, e.g. the traditional San who live in groups of 20–50 as the millennia go by, trust is assumed as is cooperative coexistence. Everyone finds food (gifted by Nature) by living within limits as agents of the biome they depend on, and everyone shares.
By comparison, we moderns are not normal humans, all the more so in that we believe we are normal and exceptionally gifted beings. Aside from being just a little lower than the angels, we modern humans are denormalized domesticants of NIMH.
If we moderns had more cultural physicians such that we were at risk of being changed, we would have to kill them. Only a few individual moderns can consider that what is psycho-social individual pathology is also endemic to the form of culture and civilization they are products of and serve.
Renormalizing within any form of modern r-culture is not possible long term, and no modern human can renormalize fully, but only partially within a lifetime. At best we can work to help the next generation become more functional, so that perhaps in as little as 8 generations, a viable — renormalized-enough-to-persist — form of K-culture could again become the norm.
The “cultural physician” job description is unposted, non-paying, and no modern human wants one to threaten their denial. This is not unlike all prophets of yore whose worth’s unknown, although their height may be taken from a distance. They endeavored to correct pathologies they seeth, although they may be forsaken thereby.
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Friedrich Nietzsche was a modern human messed up enough to realize he and the rest of us needed a cultural physician. He was the first Modern to claim the role, and so may be viewed as the first modern cultural physician. There have been others who may be viewed as cultural physicians, e.g.
Laozi c. 604 BCE
Siddhartha Gautama 565 BCE
Zhuangzi 369 BCE
Carneades 214 BCE
Epictetus 55 CE
Jianzhi Sengcan 529 CE
Baruch Spinoza 1632
H.D. Thoreau 1817
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844
H.G. Wells 1866
Albert Schweitzer 1875
Alfred Korzybski 1879
Aldo Leopold 1887
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889
Aldous Huxley 1894
Charles K. Bliss 1897
M.K. Hubbert 1903
B.F. Skinner 1904
Gregory Bateson 1904
Rachael Carson 1907
Garrett Hardin 1915
John B. Calhoun 1917
Al Bartlett 1923
H.T. Odum 1924
David Pimentel 1925
William R. Catton, Jr. 1926
David Suzuki 1936
Ruben Nelson 1939
Donella Meadows 1941
Ted Trainer 1941
Theodore John Kaczynski 1942
Dr. Gabor Maté 1944
Jack Alpert 1944
John Trudell 1946
Daryl Davis 1958
…
John, Jack, Gabor, Ted, Ruben and Daryl are still trying, but I think I’m correct in noting that too few moderns are. But there is the “teachable moment” wildcard, so I have no basis for slacking off — and maybe you don’t either.
“The conditions that are over the individual’s or group’s space and time horizons remain hidden and have little influence on behavior. Long term human and ecological viability outcomes get little attention. One explanation of this inattention is our evolved brains, and our developed culture do not include or process conditions that have not yet occurred. Normal thinking, dominated by experience, conspires to produce personal behavior and group collected behavior that act against long term viability…. Time blindness is complex in that it has many operational levels. Each omitted level, creates a blind spot in our view of reality. Each spot prevents a view of an injury producing predicament and the development of a behavior that could unwind it and create a viable human civilization.”
— Jack Alpert
”Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein
From Maximum power in evolution, ecology and economics Section 5
5. Maximum power, science and philosophy
The MPP (maximum power principle) has roots in philosophy. Thirty-six years before Lotka argued that evolution was guided by his principle of maximum energy flux, the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that evolution was guided by a ‘will to power,’ which leads natural systems to develop in ways that increase their power. His work was influenced by a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century natural scientists: Roger Boscovich, Jean-Marie Guyau, William Rolph, Julius Mayer and Maximilian Drossbach. Drossbach writes, ‘we only have a proper understanding of force if we recognize it as the striving for expansion [Streben nach Entfaltung]’. Nietzsche agreed. [K-culture is defined by a striving to live within limits to maximize the empower of the whole system, while striving for expansion to serve short-term self interests defines modernity, r-culture.]
Nietzsche used his concept of the will to power to take a unique, naturalistic approach to his critique of philosophy. It provided a foundation for a thermodynamic framework for the growth and flourishing of life that he used to describe how different forms of behaviour and knowledge either fostered or undermined this growth. He did not therefore criticize moral values for being immoral or forms of knowledge for being untrue, as most philosophers attempted to do; he attempted to view humanity from a perspective ‘hardened in the discipline of science’. He viewed his famous critique of morality as a ‘science of morals.’ He saw himself as a cultural ‘physician’ that cuts away that which undermines growth and encourages the use of ‘natural’ or ‘healthy’ moralities that remove ‘hostile’ elements ‘on the path’ of the growth of life.
The best example of a twentieth-century cultural physician would have to be H. T. Odum. In his book Environment, Power, and Society, Odum evaluates moral values, religions, and political systems from the perspective of a thermodynamic framework of growth based on the MPP. The similarities in Odum’s and Nietzsche’s perspectives are quite extraordinary; but we can also learn a great deal from the differences in their analyses. They have very different views about the value of democracy, religion and war, among other things. Nietzsche thinks democracy, religion and peace undermined the growth of life. Odum argues from the perspective of an evolutionist that democracy provides valuable information and choices to leaders that can foster growth; certain forms of religion can foster growth and war can foster growth at certain stages, but eventually it can come to undermine the growth of mature social systems. If we take into consideration the unique perspective they share, these important differences make sense. They are not analysing social systems from the perspective of some ahistorical conception of truth; they are analysing them from a scientific perspective that evolves over time. The treatments prescribed by twentieth-century physicians are very different from those prescribed by nineteenth-century physicians. It is certain that there will be enormous changes in our energy regimes over the next half-century. If the changes we make in our economic and political philosophies and structures are not consistent with good science, our efforts will fail. A critical issue is that if, and as, EROI continues to decline, inflation is inevitable. People tend to blame inflation on governments, which will make polities increasingly ungovernable — just as we need good government.
[Good government would be what proved to work for six million years — live in communities/bands of 20–50 trusted matrifocal others all watched over (governed) by Mothers of loving grace. Oh, but modern humans as political animals would rather die…. Okay, not a problem.]