Civilization: It’s Cause and Cure
A Brief Glimpse at the Unavoidable
The only cure for civilization is more civilization. The disease, like ivy, has to grow and spread, until it saps all the life out of the tree it clings to, and then it perishes.
— Edward Carpenter
To those of you whose literary horizon extends a few years at best, I have to confess that I lifted the title of this post wholesale from Edward Carpenter’s 1889 essay, well, of the same title. Carpenter, a trained mathematician, eclectic philosopher, and recreational social critic like me (and a poet and gay activist, unlike me), went to work with a lot more depth and subtlety than I can muster; alas, to each age its authors. They had less screen time then.
Civilization
In the same vein as the “Back to Nature” movement, inspired, among others, by philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Carpenter viewed civilization as a disease, as a departure from the natural and harmonious order of things that brings an estrangement from ourselves, our fellow humans, and the natural world. I know that the word “disease,” applied to our oh-so-proud achievements, appears a bit heavy-handed, but maybe it helps to read the word as “dis-ease,” uneasiness, strain, or disharmony. I don’t know about you, but I see much of that around me. Today, you need superior grit and decades of self-improvement just to experience occasional stretches of inner peace and maybe tiny moments of bliss along the lines of Naval Ravikant.
The best case is I’m a rat who might be able to look up at the clouds once in a while. I think just being aware you’re a rat in a race is about as far as most of us are going to get.
— “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”
While we are playing with words, let’s have a quick look at “civilization” itself. Being based on the Latin term “civitas,” which means “town,” it comes with its own inbuilt definition—a civilization is a city-building culture, and a city is a bunch of people living in close proximity and doing things not even closely related to food production, namely, industry and culture and economy and freeloading and posting critical essays. Therefore, any civilization needs a considerable agrarian hinterland and something easily overlooked when you see civilization just as a complex system of shiny gadgets and even shinier abstractions—an abundance of energy, raw materials, and food. The agrarian hinterland must be much more than just subsistent; it must produce massive excess. And this is it.
Its Cause
While it plays to our collective narcissism to see our civilization as the only civilization ever and the cause of it our own brilliance, industriousness, and highly evolved personalities, ahem, nothing could be further from the truth. Civilizations have happened many times and will happen many times, and the only necessary and sufficient condition is the availability of an energy surplus that can be conveniently exploited.
Egypt had the annual Nile floods bringing massive fertile stuff owing to the Ethiopian highland’s monsoon rains; Rome realized that, by virtue of a hard-knuckle army, they could conquer, subjugate, and exploit their neighbors and benefit much more than they invested until they couldn’t anymore; and we, as you might have heard before, stumbled across half a billion years of stored sunlight in an easily accessible, storable, and chemically pliable form that could sponsor just about any party from ubiquitous central heating to global supply chains to worldwide near-instantaneous communication and all the rest of it.
Yes, I’m talking about fossil fuels like coal, crude oil, and natural gas. While I know that this is not the whole story, it’s the crucial part. I’ve written elsewhere about the weird concomitants of overfunded projects, and when I looked closely at the list of overfunding symptoms like wasted resources, freeloaders, accountability vacuum, excessive risk-taking and excessive risk aversion in paradoxical proximity, declining efficiency, overall bloat, and more, I came to the strange conclusion that our civilization—and indeed any civilization—behaves pretty much like an overfunded project. Let me reiterate more clearly: A civilization is just an overfunded project involving a whole culture. It’s not the work of a line of geniuses (who need to eat and time to learn and think), it’s not the work of evolution (which is mostly just adaptation), and it’s certainly not the work of the gods, who are mostly not that interested in our vain doings.
While Carpenter saw the “spiritual sickness” of artificial needs indicated by materialism, inequality, and environmental degradation as the cause of civilization, I’d relegate those things to the status of mere consequences of the too-much-ness of excessive resources. Complexity theory has long since observed that complex systems get more complex when more resources are available; this is sometimes referred to as “complexity escalation.” We aren’t so special after all; I don’t know about you, but “this time it’s different” lost its appeal to me when I was fourteen or thereabouts.
Its Cure
In my elegiac post on the much-ballyhooed and, incredibly, often completely misunderstood and, in some circles, utterly forgotten “Limits to Growth” report from way back in 1972, I hinted at the observation that, despite what a few fringe intellectuals might think, the “standard run” of our civilization apparently runs its course, and things will be back to normal in the next one to three centuries, “normal” meaning robust and indefinitely sustainable splinter-state feudalism with a knightly code for policing and a monastic system in lieu of the internet as we’ve seen in medieval Europe, in Japan during the 1603–1868 CE Edo period (look up shogunate and bushido if you’re interested), and in India during both the earlier Gupta empire and the 700–1200 CE Rajput era (check out Kshatriya Dharma), among many other places. What is arrogantly called the “dark ages” from the perspective of peak abundance and a giant home built by hundreds of energy slaves [1] was indeed an extremely sophisticated, resilient, and sustainable form of society, although I hope we can salvage a few nice accomplishments like women’s rights, cool jazz, and the scientific method to the next one. That’s about as highly cultivated as we evolutionarily made it without extravagant overfunding from how-knows-what.
So, we need no cure; we need patience. Everything goes according to plan. As I’ve written elsewhere, there are quite a few well-known but unpopular policies apt to considerably extend the lifespan of our civilization, but to my knowledge, they’re nowhere to be implemented in earnest, and maybe they’re not even the best choice of action. We all know where good intentions may lead. Perhaps Carpenter nailed it best:
The remedy for the evils of civilization is not less, but more civilization; not less, but more science — not less, but more art — not less, but more culture.
— Edward Carpenter
To paraphrase that famous Marx quote, civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction. Still, it might take a few centuries until we get there, so maybe you’re interested in a few hacks you can use to alleviate the burdens of civilization rather sooner than later. Here are a few suggestions; note that they’re personal, not societal, and they’re nothing new—Carpenter himself advocated strongly for them, and he didn’t invent them either because they’re timeless. While it won’t cure civilization, it will help you overcome much of your own dis-ease, which mirrors and manifests the dis-ease of society.
- Return to nature. Our city-building culture perforce excludes as much nature as possible, and while everybody with the least bit of self-awareness feels full well that artificial environments make us sick and unhappy, it takes tremendous effort to get out once you’re fully “socialized.” Go and spend time outside the built environment each and every day, at least for a few minutes; a forest or seashore is perfect, but even a vacant, overgrown lot or an undermanaged garden will do.
- Simplification. There’s nothing like slapping a metric ton of rammed earth in place, with your own hands, in freezing temperatures, alone in the dead of night. That floor will be a strong and beautiful foundation for a long time, and while you might feel ten years older for a few days, you’ll come out stronger and more resilient against the cheap allures of your regional hardware store.
- Personal and spiritual development. Anything is better than nothing; choose according to your beliefs and tastes. It might be reading Hildegard von Bingen and Meister Eckhart when you’re old-school Christian; it might be Eckhart Tolle, Wim Hof, and Naval Ravikant when you’re atheist spiritual; or it might be something more obscure and deeply relevant to your own subculture and bioregion. The point is, as long as you’re a person of the masses, you’ll share the fate of the masses and the concomitant uneasiness of the civilized (read: domesticated) human. Take charge of your life and go your own way!
Notes
[1] The term “energy slaves” was coined by Buckminster Fuller and refers to the immense amounts of energy available to each of us, not just in the global north, that equates to many, many private slaves working for us. Stuart McMillen made a beautiful graphic short story about how Fuller might have come up with that concept.
