FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2022: NOTE TO FILE
The Dawn of Complex Societies
Overcomplex societies are not everything
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: TOO CLEVER BY HALF, FROM THE WIRES, NOT NEARLY SMART ENOUGH?
Abstract: The dawning of the age of complex human societies (of humanity whose verbal behavior and social interactions were more complex than those of other primates) evolved for hundreds of millennia until human sociieties transitioned into unsustainable patterns of overcomplex overgrowth enabled by technology. If modern techno-industrialized humans persist, it will be by standing down from their hubris heights to again know their place as an evolvable subsystem of Gaia. In all due humilitas, posterity may transition to again live viable lives as the millennia pass. Some humans of today, should some persist, will have to properly assess (not underestimate) the difficulty of avoiding a ghastly future, as failure to do so could prove fatal to our species.
COOS BAY (A-P) — For the last 375k years, our ancestors lived in band-sized complex societies (CS1), commonly in groups of 20 to 50 trusted others, within a comfortable band-size range of 5 to 85. Dunbar's number of 150 should be thought of as a maximum, not an optimum, approaching and beyond which stress increases and trust decreases (conflict increases) until the group splits into daughter groups.
Bands depended on other bands for mate exchange to allow for needed exogamy. Bands needed to gather with other bands at rendezvous sites to exchange genes and memes. Bands that exchanged members typically shared a common language and culture. Each band likely had relatives living in nearby bands, perhaps sharing a tribal identity with an impulse towards common defense should those with different tribal identities threaten them. Interconnected bands in a region, e.g. a watershed, typically numbered 20 to 50, so living in urban regions is not normal. Living in groups of 35 who at various times rendezvous with 35 other bands, one or a few at a time, to share genes and memes is normal with respect to human biology. All 35 interconnected bands likely never met up in one place at one time for logistical reasons, and potential for high stress and conflict.
The nomadic norm limited material acquisition, and the size of bands limited hierarchy and complexity. A band may or may not have a leader other than on occasion. There were no professional leaders. Modern humans who favor anarchy should consider living in band-sized communities with only occasional contact with other communities. Within a band's range, when agriculture developed, permanent settlements were possible within a few hours of foraging/gardening sites.
For the last 10k years, increasing numbers of humans came to live in settled communities (CS2) enabled by agriculture, plant (p, CS2p) and/or animal (a, CS2a and CS2pa). Initially the people in permanent settlements continued to live in band-sized groups (CS2b), and remained normal, functional humans differing from their ancestors in terms of their biophysical economy based on low-intensity forager-gardening instead of foraging only. Some rendezvous sites developed permanent structures, and some humans, such as elders with limited mobility, from multiple bands, could live on stored foods (e.g. grains) year around in one place for the first time.
The ability to transport large amounts of grain/storable foods to a rendezvous site after harvest enabled longer occupation, such as through the winter in temperate areas. Conflict between band-sized groups that dispersed during the growing season, selected for agro-empowered larger groups (having a competitive advantage, an ability to exploit/dominate/conquer smaller groups). Such overdensity populations selected for hierarchy, stress, and altered behavioral/social/cognitive dynamics even though, as a result, the condition was not sustainable as the millennia passed. Overcomplex, overdensity settlements resulted in the arising of chiefdoms (CS2c).
Conflict between chiefdoms selected for larger chiefdoms having a competitive advantage for the price of increasing pathologies (physical and mental/cognitive). Winners acquired material resources, stored food, livestock, and captives/slaves (e.g. children and women to breed), and were in a position to conquer others because they could. Those who did expand, grow, subsume... built empires (CS2e). Those who didn't, tended to be conquered. Grains (or in the Andes potatoes) could be stored and transported over increasing distances to support ever larger, increasingly urbanized principalities, city-states, and empires. Taxes could be gathered in the form of food, and professional armies supported.
Centers of production and consumption arose, e.g. cities. With overcomplexity came money and a monetary culture (for a time). Empires (CS2e) and empire building proved to be for a time, i.e. not sustainable in that the dynamic selects for their failure. Post-climax, CS2e societies weakened and those who were not conquered by an arising CS2e during its growth phase if one were nearby, collapsed into a 'dark age' followed by recovery, or more commonly, they collapsed without recovery in a self-extinction event (if there was no one to conquer them such as went the Indo-Europeans arrived on Easter Island).
Agro-empowered empires (e.g. Egyptians, Mongols, Aztecs, Incans) lacked energy and technology for global transport and were confined to regions of the planet. The use of technology for exploitation of sources of energy other than food (e.g. wood, wind, geothermal, water empowered industry) enabled the development of techno-industrial society (CS3, e.g. the Roman Empire).
Later, after its Wood Age, empowered by a planetary larder of fossil fuels (FF), the first global fossil fueled empire (CS3ff), the Euro-Sino Empire (aka Modern Techno-industrial society/monetary culture) arose to become the first global empire. The dissipative structure initially arose in Europe, then shifted to North America to exploit resources, and climaxed in the Sino region in the 21st century.
The future of Modern Techno-industrial (MTI) society (CS3ff) cannot be foreseen in any details, but a range of likely best-guess possible futures can be. In 500 years there could be zero humans on or off of planet Earth, i.e. the global empire could collapse and, as there are no known interstellar empires to conquer MTIed humans, a collapse to self-extinction, as has happened regionally about four dozen times in the last 10k years, and so is a significant possibility/probability. A collapse event followed (typically after 500 years) by recovery is also a significant possibility. We know nothing. We can guess probabilities.
Humans, being clever apes, could maximize their adaptive potential and transition to a global population of up to 3 billion humans assuming all planetary primary productivity is diverted to support humans, directly as crops (including wood/fiber) or indirectly via livestock/fishstock consumption. There are known biophysical limits which determine maximum (however improbable) population numbers which involves minimizing per capita consumption, assuming waste products are contained within viable limits.
MTI society, which viewed Earth as a planet for the taking, could persist by becoming a benign tumor on the face of Gaia (e.g. by making a Green New Deal work to transition to a steady-state MTI economy), then expanding (as a CS3e) into the Milky Way, viewed as a resource for the taking. The likelihood of achieving this outcome is unknown, but perhaps far less likely than undergoing a self-extinction event.
Individuals may prefer a future that is not on this spectrum of possible futures, i.e. some can prefer impossible dreams, i.e., self-select out of the future.
If the extreme edges of the CS3 spectrum (extinction or a Borg-like expansion) is not preferred, there are other possible futures within limits which we may be ignorant of and fail to account for. Given common clothed ape preferences, what would a viable, long-term future of humanity look like? What would a viable CS4 future involve apart from not being a CS3 society?
The short answer is to return to what worked and 'know the place for the first time', to both recover from acquired psycho-social-cognitive pathologies and prevent old and new pathologies from arising to end what is viable. Change within a complex, dissipative, adaptive, and evolvable system is a given. Complex, dissipative, adaptive, but non-evolvable structures (e.g. whirlwinds and MTI empire building societies) do not persist. A CS4 system would be transitional, seeking to recover patterns of living properly with the planet by understanding it ('for the first time', which requires listening to Nature who has all the answers).
MTIed humans would need to understand that they have lost functional behaviors over typically an 8 to 20 generation period of increasing overdensity living, a behavioral sink effect. The recovery of functional behaviors, perhaps over an 8 to 20 generation period, would need to be intended, which implies a conscious recognition of behavioral, social, and cognitive pathologies, a condition that selects against them.
Understanding the need to recover normal human function would be a precondition for the transition. A CS4 civilization would be transitional to a de facto functional CS5 civilization, the nature of which the CS4 peoples would have to iterate towards over a 200 to 500 year period. To envision less time needed may be to continue to fatally underestimate the difficulties of avoiding a ghastly future. To not recover within 500 years may extend our failure to a condition of never recovering. Understand that we are players in a high-stakes endgame. Failure to play better can have extinction as outcome (extinction of humans, not just species we CS3 humans are causing the extinction of).
The details of a CS5 form cannot be foreseen by CS3 humans, nor by CS4 humans who must guess then test to iterate towards a condition of what-works, as only the nature of things determines, after the fact, after the passing of millennia of sustainable persisting. That a CS5 civilization would be viable long term, as the millennia pass, would be true by definition. A CS4 people could, by becoming evolvable again, iterate towards knowing what a CS5 society looks like until they become one as evidenced by the passing millennia. Whether humans will recover and transition to a sustainable form of complex society is unknown. That we do not know enough to exclude the possibility should be self-evident, as obvious as our current state of error, ignorance, and illusion are. Any consensus that humans have come to understand the planet enough to live long term with it properly should await the passing of at least 10k years of evidence that humans are againt an evolvable genetic and memetic subsystem of Mother, and so are playing the game properly.
No CS3 peoples like this story. Nature doesn't listen to our primate prattle. At least most stories are not 704 pages long. Only humans, the storytelling animal, think their story merits so many words, words, words.
For an alternative view of the last 30,000 years of the human story, for a view which is not remotely about everything even if every word typed was spot on, read on.
