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Title: Second Nature
Author: Murray Bookchin
Date: 1996
Language: en
Topics: dialectics, social ecology, nature
Source: https://archive.org/details/BookchinSecondNature
Notes: Transcriber’s note: The two source recordings of this lecture can be found at the following URLS, Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_6WsYBMow4][www.youtube.com]], and Part 2 [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbHcupHZRM0. Both were published on 1st October 2018 by the Institute for Social Ecology.

Murray Bookchin

Second Nature

I tried last week to create some sense, first of all, of what social

ecology was and what its premises were. And when it came down to working

out or heading toward developing what you would call an ethics, I went

through a great deal of natural evolution as you’ll remember, and tried

to show what meaning there was in the organic evolutionary process.

What I would like to do today is continue that to some extent (and

perhaps go into other issues as well given time) and examine the social

process that emerges out of this biological process. Both the

continuities and discontinuities that exist between what can be called

natural evolution and social evolution. And what meaning can be given to

social evolution.

The meaning that I try to give to natural evolution is that one can see

any kind of development that lends itself to rational interpretation in

the evolution of organisms.

From our lowly amoeba all the way up to our sublime primates, this was

the development of self- consciousness of mind. That is to say, going

from the most elementary forms of sensibility, identity, as you might

find in an amoeba, all the way through to self-consciousness,

intellection[1] (you recall my steps), and finally reason.

And only human beings—and I say they are unique in this respect—are

capable of reasoning on a level of generality that makes them creative

to an unlimited extent. Where most animals adapt, and that is their

primary function from an evolutionary standpoint, of various mutations,

changes, elaborations, in the evolutionary tree, as it was—as it

flourishes and flowers out clear through from the Paleozoic all the way

up to the Cenozoic.

That we have seen an ever greater development of consciousness,

intellection and the rudiments of mind, and by mind I mean reason in a

human sense. That is the say, the ability to flexibly create one’s

environment. And that human being’s are constituted by natural evolution

itself to intervene in the environment. Not simply to adapt to it. Not

simply to find a niche in the environment or secure way of living. But

also to change it.

That’s what is unique about human beings: using their rationality, such

that the environment is suitable for them; not leaving it up to

evolution to make them suitable to changes in the environment.

Now that’s an enormous qualitative step. It’s a qualitative difference.

It does not mean that the world was made for us. It wasn’t made for

anyone. In fact it wasn’t made. It evolved, cosmically speaking, over

billions of years.

It doesn’t mean that we can or should be cruel to animals. It doesn’t

mean that we should “dominate” them in any sense over and beyond what

our simple needs are (and you can argue about the wisdom of eating meat

or not, and so on).

Our animals’ power are very important together with human labour power

for thousands and thousands of years in cultivating this planet. And

making it possible for us to sit and talk about what should be done with

this planet. Or how we fit into it. So that human beings, if one were to

ask, what their place is in the natural world, recognising that by the

“natural world” we’re talking about evolution.

Nature as we understand it, as we are talking about it, is evolution.

Otherwise the word “nature” dissolves into being anything. Anything that

contains molecules, and that is anything as such— atoms, electrons,

protons, neutrons, etc—that would be nature.

If one goes beyond that notion of nature as being more than just that

which exists, we are talking about the biosphere. And when we talk about

the biosphere we are talking about its evolution. Otherwise the word

“nature” becomes so big, so promiscuous as it were, so “universal” as to

become almost vacuous. It becomes the being that is nothing.

So we are talking, when we speak of a natural world, or when we speak of

the biosphere, we’re talking about evolution. And it is always evolving.

The image of a beautiful scene as we stand on a mountain top (or look at

a sight set aside for visitors and tourists of a national park, and the

like), that scene is deceptive. Nature is never frozen in that sense. It

is always evolving and even when we look at it. And it seems to be

static. There are changes going on that may not be perceivable to us at

that given moment. But over a period of time it would indicate changes

that are very far reaching—soil...mountains are being eroded, valleys

are being formed, rivers are changing, lifeforms are undergoing change,

particularly on a microbial level and so forth... This is going on every

second. So the frozen image that the picture postcard gives us, [which]

one expands [on] with great passion, and speaks of all the beauties of

nature, are forever changing; are forever evolving. And the point that

I’ve tried to demonstrate, or at least argue last week was that this

change has been taught forever greater consciousness, sensibility,

intellection, and finally rationality, which we, at long last, are

potentially capable of exercising to an extent that no other life-form

can even match, however intelligent many life-forms may be. And that

expresses itself in our creativity, not simply in our adaptability,

which is what marks most life-forms (they [merely] adapt to their

environment).

Since we’ve been organised by natural evolution to intervene, as I told

you this is not a sinister plot by social ecologists to create people

who meddle in the natural world all the time, this is the product of

millions and millions of years of evolution involving changing simple

rock forms into weapons, or into cutting tools, or whatever you like.

We have also evolved in a way that has opened a new area of evolution: a

second nature.

This new area of evolution is socio-cultural.

What we have done is create, out of whatever tendencies certain animals

have to group together to form some kind of community, the most basic

[...] or nuclear is, frankly, the mother-child relationship.

What has happened is we have elaborated whatever apparatus we have

genetically or otherwise. A new realm of development that is not

strictly biological and in fact is whose essence is to become less and

less biological (which does not mean we can ever escape from our

biology).

This is the realm of social relations, and very specifically (and this

is what makes human communities different from any other animal

community), we established institutions.

That is to say, we don’t simply have animals grouping together. And we

can get into a whole discussion on who going to be dominant and who’s

going to be submissive in various kinds of animal groups. And remember,

possibly 50% of all the animals we talk about do not form groups at all.

Most cats are not social. Leopards are not social. They are solitary

animals. Lions form prides, but they are almost rare by comparison with

all the other felines that exist in the wild. And even your domestic

house-cat is basically not a social animal. That doesn’t mean that these

animals don’t try to communicate with each other, in a sense, for sexual

reasons. It doesn’t mean that they might interact with each other

because of territorial reasons. All of these things are true.

But they do not form even the most elementary types of communities when

we speak of the kind that we speak of when we refer, say, to the

behaviour of deer; when we talk of herds of bison. They don’t do that at

all.

So you would have to write off even certain primates like the orangutan,

which is a solitary ape, and is a genuine ape, and is part of our

hominoid lineage. Our lineage of human-like primates; diverging from us,

I don’t know how many million years ago, but still part of that lineage.

So the remarkable thing about human beings is not simply that they form

herds, like zebras or bison... It’s not simply that they form even

communities like apes, that seem to have a measure of stability or

although that measure is very fragile. But what human beings do is that

they go beyond the formation of groups into the formation of

institutions. Now this is remarkable.

An institution is a distinct way of organizing your interaction with

other members of your species or, more specifically, other members of

your group. And not only is that a distinct way of doing so, almost—to

use the word in the most expanded fashion—a kind of social-contract, it

is also a way of interacting in a mutable way. You can change

institutions.

We all know that families have a history. That they have been, according

to some theorists, group families, extended families, matriarchal or,

more precisely, matricentric families, patricentric families,

patriarchal families, nuclear families. And here we’re talking about the

most basic level of the bio-social relationships that people establish;

involving how children are raised, involving how the two sexes interact

with each other, what they rights and duties are...all of these have

been modified over thousands of years. There’s an institution that we

call marriage which is extremely variable. This becomes far more

flexible as we start getting into ways of administering societies.

We have bands at the most elementary level, where perhaps ten or less

people seem to form a kind of community and extended family, as it were,

of administering society. And they are based on kinship. What makes you

a member of a band is the fact that you are related to a common

ancestor. Whether that relationship is real or fictitious is not the

point. The point is that there is a belief that you are related to a

common ancestor. And very frequently, and certainly at one point or

another, early on in the prehistory of humanity that common ancestry was

very real. It was not fictitious.

Then after ward we have tribes. And we form clans in these tribes. And

there too the kinship relationship is very pronounced: the blood tie.

And people who do not have a shared blood tie with us, be it fictitious

or be it real, are regarded as outsiders. They’re inorganic, as Marx put

it. They may become participants in the community, they may even be

brought in as members through various rituals, including such childish

rituals (or at least what today we regard as childish rituals) namely,

mixing blood by pricking your skin. So you had tribal organisations. And

these tribal organisations are merging out of band organisations were

themselves very mutable—they began to form tribal federations. The

tribal federations in turn become increasingly more and more like

nations. And they began to have increasingly national institutions. And

these might include monarchs early on emerging out of chieftains. Or you

had cities which had citizenship and admitted people according to

certain oaths, or according to systems of rights and duties. So these

institutions are very mutable and ultimately some of them graduated from

autocracies, into oligarchies, and finally into various democracies and

republics.

I can go on and on with every institution you can possibly think of. So

now we are talking of the following. We’re talking of ways in which

human beings interact such that no animal does, namely by forming

institutions, which no animal does. Even if you believe that everywhere

in the animal world you have relations of dominance and submission,

you’re only talking about individual dominant animals, or individual

submissive animals. But you’re not talking about institutions.

The relationship changes according to whether or not the animals lives

or dies, be it dominant or submissive. With institutions, on the other

hand, you have something that has been preserved irrespective of whether

or not a king, or a president, or a commissar...lives or dies. That

doesn’t change.

So what is remarkable about human social evolution is that you see an

evolution of institutions.

And the community that human beings establish differs profoundly. This

new second nature, which now undergoes an evolution of its own (or a

development of its own, or a history of its own, use whatever words you

want) undergoes a development of its own. An elaboration of its own on

grounds that are fundamentally different to the kind you see in the

natural world.

The real question that one faces is this: if this animal called a “human

being”—normal human being —is potentially capable of being rational,

potentially capable of being creative, potentially capable of changing

his or her environments such that no other animal [or] creature can do,

then will that animal, or can that animal, or should that animal, create

institutions that are themselves rational as well?

In other words, should this second nature, this evolution live up to the

basic capacity that make us human beings unique—namely, the capacity to

be rational and self-conscious?

Now that doesn’t mean, when I speak of capacity and potentiality that

they are at any given time rational or self-conscious. They may be

totally irrational. They may be totally blind to their own awareness or

abilities.

And we recognise that ordinary discourse. We often say “Oh this woman,

or this man, this child, male or female, has not lived up to their

capacity—what a waste...!”. In ordinary discourse we are always mindful

of the potentialities of the individual to fulfil himself or herself.

[...]

And the compelling obligation in a sense of the whole human experiment

or experience on this planet is: will human beings as potentially

rational beings fulfil themselves in a rational society?

And that compels us to ask, what the heck do we mean by “rational

society”?

What is a rational society?

This is a very unpopular question because now we’re not supposed to

believe in reason—we’re supposed to believe in intuition. It’s unpopular

because it asks a very demanding question: by what standards are you

going to judge what is rational? Is a democracy rational? Is capitalism

rational? Is egotism rational? By what standards are you going to judge

this?

And here we must go back again and examine something not only about the

evolution of amoebas but the evolution of human beings.

[...][2]

Now the earliest evidence we have of institutions, organised

institutions, go back to at least band and tribal societies. There we

find everything is on a bio-social level.

Note well: that I have not said “sociobiology”, because sociobiology in

fact freezes human beings according to their genetic apparatus; you’re

stuck with your genes and that’s that. Those are the ultimate

implications of a sociobiology or what is called an “evolutionary

psychology” today... I do not accept that point of view. I do not regard

that as being a valid interpretation of human development, or a means of

interpreting human development, because the most striking feature of

human development is precisely the fact that human beings develop beyond

their genetic apparatus. That is to say, acquire cultural attributes not

just genetic attributes, not just biochemical attributes, that determine

their behaviour, or that profoundly affect their behaviour.

So going back now to early human development would be to find our, when

we investigated, certain potentialities that are very remarkable from a

social point of view. From a non-genetic point of view.

What we find first of all, human beings at the band level and frequently

at the tribal level can live communally. They can learn to share. Not

simply to care. Chimpanzee mothers can care for their infants. Human

mothers and fathers (hopefully) care for their children. But they can

share.

The most important advantage that seems to confer this freedom of using

arms—of having four legs that now turned into arms—is the ability to

carry. The ability to carry implied that this kind of animal, our

ancestor, could bring food back to a community. And is more suggestive

of the fact that such an animal was capable of sharing and even went out

and pursued with the purposes of sharing than anything else. So that

community began to form around the idea of sharing. Around the need for

giving, and the reciprocity of giving and sharing, which seems to lie at

the very heart of the development of our species even anatomically not

only in other respects culturally.

The next great move we begin to see is the ability to fashion—fashion

cutting instruments.

And fashion weapons for the purposes of hunting. And for all I know, and

there’s no evidence to show otherwise, hunting strangers, other human

being, or other hominids. But more importantly the ability now to

intervene in the environment and literally hunt down food with

instruments that are not part of your anatomical equipment. Lions can do

these things. Tigers can do these things very effectively [...] But

their capacity to kill. Their capacity to acquire food is part of their

anatomical equipment. We now find an animal can do what leopards, lions,

tigers and whatever you wish, but using instruments. Spears, arrows, and

so forth, in order to hunt other game.

Again we see a development beyond the anatomy, the inherited equipment

more broadly, of such forms of life. And with that we see new

relationships established between this form of life called “homo

erectus” or “neanderthal” people, who certainly had spears—we know that

now.

[...]

And so we now begin to see evidence of a hominid, or more precisely a

human being, homo sapiens, that can now act upon the environment through

tools. Now there’s something that is more remarkable than we can sense

about this phenomenon. The tool is an extension of human powers. And

more precisely an enlargement of human powers. First of all it has to be

conceived of. That requires insight to an extent than no [other] animal

really has (although chimpanzees can “make” tools out of simple twigs,

but that’s hardly a great phenomenon when you consider sea otters who

can use rocks to break open oysters).

What is remarkable about these tools is first of all that they are

clearly fashioned with a distinct intention. They are fashioned for

versatile purposes. They are more multitude of purposes— protection,

hunting down game, and so forth. Tragically, I was going to say warfare.

But the point about this is that an alienation has taken place: a

separation from the natural world indispensable for enlarging the

creativity of this human creature, this animal. Yet it is an alienation

that is still part of a natural environment.

Another great advance besides tools is the discovery of fire, and the

uses of fire. And human beings have been using fire for at least a

million years. Many great plains that exist today, [...] that provided

sustenance for immense herds of animals, were artificially created by

human beings who set fire to the grass and destroyed saplings and the

encroachment of the forests on these lands. And indeed most of the

plains that existed east of the Mississippi river on the continental

United States were created by paleo-Indians or Indians generally before

Europeans settled the coast.

And probably vast areas of what we call plains were not natural in any

sense. They were created by human beings early in prehistory, who

deliberately tried to provide an environment for herd animals on which

they subsisted, at least in part. So that human beings were changing,

long before what we call civilization, the emergence of civilization,

they were changing this environment dramatically using tools and using

fire. And that story goes up until relatively modern times when it is

now known that statuesque, giant, virgin or original forests of the

Northwest that are so widely admired today. The great ancient forests

were kept as such by Indians, native Americans, who set fire to the

grasslands around there, destroyed the shrubs, for two purposes: one, to

make it difficult for animals to conceal themselves in the shrubs; and

secondly, to prevent enemies from using it as camouflage against the

community. So that these ancient forests are ancient primarily by virtue

of human activity. Many of them would not be able to grow to the size

that they did; acquired the almost temple-like beauty that they had,

which we’re all familiar with from photographs, were it not for human

actions.

At the same time we begin to see not only a sharing community beginning

to emerge with institutions, but the emergence increasingly of

institutions that tend toward hierarchy.

Part of this is even protected notably the emergence of gerontocracies:

rule of elders over the young. Because the elders are frail, as I only

know too well. They require assistance, as I know only too well. And

whatever wisdom they have to offer, and that is becoming more and more

diminished these days...in a preliterate culture that has no language is

the product of a long experience inscribed on their brain. There are no

volumes to open. There are no encyclopaedias. There are no schools.

You have to go to the elder to find out what is the best way not only to

engage in certain ceremonies, not only to untangle areas of bloodlines,

so that marriages can arranged properly. But also, simple practical

details of how to hunt, how to form camps, how to read the weather, and

so on. [With] this instruction the elders become the encyclopaedias of

the community and increasingly they have the potential, and later they

begin to realise that potential, of having greater control. All the more

because they are increasingly dependent as they grow older. They are

dependent upon the younger to provide means of food, to provide the

means of life, to protect the community. So we begin to see these early,

almost natural, forms of domination organised around age groups.

At the same time we also begin to see the emergence of different gender

cultures: female and male. In fact these are very early. These

distinctions emerged very early on in the development of humanity.

And lastly, and significantly, we begin to see that the most able

hunters are also the most able warriors.

And the more neurotic elements among the community become the shamans,

who seem to be gifted with the powers of enquiring spirits in a spirit

world, where everything has to be accounted for by virtue of the action

of spirits, be it disease, be it good fortune in hunting, be it a simple

accident... all to be blamed on spirits. The world is completely

infested by spirits. And the shamans are there to collect that

superstition, and utilize and manipulate it. For their own ends, no

matter how much the New Age today may love shamans, be inspired by

them...the fact of the matter is they are among the first politicians to

appear among early tribal communities.

What we begin to see within the community itself is a gradual

stratification. First around bio-social features: kinship, gender, age.

And then, further, entirely unique, political (namely shamans who

cultivate suspicions and fears of spirits), and lastly we begin to see

warrior castes beginning to emerge (the most able of the hunters). And

with increases in population the beginning of serious conflicts between

tribal communities.

Thus we begin to see a transformation increasingly, not only toward a

hierarchy and hierarchical institutions, but we also begin to see a

transition into specifically social institutions. The shaman is no

explicable in biological terms. Kinship is explicable in biological

terms. Gender differences are explicable in biological terms. Age groups

are explicable in biological terms. The shamans are not. And warriors

are not. And with them chieftains are not. And the formation of tribal

confederacies based around chieftains that become kings, like Odysseus,

like Agamemnon, and so on... are not.

We also begin to see something that is remarkable and that is the

emergence of cities. Many of them structured religious goals. The temple

being the most important. And sometimes the temple and palace being the

most important buildings in any city (anyone’s who’s studied Maya

culture will know this).

But now political authorities begin to emerge. And the state. And now a

new evolution begins to take place.

And the most important problematic that this new evolution begins to

raise is, first of all: to what extent can the egalitarian, sharing,

practices of tribal life be preserved and transformed so that they fit

into urban life?

To what extent can hierarchies be controlled such that people can live

in a more participatory type of political society?

To what extent can be shared, those bio-social features like kinship,

gender differences (I don’t mean make them disappear obviously) but

shared their hierarchical implications as hierarchy begins to develop?

How can this be done?

And this becomes one of the searing problems of what can best be called

human history. It becomes in the last analysis what has been called in

the 19^(th) Century “the social question”. That social burden that we

begin to develop at the same time that we move away from a largely

nature-based form of life with nature-based institutions, into

specifically cultural and political structures...institutions, such as

the patriarchal family, such as chieftains, such as urban life and all

its demands politically as well as logistically, such as the problems of

agriculture, ownership, and so on... All these issues now begin to

emerge and also the issue of class rule—those who control or own

property, and those who are placed in an oppressive and exploitative

relationship to the owners of property. These issues now begin to emerge

and begin to pose the question of how a rational society can come out of

this soup that has been produced by the development away from first

nature into second nature.

Am I clear here?

[1] Transcriber’s note: for the record he actually says

“intellectuation” but this is highly likely a mispronunciation of

“intellection”, so I have amended this.

[2] End of recording 1; start of recording 2.