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October 03 2022
Book review:
Ultrasocial: The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest
for a Sustainable Future [0]
by John Gowdy, Ph.D. - (c) 2021, Cambridge Univ. Press
- -
Yeah, I know -- nothing posted since last January. Oh the shame. Guess
I just needed a break. In any event there seems much less need to discuss
collapse-related topics as it clearly has "broken through" into the
mainstream even if all the aspects aren't being fully articulated.
Regarding the Bill Catton books, I took lots of notes but in the end I
didn't feel I had anything to add. 'Overshoot' came out decades ago and
lots of people have written about it. I would also add that it holds up
pretty well insofar as being an accurate assessment of our predicament.
'Bottleneck' is more recent and seemed to me largely a meandering critique
of division of labor post-WWII (the Great Acceleration). Catton's general
take between books remains consistent just with greater awareness of the
acceleration of biodiversity loss and climate weirding. For the curious
some decent reviews[1] of both books are listed in the references.
- -
Catton's long musing on hyper-specialization, aka division of labor,
and how it essentially turns citizens into sub-species which then prey
upon each other dovetails quite nicely with the themes of 'Ultrasocial',
the book mentioned at the opening. At this late hour many people now
have an awareness that we are collectively engaged in an unsustainable
existence, too many people consuming too many resources, excreting too
much non-absorbable waste into the biosphere. We all play our part in
this impending train wreck yet can't seem to come together to avert it.
Why not?
That's what Gowdy's book attempts to address, the WHY of it all.
- -
A bit about John Gowdy:
Like the late E.O. Wilson, Gowdy grew up in the American South, "Gods
Country", mom a fundamentalist, dad a freethinker. Science and reason
won out, especially after they relocated to Washington DC in the 1960s
(dad took a position with the FDA). Exposure to the issues of the
day, civil rights and the environmental movement, followed by being
drafted (Vietnam war) shaped Gowdy's worldview and led to undergraduate
studies in anthropology. The importance of economics to how humans
live ultimately led to a Ph.D. in economics with, probably unusual at
the time, an emphasis on geophysical constraints for which he credits
exposure to a visiting professor, Georgescu-Roegen, best known for
'The Entropy Law and the Economic Process'[2]. Gowdy spent the next
35+ years at the Rensselar Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY studying
various topics relating to the current book. A journal search pulls
up titles such as "Hunter-gathers and the Crisis of Civilization", "Our
Hunter-Gatherer Future", and -- my personal favorite -- "Ultrasociality
and the Invisible Hand"; most of these have the full text is available.
Ultrasociality:
According to Gowdy, ultrasociality manifests as group organization
that is so complex, stratified and interconnected as to function as
if it were a single, self-regulating super-organism. Gowdy goes on
to describe the super-organism as "an autonomous, highly integrated
network of technologies, institutions, and belief systems dedicated to
the production of economic surplus". Sound familiar? It really just
builds upon the work of others, including the economist Fredrick Hayek
and naturalist E.O. Wilson. Hayek is often considered the father of
neoliberalism, the whole market-knows-best thing. See the primers[3]
(YouTube) for a short introduction to these concepts.
Very few species are considered ultrasocial, really just a few ant and
termite species and, much more recently, humans. The interesting bit,
at least for me, is that at some point in their development, evolution
began selecting for group fitness OVER individual fitness. Gowdy goes
into great detail how the various evolutionary pathways -- genetic,
epigenetic, social, symbolic (only humans for last two) -- could lead
to a species becoming ultrasocial. The science of epigenetics is still
in its infancy and new things are being learned every day. Fascinating
stuff, like the merging of folk knowledge with modern genetics.
So, why become ultrasocial? In all cases, these social species in their
pre-agricultural, pre-social forms were minor players and low in number.
Ants and termites comprise over 50% of world insect biomass even though
they are just 2% of all insect species. Similarly, humans and their
farm animals represent 95% of terrestrial vertebrate biomass but are
just a handful of the approximately 4,000 species of mammals. Basically
ultrasociality allows these species to dominate their environment to
its ecological limits. More on that in a bit.
And yes, social ants and termites engage in forms of agriculture, i.e.
they are actively engaged in redirecting natural energy flows for food
production. The leaf cutter ants that E.O. Wilson wrote so much about
are particularly complex, cultivating a specific fungi using organic
inputs, weeding both mechanically and via manufactured antibodies. And
all with NOBODY in charge. Does this mean AI could be a hazard even
without becoming sentient? Maybe it already is?
Gowdy highlights the somewhat disturbing similarities between ultrasocial
ants and termites and the current state of humanity:
- each member plays a highly differentiated role in the surplus
production of the colony.
- members can not live outside of the economic super-structure
of the colony.
Some other disturbing similarities: some ant colonies have been waging
war with neighboring ant colonies for years, have been observed "blow
themselves up" like suicide bombers, and some will take slaves.
The big difference is social insects, having evolved over millions of
years, are completely run via phenotypes and life stage with pheromone
communications, i.e. there is no deviation from the programming, and
their hives remain sustainable*, i.e. they don't go into overshoot and
collapse. I took this to mean that these hives essentially dynamically
adjust to changes in the carrying capacity of their environment.
* In Gowdy's bullet-point presentation[0] he mentions cases where
in unusually rich environments ant colonies have formed into
a super-colony with elevated levels of cooperation until the
riches are no more, at which point the super-colony splits up
into distinct colonies in competition with each other.
Human ultrasociality is far more recent, about 5,000 years ago, coinciding
with the rise of hierarchical state societies. Because humans are social
primates much of our "programming" occurs post-natal via socialization and
internalization of cultural norms. Gowdy goes into the details which
involve brain plasticity and Von Economo neurons, something mostly
limited to highly intelligent social species like elephants, dolphins
and apes. These are the "social" and "symbolic" evolutionary pathways
previously mentioned. Von Economo neurons are associated with the ability
to rapidly adjust to changing social situations and, interestingly, their
numbers can increase (or decrease) with the level of social engagement,
particularly via symbolic language use (demonstrated in apes as well).
The well-observed "group think" phenomena is a good illustration of what
an abundance of Von Economo neurons makes possible.
Obviously human "programming" is NOT fixed, however in a state society
individual roles are largely governed by hierarchical social castes such
that they become highly differentiated anyway. Via inherited wealth and
privilege, according to Gowdy, the structure of society is established
in familiar ways:
- laws & taxation (institutional)
- police & military (physical)
- religion & culture (psychological)
- meta-narratives (framed reality)
The power differential is biased towards those at the top of the heap and,
external disruptions aside, results in an ever-increasing proportion
of the productive surplus flowing to the elite caste. Unlike social
insects for which arguably the entire hive benefits from any surplus and
any reduction in surplus likely acts as an attenuating feedback, human
civilizations for the reasons stated tend towards increasing inequality,
with elites failing to heed any feedback signals received until there
is some external interruption, the classic boom and bust pattern that
eventually leads to civilizational collapse.
On human nature:
Anatomically modern humans have been around at least 300,000 years and
probably much longer, especially if one extends membership to prior
humanoid iterations. And for nearly all of that time we've existed as
immediate return hunter-gatherers living in small, egalitarian groups
with no private ownership. Hunter-gatherer "technology" essentially
consisted of community commons and the knowledge needed to utilize
it. Over-exploitation of lands and waters was largely avoided by nomadic
migration and the fairly small numbers (non-human apex species are always
small in number). Gowdy goes out of his way to dispel several myths
such as the late Pleistocene mega-fauna extinctions (climate change not
over-hunting; there were massive temperature swings during that time).
Fun fact: only a +/-40ppm CO2 change was needed during Pleistocene
to swing from the warmth of the Holocene (280ppm) to an ice age
(200ppm), typically over a 1,500 year period. We are now at 420ppm,
140ppm over the 280ppm pre-industrial baseline in just a few hundred
years, 78.5% (110ppm) of that since 1950. Expect bumps.
Gowdy points out that until the Holocene arrived which brought more
arid summers favoring annuals (particularly wild grains) over perennials,
hunting and gathering was really the only option. While altruism and
egalitarian values aren't "baked in", neither is the greed and selfishness
so many neoliberal economists ascribe as our "base nature", and we have
had much more time -- and a better time -- living with the former.
To bolster this argument, Gowdy points out that while the adoption
agriculture was the first step towards ultrasociality, there was a
long period, say 5,000 years, in which humans managed to function in
semi-permanent settlements with little hierarchical structure; something
worth pondering. Gowdy provides a plausible story of how the transition
from hunter-gatherer to hierarchical states may have unfolded while
conceding that a definitive story has yet to be worked out. What is known
is hunter-gatherers didn't adopt agriculture, they were subsumed by it.
The super-organism:
Early civilizations arose roughly the same time in China, Near East and
Meso America largely exhibiting the same characteristics, implying one
simply needs the precursors in place without any human intentionality.
Basically once a certain sustained level of coordination is achieved
evolutionary forces begin to select for the group as a whole, initiating
a positive feedback. Run the process long enough and you get a transfer
of complexity from the individuals to the group, with the individual
subsumed borg-like into the System. Actually not that dissimilar to what
Ted Kaczynski said in his essay 'Industrial Society and Its Future'[4],
aka the Unibomber Manifesto, and Gowdy considers it a possible future,
abet not the most likely.
It's not hard to show that for most of the last 5,000 years civilization
has been pretty lousy for the vast majority of humans. It has resulted
in deteriorated health and longevity (until fairly recently and only for
some), has actually shrunk our brain cases (lower intelligence compared
to pre-agricultural humans), weaken our jaws, wrecked our teeth, greatly
reduced our leisure, and largely eliminated our autonomy. Add to that
degraded, depopulated ecosystems and various existential threats and it
equals a pretty shitty deal.
Fast-forward to our present, with a globe-spanning fossil fuel powered
human super-organism maximally eating the planet and largely thwarting
any attempts at deterrence from this destructiveness. The ubiquitous
surveillance cameras in modern states is the latest manifestation of
the System's self-regulation. Gowdy argues that neoliberal ideology
has become the meta-narrative that frames virtually all thought. If the
market isn't part of a proposal it's a non-starter; everything must be
monetized so the markets can work their magic.
Our hunter-gatherer future:
Because human ultrasociality is such a recent development Gowdy feels
we are still basically the same as our hunter-gatherer ancestors,
still uneasy with the ethos of the super-organism, still craving a
simpler, communal existence. While a swift return to such a life is
not possible at our current population numbers Gowdy feels aspects of
our hunter-gatherer past could be incorporated into the current economic
system to buy more time for the inevitable simplification.
Gowdy points to Nordic countries as examples of intentional attenuation
of the dominate neoliberal ideology to steer more of the productive
surplus to the citizenry. Although this is a good thing it's at most
a first step towards what is presently needed, a "minimal bio economic"
program, for which Gowdy includes:
- min & max limits on income & wealth
- fair distribution of economic gains
- universal healthcare & education (must at least be affordable)
- expansion of protected wild areas, ex. E.O. Wilson's "Half Earth"
- eliminate fossil fuel use as much as possible
- work towards the elimination of all instruments of war
- reduce (non-coercively) human population to level sustainable
w/ organic agriculture.
(puts our numbers back to under 2 billion, as in 1900)
The author feels most people would support these policies; I'm not so
sure but in any event I can't see it happening in the US any time soon
given the political climate and the levels of regulatory capture but
hey, I'm a pessimist.
Ultimately even these rather radical changes are insufficient according
to Gowdy as it leaves capitalism in place which has a baked in growth
imperative, "the logic of a cancer cell" according the late great Edward
Abbey. In the long-term -- assuming there is one for humans -- Gowdy
sees a return to living off natural energy flows at close to our historic
population levels (pre-agriculture humanity was well under 500 million).
Existential concerns:
Aside from the obvious catastrophe that a global nuclear war would be,
Gowdy expresses concern that there is still enough fossil fuels to turn
the planet into Venus, citing EIA projections. A recent study[5] suggests
those projections are much too high and that the world is at or near peak
extraction for oil and gas, with coal not far behind. That said, there is
already enough heat in the oceans and CO2 equivalents in the atmosphere
to end the Holocene with a likely 2100 average temperature increase of
3-4 Celsius. It should be noted that there are several credentialed
people saying that humans will essentially go extinct once we pass 3C
due to tipping points cranking up global heating at rates too fast for
most species to adapt to. Past geological warm periods were usually
followed up by cooler periods but one has to get there to be counted.
Blinders and impediments to change:
Gowdy identifies several cosmologies or beliefs that he feels impede the
changes needed:
- belief in the inevitability of progress, a secular religion of sorts.
This belief leads to a conflation of techno-advancements with genuine
improvements such as aggregate intelligence (lower), knowledge (some;
uneven), well being (uneven, fairly recent & not likely to last).
- belief in human exceptionalism. Free will and individual agency
likely either don't exist or are not at levels imagined by most,
as illustrated by the similarities between social insects (largely
mindless) and human civilizations.
- the belief that rational individual choices are the prime mover
of society. The author feels this is one of the primary themes
of the book, that society is not driven by individual choices but
rather the requirements of making a living, i.e. individual choice
is actually framed by the economic system they exist in. Devo
said it well[6].
Conclusion:
I'm not sure how many could be successfully dissuaded from the above
beliefs but perhaps it'd be enough to simply get people to consider
that there may be larger forces at work which largely explain why
things are the way they are without the need for vast conspiracies or
scapegoats du jour. Just that shift in perspective may be enough to get
people seeing some of the ways the System keeps them at their stations.
You must see the chains before you can begin breaking them.
- -
Refs:
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ultrasocial/FE883BB2158FE38C96DD8670E99CC730
Bullet point presentation (1:17): https://youtu.be/E5mTBY3ZCSg
[1] Overshoot review: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/003335490912400121
Bottleneck review: http://theoildrum.com/node/5954
[2] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281653
[3] YouTube Gowdy primers via the FAN initiative:
Superorganism: https://youtu.be/K9sXS-CgRsk, https://youtu.be/crbwbKJSgAQ
Humanity Post-Ag: https://youtu.be/3uYEhEb6JSE
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber_Manifesto
[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666049022000524?via%3Dihub
[6] Devo - Freedom Of Choice: https://youtu.be/dVGINIsLnqU