Rediscovering Alternative Modes of Civilization
A path to balance
1 An uncivilized history
Before we introduce a model to help frame the many crises we face and take positive action, here’s a quick historic overview to put things in perspective:
Modern civilization seems addicted to progress, forgetting the wisdom in our history. Flawed ideas from the Enlightenment era, like dualism, and theories on the progress of civilizations continue to shape modern thinking. These concepts that paved the way for capitalism are deeply engrained, leading us to see progress as inevitable, view nature as an exploitable resource and labor as a commodity. It's time to reconsider progress and explore paths that prioritize true well-being.
Exploitation
The rise of capitalism hinged on the belief that we are distinct from nature. Influential entities like the church, Enlightenment thinkers, and elites played a pivotal role in popularizing this notion, enabling the exploitation of nature for economic gain. Similarly, separating the mind from the body facilitated labor exploitation, while associating women with nature led to their exploitation to produce a larger workforce. These divisions empowered a privileged few to transform previously 'free' resources into marketable commodities, now sold to those who once accessed them without restriction. The deep bonds once held by those stewarding the land and its resources were replaced by a focus on efficiency, as new landowners implemented practices to exploit both human and natural resources in increasingly streamlined ways.
Commodification
Capitalism's pursuit of prosperity hinges on continuous growth, necessitating a constant supply of 'free' resources and inexpensive labor. When a resource runs out it requires a fix, something new to appropriate. This has led to practices like appropriating land, slavery, colonization, mining, deforestation, suppressing women's rights, burning fossil fuels, outsourcing to low-wage countries, and so on. This exploitation is visible as the abuse, suppression, waste and pollution that make up the many crises we now face. And this process of commodification doesn't just apply to natural resources and labor it is increasingly encroaching on both our physical and mental welfare. Our focus, expertise, and confidence are now measured and exchanged, fueling new markets where our attention, mindfulness, and ideas can be traded.
Consumerization
Our relentless pursuit of economic growth often obscures the true wellsprings of well-being. The abundance of material wealth can obscure the simple joys derived from human connections and fulfilling activities. In our daily lives, we're reliant on a single job that provides the income to acquire everything we need, creating a clear divide between our roles as producers and consumers. These jobs are increasingly becoming abstract tasks, pressured by efficiency concerns, making it harder to find satisfaction and meaning in them. Meanwhile, tasks that hold genuine meaning, such as caregiving, maintenance, education, and nurturing our children, are outsourced. This rigid producer-consumer dynamic can confine us to unsatisfying roles, disconnecting us from our inherent creativity and contentment.
Capitalism accelerates the transformation of natural resources into products through cheap labor, energy, and resources. With each step in this process, we delved deeper into both planetary and human resources. Fueled by abundant and inexpensive fossil fuels, we constructed increasingly complex global technology suites that support activities such as extraction, refinement, manufacturing, trade, transportation, promotion, and sales. However, in doing so, we have disregarded the true costs associated with appropriating natural and human resources.
In real simple terms we’ve swapped nature as an all inclusive system that produces shelter, building materials, medicine and food for all beings without waste for a global industrial system that turns nature into products exclusively for humans at the cost of all beings and the planet itself.
2 We’re not stuck
In our pursuit of progress, we've relinquished agency, community, and the freedom to govern our own lives. Disconnected from nature, we're blind to our impact on the world. Multiple indicators show that despite material wealth, true happiness, health, and freedom remain elusive. Let’s circle back to the concept of inevitable progress that was introduced by Enlightenment thinkers. Historically, societies have blended different approaches to civilization, often rejecting perceived inhumanity and exploitation in more "advanced" cultures. For instance, the Wendat people in North America when confronted with western European settlers, critiqued their ways of life and dismissed them as inferior and ihumane, groups like the Amish resist technologies that jeopardize their traditions, and the Zapatistas prioritize indigenous rights and social justice over economic growth in Mexico. Initiatives like ecovillages and intentional cooperatives also emphasize sustainability, social equality, and community over relentless economic growth and progress. So industrial capitalism isn't the result of a preordained path; we have the power to explore alternative routes. We can consult our rich history that has many viable alternatives and do this through the lens of modern scientific insights.
Here we will introduce a framework to consider progress and discover opportunities to change your life, business or collectively reshape communities. We do so by describing the four modes of civilization that were proposed by Enlightenment thinkers through a modern lens, not as historical modes of civilization but as alternative modes to rethink modern society and how we do things. Lets start by looking at energy. Our materialistic view of progress defines ‘civilization’ in an economic way where progress can be measured as the amount of energy that it has available to transform natural resources into human-made goods and environments.
Over time any society goes through a period of growth where they gather more energy through labor as a result of a growing population, slavery, conquests, or through employing new forms of energy such as animal power, renewables or by burning fossil fuels. With every step in energy that society gets new abilities to access resources and transform them into artefacts thereby shaping their society and culture. At some point a critical resource becomes scarce and makes further growth impossible (sound familiar?) and the society goes into decline. All these activities meanwhile have an impact on the natural world that largely corresponds to the energy that was available to that society. It is useful to consider the historical ‘energy modes’ that existed, since people were able to live meaningful lives throughout history with a much smaller footprint, without even getting close to earth’s boundaries. And even with a populace of 8 billion we would get nowhere near those boundaries. This is not a proposal to go back in time, rather to consider these modes through a modern lens and see if we can adopt these practices to question and rethink how we do things and explore where we can trade in material wealth and convenience for more meaningful things.
Hunter Gatherer
Hunter gatherers were an integral part of ecology, directly consuming the natural world and reciprocating by spreading seeds, maintaining balance, fertilizing. They spend very little energy on shaping their world and had very little impact on the ecology.
Man As Commoner
When we gather berries or forage from the land, we embody the spirit of commoners, taking from the commons and reciprocating as part of the interconnected natural world. We suggest calling this mode Man as Commoner instead of hunting.
Pastoral
Herder and horticulural societies 'invest energy in domestication of animals and transformation of land. These investments mean a shift in knowledge and skills from ecology to gardening and herding and a change in lifestyle and priorities, this is where we start to see externalization of costs, in other words, it pays off to sacrifice nature in favor of my garden or pasture. Through domestication, animal power provides more energy and therefor increases the impact people can have on the land, soil and animals that they manipulate. The effects of this manipulation may outlast the society, but not substantially as nature recovers.
Man As Maker
When we use our physical strength and simple tools to shape nature according to our needs, such as tending a vegetable garden, we embrace the role of makers. We can refer to this mode as Man as Maker instead of herding.
Agricultural
As agriculture scales from ‘play-farming’ to a specialized industry it gives rise to a whole set of new specializations that employ people who are now freed up from food production, such as milling, baking and water management. Again more specialized skills are traded for a broad set of skills and new dependencies are born. This is also where professional competition is born and innovation is fueled by access to renewable energy in the form of wind and water, which provides the energy to extract and transform resources from within the earth that to a much higher degree shape human culture and the build environment.
Man As Specialist
By harnessing renewable energy and fostering local industries that produce goods and culture, such as farmer’s markets, we become communities of specialists. Let us label this mode Man as Specialist instead of agriculture.
Man As Consumer
And finally, when we participate in a global industry that exploits nature's resources, we become consumers who can order any food we like online to be delivered within minutes. We can term this mode Man as Consumer instead of Industrial Civilization.
Our modern society relies on these interconnected technology systems, which were built upon and remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels. These systems sustain the energy-intensive lifestyles of the developed world while perpetuating disadvantages for the developing world. The intricacy of these systems makes it difficult to perceive the true impact of our actions. For instance, when we command a smart speaker to turn off the lights, it triggers a series of global technology suites to accomplish a task that could easily be done by flipping a switch ourselves. Although the magnitude of the infrastructure and energy required to achieve this convenience often goes unnoticed, it is truly gargantuan. Therefore, every seemingly minor convenience we enjoy, whether it involves finding information online, playing videos on YouTube, simply turning on a light or flushing the toilet, relies on an extensive global network of interconnected technology systems. These systems operate through the extraction of non-renewable resources, significant energy consumption, and the utilization of cheap labor.
4 Strategies (TAKE FROM OTHER PAGE)
Our challenge is evident, with broad scientific consensus and visible indicators that the crises we face are real and demand attention, and depletion of resources and energy at hand, it's clear that continuing on our current path is not a viable option.
Some tech billionaires propose a solution of pushing beyond Earth's boundaries, delving into space mining and advanced technology. While this is a gamble they're willing to take, it's a risk humanity can ill afford. Even if successful, it would perpetuate the disconnect and inequality we face.
Leaders and companies that pledge to do better often seek answers within the confines of our existing framework. Concepts like green growth fall short of addressing the underlying issues tied to our unwavering belief in progress. The simple truth is perpetual growth can’t be sustained, in nature every system grows to ultimately reach a state of balance.
Uncivilize advocates for a different approach, one that begins with recognizing the need to redefine progress. Where progress is not about amassing more material wealth, but about fostering a richer, more meaningful way of life. It's about finding purpose in our contributions, feeling connected to history, our planet, and our communities, where people have the freedom to govern and no one can exploit resources that don’t belong to us at the expense of others.
This kind of progress doesn't hinge on channeling more energy into transforming natural resources. Instead, it aims to utilize energy to restore nature, strengthen human connections, and prioritize meaningful work over sheer efficiency and productivity. We believe this can be achieved by considering these four modes and implementing them as alternatives to our current practices where they make sense.
Maybe a little more can be said here about HOW you can step out of mode 4, why the other modes are good WHY it’s hard and HOW you can get started
The examples from the blog should help
With the exception of instances where we are forced to use goods or services provided by the global industry due to radical monopolies, we have the freedom to choose between these different modes. We can draw inspiration from history books and enthusiasts who keep these practices alive. Moreover, we can learn from cultures where these modes continue to shape everyday life, appreciating them not as regressive but as a progressive way forward.
With these modes we can redefine innovation, science, legislation, technology and so on. And place them in a broader perspective that learns from -instead of denies- human history and works with -rather than against- nature.
