Did things used to be better?

[Daniel Ross]

For some years now I have been sort of a Luddite. Occasionally I get into arguments about this with people, and hit a wall when they accuse me of dreaming of a non-existant pre industrial romantic ideal. So I was wondering can anyone here provide some evidence that things used to be better?

My views on this, as many views on complex matters can be, have been cobbled together somewhat haphazardly from experiences, evidence and various intuitions.

It began just over 5 years ago when I began an undergraduate course at a supposedly fine British university. It was maybe the most obvious time ever to be a Luddite. In the space of a few months filesharing and social networking had gone from being the preserve of a few nerds to being totally ubiquitous. 5 years prior a laptop had been a rare luxury for an undergraduate; affordable only to the rich for writing their essays on. Now it was very much essential. I watched those around me spend a great deal of their waking lives in their bedrooms, downloading films, clicking aimlessly on facebook, playing video games, and watching anonymously hardcore pornography; all of this was an easy alternative to talking to people they didn't really know. Facebook became the new social reality, breeding a new kind of vanity and self consciousness never before seem; literally 2-dimensional. I wondered how many similar revolutions had gone before,  which I had not been present to witness.

I read a few Kurt Vonnegut essays, and suddenly I was seeing the world through a Luddite's eyes; half convinced (which is a long way to be convinced of such a radical idea) that society could not cure itself of its ills until it returned to a more basic, primitive way of life.

But is there any evidence? you need evidence; one to prove to others that you are right; but more importantly to not actually be wrong yourself! Are these just the broodings of a dissaffected boy; or the naiive romanticisms of an idealist? Part of me blames not technology but the pathological agencies that wield it.

Or have I got it all wrong? is progress simply gruelling and problematic; afterall technology is an attempt by humans to solve problems. You see a problem and solve it. Thats natural. Thats right. Perhaps.

[Daniel Ross]

Defining better is a big part of the problem, I think.
That doesn't make the question any less relevant.

[Lucy White]

It's a really important question for me also, I feel on an intuitive level that connection with earth, nature and through this a deeper connection with ourselves and other living beings, is too often absent. It seems apparent to me that at earlier stages in our development humanity had a stronger connection with earth and with place.

I'm just at the very beginning of exploring this connection, I'm coming at it through learning about ecopsychology and ecotherapy, and land art. Conscious and unconscious expressions of connection with nature and the impact of reconnecting. I'm seeking to work through my own deep-felt yearning for closeness with nature, and how reconnection with nature feels and develops within me.

I think we can conceive of things being 'better' only on a subjective level, but we can also have shared and resonant experiences which might go some way to providing some evidence of positive change and growth.

[Daniel Ross]

Ok wolfbird, fair cop.
I was going to say that language fails us here, because the thing we are trying to describe/define; "better"; we don't really know what it is.
But I did actually mean better in quite a specific sense, in truth. I meant were people happier, less troubled, more stable; in short less fucked up.



wolfbird said:

Okay, then why not try and define it , Dan ?

Yes, it's a pivotal question. The whole 'myth of progress' is founded upon the idea of attaining 'better'...

[Lucy White]

Hi Wolfbird,

Thanks for making a very salient point about anthropocentrism, a very hard psychological structure to step outside of.

I do think that greater attunement with and understanding of the natural environment can 'bring alive' in the individual the devastation that humanity is causing to the environment - to that extent the 'problem' is largely anthropocentric.

In terms of assessing what is 'better' - and I agree with you that there's a possible overemphasis on 'better' in place of 'enough'- it is of course philosophical but any philosophising ought - from what you are saying unless I'm misunderstood- to consider impacts across all existence, and not just the individual, the state etc. The challenge here is how to take any action at all in the face of such broad and extended effects. Is it good for the worm, is it good for the tree, is it good for another human in another place... do we take a utilitarian view by default? What are the alternatives?

Might it be that looking after the earth as the mother of life can pass on benefit to all life? The intricate connection between survival of species and of ecosystem... I'm interested in how ecopsychology looks at the origins of ecocide and relates it to parent-child attachment (in some cases, I'm still very new to this) and I wonder if there's some insight to be gained about what drives ecocidal behaviour that can helps us to work more as partners with the planet rathern than adversaries?

[Douglas Strang]

This is from the 'afterword' of Margaret Elphinstone's novel 'The Gathering Night'. It seems relevent to this discussion:

"The Mesolithic era in Scotland tends to be passed over in deafening silence. Six thousand years of human occupation - from the last Ice Age until the agricultural revolution of around 4000 BC - are usually represented in histories and prehistories by a maximum of a page or two on Scotland's hunter-gatherers, with comments on how little we know about them. [...} I wanted to show that in evolutionary terms seven or eight thousand years is almost nothing. In other parts of the world people were already farming. These people were genetically the same as us; only the world they inhabited was different. [...] Mesolithic people wouldn't have needed a separate word for 'nature': everyone - people, animals, birds, fish, mountains, rivers, seas - would have co-existed in the same holistic world.
Nor were Mesolithic lives necessarily as 'nasty, brutish and short' as Hobbesian theory would have us believe. The stereotype of grunting cavemen wielding clubs lingers on, although recent hunter-gatherers have lived rich lives in marginal areas where no one could possibly practice agriculture. Resources must have seemed infinite before agriculture took over all the prime land. Mesolithic Scotland seems to have provided a living as plentiful as that enjoyed by, for example, the Native Americans of the north-west coast before their way of life was disrupted for ever. Mesolithic people in Scotland shared their land with red and roe deer, pig, wild cattle, wolf, bear, beaver, otter, fox and perhaps squirrels. Rivers were full of salmon and trout. All kinds of birds inhabited sea, cliffs, marshes and forests. Shores were rich in shellfish. The sea teemed with fish. [...] I am not suggesting that Mesolithic Scotland was a Rousseau-esque paradise full of noble savages, but all the evidence suggests that human life was about far more than mere subsistence. People could make decisions about their lives, just as we do, based on social and spiritual considerations, and not just the material imperatives of where and how to find the next meal."

Not that we can go back to that world, there are simply too many of us, and even as our numbers are reduced we will decimate whatever we can. A wee bit of a shame though: six thousand years of genuine sustainability...

It's a great book by the way. I'd definitely nominate it for inclusion in the 'uncivilised canon'.

Dougie

[Glenn "Lee" Howden]

From my rural up bringing and working class point of view it looks to me like things are better than they used to be.

Of course I can see many potential impending disasters, but they are impending. Right now, right here, things are pretty darn good. It's a paradox.

If your mind is free and you have freedom of movement, you can pick your place, pick your friends, pick appropriate technology, and construct a life affirming belief system using the vast reservoir of historical, anthropological and scientific information that is readily available. It wasn't like that in the old days.

I've lived on farms, I've lived in cities and I've lived in the woods. The modern technologies that are the most important to me are hot showers, washing machines and a nice warm sanitary place to take a shit.

[Glenn "Lee" Howden]

Well wolf bird, it's good that you have a satisfactory situation going for you. Mine is far from perfect. I don't have 4 of the 5 freedoms I mentioned, but I do have a way to keep clean and a warm place for my poop de jour. For now anyway.

[Glenn "Lee" Howden]

You'll get to it Wolfbird. The leaky roof sounds like a priority. I would be interested in your in living situation, but this public forum isn't the right place to discuss it. You can send something to my personal space that the nice folks of Dark Mountain have provided. But only if you want to

[Daniel Ross]

Come on guys your missing the point a bit. Its not about what you can and can't do, what you do and don't have.

Ok I'll give you an example. Growing up I played a lot of football. I always thought the kids that didn't get any exercise had a sort of lethargy and defeatism to them; something missing. As I get older playing football on the green every night becomes an option for virtually noone but professional footballers (for many of whom, they admit, it is no longer a joy), and as an adult I see an incredible abundance of depression. Doctors give pills sometimes for depression, but many now think exercise is a much better way of lifting mood. Now you don't have to be an evolutionary psychologist to think maybe we were built for regular exercise, and maybe when modernity deprives us of that, the shit in some sense hits the fan.

It occurs to me though, that maybe harking back to how things used to be- which includes witch hunts, the plague and slavery in some people's eyes- discredits the critique of technology which I think has something totally crucial to offer in these times.

[Andy Sheridan]

Rather than 'better', I think the term 'balance' is more appropriate. 'Better' can be a very subjective word, and shot through with paradox, as Wolfbird has pointed out. 'Balance', on the other hand, is more to the point in describing the problems of this world; a world out of balance, of which notions such as 'better' are a product and cause. It's a more holistic approach. Balance is better. And yet it is worse. And yet, it's neither worse nor better. In other words, its the middle way between two extremes...

This thriving planet is founded upon balance. Well, 'equilibrium' being a more accurate term here. Billions of years of evolution, giving rise to the oraganic, self-regulating system that is our home, our being. An equilibrium of the whole and it's parts; of the living and non-living; of competition and cooperation. A fine balance between order and chaos.

But now, humans are throwing this system out of balance in search of 'better'. In search of 'order', 'power' and 'control' we create 'chaos'; the very thing we were trying to escape from in the first place. In seeking better, we have created worse, all because we do not accept what is given to us by nature, by this reality in which we find ourselves.

It's all such paradox! We have all the benefits of technology, which apparently renders our lives so much easier and more comfortable, and yet the dark side of such 'progress' is environmental, social, and spiritual disruption and destruction.

The evidence of the failure of technology is all around us. The evidence of the failure of our attempts to control, and to create what we perceive as 'order', ripple throughout history. When we try to control this reality in which we find ourselves, we do not live in balance with it, and the result is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. By chasing one extreme, we amplify the other. The question is, how much chaos are we willing to live with as a result of our attachment to order and progress? What if we let go of the reigns a little, would that bring us to a more bearable outcome?

It is therefore the need to control that is at the root of our problems. We can't solve them by trying to find new ways to control them, because that is again using the old paradigm that caused the problems in the first place. It's simply cutting back the weed, rather than uprooting it. Instead we need to find out why we feel the need to control the way we do, and whether there is a way to overcome it.

On a separate note:

Lucy, your thoughts about the relationship between the mother-child attachment reminded me of a passage I read in Alistair McKintosh's book 'Soil and Soul', in which he took a quote from Apache Philosopher V. F. Cordova:

"Many years ago I watched my daughter and her 'Anglo' friend take their infant sons out for their first springtime. My daughter set her eight- or nine-month-old son on to a barely greening lawn. She introduced him to the grass, encouraging him to touch it, even taste it. She pointed out the temperature, the breeze, the sky and clouds. The other mother came differently prepared for her son's encounter with the world. She brought a blanket, which she spread out for her son. She brought toys and distractions and she did not join her son so much as hovered over him in a protective manner: not allowing him to crawl away from the blanket; not allowing him to grasp at the grass ('dirty'). My daughter introduced her son to the world he lived in; the other mother introduced her son to a potentially dangerous 'environment'. The Anglo child's world consisted of his toys, his blanket, his mother, his artificial setting; the world 'out there' was alien. He ended his excursion in his mother's arms. My grandson ended his when his mother chased after him as he explored his new surroundings. 'This is the way it is done,' I thought. 'This is why we are different.' We discourage competitiveness and encourage co-operativeness; we frown on selfish behaviour and encourage perceptiveness of the other; we correct by offering alternatives rather than through threat of punishment or admonitions; we encourage laughter and camaraderie - there is no one 'out there' waiting to 'get us'. We transmit these values through loaning our attitudes to our children."

[Daniel Ross]

You seem to be forgetting Andy that we are part of nature, and it is in OUR nature to think and solve problems.

[Andy Sheridan]

Daniel Ross said:

You seem to be forgetting Andy that we are part of nature, and it is in OUR nature to think and solve problems.

That we are a part of nature is central to my understanding of reality. It's the perception that we are separate that drives our need for control. We do so to protect a 'separate' self from chaos, the unknown, and therefore death. The issue is not that it's in our nature to solve problems, but how we go about solving those problems. And more fundamentally, our understanding of how those problems arise in the first place - where do they begin.