What I'm writing here is nothing new. It's all been written before by fringy writers and scientists. However, I realize that we all live in our own bubbles or echo chambers, and we all have a responsibility to bring fringy perspectives into the mainstream, to people in our social bubbles who may not otherwise come across these ideas.
So I am about to bring you a fundamentally ground shifting perspective (with viable links throughout), something I think you and the rest of society is ready for:
Our current civilization as we know it is not the best way for humans to live.
Now, before you think I'm crazy and close the tab, I encourage you to give me a chance and read on. Take a healthy pause and think about society today...
Humans, the species that created it, largely sees itself as the pinnacle of nature, earth and beyond. Yet think about all of the problems it has created. No matter what faith or belief you adhere to you can't deny that the list is extremely long. Now consider the fact that the human species has been around 2 million years with the emergence of homo erectus, and our anatomically modern species about 200,000 years. Whatever timeline you use our species has been living in units called tribes and living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for more than 99% of its existence.
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| What better way to showcase humans as the pinnacle by building an unsustainable pyramid |
Now think about that lifestyle... It doesn't sound like much fun does it? Exposed to the elements all day, having to move with the seasons, following food sources, owning only what you can carry on your back. And it also had way more problems didn't it? Of course - poor health, short life span, war! We're much better off now than we were as hunter-gatherers, for sure! We are. Right?
Wait... are we really?
Very few people have taken a deep dive to get clarity on this idea. And for good reason... if people in our society were to actually find out that the hunter-gatherer way of life was better than ours it would destroy our belief that our society is the pinnacle of nature. It would force deep humility and introspection that none of us are ready for.
But many of us especially in the western society are on the cusp of this deep introspection due to all the problems we are creating in the world. One barrier to this introspection is our governing institutions - they shield us from such a humiliating perspective. Schools teach us that humans have risen to prominence through scientific progress, and economics reinforces the idea of endless growth and progress. These institutions portray our hunting and foraging ancestors as uncivilized, filthy barbarians. This is also for good reason - the success of these institutions depends on the people subscribing to the status quo.
Nowadays society is beginning to rethink such core values such as growth, progress, expansion and assimilation/monotonization. But to really question this colonial thinking deeply we need to zoom way back in time, to before the roots of colonialization, before the advent of agriculture.
Humbled by History
Culture is a way of living, and agriculture is the predominant form of culture adopted today. However, as I mentioned 99% of our species history lived the hunter-gatherer culture. Thus, a deeper understanding of why we lived that way for so long is key to understanding our place in the world today. It also might reveal that our ancestors were not as filthy and barbaric as we were taught to believe.
Before we finally start digging deeper we need to have shared agreement on what makes a society or culture the right way to live. I think we can all agree that happiness is a core high level criteria. Then what makes people happy? Science is revealing that real happiness comes mainly from human connection. This podcast shares scientific studies showing that people who focus on consumerism, wealth and status are less happy than people who focus on intrinsic values such as personal growth, community and greater good (link here).
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| A very influential TED Talk in my life about the keys to real human happiness |
There are numerous studies, TED Talks and self help gurus that espouse how people who prioritize human connection are overall happier and live longer. People living tribally spend much more time socializing than people in modern society. They didn't need TED Talks to teach them this, they knew it intuitively.
Tribal peoples could socialize more because they worked a lot less. Hunter-gatherers worked no more than 5 hours per day, some days as low as 2, and certainly less than 5 days per week. But isn't our industrialized and automated society supposed to free up greater leisure time? It seems people are working harder than ever to make ends meet. And they are working in offices not moving their body, invisibly accumulating chronic pain and disease.
But despite that our society is overall healthier than hunter-gatherers... right? In fact hunter-gatherers past and present are a model of good health. Dental records show their teeth were better. They were extremely fit and injury resistant. Studies of existing tribes show a thriving gut with diverse microbiome. And cancer was ridiculously rare.
But that's ridiculous! In spite of that our medical system has allowed us to live much longer... right? It is true that mortality rates were much higher as babies were much more vulnerable to the elements in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. However, that higher mortality rate artificially skewed the misleading short lifespan statistic of 30 years - once a hunter-gatherer lived past say the age of 5 they were very likely to live happy, healthy and spry into their 50s and 60s.
There's so much more we could deconstruct regarding health and happiness, but I'll stop here. So even if it was possible the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is broadly a better way of living, or our current way of living is not as great as we first thought, why did our species adopt agriculture as the primary way to live?
The Great Agricultural Experiment
Agricultural societies are fundamentally hierarchical. Such societies throughout history could never function without a power structure. People at or near the top of these hierarchies tended to reap many benefits from their position of power, and then figured their way was the best way to live. They also got drunk on this power and craved more. They thus developed and foisted a colonial mentality upon its members, mobilizing armies to annex and assimilate hunter-gatherer societies that saw the foibles of agri-culture and stuck with their hunter-gatherer ways. This is evident in the colonial nature of today's power structures from governments to corporations and billionaires.
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| Life for those in power is like one big game of Monopoly. Art by @MearOne |
Hunter-gatherer societies by contrast are mostly egalitarian in nature. Any existing power is purely based on wisdom and respect, and is informal, so does not carry any real power over other people. I believe humans are not meant to live with power over other humans. This was the case for 99% of human history so why would it be any different today? In modern society the Me Too movement is exposing us to infinite stories about people rising to power, then abusing it, from presidents all the way down to spiritual teachers and musicians.
There is a concept called the Rule of 150 positing that our brains cannot handle more than 150 relationships at once (link here), backed by psychology and anthropology. As one example, when a mennonite society grew to 150 members, it would split up into two tribes of 75 and go their separate ways. This allowed their societies to maintain an egalitarian structure. Grow beyond that size and abuse and fractures would start occurring within.
I think this is extremely important because it shows that humans are not inherently evil. Humans were simply never meant to have power over one another - our brains are still like that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors living in egalitarian social structures. Nor is this meant to exonerate those carrying out evil, or to feel resigned about our innate flaw as humans. Personally it allows me to not take acts of evil personally, nor to get angry and depressed about society. The Rule of 150 has been a key belief about humanity that I carry with me, and that has brought sanity to the world I live in.
Yuval Harari provides one more reason as to why agriculture was adopted near wholesale by humanity. In his book Sapiens Harari argues that agriculture-based society is like a runaway train. Once humans began experimenting with it they couldn't stop. That's because the initial move to agriculture resulted in food surpluses, which spawned population growth, which increased food demand, which drove the need for land and expansion, which then created more food surpluses, and so on in a feedback loop of population growth and colonial expansion.
History has supported this fact that massive population growth spurts occurred with advances in agricultural output such as the advent of chemical fertilizers. We frequently hear in the news, how are we going to feed all the people on earth? This hides the fact that we have as many people on earth as we do today due to agriculture, and that hungry people is a symptom of the hierarchical structure of society.
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| Riding past huge surplus food storage siloes along my cycle tour, Canada Prairies, 2020 |
Your Own Eyes Cannot Den-eye
Even if these arguments don't lead you to believe hunter-gatherers lived a better overall lifestyle, this information has to at least create cracks in the belief that the way society is living today is much better than at any point in history. You don't need to look far to see that people living in many poorer countries are happier because they live in community and prioritize human connection over materialism and status.
I've done quite a lot of travelling in my life and immersed long and deep enough in foreign countries considered third world and come to this realization for myself. And all I need to do is look into a mirror. I was not happy living in a consumer-centric society. I gave that up and, though I now have less materially, I prioritized human connection and spiritual growth along my journey and am much happier and healthier overall. Deep down I can honestly say if I died today I would die happy.
So how do we move forward with this information? Some fringy writers such as Neal Goldsmith and Daniel Quinn present a new culture or lifestyle called neotribalism or neopastoralism. They acknowledge that there's no going back to full on hunter-gatherer society. Nor would many of us choose to.
They reframe the idea of sacrificing a modern way of life and comforts to go back to the land, to the idea that society sacrificed much more when it decided to take up agriculture - security and belonging, community, connection to nature and spirit. Moving forward neotribalism will reclaim what society sacrificed while retaining many of the comforts of modern living.
There's an ideal balance there that will take time to figure out moving forward, but I see a much more decentralized world into smaller social units. Cities will shrink as people return to small towns and villages. There will be more organic farmers using permaculture principles to regenerate the soil working with the rhythm of the seasons. People can still travel, but they won't need to as much as today, because they will work less and feel more connected to their local communities and landscape, and won't feel the need to run away or "escape."
How do I know this is possible? Because I have actually lived in one of these neotribal settings. In modern terms it is referred to as an intentional community or ecovillage. I spent 3 months in this community earlier this year before deciding to ride a bicycle halfway across Canada back to my hometown.
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| My neotribal community! - Vancouver Island |
This community still depended of course on the greater society around it, but less so than normal, and was working towards greater independence. Practicalities aside, I had the best time of my life here and was filled with so much love and connection, and really felt part of a tribe. The lesson I took away from my experience here is that there is a better way to live. This place is a beacon for society.
A Spiritual Revolution
Slowly, one by one, people are realizing that the way society is living is not the best way. They will learn the lesson remaining hunter-gatherers today already know when they encounter modern society, full of greed and lacking spirit. Next when they see a better way is possible, such as my intentional community, many will start taking small steps to walk away from mainstream society. Over time there will be less and less dependence on society and the power structures that maintain it. One day those power structures will be dismantled, when they lose their grip over the very people needed to prop them up.
By this time a considerable portion of the global population will be living in smaller social units such as towns and villages, cooperating in a more tribal structure, using permaculture to restore the fertility of the land. They will continue to live with many modern comforts but reincorporate several aspects of ancestral culture and wisdom to achieve a balanced way of life not only with themselves but the environment.
But has any past civilization attempted just walking away? There are actually arguments that several pre-colonial American civilizations such as the Maya and Olmec abandoned their cities. And not because they got conquered and destroyed - there is evidence these people resettled elsewhere in smaller societies. Perhaps they over farmed the land? Perhaps the people at the bottom of the hierarchy realized this wasn't working and rebelled or walked away? There could be lessons to learn from this but, sadly, education tends to focus on colonial victory rather than failures.
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| The breathtaking Machu Picchu was mysteriously abandoned by its Incan builders |
If you largely question how society is living today, which most of us are, I believe the zoomed out perspective I just shared is an essential starting point. Having this perspective allows you to then zoom in and understand your place in it. Only then can you really have a solid foundation for taking action, and a vision beyond civilization to work towards.
In other words, in order for there to be a revolution, there needs to be a spiritual revolution at the individual level.
