TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2018
Degrowth Talk
On Voluntary Refugee Movement
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: ABANDON SHIP, FROM THE WIRES, CORNUCOPIAN OPTIMISM
Abstract: This page is to reference a talk I gave at the First North-South Conference on Degrowth in Mexico City.
TUCSON (A-P) — Talk given at Degrowth Conference 2018 at Mexico City. Excuse my blog-like prattle, but I spent two days on a bus to get there and stayed at a three-bunks high dormitory at the Hostel Historico, which it really wasn't other than location perhaps. My dormitory (for 18) was on the third floor, but has toilets and showers as well has electric outlets and lights for each bed as well as WiFi, so not historico. At least there was no hot water (the first time I took a shower). I recall staying at a historical hotel in a remote town in Mexico about 45 years ago and there was no electric, no running water, and what I got was a pitcher and bowl to bathe with (or drink). I mentioned coming by bus and one participant opined that I was probably the only one who had come by bus, meaning that so far as he knew or could imagine, all the others flew into Mexico City.
The organizers had provided a list of hotels, so initially I had picked the cheapest. It was in the historical district near the conference location and from the outside looked 'run down' which is fine with me. The door was all glass and opened automatically, however, which was my first clue. The interior was immaculate, not a chip of paint or speck of dust anywhere. All the staff were in immaculate uniforms and all were 'beautiful people' by carefully groomed appearance. My bus had been eight hours later than I had expected so I had not reached Mexico City until early morning. So I just hung out at the station until sun up and walked about four miles to the hotel as I had time to walk, so no need to take a cab. As on the bus, I saw many things: for example on one side-street were four vans parked bumper to bumper with power cords running up to the second floor of the building (all construction was multi-story, over 21 million people in the metropolitan area), so van dwellers here too. Also a few homeless, but fewer than I see in USA. The differences distract from the similarities: from the border to the capital, it was industrial society perhaps a notch down from the 'world of wounds' in the USA, with billboard signs in a different language, but the 24/7 traffic was the same.
I was told the hotel had no room, but might in an hour or so maybe. So I waited in their lobby which boasted a bar. I watched the bellhop, when not rushing to relieve guests of anything they might be carrying, go about wiping things that he had almost certainly, by appearance, wiped hours before. The concierge, who spoke English of course, was ever eager to 'tend. Upon the hours and times of' the well paying habitants desire. Classical music (about the only music I willingly listen to) was the background music. So this was the cheapest place organizers thought attendees would consider staying. This suggests that most academics, intelligentsia types, and political activists are upper middle to upper class (whom they rail against with great eloquence if their politics differ). After seeing how the van dwellers and homeless live, I considered staying just to observe the 1% living in their native habitat (they have no natural habitat), but after over an hour, and being told they had only a double bed room (for more $), I'd had enough.
They wanted 10 pesos for 20 minutes of Internet. The hostel (1/3rd price) provided unlimited Internet for no extra charge, and included kitchen privileges and a free breakfast. My only complaint with the hostel is they should have provided only a shared pitcher and bowl for guests to fill themselves (and composting toilet) as such would be enough. Note that in my best of all possible low-power/low-consumption worlds, some electric (maybe 50WHr/person/day) would be of high service as would something like WiFi (the Infoether) IT, which Federation technology may be able to provide in the best of all possible futures. Humans need information so at least some, those who world rather know than believe, need access to information. Books work, but I'm a very progressive techno-optimist. I mentioned the cold showers to one attendee which caused them to have a near-death experience at the thought.
The proposed ‘movement’ is for a bottom up transformation of the current nation-state control system to perhaps twenty thousand watershed management units worldwide organized into a United Federation of Watersheds. |
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The ‘movement’ will be one of voting-with-your-feet and not a political, popular, nor mass movement. Initially refugees from industrial society will be widely dispersed. They may, however, communicate and self-organize into couples, family units, and micro-communities within current nation-states, as some are doing now. |
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The first example of a voluntary refugee known to history was Laozi leaving so called ‘civilization’ on his water buffalo, and in the West, Henry David Thoreau was an early individual refugee from industrial society. |
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Ted Trainer’s The Simpler Way communities are examples of contemporary refugee communities that are self-organizing in Australia. My extraordinary claim is that the number of voluntary refugees from technoindustrial society will increase as the perfect storm of multiple system failures, of environment, power, and society, becomes increasingly obvious. |
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It may be possible, in the near future, that as many as one one thousandth of a percent of humans on the planet (0.001%, perhaps a hundred thousand individuals) will be willing to vote-with-their-feet, liquidate financial assets, and relocate to somewhere else on this pale blue dot. Refugees may be few today, but when the teachable moment arises some may remember that we told them so, and embrace the prosperous life of enough as alternative to chaotic collapse. |
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Or not. But no known biophysical laws of the universe would be violated, however, if one or more watershed management units self-organize, or if a United Federation of Watersheds arises and becomes global over time because humans living within watershed management units will have learned to understand the planet and to live with it properly. |
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Individuals, couples, families, and even small communities can vote with their feet and sever their dependence on the global growth economy to form watershed management units managed to operate per known energy principles (H.T. Odum, C.A. Hall, K. Klitgaard et al.) and limits defined by Nature per those who listen to Nature (especially systems scientists). If enough watershed management units form in a region and support a citizen’s militia, and agree to defend any watershed management unit that is attacked, then it may be possible for pockets of sustainability to avoid the scarcity/conflict induced downward death-spiral-as-usual and preserve information and functioning, cooperative complex society. |
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I've been promoting a book, "Demystifying Sustainability: Towards Real Solutions" 2015 by Australian professor Haydn Washington, and I think the best part of the book is the subtitle as we humans need to iterate towards real solutions as distinct from pretend solutions, also known as political solutions. That a voluntary refugee movement could work, could develop into a real solution that enables humans to live properly on the planet, is possible. |
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Who is likely to become a voluntary refugee from industrial society? Well, you are if: 1. You understand that the success and prosperity of the current global socio-politico-economic SYSTEM is analogous to the exuberant growth of a cancer that metasticizes prosperously for a time, but ultimately lays waste to its host. |
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2. And/or you develop foresight intelligence even though the current SYSTEM does not select for it, which allows for doubts about what seems self-evidently true to all other cancer cells. |
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3. And you realize that there is no life sustainable without ecolate [or systems science literate] thought. Those driven to leave their homes due to immediate existential threats are involuntary refugees. If wants or needs are not being met by the local SYSTEM one was born into, then relocating to another part of the SYSTEM that is richer in opportunities to acquire what is wanted/needed is not to be a refugee from industrial society. |
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For our purpose the term refugee, will refer only to those seeking to abandon technoindustrial society secondary to their recognition that: • Our global economic system is NOT REMOTELY CLOSE TO SUSTAINABLE. |
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| • That we are captured and being dragged along by a complex, powerful and remorseless dynamic that automatically thwarts all attempts to stop it. [the “dynamic” references Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle and Odum’s clarification, the Maximum Empower Principle that complex systems select for.] |  |
| • If we don’t put time and energy into understanding the downward spiral, we are doomed to go with it, right to the final curtain. |  |
| • So...don't go with it. Become a voluntary refugee before you and/or your offspring are forced to become involuntary refugees. |  |
| You cannot be a voluntary refugee if:
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| What if enough voluntary refugees from around the world pick an area, vote with their feet, self-organize, form watershed management units, and there are enough watershed management units in a region to prevent conquest?
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| During global degrowth, the previously established watershed management units would have foreseen the problem of too many end-game refugees and stockpiled food and other resources to allow up to ten times more humans to be taken into their watershed than could be sustainably supported by local agricultural productivity or trade. But the refugees would have to understand and agree that they could not reproduce at will and otherwise agree to limit consumption. They could pass on their memes, however, and avoid dying a Malthusian death, which could seem like a really good idea. Their numbers may be essential to help the watershed survive the chaotic collapse and involuntary depopulation of non-Federation regions. |  |
| So what can one person or couple do? Turn off the TV, disconnect from misinformation and disinformation sources: listen to Nature as well as those who endeavor to listen to Nature. Who listens to Nature? Some natural scientists, naturalists, non-humancentric scholars, artists, poets, and autodidacts endeavor to listen, including some from the distant past. Don't be distracted by all the primate prattle, including that which reverberates in your own head or the echo chambers of media or tavern talk. Listen to the heart-mind instead, which is not a private possession that you created after your birth, nor will it cease to exist when "your" light goes out. Iterate towards waking up, learn what works, and pass it on. |
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| Living in a prosperous enough, cooperative, complex society based on interconnected trust, one that could actually persist as the centuries pass, will matter to posterity who will inherit patterns that work. Or, if they don't, human extinction is the alternative.
The unmanaged commons selects for empire-building. Competing empire builders select for larger principalities, nation-states, corporations and other complex systems that fail to manage their environment, power, and society to persist as the millennia pass (see past 7,000 years of history). The only real solution is to ‘change the rules of the game’, the contingencies of selection. |
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| We are tasked to pioneer new patterns that work by listening to Nature. This involves being naturcentric ecolate humans rather than humancentric Anthropocene enthusiasts. |  |
| Those who would rather know than believe, those who can actually think more than a decade ahead, have the potential to opt out of the current SYSTEM. To abandon the Empire, its unsustainable economy and social system, will seem increasingly imperative as the onset of multiple system failures becomes obvious. |  |
| The fork in the road: Continue to serve the SYSTEM. Or consider alternatives, perhaps 20,000 watershed management unit alternatives, managed within limits as determined by Nature, or the nature of things as evidenced by best-guess systems ecology. |  |
The big idea (again): It may be possible to manage a complex society, well above the tribal level, without empire-building, elite overconsumption, or collapsing the life-support system. Each watershed management unit is to live sustainably on local resources and some interwatershed trade based on emdollar evaluation. Accomplishing this feat may already have been done by the Tairona of Colombia. The Kogi, our elder brothers, suggest that it may be possible to manage a complex society without empire-building, elite consumption, or collapsing the life-support system. We may have something to learn from the Tairona of Colombia, but we know too little of them. |
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So, may you have a prosperous degrowth. Be an eMigrant, eMigrate, vote with your feet, use eMdollars, understand eMergy, be part of an eMigrant Movement (aka Voluntary Refugee Movement). Abandoning technoindustrial society’s cruise ship of fools could be a really good move, and posterity may thank you. |
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References:
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Voluntary Refugee Movement: Abandoning Technoindustrial Society’s Spaceship of Fools, https://tinyurl.com/yagpuoqw
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The Kogi Project: Can we learn about real solutions from these people?, https://goo.gl/7vZzxB
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Sustainability Demystified: Towards Real Solutions, Haydn Washington, 2015, http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/demystifying-sustainability.html
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Environment, Power, and Society, Howard T. Odum, 1971, 2007, http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/environment-power-society.html http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/environment-power-society-review.html
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A Prosperous Way Down, H.T. and E. Odum, 2001, http://prosperouswaydown.com/ http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/prosperous-way-up-and-down.html
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Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making. Howard T. Odum, 1996, emdollar evaluation.
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The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter, 1988, https://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf
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The Economic Implications of The Maximum Power Principle For a Sustainable Society 2016, Boyle http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/boylenote.html
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Energy and the Wealth of Nations: An Introduction to Biophysical Economics, C.A. Hall, K. Klitgaard, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/energy-wealth-of-nations
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Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory, Jack Alpert, http://www.skil.org/
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MAHB: The Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, https://mahb.stanford.edu/
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Ted Trainer, http://simplicityinstitute.org/ted-trainer, http://thesimplerway.info/
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Waking up, https://tinyurl.com/hu-mans-awake
I started the talk by apologizing in Spanish for not knowing Spanish well enough to give the talk in Spanish as most present were Spanish speaking only and most of those who understood English were bilingual. Had I known, I would have done the slides in Spanish. I then noted that the reason I'd spent two days on a bus to come was 'in hope of critical feedback, criticism'. After the talk there were comments from three and their questions/comments were translated as was my reply. There were maybe twenty present. It was the first day, the first break-out talks between the main speakers in the morning and afternoon in the main auditorium (who had professional real-time translators). There was no program until lunchtime after my talk and few of the 200 or so attendees knew where to go. Maybe a half-dozen or so actually understood my talk in English if not the science behind what I said.
I was talking to wordsmiths, and the night before I'd crossed out the 'Way Down' in the title and added 'Degrowth', and one question was did I prefer the 'Degrowth' change. I mentioned where the 'A Prosperous Way Down' came from and that the negative implications of 'way down' was appropriate as 'prosperous' is positive and even a managed descent, likely truth be told, isn't going to be entirely positive for all. There was concern that my refugees would be elites, but I suggested they would more closely resemble the Kogi. Another objected that the word 'refugee' implies involuntary, so 'voluntary refugee' was illiterate. I was thinking, before the talk, that the word 'voluntary' was problematic as it implies free will, a concept I find incoherent. After this criticism I did spend some hours thinking and researching etymology issues, which proved fruitful as I came to realize how, in the twentieth century, the word refugee had been politicized.
In 17th century French the word means someone who (perhaps leaving home) seeks refuge, which does not imply involuntary or even victimhood. In all refugee situations, some leave to become refugees, and some don't, staying home and dealing with issues. From their POV those who left did so voluntarily. The meaning now requires one seeking refuge to cross an international boundary to be a refugee. Though with sea level rise, those forced to flee will likely be considered climate change refugees even if they don't leave their birth country. The UN excludes natural disaster as an acceptable reason to cross into another country. So 'Intentional Refugee Movement for a Prosperous Way Down' may be a better meme given that today's wordsmiths favor/insist on current usage, though 'intentional' parses into 'voluntary' and I am a 'refugee' as is one seeking refuge from unsustainable industrial society even if they stay home and work to destroy industrial society, which confirms I'm an illiterate.
I showed my actual Kogi poster at end of talk, and next day staff put it on display. During breaks and at lunch I sat where I could see if anyone read it. A few did while it was being hung, but I saw no interest after that. The next day after lunch, someone of higher authority ordered it taken down. No reason given, but I eventually got it back.
My experience of the conference, summed up in a word, was 'disconnect' and in two 'communication disconnect' which has nothing to do with the spotty translation issues during the break-out talks. It was a 'two cultures' issue, meaning most of the talks came from those within the humanities who believe in political solutions and only a few were speaking from a naturcentric science perspective, which can and would include human welfare issues and humancentric concerns, but as a sub-set of overarching concerns. I tried to make sense of the disconnect issue in yet another essay, Universes of Discourse.
Several main speakers mentioned 'science and technology' in a way that made it clear they see no difference between them. One, a professor from the USA, explained that basically all current causes of woe have three sources: colonialism, capitalism, and science (inappropriate technology, arguably most technology, yes, but that word was not used).
One of the main speakers on last day, one of four, did talk science. During Q&A at end, no one asked him any questions. He was the only one that, as nicely as possible, told the assembled anything they didn't want or like to hear, such as that 'clearly' degrowth was not just for the North, for European and American types, but involved the South equally. The North over-consumes energy and materials, among other things, but 'most of the population is in the South', suggesting IPAT. He didn't say overpopulation or add to his point, but he was the only speaker to mention the 'P' word in a way that implied population degrowth was thinkable. Where 'mere eloquence' is valued, speakers relentlessly strive to say only what the assembled want to hear in a manner they will like to hear, in order to bask in social approbation. I barely mentioned the 'P' issue during lunch to one participant and then broke the following silence by noting that population issues are difficult to think about.
The 'P' word was a conversation stopper. There is a meme that anyone talking about population as an issue is a racist, which is an effective thought stopper for anyone who believes it. In science-speak, P is about one third of PAT, and is compellingly thinkable. It's a 'two cultures' thing, and those who can't think P (among other 'scientistic' things) can't think in terms of real solutions, and so are part of the problem and not any potentially real solution. They will pretend to understand issues and offer pretend solutions. There will be degrowth, the when and where details are lacking, but not because a legion of degrowthers arises to form a Degrowth Movement to demand degrowth, just as the Vietnam War didn't end because protesters demanded it.
Is it possible to understand complex systems, or 'the' SYSTEM that tries to control social behaviors, without even realizing that one is a systems science illiterate (that one is inecolate)? If ecolacy is the primary, most essential pillar of the educated mind..., then universities fail to educate. As a consequence, industrial society humans will stay the course, full speed ahead, and hit the wall of biophysical limits. And go splat. Meanwhile the pace of planetary destruction and pretend education goes on.
Richard Feynman wrote to his wife from Warsaw in 1957, from the Second Conference on Constrained Dynamics and Quantum Gravity:
I am not getting anything out of this meeting... there are hosts (126) of dopes here—and it is not good for my blood pressure—such inane things are said and seriously discussed—and I get into arguements outside the formal sessions... whenever anyone asks me a question or starts to tell me about his "work." It is always either— (1) completely un-understandable, or (2) vague and indefinite, or (3) something correct that is obvious and self-evident worked out by a long and difficult analysis and presented as an important discovery, or (4) a claim, based on the stupidity of the author that some obvious and correct thing accepted and checked for years is, in fact, false (these are the worst—no arguement will convince the idiot), (5) an attempt to do something probably impossible, but certainty of no utility, which, it is finally revealed, at the end, fails, or (6) just plain wrong. There is a great deal of "activity in the field" these days—but this "activity" is mainly in showing that the previous "activity" of somebody else resulted in an error or in nothing useful or in something promising.... Remind me not to come to anymore gravity conferences.
I considered going to the combined ecological economics and degrowth conferences in Manchester, but remind me not to. Another biophysical economics conference where real science is being iterated towards by endeavoring to listen to Nature? Sign me up, Scotty.
SUBNOTE TO FILE 5/9/22:
There are others who question degrowth who focus on overshoot, overpopulation, and overconsumption as key issues. Working with a UN wordsmith to change the working of one of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals is, however, in my view, a distraction. It is why one should not play with Tar-Babies, i.e. merely eloquant concept mongerers. Thinking outside anyone's consensus narrative involves saying what no one wants/likes to hear, with a similar outcome.
Eric Lee, May 7, 2022, post to Degrowthers:
If I may boil this 11.5k word offering, The Two Pandemics, down [and comment]:
- There are problems.
- COVID-19: 'a highly transmissible and extremely dangerous pandemic...' [highly transmissible, but official tally is 6.25 million deaths some claim is 1/3 the real death toll. Assume 18 million. The Spanish flu killed over 12 times more per 100k (or 35 times more if you believe the 6.25 million death toll) of mostly young people, a small fraction (6%) of the arguably extremely dangerous 1347 CE bubonic plague.]
- The cause, per author, is neoliberal ‘thinking’ disease based on inequity, misogyny, racism and corrupting abuses of power seeking to destroy informed democracy by colonizing the global education system....
- There are solutions the author offers: true equity, fairness and peace for all. The solution is a truly advanced democracy and a new education system as a transformative, democratic purveyor of emotionally value-integrated with scientific and logical solutions [e.g. solutions embracing rapid depopulation and contraction of the global economy? No, not that kind of scientific and logical solutions, but Woke science and Woke logic solutions that won't work but will feel so much better to truly educated left-leaning clothed apes such that the right-leaning ones will have to work tirelessly to exterminate them with extreme prejudice to achieve the world peace that everyone wants].
[I, of course, agree (sort of). There are problems: COVID-19 and climate change are distractions. Playing the blame game is too, but primates have to play, so everyone, who is a sometimes clothed ape, start by standing in front of a mirror and seeing what is in front of your pug-nosed face. All ideologies, political and religious, will resolve themselves into a dew thereby. A New Education system will then self-organize. It will teach everyone to not listen to primate prattle, especially the subvocal voice you hear in your head. Instead, humans (who would persist long term) must listen to Nature who has all the answers. Doing so will enable some humans who are exceptionally good (relatively speaking) at listening to Nature to maybe be able to take in a few bits of insight in a not hopelessly mangled form (expressed as science, logic, art, poetry, philosophy, and non-belief-based religion, e.g. a cosmic religious feeling of interconnectedness). Those who are tone-deaf to Nature will be taught why they should endeavor to listen to those who are not entirely tone-deaf. If so, the result will be a foundationally different culture/civilization (a real paradigm shift from Civ 3.x to a Civ 4.0), one within which humans may be able to iterate towards some understanding of the planet and ability to live properly (long term) with Mother by standing down from their hubris heights.]
Eric Lee (aka Alice in Word Land)
[As a watchman my mandate (from posterity) is to declare what I seeth, especially if it is what scientists don't want to hear. Sorry about that.]
