WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022: NOTE TO FILE

A Final Offering to Posterity

From one living in your future's past

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: TOO CLEVER BY HALF, FROM THE WIRES, NOT NEARLY SMART ENOUGH

Intro: My life's work is my (final) offering, but the following is a summing-up.

As there are sustainability issues and existential concerns for posterity and the biosphere, so some endeavor to share clarifying information about our problematique (wicked meta-problem & sub-problems, our Anthropocene overshoot trajectory) and to detail what a viable solution/future might look like if we do not seriously underestimate the challenge of humanity's persisting long term.

Any viable solution would involve humanity again becoming an evolvable subsystem of Gaia (as distinct from forming expansionist dissipative structures operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium, e.g. expansionist overcomplex societies, lasting but for a time). For sixty years I was in student mode, taking in memes from many sources (e.g. H.T. Odum, Robert Browning, Thoreau, Laozi, Spinoza, Zhen, Donella Meadows) when not endeavoring to listen to Nature.

I have largely spent my life self-employed as an unpaid witness living in the future’s past with a mandate from posterity (imaged) to declare what I seeth, but I have nothing to offer modern techno-industrialized humans (at best I can only take away error, ignorance and illusion from the pro-Anthropocene expansionists for whom self-knowledge will come too late, if at all).

I have declared what I seeth to a significant number of high functioning humans. That no group of humans (2 or more) can give my offerings a careful hearing, as few are consilient with any consensus narratives, is apparent. My concerns are therefore not addressable to contemporaries, hence I must address posterity, whether unborn or not yet developmentally able to consider my concerns.

We moderns must pass away. Seek out the condition now that will come anyway—let go of life as we know it. As a modern techno-industrialized human, I don't like what I see or say. I can but endeavor to envision a viable future. I can type of what I see for posterity's sake.

COOS BAY (A-P) — Short (591 words including 73 word Donella Meadow's quote) conceptual outline:

Humans are animals.

Our ancestors over the last 500 million years, e.g. hominins for over 6 million years, were K-strategists who endeavored to live within the carrying capacity of the habitat that supported them (failure to do so, extinction, is allowed, i.e. Nature is unkind).
Humans, as K-strategists, ceased to play the game when they became an expansionist (invasive) lifeform 60 to 50 thousand years ago within and out of Africa.

Invasive/expansionist species prosper greatly as primary or secondary successionists for a time, but within mature ecosystems, few (e.g. locusts) are adapted to persist as plague-phase expansionists (each pulsing degrades the ecosystem, so while a repeating pattern, it is not selected for as the eons pass, hence few species are expansionists).

Those who do have adaptations (behavioral and morphological) that enable them to persist beyond die-off, to renormalize until again expanding into plague-phase overshoot that degrades the environment without causing extinction of the expansionist, can persist.
Humans, unlike locusts, are not adapted to rapidly turn into an expansionist form and then renormalize, and as a species risks failing to persist with each expansion, with any remnant population locally failing (local extinction) or failing to fully renormalize to repeat the pattern.
There are about 3,000 invasive species in North America, e.g. nutria, Burmese python, carp, cane toad, feral swine, domestic cat, English sparrow, Norway rat, European starlings, gypsy moth, kudzu, English ivy..., all introduced by humans who introduced themselves by land and sea.
All modern humans, except for the San, Hadza, and Pygmy, became an expansionist form of Homo sapiens sapiens whose expansions (e.g. empire building) are dissipative events without long-term adaptation (are non-evolvable, not selected for), that degrade the biomes exploited (e.g. megafauna extinctions including all other hominins to Anthropocene mass extinction of flora and fauna in recent times).
To persist, modern humans must grow (expand) beyond the solar system as Borg-like expansionists to assimilate all other worlds for the taking—or renormalize.

After the expansionists take an area (e.g. Tikopia), those that remain must expand to take new areas or renormalize enough to persist until an opportunity to expand again arises (e.g. contact with Indo-European expansionists allowed for a seven-fold increase in population by migrating off-island to other islands) or go extinct (e.g. as on Malta).

Modern humans are dysfunctional animals.
Modern techno-industrial humans are nearing the climax of their one-off global expansion.
Posterity will renormalize or go extinct, whether in 50 years or 500 centuries.
Most who live in the 21st century will keep on keeping on until they can't, while some may understand our predicament and persist (endeavor to renormalize).
1. Understanding is not a matter of belief or disbelief (both being cognitive pathologies).
2. Assume everything you think you know is error, floating on a sea of ignorance in a thick fog of illusion (i.e. is belief-based assertion).
3. Understand by listening to Nature who has all the answers; or die.

Note: Referencing claims in this summary would be a distraction; understanding involves effort. "There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go [of belief-based paradigms to enter into not-knowing] and dancing with the system." —Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Afterword: I'll guess <0.01% of people could agree with above and so might consider reading more.

As a witness with an imagined mandate from posterity to declare what I seeth, what I see is a technology enabled (to divert energy/material flows) denormalized organism, a storytelling animal who has come (within the last 50k years) to believe in belief, to tell self and society serving stories of human exceptionalism, of Lord Man (who as a clothed ape is too clever by half and not nearly smart enough to realize that there are no true stories to believe in). We have become Homo sapiens narrator, the insapient animal pursuing short-term expansionist self interests as an invasive species: we who come; we omniscient conquerors who see resources for the taking; we who conquer (for a time, hence insapient). Venimus Vidimus Vicimus.

Realizing this condition is the ending of the believing mind, the collapse of our humancentric concept-forming mind's map of the putative what-is (our worldview we mistake for the world). To replace the world as believed in is the evidence-based guess-then-test (often-wrong) map that comes from listening to nature is what is left after the fall from our hubris heights.

We modern techno-industrialized expansionist form of humans have a soldier's (expansionist's) mindset. We are the first and last global complex society empowered by a planetary larder of fossil fuels to globally overshoot the planet's long-term carrying capacity (e.g. by in the short term turning fossil fuels into food without asking, 'and then what?') as all prior solar agro-empowered lower-energy overpulsings of the last 10k years were regional. For the first time there is a global monetary culture that all serve (and are products of), a system that selects for its own failure by relentlessly growing the economy of empire (e.g. political, economic, financial, religious, ideological, and personal empire building by serving short-term self interests, i.e. by living life as we moderns know it and view as normal).

We moderns who inspire air today are Anthropocene enthusiasts all, some merely less enthusiastic than others based on having some foresight intelligence that may lead some to self-select out of a system that is not remotely viable, but with rare exceptions, only in moderation as dilettante doomers who do not understand how the world really works (or want to as such would be an existential threat to their consensus narrative, e.g. the phrase "ecological overshoot" has been used zero times in the New York Times since 1851 as only airplanes overshoot runways, and for the right-leaning, the Hoover Institution's video, 'The De-Population Bomb," in its first 11 days, had 680 thousand views, so everyone on the political spectrum agrees that any word beginning with "over" does not apply to the Modern Techno-Industrial form of Lord Man). Modern Techno-Industrial humans are political animals as was Aristotle and company. Not so sure about our pre-Anthropocene ancestors for most of the last 375k years until a small group in East Africa mutated into an expansionist form of human 50k to 60k years ago. If you are not San, Hadza, or Pygmy, then they are your expansionist ancestors.

As eusocial animals, we have an innate fear of exile from our kind, from those in the related bands we depend on. To be shunned by all, the complete withdrawal of social approbation, is our worst evolved nightmare, as to be alone and unloved on the veld is to be killed and eaten by monsters... or worse, slowly killed at the hands of an enemy tribe of monsters. Exploiting this adaptive fear to gain social control in overcomplex societies created the religious/political animal via the believing mindset. As an abeliever in all belief-based narratives, expect to be shunned by everyone in your community, culture, or family (my parents alone did not shun me; they did not understand me, but did not disown me) until you die and go away or are killed. This condition may explain modern humanity's condition of memetic factionalism and true-believer group-think at all levels, from the tavern to Davos and the UN (and many science/academic conferences).

The future is unknown and unknowable in any detail. The unknown future is a spectrum of possible futures, limited by the boundaries of the possible (and determinate) of which we know little. Possible stories include: Earth takes a direct hit by a planetoid 100 km in diameter and...; a coronal mass ejection an order of magnitude larger than the Carrington event hits Earth and...; the Hidden Imam emerges from his well and...; Klaatu arrives from Omicron, prevents humans from wearing clothing to contract the human footprint and...; as many as 0.001% of humans come to stand down from their hubris heights, iterate towards believing nothing, form pockets of a viable ecolate civilization, and....

Possible futures considered likely are few due to human cognitive limits. Some futures are foreseeably determinate, however (e.g. you find an ATV on a seemingly illimitable beach...; you drive it, you like it, you keep on keeping on towards the rising sun, leaving your camel far behind, with no thought of stopping—the thrill of the moment compels you to seemingly choose to...; your passenger may know there is a fuel tank and infer there is some fuel in it as the motor is running...; they might foresee that the fuel will run out and the vehicle will determinately stop...; exactly where and when is unknown, indeterminate, so you dismiss such concerns as they would limit your enthusiasm, but that it will stop is a determinate future whether believed in or not), the future is unknown in any details.

Modernity, the monetary consumer culture, selects for energy-blind, short-term self interests (the thrill of the moment) and hitting (perhaps over a period of some centuries) a wall of biophysical limits is a future some can consider. That a full gas can washes up on the beach where the ATV runs out of gas (and at the same time) is possible, but if humans make cold fusion work with a toaster-size generator powering a house or truck, why imagine a different outcome of our Anthropocene overshoot trajectory other than that we keep on keeping on kicking the can down the road a bit longer (until we can't)?

Approximately 99.999+% of modern techno-industrialized humans know that fossil fuels are abundant, that scientists are working on fusion reactors, and that electric cars can 'peel the edges of of your face back' [per early Tesla ad] given their ability to accelerate when the pedal is pressed to metal. And they are right (for a time). But maybe 0.001% of humans would rather know than believe, however, so expect most to keep on keeping on until they can't. Sorry about that.

Or maybe Klaatu shows up..., or there is a large planetoid impact..., or..., or modern hubris-man (hu-mans) will keep on keeping on until dissolution cometh as all prior overcomplex empire-building societies have, because that's what happens, saith the nature of things, to dissipative structures. And then what?

From The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't 2021

As only the 0.0001±% who opened this page may have read this far and share my concerns, glad you ask 'and then what?' as perhaps you too would rather know than believe. Possible futures (the and then what?) post climax and descent in order of likelihood:

After some centuries of environmental recovery (e.g. forests regrow, soil fertility increases, aquifers refill, fisheries partially recover...), remnant human populations, after perhaps 8 to 20 generations on the downslope, recover to repeat the pattern of overshoot and collapse regionally.

Repetition of the overshoot and descent pattern continues regionally until it can't (humans go extinct) whether in 500 years or 50,000 years.
A tripartite global (or per continent) world order develops that is sustainable (as a tumor is and a metastatic cancer is not), enabling a human foot (a boot) to stomp in Gaia's face (for a really long time) as other humans spread to other solar systems (to perfect the pattern) as humans come to fill the universe with wonder (and transhuman techno-biomass).

Life on a multi-generational downslope selects for loss of functional behaviors (as had life on the upslope while serving the monetary culture); the marauding-horde cultures (e.g. Late Bronze Age collapse Sea and Land Peoples as auto-organized confederacies of refugees) are non-viable and fail to transition to an overcomplex society even functional enough to repeat the overshoot pattern (i.e. dissolution to human self-extinction without recovery).
Some humans, pre-collapse, form viable pockets of complex society having the potential to persist as the millennia pass (by preserving vetted information and renormalizing) within a United Federation of Watersheds to become genetically and memetically evolvable subsystems of Gaia by learning to listen to Nature (who has all the answers) about what works to persist—to live properly with the planet.

As an extreme cornucopian optimist (and fideist) living on an abundant Earth (more so in 10 to 20 million years post-Anthropocene), I will live and die to thwart the most likely outcome of our first and last fossil-fueled global overshoot event. The outcome of numbers 1a and 2 may be lamentable, but are self-limiting. A possible 1b future is a pattern that could persist until all energy and material resources (including other lifeforms) in the cosmos is turned into humans (and mutualists and stuff as is now happening on planet Earth) until universal dissolution cometh some eons hence on a cosmic rather than planetary scale. A number 3 future leads to perhaps 7 to 35 million renormalizing people living properly with the planet to 'find glory in being an agent of the Earth' [H.T. Odum] and perhaps enable nature restorancy (recovery of pre-Anthropocene biodiversity) in less than 10 million years.

As a fideist I have no choice but to believe that 'someday there will be a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly' [James Lovelock who endeavored to listen to Gaia]. But, of course, James and I could be wrong. The doomers may have the better argument. But I do not, despite being a militant abeliever (after breakfast), argue with a life-driven purpose even if it implies having and being had by a non-reason-based nor evidenced-based belief if such is adaptive.

I may fail to destroy modern techno-industrial society (one mind at a time), but no matter, as Nature selects for outcomes whether I am an agent or not. Number 2 above or 1a (which will take longer) may happen (human extinction), and a damaged biosphere will recover. Problematique solved. No humans need to do anything, while preventing 1b is to die for.

As for number 3, some humans (>0.0001%?) would have to understand the planet enough to eventually come to live properly with it (by out persisting any marauding horde cultures as remnant populations of modern techno-industrial monetary cultures). How some such future may be possible, via some memetic mutation, may be of interest to some (or not and futures 1 or 2 unfold... or Klaatu arrives...).

The Civ 4 (form of civilization 4) Possible (however unlikely) Future

For those who may prefer a viable future, consider walking away from everything you think you know towards a viable paradigm that is not even a dim glow on your horizon:

The recognition that one must walk away comes first. Believing in a future as good as or in some ways better (e.g. greener, fairer, more equitable, just, eco and prosperous without growth by consuming more efficiently with 100% circular recycling in a donut economy...) than current modern techno-industrial consumer society... is to not walk away (e.g. transition towns, SDGs)., is to not understand/recognize the pathological condition of modern humans.
Underestimating the challenge of successfully mutating to be part of a memetically evolvable subsystem (which, for as little as we know, may never have been done in the cosmos by a technology enabled memes-over-genes, self-over-system species), may be humanity's greatest existential threat. Underestimating the challenge could be the distal death of us.
Belief-based 'ways of knowing', language games (e.g. science and religion and political consensus narratives, all social constructs), involve error, ignorance (often as willful denial), and illusion (expressed as multiple factions telling multiple, irreconcilable, tribal consensus narratives, e.g. free will vs determinism) such that coming to iterate towards telling better stories (that no one believes in) is a needed paradigm shift involving non-trivial difficulties. In short, 'understand or die'.
There is a need for policies that manage human demands on nature's resources, but politics and the Civ 3 political animal must pass away (not be selected for). Our belief in belief is fatal.
To understand that modern techno-industrial-socioeconomic-political systems select for their own failure (and so are non-viable) is to be delivered (choicelessly) from them and be given a life-driven purpose. Full stop.
Destroying the modern schooling system, formal and informal, to allow a viable system to auto-organize that selects for education, will meet with extreme resistance. A viable world socioeconomic-political system cannot allow schooling to interfere with education.

The early ecolate came to be called the 'E.O. ones', mindless followers of the ecofascist anti-human E.O. Wilson who advocated for merely a Half Earth for humanity. The EOs came to accept the term but translated it as 'ecolate ones'. Civ 4.x would be transitional, likely taking 8-20 generations by following the prime directive: each generation must objectively become more functional than the last to become Civ 5.0 containing humans who can understand the planet and live with it properly (to persist) as evidenced by the passing millennia.

7,000 kya (thousand years ago) hominins evolve.
4,200 kya Australopithecus speciates.
3,000 kya Homo speciates.
1,900 kya H. erectus sub-speciates.
1,300 kya Homo sapiens evolve, aka H. s. heidelbergensis.
375 kya H. sapiens evolve; Civ 1 nomadic bands persist as K-strategists.
50+ kya ancestral H. s. narrator expands out of East Africa to displace other H. sapiens and remnant hominins.
12 kya nomadic bands begin to transition to band-sized settled Civ 2 agro-supported civilizations while living in small groups.
7+ kya Indo-European agropastoralists expand by conquest, becoming dairy empowered 5 kya as Bronze Age expansionists.
5 kya settled agrarian Civ 2 societies select for overcomplex hierarchical empire building societies from chiefdom to state level.
1 kya Modern Techno-Industrial Indo-European agro-wood empowered European expansion begins, first within Europe.
0.3 kya Modern Techno-Industrial Civ 3 avoids collapse, for a time, by transitioning to a fossil fuel empowered society now global.
A Civ 4 human could emergently stand down, listen to Nature, and learn to evolvably persist as the millennia pass.
It's been a long way up as it will be down from our hubris heights, see full graph.]

If a consensus narrative about life, the universe, and how to live properly with a planetary life-support system emerged based on listening to Nature who has all the answers, a New Education system, formal and informal, would be ground-zero for a Civ 4 society that, if it were able to transition to a viable Civ 5 society, could have a different outcome for humanity's descendants.

But at least 150 million people believe the Hidden Imam will save us, and well over 7 billion hu-mans respect their deeply held beliefs (our belief in belief) as a human right. Don't underestimate the challenge of again becoming an evolvable subsystem of Gaia (as distinct from believing that we are).

If you think you clearly see that you (and humans like you) are the problem, that you have met the enemy and you are a subsystem of a global pathological system of growth, then (given your failure to walk away from Omelas) you do not clearly see what is in front of your pug-nosed face, hu-man. Posterity will pay the extinction debt (or overshoot die-off debt if extinction is not the outcome) we Anthropocene enthusiasts are remorselessly incurring.

Know then thyself...

More people realizing we have a problematique without any clue as to what a viable solution might look like is not a change that could matter.

Taking the long view, I remain an extreme cornucopian optimist living on a still abundant Earth (compared to what it may be in a century or so). In 10 to 20 million years, species diversity could be restored. If humans transition to become evolvable again and work as 'agents of the Earth', maybe Nature restorancy could take less time. If in 500 years there are 7 million Civ 4 humans (the Great Acceleration will be followed by a Great Selection, possibly to zero) with low-intensity forager-gardening biophysical economies of enough consumption, then resources will again seem essentially unlimited if the rules of the game keep human populations well below carrying capacity, below a population that causes any species extinctions or prevents new species from evolving.

Will Modern Techno-Industrial Anthropocene enthusiasts choose such a future? How could they? Will those who walk away from MTI society form a majority party to vote for such change? No. To seek political change, e.g. calls to action, getting the UN to rewrite their SDGs..., is to not walk away. Could remnant populations of humans, after perhaps 8 generations or more of being marauders on the downslope, start to recover to begin repeating the pattern of regional overshoot and collapse? Yes. What says history? 'Therefore, endeavor to think well....'

SUBNOTE TO FILE 9/21/2022: Renormalizing Humans

From solstice to equinox.

After 8 to 12 generations in John B. Calhoun's Utopian rodent enclosures, providing for all needs in illimitable abundance (except space—Earth too is finite), his rats and mice were increasingly not normal. They had lost functional behaviors (until local extinction—the ability to reproduce is a normal function). If removed as individuals and placed among 'normal' lab rats/mice (lab animals are not normal with respect to wild rats/mice), they failed to renormalize even to the extent that lab rats are normal.

Most of us are 8 generations or more into urbanized modernity, especially the upper class, and we are vastly further removed (on average about 2k generations) from our nomadic forager ancestral norms (and proud of it). Underestimating the difficulty of renormalizing humans as adaptive K-strategists may prove fatal (species ending). To persist, assume failure is possible, and that renormalizing, if possible, will take 8 to 20 generations of directed, conscious, reflexive endeavor to renormalize with all due meta-reflexivity. Each generation would need to be demonstrably more functional than their parents to avoid game-over.

Renormalizing is viewed in a Civ 4 society as a need (because it in-your-face is) and need be the only central focus of humanity living in a transitional form of civilization (complex society). The transition needs to be within 8 generations (a likely minimum) and 20 generations (a likely maximum as failure to transition within 500 years suggests persistence without significant renormalizing leading to extinction). The aim of a Civ 4 form of civilization is to renormalize, to transition to a viable Civ 5 form of evolvable civilization.

Today I finished what I started June 23, 2022, the making of a transcript of a presentation by Ruben Nelson to enable a more careful hearing/consideration of it. This subnote may be worth making to direct attention to this offering: Transcending Our MTI Form of Civilization. I mostly sing along. Today I also started watching another of Ruben's presentations I've had open in a browser window for over a month (finishing the transcript was higher on the to-do list). So I suppose I am fated to mention it too, which is a part 2 in a series. Start with William Rees, and then Ruben Nelson, to view in order. Enjoy (actually, better, be informed by) the Bill and Rubin Show.

A Civ 1 (nomadic forager) form of civilization is viable provided it has no technology that enables (selects for) overexploitation of the environment or other humans (e.g. red cedar canoe technology enabling settlement, the raiding of settlements for resources, and taking of slaves to build war canoes, which selects for empire building). When agriculture is adopted by Civ 1 peoples living in normal band-sized communities, the Civ 2 form of settled agrarian civilization typically retained functional behaviors for a few thousand years until settlements grow beyond Dunbar's number (150) in size. Overcomplex, overdensity society selects for hierarchical control systems (religious, political, military, legal, educational...) that select for empire building, for a time, followed by climax and descent. The empire building dynamic, from chiefdom to nation-state level, has proven to be non-viable, i.e. not remotely sustainable as the millennia pass.

The alternative to renormalizing looks like extinction, whether in a few centuries or hundreds of centuries. Our current form of civilization is non-viable, and going back to the indigenous form or early settled agrarian form is non-viable as overcomplex society would again be selected for. Would a future without cars or 24/7 Walmarts in it not be worth living in? To skip any calls to action, I want to envision what a viable future could look like without the distraction of the how-we-gonna-get-there part. At best, we'll hit what we aim for, so seeing what a viable future condition could look like, such that we should seek it out now, may be the starting point.

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You and your recent ancestors (going back 13k-16k years if Amerind, 7k-9k years if they were Indo-Europeans, 5k if Bantu, 4k if Austronesian/Micronesian/Melanesian,/Polynesian, whose Man the Hunter expansionist ancestors go back 50k-60k years), are not remotely normal (long term functional) non-expansionists. If urbanized, we become increasingly like a form of Calhoun's rats of NIMH. Waking up and seeing what is in front of our pug-nosed faces may have a better outcome than sleepwalking into futurity. To renormalize, change the rules of the game, the endgame we are playing badly, if at all.

Normal for upright walking primates (all extinct but one) is to live in groups of 20 to 50 trusted-with-your-life others (band-size communities, range 5 to 85). Dunbar's number (150) is a maximum that only full-function humans should even attempt long term. Denormalized humans need to accept simple rules, fewer being better. The first rule is: no one lives in any group larger than 50 until at least 500 years have passed, after which those who have managed to persist may (or not) consider experimentally increasing the upper limit while carefully monitoring for psychosocial pathological outcomes.

Each group of <51 needs (this is not a want) to live in association with other groups. Exogamy is a requirement to persist. The ancestral norm was 20 to 50 bands (communities) living within a region within which they are able to rendezvous to exchange memes (a common language is assumed) and genes (by mate selection) typically involving males leaving their band if their mate wishes to remain with her band, or she may decide to leave her band to join her mate's band or other band (bilocal). Patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal ways were not the ancestral norm prior to empire-building (though not forbidden, but selected against except where hunting was the main or only way to forage, e.g. on the steppes of Asia). Humans seeking to renormalize, however, should consider going with what was being selected for (what worked).

First: live in limited group sizes to renormalize. Second: live in a viable sized human ecology unit supporting a limited number of groups/communities. The area that 20 to 50 groups of 20 to 50 renormalizing humans live within is a bounded area (physically defined, as imagined political boundaries cannot be, by the ridges and troughs of an area) within a watershed large enough to comfortably support the population (400 to 2,500) using (Third Rule) the environmental productivity of 20 percent or less of the watershed to leave room for Nature (a need, not a want). Civ 4 humans must define and live within limits, and attempting to exploit all environmental productivity of land and sea is not a viable plan long term as a viable planet/biosphere is needed to support a viable form of civilization.

Third: leave room for Nature, e.g. 80+ percent. The humans living within a watershed management unit on 1/5th of the land/shore must use adaptive foresight intelligence to again become evolvable K-strategists who avoid overshooting the lower limits of carrying capacity by intent, and on any failure (carry capacity may change unforeseeably), act to lower their population and per capita consumption to avoid overshooting the upper carrying capacity as doing so incurs an overshoot debt posterity will have to pay, a debt that will also damage environmental productivity by degrading the environment.

To Rule 1 (<51 per community) and Rule 2 (<51 communities per watershed management unit. Humans manage at most 20 percent of a homeland watershed), is added Rule 3 (no watershed management unit (WMU) can exploit Nature's 80% or any part of another WMU (watershed management unit) such as by exporting excess population due to overshoot or desire to take). Adults who mismanage their WMU may starve to death, but if they cannot feed their children (fail to limit harm to less than a 5% increase in child mortality) or exploit Nature's 80 percent, the WMU will declare itself (or be declared) a failed WMU resulting in a rapid planned reorganization.

If any community within a WMU failed, for any reason, to remain under the 51 limit, their community would become a failed community and the other communities within the WMU would send a contingent of Guardians to redress the failure. Any community approaching 50 in number would be well aware, through frequent reminders, of the lamentable but needed consequence incurred by exceeding the population limit all communities in all WMUs agreed to. Any WMU that failed to manage its communities to avoid exceeding the universally agreed upon limits would be declared a failed WMU.

For this to have a consequence that limits the failure to live within limits, there must be other WMUs. Rule 4 is: if any WMU, inclusive of Nature's 80%, is attacked by a failing WMU population or an outlying non-WMU population, all WMUs will, upon as needed, send a contingent of their Guardians to ensure, by whatever means, that the attacker never incurs a net gain from their attack. Attacking a WMU's population or Nature's 80% must never have a net benefit, or empire building (an expansionist pathology like a metastatic cancer) will be selected for. Any failure to contain such forms of pathology will result in the failure of the Civ 4 form of civilization defined by its four rules of the game. [Rules restated in outline form.]

The four rules must be enforced. Other rules are optional (e.g. that enable equitable inter-watershed trade). Failure to live viable lives is possible (is being done globally now), but selects for long term failure/local extinction if not planetary extinction of humans. The understanding of why animals with technology must set limits on their demands upon Nature's resources is humanity's salvation.

Such an understanding is the deliverance from our problematique (Anthropocene overshoot). Once we can live long term by simple best-guess rules that select for what works (a viable outcome once we have renormalized), then as a Civ 5 people we can explore our limits, e.g. maximum community size could be set by each WMU, careful always to remain with the boundaries of what works to maximize the empower of the world system as Nature alone defines by the outcome selected for. As Civ 5 humans, we may dance with the planetary system and again be an evolvable species.

Oh, and rule zero? The One Rule to rule them all?

What is the One Rule to bring all who would persist, and in the future bind them? The Zeroth Rule: Only those who can understand and agree to live by the four rules can join a WMU (one that with other WMUs form the United Federation of Watersheds of Earth) to maybe avoid having to join the marauding hordes that self-organize when the world socioeconomic-political system (you know, the one you live in and serve that is not remotely sustainable) enters its post-climax downslope to dissolution (or worse, to recovery and repetition of the pattern).

Rules of the Civ 4 Game until humans demonstrably renormalize:

0. To live in/join a WMU, agree to rules 1-4:
1. No community >50 in population size.
2. No watershed management unit to contain >50 communities (global population 10-60 million).
3. Humans limited to 20% of a watershed management unit's land and shore to leave room for Nature.
4. All watershed management units agree to counter any attack on any WMU including Nature's 80%.

There is no viable outcome for a Civ 3 form of civilization. Each repetition of the figure-eight pattern below risks extinction, and so is selected against. Successful K-strategists who have foresight intelligence are selected for if there are enough to persist.

There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible [protean], to realize that no paradigm is “true,” that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension. It is to “get” at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into not-knowing, into what the Buddhists call enlightenment.

People who cling to paradigms (which means just about all of us) take one look at the spacious possibility that everything they think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. Surely there is no power, no control, no understanding, not even a reason for being, much less acting, embodied in the notion that there is no certainty in any worldview. But, in fact, everyone who has managed to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it to be the basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get a purpose, you can listen to the universe.

—Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

What the Buddhists call enlightenment is imagined, as believed in, an illusion. To have (and thereby be had by) even the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. To keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to not cling to any worldview, any form of belief-based cognition/perception, is the pathless land; is the humility of Not Knowing (enlightenment). The recognition of our dysfunctional condition (which compels a choiceless endeavor to renormalize, to iterate towards sapience) is the religious life, is the condition of listening to Nature, who has all the answers.

Two Paths
Understand or die

1. Keep on believing, pretending, taking, using, working to grow the economy and vote for better leaders (or be one)....

2. Stand down from our hubris heights to the humility of Not Knowing and list to Nature's teachings to understand or die.

SUBNOTE TO FILE: 11/1/2023

Underestimating the challenge of renormalizing is an existential threat to humanity. Denormalization of humans from being K-strategists conditioned by K-culture (overriding intent to live well within carrying capacity) norms began with the arising of expansionistic r-culture (overriding intent to pursue short-term self interest) norms 50k to 60k years ago with the great expansion within and out of Africa.

The spread of LBK culture (Linearbandkeramik aka Linear Pottery culture) in central Europe of agrarians involved largely replacing the hunter-gathers who arrived in the region about 37k-42k years ago. There had been some interbreeding 40k years ago with the native Neanderthal population by the Man the Hunter expansionists, and similarly when the neolithic farmers spread over the region, less than 3% of their DNA was passed on to the Old Europeans (some hunter-gatherer infants/young children may have been adopted to survive to adulthood), indicating genocidal, in effect, replacement within farmable areas as an expansionist norm (the Man the Hunter expansionists replaced Neanderthal apart from about 3% of their DNA).

The northern hunter-gatherers who replaced Neanderthal may have needed their low melanin skin color to survive due to the need to wear clothes when outdoors due to cold. The darker skinned LBK migrants who displaced them may have avoided interbreeding with the pale-skinned hunter-gatherers in northern Europe, but less so in southern Europe where the hunter-gatherers may have had normal colored skin.

Expanding 2500 km in 500 years would involve averaging only 5 km/year (3 mi/yr).

An even more rapid expansion was made possible by the domestication of cattle by Indo-Europeans on the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent about 9k years ago. They migrated north through Anatolia to the Pontic steppes where they developed large solid-wheeled cart technology about 7k years ago empowered by draft cattle.

Even faster expansion came when they domesticated the horse about 5k years ago, in the region of Ukraine, to milk and ride. Those on the leading edge of expansion, from its beginnings 50k years ago, were the most denormalized, especially the males.

With horses (early hot rods), young Indo-European males could easily dispatch any hunter-gatherer resistance. A slower wagon train followed them as they rapidly cleared the region of male hunter-gathers. On average, the ratio of Indo-European males to Indo-European females was about 10:1 (5:1 to 14:1) among those at the leading edge. The Indo-European males who favored being on the front lines, and the Indo-European females, likely on wagons, who joined the leading edge expansionist males on horses, would be those who were attracted to the lifestyle and to alpha-male types as “omniscient conquerors.” Both genders prospered greatly. The dynamics of leading-edge expansion selects for those with the greatest r-culture (Anthropocene) enthusiasm.

What worked, what was selected for, was killing the hunter-gatherer males and breeding the woman, and when they reached the regions recently taken by the LBK culture of likely matrifocal, partially renormalized neolithic farmers (former hunter-gatherers in the Fertile Crescent who adopted agriculture).

As the young men aged, they would remain behind the leading edge to found Indo-European settlements and continue to breed the woman, teach them and their offspring their language and culture, until the sex ratio soon returned to normal, though language and culture did not. Those left behind in settlements were partially forced to renormalize to persist sustainably as a post-conquest culture, but no full renormalization is implied nor observed, apart, possibly, from the Taironians.

The expansion of patrifocal, patrilocal, patrilineal, and patriarchal Indo-Europeans/culture in Europe involved replacing the hunter-gatherer and recent agrarian expansionists by killing adult males and breeding potentially fertile females. This allows for rapid expansion, overshoot, and regional collapse as a repeating pattern, aka 5k years of history.

Two-thirds of modern European men trace their paternal ancestry to three men who lived at different times between 3,500 and 7,300 years ago. During expansion, each male on average bred (fathered children by) multiple women (over a dozen), and modern males and to a lesser extent females, are the outcome.

It is likely that Indo-European males on the leading edge of expansion were no obligate monogamists. This helps me to understand a report in the 1970s I found shocking, that half of male US college students in one study admitted they would rape a young woman if they knew they could get away with it. Among their recent paternal ancestors, 100% could and did what was expected and deemed normal. The challenge of renormalizing modern humans is not to underestimate. My guess is that only a matrifocal culture (K-culture norm) can renormalize humanity, i.e. tweaking modern techno-industrial society into its opposite is not possible. The change needed would be a paradigm-shift change.

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