The Great Forgetting
We're starting to remember
What would it be like to live in a world of sentient beings rather than inert objects? How would we relate to such a world? And if we invoke such a world of sentient presence, calling to other than human beings as persons, might we elicit a response?
During the popular series on trees, these questions, though not specifically raised, were the backbone for how many of us feel about our world. What if we listened to trees and take them seriously? It may sound like something new, something hippy-dippy, something woo-woo, but thinking about the proposition in that way is based on a fundamental error.
Let’s go back a bit to those philosophical positions on human nature I quickly trampled over a few weeks ago.
When the thinkers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries were finally compelled to admit that the entire structure of thought in [western] culture had been built on a profoundly important error, absolutely nothing happened.
Daniel Quinn, The Story of B, 1996
Western ‘civilisation’ was based on a premise that some form of government is essential to overcome the brutal, selfish and lonely life of being in a state of nature. However, this premise forgets that humans for thousands of years lived in a state of nature and according to one line of analysis wasn’t the state of war previously envisaged. One anthropologist went as far as to say that hunter gatherers during the Stone Age were the original affluent society. The form it took, however, didn’t fit the current model of what it means to be civilised.
The world's most 'primitive' people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization. It has grown with civilization, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation.
In the western world, there has been, Daniel Quinn argued, a “great forgetting”, i.e. of the understanding that civilisation is, historically, only a recent social construct. Collectively, we’ve forgotten that in a state of nature we lived in commune with each other and with non-human beings.
… humans have, for most of their history, experienced the cosmos as suffused with life, animated with persons of all species with whom they could relate in order to keep the world alive.
The error of the giants of political philosophy was the forgetting of hundreds of thousands of years of human history.
… the natural history of humanity spans longer than a few thousand years, many hundreds of thousands of years longer. Homo Sapiens and related hominins lived in complex social groups for at least 500,000 years, and all of the aspects of culture … : cultivation, navigation, trade, sophisticated geographical and ecological knowledge, the arts, and rich traditions of complex storytelling have all been extensively documented in various parts of the world.
The Conservation of Change Lab, Sustainability: Undoing a Great Forgetting
A related idea is that of the Tragedy of The Commons. The Commons are life-sustaining resources shared by members of a group or community which have not been divided up and assigned financial value. The tragedy of the commons was first coined by Garrett Hardin in 1968. It is a form of reasoning which justifies governmental and institutional control of The Commons.
Imagine lush hills, open to use by everybody who wished to graze their sheep, or cattle or goats. As a collective, it would be in everyone’s interest to not overgraze the land. Individually, however, adding to one’s flock would increase profitability and act to the benefit of one’s self-interest. We’re all (by nature) self-interested individuals, right? Garrett Hardin was concerned about over-population. As the population of self-interested individuals increases, The Commons would come under so much pressure as to become useless. This is the tragedy of the commons.
The implication is that some kind of regulatory use of the land should be adopted to protect The Commons from exploitation. For example, due to the loss of carbon sinks in the form of forests, the UN stepped in to protect forests. The tragedy though wasn’t that indigenous peoples were exploiting forest resources, but that indigenous practices were prevented, leaving a people displaced and without a livelihood - extending from the Welsh mountains to the Amazon rainforest.
Communities which adopt commons thinking have implicit and/or explicit rules for who can use what resource and for how long. The outcome is the common good, the well-being of the community over the individual (including non-human beings) and it is how we have organised ourselves for millennia. Self-interested exploitation of common resources isn’t an outcome of commons thinking, it is an outcome of capitalism. Self-interested competition is a result of being socialised into the values of a culture which propagates free-market economies.
Trees are an example of commons thinking. Trees and other plant and fungal life engage in an exchange of resources which serve the community as a whole. Yes, there is a genetic preference for one’s own offspring, but it isn’t exclusive.
When a community was offered control over its own budget priorities, we saw an example of commons thinking. The initial preference wasn’t for one’s own benefit, but to designate resources towards those least benefiting from the available pool. From participatory budgeting, commons thinking emerged.
In times of human crises, such as natural disasters, commons thinking becomes the default setting, the natural state we switch back to. Again, there is a genetic preference, but it isn’t exclusive. In this time of global crisis, there has been a shift toward commons thinking, and a recognition that non-human beings have a lot to teach us when we listen.
Up Next
Over the next few weeks, I will explore commons thinking in more depth and consider it in relation to Transition Towns. During the series, more examples of participatory democracy (as requested) will be investigated.
Embers
First I would like to thank
who pointed me to ’s work and newsletter.
Postcards 2024 has grown and we’ve seen the first few to have been sent out and wow, how beautiful they are! It’s a joy to see it kickstart so positively. The list of participants is up-to-date and available in the community area.
Much appreciate the mentions of my work. Enjoyed yr post. Thank you. P
Peter’s opening quotation arrests the attention! Thank you for this introduction to his writing.