Author Christopher Ryan provides a wide-ranging, entertaining and thought-provoking critique of one of our favourite topics of discussion: namely, ourselves—Homo sapiens sapiens—and about who and what we are, and how we got to this moment in time. No small task that!
One of the points he makes
early on is the wrongheadedness and misplaced faith we have in the idea of “progress,”
what he calls the “Narrative of Perpetual Progress (NPP for short). For most of
us, progress seems like a good thing. As humanity grows, more benefits
are wrought by our science and technology, and our expanding economy bring us ever-greater
wealth, security and personal comfort, with each new generation more prosperous
and fulfilled that the one that came before. The more the merrier! Isn’t that the way it should be?
Well, Ryan for one. Oh, he’s
not saying that humanity shouldn’t live and learn and grow—that type of progress is common to all life—we breathe, we eat, we love, we’re born, we die. He’s
critical of the type of progress that assumes things will automatically get ‘better
and better’, and that the future will always
be bright. That type of progress assumes man’s big brain and the technologies
we’ve developed (from flint chips to microchips) are the best yet devised, and
that we can continue to grow and expand indefinitely because we are at the apex
of creation and evolution’s final answer to the silence of the void from which we
came. But we need a wake up call. Face it, Ryan tells us: we’re nothing more
than chimps with a bit of tech. Optimism, he states, is over-rated. It’s based
on false or distorted assumptions about the type of beings we are—our evolutionary
niche—and our place amongst all the other branches of evolution’s tree.
“Rosy
declarations of eternal progress are as intellectually baseless as they are
emotionally comforting, and they undermine our capacity to correct course before
it’s too late. When you wake up smelling smoke, ‘Don’t worry, go back to sleep’
may be precisely what you most want to hear, but that doesn’t make it good advice.
Psychologist Tali Sharot calls this blind faith in progress ‘optimism bias.’
She’s found that we tend to dismiss disturbing evidence as aberrations while
accentuating anything that paints a brighter picture of the future.” (37)
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| Christopher Ryan |
He goes on to say
“Paeans to progress will always be a part of the
civilizational package, because any system predicated upon incessant growth
will insist on defining all movement as movement forward, like the falling man
who insists he’s flying. Until he isn’t.” (37)
Using archaeological, anthropological
and historical evidence, as well as psychological and sociological studies,
Ryan attempts to give us a clearer picture of who we are and how we should be
living, and where we’ve gone off the rails. Our busy modern world, with its elaborate
network of technologically advanced systems of commerce, governance, transportation
and communication, etc., has become a monkey-trap. Once grasped, we seem
unable to let go of the technological prize, even if all the signs suggest we’re heading for a colossal
crash and fall (Oopsie! Sounds a bit like the one we’re experiencing. Covid-19: It's the gift that just keeps on giving!)
But changing our course seems
impossible now, and our fate may be sealed. In his conclusions Ryan asks whether we can, at
this stage, come to understand how much of our biology and genetic heritage is shaped
by our hominid and early human beginnings, and therefore, as such beings, how we ought to live on the planet. He’s not
optimistic:
“How likely
is it that we will choose this path? Not very. But it’s well within our
capacities…. (252)
The “path” Ryan suggests we need desperately to
find is the one that had previously sustained us for hundreds of thousands of years
and shaped our bodies, our senses and our minds as we lived together in social groupings of advanced hominins, descendants of earlier hominids who were also social
beings. He says we need to rediscover our hunter-gather selves, because in the
end that’s who we are and where we come from.
Okay. I know what you’re thinking: "But Jake, there
isn’t room anymore for all of us to hit the road and wander about, gathering nuts
and berries and snaring rabbits in
clever, homemade traps. Cummon! How many Innuit are living off the land full-time, anymore? Sure, there are some tribes or clans or whatever
living in jungles or deserts or in grassland regions. But almost everybody on the planet has a smartphone
and pays way too much for their data plans." (Not me!)
No. There is no more room—not with the whole
world geared-up in perpetual-growth mode, and our population in overdrive. (Infinite growth on a finite planet,
sounds pretty dumb when you say it out loud; so, keep it to yourself!) But Ryan makes
a proposal after reviewing our place in the world and who we are, and what we're made of. Who we are as a species is homo sapiens and our lineage along the evolutionary tree is conveniently drawn with ourselves at the top (which, in my opinion, makes the sapiens moniker a bit problematic. Are we truly all that “wise"?) Ryan reviews what we are: we're hominins who exist in social groups, who have certain neurological and physical characteristics developed as a result of our interactions with the environment, and with each other, over the course of hundreds of millennia. He then proposes we embrace the world view and ethos of our hunter-gather past. He suggests characteristics of hunter-gather societies such as empathy, egalitarianism, sharing, tolerance and so on be re-incorporated into our societies so that we can live full and active lives, lives that are more in harmony with our environment.
He likens the steps by which we need to examine ourselves to the Five Stages of Grieving, as articulated by Dr. Kubler-Ross, with Acceptance being the sought after end-state. Acceptance instead of hope or belief in the myths surrounding "Naratives of Perpetual Progress" is what we need, says Ryan--acceptance of ourselves with all our limitations (and our strengths), and acceptance of our place in the scheme of things.
Interestingly, he references the thought-experiment Fermi's Paradox: In a universe teeming with stars, how is it, physicist Enrico Fermi wondered in 1950, that we have not received any communications from other, similarly advanced civilizations? There must be millions of them out there. One conclusion drawn from the theory is that civilizations reaching Earth's level of technology either destroyed their ecosystems (like we're doing) or else blew themselves up. The theory suggests there is a threshold that technological civilizations must cross and get beyond before they are free to roam the galaxy and contact other planets. They do this by finding solutions to the inherent dangers embodied in their technologies. And most don't reach the finish line. Hence fewer star-buddies to call on us. Klaatu Barada Nikto.
Another conclusion to be drawn from this dearth of alien communications, Ryan tells us, is that there are, in fact, multitudes of worlds in space whose populations chose NOT to develop technologies that would lead them down the garden path of ecological overreach or the use of weapons of mass destruction. And these may be very pleasant, if more humble worlds when compared to our own, but they should in all likelihood be very alive and living ones.
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| Artist's conception of one monument ring at Göbekli Tepe site. |
Ryan suggests as humans became more sedentary, following
the adoption of agriculture, that we lost the vital characteristics and traits of
communal, small-group living. He cites the example of Göbekli Tepe*, in Turkey which is arguably the oldest religious
site in the world (some 9,000 to 10,000 years old!), which may represent as the
archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, its discoverer, speculates, “the last flowering of
a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy.”(The Guardian, online. 23 April 2008). As
such, it is instructive to note that future generations of sedentary farmers in
the area used the site as a “midden”, which is archaeology-speak for a garbage
dump. These monument rings, perhaps erected either to celebrate or mourn the end of
the hunter-gatherer way of life and the rise of agricultural lifestyles,** were something that the descendants of those monument-builders
did not think worthy of celebrating or even remembering. Instead, they buried them under millennia of refuse. It’s a disturbing interpretation Ryan makes. And his conclusions are equally troubling for they tell us now, so late in the game, that the tale about the emperor’s new clothes is really about us. We are a naked animal, but we
imagine ourselves draped in the finest garments.
Great read. Very thoughtful. I recommend it to
all my fellow hominins.
Reader Vote:👍👍👍👍4 out of 5 thumbs-up [I rarely reward perfection, but
Sophia Loren, now there's a five!]
Cheers, Jake.
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| "I thought everything would be better in spandex?" |
*His
portrayal of Göbekli Tepe does make me wince a bit. Until I read Civilized, I had a more triumphal view
of the site as one marking the beginning of modernity. Ryan’s view is that the site is,
in fact, a road-side cairn marking the downward path we have taken. This gives me
(fresh-killed) food for thought!
**One humorous
example of the mismatch between our hunter-gatherer heritage and how we live today is in the style of running shoes first invented some years ago by
the Nike sportswear company. Their shoe's design (along with most running shoes today) is
not in keeping with how our bodies actually function when we run. Similarly, the
vast majority of people, myself included, look forward to summer when we
can wear comfortable and ergonomically correct footwear known as sandals! Ancient tech rocks!
Christopher Ryan, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress. Avid Reader Press. Simon
and Schuster, Inc., New York. 2019.
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