[p2p-research] a complement to the debate with brian davey

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Brian,

a very interesting reply, could I republish this in the p2p blog, as 'next
in series' to the argument made by Eric,

my own take is that open money builders are part of the general tendency to
replace what is collapsing with more robust and localized resilient
alternatives,

I think the difference between you and eric is like a mirror image of our
earlier debate,

you hear 'abundance' and you think, these guys are not realizing we are
going to a scarcity situation,

they hear colllapse and think, these guys don't realize what can be done
about it ...

Michel

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 8:26 PM, Brian Davey <briadavey at googlemail.com>wrote:

> So, Eric Harris Braun doesn't like the word "collapse" because* "to call
> what’s happening now a “collapse” I think keeps us from stepping into the
> very “myriad opportunities it presents,” because it keeps us thinking in the
> old way. If instead we conceive ourselves as part of a living system, then
> how we conceive of what’s happening right now might be vastly different.*"
>
> Well, frankly I think this is making an awful of fuss about one word. I
> don't think using this word stops me thinking about opportunities and I've
> never met anyone else whose thinking came grinding to a halt unable any
> longer of seeing the point of working for a more positive future.
>
> Jared Diamond wrote a book called "Collapse" in order to help our society
> avoid one. On the other hand Joseph Tainter wrote "The Collapse of Complex
> Societies" and what he wrote makes plenty of sense to me. Sometimes things
> are as bad as they seem - but somehow things continue afterwards - some kind
> of life continues after collapses - or whatever word you want to use.
>
> In the book "Panarchy. Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural
> Systems" edited by Gunderson and Hollins, the word "release" is used for a
> phase in what they call "adaptive cycles" - where release is the release of
> resources from highly productive and interdependent systems that have lost
> their resilience because of their hyper interdependency - so that problems
> cascade through them and the system disintegrates. In this context the word
> "release" is meant to convey the idea that, as the big systems break down
> their resources are now available for new beginnings....
>
> It's great fun to make sweeping world historical generalisations but if
> we're going to have a "Butterfly moment" as opposed to a "collapse moment"
> then we need, to continue with Eric's metaphor about how caterpillars turn
> into Butterflys, more people functioning as "stem cells" in the
> social-economic and political "goo" after "peak everything".
>
> That means we need people who actually try to develop different forms of
> productive organisation - like common pool resources, local exchange systems
> and currencies, community farming etc - and develop them successfully as
> responses to the growing chaos "as the mainstream turns into goo" (to use
> Eric's metaphor again). So we need project developers more than essay
> writers....
>
> It also depends who you are how you describe what is happening. I dare say
> there are a few people in the USA, now living in cars and tents, who would
> think that their lives have "collapsed". When US municipalities can no
> longer pay pensions I dare say that a number of pensioners in the USA will
> think that their world has collapsed too. I think it would actually help
> these people psychologically if there was a widespread acknowledgment that
> US society was breaking up, that they were involved in something bigger that
> needed big responses  - and not deny it just because there is a facade of
> normality in Washington and in Wall Street - among the too big to fail, too
> big to tell the truth, too big to be accountable to the law institutions.
>
>   Above all I would like to insist that it is a time of great danger and
> great danger can go either way - into transformative lifeboat projects that
> become new starts for fulfilling lives and new opportunities....if and when
> people organise tangible and really helpful mutual aid and skill sharing
> that are really supportive - or it can lead to catastrophe...or indeed to
> both, depending where and who you are, and/or what stage in the process you
> are talking about....
>
> Eric writes inspirational  stuff about the accumulation of knowledge
> alongside great ignorance and oppression. Quite - but we can't assume that
> the accumulated knowledge of humanity so far will see us through against the
> other side of what's happening. There's still huge danger and I dare say
> there will be many casualties who will need support....
>
> Eric seems to be more on the optimistic side - partly because of the
> accumulation of science, knowledge and understanding by humanity over its
> history. For my part I think there's a very common oversimplification about
> the way  that societies accumulate more and more knowledge and understanding
> - what is less well appreciated is that, at the same time, societies and
> individuals forget and lose knowledge - the skill of mending or re-
> tayloring clothes, how to put a new sole or heel on shoes, the skill of
> growing and cooking local food, how to look after animals. Over and against
> this there is what sometimes feel to me to be a euphoric idea that society
> is somehow growing in its knowledge because people are accumulating a lot of
> skills to write inspirational tracts and are good at putting photos on
> Facebook.
>
> As ecological economists Herman Daley and Joshua Farley point out:
>
> "new knowledge often renders old knowledge obsolete...and when knowledge
> becomes obsolete the artifacts that embody that knowledge become obsolete as
> well. ...As E J Mishan noted, technological knowledge often unrolls the
> carpet of increased choice before us by the foot, while simultaneously
> rolling it up behind us by the yard..... Furthermore new knowledge need not
> always reveal new possibilities for growth, it can bring serious harm and
> reveal new limitations. The new knowledge of the fire resisting properties
> of asbestos increased its usefulness, subsequent knowledge of its
> carcinogenic properties reduced its usefulness. New knowledge can cut both
> ways. Finally, and most obviously, knowledge has to be actively learned and
> taught every generation - it cannot be passively bequeathed like an
> accumulating stock portfolio. When society invests little in the transfer of
> knowledge to the next generation, some of it is lost, and its distribution
> often becomes more concentrated, contributing to the growing inequality in
> the distribution of income, as well as a general dumbing down in the future.
>
> "It is a gross prejudice to think that the future will always know more
> than the past. Every generation is born totally ignorant, and just as we are
> always one failed harvest away from starvation, we are also always one
> failed generational transfer of knowledge away from darkest ignorance.
> Although it is true that today many people know many things that no one knew
> in the past, it is also true that large segments of the present generation
> are more ignorant than large segments of past generations. The level of
> policy in a democracy cannot rise above the average level of understanding
> of the population. In a democracy, the distribution of knowledge is as
> important as the distribution of wealth"
>
> Joshua Farley and Herman E Daly Ecological Economics pp40-41
>
> So, while it is true, that, at a great ecological cost that often goes
> unrecognised, computers and the internet can and do provide a wonderful
> means for the generational transfer of knowledge, I think that on balance we
> are probably NOT on course to a Butterfly metamorphosis but, if anything
> rather the reverse. The antibodies of the old order are currently doing a
> lot of damage to the possibilities for renewal. For example, in the USA
> what Daly and Farley term "the average level of understanding of the
> population" is moving in the direction of creationism and pre-Darwinian
> thought and the majority don't believe climate change is caused by fossil
> fuels because of the PR work of the fossil fuel corporations added to
> collective psychological denial. So science is in retreat in favour of
> corporate lies. No wonder the powers that be are hysterical about
> wikileaks.....
>
> So, in summary. (1) The use of the word 'collapse' is perfectly compatible
> with working for, and believing in, the possibility that one might make a
> difference for the better. ( I claim no more than that - let's be less
> grandiose please!) (2) At the moment we are still in great danger and the
> forces of ignorance seem to me, to be gaining ground if anything. I say that
> not in order deliberately to cast gloom, but in order to stay grounded in
> the reality. There are some positive developments but it's not looking good.
> (3) Instead of writing tracts on world historical generalisations can we try
> and stay on how we organise concrete and tangible projects and carry them
> forward please.
>
> Happy New Year....
>
> Brian
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 4:17 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> see http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/05/11/id-74
>>
>> *Eric Harris-Braun* wrote this<http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/05/11/id-74>in May 2009, but these are still very valid and stimulating observations:
>>
>> *“A friend of mine recently asked me to read Carolyn Baker’s article When
>> facing reality is not ‘negative thinking<http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1085/1/>.
>> This article has finally helped me nail down some thought’s I’ve been having
>> about the way I’ve been often asked to look at the “collapse” of
>> civilization and the idea that we need to “face reality.”*
>>
>> *To begin with, I’d like to affirm my agreement with Dr. Baker and others
>> that the ways our world is currently structured, from how we use people and
>> energy, to how we feed our selves, to our political and financial forms, are
>> completely unsustainable and are destined to be radically changed. That much
>> is certain to me.*
>>
>> *But I’d like to suggest that the very act of framing of this process of
>> change in terms of “collapse” and of “facing reality,” is in itself part of
>> remaining within those same sets of unsustainable structures.*
>>
>> *Some people have described the current era as on par with what happens
>> in a caterpillar before it turns into a butterfly. This process is not a
>> simple transformation where the caterpillar body shrinks and then sprouts
>> wings and legs. Instead the body of the caterpillar completely “collapses”
>> into a a blob of ooze, and is then re-grows itself into it’s new form
>> starting from what are called imaginal cells which are a kind of new
>> butterfly stem cells that are even attacked by the body of the caterpillar
>> before it has completely dissolved because they are at first not even
>> recognized as “self”. This process has been written about elsewhere, so I
>> won’t belabor it, but if you haven’t read about it before, it’s worth
>> googling.*
>>
>> *However, I actually don’t think think this caterpillar-butterfly process
>> really is on par with what’s happening now for one main reason: the outcome
>> of the metamorphosis of the caterpillar is pretty darn certain, but the
>> outcome of our future is not at all certain. But, this makes it more clear
>> to me that to describe the change we are facing now as “collapse” is even
>> more of a mistake than it was for me to use the word “collapse” in
>> describing what happens to the body of the caterpillar.*
>>
>> *The word collapse comes from the roots “fall” and “together” and evokes
>> the idea of the falling down of a building, and its breaking apart,
>> shattering to pieces. The reason why that’s not an appropriate description
>> in the case of the caterpillar, is that its body’s dissolution is part of an
>> active living process that’s going somewhere, that though it is a
>> destruction or death of sorts, is fully energized and there are nodes of
>> self-organization that are part of the living process that will take it to
>> the next step. Collapse is a word for the falling apart of a mechanical
>> system, not for the transformation of a living one. And there’s the rub: at
>> the heart of our world’s current structures (the very ones that led to our
>> current forms of government, finance, politics, that are unsustainable), is
>> the underlying assumption that the universe is a mechanical system that we
>> are separate from rather than a living system of which ware intimately a
>> part. So to call what’s happening now a “collapse” I think keeps us from
>> stepping into the very “myriad opportunities it presents,” because it keeps
>> us thinking in the old way. If instead we conceive ourselves as part of a
>> living system, then how we conceive of what’s happening right now might be
>> vastly different.*
>>
>> *Here is what I see: for the last 5000 years (since the advent of the
>> three big inventions: agriculture, writing & money) we have been on a
>> massive journey of increasing consciousness and liberating potential that
>> those three inventions are the foundation of. I’m making no claim as to the
>> universality, value, goodness or evil of this journey, I’m just know that it
>> has happened. At the end of this 5000 year journey our consciousness of how
>> the natural world (including ourselves) works, and the pure liberation of
>> potential (both social, physical, and technological) is simply awesome. But
>> we are at a nexus. On one hand there are millions if not billions of fully
>> empowered humans on the planet; there is a vast quantity of energy that is
>> available to be put to use; there is an even greater quantity of information
>> and knowledge to organize that use; and there is an astounding set of
>> information processing tools coordinate that use. On the other, there are
>> millions, if not billions of disempowered and enslaved humans on the planet;
>> there is vast energy need as well as waste; and there is great
>> disinformation and lies spread and all kinds of machinations in place to
>> prevent the free spread and coordination of information. I see these two
>> “hands” as fully living and dynamic tensions in a vast living earth of which
>> humanity, with it’s budding consciousness, is now a significant part.”*
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>


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