Humans are not going to find solutions for the polycrisis, conquer new planets, the galaxy, and the universe, fully understand the human condition, let alone the living planet or the cosmos, or develop technologies that replace anthropocentrism with technocentrism – in fact these two terms are synonyms for one and the same human collective grandiose delusion.
The presence of the above limitations opens up human potential that far exceeds what any individual can imagine. Human potential starts to manifest once we fully appreciate:
- Human cognitive and emotional limitations (*)
- Human and non-human diversity (*)
- Interdependence and mutual aid (*)
- The big cycle of life, including our impermanence and the compostability of all living beings (*)
- The wonder of life, the sacredness of all living beings
- Collaborative niche construction at human comprehensible scales
- Compassion – seeing the humanity in all mistakes, misunderstandings, and addictions
- De-powered dialogue to compare notes and incrementally develop shared understanding
- Deliberation in Open Space for omni-directional learning
- The sacredness of lifetime relationships beyond the human
Cultures that appreciate these ten aspects of life are co-creating conditions conducive to life – they are conducive to human and non-human wellbeing. Cultures that negate one or more of these aspects of life are are not conducive to human and non-human wellbeing.
(*) These four aspects of life are biological facts.
Deep appreciation of each one of these ten aspects of being alive reminds us of the suffering caused by all forms of social power dynamics and the need to clamp down on all any attempts to establish permanent social power structures.
Becoming conscious of and genuinely appreciating human cognitive and emotional limitations is the foundational step that allows us not only to appreciate all the other aspects of being alive, but it also highlights the absurdity and the harm caused by all attempts to establish and maintain institutions that attempt to “control” life beyond human comprehensible scales.
A couple of days ago archaeologist David Wengrow published a timely article on how our picture of past populations and the scope of human freedoms has been distorted through the lens of kingdoms and empires:
… How many, back then, preferred imperial control to non-imperial freedoms? How many were given a choice? How much choice do we have now? It seems nobody really knows the answers to these questions, at least not yet. In future, it will take more than zombie statistics to stop us from asking them. There are forgotten histories buried in the ground, of human politics and values. The soil mantle of Earth, including the very soil itself, turns out to be not just our species’ life support system, but also a forensic archive, containing precious evidence to challenge timeworn narratives about the origins of inequality, private property, patriarchy, warfare, urban life and the state – narratives born directly from the experience of empire, written by the ‘winners’ of a future that may yet make losers of us all.
Investigating the human past in this way is not a matter of searching for utopia, but of freeing us to think about the true possibilities of human existence. Unhampered by outdated theoretical assumptions and dogmatic interpretations of obsolete data, could we look with fresh eyes at the very meaning of terms like ‘civilisation’? Our species has existed for something like 300,000 years. Today, we stand on a precipice, confronting a future defined by environmental collapse, the erosion of democracy, and wars of unprecedented destructiveness: a new age of empire, perhaps the last in a cycle of such ages that, for all we really know, may represent only a modest fraction of the human experience.
For those who seek to change course, such uncertainty about the scope of human freedoms may itself be a source of liberation, opening pathways to other futures.
Fully appreciating human diversity
When we are conscious of human cognitive and emotional limits, we can start to appreciate human and non-human diversity, interdependence, mutual aid, and the compostability of all living beings.
Life (re)creates conditions conducive to life. Humans evolved to collaborate in groups that don’t exceed human comprehensibility.
The latent capacity for forming groups beyond the scale of human comprehensibility is best understood by adopting a non-anthropocentric ecological lens, and enumerating a few obvious consequences. In groups beyond human scale:
- No one can claim to understand the unique lived experiences, limitations, and needs that are associated with all the relationships within the group
- Anyone who makes decisions that have the potential to affect others in major ways is likely causing suffering without being aware of it – setting the stage for ableism to become established
- Interactions between people who don’t know much if anything about each other become normalised
- Maintaining social norms that clamp down on all emergent social power structures becomes difficult – if such social norms are maintained over long stretches of time it is the result of an evolutionary process beyond human control, for example thanks to favourable ecological conditions and feedback loops, and not thanks to “super human abilities” of an elite of “leaders”
- Once social power structures becomes established, the group increasingly suffers from the instability and energy cost of in-group competition, and as a result compromises its ability to fully pay attention to ecological conditions and feedback loops beyond the human
- Within a frame of social competition, any disinterest or inability to participate in competitive social games is viewed as a weakness and a sign of inferiority
In contrast, in human scale cultural organisms:
- Everyone has some awareness of the unique lived experiences, limitations, and needs that are present within the group
- Anyone who makes decisions that cause others to suffer in major ways will be made aware of it – reducing the risk of ableism becoming established
- People who interact know each other, and have some level of shared understanding and mutual trust
- Maintaining social norms that clamp down on all emergent social power structures is a viable collective practice, and the benefits of investing in the effort are obvious to everyone
- In a group in which radically egalitarian practices are well established and de-powered relationships have been maintained over many years, individual attempts at establishing social power are quickly recognised and confirmed from multiple perspectives, and can be dealt with effectively
- Within an egalitarian frame of collaborative niche construction, all dimensions of diversity become potential sources of unique capabilities, strengthening compassion and commitments to mutual care – and active disinterest in competitive social games reinforces the frame
The lived experience of ability and disability is entirely a matter of social context and framing.
Diversity and disability in modern industrialised societies
Sadly in hypernormative societies experiences with radically egalitarian human scale organisms have become very rare. Experience in the practice of de-powered dialogue has also become rare, even within households and families.
David Wengrow’s observations on the distorting lenses of kingdoms and empires fit beautifully with the introduction to the Ecologies of Care peer support model:
As we live through the current human predicament we are well advised to understand capitalism as a collective learning disability that actively contributes to human and non-human suffering…
The neurodiversity, disability, and indigenous rights movements are part of the cultural immune system of human societies, responding to the mechanistic, hypercompetitive, and rule based approach to social arrangements imposed by the learning disabled mono-cult with a holistic social justice approach. The key element that holds together all the threads, which has been systematically eroded in Westernised societies is the notion of trust, including the role of trustworthy, sacred relationships within the context of life affirming ecologies of care…
When the existence/emergence of social power dynamics is fully normalised, human social interactions are no longer about deepening shared understanding and relational ecologies of care, but about winning and losing competitive social games and systematically marginalising the less fortunate.
Diversity and disability in earlier times
Based on what we can glean from earlier times, the cultural bias inherent in the modern myths of social progress via industrialisation and the religion of the invisible hand is exposed.
Archaeologist Lorna Tilley and her colleagues, who specialize in the way past societies cared for people who were sick or disabled, remind us of the cooperation, flexibility, and ingenuity shown by past peoples in caring for one another.
Many papers challenge (sometimes overturn) assumptions about aspects of health, disease and care practices and/or social attitudes in relation to disability in medieval times (e.g., B ́ed ́ecarrats et al., 2021; Miclon et al., 2021; Robb et al., 2021; Tilley and Cave, 2023), demonstrating that a bio- archaeological lens can offer new perspectives on a past we believe is ‘known’. Finally, a number of the case studies highlight the importance of (re)considering medieval attitudes towards those experiencing disability, with findings indicating a lack of stigmatisation and an acceptance of difference which support the observations of some medieval historians (e.g., Metzler, 2006; Cilione and Gazzaniga, 2023) and add a touch of humanity to our understanding of life in this era (e.g., Bethard et al., 2021; Kozakaite ̇ et al., 2022b; McKenzie et al., 2022; Tilley and Cave, 2023).
– From Disability and care in Western Europe during Medieval times: A bioarchaeological perspective
Neanderthal healthcare is significant not in its distinctiveness compared to that of biologically modern humans in later periods but in its similarity. Neanderthals appear to share a common human emotional and practical response to vulnerability and suffering of those that they were close to, attitudes also reflected in care of children, attitudes to the body at death through mortuary practice. The very similarity of Neanderthal healthcare to that of later periods has important implications however – that organized, knowledgeable and caring healthcare is not unique to our species but rather has a long evolutionary history. Healthcare provisioning is likely to have been significant in reducing mortality and ameliorating risks in resource acquisition far into the distant past.
– From Calculated or caring? Neanderthal healthcare in social context
So what can the bioarchaeology of care approach tell us? In the cases of both Man Bac Burial 9 and Lesley, provision of health-related care entailed intensive and time-consuming efforts on the part of caregivers. In both cases, those providing care in response to acute distress would more than likely have anticipated that, were initial health care measures successful, some level of long-term support for the recipient might be needed. Conscious choices were required: To give or to withhold care? To assign scarce resources to caring for one individual or to assign priority elsewhere? In both instances, group members chose to allocate their time and energies to caring for the vulnerable in their community.
Our past contains important lessons for the present. if we are willing to pay attention. As we write this article, uncertainty reigns over the fate of the millions who will lose health care coverage if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. Is this really the best ‘art of the deal” that we can manage? An archaeological focus on health-related care completely overturns the notion that society has evolved by embracing a winner-takes-all “survival of the fittest” approach to health and welfare policy. On the contrary, research demonstrates the cooperation, flexibility, and ingenuity shown by past peoples in caring for one another. The bioarchaeology of care approach highlights a defining hallmark of the human species: our capacity to support each other in times of need.
– From Caring in Ancient Times
In early Neolithic Vietnam, a young man survived from early adolescence into adulthood completely paralysed from the waist down and with very limited use of his upper body. Dependent on others for meeting his most basic needs, Burial 9’s survival was only possible because of the high quality, dedicated and time-consuming care he received.
The skeletal remains of Man Bac Burial 9, shown in Figure 1 below, provide evidence of a pathological condition difficult to manage successfully in a modern medical environment. Four thousand years ago, the challenges to health maintenance and quality of life would have been overwhelming.
Looking after those who are unable to look after themselves is a behaviour that defines what it is to be human. Evidence suggests health-related care has been practiced within the human family at least the last 100,000 years, and some biologists claim that conspecific caregiving was essential to human evolution.
– From Introduction to the Bioarchaeology of Care
Deconstructing ableist views of the past, however, is a work in progress, powerfully explored by Vogel (Citation2023) in this volume in a careful consideration of studies of bodily differences and disabilities in the fields of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology. The author interrogates the variable nature of how disability has been, and can be, understood in this field, revealing the early tendencies for cataloguing and identifying disease in medicalised terms with embedded assumptions that these defined physiological and bodily differences. Discussions of disability in terms of treatment, care and therapy are recent developments. Southwell, Gowland, and Powell (Citation2016) in particular highlight the universal importance of care in past human relationships, dispelling simplistic notions of othering and discrimination and underlining the complexity of responses – positive and negative – to disease and impairment in the past.
Vogel, in relation to Egyptian studies, calls for a rejection of a dehumanising medicalised language, and a new focus on rethinking the disability paradigm, with consideration of the cultural variability in perceptions and the agency of those with disabilities and bodily differences. In doing so, we can move away from ableist interpretations but also empower the voices of those who directly experienced impairment, disease and bodily difference in the past. In different ways, the case studies from contemporary archaeology presented in this volume by Hattori (Citation2023) and Dezhamkhooy (Citation2023), also use archaeology to document the lives and deaths of individuals denied permanence, safety and an identity in the modern world. For example, Hattori’s archaeological and forensic exploration uncovers evidence of the structural erasure of the identity of the disenfranchised poor in Brazil through the state sponsorship of mass cremations. The study poses powerful questions about individual rights to care at death, commemoration and remembrance (Hattori Citation2023).
– From Materialising inequalities in past, present and future
An archaeological focus on health-related care completely overturns the notion that society has evolved by embracing a winner-takes-all “survival of the fittest” approach to health and welfare policy. On the contrary, research demonstrates the cooperation, flexibility, and ingenuity shown by past peoples in caring for one another. The bioarchaeology of care approach highlights a defining hallmark of the human species: our capacity to support each other in times of need.
Palliative care for institutions of empire & exit paths for the inmates
Once we acknowledge the magnitude of the current predicament of humanity, our focus shifts away from wasting precious time on delusional and life destroying notions of technological progress, towards minimising human and non-human suffering as part of the big cycle of life that is far beyond human control.
Minimising human suffering translates to providing palliative care for the institutions of empire and proving safe exit paths for the inmates. Minimising suffering beyond the human translates to nurturing ecologies of care beyond the human, and to falling in love with human limitations.
The emerging results of our ongoing survey on cognitive dissonance speaks loud and clear.
Demographics:
Note: we have yet to circulate the survey to a wider audience that extends beyond the intersectionally marginalised Neurodivergent, Autistic, LGBTQIA+, and Disabled communities.
Quantitative results:
20% could not [bring themselves to] write a job application for a corporation or big government department – this matches my own experience, and it would make over 30% feel really bad. Less than 10% would feel somewhat good about.
Only 20% would feel somewhat good about the prospect of accepting employment based on the standard corporate employment contract of an employer. 30% could not do it or would feel really bad. It is not a viable option – I know that it was not a survivable option for me.
Many of us could not [bring ourselves to] market and sell services and products to a corporation or big government department, and most would feel bad about it.
In contrast, most of us love helping friends who are in need.
But then our competitive hypernormative society has taught us to feel bad about asking for help.
When in employed work, we are routinely pushed towards and beyond our ethical concerns and emotional limits.
We know that we can’t expect much if any tangible assistance from employers. The modern conception of employment is a very one-sided exploitative relationship. Comparable relationships within our families would be characterised as neglect and abuse.
Most of us love helping strangers if we are in a position to do so.
And yet, as with our friends, our competitive hypernormative society has taught us to feel bad about asking for help.
Lived experiences of cognitive dissonance in our “advanced” globalised civilisation:
As an autistic therapist working with ND folxs, it is exactly like handing out sunblock to people burning in Hell. our entire society is actively hostile to any person who is not cis, white, het, rich and male. and we are all going to work, buying groceries and dropping the kids at daycare like everything is fine.
I don’t feel good about asking for help, but do feel good about helping others. This is unfair to myself. Second, the large inhuman institutions that make up most of society are not acting in service to humans, but we are asked to see them as human.
My own desire to please and appease others learned before I could speak due to trauma and abuse which happened regularly since I was an infant right through my first marriage. I appease others to avoid their anger or disapproval. The abuse stopped at age 30 when I got therapy to teach me how to be self assertive and make healthy choices. This was not what I had learned growing up or in the relationships I chose before therapy. I stuck to familiar scenarios with no idea I could choose multiple ways to respond to others in any situation. My autistic rigid thinking did not see I had choices. Today’s ” ABA therapy concentrates on teaching small children to please and appease and I see it as dangerous practice to do this. I was abused for much of my young life, taken advantage of by predatory people, etc because I needed to prove to them that I was “good”. After years of conditioning, the immediate response to appeasement/ people pleasing is still a struggle for me to deal with, but at least I mostly refrain from putting myself in danger through extreme appeasement responses. I am fortunate I survived. Getting therapy and better, healthier communication tools to work with saved my life and my sanity.
Living under capitalism and neo fascism as a queer, disabled, autistic person. I frequently have to weigh my own needs, desires, and abilities against the material realities of a society that doesn’t value me.
Working in a caring profession for employers and managers who care primarily for themselves and the organisation.
The biggest source of cognitive dissonance for me is valuing social justice, compassion and equality but being paralysed by my disabilities, anxiety and inability to help sufficiently that I end up not doing anything.
Becoming conscious of human cognitive limits and recognising that these limits are just as real, immutable, and relevant for our survival as the laws of physics may allow us to avoid the fate of earlier civilisations, and to embark on a path of radical energy descent.
You and your friends and colleagues can greatly assist our research by filling in our 8-minute anonymous survey on cognitive dissonance. Many thanks for your participation!
Healing from anthropocentrism
Worldwide there are many thousands – likely millions of small human scale initiatives to re-conceptualise human societies in comprehensible life affirming ways, as an integral part of the living planet.
I refer to the (re)establishment of radically egalitarian social norms as de-powering. Many of these initiatives have their origins in indigenous communities. Some of the longest running initiatives are facilitated by organisations like Navdanya, by our friends at Local Futures, and by the permaculture movement that was conceptualised and nurtured by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.
For those who grew up in urban environments and industrialised societies the learning curve can be long and steep.
But collectively we can tap into a wealth of knowledge and timeless indigenous wisdom.
Neurodivergent, indigenous, and otherwise marginalised people depend on each other in ways that differ from the cultural norm – and that is pathologised in hypernormative societies. The endless chains of trauma must be broken.
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