History For Tomorrow (Book Review)

On page 2 of History For Tomorrow Roman Krznaric quotes the German philosopher and poet Goethe. ‘He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living hand to mouth,’ wrote Goethe in 1819.

Roman Krznaric’s book is certainly not written hand to mouth. It is meticulously researched and eloquently written.

Krznaric’s essential thesis in this book is to present ideas from the past that may hold keys to how we deal with issues in the present. The historical events that he chooses at first seem illogical and unconnected to the modern-day issue. His comparisons are reminiscent of one of Edward de Bono’s (the Father of Lateral Thinking) exercises in which two unrelated concepts are thrown together to see how they might inform each other.

For instance, the problem of social media might seem like an uniquely modern issue. Krznaric shows how an understanding of the history of the invention and production of the printing press is of benefit when attempting to tackle the myriad troubles of social media. The treatment of witches in the 16^th and 17^th centuries is also presented as having some lessons for 21^st century social media. So too, does the coffeehouse culture in England from 1650 onwards. (England’s first coffeehouse is just down the road from where Krznaric live, in Oxford.)

On first glance, none of these – Gutenberg’s printing press, witch hunts, and coffeehouses – would seem to have much to offer methods to deal with the difficulties of social media. But Krznaric skilfully shows that they can.

History For Tomorrow tackles a number of modern-day issues, from water shortages to genetic modification, from inequality to artificial intelligence. How can we kick the consumer habit, or how do we restore faith in democracy? History, as Krznaric shows, is replete with possible remedies.

Reading this book I was often surprised, and then delighted, to read of the historical events that Krznaric laid in front of a present-day issue.

Towards the end of the book Krznaric quotes another writer, the American author Mark Twain. Twain is often noted for some of his pithy sayings. In Chapter 9 (of 10) one of those sayings is quoted: ‘History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’

Roman Krznaric has done an excellent job of discovering and presenting to us the rhymes of history.

Note:

1. Roman Krznaric, History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the past for the future of humanity, W H Allen, London, 2024

Two Arrows

Most of the world’s great spiritual teachers have used metaphors, parables, and allegories to convey their teachings. The use of such devices usually allows sometimes complex concepts to be more easily understood by the listener or reader.

One of the Buddha’s allegories helps to explain how we can often get into self-perpetuating and repeating cycles of pain, harm, and suffering. The Buddha has often been known as the Great Physician because his primary teaching was to teach the mechanisms of suffering: how suffering arises, and how we might heal ourselves of suffering. Indeed, his first Noble Truth tells us that ‘suffering exists.’

Before continuing it is worth taking a closer read of the word that has been translated as suffering in the English language.

Suffering, in the language of the Buddha, does not simply mean the same as pain. It can be better translated as a mixture of English words such as: discontent, dis-ease, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, or restlessness.

The Buddha distinguishes between pain and suffering. One of the best known of his allegories to illustrate the difference is that of the Two Arrows.

Imagine that you have been struck by an arrow. It is painful. The pain may be physical, such as a wound to your leg or arm. It may be emotional, perhaps a loss of someone close to you. It may be psychological, for example, becoming depressed or anxious. In each case the pain of the arrow is real and something we feel.

The key insight of the Buddha was that, having been shot by the first arrow of pain, we then react and shoot a second arrow. This arrow may be directed at someone else, whom we blame for shooting the first arrow. In many cases, too, we shoot this arrow at ourselves. We blame ourselves for being foolish, stupid, or simply careless.

This second arrow is the arrow of suffering.

By taking this second arrow out of our quiver and shooting it we trap ourselves in a snare of which there seems no way out. Shooting this arrow we believe to be capable of relieving us of our pain.

Yet, most often, instead of relief from pain, shooting this second arrow only results in further pain, to ourselves or others. Sadly, all too often when we shoot the second arrow at someone else, the other person (unless they have learnt the lesson of the two arrows) is likely to fire yet another arrow back. The arrows then begin to fly back and forth, inflicting further, and greater pain, with each shot.

The allegory of the two arrows does not try to teach us how to not shoot the first arrow. Nor is it attempting to educate us on how to dodge the first arrow.

The first arrow is inevitable. Being human places us in situations which are painful or hurtful.

The second arrow, however, is not inevitable. This is the teaching the Buddha is trying to make; How to not shoot that second arrow.

Because the first arrow is unavoidable, then we can learn to accept the pain, be open to what it is telling us. Most pain - whether physical, emotional, or psychological – has a message for us.

By shooting the second arrow we do not allow ourselves to hear the message.

Although the Buddha when speaking this allegory was talking about our individual lives, we can clearly identify the shooting of the second arrow also in our collective lives.

The lesson in our collective, social, and global lives is no different.

We must learn to not shoot the second arrow.

Leave that second arrow in the quiver.

Forgotten Forgetting

Every so often I come across two prevailing beliefs in conversations. One is that humans are innately selfish, prone to violence, and/or nasty. The other is that our hunter-gatherer ancestors often beat each other up to steal scarce resources. The two beliefs are linked. They are both highly debatable, and most likely false.

The common imagery associated with the second of these beliefs is that of opposing groups of hunter-gatherers coming into contact and, using clubs, spears, and other weapons, attacking one another. Such imagery supposes that one group may have just killed a deer, and the other group wishes to steal the deer for their own use.

A further image of hunter-gatherers is that of the males going off and taking a woman of another group by force and dragging her (many images show by the hair) back to his own cave.

These images are palpably untrue.

Yet, these images, and the beliefs themselves, are likely to be the source of the first belief – that humans are inherently malicious and horrible creatures - or perhaps stem from that belief themselves.

Over the years these images and beliefs have had their adherents, sometimes advanced by high profile, and influential people. One of the most notable was the 17^th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. In his book, Leviathan,¹ Hobbes curtly and bluntly summed up the belief that humans are innately unpleasant by stating that the ‘life of man (is) solitary, poor, nasty, brutal, and short.’

Hobbes’ solution to this condition was to enter into a social contract by which citizens give up their freedoms to powerful individuals and/or parliaments in exchange for safety. By expanding upon this notion Hobbes became known as the father of political philosophy.

Hobbes’ summary is a very bleak assessment of the nature of humanity, isn’t it?

Yet, I hear and read versions of this assessment constantly from many people; from esteemed authors to those I share a coffee with. Our culture seems to have adopted this view uncritically. Perhaps, more likely, we have simply forgotten how things were before we took to agriculture in a big way. Daniel Quinn calls this The Great Forgetting; the ‘fact that before the advent of agriculture and village life, humans had lived in a profoundly different way.’²

Over the past 10,000 years or so, not only have we forgotten how things were, but we have also even forgotten that we have forgotten. So that nowadays we assume that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutal, and short’ lives, because that was the way Hobbes and others saw the world of their time. This judgment by Hobbes and others has entered our cultural belief system and worldview, so much so that it goes unquestioned.

Yet, research by palaeontologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists challenges the belief. This research shows that our ancestors roamed over large expanses, yet when they encountered other groups, the contact was not one of distrust or aggression. More often it was to trade, to re-acquaint with friends or relatives, to find mates (outside of one’s own clan), to learn new skills, and to participate in ceremonies and rituals. As the authors of one review paper claim, hunter-gatherers ‘moved because they were part of a mobile society that was large, complex, and distributed.’³

Our hunter-gather ancestors did not live in isolated small groups according to these researchers. Hunter-gather society was complex and interrelated. This is what we have forgotten.

During Hobbes’ time the research techniques of palaeontologists and anthropologists were not available to him; consequently, he was unable to remember life thousands of years before. He most likely assumed that what he saw of British society of his time was how things had always been. His words became explanations without evidence. Today, as I hear and see these same images and beliefs repeated, they sound and look more and more like justification, rather than simply explanation. If not outright justification, then at least tolerant credibility.

Today, we try to find ways to overcome aggression, violence, poverty, and harshness, because we think these arise from our innate human nature. But, if we have forgotten our state of nature as it was for 95% of our human existence, then we do not need to find ways to overcome our nature: we simply need to stop forgetting.

Notes:

1. To give its full title: Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. First published in 1651. (They were prone to protracted book titles at that time.)

2. Daniel Quinn, Have You Heard of the Great Forgetting? An excerpt from his book The Story of B. It used to be on his Ishmael.com website, but with the shift to Ishmael.org it has disappeared. However, the article is still available on the Films for Action website - https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-great-forgetting/  accessed 16 October 2024

3. Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias, Why do hunter-gatherers refuse to be sedentary? University of Zūrich, March 2024 https://aeon.co/essays/the-hunter-gatherers-of-the-21st-century-who-live-on-the-move  accessed 16 October 2024

Wisdom Overshoot

On the front cover of his masterful book Overshoot¹ William Catton succinctly defines overshoot as ‘growth beyond an area’s carrying capacity.’  Carrying capacity, he defines as the ‘maximum permanently supportable load.’

William Catton made a coherent and irresistible case for overshoot being at the heart of our present-day environmental disasters. In attempting, via technology, to use our ingenuity and innovative powers to increase the Earth’s carrying capacity we have succeeded only in reducing it. We have way overshot the Earth’s carrying capacity, manifesting that in species extinction, climate chaos, and air, land, and sea pollution as just a few examples.

Behind the technological reasons for overshoot we can also identify another category of overshoot.

Our collective ability to innovate, invent, and fabricate systems, technology, and facilities has overshot our wisdom. What do I mean by this?

When we innovate, invent, and fabricate we ask ourselves questions such as: How can we make this happen? What resources do we need for this?

These are questions that call on our intelligence and our knowledge. These questions are framed within paradigms of progress and human exceptionalism.

They are not questions that ask us to reflect upon the consequences of our innovations, inventions, and fabrications.

They are not questions that call upon our wisdom.

Wisdom would ask, in each and every case: Should we do this?

There are innumerable instances in our past where we have not asked this question, or if we have, have ignored the answers. In just the past 200 years, we have failed to ask such a question of innovations such as: the internal combustion engine, atomic fission, weapons development, artificial intelligence, mobile phone systems, monocultural agriculture, “green” energy, the private automobile, …

Yet, if we were to honestly and robustly look into the outcomes of each of these, we would find disastrous effects and results.

Towards the end of his book, William Catton asks: ‘What must we avoid doing to keep from making a bad situation unnecessarily worse?’

His question has to be answered with – avoid our desire to continuously innovate, invent, and fabricate.

In the place of these we must give greater emphasis upon wisdom and the willingness to seriously consider the consequences of our actions, not just for ourselves, but primarily for future generations. Furthermore, within those future generations must be included birds, fish, mammals, insects, trees, fungi, ferns, rivers, mountains, sierras, and all the other phenomena that go together to make up the natural world.

We cannot afford for our intelligence to continually overshoot our carrying capacity of wisdom.

Notes

1. William R Catton, Jr., Overshoot, University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 1982

Magic Wand

At the end of his interviews with guests, one of my favourite podcasters¹ asks of them each the same question: ‘If you could wave a magic wand and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures?’

As I listen to his guests’ replies I sometimes wonder how I would answer that question.

I’ve come up with an answer.

Get rid of mobile phones. And all the surrounding paraphernalia that goes with them.

The label phone is out-of-date these days. For sure, the very first ones were phones, but nowadays they are also, inter alia; a camera, a news service, a video recorder, an entertainment centre (movies and music for example), a dictionary and encyclopedia, a calculator, a calendar and appointments diary, and ….

Getting rid of mobile phones, to my mind, could significantly improve human and planetary futures. Consider a few of the issues that would derive from a world without mobile phones.

There would be less anxiety and depression in the world. Research indicates that mobile phone use can become addictive (it even has a name – nomophobia) which in turn leads to greater levels of anxiety and depression.

Excessive use of mobile phones has been shown to result in eye swelling and other eyesight problems.

The “blue” light of mobile phones interferes with the ability to fall asleep and increases the chances of insomnia.

Many people use earplugs with their mobile phones. Excessive use of these has been shown to cause ear problems.

Ironically, since phones are supposed to be communication devices, mobile phone use leads to less communication between people. In turn this leads to greater levels of social isolation.

Cyberbullying is a term that has had to be invented to describe the bullying that becomes possible with mobile phones and other electronic media. A Headspace² survey in Australia in 2019 found that well over 50% of young Australians experienced cyberbullying.

Mobile phone use contributes to less physical activity, resulting in a number of health issues.

There is some (albeit inconclusive) research indicating a connection between mobile phone use and cancer.

The use of mobile phones whilst driving increases the risk of an accident by four times.

More than 5.3 billion (yes – billion) mobile phones were thrown away in 2022. Stacked flat these would form a pile that would rise 1/8^th of the way to the moon – further out into space than the orbit of the International Space Station.

Mobile phones get replaced once every 18 months, on average globally. Only 12.5% of these are recycled to some extent.

E-waste (of which mobile phones are a significant quantity) contribute 70% of all global toxic waste. 80% of the e-waste produce in the US gets exported to Asia, where workers (many of them children) get exposed to the toxic fumes when the waste is burnt following the extraction of the precious metals.

Between 400 litres and 2 million litres of water is required to produce just 1 kg of lithium, and essential mineral in making mobile phones. And that is just one of the many minerals required.

Having a mobile phone continuously at hand dumbs us down. The convenience of looking up information requires much less thinking than does undertaking honest and sincere fact finding. Those that would manipulate our minds know this well, and hence we become exposed to false news, misinformation, and downright lies.

What if mobile phones did disappear? Would that improve human and planetary futures? Maybe.

The mental health of young people might improve, or at least not get worse.

Our sense of community might return.

We might find a renaissance in the pleasures of one-to-one conversation and the return of the art of letter writing.

The Earth would be less exploited and may be able to cope better with the amount of waste we produce.

The health of workers in Asia (and elsewhere) might increase.

We might start to enjoy simple pleasures of outdoor activity again.

Does anyone have a magic wand?

Notes

1. Nate Hagens, https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/

2. Headspace is a non-profit organisation dealing with the health and wellbeing of young people in Australia.