as the cop26 With the climate summit underway, scientists and activists are in broad agreement that our prevailing cultural system has put us and our planet on a trajectory of disaster. They believe it is time to change course. Yet, at this critical moment, we find ourselves paralyzed, closed to new horizons by a false prospectus of human possibilities based on mythological notions of history.
We only have no. need to seetion Which underlies our idea of human development. In this story, our species originated in an egalitarian band of hunter-gatherers and forest dwellers who, at one with their surroundings, only somehow fell from grace to a state of disequilibrium. In this “coming-of-age” story, we humans started off innocence and then evolved through a journey of technological discovery – from farmers to farmers to fossil fuels – that enabled our “advancement”, but also gave us our renounced basic freedom. . We have become “civilised”, only to find ourselves locked in a tug of war with nature, which now threatens the planet.
We are told that creativity was always the exception in human society, not the norm. It is believed, in extraordinary explosions – agricultural, urban, industrial revolutions – each of which was followed by long, sterile years when we remained prisoners of our creations.
We could have lived in an equal society, the story goes, when we were little, our lives and needs were simpler. Small in this sense means egalitarian, in balance with each other and with nature. Big means complex, involving hierarchy, exploitation, and the competitive extraction of Earth’s resources. Now, as the human population approaches eight billion, we are left to draw clearly disappointing conclusions. There is no point in fighting the inevitable. Between frozen neoliberalism and the pressures of our growing or die economy, what do we really hope to make progress?
But as it turns out, nothing about this familiar concept of human history is actually true.
To be clear, the myth itself isn’t the problem here. Just as all societies have their own science, so all societies have their own myths. The problems begin when we mistake our myths for physical or social science. In fact, the great mythological structures we have deployed of history for the past several centuries no longer work: it is impossible to reconcile the flood of new evidence about the human past that is now before our very eyes. . And the categories and connotations they encourage are toddy, shop-worn and politically destructive.
In recent decades, our scientific means of understanding the past, both our species and our planet, have been advancing at a dizzying pace. Scientists may not be facing alien civilizations in distant star systems in 2021, but we are facing different forms of society beneath our feet: forgotten ways of being human and living together in great numbers. did not take the path.
we are looking for evidence garden city Governed in a truly democratic manner, without centres; NS society that adapted with the seasons, switching freely between modes of livelihood and organization – egalitarian and hierarchical – as they did; We see the size of empires in the mirror of our past, alliances and confederations held together by cooperation and consensus, not force.
Humans may not have begun their history in a state of innocence, but they seem to have spent much of it exercising a self-conscious hatred of authority. We now know that the world’s first city dwellers didn’t always leave hard footprints on the environment or on each other; We also know that there are no laws of history that compel us to bind the future of the Earth system to the cut and thrust of our electoral politics or that compel us to regard the crisis of hospitality as a crisis of migration. We do. It is not against the grain of our social development to call upon citizens’ gatherings to address issues of the magnitude of the climate crisis; It is asking us to reclaim the spark of political creativity that gave life to the world’s first towns and cities, in the hope that we all understand the future of the planet we share.
The time has come to change the course of human history, starting with the past. It seems that we are now heading towards what the ancient Greeks called KairosA window of opportunity, when our capacity for change is tested. If we fail, it is not because of history or evolution. Others – what we call indigenous peoples, First Nations – are already far ahead of us, because, against the odds of colonial appropriation, genocide and past pandemics, they followed different paths into the future, based on caring for land management. systems were maintained. , not ownership or extraction, forms of democracy in which participation means checking, not showing off, one’s ego.
Today we have no excuse for inertia. Yes, we are surrounded by the ghosts of our recent past, utopian dreams built on distorted images of human history, which give rise to demons and nightmares. But to change the world, to pierce the fabric of social reality and start all over again, is what makes us sapiens. As far as our scientific evidence takes us to our own past, we take it to be true. Our ancestors did not fade away from evolutionary theory or philosophical speculation. Viewed against the backdrop of our entire history, we have become a fickle, inventive species that has recently become caught up in the deadly game of extraction and expansion – “you are either growing or you are dying” – and forgotten. Learn how to change the rules.
my late friend David Graber Wrote: “The world’s final, hidden truth is that it is something we create and could easily create differently.” To even begin this process, and no matter how great the obstacles, we must allow ourselves to dream again, this time beginning with the freedoms that have made us human.
Not the malicious freedoms taught to us by ancient slave-holders (legal liberties linked to the plight of another’s captivity and suffering; freedom that makes us winners and losers, survivors and victims). But instead, the freedoms associated with caring and mutual assistance are long familiar to those in the global South, who avoid the worst traps for us and whose fates are now tied to our own: the freedom to walk away, be on our own terms. To escape the surroundings, knowing that you will be welcomed at the destination point; To disobey arbitrary orders, knowing that you will not be excommunicated, but heard and debated. Based on these, we can take the liberty to re-imagine and then remake our societies and our relationships with our planet in a whole new way.
David Vengro is Professor of Comparative Archeology at University College London. He is co-author of David Graber the morning of everything
cop26 And a greener future, with George Monbiot
Join George Monbiot and guests finding out whether we can bring social and climate justice together to tackle industrial carbon emissions and the jobs crisis?
Thursday November 4th, 8 pm GMT | 9 pm CET | 1 p.m. PDT | 4 p.m. EDT. ticket cutting Here.