OUR FIRST 10,000 YEARS IN 10 MINUTES

Understanding the ideological and moral roots of our environmental dilemma:

“In the moment of crisis, the wise build bridges and the foolish build dams,” this Nigerian proverb is very instructive of the environmental dilemmas we face in our time.  Now more than ever, we need to build two kinds of bridges of understanding – first a clear appreciation of our past 10,000-year human history (Smythe, 2015, p.4) and secondly, an articulation of the future we wish for humanity and life on earth to the next 10,000 years.

It is easier to understand the past 10,000 years because they have already happened and can’t be changed; it is much more difficult to build the bridge to the future. However, we must try. By understanding where we stand in relation to where we have been – we  start to gain a deeper appreciation of where the future could be taking us as a collective humanity.

I wish to provide a lay person’s quick brief summary of our past 10,000s in 10 minutes. This article draws from a presentation I made on July, 24, 2019 to about 120 business leaders from across Ohio State. I also share some thoughts at the end on what this means for our next 10,000 years as human society on planet earth. The characterization I make below is inspired in great part by Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 - 1825), a French social theorist and Philosopher.

The past 10,000 years of our modern human society as depicted in the image above can be thought of a long road which can be divided into three distinct ideological periods including, the;

i)                   Classical Antiquity - period which lasted 8000 years and ended about 400 A.D;

ii)                  Christian-Feudal period which lasted 1,200 years and ended about 1700s

iii)                Science-Industrial period which started late 1700s and is currently still ongoing

Each of these periods was characterized by a distinct ideological view of the world which in turn influenced how to humans interacted with each other and their natural environment, or rather environmental world view. Let’s briefly consider each of these distinct periods;

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY (our first 8000 years):

The dominant ideology of the classical antiquity era was a belief in “many gods”, or polytheism. This in turn shaped the view of our human society towards the environment. Most communities from the classical antiquity era are known to have perceived themselves as co-existing in unity with the rest of the created world. Nature was sacred just as humans were.

This environmental worldview led them to describe the natural world as brother, sister, mother. Others related to nature as a repository of the spirits of ancestors.

In the Baganda clan culture (where yours truly originates) this identity of self with the natural world was uniquely expressed through their clan-totem system. Every individual muganda (member of Buganda Kingdom) belongs to a clan and each clan is assigned a typically wildlife animal/bird totem. I personally descend from the lungfish clan and the more than a 1 million members of my clan, don’t eat lungfish, other members of the tribe can eat lungfish, but they too belong to different wildlife clans. Within this complex clan-totem system is embedded the fundamental principles of interdependence, mutuality, reciprocity that evolved over hundreds of generations and kept the tribe members co-existing in peaceful harmony with each other. There is no recorded history of one clan conducting war against another clan. This is because the clans are bonded together by intermarriages, a shared worldview and common ancestry. The wildlife totems such as the lung-fish are protected by each individual member of the clan because they are perceived as representatives of the Baganda ancestors.

As the human societies expanded, resources becoming scarce, the classical antiquity era started to disintegrate between 200-400A.D and was gradually replaced by the second ideological period of Christian-Feudalism (Kumar, 1978, p.31).

CHRISTIAN-FEUDALISM (1200 years):

The dominant ideology of the Christian-Feudal era was monotheism, the belief in one God, particularly the Christian version, which became more widespread from around 400 AD till about 1600.

The environmental worldview however for much of this period still remained relatively similar to the one of the classical antiquity period. St. Francis of Assisi is most illustrative of this environmental ideology – in his beautiful “Poem to brother sun and sister moon”; where he observed thus;

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister, Mother Earth

who sustains and governs us,

Be praised, my Lord, for especially our Brother Sun… Sister Moon…

our Brothers Wind and Air…

for Sister Water, who is very useful to us, humble, precious and pure…

From St. Francis’ poem we notice that the understanding of the unity between the human and the rest of the natural environment had not been lost between the classical antiquity and Christian-Feudal eras.

However, this Christian-Feudal period started to crumble as early as 1,100 A.D (Kumar, 1978, p.32) and by 1600s this era was on its knees due in part to excesses of Christian and feudal leaders such as Pope Alexander VI (1421-1503) who fathered several children among multiple mistresses. The corruption and abuses of the masses by cruel kings and emperors, lords and bishops amidst a poor and sick majority of peasants alongside natural calamity. By late 1600s, 50% of the French people died before 20 years and only 10% lived to the age of 60 years; France experienced 16 famines in the 1700s and it was the discovery of America and diffusion of new agricultural products that eventually saved Europe from famine (Foster, 1999, p.40)

However, the major leadership failures of the Christian clergy and political leaders also inspired many scientific and social thinkers to break the mold and try new ideas and later inaugurate the Science-Industrial era described below;

SCIENCE-INDUSTRIAL PERIOD (300 years):

Unlike the relatively gradual and consensual transition between the classical-antiquity period to the Christian-Feudal era. The transition to the Science-industrial era was rife with conflict from the start.  Some of the pioneers of this transition included Martin Luther (1483-1546), who pinned his 93 theses on the catholic church door and launched the protestant revolution that saw the catholic church devolve into multiple Christian denominations since then. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer fondly called the  "father of modern science" challenged the Catholic church monopoly of knowledge by publicly stating that;

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. 

The catholic church condemned Galileo for "vehement suspicion of heresy"

The same year Galileo died, Isaac Newton (1642-1726), was born. Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian. Newton challenged the conventional catholic church’s view of the Holy Trinity a key tenant of the monotheistic Christian faith at the time. He would later make significant scientific contributions to the fields of mathematics, optics, mechanics and gravitation. It is important to note that even though these early pioneers of the science-industrial revolution fought spirited fights with the Christian administrators at the time, they remained deeply committed to the monotheistic faith. For example, , Isaac Newton clarified thus;

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.

Even though many maintained this monotheistic view. Overtime, it became clear that this ideological view was in sharp contrasts to the foreseeable gains and potential of the science-industrial era. Later science-industry proponents thus recommended a major separation of the moral-ethical requirements of the monotheistic worldview and its replacement with a new ideology based on production as the ultimate goal for human existence.

While many other social reforms such as Adam Smith (1723-1790), the father of Capitalism articulated how this could be organized, credit goes to  Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 - 1825), for clarity in articulating both the tensions, between an ethic of which prioritizes economic growth and production which stands in sharp contrast to an ethic which prioritizes a few of the human and natural world as brother, sister and mother.

Henri de Saint-Simon clearly demanded that a science-industrial society must chose between morality and industrial production. He argued that modern society could not survive while it continued to pursue the two conflicting principles. He observed that all human social life must converge on the principle of industrial production and science was the tool towards such a goal. He  concluded that human society is fully in harmony when it is totally industrialized - society must become a vast production company (Kumar, 1978, p.40)..

I have had the unique privilege of working on environmental issues in at least 25 countries over the past 15 years of my professional life and without exception – every single one of those countries is in a do or die pursuit of industrial production – true to the recommendation St. Simon made nearly 300 years ago!

So, what happens to the old structures of the Christian church and the feudal kings and lords. St. Simon had a solution for that too. He recommended that scientists “carry the seeds of the future and the fullest embodiment of enlightenment and rationalist philosophy ((Kumar, 1978, p.25).

“Scientists must become “new priests of the capitalistic era”

(Henri Saint-Simon, 1975, p.40)

The Nobel prize too listened  to Saint-Simon – over the more than 100 years of its awards, which started in 1901 – the Nobel committee has awarded five (5) awards to scientific endeavors for every single prize to moral (peace) endeavors. Each prize typically comes with 1 million dollars. In other words, the Nobel Prize has invested 5 million in science for each 1 million investment they have made in peace. It is not just the Nobel committee; today nearly every government has a science advisory team while many lack dedicated religious leaders they constantly support and seek advise from compared to the scientis

Based on the foregoing, the collective effect of this transition from the Christian-Feudal era to an industrial-scientific era has resulted into a movement that has increasingly tended towards an ideology that is not only in sharp contrast to the polytheism of the classical-antiquity era; but most importantly to Monotheism of the Christian-Feudal era. This ongoing trend of our science-industrial era is towards a belief in Atheism – there is no God. With Atheism - nothing is sacred – all matter has been reduced to atoms and molecules. Our scientific-industrial era is leading us to a conclusion that humans are understood as a complex assembly of DNA and nature which has been previously upheld for the past 9700 years as sacred brother, sister and mother is nothing more than the aimless evolution and accidental forces of nature.

This atheistic ideology has also radically transformed not only our relations with one another – but most critically it has fundamentally radicalized our view of the natural world into one of dominance.   

The environmental worldview that has characterized the first 300 years of our science industrial era is best described by Sir Francis Bacon, the Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England (1561-1626) who recommended the following;

humanity is engaged in a war for the domination of nature…We have seen the floods of treasure which have flowed into Europe by that action… Besides, so infinite is the access to territory and empire by the same enterprise. Our conquest of nature constitutes the real business and fortunes of the human race. By art and the hand of man,  nature must be forced out of her natural state, squeezed and molded. Rather than allowing the natural world to continue to dominate humanity, nature must be bound into service and made a slave for human needs

Words matter. A closer look at Sir. Francis Bacon’s call  above reveals some fundamental beliefs and perceptions about the environment of our science-industrial era that stand in sharp contrast to the 9700 years past.

When you combine Sir Francis Bacon’s logic of enslaving nature with St. Francis of Assisi’s logic of treating nature as brother, sister and mother. It turns out that Sir. Francis Bacon and our science-industrial era is demanding us to “force, squeeze, mold and otherwise dominate our brothers, sisters and mothers into service and slavery for needs and desires!

In fact this has been one of the hallmarks of our science-industrial era. The “domination of nature” is not simply squeezing and molding the natural world into slavery; it has also regrettably involved dominating “other people” who were less fortunate than ourselves. It was thinking that gave way to slavery and two world wars that claimed more than 100 million lives in a matter of decades. It was nearly impossible to get to this scale of industrial self-destruction within a polytheistic and even less so in a monotheistic era of classical antiquity and the Christian-Feudal eras respectively.

However, this same science-industrial era has also led to some major advances in medicine, food production, connectivity, knowledge and in millions of other facets of life than would be possible under the all previous eras combined.

 There is no doubt that the past 300 years have yielded the fastest and most advance progress of our human civilization over the past 10,000 years. Nonetheless, this has come at huge social and environmental cost underlain by the ideology of enslaving nature.

Today, we face some particularly daunting environmental challenges that have left some to wonder whether we could be on the road to collapse. Species are getting extinct at rates that are 1000 faster than natural background rates; the United Nations (2018) warns that we could only be 12 years to climate catastrophe – meanwhile the current global population is expected to reach 8.5 billion within the next 10 years (by 2030).

OUR NEXT 10,000 YEARS

We face some daunting challenges ahead. There are no easy answers and this short brief is meant to stimulate our imagination and rethink how to restructure our science-industrial era into one which is also respectful of the environment and one another realizing that the next 10,000 years could look remarkably different from the last 300 years of our industrial revolution. What gives me hope is the growing consciousness and optimism of younger generation – the GenZ which is leading the charge to a new ideology based on mutuality and reciprocity with nature. GenZ is showing us once more that there is more to life than money. GenZ is constantly in search for pathways to more simple living to a more meaningful life where profit is not an end, but a means to a better more sustainable world. Young people nearly on every continent increasingly recognize that contrary to what Sir Francis Bacon would like us to belief; nature is not infinite.  

The GenZ is also teaching us that our society becomes chaotic when it becomes fully industrialized in pursuit of growth without limits. The year 2017 was the third hottest year on record since records began 170 years ago (1850). However, in the same year 2017- saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history. One more person became a billionaire every two days during that year. Billionaires saw their wealth increase by $762bn in 12 months. This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over yet 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% saw no increase at all. GenZ is increasingly demanding change in this dynamic both because they stand to lose the most but also gain the greatest if our world finds the way to a more equitable and greener path to human wellbeing that industrial growth without limit.  

Another dimension which gives me optimism is the fact that there are still many indigenous communities going back to the Classical Antiquity era. Countries such as Canada which has recently launched the “We rise Together” an initiative which places Indigenous knowledge and ways of life alongside science to guide the management of vast natural areas give me hope. Similar societies including the Baganda Clan-Totem system still exist nearly on every continent and if we are intentional, we can learn both at the individual, national and international level to tap into that superior ideology which is based principles of interdependence, transcendence, mutuality, reciprocity and which stands in sharp contrast to our self-destructive pursuits of dominance of nature.

These “mother nature” principles are also reflected through what Schumacher, (1973) termed the “Light livelihood” or Buddhist economics of several Buddhist societies in Asia. They are also practiced across several sub-Saharan Africa countries through what is termed “Ubuntu”. The Ubuntu worldview places “society” above the individual and best reflected as (Mwipikeni, 2018, p.322)

I am because we are

This Ubuntu philosophy reflects coexistence, “mutual recognition and interdependence” which enabled individuals and Bantu African societies to foster solidarity and feelings that were necessary for surviving and thriving amidst harsh environments and with limited technology.

In the Buganda culture where the author of this essay comes from; the “Ubuntu philosophy” is coded in the cultural language. The word for person is “Muntu” while the world for created things is “Kintu” and Kintu is the name of the prototype ancestor of the Baganda people as a whole. In addition, the root of the two words “ntu” is the same which implies a continuity between the human and the natural world. Similar expressions of the concept of “Ubuntu” is spread across sub-Saharan Africa from Nigeria through to South Africa.

This understanding goes to demonstrate that the understanding of nature and humanity as brother, sister and mother is still deeply seated within our human societies having developed and coded over the past 10,000 years of our modern existence. It was simply disrupted in the past 300 years, but we can and should endeavor to rediscover and harness it to save us from the existential environmental dilemmas – particularly climate change – which we must resolve within this decade!