“Am I not a man? And is not a man stupid? I’m a man, so I’m married. Wife, children, house – everything. The full catastrophe.”
“One of the things that holds the professional class back from making radical decisions is the assumption that most of us are, already, well informed. Instead, research has found that what’s more important is how ‘domesticated’ we are through our levels of education. That is because we have worked hard to succeed within the current system and have a subtle yet deep allegiance to the status quo. That makes us more resistant to recognising the end of that status quo – and therefore the end of our previous comforts, privilege, and status.”
You probably know the first quote. Why do we find Zorba’s quip funny? After all, he’s equating things that we’re taught to believe are highly desirable with stupidity and catastrophe. But if there weren’t an element of truth to it, would it be funny or memorable?
You probably aren’t familiar with the second quote. It’s from a recent essay by Jem Bendell of Deep Adaptation fame. I juxtapose the two because, really, they’re about the same thing. And that’s what I want to discuss here: education, comforts, privilege, status, Zorba’s “wife, children, house”—in a word, domestication.
Domestication is a social phenomenon and priority. Zorba’s and Jem’s list of desirables is super useful for social order, stability, status quo; but why also a catastrophe? Because… social baggage constrains us. Zorba understood that it holds us back from our individual potential while Jem proposes that it keeps us from making “radical decisions” which our collective survival depends on. We are caught in a bind, we have a social dilemma.
Apparently, these are radical decisions: Ending war. Ending extractive, exploitive, amoral, hyper-capitalism. Ending our use of fossil fuels. Ending our shameful habit of throwing stuff away when we all know there is no “away”. Taken together these destructive behaviors are the root cause of climate change and ongoing ecological collapse. So why is deciding to end them “radical”?
Well, without stepping into the minefields of war and capitalism, let’s start with this: What if… gas stations and trash pickup disappeared tomorrow? That’s threatening! Society would collapse! Chaos! Radical! But what if… we decided to end them in, say, five years? Having a hard deadline is a terrific motivator, ask any journalist. Could it be done? Of course, but we just don’t feel the urgency, do we? I don’t live in Gaza or Afghanistan or Yemen or Haiti or Vanuatu or…, but I feel sorry for “them”. My family is safe. I still have a job. I drive a hybrid car. I try to recycle. I’m mostly getting by. Isn’t that enough for God’s sake; what more do you want from me!?
I think that if we believe ending our destructive behaviors—which are the status quo—means “the end of our previous comforts, privilege, and status,” then we’re not likely to go there even if we know that change is possible. Might we try, subconsciously even, to preserve the status quo even if we believe that collapse accelerates if we do so? While this seems nonsensical, I offer up a First Dog on the Moon cartoon in support of this absurdity. After all, no one knows how long it will be until things really fall apart, right? I think that’s what’s going on. Maybe we’re all just trying to hang on, perhaps secretly hoping we’ll outlast our neighbor? After all, isn’t our deepest desire to cheat death? But even if not, isn’t it just easier to not think about catastrophe, be distracted, have some fun while we still can? Is there an antidote to that kind of thinking?
But let’s return to to our social dilemma theme. If we hold on to our accustomed lifestyles for fear of unleashing chaos, then we undermine the foundation on which society rests – our biological world. But as we’re already seeing, when nature falters, social unrest is not far behind. And so we have a paradox: social stability depends on nature, but we undermine that stability if our social structure is too stable and can’t change.
Is there a way out? I believe so, and remarkably enough, it involves a hierarchical idea: We are first of all biological creatures, born naked, crying, utterly dependent. Inexorably, we become social creatures, products of our peopled environment. But, emerging from it all, we also develop minds; we ultimately become intellectual beings. And this, I think, is our only hope – to use our intellectual capacity to see that static social and cultural patterns are undermining the ecological web on which our existence completely depends. If we persist in valuing social stability over intellect then collapse is inevitable. Now this whole hierarchy of values idea1—biological, social, intellectual—is not my invention, but that of the guy who wrote Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This short essay is simply an attempt to apply Pirsig’s metaphysics of Quality to our dire worldly situation and perhaps point to a way out of our social straightjacket.
In Lila, his second novel, Pirsig states that the pivotal tension in the world today is a conflict between social and intellectual values. For thousands of years, human social organization has struggled against biological forces (hunger, disease, wild animals, natural disasters, etc.) that had prevailed for millions of years on this planet. That there are now in excess of 8 billion of us organized largely into cities is evidence enough that social values have won that battle. But now, the multi-millennial social building project has stalled out. It has nowhere left to go on a planet with finite resources, unless we admit something to ourselves . . .
There are higher values than social ones. Intellectually we all know very well what has to be done. Our climate and social scientists have exhaustively warned us. But socially we’re afraid of change because it undermines the status quo, the powers that be, our habits, our creature comforts – our cherished, hard-won domestication. And yet, to save our world from collapse, I submit that many elements of our social order have outlived their usefulness. Indeed, aren’t there innumerable ongoing struggles challenging outmoded elements of our societies? Let’s name them. Patriarchy. Capitalism. Fascism. Fundamentalism. These broad social banners harbor “social conservatives” of all flavors across the entire political, religious, and economic spectrum. All of them value business-as-usual social stability at all costs. A paradigm shift is not only overdue, it’s necessary for our survival.
But really, I have no wish to see societal collapse, yet I would like to make a simple appeal. Let’s try a non-threatening thought experiment. What if… you relinquished your participation in all social groups and activities – political parties, business liaisons, church groups, music and sports fandom, book clubs, gym memberships, sewing circles, neighborhood associations, chat rooms, watch parties, whatever… the list is practically infinite. What’s left? Are you even still a recognizable person? To whom? To others? To yourself? What, exactly, are you if not socially-defined? Pretty scary, isn’t it? But this is the terror at the root of it – if we define ourselves and our value only in social terms then we are doomed. To survive now, I’d like to suggest that the paradigm shift is to move beyond this artifice, these superficial social labels. Here’s my appeal – you don’t actually have to eschew your social liaisons (this is just a thought experiment), just realize that there’s a higher level that’s been there all along but it’s been drowned out by the overwhelming social din.
Let’s explore that higher ground. What if… you allowed your own mind some freedom? Not the social, collective, constrained, programmed, hive mind, but your real one. You might not be sure it even exists, but it does. Try to remember back to when you were younger. You had your own thoughts then. You were curious, playful, questioning, protesting, pushing against limits – in a word, open-minded. So what happened? You’ve been domesticated. We’ve all become stuck – social pawns serving static social norms but nothing larger or grander or visionary. But human beings need purpose – things larger, grander, visionary.2
I think it’s time for us all to rebel, to shift the paradigm. You have your own mind, and it really can tell you what’s right, what’s wrong, what matters – if you care to listen. It’s time for your human superpower, your intellect, to override whatever heavy, static social baggage you carry – and we all carry a lot. It’s time to move beyond the social network to the intellectual network. Time to put the spectacular human prefrontal cortex to work which, research has shown, is where empathy resides.
Pick up that piece of plastic on the street? Give some money to that struggling human over there? Realize when you have enough? Share what you do have? Acknowledge you’re not (and have never been) in control of anything? Accept help from others? Accept that you’re going to die? Care for Mother Earth as if your life and the whole future of everything dear depended on her? I think we all know what to do and how to behave.
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within me.” — Mohandas Gandhi
“Good is a noun. . . . If you had to reduce the whole Metaphysics of Quality to a single sentence, that would be it. THE END.” — Lila
- There’s a fourth even more fundamental level which Pirsig labels “inorganic” which prevailed for billions of years before biology got started. ↩︎
- And that might be the subject of another essay, but for now, here’s one creative vision of how we might find worthy purpose together – as opposed to being told what to do and how to behave by elites, Big Brother, corporate media, social media, etc. ↩︎
