One has to look at the at the big picture. It is not just a problem with Physics. Here are a couple of pages from my copy of
(Bruce E Levine) that I think explains very well how an EU theory that strongly supports our own inclusiveness in the Universe can be ignored and rejected by institutional society. I was only feeling this last night looking up at the stars seeing them as electrically connected, even conscious.
260 Chapter 25
Would we be machine worshipers today if we had a different version of
what defines our humanity? This error has been a tidy rationale for the mod-
ern worship of the mega-machine and conquest of all of nature. This and other
great errors need to be challenged not simply to end our machine worship, but
to exorcise ourselves of our cynicism about humankind.
HUMAN BEINGS BEFORE THE WORSHIP OF MACHINES
AND AUTHORITY
Early versions of the creature we now identify as human go back over
500,000 years, and the modern species Home sapiens goes back some 50,000
to 100,000 years. From this perspective, 3500 B.C., the beginning of what we
call civilization, isn’t that terribly long ago. Over twelve thousand years ago-
more than six thousand years before civilization——humans had technics: traps,
nets, skin containers, baskets, hearths, huts, varied weapons, paints, masks,
painted images, and graphic signs. They also had healthy culture: traditions
expressed in rituals, customs, religion, social organization, art, and language 5
Before civilization, humans lived in what anthropologists called "archaic
village cultures." Actually, up until the last couple of centuries, the majority
of the planet continued to live that way. This is much of traditional Native
American and African tribal culture, and it still exists in a few spots on the
planet. These archaic villages had mixed economies of hunting, gathering,
and farming, and the kind of technology that all could understand and most
could master. These cultures, though different from one another, shared many
things in common. What was the archaic village like?
Much of the time was devoted to watching and instructing the young. Chil-
dren were of value, as they could make economic contributions. ln all these
cultures, seasons were marked by holiday festivals and ceremonies, and stages
of life were noted by communal rituals. Eating, drinking, and sexual play
made up a central core of life. Family and friends were all part of a face—to-
face community. While civilization was to be defined, in part, by the written
word, in archaic villages the transmission of culture was arguably more pow-
erful: oral history. In this manner, generation after generation received the
principles of the nurturing of life, which included the sharing of goods, self-
discipline, self-control, and cooperation.6 This way of living was both satisfy-
ing and successful in maintaining community and autonomy without institu-
tionalized authoritarianism. Mumford notes there was
no hierarchy . . . except the natural one of age, since in such a community,
he who lived longest knew most. The easy interchange of skills and occupa-
tions, with a minimum amount of specialization, gave village culture a flex-
ibility and range .... [Every] member of the village community, of every
age . . . had an active part in its whole economic and social life, each con-
tributing his effort .... 7
Y2K Compliance: Technics and Machine Worship 261
This daily participation in meaningful activity is exactly what is missing in
the modern machine economy, and, as Mumford points out, probably ac-
counts in large measure for juvenile boredom and juvenile delinquency. In the
1920s and 1930s Bronislaw Malinowski studied the Trobriand Islanders, who
were still living for the most part at the same levels as had these earliest archaic
villagers. Malinowslii wrote:
Tiny children actually did make their own gardens; the heavier labor is of
course done for them by their elders, but [children] have to work seriously
for many hours at clearing, planting, and weeding .... The gardens of
the community are not merely a means to food; they are a source of pride
and the main object of collective ambition.8 `
Mumford knew that his first task was to shake us from our cynicism over
human nature. If we continue to beIieve—as totalitarians hope we do—that
humans are inherently evil or stupid, then we give up our efforts for a higher
quality of life. Next, Mumford challenged pessimists who might not believe
that humans are inherently evil or stupid, but see the march of human history
as a continuous decline. This is another great error. These archaic villagers had
arguably more of their human needs satisfied than those paleolithic humans
that preceded them. Mumford concluded that archaic villages had a higher
level of satisfactions than had existed before them, as these villages "brought
the outer and inner life into harmony, making the most of man’s powers, but
neither taxing them too heavily, nor over—emphasizing one set of functions at
the expense of another. "9
This pessimistic view of continuous decline in the satisfaction of human
needs is not borne out even after 3500 B.C. After giant institutions such as the
Egyptians and Mesopotamian empires collapsed, there was increased auton-
omy and community, Mumford offers us another example of a "comeback”
of our humanity: After the Black Death had wiped out a third to a half of Eu—
rope, the status of the worker improved.10
There are other major and minor examples of the rejuvenation of society and
culture to meet human needs. Both the cynic, who sees humans as inherently stu-
pid or evil, and the pessimist, who sees the march of human history as one of in-
creasing dissatisfaction, are for Mumford mistaken. For Commonsense Rebel-
lion, these cynics and pessimists are as valuable to institutional society as those
who believe in HMOs, Xanax, fen—phen, prisons-for—profit, gambling commer—
cials, billion—dollar warplanes, and those 400 DSM psychiatric diagnoses.
CIVILIZATION?
We are taught in school that civilization began around 3500 B.C. in the
Near East. This marked the beginning of the end of the neolithic era of ar-
chaic villages, though, as noted, the majority of the planet did not become
"civilized" until the last two centuries. Civilization is routinely defined as a
262 Chapter 25
technological event, and for the most part it is considered a triumph. Both
of these assumptions are challenged by Mumford.
The first great error was defining human beings by their tools, not their cul-
ture and language. Another great error is how we define civilization. In fact,
there was no great superiority in technology that defined civilization. Instead,
civilization merely meant a change in scale of already existing technology.
With mass society and dictatorial control, there could be mass planting, mass
irrigation, and massive structures not because of better tools and equipment,
says Mumford, "but because a highly efficient type of social organization . . .
had taken command.”H
Civilization is inaccurately defined as the beginning of technology. Mumford
tells us that what truly set this era apart was its revolutionary social organiza-
tion, its hierarchy or pyramid-like social structure: "This political structure
was the basic invention of [civilization] . . . without it, neither its monuments
nor its cities could have been built."12 Civilization, Mumford tells us, rather
than being the beginning of technology, was the beginning of the use of tech-
nology exclusively to "increase order, power, predictability, and above all, con-
trol" (this in fact was an early version of modern scientific ideology). This new
political structure was
no longer ‘democratic,’ that is, based on neighbourly intimacy, customary
usage, and consent, but authoritarian, centrally directed, under the con-
trol of a dominant minority: no longer confined to a limited territory, but
deliberately ‘going out of bounds’ to seize raw materials and enslave help-
less men, to exercise control, to exact tribute. This new culture was dedi-
cated . . . to the expansion of collective power. By perfecting new instru-
ments of coercion, the rulers of this society had, by the Third Millennium
B.C., organized industrial and military power on a scale that was never to
be surpassed until our own time.13
Civilization, rather than a modern advance, is socially about as primitive as
you can get. No doubt many archaic villagers viewed civilization as the “cult
of ant worship." Mumford notes that ants, some sixty million years ago, had
developed all the major institutions of civilization, including royalty, con-
quest, division of labor, and a caste system.14
Why a way of life that was less satisfying than that which it replaced (and
which mimicked the structure of a sixty—million—year-old totalitarian ant soci-
ety) was hailed by historians as an unqualified triumph, and why the human
race has endured it so long is for Mumford one of the puzzles of history.
THE WORSHIP OF QUANTITIES, THE DISMISSAL OF ALL ELSE
The world of machines is one of mass and motion, size and speed. This is
only a fraction of the world occupied by living organisms. Only a tiny part of
This is why EU is so threatening to this zenith of institutional control and society. The power of realising the electrical observations - and their common sense basis which is of course missed by the institutional society - is either completely ignored by those completely immersed in institutional society, or it seems "scary" to those who still have partial commonsense, because it reveals the nature of what they have not (yet) questioned in society.
then you might think of Wikipedia, or even better Linux and Open Source that DOES produce that sense of meaningful activity and inclusiveness. But that still happens using machines. Look how controversial Wikipedia and Open Source were to many people (at least initially). Then think what EU seems like to some people with it's strong message of COSMIC participation, meaningful connections and inclusiveness and you might get an idea of what is going on here.
BTW, I highly recommend the rest of Levine's book, it's well worth getting hold of. If you are wondering who Mumford is then he wrote
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