Robert MacNeil Christie, Author

Our hyper-media culture of industrial modernity tends to send us off in all sorts of directions. In fact, tangential thinking seems to dominate most discussions of important matters. For example, I have been in many discussions of how to deal with the destruction caused by the heating of the planet and the extraction of ‘resources’ used in the industrial processes that destabilize ecosystems. Many experts have sophisticated understanding of the processes involved and the damage done.

The evidence for all that is incontrovertible, despite the proliferation of denialism and conspiracy theories. Yet, when it comes to ‘solutions,’ the difficulty is how to get past the abstract level of describing trends and trajectories of destruction, or how to reduce the damage in one sector or another. Treating symptoms does not cure the dis-ease caused by the industrial-consumerist political economy.

The Abstract Society

We tend to abstract our vision of modern everyday living from the natural systems that support all life. We have culturally escaped the real world we inhabit, yet we still live in it as we imagine separation and superiority. We work in complex institutions, in office buildings or on factory floors, and the neighborhoods in which we live, all of which are part of our “built environment,” too often seen as somehow outside of Nature.

Many people do not have any realistic understanding of where our water or food comes from. I used to ask my university students where their water comes from. Most could not give a realistic description much past the faucet. Our ignorance of our complex relations to Nature in the supply of food and water does not remove the imminent dangers of regional or global shortages of both. It only enables our collective failure to change our lives in ways dictated by our need to survive.

Industrial agriculture has plundered the soil to leave it sterile. Mining and fracking have consumed and polluted huge quantities of water, leaving soil and used water with toxic pollution. International trade rules force import and export of foods that should be produced near their consumers. The result is vast waste of water, land, and energy.

Neither urban nor suburban life enable an understanding of the deep collective threat these forms of damaging natural systems cause. We go about our modernist lives as if we had conquered Nature. We don’t notice that we are sitting on the tree’s branch that we are sawing off. Reality is not abstract.

The Plague of Individualistic Ideology

I grew up in the 1950s, when individual effort could result in success, at least for white men in America, and indirectly for white women if they married the right white man, since their economic opportunities were very limited. Not so much for Black folks, Mexican Americans, and other peoples of color. Yes, the system was rigged in favor of the dominant groups. But one of the consequences of the ideology of individualism was to implicitly deny the systemic causes of racism, misogyny, and class prejudices, as well as individual failure.

On top of that, the growing political economy of perpetual growth required more and more docile workers and willing consumers of the increasingly meaningless ‘consumer products’ that generated the profits investors needed to accumulate capital. Eventually, the impact of endless growth on a finite planet would be felt, which is already happening now. A more humane approach would be to focus on economic development instead of system growth.

More and more, the activities and products of the industrial-consumer economic-growth machine demanded that its producers-consumers live increasingly complex lives while necessarily acting in simpler ways. It seems strange at first glance, but the more complex the system of extraction-production-consumption-waste became, the simpler it required its producer-consumers to become. ‘Simple individuals’ more easily follow orders and respond to psychological manipulation.’ But that does not bring them happiness, quite the opposite.

The ideology of individualism redirects the cause of their dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and loneliness to themselves. Humans are complex creatures, and we need to engage with the world in complex ways. However, with far less engagement and social support than existed in traditional societies, individual anxiety, fear, and resentment build. That turns into anger toward the vulnerable groups that demagogues blame for the societal malaise that actually results from the breakdown of natural social relations in the corporate state.

Thinking About the Systems We Inhabit

Obviously, we live in a complex world, a world of increasingly rapid change. Much of that change produces conditions that we have never experienced before. Most of human evolution occurred very slowly, compared to the changes we experience today. Human groups learned the means for survival together, over time. They stuck with what worked. That kind of ‘conservatism’ worked in the stable world of the Holocene.

Today, changes that produce new and dangerous situations that we are not prepared to deal with by applying traditional responses, increasingly bombard us. At the same time, a lot of important principles of human conduct and relationships have not changed; they are inherent in being human. The same thing applies to a wide range of principles of how ecosystems and the entire Earth System work for all life on Earth. That is why it is so important to begin thinking in terms of systems. The systems we live in are increasingly unstable, and some of them are spinning out of control. That is precisely why we need to get back to basics. Only by re-establishing strong human associations—that is, social networks not based on membership in giant institutions—can we begin to overcome the growing chaos of complex systems spinning out of control. The social networks we need must be grounded in the traditional principles sustaining social groups built around interpersonal relations of trust and respect for the other.