The Next Phase Shift

An Important Argument hasn’t been made.

Hunter-gatherer groups are fiercely egalitarian. Egalitarianism insists on distribution of resources, cooperation within groups, perfect personal freedom, strict accountability for anti-social behavior, and is highly sustainable. It is by insisting on sharing and reciprocity that egalitarianism promotes the well-being of all members of the group, regardless of the role that each member fulfills, and thus promotes social stability, and ultimately sustainability. Egalitarianism isn’t just a strategy in a set of sustainable practices. Egalitarianism is the necessary attitude for sustainability.

Tragically for the fate of life on Earth, and humanity (sixth great extinction, global warming), the super abundance of natural resources suitable to the uses of human ingenuity has supported economic systems which encourage inter-group conflict, and hyper-inequality in their distribution. This is the academic way to say that humanity has stolen, betrayed and warred on itself most extensively and tragically since ingenuity produced surpluses and the greed of some found these surpluses could be used to control other people. Simply, egalitarianism is sustainable so long as cheating can be punished, but is “unfit” in competitions with hierarchically organized groups, when resources are surfeit (horses, clubs, swords, guns, grain) and can be mustered against small, stable, homeostatically regulated groups. Scott (Against the Grain, 2017) argues that the emergence of the coercive state was resisted by hunter-gatherer groups, as long as they had access to food and resources. However, as population densities rose and the vagaries of weather forced some people into dependence on those others who controlled the grain supply,  nascent coercive states – utilizing hierarchy – were able to focus more energy and more lethal technology against surviving hunter-gatherer groups, in addition to the subservient of their own societies.

The transition from egalitarian hunter-gatherer modalities to hierarchical modalities could be described as a phase shift from a super stable, low impact, survival modality (egalitarianism) to an unstable, high impact modality (hierarchy and privilegism) which in its nature drives culture toward short-term gain at the expense of long-term sustainability. At that point at which habitat suited to hunting and gathering diminishes to negligible, hierarchical societies has won in nature’s game of natural selection. The course of history is set.

The problem at hand for us is either how to transform, or with what to replace, hierarchical organization, such that we can maintain modern levels of science, education, health care and nutrition, while deprecating modern levels of poverty, habitat destruction and pollution, mental illness, war, and genocide. Egalitarianism is perhaps not the goal, but a principle strategy. Success in such a project would be the next great phase shift for humanity: considering the impact of hierarchy on human history, what would post-hierarchy look like?

Traditional economists emphasize innovation and growth as key strategies toward meeting human need. These strategies are consonant with the hierarchical model, but provide no means of accountability for being unsustainable. Practice of the traditional, Neo-liberal economic model speeds us toward the brink of Gaia-cide. We do not play “chicken” in this race. We aim to stop the race. The key research question is “How do we make hierarchy unprofitable? How do we make sharing seem necessary and inevitable?”.

The hunter-gatherer model of economic activity sustained itself in the abundance of nature until food supplies began to expand with farming and pastoralism, while diminishing for hunter-gatherers. The surpluses of the agrarian economies (grain, cattle, military supplies) energized hierarchy, larger populations, and dominance over subsistence groups. Without those surpluses, hierarchy could not have prevailed over egalitarianism, and surpluses, or at least value available to be skimmed from the producers of value, continue to drive hierarchical wealth accumulation. The argument here made is that the thing we fear – Gaia-cide, the loss of our life on Earth as we know it, the loss of the resources we need to live – may be the loss that finally forces humanity to enter this next phase shift. Easily might populations of Homo sapiens collapse, in which case populations would be so dispersed that hunting and gathering might be feasible again, except we have lost the knowledge of how to do it.  But we value our own lives and the opportunities of the modern world, and we don’t want to go over that cliff. So what changes permit us to begin the phase shift?

What would a cooperative, egalitarian world culture look like? What does the next phase in human history look like? Are we trying to imagine a compromise between hierarchy, property and control, and equality, sharing and mutual respect? Does the natural fitness of hierarchical systems, where resources are available to energize those systems, make the totalitarian social control exhibited by the Chinese state a necessary future for humanity? Or will the instinctive drive of Homo-sapiens toward “fairness”, freedom and accountability effectively undermine the fitness of the totalitarian state? What innovations are needed to build self-correcting sustainable systems that can prevail over the natural short-term advantages of the hierarchical organization?

The one thing that I prize that only the modern world can provide is information: science, stories of other people in other places, visions of the past and the future, deep knowledge of how the universe works, and fiction. I want only enough energy available to me so that I can, one, enjoy these flights of imagination that make my intellectual and emotional growth possible, and two, so that I can engage with other people in creating the world that we want. I do not want to be above or below anyone, I don’t want to be the decider. I want my voice to be among the voices that decide. I want my share of voice, where everyone gets a fair share – and not more.

Hunter-gatherer societies were highly sustainable and required very little work from their members. Effectively, nature did the work, of growing plant foods and hunted foods, and the hunter-gatherer only needed to go harvest them. At some point, as explained by Scott (2017), humanity had to work harder to get enough food. We have been working harder and harder ever since. Up to the dawn of the age of fossil fuels, energy was supplied mainly by human labor and animal labor, with some wind and water energy, and people typically worked all day, frequently under dire cruelty. With the advent of fossil fuels, slavery was eventually outlawed, though not eliminated, but we continued to work hard. Instead of using all of that energy to reduce our workload, it was used to increase material wealth, some even for those at the bottom of the hierarchies, and to sustain ever more people. The burdens on other life forms, eco-system services, and the planet, multiply exponentially.

The use of power to coerce behavior is only possible where there is power. What if social organization – with prolific use of altruistic punishment – were to deprive those centers of privilege and authority of that power, when it is shown to be abusive? What if we appealed to the instinctive egalitarianism of human beings? What if we systematically retrained resources to be distributed as they are created? What if we designed our systems for finding leaders so that the modest, reasonable and compassionate were as likely to be chosen as anyone else? What if everyone in the world were trained in how to resist coercion, and to recognize manipulation? What if we designed new systems of accountability for leadership which is over-ambitious? What if community members were taught to make appropriate use of power, by other members of the community, the measure of status? What if everyone was trained to seek the distribution of wealth, instead of allowing the concentration of wealth? Axelrod (Evolution of Cooperation) predicts the long-term inevitability of cooperation. But for a global civilization, how long do we have to wait? What efforts, what transformations, are necessary to achieve that cooperation? Can we enter the transformation soon enough? We are asking these questions.

I think we can safely predict that the vast majority of social revolutions are driven by the egalitarian principle “I want a life worth living.”. IOW, egalitarianism is alive and well in the human psyche. Our question is “How do we tap this instinct to create the world where everyone, including every other form of life, has a life worth living?”.

Submitted to UVM Admissions Committee in answer to their questions:

Your purposes and objectives in pursuing graduate study:

Grow, or die.

Whether to ~ .

Whether I prefer to hide in my room and forget what flies, floats wheels or runs about out of my door. Or open it every day and, not knowing whether I am welcome, go out and join in the carting and careening, pitching and yawing. And create welcome. Thus I open my sail, let it fill with wind, and let it take me places I have not been. To be guided by stars I did not name, but cast light upon me.

All is pursuit of rightness, calm and connection, buffeted by chaos, crisis, conflict, contradiction, challenge and growth. For me, opportunities to create new knowledge, to write, to teach, and to speak; to feel human need and the need for meaning, and derive wisdom from it. To discern how we might tie our fates into one effort, and thus avoid the mass extinction due to us in the near future. To extract from science and human intercourse what acts of kindness and courage are needed to transform our world, to end misery, genocide, and ecocide. What can we learn from our previous mistakes to avoid mistakes we have yet to make?

This path is one of many paths, each valid; mine, to understand the forces that shape the motivations and actions of human beings, so I may put my shoulder behind our salvation. Economics, Ecology, Sociology, Religion, Politics, Psychology, History, Literature, Media, and the emotions coursing through my body, are all subjects I study. In this program, I will begin with the required courses, and seek from my advisors and colleagues how to advance this mission: how to build a sustainable community.

My ambition to be seen and recognized as a worthwhile member of our community is common and unremarkable. My ability to see and articulate structures of human ambition, appetites, fear, integrity and community, and their effects on the world, is not common, and my ability to name them is rare. The joy I get from sharing that vision is the reason I work for this path.

Any particular reasons you may have for applying to the University of Vermont :

My first ambition has always been to get a doctoral degree. And perhaps if I am very successful in a Master’s program, I will naturally stream into a doctoral program. But perhaps when I am done I will be content to write, teach and advocate. In either case, I must first succeed here, now, where I live. I have worked to put in roots here. I have devoted countless hours to community service here, and have developed a wide network of friends. I see no sense in taking my work to another city. Thus I choose UVM as the place to pursue my degree, and give to it my hopes of writing, teaching, and creating new knowledge. And in search of that Master’s degree, the department of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont seems to be the best place for my work.

Would you like to work with a specific faculty member?

The faculty person with whose work my own interests most closely align is Josh Farley. But no commitments have been made.

If applicable, any research projects or any independent research in which you have actively participated and how they have influenced your career choice and desire to pursue graduate studies;

My questions are primal, and existential: How do I survive? What are the obstacles to my survival? What are the obstacles to creating a home, a family, a life filled with love and joy? What are the obstacles to knowing myself in community? Thus in my perambulations, islands I have visited include anthropology, history, economics, sociology, biology, ecology, evolution, and the stories of those who live, and suffer, around me. The answers I find do not take me on familiar routes: I do not seek the seal skins, whale meat, or harbors of hunters of gold: what I want is to find the Northwest passage of human survival: What must I and we be doing now so that life on Earth is not destroyed by the recklessness of humanity? What must I and we be doing now so that the lives being lived now can be lived with meaning and richness? I find my life attached to the lives of those around me: How do we survive together?

First was anthropology, natural selection, evolution, and carrying capacity, in high school; in 1980 sciences at Westchester Community College; in 1988 at Goddard College I read “Introduction to Ecology” by Paul Colinvaux, an eloquent exposition of ecosystem science. Throughout the 45 years of my adulthood, reading.

In 1978 I received an Associate’s degree in printing technology; in 1988, a Bachelor of Arts from Goddard College; in 1998 at Johnson State College I received a BS with a concentration in Ecology, and studied education at the graduate level. I have experienced and learned from privilege, and the plunge from privilege, from mental illness, loneliness, poverty, hardship, and recovery; I have studied in the peace movement, in Occupy, at the Gund Institute, with the Monetary Policy Working group, and I have read hundreds of books. While at Johnson I was told: “Your work is post-doctoral. You must go on.”

Since 2008 I have written, on average once per month, erecting the flag of Who I Am, in a blog for the world to see (Dispolemic.blogspot.com).

Since 2011 I have attended seminars at the Gund Institute, worked with faculty, and audited the class in Ecological Economics. I have studied with Josh Farley and his colleagues and students, traveling with them in 2012 to a De-Growth Conference in Montreal. Today I work with Josh on a chapter in a work intended to guide future research on Ecological Economics.

Over the last five years I have done the work of establishing myself as an active, contributing member of the Burlington community. I have worked at COTS, the day shelter for homeless folks, I have worked at CEDO, of the City of Burlington, where I built a strong reputation, and at CVOEO, the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, our community action agency, where I wrote a report intended to chart a course for the development of CVOEO. Over the last three years I have added my voice to and worked as part of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance, which works to end homelessness, as its member with lived experience, living with and representing those who are homeless in Burlington. Over these five years I have gathered the reputation and references I needed for my application to UVM.

The pursuit of a Master’s degree is the next adventure, fulfilling my lifelong drive to learn, create, speak and bring justice into our world.

Your special interests and plans:

Generally, I am eager to work with faculty at the University to produce research, to write my own papers, perhaps develop journal projects, and to teach students in the subject areas of my expertise. If it is not too great a conceit, this education will provide the substance of fiction I hope yet to write.

More particularly, I have wanted to understand how ecological processes affect the development of economic activity and cultural activity. I am especially interested in carrying capacity, the ecological concept, and how it affects the stresses and boundaries in economic activity. A good demonstration of the principle of carrying capacity is seen in the problem of housing supply. Laws, zoning, and culture, in areas like Chittenden County, limit the availability of land for low cost housing (capacity boundary), while the demand for housing is high. You could say that the carrying capacity of the housing stock is lower than the supply of occupants. Since there are many unfilled jobs, the carrying capacity of employment is higher than the supply of potential employees. What effect does the excess of occupants have on the market and the cost of housing? What insights do we gain from this point of view, as opposed to a supply and demand perspective? How does this carrying capacity affect other aspects of the ecology of the economy?

The key insight of Ecological Economics is that the economy must be sustained within ecological boundaries, and the key implication is that ecological services must be protected and paid for by that economy, as if these were distinct, if interacting, phenomena. The key postulation that I bring to the table is that economies can be modeled as ecologies. This perspective embeds the economy in the environment in a new way, asking questions about community structure, reproduction, r-K behavior, predation, production, trophic levels, and questions about how resources are allocated. I would like to know whether, if we describe the economy as an ecology, we begin to remind people of the interconnection between the health of the economy and the health of the Earth.

The vision of a humanity which arranges its economies within the embrace of nature seems necessary and compelling to me. I want to study, understand and argue for human systems that are sustainable. And I am, if nothing else, a word smith, an explainer, a teacher, and an advocate. So the work I carve out for myself, is to seek and share the knowledge of how we – all of us as human beings – will avoid the impending natural disaster, the Gaia-cide.

Your strengths and weaknesses in your chosen field:

I will tell you what my strengths are: the writer has brain wiring that fuses words with meaning, astoundingly, producing entire thoughts, concepts, images, abstractions and tales. For this, the writer must seek meaning and experience, hold, in a reservoir, these collections, and tally and mark them, on call. “The Writer” is not a mere scribe or vessel; The Writer processes sense information and presents it to other human beings to coach their enlightenment. And his or her own. I bring to you a writer.

The teacher is another sort of animal. The teacher must look upon her or his audience for the clues that will guide the speech, that will direct the information, the story, the explanation. The teacher must adjust his/her explorations to the fidgets and yawns, distracted looks, or rapt attention, find the alleys of learning readiness as they show up, and populate them according to the nooks, niches and nails upon which knowledge may be hung. The student, the listener, the audience member, has granted the teacher their time and attention, and in all due respect the teacher must discover why. I bring to you a teacher.

I will tell you what my weaknesses are: I am not very good at planning ahead. I do not plan words, spoken or written, into being. I listen them into being. I do not without counsel anticipate the consequences of my projects or efforts. I learn by trial and error, freely entering a new contract with the expectation I will fail and pick myself up and try again.

In the subject areas, my strength is my weakness: I am intuitive. I do not carry racks upon racks of random facts; I do not always remember names. I am distracted by the present and the needs of this moment. I depend upon clues. I am attentive to meta-communication. I read slowly. My comfort in crowds is completely a fabrication. Yet my comfort speaking is undeniable. This, and that my writing has become very personal: the rational, abstract, academic paper has lost its honey for me. I write to find meaning. But that is the definition of my work and my ambition: To find, create, communicate meaning. Meaning for us all.

Policy Resolution for Closing Camps Occupied by Homeless Persons, Burlington Vermont

Presentation given 2/23/2019

Folks who live outdoors because they do not have access to the American standard of shelter –walls, roof, locks, plumbing, electricity, rent or mortgage, bills– do not have many choices.

Shelters are sometimes operated to “house” folks without homes, we have several here in Burlington, but there are not always enough beds for all who need them, and those who need them are not always welcome. Some have special needs that shelters do not accommodate. Some people are so damaged that being in a shelter is simply not possible. Some have been so damaged by the system that they have no reason to tolerate the rules. For all of these reasons, living outdoors is the only option for many we count as “homeless”.

For these, there is sometimes a neglected shed or storage unit, or a car, to hide in. Not a few sleep on benches or on the ground, in the warmer weather, and in ATM booths in colder weather. Some sleep in tents that they move every day. Some set up a camp that they return to each night.

We are here today to talk about the people who camp, in one place, on public property, who cannot afford fees, under the constant fear of being attacked and closed down by police.

We are here today to talk about the human rights and dignity of persons who, without other options, seek an out-of-view place, to set up a tent, in hopes that they will not be seen, that their possessions will not be taken, that no one will discover them and demand that they move, or worse, destroy that camp.

We are here today to discuss the structural violence imposed on persons who, because the American standard of shelter isn’t available to them, do what humans have always done: they build a camp.

We are here today to discuss protections for people who camp.

Right now, people in tents are tolerated in Burlington Vermont. Instances of being hassled by the police are infrequent. I have called the police to the Sears lane camp to respond to a conflict, and never worried about camp closure. One of the last major camp closures was also Sears lane, fall of 2017, closed because one of the occupants was bullying, entertaining people with guns, and selling drugs. The issues had become severe, and neighbors were getting anxious. As of now, the city is operating on the compassionate side of its discretion.

On the hostile side of its discretion, the City less than a year ago “cleaned up” a camp that was occupied and in use, without any warning, and without any acknowledgement that the City was wrong. One of the City departments was cleaning up abandoned camps, without informing the camping community that it would be doing that, and the workers mistook the occupied camp for an abandoned camp.

Camp closure is a traumatic event and people are in constant fear of being uprooted and forced to find another, hopefully safer location. At any time the City can charge them with trespassing, and tell them to move. The City has refused to provide services, such as trash pickup, in the fear that to do so would set a precedent, and encourage people to think they were entitled to trash pickup and water. Instead, they want to dispose of the tents people occupy to move them from their camps. In effect, the camper is compelled to live outside of the law and outside of the norms of service that everyone else expects. To not be a renter or an owner of housing is to be made illegal. You are defined, because you are “trespassing” on “public property”, as breaking the law. If you are homeless, you are without a legal right to be anywhere. If you are homeless, the right of your wealthier neighbor to stroll through a wood often prevails over your right to live somewhere. Our fear is that with too much discretion, the City will continue to operate on the hostile side of its discretion.

There are two strategies to address these issues. One is to treat campers as tenants, with the legal protections of tenants. To get this protection, someone under an eviction order would have to sue under the laws protecting tenants, and then win in court.

The other strategy is for the state or municipality to designate specific locations for camping, where peaceful, non-destructive campers would have a right to be, and where trash would be picked up and water and hygiene provided. Most homeless want to live within the law, with protections of privacy and dignity that everyone housed enjoys. This strategy sends the message that being homeless does not mean you are community-less.

Because neither of these forms of protection is available, we ask how we can protect the safety, dignity and property of campers under the City’s policy on how, when and why to close camps.

The City has had a “working draft” policy, for the last several years. This policy has held that the City would provide a three week notice, when it decided to close a camp. In 2017 the City Council took an interest in that policy, and in November of 2018 the City Attorney issued their proposal for that policy, and I have responded to that proposal, as here documented:

1.CampClosureTablizedKEY – The Policy as proposed by the City, with numbering added.

2.ClosurePolicyWhat'sItMean – An effort to translate the opaque and convoluted language of the original policy proposal.

3.PolicySummaryFailsTo – Details the failings of the proposed policy. (I was asked to critique the policy in this way.)

4.PolicySummaryAmendmentsAndComments – Amendments and replacement language.

5.GeneralDescription – Generalized critique of the policy. “policy fails to” without all of the redundancy.

The policy is being considered in the Public Safety Committee, chaired by Adam Roof. He and I have agreed to a process which includes:

1. A Critique of the proposed policy, noting its flaws, as shown directly above,

2. A response to this critique in the form of new language by the City Attorney prior to the next step,

3. A hearing of concerns from the community, at a hearing of the Public Safety Committee;

4. A revised draft of the policy to be written,

5. The Public Safety Committee votes to recommend the policy to the full Council, and

6. The full council debates, amends, and approves the policy.

The critique has been written and submitted to the City Attorney, and we are waiting for their response, so we are waiting for step 2, and for the hearing to be scheduled, step 3.

This presentation is intended to prepare you for that hearing. I probably don’t need to tell you how important a good turnout at the hearing will be. Justice, dignity, safety, and the idea that homeless persons are actually human beings, and members of the community, hangs in the balance.