The Minimum Bound of the acceptable Future.

I'm going to take us on an imagination exercise today. The purpose is not to propose any one thing as a solution to a problem. The purpose is to remove a few blinders, stretch your definitions of an acceptable future. Or at least get certain boundaries aknowledged.

Lets suppose that, for whatever reason, we're reduced back to the stone age. That's right, we lose all civilization. Through a combination of resource depletion, mass die-offs and loss of records, our descendants live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle amid the ruins of our civilization. How Bad is this scenario?

Making some wild assumptions, lets assume that the population of our future culture has relearned the necessary skills. That's not too far-fetched, as there are hobby groups that practice most of them today. Lets also assume that the ecosystem is still intact enough to support people. This isn't a safe assumption, but honestly if the oceans go anaerobic we're all screwed anyway.

So lets imagine it. You (the reincarnated you, because this is a few hundred years from now, after the end of civilization) live in a group of 50-150 people, a group of probably a dozen families each with a dozen members. The young men hunt for meat, everyone else either gathers food plants or does camp chores like caring for the young, preserving yesterday's food, tanning hides, etc. A few dedicated flintnappers make new blades. In the evening everyone gatheres around a fire to eat the day's catch, share stories, play music, and retire for the evening when they get tired. All your possessions fit in a bag, your entire village is moveable so yo ucan follow the food and leave problem areas.

Basically, an endless camping trip. Some of you will hate this idea. I think more than a few will think it sounds fun. But this is pretty much how all our ancestors lived, from the beginning of our evolution to the invention of civilization 10,000 years ago. This is the type of living that we evolved doing, and you'd be surprised how easily we adapt to it. Going native is one of the easiest things to do. Historically, civilized settlers would often rapidly go native in a new land. Maybe you've heard of Roanoke, its one of the better examples. The thing is, this is the baseline of Human existence. And it ain't all that bad. It's not that stressful, for one. Hunter-gatherers work about 2 hours a day to meet their needs. When you fail to catch something, you know your tribesman will share his catch, just as you share when you bag the food.

There are still arguments and evil people and violence, but I think still is the operative word there. Civilization never got rid of any of that stuff, it just channeled it into wars and sports teams and political parties. The amount of unpleasantness, at the very least, remains the same. I'm giving a bit of a truncated sales pitch on primitive living, but there are so many more eloquent advocates that I'll just leave it to them.

I'm not advocating returning humanity as a whole to the ancestral state (though if you want to, there is ReWilders.) What I'm asking you to do is consider the Minimum Bound of acceptable future. This society is sustainable. It lacks high tech, low tech, global understanding, the internet, multiculturalism, and million other things we like, but it also lacks pollution, Intrusive government, economic inequity and a million other things we hate. And we know, from millions of years of experience, that this works.

I accepted the possibility of this being the future back around 2005, and it does a world of good. I'd be happy in this society, at least happier. But more importantly, I can build the society I really want to live in from the ground up. If I can accept a society that lacks EVERYTHING we have come to rely on as civilization, Then I am free to discard whatever needs to go.

I'm not attached to, say, cars. Or computers. Or Electricity. Oh, I like the last two, but if the making of them turns out not to be sustainable in the long run, I'll survive. I like living in cities, but if that level of concentration of people is unsustainable or damaging, I can live without it. Because I know this wasn't a bad life, I don't have to accept the bad things civilizations do because of the argument that "well, we can't do without it." In fact, we can.

When I imagine a sustainable society, I start not from our current one, but from this. I ask, not how we can change a system we depend on to being sustainable, but how we can add a system we want to a tribal culture without making it unsustainable. Compared to becoming Neoliths again, Most other reactions to the crisises we face today seem a lot less radical.

So ask yourself. Could you live with being a stone age survivor? What do you want out of a society that isn't included in such a culture? And, most importantly, how could you maintain those things you want in a sustainable fashion?