Slavery

Is civilization possible without slavery? 

I don't know that it is. You can read online that not every civilization has had slaves, but then again, most have. Certainly the most "civilized" have kept humans as chattel. In the West, our origins are tainted by this fact, as Athens and all of Greece was a slave society, and Rome, the West's Classical model, was very much dependent on the slave class. I'm not even getting into the Arab slave trade, nor what was going on in the East, which were monumental in their own ways. 

There was less slavery at other times. It declined in the Dark Ages and on into Medieval Europe. Not to the point of being absent, and it differed country to country, but it was largely replaced by serfdom. Which is still basically forced labor, though not as explicit and carrying somewhat more freedom. But then the Renaissance hits, the great "rebirth" of Western civilization, and what does it bring? The horrors of the African slave trade, the enslavement of whole nations of Native Americans, plus indentured servitude, which was in some ways worse, as far as how the people were treated (an African slave was an investment for life, so was somewhat less abused than someone only "owned" for 4-7 years. They worked the latter to death, more often than you'd think, to get their money's worth). 

I've heard that if people had been civil and patient, slavery in the Old South would have died out on its own, without the national bloodletting of the Civil War. Much the way Canada waited patiently to themselves eventually split from England by a gentlemen's agreement, no Canadian Revolution required. Canadians like to use these examples to prove how violent we Americans are. They are only partially right, because things aren't black and white or simple like that. There were principles at stake, and institutional human suffering, and these are worth fighting for and against, respectively.

Thoreau had something to say about this:

When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. (1)

It's true, it would have ended of itself, the way things were going. But only because we replaced human slaves with machine slaves. Be certain that I am not saying that it is immoral to use machines to do our work. I am simply saying that slavery has not been abolished, only mutated and changed. Of course, there is still wage slavery, as machines have not replaced all human labor, and actual human slavery still persists in pockets all around the world, even here in the US. But that is not my overall point here. The point here is that high civilization is not possible without free labor, and that the degree of civilization is based on how much free labor (energy) is available.

Hell, take animal domestication, the final nail in the slavery case. No civilization has existed that did not have domesticated animals, that is, enslaved animals. Perhaps the American civilizations like Cahokia, the Aztecs and Maya did (the Inca had llamas), but they practiced human slavery, were not as stable or long lasting, and not as developed (at least in the case of Cahokia) as, say, Greece, Rome, China, India, or the Arab world. That is, they were not as far removed from the hunter-gatherer and simple horticultural models they grew out of, and that is why they so easily disappeared back into those models when their civilizations dissolved (in the case of Cahokia and the Mayans). 

Animal slavery is where higher civilization began. It's one thing to keep a herd of sheep around to eat, or even cattle for milk and cheese and meat. But when you strap a saddle on a horse, or a yoke on a pair of ox and force them to do the work for you, you free up human labor to do things like form more refined administrative techniques, writing, art, religious embellishment, war, and technological invention. 

And it all comes down to energy, no? The Age of Fossil Fuel is exactly the same as the Age of Animal Domestication, in that the vast power available in either the livestock or the oil barrel frees humans from drudgery and labor to do other things. Each is a step up of an order of magnitude from what went before. That's why higher civilization developed out of the use of animal labor, and why the Industrial Age sprung up when we tapped the energy of machine labor running on fossil fuels. 

This is the issue around which our current energy woes revolve. Naturally no labor is free, even slave labor, since the slaves need to be bought, and fed, and at least minimally maintained in good health, much as a horse or ox needs to be. Likewise the machine, which, while often cheaper than human workers, still needs maintenance and fuel. It's funny, the way the owner class comes to depend on its slaves, and the energy they represent.

So now the upshot. If it turns out to be true that Peak Oil is not resolved via new energy sources, things are going to decline in complexity. This is obvious, but one must understand what's at stake. You read books like James Kunstler's A World Made By Hand, and it seems like democracy and freedom largely survive the fall. I wonder at that. Power doesn't let go so easily, and I wonder if instead of a sort of benign localism of freeholders and townsfolk, we won't end up with something more akin to a world under a myriad of Pol Pots. Those used to living high on the hog are not going to want to climb down, and I fear that they will simply see that as the oil energy goes, they must return to human energy in the form of serfs and slaves.

(Finally, check out this link, and savor the irony)

Charlotte Harbor

Wow, it's been weeks since I've written here, sorry for the lag, my loyal readers, whoever may remain. (You know your blog is in trouble when you start with the apologies about the lack of posts, haha).

I went walking yesterday down at Charlotte Harbor, which is really the estuary for the Peace River down here in southwest Florida. There's a little park there, with a boat ramp and a little beach (if you can call that a beach, it's more of a sandy area held away from the water by a concrete wall); I personally favor the area to the right of the "beach" which is undeveloped. There's a little path, no more than a quarter mile (if that) along the shore through the mangroves, and that's where I usually go when I stop by the place.

The scenery does very little for me. I certainly try, but the sea just isn't my thing; though born on the urbanized flats of the Midwest, I have become a man of the mountains, and although the shore has its own beauty, it is not my asthetic or atavistic preference. At least, not this shore. I can dig the Northwest coast, with its wild forests marching down the rugged mountainous land to the sea in a dramatic flair. Same goes for the California and Maine coasts; they are interesting at least. Here on the dreary coastal plain, it's just a slow, slow crawl under the waves. There's a great feeling of lassisitude about the place, in more ways than one.

Firstly, the land. You can think of this in terms of some sort of spiritual energy, a fung shui or earth energy, or simply in terms of variations in topography, soils, vegetation, climate/microclimates, and so on, but either way, the feel of this place is as flat as it looks. The rivers are sluggish, the tides are almost nil, the soils are a near-uniform sand, the forests repetetive. The soil probably explains the repetitive forest, as well, in conjuction with topography: there are no hollows, no north or south side of a hill, no high dry ridges to affect vegetation patterns, save for the little ponds that harbor pond cypress instead of endless slash pine-and-cabbage palm.

Mangrove islet

Mountains give you that. You walk for ten minutes anywhere and you stumble into little microclimates, new forest areas. Some places the rivers rush, some places they slow, there are little hollows where water, and soils, build up, ridges where there is little water or soil, and so on. You can easily find "special" places in such areas. I can think of several I found even back in some tiny nature preserves back in metro Detroit that I used to visit. Like that bend of a branch of the main branch of the Rouge River; just the way the river turned, and ran over some riffles, where I sat up above the undercut bank. Or at various moments hiking along the Superior Tail in Porcupine Mountains State Park, just little places where the rocks and trees and light all came together to feel unique and set apart. You know what I'm talking about if you've spent any time walking around in the woods. But I can't find anywhere like that down here, though I've spent a lot of time out in the woods, which around where I live there's still plenty of, in the form of preserves and wildlife management areas and just undeveloped private land. It's all same same same.

I really think the flatness is a large part of this. If you like, you can think of energy flowing and stalling in the same way as water; I only bring it up because it is something you can feel, rather than merely knowing about, in terms of hydrology and soils and such. I don't understand it, don't know what it is or how seriously I take the "energy" thing, but I'll put it out there all the same. I figure, the more complicated the terrain, the more interesting the energy flows. It can gather, it can seperate, form in pools and eddies, or rush away. I think this is the reason the standing stones over in the British Isles were set up where they were, at least in part. Here, it's sort of spread out, diffuse, stagnant.

It's a matter of having a relationship with the land. Most people reading this will think I'm a crazy fool for even entertaining the notion of "Earth energy," but consider the fact that we spend out lives almost entirely cut off from it. Even in terms of electricity: we are insulated by our buildings (wood, concrete, carpet and tile floors), and the ubiquitous rubber soled shoe. I remember, years ago, suddenly realizing that it had been months since I'd last touched the Earth with my skin. I don't know how much there is in the notion of Earthing, but, being that we are electrical beings, it's worth thinking about. And as far as our view on land, it's just something to buy and sell, and something to build on. That's not a relationship, especially considering that what we build almost always has zero relation to the land it sits on. If any trees are left standing, they are tokens. We name streets after what we have destroyed: Iroquois Avenue, Cherry Hill Lane, Swan Hollow. We do things in the buildings that have nothing to do with what's outside, which, these days, has often been homogenized into bland suburbia, replanted with non-native trees and plants to suit our tastes.

Horseshoe Crab shells

Another aspect of the dullness around here is that, there's no industry. I'm not huge on big industry, of course, but I simply mean that no one produces anything down here. There's some fishing and shrimping, and inland, mostly cattle (dying out thanks to development), some citrus, and some vegetables being grown. But the economy here depends for its very existence mainly on two things: tourist dollars, and retiree dollars. Both classes of people are down here to relax, to lay around in the sun on the beach, to bask in the all-year warmth (half the year living in A/C, of course). I call the place Vacationland. The place is a sort of energy sink, in terms of money and in terms of activity.

On the other hand, I do admit feeling a sort of ease down by the water. There is a reason that the beach is relaxing to people. Electrically, you can ground yourself to the earth and sea, because you're probably barefoot. There's the warm sun on your skin, cool water to swim in, pleasant breezes, and so on. You can listen to the sound of the waves, endlessly repeating, at least when the power boats and constant air traffic allow you to tune in to it. Among the mangroves, there's plenty of life, birds and crabs and offshore, pelicans, manatees and dolphins occasionally, depending on where you are (I have yet to see a dolphin).

Yesterday, I happened to see a Golden Crowned Night Heron hunting crabs among the mangrove roots. At first, when I spooked the big bird out of the trees, I thought it was a Great Blue Heron, which are far more common; fortunately it only flew about fifteen yards away then proceeded about its business, so I got a good look. Couldn't get a good picture, but here's an old video of one I saw on Padre Island a couple years back. They "dance" before striking for the crab, to distract or entrance the prey, I suppose. Sorry, I couldn't catch an actual strike.

Back in Dallas

Weird. I'm in Dallas today, back to get my truck and other stuff, which I'd left here for my hike and then afterwards when I flew direct to Florida after my dad's accident. Finally time to go back for it. And as if in proof of my previous post about the energy of a place, my left eyelid is twitching again.

It was doing this all the time last winter and spring before I left for the Pacific Crest Trail, but had stopped just a day or two into the hike, never to return. And now it's back. At first I thought it might be the caffeine: I've been off the juice for almost a week now, but stopped in to my favorite Dallas area coffeehouse for old times sake and to kill some time. Halfway into my cup of coffee, it started up. But caffeine has never affected me that way, even after a break. It's very strange, I think this place makes me jumpy or something.

And there is a different air about this city, I just can't explain it. More energetic and dynamic than retirement-ville in SW Florida, but there's also a sort of undertone of negativity, something I was feeling last winter, when I felt rather depressed and down and out, poor. Like there's some big money-focus here (though not as bad as in downtown Houston, let me tell you).

I'm really fascinated by this. I'm sure some of it is climate induced: Detroit always had a bit of a depressed feel, and it's cloudy and grey so damn often it's easy to see why, plus the 5 months of winter cold. Not to mention the depressed economy, of course. There's probably all kinds of things that go into a particular feel of a place: local economic priorities (tourism in Florida, manufacturing or the lack of it in Detroit), weather and climate, lattitude, topography, history, the cultural and racial mix, size of the town, water (lake, river) or lack of it...

I wonder what others have to say about this, about where they live in comparison to other places. Have you felt this effect?

Surviving peak oil

Thurman told me to look into this documentary, called The Power Of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. Well, I found a video of it online, you can watch it here.

It's pretty fascinating, a real case study of a society experiencing and dealing with Peak Oil and its issues and problems. Gives me a more hopeful feeling than I've had, which I really needed.

There were some interesting points raised at the end. For one thing, the idea that we have used in 100 years half of the oil the Earth has been producing for hundreds of millions of years. As the man in the film says, it's absurd.

Secondly, they made reference to the way Cuba, like all island nations, have a sort of natural sense of limited resources. And it seems this island consciousness is what started the whole environmental movement, when we had for the first time an image of the whole world, as pictures of Earth from Space came out back in the late 1960s.

But it still hasn't sunk in for most of us on the necessary scale. Earth is an island of habitable, livable environment in a sea of inhospitible space. But we still think in terms of growth, endless growth. Not gonna happen. Especially if this century long spasm has used half of one of the most energy dense, versatile, easily used fuels ever known.

Grumbles

The people are grumbling. As usual, about the wrong things.

For myself, I think that it's fine that gas prices have shot up a few dozen cents. The debatable evils of price speculation and stock markets aside, these soaring prices are occurring as a result of the people of northern Africa and the greater Arab region fighting for freedom. If the price of having a half dozen countries topple despots and dictators is for me to pay a few dollars more per week for the privilege, the luxury, of driving distances that once took all day to traverse, and doing it in a mere a quarter of an hour at inhuman speeds two, three, four times a day, well, I'll do it smiling. I won't support a war fought (supposedly) to force freedom on people who didn't ask us for it, but I'm glad to pay extra when the people themselves decide they've had enough of tyranny and choose to do something about it. It's the least I can do.

(the fact that the protests and revolts may be caused by soaring food prices thanks in part to us turning a quarter of the U.S. corn crop into the boondoggle of ethanol to keep the SUV fleet going leaves me a bit muddled-feeling, but the point stands).

(there are other reasons for the rising food prices. Here, read this: The Rising Prices of Food & Political Instability )

Ka Boom

So, I was bored the other day. In my web surfing I came across the E = mc2 equation. Thought I'd try to calculate the energy present in my body, with the help of Wikipedia's equivalents. I came out with 1,219,029.493474 kilotons of TNT. This is equal to over 67,723 of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima (15-18 kilotons), 58,049 of Nagasaki (25 kilotons), or about 24 times the size of the Tsar Bomba (50 megatons), the largest atomic detonation ever. All that in a couple of cubic meters of flesh. If every atom of mine dissolved their energies all at once, I'd light up like the sun.


Use the force, Luke

Naturally the conversion isn't perfect, and I read that it doesn't quite work that way, but more or less that's about the length of it. No matter what, I have the power of the sun in my make up, I am truly a being of light. For what is matter, what is solidness, but vast energies moving very very fast in a very very tight space? Like the solid disc of a moving fan, which you cannot throw an egg through, there's nothing solid there at all, just movement, just pure energy.

Like a little tale I read once, about a man and an angel walking along. Together they pass through an area of fog, then they encounter a log across the path. The man goes over, the angel walks through it. When the man asks how, the angel says he did it in the same way the man went through the fog: by being denser than it. That is to say, having more energy. You can see that if the egg was moving fast enough (i.e., had enough energy) it could be thrown through the fan. Like how old fighter planes shot bullets through the propeller, timing and speed.

Zing! Whoosh!

Anyways, in the end it's all vibration. I said a few cubic meters of flesh; but really if all the "matter" of my body were collected into a purely dense piece, it'd still be invisible. An atom the size of a football stadium would have a nucleus the size of a football and electrons the size of grains of sand out in the nosebleeds. As physicists develop ever "sharper" "knives" (atom smashers), they will find tinier and tinier "bits" and this could continue forever, there's no ultimate bedrock of matter. You can't get via division to anything that is indivisible. No matter how small the number, you can always divide it again. Matter is a vibration of something we know not what.

What is this world in which we live?