Keep in mind that America is currently under an administration discarding science and reason, while it pursues acquisition with obvious psychosis. The psychosis is not one of science and reason! Nor did colonization begin in the 1500s. Aryan tribes colonized the Indian subcontinent in about 2000 BC. What's now China and Mongolia also has seen waves of colonizers over millennia. And while China and Mongolia also produced some great philosophies, those philosophies were famously right-brain, as with Taoism. The Aryans of the Indian subcontinent were right-brain-dominant through most of their history too. So there's no correlation between brain-hemisphere domination and colonial domination. Conflating these things is part and parcel of the psychotic discarding of science and reason which is the core of the Trumpist agenda.
And yes, I've read McGilchrist. He makes many excellent points. But y'all are generally taking this way too far as a basis for rational analysis of our current point in history. We need to progress to a thorough egalitarianism, both psychological and social, not a revival of some mythic Middle Ages paradise where societies (and psychologies) obeyed masters -- of either hemispheric persuasion.
Great, I’ve been following this narrative for a few years now & have Paul Levy’s books. This is a spiritual sickness - it goes being western understanding of the human brain, btw I also read McGilchrist - his work has helped me immensely.
Thank you very much for spreading awareness of wetiko. Paul Levy also did a great service in disseminating this phenomenon.
Even the Bible alludes to wetiko in its story about Moses and Mount Sinai. When Moses left the people to communicate with God, the people took up worship of a "golden calf" idol. A golden calf statue? Wtf! To this day so called "civilized" people everywhere have never given up their golden calf Weltanschauung.
You could find Wetiko as almost exactly what ancient Christians referred to as Satan. I'm pretty sure that's what they were getting at, and Wetiko could serve as a secularisation of Satan pretty well, even if in fact it has an independent genesis.
All such doomsday prophecy rests on the same underlying premise — that humanity is not a creative force but a blight. While doomsayers are busy painting nightmarish scenarios of a collapse that is always twenty years in the future, the silent majority is steadily solving the very challenges the prophets despair over.
Well, perhaps humanity is a parasitic creative force that cannot stop destroying it's environment to the detriment of other living beings? Doesn't seem so far fetched, and certainly doesn't magically make humanity exempt from is role and responsibility in destruction the commons. Unless of course you purpose that humanity could never be a blight, could never be destructive and could never be in violation the "The Golden Rule"? All results of left brain thinking by the way...
I don't know who the 'silent majority' are but all 'solutions' seem to produce more problems as complexity increases (the diminishing returns to complexity as per Tainter etc)
"Solutions" don't produce more problems. The conditions and bad actors and even random mutations on the ground produce problems. Per Tainter, the diminishing marginal returns are correlated to complexity but not caused by it. The growth of bureaucracy is the cause. This is hilarious if you think of it, since Tainter is such a fan of bureaucracy at its beginning.
Yes, you are onto something here. Tainter used integrative theory vs. conflict theory in The Collapse of Comples Societies (1988), which is where I first heard of it. He came down on the side of integrative theory over conflict theory, even though he gave weight to conflict theory. My operating paradigm is just the opposite. I come down on the side of conflict theory but give weight to integrative theory. I have some experience with bloated bureaucracies and how to manipulate them to some small degree. Your observation that bureaucracies become bloated and therefore become less efficient is spot on. My further observation is that this is integral to the very idea of bureaucracy. One could even say that bureaucracies MUST consume more energy as they age because the systems needs them to amass more power. They do this by becoming more inefficient. The snot-nosed kid behind the counter at the DMV has a lot of power over everyone's life simply because the procedures and policies are so poor. Sometimes he even knows it.
Totally agree...Our sons and I have made a number of trips into the true wilderness, in Montana or the Canadian Boundary Waters...it's transformative...The sheer silence, with the only noise being a wind rustling through the trees and the occasional bird cry, makes you forget about everything you left behind....The Mountain Men and the fur trade's voyageurs knew this....
This spirit percolates down into our most intimate and subtle spaces, adopting aesthetics and vernaculars to skin it's ruthless game theory as otherwise. You can see it dividing generations, slipping between partners, into the axioms of our own being, liberating everything to market.
"Wendigo" is a far more common usage in general English and modern popular culture, while "wetiko" is a specific cognate used within academic or social commentary contexts. Here in the northern heartland, our Anishinaabe neighbors share with us the Myth of the Wendigo. You should NOT have selected the abstract, academic term - it's left brained, like my definitions below.
"Wendigo is common in general English, horror fiction, films, TV, and internet folklore, referring to the mythological creature, often depicted in popular culture as an antlered, cannibalistic monster (a modern invention and not traditionally accurate). The term also lends its name to the disputed medical term "Wendigo psychosis".
Wetiko is less common in general use. Primarily used within Cree, Anishinabek, and other Algonquian-speaking communities and by authors or academics discussing the concept's original cultural meaning as a "mind-virus" or spiritual sickness embodying insatiable greed and excess."
You selected a term which is technically more correct, but now with a totally abstract, academic usage. You needed to call forth the myth. A reading of Harari's Sapiens leads to the obvious conclusion: Intersubjective Realties are catalyzed by MYTH, not by abstractions. Therefore, we need better myths. Never use an academic abstraction when there is a mythological term available in common usage. Academically, the term is "Wendigo psychosis", NOT Wetiko psychosis.
By the way, as I understand the myths of my Anishinaabe neighbors, "Wendigo psychosis" is an accurate metaphor for the behavior of western Oligarchs, in both the boardroom and in politics, as well as media. Consumerism has infected a large portion of people in modern societies with a more passive version of this mind virus that makes them willing victims as they scramble for more useless things that distract them from the emptiness of their lives.
People don't recover from a mind virus by hearing an academic, left-brained, discourse. They recover if they can envision a powerful myth that bathes the dark virus in clarifying light. While anthropologically incorrect, the vision of a dark, antlered, cannibalistic monster whose greed devours the people around them is likely to be effective in evoking resistance.
To all the readers here -- when you have a choice, evoke the powerful myth; avoid the dry, academic discourse.
You miss the point - Semantics IS Abstract [generated in the left brain where the Wendigo psychosis virus lives]. And Jack D Forbes IS an Academic who deals in abstractions because a person can't get an article peer reviewed if they cite mythological (right brained) terms or, God forbid, that they write for a popular audience instead of other academics using terms the average person on main street might actually know.
If we believe Iain McGilchrist's ideas about overuse of the left (abstract) hemisphere have any validity, then we who are overly educated and trained to think in abstractions need to cut it out! When you have a choice, evoke the powerful myth; avoid the dry, academic discourse.
Before I even saw Barbara's comment, I looked "wetiko" up in Wikipedia.
Guess what? The two words are linked together! Literally, "wetiko" brings up the "wendigo" page in Wikipedia. Wikipedia calls the two terms synonymous.
I suggested on the Talk page for the link that it should probably have its own page that is more conceptual, as a description of malignant colonialism or capitalism, for example.
That said, I'll defend concept any day. We are conceptual beings. Yes, it's been horribly mis-applied, but so was the much-vaunted right-hemisphere realism that allowed our forebears to destroy the megafauna, long before we even had written words.
I think there's a missing bit here: restraint. Can we bear to not do anything that we might imagine doing? It appears not!
It is the rational mind that tells us that if we touch a hot stove, we'll get burned. It is the rational mind that tells us that if we keep putting CO2 in the air, we'll get burned.
Industrial Society and Its Future, is a 35,000-word anti-technology essay. Published in 1995, it argues that the Industrial Revolution was a disaster for the human race and calls for a revolution to destroy the industrial-technological system and restore human freedom and a connection to nature.
william rees has released 2 of his triptych on Why collapse is inevitable. The indigenous movement under the rubric, The Global Tapestry of Alternatives, holds a countering vision within its larger objectives (reflected in much of the writings of Ashish Kothari) and offers a previously closed negotiating platform which could avoid Rees' dooms day scenario- And a path through the failings of COP30 and related.
Powerful message. Very comprehensive assessment. It’s sad, very sad, that people have grown so disconnected from the earth, one another, and themselves. If we survive this period we are walking through right now, many will still be lost in the process. But I have come to accept that we need a global reset… and it won’t look pretty. (At least in my lifetime.)
Turchin posits, based on data from seshat, that the actual change was just before Ur et al. He says that the evidence suggests the domestication of a mammal for meat production instead of pseudo-tribe member lines up everywhere with the end of animism and the start of hierarchical polytheism.
From the Steppes, town sites like Amnya (Western Siberia, ~8,000 years old) built by sophisticated hunter-gatherer societies, significantly predated the arrival of agriculture in the region. Predating the townsite, is perhaps an example of early avarice among prehistoric elites in burial sites at Sungir, Russia (Upper Paleolithic, ~34,000 years ago):
Goods: Thousands of mammoth ivory beads, fox teeth, bracelets, spears, red ochre covering bodies.
Significance: One of Europe's earliest elaborate burials, indicating high status for individuals and complex spiritual beliefs.
A clear example of hunter-gatherer societies allowing their elites to extract from the "peasants" in a way that looks similar to Egyptian pyramids. Hoarding not only in life, but depriving their populace of resources after their death.
Is that really an example of 'early avarice' and elites? Maybe the people in those burials were loved and respected by their fellow tribe members. Some grave beads, bracelets etc are not sufficient evidence to make definitive statements about a 'clear example' of 'elites' and 'peasants' in hunter-gatherer groups.
By contrast, ruling elites have been almost the defining feature of the bureaucratic hierarchies that have followed since the invention of agriculture.
Not sure what a “mind virus” may be, yet the world-system which is destroying the planet is called capitalism. It is not at all a “symptom” — it is the very system, of planetary management, that controls and abuses the entire planet including the working-class population.
The mind virus came first. Somewhere along the way some humans became deeply disconnected from each other and nature and this cause a deep rupture and trauma. The mind virus led to things like domination, deceit, coercion, greed, colonization, capitalism and over time to enforce those systems things like racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, etc.
So, this “mind virus” did not travel to other parts of the world? Before 1492? (discovery of North and South America by Europeans). Given that, “Greed Is the Final Enterprise” (Puritan + Catholic proliferation and colonization the new world). All such things like “deceit … greed … domination” existed in various pyramidal societies in India, in China, across the Levant and beyond. Indeed, “white supremacy” can be termed as “mind virus” that yet again emerged from the Catholic and Puritan domination, loot and enslavement of the indigenous, the mantra backing European colonizers, wherever they went.
You're in the comments of an essay explaining an indigenous belief, dismissing said indigenous belief. Sure, capitalism is destroying the planet, but this is a space to be open to a non-"Western" explanation of what caused capitalism to be in the first place. The whole point of the essay is that the only way we can end such cancerous systems (like capitalism) is by returning to right hemisphere thinking and myth. You're failing to do just that. Although you're not wrong, it's simply the wrong place.
I would argue weitiko began long before agriculture or European expansion to the Americas. All expansions of humans into new places led to massive extirpations and extinctions of species, especially the megafauna. Before European expansion, we had the Mongol Empire, the Han Dynasty, The Bantu migrations, Polynesian expansion (leading to the extinction of thousands of species!), the Ottoman Empire, and more, all colonizers. Taking land from other species and other humans is something we've been doing a VERY long time. As Lyle Lewis has argued, what changed the game was developing the spear and a shoulder to throw it with. Add control of fire to that, and bam. We take over the world, and relatively fast (geologically speaking).
But the megafauna did ok in Africa, where they evolved alongside humans. Things were *relatively* stable for a very long time, until agriculture, 'civilization', 'progress' etc
Effectively saying 'it was always this bad' let's the 'system' off the hook.
"did ok" -- relatively to megafauna on other continents perhaps.
And of course I would never say "let the 'system' off the hook."
Just saying it's more than left brain analytics. A confluence of things come together, including being bipedal, the shoulder, the spear, fire, loss of predators, and a propensity to take from others.
Hi James, I wanted to amplify Elisabeth's point, the deep time perspective, via way of a direct quote from the book she mentions by Lyle Lewis, that goes into detail about the way early human species evolved in tandem with Leopards (in Africa), but eventually came to dominate them and their shared habitat. I think it's worth retiring these phrases of left/right brain dominance and wetiko, they do not go far enough to understand our current predicament and human nature. The further back you go, the more the whole picture comes into sharper focus. It is neither good nor bad, we are who we are, and we evolved to survive, like any other species, and now we will die out, like any other species, it's just a matter of time. Here's the quote:
"The intricate and dynamic interaction between humans and leopards likely played a crucial role in preventing hominids from attaining dominance.
However, the acquisition of fire disrupted the long-standing equilibrium that had persisted for hundreds of thousands of years.
The mastery of fire by humans provided a new level of protection against leopard predation in areas they continued to cohabitate. It also facilitated hominid expansion into colder climates and effectively transformed humans into an invasive species.
The deliberate targeting of those of lesser power is what distinguishes bullying from garden-variety aggression. It involves acts of aggression and exploitation.
For several million years, the reward of aggressive, violent behavior was our survival. It came at the expense of carnivores that coexisted with humans on the landscape.
With the abandonment of kills [in caves], leopards provided hominids a relatively consistent opportunity for thievery. While bullying and theft were evolutionarily inspired for survival, these behaviors haven’t disappeared.
Ours has been a subtle metamorphosis from an animal who scavenged, stole, and gathered to one furthering our economic interests, political ambitions, and social status and imbued with a sense of cultural superiority. We are our ancestors in high heels, suits, and ties."
Lewis, Lyle. Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish (pp. 64-65). Lyle Lewis. Kindle Edition.
What about places where there were no leopards? Also the word 'bullying' has negative overtones, not suited to the supposedly dry, academic 'explanation' written by this Lewis character.
He was not there millions of years ago, so it's all speculation anyway.
The point about indigenous ways vs 'wetiko/wendigo/LB/greed/whatever is that they *learned* wise ways of (co)existing.
Saying 'it is human nature so it's no one's fault, let's continue IC' *is* letting colonialism etc etc off the hook.
Are you aware of the preconquest consciousness research? It hints that the psychosis gets even deeper and it stems from *any* form of coercion/deceit. Pushing human mind to conform to abstractions is only one of them.
THANK YOU for posting that link. I haven’t even finished reading the pre-conquest v post-conquest piece but already it’s been life changing. Just whoa. It brings me to tears.
Hi Kristen thanks for your comments and interest in the link. I came across some of this lifestyle many years ago and was deeply moved.
Sadly it won't provide us with the perfect solution because the forest regenerates too slowly for the needs of the village, and that's why the two different tribes eventually met on the remote ridge.
However this problem points us to how we can put these wonderful ideas into practice in our own lives: to focus on regeneration, of farmland, of friendships, of communities, of ourselves.
I agreed with a lot of that, but at the end he's equivocal about whether postconquest consciousness is good or bad - which seems to negate the rest of the text somewhat.
(I replied to Kristen below, along the same lines, not realising that you introduced the link.)
I didn't read it all (tl). That's the problem with scientists though, isn't it, their 'detachment'. No doubt Oppenheimer & co. were 'detached' when they invented nuclear bombs. Etc etc.
Keep in mind that America is currently under an administration discarding science and reason, while it pursues acquisition with obvious psychosis. The psychosis is not one of science and reason! Nor did colonization begin in the 1500s. Aryan tribes colonized the Indian subcontinent in about 2000 BC. What's now China and Mongolia also has seen waves of colonizers over millennia. And while China and Mongolia also produced some great philosophies, those philosophies were famously right-brain, as with Taoism. The Aryans of the Indian subcontinent were right-brain-dominant through most of their history too. So there's no correlation between brain-hemisphere domination and colonial domination. Conflating these things is part and parcel of the psychotic discarding of science and reason which is the core of the Trumpist agenda.
And yes, I've read McGilchrist. He makes many excellent points. But y'all are generally taking this way too far as a basis for rational analysis of our current point in history. We need to progress to a thorough egalitarianism, both psychological and social, not a revival of some mythic Middle Ages paradise where societies (and psychologies) obeyed masters -- of either hemispheric persuasion.
wow great article
Aha finally, finding wetiko being discussed here is an interesting development.
It was discussed here in 2024 as well: https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/meet-the-mind-virus-wetiko
Since then I have read McGilchrist's books, and he does make a compelling case about the left hemisphere.
Great, I’ve been following this narrative for a few years now & have Paul Levy’s books. This is a spiritual sickness - it goes being western understanding of the human brain, btw I also read McGilchrist - his work has helped me immensely.
Spiritual sickness = mental disorder.
The wetiko = The symbiote.
It lives within us all and its only intention is to take over our existence by controlling every aspect of our reality.
When we are out of control, it is in control of us.
But it must have our consent to function and unknowingly to many, they are consistently consenting and contracting with this technological entity.
Thank you very much for spreading awareness of wetiko. Paul Levy also did a great service in disseminating this phenomenon.
Even the Bible alludes to wetiko in its story about Moses and Mount Sinai. When Moses left the people to communicate with God, the people took up worship of a "golden calf" idol. A golden calf statue? Wtf! To this day so called "civilized" people everywhere have never given up their golden calf Weltanschauung.
You could find Wetiko as almost exactly what ancient Christians referred to as Satan. I'm pretty sure that's what they were getting at, and Wetiko could serve as a secularisation of Satan pretty well, even if in fact it has an independent genesis.
All such doomsday prophecy rests on the same underlying premise — that humanity is not a creative force but a blight. While doomsayers are busy painting nightmarish scenarios of a collapse that is always twenty years in the future, the silent majority is steadily solving the very challenges the prophets despair over.
Well, perhaps humanity is a parasitic creative force that cannot stop destroying it's environment to the detriment of other living beings? Doesn't seem so far fetched, and certainly doesn't magically make humanity exempt from is role and responsibility in destruction the commons. Unless of course you purpose that humanity could never be a blight, could never be destructive and could never be in violation the "The Golden Rule"? All results of left brain thinking by the way...
It is the symbiote that is doing all the destroying and using beings as its host to bid its dirty workings.
I don't know who the 'silent majority' are but all 'solutions' seem to produce more problems as complexity increases (the diminishing returns to complexity as per Tainter etc)
"Solutions" don't produce more problems. The conditions and bad actors and even random mutations on the ground produce problems. Per Tainter, the diminishing marginal returns are correlated to complexity but not caused by it. The growth of bureaucracy is the cause. This is hilarious if you think of it, since Tainter is such a fan of bureaucracy at its beginning.
Yes, but maybe bureaucracy is a (nasty) form of complexity? Bureaucracies become bloated, consuming more and more energy and becoming less efficient.
The 'bad actors' inevitably end up in charge, due to the very nature of bureaucratic hierarchies.
Yes, you are onto something here. Tainter used integrative theory vs. conflict theory in The Collapse of Comples Societies (1988), which is where I first heard of it. He came down on the side of integrative theory over conflict theory, even though he gave weight to conflict theory. My operating paradigm is just the opposite. I come down on the side of conflict theory but give weight to integrative theory. I have some experience with bloated bureaucracies and how to manipulate them to some small degree. Your observation that bureaucracies become bloated and therefore become less efficient is spot on. My further observation is that this is integral to the very idea of bureaucracy. One could even say that bureaucracies MUST consume more energy as they age because the systems needs them to amass more power. They do this by becoming more inefficient. The snot-nosed kid behind the counter at the DMV has a lot of power over everyone's life simply because the procedures and policies are so poor. Sometimes he even knows it.
Totally agree...Our sons and I have made a number of trips into the true wilderness, in Montana or the Canadian Boundary Waters...it's transformative...The sheer silence, with the only noise being a wind rustling through the trees and the occasional bird cry, makes you forget about everything you left behind....The Mountain Men and the fur trade's voyageurs knew this....
This spirit percolates down into our most intimate and subtle spaces, adopting aesthetics and vernaculars to skin it's ruthless game theory as otherwise. You can see it dividing generations, slipping between partners, into the axioms of our own being, liberating everything to market.
Let's call forth the Myth of the Wendigo.
"Wendigo" is a far more common usage in general English and modern popular culture, while "wetiko" is a specific cognate used within academic or social commentary contexts. Here in the northern heartland, our Anishinaabe neighbors share with us the Myth of the Wendigo. You should NOT have selected the abstract, academic term - it's left brained, like my definitions below.
"Wendigo is common in general English, horror fiction, films, TV, and internet folklore, referring to the mythological creature, often depicted in popular culture as an antlered, cannibalistic monster (a modern invention and not traditionally accurate). The term also lends its name to the disputed medical term "Wendigo psychosis".
Wetiko is less common in general use. Primarily used within Cree, Anishinabek, and other Algonquian-speaking communities and by authors or academics discussing the concept's original cultural meaning as a "mind-virus" or spiritual sickness embodying insatiable greed and excess."
You selected a term which is technically more correct, but now with a totally abstract, academic usage. You needed to call forth the myth. A reading of Harari's Sapiens leads to the obvious conclusion: Intersubjective Realties are catalyzed by MYTH, not by abstractions. Therefore, we need better myths. Never use an academic abstraction when there is a mythological term available in common usage. Academically, the term is "Wendigo psychosis", NOT Wetiko psychosis.
By the way, as I understand the myths of my Anishinaabe neighbors, "Wendigo psychosis" is an accurate metaphor for the behavior of western Oligarchs, in both the boardroom and in politics, as well as media. Consumerism has infected a large portion of people in modern societies with a more passive version of this mind virus that makes them willing victims as they scramble for more useless things that distract them from the emptiness of their lives.
People don't recover from a mind virus by hearing an academic, left-brained, discourse. They recover if they can envision a powerful myth that bathes the dark virus in clarifying light. While anthropologically incorrect, the vision of a dark, antlered, cannibalistic monster whose greed devours the people around them is likely to be effective in evoking resistance.
To all the readers here -- when you have a choice, evoke the powerful myth; avoid the dry, academic discourse.
Semantics, really... if 'Wetiko' was good enough for Jack D Forbes, it's good enough for me.
You miss the point - Semantics IS Abstract [generated in the left brain where the Wendigo psychosis virus lives]. And Jack D Forbes IS an Academic who deals in abstractions because a person can't get an article peer reviewed if they cite mythological (right brained) terms or, God forbid, that they write for a popular audience instead of other academics using terms the average person on main street might actually know.
If we believe Iain McGilchrist's ideas about overuse of the left (abstract) hemisphere have any validity, then we who are overly educated and trained to think in abstractions need to cut it out! When you have a choice, evoke the powerful myth; avoid the dry, academic discourse.
"Semantics IS Abstract" - yes, and you're getting sidetracked by semantics.
Who even knew about the difference between those two words until you got annoyed about it?
If 'Wetiko' is primarily used within Cree etc. - well those Native Americans aren't all academics, are they?
Language is always a limited way of describing reality.
I think you miss the point.
Before I even saw Barbara's comment, I looked "wetiko" up in Wikipedia.
Guess what? The two words are linked together! Literally, "wetiko" brings up the "wendigo" page in Wikipedia. Wikipedia calls the two terms synonymous.
I suggested on the Talk page for the link that it should probably have its own page that is more conceptual, as a description of malignant colonialism or capitalism, for example.
That said, I'll defend concept any day. We are conceptual beings. Yes, it's been horribly mis-applied, but so was the much-vaunted right-hemisphere realism that allowed our forebears to destroy the megafauna, long before we even had written words.
I think there's a missing bit here: restraint. Can we bear to not do anything that we might imagine doing? It appears not!
It is the rational mind that tells us that if we touch a hot stove, we'll get burned. It is the rational mind that tells us that if we keep putting CO2 in the air, we'll get burned.
See the difference?
Didn't think so! :-)
Not sure how I've missed the point??
I miss a lot of things these days.
Yeah, when I find myself getting too abstract and academic, I make some popcorn and watch YouTube videos of cats.
When I find myself getting too abstract and academic, I go for a walk and talk to the trees!
Ted was a hero:
Industrial Society and Its Future, is a 35,000-word anti-technology essay. Published in 1995, it argues that the Industrial Revolution was a disaster for the human race and calls for a revolution to destroy the industrial-technological system and restore human freedom and a connection to nature.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm
Yes, he was ahead of his time on many issues.
Btw, I'm in Britain and can no longer read your articles "Age-restricted content" (without a ridiculous 'verification' process).
The Online Safety Act is true censorship here.
I am in Perth ... when I tried to access SS this morning I was asked to verify my age as well....
I am anticipating leaving Australia at the beginning of March... not to return
Yeah I'm aware of Wendigo but not this weitiko fella.
Beautifully articulated. Thank you for sharing this.
william rees has released 2 of his triptych on Why collapse is inevitable. The indigenous movement under the rubric, The Global Tapestry of Alternatives, holds a countering vision within its larger objectives (reflected in much of the writings of Ashish Kothari) and offers a previously closed negotiating platform which could avoid Rees' dooms day scenario- And a path through the failings of COP30 and related.
Powerful message. Very comprehensive assessment. It’s sad, very sad, that people have grown so disconnected from the earth, one another, and themselves. If we survive this period we are walking through right now, many will still be lost in the process. But I have come to accept that we need a global reset… and it won’t look pretty. (At least in my lifetime.)
They have disconnected from their fundamental truths.
Turchin posits, based on data from seshat, that the actual change was just before Ur et al. He says that the evidence suggests the domestication of a mammal for meat production instead of pseudo-tribe member lines up everywhere with the end of animism and the start of hierarchical polytheism.
From the Steppes, town sites like Amnya (Western Siberia, ~8,000 years old) built by sophisticated hunter-gatherer societies, significantly predated the arrival of agriculture in the region. Predating the townsite, is perhaps an example of early avarice among prehistoric elites in burial sites at Sungir, Russia (Upper Paleolithic, ~34,000 years ago):
Goods: Thousands of mammoth ivory beads, fox teeth, bracelets, spears, red ochre covering bodies.
Significance: One of Europe's earliest elaborate burials, indicating high status for individuals and complex spiritual beliefs.
A clear example of hunter-gatherer societies allowing their elites to extract from the "peasants" in a way that looks similar to Egyptian pyramids. Hoarding not only in life, but depriving their populace of resources after their death.
Is that really an example of 'early avarice' and elites? Maybe the people in those burials were loved and respected by their fellow tribe members. Some grave beads, bracelets etc are not sufficient evidence to make definitive statements about a 'clear example' of 'elites' and 'peasants' in hunter-gatherer groups.
By contrast, ruling elites have been almost the defining feature of the bureaucratic hierarchies that have followed since the invention of agriculture.
its capitalism, not any psychosis. All the climate sorcery that goes on, itself a part of the same “world-eating” system.
Capitalism is the symptom. caused by the mind virus we term Wendigo psychosis.
Not sure what a “mind virus” may be, yet the world-system which is destroying the planet is called capitalism. It is not at all a “symptom” — it is the very system, of planetary management, that controls and abuses the entire planet including the working-class population.
The mind virus came first. Somewhere along the way some humans became deeply disconnected from each other and nature and this cause a deep rupture and trauma. The mind virus led to things like domination, deceit, coercion, greed, colonization, capitalism and over time to enforce those systems things like racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, etc.
So, this “mind virus” did not travel to other parts of the world? Before 1492? (discovery of North and South America by Europeans). Given that, “Greed Is the Final Enterprise” (Puritan + Catholic proliferation and colonization the new world). All such things like “deceit … greed … domination” existed in various pyramidal societies in India, in China, across the Levant and beyond. Indeed, “white supremacy” can be termed as “mind virus” that yet again emerged from the Catholic and Puritan domination, loot and enslavement of the indigenous, the mantra backing European colonizers, wherever they went.
You're in the comments of an essay explaining an indigenous belief, dismissing said indigenous belief. Sure, capitalism is destroying the planet, but this is a space to be open to a non-"Western" explanation of what caused capitalism to be in the first place. The whole point of the essay is that the only way we can end such cancerous systems (like capitalism) is by returning to right hemisphere thinking and myth. You're failing to do just that. Although you're not wrong, it's simply the wrong place.
I would argue weitiko began long before agriculture or European expansion to the Americas. All expansions of humans into new places led to massive extirpations and extinctions of species, especially the megafauna. Before European expansion, we had the Mongol Empire, the Han Dynasty, The Bantu migrations, Polynesian expansion (leading to the extinction of thousands of species!), the Ottoman Empire, and more, all colonizers. Taking land from other species and other humans is something we've been doing a VERY long time. As Lyle Lewis has argued, what changed the game was developing the spear and a shoulder to throw it with. Add control of fire to that, and bam. We take over the world, and relatively fast (geologically speaking).
But the megafauna did ok in Africa, where they evolved alongside humans. Things were *relatively* stable for a very long time, until agriculture, 'civilization', 'progress' etc
Effectively saying 'it was always this bad' let's the 'system' off the hook.
"did ok" -- relatively to megafauna on other continents perhaps.
And of course I would never say "let the 'system' off the hook."
Just saying it's more than left brain analytics. A confluence of things come together, including being bipedal, the shoulder, the spear, fire, loss of predators, and a propensity to take from others.
Fair enough (but, McGilchrist would say, a propensity to take from others is itself a left-brain trait...)
Hi James, I wanted to amplify Elisabeth's point, the deep time perspective, via way of a direct quote from the book she mentions by Lyle Lewis, that goes into detail about the way early human species evolved in tandem with Leopards (in Africa), but eventually came to dominate them and their shared habitat. I think it's worth retiring these phrases of left/right brain dominance and wetiko, they do not go far enough to understand our current predicament and human nature. The further back you go, the more the whole picture comes into sharper focus. It is neither good nor bad, we are who we are, and we evolved to survive, like any other species, and now we will die out, like any other species, it's just a matter of time. Here's the quote:
"The intricate and dynamic interaction between humans and leopards likely played a crucial role in preventing hominids from attaining dominance.
However, the acquisition of fire disrupted the long-standing equilibrium that had persisted for hundreds of thousands of years.
The mastery of fire by humans provided a new level of protection against leopard predation in areas they continued to cohabitate. It also facilitated hominid expansion into colder climates and effectively transformed humans into an invasive species.
The deliberate targeting of those of lesser power is what distinguishes bullying from garden-variety aggression. It involves acts of aggression and exploitation.
For several million years, the reward of aggressive, violent behavior was our survival. It came at the expense of carnivores that coexisted with humans on the landscape.
With the abandonment of kills [in caves], leopards provided hominids a relatively consistent opportunity for thievery. While bullying and theft were evolutionarily inspired for survival, these behaviors haven’t disappeared.
Ours has been a subtle metamorphosis from an animal who scavenged, stole, and gathered to one furthering our economic interests, political ambitions, and social status and imbued with a sense of cultural superiority. We are our ancestors in high heels, suits, and ties."
Lewis, Lyle. Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish (pp. 64-65). Lyle Lewis. Kindle Edition.
I disagree.
What about places where there were no leopards? Also the word 'bullying' has negative overtones, not suited to the supposedly dry, academic 'explanation' written by this Lewis character.
He was not there millions of years ago, so it's all speculation anyway.
The point about indigenous ways vs 'wetiko/wendigo/LB/greed/whatever is that they *learned* wise ways of (co)existing.
Saying 'it is human nature so it's no one's fault, let's continue IC' *is* letting colonialism etc etc off the hook.
There is always a choice.
Amazing post, thank you for this.
McGilchrist's "Master and His Emmissary" is great for the first part but the second part is pretty shallow.
I can recommend Carolyn Merchant's "Death Of Nature" for those interested in a more nuanced socio-political take on the Enshitenment.
Lovely word, Enshitenment.
Are you aware of the preconquest consciousness research? It hints that the psychosis gets even deeper and it stems from *any* form of coercion/deceit. Pushing human mind to conform to abstractions is only one of them.
https://ranprieur.com/readings/preconquest.html
THANK YOU for posting that link. I haven’t even finished reading the pre-conquest v post-conquest piece but already it’s been life changing. Just whoa. It brings me to tears.
Hi Kristen thanks for your comments and interest in the link. I came across some of this lifestyle many years ago and was deeply moved.
Sadly it won't provide us with the perfect solution because the forest regenerates too slowly for the needs of the village, and that's why the two different tribes eventually met on the remote ridge.
However this problem points us to how we can put these wonderful ideas into practice in our own lives: to focus on regeneration, of farmland, of friendships, of communities, of ourselves.
Yes absolutely! Very much in alignment with that.
I agreed with a lot of that, but at the end he's equivocal about whether postconquest consciousness is good or bad - which seems to negate the rest of the text somewhat.
(I replied to Kristen below, along the same lines, not realising that you introduced the link.)
That is all you got out of it? Well they are a scientist and they have some detachment from the subject.
If we insist to make moral judgments, I'd say postconquest one is worse, but somewhat less fragile.
I didn't read it all (tl). That's the problem with scientists though, isn't it, their 'detachment'. No doubt Oppenheimer & co. were 'detached' when they invented nuclear bombs. Etc etc.
Where is the problem here? Did they harm anyone, even indirectly like Oppenheimer did?
I just don't see why he can't state the obvious conclusion to his research and make a judgement on postconquest consciousness.
Is there an obvious conclusion? No matter how good moral and whatnot that way of life is, it would probably require extinction of 99% of humanity.