TEK & the Technosphere
I know that the ink has hardly dried on the first printed copies of my last book, The War on Terra & the New Underground Railroad, but I have already begun writing my next book.
The new project has been given the working title TEK & the Technosphere.
Taking up material from the proceedings of the (anti-)Social (anti-)Bodies seminar, and weaving in threads from Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think, Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse, David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, and Julia Watson’s Lo—TEK, my next book will investigate the “human, all too human” origins of the Anthropocene and consider the prospects for the (re-)creation of “more-than-human” social arrangements as a way out of the Anthropocene.
The dispatch below delivers the thrust of the book. All of the photos pictured below have been lifted from Julia Watson’s Lo—TEK.
For tens of thousands of millennia, most humans have lived in immense and complex societies together with great multitudes of non-human others. Humans and non-humans had comparable influence within these social polycultures. Indeed, for most of human history, humans and non-humans have been so intimately and deeply involved in each other’s lives that, more often than not, humans have regarded and treated all non-human others — animal, vegetal, and elemental — with the same deference as they have other humans.
It was commonplace for humans to regard the winds, the rains, the seas, the soils, the rocks, the clouds, the sun, and the moon as peoples; to regard the trees, the shrubs, the herbs, the grasses, the mosses, the lichens, and the fungi as peoples; to regard the birds, the insects, the fish, the reptiles, the amphibians, and all our fellow mammals as peoples.
Today, such commonplaces are too often haughtily dismissed as superstitious “primitivisms,” and those humans who adhere to such commonplaces dispossessed, dehumanized, denigrated, and dismissed from consideration, as “primitives.”
Why and how has this come to pass?
Jingkieng Dieng Jri
Living Root Bridges
of the Khasis, India
500 years ago, a dramatic social shift took place. Some groups of humans increasingly began to distinguish themselves from and claim dominion over non-human others and to organize themselves into “human, all too human” societies, social monocultures in which humans are far and away the most influential social actors. What’s more, some humans increasingly began to distinguish themselves from and claim dominion over other humans, casting these others as dehumanized “races,” and treating them as derisively and dismissively as they did non-human others.
What happened 500 years ago was not entirely unheard of. The first highly “successful” and expansionary “human, all too human” social arrangements achieved great prominence and then died out millennia ago — these being the patriarchal and imperial “military-slavery-coinage complexes” of the Axial Age empires (800 BC - 600 AD). Other such social arrangements have periodically re-emerged and died out ever since. The uniqueness of the dramatic social shift that took place 500 years ago had less to do with the emergence of “human, all too human” social arrangements per se, and more to do with their extreme virulence and violence. Turbo-charged by a fusion of racist and capitalist techniques and technologies of power, these were the imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchies of the Euro-Atlantic West.
The practice of distinguishing oneself as human and claiming dominion over both non-human others and dehumanized humans has come to be called “human civilization,” and the human groupings who practice it have come to be called “civilized peoples.” The extreme virulence and violence of the “human, all too human” social arrangements that emerged and spread from the Euro-Atlantic West to the rest of the world have yielded a human civilization so “advanced,” and peoples so “civilized,” that they have come to define a new ecocidal geological era that is, itself, “human, all too human”: the Anthropocene.
This era is characterized by the emergence of a new Earth sphere: the technosphere. Once, everything in Earth’s system could be placed into one of four interlocking natural subsystems: the lithosphere (landforms), hydrosphere (water), biosphere (lifeforms), and atmosphere (air). The technosphere is a new, artificial subsystem made up of the assembled technologies and infrastructures of the “human, all too human” lifeways that emerged and spread from out of the Euro-Atlantic West. The ecocidal horrors of the Anthropocene are attributable to the harmful effects of the rapid growth and spread of this technosphere on the natural regeneration and renewal of the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere.
Prior to the Anthropocene, to the extent that the greater part of humanity lived in more-than-human societies in which non-human others were influential social actors, Transformative Ecological Knowledges (TEK) prevailed over and against “human, all too human” technologies and infrastructures. TEK was integral to the natural regeneration and renewal of the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. The repression and ruination of TEK, everywhere and anywhere it was inconveniently found, enabled the rapid emergence and growth of the “human, all too human” technosphere, and brought about the Anthropocene.
Al-Tahla
Floating Islands
of the Ma’dan, Iraq
The advance of “human, all too human” civilization and the repression and ruination of TEK have benefited a minority of human beings, primarily those peoples belonging to the so-called “white” race and those “non -white” peoples who serve the peoples of the white race as proxies and redeemers. Otherwise, the vast majority of non-human others and the dispossessed and denigrated races of humanity have suffered and endured ruin.
Over that past five centuries, hundreds of millions, if not more than a billion dehumanized humans have been tortured and murdered by the civilized peoples of the Euro-Atlantic West and their proxies and redeemers. We shall tend to these tortured and murdered multitudes later in this book. For now, let us simply recognize that the past sufferings of tortured and murdered multitudes are inextricable from present sufferings. And things only seem bound to get worse. Rampant fossil fuel consumption, driven by the growth and spread of the “human, all too human” technosphere, is transforming the atmosphere of the Earth. A phase change from a relatively stable climate to a chaotic climate is currently underway. Climate chaos will decimate wildlife habitats and cause more frequent and fierce droughts, floods, and famines. The results of all this being (i) that wildlife populations will not only drop further but faster, (ii) that hundreds of millions, if not billions more humans will endure hunger and poverty, and (iii) that cultures and languages rooted in landscapes that have been rendered unlivable by droughts, floods, and famines will themselves be driven to extinction.
In order to survive this ongoing planetary ecocide, the vast majority, inclusive of both the dehumanized races of humanity and non-human others, must band together to (i) deconstruct and desert the “human, all too human” civilizations that are currently prevailing over the planet and furthering planetary ecocide, (ii) recover and gather together the remnants of ancestral TEK that have managed to survive the advance of “human, all too human” civilizations, and (iii) (re-)construct ancestral TEK and (re-)create more-than-human societies anew, complementing them so that they are better able to confront the challenges wrought by the Anthropocene.
Survival will not be an easy feat. The “human, all too human” civilizations prevailing over the planet today are ruthlessly committed not only to protecting their existing powers and privileges, but to advancing them. They are presently promoting “solutions” to the challenges of the Anthropocene that involve extending the reach and intensifying the grip of their technosphere over the planet. They have engineered a global apartheid regime that serves to keep the dispossessed and denigrated races under their domination and control, and ripe for exploitation. The planners and technocrats who administer and supervise the advance of civilization are telling us that geo-engineering projects, carbon capture services, and renewable technologies made from vast quantities of rare earth metals extracted from the lands of the denigrated races of humanity, will ensure “sustainability” from here on out. What this means, in reality, is the “managed depletion” of the Earth’s natural resources, the optimization of the ongoing planetary ecocide, the relative maximization of the pleasures and profits enjoyed by the “civilized,” whiter races of humanity and their proxies and redeemers. “Managed depletion” is, of course, a better course for Euro-Atlantic Western civilization to follow than the course of reckless depletion that it has followed heretofore, but managed depletion is depletion nonetheless, and what the vast majority wants and needs in order to survive is renewal and recreation.
Boma
Corrals
of the Maasai, Kenya
Many of us are desperately in search of guidance on what is to be done, the most desperate among us being those of us who have lived most of our lives in the networks of “Global Cities” that are the strongholds of “human, all too human” civilizations. Having never lived without them, many of us have no clue how we might even begin to deconstruct and desert such civilizations. We feel clumsy and daft when handling the remnants of ancestral TEK that have survived the advance of the “human, all too human” model. We doubt that we have what it takes to (re-)construct ancestral TEK and (re-)create more-than-human societies anew. Our difficulty, however, is less that we do not know what to do and how to do it, than that we are afraid of what it will take to find out. We are afraid of so many inevitable failures and their consequences.
But shouldn’t we be far more afraid of the consequences of never trying, never failing, and never learning from failure? Above all else, what we need to do, if we are to survive, is to learn from our own and others’ failures and to teach others how to learn from failure. Ay, and this is precisely what TEK, properly understood, is all about. What differentiates ancestral TEK savvy from modern technology is not the fact that TEK involves mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances that are “unscientific” — the makings of TEK are, in fact, no less scientific than the makings of the technosphere. Rather, the difference is that TEK savvy empirical investigations and theoretical speculations are bound up with more-than-human mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances. The engineering of the technosphere, by contrast, assumes mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances that are “human, all too human,” that make Man out to be the measure of all things.
Kihamba
Forest Gardens
of the Chagga, Tanzania
Perhaps the most remarkable blows that have been struck by the “human, all too human” civilizations of the Euro-Atlantic West against primitive peoples have been the ideological blows that have sought to slander ancestral TEK and reduce it to no more than the unscientific and superstitious musings of primitive peoples. This repressive and ruinous fabrication was undertaken at immense cost of psychic and intellectual energies in the Euro-Atlantic West. But this expenditure was obligatory for the maintenance and advancement of “human, all too human” social arrangements centered in the Euro-Atlantic West.
It was by no means innocent. Consider the more obviously willful example of Spanish conquistadors, who dismissed indigenous peoples of Abya Yala, Anahuac, and Turtle Island as heathens, to be exploited and/or eliminated after simply reading the Requerimiento to them, without ever bothering to translate, provide cultural context, and learn the indigenous peoples’ perspectives. But then consider how like Spanish conquistadors are the Western(ized) scientists, rarely bothering to question whether their own languages, customs, and belief systems are provincial, and so failing to entertain the possibility of deferring to non-Western(ized) others’ languages, customs, and belief systems. Like Spanish conquistadors who willfully refused to commune with non-Western(ized) others in order to conquer their lands and stake claims to their natural resources, Western(ized) scientists willfully refuse to commune with non-Western(ized) others in order to conquer their minds and stake claims to their intellectual resources. Like the Spanish conquistador’s relationship to conquered lands and natural resources, the Western(ized) scientist’s relationship to conquered minds and intellectual resources is extractive as opposed to regenerative.
Today, just as the reckless depletion of natural resources is now yielding to their managed depletion, the reckless depletion of cultural resources is now yielding to the managed depletion of the same. Many Western(ized) scientists will now admit that ancestral TEK cannot be carelessly tossed aside as “unscientific,” but these Western(ized) scientists do not believe that this is reason to invest in the substantive renewal and revitalization of ancestral TEK. Rather to the contrary, Western(ized) scientists consider this reason to invest in extracting the “hard science” from ancestral TEK, so that it can be exploited for the purposes of maintaining and advancing “human, all too human” social arrangements — afterwards casting aside the more-than-human mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances that nurtured the “hard science” prior to its being extracted from TEK.
To recognize that TEK involves science, without making any derisive qualifications, is to recognize that the only proper way for us to (re-)construct ancestral TEK anew is to conduct experiments that aim to (re-)create more-than-human mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances, to better nourish dynamic cultures in the here and now. Perfect adherence to the stories and strictures of static cultures that never actually existed has only ever been a demand imposed by civilized peoples on those peoples who have resisted the advances of “human, all too human” civilizations. Such peoples have always been dynamic, never static; they are forever (re-)creating themselves and their cultures anew, reworking the mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances that have been handed down to them. Failure and change have been the life breath of more-than-human cultures, the inhale and the exhale. Without failure and change, ancestral TEK suffocates and dies. To demand that primitive peoples prove their authenticity by strictly adhering to unchanging stories and strictures is, in fact, to demand that primitive peoples commit cultural suicide by suffocating their ancestral TEK.
All primitivisms are, properly speaking, neo-primitivisms inasmuch as all primitivisms are (re-)created anew each and every time that they are invoked and instantiated. What’s more, all primitive peoples are neo-primitives inasmuch as all primitive peoples are forever (re-)creating themselves anew. Outmoded primitivisms and outmoded primitives are but self-serving figments of the “human, all too human” imagination, projected onto us in order to dispossess and denigrate us. When fear overtakes us, let us endeavor to overcome this fear by reminding ourselves and others that the failures of (neo-)primitive peoples tend to keep problems open to many different solutions, and that the achievements of civilized peoples tend toward that one and final solution, total destruction.
Subak
Rice Terraces
of the Subak, Bali
To recognize that TEK involves science, without making any derisive qualifications, is to recognize that the only proper way for us to (re-)construct ancestral TEK anew is to conduct experiments that aim to (re-)create more-than-human mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances, to better nourish dynamic cultures in the here and now. Perfect adherence to the stories and strictures of static cultures that never actually existed has only ever been a demand imposed by civilized peoples on those peoples who have resisted the advances of “human, all too human” civilizations. Such peoples have always been dynamic, never static; they are forever (re-)creating themselves and their cultures anew, reworking the mythical cosmogonies and ritual performances that have been handed down to them. Failure and change have been the life breath of more-than-human cultures, the inhale and the exhale. Without failure and change ancestral TEK suffocates and dies. To demand that primitive peoples prove their authenticity by strictly adhering to unchanging stories and strictures is, in fact, to demand that primitive peoples commit cultural suicide by suffocating their ancestral TEK.
All primitivisms are, properly speaking, neo-primitivisms inasmuch as all primitivisms are (re-)created anew each and every time that they are invoked and instantiated. What's more, all primitive peoples are neo-primitives inasmuch as all primitive peoples are forever (re-)creating themselves anew. Outmoded primitivisms and outmoded primitives are but self-serving figments of the “human, all too human” imagination, projected onto us in order to dispossess and denigrate us. When fear overtakes us, let us endeavor to overcome this fear by reminding ourselves and others that the failures of (neo-)primitive peoples tend to keep problems open to many different solutions, and that the achievements of civilized peoples tend toward that one and final solution, total destruction.
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