6 Steps toward Evolutionary Stability: I am B, Part II
In Part I of this series, I summarized three of the six steps toward evolutionary stability, from Daniel Quinn’s book, The Story of B. The first is the Law of Life, which says that whatever fosters life is evolutionarily stable. The second is diversity, which ensures resilience through genetic abundance. The third is the Law of Limited Competition, which states that we can compete but not destroy our competitors or their food supply, or deny them access to food.
In this post, I share the remaining three steps that are controversial and profound.
4. Signs of Distress: Quinn lists many signs of the dangers of a single culture, resulting from the shift to what he calls totalitarian agriculture and the hierarchies that ensued, and away from hunting and gathering and a more egalitarian way of living. The list includes war, crime, counterfeiting, inflation, famine, plagues, civil revolts and assassinations, depression, the craving for salvation, prisons, asylums, anti-Semitism, STDs, drugs, epidemics, crop failures, famines and two world wars. I would add climate change to this list. This alarming list, according to Quinn, contains the signs of the distress of leaving the evolutionarily stable tribal way of living, where agriculture was practiced, but it was not full time, and we were not encroaching on tribal lands and destroying their cultures to expand agricultural production and what is now the Western way of life. We must recognize these signs of distress and work to reverse them if we are to avoid catastrophe.
5. Positive Feedback and Growth: Quinn explains, from a systems thinking perspective, what positive feedback is and how it leads to growth. One example he gives is a thermostat, which detects hot temperature and increases heat – this is positive feedback. The agricultural example is that when we increase food production, we increase population: increased food availability for a species leads to growth in numbers for that species. Quinn posits that increased food production globally is the cause of the increases in human population, and the increases in famine due to lack of proper distribution of food. Lowering food production would lower population, he states, adding that this need not be unethical because it would not cause suffering. We do have enough food to feed those who are starving, if we distribute it better. Nevertheless, this point remains controversial.
6. Animism: Quinn’s initial and ultimate point in this book is about the role of Western and Eastern religions in brainwashing humans about their damaged status and their need for salvation, around the same time that egalitarian life was losing ground to totalitarian agriculture and resulting conflicts. Humans began to look for salvation outside of themselves, believing they needed outside assistance to live well. Previously (and now largely forgotten in mainstream Western culture but still present in tribal and indigenous cultures), humans had lived in harmony with the Earth, believing that all life was sacred and had a soul – animism. Thus, Quinn contrasts religion with animism, stating that humans must be of this world, not some other place (like heaven), and that whoever is called B, is effectively the AntiChrist. Quinn’s explanation of this is eloquent and powerful:
When they say to you, “B is the Antichrist,” here’s what you should say to them…B means to gather the voices of humans all over the planet into one voice singing, “The world must live, the world must live! We are only one species among billions. The gods don’t love us more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies….Now we remember who we are. Our kin are not cherubim, seraphim, thrones, principalities, and powers. Our kin are mayflies, lemurs, snakes, eagles and badgers….We can no longer believe that suffering is the lot the gods had in mind for us.
We’re not straying from the path of salvation for the sake of sin and corruption, as you always imagined we might. We’re straying from the path of salvation because we remember that we once belonged to the world and were content in that belonging. We’re straying from the path of salvation – but not for love of vice and wickedness as you contemptuously imagined we might. We’re straying from the path of salvation for love of the world, as you never once dreamed in a thousand years of dreaming.
Daniel Quinn, The Story of B
Taken together, Quinn’s books, Ishmael, My Ishmael, and The Story of B provide a powerful and compelling invitation rethink the purpose of human life on this planet, and the importance of honoring biological and ecological limits to live in harmony with all life. As Quinn puts it: there is no one way to live. Let diversity, then, be our guide.
