Ancient Futures: A Book Review
When I was first introduced to the ideas of effective accelerationism, I felt a sickening pit in my stomach. It was one of those dangerous ideas that rubs me the wrong way and I can’t figure out why.
“...practically speaking, the solution to the problems facing humanity is to grow out of them. Humanity solves problems through technological advancement and growth. Contrary examples from history—where humanity has solved a problem by skulking backward—are scarce to non-existent. This is not a surprise, and is in fact a consequence of our physical reality. ...There is nothing stopping us from creating abundance for every human alive other than the will to do it. We have the most powerful information technology known to man on our side: the market. And the same technological growth that is helping out in other places is increasing the power of the market as well.
...It’s hard to avoid the messages: mankind is bad. There are too many of us. Our problems are too many and they are too hard to solve.
...Many people are saying the solution to these problems is to take a step backwards, that the solution is degrowth. But degrowth is a kind of surrender. Degrowth is central planning hopped up on scarcity mindset. Degrowth is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
I’m one of those people - call me old-fashioned - that doesn’t like to criticize an approach unless I can present an alternative I think is superior. And when I analyze the arguments of effective accelerationism, I can’t offer a coherent, superior alternative, so there’s no place for my critique.
That is, until I read Ancient Futures, by Helena Norberg-Hodge.
Background
I had no idea who she was when I read the name, so I’ll share a potted bio in case you’re in the same boat.
Helena Norberg-Hodge is an internationally renowned author, speaker, and filmmaker with a deep understanding of the intersection between culture, ecology, and economics. As the founder and director of Local Futures and the International Alliance for Localization, she has dedicated more than four decades to promoting sustainable, community-focused approaches to global challenges. Helena's pioneering work kicked off in the 1970s with her involvement in the Ladakh Project, which sought to protect the unique ecocultural heritage of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas. Over time, her expertise has manifested through several outstanding accomplishments, including the publication of her seminal book, Ancient Futures, and the award- winning documentary, The Economics of Happiness.
Generated by GPT-4
This book offers a compelling portrait of an alternative to our growth-focused culture. The Ladakh people. She’s a natural anthropologist, sharing a window into how the Ladakh people live.
How to change your mind
Helena conjures up these insightful moments where you can see she herself changing her mind and the moment and thought process that made her do so.
She does this with the idea of frugality:
I was beginning to learn how Ladakhis manage to survive in such a difficult environment. I was also beginning to learn the meaning of the word frugality. In the West, frugality conjures up images of old aunts and padlocked pantries. But the frugality you find in Ladakh, which is fundamental to the people’s prosperity, is something quite different. Using limited resources in a careful way has nothing to do with miserliness; this is frugality in its original meaning of “fruitfulness”: getting more out of little.
Where we would consider something completely worn out, exhausted of all possible worth, and would throw it away, Ladakhis will find some further use for it. Nothing whatever is discarded.
Then again on individual rights vs. coexistence:
I was spending the summer of 1983 with a team of professors doing socioecological research in the village of Tongde in Zanskar. After a month or so, some of them felt the need for an extra room for quiet study. Since the house where we were staying was full of young and boisterous children, we thought we would ask the neighbors. At first I felt annoyed at [their] refusal [on the grounds that the current renting homeowner might be offended]. To me, with my emphasis on individual rights, this seemed so unfair. [we’re already renting rooms from him...no reason why we should rent another one from him...it’s getting quite noisy...] But their reaction, “We have to live together,” made me think. It seemed that to the Ladakhis the overriding issue was coexistence.
Once more on the topic of neutrality and justice:
Before coming to Ladakh, I had always thought that the best judges were the ones who were in no way connected with the individuals they were judging; maintaining its neutrality and distance, it seemed, was the only way of administering real justice. Perhaps it is, when you are talking about a society on the scale of our own. But having lived in Ladkah for many years, I have had to change my mind. Though no system of justice can be perfect, none is more effective than one that is based on small, close-knit communities and that allows people to settle their problems at a grass-roots level, by discussion among themselves. I have learned that when the people settling disputes are intimately acquainted with the parties involved, their judgment is not prejudiced; on the contrary, this very closeness helps them to make fairer and sounder decisions. Not only do smaller units allow for a more human of justice, they also help prevent the sort of conflict that is so much a part of larger communities.
And finally, on the role of monasteries:
The role of monasteries in Tibetan culture has often led people to describe the society as feudal. Initially, I too assumed that the relationship between the monasteries and the rest of the population was an exploitative one. Some monasteries own a lot of land, which is worked by the village as a whole...
On a broader societal level, however, the monasteries offer real economic benefit. In fact they provide “social security” for the entire community, ensuring that no one goes hungry. If an individual family should find itself with too many mouths to feed, any number of sons - usually the younger ones - become monks...Moreover, anyone, male or female, young or old, can opt for celibacy and spiritual devotion as an alternative to the life of a married householder.
In each case, she lays out her view which closely matched mine before arrestingly sharing her shift. I found that to be a very effective form of persuasion.
What’s the point?
Helena then pulls these micro-examples into an over-arching narrative - our need for an alternative to the growth narrative fueled by technology and capitalism that she believes has wreaked havoc on our economic, environmental, and spiritual success.
Armed with her time with the Ladakh people, she proposes an answer, one she terms “counter- development.”
What is the goal of counter-development?
The primary goal of “counter-development” would be to provide people with the means to make fully informed choices about their own future...we need to publicize the fact that today’s capital- and energy-intensive trends are simply unsustainable. Ultimately, the aim would be to promote self-respect and self-reliance, thereby protecting life-sustaining diversity and creating the conditions for locally based, truly sustainable development...In short, it would expose the escalating costs of our industrial way of life.
She has a strong point of view and she articulates it well. Instead of just criticizing the “techno-utopian” views of effective accelerationism, here was an alternative direction.
Yet, I had two issues that left me less than fully convinced.
Issue 1 - Where’s the data?
I found the anecdotes highly compelling, especially as she dealt with my first pushback of “how come so many of the Ladakh people want what we have if their life is so good?”
Still, as a data nerd in so many areas of my life, I felt the lack of data to defend her anecdotal experiences glaring. Is it true the Ladakh people fight less on any measurable? Live a “happier” life? Spend less time struggling with illness or aging? These are all claims that, in this day and age (maybe not at the time of writing), can be factually assessed with modern data collection. I’m very curious as to the results, and think that would have an important bearing on how seriously to take her arguments.
Issue 2 - Conflating the environment and the human spirit
Throughout the book, Helena moves fluidly back and forth between making claims of the industrial damage to our environment and our spirit wrought by the modern economy. She seems to view these two as very inter-related and inter-dependent. Perhaps she is right, but I tend to think differently. I think these are two separate claims that need to be assessed independently. Is counter-development the right environmental approach? Is counter-development the right spiritual approach?
The reason this distinction is important is my personal evaluation of her arguments are very different depending on the context.
On the environmental front, I believe Helena’s solutions are misguided. I believe we are too far down a path of resource-intensive growth to ever salvage our habitat and needs with a return to locally-based, sustainable development. In short, I think we are passed the point of no return, and our best bet is to effectively accelerate our technological progress to solve the environmental problems our society faces. I know that rubs environmentalists the wrong way, and I see the hypocrisy in leaning on technology to save us when much of our environmental woes have been partially fueled or exacerbated by our technological development. Yet, I still believe it to be our best bet.
On the other hand, on the spiritual front, I resonate deeply with Helena’s arguments. There’s no way that growth will lead to our spiritual fulfillment, because the entire system is predicated on fueling our desires at a faster rate than our actual growth. The Ladakh way of life presents a compelling alternative - one that focuses on coexistence, a deliberate lack of scale, and having enough. In my experiences in remote cultures and villages, I have seen and felt that to be true. And I might actually believe that a counter-development narrative might be the only path to spiritual progress amongst humans.
Final Thoughts
It was a fast-paced read. I didn’t agree with the author entirely, but she exposed me to new ideas, a new way of life, and a coherent alternative to an ideology that I worry is spreading too fast amongst our tech overlords.