The Master's Plan … oikos-logos
The man’s mandate … oikos-nomos
It appears to be exceeding difficult for human beings [especially so-called “economists”] to broaden their perspective and vision during a single lifetime [human or national]. And so, Tom Murphy has proposed that we step back and simply consider the story of human civilization as a single human lifetime on the planet … and here is what it looks like … a sudden and rapid decline just like real life … and death.
“In order to make comprehensible the vast tract of human time on this planet—itself 5,000 times shorter than the age of the universe—I will compare the 2.5–3 million year presence of humans (genus Homo) on Earth to a 75 year human lifespan: a span that we can grasp intuitively. On this scale, we get the following analogous periods:
By reestablishing “reverence” as the merger of “history” and “policy”, Murphy hopes it might be possible for us to at least admit [if not overcome] our tragic myopia … and finally learn something about good and evil.
“We can be content with no less than the old summary of educational ideal which has been current at any time from the dawn of our civilisation. The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.” Whitehead
Now using the Genesis story, let’s build a crude timeline applying Murphy’s thinking … and see if it opens our eyes in the same way.
c. XXXXXX BC
And God said, “Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.” [OIKOS] So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every bird of flight after its kind. And God saw that it was good [LOGOS]. Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” …
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, land crawlers, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that crawls upon the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.[LOGOS] …
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule [NOMOS] over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself [OIKOS] and every creature that crawls upon it.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.” …
Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed. They will be yours for food. And to every beast of the earth and every bird of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth—everything that has the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. Genesis 1
c. 0 BC/AD
Who then is the faithful and wise servant [nomos], whom the master has set over his household [oikos], to give to them their food in season [logos]? Matt 24
c. 2024 AD
FACT: 96% of mammal mass on Earth is now humans and their livestock.
“The ‘adults’ of this world have not established a global plan for peace and prosperity. This has perhaps worked okay so far: a plan hasn’t been necessary. But as the world changes from an “empty” state in which humans were a small part of the planet with little influence to a new “full”regime where human impacts are many and global in scale, perhaps the ‘no plan’ approach is the wrong framework going forward. Most decisions are made based on whether money can be made or saved in the short or intermediate term. The market then becomes the primary arbiter of what transpires, constrained only by a light touch of legal regulations and public sentiment. Earth and its ecosystems have little voice in our artificially-constructed societal framework—at least in the short term. Perhaps we are structuring our world exactly backwards.”
Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021, Murphy, Thomas W, Jr
“This condition seems unlikely to be solved by technology. Wouldn’t we say that technology is a primary ingredient of the illness? Cleverness and an illusion of control got us here, and they are not our best tools for extracting ourselves from the mess.
“I have written other pieces about the foundational flaws in our growth trajectory on a finite planet; about the idiotically narrow construct of money (Box 19.1 in textbook), and how decisions based on money will be bad ones (if it makes economic sense, it almost certainly batters the ecosystem). I have posted about the cognitive distortion produced by fossil fuels, and the tragic fallacy of building an enormous human population on the back of a finite resource that threatens a devastating population crash when its availability inevitably declines. The real, ultimate value is in biodiversity and ecosystem health, which suggests de-emphasizing the primacy of humans and becoming subordinate partners on the planet rather than its self-appointed and ultimately inept overlords presiding over the demise of our transitory empire.
“But stepping back and using our temporal framework as a mental guide, we are justified in asking whether our path of civilization is wrong at its very roots. That might seem extreme, but we are indeed at an extreme nexus in the history of our planet. I didn’t start out thinking this way (as the long evolution of this blog series attests). I mean, I knew our growth path could not last, and that fossil fuel substitution would be harder than many appreciated, but I never entertained the idea that civilization itself was a bad idea. It is not eagerly that I tread these waters.
“The surprisingly recent gateway experiment of agriculture led—in a causally-connected way—to surplus, storage, permanent settlements, accumulation of material possessions, hierarchy, standing armies, property rights (the laughable conceit that we own the land!), patriarchy and monotheism, subjugation of humans and animals, soil degradation, habitat destruction, extinction rates far above normal, and all the rest. A bad trip—all for the sake of controlled food production and storage, the lack of which did not prevent humans from living sustainably for millions of years. Likewise, wild animals in healthy ecosystems don’t appear to live in constant misery: they’ve got it figured out in a way that works and is stable. We don’t look at a bird chirping and flitting through the trees and react in horror at the pitiful state it must find itself in, lacking the means to control its environment. Why should we look at pre-agricultural humans and imagine horrific misery, as many are inclined to do?
“Since our civilization is not built on a foundation of sustainable principles, it is no surprise that we find it now to be utterly unsustainable. Unsustainable means certain failure, by the way. Thus, our civilization was custom-built for failure. Congratulations. The unfolding story just transpires over enough life spans that it all seems gradual to us as individuals, and therefore does not feel pressing or inevitable based on our narrow direct experience. In hindsight, I suspect it will be forehead-slapping obvious—to the point of making us look rather dull-witted.”
The Simple Story of Civilization - Do the Math: Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options, Tom Murphy, Dec 2022