In favor of collapse (for what may come next will be better!)

The sacking of civilization and "Barbarian logic"

The world we live in, is centralized, top down and totally structured. As family, education, work, law, the state and the overarching presence of bureaucracy and capitalism. This preordained centralized world, touted as an everlasting one, is in trouble on several fronts. The vainglorious image of a technocratic civilization (Yuval Noah Hariri, Steven Pinker, Mark Zuckerberg types) will never come to be. Instead a impoverished and hotter planet will define our size, scope and overall future. Our troubled civilization has a ‘dark twin’. One that we have avoided like a plague. One that we demonized for eons. One that always appeared at the onset of collapse or when civilizations were sacked. Ones fleeing from a centralized to a decentralized world. For thousands of years, those who remained resilient and hardy, being “free” of the state. Those who lead the ‘flight from ruin’, towards ‘new worldmaking’. For what came next, was most often better and stable, creating new possibilities, as history shows us through the last 8000years.

As an argument in favor of Collapse of Centralized Power - the protagonist of this story is the ‘dark twin’ of civilization, the ‘Barbarian’. No not Conan The Dumb-F*ck! For we the civilized, woke or conservative, rich or poor, left or right, have much to learn from the Barbarian legacy. This is not another discourse in favor of pro-primitive groups. Nor am I suggesting we head back to the caves! Instead, let us explore the “Barbarian logic” as means to decipher, learn about what comes after the collapse of civilization. About navigating stateless worlds. A class of peoples, who have survived for eons, regardless of which civilization, empire, kingdom, technology, form of enlightenment and prevailing order was at it’s zenith. The Barbarian persisted, evolved and migrated, as any collapse resilient species does.

A rising number of us are aware of the “poly-crisis” emerging upon our world. A avalanche of problems, now underlined as “planetary emergency”. The coming together of climate change, global warming, increased acidification of the oceans, loss of habitat and ice, widespread fire and flood, forced migrations, the rise of pandemics, threat of nuclear war and population overshoot. The seemingly endlessly onward march of civilization, however glorified does not seem bonafide. Worse visions of the future, which we can question and perhaps avoid, are being predicated by the dominant culture (of green energy, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, magic technology, veganism, binary etc). The ‘eco-despair’ and doom is hitting up every age, class and race. The maddening overshoot created by us as a species, is visibly unable to hold itself together. It’s obvious, at some point in the near future, more humans will flee, by choice or by repercussion, tipped over by the crumbling down of civilization. It’s a matter of time, when millions if not billions will junk the idea of a centralized rule and it’s underlying violent nature. The faith or attraction will crumble in favor of survival and conservation. For some of us, that utterly scary vision of the future, is beyond our worst nightmares. Beyond the stupid Hollywood doomsday thrillers. That fear of collapse, is what keeps us packed together or pitted against each other, serving a dysfunctional civilization, instead of sacking it!

For eons, we have been indoctrinated and warned, that without a state and centralized control, society is doomed and we would turn into barbarians. The underlying verdict that people are destined to rapidly perish outside the state and it’s given order is worth challenging. Why have the civilized and educated invested so much time and resources in demonizing and persecuting stateless peoples. What do we actually know about them? Who were the Barbarians we ask? And what makes us any better than them? That eternally fixed image of barbarians, as wild raiding nomads, hunter-gatherers and “primitives” foraging beyond the reach of empire, is unable to account for their success, history and sustainability. This mainstream definition of the Barbarians, is further sustained by mountains of literature, history, movies, art, anthropology etc. Enlightened man’s fear and loathing of his Barbarian twin is at least 5000 years in the making. Our moral superiority needs no further discourse. Yes we do enjoy watching stupid violent shows like ‘Barbarians’ (Netflix 2021), which perpetuate those very euro-centric perceptions. Ever heard a Barbarian song or read Barbarian poetry or check out Barbarian fashion?! Oh no, that would make them ‘civilized’ like us right?

Too bad, that the Barbarian did not write down the “Art Of Not Being Governed” - for today it might be a really useful guide!

The Barbarians, who were free of the state, free of borders, feudal taxation, fixed property etc formed a class of peoples, that evolved and survived, sometimes way longer than the great civilizations. 7000 BCE period anthropology reveals the little remaining facets of Barbarian culture, predating sedentary human projects (agriculture, construction, maritime trade etc). What comes across as inspirational, of Barbarian peoples of distinct races, is through thousands of years they resisted the idea of a fixed state and centralized power. Their existence can be mapped as a “systematic evading of the state”. Emblematically speaking, the barbarian class was anarchist in nature and perhaps more collapse resilient. Too bad we imagine them as savage, dirty, primitive, volatile and beyond civility. Given that their numbers and presence has dwindled over time, thanks to the eradication, persecution and or domestication by civilized people, yet they have indeed persisted. The Barbarian presence is all along the the rise and fall of empires, through plagues and famines, through the dark ages and the enlightenment, through change in climate, through the deserts, frozen tundra and deep valleys.

The stateless peoples allover the world, knew what they needed (to consume and conserve) and remained within those frugal limits. The modern civilized peoples clearly did not. They did not bother to separate nature and technology, while we viewed nature as a machine.

“That hunters and gatherers had the freedom of either continuing with their existence or joining the early welfare states needs clarification. What we define as ‘welfare’ is synonymous with domestication. The choosing was forced, to join an agrarian autocracy of one kind or another. Hence, there were no barbarians left in Europe by the 16th century. Insofar as the state, the rulers and military had any benevolent aspects, it was only to hold a population together, best at the center. Hold as many people, who can be as productive for the state.” James C Scott (Seeing Like A State). That foundational aspect of many civilizations, however massive in construct, framed the idea of welfare (security and prosperity) only as long as the citizens ‘served’ the vital interests of the ruling elite. As long as the Barbarians were kept out or eventually enslaved (and converted) to ‘serve’ the empire. In this context, one can see that the Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations were tacitly dependent on slavery, servitude and military prowess, to ensure civilization would operate ‘nicely’, for the elite, for a few centuries at least.

We can draw inferences, from emerging studies, that Barbarian culture stood a better chance at not only surviving in a sustainable manner but also inventing new means of resistance and evasion from the benevolent trappings of civilization. The barbaric, nomadic, transcontinental, stateless tribes, who evaded the state for thousands of years also have their history, culture, knowledge, laws and customs. In the recently published book The Dawn Of Everything (David Graeber and David Wengrow), the authors present compelling cases, as evidence, in favor of the so called “primitives” and “barbarians”. These peoples (30,000 BCE onward) were not only capable of governing their societies but also maintain individual rights and responsibilities. The writers make a fitting blow at the heart of a really stupid narrative, now taken for as fact, that early men and women were primitive or childlike, either free or thuggish and warlike. What new research and revised anthropology reveals is quite contrary.

In his book ‘Against The Grain’ (2018) James C Scott encapsulates the ‘Barbarian / Civilization Conflict’ as “That big civilizations held power over people by some benevolent construct is a myth. A lot of archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The underlying presence of violence was necessary for sedentary life to become stable. Domestication of animals, colonization, invasion, slavery, transformation of land, forests, water bodies, taxation, laws, roads, formation of military and fortified citadels lead to the foundation of the early grain states (4500 BCE onward - ‘Aluvial States’ Mesopotamia region). That underlying principle would remain at the foundation of every preceding civilization (China, Indus Valley, Inca, Greek, Roman etc) The collapse of these civilizations lead to conditions, sometimes lasting hundreds of years, where people dispersed far and wide. They transformed in terms of building new social groups, adapting to new terrain, climate and ecology. Central power demised again and again, however most people carried on with life and sustenance…”

Emerging archeology and environmental history reveals useful images and ideas. New “worldmaking” derived from prehistory. The principle reason why early civilizations collapsed (repeatedly) was due to exhaustion of fertile ecosystems. As agriculture failed and the reserves ran out, people fled in all possible directions, signalling the end of many thriving states, end of elite power and end of glorious (violent) empires. A similar exodus is happening today, across Africa, Asia and South America. The weakest states and regions are falling apart. Of the early mega-failures were Mesopotamia, Egypt, Han, Quin, Indus Valley and Inca to name a few. Consequent civilizations, technologically way more advanced (with bigger reserves, administration and military power) also collapsed - due to overshoot, abrupt change in climate or breakdown of centralized power (invasion, civil war etc). Even certain sea faring island civilizations collapsed over time (Rapa Nuii, Easter Islands). This sinusoidal curve of growth and collapse repeats itself again and again, through the last 5000 years, leading up to our current civilization (in poly-crisis).

One empire followed by another, like one revolution sweeping aside another, like one messianic vision eclipsed by another. One type of parasite (civilization) displaced by another. The making and collapsing of civilizations, as a routine, seems like a house of cards, balanced delicately over time, to acquire complexity and go higher and higher and higher. The audience and the players rapt in anxiety, until the delicate balance begins to wobble and the ‘house’ collapses really fast. As any such structure is bound to. Yet this civilization is not a house of cards. It’s a fortified super-structure, deeply hooked to energy, all be it still overshot and collapsing from within.

Today 8 billion ‘civilized people’ facing a vastly depleted planet may not have another chance at setting up a new civilization. Civilized serfs or stateless Barbarians, as a species we are still bound by the biophysical limits of the earth. The impact of our civilization is killing the planet, while we keep investing into a dying entity. Science made it clear decades ago, that overshoot leads to collapse which is followed by regeneration. Sometimes the last part takes thousands of years, if not more. So, where are we at as of now?

The earliest hunter-gatherers, nomads, indigenous, barbarians, hill peoples, boat peoples, tribal etc still take up the larger share of the timeline, of our presence on earth (about 1.5 million years). For hundreds of thousands of years, the earth was colonized and transformed by us, however without any need for centralized power or big civilizations. The earth was indeed once a non-state space. Ecologically speaking it was a “steady state” - and perhaps it can be again. Even more so, without us being the dominant central figure, in the incoming future of the planet…

To Barbarian Futures 😇 👹 New Worldmaking ‘ In Less Numbers We May Thrive 👩‍👦´

Referred Books
1. Seeing Like A State (James C Scott)
2. Against The Grain (James C Scott)
3. Limits To Growth (Various Authors)
4. Dawn Of Everything (David Graeber and David Wengrow)