This has been the most amazing series. It has completely re-fashioned my thinking about how things got to be the way they are and what we might do to correct them.
There was a 'law of earth and action' and a law of 'paper and abstraction'.
The positing of a conflict between 'anthropocentric' and 'reicentric' views makes me uncomfortable. It seems to me that an ecological perspective - such as that promoted by Aldo Leopold - provides a model for blending the two approaches. Too many 'environmentalists' are misanthropes and, as a consequence, much of the movement is now rejected by ordinary folks. But Leopold saw humanity as just one of the many life-forms in a given biome whose needs should be balanced with all other life-forms.
I guess what I'm saying is that there is a place for a balanced view.
I certainly think there's an Innisian sweet-spot arc in the spirals of the phenotype wars when a relative balance between temporal and spatial phenotypes promotes the capacity for such a cultural and political balance: a best of both worlds settlement. Though, my reading and work inclines me to believe such periods are only passaging. The momentum will be toward increased spatialization, until eventual collapse. But maybe I'm all wrong.
The reason the temporals lost was because they did not have a conscious ethos of resistance to spatialization. We know better and we promote an ethos that will prevent such things. There is a book by Pierre Clastres called 'Society Against the State'. Whether or not Clastres anthropology is 'true' (and I've seen some critiques that suggests there are limitations to his methods), Clastres posits something very interesting: That some 'societies' that did not create 'the state' did not do so because they had existing social mechanisms to prevent it. Even if Clastres is wrong in the specifics, it seems to me he does point to how a society might prevent something like spatialization.
Oh, geez. You’re making me feel old, here. I just did a little sleuthing and figured out that I read that book the year it was published, in 1989. Zone Books was a big sensation in my geek theory circle back in the late 80s. All to say it was a very long time ago and I can’t say with confidence that I entirely remember all the nuances.
My recollection though is that the societies he’s focused upon would be characterized as economically primitive. So, to your point, could it be possible to maintain a society in a primitive economy, preventing the level of prosperity at which humans can become economically sustain divorce from the negative feedback loop with the natural world, and so unleash the unconstrained vision – all of which I discuss in the book? Sure, I could imagine such a thing might be possible. And regardless of whether his argument is accurate, I’d never claim that all societies are going to reach such a level of prosperity. What I do argue though is that humans – like all other species – have a caloric optimization mechanism built in. You’d die without it. And once you marry that tendency to humans’ unique capacity for abstract symbolism, at a certain point the logic of instrumental rationality become inevitable, and so the increasing dominance of spatials, with their high openness, high risk tolerance, and appetite for border and rule transgression.
Additionally, I’d add that I think humans vastly overrate conscious will. It’s largely an illusion. But I guess that’s a discussion for another time. So, while I don’t doubt what you propose is possible, provided it restricts prosperity, I think the momentum of the human condition is contrary, leading us into the ever repeating spirals of the phenotype wars.
> Amid this pincer movement of the emergent new mercantile economy and world, with the harsh life of deprivation and violence occasioned by the 14th century, Europeans were widely prepared for change
This is too vague. It does not address the possible link between the upheavals of the 14th century with the spatial shift.
It seems that the following is your attempt to answer that:
> Read through the model of the phenotype wars, as I’ve developed it, Grossi’s historical claims could be stated as the fact that the gradual growth of prosperity across the long expanse of the medieval period gave rise to relaxed Darwinian conditions and a growing social niche for spatial phenotypes, which had not been present under the far harsher Darwinian conditions prevalent during the earlier medieval period
But that's kind of vague and too general as well.
I find more intriguing J. Daniel Sawyer's idea (and it's probably not his proper, but rather taken from his readings) that the Black Death by decimating the population of Europe changed social relations and opened the opportunities previously not available. The change in "Darwinian conditions" was not gradual, but rather relatively sudden: from the Black Death and attending horrors to the situation where the field was wide open for those who could take advantage of it.
El senor Mal Scot. An elaboration may be in order. I hadn't been sleeping well for a couple days leading up to my earlier response, and recently reading something pertinent, it occurred to me that my reply may not have been sufficient. So, if this elaboration was obviously implicit in what I wrote, please excuse my redundancy.
A classic example of what I've described would be the situation under feudal law in which the local lord owns the commons, yet as determined by customary law, supported by the scholastics, the lord's serfs had ownership privileges in access rights to that commons. Failure to preserve such peasant property rights, pre-industrial economy, would have made their survival at best precarious, thus risking collapse of agricultural production and imperiling the sustainability of medieval agrarian society.
Yet, in another context, say in a mercantile dispute over payment of transport charges, the scholastics would not conclude that each party had partial, divided ownership, but that ownership, with its attendant obligations, was indivisible, since dividing the cargo would be suboptimal use of the goods. Dividing ownership between merchant and transporter may make perfect sense from within the logic of customary feudal law; but it would be suboptimal economically insofar as the economic value of the goods was premised upon delivery to the market, and divided ownership risked the danger of holdup moral hazard arising from one party's extortion for a larger share of the profits. Under that context, a strict Roman law definition of exclusive dominium and contract rights better served marginal productivity.
This flexible application of legal ownership rights, though, for the Roman law jurists and humanists was inconsistent as measured by their universalist and rationalist standards. That "irrational" flexibility was eventually "corrected" in the law of land ownership, so that the lord exclusively owned the commons, which provided legal legitimacy to the enclosure acts and movements, erasing the ancient property rights of peasants, optimizing the value of the land through sheep husbandry, while pushing the peasants off the land into the burgeoning cities, to become labor fodder for the new industrial factories. The existence of such industrial cities though was the condition of possibility for such economic optimization, which obviously was not the situation during the period discussed in this installment, in which the scholastics operated.
I hope this explanation provides a more robust example and apologize if my sleep deprived earlier reply was insufficient. Thanks as ever for your contribution to the comments discussion.
To be clear of course, in this set of posts I'm trying to tease out Grossi's argument. And I don't recall him discussing the Black Death. Certainly not to the extent that, as you rightly point out, it deserves. Interestingly, though, after the 14th century plague had swept through Europe, which only took a couple of years, and in any one place (even the most ravaged) didn't last longer than six months, from what I understand from previous reading, it was followed by a great deal of prosperity. Labor wages increased dramatically and the economic infrastructure, developed to support a considerably larger population remained mostly undamaged. I know some historians believe the plague laid the ground for the long term prosperity that underwrite the Renaissance. So, all this definitely complicates Grossi's reading of the historical context, doesn't it? Thanks for reminding me about this.
This has been the most amazing series. It has completely re-fashioned my thinking about how things got to be the way they are and what we might do to correct them.
There was a 'law of earth and action' and a law of 'paper and abstraction'.
The positing of a conflict between 'anthropocentric' and 'reicentric' views makes me uncomfortable. It seems to me that an ecological perspective - such as that promoted by Aldo Leopold - provides a model for blending the two approaches. Too many 'environmentalists' are misanthropes and, as a consequence, much of the movement is now rejected by ordinary folks. But Leopold saw humanity as just one of the many life-forms in a given biome whose needs should be balanced with all other life-forms.
I guess what I'm saying is that there is a place for a balanced view.
I certainly think there's an Innisian sweet-spot arc in the spirals of the phenotype wars when a relative balance between temporal and spatial phenotypes promotes the capacity for such a cultural and political balance: a best of both worlds settlement. Though, my reading and work inclines me to believe such periods are only passaging. The momentum will be toward increased spatialization, until eventual collapse. But maybe I'm all wrong.
The reason the temporals lost was because they did not have a conscious ethos of resistance to spatialization. We know better and we promote an ethos that will prevent such things. There is a book by Pierre Clastres called 'Society Against the State'. Whether or not Clastres anthropology is 'true' (and I've seen some critiques that suggests there are limitations to his methods), Clastres posits something very interesting: That some 'societies' that did not create 'the state' did not do so because they had existing social mechanisms to prevent it. Even if Clastres is wrong in the specifics, it seems to me he does point to how a society might prevent something like spatialization.
Oh, geez. You’re making me feel old, here. I just did a little sleuthing and figured out that I read that book the year it was published, in 1989. Zone Books was a big sensation in my geek theory circle back in the late 80s. All to say it was a very long time ago and I can’t say with confidence that I entirely remember all the nuances.
My recollection though is that the societies he’s focused upon would be characterized as economically primitive. So, to your point, could it be possible to maintain a society in a primitive economy, preventing the level of prosperity at which humans can become economically sustain divorce from the negative feedback loop with the natural world, and so unleash the unconstrained vision – all of which I discuss in the book? Sure, I could imagine such a thing might be possible. And regardless of whether his argument is accurate, I’d never claim that all societies are going to reach such a level of prosperity. What I do argue though is that humans – like all other species – have a caloric optimization mechanism built in. You’d die without it. And once you marry that tendency to humans’ unique capacity for abstract symbolism, at a certain point the logic of instrumental rationality become inevitable, and so the increasing dominance of spatials, with their high openness, high risk tolerance, and appetite for border and rule transgression.
Additionally, I’d add that I think humans vastly overrate conscious will. It’s largely an illusion. But I guess that’s a discussion for another time. So, while I don’t doubt what you propose is possible, provided it restricts prosperity, I think the momentum of the human condition is contrary, leading us into the ever repeating spirals of the phenotype wars.
> Amid this pincer movement of the emergent new mercantile economy and world, with the harsh life of deprivation and violence occasioned by the 14th century, Europeans were widely prepared for change
This is too vague. It does not address the possible link between the upheavals of the 14th century with the spatial shift.
It seems that the following is your attempt to answer that:
> Read through the model of the phenotype wars, as I’ve developed it, Grossi’s historical claims could be stated as the fact that the gradual growth of prosperity across the long expanse of the medieval period gave rise to relaxed Darwinian conditions and a growing social niche for spatial phenotypes, which had not been present under the far harsher Darwinian conditions prevalent during the earlier medieval period
But that's kind of vague and too general as well.
I find more intriguing J. Daniel Sawyer's idea (and it's probably not his proper, but rather taken from his readings) that the Black Death by decimating the population of Europe changed social relations and opened the opportunities previously not available. The change in "Darwinian conditions" was not gradual, but rather relatively sudden: from the Black Death and attending horrors to the situation where the field was wide open for those who could take advantage of it.
El senor Mal Scot. An elaboration may be in order. I hadn't been sleeping well for a couple days leading up to my earlier response, and recently reading something pertinent, it occurred to me that my reply may not have been sufficient. So, if this elaboration was obviously implicit in what I wrote, please excuse my redundancy.
A classic example of what I've described would be the situation under feudal law in which the local lord owns the commons, yet as determined by customary law, supported by the scholastics, the lord's serfs had ownership privileges in access rights to that commons. Failure to preserve such peasant property rights, pre-industrial economy, would have made their survival at best precarious, thus risking collapse of agricultural production and imperiling the sustainability of medieval agrarian society.
Yet, in another context, say in a mercantile dispute over payment of transport charges, the scholastics would not conclude that each party had partial, divided ownership, but that ownership, with its attendant obligations, was indivisible, since dividing the cargo would be suboptimal use of the goods. Dividing ownership between merchant and transporter may make perfect sense from within the logic of customary feudal law; but it would be suboptimal economically insofar as the economic value of the goods was premised upon delivery to the market, and divided ownership risked the danger of holdup moral hazard arising from one party's extortion for a larger share of the profits. Under that context, a strict Roman law definition of exclusive dominium and contract rights better served marginal productivity.
This flexible application of legal ownership rights, though, for the Roman law jurists and humanists was inconsistent as measured by their universalist and rationalist standards. That "irrational" flexibility was eventually "corrected" in the law of land ownership, so that the lord exclusively owned the commons, which provided legal legitimacy to the enclosure acts and movements, erasing the ancient property rights of peasants, optimizing the value of the land through sheep husbandry, while pushing the peasants off the land into the burgeoning cities, to become labor fodder for the new industrial factories. The existence of such industrial cities though was the condition of possibility for such economic optimization, which obviously was not the situation during the period discussed in this installment, in which the scholastics operated.
I hope this explanation provides a more robust example and apologize if my sleep deprived earlier reply was insufficient. Thanks as ever for your contribution to the comments discussion.
Thank you!
To be clear of course, in this set of posts I'm trying to tease out Grossi's argument. And I don't recall him discussing the Black Death. Certainly not to the extent that, as you rightly point out, it deserves. Interestingly, though, after the 14th century plague had swept through Europe, which only took a couple of years, and in any one place (even the most ravaged) didn't last longer than six months, from what I understand from previous reading, it was followed by a great deal of prosperity. Labor wages increased dramatically and the economic infrastructure, developed to support a considerably larger population remained mostly undamaged. I know some historians believe the plague laid the ground for the long term prosperity that underwrite the Renaissance. So, all this definitely complicates Grossi's reading of the historical context, doesn't it? Thanks for reminding me about this.