Lord of the Rings characters: a modern interpretation

The Lord of The Rings is not only a great fantasy, but a great psychological drama. What makes it great is that the characters and themes are ones that we can relate to in the modern world. The ring represents the lust for money and power/control and we embody all the characters to a greater or lesser extent. There is a great  emphasis on war and battle, but these can also be taken metaphorically, as both internal battles, and spiritual battles between the lovers of Life and the lovers of Empire.

It is also a story of a declining civilization and a discerning of what needs to be saved, and what needs to be let go or integrated into consciousness. Can we keep our tolerance for diverse ways and ideas, our gender equity, our compassion, our science, our love of learning and innovation? Can we let go much of our out-of-human-scale-technology, our lust for power over others and nature, our other addictions?

Especially relevant to this luddite blog are the contrasts between Saruman's industrial path and The fellowship's path of heart, love and valor internally. Also the attempt to go through the mountainpass of Caradhras, foiled by Saruman, and the successful attempt to go through the mines of Moria (the subconscious realm) and facing the Balrog (the internal demon).

Here are some of my translations to the psychology of modernity:

Aragorn: This is man who is a perfect leader because he is naturally humble, but also perceptive. He is one who has resisted the corruption by Power. Gone into hiding, he is coming out as a man and a leader. He is the hero (who dares ask questions and seek answers outside the mold), the warrior (who takes action) and the magician (who uses his imagination to see what could be, not only what is).
Gandalf: The scientist or engineer who has gotten disillusioned with the mainstream and decided to use his talents for something he believes in. A scholar and a mage (I have a big Gandalf component).
Denethor, The Steward of Gondor: This is the hurt idealist, who has become cynical and sarcastic and eventually goes mad (I hope I don't go into that archetype more than I already have).
Theoden, The King of Rohan: A great leader, who is not only wise, but leads from the heart, with love. Also, a fierce warrior, ready to sacrifice his life for his people.
Eowyn: the feminist (not the man-hating wave, whichever wave that is) heroine who wants to follow her bliss. A perfect combination of a nurturer (though a terrible cook) and a warrior, preferring to die with dignity, than to live the living death of how society expects her to live.
Boromir: A great warrior, perhaps a businessman (the modern equivalent of battle), but not quite immune to corruption by Power/money.
Faramir: A loyal son, and a man of honor, able to act beyond self-interst, motivated by ethical ideals.
Galadriel: A goddess more than a woman. The divine feminine archetype. Beauty, wisdom, nurturance, magic and fearlessness combined. One of the only people to be able to resist the ring of power, though she knows she can succumb to it if not careful. Such women are rare indeed. We need more of them, and more men who are in touch with Her.
Frodo: The pure hearted simple country boy (but relatively wealthy) who is willing to sacrifice for a cause.
Sam: Also pure hearted and loyal, perhaps more practical than Frodo. Also resisted the ring because not interested in power (I have some Sam in me).
Smeagle: The addict, who has lost his consciousness to his addiction.
Arwen: The daughter of pious conservative (or classic liberal, or Religion of Progress) and privileged people who gives up her privilege for love. Insulated from the nasty world of modernity, she may also give up her religious faith for love. I know a few of these, one lives nearby. I've known and loved two others.
Elrond: The wise conservative leader and family man.
Tom Bombadil: the spiritual hermit.
Goldberry: The mystic, ethereal yogini, artist, dreamer.
Gimli: the salt of the earth, blue collar worker or craftsman.
Legolas: The golden boy military man. The white supremacist or just privileged upper class white man, who can befriend the other as long as trust is built.
Saruman: The sell-out academic, working for corporations or the military.
Sauron: Not a person anymore. The culture of Empire. Powers and principalities.
Treebeard: The archetype of the environmental movement
Balrog: The subconscious muck that needs to be dealt with/confronted before spiritual growth can happen.
Orcs: Our nasty little animal side: selfish, greedy, violent, fearful, lustful, unrefined. The Orcs were themselves oppressed and traumatized previously and now they project their fears onto others, just like SJWs project their fears onto father figures or whatever the oppressor du jour is. Though they have a spark of divinity in them, they must be resisted and not othered or dehumanized, like they do to humans.

A path through the mountainpass

I have said that the Kelvin generator is an example of a luddite technology, but it it not a very good example. The reason is that it is not placed in a context of a network of local crafts, nature and craftspeople/farmers. Who produces the wire, the tubs, the insulators, the pipe and the drippers? How is their work edifying and community building? How does it assist in producing basic needs? At this point the materials for the KG are mostly industrial inputs (or industrial refuse), and if they never transition into locally produced crafts, the KG will not be a luddite technology. But the KG is a good example of a possible transitional technology. What makes for a good transitional technology?
1. It fits into both the future local luddite web and the present global industrial web. The fitting into the industrial web is both technological (it uses cheap, readily available parts/materials), and economic (it can earn a living for the craftsperson producing the technology by providing a currently needed product, and able to compete with similar industrial products)
2. It is not usually a luxury item or service, because in the luddite web, as in any successful human endeavor, the luxuries must come after the necessities have been produced.


From an evolutionary perspective, a new gene network uses mostly existing genes with new interactions  (with the exception of master/regulatory gene mutations), and the new network COEXISTS  for a while with the old one, as in lungs coexisting with gills.


Also from a more abstract evolutionary perspective, transitional technologies roughly correspond to a mountainpass of the generalized (negative) fitness function*. A big portion of fitness has to do with effective energy expenditure. Circuitous paths in gene or meme space which do not go directly to the pass or avoid the pass altogether take more energy and confer lower fitness. Livelihoods which only make money but do not move directly towards transitional technologies or vise versa, are not as good as those which both make money and move towards transitional technologies. This includes livelihoods which make money indirectly by being funded even though they may not be producing products or services which are marketable in the current global industrial system. Most cottage industries that produce necessities, including small farm food production qualify. Most domestic jobs and teaching qualify. New-agey services do not. Neither do most industrial trade jobs such as those of plumbers, electricians, mechanics, machinists, and most modern carpenters. Neither do middle class professional jobs such as science, engineering, modern medicine, or law, nor military jobs, nor high tech jobs. I have nothing against any of these jobs (in fact I love science and engineering), but they don't meet the two criteria above.

However, if a group has not figured out a way to make a livelihood with cottage industries or teaching, or if startup funds are unavailable, it would make sense that some members of the group could engage in any currently available job (within their ethical constraints) in order to support the other members who are working on setting up cottage industries and teaching. As time goes on more and more support comes from the luddite technologies in direct form (i.e. not money), and less and less support is needed from the outside world.

Part of the transition with craft cottage industries involves a change in the perception of crafts as providing foo-foo luxuries into a perception of crafts as providing basic necessities. This is already happening with the local food movement, but it is not the only thing that is happening. The local food movement has also been able to effectively compete with the global/industrial food system because it has appealed to other human values besides efficiency and did better on those. This should be generalized to other craft-based enterprises. Do not compete with the industrial system on efficiency or price (it will win on those). Compete on beauty, sensuality, health, sustainability, craftsmanship, heart.

* As I have hinted at in previous entries, there is an analogue to the physics concept of (negative) free energy in evolution, which I call the generalized fitness function. This would involve not just fitness, but entropy bottlenecks. I will not attempt a formal mathematical definition here, but I expect it would involve first the definition of entropy S in terms of paths in gene/meme space (as opposed to volumes in phase space) and then something similar to F=U-TS, with the analogue to the free energy F being the generalized (negative) fitness, U the regular (negative) fitness, and T a measure of the rate of mutations.

Kelvin Generator for electric fence, an example of a Luddite technology

Here is something I wrote about 5 years ago, when I was living in Arkansas, and modified it to enter the archdruid post-industrial technology contest.

Electric Fence Powered by Falling Water, with No Moving Parts

Motivation

We live in a wilderness area. Most of the year we can’t drive a vehicle here and it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to walk from the little country road to our place here in the valley. Our garden is surrounded by deer and bear habitat. We wanted to discourage them from entering our garden. 

We wanted to minimize buying anything for this fence, first because hardware is hard to carry in, and second because we wanted to figure out how to reuse what we have so as not to produce more waste. We also wanted to show by example how a balance can be struck between local consumption and local production, so as to contribute to the interdependent web of meaningful work existent in a local economy. An additional motivation was to see if such a traditionally high technology as a high voltage technology could be built in a de-industrialized setting. 

We have a lot of used metal and lots of water from a spring. It occurred to me that a Kelvin Generator might be the answer, and indeed it has been a success in keeping out bear and deer.

Description and design of Kelvin Generator

The generator, invented by Lord Kelvin many years ago, uses no mechanical or electronic parts. It converts gravitational potential energy of water into electrical energy: tens of thousands of volts with minimal bursts of current when discharged by an animal or person. The low current makes it ideal for a non-lethal shock, which would discourage but not kill animals or people. It uses the principle of positive feedback: any charge imbalance caused by thermal or quantum fluctuations in the water droplets is amplified by the way the parts are related/connected together. It consists of a container filled with water at the top (where county or city water is available, a direct connection, through a garden hose, to a pressurized source is also possible), metal pipes with a T (non-conductive pipe with wire inserted will work as well), two metal cylinders called charge inducers(bottomless tobacco cans were used) through which the water drips, two bottom metal containers into which the water falls under the inducers(washtubs were used), two metal wires cross-connecting the bottom containers to the inducers, and mechanical supports (fishing line hanging from branches or wooden framing) for the metal cans and wires (see Figure 1 for schematic, framing and fishing line supports not shown, Figure 2 for picture). 

To understand in more details how it works, one needs a rudimentary understanding of electrostatics, how metals distribute charge over their surface, how (opposite) charge can be induced across an insulative medium like air, and then follow a little charge imbalance in one of the droplets into the tub, through the cross wire, inducing the other stream droplets, into the other tub and back to the original stream through the other cross wire. As charged droplets fall into the tubs on the right side, charge redistributes to the inducers on the left side, creating more (opposite) charge on the left side droplets, which increase the charge on the left side tubs, redistributing to the right side inducers, which induce more charge on the right side droplets(etc.), until leakage of charge occurs and limits the voltage from rising any further. The main leakage paths are corona discharge through the air, conduction through weeds, and droplets hitting the sides of the inducers or wires. The top reservoir remains neutral because equal and opposite charge flows  through the metal pipes (or plastic pipes with metal wire) to droplets. The conductive path to/from the reservoir is broken once the droplets form while they fall (further separating).

For the top tank I used a used 55 gallon plastic (metal can also be used)drum with a hole drilled at the top where an input garden hose could fit. For drippers I used plastic tubing in combination with river cane reeds and hose clamps to limit the flow. I have also used industrial shower heads for greater flow in a situation when more pressure was available. We had two galvanized wash tubs, to be used as the bottom containers, and for the inducers I used two tin tobacco cans with their bottoms taken out. These were supported by fishing lines hanging from the metal pipes and by standard electric fence insulator supports, nailed to trees. The fishing line was used because of its high electrical resistance.

The washtubs have drain holes at the bottom. These can be adjusted relative to the flow rate from the drippers so that water leaks out so as not to accumulate water in the tubs (they would become too heavy) and yet to have a drip (as opposed to a conductive stream) to the ground. The physics of Faraday cages ensures that water can drip down to the ground, but no charge. Instead of letting the water fall to the ground and get wasted, I let them fall into irrigation tanks which were hooked up with hoses to a drip irrigation system, thus getting a second use from the water.

The fence needs to have two parts which do not touch. Each tub can have a fence wire conncted to it, then the fence wraps around the garden, terminating in two parts which can be separated by a gate, which is not itself connected to the electrified fence.

The following engineering tradeoffs were observed:

The diameter of the inducers needs to be small enough so that the electric field is large enough at the center near top and bottom in order for efficient induction to happen, and the capacitance between forming droplets and the inducers is thus large. But this capacitance also needs to be kept small because the saturation voltage is inversely proportional to its square root (see below for a mathematical understanding of the tradeoffs for this capacitance). The diameter of the inducers needs to be large enough so that droplets do not hit the sides as they fall down through it. 

The height of the inducers needs to be large enough so that the stream coming from the drippers has a chance to break up into droplets somewhere within an inch or so from the top and bottom (the electric field is weak inside the inducers but strong close to top and bottom). The length of the inducers needs to be small enough so droplets do not hit the sides as they stray off the centerline due to the electric fields.

The distance between the tubs/wires/inducers of opposite polarity needs to be large enough so that droplets straying off axis do not hit wires/tubs of opposite polarity, thus discharging the generator.  Also, the larger the distance between the tubs, the bigger fraction of the charge on the tub/inducer system is concentrated around the inducer, helping to prime the generator. The distance needs to be small enough to conserve space and piping material.

During the initial priming stage, the vertical distance between the drippers and top of the washtubs needs to be small enough to catch the droplets that move off axis due to electric fields, small initial deviations (which get amplified just from geometry) and wind. After the initial priming stage, once a high voltage is achieved, the vertical distance needs to be large enough for droplets to have enough momentum to fall into the tub under the influence of the (repulsive) electric field which pushes them off axis and away from the tub.

The diameter of the tubs needs to be large enough to catch the droplets, yet small enough to save on materials (if one is building the tubs) or practical enough to find tubs of that diameter.

The flow rate needs to be large enough to make the generator robust to small leakage (mostly from weeds, especially when starting to charge or after a zap/discharge). See below for a mathematical understanding of this. The flow rate needs to be small enough to save on water.

Assuming basic circuit physics, a negligible capacitance between each tub and ground, a parasitic resistance R2 between the electrodes (infinite initially, but see below), a capacitance C between a forming droplet and an inducer (equal to the capacitance between the inducer and ground, since the droplet is grounded by the stream above it just before it separates), a capacitance C’ between each inducer and the tub underneath, a capacitance C” between the two tubs, a flow of J charged droplets per second into a tub and a resistance R due to weed load and humidity between each tub/inducer/fence and ground, the initial voltage on the fence would be:

V=K*Exp[B*t],

where K is the initial charge fluctuation on a droplet (a few electrons of charge), t is the time and

B=(C*J-1/Reff)/(C+4*C’+2*C”),

Where 1/Reff=1/R+2/R2

The only term that makes this a generator rather than a capacitor is the C*J term, which acts like a negative conductance. 1/B is the time it would take to amplify the initial tiny voltage (due to statistical fluctuations of the charge on all the droplets leaving the stream at one time) by a factor of e(about 2.7). It can be shown that 1/B will be larger that the time between the droplets (1/J), but it can’t be much larger, or else the generator won't work, because an opposite charge fluctuation is likely to occur before induction and amplification takes over. So to keep B large (1/B small), the parasitic capacitances C' and C” have to be kept small.

If there was no conduction between the two electrodes, and if all the charged droplets fell into the tubs below, the voltage would either increase or decrease exponentially depending on whether C*J > 1/Reff, or C*J < 1/Reff, so in order for amplification to happen, the product of the capacitance between the ring and stream above (C) and the number of droplets per second (J) should be larger than 1/Reff. As the voltage increases, the infinite resistance R2 between the electrodes decreases due to droplets hitting oppositely charged conductors (which was not taken into account in the above equations), and so the effective resistance Reff decreases. J also decreases because some droplets no longer make it into the tub, and eventually the voltage reaches a saturation point when C*J=1/Reff. A way to understand the saturation voltage in the idealized case when 1/Reff=0, is to realize that the gravitational plus initial kinetic energy of a droplet is converted to kinetic energy as it falls, but also to electostatic potential energy as it climbs up an electrostatic potential towards the tub. At the idealized saturation voltage, all the initial energy will be converted to electostatic potential energy with no kinetic energy left (J=0) and the droplet will never reach the tub (in reality, it doesn't just hover. Any small initial momentum sideways, will be amplified by the electrostatic potential between the tubs, and the droplet will be deflected towards the other tub, or attempt to go back towards the ring in a beautiful upside down fountainlike effect). The idealized saturation voltage thus depends on the pressure exiting the dripper, and the height of the dripper above the tub. Assuming that all the gravitational energy of a droplet gets converted to electrostatic energy, and that there is no load (due to weeds or corona discharge) or parasitic resistance, the idealized saturation voltage Vmax would be roughly:

Vmax=(1/2*v_i^2+g*h)/rho, where v_i is the initial speed of a droplet as it comes out  of the dripper (which is proportional to the pressure in the top tank), g is the gravitational acceleration, h is the height of the bottom of the dripper relative to the top of the tub, and rho is  the charge of a droplet divided by the mass of a droplet. 

When the initial velocity of a droplet is negligible, the previous equation can also be written in terms of the capacitance C as: 

Vmax=(1/2*v_i^2+g*h)/rho, where v_i is the initial speed of a droplet as it comes out  of the dripper (which is proportional to the pressure in the top tank), g is the gravitational acceleration, h is the height of the bottom of the dripper relative to the top of the tub, and rho is  the charge of a droplet divided by the mass of a droplet. 

When the initial velocity of a droplet is negligible, the previous equation can also be written in terms of the capacitance C as:

Vmax=Sqrt[2*m*g*h/C], where m is the mass of a droplet.

These two equations are fertile ground for dripper engineering. Bigger droplets with less charge, more water in the top tank, bigger height of dripper relative to bottom tub, and smaller capacitance between inducer and droplet produce a larger saturation voltage.

An attempt to model these effects in Mathematica produced figure 3, assuming the following dependence on voltage (V) for R2 and J:

R2[V] := a/(V) + Rmin

J[V] := J0*(1 - V/Vmax),

and the following numerical values (resistances in ohms, capacitances in farads):

a = 100000 (volts), Rmin = 1000000, J0 = 10/second,Vmax = 100000 Volts, c = 10^(-8), c’ = 10^(-12), c” = 10^(-12), K= 10^(-12), R = 10^(8).
If a zap occurs through an animal with a resistance R=10^5 ohms, then a discharge looking like Figure 4 occurs. Figure 5 is a plot of the current through the animal in such a zap. The current seems too large (since it didn't kill those zapped by it, including me), probably because the real C is smaller than 10 nano farads, and/or Vmax is smaller than 10^5 Volts. Figure 6 is a circuit diagram, trying to model the distributed system in a discrete way. The rectangles with squiggly lines are my symbol for a negative, voltage dependent resistor (there might be a more standard symbol).

For a 600 ft fence, the generator takes a few seconds to charge to saturation after startup or a zap, as long as the animal zapped does not hold on to the fence. If it holds on, the fence will not charge. The time to charge is proportional to the length of the fence (which is proportional to the capacitance of the fence to ground, data not shown).

As with most feedback systems, when they work they are fairly insensitive to design parameters, once a certain operating range is reached. Suggested dimensions based on experience are shown in Figure 1. The range of flows experimented with are in the range of one pint (under conditions of low humidity and low weed load) to one gallon of water per minute (high humidity and/or high weed load). The high flow was used in conjunction with an industrial shower head, so lots of drips jets in parallel from each head. 

Possible improvements

Materials could be found to replace those gotten from the waste stream of industrial technology. For example, bamboo pipes can be used instead of plastic or metal pipes. An automated (negative feedback) way to stop water flow when the charge/voltage reaches a level sufficient for zapping, and to start the flow when the level drops sufficiently (from weeds or a zap) would help to conserve water. Such a mechanism would be based on something similar to a toilet bowl float, except the lever turning off the water valve on the top tank would be actuated by electrostatic instead of mechanical/gravitational forces that move a  toilet bowl float.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Thomas Friedman and the religion of Progress

I have just read Thomas Friedmann's 3 books, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World Is Flat, and Hot, Flat and Crowded. I was surprised that he is not an ideologue, but a thinker who sees in shades of grey. He is pro globalization but sees some of the problems. I am writing this in the hopes that I can alert him to something essential that he missed. Not due to stupidity but to history, a cultural accident.

The fact is that most Jews (except recently a few in Israel) have lost touch with a sense of place, not just by being nomadic, but by not participating in a local economy, which involves ecological (as opposed to industrial) agriculture and crafts and domestic services, not just information juggling. Of course by now this has become part of global culture, not just Jewish culture, but I think the origin of this loss is part of the Jewish experience of exile and a need to be mobile in one's livelihood. Tom talks a bit about Olive Trees, but in nationalistic terms, or in terms of identity and defending identity. He (and most of his race and class) have no idea of what it means to have a job that contributes directly to one's well being and the well being of one's family and community, instead of indirectly through money and what money can buy. They think that manual work is somehow devoid of intellectual components and is inferior to information juggling work. That competitiveness and speed are superior to cooperation and slow, methodical craftsmanship, relationship and nurture. That predation and escaping predation are the essence of life (the lion and the gazelle are used as metaphor for the "fast" world). I am very familiar with this worldview, as I was raised by two secular humanist, Jewish scientists, and became a scientist myself for a while. I have nothing against information juggling, except that it can lead to a very incomplete worldview. Not only is this worldview destructive of nature and community, but there is not much joy in it, especially in old age, when one is isolated from the sources of life.

I wish Tom could live for a week at the Possibility Alliance or some villages (if they still exist) where the local economy has not been devastated and people can still take care of themselves, each other and their land without money or aid from the industrial economy. Maybe if he could just watch the initial scene in Fiddler on the Roof, he would get the idea that wealth does not come from money, but from nature, manual (and intellectual) work, and relationships. This could be done through both globalization and localization, but localization does it better: nature is respected and seen as a partner or a mother, instead of a resource, an "environment" and a dumpsite, work is done by people (instead of machines and dehumanized slaves), the relationships are real instead of abstract (through money or an impersonal market). Once people have been stripped of their ability to take care of themselves in a local economy, globalization is an appealing choice. This certainly happened to the Jewish people in their diaspora, who made the best of it and developed a cosmopolitan, liberal, diversity-embracing, information juggling culture, the light side of globalization. But some people did not adapt to the destruction of local economies as well. They took sweatshop and help desk jobs. The situation is also analogous to Jews who have a choice between going to Auschwitz and working in Schindler's factories. Just because they choose the latter does not mean it is a good choice.

The Lexus is not a symbol of global tolerance and diversity or a higher standard of living. Those who have a vibrant local economy have no need for a Lexus or any other car, and for most modern conveniences such as computers, electricity, indoor plumbing, washing machines, television (though they might still choose some of these as luxuries). I say this based on my experience at the Possibility Alliance and from what I've read about craftspeople of old, who have very only a weak similarity with modern tradespeole (e.g. carpenters, electicians and plumbers).  I have tried blacksmithing and it is very intricate and takes lots of skill, both manual and intellectual. I have learned electrical wiring, which is much simpler, but still requires intelligence. I am still learning weaving, which is no less complex than theoretical physics. Industrialization destroyed the crafts and much information may be gone forever (are there any skilled coopers left?), in this so called age of information and progress. The surviving crafts are mostly for luxuries and baubles for a few rich people. This was opposed early on, but the industrial victors can now semantically control history and call it Progress and pay homage to it. A future topic for this blog will be on the history of the crafts after industrialization.

There is a myth that goes with Progress. It says how terrible life was before industrialization. If it was terrible in certain cases, it was because of tyranny, and ignorance of hygiene and perhaps a few other things, not because of lack of industrial technology. It did not take me hours to do my laundry (as the myth goes) and a washboard is not as good as a tub with a special hand-agitated plunger. The supposedly lifestyle improving technologies only become necessary once people's local culture and economy is destroyed. Tom knows that local cultures are destroyed by global capitalism (local market capitalism, if we can call it that, and trade are more benign), but he sees not their real value. In this he is complicit with Marx (quoted twice on this topic in two separate books) and the Bolsheviks.

Culture and economy are deeply intertwined. Tom gives feeble examples of community, such as attending PTA meetings, voting in local town meetings and meeting one's neighbors face to face (he is missing on even the disappearing local distributors of goods, such as pharmacies, hardware stores and local coffee shops and restaurants, though he mentions in one anectdote the disappearance of a local tomato variety). This is because that is all he knows. He is missing the richness of community and culture that an interdependence born of economic ties produces. Not the kind of abstract ties through money and computers that are produced by the global economy, but the real ties of producing food, processing food, cooking food (I am pretty sure he doesn't cook, and wonder whether his wife does, and if he is home enough even if she does) , producing tools, producing clothes, producing a home and all the hardware involved, producing medical care for oneself, family, neighbors and visitors from out of town, and producing music, art, and spiritual expression. For Tom, it's all about finances, real estate, and the manipulation of global information, software. If you don't really know what is being destroyed by these, you will just continue the destruction.

The world is flat? What about empires which have a net direction of wealth flow towards the center of the empire? Why does he not take a job in a sweatshop or a help desk if it is such a great job? Because the world isn't flat and he can take advantage of his priviledged position high up in the american empire. Some people are forced to take shit jobs (which is not equivalent to skilled manual labor), while others can be galavanting on jet planes for their job. If there is any flattening it is the increase in stupid, alienating shit jobs across the globe. The goal of empires is not to flatten but to suck resources in one direction. This is why India is in such a sorry state, because first the British empire sucked it and then the American empire finished the job, with help of national (not as bad as global but not as good as local) corruption. If it's a choice between the corpse of a vibrant village economy left by empire, and the middle class job doing stupid help desk stuff and the middle class comforts available to a few, most villagers will choose the latter. But if the goal is to improve the lives of the villagers, then one would attempt to recreate a local village economy, which is what Gandhi and Kumarappa were trying to do and perhaps succeeded if Gandhi hadn't been killed and Nehru decided to go with industrialization.

In The World Is Flat and especially in his latest book, it finally dawned on Tom that "wealth creation" (the kind of wealth I like does not destroy the earth) is not independent of the earth (something most stadard economists  do not teach and would be hard to learn through computers) and that the earth has limits. Congratulations for having an inquisitive open mind. Perhaps he can use it to study native cultures and pre-industrial societies. I recommend Jarred Diamond's latest book (since I know he reads J.D) as well as Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics, and anything by Wendell Berry. Also, Jaron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget, which debunks the desireability of flatness.

Nature and culture evolved cells, individual organisms, species and cultures by the use of membranes and other boundaries, because this is the way to reduce entropy. Otherwise we would have a flat world with no individuals, just tubes for information, which would quickly end in a "heat death", a high entropy state not conducive to life. Total isolation is not possible or desirable either, and a sweet spot has to be found between exchange of energy and information and the ability to contain them within boundaries, to establish (unflat) gradients. Perhaps globalization for some like Tom is another expression of frustration with too much isolation and ego. Another way to deal with this imbalance is mystical union with the divine (or other people and nature) or ego transcendence.

It is a bit of an irony that I have not found a place to settle down, after 7 years of trying.

Why Luddites are pro technology

There were many good reasons for the US to adopt slavery. It was more efficient to have slaves for agricultural and domestic labor than paid employees. Though it was not very good for the slaves, rationalizations were made by the non-slaves that it was actually for the slaves' benefit as well. The whole economy of the South depended on slavery. There were those that would demand better treatment for slaves in a particular plantation. But to demand and implement the abolition of slavery occurred to only very few people. Once people get used to a system, whether it is economic, moral or technological, it is hard for them to conceive of another system. It is easier to conceive of changing bits and pieces of the old system, even if the changes do not solve any fundamental problem. It took a bloody civil war to end chattel slavery. People died rather than recognize that the whole nation made a mistake in accepting slavery. The benefits were too good (for the whites), the alternatives unknown in their effects and too scary to try.

Luddites are like modern day abolitionists. They believe (and some know from personal experience) that the industrial revolution was largely a mistake. That the benefits of mass production/efficiency are offset by the effective slavery of people working in factories, the conversion of skilled labor to purely menial labor (The so-called Luddite Fallacy says that jobs will be lost, which is not necessarily true. What is true is that the percentage of skilled work that promotes creativity and initiative decreases), the destruction of nature, the destruction of communities and the centralization of political control by economic means. There are some Luddites that focus on the negative psychological effects of some modern technologies like computers and TV (e.g. Chellis Glendinning, though she also understands the systemic nature of the problem with the industrial mode of production and consumption). Generally, Luddites are not interested in boycotting a particular company for ungainly practices (the historical equivalent being asking the master of a plantation to treat his slaves better). They are interested in providing an alternative system of production, based on small-scale craft (artisanal) and agricultural production (i.e. abolition of slavery). That this non-industrial system existed for most of humanity's history and was superseded by the industrial one does not mean that the industrial one is better. Mistakes can be made, just like with slavery. The religion of Progress gets in the way of admitting that one of its gods is a mirage. The simple minded slur "you want to go back" is often hurled at Luddites. It is partially true, in that the pre-industrial mode of production is something they aim for. But innovations are welcome, as long as craft-based technology can be used.

Does prosperity demand either slavery or industrialization? This is debatable. I think not, but I am not sure. I would be willing to be less prosperous and more connected, more creative, more free, more useful to those around me, giving freely of my gifts. I would think that if a craft and agrarian based technology was combined with political freedom and equality and with a gift economy or some approximation, that prosperity and full, MEANINGFUL employment could be shared by most.

In this essay, I'd like to dispel some myths about Luddites. Though some Luddites will disagree with me about some things, I hope the views I present are generally accurate and that I point out where differences arise among Luddites. I also want to explain myself, how I can be a scientist, an engineer and a Luddite. How I can believe that both the use and production of computers can be justified despite some serious issues, yet that most of industrial technology is more destructive than life-giving and needs to be replaced with something else, mostly craft and agrarian-based technology. I want to explain how being a Luddite is an intelligent and nuanced position vis a vis technology, that Luddites do not dislike all technology, only the kind that is more destructive to life than creative, and why most industrial technology falls under the former category.

The original Luddites were skilled weavers who were being displaced by machines. Some were farmers who were pushed off common land by the Enclosure movement. The machines also displaced the looms that the skilled weavers previously used. They could weave faster and needed workers with much less skill to operate them. They also could only be afforded by a few wealthy individuals. People who could previously make a living farming and weaving, who could have edifying, skilled work, who could take pride in their work, lost their livelihood to machines and became cogs in an inhumane system which required little creativity or initiative from them. It was not done with their consent. This is the pattern that repeated everywhere to turn craftspeople and farmers into factory hands, and eventually office workers and other modern jobs (including beggars) which are mostly an insult to human initiative, creativity, labor and connection. The domestic crafts (which were mostly not part of the money economy) somehow mostly endured this shift, though they too suffered.

The industrial revolution destroyed nature, communities, creativity, while creating efficiency. It promised a paradise of leisure and wealth, but most people work harder with less satisfaction in their work, and I think this is a direct result of the industrial paradigm. In the popular mind science is somehow linked to the industrial revolution, but the scientific revolution was fueled by a craft and agrarian-based technology (printers, lens grinders, glass workers, carpenters, gardeners, chemists and blacksmiths) For a few engineers, scientists, scholars, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and other middle-class professionals the industrial revolution enabled creative jobs, but even for those few the cost was a loss of connection with their families, communities, nature and their humanity. Perhaps this is too extreme a rendition of history. But I have seen all three worlds (the privileged work world, the work for a paycheck and the work in a non-industrial, gift economy setting) and I think I am fit to judge. I worked for a while in the industrial global economy as a physicist, an engineer, an assistant custodian, and a molecular biologist. I also worked as a gardener, a caretaker of mentally handicapped people, a construction hand and as an alternative technology installer and inventor in gift economies in intentional communities (guess which work I like better).

There are many famous Luddites, though most people don't know it. Gandhi is famous for his non-violence and peace (whereas the original Luddites advocated smashing industrial machines), but he worked hard to promote local, craft and agrarian based technology. Unfortunately, Nehru did not carry that work forward after Gandhi's death (see J.C. Kumarappa's Why The Village Movement). Other famous Luddites are Wendell Berry, Leo Tolstoy, Ursula LeGuin, Kurt Vonnegut, Henry David Thoreau, Peter Maurin, EF Schumacher, Lanza del Vasto, Ivan Illich, and J.R. Tolkien (the LOTR is allegorical of the battle between luddites and the military-industrial-academic complex), John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Aldous Huxley, Paul Goodman, Max Weber, Rachel Carson, Lewis Mumford. Most of these also believed in economic (and some in personal, spiritual), not just technological reform. If being a Luddite is not a binary state, but an analog continuum, it would be more accurate to say that these folks are more or less Luddite on some scale.

Luddites are pro technology which is more life-giving than life-sapping. They are interested not only in how technology is used (or to use the industrial term, "consumed"), but how it is produced and what happens after it is used (end-of-life analysis). It is no coincidence that most luddites also believe in and practice non-violence. Industrial technology promotes a violent way of life. Here is how:

It enables the control of people by centralized institutions. If people can't take care of their basic needs except by participating in a centrally controlled system. whether it is market driven or not, well, they can be controlled without their explicit consent. A clever form of coersion.
It promotes an "I want it now" instant gratification mentality, a click of the mouse away. Whether it is a gratification of wanting to know, wanting to get something done, wanting sex or wanting to kill someone is irrelevant for this discussion.
It allows violence (see complaints against oil companies destroying not just the environment but communities) resulting from consumers' demand to be abstracted because it is happening somewhere else.
It creates enemies of nature and other people, because instead of trying to gently work with them when an apparent conflict comes up, we would rather annihilate them, since we have the technological power to do so. So we remove mountaintops, spray insecticides and herbicides, shoot those who make us angry (or their kids), bulldoze houses of "terrorists", napalm the "enemy", kill, flippantly diagnose as "insane" and dehumanize "criminals".

By contrast craft-based local technology is less violent:
It allows small groups to take care of their basic needs. This makes them harder to be controlled.
It develops thoughtfulness, patience, resourcefullness and more gentle attitude towards the material and social world.
It promotes relationships with one's neighbors and makes consumerism less palatable (because of the feedback between production and consumption)
It promotes peace because one is involved in being useful and productive to one's community instead of  just dealing with the abstraction of money. Also because there is less material power. The power of craft tools and machines are on a human scale, not a super human scale.

Unfortunately there is also a violent strategy brand of Luddites, such as the unabomber and the original weavers. I would like to say they are just angry and not thoughtful, but that does not seem to be true.

Human and animal-powered tools which enable us to produce our own food, science, shelter, music, art, dance, games, and tools for these, that enable us to have face-to-face relationships with our neighbors and nature, that create balance and beauty in nature, that can be recycled are life-giving. Machines that enable us mostly to make money, that we can't manufacture or maintain ourselves (hence make us easier to control by the owners of said machines), that force us to buy our basic necessities from far away and be dependent on other machines and impersonal markets, that force us to be complicit in the destruction of nature and war, terrible working conditions and inhumane treatment of other people far away are life-sapping. If a community can extract and produce its own petroleum with local materials, with little environmental destruction, and use it for life-giving purposes, then most Luddites would probably support that technology. Life-giving attributes of a technology include edifying the human who produces it and the human who uses it, encouragement of his initiative and creativity, enhancement of the natural systems around that human.

But there is a bigger issue and a bigger system to consider than an individual technology. Luddites believe that the industrial revolution was largely a mistake(despite the bigger efficiency), that the whole industrial system is in the balance life-sapping and needs to be replaced by a more life-giving system such as a craft and agrarian local system. They are distinguished from economic reformists (e.g. Charles Eisenstein) in that they believe that though the economic system may or may not need to be replaced, the technological system underlies the economic one and needs to be replaced in order for any economic reform to be effective.

One would think that a technology can be both life-giving and life-destroying and then a calculation of the net must be done. But this is not something that can be computed in isolation from the rest of the system, since every technology interacts with the whole system.  Since technology, like economy and ecology is an ecosystem/network, changing just one part  usually does not improve things. Though Luddites may engage in a tradeoff analysis for individual technologies, for most Luddites, it is useless to (except strategically) focus on the pros and cons of any one industrial technology like TV, cell phones or computers, since according to Luddites, the whole industrial paradigm is basically sick and must change.

As far as particular technologies, the pros and cons can be debated with regards to strategy--does the use of a particular technology promote the Luddite goal better than another technology?

Putting aside strategy for the moment, and with the caveat that it is difficult to measure net life-giving or life-sapping of any particular technology given the systemic nature of technology, I still like to consider the question of whether any particular currently industrial technology is worth keeping if there were a functional craft-based technology ecosystem. It may be that a particular technology has many life-giving aspects in its use, though the net may be debated. A fundamentalist Luddite may still consider that technology as ultimately to be disposed of, but some Luddites might think that even if that technology can't be produced through local, craft-based means, that it should continue to be produced by a limited industrial system. I think that about computers--though their production is environmentally destructive, and a lot of people use them as escapism and they can create alienation and ADD, their existence can be justified by the information exchange, and the powerful computation they enable. I wonder if there could be an industrial system for just a few things like computers, with most other things being manufactured by crafts and agriculture. Computers definitely enhance some forms of connection. They allow for the exchange of ideas among people far away from each other. The connection may not be as satisfying as a face to face connection, but it can be useful and life-enhancing. Computers can also do computations that would be tedious and too slow for humans--I use Mathematica to do General Relativity computations in a few seconds that might take me weeks to do otherwise.

Besides assessing the pros and cons of individual technologies, we can compare the production of goods as livelihoods for different technologies. A cooper or a blacksmith can usually not make a living in an industrial technology ecosystem (blacksmiths can make knick-knacks for a few wealthy people and thus survive, not very satisfying), so it would not be fair to compare coopering with, say, computer programming within the industrial system. A cooper surrounded by hundreds of different craftspeople and farmers who are all producing for each other can rightfully compare with working as a computer programmer or whatever else in an industrial technology system.

Luddites can be knowledgeable not only of pre-industrial technology, but modern high-tech (I went to MIT and got a degree in EE and one in Physics, then a PhD at BU in Physics, then worked as a process simulation engineer at Motorola). Understanding both modes of production gives one more authority to choose between the two. Ironically, some Luddites are motivated by similar sentiments of abundance and altruism that some of the engineers (and the few entrepreneurs who weren't motivated by greed) of the industrial revolution were motivated by. We want the earth and the human spirit to flourish. We want material, cultural and spiritual abundance, connection, scientific exploration, edifying work as a manifestation of love and our unique gifts, art, music and dance. Based on history, a calling (from the future?) and our own limited experiments, we think these could be better encouraged through a craft-and agrarian mode of production. Our recent ancestors saw only the benefits of industrialization and were bamboozled by efficiency and convenience.

We are just beginning, as a culture, to see not only the benefits (convenience and efficiency) of industrial production, but also the costs. The logic of machine/industrial/capitalist production is the logic of efficiency and convenience. This is the logic not only of monocultures in agriculture, but also of standardization and robotization in industry. It is the logic of turning life into death. It is not true that industrialization kills diversity. It only kills diversity in local production, but on a global scale, and with the help of petroleum, a diversity of goods becomes available to the local and global consumer. Pre-industrial production was more diverse than industrial production (think not only agriculture, but the hundreds of crafts that existed in thriving villages), but with less trade, consumption was in some ways less diverse. Since we are a part of nature, the law of nature which says that a locally diverse production is more resilient than a local monoculture production (even if globally there is a diversity of monocultures), applies to us as well.

Just for fun, I am starting a list of "backwards" industrial technologies vs "progressive" Luddite alternatives (I am using these words facetiously, in a mock anti-religion-of-Progress. In reality I think that Luddism is more adaptive to the present time than industrialism, not more progressive). Remember that no one Luddite technology can be switched to to make things better. All these,  a large enough subset have to work synergistically to make things better.
Inustrial                                           Luddite

lawn mowers                                   scythes
Facebook                                         face to face gatherings
power looms                                    hand looms
combines                                          threshers, winnowers, dehullers
cnc lathes                                         foot or hand powered lathes
computer                                          brain plus pen/paper
petroleum/electric power                  human (sometimes pedal) or animal power
car                                                    bicycle or horse (with carriage if needed)
oil furnace                                        wood stove
refridgerator                                     ice house or rootcellar or stream
machine shop                                   blacksmith shop
shoe factory                                      shoe maker shop
hostpital with megamachines            clinics of various alternative medicine modalities
monoculture+pesticides                    polyculture+predators of pests
chemical agriculture                          soil health agriculture
factory animal processing                 free range animals
multimillion dollar                     barn dance, porch jam, sing-alongs,
film, video games                              storytelling, live games

Besides the Possibility Alliance, which is a real present day example of a Luddite community, there have been depictions of such communities in fiction. My favorite is the scholarly, monastic (understanding the value of cultural isolation) "Maths", in Neil Stephenson's Anathem. It shows how people can continue to do science, math and other scholarly pursuits, while being judicious about which technologies are worth having.

Disadvantages of grass roots approaches to cultural speciation

Grass roots initiatives are naturally appealing to anarchists and all lovers of freedom. They are great for getting things done that people mostly already know how to do. But if a project requires a high level of expertise, and a complicated level of coordination of many people, another approach is needed. A combination of a hierarchical system and a grass roots system may be more appropriate. Information can flow in both directions: from one (or few) top coordinating person(s) to many experts and from the experts back up to the coordinator(s).

A grass roots approach to culture change is somewhat like a "random walk" or diffusion in physical systems, or random mutations in biological systems. It takes longer to find the mountain pass with a random walk than if one is able to see the fitness landscape and the direction of the pass and head that way. This is a kind of conscious speciation, where a master meme (the direction of the pass) is identified and then selected for consciously, not by natural selection (which would select against it before it made it through the pass). Natural selection/genetic algorithm/random walk/diffusion would eventually work, but it might take too long, unless the fitness landscape changes significantly so that the  fitness or entropic barrier becomes small.

To bring it back to concrete reality: The culture of empire is not going to change by grass root approaches unless something drastic happens (economic, political or ecological collapse, or a slow decline of industrial civilization due to peak oil or such). If industrial technology and capitalism are master memes, then changing them in a small, coordinated group with the help of expert craftspeople and farmers is a more pragmatic and quicker  approach then letting a craft/agrarian based technology evolve by a grass roots approach (what the Possibility Alliance is doing). Hence the Luddite Manhattan Project. Imagine trying to build the atom bomb with a grass roots approach--it won't work. A craft/agrarian-based technology and a gift economy are even more complicated tasks (more memes are involved that need to be coordinated in a network). That kind of technology evolved from earlier technologies over many generations because there was a path almost always going downhill, but the path to it from where we are now has a large fitness barrier. No single farmer or craftsperson can get there.

The problem right now is to convey the meme of creating a local technology ecosystem. It is too much for most people to understand this--crafts are for art and luxuries and technology is magic and not to be tampered with in any drastic way in most people's minds. Rather than understanding it, it might be possible to pay some expert craftpeople (not tradespeople, like plumbers, electricians, builders, etc. since these are too tied to the current industrial production) and farmers to just figure out what they need in order to produce what someone else needs and enlist the help of a computer program to do the necessary computations and display the missing links. Some pre-industrial crafts do not have any more living practitioners (e.g. coopering in certain places). Most people have no knowledge of these crafts. The few pre-industrial craftspeople that exist can't make a living because they don't have a supporting infrastructure (other craftspeople and farmers), except making foo-foo artsy stuff for wealthy people. Also, they are using much industrial infrastructure in their craft because it is more readily available. To create a local technology infrastructure is a challenging networking problem.

There are those, like Charles Eisenstein, who think that the whole technological question can be bypassed with economics. But technology underlies economics. A global, centralized technology that devalues human craftsmanship, nature, relationships and creative work will create a global economy with the same values, even if the values that people want are different. We can give lip service to a gift economy, but our technology does not support it. In the production (less so in the consumption) of the goods we need to live, we produce slavery, war, toxic waste, alienation, a gross misuse of human creativity, destruction of nature.

Communal Tragedies

We've all heard of the Tragedy of the Commons, where people don't take good care of common resources because they assume the responsibility for a shared resource is not also fully theirs (or because they don't have good systems for sharing responsibility, or because they only want the benefits and not the responsibility). But there are 8 other tragedies that are not as well known when people seek to live in intimate community.

The first is what I'll call the Tragedy of Artistic Freedom. People have different ways of expressing their creativity. The problem occurs when people assume that their way is "what needs to be done" and expect other people to have the same ideas about what they want to do. If I have a certain amount of time in which to express my creativity, then the work will expand to fill that time. I will do certain things that I may consider necessary, that someone else might think are silly, inefficient or arbitrary. If someone else is under my authority and they need to express themselves differently, then they will feel burdened and unfree. I have harnessed them to my plow instead of setting them free. I may think they are lazy, or unreliable.

The solution is to free people to contribute in ways that are most meaningful to them, while having a minimum of agreed upon tasks that everyone wants to happen. Ideally people's gifts can be matched to the community needs, so that artistic freedom can flourish. This contrasts with a socialist vision where everyone works in the community business or factory. If everyone can work at something they enjoy and are good at, then not only artistic freedom, but deep interdependence and efficiency can happen. Alternatively, if people's gifts can't all be matched to community needs, there should be enough free time where people pursue their passions even if the community does not benefit directly

The second tragedy that makes people not want to live in community can be called the Tragedy of Unrealized Communion. Humans have a need to transcend their ego and merge into a higher collective, whether it be nature, a spiritual world of ideas, a mystical union with a beloved, union with other musicians, singers, game players, dancers, or simply people sharing a nurturing activity. Some come into a community looking for this experience only to find that the fear of others prevalent in the mainstream culture is also there in the community, and instead of mystical union there are monotonous meetings, drudgery and power-politics.

The solution is to give high priority to creating ego-transcending, communion-producing activities. In the US, the supposed land of individual freedom, most people only want to be around each other to have sex and/or when they are drunk. Communities where people enjoy each other have lots of activities, such as dancing, singing, playing music (not for show, but for communion), friendly, spirited discussion, study groups, workshops, and common work where banter and laughter abound. I suppose protest fills this role for communion for some.

The third tragedy may be called the Tradgeoff (attempted pun) Between Communion and Freedom. Groups have to figure out ways of ensuring smooth communication and operation, what sociologists call normative behaviour enforcement.  This can be done through carrots or sticks externally, and more effectively through internalizing beliefs and norms. I don't know if this Tradeoff is a law of sociology. I seem to remember that Ben Zablocki in The Joyful Community thought it was. A corollary might be that the free spirits leave after a while, and the control freaks stay in a community that lasts. I would like to believe that it is possible to have communion while respecting other people's needs, especially the need for autonomy/freedom, aloneness and communion with God, nature or other people. What would make this possible seems to have been articulated and lived by Jesus long ago and maybe others. It is not something that one could believe, but something that must come from each person's soul, in a holistic way. It is something that is rare, but I have seen glimpses of it in at least two intentional communities.

The 4th tradgeoff is one that is found in nature between progeny producing activities and activities that further the interests of the current generation. Children in community take much resources and can’t give them back till many years later. Mothers instinctually get satisfaction from children, but not only do the children drastically reduce the mothers’ capacity to build infrastructure, in the post feminist era, the fathers also take a big hit. The result is that the infrastructure gets built very slowly or not at all, and in order to gain more safety and comfort for the mothers and children in the short term, the community moves more towards the mainstream culture or dissolves altogether.

The solution is to send the men ahead first to build infrastructure, perhaps with a few women who are either menopausal or willing to wait for children.

The fifth tradgeoff is between families and community or families and individuals, or families and other families. The need of families to focus much energy on their children has already be mentioned. But there are other needs that families have such as spending quality time together. This is a generalization of the artistic freedom tragedy, where the tradeoff is between individuals’ differing needs, or between the needs of individuals and the community (which is not just the sum or average of the needs of the individuals in it).

The solution could be to make the distance between the family needs and the community or individual needs as small as possible. And when this has been minimized, to have discussions about it when conflict between needs arises, so that people could make good tradeoffs, instead of wreaking either the family or the community.

The sixth  tragedy is when the community is either too liberal (and therefore not cohesive enough) or too conservative (and therefore not joyful and dynamic enough). A good mix of the two is necessary in order for the community to be “in the zone”, or in a state of “flow”.

The 7th tragedy is when people don’t bother to study what the obstacles to community are before joining or starting an IC, not just the ones mentioned here, but also the tragedy of the commons and the ways to address it such as Ostrom principles.

The 8th tragedy is the tension between wanting to do what is in the best interest of the group, but not be taken advantage of. This is similar to, but not quite the same as the tradeoff between individual liberty and communal cohesion. Game theorists are well aware of this dilemma and they have simple models for it. Their conclusion is that if the group is to be maintained, there has to be trust developed, but trust is not enough. There also has to be a way to monitor and punish freeloaders, or people who break the trust. The balance between being generous and being taken advantage of is hard to achieve. If one wants to make sure that one won't lose the energy put into the land and infrastructure in case the group decides to kick one out, or shun one, or just do something totally different than what was agreed upon, one needs to have private ownership of some of the land and infrastructure, or be able to be compensated if one has to leave. However, now the temptation is to not be to dependent on the other members of the community, who also have private ownership of some land. That temptation is hard to resist especially in the environment of the global economy, and then we're back to status quo, individual land ownership with very little communal interactions.

Most groups at this point go to far in the direction of not enough interaction with each other, and too much interaction with the global economy.

We can address this by either not allowing private ownership,  or requiring the commitments we asked for in the mission statement