Simple consumption and unfolding of needs

The accumulation of meanings begins when proto-humans transform their habitat into a means and adapt it to their needs. The accumulation of meanings, in turn, leads to the unfolding of needs (Korotaev 2003, pp. 32-33). The unfolding of needs implies, first, that animal needs become more cultural and, second, that new more cultural needs emerge. Above, we called this transition the “needs trap” with which human history began. “…The satisfaction of the first need, the action of satisfying and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired, leads to new needs; and this creation of new needs is the first historical act” (Marx and Engels 1975-2004, vol. 5, p. 42). In this transition, not only animals but also their needs are transformed into a mixture of life and meaning.

The unfolding of needs initially takes place within the framework of cultural selection. As humans advanced from cultural selection to choice, the satisfaction of needs unfolded into a meaningful process of consumption, that is, an increasingly targeted appropriation and elaboration of the material of nature. Traditional/simple consumption is based on the gradual expansion of the domus, the cultural niche of humans within the natural environment. Primitive people are still firmly embedded in nature and follow its rhythms:

“Close observers of hunter-gatherer life have been struck by how it is punctuated by bursts of intense activity over short periods of time. The activity itself is enormously varied—hunting and collecting, fishing, picking, making traps and weirs—and designed in one way or another to take best advantage of the natural tempo of food availability. ‘Tempo,’ I think, is the key word here. The lives of hunter-gatherers are orchestrated by a host of natural rhythms of which they must be keen observers” (Scott 2017, p. 88).

As the domus expanded, a cultural rhythm of its own evolved. The nomadic life of hunters and gatherers gave way to the more settled life of farmers. Technological changes, which were very slow, were accompanied by equally slow changes in organization and psychology. Tribes became chiefdoms and chiefdoms became states. Fetishism and animism were augmented, though not superseded, by totemism and polytheism.

The more meaningful consumption is, the more the needs are cognitively represented as values. Emotional behavior is gradually supplemented by traditional behavior as a prelude to rational action. “The line between meaningful action and merely reactive behavior to which no subjective meaning is attached, cannot be sharply drawn empirically. A very considerable part of all sociologically relevant behavior, especially purely traditional behavior, is marginal between the two” (Weber 1978, pp. 4-5).

William Durham has noted that cultural variants (we would say, meanings and counterfacts as alternative meanings) are socially transmitted, so they are not necessarily reproduced at the individual level, but can be retained or rejected by social choice (Durham 1991, p. 192). In fact, what needs to be explained is not how individual choice creates social choice, but where individual decisions come from and how they are possible. Historically, traditional choice began not with decisions made by individuals, but with social choice based on order and inherited practices.

Needs are not satisfied on the basis of a single norm or a single emotion. The unfolding of needs occurs within a broad framework of many norms, within the socio-cultural order. Values are the result of a choice in which different norms and emotions, morals and motives compete with each other. A person finds himself between norms and emotions. In the evolutionary process of selection and choice, norms and emotions as well as needs unfold.

For the vast majority of the population, simple consumption is limited to the satisfaction of needs essential to survival. These minimum needs, the satisfaction of which is necessary for the continuation of existence, play a central role in simple consumption. We call this first type of need subsistence needs. They ultimately develop into utilitarian motives.

The second type is communication needs. Simple consumption takes place in relatively small and isolated communities of several dozen or hundreds of people. In small communities, the satisfaction of the need for sociality, respect and social contacts serves primarily to maintain cohesion, distinguish between “us” and “them,” and establish social status.

The third type is the need for self-expression. In a traditional society, this is the least developed type: it arises later than the first two types and plays a minor role. Since primitive meanings are the result of cultural selection, not choice, and their main content is stability and not change, the need for self-expression remains inessential and sometimes harmful to the self-reproduction of traditional societies. Dreamers and inventors are ignored or even persecuted.

For anarcho-primitivists like John Zerzan, the reason for the slow progress of primitive societies makes no mystery. The answer for him is that the primitive dreamers could not think of anything better than their simple life.

“During the vast time-span of the Paleolithic, there were remarkably few changes in technology. Innovation, ‘over 2½ million years measured in stone tool development was practically nil,’ according to Gerhard Kraus. Seen in the light of what we now know of prehistoric intelligence, such ‘stagnation’ is especially vexing to many social scientists. ‘It is difficult to comprehend such slow development,’ in the judgment of Wymer. It strikes me as very plausible that intelligence, informed by the success and satisfaction of a gatherer-hunter existence, is the very reason for the pronounced absence of ‘progress.’ Division of labor, domestication, symbolic culture—these were evidently refused until very recently” (Zerzan 2012, p. 7).

Rather, the reason for the lack of “progress” was not intelligence, but its subordinate position: the intellect was suppressed by tradition. Practice, not the intellect, was the main source of the most effective causal models. Increasing the degree of adaptation in a simple society meant bringing the causal models closer to reality and thus strengthening man in his relationship with nature. The unfolding of needs, motives and activities requires an expansion of choices, but under cultural selection and traditional choice this expansion advanced extremely slowly.

Chapter 2. Simple production and necessary activity

1. Development of production from consumption

Agricultural evolution and increasing meanings

If Homo sapiens were simply a large mammal, like a wolf or a bear, its total population would not exceed several hundred thousand (Kapitsa 2009, p. 15). For example, the number of gray wolves in the world is about 300,000 individuals, the same number applies to chimpanzees. The transformation of man into a cultural being allowed him to exceed the limits set by nature. 100,000 years ago, 1 million people lived in the world. 10,000 years ago, when agricultural evolution began, 5 to 10 million people lived, and many of them depended on (semi-)domesticated animals and plants for reproduction. The further agricultural evolution advanced, the more people there were. At the turn of our era, there were about 250 million people living on Earth, most of whom were farmers and herders, not hunters and gatherers. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the world’s population was about 1 billion people (Malanima 2009, pp. 1 ff.).

The accumulation of meanings first led to the separation of culture from nature. Subsequently, the same process led to the separation of production from consumption. Agricultural production arose approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago through the domestication of plants and animals. Neolithic evolution may have been a rapid event by Paleolithic standards, but by the standards of modern socio-cultural change it was a very slow, gradual development of a productive economy. Recent research suggests that domestication itself was a long process:

“First, it makes the identification of a single domestication event both arbitrary and pointless. Second, it reinforces the case for a very, very long period of what some have called ‘low-level food production’ of plants not entirely wild and yet not fully domesticated either. The best analyses of plant domestication abolish the notion of a singular domestication event and instead argue, on the basis of strong genetic and archaeological evidence, for processes of cultivation lasting up to three millennia in many areas and leading to multiple, scattered domestications of most major crops (wheat, barley, rice, chick peas, lentils)” (Scott 2017, p. 12).

There was no clear boundary, but rather a transition between foraging and agriculture, between food appropriation and food production. James Scott calls this transition “illegible” production (Scott 2017, p. 33). “Illegible” production was characterized by two moments. First, meanings grew in objects, means of activity and the subject itself: plants, animals, and humans transformed from products of pure nature into products of human action. Second, the transition from hunting and gathering to herding and farming changed the rhythm and patterns of activity.

The advent of a relatively warmer and more stable climate at the beginning of the Holocene meant that in some areas, such as the Fertile Crescent region humans could reproduce without being nomadic. It became possible to obtain food by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants while remaining sedentary. The possibility of large seasonal food surpluses led to increased population density in areas with fish spawning grounds or natural grain fields. Seasonal food surpluses and the need to store food required long-term planning:

“A food supply dependent on a few seasonal energy flows required extensive, and often elaborate, storage. Storage practices included caching in permafrost; drying and smoking of seafood, berries, and meats; storing of seeds and roots; preservation in oil; and the making of sausages, nut-meal cakes, and flours. Large-scale, long-term food storage changed foragers’ attitudes toward time, work, and nature and helped stabilize populations at higher densities. The need to plan and budget time was perhaps the most important evolutionary benefit. This new mode of existence precluded frequent mobility and introduced a different way of subsistence based on surplus accumulation” (Smil 2017, p. 39).