(Poorly written outline of ill-formed unedited thoughts, sparked by questions of “smart growth” and Graeber’s Malinowski lecture on bureaucracy, power & knowledge/stupidity.)

We prefer stability, except complete stability is boring.

Also, we prefer stability, but we are creatures of the natural world, and everywhere in the natural world, organisms only achieve stability with violence at the edges.

Life requires growth; life is growth. The only things that are really stable are non-living things. (Maybe this explains our infatuation with golems, robots, and other inanimate but living beings.)

All populations eventually hit resource boundaries. Due to this, there are punctuated die-offs, or asteady background noise of death. Populations come into conflict with others over common resources and violence emerges. In other words, the violence of limited resources is inherent in life, because life must grow and consume resources in order to survive, which I’ll define as “simply to live in the first place.” Life = growth, and growth inevitably leads to resource issues which threaten growth. Anything that threatens growth, that threatens life, IS violence. (This is a mistaken thread of thought, but I’ll get to “why” further down.)

Humans develop different ways to manage this violence.

1) Move, thus expanding resource boundaries and eliminating the source of conflict. This only works until all places are filled, or all resources have been claimed. This might be part of the fascination with “natives” out in “natural” territories, where we perceive people still have the freedom to up and move, and havent’ “developed” the further ways of managing the violence inherent in existing.

2) War. In other words, resolve resource conflict through direct violence against others. If you can’t liberate yourself by moving, the violence inherent in resource limitations remains and must be managed somehow. War involves attempting to direct the violence AWAY from you and towards SOMEONE ELSE. Inevitably there is some blowback, and even when so unevenly matched as to be “no contest,” people still don’t generally like war, so eventually other options are pursued (one hopes).

3) Invent/discover. Another way of resolving resource issues themselves – not by moving yourself, but by moving the boundaries by finding ways to increase abundance. This is uniquely human – to use our intellects to learn new ways of utilizing existing and new resources in order to expand our resource limitations. We are creative, we grow ourselves, we are life upon life.

4) Bureaucracy. Within society, power is exercised to limit growth. Think, population control. This is a form of structural violence, when in a hierarchical society, the management is imposed and obfuscated through administration. (See Graeber’s Malinowski lecture)

5) Empire. Through a combination of the above methods, empire involves creating spaces of safe growth surrounded by conflict. You push the violence to the edges, allowing the core to enjoy continued growth, relatively oblivious to the realities of the world. There are resource limitations, but only people on the edges of society experience them.

Of course, there’s also diplomacy and self-management, but since we live in a top-down society, this too is a form of violence. “We” are not getting together and agreeing on sustainable choices for society. To the extent that it happens, it is expressed through the structurally violent systems of bureaucracy and empire. Think of China’s population growth laws.

But we know that, given education and reasonable stability, people choose to not have children. Privileged populations limit themselves.

So what’s the problem?

Sustainable development, population control, seem to feel terrible to people, frightening. Why? I believe that, left to their own devices, people would choose these options. People would self-manage.

There are two problems, both sharing the same solution. One is misinformation coming from those with vested interests in maintaining their own personal, privileged status quo. Powerful interests not only misinform, they also activate and nurture people’s natural fears of the violence of bureaucratic imposition. Some other people OVER THERE are going to discuss on our behalf and then agree to yet MORE rules we would rather not have, and we’re going to be stuck dealing with them. Who wants that?

Indeed. Who wants any of this hierarchical administrative violence?

The solution is direct democracy. The solution is a non-hierarchical society of consent.

Yes, things that need to happen do eventually happen in administrative societies like ours. But it becomes much more difficult over time, as power concentrates and, resentment over the exercise of power grows.

“Smart liberals” bang their heads against the tables and wonder why everyone doesn’t understand what “we” all need to have happen. But of course there is resistance. On both the right and the left people are frustrated with bureaucracy and top-down administration. Unfortunately they don’t really realize that’s what’s frustrating them. People are alienated from decisions being made about their lives on every side, and this is a dangerous brew.

Those in power, and those who feel they are smarter than everyone and know what needs to be done, are afraid of giving up power, and afraid of giving up control and the speed of life. If people need to be involved in everything and consent to everything, it’ll take longer for things to get done. Maybe. But it takes forever for things to get done now! Our representational democracy is nearing the end of its life. What will replace it?

Unlike animal populations, human populations choose to manage their own size. It need not be enforced from on high. Rather than structural violence to manage the stupid breeding and greedy masses, education and open discourse enables nonviolent management on a personal level through individual choice.

And here’s where the “life = growth” thing is wrong. Ultimately, I believe it would be possible for a human population to self-manage itself to a place of stability, but still be alive, vital, healthy. How is that growth? It may be metaphorical growth, but really it’s just change. Life grows, it’s what life does — but when populations reach boundaries, they experience constant change, while still living, but not growing. Humans have the ability to find ways to self-manage our growth through conscious, informed choice, without experiencing violence. Internalizing the limits within each individual, the violence would disappear in a puff of smoke. Perhaps this relates to Graeber’s ideas in Fragments about imaginary counterpower, in that the violence doesn’t disappear, but we keep it in an imaginary place that informs each person’s individual choices and actions. Outside of society, but within each individual, the only ethical options.

A numerically stable society with well-managed sustainable resources wouldn’t grow, but would certainly contain a lot of vibrant change as everyone went about living and enjoying and inventing. “Smart growth” is just a growth-obsessed society’s only way of imagining what really needs to happen: managed, contained living. Which sounds terrible if you think it’s being forced on you. Not so bad if you choose it for yourself.