Change: Buzzword of the Moment
In America, 'tis the season of the State of the Union speech and political debates. Politicians have a lot to say right now about progress and growth.
While I myself want change -- at least as far as national priorities (economy, environment and health care impact more Americans than terrorism, I say with callous pragmatism) -- we should weigh the assumptions that leaders and economic experts are making. They speak of growth and progress as positives with the same absolute conviction that one might say, "the sky is blue." Yet these two pillars of the American Dream have not always been so highly regarded.
In ancient Egypt, pharaohs were quick to claim responsibility not for progress, but for stability, the key measure of success for many ancient cultures.
Progress? Bah! Who Needs It?
Change was bad. Three thousand years ago, you might have heard someone say: Who needs chariots and wagons? Oxen and horses take too much maintenance for too little gain. We've got the Nile: just hop in a boat and float north, or put up a sail to go south. Look at King Tutankhamun. Handsome young man, had the world at his fingertips -- boom, dead at nineteen from a chariot accident!
The cycles of the river Nile were the stock market of those days. As long as it flooded about the same amount every year, the farmers would get a fresh supply of rich, fertile mud, enough to grow two or even three harvests a year -- more than modern Egypt can produce now, dams and all. There was enough for the government to store the surplus, then feed and house all able-bodied men in exchange for their manpower on public works projects during the off-season. (This, the Hebrews called slavery, but the Egyptian work gangs who built the pyramids left boastful graffiti on the blocks about how "we have bigger balls; we hauled eleven blocks today and Scorpion's gang only hauled nine!" They were free men with room and board, literate at a time when most people in the world didn't even have towns.)
Even Egyptian writing barely changed. A scribe living in Cleopatra's day could probably have read the inscriptions in pyramids built 2500 years earlier. Try reading Shakespeare, a mere 400 years old -- let alone a Latin text, 2000 years old -- to understand how unusual that is.
For ancient Egyptians, progress was an alien concept. They had a lock on the status quo.
"Djed" - The Stability Principle
Djed, "stability," was a key symbol in Egyptian royal art, and you see it everywhere in museums: a striped pillar, often paired with the ankh of life. Djed worked. Despite invasions and the occasional corporate takeover -- er, conquest -- Egyptian civilization continued to function almost unchanged for nearly 3000 years. That's quite a legacy, one that no modern nation can claim. Modern countries are old if they've been around for 300 years.
The key to a stability culture is to think of time not in terms of growth, but cycles. Overpopulation would have killed Egypt; the desert didn't have the resources to sustain it. But their river did, with its annual flood and dry season. All the royal rituals were about repeating and reaffirming the way things were. Even their funerals were all about keeping the good times rolling: they'd mummify themselves and bury luxury goods in their tombs, hoping to live it up in the afterworld.
Programmed obsolescence may help companies make a quick buck, but it's a lousy long-term strategy. The pyramids have lasted nearly six thousand years, and it's a good bet they'll last another few thousand. Those ancient Egyptians weren't tutored by space aliens, they just built things to last. They believed in the good old days.
Cancerous Growth
It amazes me how much modern economies depend on growth. When growth slows, that's bad. If our bodies worked that way, we'd be twenty feet tall when we died. In fact, that's what we call cancer -- that's what happens when cells don't know when to stop growing. I've heard a crackpot theory that a society's diseases reflect its social ills. There's no logical reason why that should be so, and yet -- look at us. Exhaustion of resources, exhaustion of ourselves. Poisoning the environment, poisoning ourselves with nicotene, bad foods, drugs. Cancer a number one killer, a disease that wasn't even on the medical map before the 1800s.
Sustainability and Recycling
There's another system that's worked for thousands -- according to scientists, millions -- of years, and it's pretty successful. It's called life. Individual people, animals, and plants die, but there's cycles of growth and decay, the wheel of the seasons, times of plenty and times of dearth. If we throw these cycles out of wack, we're liable to get pandemics or famine, Mother Nature's version of a stock market correction. Another natural correction is global climate change -- a more accurate term than "global warming" -- and extreme weather. Climate's one place where we'd prefer stability to change, don't you think?
Now, there's something to be said for progress and change. I love my internet connection, my microwave, and my hybrid car. So perhaps I should be making a more careful distinction between progress (which may not necessarily require more resources; it could mean making better use of existing resources) and growth.
Let's Change How We Do Things -- Let's Challenge the "Growth" Culture, Too
I think it's time for change, but I also think it's time for efficient use of what we have. Let's stop thinking only in terms of progress and economic growth, and aim instead for stability and long-term sustainability.
