Archdruid Watch: Imaginary Countries
by Jason GodeskyWe missed last week’s article, “Imaginary Countries,” but that’s all right, because this week’s installment of Adam’s morbid fantasy covers much the same ground: the prospect of shifting political boundaries, and the fact that the United States won’t last forever. It’s a relief that for once, Greer has taken some time off from trashing primitivists, but it’s unfortunate that we can’t offer a little more depth to his analysis. Greer’s points are fine enough, but they’re shallow. He largely misses the much bigger and more important underlying phenomenon at work here: bioregionalism.
The closest thing you’ll find to it is the suggestion, kept alive by the memory of our nation’s only civil war so far, and trotted out now and again for shock value, that the United States might someday split up into two or more still recognizably American nations. The possibility that the current borders of the United States might be the high water mark of an American continental empire, one whose tide is already turning from flow to ebb, remains all but unnoticed. The possibility that a century from now the United States might be a much smaller nation with no bigger role in international affairs than, say, Italy, is practically unthinkable. History shows that this sort of change happens all the time, but it seems very hard for Americans to apply a historical perspective of this kind to their own national community.
Greer’s article makes it seem like North America is amorphous, and that there are no variables that go into drawing political boundaries besides human populations and cultures, floating free-form without any reference to ecology, geography or geology. He presents the breakup of the United States as if the new lines could be drawn in any direction, that there are no underlying fault lines drawn by any factors older than humans themselves.
It’s ironic that, had Greer simply pressed the question of the United States’ previous civil war, he might have approached an answer, because looming behind the American Civil War even more prominently than slavery was a bioregional tension between Dixie and the Longhouse. New England (what we’ve been calling “Atlantica”) was already part of the United States, and other bioregions—the Breadbasket, the Empty Quarter, and even parts of Mexamerica—were coming into the country, but their admission was seen primarily through the lens of a Dixie-Longhouse standoff. The most productive, prominent states of the Union were the Longhouse states; of the Confederacy, the Dixie states. They provided the most men, the most goods, as well as the political and military leadership. The Civil War was when Dixie and the Longhouse finally had it out; everyone else was just along for the ride.
Today, the situation is more complex. The old Dixie-Longhouse vendetta is alive and well, but there are seven other bioregional “nations” in North America now. The fault lines of the United States aren’t random; they’re drawn by watersheds and mountain ranges that create ecologies, that create economies, that create social norms, expectations and beliefs. In short, Greer’s analysis is shallow because it only recognizes that the United States will break apart with less energy. It doesn’t recognize that there are distinct ecological fault-lines where that breakdown will take place. Just like before, he failed to understand the bioregional shape of immigration. The United States will not break up randomly: it will break up along bioregional lines. To some extent, it already is.
Of course, the traditons and regalia of American patriotism will likely color those bioregional nations for some time to come. When the barbarians invaded the Roman Empire, what they wanted most was to be Roman. Even long after the empire had passed, they justified their rule by appealing to Roman tradition and Roman titles. The Mexica, too, appealed to memories of Toltec glory. Expect titles like “President” and “Senator” in the feral world to carry much the same magical tone as “princess” does for us now, even if their political meanings are completely stripped away. The superficial elements of culture are generally the last to fade, and appeals to “American-ness” will persist long after the United States is gone.
John Michael Greer’s “Archdruid Report” comes out every Wednesday, and one of his favorite topics is the failing of primitivism, or “apocalyptic narrative,” as he prefers to pigeon-hole it. Unfortunately, Greer also thinks that actual primitivists stopping by in the comments to defend their “apocalyptic narrative” side-tracks the disucssion of how looney and wrong their narrative is. Primitivists who try to answer Greer’s attacks are eventually censored and banned. Enter “Archdruid Watch,” a weekly response to Greer’s weekly attack, on a forum that encourages discussion and dissenting views, rather than squelches them from the bully pulpit. If you think we’re wrong, by all means say so. It’s not as though we’ll delete what you have to say just because you make a good point—and that’s not something all blogs involved here can say.
- Last Week: “Völkerwanderung“
- Next Week: “Culture Death“
Oh, I meant to mention in the article that in the story, at least, Greer mentions the “Cascade Republic Army,” and describes the Cascadian flag. Whether that’s an indication that he does recognize the importance of bioregionalism (on some level), or just a coincidence, I don’t know.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 July 2007 @ 3:25 PM
He read Ecotopia when it first came out. I think he’s into the idea of the PNW breaking off…
Comment by Al Billings — 13 July 2007 @ 8:26 PM
Trashing primitivists - sounds like a rock band.
Comment by Ben Ten — 15 July 2007 @ 9:21 PM
thanks for sticking it to Greer on a regular basis…
But isnt he basically right when he says that: “North America is amorphous, and that there are no variables that go into drawing political boundaries besides human populations and cultures, floating free-form without any reference to ecology, geography or geology.”
Isnt that what civilized cultures aspire to? An existence and pattern of habitation that transcends (rejects) all these things? This statement accurately describes where north america is on a conscious level. If youre trying to predict how people will react during the dissolution of the U.S. you have to take this into account. If youre trying to predict how things will eventually play themselves out irrespective of human will, maybe only then the bio-geographical boundaries come into play.
It may also be worth noting the role that remaining infrastructure will play in regional relations. Coastal vs. Inland supply lines, the promise of oil coming down the pipeline from the gulf coast to say… north carolina (where people waited a for a week after katrina halted flow into the state). Promises, belief, and a desire to deny whats right in front of us will have a powerful effect.
People arent necessarily loyal anymore to the place they live either (especially as placelessness follows scattered careerists) and familial ties now span continents.
Youve said before that most people would rather starve than eat outside what their culture defines as “food”. Im pretty sure the ideas and notions that Americans have about themselves will play a critical role in their fall, and the bioregional stage on which it happens will be an unconscious secondary player.
also, chattel slavery in the american south was more than just a product of the bioregion. there were internal conflicts (even between groups of townspeople), and the bioregions you describe themselves were not homogenous. there were major fights about the shape and the spread of human enslavement across the continent before the civil war that transcended geography. hell… an ocean couldnt stem the imposition of european ambition on the native people’s of north america.
i would like to see things “break down” along ecological lines, either consciously or unconsciously, but i dont think there can be any garauntee.
Comment by Chuck P — 17 July 2007 @ 4:52 AM
Not even a little bit. Bioregional boundaries assert themselves no matter how much we try to roll over them.
What people think consciously and what civilization aspires to are very different things than what civilization can do or actually does, and what’s real. These things are irrelevant. Bioregional boundaries assert themselves no matter what we try to assert over them. They can try to form their own, new boundaries, but what’s real will always push them back to bioregional breakdowns.
Look at what you’re pointing to: coastal vs. inland, for instance. Those are bioregional designations. What people want or try to deny doesn’t have much effect on what actually happens; it only changes what people recognize going on around them.
That’s true–and irrelevant. It takes enormous amounts of energy to ignore bioregional boundaries. Look at the Mexican border for a prime example. Bioregionalism doesn’t assert itself because people love their land or are even aware of their bioregional boundaries; it asserts itself because your bioregion is a functional unit, and every resource in it tends to unite you, while the boundaries are real boundaries that take significant energy to overcome.
The only way you can ever ignore bioregional lines is wth overwhelming energy. We’re talking about energy decline, and that means that the energy it takes to ignore bioregional boundaries will disappear.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 July 2007 @ 9:41 AM
it just sounds a little deterministic thats all. i understand your position fully, i just dont think we can underestimate the ability of people to defy “rational” (place-based/bioregional) behavior.
ghengis khan had the steppes, china, the middle east, russia and eastern europe under his (and his sons) belt and they did it with illiterate, outnumbered armies, horses, swords, bows and arrows. the imperial networks of south america crossed bioregions and cities were maintained even in some of the most inhospitable places. their weapons and tools and trade networks were stone-age.
for a people who are used to leaping bioregions in a single bound, thousands of times a day, whose cultural conception of themselves and “primary loyalties” are dispersed, the physical reality of the bioregion will feel like confinement and they will go to any length (against sanity) to maintain their perceptions about themselves and their world.
in the long long run bioregions define human societies, but in the time frame that we are dealing with, the delusions of the last few thousand years (and then the last few hundred, and on top of that the post wwii hyper-vacation) will shape the break up of north america in human terms. i think the difference is just a matter of time and scale.
for the purposes of my life im not all that concerned with being able to accurately predict history on a machine that wont exist by the time that history emerges. what i DO know is that something prompted hunter gatherers in asia to get in boats and cross an ocean to populate the americas 30+ thousand years ago… the ultimate bioregional boundary crossed by an act of will. was it crazy? did it make sense at the time? in the long run, their ideas and notions WERE relevant because they defied an ocean with a very low level of energy.
given that we’re entering a period of mixed bag- energy/state/cultural/geographical- realities, its easy to want to point to ONE thing and call it the deciding factor.
Comment by Chuck P — 17 July 2007 @ 2:34 PM
But it takes more than irrationality to defy bioregional boundaries: it takes energy. A lot of it.
Genghis Khan had a lot of energy, but on his death, his empire fell apart–back into bioregional lines. The European empires broke down when they shifted from coal to petroleum, and bioregional boundaries reasserted themselves.
Bioregionalism is rarely something consciously pursued: rather, it’s something that asserts itself in every corner of your culture, largely without notice.
The age of defying bioregional realities was the age of cheap energy. It was cheap energy that made that possible. That’s precisely what’s ending. As it does end, the future will become increasingly bioregional, not from conscious pursuit, but from mundane reality.
I don’t think that’s a good way of characterizing it at all. People move around, and that ultimately leads to dispersion, and over time, migration. That doesn’t defy bioregionalism at all. Their cultures changed as their bioregions did, and they never set out to conquer some new bioregion; they slowly expanded, over time, adapting and entering new bioregions along the way, just like any other species.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 July 2007 @ 2:51 PM
“Bioregionalism is rarely something consciously pursued: rather, it’s something that asserts itself in every corner of your culture, largely without notice.”
Then you should take the “ism” off of the “bioregional” because what you are referring to is actually called Geography.
The idea that geography plays a role in human history is not new or exciting or controversial, its a given.
Bioregionalism ala kirkpatrick sale is a conscious pursuit of living within one’s bio-geographical boundaries. Something -an ‘ism’- much different than the processes you are describing.
Comment by Chuck P — 17 July 2007 @ 3:10 PM
Well, it’s more than just geography; it’s also ecology and biology. A bioregion is partially geography, but it goes beyond that, as well; hence, “bio.” It’s community of living things that humans are part of, whether we recognize that or not.
Bioregionalists encourage people to embrace these boundaries. But the trends I’ve been charting in the bioregionalism series aren’t being driven by bioregionalists; they’re proof of what bioregionalists have been saying, examples of how a bioregion asserts itself regardless of your own ambitions.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 July 2007 @ 3:16 PM