Rogerkb [at] theworldisfinite [dot] com

Samuel Butler on Adaptation to the Environment

Recently in reading Samuel Butler’s book God the Known and God the Unknown I came across some interesting passages concerning adaptation to a changing environment which I think are relevant to our current global situation. I reproduce the passages below from the Project Gutenberg e-text of Butler’s book:

MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverse ratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question is felt to touch the hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it is considered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist, to frown it down, to tell it to hold its tongue, to maintain that it has long been finally settled, so that there is now no question concerning it.

It is not difficult, indeed, to show that, instead of having reason to complain of the desire for the postponement of important questions, as though the world were composed mainly of knaves or fools, such fixity as animal and vegetable forms possess is due to this very instinct.

Whether the organism or the surroundings began changing first is a matter of such small moment that the two may be left to fight it out between themselves; but, whichever view is taken, the fact will remain that whenever the relations between the organism and its surroundings have been changed, the organism must either succeed in putting the surroundings into harmony with itself, or itself into harmony with the surroundings; or must be made so uncomfortable as to be unable to remember itself as subjected to any such difficulties, and there fore to die through inability to recognise [sic] its own identity further.

Under these circumstances, organism must act in one or other of these two ways: it must either change slowly and continuously with the surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting the smallest change with a corresponding modification so far as is found convenient; or it must put off change as long as possible, and then make larger and more sweeping changes.

They will deal promptly with things which they can get at easily, and which lie more upon the surface; those, however, which are more troublesome to reach, and lie deeper, will be handled upon more cataclysmic principles, being allowed longer periods of repose followed by short periods of greater activity.

So with politics, the smaller the matter the prompter, as a general rule, the settlement; on the other hand, the more sweeping the change that is felt to be necessary, the longer it will be deferred.

The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by more cataclysmic methods are obvious. For, in the first place, all composite things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, so that some parts shall depend upon and be grouped round others, as in the articulation of a skeleton and the arrangement of muscles, nerves, tendons, etc., which are attached to it. To meddle with the skeleton is like taking up the street, or the flooring of one's house; it so upsets our arrangements that we put it off till whatever else is found wanted, or whatever else seems likely to be wanted for a long time hence, can be done at the same time.

Thirdly, it is more easy and safer to make such alterations as experience has proved to be necessary than to forecast what is going to be wanted. Reformers are like paymasters, of whom there are only two bad kinds, those who pay too soon, and those who do not pay at all.

I believe that before too many years have passed we will be faced with the need for what Butler calls a cataclysmic change. The very skeleton and body plan of society is going to have to be altered in a dramatic way. However, as Butler points out the need for this change cannot be discussed in an intelligent way with the majority of people. Private finance capitalism is accepted as the necessary and eternal form of economic organization even by the majority of those people who believe that we are facing severe ecological and resource crises. To many people the suggestion that some other form of economic organization than private finance capitalism is possible and desirable is akin to suggesting to reptiles during the Triassic that they ought to consider turning themselves into mammals; The idea is simply outside the range of what can be imagined.

The reformers who want to retain private finance capitalism by making it ecologically friendly via pollution taxes, green technology subsidies, etc. are like Butler’s bad paymasters who pay too soon, while people like me who try to imagine fundamentally new social institutions are probably like the bad pay masters who do not pay at all. Nevertheless I do not apologize for my efforts to imagine a future for the human race beyond the current mad pursuit of wealth concentration. The final disaster is not yet upon us, but its outlines are appearing more clearly every day. It is impossible for me to be aware of the imminence of such huge changes without dedicating a certain amount of intellectual energy to thinking about how they ought to met with and adapted to.

December 14, 2007