The biological growth imperative and the radical unsustainability of civilisation as we know it
Posted: 25 Sep 2023, 10:14
A fundamental property of living things is a natural tendency to grow and expand – to increase in size, reproduce, to occupy more space and consume more resources. This process is competitive, and a fundamental part of evolution and ecology. Its flipside is death – the only way it is possible for new organisms and new species to flourish is for other organisms – the old, the weak and those which fail in the grand competition of life – to die. I will call this tendency “the biological growth imperative”.
Much more rarely in the history of life, something else happens – co-operation of individual organisms to make a (relative) super-organism.
The first time this happened was when the individual micro-organisms that were the ancestors of cell organelles first got together to produce a eukaryotic cell (a cell with a nucleus). In order to do this each of the organelles had to give up its individual adherence to the growth imperative – they had to stop growing or reproducing, unless instructed to do so by genetic processes in the nucleus (ie when the whole cell was ready to divide).
It happened again when multicellular organisms first appeared. Multi-cellular organisms are effectively a colony of single cells, each with exactly the same set of DNA instructions, even though there are a great many different types of cell with a wide variety of purposes. That this ever managed to happen at all is an example of the mind-boggling power of evolution by natural selection. Again, the biggest obstacle to creating a multi-cellular organism was the biological drive to grow. The fact that these cells manage to stop dividing is an extraordinary feat of biological engineering: every single cell in a complex multi-celled organism is descended from an unbroken series of cells stretching right back to the first single celled organisms, every one of which divided, and yet somehow it “knows” that it must specialise and then stop dividing. The complexity of this process of halting the biological growth imperative is revealed by the plethora of ways it can malfunction, whenever the cell “forgets” its instruction to stop dividing and cell division starts again. Each of the different ways this can happen is a different type of cancer.
The next major layer of complexity occurred in insects, initially in termites about 150 mya, but it has happened in the hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) at least eight times since then. This took co-operative evolution to the next step. Each cell in an insect is a collaboration of bacteria-like sub-organisms. Each insect is a collaboration of genetically identical but morphologically different cells. A colony of eusocial insects is a collaboration of individual insects that functions as a “super-organism”. In order to achieve this, the eusocial insects had to change their genetics so that each individual insect which labours away in the interests of the colony is labouring on behalf of its own genes, even though the workers don't get to reproduce. Only the queen and the drones (males who serve no other purpose than to compete to pass on their genes) do that. So again we have an example of an additional layer of biological co-operation, which was only made possible by the individual units that comprise the super-organism giving up their biological growth imperative.
Something similar happened in some social mammals, such as wolves. Wolf packs are led by a dominant pair, and they are the only ones who reproduce. All the other members of the pack then help to raise their young. The system would not work if all the other individuals followed the biological growth imperative, so they must not have any right to reproduce.
Now compare to humans. Civilisation is another example of individual organisms getting together to make what is effectively a super-organism. At first these super-organisms were temple/city states, the they were empires, and now they are sovereign states. But there's something wrong. In this case we have NOT found a way to control the biological growth imperative. We haven't done so at the level of global mega-civilisation - the history of human civilisation is the history of war between different groups over territory and access to resources. It is happening right now in Ukraine. But we haven't done so at the level of internal socio-economic organisation either. In the temple/city state model, individual humans were encouraged to reproduce in order to provide military manpower – the growth imperative was either satisfied by territorial expansion at the expense of neighbouring groups, or offset by death in warfare, famine and disease. In the feudal system that replaced it something similar applied – feudal estates had to supply soldiers, and if that didn't keep the population under control then localised famine did (there was no global trade, and feudal estates were supposed to be self-sufficient).
And in the modern world of science and capitalism, we have completely failed to control the growth imperative. Instead, we've created an economic system which celebrates and encourages it. Nobody is allowed to question the desirability of growth, whether it is in terms of population or GDP. Each individual human is encouraged to consume more, even though many of the poorest don't have enough. Control of human numbers is taboo – even among “progressive” people, it is denounced as “eco-fascism”. And while we are willing to call for a reduction in the consumption levels of the super-rich, it is assumed by everybody that our goal is for all humans – at current population levels or higher – have a right to enough resources to enable them to reproduce at will.
It seems to me that our most fundamental problem is a profound psychological, political and cultural unwillingness to admit the reality of this situation, which is that in order to actually make civilisation work – to make it ecologically sustainable and therefore a viable long-term “super-organism” – we are going to have to find a way to control the biological growth imperative. The problem is that there is no way to do this which does not conflict with what we consider to be individual human rights. We either have to restrict people's right to reproduce, or we have to restrict their right to expand their personal territory (ie buy land) and consume resources. At the moment neither of these options is considered politically acceptable and that applies not just in the West but to pretty much the whole world.
Much more rarely in the history of life, something else happens – co-operation of individual organisms to make a (relative) super-organism.
The first time this happened was when the individual micro-organisms that were the ancestors of cell organelles first got together to produce a eukaryotic cell (a cell with a nucleus). In order to do this each of the organelles had to give up its individual adherence to the growth imperative – they had to stop growing or reproducing, unless instructed to do so by genetic processes in the nucleus (ie when the whole cell was ready to divide).
It happened again when multicellular organisms first appeared. Multi-cellular organisms are effectively a colony of single cells, each with exactly the same set of DNA instructions, even though there are a great many different types of cell with a wide variety of purposes. That this ever managed to happen at all is an example of the mind-boggling power of evolution by natural selection. Again, the biggest obstacle to creating a multi-cellular organism was the biological drive to grow. The fact that these cells manage to stop dividing is an extraordinary feat of biological engineering: every single cell in a complex multi-celled organism is descended from an unbroken series of cells stretching right back to the first single celled organisms, every one of which divided, and yet somehow it “knows” that it must specialise and then stop dividing. The complexity of this process of halting the biological growth imperative is revealed by the plethora of ways it can malfunction, whenever the cell “forgets” its instruction to stop dividing and cell division starts again. Each of the different ways this can happen is a different type of cancer.
The next major layer of complexity occurred in insects, initially in termites about 150 mya, but it has happened in the hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) at least eight times since then. This took co-operative evolution to the next step. Each cell in an insect is a collaboration of bacteria-like sub-organisms. Each insect is a collaboration of genetically identical but morphologically different cells. A colony of eusocial insects is a collaboration of individual insects that functions as a “super-organism”. In order to achieve this, the eusocial insects had to change their genetics so that each individual insect which labours away in the interests of the colony is labouring on behalf of its own genes, even though the workers don't get to reproduce. Only the queen and the drones (males who serve no other purpose than to compete to pass on their genes) do that. So again we have an example of an additional layer of biological co-operation, which was only made possible by the individual units that comprise the super-organism giving up their biological growth imperative.
Something similar happened in some social mammals, such as wolves. Wolf packs are led by a dominant pair, and they are the only ones who reproduce. All the other members of the pack then help to raise their young. The system would not work if all the other individuals followed the biological growth imperative, so they must not have any right to reproduce.
Now compare to humans. Civilisation is another example of individual organisms getting together to make what is effectively a super-organism. At first these super-organisms were temple/city states, the they were empires, and now they are sovereign states. But there's something wrong. In this case we have NOT found a way to control the biological growth imperative. We haven't done so at the level of global mega-civilisation - the history of human civilisation is the history of war between different groups over territory and access to resources. It is happening right now in Ukraine. But we haven't done so at the level of internal socio-economic organisation either. In the temple/city state model, individual humans were encouraged to reproduce in order to provide military manpower – the growth imperative was either satisfied by territorial expansion at the expense of neighbouring groups, or offset by death in warfare, famine and disease. In the feudal system that replaced it something similar applied – feudal estates had to supply soldiers, and if that didn't keep the population under control then localised famine did (there was no global trade, and feudal estates were supposed to be self-sufficient).
And in the modern world of science and capitalism, we have completely failed to control the growth imperative. Instead, we've created an economic system which celebrates and encourages it. Nobody is allowed to question the desirability of growth, whether it is in terms of population or GDP. Each individual human is encouraged to consume more, even though many of the poorest don't have enough. Control of human numbers is taboo – even among “progressive” people, it is denounced as “eco-fascism”. And while we are willing to call for a reduction in the consumption levels of the super-rich, it is assumed by everybody that our goal is for all humans – at current population levels or higher – have a right to enough resources to enable them to reproduce at will.
It seems to me that our most fundamental problem is a profound psychological, political and cultural unwillingness to admit the reality of this situation, which is that in order to actually make civilisation work – to make it ecologically sustainable and therefore a viable long-term “super-organism” – we are going to have to find a way to control the biological growth imperative. The problem is that there is no way to do this which does not conflict with what we consider to be individual human rights. We either have to restrict people's right to reproduce, or we have to restrict their right to expand their personal territory (ie buy land) and consume resources. At the moment neither of these options is considered politically acceptable and that applies not just in the West but to pretty much the whole world.
I asked them to define "conventional oil" when they claimed it was something terribly special. Even offered them links to information sources to point them out to me...if they could. 
