Integrated Activism

Interview with Alexis Zeigler

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1. What was your prime motivation in writing Integrated Activism?

I want to try to provide a broader vision for addressing the ecological and social problems of our time. If you look at the anthropological record, you can see a trajectory of how we have evolved into complex, hierarchical societies as a response to population growth and the over-stretch of past technologies, thus pushing us to develop new technologies and social systems. The social and technological changes that have allowed us to grow economically have at the same time blinded us to our own social evolution. I am an activist, and talking in broad terms is not generally an effective organizing tool. But when we simply lurch from one social movement to the next, responding to one crisis and then the next, our social movements fail to develop a long-term vision. Even the social sciences have in general failed to really examine the primary forces driving human cultural evolution because the answers are too often unflattering and politically uncomfortable.
I believe we are capable of a conscious cultural evolution, or conscious evolution if you will. I am not talking about an evolution of consciousness divorced from material reality, but rather an much deeper, and more honest, understanding of how material reality influences our consciousness. Tens of thousands of years ago we made a “Great Leap” from biological to cultural evolution. We are now the only animals in the world whose behavior is driven primarily by cultural factors. The problem is that we do not understand the evolution of our own culture, nor do we guide its future evolution with our conscious intent. We are capable of another Great Leap, from non-conscious cultural evolution to conscious evolution. And that is why I wrote Integrated Activism, to try, within the best of my abilities, to describe how we build the culture that can evolve consciously.

2. Could you share some examples why you think our Democracy has fallen?

Back when George Bush was elected, many liberals were suffering “outrage fatigue” as we were dragged into one war after another. Prisoners were (and are) being tortured at Guantanamo Bay and rendered overseas. Now under President Obama, it is becoming clear that the National Security Agency and it sister agencies have been spying on Americans as a matter of practice. Journalists and whistleblowers have been hounded with a vengeance. We are using drones to bomb — how many different countries? — its hard to keep track. We need to set aside the outrage for a moment and ask ourselves what is really going on here. The nutshell version is that the global economy grew like mad in the 1960s, but cracked in the 1970s because of ecological limits (spikes in commodity prices, particularly oil). Corporate profits and growth were re-established by destroying wage growth for most working people. Since then, the economy has continued to polarize, both nationally and globally, and commodity prices are lurching upwards. The global imperial system simply cannot provide for everyone, so class conflict is increasing. I bear no sympathy for Islamic extremism, nor American Imperialism, but one has to understand that these ideological facades are window dressing for the battle over who controls the supply of energy, food and money. The first democratic empires at the dawn of the industrial revolution established what we now call Eastern Europe as their resource supplier. It benefits empires for their resource supplying regions to be backward, disorganized and incapable of producing manufactured goods. If you look at the impacts of American foreign policy in the Middle East, it is clear we do not put democracy foremost in our aspirations for those nations in whose affairs we meddle. In short, democracy is failing because the current form of democracy we possess is oligarchic and growth-based, where those who are empowered by economic growth over time express their power in the political forum. Now that growth is constrained by the finite nature of our Earth, then so too democracy is constrained. The evil deeds of the spymasters are not real impetus behind the changes we see. As our industrial empire matures, then increased surveillance is a natural outgrowth of increased economic polarization. The same pattern played out in the late Roman Empire. Blaming will not fix this problem, nor will the foxes currently guarding the national security apparatus henhouse. We are faced with a big problem that demands a broader solution.

3. Would you tell us what the heck is actually going on in South Dakota?

South Dakota is part of the “second America” that has economically stagnated, particularly for women, as the coastal states have prospered. Looking at the long-term picture of the evolution of male supremacy in cross-cultural perspective, one can see some bizarre patterns that play out over and over again. The Christian right has been trying to restrict access to birth control, and has had some success in the second America. This seems a bit nuts in our time, until you look at the pattern of control over women’s sexuality that plays out in male supremacist cultures around the world. Stratified societies use women’s sexuality as a reward for increased productivity or aggression against competitors. To be a reward, women’s sexuality has to be controlled. That’s the analytical side. On the personal side, working class people in the United States as elsewhere value loyalty above all else. They get screwed over by rules and laws. Loyalty to family is of absolute importance. It’s the stuff that runs through your veins. In that context, the perceived permissiveness that comes with recreational sex is seen as threatening. Such personal sentiments are manipulated by cynical political forces. South Dakota ranks among the hardest states for women to earn a living. It is no coincidence that it also ranks among the states with the most aggressive campaigns to restrict abortion and birth control. It fits perfectly with the cross-cultural patterns of male supremacy. When women loose ground economically, then they are more restricted politically and culturally, and more dependent (thus desirous of clear social contracts with their husbands). While it is noble to seek short-term remediation, the bigger picture solution demands that we understand human cultural evolution and learn how to guide it consciously.

4. In your chapter Wars that were never meant to be won. You speak of the drug war. I live

in Florida and their Marijuana laws really frustrate me while the rest of the country gets to
smoke out. What is your perception on this?

The drug war is an outward manifestation of class struggle. Medically speaking, tobacco and alcohol are worse than marijuana. (I don’t use any of them, personally.) The modern drug war was initiated by Reagan in the early 1980s. That’s when prison populations began their relentless upward trend. It is no coincidence that Reagan’s re-invigoration of the drug war coincided with “retrenchment,” which is the economic word for gutting social programs and smashing unions, thus escalating class polarization. Our drug laws have always been driven by political pressures. The book reviews the history of the different anti-drug campaigns and how they grew out of various anti-immigrant and class struggles. If one assumes there should be any rational basis for law, then yes, drug laws are frustrating. But our drug laws were never intended to be rational. They always were, and remain, a means of repression against various potentially restive groups. The class structure of modern society is resilient, and its going to get a lot meaner as commodity prices continue upward. The drug war is part of a larger witch hunting process that serves to distract people from the ecological causes of their personal woes. Until and unless we can address that bigger picture, its only going to get more irrational. There may be some relenting of drug laws in some places as the baby boomers are getting older. Perhaps they want some relief from the pains of aging. Different states have different economic profiles, and different approaches to drugs. Florida is polarized economically and racially. It is no surprise that the witch hunt would be pursued with greater vigor there.

5. Why do large groups of people often do foolish things?

Large scale human cultures are blind to their own social evolution on purpose. Understanding cultural evolution would necessitate understanding the ecological influences over society and its politics, as well as understanding class divisions the impacts thereof. In a sense, being blind makes us more powerful. Our blindness grew out of a tradition of increasing consolidation of power. It has never been in the interest of the powerful for ordinary people to understand their own cultural evolution. We have developed some fairly sophisticated means of manipulating childhood development to create a selective blindness. In the short term, that has made us more economically and militarily powerful. But now that we are approaching the limits of growth on the planet Earth, we need to wise up. We need to learn how to guide or own cultural evolution. If we do not, we can expect our social evolution to get quite a bit more foolish.

6. What are some ways that we can actually get involved with some of these issues mentioned
in your book to have positive change?

There are a few things. Read Marvin Harris, Richard Wilkinson, and some of the other folks in the bibliography of Integrated Activism. Get involved in local activism. Any form of activism will begin to open doors to other opportunities. Local food is a big movement now. That could be the basis of a democratic renaissance, if we can prevent it from being overtaken by grassfed greenwash. Be aware that the entire social structure of industrialism is built not so much on the power of the one percent as on the petty privilege of the millions who support it through their daily actions. We are going to have to be willing to give up some measure of private privilege, and trade it for involvement in cooperative empowerment.

7. What would you like to share from the book with us, a wild card question if you will?

When I speak to people, the core of the message is that we need to learn to see the relationship between politics and ecology. Our ecological problems are easily solved, should we ever actually try to do so. Consuming the future makes us more politically and economically powerful as a nation in the short term. At an individual level, we have become so vested in our privatized economy that the simple solutions to the ecological crisis remain hidden before our very eyes. It is a lie that we can power the economy of private houses and private cars with renewable energy. Renewable energy is a natural fit with cooperative use. Taking local control over our economy is also necessary to regain political control over our polarized, and not coincidentally increasingly fascistic, government. We have to regain localized economic control, and we have to learn how to use that local power as the foundation for guiding our own cultural evolution.

8. Any links or future projects you’d like to discuss here or parting words? Thanks.

I am working on a project to build a zero fossil fuel farm and community called Living Energy Farm (livingenergyfarm.org). My personal website is at conev.org, which is short for Conscious Evolution. While the challenges we face may seem monumental, the solutions are readily at hand, if only we are willing to see them. We need to understand our own cultural evolution, and we need to put that understanding into action in how we are organized economically. There is no point talking about sustainability and justice when your food, your housing, your transportation, when every cell in your body is fed by energy supplied by transnational corporations. Working on Living Energy Farm has taught me how easy it is to live with little or no fossil fuel. That could be the basis of breaking our corporate dependency. It could be the basis for a second Great Leap, a world in which we consciously guide or own cultural evolution toward a sustainable future.

For many fine publications visit North Atlantic Books.