Lambert Strether: Dang, another book to read: Kropotkin.
By Elizabeth Svoboda, a science writer in San Jose, California, and the author of What Makes a Hero?: The Surprising Science of Selflessness.” Originally published at Undark.
In the opening scene of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,” a flock of birds descends on a tree heavy-laden with fruit. Though the birds devour the waxy purple berries with fervor, there are more than enough to go around — not just for the robins and cedar waxwings, but for Kimmerer and her human companions. “There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way,” Kimmerer writes. “And yet here they are.”
Kimmerer’s book, the long-awaited follow-up to her best-selling 2013 essay collection “Braiding Sweetgrass,” is a novella-length meditation on the abundance that sharing and mutual exchange can create. A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, which is native to the Great Lakes region, Kimmerer grounds her worldview in traditions that resist attempts to quantify or hoard what the Earth produces.
Unlike Westerners who prize individual ownership and accumulation, many Indigenous peoples live in “a culture of gratitude” that recognize natural bounty as belonging to all, discourage mindless consumption, and embrace giving’s multiplicative effects. “A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance natural well-being,” she writes. “The economic unit is ‘we’ rather than ‘I’, as all flourishing is mutual.”
Though these ideas wend their way through “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Kimmerer’s latest book examines them more rigorously. She brings a botanist’s eye to descriptions of natural thriving that evoke collaboration’s rewards. The berries she and the birds enjoyed, she notes, could never have ripened without a host of willing contributors — the cedar waxwing that dropped the serviceberry seed so it could germinate, the microbes that fertilized the soil. She traces repeated cycles of flourishing: After single-celled algae take up molecules of phosphorus, zooplankton eat the algae and excrete the phosphorus back into the ocean, where a new generation of algae can feast on it.
“The Serviceberry” continues a long tradition of naturalistic writing about interdependence in the wild. Among the first to cover this ground, over 100 years ago, was Russian naturalist and revolutionary Peter Kropotkin, who observed how animals on the steppe protected each other and collaborated to secure food — and whose work rebuked the idea that nature mostly consisted of winners and losers. “Sociability,” Kropotkin wrote, “is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.”
Like Kropotkin, Kimmerer draws on cooperative successes in nature to mount a vigorous case against human greed and opportunism. “The Serviceberry” broadly indicts economic and political systems that run on the idea that a win for one person must mean a loss for someone else. “There is a tragedy in believing the proffered narrative of our system,” she writes, “which turns us against each other in a zero-sum game.” She compares unchecked accumulators to the mythical Potawatomi villain Windigo, who eats and eats yet is never satisfied.
There’s a distinctly American fear — propped up by “welfare queen” stereotypes — that offering resources up to a communal pool invites freeloaders to drain that pool, a mindset crystallized in ecologist Garrett Hardin’s famed 1968 paper “The Tragedy of the Commons.” In this particular “mathematics of worthiness,” those who could benefit most from community aid are marked as least trustworthy and deserving.
But Kimmerer deftly turns this calculus on its head. Evolutionary scientists like David Sloan Wilson, she notes, are finding that cooperative human and animal societies actually do better across time and generations than those whose members distrust others and look out for number one. “When the focus shifts to the level of a group,” she writes, “cooperation is a better model, not only for surviving but for thriving.”
While “The Serviceberry” convincingly links hoarding to long-term decline, the book’s most resonant passages celebrate the joy to be found in connection and reciprocity, as well as the ongoing ways they multiply. Kimmerer profiles her neighbor Paulie Drexler, who invites community members to come pick her serviceberries for free — mostly because it lifts her spirits to do so. “In the berry patch, all I hear are happy voices,” Drexler says. “It feels good to give that little bit of delight.”
Yet the reciprocal effects of offering that delight, as Kimmerer shows, accrue to both Drexler and the wider community. Grateful berry-pickers may return to Drexler’s farm for sunflowers, blueberries, and pumpkins, and buoyed by their immersion in the joyful harvest, they might even end up voting for farmland-preservation measures on the next ballot. Kimmerer’s narrative complements years of research showing that people who share what they have — time, love, or resources — are happier and more fulfilled than their stingier counterparts.
Though readers are bound to wonder how thriving local gift economies can drive broader shifts away from zero-sum thinking, that isn’t really the province of this book. Kimmerer notes that gift economies do best in small-scale communities, village atmospheres where everyone knows each other on sight. What holds people back from spoiling the commons is a sense of obligation to those around them, and on larger scales, this communal obligation often disappears.
Kimmerer envisions gift exchanges, mutual aid networks, and all the rest as “yes-and” solutions that will play out against a capitalistic backdrop, not direct systemic rebukes. “I don’t think it’s pie in the sky,” she writes, “to imagine that we can create incentives to nurture a gift economy that runs right alongside the market economy.”
Yet Kimmerer is a bit vague about what would compel us to launch these smaller-scale giving ventures. She artfully describes the rewards reciprocal systems produce once we set them in motion, but she’s less clear about what might motivate more of us to do so. What would make a critical mass of Americans, marinating in a rugged individualist culture, want to become their neighbors’ keepers? How dramatically would our current system have to cave in — whether through climate disaster, civil unrest, or autocracy — before a more communal ethos could take hold?
The promise and peril of the world Kimmerer envisions is that it requires a leap of faith, a kind of hurling yourself into the universe and trusting that others will be there to catch you. In our dogged focus on punishing freeloaders, and on seizing whatever can be stockpiled, we’ve collectively detached from that trust.
“The Serviceberry” is an impassioned call not just to return to the natural webs of exchange that are our birthright‚ but to recapture the fulfillment that stems from interdependence. “To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people,” she writes, “we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants.” Whether we emulate their example is up to all of us.
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Ah, that book should arrive tomorrow. Looking forward to reading; thank you for the review
I recently read Braiding Sweetgrass which is certainly well written but not necessarily persuasive re the Edenic nature of the Native American lifestyle. Time was Tahiti was described as a natural paradise but when you find out more you learn that the Polynesians fiercely warred with each other. It seems competition really is part of our nature and therefore part of Nature.
Still our rational side says that we must cooperate with ourselves and nature in order to survive and this urge waxes and wanes as more self centered urges exhaust themselves. Here’s hoping our rational side is about to make one of its periodic comebacks.
The Native American groups in fact also engaged in constant conflict with each other. Some groups adopted polygamy because the loss of men was so serious. Another related custom was kidnapping a man from another group, to substitute for a lost family member. (Or, if unlucky, the kidnapped man might be tortured to death over a few days in a community event – either adoption or torture execution seemed to provide consolation to the grieving family members). Again, edenic portrayals may leave out problems.
Women were also taken in raids to increase genetic diversity.
Did Kimmerer claim that the Native Nations practiced an Edenic nature lifestyle? Or does she merely note that various Native Nations practiced an eco-viable mutual co-operation approach within their own Nations?
Is the accusation of “Edenic nature hyper-valorization” merely a diversion to draw attention away from the obvious fact of Native eco-maintainance and even eco-upgrading in some cases, as with the up-terraforming of parts of Amazonia?
Since Industrial Man has been raised with an ethic of individual winning through zero-sum hoarding, with obvious eco-destruction results, it may be that Industrial Civilization humans will have to employ genuine rationality in order to up-value cooperation among selves and with nature.
The point is that both competition and co-operation exist simultaneously. That was Kropotkin’s revision to Darwinism, and especially his debunking of Spencer’s Social Darwinism, which he despised.
And competition in terms is actually “best adaptation” where environmental niches will be occupied by the best adapted, and not necessarily the most belligerent predators.
Top carnivores have very specific niches. If their food sources change, and they cannot adapt their behaviours, they die, but not because they are insufficiently aggressive.
“Red in tooth and claw” was Tennyson’s take, but intended as an exaggeration for literary effect, and is not a scientific description of the ecosphere. It predated Darwin too.
There might well be competition between individuals within species, say for a food supply, but co-operation within social groups for resources, so to secure that food supply in the first place.
If there is pressure on food supplies, or limited availability of females for breeding, say for rutting herbivores, rather than incels, then competition will exist. However, it is within strict limits, and is usually specific.
It is not a never ending search or lust, though curiously some predators do kill for the sake of it.
That blood lust has certainly been a part of some human societies, as much as it is for a mink in a hen house.
It is difficult to see the industrial slaughter of millions of men in World War One, for the sake of a few metres of ground, in a dispute between three first cousins, and exploding millions of artillery shells bombarding frontal positions even in a few hours, as anything but killing for the sake of it.
Nor has man adapted his behaviour positively as a result of this earth shattering event.
It’s as if we have learnt nothing.
Then there may be social hierarchies within species groupings, but the actual ecosphere is non-hierarchical. (as Bookchin highlighted)
A food web might involve the excreta of grazing animals then sustaining soil fertility and feeding and renewing the grazed plants. The dung beetles that aid that process are integral to the system, but are not ‘inferior’ in having a low hierarchical position in the food web.
All the elements interact, and integrate.
Clearly, there are limits in all eco-systems at any particular time.
They are not infinite in capacity but may still be self sustaining because the system renews itself, just as the dung beetles feed the soil.
If only corporate capitalists understood the dung beetle better.
If the elements in the ecosystem are out of balance or exposed to disruptive external events, then we’ll get such processes as desertification, soil erosion, and even system collapse.
Just as the Aral Sea has dried up in two generations.
A series of external events like floods, droughts or extreme wildfires will all affect the capacity of the system to support the fauna and flora that normally interact within the system’s limits.
This applies equally to man altered agricultural ecosystems.
And this is why rapid climate change is so dangerous.
Life on earth can simply not adapt so rapidly to new situations, and widely varying circumstances, and the balance is not only disturbed but the survivability of species (including man) and habitats may be threatened or entirely destroyed.
That is the very high risk course upon which we are currently set.
The problem that humans have is that we are primed to engage in behaviors like “lethal raiding” which also goes in hand with the fact that high-ranking human males like to keep “harems” of females and prevent access to them by other males. Both of theses behaviors are present in many species of great apes, especially in the chimpanzee, our closest relative. Wars over resources and territory seem to be outgrowths of these same behaviors that drive our ape ancestors.
The problem is I do not think that all of the intentions of peace and goodwill of a few individuals are enough to override our tendencies towards constructing social hierarchies enforced by violence and territoriality. As the former takes monumental effort on the part of each individual, and while we may succeed in overcoming our basic drives occasionally, it is also human nature to take the path of least-resistance and you cannot expect people to act consciously all of the time.
It is not that humanity is in some sort of state of “fallen grace” but we are just evolved apes with a few extra bells and whistles and all of the evolutionary behavioral baggage that goes along with it for better or for worse. Nature isn’t “nice” so what is “natural” isn’t necessarily good or better as many animals evolved behaviors or reproductive strategies that are very destructive or self-defeating on the scale of large populations.
My neighbor alerted me to Kemerer’s new book (she loves “Braiding Sweetgrass”) last week. She has a mature serviceberry bush in her yard; I planted a row of ten tiny serviceberry bushes as a hedgerow along the boundary of a field four years ago.
The descriptions of serviceberry, also known as shadbush or juneberry, mention that birds love the berries, but deer will leave them alone. Not sure what planet those people live on, but our Chautauqua County deer will browse them down to a nub if not robustly fenced.
Our neighborhood is a nascent ‘gift-economy’ and I had not realized just how much we had evolved until spending a week with my daughter in suburban New Jersey. We had a surplus of granddaughter’s pumpkin spice cookies, yet had to fork out almost $7.00 for a dozen ‘free-range organic’ eggs at the local Whole Paycheck. In Chautauqua County, a dozen fresh eggs would be available, exchanged for cookies and a mason jar of rich turkey broth.
Arigato in, arigato out? Dharma? The Wheel?
I believe that serviceberries are the same as the saskatoon?
Key ingredient in pemmican, the dried-meat-and-fruit native american ‘jerky’ of yore? Really have a delightful almond aroma and taste, fresh frozen and then re-deployed in Oatmeal or other hot morning gruels.
My dear, departed bird dog, wirehair/ brittany cross, The Devil With The Beard, Diablita con Barba, adored them and would stall out in copses on our walks.
The answer seems so obvious to me, it will be driven by necessity. When you have nothing, you give more. When you have more, you give less. When you have nothing you’re not driven by pride and entitlement. And this thinking is aligned with so many world religions, too.
Spot on. When we moved to our small holding 30+ years ago, we would amble on horseback around our canyon’s dirt roads and trails, stopping often to companionably chat with any neighbors we met.
Then came the McMansions, 12 foot high hedges, paving, monstrous greed and abject fear. These days, the few times we’ve gone out, we’ve been greeted by security cameras. The last of the WWII era residents have passed on and with them any sense of a commons.
The coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, bears, owls, hawks, road runners, acorn woodpeckers, rabbits, snakes, et al have simply adapted and remain. The ~600 year old oaks are imperturbable. Wendell Berry was right.
Ray Charles once said that poverty brings people together, while wealth divides them. One of the first things wealthy people tend to do is build a wall around their place.
Not having read Kemerer’s book but planning to after reading this post, I am reminded to two discoveries over the years. The first was a young woman with a baby at a Starbucks in a Target store who insisted on buying my double espresso. Since then paying for someone’s lunch at a grocery or at a McDonalds can turn an ordinary day into a special day. The other discovery years ago was the life and work of Elinor Ostrom, economist and the Nobel laureate in Economics in 2009 (different than the other awards). She was the first woman to win this prize and her life work was about preserving the commons. She (1933-2012) and her students went about actually doing life-size experiments demonstrated the value and community benefits of the commons. Having taught at Indiana University for decades there is a bronze statue of her on campus commemorating her achievements.
When I was thirteen (in 1953), I lived for a year on a small farm in Alberta to help do the milking, the feeding of pigs and cows and looking after the chickens by feeding them and putting them safely in the hen house at night to protect them from coyotes. During my year there, I certainly noticed the community activities that were attended by families from miles around. There was a rodeo held in a public space in the summer; there were Sunday Services attended by neighbours for miles around and there was wild berry picking. No one was rich but everyone helped others to build barns or houses, to hay the fields or bring in or plant the crops. Neighbors had to help others because otherwise the work wouldn’t get done on time, i.e, before the snow and cold of winter came.
I imagine if I went back to that farm I would probably not see the communal nature of the work being done there for many reasons one of which is that oil was discovered in that farming community long after I left that place.
Being well off, or being rich changes the nature of people.
It was once common for people to sing together, whether at church or at home, singing was a powerful way to bring people together. Now we have Karaoke.
What would make a critical mass of Americans, marinating in a rugged individualist culture, want to become their neighbors’ keepers
Answer: a pandemic, …… just kidding.
Jesus failed in his mission, so don’t expect too much out of Americans.
A similar treatise, and one which quotes liberally from “Braiding Sweetgrass”, is “One Disease, One Cure”. The exuberant iconoclasm of the author, Whip Randolph, reminds me of the atmosphere in the 60’s and early 70’s. There are more and more such authors finding their voices on the internet, outside of the MSM. Maybe they were always speaking, thinking, but simply didn’t have the audience til now. Building the new society is not for the faint of heart. Announcing that the emperor is naked is never popular – until it is.