A review of What is Sustainable by Richard Adrian Reese

Richard Reese is trying to cut away your hope. But don’t worry: he’s only after your false hope. Your true hope, your animal sense of the real possibilities before us, cannot be taken away, even by a surgeon as powerful as Reese. And the nice thing about having one’s false hopes excised, I’ve found, after the pain of loss has subsided, is that the real hope gets more clear, and a new sense of freedom and sanity can arise that more than makes up for the loss. My primary felt experience while reading Reese’s book was that of relief.

It is important that the younger generations understand that these times of sickness are not normal, and do not resemble our ancient path… For almost all of human history, successful cultures were the norm.

If you have to have surgery, it’s nice to find a good surgeon. One with a kind manner and gentle touch. One who seems able to connect with you on a human level. One who understands not just the mechanics of cutting and sewing, but the mysteries of trauma and pain and fear and healing. Richard Reese is such a person. He’s funny, smart, wise, confident, simple, clear, honest, and willing to risk challenging you in the service of truth and healing. Like the eponymous teacher gorilla in Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, Richard Reese is a powerful presence in his book, an emissary from some other time or place or culture, perhaps, or a wizard living in a hut on the village’s edge. He doesn’t feel like your average acculturated civilized human being. He feels more animal, more grounded, more real. He has mastered the ability to see through the cultural surfaces and right to the roots. And because of that, his skill with the scalpel is sure and swift, and the pain is minimal.

Collapse is already in its early stages, and nothing can stop it… We can’t wish away reality. The avalanche has started, and it will do what it wants to and stop when it’s done. So, pay attention, be flexible, and think clearly… We must accept the cards we were dealt, and play them to the best of our ability.

If we can imagine a genuinely healthy destination, and move in that direction, we’ll waste less time wandering aimlessly, or desperately clinging to sinking ships… Maybe the first step is ripping off our blinders and taking a cold, hard look at our poisonous way of life.

And Reese has more than five minutes to give you in his office. He’ll tell you about his own journey out of the dominant mainstream culture and his years in the relative wilds of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula living more gently on the Earth. He’ll tell you about his ancestors and their journeys through the vast cultural and planetary changes of the past few centuries. He’ll regale you with stories of the people he’s met and the gifts they’ve given him, and he’ll include the tree people, the rock people, the animal people, and the Good People, in his stories. He’ll tell you what he’s learned about our collective predicament on Earth, about how we got here, about what may have happened to set us on our path to seeming catastrophe. And he’ll invite you, at every point, to consider your own life. He knows that surgery is only a part of healing. He knows that love and connection and sharing and listening are essential as well.

When times change and a culture no longer works, people have a tendency to cling to their old culture even harder…. We are furiously using the magic of our failed culture (science and technology) in an attempt to continue growing forever on a finite planet.

But, as the fossil fuel era fades, we can be certain that the unfolding collapse is going to radically alter our worldview… The alternation process is going to be bottom-up, and happening everywhere. All changes will be born and nurtured in the hearts of ordinary individual people.

Reese is a specialist. His expertise lies in cutting away the diseased beliefs and unbalanced assumptions of those born and raised in the culture of civilization, the history of which he describes as “essentially a story about controlling and exploiting large herds of submissive humans.” Following ecologist John Livingston, Reese sees humanity as an unstable, “overspecialized” species, whose reliance on acquired, accumulated knowledge can be both a blessing and a curse. In civilization’s case, humans made “a radical shift from the past” with the adoption of domestication of plants and animals:

The birth of domestication led to a great rift in human history. On one side of this rift was Fairyland, where all of the wild ones lived together in a relatively balanced and elegant manner. On the other side was slave country – civilization – where domesticated plants and animals were controlled and exploited by humans who fancied themselves to be masters and owners.

Farming, herding, fishing, logging, metallurgy, energy, ballistic weapons; Reese examines these basic “mining” and “slaveholding” behaviors of civilized peoples and traces how they served as the engine for both population growth and environmental destruction. He examines a wide array of food-growing methods and finds only a few that have the potential to be sustainable, and none that can be sustained in any system that insists on growth. And he challenges us to consider that much of what we now think of as sustainable really isn’t, and that even “old-fashioned low-tech organic agriculture was ecologically devastating”:

The civilizations of the ancient world were typically destroyed by a combination of intensive logging, over-grazing, organic farming, and perpetual growth. Their organic farming practices would likely fall within the sphere of what is today wishfully referred to as sustainable agriculture – organic manure fertilizers, no machines, no herbicides, no pesticides, no gene-spliced seeds.

It is important to comprehend the notion that, wherever it was attempted, wood-fired industrial civilization promptly created massive environmental destruction – it was absolutely, completely, and ridiculously unsustainable. European ecosystems were already devastated by 1800, when the industrial revolution officially began. Thus, when we contemplate creating a healthy and sustainable way of life, far more is needed than simply turning back the clock 200 years.

He suggests that we might learn to live without farming altogether:

Here’s the bottom line – horticulture, agriculture, aquaculture, and animal enslavement are completely unnecessary if the number of mouths is kept low. If we achieve this, then it’s possible to free ourselves by hunting, fishing, and foraging – a way of life that is much gentler on the ecosystem, much less work, and much healthier. Farming is spiritually dangerous, because it involves manipulating, confining, and dominating other humans and other species – an unwholesome relationship… It is important to remember that agriculture did not exist for most of human history.

He does not shy away from the issue of population:

What is a sustainable population? It depends… There were two billion people in 1925, and it was anything but a sustainable utopia. The experts know this. But if they gave us realistic numbers, they would immediately be sent to a lunatic asylum, and their professional careers would be over. This brings to mind an old Yugoslav proverb: “Speak the truth. Then run.”

The downsizing will be automatic, and impossible for us to prevent… With fewer people, and fewer machines, the destruction of the planet will be reduced.

And he does not shy away from our chances:

Realistically, cleansing our consumer worldview of dysfunctional beliefs, in a planned, orderly, and efficient manner – radically altering the thinking of billions of human minds, instilling a profound sense of reverence and respect for the Earth, eliminating materialism and self-centeredness – is an absolutely ridiculous idea.

But like all good healers, Richard Reese is not content with simply cutting away diseased tissue. He has poetry and possibility with which to sew you back up, and healing balms of connection and story to soothe the pain. He sits at your bedside with grand stories to tell, stories that go right to the heart:

“The good news here,” he says in a soft, sure voice, “is that we are not dim-witted and helpless prisoners of our history… In theory, we have the power to break free from the trends of our history. Overspecialization in learning and thinking provides us with an unusual wild card. Our mighty brains give us the ability to foresee problems, to analyze our mistakes, to alter our patterns of thinking and behavior. In theory, we aren’t doomed to continue repeating our mistakes. Self-destruction is not our only option. Will we play our wild card? I remain a dreamer and romantic, despite the huge odds. I see no harm in trying. We have nothing to lose.”

“The legends of the fairies,” he says with a tone of awe, “remind us of our old ancestral heritage, when people were wild, free, and happy. … But the newcomers – the farmers, loggers, and miners – drove the Good People away…. We could imagine that the Earth Crisis is the fairies’ revenge. They have summoned all of their magic, and have cast a spell that laid a powerful curse on us. A thousand disasters are circling over our heads. Our silly clever tricks no longer work. We’ll pay a dear price for the injuries we’ve caused Fairyland. It is right and fair that justice will be done. Hopefully we’ll learn and remember and heal. I think we will. A sustainable future with humans in it is not impossible.”

“At core, we long for freedom,” he continues, “a life without clocks or jobs, cars or cities, master or slaves – a life of love, hope, and celebration. And the rivers dream of freedom, the day when the last dam falls apart. And the forests dream of freedom, the day when the cutting stops. Everything everywhere wants to be free, and freedom day is coming. The cruel old master is sick and feeble, and his days are growing short. In the other world, the spirits of our wild ancestors are filled with joy. The Earth shall be free once more, and forever.”

“Our cages are not locked,” he whispers.

Look at Reese’s picture on his website, the kindly, gnomish face. Notice that there is no question mark at the end of his title. We are hearing the true heart and soul of someone who has found his own freedom apart from the “spectacularly destructive” culture in which he was born, one who can speak for the oaks and the coyotes and the bees because he can speak with them, one who brings us messages from the ancestors in his dreams. The surgeon’s mask falls away. He’s a Pequot elder in the woods, beckoning to us to leave our tidy village and join him. He’s one of the Fairy folk, tempting us with music to join his strange adventures. He’s a great bear, stopping to look over his shoulder as he heads back into the woods, heading toward a life we ache to know. We might do well to follow him. And we might do well to consider his words:

Here’s the bottom line: it’s too late for a smooth, intelligent, carefully planned, and painless transition to a sustainable future. But it’s never too late to wake up and get real. It’s never too late to learn and grow. It’s never too late to behave more intelligently. It’s never too late to nurture a sense of reverence and respect for the living Earth, and the generations yet-to-be-born of every species.

The ancestors talk to me in my dreams. It saddens them to see how we suffer in the modern world. Their message is simply this: Come home! We miss you! Let the land heal!

Indeed.