Fight Like An Animal

In this episode, you will find the only valid interpretation of the UFO phenomenon in the world. It involves: how psychological experiments conducted by humans on other species are structurally similar to what we call paranormal; how propaganda is best understood as the selective curation of truth to create false impressions; how some spooks got the guy from Blink-182 to hype the kids on secret military programs; how almost every definitive story about the nature of UFOs amplifies some accounts while excluding others; and how people have been leaving us written records of UFOs all over the world since antiquity, describing them in a wide variety of tones, from casual bewilderment to embarrassment to religious awe, always utilizing existing concepts like lamps and moons to describe what they were seeing.

In this episode, we examine a simplified scenario—that of a total social revolution without a single shot fired—to illustrate real dynamics at work in our complex world. Across human and other animal societies, power is often maintained not with outright aggression, but with threat display. Crucially, some kinds of threats are only functional when they remain implicit, or are communicated clandestinely. In other words, there are times when surrendering or fighting are both bad options, but it is still possible to communicate to an adversary that attacking will result in unacceptable losses. This lands us in the terrain of what is formalized as game theory, but experientially familiar from a wide range of scenarios, from calculations by soldiers about whether to obey orders to calculations by commanders about how far they can push soldiers: the world of theorizing about other people's theories about your theory of their likely intentions and behavior.

We introduce the new Fight Like An Animal-adjacent project Defending the World Tree: A Journal of Animist Awakening, from Severed Branches Press, and describe the ceremony we are trying to spread. Using our Jan. 18 Day of the Forest Defender event as an example, we discuss ways to transmute grief and trauma into collective agency. Then we complete our examination of the structure and nature of revival movements, and their fundamental role in shaping societies throughout human history. We examine case studies with widely variable outcomes—beneficial, neutral, and tragic—from Europe to Africa to North America, relying on the classic 1956 paper “Revitalization Movements” as a guide. From the catastrophic absurdity of the children's crusade of 1212 to the Shawnee Prophetstown movement whose legacy lives on today, we see how cultural revivals can mobilize great energy, but still require coherent political strategy. Finally, we end with some punk rock revival preaching.

All social change is ultimately biological change. We present a framework, called an alliance of phenotypes, for thinking concretely about societies in this way. It involves a ten-item trait inventory called RAMBO-BAMBI, which is intended to bring relevant variables out of the hazy periphery of consciousness and into explicit focus. In other words, it is a way of telling more complex stories about the world than we frequently do. We use two events, which occurred on successive nights, to illustrate the diversity of initiatives that emerge from this way of thinking. One event featured the Survival Ecology presentation from last episode; the other is best described as punk rock revival preaching. The Survival Ecology research will be used in communications appealing to one population's psychological needs for security and stability. The preaching was intended to bring out a different group of people's best, and wildest, selves. We use this as a minimal illustration of fluidly transitioning between modes of being, to best engage different political personalities in different ways.

What would a truly resource-minimum, viable human ecology—viable in the sense that we are fed, warm, and dry—look like? What proportion of the current system is useless economic activity, and what proportion is useless economic activity entangled with legitimate human need? Environmental policy documents don't answer these questions, but they do provide information that helps us to craft a vision. Utilizing Oregon's consumption-based greenhouse gas inventory—which looks at all energy use to meet in-state consumption, regardless of where that energy use occurs—we throw out some numbers. We estimate that less than 5% of current economy activity is essential. A very significant proportion of that is wrapped up in heating, cooling, and cooking. We then examine ways to meet these basic human needs. Having a concrete vision of this nature allows us to contemplate rapid shifts, whether out of a conscious choice to stop destroying the world or because the global economy ceases to function.