OK Doomer: "Doomer Optimism" Podcast appearance

Some show notes

It was great to spend an evening discussing the end of the world with friends on the Doomer Optimism podcast. You can find the conversation in audio and in video. My only regret is that I didn’t use a better mic! Many thanks to Going Godward and Jason for giving me the slot.

If you’re new to the Substack, thanks for checking it out. You can find a lot of my work here or on my website (www.willcaverly.com). Importantly, my wife Sarah and I have a podcast called The Original Transplants that covers several years of our homestead trials and successes. Sarah is the brains behind the permaculture project here on our homestead.

During the Doomer Optimism podcast we talked about a few thinkers and books so I thought I’d provide some links.

My book project on urban renewal in mid-20th century Philadelphia is forthcoming, but if you want to read an engaging piece on the area I’m researching, see this recent article from Grid Magazine about the Eastwick neighborhood and its challenges: Bernard Brown, “Eastwick Residents work with the EPA to remediate the toxic legacy of a former landfill,” April 3, 2023.

I mentioned a story in Harper’s Magazine called “Labor Pains” by Allegra Hyde, thanks to friend of the substack Diane Skorina for sharing it. It’s a fun one.

David Graeber’s opus magnum, Debt: the First 5,000 Years, is an excellent history and anthropology of debt, and really changed my perception on money, trade, and political economy (see here: https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290). I also did a kind of eulogy to Graeber on The Tinderbox Podcast, which you can find here:

Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah is the introduction to his planned history of the world. It was translated by Franz Rosenthal and someone had the gall to upload the entire book here. I’ve pulled a few of the sections and pasted them below pertaining to his views on urbanism, decay, and cyclical history. You can also find my masters thesis on medieval Morocco buried on this Substack.

When Khaldun talks about the Middle Eastern Bedouins, he’s using them as a sort of exemplar of nomadic purity, a group that has perfected a “group feeling” (‘asabiyah). As mentioned on the podcast, Khaldun believed “group feeling” was the stuff that societies were made of, and vibe checks of group feeling were the thing of overthrown empires. His histories touch on the Sanhaja Berber confederation, often called the Almoravid, and their enhanced group feeling that overthrew the incumbent Arab empire in Morocco. They were a product of their Saharan desert environment, practicing a strict, unyielding version of Islam obsessed with purity, and thus had immense group feeling. They were later overthrown after “going soft” and losing their group feeling: the Sanhaja were wiped out by the Almohad movement of the Masmuda Berber confederation, with this group of religious zealots coming out of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The Almohads had the same thing happen to them by the next group, and so goes history.

• We have mentioned that the Bedouins restrict themselves to the (bare) necessities in their conditions (of life) and are unable to go beyond them, while sedentary people concern themselves with conveniences and luxuries in their conditions and customs. The (bare) necessities are no doubt prior to the conveniences and luxuries. (Bare) necessities, in a way, are basic, and luxuries secondary and an outgrowth (of the necessities). Bedouins, thus, are the basis of, and prior to, cities and sedentary people. Man seeks first the (bare) necessities. Only after he has obtained the (bare) necessities, does he get to comforts and luxuries. The toughness of desert life precedes the softness of sedentary life. Therefore, urbanization is found to be the goal of the Bedouin. He aspires to (that goal) Through his own efforts, he achieves what he proposes to achieve in this respect. When he has obtained enough to be ready for the conditions and customs of luxury, he enters upon a life of ease and submits himself to the yoke of the city. This is the case with all Bedouin tribes. Sedentary people, on the other hand, have no desire for desert conditions, unless they are motivated by some urgent necessity or they cannot keep up with their fellow city dwellers. (164)

• Sedentary people are much concerned with all kinds of pleasures. They are accustomed to luxury and success in worldly occupations and to indulgence in worldly desires. Therefore, their souls are colored with all kinds of blameworthy and evil qualities. The more of them they possess, the more remote do the ways and means of goodness become to them. (165)

• 6. The reliance of sedentary people upon laws destroys their fortitude and power of resistance. Not everyone is master of his own affairs. Chiefs and leaders who are masters of the affairs of men are few in comparison with the rest. As a rule, man must by necessity be dominated by someone else. If the domination is kind and just and the people under it are not oppressed by its laws and restrictions, they are guided by the courage or cowardice that they possess in themselves. They are satisfied with the absence of any restraining power. Self-reliance eventually becomes a quality natural to them. They would not know anything else. If, however, the domination with its laws is one of brute force and intimidation, it breaks their fortitude and deprives them of their power of resistance as a result of the inertness that develops in the souls of the oppressed, as we shall explain…. When laws are (enforced) by means of punishment, they completely destroy fortitude, because. the use of punishment against someone who cannot defend himself generates in that person a feeling of humiliation that, no doubt, must break his fortitude. (168)

• The same happened to the Sinhajah in the Maghrib. Their group feeling was destroyed in the fifth [eleventh] century, or before that. Dynastic (power), but of decreasing importance, was maintained by them in al-Mahdiyah, in Bougie, in alQal'ah, and in the other frontier cities of Ifriqiyah. Frequently, some rival aspirant to royal authority would attack these frontier cities and entrench himself in them. Yet, they retained government and royal authority until God permitted their dynasty to be wiped out. Then the Almohads came, fortified by the strong group feeling. (206)

Thanks for reading and listening, as usual!