In recent days I have relistened to The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene by Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin and have just started to relisten to Ian Hodder's Where Are We Heading?: The Evolution of Humans and Things.
I really like these two books as they explain... or begin to explain... or try to explain a key difference between us and other animals. I think, despite the stress on similarities and continuity and difference in degree not kind, that it's vital to acknowledge that in one way at least we are different. Not better. Different.
Hodder's view is that humans became entangled with things - and that things have a habit of leading to more things. Once you have a lot of stuff, you need baskets to carry the stuff in or a place to store it. Once things get complicated, you need things to repair or replace other things. Things have unintended consequences - like domesticating animals increases diseases - so you need stuff to deal with the problems caused by stuff. There is a positive feedback loop.
For him, the 'thingyness' of things means that a thing is not a distinct object but part of an entanglement of processes, people and things. So my iPhone cannot be detached from mining for rare metals, the huge annual use of electricity (mostly coal powered) to keep the network of phones, data and internet going (it's equivalent to the energy use of Germany and Japan combined!), the low-wage labour, the history of exploitation and more.
Lewis and Maslin also see positive feedback loops. Once humans domesticated fire, they had access to more energy and could increase in numbers. Once they accessed the energy of domesticated plants, animals and other humans, some humans had leisure to gain knowledge, to be creative and work out ways to get more energy. Increased exploitation of land, other animals, other humans, machines, natural processes and so on enables more people to come up with more ideas. But to keep those people alive you need more energy which demands more knowledge which demands more people and so on.
In both cases the positive feedback loops led to phase changes in human societies - and, ultimately, to fucking up the world for everything else.
I like it that they have a reason. I mean, for me, neither explains entirely - I mean, bower birds and beavers have stuff but don't get entangled with them and ants use the energy created by fungi and aphids. But, even so, these ideas help me make better sense of things.
Stuff, energy and knowledge - what we are addicted to.
I'm currently an Audible member and discovered the Hodder book is available to listen to for free (if you're a member). So I listened and he has some interesting examples. He gave a detailed comparison between gas and electric cars -- and tried to see if there's an answer to which is more green.. So yes, stuff and entanglement. Yup.