subaks
Rice padis, Bali. Each terraced field is a facet of a jewel, reflecting the importance of spiritual balance.
The traditional water distribution and agricultural expressions of Balinese rice farmers is my favorite example of articulture. Back in my greenmuseum•org days, I attended a talk as part of the Long Now SALT lecture series. The presentation blew me away with its modeled analysis of how this complex rice farming (and so much more) system functioned. It also gave me an introduction to how Balinese culture made the engineering and policy all work together, managing conflict and equity, and ensuring effective practices and wisdom were spread from generation to generation. These were grand, island-scale agricultural earthworks with art and ceremony and beauty woven into every step of a joyous, colorful, nourishing process. Here is a shorter version of the same basic talk:
Either video (the first SALT link or the large image above) is well worth watching. In them, anthropologist Stephen Lansing explores “the hidden structure and profound health of the traditional Balinese rice growing practices. The intensely productive terraced rice paddies of Bali are a thousand years old. So are the democratic subaks (irrigation cooperatives) that manage them, and so is the water temple system that links the subaks in a nested hierarchy.” In short, the whole thing is a magnificently calibrated articultural system that combines agricultural efficiency, water distribution policy, cooperative decision-making, gorgeous landscaping, architecture, colorful ceremonies and pageantry, food and festivals, plus spirituality and likely a thousand other intermeshed elements all working towards the health and wellbeing of the land, water and human communities. In the Balinese language and understanding, ‘rice paddies’ (the word "paddy" is derived from the Malay word padi, meaning "rice plant"), equals ‘jewel’ equals ‘mind.’
In this fine paper by Hao Huang, the author explores this cultural element more deeply. In it is a quote from Per Olsson, who does transdisciplinary research on resilience and sustainability science, and remarks that the Balinese cultural system is perfectly adapted to local ecosystem conditions: “We often talk of a socialecological systems perspective and the need to reconnect to the biosphere, to realize our dependence on nature. This connection is visible in the way the Subak system operates. Farmers have developed a management system, embedded in ritual, in which their needs are met in the best possible way and in tune with the ecosystems they depend on.”
The emergence of all this is also fascinating. This paper explores how a self-organizing complex adaptive system (CAS) could combine with “cultural multilevel selection (CMLS)”. This latter is a promising theoretical framework derived from research on cultural evolution and cultural group selection, that is now being applied to environmental challenges. “With this paper, we use evidence from the literature and hypothetical scenarios to show how the framework can be used to understand the emergence and persistence of sustainable social–ecological systems.” (This is the closest theoretical framework related to articulture I’ve found.)
I ache to live in a world with even a fraction of this exquisitely functional fractal elegance in my daily life. As I surely hope you are aware, this systemic bio-cultural diversity is, and has been, disappearing rapidly around the world (languages, species loss). The few intact shreds remaining in the world are under constant siege by corporations, short-sighted policy makers, colonial greed, ignorance, marketing and desperation. Fortunately the rice fields of Bali were declared a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site (thanks in part to the research of Dr. Lansing and his colleagues). Unfortunately, it is all very much still under threat, including the health of downstream fisheries and coral reefs increasingly impacted by the application of new chemical fertilizers and “modern” farming methods.
The focus, here, is to attempt to look at the Subaks and rice planting in Bali as an art-system, so layered and complex, and developed over millennia, that it surely reflects articultural principles and processes, grown and evolving organically. In the image below, offerings to the subaks and water gods are carried on the heads of village women and you can see a group of musicians following behind. On the surface, I can see what appear to be synthetic fibers, dyes and materials and I imagine their practices have changed since the times of their great grandparents. Culture evolves, yet the basics are still practiced in many areas. I’ve never been to Bali and what little I know about this is through talks and links online. Just as researchers were able to show how planting systems self-organized for efficiency, I expect the articultural support and metaphors of this matrix, through CMLS, emerged over millennia in a similar fashion. Cultural practices that didn’t contribute to survival and the capacity of Balinese to thrive within their ecological limits, were likely discontinued over time. I wouldn’t know how to map or prove any of this, of course as it’s quite complex. At most, I can hope to identify some of the elements involved.
My hope is that we can begin to wrap our heads around how art-systems and their deliberate application over time through articulture can help us navigate the challenges ahead. My hope is that enough intact examples internationally can be preserved and offer some insights into how they function, which are the keystone elements of an art-system, for example, how might they layer effectively over time?
I often think of accumulated wealth and foundation aid as a type of fertilizer - woe to the algal blooms and fisheries downstream! How might conventionally wealthy people seeking to support the conditions for articulture contribute to this (or to similar practices in other areas) without making things worse? It would be interesting to see how traditional wealth could be spread, slowed and sunk into the equivalents of subaks. Those fine temples take resources to build and maintain; parades and rituals must have patrons - even if anonymous and widely distributed. These festivals (like the Pacific Northwestern potlatch) offer opportunities for the meaningful redistribution of wealth and healing of the systems which contribute to abundance and inequality. So much to explore…
Some last thoughts: It seems having a profound spiritual anchor and commitment helps. The complexity of religion (or spiritual practice) and the deep sense of time, service, reciprocity and mindfulness it can engender are likely an important beam upon which to scaffold such vast land shaping, water diverting, people inspiring and community transforming effort. In this, we can see the influence of paradigm on the system. If the rice padis equal “jewel” equal “mind”, it is clear that a balanced alignment of “mind” is central to this long-lived system. Of course, the rituals, ceremonies, architecture, deliciousness and profound lived experiences of generations over millennia, in turn, support and help polish these state of mind in a virtuous cycle.
Systems theorist Donella Meadows lists paradigms and the ability to transcend them at the top of her list of ways to intervene in a system: ”It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.”
We are faced with the destructive global and personal impacts of our current paradigm. We know subaks and other ways of living within the means of our ecosystems have worked before and are working still in some places today. According to the CMLS framework: “group-beneficial behaviors will be favored when selection pressures between groups are stronger than selection pressures among individuals.” What will it take to begin to apply this wisdom to our own lives and circumstances wherever we are? Can we build enough group cultural cohesion in time for selection pressures in favor of these methods to kick in? Most of these systems were worked out over hundreds or thousands of years. We don’t have or perhaps need that luxury if we can test them consciously. Perhaps we can learn to shift paradigms and create healthy, delicious support patterns through articultural principles and sculpt the context for how we show up in the world with mindfulness, practices of reciprocity and patience. Perhaps.
With deep gratitude for the wise and hard working generations of people in Bali who dreamed, built and maintained this system.
