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Posted on July 12, 2025 | 13 Comments
Happy news if you’re bored of me trailing my new book – I’m shortly going to hand over to a much valued long-term commenter here at Small Farm Future, Eric Farnsworth, so that he can trail his instead. But, lest you fear my powers of self-promotion are waning, let me also draw your attention in passing to this TBLI podcast I recently did with Robert Rubinstein.
Also, before we get to Eric’s book, I just want to thank commenters for the multiple discussions under my clown and two romances post. Apologies I didn’t have the time to respond much. Just to pick out a few threads that I’d have liked to engage with more, Philip made some good points about regulation in the food and forestry sector as a form of corporate capture. And about the way that, here in the UK, a Conservative government with an almost unsurpassable hostility and indifference to agrarian, rural and ecological matters has in fact been surpassed by the succeeding Labour government with an even greater hostility/indifference.
I won’t revert to old battles and name names, but I think it’s safe to say the idea floated by various prominent opinion-formers around election time that the arrival of the new Labour administration signalled better times for nature and environmental protection can safely be consigned to the bin. The fundamental problem, I’d suggest, is not the Conservative Government or the Labour Government. The problem is the Government.
That touches on another point in the comments. John writes that it’s “the “State” that ultimately grants ownership of land. Once “the law” is no longer enforceable, what’s stopping someone else deciding they want your plot?” A good deal of my forthcoming book Finding Lights in a Dark Age is devoted to exactly this question, so I won’t get into it right now. In brief, I’d say that John’s question points to the fact that societies need governance, but they don’t need The Government. Indeed, it’s often The Government – the “State” – that decides it wants your plot, your body, or your work.
On that note, apologies to Walter if I mischaracterised his position around grain states and unfree labourers or citizens. A topic that I hope to revisit soon.
Hell, why don’t we revisit it now? The Epic of Gilgamesh is probably the oldest surviving story about the state, freedom and civilisation. And it’s also the topic of Eric’s new book, which I’m looking forward to reading. So … over to Eric.
oOo
Chris has graciously offered me a guest spot on this blog to talk about a topic that has occupied a fair bit of my time recently – even to the point of producing a little book of historical fiction. I’ll try not to waste everyone’s time here, so it should be noted that I have no claim to actually know anything about this topic. I just read some things and filter them through my biases. Feel free to tell me how wrong I might be.
But one day I picked up the Epic of Gilgamesh. I recommend it.
When human written language began to take a particular standardized form, a little more than 5,000 years ago in Sumeria, most of the writing had to do with trade and accounting. Gilgamesh was one of the very first pieces of writing done for the purpose of telling a story. The Gilgamesh narrative can be credited as the (written) starting point for many of the stories we (especially in the West) tell ourselves even today, about society and the state and power and what it means to be human. And when I read the Gilgamesh epic it made me angry.
So if you haven’t read it, I believe Gilgamesh is really helpful to understand Western Civilization.
But — Spoiler Alert– Gilgamesh is a creep. A tyrant writ large. He dragoons the men of Uruk to do the labor of building the city walls and other public works (that Gilgamesh then takes credit for). He rapes the virgin brides of all the new husbands in the city. He doesn’t listen when the people of the city beg for relief. So the people of Uruk call out to the gods for relief, and the gods hear them.
The solution the gods come up with is to create a rival for Gilgamesh who will distract him from bothering the people of the city. They create Enkidu, the wild man. Enkidu is large and hairy and naked, running with the gazelle and eating grass. Does this sound familiar?
When the settled people on the fringes of Uruk finally see Enkidu, they are afraid, and send word to Gilgamesh, since he styles himself the protector of Uruk. Gilgamesh sends Shamhat the harlot out to the countryside to lay in wait for Enkidu and seduce him. This works, and after having sex for six days and seven nights, Enkidu goes back to his gazelle pals, but they don’t recognize him anymore.
So Enkidu hangs around with Shamhat for a while, until he hears about a wedding in Uruk where Gilgamesh is scheduled to rape the virgin bride. Enkidu is so angry about this that he runs down to Uruk and has a colossal fight with Gilgamesh which neither of them really wins. But afterward Gilgamesh and Enkidu are best friends and wander off to have adventures together.
Tellingly, their first big adventure is going to the sacred cedar forest, killing the forest’s guardian monster, and cutting down the mother tree.
Okay, fine, nice epic. But I can’t see it happening that way in real life.
There is some reason to believe that Uruk might have actually had a king named Gilgamesh somewhere around 2800 BCE. There were also nomadic tribes living outside the settled agricultural areas.
And the Gilgamesh epic as we have received it from the ancient cuneiform tablets is excellent propaganda supporting the idea that cities are better than nomadism and we must have kings ruling us. But my question is: What is a more realistic story about how the conflict played out between the city states in Mesopotamia and the older nomadic culture of the surrounding area?
We know who won that conflict, mostly. The cities took the best land, and nomadic subsistence living got much more difficult. Except that periodically a nomadic leader would sweep out of the steppes and set himself up as king of one of the cities or empires. And so, after many iterations of this, here we are today.
So I wrote a little story trying to see the events of the Epic of Gilgamesh from Enkidu’s point of view, unassisted by supernatural gods and monsters. I have to say that at no time did I feel particularly competent at this task. I just made some guesses and tried to have it all make some kind of internal sense.
But I do think the underlying issues are important, and if telling stories about them can help us understand how to deal with this crazy human urge to be tyrants, then I think fiction can be useful. Or maybe even beyond that, telling stories that draw attention to the fact that we don’t need to live the way we are living right now.
And I would certainly be interested to hear any ideas about what could have caused Enkidu to act the way he did.
I called my book O! Enkidu!
And I really don’t care if anyone buys it, but I’d like people to read it. I’d be especially happy if all my friends asked their local public library to buy a copy.
There is a publisher page:
https://sulbooks.com/bookstore/p/o-enkidu-eric-farnsworth-print
And a Goodreads page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/236805993-o-enkidu
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At the end of the epic, a snake devours the magic plant that Gilgamesh counted on to become young again.. He cries out:
For whom have I labored? For whom have I journeyed?
For whom have I suffered?
I have gained absolutely nothing for myself,
I have only profited the snake, the ground lion!
Then he looks up and sees his city. His life is now okay. Many modern people feel the same way returning to New York or Paris or many other cities. Everything has returned to its proper order in the universe.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a very clever way to establish the city-state as the basis of all good things. Further, it establishes state-level society as a good thing. This is a lie, of course, but the fact that it is so skillfully done makes it great art.
Thanks Walter.
I hadn’t thought to connect the urge to urbanism with a fear of death.
Though there is something childish about fear of death. The epic has Utnapishtim mock Gilgamesh about his quest to live forever.
And certainly the accumulation of great wealth is a play for immortality. But the cities only work as a wealth engine for the very few at the top. Ordinary Urukians have to just shut up and get back to work. And the great wealth only amplifies the fear. A vicious loop.
Is it possible that fear of death is a symptom of leaving our place in the cycle of life on the land?
Eric –
“Is it possible that fear of death is a symptom of leaving our place in the cycle of life on the land?” Astute comment. Since I grew up on a farm, I early on saw that death had its proper place in the cycle of life. Logically, in a small farm future, children would grow up with this and it would be a non-issue.
Fast-forward to the 21st century and the Gilgameshes of Silicon Valley, who are also terrified of death and spend some of their billions on trying to outwit it, in both personal and impersonal ways. (This is described very well by Adam Becker in his excellent 2025 book ‘More Everything Forever’.)
Like the tyrannical and cruel ancients, their attempts at eternal domination are based on crazy myths (cyrogenic preservation, Mars colonisation, life-extending potions, etc.) which are peddled as reality.
How sad that this hideous pattern has been repeating itself for thousands of years. Also that non-human species (ground lions!) as well as humans are now bearing the horrible costs of it.
Fear of death as a legacy of modern secularism seems to me at the heart of our destructive modern progress ideologies, which ironically are only likely to hasten its eventuality. I’ve written a bit about this in the past, but it seems curiously underappreciated. So thanks to Eric and Walter for tracing it back to its roots, and to Christine for highlighting its bizarre contemporary manifestations.
It sounds like a great book, the title ‘O! Enkidu!’ Reminds me of ‘Up Pompei!’ , the camp humour of the British sensibility. I wonder how the nomads fit into the early empire building- the desire to keep moving on and taking more land, is that the part where they buddy up for adventures?
I read an obscure history book about this part of the world, which was an insight into the seasonal, animistic gods that centred around the wrath of a particular god which was what we now know as the gas and oil fields. It would fell whole armies with the lethal gas emanation, and some would naturally combust, creating ‘pillars of fire’.
Thanks Joel,
That’s an interesting question – who settles, and who keeps moving, and why.
My understanding is that just about all of the oldest human groups moved from place to place within a range. This mostly because of available resources.
But in very rich areas, and once their tool kit allowed it, some groups settled down. This allowed for much socializing and elaboration of culture, and usually ended with the rich resources eventually being used up and people going back to a mobile life.
With agriculture in the tool kit, the time before resource exhaustion becomes much longer, and in several places, our forebears discovered that tyranny could be done in such a way as to be somewhat stable. Stable as a system, if not preserving the rule of any one particular tyrant.
But this is an interesting phenomena you mention: ‘the desire to keep moving’. Funny how the settled cities have the foundation of farmers who stay on the land, but their rulers adhere to something like the older, mobile sensibility – but usually involving horses and war.
Such that the tyrants take the old subsistence ways and turn them to the project of conquest. A weird mixture of conservativism/traditionalism and innovation…
Pondering demise is a age old cononderum , few have come down the ages and are recognised today , Gilgamesh is one , Socrates and the Greek thinkers / poets are a few more ,perhaps Archimedes and his screw is the only piece of technology from the ancients .
Musk and his technology along with others trying to condense themselves into algorithms will be forgotten as Stephenson and Brunell are , their legacy will disappear as energy retreats into oblivion .
Those that made life livable are unknown , those that bred the plants that we live on , planted, watched, culled the failures , increased the useful and taught other unknowns to do the same , and had children to hand their legacy on too .
The great names of today are just a soap bubble in time , children are your legacy and immortality !
Yes, it’s funny, isn’t it?
We have so many old stories about the futility of trying to leave a mark and be famous.
But it seems that there is always a set of powerful people who take those stories to mean that they need to try harder, rather than giving up.
And in giving up on personal fame, putting their efforts toward making their immediate surroundings a little nicer for the people who live there right now.
Interesting comment over on Substack about this: “while it’s plausible to see the epic as propaganda for the State, it’s also a cautionary tale about limits. Gilgamesh at the beginning is a Bad King; he needs to meet his match in Enkidu. Together they cut down the great cedars, but they go too far when they kill the Bull of Heaven. Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh has to wander the desert in the skin of a lion—a nice metaphor for empty royalty—to learn that he, too, is mortal. So perhaps propaganda but also a lesson from religion about distinctions.”
https://chrissmaje.substack.com/p/o-enkidu
Yes, that’s a good point.
I see the Bull of Heaven as a token for the power of the priesthood, and clue to the power struggle between the priests and kings. Interestingly, the scribes who set the story onto those clay tablets occupied a place somewhere between the kings and priests. So that power struggle mattered to them.
But the voices of the people who lived outside the system of cities were not heard.
Interesting too, that it was the Wild Man who had to die for killing the Bull of Heaven, even though he really didn’t have a stake in that fight.
” . . . occupied a place between kings and priests . . . .”
Reminds me of the godthi (priest chieftains) in early Iceland during the Viking Age. They “monetized” the intersection between the two. No small feat in a hard land, where the dispute over a beached whale could start a feud that lasted for years and resulted in hundreds of deaths. Perhaps the writers of the Epic of Gilgamesh were in the same position. Manipulating history for power and treasure.
“Interesting too, that it was the Wild Man who had to die for killing the Bull of Heaven, even though he really didn’t have a stake in that fight.”
Of course the “wild man” had to die, just as the wild man in all of us has to die in order to become domesticated. [The rationale is unimportant, in my view. It is just a convenient plot device.] One of my archaeology professors used to lament, “Whatever happened to the old wild humans in the Paleolithic?” Then he would go into a discussion of the Megafuana Extinction thesis of Paul S. Martin. He then made the connection that we had to become domesticated because we killed off the megafauna. [Donald Grayson and other contemporary scholars disputed this.] I see it as a state-level phenomena.
In the 1960s, Jerry Rubin was lambasted for saying, “We have to kill our parents.” He did not mean literally of course [lots of hyperbole back then], but instead meant that we had to kill the parent template inside of us. This is another name for the domestication template, which we are saddled with from the moment of birth – in a class-based, state-level society at least. One of the MANY reasons the “straights” – to use the old meaning before it was co-opted by the gay/lesbian community – STILL hate us is that us “dirty hippie commie pinkos” released the “wild man/woman within.”
So thanks for the useful heuristic Eric! In fact, adopting the Enkidu paradigm would be a useful paradigm for adaptation.