IT TAKES A VILLAGE

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve evolved at all as a civilization. There’s more than enough evidence to suggest otherwise. We seem to conveniently conflate words and meanings, like growth with development and intelligence with technology. The result is always the same. Wherever it is, with whomever it involves, it seems that when society begins at the roots and develops, it invariably ends up corrupt, one-sided, oppressive, and self-destructive. I have yet to learn about a “well-developed” society or civilization on earth that has not become its own worst enemy and executioner.

Ultimately then “progress” becomes a process of “undoing” and returning to what once was. Then we fail in every way imaginable because we try doing it through the filters and lenses which brought us here in the first place. We refuse to give up what we’ve worked so hard to achieve, and that becomes our biggest nemesis. The same dilemma plays itself out in microcosm with each individual – the adult attempting to “recover” his childhood innocence. It’s the old “ontogeny-phylogeny” parallel.

If you want to visit a place which lives by its principles, which practices egalitarianism and justice, you have to go somewhere that isn’t “educated” and technologically advanced. And even then it has to be a village or group that hasn’t yet grown into a city-state. It practically has to be hidden in some forest somewhere , as yet undiscovered, stone-age, and above all very small and primitive.

Just look at the typical history of a village devolving into a modern-day city and nation. It’s not just a process of losing a (spiritual) innocence, it’s also a matter of giving birth to “liberalism” as a counterpart to that (explained below). It’s what happens when politics gets too big for too many people. Liberalism historically is what always symbolizes a silenced majority (wrongfully called a minority), a weaker faction, the side that always gets cheated and betrayed. It’s the eternal realm of martyrdom. Liberals are always behind the curve, always needing to catch up to the other side which always triumphs as controller of the status quo. Just look at today’s Democrats and you’re looking at “the people” as they were five hundred years ago – fighting fruitlessly against wealth and unbridled power which at the end of the day gets away with virtually everything.

So, what does that say about civilization and progress? In another microcosmic way I suppose it’s just another reflection of the “hero’s journey” in classical mythology. One is born innocent but also naive and without consciousness. He must separate from himself in order to return to himself (spiritually) – this time with knowledge and understanding. If we apply that principle to western civilization it becomes obvious that “as a village” we have a long row to hoe. The US is in fact living the “hero” metaphor like no other: Culturally and politically we reside in late childhood-early adolescence (relative to Europe) and hope to survive into late maturity. We hope to rediscover a lost innocence and almost magical simplicity that accompanies wisdom.

Europe and Asia are older than America, and in their minds America is a spoiled impudent child with lots of (dangerous) toys in his yard. The national image of an old man named “Uncle Sam” is a hypocritical lie. It’s why they do more than just envy us. They frequently hate us because they’re forced to fear us. They’d like nothing more than to turn this impudent child over their knee and whack him a few times for his insolence.

Society began “small” in every conceivable way. There was always infighting and conflict, but it always had the community in mind as a whole, never just one piece at the expense of another piece. Human consciousness was literally synonymous with the idea of a commonwealth. It was a large cell consisting of individual cells paradigmatically conjoined. This was “tribalism” at its core, a modern term used by more advanced societies steeped in connotations of inferiority. It’s the term we grapple with daily in a very schizophrenic way – desiring it while fearing it, continuously avoiding it as something “less than.” We repeat the mantra: “It’s quaint, simple, and carefree, but look at all we give up. No way!!”

At first there were the smallest of “kinship” groups and clans. Then clans began mingling, causing divisions of labor and advanced socialization and organization – leaders and followers. Finally there was the city-state of ancient Greece containing many clans and villages. Life became more varied and complex. It allowed for opportunities for the individual; on the other hand it began suppressing the old clan cohesion. There were new social and civic divisions, and the concept of “freedom” came into view on many levels. There were slaves but also free men. Freedom also came attached to civic responsibility – a quid pro quo. Men governed themselves but with voluntary restraint. The individual’s relationship with the city-state was close, direct, and natural, and their interests were bound up together – the authority of conscience was bound up with allegiance to one another.

Hence, one could say the very first sense of community was socialistic. Individual liberty was reconciled with social harmony. All meaningful freedoms required restraints along a path of liberty for all. Social control was necessary for social freedom. One man’s restraint was the condition for everyone’s freedom, etc. This was the first condition of universal freedom. All notions of freedom were grounded as such in the social contract. And of course the opposite applied – the commonwealth allocated appropriate restraints upon itself to maximize personal freedom.

Eventually the city-state grew into the nation-state, and by the Middle Ages there were independent fiefdoms – the Feudal system. Communities had evolved at least in the sense that it no longer had slavery. But at the same time there was indentured servitude; every man had his master: The serf had his lord, who had his seigneur, who had his king. The king bowed to the emperor, who was anointed by the Pope who served the Saints and God (apostolic succession, sacerdotalism). The politics continued to thicken: By now power had become concentrated and centralized, feudal disobedience and disorder were suppressed, and by the late-fifteenth century we had hugely unified states – the foundation of modern nations. There were benefits – art, leisure, courtly love, improvements in the social order, and the suppression of “local” anarchists and feudal renegades. But to operate at all required “regulating” human rights and freedoms – the very things regarded as sacrosanct in early “socialist” clans.

Medieval France was the classic exemplar. Early social groups, called corps, grew into bodies with each claiming special rights. Eventually there were three main Estates – clergy, nobility, and peasantry. The nobles and clergy paid no taxes to the king, while the peasantry did. Certain towns also didn’t pay taxes as they received grants for special exemptions. People of certain professions organized into guilds which could monopolize certain kinds of work and set prices and wages. As kingdoms grew and acquired new provinces, different regions claimed different privileges which included maintaining their own laws and institutions. Non-noble families could “purchase” noble status by buying offices in the bureaucracy – and on and on.

In terms of which Estate (church or nobility) enjoyed the most privileges and tax exemptions, the Catholic Church won hands down. It had its own court system, could collect tithe from peasant farmers, and bishops and abbots lived in great luxury and wealth. All they had to do was feign modesty and humility.

From here we entered the “modern” period. Governments became thoroughly authoritarian, kingly power was supreme which led to arbitrary despotisms. But the irony here was what was happening at the very bottom rung of the social-political ladder. Being the most remotely situated from politics and government, it was the peasant who actually found himself the freest of all. He suffered the most economically, but the simplest freedoms given to him by nature (his natural rights) were core to his family, religion and lifestyle. It was here that “grace through poverty” existed, not in the church.

The peasantry brought on another phenomenon as well. For the first time against authoritarian order we have a “protest” faction weighing in against it. This became the historical beginning of Liberalism – a subversive, illegal, agitator group setting out to resist injustice. Not just another political point of view or ideology, but a “radical” movement willing to use violence if necessary. It’s agenda is not so much to build up as to pull down, to remove obstacles and set people free from bondage. From here on what develops is what today we call “classical liberalism” – as opposed to modern liberalism – the fight for individual freedom and liberty against systemic (government) oppression. And with it comes a long procession of crusaders, martyrs, and champions – Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Hugo, Washington, Paine, Jefferson, Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., just to name a few.

The “modern” antithesis to classical liberalism arrived with FDR when corporate power (at the hands of Congress) had become so overwhelming at the cost of so many (who were suffering through the Depression) that he reversed the meaning altogether. We needed more government (labor laws, unions, workers’ rights, guaranteed wages, collective bargaining, anti-trust laws, the GI Bill, Social Security, etc) as a defense against corporate bosses. Liberalism made a 180 degree turn-around. – Needless to say, conservatives today try to confuse their own constituencies by calling our greatest national icons (like Jefferson and Lincoln) “conservatives” because they fought for “minimum government.” This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows just a little American history..

But here’s the point: There can be no antithesis between liberty and law. There must be laws and restraints to ensure the most freedoms for the individual. The “modern” conservative today resists this tooth-and-nail. He fights for the maximum freedom for himself while disregarding the needs of the collective by killing as many restraints as possible that get in his way. He uses the free-market expedient of “rugged individualism” and “entrepreneurialism” to justify his argument. Even Adam Smith is considered a “liberal” today by his standards, for having the gall to warn against monopolies, to urge some government restraints while the “invisible hand” of shared wealth hopefully worked. Conservatives hate the Father of market capitalism while hiding behind his (redacted) principles at the same time.

So, again, we return to my original point: We’ve gone from true egalitarianism and the commonwealth to an “evolved”(?) state of great division and suffering by the many for the sake of the few. And it’s the “liberal” who is always behind the curve, always “too little, too late” in the face of enormous corruption which always (seems to) win the day. Liberals fool themselves into thinking they’ve “won” whenever a few crumbs fall from the king’s table – a few million dollars here for medical research, a few million there for the homeless. But it’s pocket change to the wealthy who have more money than they literally know what to do with.

A few years ago a famous C&W singer laid this point wide open. Here was a person whose art was/is all about speaking up for the blue-collared “down & out.” One day an interviewer asked him how wealthy he really was. His response: “I have more money than my grandchild’s grandchild could spend in a lifetime.” To a liberal (and a socialist) this was obscene – putting it mildly. The space between his lyrics (rhetoric) and his lifestyle was abominably wide and unforgivable. It just shows the depths of a brazen hypocrisy which consumes us all, exposed most glaringly by our leaders, artists, and celebrities, those we call heroes and role-models. Privately, the so-called champions of humility and modesty live the lives of unbelievable excess. If they gave away just “one-quarter” of their wealth (perish the thought of it phasing their grandchildren’s grandchildren!), it might just retrieve the kind of credibility they wish to keep for themselves and which artists are supposed to defend – as liberals.

So, again, the question stands: Does civilization really evolve? Or does it simply get more convoluted, ensuring that nothing interferes with one’s opportunity to “grab & run” with the spoils of war, community, wealth and power? Has “civil engineering” merely taken on a newer meaning, a newer dimension? It seems to me that the only way for one to regain/rediscover his sanity is to “drop out” and find his own “primitive forest” again, his own clan with which to find a “primitive” mindfulness.

By definition, if you do this, it means you’re no longer a “team player,” and you definitely no longer play by the prescribed rules. You’re feared more than anything. But it’s the great sacrifice, the great stepping-off point, required if we’re going to find what we’re really looking for in this toxic maze of technology, artifice, high speed and volume – a place of “imitations without originals.” quoting Baudrillard.

We’re talking about an enormous “undoing” while moving forward at the same time. All things cycle around, but as a helix. Hence, in no sense would it be a regression. It’s about, to borrow an old hippie phrase, “getting back to the garden” while not actually returning anywhere. The garden is perpetually new. – Never have such innocent words (naively voiced by young pot-smoking minds 50 years ago) taken on such dimension, urgency, and gravity.

© 2019 Richard Hiatt