When in difficulty, human cultures, however elevated, are predisposed
to default to institutions (or classes) which in turn are predisposed
to default to tribes, which in turn so easily default to cliques,
which in turn default to single leaders. The last are the equivalent
of daddies of the original family-sized groups in which we and our
predecessors lived, and in which our genes have been shaped, for
millions of years. The default tends always in an anti-evolutionary
direction towards the earlier basics. "Cometh the hour, cometh the
man". The Tolstoyan view of history.
So, if cultures are unfortunate in their immediate past histories,
they produce the Stalins, Hitlers and Mao Zedongs of the human world.
Monsters. Sometimes, if the nominal leaders are not so monstrous but
still powerful then the default condition is a little higher, at the
clique level. This is why President Bush needed three or four others
(but only three or four others) in order to manipulate America into
invading Iraq -- an illegal act if there ever was one. When the
nominal leader is neither monstrous nor powerful -- and really hardly
knows what he's doing -- then the reverse default is a clique that
can be well-nigh invisible and works in mysterious ways.
Thus President Obama's financial policy is actually that of a clique
centred around top nerds in the US Treasury and also friends in the
banking world. Not so much a clique in this case as almost a tribe,
almost at a higher notch. Whether this bunch, this almost-tribe, can
continue succeeding in mystifying the other tribe in Congress is a
moot point. But then, the latter tribe is actually in a further
default condition already -- two tribes which spend most of their
energy performing war-dances around each other.
Thus human behaviour is a ratchet which works both ways. With a
gentle following wind, it can proceed very slowly in one direction
towards culture, but this takes generations. If met with storms, then
the ratchet clicks very rapidly in the default direction. Whether a
nation is formally a selected bureaucracy as in China, or an elected
democracy as in America, matters little. It is where it is on the
ratchet that's important.
I've simplified, of course. There are many components of a culture --
fertility, science, art, sports, industry, entertainment, etc. -- and
they're not necessarily correlated. But some specific state of
politics, some specific position on the ratchet, applies in all of
them. In the fertility department, for example, the Western cultures
are right at the family end. In fact, less than that, because
singlehood is a growing phenomenon and, also, families are no longer
able to sustain themselves -- neither looking after their old people
humanely enough nor producing enough children.
Perhaps one day when the default system is taught to children at
school as a rendered down account of anthropology, behavioural
psychology and evolutionary genetics -- but essentially simple
withall -- then perhaps we can govern ourselves and our activities
just a little better than now without today's much practised
manipulation by a few on the one hand or the punter-like credulity of
the masses on the other. Perhaps we'll really begin to know
ourselves, as Socrates used to say, and for cultures to know more
truly how they ought to operate.
The book that's inspired today's outburst? The Tribal Imagination:
Civilization and the Savage Mind by Robin Fox.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/06/
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