Long Title
You
Choose – Continue Satisfying Your Personal Passions or Begin Serving the
Greater Needs of All. The First Will Lead to Tyranny and End in Revolution. The
Second is Your and Humankind’s Only Possibly Viable, Sustainable Option
Politico
Magazine
December 27,
2019
In each of the paragraphs in the above
linked compilation are descriptions of what Americans (citizens of the U.S.)
were and what we have become, and the precarious social, economic and political
perch from which we and much of the rest of the world are now embarking into
the future.
The good news is Humankind’s current
problems are now more starkly revealed than ever before. The bad news is the
stakes are higher because the decisions Americans and the rest of Humankind
make to address these problems are more likely to be catastrophic if we choose
to act wrongly, and more difficult to sustain if we decide and act wisely. We,
US citizens and the rest of Humankind, are facing yet another crucial decision
point in our species’ cultural evolution. At each previous point we chose
directions that served our short-sighted and short-term interests.
1
Primal
Accommodation
At Humankind’s first species-evolution
decision point 200,000 years ago, the demands of the East African environment
forced our earliest hominin ancestors to rely on complex language, high tool
dependency, in-group egalitarianism, and out-group cooperation and occasional
conflict. It worked. This newest mammalian accommodation of both individual and group needs proved adaptable in an evolutionary
sense. Homo sapiens survived and produced viable, fertile offspring. In
the process, we also began having more highly learning-dependent progeny. The
norm was an in-group balance of liberty, equality, and brother/sisterhood. Out-group
relations, despite occasional violence, were more often than not, maintained
through periodic ecological knowledge and technology exchanges, and most importantly
through extended family kinship ties. Politics, economics, and sociality
functioned as an accommodative unity, within and between groups.
2
Settled
Agricultural Autocracy
Next, as certain of our numbers grew,
our store of ecological and technological knowledge advanced, and life-sustaining
environmental conditions for hunter-gatherers in Mesopotamia worsened. In
response the human inhabitants of that region chose settled agriculture,
urbanism, and autocratic governance. This socioeconomic innovation also worked because
it was supported by in-group food commodity accounting, laws, and out-group
militarism. Populations grew in size and became ever more dispersed. Liberty
declined in response to laws and autocratic dictates. Equality declined in that
political power was moved from individuals to autocrats and their agents and
functionaries. Local fraternal allegiance was retained but ultimate allegiance
shifted from one’s personally known fellows to autocrats and their system. The
unity of politics (liberty), economics (equality), and sociality (fraternity)
ended.
3
Democratic
Oligarchy
At the next decision point, the best
thinkers among early Western Humankind gave their attention to moral philosophy
and efforts at answering the most fundamental and perennial human question: How
might people live optimally, both individually and collectively? This attempt
at defining and implementing optimal living was different from those of
200,000BP or 10-15000BP. The impetus was less on addressing environmental
challenges and more on achieving sustainable peace and prosperity. Liberty,
equality and fraternity became the exclusive province of the free and wealthy,
in particular, one’s male aristocratic fellows.
First, the Greeks followed by the Romans
chose governance forms of exclusive, restrictive democracy. Women, slaves and
the poor were excluded from participation. There was a degree of liberty for a
self-exalted few but equality and fraternity in their broadest sense were not
served.
