The first problem facing early human beings was
survival.
The second was
government.
These are the opening words (rough paraphrase) of an
obscure, out-of-print textbook on American government written by Theodore Lowi.
I quote these words because I believe these are relevant to any debate regarding the current political impasse in Washington.
Imagine the earliest Homo sapiens struggling to survive in
the Great Rift Valley, in the forests of Europe, on the steppes of Asia. Imagine how the earliest human beings
organized themselves to
survive harsh and primitive conditions; how they hunted in groups to overwhelm
large prey and better feed themselves; how they divided their
labors and distributed scarce and hard-won resources. In short, social organization - as manifested in government - is an evolutionary adaptation that enhanced survival.
No doubt, there are rightwing ideologues inclined to
interrupt me with this all too familiar screed: Another stooge of the collectivist, commie-socialist state! Misplaced invective misses the point.
Imagine Tea Party Republicans of today surviving without the
trappings of civilization: Living
in a wilderness without neighbors, hunting their own game, growing their own
crops, felling their own trees and sawing their own lumber, with no Internet connection to scam, spam, or troll other folks
living in the valley below; with no cell phone - no fire, first aid, or police protection.
At least, with no taxes and no government, their meager
subsistence would be theirs and theirs alone for the keeping … as their wives and children are carried off and eaten
by lions and tigers and bears.
“Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the
problem,” spoke Ronald Reagan in a failed campaign promise to limit the size of government. Until the day arrived when government shuttered
its doors and then we learned just how vital government is in our lives, our communities, and the life our country.
The first problem facing human kind was survival. The second is self-sabotage.
It seems beyond doubt that early humans, proto humans and their not-so-human forerunners were social animals, dependent upon each other for support and survival. Not only do we need organization just to make it through the day, but our enormous ability to organize and cooperate not only made us the top of the world's food chain, but so able to dominate nature that we're destroying it. There never were humans without a government of some sort and without one, I don't think our evolution would have bet all its genetic cards on brains.
ReplyDeleteBut antipathy towards government has long been there - perhaps always. How many people immigrated to get away from authoritarianism? How many went West, how many rebelled against a distant Eastern government not sympathetic to frontier life? Government requires some sort of submission. Many of us are not wired for it.
There is no government without authority, no civilization, not tribes or even families, but even though we're technically past the stage of kings that antipathy is the descendent of efforts to reduce the power of kings and emperors. It's human and it's natural to continue that distrust and to want to limit the power even of democratic governments. Our current culture places more restrictions and controls on us then on our great grandparents: Don't do this yourself, leave it to us, the experts. It's too dangerous for you, safety first, we can't trust you with that, you can't do that without a license, you can't get a license without going to a licensed school, etc. Partly because there are so damned many of us, living ever closer together, much of that is necessary. If someone throws a barstool at you, you can't throw one back, you can't say this, you can't do that, you can't eat this or smoke that and we'll put you in jail or shoot you if you do.
Division of labor has become so intense that most of us are helpless outside our small niche and reminded of that every day when we see people leading lives of so much more adventure,independence and freedom than we can hope for. It's getting more so. We don't know how to make things, fix things, how things work, we're dependent, we're urban, we're part of a hive. We still watch "survivor man" and dream of living off the grid, connected to our health and food and shelter as we dream people used to be. We watch movies where heroes get to destroy their enemies. We're not allowed to. Civilization has a price and it's not a small one.
But we're not talking about the burden of civilization, we're talking about people taking advantage of frustration and fear by telling people they're worse off than they are but more -- that it's someone else's fault. It's easy to say things like "the best government is the least" but that's not true, because the least is none at all and we don't want chaos. Chaos is a magnet to tyranny.
ReplyDeleteThe enemy wants chaos so he can take what's ours. Anarchy is being sold as freedom. Law is being defined as something that reduces freedom rather than enabling it.
Perhaps it's not so much that people are stupid, but that the con-men, the tricksters, the power hungry would be exploiters are better salesmen. Perhaps they're the only salesmen because I'm certainly not hearing rational spokesmen for rational government explaining it well. Perhaps we're all too agitated about our own personal issues and too unconcerned about other things and other people. Perhaps we're too self indulgent and too prone to pushing our vision of utopia without much thought about how well it could possibly work.
We're being led around just as surely as people were centuries ago, but we're being made to tolerate it by thinking we're fighting it. The devil may be many things but he's not stupid.