Different levels of identification determine our future success
This is the third in my series of blog posts sketching out a framework or underlying theory behind a mode of living and organizing that I think is better than what we have experienced in the past. (Our past experience does not seem sustainable, and it does not seem that it can last very much longer – therefore some kind of change will be necessary, and these posts are a starting block for us to consider a way forward out of this mess.) In the first post, we looked at social organization and what is most fitting for man. And the second post, we looked at the institution of property, and tried to see how we might consider property in different terms and of different kinds.
Now, let’s look at social organization from a more personal point of view.
Who do you think you are? Most of us have many answers to that question: we might consider ourselves to be an individual first, a member of a gender, a member of a family, a laborer of a certain profession, a member of a certain institution or enterprise, a member of a certain ethnic heritage, a member of a certain religion, a member of a community, state, region, nation. All of these different identities overlap and to some degree conflict with one another. We can sometimes find ourselves being pulled or torn between two or more of these identities, especially if the different groups with which we identify ourselves are themselves in conflict.
Some of us like to think of ourselves as members of a more abstract and more general group than those groups which we find immediately around us. We might consider ourselves to be ’citizens of the world’ and we might actually disdain or look down upon our neighbors or fellow townsfolk.
This will prove to be a grave and costly mistake in the world to come.
Once upon a time, men have no idea of any association broader than that small group among whom they themselves lived and worked and bred. A long time later, after the intervention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, men began to identify themselves with the land upon which they lived. They were born there, raised there, and would in time be buried there. Only a great crisis such as famine or war might break the bond holding them to the land where they lived.
I don’t want to claim that this was any kind of ’Golden Age’ by any means – in fact I’m quite sure I myself would find such a life both alien and depressing. But this way of life has one great benefit over the life most of the developed world has led during the 20th century: it is sustainable.
It is not entirely sustainable – or at least, it does not have to be sustainable, as we can see quite easily from all the cultures that perished in the past. So I guess I really mean that the feedback mechanism of sustainability works a lot faster under a more local economy that is bound and tied and dependent upon the natural resources of the immediate area.
Consider as a hypothetical model, a valley penned in between two mountain ranges. There is only so much fertile land on the bottom of the valley which can be farmed. There is only so much meltwater coming down off the mountain peaks each year. There are only so many minerals to be extracted from the mountain sides. Along one side of the valley there is a forest – and it will quickly be seen that the forest is growing bigger or smaller depending on how much wood is taken out of it, how many trees are cut down each year, and how many might be destroyed by fire. It can also be seen very easily that this forest is not infinite. (Nothing of course on this earth is infinite; sometimes the oceans and the air, the central forests of Europe and the grasslands of Eastern Europe a thousand years ago seemed to be infinite, or even were infinite to all intents and purposes, as far as one man’s mind could conceive of them. The chief advantage of a small valley such as the one we are considering here, is how its finiteness is so readily apparent and measurable.)
Now consider another hypothetical model, a small town surrounded by a few square kilometers of orchards and farmland. In this small town there are perhaps six to ten representatives of any given profession – a half dozen butchers, a half dozen bakers, five greengrocers, seven coopers, and so on. Any potential customer in this town will know all these butchers, bakers, greengrocers etc. by name and family connection (and all sorts of tidbits of local gossip). The average citizen of this town will have a pretty good idea of the relative quality of goods produced by any of these professionals as well as their personal honesty and integrity.
Against the model of the valley now, consider the model of the globe – the model the world’s economy has been laboring under for the past 20 years or so. The world is a mighty big place – too large, in fact, for any one of us to conceive of in our minds. It takes dedicated scientists with sophisticated instruments to be able to measure and judge the health of the world’s forests and oceans and atmosphere. And then they can tell us their conclusions, but these conclusions will be couched in numbers that are hard for us to grasp, so far do they run beyond our limited comprehension in their very vastness. (And that vastness by itself makes it easy for each one of us to justify doing something that will harm the environment. We know it’s not the right thing to do, but against the vastness of the resources involved in the whole globe, how much harm can one man’s small action do, anyway?)
Against the model of the small town now, consider the model of the global economy with all its immense multinational corporations. This is a model so characterized by alienation, that both the workers and the consumers of the goods produced by it must find themselves totally adrift, without any connection to one another. The worker is given no cause to think of the person who will actually be consuming the goods in question – much more likely, the worker will only be concerned with his immediate supervisor and coworkers. To the consumer, the product has at most a recognizable brand which the consumer associates with a company but not with any particular person who is actually touched the product by hand.
(Composed by dictation Thursday 16 October 2008)
