Large Fierce Mammal

Last week we talked about what Gandhi called “swadeshi“. If you haven’t read that article before this one, go do it now. We’ll wait.

Gandhi proposed a veering away from the British model of centralized control of resources and industrialized production power in favour of localized, self-sufficient community based government and production of necessary commodities at that local level. He envisioned that trade between communities would be minimal because of the level of self-sufficiency each would attain, but communication would be constantly open. Why? Because intercommunity communication is essential to building and maintaining consistent standards of ethics and conduct within a culture. It is essential to the transfer of ideas and knowledge. Without communication, communities become estranged, even as people do on an individual and family level.

Government offices are a shining example of this in their interactions with other agencies of the same government, and with the population they were set up to serve. Interagency competition and limited, if any, communication beyond the official party line they’re required to parrot results in no real communication at all, an atmosphere of distrust and disdain, and development of compartmentalized and essentially closed “cultures” that alienation induces to retreat behind walls of fortification to do their own thing. That means, for the most part, only perpetuation of the culture’s values matter, and no thing of real value to the Culture at large gets done, no matter how much money it costs.

None of this should surprise us because humans are predisposed to seek two things – community, and a comfortably identifiable social position within the community. The human grasp of community is limited in terms of the size of the population it can, or indeed should, grasp which is why the terms “global village” and “global economy” are bullshit of the most aromatic kind. We all know what they mean, but in terms of the Way of the Wild as it applies to Man, they are meaningless.

At the opposite extreme from globalization is the concept of what was once called “survivalism”, and has since come to be referred to as the “prepper” movement – people who have lost confidence in their government along with the ability of everything in their society to perform as promised – and so conclude they are on their own to see to them and theirs, in perpetuity if needs must. Taken too far, behind those ramparts of isolation I talked about earlier, this is as meaningless as globalization. Approached intelligently though, with an eye to the long haul and Simon and Garfunkel notwithstanding, it lies closer to the Truth if it springs from an understanding that you are not a rock, nor are you an island. You will need community as the Way of the Wild in Man requires.

The Archaic Revival: Evolving through the Survivalist Mentality to the Unity Mentality is the title of an article by Christopher Renzo published to the Keen Awareness blog on 24 April 2012. While the piece could benefit from a thorough proof reading, and I certainly cannot lay claim to embracing everything Mr. Renzo has ever written, I do feel he has hit a relevant nail on the head with this observation:

Observe and question the main stream avenues of social influence.  Observe the main stream media, observe government, observe religion, and observe big business.  Do these institutions disseminate views and objectives that support unity and harmony or do they keep the illusion alive that we, above anything else, are different and separate from each other?

Be observant as to what you watch and listen to, your mind is registering everything, even those things which it can not readily discern.  Be careful to see that maybe the major avenues of social dissemination are subliminally telling you that you are an individual who is not good enough, not pretty enough, not strong enough, and not rich enough to be labeled a “success.”  What is a success anyway?  Is something a success when it proves that you are “better” than another person at something?  What was that magazine trying to tell you about beauty and how you relate to it, what is the hollywood star telling you about how wonderful it is to be rich, popular, and influential?  Are these people really better than you?  Better yet, are these people fundamentally different than you?

There is no such thing as “better” only as far as you believe something or someone can be better.  Do you fear you must be better than someone else in order to secure your piece of the pie?  Is there not something fundamentally wrong with this way of life?

How are we to move from the survivalist mentality that has us competing against each other in a race to the bottom of consuming Earth’s last resources to a more harmonious society that thrives and allows the Earth to function optimally?

And that leads me to one more thing before we wrap up today’s discussion. Man has a large and highly adaptive brain – nearly as smart as a Crow – along with this pesky opposable thumb – one on each side unless you’ve gone through life being called “Lefty”. We Man critters can imagine and build solutions to problems that Nature didn’t give us the speed, wings, teeth, fur, claws, armor, sense of smell, or eyesight to solve otherwise. Lest it be thought that the Way of the Wild in Man is limited in scope to being maxed out at 18th century technologies, let’s combine today’s examination of community, communication between communities, and a tool you may have heard about called “the internet”. I’ll leave you with that reference, supported by Maxim XI from The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Balthasar Gracian:

Cultivate those who can teach you.

Let friendly intercourse be a school of knowledge, and culture be taught through conversation: thus you make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction. Sensible persons thus enjoy alternating pleasures: they reap applause for what they say, and gain instruction from what they hear. We are always attracted to others by our own interest, but in this case it is of a higher kind. Wise men frequent the houses of great noblemen not because they are temples of vanity, but as theatres of good breeding. There be gentlemen who have the credit of worldly wisdom, because they are not only themselves oracles of all nobleness by their example and their behaviour, but those who surround them form a well-bred academy of worldly wisdom of the best and noblest kind.

Used properly by thinking people, a tool like that might just do a lot of good.

But more on tools next time.