Societies which were low in aggression occurred when “the individual by the same act and at the same time serves his own advantage and that of the group… Non-aggression occurs not because people are unselfish and put social obligations above personal desires, but when social arrangements make these two identical”
This essay by Catherine Burton, from which the quote above was selected, was written in the early 80’s, and it reminds us that we have gone through 2 lost decades, and that the ecological “long emergency” and crisis of global governance has simply gone on … Nevertheless, it’s still as good a read as when it was republishing in 1997.
I’ve selected the following topics:
1. The history of world governance in stages
For millions of years, humans existed through hunting and gathering, foraging for food in nomadic bands. These early humans existed in an undifferentiated unity with their environment. Their numbers were small (perhaps 10 million on the planet), their technology consisted of simple hand- made tools, and their economic and governance forms centered around the procuring and sharing of food. Conflicts were settled either by one band moving onto a new foraging region or through sharing and cooperation with food. Some of the more developed forms of governance from these cultures still remain in aboriginal societies, characterized by an ecological consciousness and a strict adherence to traditional law.
Between 8,000-10,000 B.C., homo sapiens came out of the bush onto the savannah, forsaking the mobile hunting and gathering lifestyle to procure food through the planting and harvesting of stored seed. These early farmers began to make a direct intervention in the natural order, although still recognizing their ultimate dependence on the sacred web of life. The economy centered around the land and those who controlled it held authority. Authority also resided in the major religious teachings and the power of the church.
As early civilization grew and humans moved out of a state of symbiosis with the natural order, the deeply felt connections to the earth expressed in the early religions were gradually replaced by cosmologies which, like the new technologies, extended human dominion over the earth.
In the fifteenth century, new modes of exploration, transportation, and communication resulted in a drastic shift in world view. The Copernican Revolution, Galilean astronomy, the Baconian scientific method, the Cartesian split between mind and matter, and Newtonian clockwork universe brought a separation between human law and natural law as the materialistic world view gained ascendancy and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution. Machines soon replaced domesticated animals, farms were left for city factories, and smokestacks replaced steeples. The enclosure of the common land signaled a shift from feudalism to capitalism which retained its feudal inheritance in the form of slavery. Power shifted from those who owned land to those who owned capital to finance industries. Land was now viewed as an inert substance, an economic commodity which provided the basis for the large-scale rise of the two forms of industrialism – capitalism and socialism. With the rise of industrialism, came the rise of independent nation states as power began to shift from local community centers of power to state and national centers.
The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima signaled the entrance into yet another new era for humankind. The physics of Einstein and findings in other disciplines led to the recognition that matter, energy and mind were not separate and that the universe was more like an organic web of flowing interconnections than Newton’s well- behaved clock. Communication and expanded transportation technologies turned us into a “global village.” We suddenly became more intimately aware of the neighbors who shared our planetary house. National economies became interdependent with the rise of multinational corporations. The planet saw the birth of the first attempts towards planetary governance in the form of the League of Nations, and after World War II, the United Nations.
2. Similarity between social and personal growth stages
This evolution of human civilization displays a marked similarity to personal stages of growth which are also characterized by transitional identity crises. Like the development of a living organism, the collective human system has moved from a stage of initial undifferentiated unity with its environment (hunting and gathering), through a stage of dependence (agriculture/imperial colonies), to the adolescent stage of developing independence (industrial/independent nations), and now could be ready for maturing and integrating itself in the adult stage of interdependence (planetary/ecological age).
3. Ruth Benedict on Synergy in Good Cultures
“As we consider possible forms of interdependent governance for the planetary age, we might ask ourselves if there are any clues to guide us in our efforts. Indeed there are. One set of clues is provided by Ruth Benedict, an anthropologist, who wrote on “Patterns of Good Culture.”
Benedict introduced the idea of synergy (that the whole is more than the sum of its parts) into the social sciences. She found that the idea of synergy discriminated “good cultures” from cultures where there was much aggression and economic hardship. Specifically, she found little aggression in societies which “provide areas of mutual advantage and eliminate acts and goals that are at the expense of others in the group.” Societies which were low in aggression occurred when “the individual by the same act and at the same time serves his own advantage and that of the group… Nonaggression occurs not because people are unselfish and put social obligations above personal desires, but when social arrangements make these two identical.”
High synergy cultures were not only defined as peace-abiding or nonaggressive but also had a “syphon system” as Benedict calls it. This syphon system kept wealth circulating through the culture and away from any single point of accumulation or concentration. In such a high synergy culture, “if a man has meat or garden produce or horses or cattle, these give him no standing except as they pass through his hands to the tribe at large.” (Ruth Benedict, “Patterns of the Good Culture’, American Anthropologist, vol. 72, 1970).
4. The Great Law of the Iroquois Six Nations
the Haudenosaunee – the Six Nation Confederacy of the Iroquois – had a Great Law which described the philosophy and mechanisms for a government of peace. Governments were to be established, according to their legendary Peacemaker, to eliminate war and injustice. Peace came through the establishment of universal justice according to the principles of:
1 ) Righteousness, which considered the gifts of creation to belong to all equally;
2) Reason, which enabled human beings to settle their differences without force or violence, and
3) Power, which is “the product of a spiritually conscious society using its abilities to reason,” through education, public opinion, political will and the power of a dedicated and united people towards absolute and pure justice (from the Basic Call To Consciousness, Mohawk Nation).
The Great Law attempted to anticipate and eliminate the group or class interests which were the basis of most conflicts, and was based on the law of Nature. It provided for direct democracy such that decisions were made by the people themselves and transmitted to the leaders who served the will of the people. The law provided that the different nations would give up part of their sovereignty to become part of the confederacy of nations. In so doing, the nations recognized all people as one people and abided by the abolishment of exclusive national territories and the idea of national minorities. Each individual had full rights within any nation. If attacked, the confederacy agreed to military force to repel the invader until a truce was called, negotiations started, or the attacker ceased military aggression. The invading nation was required to do nothing, such as giving up land, but was only required to cease its war-making. The Great Law was written to outlaw war and replace violence with a negotiated dispute settlement process. The Great Law of the Haudenosaunee found its way into the checks and balance system of the U. S. Constitution and served as a model for the formation of the League of Nations.