As is my want when there are no real consequences of doing so I shoot off at the hip with a gross oversimplification to drive a home point. The point is valid, the argument tends toward misericordiam. So, shoot me.
For example…
I was a high school drop out who got a GED in the Air Force. After I got out I managed to get an Associates Degree from a community college. That would have pretty much been a waste except I was fortunate enough to get exposed to three things in the process:
- Basic philosophy, including a general survey course of all the “great” philosophers and “great” ideas and a solid introduction to formal logic and exposure to the common (and perennial) fallacies.
- A general survey course of ancient history from the late-neolithic period through the fall of Rome in the West.
- An introduction to literature in the form of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Twain, Steinbeck, etc.
My actual education and degree got me nothing, actually, but those three things, which should be covered by middle school, equipped me to educate myself. An advanced degree is a badge that you are either a docile conformist or an amoral predator with expensive skills and entrenched connections.
Not that I’m a bitter old man or anything.
Much as the application in the context I delivered it may be misplaced, I realize those three point say something about my intellectual foundation, such as it is.
For some reason I feel compelled to expound a bit on item #2… A general survey course of ancient history from the late-neolithic period through the fall of Rome in the West.
I think it is important to have some historical perspective. Without it the events of one’s own day can seem overwhelming and there is no basis for forming judgments without the understanding that humans are slow to change and there is little we have not faced and adapted to before. It is only in the last century we have become technically capable of altering our environment on a massive scale–for good or ill–and reached the capability of wiping ourselves out in a matter of hours. But that’s for a different screed.
So, let’s begin with the Neolithic Revolution.
From The Wise Geek. . .
The Neolithic Revolution is the transformation of human societies from being hunter-gatherer based to agriculture based. This period, which occurred between 12,000 and 8,000 years ago, brought along many profound changes to human society and culture, including the creation of cities and permanent dwellings, labor specialization, the baking of bread and brewing of beer, personal property, more complex hierarchical social structures, non-agricultural crafts, slavery, the state, official marriage, personal inheritance, and more. The term “Neolithic revolution” refers both to the period of time when it occurred as well as the enduring changes it caused.
The Neolithic revolution first emerged in the Fertile Crescent, around present-day Iraq, which would also be the founding site of the world’s first large cities, including Babylon. Mankind was most active and prosperous around the Near and Middle East at this time. Some of the oldest known human settlements were founded in Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey just a couple thousand years after the conclusion of the Neolithic revolution.
Having followed a neopagan spiritual path for a few years I’ve had an idea or two about the paleo- and neolithic period, probably a bit biased by my natural (not political) feminism and a still active romantic streak. Should I ever revisit it I suspect I’d see things through a different prism. As it stands the best I could say is that prior to written language we still lack enough objective knowledge to more than speculate about social organization and culture beyond simple pattern recognition.
Whatever the cause, when humans learned to produce more than they consumed they acquired the luxury of time to devote to things other than basic survival. With the advent of writing we can actually know the content of human thought on something on more than a purely symbolic level. It also enables the external deposit of memory and experience where in the past only human memory and oral transmission could preserve the past and impart its wisdom. “The great benefit of writing systems is their ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in a language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of formulation.1”
The earliest coherent system was Sumerian. It is from them, nearly six thousand years ago, that Western civilization ultimately derives.
In The Long Road West Frank Morley described the main organizing principle in society as the idea that the world belongs to God–or a god–and people exist as God’s slaves and priests, as God’s representatives became the first elite or noble class as they managed the excess production brought about by advances in agriculture. They soon joined in a symbiotic relationship with royalty to establish the state as representing divine order on Earth.
By the time of the Uruk period (ca. 4100 - 2900 BC), the volume of trade goods transported along the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rise of many large, stratified, temple-centered cities (with populations of over 10,000 people) where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. It is fairly certain that it was during the Uruk period that Sumerian cities began to make use of slave labor captured from the hill country, and there is ample evidence for captured slaves as workers in the earliest texts.
Stefan Molyneux argues that…
…in tribal times, human beings could only produce what they consumed — there was no excess production of food or other resources. Thus, there was no point owning slaves, because the slave could not produce any excess that could be stolen by the master.
If a horse pulling a plow can only produce enough additional food to feed the horse, there is no point hunting, capturing and breaking in a horse.
However, when agricultural improvements allowed for the creation of excess crops, suddenly it became highly advantageous to own human beings.
When cows began to provide excess milk and meat, owning cows became worthwhile.
The earliest governments and empires were in fact a ruling class of slave hunters, who understood that because human beings could produce more than they consumed, they were worth hunting, capturing, breaking in - and owning.
The earliest… empires were in reality human farms, where people were hunted, captured, domesticated and owned like any other form of livestock. Due to technological and methodological improvements, the slaves produced enough excess that the labor involved in capturing and keeping them represented only a small subset of their total productivity.
It is, perhaps, a bleak assessment, but one with great explanatory value for me.
Of course it is probably due to thirty or so years of perspective that allow me to be cynical enough to grasp the nation-state as a human farm. When first exposed to the sweep of ancient history I saw it as the playing out of heroic forces and the upward striving of humanity. A nearly Manichean struggle between progress and ignorance.
To be continued…