The Revolutionary Public

The public is a threat to the status quo, because the status quo has been built from the top down with little input from the bottom up. Even in democratic states, the interests of the ruling classes are a priority over other interests, because power exists primarily to maintain power. The interests of the ruling minority only superficially resemble those of the general public, and only after considerable pressure from the public.

We would see a very different world if public opinion controlled everything without the filter of government interpretation. It would be a revolution that would break down the status quo and replace it with something quite different… after a lot of pain and confusion. There would be wonderful changes and atrocious changes, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be the same world.

There can be problems with voting on things that most people do not understand or are not directly affected by, but I think the general public is revolutionary because its interests and preferences are radically different from those of governments. I want to see the world become radically democratic, but I’m not sure I’m ready to see it all at once.

History and the Nature of the Gods

The nature and character of the gods are not academic or archeological, though their traces are left for us through history to study. It’s admirable to reach back into time and get as historically accurate an image of them and their traditions as possible, but the roots of the gods are very different.The impulse that gave shape to the gods is a human one. The needs and desires of humans throughout history have forged the character and stories of the gods. The ancestors didn’t rely on books or ancient remains to create their relationship with the gods but on the changing demands of life as lived day to day. In this way religions change and adapt themselves to the needs of the present day.

Land and the Fossil Fuel Bypass

In the past, most of humanity’s energy needs were obtained from the land, especially from plant matter. This made the land and it’s resources of central importance to human life and culture, and its value was incomparable and unquestionable.

Nowadays, the use of energy-rich fossil fuels has bypassed this most important resource – their value seems incomparable and unquestionable. The land has become a place of physical existence, and there is little relationship with it. Food and work can be found in other places, and what can be obtained from the land has little value.

Eventually, the quantity and quality of fossil fuels are only going to decrease, so the value of the land and our relationship with it will once more come to prominence.

Homo narrans

I find the name “sapiens” a bit optimistic. It seems right that a scientist, someone whose job is knowledge, should call us “wise man”, but it reveals their professional bias more than our innate nature. It’s not to say it’s not right, but that it’s not that universally consistent. There are many other appellations to choose from. Homo contradictus makes sense to me. We are a species capable of abstract thought. Our generalisations and categories, though useful, never match concrete reality completely, so we’re always in a state of contradiction.

A more optimistic take on this would be Homo narrans. Our ability to create abstract thought makes us storytellers. Our brains observe patterns in experience, then we try to describe those patterns in coherent ways i.e. a narrative. Even postmodernists, when asserting there is no overarching narrative, are forced to use a verbal structure with a beginning, middle and end i.e. a story in the most basic sense of the word. Our brains are sense making machines, taking the many different sensations and trying to make a coherent narrative or picture out of it, whether that be religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic, cultural, political or a variety of other perspectives.

Though as Homo sapiens reveal the biases of a knowledge-seeker, Homo narrans reveals the biases of a storyteller. My preferred appellation may reveal more about myself than it does humankind.

Frankenstein’s Meritocracy

Perhaps meritocracy would be less disagreeable if some objective metric could be conceived to establish success. At least there’d be rules. It could be based on coherent measurements of mental and physical effort, skill, level of risk or hours worked. But we don’t have a coherent meritocracy. It’s a hodgepodge of arbitrary and abstract systems stuck together, a “Frankenstein’s meritocracy”. It does include some of the criteria already mentioned, but also things like being famous, having aristocratic birthright, or even just the ability to navigate or manipulate the flow of the economy without producing any significant goods or services for society. Other factors like gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class are also subject to dubious systems of merit and privilege.

There is no guarantee that people that work hard will be richer, and no guarantee that those that are rich have worked hard for it, even though wealth is generally regarded as a sign of success. Individuality, too, is not affirmed by such a system, as the mark of individuality is the free and creative expression of one’s idiosyncrasies, not conforming to an arbitrary system of merit.

Perhaps I’m not entirely adverse to merit based on physical or mental work (there’d be no billionaires, for sure), but society is so large and complex that applying any sort of meritocratic principles to it will never have any coherent or fair result, as so much of what we value is arbitrary and relative to each person or group. The market is a fickle place, as subject to our whims as it is to concrete physical conditions.

And how do we calculate the usefulness of a good or service when “usefulness” is relative? Not everyone needs an umbrella. Not everyone will use a hammer. Not everyone wants a book. When an expensive painting costs the same as breakfast for a whole town or when the price of a jumper can be raised simply by adding a logo, value is not going to be objective or coherent. What remains is for people, individually and collectively, to put value into their own work and defend that value, instead of passively accepting some sort of “objective” system of value imposed by market forces or government.

Material Empowerment

Materialism doesn’t always get proper recognition from those of a religious or spiritual persuasion. It is seen as a perspective that is devoid of values or morals, an opinion I have shared in. But I’m in the process of understanding that this criticism can be a smokescreen for more underhand motives.

If this world we inhabit really is material, then any metaphysical speculation only serves as a distraction, and this distraction can be used to devalue the material needs of people. If I am focussed on building a relationship with an unseen entity or world, then I can be encouraged to  devalue my existence as a material being. Even worse, my material pursuits can be demonised as “selfish.” I can be made to feel guilty about putting the needs of my body before so-called “higher” needs that may or may not exist.

If people took their material existence more seriously and deprioritised the abstract and the metaphysical, they could gain real empowerment over their lives, instead of delegating it to invisible powers that are a facade used by the rich and powerful to maintain their own wealth and influence.

The affirmation and pursuit of material needs is a prerequisite to empower ourselves and create our own freedom. Perhaps this empowerment is individual, but I think a lot can be said for collective empowerment. The basic needs of humans are near identical, and it serves very few of us if we put these needs in competition where we could fulfill them through cooperation.

Material Needs and Spirituality

It might be obvious to say, but in practical terms I think better when I’m not hungry, thirsty, tired, ill or in pain, as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggest. I would say material needs aren’t our only needs – “not on bread alone” – but they tend to come first. And I agree with the sentiment that wealth does not guarantee happiness, but I think a certain amount of material stability is a prerequisite for happiness. Being stressed all the time about fulfilling basic needs does a lot to impede happiness.

I embraced spiritual naturalism some years ago, as I felt the dualism of spirit and matter contributed to the environmental crisis. Valuing the metaphysical or supernatural detracted from valuing the physical and our place within the ecosphere. It’s a shame that, under commercial values, the pursuit of “merely material” ends is conflated with greed and ambition, when it really is an essential part of how humans survive and live. My existence as a material and ecological entity is not separate from my spirituality but an essential part of fulfilling it.

The Pleasure Principle

We live for pleasure. I don’t mean an all out, hedonistic pursuit of pleasure that disregards health, sanity or the well-being of others. Just that, at base, we are all motivated by feeling good and tend to avoid feeling bad.

Being healthy is pleasurable. Caring for others is pleasurable. Denying oneself short term gratification for long term satisfaction is also pleasurable. Hard work with productive end results is pleasurable. Participating in a healthy society or ecosystem is pleasurable.

It’s natural for organisms to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. They are a sign from Nature that indicate whether we are going the right way or not. We don’t have to experience permanent happiness or ecstasy, just general well-being and contentment is enough.

The Conditions of Freedom

Identity is a cage, built for us by society. But without identity, we are just formless spirits floating in formless aether with no location in time and space and in relation with nothing. Identity is a useful vehicle we use to “navigate” society; it’s a necessary condition for living in society as autonomous beings.

We may not be “free” of conditioned existence, but without conditions we just couldn’t be. Freedom, then, isn’t being free of conditions, but free to determine them instead of being determined by them. We are “supposed” to fulfil so many roles and stereotypes prescribed by society, which is a double-edged sword. Fate is imposed on us from the outside, and we can decide to do something with that.

Freedom in this case is empowerment, taking the conditions imposed upon us and gaining some influence over them.

The Scale of Civilization

Through agriculture a large amount of people are able to live together. It allowed a group to grow, several to merge together or one to gain control over others.  Whatever happened, it became necessary to organise on larger scales and to formalise or standardise a common system of values and symbols through which to communicate. This became “civilisation”.

There are many different aspects to civilisation, many different factors that go into defining it, so it can’t really be reduced to a single attribute, but the scale of it is what stands out for me. The size of civilisation allows for more things to be done and a larger amount and diversity of resources to be coordinated, allowing for a more complex society.  Its size allows for impersonal relationships between people, which makes it, in a sense, inherently dehumanising. It also gives ripe conditions for oppressive hierarchies, corruption and inequalities to flourish.

The scale of civilisation presents interesting questions. How are so many strangers supposed to be coordinated? How do we relate to each other without knowing each other? I am able to walk through a city, and there are common customs, both implicit and explicit, developed within impersonal society that most people are familiar with so that confusion and conflict are minimised and communication facilitated, even if that means ignoring passers-by.

Civilisation is what happens when a large group of strangers have to co-exist, when intimate community is replaced by impersonal society. New dynamics and conditions apply because society becomes more unpredictable and more unwieldy. In small groups the members and their relationships are known; their personalities and idiosyncrasies are predictable or “navigable”. Personal experience may be more consistently transmitted across generations. Requests and deals can be made easily on a smaller scale without much forward planning or grappling for a consensus. In a large group of strangers, this becomes more difficult. Bureaucracy, market economies and the like become necessary.

Despite the facelessness of civilisation, its systems, institutions and traditions, there is still one thing that defines to me what it means to be “civilised”, and that is being able to rely on the good will or understanding of complete strangers. Within an impersonal context, personal connection still has value and is indispensable for civilisation. It is the one thing that prevents civilisation becoming a machine comprised of mere mechanisms.