by Nowick Gray
“What we learn from history is that nobody learns from history.”
—Hegel, quoted by Pepe Escobar
The worldview we are given in conventional history, politics, media, movies and fiction is heavily slanted toward violence, “the survival of the fittest,” war, and hierarchy. It’s what we recognize as the vector of so-called civilization and its chief engine, technology.
As a conscientious objector to war, a pacifist, an anarchist, a libertarian, a dissenter, a nature worshipper, a spiritual being, I am opposed to those ideologies. Thus I am confronted with a dilemma, and forced to ask the following questions:
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- Is my idealistic view of human nature, based on my own self-image and values, simply deluded and in denial of worldly realities?
- Am I in denial of my true nature as a violent predator, blinded by my privileged, pampered, sheltered upbringing and milieu?
- Is human nature condemned to follow the template of our animal ancestors, locked into fierce competition for sex, food, and other resources?
- Is my model of human nature limited to the feminine qualities of cooperation and nurture, while denying the male attributes of aggression, competition and violence?
Recent research in archeology (David Graeber) and genetics (David Reich) opens the conversation to consider evidence for counternarratives. Graeber in The Dawn of Everything makes a case for egalitarian social structure persisting long past archaic hunter-gatherer bands, through eras of agriculture, urbanization, and empire. This hidden history runs contrary to the premise that civilization’s much-heralded “development” implies necessary stratification and hierarchy. History rather presents a more inclusive view, in which hierarchical warrior societies existed contemporaneously with more egalitarian societies. In times of direct conflict or invasion, the warrior invaders would prevail. Then, as with the Mexican city of Teotihuacan, the cycle could reverse after a time—the palatial urban structures razed, and the city reorganized for citizen housing.
If a fuller history shows us both darker and brighter sides of human nature, the question then becomes more open. The fact of violent or authoritarian rule is not a given, but one path taken while an alternate path also remains possible.
Likewise, the study of genetics proves the historical dominance of male progenitors. By virtue of conquest and brute force, the alpha warriors disseminated their legacy into the successive populations of the conquered lands. Yet this historical trend does not prove the power of the male warrior must be institutionalized, so the apex chieftains can continue to breed unchecked forever. At some point we as humans can consciously depart from the behavioral patterns of our chest-beating relatives.
Geneticist David Reich makes this point as a personal plea, in the face of the demographic record:
‘The genomic evidence of the antiquity of inequality—between men and women, and between people of the same sex but with greater and lesser power—is sobering in light of the undeniable persistence of inequality today. One possible response might be to conclude that inequality is part of human nature and that we should just accept it. But I think the lesson is just the opposite. Constant effort to struggle against our demons—against the social and behavioral habits that are built into our biology—is one of the ennobling behaviors of which we humans as a species are capable, and which has been critical to many of our triumphs and achievements. Evidence of the antiquity of inequality should motivate us to deal in a more sophisticated way with it today, and to behave a little better in our own time.’ —David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here, p. 246
Though such moral decisions must be made in the context of species-wide evidence to the contrary, they are necessarily individual in nature.
Another researcher, Stone Age Herbalist on Substack, takes issue with the pacifist–anarchist philosophy, on the strength of millennia of warfare and violence proving the darker side of human nature. To him it is a naïve or “adolescent” philosophy that attempts to depart from such evidence. More recent behavioral experiments such as the Stanford Prison Experiment, or the great Covidian coup with its mass psychosis, show the potential for well-meaning human subjects to be manipulated into oppressive or even murderous behavior that previously would be unthinkable for such “normal” people.
While a majority of test subjects may reveal an inherent propensity or susceptibility to violence, there remains the possibility of individual dissent, conscientious objection, religious exemption. Minorities of like-minded individuals can separate from a hostile group, to form intentional communities, communes, villages, or breakaway sects where alternative values can come to the fore.
The United States of America, it could be argued, was just such an experiment, where the colonists rebelled from the Crown and declared their own sovereignty. On that foundation, other refugees from economic, political or religious persecution and repression could find the freedom to live under another standard of life. The ensuing history—which brings us full circle to imperial fascism that marks the policies of the American government today—might suggest once again the inevitability of violence and authoritarian rule. Then again, following the impulse of the Declaration of Independence, American patriots might be reinspired to turn the cycle around again and begin anew. Indeed, this lawful revolution appears born in the example set by Governor DeSantis in the free state of Florida.
The conclusion I reach, at the end of this latest round of investigation, is that there is no polarized conclusion that serves to describe (or worse, proscribe) that elusive entity known as “human nature.” Or even if there is, there is nothing to say it still cannot be changed, or evolve, from its past or present limits. In uncountable ways we’ve departed from the horn-butting of our animal forbears.
Which is not to crow about our achievements, so often injurious to ourselves and to the nature that gave rise to us. Yet the capacity for witness and discernment, for inner and outer research and evaluation, for discussion and deliberation, gives us a ticket out of behaving like animals or automatons, craven subjects or draftees of demagoguery.
We are given a template for our behavior in our genetic, historical, and cultural heritage. That template is more varied than we have been led to believe by the blockbuster movie.
In truth we have the power to edit the script, play new roles and improvise, to challenge the traditional authors who have maintained an edifice of fear and control for their own egoistic power and rewards. We don’t have to follow the rules of their rule.
‘The Earth gives us life, not the American government. The earth gives us life, not the multi-national corporate government.
‘The Earth gives us life, we need to have the Earth. We must have it, otherwise our life will be no more. So we must resist what they do.
‘They want to break our spirit. They will do everything and anything to break our spirit, our will to live. We must learn to resist, we must learn to see, we must learn to look.
‘We must learn to step out of this reactionary-ism. All of our lives they’ve had control of us through their schools, their TV, their electronic media.
‘They’ve had control of us all of our lives. They have programmed us, they have made us become reactionary. We don’t think, we react to what they do.
‘To everything that they do–we react to it. They’re setting us up… because they know consistently throughout the past the people have always reacted to their manipulations of circumstance.
‘They know that the people always react. They’re counting on it..
‘See, and they outnumber us with guns. They outnumber us with money. They outnumber us with votes.
‘They control all the machines that count the votes. They’ve got it all stacked in their favor. Except there’s a key. The key is we must start thinking, and stop reacting.
‘The oppressor has no thinkers, they have no philosophers, it’s all scientific, it’s all economic, it’s all manipulative. They have no thinkers.’
—John Trudell, Thanksgiving Day address 1980
And if the cavalry, the storm troopers, the brownshirts or redcoats or whitecoats arrive to enforce their edict of “how things are”?
Yes, they prove their own point that violence rules—for the moment. But history also is cyclical, and we can remind them or prove the contrary point in time to come, that their rule will be temporary, until enough individuals dissent in numbers to overturn that rule, and reassert the counter narrative of “liberty, equality, fraternity.”
Yes, I’m aware that rusty motto of revolution is ironic given the Reign of Terror it brought about. It is tragic that the pure revolutionary impulse can be so short-lived, as in France, or subject to two and a half centuries of corruption and inversion, as in the USA. Somehow, the humane values do not die off. In times of the greatest totalitarian excess, faith goes underground, stays burning in embers in the human heart, only to emerge in joyful recognition and celebration when it is most needed—as in the Canadian Truckers’ Convoy of 2022.
In my stubborn insistence on freedom and natural law, I am neither right nor wrong in an absolute sense, on the scale of history. Rather I am aware of a choice, or even more deeply, an obligation, to honor those principles deep within. To uphold them in the face of archaic or sophisticated violence.
In truth today’s predators, typified by the WEF and its technocratic minions, have been clever enough to sublimate violence as a tactic. The strategy has become institutionalized, as information and data has been weaponized.
‘The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have “taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho” and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?’ —C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Whether fighting the good fight of information warfare, or bearing silent witness to the battle, we continue to carry the banner of natural humanity. Taking refuge, if necessary, in the hinterlands of geography, or a subcultural enclave; savoring gifts of music and fellowship; taking solace in nature and spirit; yielding and unyielding.
Finally, a new volume of haiku has just launched, featuring the natural charms and human foibles of Salt Spring Island, BC, where I make my home. This third volume of haiku introduces the reader to the island’s unique character amid a precarious world drift. Includes sections on Homecoming, Housekeeping, Zeitgeist, Equanimity, Expression, Insight, and Witness. Original photographs complement over fifty haiku and senryu, blending personal observation with larger social issues and redeeming spiritual grace. Order now from Amazon.
