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PatriotismPatriotism and the Human FlawThe word patriot builds on the Greek and Latin "pater" meaning father,
and is commonly defined as one who loves and defends their fatherland,
their country. Patriots however have spilled and shed blood long before
the existence of fatherlands or countries. Out of phaseWhen Homo sapiens completed hominid evolution some 160 000 years ago, they continued to consolidate the social conditioning etched into the mechanisms of the frontal lobe of the brain. The human social brain with its society building capacity is unique. An ape, in comparison, could learn to throw a horseshoe, but could never manage the simple rules to pitch a game. They don't have the (socially adapted) brains for it.Within the social area of the brain resides the patriotic response. For more than 100 000 years during which social behavior was consolidated, humans lived in small mobile groups as hunters and gathers. The communities rarely exceeded a few hundred individuals. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone was in direct contact with the decisions of the group. 10 000 years ago the innovation of agriculture shattered the structure of hunter-gather society. Small groups that settled into a farming way of life expanded into kingdoms, nations and empires. Entities of a few hundred people grew into collectives encompassing tens and hundreds of thousands of people. The small groups of relatively equal and familiar individuals transformed into massive organizations with a class-grouped hierarchy where a tiny group at the top ruled over the great majority of the toiling slaves, serfs, farmers and workers. 10 000 years occurs quickly in an evolutionary context - much too quickly for biological evolution to adapt to the new conditions. We still carry a little everyone-knows-everyone mind as we scurry around in a global world populated by hundreds of millions of interconnected citizens. Our biology is out of phase with our social reality. And our patriotism is all fucked up. The human patriotic response aligns along a chain of command dictated by the leadership. A collective needs a head to coordinate its movements. The patriotic response respects and obeys the leadership as faithfully as bees or ants defend their queen. When the leadership does not represent the collective, patriotism goes psychotic. Family AffairsIn primitive groups leadership was managed by a chief in a council of elders who achieved their position by virtue of age and experience. The leadership and the patriotism were self-evident. In the first agricultural societies, leadership was taken over by the head of a family. The successful families incorporated non-family members into their domains creating a division of classes. The family class ruled. Everyone else belonged in the servitude class. When forced to unite in the face of danger the families selected a king (derived from the word kin) among themselves to act as chief. Those outside the family (the fatherhood) were required to supply the needs of the families and tend to their property. The status of the servitude class can be illustrated by the term villain, the French word for farmer or village dweller outside the walls where nobility lived. Today villain means bad guy, and we can see the sneer on the face of the noble who spat out the term for farmers or commoners.The word nobility is derived from "know". The wisdom of the council of elders was replaced by the knowledge of advisers, who, at times, may have seated themselves at a round table, but never with a villain sitting beside them. Up until the Middle-ages, conflicts were fought by the nobility and their mercenaries. The lower classes didn't participate directly in the honorable art of war that required long training and expensive equipment. A horse and a coat of arms cost the equivalent of a tank today. Farmers couldn't be trusted with weapons because they didn't have the character of a gentleman, a word that stems from "gens"- meaning family. Gunpowder came into use in the 1300s. It takes years to train a knight to do battle on a horse. In a couple of days a man could learn to handle a musket that cost no more than a saddle. The stage was set for the common man to enter the theater of war. Kings were soon conscripting farm-boys into military service for the good of the state. The Family of EconomyDue to the growth of trade, economic resources accumulated in the hands of commercial families. Money can buy power. Before long the commercial forces threatened the leadership of the nobility. But the moneyed class could not climb to the throne of leadership on their own. They needed the support of the workers, farmers and other "common" people.Where the kings forced the commoners into their service by virtue of their divine right to represent the fatherland, the commercial forces enlisted the support of the people by including them in their march to power. They awakened the patriotism of the people with promises of freedom, equality and justice through democracy. And they kept their promises. Until they took the leadership. They never reflected on the possibility of real equality between themselves and the citizens, but matter-of-factly assumed that some people are more equal than others. The citizens would be given freedoms, but it would be preposterous to imagine them in the leadership. Exceptions could be made for citizens who managed to buy their way up with economic success. The CitizensThe commoners interpreted equality and democracy differently than the commercial forces. They believed that democracy implied majority rule. The struggle for majority/people rule contra elite/money rule has been going on since agricultural society began to give way to civilian society. The people organized themselves in cooperatives, unions and parties. With the strength of numbers and the spirit of patriotism that comes from fighting for your own community the citizens advanced. By the mid 1900s the forces of the citizens could see more than half of the world oriented toward the struggle for universal human rights. Unions, organizations, political parties and some large and powerful countries declared their determination to struggle for the needs of the broad masses of the people.From the height of their influence around 1950 the power of the commoners and citizens has grown steadily weaker as the commercial families have grown stronger. Today the citizens share the status of those who were once called villains while the plutocrats (the wealthy) who were once called nobles dictate conditions from the heights of leadership. The citizens failed because their leaders were inexperienced in the administration of large organizations. Many mistakes were made and all too few were remedied. Furthermore, the leadership, at the top of a large, complicated, stratified and diversified hierarchy, lost sight of the community below and became drunk on power's glory or was seduced by money's charm. The citizen organizations became corrupted. The commercial families had a hand in buying (bribing) the organizations of the citizens while seducing the citizens themselves with daily "product information" and "news". Product advertising creates desire and uncertainty and encourages a self-indulgent worship of possessions. Because you're worth it. The news (the Media, the fourth Estate) supplies junk information and hardens the arteries of thought. We are told daily that we are a democracy, and constantly hear the refrain, "We Democracies" when referring to the allied plutocracies as a collective. It's no secret that the leadership of the "democracies" consists exclusively of wealthy people promoting policies that promote wealthy people. Today, no significant (organized) opposition confronts the commercial leadership. This plutocracy dominates all aspects of society to such a degree that young citizens use their patriotism to fight, kill and die to enhance the ambitions of the wealthiest people. The leaders wrap themselves in the flag of the country and claim to act on everyone's behalf. They act to enrich themselves. That is the only thing that concerns them. The citizens are useful or troublesome - villains one has to put up with. Ruling ExamplesEconomy rules today and governments dance to the tunes of money. The commercial forces dictate what is read; what is heard; what is done; what is not done.... Their influence saturates society. The citizens adopt the moneyed view of the world as a natural or obvious one.An example:Every newspaper and all the major TV-news programs contain a financial section. We don't even think about this. It's as though this was a law of nature. On the other hand no one questions the lack of a health section. Why aren't we informed about the health of the citizens? How many people are in the hospital? What's the status of different diseases? How many people are on sick leave? Etc? Etc?Why is the condition of the citizen's health less important than economic "news"? When people greet each other they ask about health. How are you? How are you feeling? How's the family? They don't ask how much money you are making or how much you have in the bank. Yet the citizens have been conditioned to regard economic reports as priority news and accept unthinkingly that health reports are of minor concern? Money rules and money is therefore more important than the health of the villains. A more violent example:70-80% of the world's citizens were against going to war with Iraq. The leadership wanted to go to war. The wishes of the citizens weighed little in the plans of the leadership. If there's money to be made by going to war, then war it is. Money, not people, rule.If the citizens can't say no to the greatest of international crimes, the initiation of a war, what can they say no to? Nothing! But such is the influence of the families' printed matter, TV, radio and films that the citizens believe that they can change things by appealing to the leadership. They may as well "administer medicine to a dead horse." (Thomas Paine) The patriotic response struggles with frustration. A million years of conditioning pushes us towards action against a common danger. We feel it. But the danger is seemingly abstract and we've gone lost from our community. We seek refuge in our small communities; ethnic, religious, national, job, hobby, sports, neighbors, whatever. And remain divided. Our trust turns instinctively toward the leadership when no alternative can be found. Even a leadership that creates rather than solves problems. The citizens suffer from a malfunctioning patriot response. This is crucial but curable. One thing is certain, we can't change our biology to suit the present structure of society. Our only choice is to change the structure of society to suit our biology. It's almost as though we were created with a frontal lobe control. If humanity doesn't get its community in order, the community loses control. Goodbye, humanity! Because you're worth it. © Joel Miller/BenTarZ ⇐ Back - 05 Unsmart Jew Next - 07 Balanced Bullshit ⇒ |