I mentioned in the last post that certainty in food supply increased competition rather than cooperation, and noted it to be a paradox of sorts.
I thought about this a good bit!
It appears to me that, in the getting-on-well-with-each-other department, a harmful by-product of certainty in food supply (surely a very desirable thing) was greed.
But how did we become greedy as food supply became more certain?
An explanation is probably buried somewhere in the reality that usually land was acquired by people who were strong and smart, and mostly by methods that contained some element of force, bribery, dishonesty or even violence.
We only have to look at the way, for example, the Americas were colonised by landowners who replaced nomadic tribes in the 1800’s to see how this happens. I am sure it was no different thousands of years ago when land ownership first began in what is known as the Fertile Crescent – where farming as we know it today is reputed to have started.
I am sure that those early farmers gave short shrift to the existing hunter gatherers in those places where farming began, as the smart strong manipulators, those who would eventually become the nobility, (the fast-processors to be described in the Chapter on Leadership) rose to the upper echelons of society.
I cannot imagine any nomadic tribes obligingly abandoning their traditional hunting/gathering grounds to facilitate those who wanted to put fences around the land and own it!
Indeed, the insecurity that is evident in all our dealings with each other may come from our deeply embedded folk memory of scarcity going back to Paleolithic times (when virtually all of us were hunter-gatherers) and our efforts to eliminate same by farming. When we began to own land, the human mean gene was cultivated – pardon the pun – (or, perhaps, favoured or gained prominence) over the generous gene.
How did this happen?
Let us imagine for a moment that I own a lot, and I and my family are full, and have plenty, and you own nothing, and you and your family are hungry and constantly struggling. Obviously, you will want what I have, or the equivalent, and if there is no way that you can see yourself getting it then you will be angry. Then I will be afraid of your anger and will tend to protect what I have, fearful that I will lose it all if I give a little away to move towards equality.
Because my possessions now not only ensure food supply, they almost define me, and give me a kind of status in society that is enviable and desirable, perhaps an ability to influence and control others, and that most mysterious and seductive of attributes that I find so difficult to share…………… power.
And amongst my own peers, other landowners, there is inevitable competition over who has the best land, who has the most land, who can exercise most control over food production, puchase, distribution etc. and who among us can add to our wealth at the expense of others.
The irony is, of course, that we’d all be safer (and happier) if we all had an equal amount – but for me who has plenty – it is getting more and more difficult to imagine no possessions, as I mentioned already.
I believe that property ownership is related to many problems that beset society in the areas of birth, inheritance, inequality, illness and death, what used to be called illegitimacy etc., and even the tendency for males to dominate females.
When owning possessions became the norm, as well as land and livestock, women and children became men’s property. Those who were smarter, stronger and had the know-how to be able to manipulate others were able to acquire the most property.
Therefore marriage became ritualised, women’s purpose was to bear children and children’s purpose was as much inheritance of land, to keep it in-the-family, as anything else.
I suggest that, in exploring the origins of trauma in the world in general, which I mentioned here, we should look at ownership. The reason I suggest this is that, if we are of a mind to, we can do whatever we feel like to something we own. If that includes other humans – including those in our own family – we can use and abuse with impunity, thereby causing trauma in those we abuse. This behaviour then propagates through time and space.
Negative type emotions that arose from having/not having possessions (fear, anger, envy, jealousy, shame etc.) and the trauma from experiencing violence propagated through the generations through upward and downward causation and became embedded in our genetic make-up as each generation passed.
It stands to reason that such emotions are not as intense at all in a society where no-one owns property and there is far more equality.
I propose that the more class distinction there is in a society the more fear there will be. This is as true nowadays as it was 10,000 years ago – we see it in our attitude to immigration.