I seem to attract people who enjoy talking about what a failure modern society has become and how they wish the world governments would
just collapse already so that, after a given period of chaotic violence, the
“legitimately” strong could once again prevail and we could go back to living
in tribal anarchy* where human evolution once again exists. Oddly, most of these
people are computer nerds (or, to a lesser extent, rednecks, who probably would benefit from such a system...provided they are male). They think this is the superior way to live, and go
so far as to say it is healthier because it is more “natural”.
It deserves mentioning that there is a snowball’s chance in
hell that either of the two individuals I most often have these
sorts of conversations with would ever survive this manner of “society”. One of
them thinks he’s having a seizure every time he nods off at his desk and claims
to be chronically hypoglycemic, and thus, needs to smoke excessive amounts of
pot, take three different kinds of pills a day and eat constantly. The other has dainty wrists, I’m just sayin’! We’ve
had hour upon hour of debate over why/how tribal anarchy does/does not offer a
superior standard of living vs modern society. Their arguments tend to boil
down to evolution and the idea that we are no longer evolving (Which is not necessarily true. See the end of the post.) because technology has allowed virtually everyone to live in the world,
regardless of whether or not they would be fit to do so without such technology (think allergies, chromosomal disorders,
compromised immune systems, women with hips too narrow for childbirth...yes, even this one came
up) and, thus, we can no longer improve as a species. It’s also tied
into the idea (which I do not support) that violence is inherent in human
beings and it is easier to express this “natural” aspect of our humanity
within the societal structure of tribal anarchy…but for the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to
get into that side of this for now.
I take issue with the original matter for many reasons. Perhaps the main one is that I don’t think I would be able to survive in that sort of society.
I have allergies, and vision that is impaired enough to make me a useless
hunter without corrective lenses, and outside of my "reproductive value" I don't have many real survival skills to offer...unless you count the ability to knit warm things. I certainly don’t think I would be privileged
to exercise the degree of self-agency that I do today because the model that is
described is very patriarchal. It writes off the intellectual value of a human
being in favor of physical power. Since women are typically at a disadvantage
when it comes to brute force, the value of a woman is reduced primarily to her
ability to bear children (hence, the point about women with hips too narrow for
childbirth). And women have a lot more to offer than that, and a society that
embraces this fact is more likely to succeed and outlive the previous societal
model.
Today I came up with a concise response to these arguments:
If evolution is the root of your argument and that by
denying evolution taking its path we are doing humanity as a collective whole a
disservice, then you would have us deny the path down which evolution has already
taken us to a societal structure deemed more beneficial to the species than
your preferred structure by the very mechanism that you cite as being
the reason why you would prefer tribal anarchy in the first place. What you
really propose is just back-tracking, or a loop, since evolution has already
shown that we would end up right back here, provided no major events disrupted
the natural progression back to this point. Let’s call this Societal Darwinism.
If all else fails, at least its convoluted enough to keep them thinking for the rest of the car ride home.
*Tribal Anarchy is a bit of an odd term that I think might be very specific to the conversations I have with very particular people. So, I feel I should elaborate on what I mean when I say this. The folks who I am talking about in this particular post say they would prefer to do away with government all together and opt for a system of loose anarchy instead (I know, right? My eyes hurt from rolling, too). We have both agreed that in order for something like that to even be plausible, the group size must be small, and in order for that to happen, something would have to happen to greatly thin out the human population. For fun, we'll just say a zombie apocalypse. Then small tribes of people could begin to form and anarchy could (maybe) be a viable option of governance...or non-governance...I guess.
