(A very welcome expansion on a comment I made in a previous post. 10,000 years in less than 10,000 words? Pretty much! - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
In a recent blog post here, Paul Rosenberg explained the inability or unwillingness of the "serious people" in charge of our nation to address its fundamental problems: "It's the same old elitist aristocratic death grip that we've been struggling against for the past 10,000 years."
That's an excellent observation, one not often made, and I'd like to elaborate on it. Below is a basic outline of that struggle.
The First "Progressives"
In early human civilizations, a small ruling class of people controlled society. The ruling class was composed of military leaders and priests, and wealth and power were concentrated in their hands. This ruling class directed the vast majority of people, who made a living as farmers and tradesmen.
Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian societies were all structured this way. This sort of aristocracy appeared wherever civilization sprang up, not only in the Fertile Crescent, but in Asia (the Shang dynasty) and the Americas (the Olmec empire).
Not all civilizations followed this pattern, however. Around 2500 B.C., the Minoan people living on the Mediterranean island of Crete started building a more equal society. Their society represented a leap forward for humanity, taking on the general outline of what we now call "progressive."
The advances made by the Minoans show up clearly when their society is compared to that of their contemporaries, the Egyptians:
As I noted yesterday, legendary activist/folk singer Pete Seegar just turned 90. In my own little universe this coincided with a whole lot of exposure to William Grieder-also on Democracy Now! as well as two or three local radio shows-and the season (hopefully not series) finale of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, all of which had at least one common thread: the nurturance of an anti-hierarchical vision, which I'd like to ruminate on for a bit as the weekend moves toward a close.
Starting off with Pete Seegar, I won't quote him directly, but instead will repeat a brief passage by Dar Williams that I quoted in the Pete Seeger diary:
AMY GOODMAN: When do you remember first hearing Pete?
DAR WILLIAMS: Let's see. Well, you know, as Peter said, you know, there are certain things that are just in your DNA. So, who knows when any of us first heard Pete? But I do remember a friend of mine working at a camp for disabled kids. And I was just out of college, and I was, you know, trying to figure out what my contribution to society would be. And he showed up and was-he sang "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain."
And nobody really knew he was coming. It was a camp for disabled kids. You know, there was nothing-it was just he was there to sing music that would include people. And kids in wheelchairs were singing; kids were singing in sign language; kids with disabilities, with very limited abilities to, you know, participate, were participating.
All the counselors were in tears. I was in tears, because he was just-and I just thought, you know, that spirit of inclusiveness, that spirit of unity. Of all these different abilities, these kids who have this, you know, desire to express and be a part of it, he's completely succeeded. You know? And everyone was going, "Whoo-hoo!"
That's when I realized what his power was and that the power is-what Spalding Gray called like "horizontal." You know, it wasn't vertical, from on top of a mountain speaking down. It was radiating outwards. And that's when I realized that that's the kind of power, that if I ever had it, that's the way I would do it. So, my cognizance of his power was around then.
Horizontal power-the power of inclusiveness-that's part of the very essence of what Pete's life has been about, because it's true essence of what the left is about: power-with, not power-over. And, of course, that's true of the Net as well.
(Robert Fuller, father of the dignitarian movement, offers his views of a potential connection I wrote about early this month in "Rankism-An Issue Custom-Made For Obama". - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Barack Obama is offering Americans dignity, and they're grabbing it with both hands. Dignity permeates his speeches, informs his policies, and is evident in his manner. Whether he intended to or not, Obama has become a herald of the politics of dignity.
But dignity for whom? For blacks and whites, for men and women, for gays and straights, for young and old, for rich and poor, and for immigrants and the native-born. Obama also reaches out to both sides of the aisle-liberals and conservatives-and to other nations and their leaders. Americans, eager to move beyond the fractiousness of identity politics and to end the standoff between libertarian and egalitarian ideologies, are lining up in support. They are ready for a leader committed to building a world of dignity for all.
What exactly is the dignity that people crave? It's more than good manners, respect, and civility. It's the absence of indignity. The American people know that indignities inflicted on the world have diminished America's stature. They know that the indignities they and their fellow citizens are suffering at home are sapping the American spirit.
Barack Obama's campaign has been called a "phenomenon," one with the potential to swell into a movement. But to realize its promise, a movement must evolve from a call for change to a plan for removing the obstacles that stand in the way of that change. How can the energy that has crystallized around Obama's candidacy be effectively focused to fight the indignities of everyday life?
It's not simply a matter of protecting folks at the bottom, Hacker argues-effective dealing with risk is vital for creating an environment in which people feel secure enough to take on the sort of voluntary risk that helps drive the economy forward-what's often called "entrepreneurial risk," but that includes a wide range of choices to invest resources of time, money and effort in future possibilities that by their very nature cannot be certain. These include investments in eduction, training, changing careers, starting a new business, etc. In short, Hacker argues, a security orientation is not the polar opposite to an opportunity orientation-it is a vital aspect of an opportunity orientation. And it's this latter argument that gives Hacker's point about countering the Great Risk Shift a potential bipartisan cross-over appeal that fits perfectly with Obama's articulated intentions.
In this diary, I'd like to make another major issue proposal that is, if anything an even better fit for Obama. In fact, this is an issue that is truly transformative. It's called "rankism," and it consists, quite simply, of the abuse of the weak by the strong.
If the term "rankism" sounds a bit odd and contrived, the positive value opposing it is anything but. It's called "dignity," and the struggle against rankism is the struggle to make dignity a universal human right.
The purpose of this web site is to discuss the social cost of rankism and to develop a grassroots capacity to defend and protect dignity in everyday life. We hope you will join us in planning and building a world without rankism!
On the website, Fuller explains:
Rankism: A Social Disorder
An undiagnosed disorder is at large in the world. It afflicts individuals, groups, and nations. It distorts our personal relationships, erodes our will to learn, taxes our economic productivity, stokes ethnic hatred, and incites nations to war. It is the cause of dysfunctionality, and sometimes even violence, in families, schools, and the workplace.
Over the course of history, the most common abuses of power have acquired special names:
Each of these practices is an abuse of the weak by the strong. Each of these familiar named offenses is an instance of bullying, of pulling rank. By analogy with abuses based on race and gender, abuse based on rank is given the name rankism.
1. n. abuse, discrimination, or exploitation based on rank
2. n. abusive, discriminatory, or exploitative behavior towards people who have less power because of their lower rank in a particular hierarchy
Once you have a name for it, you see rankism at the heart of many infringements of human rights, far away or close to home. Rankism is the root cause of indignity, injustice, and unfairness. Choosing the term rankism, places the goal of universal human dignity in the context of contemporary movements for civil rights. Reexamining racism, sexism, and ageism as examples of rankism breathes new life into the movements opposing them. Identifying rankism in all its guises and overcoming it is democracy's next step.
In my series "The Political Duality of Rep And Dem" I developed the argument that Democrats and Republicans act similarly in different realms. In the policy realm, Republicans cling to antiquated notions in defiance of reality, while Democrats do the same in the realm of political struggle, scrupulously playing by rules that the GOP flaunts with giddy abandon.
Track Two:
Today, Glenn Greenwald wrote a diary, "The false Beltway script never changes", in which he looked back at some typical examples of Versailles Press warning the Democrats about anti-war extremism dooming their chances in the 2006, and noting how the exact same narratives were being floated today, even though they had been utterly refuted by the 2006 midterm elections.
Converge:
In the comments, I responded to Glenn by noting how the Versailles Press followed the same pattern as the Democrats. They were controlled by the social conventions of Versailles, and those conventions have absolutely nothing to do with reality-based news reporting. In itself, this is not a particularly new insight, but the framing of it is. On the flip I reprint my comment, and then expand on it.
In my Part Two of this series, Why Conservatives Can't Govern, I argued that (a) the world is simply too complex for the Level 3 conservative mind [in Kegan's typology] to handle and (b) movement conservative political discourse often doesn't even rise to Level 2. This raises the obvious question: if they're so stupid, and we're so smart, then how come they're running everything?
The simple answer is: wealth and power. But a secondary answer is that they're not all stupid (besides which, cognitive complexity and intelligence are two different things).. In this diary, I'm going to lay some groundwork, and then begin discussing how the lens of cognitive complexity can illuminate why conservatives have been so much better at politicking, when they suck soooo bad at governing.
Yesterday, discusson of my post on Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine took an unexpected turn, with accusations that Klein was peddling some sort of conspiracy theory. It took me too long, really, to post a link along with some excerpts from an interview with Chip Berlet that explained just what conspiracy theories are, so that it would be clear that Klein wasn't doing anything of the sort.
But beyond the confusion about the nature of conspiracy theories, I saw something deeper at work--a distrust of the creative, artistic expression involved in the short film promoting Klein's book. This sort of distrust is quite widespread. It is, in part, a distrust of what cannot be rendered into cold hard factual arguments, at least the way that we define them. We can see it in the legions who dismiss George Lakoff without ever actually having read him. It is also, in part, a longstanding distrust between the political and the cultural left. And that made me think of a short article I wrote for my paper back in 2002. Because, you see, there are very important truths that can best--if not only--be told in the form of stories, which is to say, true lies.
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