Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Re: Moral cap and Authority

RICHARD to Claudiu: Yes, the better example is indeed ‘before civilisation’ as to ‘stake out a territory and start farming it’ marks the shift from a ‘free-range’ life-style to the ‘property-rights’ way of life (and, thereby, to the arising of a ‘peasant-mentality’). To explain: for a hunter-gatherer, the free-range life-style was epitomised by, basically, just helping oneself to whatever was available. With the advent of the property-rights way of life, however, any such ‘helping oneself’ transmogrified into being theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera. (...).

JONATHAN: Hi Richard, thanks for your input. Is it fair to say that there has never been a time where an individual could just help himself to what he wanted?

RICHARD: G’day Jon,

No, it is not fair to say that because as a boy, a youth and as a young man, this particular individual writing these words would regularly ‘just help himself to what he wanted’ from the forests/ the woods and the pasturable-lands and the rivers/ the streams and oceanic-waters in and around the remote pioneer-farming district where this particular individual was born and raised, in the rural south-west of Australia.

And the term ‘remote pioneer-farming district’ is used advisedly because, although there had been some timber-cutters in that particular area in the 1890’s, the district did not attract a lot of settlers until a soldier-settlement scheme was established in the 1920’s whereby the state-government encouraged de-mobilised military personnel from ‘The Great War’, as it was known then, to take-up land-holdings there. Although, even so, the following decade’s ‘Great Depression’ held back a lot of development, which might have otherwise happened, and the main employers of hired hands then were timber-mills. As I was born in the late 1940’s (some 20-25 years later) there were still large amounts of forested land – virgin territory where, perhaps, no human had trod before (the hunter-gatherers from surrounding districts had a legend referring to it as being a ‘taboo’ area for them) – such that the intervening area between the northernmost boundary of the property, where I spent the first 16-17 years of my life, and the nearest settlement, some 30-odd miles nor-northwest as the crow flies, was uninhabited forestland still yet to even have roadways established through it.

A few details of my early life are already online.

Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘I was born and raised on a dairy farm in the south-west of this country (my progenitors were pioneer settlers carving a farm by hand out of virgin forest and sowing grasslands for animal husbandry). (...). As both a boy and as a youth I personally used hand-held axes and cross-cut saws to help cut down the trees to make pasture land; I was involved in the fencing and ploughing and sowing and harvesting; I hunted game in the forest and helped raise domesticated animals; I tended the gardens and orchards and crops; I assisted in building sheds (barns) and outhouses from forest timber and learned improvisation from the ingenuity required in ‘making do’ with minimal commercial supplies. There was no plumbing; no sewage, no telephone and no electricity – I went to bed with a candle and to the outdoor latrine with a kerosene lamp – thus no computer, no television, no videos, no record players, no freezer, no electric kitchen gadgets and etcetera. (...). The pioneering lifestyle gave me a vast experience with animals – domesticated creatures such as cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, geese, ducks and chickens plus the wild species which include kangaroos, emus, foxes, rabbits, eagles, crows, magpies, pigeons and quail – quite a few of which I slaughtered, skinned and dressed with my own hands. Stalking game for the table made me keenly aware of feral behaviour and raising livestock for a living necessitated an eye for the detail of the creature’s daily practice (...)’. (http://an.actualfreedom.com.au/).

I would either shoot or trap that ‘game for the table’ – although trapping was preferable wherever possible as the cost of each bullet, for the somewhat antiquated rifle I used, was the same as the price of a full loaf of bread baked in the nearest township 20 kilometres away to the south – and freshly-killed kangaroo meat, rabbit, wild duck and pigeon (for instance) were oft-times a feature at meal-times.

An abundance of fresh-water lobsters frequented the waterways and (although the regular way of catching them was to dangle a piece of meat on a string into the water), upon having noticed one night how they came out from their underwater burrows to feed after dark, the easiest way to capture them was to go out into the forest to wherever there were shallow streams and, by shining a light into the water, simply reach in and pick them up by hand (just behind the head to avoid their claws). As a general rule, it would take about an hour or two to help myself to a four-gallon bucketful.

Another foodstuff to just help myself to were berries when in season – blackberries in particular were plentiful – as were mushrooms, both of the field and forest variety, which could be collected by the bucketful. Emu eggs, although not plentiful all year round, were an occasional item to gather, as were wild bee honey-combs as well. An oddity item to help myself to by the armfuls, in season, was a rather special wild-flower which grew in swampy areas and known locally as ‘Boronia’; once a year a buyer for a city-based perfume supplier would travel throughout the area purchasing prodigious amounts, for distillation, from whomever would go out and pick them for free.

The nearby southern ocean was a bountiful source for a range of seafood and my preferred way of helping myself was to go into the sea with a spear in hand (fashioned from a straight piece of sapling, about the length and thickness of a modern broom-handle, with a sharpened length of eight-gauge fencing wire attached for a spear-head, and an inch-wide section of circular rubber, cut from a discarded inner-tube, fastened at the other end for propellent force when held at full-stretch by the hand grasping the shaft) in order to be able to pick and choose particular fish. And, apart from all the fish, there were also crabs, crayfish (known as salt-water lobsters in the USA), octopus, and quite a variety of shellfish to help myself to.

Come to think of it, even today (if I wanted to) I could just pop open my bedroom window and drop out a line with a baited hook attached and help myself to any peckish fish swimming by or, for that matter, I could slide open one of the glass doors of my sitting-room and pass out a small netted cage on a rope, suitably baited with some attractive meat near the inner end of a funnelled entrance, so as to help myself to any crabs hungry enough to find their way in. Furthermore, there are oysters growing on the nearby rock-walled river-bank, uncovered twice a day at low tide, which remind me of my younger days when paddling a canoe from island to island, in the coral waters off the north-eastern seaboard of this country, where I would wander along a tide-exposed reef with nothing but a stubby flat-head screwdriver and enjoy oyster after oyster au-naturel.

Ahh, well ... I guess it is a case of being too fainéant, these days, to just help myself to foodstuffs like that.

JONATHAN: Even in the hunter-gatherer days, individuals and groups had to work quite strenuously to feed their bellies and protects themselves from danger.

RICHARD: The question of whether or not hunter-gatherers had to ‘work quite strenuously to feed their bellies’ is beside the point – the point being that they retained 100% of whatever such ‘work’ produced (in contrast to the archetypal 30% labour-cost component of the stereotypical business-model) – as is the question of whether or not they had to ‘quite strenuously ... protect themselves from danger’ also beside the point (the point being that, whatever else might be a ‘danger’, what they needed to ‘protect’ most, lest they be enslaved, was being able to retain that 100% return on their ‘work’).

Howsoever, even with it being beside the point, it is handy to know that when 1,030 people from Albion, comprising of 732 convicts, a contingent of marines, and a handful of other officers, first established a penal settlement in Terra Australis, on the 26th of January 1788, a dozen or so of the more literary-minded personnel amongst them recorded in journals their observations of the way in which the nomadic hunter-gatherers lived their lives, in and around the surrounding districts, with some of those journals being published shortly thereafter in book form – most of which are available to read online – and no impression of them having to ‘work quite strenuously to feed their bellies’ is conveyed in the half-dozen I have read.

Plus it is also worth mentioning – if only in order to diffuse the impression which modern-day labelling of that January 26th date as being ‘Invasion Day’ conveys – how those published journals record that the first confirmed instance of any of those 1,030 people being speared, and even then non-fatally, is some 20 months later on the 7th September 1790, with no retaliation being permitted, and the first confirmed fatal wounding was on the 13th December 1790 (whereupon retaliation was ordered on the 14th).

In other words, no such impression of those hunter-gatherers having to ‘quite strenuously ... protect themselves from danger’ is conveyed by those first-hand accounts from the very people who were there at the time.

Viz.:

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00010.html

JONATHAN: And their gains were probably stolen by alpha males and more powerful groups as well as floods, drought and plague.

RICHARD: Just as a matter of interest – as this allegedly scientific term ‘alpha male’ has made an appearance on this forum before – are you aware that it is a 1930’s ‘Mills and Boon’ invention (albeit therein depicted as ‘Alpha Man’) which was co-opted by zoologists in the 1960’s and, in the 1990’s, by evolutionary psychologists and sociobiologists?

Viz.:

• alpha (c.1300, from L. alpha, from Gk. alpha, from Heb. or Phoen. aleph (...). Alpha male was in use by c.1960 among scientists studying animals; applied to humans in society from c.1992. (www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=alpha).

Now, Mr. Joseph McAleer, in his book, ‘Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon’ (OUP, 1999), explains that it was Mr. Charles Boon (1877-1943) who – after the death of Mr. Gerald Mills in 1928 (the co-founder of ‘Mills and Boon’ in 1908) – set down what he called ‘the Alphaman’ as one of the ‘ground rules’, for his authors, when he reshaped the company in 1930.

Viz.:

• [Mr. Joseph McAleer]: ‘Although the modern Mills & Boon romance, tied to a specific formula, did not yet exist in the 1930s, it is apparent that Charles Boon did set down a few ground rules for his authors. Some have survived, and were passed down through the years in the firm by two names: ‘Lubbock’s Law’ and ‘the Alphaman’. Both still have an impact today. (...). The ‘Alphaman’ was based on what [his son] Alan Boon referred to as a ‘law of nature’: that the female of any species will be most intensely attracted to the strongest male of the species, or the Alpha’. (pages 149-150).

To sum up the story so far (because this is so funny it is hilarious): when Mr. Charles Boon reshaped the ‘Mills and Boon’ company – two years after the death of its co-founder (who had held the company to a more mainstream line since 1908) – he set down some ground rules for his authors to follow, one of which, ‘the Alphaman’, survived through the decades, even after his death in 1943, such as to still have an impact today. His son, who took over the ‘Mills and Boon’ company in 1944, spoke of his father’s ‘Alphaman’ as being based on what he referred to as a ‘law of nature’ in that ‘the female of any species will be most intensely attracted to the strongest male of the species, or the Alpha’.

Note that none of this stems from or is based upon any scientific studies but, rather on what a 53-year old British male publisher set down, for his authors to follow, after his mainstream business partner died. The unmitigated success of ‘Mills and Boon’, amongst the mostly-female readers during the thirties, the forties, the fifties, the sixties (and on down to the present-day), attests to Mr. Charles Boon having picked a winner with his ‘Alphaman’ concept (the company had nearly gone broke in the latter years of the 1908-1928 period when Mr. Gerald Mills set the company policies).

Now, according to the ‘Online Etymology Dictionary’ quote further above, the term ‘Alpha male’ was in use by circa 1960 ‘among scientists studying animals’ (i.e., zoologists) and was applied to humans in society from circa 1992 (i.e., by evolutionary psychologists, so-named in 1973 & popularised in 1992, and sociobiologists, so-named in 1975).

However, starting back in the sixties and seventies, feminists (such as Ms. Germaine Greer) joined in the public discourse on the ‘Alphaman’/ ‘Alpha Male’ concept and public support of ‘Mills and Boon’ gradually became more and more muted. After 1992, more and more Romance authors began to move away from the ‘Alpha Hero’ model.

Ms. Laura Vivanco picks up the narrative, at this point, in an online article she published in 2010 titled, ‘The Evolution of the Alpha Male’, in which she delves into the historical origins of the term. It is a long read, with many links to follow, but its essence is as follows.

Viz.:

• [Ms. Laura Vivanco]: ‘An earlier date for the adoption of the term ‘alpha’ (whether in the form ‘Alphaman’, ‘alpha male’ or ‘alpha hero’) to describe a particular type of romance hero would not invalidate [Heather] Schell’s facts about the spread of the term in the US around the time of the publication of ‘Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women’ [a 1992 volume of essays by romance writers which was edited by Ms. Jayne Ann Krentz], nor its definition in that context. The Boons’ version(s) of the Alphaman, based on their belief that the ‘laws of nature’ which apply to many species of animals also apply to humans, may have differed from the alpha males created by romance authors who, Schell suggests, were influenced by evolutionary psychology, as evidenced by their references to ‘cave days’ and ‘the ancestral hunter’ in descriptions of the alpha hero. On the other hand, even if they weren’t aware of [Charles] Boon’s term for him, it seems impossible that US authors could have remained unaware of the Mills & Boon ‘Alphaman’ as a character type, since Harlequin had been publishing romances edited in the UK by Mills & Boon for some considerable time before the publication of ‘Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women’. Schell’s focus on evolutionary psychology as the unmentioned source of the ‘alpha’ hero, and her assumption that he emerged in response to feminist criticism of the genre, leads her to conclude that: ‘once the battle with academic feminism was over, there simply was not as much need for the facts about sexual strategies. Even as the animal behaviour model gained ascendancy in American popular culture, the Alpha Hero’s star began to fade within the romance writing community’. (...)’. (http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/evolution-of-alpha-male.html).

So, there you have it. The next time you are tempted to use the term ‘Alpha Male’ just lie back and think of ... um ... ‘Mills and Boon’.

*

In regards to the second part of that portion of your ‘probably’ speculation – that the hunter-gatherer’s ‘gains’ were probably stolen by ‘more powerful groups’ – it completely overlooks the fact that those ‘gains’ of hunter-gatherers are, by the very action of being either hunted or gathered on the spot, of a consume-now-or-go-to-waste nature (i.e., sufficient unto the day thereof).

Besides which it is all beside the point, anyway (the point being, whether stolen or not, a particular day’s ‘gains’ were obtained by the hunter-gatherers via, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available).

As the remainder of your ‘probably’ speculation (viz.: ‘...as well as floods, drought and plague’) has strayed so far from your query it is helpful to re-present it here:

• [Jon]: ‘Is it fair to say that there has never been a time where an individual could just help himself to what he wanted’? [endquote].

Given that the land-mass referred to as ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ before it was discovered, explored, and mapped by Caucasians, starting circa 1606, is notorious for being prone to periodic droughts and floods then the very fact that nomadic hunter-gatherers roamed over virtually the entire country, surviving for tens of thousands of years by, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available, demonstrates that neither floods nor drought are evidence that it is ‘fair to say that there has never been a time where an individual could just help himself to what he wanted’.

As for ‘plagues’: in April 1789, just over fifteen months after that penal settlement was established in Terra Australis, a smallpox plague began to affect the nomadic hunter-gatherers in and around the surrounding districts (despite none of the 1,030 Caucasians being infected with the disease since having left Albion) and by May 1789 an estimated 50-70% had perished. Many years later, as explorers mapped further inland, it became more and more evident (via smallpox scars observed on survivors in the 1830’s for example) that almost all of the nomadic hunter-gatherers on the continent had been affected by smallpox, between the late 1790’s and the late 1820’s, with various estimates of 10-50% having perished.

Obviously then, the evidence that somewhere between 50-90% survived (and kept on living their hunter-gatherer lifestyle all the while) demonstrates that plagues are not a reason why it is ‘fair to say that there has never been a time where an individual could just help himself to what he wanted’, either.

JONATHAN: With that in mind, it would seem that the atavistic harboring of a deep primordial feeling of being somehow disenfranchised developed right along with the evolution of the species from early primate to man.

RICHARD: No, it would not seem that at all (else you are proposing that the ‘property-rights’ way of life – where just helping oneself to whatever is available is theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera – began ‘right along with the evolution of the species from early primate to man’).

JONATHAN: As opposed to having developed after warlords appropriated the land and produce.

RICHARD: You do realise, do you not, that the period between when (1) ‘the evolution of the species from early primate to man’ occurred and when (2) ‘warlords appropriated the land and produce’ is measured in the millions of years?

JONATHAN: Another question: Is it fair to say that the feeling of being disenfranchised (and its associated feelings of resentment, envy, cynicism, and so on and so forth) is baseless?

RICHARD: No, it is not fair to say that because all of your propositions and speculations presented above, which have led you to this conclusion (albeit presented as a query), are either invalid or beside the point.

JONATHAN: No one is disenfranchised (franchise = the territory or limits within which immunity, privileges, rights, powers, etcetera may be exercised) in part because no one has ever had it (the strong have always had power over the weak but were in turn subject to up-and-coming adversaries as well as injury and illness) ...

RICHARD: Your ‘because no one has ever had it’ assertion is flatly contradicted by the published reports of how the nomadic hunter-gatherers of ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ – reports about how both those on the mainland and those on ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ (who were markedly different in height, physique, physiognomy, hair type, weapons and tools) – lived their lives inasmuch they survived for tens of thousands of years by, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available.

JONATHAN: ... but mostly because one can chose to not ignore what life and the universe actually is.

RICHARD: Hmm ... when spelled out in full what you have ended up saying is that no-one is disfranchised from, basically, just helping oneself to whatever is available because, mostly, one can choose to not ignore what life and the universe actually is.

Surely it must be obvious that this flesh-and-blood body – despite the identity in residence all those years ago having chosen to ‘not ignore what life and the universe actually is’ – cannot, basically, just help itself to whatever is available as that would be theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera.

Ha ... back to the drawing board, Jon.

Re: Moral cap and Authority

RICHARD to Claudiu: Yes, the better example [of where nothing was owned and where one could help oneself to whatever was available] is indeed ‘before civilisation’ as to ‘stake out a territory and start farming it’ marks the shift from a ‘free-range’ life-style to the ‘property-rights’ way of life (and, thereby, to the arising of a ‘peasant-mentality’).

To explain: for a hunter-gatherer, the free-range life-style was epitomised by, basically, just helping oneself to whatever was available. With the advent of the property-rights way of life, however, any such ‘helping oneself’ transmogrified into being theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera. Millennia later, all of this results in feeling-beings atavistically harbouring a deep, primordial *feeling* of being somehow disfranchised – the instinctual passions, being primeval, are still ‘wired’ for hunter-gathering – from some ancient ‘golden age’, wherein life was in some ill-defined way ‘free’ (e.g., ‘The Garden of Eden’), such as to affectively underpin all the class-wars (between the ‘haves and have-nots’) down through the ages.

Unless this rudimentary *feeling* of disfranchisement – of *feeling* somehow deprived of a fundamental franchise (franchise = the territory or limits within which immunity, privileges, rights, powers, etcetera may be exercised) – is primarily understood (to the point of being viscerally felt, even) any explanation of ‘peasant-mentality’ will be of superficial use only.

A footnote appended to a 2005 online response of mine is as good a place to start as any. Viz.: [...snip remainder of post...].

JONATHAN: Is it fair to say that there has never been a time where an individual could just help himself to what he wanted? Even in the hunter-gather days, individuals and groups had to work quite strenuously to feed their bellies and protects themselves from danger. And their gains were probably stolen by alpha males and more powerful groups as well as floods, drought and plague. With that in mind, it would seem that the atavistic harboring of a deep primordial feeling of being somehow disenfranchised developed right along with the evolution of the species from early primate to man. As opposed to having developed after warlords appropriated the land and produce. Another question: Is it fair to say that the feeling of being disenfranchised (and its associated feelings of resentment, envy, cynicism, and so on and so forth) is baseless? No one is disenfranchised (franchise = the territory or limits within which immunity, privileges, rights, powers, etcetera may be exercised) in part because no one has ever had it (the strong have always had power over the weak but were in turn subject to up-and-coming adversaries as well as injury and illness) but mostly because one can chose to not ignore what life and the universe actually is.

RESPONDENT: Richard I had similar doubts as Jon re: the ‘helping oneself’ as a hunter-gatherer bit.

RICHARD: G’day No. 45,

As you will probably be aware by now I responded in detail, with suitable quotes plus relevant references, so as to demonstrate how each and every proposition and speculation in that above post – about which you say you ‘had similar doubts as Jon’ regarding the way in which the free-range life-style, for a hunter-gatherer, was epitomised by, basically, just helping oneself to whatever was available – is either beside the point or invalid. Viz.:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/actualfreedom/conversations/messages/19624

As Jon replied shortly afterwards (in Message № 19627), indicating that they were [quote] ‘burdened by prior assumptions’ [endquote], it may be helpful to particularly bear in mind the ‘beside the point’ aspect as you read what follows.

The point being, of course, that the free-range life-style, for hunter-gatherers, was epitomised by, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available (whereas, with the advent of the property-rights way of life, any such ‘helping themselves’ transmogrified into being theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera).

RESPONDENT: Hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon had to be quite careful about the territory they were permitted to forage in and were subject to brutal raids by other tribes.

RICHARD: The fact that hunter-gatherers, being driven by the same instinctual passion of territoriality as modern day feeling-beings are, were thereby subject to territorial warfare is beside the point insofar as to ‘forage’ – as in, ‘to wander in search of food or provisions’ (American Heritage Dictionary), for instance – in that manner (i.e., within any such tribal territory as was thus forcefully demarcated) was not a matter of theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera, but rather a case of, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available therein.

So there be no misunderstanding: nowhere have I suggested the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is one of peace and harmony (either personal peace or communal harmony) or that it be preferable over capitalistic enterprise (be it privately-owned or publicly-owned capitalistic enterprise).

Indeed, the ability to generate capital – so essential for the elimination of poverty, for the maximisation of health and safety, for release from debilitating manual labour (from having to ‘earn the daily bread by the sweat of the brow’), for the proliferation of the arts and sciences, and so on – is of inestimable benefit.

RESPONDENT: I too would ask a similar question re: the fundamental nature of the disenfranchisement.

RICHARD: Okay ... the most ‘fundamental’ aspect of all, then, is illustrated by the distinction between my deliberate usage of the word ‘disfranchisement’ and the word ‘disenfranchisement’ (which both you and Jon used) as the word franchise – derived via the now obsolete usage of the word frank, from the Late Latin francus, meaning ‘free’ – refers to the ‘condition of being free’ (the noun suffix ‘-ise’, occurring in loanwords from the French language, indicates a quality, condition, or function).

Viz.:

• frank (adj.): an obsolete word for free, generous; C13: from Old French franc, from Medieval Latin francus, ‘free’; identical with Frank (in Frankish Gaul only members of this people enjoyed full freedom). (Collins English Dictionary).

Thus the word disfranchise refers to being deprived, lacking or having lost that original ‘condition of being free’ (‘original’ as in having been free in the first place) inasmuch the prefix ‘dis-’, being privative, indicates a negation or absence.

Viz.:

• dis- (pref.): a prefix occurring orig. in loanwords from Latin with the meanings ‘apart, asunder’ (disperse; dissociate; dissolve); now frequent in French loanwords and English coinages having a privative, negative, or reversing force relative to the base noun, verb, or adjective: disability; disarm; disconnect; dishearten; dishonest; dislike; disobey. (Webster’s College Dictionary).

Whereas the word disenfranchise refers to being deprived of an enabled or caused ‘condition of being free’ (as in, having a previously granted freedom withdrawn, for instance) as the prefix ‘en-’ forms verbs with the general sense of enabling or causing someone/ something to be in the condition, state or place referred to by the word it prefixes.

Viz.:

• en- (pref.): cause to be in a certain condition: enable; [e.g.]: encourage, enrich, enslave; a prefix forming verbs that have the general sense ‘to cause (a person or thing) to be in’ the place, condition, or state named by the stem. (Webster’s College Dictionary).

Now, while this distinction may initially appear to be pedantry on my part it serves, nevertheless, as a useful illustration of how relatively little time it has taken – despite the vast majority of the millions of years of human development, prior to the ‘free-range’ life-style being hijacked by the ‘property-rights’ way of life, over which our human/ hominid ancestors lived an original condition of being free to, basically, just help themselves to whatever was available (and I have seen plausible estimates of it being 99.8% of those millennia) – for modern-day thralls to atavistically feel and thus intuitively think of their ancestral disfranchisement as being a prehistoric disenfranchisement.

In other words, the domination of the enthrallers has been of such an all-encompassing/ far-reaching magnitude as to be interiorised and personalised so completely it is ‘second-nature’ for the enthralled to automatically think of their ancestral ‘free-range’ franchise – that heritable condition of being free to, basically, just help themselves to whatever was available – as having been an antediluvian enfranchisement (i.e., an endowed ‘free-range’ right granted in primeval times) which, being a bestowment, is subject to rescindment.

One of the reasons I provided ‘The Garden of Eden’ as an example of some ancient ‘golden age’ wherein life was in some ill-defined way ‘free’, in my initial post at the top of this page, is because of it being such an archetypal case of ‘that which can be given is that which can be taken away’ (and taken, what is more, with creatorship impunity). Howsoever, the edenic mythology has an extra twist to its knife insofar its disenfranchisement is the fault of the disenfranchised – not of the disenfranchiser as is the everyday reality – and, as such, redemption requires total obedience (a.k.a. complete surrender) to the enfranchiser.

The many and devious ways and means whereby upwards of at least 98% or more of the peoples alive today are, in effect, in thrall to so few (yet obscenely rich) enthrallers are quite fascinating to contemplate as the continuance of such thralldom depends solely upon the ongoing complicity of the enthralled.

Hence the term ‘peasant-mentality’.

RESPONDENT: Still it must be said that the sheer magnitude of disparity in resource distribution we have today cannot really compare to that of a hunter-gatherer life, where the elders/ chieftains aren’t that much better off resource wise.

RICHARD: Indeed so ... and, furthermore, due to the inexorable law of mathematics all usurious ‘resource distribution’ (a.k.a. wealth) eventually, and quite predictably, shifts into the hands of an elite few.

RESPONDENT: Also the fact that this has led to this all encompassing economic system of servitude that runs our lives is very much the product of property rights.

RICHARD: Yes, and the way in which that alienation of the very earth beneath our feet – the source and nourishment of life itself – from the vast majority of the peoples it engenders and sustains, by a minority of those persons for the maximum enrichment of that commandeering few, has thus far escaped world-wide criticism and condemnation as ‘a crime against humanity’ is a prime example of the ‘peasant-mentality’ in action.

RESPONDENT: I don’t think the ‘buy in’ for hunter-gatherers was as insidious and comprehensive as the world we live in today. Perhaps the hunter-gatherer life, while not perfect, was a bit more relaxed and a better fit for our animal bodies and animal instincts than the current rush-rush-rush world?

RICHARD: Oh, goodness me, no ... in no way at all is the hunter-gatherer lifestyle ‘a better fit’ for flesh-and-blood bodies with the instinctual passions/the feeling-being formed thereof still in situ. For just one instance: via studies carried out around the world it can be reliably estimated that upwards of 25% of a tribe, over an average tribal-member’s life-span, perished in inter-tribal warfare (as compared with around 2-5% of a nation in 20th Century inter-national warfare).

For example, the first-hand account recorded by Mr. William Buckley, on pages 42-44 of a 1852 book titled ‘The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, Thirty-Two Years a Wanderer Amongst the Aborigines of the then Unexplored Country round Port Phillip, now the Province of Victoria’, provides a unique insight into what the almost constant state of warfare of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle really entailed and, what is more, comparatively so as well as he fought in the Napoleonic wars in the short-lived Kingdom of Holland in the early 1800’s.

(Mr. William Buckley, an escaped convict, having lived on his own amongst the hunter-gatherers of the south-eastern coast of Terra Australis in the years before any Caucasian settlement anywhere at all in that area provides a unique insight into the hunter-gatherer lifestyle there because of it being, at that time, a lifestyle totally-unaffected by any subsequent settlement many years later).

Viz.:

• [Mr. William Buckley]: ‘As I have said in the early part of this narrative, I had seen skirmishing and fighting in Holland; and knew something therefore, of what is done when men are knocking one another about with powder and shot, in real earnest, but the scene now before me was much more frightful – both parties looking like so many devils turned loose from Tartarus. Men and women were fighting furiously, and indiscriminately, covered with blood; two of the latter were killed in this affair, which lasted without intermission for two hours; the Waarengbadawas then retreated a short distance, apparently to recover themselves. After this, several messages were sent from one tribe to the other, and long conversations were held – I suppose on the matters in dispute.

‘Night approaching, we retired to our huts, the women making the most pitiable lamentations over the mangled remains of their deceased friends. Soon after dark the hostile tribe left the neighbourhood; and, on discovering this retreat from the battle ground, ours determined on following them immediately, leaving the women and myself where we were. On approaching the enemy’s quarters, they laid themselves down in ambush until all was quiet, and finding most of them asleep, laying about in groups, our party rushed upon them, killing three on the spot, and wounding several others. The enemy fled precipitately, leaving their war implements in the hands of their assailants and their wounded to be beaten to death by boomerangs, three loud shouts closing the victors triumph.

‘The bodies of the dead they mutilated in a shocking manner, cutting the arms and legs off, with flints, and shells, and tomahawks.

‘When the women saw them returning, they also raised great shouts, dancing about in savage extacy. The bodies were thrown upon the ground, and beaten about with sticks – in fact, they all seemed to be perfectly mad with excitement; the men cut the flesh off the bones, and stones were heated for baking it; after which, they greased their children with it, all over. The bones were broken to pieces with tomahawks, and given to the dogs, or put on the boughs of trees for the birds of prey hovering over the horrid scene.

‘Having apparently gratified their feelings of revenge, they fetched the bodies of their own two women who had been killed; these they buried with the customary ceremonies’. (www.archive.org/stream/lifeandadventur00morggoog#page/n63/mode/1up).

And so it goes, page after page of a ‘raw-footage’ account which undeniably exposes the (highly-politicised) modern-day narrative – whereby the ills which notoriously plague indigenous communities are virtually all the fault of ‘whiteys’ having dispossessed erstwhile hunter-gatherers from an idyllic living-in-harmony-with-nature lifestyle – which seeks to maximise ‘colonial guilt’ for a fiduciary-style perpetual recompense.

RESPONDENT: I do feel guilty mooching around at times. It does seem that the master-slave apparatus has been thoroughly internalised. Is this a question of the social identity type disenfranchisement piggy-backing on our primordial disenfranchisement?

RICHARD: As a social identity – a mental-emotional construct (a.k.a. a ‘conscience’) inculcated verbally, affectively and psychically according to a particular society’s cultural mores (mores or moeurs = ‘folkways of central importance accepted without question and embodying the fundamental moral views of a social group’ ~ Webster’s College Dictionary) – is a mental-emotional embodiment of particularised societal/ cultural mores and, as any society’s mores have that primordial disfranchisement as a central cultural feature, then any ‘social identity type’ disfranchisement intuitively felt is that very primordial disfranchisement.

Put simplistically: one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: I am somewhat socialist leaning so I do see the current liberal capitalist or state-capitalist global order as being fairly rotten.

RICHARD: All political ideologies, being identity-based or rooted-in/ stemming-from many and various an identity in situ (i.e., born of feeling-beings’ core desires for feeling-beings’ self-centric advantage), are as rotten to the core as any of its constituent identities are.

For example:

September 23 1999

• [Co-Respondent]: Also, in my opinion, modern psychiatry and psychology are for the most part a failure because they (...) are often merely concerned with helping people to adjust, cope, and adapt to a sick, crumbling, and corrupt society.

• [Richard]: (...) it is not because a society is ‘sick and corrupt’ (no society is ‘crumbling’ because all cultures throughout 5,000 years of recorded history and maybe 50,000 years of pre-history have always been ‘sick and corrupt’). A society – any culture, anywhere in the world, anywhen through the aeons – is ‘sick and corrupt’ because each and every person who makes up that society is ‘sick and corrupt’. This condition is called ‘The Human Condition’. (../richard/listbcorrespondence/listb37.htm#23Sep99).

*

August 22 1999

• [Richard]: ‘(...) by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am defiled; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am corrupt through and through; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am perversity itself. No matter how sincerely and earnestly one tries to purify oneself, one can never succeed completely. The last little bit always eludes perfecting. By ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am rotten at the innermost core’. (../richard/listafcorrespondence/listaf07.htm#22Aug99).

RESPONDENT: Not that I think communism or socialism is the answer. Because those can be perverted too. But I do think that the present system breeds a great deal of covetousness and comparison in everyone.

RICHARD: Any political system ‘breeds a great deal of covetousness and comparison in everyone’ (just as any socio-economic system, any politico-philosophical system, and so on, does).

Viz.:

January 11 2006

• [Co-Respondent]: Richard, I remember you saying that what the West represents in terms of culture/ civilization (individualism, liberal democracy, market economy, etc.) is threatened/ undermined by Eastern spiritual concepts.

• [Richard]: You are obviously referring to this:

• [Richard]: ‘... western civilisation, which has struggled to get out of superstition and medieval ignorance, is in danger of slipping back into the supernatural as the eastern mystical wisdom, that is beginning to have its strangle-hold upon otherwise intelligent people, is becoming more and more widespread. The ancient wisdom has even infiltrated modern physics’.

Or this (a variation on the theme):

• [Richard]: ‘I do appreciate science and have the highest regard for facts – it is what enabled western civilisation to get out of superstition and medieval ignorance – hence the concern that it not be taken over by the metaphysicists who would have future generations slip back into the supernatural’.

The only occasion I have discussed democracy with you was in regards to Christianity (and not eastern mystical wisdom). Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Capitalism in my view is a more fortunate [than Communism] mixture between Christianity and instinctive drives.

• [Richard]: ‘The primary distinction between capitalism and communism, as currently and previously practised, is the private ownership of property/ means of production (privatisation) versus the public ownership of property/ means of production (nationalisation); the secondary distinction is a representative democracy (regular competitive elections for governance) versus a non-representative autocracy (non-competitive elections or imposition of governance); the other distinctions lie in the areas of accountable jurisprudence versus unaccountable jurisprudence, freedom of speech (uncensored media) versus restricted speech (censored media), freedom of association/ assembly versus restricted association/ assembly, freedom of contract versus restriction of contract, and freedom of religion versus restriction of religion (all of which involve issues of public policing versus secret policing) ... apart from the freedom/ restriction of religion issue where is Christianity part of the mixture?

The Christian god not only owns everything, but is totally autocratic, arbitrarily imposes judgement, despotically punishes dissention, condemns proscribed association/ assembly, has an authoritarian insistence on an exclusive contract ... and secretly spies on everyone (all of which makes the most notorious dictator but a rank amateur by comparison).

However if you can somehow manage to love this god you will be loved in return ... but even that is a matter of caprice (grace)’.

• [Co-Respondent]: To me, it seems that the danger is broader and includes, above all, demographics. In a few generations, Europe will not be the place we now know ... and not for the better. I also think that the Western Civilization is helping its own extinction via fancy concepts like multiculturalism ... something akin to a suicidal gesture. There’s no better example than the country/ society you currently live ... and I’m speaking of trends. I can see no solutions though ... except maybe for a ‘white Australia policy’. Values are not actual, okay ... but some are better than others. What’s your practical take on this?

• [Richard]: The following encapsulates my practical take on sociological issues/ societal values as well:

• [Richard]: ‘I do not seek to advise anybody on what to do, or not do [in regards to political issues], and I have stated the reason why on many an occasion ... for example: [quote]: ‘I have oft-times said that I have no solutions for life in the real-world ... the only solution is dissolution’. [endquote]. Which means I have no solutions for governments either ...’.

Just so there is no misunderstanding ... when I say I have no solutions for life in the real-world I am referring to systematised solutions like political change, social reform, economic reconstruction, cultural revisionism, and so forth. For instance:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I have a first hand experience that this [communism] could only lead to hypocrisy, theft, corruption, greed; even brain-washing won’t work, these instincts have an innate ability to turn almost anything to their own advantage and fulfil their priorities.

• [Richard]: ‘Any system brought about by political change, social reform, economic reconstruction, cultural revisionism, and so on, is bound to fail, no matter how well thought out, because blind nature’s genetically endowed survival passions, and the ‘being’ or ‘presence’ they automatically form themselves into, will stuff it up again and again.

I have seen this repeatedly on the familial level, on the local community level, on the national level, and on the an international level ... plus, more pertinently, on the partnership (marriage/ relationship) level.

Unless one can live with just one other person, in peace and harmony twenty four hours of the day, nothing is ever going to work on any other scale’.

(../richard/listafcorrespondence/listaf25j.htm#11Jan06)

RESPONDENT: I feel very much like a white-collar peasant. Engaged in the rat-race to get to the top and realise there is nothing there ala what John Lennon and your friend spoke about.

RICHARD: What is there at the top is, of course, money/ assets, fame/ prestige and, especially, power – albeit a puny power, being over people (to have them do as bid), and not a potent power, as over the physical world (to directly effect beneficial material modification) – but there is ‘nothing there’ of intrinsic value (as in, nothing of significance, in the ‘meaning of life’ significance, that is).

RESPONDENT: I can relate to the Stockholm Syndrome aspect quite well too.

RICHARD: Good ... capture-bonding (i.e., loyalty to ‘the system’ in this context), when unexamined, enables the continuance of complicity (as already mentioned further above) with its especially insidious loyalty.

RESPONDENT: Professional training is one of gladiatorial combat, where one vies with others to become a member of a small officially sanctioned professional cabal that has a strong financial incentive to maintain the current hierarchy (Training, safety etc. are the other reasons cited - which are quite sensible. Somehow though I think these are secondary). Naturally this inculcates the symptoms you talked about. However I’ve had deep suspicions about ‘the system’ for a while. In some sense this that has lead to my being less focussed on accumulating wealth, assets, prestige, being career focussed etc. than many of my peers. But I wonder if I go far enough.

The question I have for you is: Can you elaborate some more on becoming aware of this peasant mentality - specifically as it relates to practising actualism?

RICHARD: Essentially, seeing-through the whole sick-and-sorry system and, thus, ceasing to believe in it, is all what is required.

The identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago found it incredibly liberating to no longer be able to believe in it/ be capable of loyalty to it ... especially so as ‘he’ had been quite the rebel up until then (the ‘black-sheep’ of the family and all).

In a latter part of his response to your ‘Money as Debt’ post Andrew speaks of having tuned-in to this liberating aspect.

Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘(...). From Richard’s posts and the ensuing discussion/ clarifications, I’m also beginning to get a clearer sense now of how the primordial *feelings* of resentment, the peasant mentality and the current monetary system are related’. (Message № 196xx).

• [Andrew]: ‘(...). I felt a liberating quality having this being discussed. Having it all tied together with actualism and being free of the human condition’. (Message № 196xx).

RESPONDENT: For instance would you recommend pragmatically minimising ones involvement in this system as a necessary (or helpful) condition to becoming actually free? Thanks.

RICHARD: Not necessarily, no ... actualism practice works best in the market-place.

Both feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ and feeling-being ‘Peter’ minimised their respective income-streams, within a year or so, but that was more because they valued their time over money than any other reason.

Plus the more one enjoys and appreciates being alive simply by being here, each moment again for as much as is humanly possible, the lower the cost-of-living becomes as less and less discretionary spending is used-up in purchased entertainment, in socialising expenditure (e.g., fashion-house attire, designer-driven accoutrements, status-displaying automobiles, and etcetera), in mood-enhancement payments, in novelty-seeking travel costs, and so on and so forth.

Golly, come to think of it, actualism should accrue quite a few brownie points for being so ... um ... so environmentally-friendly!