The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.
The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.
Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Wednesday, 16 October 2024

Forgotten Forgetting

Every so often I come across two prevailing beliefs in conversations. One is that humans are innately selfish, prone to violence, and/or nasty. The other is that our hunter-gatherer ancestors often beat each other up to steal scarce resources. The two beliefs are linked. They are both highly debatable, and most likely false.

The common imagery associated with the second of these beliefs is that of opposing groups of hunter-gatherers coming into contact and, using clubs, spears, and other weapons, attacking one another. Such imagery supposes that one group may have just killed a deer, and the other group wishes to steal the deer for their own use.

A further image of hunter-gatherers is that of the males going off and taking a woman of another group by force and dragging her (many images show by the hair) back to his own cave.

These images are palpably untrue.

Yet, these images, and the beliefs themselves, are likely to be the source of the first belief – that humans are inherently malicious and horrible creatures - or perhaps stem from that belief themselves.

Over the years these images and beliefs have had their adherents, sometimes advanced by high profile, and influential people. One of the most notable was the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. In his book, Leviathan,1 Hobbes curtly and bluntly summed up the belief that humans are innately unpleasant by stating that the ‘life of man (is) solitary, poor, nasty, brutal, and short.’

Hobbes’ solution to this condition was to enter into a social contract by which citizens give up their freedoms to powerful individuals and/or parliaments in exchange for safety. By expanding upon this notion Hobbes became known as the father of political philosophy.

Hobbes’ summary is a very bleak assessment of the nature of humanity, isn’t it?

Yet, I hear and read versions of this assessment constantly from many people; from esteemed authors to those I share a coffee with. Our culture seems to have adopted this view uncritically. Perhaps, more likely, we have simply forgotten how things were before we took to agriculture in a big way. Daniel Quinn calls this The Great Forgetting; the ‘fact that before the advent of agriculture and village life, humans had lived in a profoundly different way.’2

Over the past 10,000 years or so, not only have we forgotten how things were, but we have also even forgotten that we have forgotten. So that nowadays we assume that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutal, and short’ lives, because that was the way Hobbes and others saw the world of their time. This judgment by Hobbes and others has entered our cultural belief system and worldview, so much so that it goes unquestioned.

Yet, research by palaeontologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists challenges the belief. This research shows that our ancestors roamed over large expanses, yet when they encountered other groups, the contact was not one of distrust or aggression. More often it was to trade, to re-acquaint with friends or relatives, to find mates (outside of one’s own clan), to learn new skills, and to participate in ceremonies and rituals. As the authors of one review paper claim, hunter-gatherers ‘moved because they were part of a mobile society that was large, complex, and distributed.’3

Our hunter-gather ancestors did not live in isolated small groups according to these researchers. Hunter-gather society was complex and interrelated. This is what we have forgotten.

During Hobbes’ time the research techniques of palaeontologists and anthropologists were not available to him; consequently, he was unable to remember life thousands of years before. He most likely assumed that what he saw of British society of his time was how things had always been. His words became explanations without evidence. Today, as I hear and see these same images and beliefs repeated, they sound and look more and more like justification, rather than simply explanation. If not outright justification, then at least tolerant credibility.

Today, we try to find ways to overcome aggression, violence, poverty, and harshness, because we think these arise from our innate human nature. But, if we have forgotten our state of nature as it was for 95% of our human existence, then we do not need to find ways to overcome our nature: we simply need to stop forgetting.

Notes:

1. To give its full title: Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. First published in 1651. (They were prone to protracted book titles at that time.)

2. Daniel Quinn, Have You Heard of the Great Forgetting? An excerpt from his book The Story of B. It used to be on his Ishmael.com website, but with the shift to Ishmael.org it has disappeared. However, the article is still available on the Films for Action website - https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-great-forgetting/  accessed 16 October 2024

3. Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias, Why do hunter-gatherers refuse to be sedentary? University of Zūrich, March 2024 https://aeon.co/essays/the-hunter-gatherers-of-the-21st-century-who-live-on-the-move  accessed 16 October 2024

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