Issue #48 June 2014 In thIs Issue: the hIdden topography of … · 2020-02-02 · Issue #48 June...

Issue #48 June 2014

Topographic maps, like the one shown above, have remained in my mind ever since I went on a backpacking trip to the Smoky Mountains when I was 17 years old. When you’re on foot in the wilderness, knowing the elevations in front of you is crucial, not only for walking, but for finding water and food.

The same types of factors show up in human cultures. Our history books give us the “flat map” view, not the elevations that make real people walk one path or another.

Topography, a detailed graphic representation of the surface features of a place or the features themselves, applies to human affairs in powerful ways. There is a psychological topography that underlies human affairs, and we will examine it in this issue.

In thIs Issue:

“People Are People” ... 2

The Core of Civilizations ................................................... 2

What Does Matter ....... 4

Caesar Versus Christ ... 5

Cultural Confidence ........ 7

The Quantum Leap ..... 9

Our Job ......................... 11

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http://www.freemansperspective.com

the hIdden topography of human Cultures


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Since I’ll be staying on this metaphor, I’d like to start by giving you some additional images of topography that I hold in my consciousness.

First from Sun Tzu:

The natural formation of the country is the soldier’s best ally.

The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting of pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.

And an old maxim of the common law:

Water runs and ought to run.

“people are people”

There is one other concept that underlies this discussion. I often hear people who travel saying that “People are people, no matter where.” To that, I’d like add a clause: and no matter when.

There are more books of history than any of us could read in a lifetime, but I have read a good number of them, and what I see is that while people are shaped by the beliefs of their time, underneath it all, they remain basically the same.

For example, there was probably no Western culture that was more degrading to women than the ancient Greeks. According to their cultural standards, women were never to be seen outside of their homes. They were held to be things, more than people. Still, in real life those cultural standards failed to hold, and you can still find gravestones from ancient Greece showing a husband’s lament that his beloved and noble wife had died, leaving a terrible void.

Another example: As we age, we tend to complain about the younger generation that follows us. We see their flaws all too well. The ancients did precisely the same thing:

The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching. – Assyrian tablet, circa 1,800 BC

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint. – Hesiod, 8th century BC

These quotes sound just like us, do they not?

So at their core, people are people, no matter where and no matter when.

the real Core of CIvIlIzatIons

(For this article we will define civilizations and cultures as “groups of people with persistent, shared ideas,” with civilizations being the larger, longer-lasting groups.)


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According to what I learned in school, civilizations rise and fall mostly because of military actions. Nowadays the weather is often blamed. Popular books have blamed germs and resources. But all these issues are minor at best. The core of any human civilization (and this becomes obvious as you think about it) is what goes on in the human minds involved.

Briefly, here are the reasons why the factors usually credited with the rise and fall of civilizations are not to be taken too seriously:

military actions: Military actions are always dependent upon a cooperative group of people who produce war materials. No emperor can conquer without an army, and no army can march without provisions. All these things must come from a much larger group of people who cooperate on a large scale. Without a productive culture that feeds him and his attendants, the emperor is powerless. Culture must precede military action.

Weather: Human cultures have thrived in the Arctic, in the tropics, at middle latitudes, and in almost every location except the poles and the worst deserts. (And we now have outposts even in those places.) Humans can adapt exceedingly well. Weather has seldom stopped them.

germs: Germs have certainly been a powerful force on Earth, but they affect all parts of it. The Great Pestilence of 1338-1353 AD, for example, began in China, then spread throughout the known world. The death was spread almost uniformly.

resources: Natural resources have rarely affected civilizations very deeply. The reason is simple: humans are very good at trading, which overcomes scarcities. For example, here’s a map showing the Near East obsidian trade at about 8,000 BC. Note that this was 5,500 years before the pyramids of Egypt.


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We also saw in FMP #37 that Catalhoyuk, the first city after the ice age, was not positioned around natural resources. The nearest farm land was miles away. It was, however, on the obsidian trade route.

The contrast between Japan and Brazil also makes a fine example. Japan has very few resources and Brazil has very many, but this has not kept the Brazilians wealthier and more powerful than the Japanese.

So, the external factors of war, germs, resources, and weather are not primary factors shaping human civilizations.

What Does matter

What matters in human civilization is humans, and in particular, the thoughts that lead to their actions.

Human action, however, is not directly driven by the external impulses that buffet people in their daily lives, such as fears, commands, surprises, and necessities. The more important thoughts are the ones that we think about ourselves. Self-opinion colors all that we do, and before external impulses can be turned into actions, they must first pass through our attitudes about ourselves.

Man is by nature self-referral; he has conversations with himself. All healthy humans do this, asking themselves questions and observing their recalled memories.

Furthermore, man knows that he can be either divided against himself or true to himself. He holds deep opinions about himself.

This “opinion of myself” is a self-image, leading over time to self-esteem, which is, as Nathaniel Brandon used to say, “a reputation you build with yourself.”

Developing what we might call authentic self-esteem takes time, effort, and consistency. But it results in beneficial and reliable human beings – people who are confident, self-analytical, and adaptive.

But there is a cheaper, easier route that is not only presented to us, but is regularly thrust upon us: identification-based self-esteem. These are the slogans that tell us we are welcomed, important, powerful, or right because we are part of a certain group.

Identification-based self-esteem is cheap self-esteem. It says that we should think well of ourselves because we are Swiss, Chinese, Jewish, Buddhist, rich, poor, or any of a hundred other types. This kind of identification creates two glaring problems:

1. It completely diverts attention from our real selves: our character, our actions, our internal self.

2. It enslaves us to the group we identify with. After such an identification takes root, serious change requires us to abandon our primary source of good feelings about ourselves. That can be painful and requires courage.

Because man is self-referral by design, his self-image colors everything else he does. Self-concept is the crucible in all our decisions are forged. This has massive effects, in all of us and in every generation.


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This is truly what makes human civilizations rise and fall. Wars and conquerors are mostly side-effects, derivatives.

So, the topography we’re talking about in this issue is “the shared internal features of human groups.” These are the factors that give shape and firmness to human cultures and civilizations.

Before I go any further, let me show you how this works.

Caesar versus ChrIst

The great illustration of self-image directing even the largest events is the conflict between the Christians of the first few centuries and the Roman Empire.

Let me paint a picture of this conflict for you, with the assistance of passages from historian Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ:

They met in private rooms or small chapels, and organized themselves on the model of the synagogue. Each congregation was called an ekklesia – the Greek term for the popular assembly in municipal governments… The early converts were primarily proletarian [productive, working people], with a sprinkling of the lower classes and an occasional conquest among the rich. Nevertheless, they were far from being the “dregs of the people,” as Celsus would claim; they lived for the most part orderly and industrious lives, financed missions, and raised funds for impoverished Christian communities.

What Durant describes here are the early Christians. Notice that these were productive, industrious people. This production ethic was held firmly in the Christian writings, and especially in the words of Jesus, who talked repetitively of “bearing fruit.” Christian culture was a productive culture.

As this Christian culture took root, however, Roman culture was turning against production and toward plunder. The old Roman virtues faded under the empire, until either you were ruling class, or you were nothing. As Salvian the Presbyter would later complain: The state has fallen upon such evil days that a man cannot be safe unless he is wicked.

The welfare class of Rome increased until free bread distributions were almost the foundation of the state. The central cities became the distribution points, where the welfare classes gathered and where state monuments were built. In the process, the formerly productive Roman farmers were slowly pushed into dependency. As Durant writes:

Urban architecture and games profited while the countryside grew desolate.

At the same time, the Christians, who at this time consisted of hundreds of widely-scattered groups, consolidated their internal landscapes. Regardless of the odd beliefs that sometimes developed, they adopted a shared set of ideas that set them clearly against Rome:

• Believing that justice was above the empire, that even the emperor was to be judged by a superior standard of justice.

• Believing that their kingdom was superior to Rome’s and deserved more allegiance.


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• That sacrificing to the emperor was insulting to the real deity. That the gods of Rome were no gods at all.

• That loving one another and production were the right ways to live and that all men were equal in the eyes of God.

At the same time, Rome’s hierarchy was becoming more rigid and more abusive. Productive Romans were being squeezed out of their way of life, not wanting to be either an abuser or a serf. It didn’t take long for many of them to take a serious look at this new set of ideas, recently transported to Rome from Judea.

Durant continues, writing about the Crisis of the Third Century, when Rome frayed badly:

Under these blows [at about 250-260 AD] and the disorderly elevation and assassination of emperors by troops, the imperial prestige had collapsed; those psychological forces, which time consecrates into habitual and unquestioned authority, lost their hold upon Rome’s enemies, even upon her subjects and citizens. Revolts broke out everywhere.

This was when it became difficult for people to hold self-images that were tied to Rome. The Roman hierarchy was contradicting their image so badly that the people’s identification with them broke. This is what Durant meant by “psychological forces, which time consecrates into habitual and unquestioned authority” losing their hold.

Rome had developed as a structure of patronage and tradition, and now its base was being undercut. Those who could hold onto power did so. Everyone else was pushed out and deprived of their former self-esteem.

At the same time, Christianity featured self-esteem with a more durable foundation, and offered it to everyone. Romans in increasing numbers took the deal.

Once the emperors understood what was happening, however, they fought back. Durant explains:

This persecution lasted eight years [Diocletian’s persecution, 303-311 AD] and brought death to approximately 1500 Christians, orthodox or heretic, and diverse sufferings to countless more… As the brutalities multiplied, the sympathy of the pagan population was stirred; the opinion of good citizens found courage to express itself against the most ferocious oppression in Roman history. Once the people had urged the state to destroy Christianity; now the people stood aloof from the government, and many pagans risked death to hide or protect Christians until the storm should pass.

Rome, in the eyes of its people, had not only lost itself, but had turned malicious. Again, this stood in contrast to Christianity, whose followers demonstrated benevolence.

The Diocletian persecution was the greatest test and triumph of the Church. It weakened Christianity for a time through the natural defection of adherents who had joined it, or grown up, during a half century of unmolested prosperity. But soon the defaulters were doing penance and pleading for readmission to the fold… There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the


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word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ met in the arena, and Christ won.

Christ defeated Caesar, not because of outward factors, but because of inward factors. These factors controlled events just like the topography of a landscape affects a river that flows through it.

As Rome robbed the people of Europe of purpose, meaning, and self-respect, Christians offered them a clear purpose, meaning, and authentic self-respect. Once people let go of their emotional investment in Rome, they could see that Christianity was a better, more affirming, more meaningful set of beliefs, and they took the deal.

a feW addItIonal poInts

The Christianity of this time was different than the original teachings of Jesus, of course. It was mixed, often confused, and sometimes wrong, but it carried a better set of ethics and told people that they were right to seek meaning as individuals.

I should also add that there was no Catholic Church at this time; it had not yet formed. And even after it did, it was a long time before it became an overpowering institution. After the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the Eastern emperors appointed and often controlled the bishops of Rome (later called popes). Large numbers of Christians differed with the Catholics on primary beliefs, and control was hard to come by.

While the interactions between Caesar and Christ make a great illustration (thankfully we have good documentation from the period), this pattern is common in both larger and smaller cases, such as the Protestant Reformation, when the image of the Holy Mother Church died in half the minds of Europe.

Empires grow when their subjects get fast, cheap self-esteem by identifying with it. Willing obedience is any ruler’s treasure trove, yielding money in abundance. Over time, however, empires inevitably abuse their subjects, who then either become dependent or judge the empire as unworthy. Then, the empire falls apart.

The foundation of any empire is a view of the world that is shared by many minds… and especially identification-based self-esteem. If those connections fail, the empire will fail also, no matter how many resources or weapons it holds.

Cultural ConfIdenCe

Cultural confidence is something that we see little of today in the West, but it is a powerful thing, and an important feature of cultures at their high points.

I’ll continue using Rome and Christian Europe as examples.

Socially, Rome was built on the free family model. The head of every family was a law unto himself – an unquestionable law. Theoretically, he could even kill family members if he wished. (There is very little record of this happening during the Republic. Killing children was common only in the imperial palace.)


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Economically, Rome was built on agriculture and slavery. (See FMP #32 for more on this.) As it began, the slavery was relatively mild, with slaves and owners working the fields together. Over time it often devolved into very harsh slavery.

Rome became a society based upon patronage and tradition. But power for the sake of power was not part of Rome at the beginning. Being a slave holder had to be justified by being a better and nobler type of person. That’s why the citizen class made efforts to show themselves as cultured and educated.

Rome was also built on effective, vigorous action. This was seen in Rome’s armies, of course, but more importantly in its engineers. Romans became proud of the better way of life they brought to the world, and of the culture they had developed. They built water systems and roads that far surpassed anything ever seen prior, and for a long time after.

Romans were confident in their culture, which centered their energies and supercharged their effectiveness. Rome’s builders brought “the Roman way” to many hundreds of cities throughout Europe, the Balkans, the Near East, Africa, and Asia. They dramatically surpassed the works of any civilization that had come before. They also created wonderful literature, art, and what we would now call a modern, urban lifestyle.

As the Roman state grew, however, it developed self-aggrandizing and abusive power structures. The individual farmer could no longer prosper by his virtues; instead, he had to use politics to get ahead. Soon enough, the old virtues were mere sales props, and political power reigned. Emperors provided free food and entertainments to the growing ranks of superfluous people, in an attempt to maintain their image of legitimacy.

But as the empire abused more and more people, their cultural confidence slipped away. Soon, the Roman people didn’t self-organize around their images of “what a Roman would do,” and the only way the Roman state could get things done was by force. “Roman actions” had to be compelled by outside pressures. The image of Rome was no longer within the people of Europe and had to be imposed upon them by a threatening hierarchy. Not only is that grossly inefficient, but many people simply ran away.

But at the same time Rome was resorting to force and distractions, Christians were enjoying a strong cultural confidence and gaining converts.

It took the Christians centuries to become the dominant culture of Europe, of course. The city of Rome had continued almost as it was till about 550 AD, and Roman models continued in part for a long time.

Nonetheless, by about 900 AD, the people of Europe had a new, Christian culture in their heads, and Rome was primarily a historical subject. A few rulers tried to hang on to the idea of Rome, but the people and the thousands of minor rulers generally did not.

By about 1100 AD, Christian Europeans saw themselves as morally superior to competing cultures. More importantly, they saw that moral superiority led them to material superiority. This Hebrew concept was the opposite of the power justifications that drove Rome, Greece, and all the other civilizations.

However impurely they held to a Christian ideal, this new European civilization believed that right made might. This was a stunning changeover from Roman thinking.


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The confidence of European Christians in their culture brought impressive results. These people killed the ancient economic system of slavery that had reigned in all large civilizations that preceded it. And they replaced it with market capitalism, which brought material prosperity to the world. (See FMP #33.) This was something that even the Hebrews never achieved, even though they had the same set of religious ethics a millennium prior.

Europe became – proudly – a civilization more interested in progress than in dominance, and in production rather than conquest. Certainly they had rulers who were base power-mongers, but rulers of that era had far less power than modern rulers. The more they exercised power, the more power they ended up giving away. (I’ll explain this dissipation of power in a future issue.)

So, in the end, the self-images of individual men and women create the terrain upon which all of the generals, revolutionists, and movements must travel. The shared thoughts and assumptions of human cultures are a hidden topography over which everything else must move.

the Quantum leap

The argument that I have made several times is that once we humans get past our ancient and barbaric ideals of submission and dominance, our lives will flower. I am convinced that humans are inherently creative beings, guided primarily by their imaginations. For the past several thousand years, however, identification with hierarchies has left us imagining and creating within false boundaries. That should change.

I contend that if we change these archaic beliefs about dominance and submission, humanity will take a fundamental leap forward.

And we can change. We can sever our mental partnerships with dominating and thieving structures, and build our own self-concepts as individuals.

While all the great civilizations rested upon identity-based self-esteem, there are hundreds of thousands of people alive today (probably millions) who operate on the opposite model… on reputations they build with themselves. And if they can do it, others can as well.

The one group that came close to abandoning identification-based self-esteem was the early Christians. Over time they fell into self-esteem as members of Christendom, but their first teachings had been that every person stands before God as an individual, and this led them toward authentic self-esteem.

The culture that they created was, at first, a fairly clear reflection of that individualism, as professor Carroll Quigley wrote in his book, Tragedy & Hope:

By 900 AD… there was no empire, no state, and no public authority… the state disappeared, yet society continued… It was discovered that man can live without a state… It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a state.

So, a change in human self-esteem from the collective to the individual has occurred, and its effects were more or less what we might expect: all things collective failed for lack of foundation, but all things effective remained.


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And as we saw in FMP #38, even baboons can live without the dominance and submission that are thought to be inherent parts of their nature. And, in fact, they are healthier without it.

Really, the only thing stopping us from dumping dominance and submission is our mistaken assumption that they are necessary. Now, this assumption is rather deep (including things like relying on status to impress prospective mates), but it requires only a change in software, not a change in hardware.

We’ve talked a lot about building this opposite model in the past (particularly in FMP issues 17, 19, 21, 26, 31, 36, and 39). There is nothing about it that is impossible or unnatural to us. In fact, it is more natural to us. All that really needs to change are individual minds and their assumptions about life.

One of the problems of dealing with numbers of people is that so many operate on “common knowledge.” People assume that everyone else knows something, so they should know it too. They accept it as true, because other people seem to think so. In other words: Everyone knows because everyone else knows.

But this kind of common-knowledge belief does change, and often very rapidly. The photo below shows the garment district of New York in 1930. Notice that every person in the photo is wearing a hat. Everyone simply “knew” that a gentleman wore a hat. Today, the same view would probably show no hats at all.

So, what “everyone knows is true” does change. And prior to this case, everyone knew that gentlemen wore wigs, and that the proper treatment for sick people was to bleed them.


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our Job

It turns out that Jesus was right when he said, “Cleanse the inside of the cup, that the outside may become clean also.” If we change the core, the rest eventually becomes changed also, leaving old, barbaric things to fall of their own weight.

But, it took Jesus’ followers a long time to change the world. With the greatly increased speed and reach of communications today, it should take us a much shorter time, but it will still take many years.

This is why I so often encourage people to talk to their friends and neighbors. It’s not the actions of people in power that really change the world – what changes the world are the thoughts of all our neighbors. For better or worse, this is the landscape upon which everything else shifts.

Note also that Jesus’ followers did not have to be pure to make their changes happen. As I mentioned, by the second and third centuries they had lost a portion of the original beliefs and had accepted numerous questionable ideas and even outright errors. But they did retain much of the core message, and that was enough.

So, we don’t need to “strain at gnats.” Our friends don’t have to be perfectly pure, and we commit a very grave error if we try to enforce purity; that’s an ugly and negative thing. Just keep planting good seeds.

Our job is to change minds – first our own, then to help others see new and better ideas with their own eyes.

Changing minds, however, takes time. We must make our points and persist in them over long years. Thomas Paine was right when he wrote, “Time makes more converts than reason.” Because of bad ideas they’ve inherited, people require time to change their opinions.

We must persist. This is a marathon, not a sprint. But like the early Christians, if we endure, we will win in the end.

See you next month.

PR

Issue #48 June 2014 In thIs Issue: the hIdden topography of … · 2020-02-02 · Issue #48 June...

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