Things Fell Apart

Recently, I’ve been listening to the BBC Radio 4 series “Things Fell Apart“ by Jon Ronson. If you’re based in the UK, you can find the two seasons on BBC Sounds. The series comprises a journalistic exploration into the key events that created the ‘culture wars’ that we see today, where one part of society attacks another. In my opinion, it’s a very good piece of work. Each episode explores one of the ‘tipping point’ events in the polarisation of social thinking, tracing some at least of the human stories leading up to those events.

In each of these so-called ‘culture wars’, what we are seeing is the appearance of a social ‘fault-line’ between small ‘c’ conservatism and some new paradigm. And that division is not a new phenomenon at all: you can trace examples of it throughout human history. It’s part of the process of social evolution. Clinging to the comfort of ‘what’s always been right’ is a big part of small ‘c’ conservatism. People define their very identity from the roles they fulfil in society, so when some new development seems to threaten those roles, the people themselves feel threatened. The threat takes on an almost ‘existential’ quality.

As the conservative element in society moves to suppress the perceived threat – the ‘perversion’ of moral standards, as they see it (in reality, the movement of social roles) – the ‘progressive’ element counter-attacks: usually on the basis of a ‘human right’ to self-determination.

There is no ‘progression’ as such, in evolution. It is merely a process by which life adapts to new environments. And those changed environments can include new social ‘obligations’. For example, in the context of a hunter-gatherer social fabric, the concept of ‘ownership’ of land attaches to a tribal group, and is related to protecting natural resources that the tribe needs. However, as trade develops – and with it the concept of ‘assets’ – hunting and gathering turn into farming. Roaming a territory to follow natural resources turns into settlement and cultivation. And the concept of ‘owning’ resources develops out of the process of cultivating them, rather than just finding them.

Today, we can barely imagine the upset that the above change caused to then-prevalent social roles, back in pre-historic times. Someone who previously worked for the tribal group as a whole had to choose whether to enter the new, competitive realm of building and operating a ‘business’, or sell their labour to someone else. And yet the very same social turmoil hit the native American people, in both north and south, as European settlers brought the new social paradigm with them. Not only that, but also used their superior weapon technology to ‘appropriate’ land and resources. But this isn’t just a story of a few continents: it’s a global story, evolving out of many starting points. And the European settlers were as much the product as the vector of these changes. (In Central America, they weren’t even the first.)

In these days of rapid communication – newspapers, then radio, then television and then ‘social media’ – it’s easier than ever for people who find their social roles ‘limiting’ to seek and find emotional allies. And in the hot-house of reinforcing each others’ ideas, new social paradigms emerge and get tested. But as they ‘take hold’, they rub against the conservative ‘establishment’. The new paradigms challenge sources of social power, which equates directly to challenging the social norms that ‘establish’ that power. And yes, at the root of the conflict – on both sides – is an attachment to so-called ‘self-determination’: the choice to be a satellite to someone else’s self-centred ‘system’ of living, or create one’s own system.

Culture wars? Nothing new. Tipping points in the evolving conflicts? Nothing new. But one can still admire a dedication to ‘journalising’ the tipping points and causal chains in our current ‘wars’.

Is abortion right or wrong? Not even God knows that: it’s merely an evolutionary possibility in how a society works. I’m sure that view would anger ‘pro-life’ fundamentalists, but I’ll merely point at the food they eat and say, “You killed that, and you didn’t even eat the whole of it: what makes human life more special?” Doubtless the response would be something like, “God created us.” But surely, by their own logic, He created everything. Or maybe they’ll say, “God granted Adam sovereignty over the Earth.” But that’s not true. There were rules in the Garden of Eden, and Adam got cast out for breaking them. If one is going to cite a creation story as justification for small ‘c’ conservatism, then surely one should take all of that story into account, and not just pick the most convenient parts. And it’s just a story, to boot. There are many other origin stories, invented by hunter-gatherers under the stars.

And the same applies to almost any other ‘divine truth’. Look closely and all you find is a conservative establishment protecting the norms that give it social power. And that ‘establishment’ is made up of ordinary people, each protecting the validity of the choices they have made about the social roles they will play. But collectively, such life choices produce a large inertia, always snapping back towards the same social ‘norms’. Those norms may be an accident of history, but that doesn’t prevent them from having real weight.

[I say, “almost any,” because there are reflections of cosmic reality in all our major religions, along with advice about how to find that reality, and be released from needing ‘ego’.]

Culture wars? Just vested opinions with different social paradigms behind them. Right or wrong? Totally subjective and always self-centred, but ‘collective’ in force. Even the supposed war between Islam and other religions is just the same: a delusion of feeling that certain social norms, representing ‘life choices’, need to be defended. The only ‘divine’ truth is that we’re all products of the same creative process – as are all the resources we use for our survival and every other life form on this planet. Any attempt to impose ‘right and wrong’ on that comes straight from the Self – in collaboration with other, like-minded egos. But finding that truth – let alone then releasing it – takes a certain journey.

Featured image from Shutterstock.