“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
Ishmael was silent for a moment, then he asked if I saw erratic retaliation at work anywhere among the Takers of today. After thinking about it for a while, I told him I saw it at work in juvenile-gang warfare.
“That’s very astute, Julie. Erratic retaliation is precisely the strategy they employ as a means of maintaining an equal footing among themselves. And what do the people of your culture want to do with juvenile gangs?”
“They want to suppress them, for sure. Do away with them.”
“Naturally,” Ishmael said, nodding. “But there are some other highly visible combatants pursuing a strategy of erratic retaliation right now, aren’t there?”
“Oh,” I said, “yeah, I guess so. You mean all those crazy people in Bosnia.”
“That’s right. And what do the people of your culture want to do with them?
“They want to make them stop fighting.”
“They want to make them stop acting like Erratic Retaliators.”
“Exactly.”
“ ‘Going to war’ is acceptable to you, but erratic retaliation is not, and it never has been. Right from the beginning, the Takers have been unalterably hostile to this tribal strategy. I suspect it’s because erratic retaliation is fundamentally self-controlling and fundamentally unsusceptible to outside management. And Takers don’t trust anything that’s self-controlling. They want to manage it all and can’t stand having anything going on around them that is outside their control.”
“Very true. But are you saying we should leave them alone to fight it out?”
“Not at all, Julie. You should know by now that I don’t pretend to know what people ‘should’ do. Erratic retaliation isn’t ‘good’ and the suppression of it ‘evil.’ What’s happening in that part of the world is merely the latest calamity in a calamitous history that can’t be made right by any means whatever.”
“Yeah, that’s the way it seems,” I said.
“While we’re momentarily off the track, I’d like to point out that we’re in a position to observe something new here. I’ve shown you that competition among members of the same species is necessarily more comprehensive than competition among members of different species. Cardinals compete more comprehensively with other cardinals than they do with blue jays or sparrows, and humans compete more comprehensively with other humans than they do with bears or badgers.”
“Yes.”
“Now you’re in a position to see that competition among peoples with the same lifestyle is necessarily more comprehensive than competition among peoples with different life-styles. Farmers compete more comprehensively with other farmers than they do with hunter-gatherers.”
“Wow, that’s true,” I said. “So that by creating a world full of farmers, we’ve heightened the level of competition to the max.”
“This is indeed the situation among the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas, Julie. There was plenty of competition among them even when they were living in different ways. Now they’re all living the same way, and so (far from having eliminated competition) they must compete even more intensely.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“In our examination of competitive strategies, we’ve seen that their effect is to make it possible for competitors to live side by side without having to engage in mortal combat over every little thing. The Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas can no longer live side by side by playing Erratic Retaliator. That strategy has been thrown out. Without it, in the matter of the dammed stream, your only idea so far is: ‘Let’s go to war.’ In other words, let’s go straight to mortal combat. But I’m sure you can see that it’s not going to work for the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas to go to war over every little thing.”
“Right.”
“The peacekeeping strategy of the past was ‘Give as good as you get, but don’t be too predictable.’ The Takers discarded that. What did they come up with to replace it?”
I struggled with it for a few minutes and finally said, “I guess I have to say that what the Takers came up with was themselves. They made themselves the peacekeepers.”
“They did indeed, Julie. They appointed themselves the administrators of chaos, and they’ve been at it ever since, improvising generation after generation with varying degrees of success. They took the keeping of the peace into their hands at the beginning of their revolution, and it’s been there ever since. When they arrived in the New World, no one was keeping the peace here, as you know. Rather, the peace was being kept in the traditional way, by people giving as good as they got and remaining unpredictable. The Takers put a stop to all that, and now the keeping of the peace is in their capable hands. Crime is a multibillion-dollar industry, children deal drugs on street corners, and maddened citizens vent their rage on each other with assault weapons.”
The Crescent, Part II
Before the Hullas, the Puala, the Albas, and the Cario were overrun by the Takers, each tribe had its own way of dealing with things, the gift of tens of thousands of years of cultural experience. The Hulla way was not the Puala way, the Puala way was not the Alba way, and the Alba way was not the Cario way. The only thing these ways had in common was that they worked—the Hulla way for the Hullas, the Puala way for the Puala, the Alba way for the Albas, and the Cario way for the Cario.
“What was vitally important for all these peoples was to have ways of dealing with humans as they are. They didn’t think of humans as flawed beings, but this doesn’t mean that they thought of them as angels. They knew very well that humans are capable of being troublesome, disruptive, selfish, mean, cruel, greedy, violent, and so on. Humans are nothing if not passionate and inconsistent, and it doesn’t take a giant intellect to figure this out. A system that works for tens of thousands of years is not going to be a system that works only for people who are invariably agreeable, helpful, selfless, generous, kind, and gentle. A system that works for tens of thousands of years is going to be a system that works for people who are always capable of being troublesome, disruptive, selfish, greedy, cruel, and violent. Does this make sense to you?”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“Among tribal peoples, you don’t find laws that forbid disruptive behavior. To the tribal mind, this would be supremely inane. Instead, you find laws that serve to minimize the damage of disruptive behavior. For example, no tribal people would ever frame a law forbidding adultery. Instead, what you find are laws that set forth what must happen when adultery occurs. The law prescribes steps that minimize the damage done by this act of infidelity, which has injured not only the spouse but the community itself by cheapening marriage in the eyes of the children. Again, the objective is not to punish but to make right, to promote healing, so that as far as possible, everything can return to normal. The same would be true of assault. To the tribal mind, it’s futile to say to people, ‘You must never fight.’ What is not futile is to know exactly what must be done for the best when there’s been a fight, so that everyone sustains the least damage possible. I want you to see how very different this is from the effect of your own laws, which, instead of reducing damage, actually magnify and multiply damage all across the social landscape, destroying families, ruining lives, and leaving victims to heal their own wounds.”
“I do see it,” I told him.
“As I think is clear from what I’ve said so far, there was one imperative that was common to all tribes: Attack other tribes, defend each other. In other words, despite all internal squabbles and vendettas, it was the tribe against the world. If you’re a Hulla, it’s fine to attack Cario or Puala, but attacking other Hullas is not the idea. If you’re a Cario, it’s fine to attack Hullas or Puala, but attacking other Cario is not the idea. Do you see why this must be so?”
“I think so. If Cario law encouraged the Cario to attack each other, then the Cario would eventually disappear as a tribe. And if Cario law prohibited Cario from attacking Hullas or Puala, then the Err
atic Retaliator strategy would be out the window, and the Cario would also eventually disappear as a tribe.”
“Exactly. At the beginning of your revolution, your own tribe, which I’ve called the Takers, was exactly like the Hullas, the Puala, the Albas, and the Cario—and indeed all the tens of thousands of others that were extant in the world at that time. I mean that they had a way of living that worked well for them and a set of laws that enabled them to deal effectively with disruptive behavior in their midst. What do you suppose happened to that original way of living that worked well for the Takers?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
“We’ll have to see if we can imagine it together, Julie. Here’s one thing we can be sure of: Nothing in the tribal way of the Takers prepared them for the responsibility they undertook when they overran their neighbors at the beginning of the revolution.”
“How can you know that?”
“Tribal culture showed people how to cope with things that had been happening from the beginning of time. It didn’t show people how to cope with things that had never happened before in the entire history of the world—and your revolution was just such a thing. People had been competing and conflicting from the beginning of time. They knew how to hold their own by playing the Erratic Retali ator strategy. But now one tribe, under an impetus never felt before among humans, was ready to wield a kind of power that had never been wielded before. Their population expanding in front of an abundance of food, the Takers were no longer interested in merely holding their own against their neighbors. They had more people to feed, needed more land, and had the power to overrun their neighbors—assimilating them, running them off, or exterminating them (it didn’t matter which). But once they’d overrun their neighbors, they were in uncharted territory. What were they to do with them? They were certainly not going to go back to playing Erratic Retaliator with them. That would have made no sense at all. And they were also not going to allow them to go on playing Erratic Retaliator among themselves. That too would make no sense. Do you see why?”
“Yes, I think so. Erratic retaliation is a way of maintaining your independence on an equal footing with your neighbors. The Takers were against that. They didn’t want the Hullas and the Puala and the Cario to be independent entities, constantly fighting among themselves.”
“What was the old Taker law about fighting? I mean the law they followed before the revolution.” Seeing my blank look, he added, “This is the law all tribal people follow in common about fighting.”
“Oh. You mean ‘Fight your neighbors, not yourselves.’ ”
“That’s right. This was the law that was being followed by every tribe in the Fertile Crescent, every tribe in the Near East, and every tribe in the world.”
“I’ve got that,” I told him.
“But when the Takers began to overrun their neighbors, they had to create a new law. They didn’t want the tribes they overran to go on fighting each other.”
“I’ve got that too.”
“So what was the new law, Julie?”
“The new law had to be ‘Don’t fight anybody.’ ”
“Of course. And as you pointed out a minute ago, this meant that the Erratic Retaliator strategy went out the window—and tribal independence went out with it. The Takers wanted to administer a world where people worked, not a world where people wasted energy playing Erratic Retaliator.”
“Yes, that’s obvious.”
“The old tribal boundaries were meaningless now—geographically and culturally—not only for the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Alba, but for the Takers themselves. The Takers didn’t bring to the new mix their old tribal ways. These would have been meaningless to the others. All the old tribal ways were equally meaningless in the new world order being built by the Takers. It was pointless for the Hullas to teach their children what had worked for Hullas for tens of thousands of years, because they were no longer Hullas. It was pointless for the Cario to teach their children what had worked for Cario for tens of thousands of years, because they were no longer Cario.
“But though they belonged to a new world order, people didn’t stop being troublesome, disruptive, selfish, cruel, greedy, and violent, did they? The same old behavior continued—but without tribal law to moderate its effects. Even if the old tribal laws were remembered, the Takers would find them impossible to administer. The Hulla way of dealing with disruptive behavior might be fine for Hullas, but it wouldn’t be acceptable to the Cario. I’m sure you can see that.”
“Yes.”
“So how are the Takers going to deal with disruptive behavior among the people they rule? What are they going to do about adultery, assault, rape, thievery, murder, and so on?”
“They’re going to outlaw them.”
“Of course. Under the tribal order, outlawing things was never the idea. Instead, the laws of each tribe served to minimize the damage and put people back together. Tribal laws didn’t say, ‘Such things must never happen,’ because they knew for an absolute fact that such things will happen. Rather, they said, ‘When such things happen, here’s what must be done in order to put things right as far as they can be put right.’ ”
“I understand.”
“We’re near the end here, Julie. There’s only one last thing to see. To the tribal mind, it’s asinine to formulate a law that you know is going to be disobeyed. To formulate a law that you know is going to be disobeyed is to bring the whole concept of law into disrepute. A prime example of a law that you know is going to be disobeyed is a law in the form thou shalt not. It doesn’t matter what you follow those words with. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not injure—every single one of these is a law that you know is going to be disobeyed. Because tribal peoples didn’t waste time with laws they knew would be disobeyed, disobedience was not a problem for them. Tribal law didn’t outlaw mischief, it spelled out ways to undo mischief, so people were glad to obey it. The law did something good for them, so why would they break it? But from the very beginning Taker law was a body of laws that you knew would be broken—and (not surprisingly) they’ve been broken day in and day out for ten thousand years.”
“Yes. That’s amazing—an amazing way to look at it.”
“And because your laws were formulated with the understanding that they would be broken from the very first day, you had to have a way of dealing with lawbreakers.”
“Yes. Lawbreakers had to be punished.”
“That’s right. What else can you do with them? Having saddled yourselves with laws that you assume will be broken, you’ve never found anything to do that makes better sense than punishing people for doing exactly what you expected them to do in the first place. For ten thousand years you’ve been making and multiplying laws that you fully expect to be broken, until now I suppose you must have literally millions of them, many of them broken millions of times a day. Do you personally know a single person who isn’t a lawbreaker?”
“No.”
“I’m sure that even at your age you’ve broken dozens.”
“Hundreds,” I said confidently.
“The very officials you elect to uphold the laws break them. And at the same time your pillars of society somehow find it possible to become indignant over the fact that some people have little respect for the law.”
“It is amazing,” I told him.
“The destruction of tribal law and the Erratic Retaliator strategy was not something that could have happened gradually, over hundreds or thousands of years. It had to begin immediately, at the site of the very first Taker encroachment. Tribal law and the Erratic Retaliator strategy were barricades that had to come down right at the outset. Whatever their real names were, the Hullas, the Cario, the Albas, and the Puala had to disappear as tribal entities. Within a few decades the surrounding tribes had to fall in the same way, willingly or unwillingly exchanging tribal independence for Taker power. The revolution spread outward from
this center, like a circle of fire burning away a cultural heritage that reached all the way back to your primate origins.
“The memory of having been Hullas, Cario, Albas, and Puala didn’t vanish in a single generation, of course, but neither did it plausibly survive for more than four or five generations—but say even ten generations and this is only two centuries. At the end of a thousand years here at the center, the descendants of the Hullas, Cario, Albas, and Puala wouldn’t even remember that such a thing as the tribal life had ever existed. It would obviously still be remembered at the perimeter of Taker expansion, but by now that perimeter enclosed Persia, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. A thousand years later that perimeter would extend well into the Far East, Russia, and Europe. Tribal peoples were still being encountered and engulfed at the perimeter of Taker expansion, but this was eight thousand years ago, Julie.
“The revolutionary heartland was still the Near East and indeed the Fertile Crescent. Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, was the New York City of this era. Here your culture’s most powerful innovation (after totalitarian agriculture and locking up the food) was just being tinkered with—writing. But another five thousand years would pass before the logographers of classical Greece began to think of using this tool to make a record of the human past. When they did at last begin to record the human past, this is the picture that began to emerge: The human race was born just a few thousand years ago in the vicinity of the Fertile Crescent. It was born dependent on crops, and planted them as instinctively as bees build hives. It also had an instinct for civilization. So, as soon as it was born, the human race began planting crops and building civilization. There was, of course, utterly no memory left of humanity’s tribal past, extending back hundreds of thousands of years. That had disappeared without a trace in what one of my pupils whimsically (but quite usefully) calls the Great Forgetting.