{"id":5302,"date":"2019-02-22T08:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=5302"},"modified":"2023-11-01T15:50:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T19:50:56","slug":"55-natural-regulation-no-hierarchy-no-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=5302","title":{"rendered":"55. Natural Regulation: No Hierarchy, No Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"We<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n

Chapter 2: What Were They Thinking?<\/p>\n

Digression: Government from the Paleolithic to Philadelphia<\/p>\n

Page 55: No Chiefs, No Religion<\/p>\n

Average Joe trying on a chieftan\u2019s headdress, Sis looking on skeptically.<\/em><\/p>\n

JOE<\/em><\/p>\n

I mean, obviously they\u2019d have been led by chiefs<\/strong> of some sort, but-<\/p>\n

SIS<\/em><\/p>\n

What on Earth makes you say that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSelf-regulating\u201d means people kept each other social and cooperative naturally… informally.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our naturally social brains didn\u2019t need<\/strong> any higher authority telling them what to do or how to live.<\/p>\n

Island folk.<\/em><\/p>\n

BEMUSED WOMAN<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNeed?\u201d We wouldn\u2019t tolerate<\/strong> anyone who tried it!<\/p>\n

Sis and Joe bickering.<\/em><\/p>\n

SIS<\/em><\/p>\n

Dominance<\/strong> behavior is about as anti-<\/strong>social as you can get! Hardly a survival skill in band society.<\/p>\n

JOE<\/em><\/p>\n

Sorry, I don\u2019t buy it. Every<\/strong> human endeavor, no matter how small, winds up having a leader.<\/p>\n

Island folk again.<\/em><\/p>\n

BEMUSED<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, leaders.<\/strong> Certainly we have leaders! Leadership is the opposite<\/strong> of dominance.<\/p>\n

TALL DUDE<\/em><\/p>\n

Leadership is a phenomenally<\/strong> social skill!<\/p>\n

BEARDED GUY<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re going along with him because we<\/strong> want to. He\u2019s earned<\/strong> our trust and respect.<\/p>\n

LEADER<\/em><\/p>\n

More on that later.<\/p>\n

Right now, we got some deer here, and I\u2019ve got a plan…<\/p>\n

Armed band members pinning a guy in the snow.<\/em><\/p>\n

YOUNG WOMAN<\/em><\/p>\n

And if we catch<\/strong> anyone bullying or bossing, or being overly aggressive?<\/p>\n

You\u2019d better believe we\u2019re gonna nip<\/strong> that in the bud!<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to get away<\/strong> with anti-social behavior when we all know<\/strong> what you\u2019re up to.<\/p>\n

CLUB GUY 1<\/em><\/p>\n

And — no matter how strong<\/strong> you might be — the rest of us outnumber <\/strong>you.<\/p>\n

CLUB GUY 2<\/em><\/p>\n

And we\u2019re very<\/strong> good at cooperating.<\/p>\n

CLUB GUY 3<\/em><\/p>\n

And we\u2019re all big<\/strong> fans of bud-nipping!<\/p>\n

SIS (narrating)<\/em><\/p>\n

[It is thought that removing<\/strong> persistently violent, aggressive, antisocial people from our gene pool, whether by ostracism or execution, is one of the ways we tamed and \u201cdomesticated\u201d our own species. As we\u2019ve already seen, this instinct still drives much criminal punishment.]<\/p>\n

Sis gearing up to make a point to Joe.<\/em><\/p>\n

SIS<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay, so — band-level society didn\u2019t need any \u201chigher authority\u201d because we regulated our behavior with social stimuli.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words:<\/p>\n

PEER PRESSU-<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

JOE<\/em><\/p>\n

Hold up, wait.<\/p>\n

What about religion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SIS<\/em><\/p>\n

Eh? What about<\/strong> it?<\/p>\n

Band hiking near mountain lake in twilight rain.<\/em><\/p>\n

SIS (narrating)<\/em><\/p>\n

Religion wasn\u2019t a thing<\/strong> until fairly recently. Because it simply wasn\u2019t necessary.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Band society managed to maintain social order just fine without<\/strong> religion for something like 60,000 years — 85% of the human experience since our cognitive revolution.<\/p>\n

HIKER GIRL<\/em><\/p>\n

Do gorillas<\/strong> believe in gods?<\/p>\n

Do cougars have a cosmology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then why would we?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DISTANT HIKER<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019d be the point of dreaming up narratives of the super<\/strong>natural?<\/p>\n

Nature<\/strong> is more than enough to reckon with, thank you.<\/p>\n

Couple on riverbank with Asian animals nearby.<\/em><\/p>\n

SIS (narrating)<\/em><\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean people weren\u2019t spiritual.<\/strong> On the contrary!<\/p>\n

HIM<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/strong> obviously think and act with my<\/strong> own mind… my own animating spirit… my own \u201cme\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s kinda obvious that you<\/strong> have one, too!<\/p>\n

HER<\/em><\/p>\n

What do you mean, \u201ckinda?\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, we have no reason to think other<\/strong> creatures don\u2019t experience the same reality that we<\/strong> do…<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s kinda obvious that every other living thing must be its<\/strong> own conscious \u201cme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cave art.<\/em><\/p>\n

HIM<\/em><\/p>\n

And so it feels kinda obvious that we can communicate with their<\/strong> animating spirits, same as we do with other humans — commune<\/strong> with them, even, if they care to listen.<\/p>\n

HUNTER<\/em><\/p>\n

We need your meat, mister deer. So with respect, I\u2019m asking you to take one for the team.<\/p>\n

I thank you for sacrificing yourself to my arrow, for the greater good.<\/p>\n

Smiling Sis.<\/em><\/p>\n

SIS<\/em><\/p>\n

But this \u201canimist\u201d way of seeing the world was a perception,<\/strong> not a belief.<\/strong> A byproduct of our brain\u2019s prodigious social cognition and creative pattern recognition. And the \u201cspirit\u201d would have been a natural attribute of that<\/strong> dog or tree, not a supernatural god<\/strong> of dogs or trees.<\/p>\n

More to the point, neither spirituality nor<\/strong> the supernatural were involved in how we governed<\/strong> ourselves in our state of nature.<\/p>\n

Instead, we\u2019d evolved to rely on<\/p>\n

PEER PR-<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Joe and Sis bickering.<\/p>\n

JOE<\/em><\/p>\n

No no no! <\/strong>Paleolithic people buried their dead! They carved fertility talismans! They must<\/strong> have had religion!<\/p>\n

SIS<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s symbolic<\/strong> behavior. So is speech. That\u2019s not religion.<\/p>\n

But you\u2019re right, our early ancestors\u2019 lives were saturated<\/strong> with symbolism.<\/p>\n

Thirty-five, forty thousand<\/strong> years ago, people were filling the world with expressive art<\/strong> — painting exquisite murals, carving detailed sculptures, decorating their clothes and bodies, playing musical instruments…<\/p>\n

…we can only imagine<\/strong> what stories they told.<\/p>\n

The human imagination was nothing short of transcendant,<\/strong> and indeed, one day all of this would become part<\/strong> of religion…<\/p>\n

But that day was a long way off.<\/p>\n

Religion would<\/strong> play a very important role in the history of government.<\/p>\n

And religion was as much part part of the Framers\u2019<\/strong> world as the air that they breathed.<\/p>\n

So believe <\/strong>me, we\u2019ll have a lot<\/strong> to say about religion in the coming pages.<\/p>\n

But right now, let\u2019s focus on how we did<\/strong> govern ourselves in the state of nature…<\/p>\n

Without<\/strong> rulers…<\/p>\n

Without<\/strong> religion…<\/p>\n

But with…<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Suggested edits: \u201ctranscendent\u201d is misspelled. And change \u201cpart part of the Framers\u2019 world\u201d to \u201cpart of the Framers\u2019 world\u201d.]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>Transcript<\/a>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gee, I wonder what’ll be at the top of the next page!<\/p>\n

This is only 2\/3 of the page I intended to put up, but I’d gotten this much done, and it seems like a good break point, and I didn’t want to make you wait for the rest of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We tend to think that government is inherently hierarchical, with chiefs on top. Or that it requires social institutions like religion. But for most of human history, we did just fine without either. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,35,58,1,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-brief-history-of-government","category-constitutional-law","category-the-cognitive-revolution","category-uncategorized","category-what-were-they-thinking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}