New Pantheon (03) — Governance
Our steadfast faith in the necessity to be ruled.
[Letter #010]
Good morning, son.
As we rose from bed today, your mother told me that she had had a couple of songs from Disney’s The Lion King jumping around in her head. I don’t recall the last time I saw that one in full, but I definitely remember all of the plot beats. The songs were catchy as well, of course. I’m sure, growing up, you were given as much exposure to Disney’s filmography as your mother was able to provide. She’s managed to maintain her childhood love of the Mouse’s Magic throughout the years, as you undoubtedly well know.
The Lion King was always one that I never really thought much about until recently in life. It just sorta made sense, right? “The lion is the king of the jungle.” It’s an expression that really only means that this particular animal is the apex predator of that given biome. Throwing in the royal lingo serves to romanticize the concept, I suppose, but it’s also humanizing the lion. The Disney version takes the phrase to another level. The story that we get is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, except with fewer (although not zero) deaths than the bard’s tale.
When I was younger, I never really thought much about what it all really means thematically. Talking animals in Disney movies is not unique in the slightest, but the very fact that they’re talking at all tells us that these are stand-ins for actual humans, with all of their human ideas and human desires. These animals in their human-ness are telling us how to feel and what to value in our real “jungle.”
The degree of separation that you get with anthropomorphic cartoon animals from real world adult humans means that the kids will almost certainly not think twice about it, and then you can get away with pretty much any sort of on-screen violence or adult theming you want. Explicit sex isn’t allowed, but most everything else is. Thus, political maneuvering and violent coups are par for the course.
The stories that we learn young are often what shape the way we see the world, whether we realize it or not. The story of The Lion King tells us a number of things about the way the world works, and most of us just take these lessons as truth without question. One lesson is that there are natural hierarchies, and that some people are simply more important than others. Another is that without these hierarchies, without the good king on his throne, the world will fall into chaos and violence. Today, I want to talk about the next god on my list.
Like all children of the primordial god, Hierarchy, this one is about controlling others by violence or threat of violence. Brother to Money and Ransom, this god is named Governance, and he’s just as necessary to any society as every other god in the pantheon. That is to say, not at all.
That’s a rather controversial opinion these days, I know. Regardless where you look on the political spectrum, you’re going to find folks who think that the government needs to be reformed this way or that, the laws need to be added or repealed, and enforcement should be increased or decreased, all depending on whatever agenda they’ve got in mind. What you generally don’t find are folks who simply think there shouldn’t be a government in the first place. Everyone wants the power to be shifted in their favor, but almost no one agrees that there simply ought not be power at all.
But, from what I can tell, folks don’t really think about the government or laws much of the time. Sure, there are rules for what you can and can’t do, but for the most part, they’re just codified ideas that we all generally agree on anyway. Don’t walk into traffic, except at a crosswalk. Reason: you might get hit by a car. If you’re driving, pay special attention at crosswalks. Reason: you don’t want to hit people with your car. Simple stuff.
David Graeber, during his studies in Madagascar, observed how people didn’t really even seem to notice when the local law enforcement simply dissolved one day. Virtually all government and legal powers simply left, and no one in the region really changed how they did things. People went on about their day-to-day business.
For the vast majority of us, folks just want to get along with others and enjoy ourselves and our kids.
However, you start getting eyebrows raised when suggesting that maybe we don’t really need Governance. Maybe we can just self-govern, the heretic may say. Maybe all we really need to direct our behavior is our own personal conscience. I mean, we’re incredibly social animals after all. Almost everyone is empathetic to some degree. “Put yourself in their shoes” exists as a phrase for a reason.
But, folks seem to get really uncomfortable really fast when you start to blaspheme Governance. His authoritative claws are dug in deeply in our modern society.
I said above that The Lion King teaches us some lessons about life that we essentially take for granted. One of them is that there’s a king. I mean, you can call this figure whatever you want: monarch, president, warlord, congress, senator, parliament, chairman, or tsar. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The important part is that there is a hierarchy, and it funnels power to the top person or small group of people. The movie even goes to great pains to let you know that not only is this necessary and normal, but it’s required by the “circle of life.” The story could easily have ended with Simba living his best life in the country with his buddies, but instead he has to “take his rightful place” in order to save everything and everyone. God save the king.
It’s the same “divine right of kings” narrative that people heard back in the middle ages. In order to convince common folk that they needed lords and nobles to rule over them, they had to first convince them that this nobility was divinely chosen to do so. “God said we were supposed to be the boss, you see, so… Hands are tied.”
We’ve dropped a lot of the religious thematics these days, but we still dress our figures up in fancy lingo to match their fancy suits. “With regard to the good gentleman from the great state of South Dakota…” etc, and so on. It’s the same nonsense with the same purpose: to give these people some degree of credibility. It’s certainly challenging to assume a powerful position based on nothing more than a “trust me, bro,” but credentials of most “leaders” don’t seem to go much beyond that.
You know what I think? Call me crazy, but I think they only want power and control.
I realize that it was all a joke to them, but I can’t help but to think about the peasants from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene wherein they’re shouting about the repression they’re suffering at the hands of the king they didn’t vote for. Ridiculous joke or not, they’re absolutely right. You can make up some farcical tale about an aquatic bint lobbing a scimitar at you, but that doesn’t grant you supreme executive power. To be fair, what gave Arthur the power there was the actual repression administered at the end.
These “leaders” don’t really add anything to my life either though. They’ll say that they make laws “to keep people safe,” but it really seems more likely that they’re made to keep themselves in power and everyone else in line. I guess that’s a cynical way to see things, but it doesn’t help that the rules I have to follow don’t really apply to them.
For example, the office of the President of the US has a power called the “executive order.” Basically, it’s a little mini-law that the guy in charge can make up without anyone else to stop him, so long as it’s not too egregious. This isn’t in the Constitution, by the way. George Washington just sort of made it up, since that’s how kings worked in his day. It was basic stuff back then, but ever since Washington, whenever a president makes up an order, and no one calls him on it, then that means that whatever he just got away with is now within the power of the presidents to do in the future. Over time, presidents try to get away with more and more orders, each of which would grow the power of the office. It’s gotten to the point now that presidents can wage their own private wars, assassinate military targets, and occupy entire countries with standing armies all on their own. No approval required from anyone.
Right now, we’ve got a former president of the US currently trying to prove in court that he can do whatever he wants without consequence, simply by virtue of his “service” of holding that office. This orange bastard is certainly the one who everyone wants to talk about, but he’s by no means aberrant in this behavior. Presidents have attempted all manner of nonsense, throughout my lifetime, without any formal declarations or consent of the governed. They just did so with less bombast and indignity than the manchild-in-chief, and thus they only earned the ire of the public every four years or so.
The laws don’t apply to them, folks with enough money and power. They’ve never arrested anyone who destroyed the economy back in 2008, as another example. They never so much as had to mutter an apology, for all the sincerity that would have had. The family that ran Perdue Pharma and actively tried to get citizens addicted to opioids, killing tens of thousands and destroying their families, still haven’t dealt with any real consequences. We just got a couple of Netflix documentaries out of all that so that we can shake our heads and call them bastards, but I seriously doubt they care about that.
George Carlin told us that it was a “big club, and you ain’t in it.” He was right, of course. I just wonder so hard sometimes why folks insist that we have to have this club. Regular folks, mind you, just can’t imagine what would happen without the elite leeches– er, “leaders.”
The desire to have some person, group, or system be “in charge” goes back a long way. Longer, I’m sure, than we have records of it going. However, we’d only have to go back a few hundred years to find one of Governance’s most influential priests. His preference was explicitly for a monarchy, but his beliefs about humanity seem to have persisted well beyond his calls for a king. Thomas Hobbes has earned his unenviable position on my list of most heartless and destructive bastards in history. If you’ve ever heard me describe something as “Hobbesian,” you should know that it’s not a compliment.
The thing about Hobbes is that he didn’t pull his punches. Usefully, he said all of the quiet parts out loud for everyone to hear. “People suck, we need kings, and without law and order, everyone murders everyone” might be a good translation into a modern vernacular. Actually, he used Latin like some fancy-pants know-it-all in his book, De Cive. “Bellum omnium contra omnes.”
I won’t make you pull out the Latin textbook. It means “War of all against all,” which is what he believed that people do without strong kings to bludgeon them into submission. Here’s another quote where he spells it all out:
Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man. […] In such condition there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual Fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
– Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13. [emphasis mine]
What a charming guy.
Amazingly though, this has become “common knowledge.” From my experience, people seem to think that they’re among a small group of decent people in an ocean of cowards, cheats, liars, murderers, rapists, thugs, and cons. It’s this bizarre Dunning-Krueger sort of mentality, like how more than half of all people think that they’re somehow above average. Maybe it’s just an American thing, but folks somehow seem to think that everyone else out there must secretly be awful criminals, and it’s only the law and/or police that keeps this army of criminals from running rampages through the streets with tommy guns and machetes.
How is that possible? How is everyone part of the group of decent people, but everyone else is about to commit horrible atrocities?
Could it be that everyone would rather just chill and get along? Maybe people have been getting along, with more or less success, for the past 200 thousand years. Maybe we just evolved to be decent to each other, and then some asshole in a fancy suit told us that we should be afraid of people who are different from us. Afraid, and hateful. You know: divide et impera.
Incidentally, regarding the Good Mr Hobbes’ comment above, people absolutely had culture, navigation, trade, construction, heavy lifting, knowledge of the face of the Earth, account of time, arts, letters, and society — all before the first human civilization a good 10 thousand years ago. We had all of those things before a king told us to do them. People made them happen, and they did it on their own without being forced.
Was there a fear of violent death? Maybe, but no more than there would be today, and probably even less fear than in Hobbes’ day. Why? Because, people had each other’s back, even in the paleolithic era. That was back before we were taught to be fiercely independent and distrustful of others. Being around other people in a tribe 20 thousand years ago was probably safer than walking down the street today. Jussayin’.
Solitary? Hardly. If humanity was solitary by nature, Mr Hobbes himself would likely never have come about at all. I’ll give him the benefit of this one since he wasn’t alive anymore when Darwin told us how beings of a species survive by working together. Remember, the “fittest” doesn’t mean the strongest individual. It means the species best suited to the environment. Humans are fittest because we work together.
Poor, nasty, and brutish. Mr Hobbes just could not conceive of a world wherein the “right” people didn’t have control over everyone else. In truth, he was terrified of such a world. If people in the past were “poor,” then it’s because they had no use for the rich man’s money or they refused to dance for the rich man to get paid. Nasty and brutish? Well, I mean, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Last thing in the quote there is “short.” I’m sure by now I’ve taught you that paleolithic humans didn’t actually live super short lives as the conventional myth holds. The average lifespan was short when you factor in all of the childhood mortality. We have certainly got better at not letting babies die from preventable causes, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve dramatically extended the length of the average lifespan once a person reaches adulthood. No one has ever actually believed that 30 years old was nearing the end of a human life, with the exception of some angsty teenagers. They often believe such things.
To be clear, I still don’t know what purpose rulers have really ever served to common people in history. At some point, I was taught that the king was supposed to be the one in charge of protecting the kingdom, and thus he was awarded the privilege of not having to worry about day-to-day tasks. This was supposed to leave him available to protect everyone from foreign threats. I’m not sure if this was ever actually a thing or just a justification for why the guy with the fancy chair and the silly hat gets to order other people to die.
Aren’t these kings the ones who are causing the threats? If there just were no kings, wouldn’t there be no one to declare wars? If we didn’t have rulers, I’m pretty sure we’d just co-exist in villages and sing silly songs around campfires. Naive? Eh, seems like a pretty good time to me.
It keeps happening over and over too, and it’s not like they don’t know what they’re doing. Take this 1946 conversation with Herman Goering, a big shot in everyone’s favorite German bad guy group from the mid-twentieth century (you know the one):
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
I always grin a little at the naivete of people like the interviewer. “We iN tHe u.S. hAVe soMe sAy iN ouR…” blah, blah! It’s tripe. The interviewer absolutely believed it, I’m sure, but it’s still tripe.
What it is though is a subtle prayer to Governance. It’s a prayer to the system. At the core of this, the interviewer and Goering are having a difference of opinion on how the system should operate, but they would never question that a system is necessary to control the “undesirable” elements of society. The difference is that the Nazi is simply being honest about his goals.
I know, because I’ve asked a lot of them, that people are afraid that if you simply had no laws and no police that you’d have murderers and rapists just running around doing all manner of things to everyone, creating this Mad Max crazy world where anything goes and might would make right. First off, might does make right, and that’s exactly how the world works right now. It’s not actually right, but it’s how things are done in a hierarchical system. But, let me tell you why Mad Max wouldn’t happen.
In order for us to end up with a “wild west” situation, you’d have to have a person who wants to, you know, actually do the murdering and raping. There would have to be a reason why they’d want to do that. Despite what propagandists will tell you, almost no one wants to bother with that sort of thing. They don’t want to bother with it because those activities aren’t helpful to anyone. You need motive to commit an antisocial act, and going about one’s daily tasks almost never creates motive.
Not only that, but people aren’t defenseless without laws and police. A person who wants to run amok also runs the risk of being shot and killed by a would-be victim, exactly the same way that they ran the risk 20 thousand years ago of being run through with a spear. Even the so-called “wild west” wasn’t actually a free-for-all bedlam. People worked together to protect each other.
So, in such a lawless world, would you have the occasional idiot who did something incredibly stupid and got himself killed or otherwise beaten by a vengeful family member? Absolutely, you would. But, here’s the big question: how’s that any different than it is right now? How’s that any different than it’s ever been with laws and kings? Seems to me that there’s not much difference at all, except that in our world, we have to pretend that the “leaders” are somehow more important than the rest of us, and that somehow their presence keeps humans from engaging in a constant state of bloodlust berserk.
Another inconvenient factoid that your average pearl-clutcher doesn’t like to admit: the police don’t stop crime anyway. They certainly don’t solve mysteries or whatever like the TV shows would have us believe. They show up after something has been done, take some notes, and they leave. You’ll never hear from them again. Their job is to protect the interests of the powerful class and to enact their wishes. Why, do you suppose, they all took Protect and Serve off their squad cars? That little fabrication just no longer made sense.
But, they’ve got citizens convinced that we need them. Not just the police and military, but all of the “leaders” too. If not for the good kings and queens, lords and dukes, contessas and viscounts, then surely the barbaric hordes would batter down the city walls, overrun us all, and take everything we hold dear!
Or… you know, they’re just people like all other people ever, and more than anything, they’d rather just raise their families peacefully. I’m no pacifist, and I strongly advise everyone to learn to defend themselves with whatever necessary force, but I know damn well that most folks would rather not die for a stupid reason. War is almost always a stupid reason.
For the last couple hundred years, it’s been fashionable to blame psychosis or other mental illness for criminality. Look, if people have a mental illness that causes them to kill or want to kill someone, then they need medical assistance, not handcuffs and prison time. Locking them in a box for years isn’t going to fix anything or help anyone. It just removes the “bad” person from the presence of everyone else. That’s how we ended up with sanitariums long ago, and these days we just call them “correctional facility psych camps.” I know this because I spent a horrifying year of my life working at one of them.
The lunatic is on the grass
The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games
And daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path
– Pink Floyd, Brain Damage
Of course, there are other bad things besides murder, but the same goes if they want to commit any other antisocial act: rape, arson, destruction, or whatever. If someone has something going on that makes them want to behave in a shitty way, then we should probably help them to address the reason that they want to do that, whether it’s an illness or some condition in their life. If they’re hungry, feed them. If they’re lonely, talk with them. If they’re sad, maybe make them a pizza or something. Food is good, ok?
This “helping people” thing worked really well for tens of thousands of years before Hammurabi decided that we needed to punish people for going against his wishes. People weren’t always super well-behaved in every social situation, but that’s why cultures came up with ways to dissuade assholes from making too much of a scene. Shame is tremendously effective, actually. Ask a Catholic. Point is that there’s a reason people do shitty things, and you can try to address that root issue instead of simply trying to solve all of your problems with the barrel of a gun or the tip of a sword.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that what we have now, with the hierarchical power-holders on top and everyone else below them, with the monopoly on violence granted to the powerful and removed from the rest of us, doesn’t really work well. It never really has worked well. This need for Governance in a hierarchical system was taught to us in the stories we learned young, but these stories have only been told for as long as we’ve had the governments to tell stories about. Maybe we should tell different stories.
As far as we know, we’ve only had kings for as long as we’ve had civilization (that is, cities). If we’re generous, maybe 8 thousand years of rulers. That’s 8 out of the 200 to 300 thousand years that we’ve been, as a species, just as developed as anyone is today. Just as intelligent, just as perceptive, just as wise. Maybe more so, before all of the busy-ness of civilization. Sure, we have pre-civ humans beat on technology, for all the good that’s doing for the planet these days, but that’s about it.
That means that before there were kings and empires and laws, people just like you and me were telling their kids stories about how life works. Those stories didn’t include kings and empires and laws. They didn’t teach their kids to bow down to an overlord or respect some universal edict of the emperor. They didn’t care about borders or nations.
They taught them how to fend for themselves and how to take care of the people they love. They taught them to love and laugh, to hunt and fish, to grow plants and sing. Their gods were those of animal spirits, rivers, trees, and the sun — the things that they knew provided life. Not vengeful, dominant gods who demand loyalty and obedience.
Well, that’s all that this god does: demand subservience. Does Governance actually provide benefits to the world? I’m sure cases could be made for things we’ve done in his name. My question would always be whether any of these supposed blessings could be done without some sort of hierarchical system. I would suggest that if they cannot, then they aren’t really blessings at all. But, maybe I’m oversimplifying it.
Oh, I just can’t wait to be king!
– Simba, Disney’s The Lion King
I hope that this one made sense. It was a truly challenging letter to compose. Whereas you will be exposed to these sorts of ideas from a fairly young age, it took me well into my thirties before I started thinking about any of it. As a result, I fear that I take a little longer to collect my thoughts than I expect it will take you. You’re going to be a smart kid. Too smart to worship the likes of this pantheon.
I hope that you’re doing very well when you read this letter. I hope that you’re safe, son. I love you.
Your father,
Papa Bear
[Author’s note: This is a series of letters that I intend to print to paper and deliver to my son, probably around the year 2040. You are more than welcome to read along. The links in the article are only for you, the reader, and will include citations, jokes, asides, and links to books or other items. If you happen to purchase anything through such a link, I’ll get a small commission. Every little bit helps, right?]
