Is World Peace Possible? (part 2)

Who Are We?

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We all belong to one family. — Nkosi Johnson[2]

Common anthropological theory states that we all originate from Africa.[3] Ancestrally, we’re all Africans. If everyone would just let that sink in, many misconceptions would be clarified. Over time, we spread throughout much of the planet and developed superficial phenotypical differences to adapt to the climate and geographical location we inhabited. From different locations, we developed various customs and ways of life. Our brothers and sisters no longer looked or acted just like us. This, compounded by self-serving tales of strange groups from far-off places…and the Other was born.[4]

To solidify our identity, we tend to see people as other than ourselves (without a “you,” there is no “me;” without a “them,” there is no “us”). Unfortunately, to bolster our confidence and the confidence of our group (which is crucial for survival), there is a malignant tendency to deem ourselves not just separate from others but better. [5] Once we have convinced ourselves that there is a lesser Other, it becomes easier to use or remove them to make our lives easier and more fruitful (oppression, looting, slavery, displacement, and most abominably — genocide).[6]

For almost all of human existence (roughly 96% of humans’ 300,000-years), we were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Thus, independence — combined with cooperative family life — is likely our hardwired, default state. Mostly in the last 4% of human existence (roughly 12,000 years), since the invention of agriculture, have we joined together to form large groups. Therefore, in the span of human existance, large groups are very new. This could explain why we’re still struggling with them.[7]

Group leaders — accompanied by their inner circles — evolved into warlords, chiefs, pharaohs, kings/queens, tyrants, dictators, emperors/empresses, sultans, tsars, et al.; and the many became ruled by the few. Through great struggle and sacrifice (mostly by the many), we have slowly, and not always steadily, become less authoritarian and more democratic — thus finding our way back toward our natural state of independence, now bolstered by the group power of government. Yet despite thousands of years of governmental progress, the erroneous concept of the Other still persists. Too many of us are either unaware or deny that we are all blood relatives. Why is there this negation of our shared heritage? First, we must explore why we do what we do.

(Continued in Part 3)

Notes

[2] From Jim Wooten’s, We Are All the Same: A Story of a Boy’s Courage and a Mother’s Love (Penguin Books, 2005).

[3] Chris Stringer, “Out of Ethiopia,” Nature 423, 693–695 (2003), https://doi.org/10.1038/423692a; Luke Taylor, “Where Was the Birthplace of Modern Humans?” Discover (2020), https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/where-was-the-birthplace-of-modern-humans

[4] I am using the common term “the Other” in a universal ‘us vs. them’ frame of reference, rather than the more one-sided hegemonic ‘Occidental vs. Orient’ frame of reference used in Edward Said’s book Orientalism (Vintage Books, 1979).

[5] Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage Books, 1979), 3, 47–48; Norbert Elias uses the term “group charisma”: Keith Tester, Panic (Routledge, 2013) 57–60 [primary source: Norbert Elias and John L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders (Sage, 1994)].

[6] This is not to say that there cannot be conflict within the same group, family, or even within oneself. However, some sort of separation or split needs to occur for opposition and conflict to arise.

[7] Thomas Mayor, “Hunter-Gatherers: The Original Libertarians.” The Independent Review 16, no. 4 (2012): 491. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24563115.

Previously in this series…

Is World Peace Possible? (Part 1): A New Age of Vulnerability