Social Contract

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they."

Rousseau wins the prize for kick-ass intros. Any reader is grabbed by these claw-like words and pulled into the meat of the first book of the Social Contract. This book is nearly laughably relevant to our modern times, especially considering the US's occupation-based empire abroad. I should say, it would be laughable if the consequences were not so grave. It's exactly the gravity that turns my stomach.

I mentioned my early inability to get beyond Rousseau the man. I'm still having difficulties, but I'm making progress. I can't exactly squash my feelings about the writer, but anyone who supported Clinton throughout the 90s is well-versed at separating a man's genius from his fatal flaws. I find myself incorporating them into my interpretation of the text, specifically regarding Rousseau's idealized vision of human history, in which our primitive selves were perfect and good until reason came along to screw it all up. An early problem with this romanticized view is that the primitives around Rousseau were indigenous, displaced individuals, and he's pretty condescending to consider them perfect without reason.

After Rousseau, and in no small part influenced by Rousseau, Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, in which he posited the theory of natural selection and suggested that all species were not created as separate, unique species, but resulted from adaptations from fewer species. Our scientific cannon has since grown to examine primates as human kind's species cousins, thereby positing that all primates share a common special ancestor. I think this is why my mind looks to primate activity rather than indigenous lifestyles when I read Rousseau today, even if that's not what he intended.

It's fascinating that Rousseau posited the first societies were signaled by the creation of families, as if before society was established, people (primates) lived alone. Among the four great apes--the primates humans appear genetically and socially closest to--orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees, we can observe today social patterns that Rousseau presumably envisioned as our utopian past. Only orangutans live alone, the others live in cultural groupings that include several family units, but are not defined by blood lines. Considering Rousseau's own relationship weaknesses, it's likely that he so idealized a life without familial obligations that his utopia necessitated that aspect.

Among the apes, chimpanzees are genetically and socially closest to humans. While all apes share at least 96% of our genetic make-up, chimps share over 98%. Jane Goodall documented through decades of study the amazing patterns of the chimp culture, and she's careful to never present this culture as utopian. Indeed, the chimps wage periodic and brutal warfare against neighboring chimp and baboon societies. But it is clear that the chimps have an advanced and organized society. Perhaps Rousseau intended some primordial existence without society, but since symbiosis, or mutually beneficial communal activities, is considered responsible for the leap from single celled organisms to multi-celled organisms a few million years ago, I'd venture to say social living at some level has always existed.

Forgetting that I totally disagree with the precept upon which it's based (that family was the first wrong turn from utopia), I do champion Rousseau's attack on born inequalities. Augustine's concept of potential good seems rebirthed in Rousseau with the concept of potential freedom. Rousseau is credited with inspiring the French revolution. It's sad to consider what Rousseau wrote considering the collective people in context with history. Just 60 years later, Napoleon marched across Europe, galvanizing nationalism among his conquered and vanquished people. Nationalism is the root, of which racism forms the branches alongside the extreme possibilities of flag waving on one end, and genocide on another. Rousseau asked what defined a people as a populace, and Napoleon answered their common enemy, a lesson humanity has never forgotten.

I digress. Potential freedoms. Rousseau gives everyone a political tabula raza by saying everyone is free and has a right to everything they need. Key word: need. Property is not a need. If only modern society would affirm this! Water would be considered a human right. Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs labeled food, water, safety, shelter, love, and affection as chief among the human needs. Did you know that in Colorado, it's illegal to catch rainwater from your roof? Theoretically, that water has already been claimed downstream. The law is ridiculously unenforceable, should it therefore be a precedent for not allowing gardens, too? Increasingly, water supplies are being privatized so that the state must purchase water for the citizens. Your water bill used to represent the infrastructure needed to deliver the water, but our future most likely involves actually paying for the water at whatever exorbitant prices the owners of the water charge. And what's to come of our fellow citizens if they can't afford the water? It's not exactly something we can do without, like gas or nice shoes. Yes, society would do well to ensure the basic needs are essential and inalienable human rights. These properties, and only these, comprise my own personal utopia. In fact, they're very close to the existence Thoreau found on Emerson's pond. And I do plan to spend some time next week talking about that.

Rousseau, mon ami, reluctantly

Plato held that men (I give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming, had he lived more recently, he would have included women and thus said humans) aren't adults until their forties. This week I enjoyed another birthday, and the acknowledgement of the wisdom of Plato's theory. I'm still progressing in my comprehension of the world, I understand more of it each year. I hold closer to Maslow's view of maturation, which was based on experiences under the belt rather than years. All the same, with all I see in the world now that was absent from my view previously, I find myself wishing I could get another bachelor's degree just to immerse myself in the liberal arts with my somewhat matured mind.

Back in college, I hardly considered Rousseau a friend. I was a Locke and Hobbes lover, the Enlightenment enemies of Rousseau. I never got past his fatal flaw of having five illegitimate children and giving them over to the state to raise. Now, I can read about one's personal life and, with the knowledge of my own mistakes, put human failure into perspective. I imagine that the private affairs of many, if not most great thinkers were shaky. Brilliance and passion are rough bed fellows. These days, I have to consider Rousseau closer to my values and perceptions than either Locke or Hobbes.

Perhaps one reason I so resisted Rousseau was natural teenage rebellion, as his philosophies were a huge influence on my mother, and therefore, my upbringing. My mom might not have claimed Rousseau at the time, but she did claim his proteges, Emerson and Thoreau. In my rural New Mexico home, Thoreau quotes adorned posters and Walden was an apt theme for our animal utopia with countless pigs, horses, sheep, cats, and dogs. Rousseau's proteges continue to influence my life as my husband was schooled early on in a Piaget program, and we've in turn chosen a Piaget-based pre-school for our children.

I was surprised to find strong tones of Rousseau in the book I'm writing now, Sustainable Parenting (shameless plug for a publisher. anyone?). I expected Thoreau, and was prepared to claim him. But Rousseau? I have a friend who intends to base his entire parenting approach on Rousseau's Emile. I chastise him because Emile was not a real boy, and what of the social contract with Rousseau's real children. We'll get to parenting eventually. First, I have to wrestle with the pig: politics. If you'd like to read with me, click here for an entirely readable translation of the Social Contract.

this is not a blog

except, it is. But it's also an exploring expedition, an adventure. It's a small attempt to find the meaning in the odd moments of the crossroads in which the paths of the universe collide. It's a fieldjournal for my life as a cultural pioneer.

The genre of blogging was a huge paradigm buster, mixing the fields of social science, journalism, and computer science with the common journal. In the resulting social order, blogging services were created to be free to all, and--more importantly--usable for all. The unit of power, instead of a dollar, became the link. A culture hungry for a voice has seized blogging as their medium. Politicians, clergy, teachers, students, comedians, teenagers professors, techies, engineers, artists, writers, work-at-home moms, stay-at-home dads, and even the not-exactly-homeless populate the burgeoning land known as the blogosphere. Together, they [we] represent the largest population of individuals not defined by a border. But where are we going with this?

The time has come for the genre to meet the fate that all paradigm busters must by design meet: this too must be busted. Here's our Kant moment: are we an enlightened age, or merely living in an age of enlightenment? By naming the bubble, the paradigm is busted. Pop. Welcome to the Blogging Age.

Here's my place to explore our paradigm. Is it possible that blogs are the point of the entire [western?] literary cannon? It must be so! The linear progression (at least by chronological terms) of all that's ever been thought is otherwise a meander, and we aren't so much the inheritors of the collective advances of the human race as we are bumps on a log. The Buddhist in me likes the idea of being a bump on a log, a home for a spot of moss and a nice meal for the grub. The rest of me, consumed in competition with my own potential self, keeps my eyes on the horizon. Move west, young [wo]man!

I share today as my birthday with Jean-Paul Sartre, who violently tore open his paradigm by declaring that nothing means anything. We forget, though, that his discovery was a rally cry for humanity to give meaning to our own existence. And here we are back at the Buddha. I've heard you can tell if you're in a room full of Buddhist monks by the shoes perfectly lined along the wall. It's not that neatly ordered shoes have an inherently spiritual property, instead, the Buddhist monk (as well as monks of other spiritual traditions) is called to be mindful of all things. To the degree that even taking one's shoes off is thought about. Or, in Sartre's terms, given meaning.

This is my life's desire: to live with meaning, on purpose, to live mindfully. With this blog, I can explore the depths of life, the meanings we are accidentally or mindfully giving to the various aspects of our existence. Even blogging can be mindful and purposeful. Sartre said so!