It’s a long one, but if you’ve got the patience and perseverance I’m interesting in reading your thoughts…
Thou Shalt Not Steal
Sounds simple enough right? Some version of this mandate exists in every world culture we have any familiarity with. What refutation can be offered for such a ubiquitous cultural meme? Surely something so endemic must be indispensible to the functioning of society? Can we imagine a circumstance in which such a thing could be determined to be inimical to our psyche and sociability in spite of its limitless proliferation in customs of interpersonal interactions?
The first thing we must understand is that when something becomes so widespread, it lies beyond scrutiny. When there are no longer alternatives to which we may compare any given meme, it is less than scrutinized – it is no longer even noticed. Much like breathing, we see no purpose in returning to the fundaments of its employment. Everyone does it, so it must be good. Everyone senses the underlying morality of property, ownership, and the theft thereof (whether they choose to honor the taboo or not), therefore it must be a natural imperative. Do not think. Do not question. Just accept. Now, I am not suggesting that you stop breathing. Rather, I am suggesting that with everything you encounter in life (especially those that are habitual unto thoughtlessness), you should examine its source. Go back to the beginning and determine its worth. I am certain you will find that in the case of breathing, there are significant benefits – metabolic and physiological processes would be impossible without it. I think, with a bit of research, you’ll find that a life without breathing is no life at all. Literally. Our exploration has shown breathing to be good. It suggests that the continuation of breathing is irrefutably ‘good’ (w.r.t. the subjective universe). However, this is not necessarily what you will find with all such explorations.
At the start of our journey, it should be obvious that theft does not exist without a notion of property. One cannot illegally seize something that is not owned. To narrow in on the true inception of something, it is easiest to play something like a temporal high-low game. First, go back much farther than should be necessary, then jump forward, and back again, and so on, zeroing in on the bullseye. Going back to pre-human life, we find that animals had(have) no sense of property, and thus, of theft. They might be upset about food being forcibly taken from them, but in no way is there an appeal regarding the ‘injustice’ of such behavior. Unfair maybe, fought back against sure, illegal no. So we can go forward from there. At the inception of written history, back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi’s Code, and so on, there is already a basic assumption of property and the taboo of theft. In this assumption we see that it had by this point already reached a level of ubiquity, at least within the cultures that produced these early writings, which placed them beyond scrutiny. To them, theft was inarguably poor behavior. We have moved too far forward.
At some middle point, social organization and linguistic intent reached a point at which an individual was able to appeal to the group for support in condemning the action of thievery. When moral outrage leapt from the victim to the group, the taboo against theft was born. Now one could call upon her peers to help defend some piece of meat or coveted sleeping spot. I think it’s likely that the meme had its humble beginnings in interactions between groups, in which territorial hunting and gathering areas were a hotly contested commodity. In the defense of territory we find both the motive behind the thought (protection of resources) and the group-dynamical nature of the meme. When the group as a whole recognizes and cooperates in the defense of territory, it is only a small leap to the situation in which individuals within the group feeling an analogous sense of necessity in resource defense against would-be thieves and encroachers. With this, ‘theft’ is born, as is ‘property’
Now here’s the important part: The moment of inception of the meme of theft-taboo is concomitant with the meme of property. In fact, they are the same thing, the same meme, only viewed from different temporal viewpoints. Property exists only in the present tense. Theft is property in the past tense. Our relationship with property in the future tense lies only in the context of hopeful continuation of one’s property’s proprietary status. It is not fact, but the hope of something becoming or continuing to be fact.
Property in the past tense takes two forms. The first is of the personal memories that accompany your interactions with the owned thing. Different people carry about and have immediate access to these sorts of memories to different degrees, and it is an important consideration in their personal relationship to property. The second is of loss. This is in a way the second degree of past tense – ‘that had had been mine.’ This might occur through damage, age, loss, sale, theft, and so on, but all are accompanied by the feeling that ‘that was mine.’ This is the operative phrase that illuminates the perspective that is at the core of the ownership of things. If we lose something dear in a fire we do not bring the flame to trial. The rage and confusion are the same as they often are in theft. The difference is that with the latter, there is a tangible and extant scapegoat for the pain we feel for our loss. We experience the loss of many things in our lives, yet the only time we feel vengeful is when there is some material culprit on which to square the blame. That we will kick a thing that has tripped us, throw something that has burned or cut us, is telling. Revenge is not about justice, no matter how much we rationalize the motive. Justice is indefinable anyway, created for the purpose of rationalizing our petty vengeance. Revenge shows up in one circumstance only: when there is a definable enemy we can fight back against after it has inflicted us with loss. Some people are better than others at letting things go.
Switching Gears
Now, I hope you didn’t think that I was promoting some self-actualizing tripe about how to let go of things in your life and deal with loss.
Instead, it would be far more interesting if I were to use the above to show how the memes of property and theft (or even further extended – ‘law’ in general) are inimical to healthy and stable social living, how they have burdened our collective psyche and served no benefit to our lives or our society.
But even that’s been talked about before. Maybe you haven’t read about it, but I have. It’s out there, it’s been done. Thou Shalt Not Steal was the inception of our materialistic value system. Great. Moving on.
Instead, I’m going to take it a step further. Ready?
Once the meme of commodity is invented, many curious things happen. Foremost among these is that man, especially individuals who are inclined toward power and prestige (which ultimately comes down to sexual access, but that’s another post), will look to the whole of the world, to everything in existence, and categorize it in terms of whether it is a commodity or not, and if not, how can it be converted into a commodity.
This is as true for intangible things as much as anything else. Because commodity and ownership represent power over something, and the most ultimate power is that which is held over other individuals, the minds of one’s peers becomes a commodity like any other. What is the point of collecting property if not to impress those around you with it? But, to impress them, you also have to make them understand why these sorts of things are impressive. You have to surround your commodity with a mythos that will cause those peers to stand in awe of the vastness of your property. If they do not understand why this is impressive, then you have no power at all. It is ultimately the minds of others that must be owned. The material things are just wallpaper – decoration for the war-machine of your will-power over the mind of the other.
Mythology is therefore an even more fundamental precursor to property. Thou Shalt Not Steal is the linguistic marker for the mythology, but what is the purpose behind it? Why not Thou Shalt Not Climb Trees or Thou Shalt Not Stick Your Tongue At Another? These examples only seem comparatively ridiculous because of the cultural mindset which makes Thou Shalt Not Steal a given. As I said before, because it lies beyond scrutiny, we are incapable of sensing whether it may or may not be ridiculous, even harmful.
Ownership of material property is a mark of one’s relative strength or import within a social group. This provides sexual access and also the weight of authority in group decision making. Since property cannot exist without the mythos surrounding it, it is a small leap to recognize the ownership of religious thought to be its source.
When one owns religion, they own the very definitions of property, of authority, of power, of prestige, and so on.
It is necessary here to supplant your limited notion of religion as being a strictly spiritual medium. Religion is rather the cultural mindset of a people, irrespective of axiomatic cosmology.
Our economy is our religion. Our politics, our technology and science are our religion. The modern notion of ‘freedom’ is our religion. Law and the judicial and punitive systems are our religion. And of course I’m sure you can come up with much, much more. Religion is nothing more than a worldview, and it’s impossible not to ‘have’ it. The best we can hope for is to replace one form for another.
This is an unbelievably complex and many-tiered kind of religion modern culture is engaged in. No person is in charge of the assertions it brings or propagates from generation to generation. Rather, the systems themselves have reached a point of self-preservation, in which their continuation is ensured purely by self-interest. The intent of individuals is irrelevant. Groupthink is an entirely different meta-animal.
Individuals no longer ‘own’ religion as they might have in earlier times and smaller groups. It was born as a commodity. Religion is a mindset, and the whole purpose of property is to own the mindsets of others. If you own religion, you own minds. These primordial beasts – money and culture – creatures of our own creation, now own our collective mind. This is, in a way, A.I.; they are our children, of us and by us, but wholly beyond us.
We invented commodity to own minds, then we invented a wholly new kind of animal that is far better than we at this form of ownership.
Humanity’s only hope lies in creating a new mythos, a new religion, which is capable of destroying the old. Armed with the knowledge of cause-and-effect we have gained through witnessing the last 10,000 years of cultural ‘progress’, we just might have enough insight to make something better.
Back to basics, kids. Really, really fucking basics. Way, way fucking back. Your survival depends on it.
Thou Shalt Not Think