Distribia

T

he tale of delegating decision-making and power in the hands of the few on behalf of the many is as old as the first human civilization. As the case with everything human, any behavior or practice always begins with a "need," which can be explained in biological terms. Why do humans have needs? We have needs because the human body is designed to be inseparable from its natural environment and we cannot survive without the elements outside our skin. What we call needs are in fact external nourishment that our bodies lack to sustain an inadequately designed biological system. We grew out of this planet in the same way apples grow on apple trees and just how apples continuously need the tree for nourishment, we are destined to have never-ending needs to countless things in our world. Humanity is intended to be one with Earth, and this aim is most evident in how our bodies are structured. Our bodies are destined to be naturally dependent on outside elements and continuously demand nourishment from these elements for mere survival. We cannot hold our breath for too long or stop eating or drinking because we are dependent on these elements to persevere. We need food and water among many other things, and our survival will always be contingent on them. We need to build shelters to protect us from the elements and predators or otherwise we will perish. Our continuation as a species is reliant on a vast number of things, and for as long as this dependency lingers, we will remain vulnerable and we will continue to have needs.

There is a limited number of things that one person can accomplish on one's own. You might be a gifted hunter, but you might fail at building a proper shelter or protecting yourself from predators. You cannot live alone in a forest somewhere because the chances are high that one day you might get sick or injured and this shortcoming will prevent you from securing your food and water, which would eventually kill you. Moreover, we need others to be there for us on our worst days, and in return, support them on their worst days. The need to trade with others is a necessity in the human way of life because of humanity's natural vulnerability to the elements and dependency on outside nourishments. The urge to trade is hard-wired into our DNA, and it is what brought people together and inspired them to form communities and build cities.

Trade Created Society

Society would not exist if humanity did not need to trade. Everyone is good at something but in need of something else, and we need other people to provide us with the things we can't get on our own. You might be a skilled potter but a horrible farmer, and you need to trade your products for food with someone else to put food on your table. So, you'll naturally thrive when you are able to trade with others. And just how you would typically thrive when you trade goods and services with others, the community in which you live prospers proportionally. Civilizations of yesterday flourished because they were able to conduct agreements to get what they didn't have from other people in return for what they did have. In such way, if a civilization plants a lot of grain but not so much rice, and if its people like to eat both, it can supply some grain to the rice-growers in exchange for some rice to enjoy both foods.

Whether it started by cavemen exchanging animal coats and hunting tools with one another, or later when humanity learned to domesticate cattle and trade them as a commodity, trade is the founder of the human society. The need for trade drove people to live in proximity to one another forming ever-expanding communities so they can readily and efficiently transact with one another.

Laws Are Inevitable Byproducts Of Society

As explained earlier, a single person cannot live prosperously on his/her own without help from others. A person needs to be part of a social group to enhance his/her chances of survival or experience a better quality of life. But there's a problem with living in a society, and it is the "need for laws." Obviously, you wouldn't need laws if you're living alone on a deserted island because you're not disturbing anyone and there's no one around to offend or disagree with at all. You could just do whatever you feel like doing, and you wouldn't be self-conscious of anything you do because there's no one around to judge you or your behavior as right or wrong.  Anything you do on that island will be your way of doing things, and you'll be entirely free to live in any way you desire because you won't be at odds with another human being.

Humanity introduced laws (the concept of right and wrong or good and bad) because we cannot live in a healthy community without them. You need to find a way to tell the other person in your community that it is not okay for him or her to act in a way or to do certain things. You will naturally judge the behavior of someone else in your community as good or offensive to you, which will create problems and you'll find yourself needing to find a way to tell that person to stop. It is not okay for members of a community to kill one another for example or just take whatever they want. And so, rules are inevitable if we wish to live in a society. The concept of right and wrong evolved so we can explain to other people what they can or can't do and so everyone can live peacefully together in a successful community. In other words, the social convention of morals, which are a person's standards of what is right or wrong, evolved so that the people of the community can all agree on the way of life in which they wish to partake.

However, not everyone could or would play by a rulebook faithfully, especially if there's a possibility to commit wrongdoing and get away with it undetected or unchallenged. Problems quickly emerged within such early forms of the human community because, even though there's a common understanding of what is right or wrong, who will be the authority that enforces the law when it is violated? In other words, who will be the prosecutor, the judge, and the law enforcer? Admittedly, they can't all be the same person or otherwise there'll be chaos. Everyone can accuse anyone of a crime and proceed to implement the punishment without answering to anyone, and no one will ever know the truth behind any claim. And so, a need emerged to safeguard the people of the community from each other. People needed an authority to inspect disputes and enforce the laws of society. And thus, the concept of tribes was born when they learned to write their rules and consolidated the authority of enforcing these laws in a handful of people.

Tribes Emerged As An Unavoidable Outcome Of Having Laws

As people continuously traded, they accumulated more assets that needed safekeeping. The concept of land ownership arose giving some people the exclusive right to do anything they wanted over a specific piece of land, demarcated geographically. And so, the authorities in the community needed to keep a record and safeguard everyone's assets and properties. As soon as people started drawing lines in the dirt declaring ownership of what goes behind the lines and defining borders on a map, multiple tribes began to emerge in many locations.

Each tribe's authority, of course, needed to establish a system which registers everyone who belongs to the tribe so that they can better protect the tribe and its members from each other and from everyone else who doesn't belong. It didn't take long for the concept of "you are not one of us" to perpetuate in each tribe, and they became enclosed social bubbles with a sense of unique tribal identity. And with that, the tribe's authority took ownership of the tribe in the same way parents own their children and hold power over them. In a family, parents are the ultimate authority, and they more or less own their children whereas the ruling class of a tribe entirely owns and masters its citizens.

And so, tribalism disrupted the ancient understanding that "we are all one human family" and divided humanity into distinctive groups tucked away behind borders and setting them in endless conflict with one another. People no longer share a common heritage as human beings, or at least they stopped recognizing it that way. Now, the real heritage is the one passed down by the tribe to its citizens from one generation to another. Anyone who does not belong to the tribe is an alien and is not to be trusted.

It began with small tribes scattered around the globe competing for local resources. Each tribe was a community of people linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a standard culture and dialect, and typically having one recognized leader. And most importantly, each tribe had a ruling class that made all the critical decisions, controlled all the money and power of the tribe, and ruled over another category of people called the working class.

The ruling class was in charge while the working class just followed orders and did what they were told. The ruling class was the shepherd while the working class was the sheep. And just how a shepherd steers his sheep in any direction he desires, and the sheep simply obey and follow the orders hoping that the shepherd will treat them nicely for as long they conform, the working class followed the same approach. Just how sheep think that the shepherd is protecting them from wolves and out of fear of the wolves they continue to obey, the working class also submitted to their ruling class out of fear of other tribes.

The ruling class of every tribe never failed to envision and immortalize the image of the big grey wolf to the sheep-like public,...