It is widely believed that in view of the mess we have got the world into in there must be something irretrievably evil built into the nature of humans. We must be basically selfish, aggressive, competitive, perverse, obsessed with power, patriarchy and domination, right?
Sorry, wrong. And the hunter gatherers show us this.
We humans today are the product of 300,000 years of surviving and thriving in the conditions they experienced. That shaped them as individuals and as cultures to have natures and ways that are remarkably admirable, sensible, nice and foundational for utopian thinking.
The trouble is that we now do not live in their kind of conditions and society. We now live in very different circumstances which clash with our basic nature, and this causes immense intra-personal, inter-personal, inter-group and inter-national trouble. Thinking about the contradictions points to important implications for the design of a good society, something we urgently need to work on.
Generalities
First it is important to realise that many “primitive” tribes described by anthropologists have had severely destructive contact with nasty outsiders who have what Sorenson terms “conquest mentality”. This has destroyed their original nature and culture. Sorenson (2019) reports on studies of 25 societies that have not been damaged by contact.
To generalise, hunter gatherers are astoundingly nice. They are friendly, including to strangers, they are pleasant and helpful, intensely cooperative and not at all interested in competition, let alone domination and power. They delight in social activities and interaction. Their societies are intensely egalitarian and non-hierarchical. There is not only no inequality in wealth, property or power, they have strong mechanisms preventing any emergence of tall poppies.
They are non-violent, well described as “peaceful egalitarians.” “Warfare was unknown to most of these societies.” They practise egalitarian, non-hierarchical consensual decision-making. They have an “...extraordinary willingness to share everything...” They have no bosses, chiefs, authorities, let alone police, courts or prisons. Yet they have remarkable social cohesion, conformity, solidarity, harmony, and lack of conflict.
In several papers Gray explains that their fundamental, all-pervasive orientation to life is ... play.
“Play requires a sense of equality, and hunter-gatherers are remarkably able to retain that sense...The drive to play, therefore, requires suppression of the drive to dominate.” It “..(infuses) essentially all of their activities with play...”
This aligns with Bregman’s account of our species as “Homo Puppy”, primarily oriented to enjoyable, spontaneous, uncoerced playful activities engaged in with others. Humans like people and like interacting with them on mutually enjoyable tasks and exchanges.
Equity... no inequality, poverty, hierarchy, domination or power
Sorenson says, “...forcing of others (including children) to one’s will a disruptive and unwholesome practice. It was not seen. “Their core value, which underlay all of the rest, was that of the equality of individuals”.
Gray says, “... nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared... nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions. ...” Hence no boss, "big man," or chief.
In fact, they practise,
“...a system of "reverse dominance" that prevents anyone from assuming power over others.” In the words of anthropologist Richard Lee,
“they were fiercely egalitarian. They would not tolerate anyone's boasting, or putting on airs, or trying to lord it over others. One regular practice of the group that Lee studied was that of "insulting the meat." Whenever a hunter brought back a fat antelope or other prized game item to be shared with the band, the hunter had to express proper humility by talking about how skinny and worthless it was.”
Work
They don’t do any. The production of necessities is not a coercive burden, something that has to be done in order to survive. It is enjoyable activity engaged in at leisure. If a house is to be built it gets built by people just joining in spontaneously and helping out. They have no concept of toil.
They might spend 20-40 hours a week producing food etc., but it’s an optional activity. If one doesn’t feel like going gathering today one does something else, maybe just lie about. “A person who doesn't hunt or gather will still receive his or her share of whatever food is brought back.”
Most of their work is done cooperatively, “...converting chores into social occasions”. “They often had something of the atmosphere of a picnic outing with children.”
Property
They don’t own any. Sorenson says,” The outstanding economic condition is absence of private property, which allows constant cooperative usage of the implements and materials of life for collective benefit.”
So there can be no theft, or envy of another’s dress or houses. They have a perfect insurance industry; if your house burns down tonight everyone will be around in the morning to start rebuilding it.
Government
There isn’t any ...and its everywhere, “controlling” everything, and largely automatic and unconscious. There’s no formal government. It’s all more or less spontaneous and un-thought-about. Decisions and behaviour are mostly regulated by the built-in dispositions and world views of individuals, who just tend to do what’s sensible, nice, mutually beneficial and socially cohesive ...because they like doing that and that’s all that occurs to them.
Rules, Law
There are virtually no moral or legal codes, let alone police and prisons, although there are “customs” such as insulting the successful hunter. Our society is riddled with and coerced by highly codified rules, explicit, coercive and in your face, unavoidable, and troublesome; you have to think about them and you deviate at your peril.
Sorenson says in the preconquest era “ .. people freely spread their interests, feelings, and delights out for all to see.”... “It was an altogether different world from that of ...behaving ‘properly,’ having ‘right’ answers, wearing ‘appropriate’ clothes, etc.”
Thus the hunter gatherers seem to not even be aware of codes, rules, laws. They just seem to behave as their moment to moment impulses determine. The trick is, these impulses are good ones, built into their friendly, mutually beneficial, cooperative, altruistic pro-social habitual natures.
Individual vs Society
We see these as being in conflict; to have social order we think individual freedom must be curtailed. But Sorenson says this is not the case with the hunter gatherers. It is an intensely collectivist society, yet individual freedom is great and there seems to be no overt pressure on individuals to conform. Gray says, “Deciding what another person should do, no matter what his age, is outside the Yequana vocabulary of behaviours.
Consciousness
The core element in all this is the mentality, consciousness or world view they have.
Sorenson refers to the centrality of
“...empathetic, integrative, intuitive rapport.”, an “...indubitable trust”. There is an unhesitating readiness, perhaps impulse, to engage with others, to delight in this, and to do so frankly, spontaneously and without inhibitions, knowing that one need not be careful or calculating, because everyone does this in a climate of friendliness and an absence of danger.
There is no fear of conflict or disapproval over having said the wrong thing. This is about lack of inhibition, readiness to express feelings...especially empathy. There is,
“... intuitive helpfulness and a constant considerate regard by each for all the others. These extended not just to associates and friends but to strangers too. Long before we shared a single word of any common language (indeed, in my first hours there), these forest-dwellers had instinctively tuned in to my feelings and made life easier and happier for me.”
What has produced all this?
Sorenson’s account is at its most profound in his explanation of where this remarkable pre-conquest consciousness of trust, security and empathy comes from. He details the way it is created by the child rearing practices.
“Preconquest mentality emerged from a sociosensual infant nurture common to its era but shunned in ours.“
“When I first went into those isolated hamlets in the deep New Guinea forests, I was dumbfounded by the lush sensuality of infant care I saw. Infants were kept in continuous bodily contact with mothers or the mothers’ friends—on laps when they were seated, on hips, under arms, against backs, or on shoulders when they were standing.
“I was astonished to see the words of tiny children accepted at face value—and so acted on. For months I tried to find at least one case where a child’s words were considered immature and therefore disregarded. No luck. I tried to explain the idea of lying and inexperience. They didn’t get my point. They didn’t expect prevarication, deception, grandstanding, or evasion. And I could find no cases where they understood these concepts.”
Gray says,
“Hunter-gatherers trust their children.” And in a climate of trust and acceptance the children grow up to be trustful, frank, and empathetic.”
This orientation is not contrived or deliberately constructed or encouraged or even recognised. It is just like the way they learn that when it rains you get wet ... it’s the reality they encounter, and they unwittingly learn it’s how people are and it’s nice and that’s just the way the world is.
“Free from frustration or anxiety, sunny and cooperative, the children were every parent's dream. No culture can ever have raised better, more intelligent, more likable, more confident children. People treated in this way do not grow up to see life as a matter of trying to overpower, outsmart, or in other ways manipulate others. Rather, they grow up viewing life in terms of friendships, that is, in terms of people willingly and joyfully helping each other to satisfy their needs and desires.”
What can we learn from them
I think there are profoundly important things the hunter gatherers get us to grasp.
- Humans today have been shaped by 300,000 years of evolutionary pressure to be nice, to like interacting, to enjoy the company of others, to be helpful, egalitarian, non-violent and not selfish, greedy, aggressive or interested in property or power.
- The conditions humans experience are the major determinants of the nature they exhibit. In many ways the conditions we experience today are very undesirable. They involve and tend to produce nastiness. This is good news; it means all we need to do is change our systems, not change our basic nature. Bregman, Mate, and Graeber and Wengrow recognise this. Mate is especially important in emphasising how stressful life in our society is. This stressful and insecure existence is regarded as normal, although it is actually quite pathological and toxic; hence the title of his book The Myth of Normal.
- It’s a mistake to think that we can get people to be nice, friendly and helpful by encouraging them to “knock on your neighbour’s door.” You can’t expect a lot of niceness in a society structured to work on competition, self-interest, predation and exploitation, one that isolates people in dormitory suburbs with no reason to knock on the door of their neighbours who they don’t even know. You can’t take a faulty society and just add some neighbourliness.
- Goodness must be spontaneous, automatic, enjoyable, not seen as an option to be considered and chosen. Hunter gatherers treat each other nicely without having to think about whether or not to do so.
- Hence we need degrowth to The Simpler Way. As well as defusing the global poly--crisis its conditions require and reward goodness. Everyone can see that their own welfare depends on how well the town is thriving, that the more individuals thrive then the more the town will. They will be concerned to make sure no one is struggling, and that social and ecological systems are in good shape.
- All this is anarchism. Hunter gatherer society is a marvellous example of classical anarchism...social functioning without hierarchy or anyone having power over others, with equality, mutually agreed arrangements, responsible citizens, a climate of care for others, community self-government aimed at consensus, and automatic spontaneous goodness.
Link to References
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ted Trainer is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. He has taught and written about sustainability and justice issues for many years. He is also developing Pigface Point, an alternative lifestyle educational site near Sydney. Many of his writings are available free at his website, The Simpler Way.
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