Room for Us All

As The Infinite Compass slips closer to each day to being let lose from its nest in my files, into the world at large, I think of bits I couldn't fit in. One of those recently centered around the discussion that since the Agricultural Paradigm shift occurred, by nature of its intent to own everything, people have been shoveled into two categories: those that own, and those that aspire to own. Those that were able to amass land and cattle, by fair means or foul, placed themselves in a powerful position. They owned all the food! That left those that owned no food in a position of starving or having to negotiate with those that had some. This worked well for the landowners, because as their addiction to ownership grew, it was impossible to service all the land, or beings on it. Perfect. Those that owned nothing worked for those that did, aspiring to one day own also. Now we have the economic system. Gradually, that system embedded itself into our psyche so that it was taken for granted that that is what we must do; work, save, buy, and own.

But there was and is a third class of human that didn't fit this ambitious mold. There were those in our tribes whose value had been defined differently. Women's role in a hunter/gatherer society was as important as the males in gathering food. However, once the need to defend enclosed territory from others, that had used it freely, became an issue, women's role was diminished in value. The whole society entered a state of war, from which it has never exited. So collaboration within the tribes was overtaken by warlords. Women were demoted. I have covered this in depth in the book. But nevertheless they were essential to take care of those that owned and fought for more. The elders however, of either gender, became a liability. Their prime role had been that of teachers of wisdom. Wisdom was no longer a saleable commodity. But they still required feeding and caring for as they aged, taking away from the overall output of the workers. They became the job of the women along with the children. Out of mind of the earning and owning community as much as possible. Keeping the costs down to allow for more owning of that which was valuable.

As time has gone by, and women have demanded their rights, they also have desired to work, save and own. Now they had to find a way of moving the nonworking, earning sections of the community out of the way. The institutionalisation of  care for the aged, childcare, and hosptalisation of the sick has been a way of removing these 'non-productive' elements out of the way of the main agenda. The quality of life has become solely about working. It is really only since workers reconnected with the joy of working from home during Covid 19 that the paradigm has weakened. Workers have started to refuse to go back to the office. We are now talking about  work/life balance. It seems a realisation is beginning to creep in that there is more to life than working to own.

This is something that you certainly learn as you age, and surely know before you are shuffled off to work. Perhaps it was essentially to the establishment of the system that the people lost the opportunity to listen and interact with the Elders and the Young. Maybe if there had been continuous access to them, with value attached to their words, we would not have ended up where we currently are. We will never know. What we can do now though, is to start to appreciate those things in life that are about something other than working to accumulation of things. Perhaps the accumulation of wisdom instead ??