The Nomadic Alternative – Page 254

VIII

I should now like to risk a definition of the basic human society.

A human society is a small unit of men and women, paired off into sexual and economic partnerships.

They do not settle in one fixed place, but migrate along the tracks of a given stretch of territory, to exploit its animal and vegetable resources as they come in season, without taking active steps to store surplus or propagate their food supply.

They deliberately calculate for alternate seasons of plenty and want, and their bodies allow for at least one unenjoyable period of enforced torpor in the year.

They divide the human life cycle horizontally into distinct phases, or units of biological time, which synchronize with glandular changes of the body; and they actively ensure that the members live out all the possibilities contained within each phase.

Men distinguish themselves from all other animals by their ability to speak and convey symbolic messages to each other. But speech is also the vehicle of a programme of given ideas, or instructions on how to live, which relate to the whole life cycle.

Language also introduced the notion of contractual balance into men's relationships with each other and their surroundings. Ideas supplant the agency of Natural Selection in determining the structure and character of society.

Among these is the idea that men should minimize their possessions and avert the ill-effects of over-population by keeping their numbers constant - and on the move.

While the cohesion of an animal society depends on a hierarchy of dominance, the cohesion of a human society depends on the cooperation of equals and is disruptive without it.

Animals grab, and their weak submit to superior force. Men share equally and sublimate their 'aggressive' drives into exchanges of gifts, ideas and 'blood'.