A woman gathering with a basket in Dhading, Sunaula Bazar, Nepal near one of one of the first four areas of Earth where civilizations began, India
Photo by Ashes Sitoula on Unsplash

“The Raute hunt in groups, they share all their food and property evenly. They follow their unique religion, rituals, belief systems and uphold political, social and cultural institutions, including leadership structures and knowledge systems. The closed society that the tribe is to outsiders, they limit socialisation just enough to fulfil their material needs.
As the last of the hunting-gathering community in Nepal, the tribe is proud of its heritage. "We don't want the burden of agriculture, we don't wish to settle down. We want to continue our nomadic way of life. We wish to travel freely and want no harassment in community or government controlled forests," says Shahi.” ~Nepali Times interview with Raute tribesman

In passing conversation here on Steemit I hear a lot of ideas about freedom. I was lucky to stumble upon an article in The New Yorker, which I read every week usually on the train bebopping around New York City, called “The Case Against Civilization”. I found it extremely fascinating as it draws on anthropological and historical research showing the changes that took place after humans began to walk upright then discovered the technology of fire. The author, drawing on this research, postulates that the advent of domestic farming had a lot of fits and false starts and backtracks because it wasn’t viewed as a particularly good idea as humans had all they needed in the natural world through hunting and gathering.

Although I have a lot more questions than answers about how humans lived before central planning like roles of men, women and even transgender. You may have heard of a Native American term “Two Spirit” how transgender people were acknowledged for their gender identity and I am also curious about moral customs in hunter gatherer cultures. I will stick for now to the economics of the change from decentralized human activity to the emergence of elite rulers, the technologies that made it possible, and the technologies that are making non-centralized economies possible once again.

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Economies of Freedom

Our first upright walking primate ancestors, hominids, discovered fire and learned how to control it and use it for warmth, light and then cooking. Cooking food was the advancement that gave humans a greater advantage of nutritional value from food. As a result our ancestors brains grew larger and we evolved into homo sapiens. Hominids and early humans were nomads. It took many thousands of years to adopt agriculture and some historians speculate it was due to the major shift from a nomadic lifestyle to living in farming settlements. In essence, it was a tradeoff of a life of freedom to a life tied to a settlement which in which needed to be maintained. While this may have been a choice that was grappled with over many thousands of years it may have become a necessity at some point due to environmental pressures.

Through agriculture and settlements new disputes over land rights more than likely emerged. Leaders and governments needed to be created to manage these new issues and to resolve conflicts. Writing came about to create accounting for the new systems of ownership: agriculture, land, slavery. Before this occurred hunter gatherer societies spent time looking for food but did it in a culture of freedom not ownership and centralized ruling by self appointed elites. Scribes were people that created records and lists for all these new systems that needed to be accounted for. This centralized form of control of people and resources effectively ended the former way of life of freedom that most humans had. For more people than not began lives of servitude or forced taxation.

Photo by Zac Nielson on Unsplash

Modern Day Ownership and Government

Wherever one stands on the issue my perspective is that we have gone too far in the direction of centralized planning that it would ever even be possible to return to the ways of personal responsibility and freedom that our ancestors lived. There are so many things and ownership rights to keep track of as well as issues of inequality resulting from elitism that it would take many hundreds or thousands of years to reverse it all. Coupled with the fact that governments are too powerful. But the other thing that comes to mind is the people with the most money and resources are very greedy and do not place a great value on human life – they value the acquisition of money and material affluence. They do not understand that the real economy is spiritual not material and that human relationships are the most valuable currency.

Unless it all comes crashing down somehow, that is.

There are also the matters of civil rights, sexism, ableism, classism and all of the other ills that have seem to arisen from the rise of the elite ruling class. As a woman and a sexual assault survivor I don’t feel comfortable at all with the idea of no government. I have no faith that an ideology of ostracism would have helped me in any way. Men have used their physical prowess against women forever and other men don’t want this advantage taken away so rarely support women in their claims against male violence and aggression. But then again I do enjoy the privilege of white skin and am not subject to racist harassment. But these are the kinds of issues that make me leery of the ideology of no government. It is through government that civil rights, equal rights and justice are fought for and carried out through the rule of law. Maybe there is an alternative parallel path that has nothing to do with governments.

Photo by Patrick Lindenberg on Unsplash

From the Writing Ledger to the Blockchain

No matter how many records governments create about us they and whatever economic value they think they assign to us they cannot completely squelch the human spirit or ever replicate the true value of our innate economic potential. As more and more people realize the limitations created by the government and the injustices that arise from it more technologies will be created and ideas will evolve to accommodate this desire for freedom.

Enter the blockchain and digital currencies. The blockchain as a decentralized digital ledger system that is maintained by a group effort hosted across a network of many participants, or nodes, is one answer to this problem of government oppression. By storing data in blocks which are unchangeable and secure, and with multiple associates with copies, the risk of fraud and theft is practically zero. The peer-to-peer system eliminates the necessity for third party verification from institutions such as banks or other centralized institutions

Here in New York City there is a group called Blockchain for Social Good that highlights social justice initiatives that use blockchain technology to deliver their services. Apparently, there are many social justice initiatives using blockchain technology such as World Food Program that uses Ethereum blockchain to get much needed cash relief to refugees without requiring them to have a government issued ID and CrowdJury which is “is an online platform that crowdsources judicial proceedings: filing of complaints, evaluation of evidence, trial and jury verdict.” And “All who helped by reporting the wrongdoing, gathering evidence, checking facts and voting as jurors are rewarded in Bitcoin. Evidence and jury decisions are recorded in the blockchain and are fully auditable.”

While I don’t think government is ever going to go away I do think it is possible to take a great deal of power back that the government just doesn’t need to be fully in control of. We certainly do live in exciting times and I can’t wait to see what humans come up with next for the advancement of all.

What do you think?

More on Ancient civilizations Ancient Civilizations For Kids

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@soulsistashakti is a musical artist and writer based in NYC. You can check out my music on my FB artist page at https://www.facebook.com/soulsistashakti