Mandate for Freedom: Safety and Security
This is the second post in a series. For the first post, go here: https://steemit.com/life/@castimir/mandate-for-freedom-how-to-be-a-producer-not-a-consumer
The basics of a production economy are common to homesteading sites and prepping forums. Today, I am moving into ideas that are often neglected by such sites because they are considered frivolous or less necessary in an extreme survival situation. Or, in the case of safety and security, the priority is given to violent, individualistic means of defense instead of cooperative means of prevention. This makes sense, given the human species' evolution as a violent, aggressive, omnivorous species[1]. We evolved to hunt. We are predators. Our natural reaction to a threat is fangs and claws, punches and stones, or guns.
But I would argue that this is a very dangerous trait for our continued evolution. Human violence is not only contributing to mass species extinction, but we regularly kill millions of our own species. It is causing irreparable trauma to our children and frequently forces the minds of women, minorities and other oppressed groups into traumatized survival mode. Continued violence may threaten our entire species' existence.
So how are we to be producers of safety and security without continuing this descent into violence?
The obvious answer is the liberal order of laws and balances and courts. This works to the extent that we are not living in anarchy, but currently we are seeing the illusion behind the entire system. In order for laws to work, they must either be brutally enforced or have a near-consensus on their legitimacy. Laws without informal cultures of consent are a chimaera that will crumble in the long run.
How then do we produce that culture of consent?
We start by overturning some of our deepest held cultural taboos. In the Western mind, there is a distinct difference between Inside and Outside. We have "hobbies", which are performed indoors or in the private life and are considered amateurish. Then, we have our "job", which is supposed to be the overriding feature of our life. Our social lives are separated by this gulf, with work friends and other friends rarely mix. This leads to a fractured social space, with people meeting for the purpose of, say, selling insurance and then developing completely different lives outside of that narrow spectrum of activity.
We need to make work more like home. We do not need to bring work home or make the workplace homier. We need to make socializing and non-productive functions essential to workplace culture.
But this merely scratches the surface of producing a safe and secure culture. Safety and security are built primarily on familiarity. You trust the person you see every day, and greater trust leads to greater security in a cascade of deescalation. Society needs to be reoriented towards familiarity, with stabilized neighborhoods where people know their neighbors. The culture of the automobile, the faceless delivery service and the mysterious stranger needs to dissipate. We need an intentional community 300 million people wide.
This would by no means end crime. The police force is needed no matter what progress is made in the social sphere. Nonetheless, the rabid echo chamber madness of the past few years can be greatly reduced by neighborhood stabilization and a culture of caring for your neighbor.
Next time, I will be continuing to examine this level of Maslow's needs, but in regards to Universal Basic Income.
[1]http://www.livescience.com/5333-evolution-human-aggression.html