Consider the civilized and the barbaric. There are many differences between the two. The civilized enjoy the benefits of rule of law, while barbarians tend toward tyranny. Civilizations usher in technological advancement while barbarians are technologically static, if not regressive. Civilizations have the potential for enlightenment, barbarians usually don’t have words so large as ‘enlightenment.’ But I believe there is one difference that explains all the others, one molecular component of culture that spells the difference between societal advance and decay.

CIVILIZATION’S ADVANCE

That molecule is respect for the individual. The west has possessed this ideal since at least as far back as ancient Greece, and it has become perhaps the core value defining western civilization. To greater or lesser degrees, it can also be found in other civilizations, and in a few places it scarcely exists at all. Contrary to this ideal are forms of collectivism, in which every individual is slave to the group, and despotism, in which every individual is slave to one supreme individual. Societies are not all of one type or another; these poles are formal extremes, and every actual society in practice falls somewhere in between.

By “respect for the individual” I mean that every person is recognized as possessing certain rights simply by merit of his being alive. “That all men are created equal” is a strong statement of this idea. The degree to which the west has adhered to this idea has waxed and waned over the centuries, but it never went away, and the west seemed to finally commit to it irrevocably with the Magna Carta. Respect for the individual is why slavery in America was ultimately doomed; whether the founding fathers had abolished it from the outset in 1776 or allowed it to linger for another 100 years, there was simply no way that an institution so inimical to western values could survive forever.

This molecule ends up having profound and far-reaching effects. It all begins when two people disagree. Any two people being fundamentally equal, disputes between them do not carry automatic resolution. If you and I, say, disagree about the chemical composition of the atmosphere, I do not get to carry the day simply because I am the Alamanach. I may be the Alamanach, but you are whoever you are, and neither of us is automatically right. If all people are equal, then our only recourse is to try to get at the objective facts of the matter, and see what those facts indicate. Whoever has the facts on his side wins the argument.

To this end we perform experiments, we take measurements, and we attempt to reason. Western civilization has been known to take some comical detours in its attempts at inquiry, but always there has been the desire to get at objective truth. Medieval scholastics, however pedantic their discipline and poorly grounded their beliefs, recognized the worth of logic and reason, and valued objective facts over the dictates of human authority. Modern science could never have emerged had it been otherwise.

Inquiry inevitably leads to discovery, and from discovery comes innovation. Our inquiry into the behavior of the atmosphere can lead to discoveries in thermodynamics, which in turn allow for innovations in engineering. This same process functions in philosophy, economics, politics, the arts– any field one can name. As these innovations accumulate, civilization advances. No other civilization has advanced as far or as persistently as the west because no other civilization has put as great an emphasis on respect for the individual.

That said, respect for the individual is by no means exclusive to the west. Though it may not take so central a place, the idea does show up in other cultures. India’s caste system, for example, in spite of its fundamentally restrictive nature, acknowledged inherent worth even of people from lower castes. This is utterly unlike, say, ancient Persia, in which every last person in the empire was a slave to the king. That India advanced further as a civilization is easy to see. India’s innovative contributions to the world include the concept of zero and two of the world’s major religions. Ancient Persia’s cultural achievements are so meager, I am unable to name any of them.

THE BARBARITY OF DESPOTISM

To understand just how extraordinary the idea of respect for the individual is, it helps to look at a culture that lacks it. Afghanistan, as it happens, is far on the despotism end of the spectrum. In Afghanistan, every group has a village elder, tribal chief, business owner, or other single human figure whose authority is in every way superior to everyone else in the group. (For convenience, let’s call this generalized authority figure the chief.) If there is a dispute between two people, the solution is to determine the opinion of the chief. What the chief says, is. The idea that there is an objective, measurable reality that exists regardless of man’s opinion is never considered. Inquiry into that reality never begins because the possibility of such inquiry is never even imagined. 

This has subtle but powerful results. For example, there are countless Afghan construction companies in that country right now, with contracts from the US Army Corps of Engineers, USAID, and other western organizations. These construction companies are building (or trying to build) roads, schools, army barracks, police headquarters, irrigation canals, and almost any other item of basic infrastructure one can imagine. Contractually, they are all required to have a Quality Control (QC) department of one form or another. Western agencies want QC because they recognize the value that independent verification brings to a project. The Afghans have no concept of “independent verification;” they maintain these departments because their chief tells them to. The purpose of QC is not understood, but neither is it questioned. The chief has dictated that it shall be. That is enough.

As you would imagine, the quality of these QC departments is exceptionally poor. There is little or no independence from the construction management personnel, actual inspections are rare, and reports are disorganized and empty. These QC departments are Potempkin villages, existing only out of contractual requirement.

Instead of independent verification, Afghans rely on human authority. If a construction foreman says a particular job has been done, that is enough. If the owner of the company says the work is correct, no argument is conceivable.

To come at this from another direction, consider what Adam Smith had to say about the economic bases of human authority. The picture he paints can be helpful when trying to appreciate the radically different worldview possessed by someone lacking any notion of individuality.

An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith, 1776

A Tartar chief, the increase of whose flocks and herds is sufficient to maintain a thousand men, cannot well employ that increase in any other way than in maintaining a thousand men. The rude state of his society does not afford him any manufactured produce any trinkets or baubles of any kind, for which he can exchange that part of his rude produce which is over and above his own consumption. The thousand men whom he thus maintains, depending entirely upon him for their subsistence, must both obey his orders in war, and submit to his jurisdiction in peace. He is necessarily both their general and their judge, and his chieftainship is the necessary effect of the superiority of his fortune. In an opulent and civilized society, a man may possess a much greater fortune, and yet not be able to command a dozen of people. Though the produce of his estate may be sufficient to maintain, and may, perhaps, actually maintain, more than a thousand people, yet, as those people pay for every thing which they get from him, as he gives scarce any thing to any body but in exchange for an equivalent, there is scarce anybody who considers himself as entirely dependent upon him, and his authority extends only over a few menial servants. The authority of fortune, however, is very great, even in an opulent and civilized society. That it is much greater than that either of age or of personal qualities, has been the constant complaint of every period of society which admitted of any considerable inequality of fortune. The first period of society, that of hunters, admits of no such inequality. Universal poverty establishes their universal equality; and the superiority, either of age or of personal qualities, are the feeble, but the sole foundations of authority and subordination. There is, therefore, little or no authority or subordination in this period of society. The second period of society, that of shepherds, admits of very great inequalities of fortune, and there is no period in which the superiority of fortune gives so great authority to those who possess it. There is no period, accordingly, in which authority and subordination are more perfectly established. The authority of an Arabian scherif is very great; that of a Tartar khan altogether despotical.

The Tartar khan Smith describes would find absurd any suggestion that his followers possessed rights equal to his own. The khan’s followers, too, would be unable to comprehend such an idea. All their lives they have lived in a world in which the khan owned their lives; their entire reality is structured around social inequality.

Cynics may claim that the west, too, has plenty of example of human authority dictating the reality that everyone else must live with. The difference is that in the west, there is always the possibility of dissent. One lone voice with the truth on its side can pit itself against any human authority– sometimes without great effect, perhaps, but there is still that one voice having its say. In the west, truth can be avoided, but it cannot be eliminated. In Afghanistan, there is no such thing as dissent, there is no speaking truth to power, there is no understanding that there is a “truth.” The word has no meaning, except insofar as truth is what the chief says.

For this reason, there is no inquiry– there would be no point. In cultures lacking any concept of individual rights, there is no pursuit of new knowledge. The sciences, even in their primitive forms, being nonexistent, there is no discovery, and no innovation. Furthermore, innovations that are introduced from the outside are never truly mastered. Cars, guns, computers, explosives, and airplanes have all been introduced to Afghanistan, and Afghans have learned how to operate each of these. They have not, however, made them their own. Do not look for a clever new application of the PC to come out of Afghanistan. Do not look for them to improve fundamentally upon Semtex or the AK-47; that kind of inventiveness is denied them by their own culture. Unconsciously, they seem to believe that computers exist because some rich and powerful person like Bill Gates decreed them into existence.

THE BARBARITY OF STATISM

I pick on Afghanistan only because of my recent experience. Barbarism has existed in many times and places, and not always in the form of despotism. In variations of statism, the group as a whole wields total authority over every individual. This may be a slight improvement over despotism in that there is equality between people, but there is still no respect for the rights of the individual.

A lucid and chilling apology for statist barbarity appears in Julius Caesar’s account of the siege of Alesia in 52 BC. Caesar had been campaigning in the barbarian territory of Gaul for six years, advancing Roman domination and rule of law. Caesar was no saint– this adventure was a piece of political opportunism on his part that later helped him to become emperor, and he invaded Gaul on flimsy excuses– but by all accounts he was lenient towards those he had conquered and fair towards his own men.  He was not a saint, but certainly he was not a monster.

Gaul was nearly pacified when Vercingetorix rose from obscurity and proved to be Caesar’s most capable adversary. After fighting various engagements, Caesar managed to get Vercingetorix and his army buttoned up inside the walled town of Alesia. The Roman legions, long masters of siegecraft, immediately threw up a “line of contravallation;” a fortified siege wall encircling the town. Because there were numerous Gallic reserves still operating in the country, the Romans also erected an outer ”line of circumvallation” to protect themselves from attack.

(Our knowledge of this siege comes principally from a book Caesar himself later wrote, Commentaries on the Gallic War. Sometimes publishers title this book simply Commentaries, or I have also seen it as The Conquest of Gaul. Whatever the title, it is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it. It gives insights into the character of Caesar, it recounts important historical events, and it is a good primer on military science.) 

Outside Alesia, the free Gauls assembled a large relief army to attempt a rescue of the city…

Commentaries on the Conquest of Gaul
Julius Caesar, c. 50 BC

In Alesia, however, they knew nothing of these preparations; the time by which they had expected relief was past and their corn was exhausted. So they summoned an assembly and considered what their fate was to be. Among the various speeches that were made– some advising capitulation, others recommending a sortie while they still had the strength– the speech of Critognatus, a noble Arvernian whose opinion commanded great respect, deserves to be recorded for its unparalleled cruelty and wickedness.

‘I do not intend,’ he said, ‘to make any comment on the views of those who advise “capitulation” — the name they give to the most shameful submission to enslavement; in my opinion they ought not to be regarded as citizens or allowed in the assembly. I will concern myself only with those who advocate a sortie. You all approve this suggestion, as showing that we have not forgotten our traditional courage. But it is not courage, it is weakness, to be unable to endure a short period of privation. It is easier to find men who will voluntarily risk death than men who will bear suffering patiently. Even so, I would support their proposal– so much do I respect their authority– if it involved no loss beyond that of our own lives. But in making our decision we must consider all our fellow countrymen, whom we have called to our aid. If eighty thousand of us are killed in battle, what heart do you suppose our relatives and kinsmen will have when they are compelled to fight almost over our corpses? Do not leave them to continue the struggle alone when for your sakes they have counted their own danger as nothing, and do not by folly or rashness, or by lack of resolution, ruin all Gaul and subject it to perpetual servitude. Because they have not come on the appointed day, do you doubt their loyalty or constancy to our cause? What? Do you suppose the Romans are working day after day on those outer fortifications to amuse themselves? Since our countrymen cannot get messengers through the cordon that is drawn around us, to assure you that they are coming soon, believe what the enemy are telling you by their actions: for it is the fear of their coming that keeps the Romans hard at work night and day.

‘What counsel, then, have I to offer? I think we should do what our ancestors did in a war that was much less serious than this one. When they were forced into their strongholds by the Cimbri and Teutoni, and overcome like us by famine, instead of surrendering they kept themselves alive by eating the flesh of those who were too old or too young to fight. Even if we had no precedent for such an action, I think that when our liberty is at stake it would be a noble example to set to our descendants. For this is a life and death struggle, quite unlike the war with the Cimbri, who, though they devastated Gaul and grievously afflicted her, did eventually evacuate our country and migrate elsewhere, and left us free men, to live on our own land under our own laws and in possession of our rights. The Romans, we know, have a very different purpose. Envy is the motive that inspires them. They know that we have won renown by our military strength, and so they mean to install themselves in our lands and towns and fasten the yoke of slavery on us for ever. That is how they have always treated conquered enemies. You do not know much, perhaps, of the condition of distant peoples; but you need only look on the part of Gaul on your own borders that has been made into a Roman province, with new laws and institutions imposed upon it, ground beneath the conqueror’s iron heel in perpetual servitude.’

At the conclusion of the debate it was decided to send out of the town those whom old age or infirmity incapacitated for fighting. Critignatus’ proposal was to be adopted only as a last resort– if the reinforcements still failed to arrive and things got so bad that it was a choice between that and surrendering, or accepting dictated peace terms. So the Mandubian population, who had received the other Gauls into their town, were compelled to leave it with their wives and children. They came up to the Roman fortifications and with tears besought the soldiers to take them as slaves and relieve their hunger; but Caesar posted guards on the ramparts with orders to refuse them admission.

There is evidence of some measure of equality in Vercingetorix’s army. Open discussion took place between those who wanted to capitulate, fight, or cannibalize, and such discussion would be pointless if Vercingetorix were an absolute despot. On the other hand, the needs of the group take absolute precedence over the rights of any individual; the state is supreme.

In the end, Alesia fell, and Vercingetorix was taken to Rome in chains. Historically speaking, this was not an aberration; in our own day, one statist system after another has proven inferior to liberal democracy. However illogical it may seem, the needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the few. Civilization demands that the needs of the few– the rights of the individual– be preserved.

Why does eating the few for the sake of the many consistently lead to failure? The answer might again come back to innovation. No statist system can judge every individual on his own merits because there are simply too many people and they are all, ultimately, unique. Categories are necessary if any sort of sense is to be made of a population (“those who were too old or too young to fight” is a category), but as soon as a person is categorized, his unique personhood is lost. I am not a male or an American or a father, I am the Alamanach. And note the use of the definite article: there are no others. Were their others, it would be a class we were talking about, not an individual. Classes are acceptable as a bit of linguistic shorthand, but when moved to action, it must not be forgotten that I am not a father as other men are fathers, I am a father only in the unique way that the Alamanach is a father. I am an American only in the way that the Alamanach is an American. I am male in the way that the Alamanach is male. “The Alamanach” contributes to the definitions of those classes, not the other way around.

States forget this. More accurately, states lack the vast machinery that would be needed to deal with this. Fathers, Americans, and males a state can possibly deal with, but a vast gaggle of individuals– the Alamanach, the Mike Ferrugia, the Xenlogic, the dranoel (and all the rest of you hep cats)– quickly overloads any attempt at organization. The only recourse a state has is to preserve us in our classes (father, American, male, etc.) but destroy us as individuals.

This happens in countless ways far less intense than cannibalism. In a perfect statist system, individuals would not have to pay for their education because the state would provide it. Unavoidably, the state would then have control over which education an individual receives. For myself, I attended college for triple the standard amount of time, and came away with two very different bachelor’s degrees. The second degree was in engineering, though everything in my academic career previous to college indicated that I had no aptitude for mathematics. Under a statist system, I never would have been allowed near an engineering program; state resources cannot be wasted on someone who shows every likelihood of failure. My unique education never would have happened.

Without that education, we never would have had this: http://alamanach.com/second-order-differential-equations-and-dark-adaptation-in-vertebrate-photoreceptors/. That paper, in which the author was working way outside his field, demonstrates how mathematical analysis alone can sniff out physiological mechanisms operating at the cellular level that our experiments and instrumentation cannot detect directly. Neurobiologists (themselves usually not very strong at math either), have been slow to take up this idea, but someday it will matter to somebody. Innovations relying on this sort of mathematical technique will come, and civilization will be the stronger for it.

Those innovations are possible because I and people like me are free to engage in our own pursuits. We are free to develop into our fullest and most productive of possible selves. If I want to go to college for twelve years, it does not matter that such an education would make no sense for anybody else: I am the Alamanach, I live in a society that respects the individual, and I can pursue any course of living I like. So can anyone else. Denied such freedom, most individuals in a statist system never have an opportunity to flower, and their unique contributions to the world are forever lost.

GOD

As noted above, respect for the individual can be traced back at least to ancient Greece. Long centuries later came Christianity, and when we compare Christianity’s core value of love for one’s fellow man with the west’s core value of respect for the individual, it is no wonder that the west came to embrace Christianity so firmly.

If Christian values are the same values that allow civilization to flourish, then could it be that even God is on the side of respect for the individual? It seems to me that He would be. God created individuals, it was man that created states and despots. Civilization has divine roots, barbarity is in its origins wholly mundane. This suggests that states and despots could be entirely unnecessary, provided that civilization, respect for the individual, were sufficiently advanced.

~

My adventures in Afghanistan are finished and I am safely back home, hopefully to stay. To celebrate, I leave you with one of the most successful accumulations of innovations I can think of.

 

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Leader image is Vercingetorix Throws His Weapons at the Feet of Caesar (oil on canvas, 1899) by Lionel Royer (1852-1926) and is in the public domain.

Siege of Alesia map was prepared by the Department of History at the United States Military Academy (West Point), and as a government publication is in the public domain.

Special thanks to reader Phillip Grayson who suggested a line of thought the fruits of which appeared briefly in this post.