Govern Ourselves? Why Didn’t I Think of That?

How long has it been now? We can almost remember it — the days our families ceased to roam the lands alone and we took shelter in groups. We needed ceremony then to keep us sane. When one died, we all mourned the same, no matter my mother or your cousin, we mourned the same. Indeed, when your sister gave birth we all rejoiced, just as you had for my birth. In sour season, we all feared and paid due to the forces greater than ourselves –be they additional chores to be done or the blood of a winged animal, we all paid in sour season.

Of course none of us can really ‘remember’ the experience of the birth of society, not ‘remember’ in the popular sense anyway. However, there is memory. Though this may sound like a contradiction on the surface, let’s try to understand it by first giving this phenomenon a name: social memory.

Social Memory

If I don’t remember the beginning of society and you don’t remember the beginning of society, who does? It would be safe to say that no one alive today was alive then –so the answer inevitably would have to be; no one, not directly.

Yet how did we remember how to get-by? Before the advent of coherent languages, how did we remember how to survive? Our chores, our duties, our rules, our place, our direction? Who governed our groups? Was it a top-down organization? Not likely, though it may seem that way when one thinks of the alpha-male and his crew, however it would be infeasible for any member of the society to not be consistently occupied without being too young or too old or just too weak to contribute. Meaning, everyone is pretty busy doing what they can do for the collective. No one really has time to watch anyone else…save for our wise one(s).

Our Wise One(s)

Sahir-þairls, Angakok, Znakharka, Tang-ki, Shaman …

Life was initially pretty tough for the elderly. They died a lot. It took the rigors of duty, descended upon a human group of sufficient size, before the elderly would find themselves in a happier state-of-affairs.
Even then, it took sometime before all of the groups’ elderly were cared for –indeed during the birth of society, one aged quite quickly, so the elderly if sustained, would begin to add up.

Nonetheless, as the group was better able to support its elderly it received as a by-product; observers and knowledge/experience holders. Holders?! Yes, what the group was really doing by sustaining its elderly, was saving more of its knowledge and experience as refined by years in the heads of the group’s elders.

Best of all, these elders could sit and observe, note patterns and start to formulate what would become a function to the group that would not have been conceivable prior to this time. They would begin to become advisors and the position would eventually grow until the role of the elderly was so important, it became apparent that a portion of the group’s young would need to be trained successors to the elderly. This is the birth of our wise one(s).

Our wise one(s) were created out of the need for their services in the group and then ultimately this need was made tangible by the elderly.

[ originally posted to the We Are Smarter Than Me project ]