Governance
Everyman’s Guide to How Words and Ideas Chain or Release Citizens
When I was a child, my mother read to me at night. As I look back on it now, I see the idea was to get me go to sleep.
As I grew up, I learned how to read to myself. I kept reading because it awakened me. It was how writers put words together in ways I would never have thought of….they impressed their thoughts on my mind the way fingers leave marks on rising dough. Yes, the marks often disappeared as the dough rose, but it was better than having cement for a brain. And when we read we’re learning how to speak and write. Whether we allow it to form our not, even against our will, we are learning to be expressive.
Even now when I am talking, the words of the writers I’ve read leap out of my mouth as if they were my own. I try to give them credit. I hear myself and others often attribute what they are saying to an author.
Not long ago, a friend and I were discussing consensus-based governance v. authoritarian rule. Doesn’t everyone talk about that these days. I’d been reading a book by Reza Aslan, so during the conversation with my friend I blurted out one of the phrases Aslan used in describing government before civilization: FIRST AMONG EQUALS, FIRST AMONG EQUALS. We discussed if that were even possible. But here is the gist of Aslan’s take on primitive or tribal government.
Heads of the families that formed a tribe or clan would meet (of course, men only, remember it was before civilization), and they would choose one of the peers to be the spokesman….more than that, the decider if consensus couldn’t be reached. This should not be foreign to Toastmasters. Think of how we run the meetings. The TM is the First Among Equals, then the Speaker becomes First Among Equals. During this speech each of you have chosen to surrender your voice to me. What I am speaking becomes the ruling part of your mind if I am able to keep your attention.
In the early form of governance, the leader, The First, was chosen because of his experience which made him wise in waging warfare and negotiating peace with other tribes, in settling disputes among the families of the tribe, and in the sacred rites of the group. These were not one-dimensional experts; if that weren’t enough…Two more virtues were expected. The First was selected because his character made him trustworthy. And he was selected because he had the ability to raise the equals to his level of being the First. Interesting ideas, yes? That when you speak, you are trusted to speak the truth and are raising the listeners to your level. What a responsibility!! The only flaw that could cause for the removal of the leader was a decision that weakened the tribe. Think of that. In our decision-making process do we ever make that consideration—has he…will she…weaken our Tribe? Remember this: if you weren’t one of the Equals, you had few rights…and no VOTE!! You were at best a valuable piece of property or a beast of burden. A remnant of this remains in the words denoting European heads of state who are called Prime Minister or Premier, taken from the Latin word for First. Think about that in your own experience in family, community organizations, corporate hierarchy—First among equals.
Books aren’t the only source of the phrases that remain imprinted on our minds. I will never forget one phrase because of the embarrassment it caused me, a learning experience most unforgettable. 7th grade, Mr. Clark’s Math/Science class. He draws a chain on the blackboard with 5 links. The first link has 5 lbs. of tensile strength, the second, 10 lbs of strength, the third, 15, the fourth 20, the last 25. The teacher asks what is the strength of the chain? I quickly total up the numbers and mindfullessly blurt out—75lbs!! Yes, I was the fastest, the firstest! The teacher smiles so wide he needs two faces. I know from the look on his face that I am the Wrongest. The teacher as slowly as he possibility can and says it twice, so I will never forget it, says—"The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” I am sure Mr. Clark’s big smile had to do with repeating this quote from Thomas Reid’s “Essays on the Intellectual powers of Man” every year of his teaching career and always finding one willing victim in each class willing to be his weak link. Of course, not 75lbs, 5 lbs. We can apply that to government when we think of the group of equals being only as strong as its weakest members, thereby, selecting perhaps the least of the First of peers. Can you imagine--in a nation of 340 million citizens, could it be true, we are only as strong as the most uninformed, unproductive, indifferent citizen among us? What if there are 30 million of the uninformed, unproductive, indifferent? Oh, wait, what it applies to leaders? What if we are only as strong as our most uniformed, unproductive, indifferent leader among us? Of course, you will ask, “How did that guy reach the Firstmost?”
But let’s go on…Chains as they apply to citizenship. I burst out in song to glide the transition. “Chains, my baby got me locked up in chains/And they ain’t the kind that you can see./Whoa, these chains of love got a hold on me!” Now back to books. I hold in my hands a copy of Lovejoy’s—The Great Chain of Being. It’s traveled with me from New York to Pennsylvania, across country to San Francisco, Sonoma and now Sacramento. Barely an inch thick, filled with high-sounding, elegantly reasoned justifications…but within it is compacted fifteen-hundred years of bondage. It was the model of governance in Europe for 15 Centuries…75 generations of human beings with their own thoughts, passions and wishes .
A Chain! This book makes its compelling case. The political powers of church and state, which held through the jaws of its vice of ideas and force, human beings who were locked within this model of disinformation. The chain stared with the Supreme Being, descended to angels, then Kings, then Priest, Knights in Service to the Kings and Priests. Below them followed the Artisans, finally Serfs who were just above dirt with its roaches, beetles, and worms. And it never changed. You were linked in where you were born. Because he was nearest to the Heavenly Host, the King ruled by Divine Right no matter what kind of idiot or sociopath he was. His decisions were infallible as commandments. If you were a serf, you were ruled by Divine Right unless you tried to change things and were judged to be Divinely Wrong.
Think of it, Toastmasters, you couldn’t give a speech one week, be the toastmaster the next. All you could be was the damn Vote Counter or Timer… counting votes that weren’t yours, timing other individual’s expressions never being able to give voice to your own. You couldn’t rotate through positions or roles of this meeting, of work, of society, of family. You had no space within which to grow. The Great Chain required total acceptance, OBEDIENCE, as if you were drayage chattel very tightly reigned and yoked…
Unthinking Obedience. This is what it took to be a citizen.
I know each of you. While we are all different, there is one quality we share. We cringe under, our gorge rises under, our outrage peaks we are told what to do without reason. When expected to follow the unjust dictates of a blind leader, the flame of authenticity roars out of each of us in all its defiant, rebellious, glorious self-expression!! Sorry, the crazed olde man in me ran away….where was I?
…The Great Chain of Being required you to give all your strength to the link you belonged to. The chain required your link, so in some way you were essential to it, but the demands of just staying in your place would cost you your life. Individuality was a form of dissent that would be acknowledged with your removal from the chain. You were disposable, replacements were abundant. Only the chain was permanent. And so, it held—for an eternity to 75 generations of humans and their children, as if there were no weak links.
No one had the audacity to think of a way out….the possibility of vision was driven from them by the work needed to survive….so, the citizens were waiting for a Champion to Save the Day… but to wait 1500 years? In our next installment entitled A New Kind of Madness you will see the chain broken by champions whose ideas and words would rescue us but, in the process, would give us more responsibility than any citizen would wish.
{Through all this, I stood in front of a cherished bookcase filled with prized art and philosophy books. We are encouraged to stand for Zoom speeches so I gave it my best shot taking the two books cited in the speech from the top self at the appropriate time. The evaluator said it was distracting. I wanted to tell the story of how Val and I salvaged the book case from a San Francisco flat we lived in that was scheduled for demolition. Yes, to make a parking lot! I also wanted to discuss how droit de seigneur worked to perpetuate the Great Chain, but I didn’t have time to tell those stories. The bookcase has followed us to Petaluma, Sonoma, and now Sacramento. Like “The Great Chain of Being” it was crafted to stand the test of time.}