This lone-wolf archetype
The self-made-man stereotype.
Relying only on his/her own hands, intelligence, skills, experience.
Suspicious of participating, avoiding the crowds.
The solitary trapper of Alaska.
The scout of the Western frontier .
The fearless explorer of the Amazon jungle.
The yogi in a remote Himalayan cave exploring the inner jungle.
( strange that its aways/mostly males doing this lone-wolfing )
I know it is not always just milk and honey to be a lone wolf.
This is not our default state as a human being.
I guess we are some kind of a social animal after all.
Or to begin with.
Aren’t we?
We need to belong.
We wish to be part of something bigger than ourself.
We want to participate in some kind of social group, some kind of society.
We also wish to benefit from our participation.
Pay our dues and benefit.
I am not a sociologist or cultural anthropologist, but i guess that this was how societies formed long long time ago. And evolved.
Participation always means commitment, loyalty, willingness to surrender some freedom. And ego. Willingness to respect authority and the norms of the group. The law.
If i have a family, i get emotional closeness, intimacy, practical personal support, warmth, personal love and the rest. ( Hopefully not too much drama ; ) )
And in return i pay with faithfulness, loyalty, giving up some of my individualistic freedom, contributing, providing.
Join a Country Club, i pay my fees and i get to mingle with the rich bitches, the “important” folks, the high-flyers.
Join a gang, i get protection from the gang-next-door and i pay with having to do some very unethical things at the whim of the top dog, our gang boss.
Join a sect or even organized religion and we pay by accepting the rules, the practices, the dogma, the lifestyle in exchange for moral direction, for belonging to a, now “our spiritual family”.
Belong to a country, a nation, automatically i pay with my taxes, my military service, follow the law. And i will benefit from a lot of things. Like good roads, trains, bridges, infrastructure, pension, police and the rest ….
( probably really depending on the country : )
That is all just nice and good and the usual thing so far.
And there is nothing to say against.
( well, maybe the gang part )
But a serious problem accrues when we reach the edge of our chosen or born-into society, the border.
Visible or invisible border.
And when we wish to cross it because of a bigger picture that we have.
Because we find that our tribe can not include our evolved individual believes and values.
This has often quite serious consequences.
They may be called a nasty divorce, expulsion from the tribe, shunned by the sect, excommunication from a religion and so on.
Or death ( talking about Mexican gangs ).
But its not always so dramatic i guess when you outgrow the refines of your group.
But one fact remains in all cases: Once you cross the border, you are on your own.
Why i am saying all of that?
Well, because of my utopian dream.
This dream of no borders.
No passports.
No visas.
The reoccurring dream of one humanity, one human nation including all colors, all religions, all philosophies, all individualities.
The end of the us-against-them tribal politics.
The end of getting weapons to defend our territory.
The end of stockpiling much bigger weapons to be a believable-enough threat to anybody who intends to threaten our national security.
The end of the perverse spending on military budgets.
The end of walls.
And i am not just talking about Trump’s Southern border wall.
Walls inside are the root of all of that.
The ego’s sense of insecurity.
It’s fear of annihilation.
In Unity.
In my dream, its always about the United Nations.
A great idea that has been even established – 75 years ago already.
But in reality a maddeningly toothless and ineffective institution yet.
(i am not talking negatively about this wonderful idea and the positive things that came from it)
Why that, i ask?
Why has this idea not taken hold and transformed our human world yet?
Wouldn’t it be the smartest thing on Earth if we would have cooperation and collaboration between the nations and countries of Our World?
Instead of competition for resources and petty territorial or market disputes?
Instead of endless wars?
Wouldn’t it be just great if we would realize that we are all in it together and that it would be so much more effective to tackle the big problems together, in a coordinated and rational manner?
Like pandemics, like climate change, like poverty, like inequality and social injustice and all the rest.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have one shared language that is spoken everywhere instead of the Tower of Babel situation that we have now? Seven thousand languages i guess, not to mention the dialects.
Wouldn’t it be great if we would have one currency for our worldwide financial dealings, instead of onehundredandeighty? No more banks-charging-perverse-fees for just switching our money from one currency to the other and such robbery.
And in my impossible utopian dream it gets even better:
There we are individuals in this vast and multicolored worldwide society with no borders, no passports and no visas : )
In the dream we contribute to society what we have as skills, as muscle, as intelligence, as idea, as creativity, as power, as love.
Freely, naturally.
Not as a job, not as a bargain.
No, because participating and giving and contributing is the natural purpose of a highly developed individual. Then it makes sense to be the highly skilled wolf, the trapper, the scout archetype.
But then all this skilledness is good for something, not just for the individual survival.
And in return, this utopian dream society provides us with all we need to live this kind of paradise on Earth.
And there is plenty around now, plenty for everyone.
Now with no military budget and all … ; )
Impossible dream?
Says Yoda to a skeptical Luke Skywalker: “It is always good to dream big. Even if you are really small”
And I am sure those extraterrestrial observers in their motherships*** up there would be pretty proud of us, if they would see us making such a quantum leap.
Don’t you think?
: )
* White Fang – by Jack London >> white_fang pdf
** You don’t know Yoda yet? Big mistake ; )
*** Some things about Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Beautiful utopian vision, beautiful yet impossible dream, not with the real humans, I am afraid….
According to athropology the initial reasons for people to gather, cooperate, help each other, create tribes and later on town-states, states and empires have always been highly pragmatic. In prehistory: more people (males) were stronger togehter during hunting. Later on, more cooperating males were more efficient in building villages, towns, walls and to create a stronger army to fight enemies… It seens that the entire civilization has been engined by the need to resist the competitors, fight the enemies, be stronger and better than them. Solidarity and loyalty just as you´ve mentioned have always been an exchange, you give something in order to get something, not out of goodwill… When you read history, you will discover that most of it (since antiquity) it is a string of never ending bloody wars occassionally interrupted by a short period of peace. Currently, we are fortunate enough to experience an unprecedentedly long period of peace and plenty, so we have the luxury of space for thinking about philosophy, dreaming and meditating on various issues. Yet, how many people really do this?.. In the past there have always lived exceptional altruistic people, who devoted their lives to communication with God/gods, meditation, healing, fortune-telling, caring for the needy etc., that´s for sure. Yet it has always obviously been a higher stage of humanity, which can be exclusively reached by a small fraction of humans. Those who have given up all of their beast nature, the ability to destroy and kill in the sake of creation and love. No matter how much we wish and dream, (in my opinion) we need to accept the reality, that the world is a place of duality, the 3D and the humanity as a whole has never and will have never aimed on unity:-(((( It is heartbreaking to say that, yet it is my conclusion made from the perspective of human history…
Dear Klarka, i love you : )
You know i am not your kind of realist.
I am rather a … potential-ist and clearly believe in the potential of human beings to wake up to the reality of the soul.
I am fine with that, so i am also somehow in a tentative peace with the realities of the world and humanity.
I hope you will not become too much of this kind of a historian / realist.
And will not give up the dream.