Abandonement and rejection, deceit and defamation: The war never ended. It is alive and kicking in all communities and in every corner of the global village. More or less.
Man is not mentally equipped, except for in some very rare and incredulous cases, to cope rationally with the warfare which shows it´s ugly face in mobbing, envy, revenge, slandering, thieving, abusing and exploiting and which is present right around the corner or, at least, in the trashier hoods of the town..
The mega city syndrome has spread like a contagious virus to smaller towns and rural villages, or de facto, never left the humbler origins in the first place. The canon of the Balkan and the perpetual and deadly family feuds in Kurdistan goes to prove that even rural parts are not all that peace promoting and idyllic as alleged by the agoraphobic countryside dwellers..
Like in a hen house, the more hens the more and the fiercer the struggle for space and survival. Except for the highly disciplined insects of great socialbility, the species and man do best when trusting and relying emotionally, socially and substantially on some fifteen odd individuals or as solitary rangers, reflecting the Ardi (Ardiphitecus ramidus) extended family group organization originating on the slopes of Ethiopian mountains some four million years ago and is still regarded as the optimal number of interactive individuals in a learning, confidence building, bonding or cooperating situation by socialdarwinists and anthropologists. Less, obviously, is more, no matter how much we insist that the degree of evolution equals the size of the urban conglomerates.
The continous Amigdala Alert keeps us unconciously or conciously alarmed at all hours even when we are chilling out in our favorite Brasserie in Saint Germain or sipping Farnese in Firenze, because there is simply too much to take in even when we believe we take no notice or know how to ignore. Add your intelligent mobile devices and all other gadgets calling for your attention at all hours and voilá the bliss of yet another technological progress to maneuver in addition to your GPS and the perpetual maelstrom of stimuli you are trained to appreciate.
I am in the wrong, of course. Since 3.300 B.C. in the earliest Indus Valley urban conglomerates and the even older citylike constructions in China, Egypt and pre-Columbian America, people have been trained to live shoulder to shoulder and doing just fine. Or those with a room at the top.
The exodus from Urak may have pointed in the direction that the patriarch knew better than to attempt to adapt to the rapidly growing metropolis, skillfully avoiding the historic urban centers while crossing presentday Iraq and Syria over the fertile land between Eufrat and Tigris, where a future Babylonian tower was to collaspse because of a multilingual generated chaos, to inhabit a seemingly barren land on the border of Lebanon, while his offspring Ismael turned towards his mother´ Hagar´s native country and Jacob, his son by Sara, explored the borders of Judea and Galilea.
The quest for fresh air, green pasture, clean waters and friendly but distant neighbours may be a reminesence of Paradise lost for all I know. Maybe my own origins in a sparsely populated Scandinavia makes me shudder at the thought of being cosy with twenty million townsmen and which I project on the human potential to feel at ease and harmonious when residing in the midst of an overcrowded anthill, an opinion shared by socialdarwinists and anthropologists. Obviously people cope and convincingly argue that a forcible removal to a remote rural village would kill a citycrawler while the rest of us are equally convinced of the opposite.
Whatever takes place in the Hippocampus or in the Hypothalamus and other cerebral parts where transmittor substances and hormones are produced and governed to combat stress is still an enigma because the evolution of man took principally place in cluster organizations of nomad transhumance or scattered smaller sedentary agricultural communities, the latter very late on a timeline.
The Hunter and Gatherer societies have remained just that, extended family groups and clans with no need to change their mode of living due to an abundant ecological niche until confronted with greedy outsiders.
When examining the degree of "civilization", the Social Anthropolgists, who more or less invented the "quality of life" concept, used parameters such as percentage of time spent on work, leisure time, resting, sleeping, daydreaming, friendly or amorous social interaction, playtime (children a n d adults alike), time dedicated to spirituality, metaphysical philosophing and religion, social interaction with departed forefathers in a fourth dimension, creating art, music, rituals and "staging" drama and dancing performances, story telling and eating and, helás, no sophisticated New Yorker or Londoner came even close to achieve the scores of the Australian aboriginals or the Amazons forest tribes.
Surprised? I think not. Somewhere we knew all along. As did Kon Fu Tze, Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth and all the others with basically the same message. Skip the BMW and botox and do not dress your Pincher dog in Gucci...
There is no place as lonely as a crowd when you are down and out for a million reasons. In the village people won´t let you despair on your own. It takes a village to raise a child and it won´t let the investment collapse willingly. People in the village are not better people. But live in circumstances allowing them see what is going on before their eyes. And act upon it. Wether you like it, or not..
Yeah.
That´s it !
Hereuka ! Go tribal, friends and foes !!
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