I’ll go after almost any aspect of modernity, including technology, agriculture, or even written language. Let’s now take a big swipe at “The Law.” But first, we’ll need to get a few common reactions out of the way.
When I suggest that a rigid, codified legal system is an abomination that humans are better off not suffering, strong objections instantly arise on the basis that a lawless modernity would be a chaotic nightmare.
I totally agree: modernity absolutely needs a legal system in place. So, sure: anarchy is no way to run modernity, but here’s the catch: modernity is no way to run humanity, or life on Earth more generally. Modernity, it appears, initiates a sixth mass extinction, and is thus effectively synonymous, just as unsustainable is synonymous with failure. Modernity has no deep-time ecological vetting, and is a transient offshoot that has—in a relative eye-blink—caused tremendous disruption to the prospects for a happy life for countless members of the Community of Life, including, of course, future humans.
So, ask not what modernity needs, because doing so is basically asking what the sixth mass extinction needs. As far as anyone knows, and certainly as the actual evidence reveals, the two are inseparably part of the same phenomenon. So, let’s get over prioritizing what modernity needs. Laws are among those “necessities” of the sixth mass extinction—a.k.a. modernity.
Hackles
Most people in our culture believe that without laws, humans would behave like savages. But they only believe so because—as products of modernity—this is the only mythology they have ever heard.
Are such beliefs based on any personal, direct experience with hunter-gatherer lifeways somehow spared from modernity’s influence? Of course not. How hard have most people worked to absorb anthropological research—while simultaneously attempting to peer past cultural biases that seep into those practices as well? It should be clear that narratives in such fields change over time, leaving the truth that much more elusive, which is its own important lesson. Almost nobody actually knows what life feels like outside agricultural modernity, although the math says it doesn’t feel very dangerous. We need to recognize our staggering lack of authority on this point. Christopher Ryan’s Civilized to Death is a great entry point.
Our culture hammers it into us that “uncivilized” equates to barbaric, savage, or violent. But without more intimate—and uncorrupted—familiarity, these can’t be anything other than stories, or at best decontextualized inferences.
Many interactions between modernity and ecological lifeways have occurred in extreme contexts. Humans living authentically can indeed be ferocious when protecting their livelihoods. When outsiders—especially those whose habits and technologies are unrecognizably different—intrude, one can expect savage ferocity as an appropriate defense. Reach your hand into a beehive sometime and you may come to the same conclusion about the savage ferocity of bees. But among each other, the bees are perfectly docile and cooperative. Context matters a lot.
Norms, not laws
People living as ecological members of the Community of Life might not have laws as we have come to know (fabricate) them, but they do take norms very seriously. Other social animal groups are similar. Transgressions are met with prompt, corrective actions—or even hostility if need be. Certain general behaviors are discouraged, but less in a rigid way than in a case-by-case assessment. The one-size-fits-all letter of the law, imposed by modernity, stamps out the nuances that dominate “natural” law, to everyone’s detriment.
One might worry that in the absence of formalized law, tribes were left with mob rule. But that’s just our modern ignorance spouting off again, “informed” by the anonymous collectives we inhabit. Tribal people are deeply connected and anything but anonymous. Every member is important, and punishing any one member hurts the whole tribe: not only in terms of lost capability but also emotionally. It must be excruciating to decide to banish or, if it must be done, kill one of your treasured flock, intimately known since birth. These rare episodes are taken very seriously. I say “rare” because growing up in a supportive, familiar community of mutual cooperation and dependence does not promote the phenomenon of “crime” as modernity knows it. Narcissists (jerks) are not as common in a culture of mutual support compared to cultures that emphasize competition, individual success, control, acquisition of materials and power, etc. Given modernity’s twisted priorities, is it any wonder that we’ve bred a culture of A-holes that make and require laws in a nearly futile attempt to tame the resultant chaos?
Wait: Am I an anarchist?
I’ve basically always been a “good kid” and a good citizen. As long as I am embedded in modernity, I default to following rules—rules serve a purpose in the context of modernity to protect myself and others from myself and others. I actually drive the speed limit: it’s safer for me, other drivers, and other animals while being more energy efficient. I would go even slower if that didn’t create its own safety hazard or make me a major irritant for the impatient majority. While I tend to follow rules, I’m not 100% compliant—sometimes assessing situations on a case-by-case basis. I try to respect the spirit of the law most of the time, deviating only in cases where either I assume complete personal responsibility or I believe I understand the nuanced, contextual situation more thoroughly than the codified version could have encompassed (which I don’t assume as a default: mine is just one more meat-brain having limited perspective).
As a conscientious “good” citizen, I have always found the concept of anarchy uncomfortable. I don’t trust myself to always fully understand a complex scenario and act optimally. If everyone trusted their own judgment more than that of the collective, everybody would do their own thing without regard to rules—which strikes me as a recipe for disaster. As I said before, anarchy is no way to run civilization.
But again, civilization is no way to comport ourselves on this planet, since that road leads to a sixth mass extinction. For millions of years, humans lived in satisfying political arrangements as free agents in egalitarian bands, enjoying great autonomy and freedom from coercion—rooted in distributed competence and access to resources. They were anarchists, and the outcome was, in many respects, the opposite of chaos, as evidenced by stability over tens of thousands of generations. So, maybe anarchy deserves a closer look. Maybe it’s still possible to be a good citizen of the Community of Life and an anarchist. Maybe, in fact, like basically every other creature on this planet, I’m fundamentally an anarchist. But the teachings of modernity make it hard to shoulder the baggage the term invites.
When I confront the fact that I may in truth be an anarchist, I can’t stop the punk song from the Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the U.K., from charging into awareness: “I am an Antichrist-a, and I am an Anarchist!” Great: now anarchist is tied in my brain to what is possibly the most reviled term in Western culture: Satan-adjacent. Like I said: baggage.
The core flaw
What’s happening in the U.S. right now is a fascinating example that “exposes the lie” of legal validity. It’s impossible to play a game when one team basically says the rules are stupid and refuses to grant them authority. This leaves the other side blowing the whistle, saying, “You can’t do that.” The response is, quite accurately: “But we just did.” The “game” only works if both teams agree on the rules, or even that there are rules. At present, the political left is still pretending that the game is on and can get back to normal. Judges issue pronouncements that are simply ignored. Whatever “side” you prefer, it’s at least becoming clear that the whole construct is a fiction (sham) that requires common buy-in (pretending) on all sides in order to work. The “game” of modernity is pretty fragile: not written in the stars, rocks, or deep-time ecology but is instead a novel, temporary, flimsy arrangement that won’t stand up to the trials ahead.
The legal system offers yet another stark example of how our cognitive limits are simply not up to the task of creating an artificial (non-ecological) framework as a basis for reality. As a classic example of left-hemisphere fetishization, legal proceedings aim to determine fault in a binary guilty/innocent scheme, pretending that 100% of the responsibility lands on some individual (or group of individuals). The brain-exploding truth is that responsibility is threaded into the entire history of the universe. The forces applying to an “individual” are intractably dependent on a boundless chain of cause-and-effect that reaches essentially everywhere. Of course, such recognitions dredge up the dreaded topics of free will and determinism, which our modernity-addled narcissist/supremacist brains have tremendous difficulty accepting.
Because the universe is not interested in stark delineations, it quickly becomes clear that legal systems struggle to accommodate nuances of the complete world. The response has been to double down and double down and double down by elaborating written law until it’s a rat’s nest of misguided complexity. The enterprise is simply trying to accomplish the impossible, in a doomed effort to assign blame. It’s incredible—and more than a little sad—how many people are invested in the ever-elusive fantasy that the failing fabrication can be made more perfectly functional.
Humans are much better adapted to common-sense, case-by-case judgment among intimately familiar “citizens,” based on norms that evolve with the group over time and on what works well for them in that place. Only when hierarchies, possessions, and writing emerged did law come into being: mostly motivated to protect the elites—and their acquired power—from the masses. If laws were to be boiled down to a single word, that word would probably be: MINE!
The aggrandizers couldn’t have done civilization without it. Once laws were in place, the sixth mass extinction could charge forward. By vesting power in written words and securing mass acceptance in their fictional authority, the way was paved for a disastrous end to the vastly older and successful legacy of ecological anarchy.
This piece has been edited for clarity and length. An earlier version of this article appeared on Tom Murphy’s blog, Do the Math.
