Ashoka’s Dilemma

                                                              Ashoka’s Dilemma

                       by Marco M. Pardi

Note: All comments are appreciated, read, and responded to accordingly.  The COMMENTS sections for all previous articles have been opened for use.  I will certainly look forward to your comments. 

“The poor will be among you always…” rendered variously in Deuteronomy 15:11, Matthew 26:11, and Mark 14:7.

“Freedom’s just another word for nuthin’ left to lose…” Me and Bobby McGee. Janis Joplin

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in attention to and discussion of the growing wealth disparity between the 1%, even the .01% of Americans and the rest of the country.  What is missing from many of these discussions is the explanation that economic trends often take years, sometimes decades to develop and mature.  The current inequity can be traced back not necessarily to its primogenitor but to a force multiplier in the form of Saint Ronald (Reagan) and his Merry Men (most notably the economist Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics).  Rob from the poor and give to the rich.  It will “trickle down” and create jobs.   Long after the orgy of greed and social cannibalism remembered fondly as the “Reagan Years” a major portion of American workers are working at jobs significantly below their capabilities, and glad to have those jobs.  Others simply found their jobs outsourced, created overseas.

It might seem that this is an inevitable step in the development of a post-industrial society.  Sociology classes even in the 1960’s warned of the displacement of skilled labor by mechanized production, robotic assembly lines.  Classes in “Leisure Studies” developed in anticipation of much shorter work weeks and less coping skills for free time.

But resistance to mechanization is nothing new. The word sabotage (French: sabot – shoe; age – suffix denoting an act) originated among the French speaking Belgian peasants who, upon seeing ox drawn mechanical harvesters replacing them in the fields snuck up and inserted their wooden shoes into the gears of the machines – sabotage.

The root of the wealth disparity problem is not to be found in its branches, or expressions.  It is to be found in the crafting of the cultural narrative, including the definition of terms.  Narrowing the concept of wealth solely to money deflects attention from the real meaning of wealth: Access to power.  Being stranded on a desert island with a steamer trunk of Euros might mean I’m rich, but it also means I’m powerless, powerless to alter my circumstances.  I cannot eat the Euros.  I cannot fashion them into a boat.  At least, a death by starvation might be better than that experienced by Manius Aquillius (Roman Consul 101 BCE) who, in 88 BCE was executed by Mithradates VI of Pontus by having molten gold (not Euros in this case) poured down his throat.

So, money is nice. It buys toys. Within limits, it allows one to alter one’s circumstances.  But it does not automatically confer power.  On a societal level true power (wealth) lies with those who are able to alter the cultural narrative, to bring about changes which become accepted as “the way things should be done, the things good members of society share as beliefs.”  An ongoing example of this is the attempt by some fundamentalist groups to re-write American history as a nation founded on the Bible, eradicating all historical references and proofs to the contrary.  A recent upstart is the self-defeating drumbeat against Common Core in public schools.  Those States rejecting it do not individually have the power to stop it at the federal level, but they are asserting the power to stop at the State level, thus ensuring their version of the cultural narrative is taught in schools.

Here’s a cultural narrative:  There were two brothers, one a pastoralist who herded sheep and the other a farmer who grew crops.  In a dispute over which of the two (incompatible until the advent of barbed wire) lifestyles was better,  the farmer killed his pastoralist brother and went off, his descendents eventually raising a great city.  The city was Rome, named after Romulus, the farmer who killed Remus, his pastoralist brother.  Were you thinking Cain and Abel?  If so, that may be because the Hebrews (originally the Elohim – people of El) who apparently derived their new name from when they, as they were accepted into Egypt during a drought in what is now Palestine, were housed and well fed in return for manual labor and referred to by the Egyptians as hebiru, migrant laborers. As the Hebrew narrative, including the Exodus for which there is not a scrap of linguistic or archaeological evidence, gained strength in the Levant its Christian offshoot, through cultural conquest – not monetary conquest, ascended to a position of power sufficient to eradicate previous and competing cultural narratives.  The adoption of a derogatory name into a title of power was again seen later among the Mamluk Turks (Arabic: mamluk – slave). The expanding Caliphate subdued and enslaved the Turks, but subsequent to their conversion to Islam, it being against the Quran to keep slaves, their descendents were freed.  However, they kept the mamluk term of reference as a title and proudly rose to power, changing the narrative.    

Most people know of the Hindu/Buddhist traditions.  Many people know of Siddhartha Gautama.  But few seem aware of  arguably the greatest cultural narrative ever written.  At more than eight times the length of The Iliad and The Odyssey put together,  the Mahabharata of India contains the Bhagavad-Gita and other epic poems.  Thought to have been compiled after Ashoka’s death in 232 BCE,  it details the earlier crisis of the transition from pastoralism to agriculture.  In her recent book,  Fields of Blood, Karen Armstrong examines the history of religion and violence.

Although her discussion of brain anatomy and physiology is dated and betrays her biases,  Armstrong goes on to explain the development of structural violence, the multi-faceted phenomenon in which the individual is rendered increasingly powerless before the broadly anonymous face of the State.  Contrasting the egalitarianism (equal access to power) of the pastoralist societies with the stratified (unequal access to power) hierarchy of the developing agriculturally based societies she shows how the selective accrual of surplus in the hands of the few enabled the development of trades and specialties which initially benefited the many, providing the basis for the development of what we call civilization.

Indeed, history and contemporary studies confirm that no truly egalitarian society has ever existed at higher than the band level.  Modern societies that do, or have called themselves “Communist” (egalitarian) have invariably proven to be exactly the opposite; they are narrow pinnacles of power exercised through totalitarian dictatorship.  Furthermore, history is littered with examples of failed “communes” and other experiments with egalitarian society even including, by their account, the early Christian communities (Matthew 6:19-34, and related materials).  In every case, be it some spontaneous “Hippie” commune in the woods or the “refusenik” groups of early Christians they quickly found themselves unable to survive outside the structure of stratified, surplus based economies.  Early Christian communities compounded their troubles not on theological grounds (Rome was in effect too tolerant of various religions) but on structural grounds when their refusal to participate in Roman society presented a socio-political threat, not a theological threat.

Armstrong exhaustively traces many examples of the transition from egalitarian pastoralist societies to stratified surplus based agricultural societies.  Her prime example of the inherent problem of structural inequality leading to the structural violence in which the potential life choices of individuals are increasingly narrowed and controlled by the necessary administrative echelons is the Mauryan Empire living on plunder of its neighbors, constant warfare to control rebellion, and enforced taxation.  Ashoka (“Devanampiya” – Beloved of the Gods), the third Mauryan emperor was, like his predecessors, egalitarian in principle – coining the dhamma, a code remarkably close to Jainism, but practically autocratic in the face of the reality of managing an empire. Torn between his feelings and his needs, feeling the call to become a monk but knowing the disaster that would befall his land and people without strong leadership, his well documented dilemma raised him alongside Mahavira and the Buddha as “the most central political and cultural figure of ancient India.” (Asoka: In History and Historical Memory (Delhi, 2009) Olivelle, Patrick, ed.)

The lesson here is universal: The development of new technologies, even advances on old technologies can come only from the freeing of an entrepreneurial, inventive class from the daily wheel of producing their own food.  The intake, management, and redistribution of surpluses accrued through taxation becomes the specialty of yet another class, the administrators at every level.  The security of the system, from within and without, falls to yet another class – the standing enforcement sector, be they police or military.   And on it goes.

Yet, no such society stands the test of perfection.  As long ago as Plato, the problems of corruption were well recognized, leading Plato to write his utopian The Republic, positing philosopher-kings freed from the corrupting influences of money.   Contrast that with the recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings in favor of practically unlimited campaign donations to politicians.  The administration of the United States is open to the highest bidders.  But what are they bidding for?  The right to control the cultural narrative.  For it is the narrative, embedded in the educational system, the economic system, and all through the culture which spurs people to define themselves as free, to define themselves as immune to the ravages industry brings to the environment and to their own children, to define themselves as entitled to live with the comforts gained off the backs of unseen people elsewhere. 

So, here I sit in a comfortable home powered by electricity generated from a plant spewing pollution through air and water as I click away on a computer assembled by outsourced labor (China? Malaysia?) somewhere.  As it happens, I can turn on my large television today and watch the swearing in of a bought and paid for Congress, an entity for whom my vote may have made only a sub-atomic difference at best, wondering who they will favor (or pay off) with their new round of legislation, deregulation, trampling of women’s rights to control their own reproductive function.

I feel Ashoka’s dilemma.  I see the alternatives such as Somalia (BYOG – Bring Your Own Gun).  I enjoy speaking out, in comfort, while at the same time understanding that my lifestyle is on the backs of people I will never meet. 

We are that kid again, running at top speed when the realization comes that we’ve lost our balance.  The best we can hope for is to control the fall.