We humans have two fundamentally different ways of governing ourselves in social groups. One is the method of hierarchy, or dominance, or force. I need not describe this method in detail; we are all too familiar with it. This is the method of governance in which those in power keep order by telling the others what they must do and not do. This is the method that predominates in conventional schools, where teachers tell students what to do; in conventional businesses, where bosses tell employees what to do; and in civic, state, and national governments, where those in power--whether that power is founded in heredity, military coup, appointment, or election--decide upon and enforce the rules that people must live by. We share this method of governance with our animal relatives. Mammals that live in social groups, especially primates, develop dominance hierarchies in which those higher up control at least some of the activities of those below. The ultimate source of control in any dominance system lies in the ability of dominant individuals to hurt subordinates who disobey--by giving bad grades to students, or firing employees, or putting offenders in jail, or simply by beating up those who behave in an insubordinate manner.
The other method is so little known and little discussed that it does not have a commonly accepted name. Sometimes the term anarchy is used to refer to it, but that term carries a pejorative burden because it is so often used to imply social chaos. I am talking not about chaos, but about situations in which people abide by rules willingly and freely, not because of threats imposed by more powerful others. I refer to this method of governance as the method of play, because play is where we see it most clearly and, I think, play is always its ultimate source.
Social Play Demands that Dominance Be Set Aside
Social play is the enemy of hierarchy and dominance; it demands equality. This is as true in animal play as it is in human play. In their serious daily lives, young monkeys--especially young male monkeys--are concerned with status. They spar and fight to establishing their positions in the hierarchy of power. Physical strength, cleverness, ability to form coalitions with others--these all contribute to the capacity to achieve high status. The one social activity for which young monkeys must, and do, set their concern for status aside is play.
Play, by definition, cannot be coerced. If two monkeys are playing together they must both feel free, not threatened or dominated by the other. Young monkeys love to play at chasing one another and wrestling, and such play is crucial to their healthy development. But to engage in such play they must set status aside, otherwise any monkey who is subordinate will run away or freeze and the game will end. In order to play with subordinate monkeys, dominant monkeys must suppress all signs of dominance. If they are stronger, they must self-handicap, so as not to overwhelm a weaker playmate. If they are cleverer, they must use that cleverness to help, not hinder, the less clever playmate.
All mammals have signals to mark their play. In wolves and dogs that signal is the play bow (the animal lowers its front end while facing the playmate). In monkeys and apes the play signal is the relaxed open-mouth display, or play face, characterized by a widely open mouth with lower jaw dropped and lack of tension in the facial muscles. In chimpanzees, our closest animal relative, the play face is often accompanied by a vocalized ahh ahh ahh, which sounds like a throaty human laugh. If such signals were translated into English they might be rendered: "We are just playing; nobody is going to hurt anyone; we have put aside our aggressiveness and defensiveness; we are cooperating in this activity for our mutual enjoyment."
As I explained in an earlier post, on the definition of play, all play--even the rough and tumble play of monkeys and children--has rules. The rules specify the actions that are permissible and not permissible; they serve to keep the play organized and fun for all and to prevent any one player from hurting another. Players follow the rules because the game is fun and the players know intuitively that the fun will end if rules are violated. If one monkey fails to take its proper turn in chasing another, or if one play-nips the other a bit too hard, the other will quit and the game will be over. The participants are motivated not only to follow the rules, but also to go beyond the rules to meet the needs and desires of the others. In my observations of age-mixed play in children and adolescents I have witnessed time and again the ways by which the stronger and more capable players modify their actions so as to refrain from dominating and to keep the game fun for all (see, for example, my discussion of an age-mixed pickup baseball game).
Now, here is the point that I am building to. In human beings, the spirit of play can suffuse all sorts of activities, including productive work, and when this happens the playful mode of governance can trump and defeat the hierarchical mode. Hunter-gatherer peoples throughout the world seemed to have understood this, and they used this knowledge, more or less deliberately, to arrange their entire social existence in a manner that permitted them to avoid hierarchy, dominance, and coercion.
The Egalitarian Nature of Hunter-Gatherer Societies
The kinds of hunter-gatherer societies that I am referring to here are those that are sometimes called band societies or immediate-return societies. These are societies in which people live in small, independent bands, of roughly 20 to 50 individuals per band, who move regularly from place to place within a large but circumscribed area to follow the available game and edible plant life. Today such societies are all but destroyed by encroachments from the outside world, but as recently as the last half of the twentieth century anthropologists were able to find and study such societies, in various remote parts of the world, that had been almost unaffected by modern ways. Examples include the Ju/'hoansi, the Hazda, the Mbuti, the Aka, and the Efé in Africa; the Batek in Peninsular Malaysia; the Agta in the Philippines; the Nayaka in India; the Aché in Paraguay; the Parakana in Brazil; and the Yiwara in Australia.
These societies are of special significance to those of us who are interested in human nature, because they are believed to represent the predominant manner by which human beings lived for hundreds of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture (which occurred a mere 10,000 years ago). Although such societies are not carbon copies of one another, they are remarkably similar to one another in certain basic ways. Of most significance to this essay, they are all marked by extraordinary egalitarianism and total commitment to cooperation and sharing. The people within a band cooperate fully with one another, regardless of degree of genetic relationship, in hunting, gathering, childcare, defense against predators, and everything else that is necessary for survival. They share all food and material wealth equally within the band, and they also often share with neighboring bands that are in need. Such intense cooperation and sharing appear to be essential to the hunting-and-gathering mode of existence; without it, our species would probably not have survived all those millennia prior to agriculture.
My analysis of the anthropological literature concerning such societies has led me to conclude that they managed to live in this highly cooperative, egalitarian manner by deliberately accentuating their playfulness as a way of suppressing the drives for dominance that we humans inherited from our primate ancestors.[1] Essentially all aspects of hunter-gatherer social life seem to be bathed in the spirit of play. Their religions are playful--not grim and threatening like the hierarchical religions that originated with agriculture and came to fruition in medieval times. Their work, including both hunting and gathering, is playful. Their approach to childcare is playful. The playful nature of hunter-gatherer religion, work, and childcare are topics of my next several posts. Right now I want to focus on hunter-gatherers' ways of making group decisions and maintaining order within the band.
