In an earlier post, we wrote a bit about the differences between modern politics and the approach taken by our pre-agricultural ancestors. When thinking about these issues (modern vs. pre-ag), it's important to understand that while our experience of the modern is (obviously) more immediate, the experience of those who lived in that long dawn before agriculture was far more lasting, and thus is more likely to find reflection in our deepest patterns of thought and feeling. If we agree that our species, modern Homo sapiens came into being around 200,000 years ago, and the earliest evidence of agriculture is from around 10,000 years ago, our species has spent 95% of our time on this planet living as hunter-gatherers. If you add in all the generations of pre-modern humans, the numbers go even higher.
So, while the experiences of a hunter-gatherer no doubt seem remote to you, understand that you carry the accumulated effects of those experiences in the deepest recesses of your mind, body, and spirit.
In our earlier post, we quoted an anthropologist who had lived with and studied the !Kung San people of the Kalahari desert, in Africa. He's talking about the qualifications of a leader:
"None is arrogant, overbearing, boastful, or aloof. In !Kung terms these traits absolutely disqualify a person as a leader and may engender even stronger forms of ostracism. Another trait emphatically not found among traditional camp leaders is a desire for wealth or acquisitiveness. Their accumulation of material goods is never more, and is often much less, than the average accumulation of the other households in their camp."
When you look at leadership among h/g societies, what you find is that nobody can "sieze power." How can you control people who each have free access to everything they need? Food, water, shelter, companionship -- all are there for the taking in h/g existence. The result of this is that coercive power -- a form of power so ubiquitous in modern societies that we often forget it is merely one type of power -- is impractical. Nobody becomes a leader because they demand the position; someone becomes a leader when the others decide that he or she is someone they want to follow. In these societies, leadership is based on a bond of trust, humility, and sincerity -- not to mention the intellectual superiority to make wise decisions.
Watching the Obamas being interviewed on 60 Minutes the other night, we had the unmistakable sensation that we were in the presence of real people. Not made-for-TV political products, but honest, sincere, open, loving people. If you've spent time analyzing marriages at all, you see immediately that these two people love and respect each other deeply. It's not an act.
Look at how much pleasure they take in their shared history, laughing about the old car he drove when they first met, or the dismal apartment he had, full of last night's pizza and empty beer bottles. Notice the respectful-but-unimpressed immediacy with which Michelle laughingly challenges Barack when he says he washes dishes ("Like when?") -- too quick to be faked, too organic to be coached in or out of their presentation of self.
I (CPR) grew up in a culture poisoned by assassinated and persecuted heroes, senseless slaughter in Vietnam, the lies of Watergate, the polyester idiocy of disco. It was a culture that ridiculed Jimmy Carter for wearing a sweater and daring to suggest that America should rethink our approach to energy consumption and maybe adopt the metric system while we're at it.
Well, we taught that stupid peanut farmer (with a PhD in nuclear physics, but still...) a lesson by electing a real hero in a landslide. Our hero told us that we didn't have to change. We're America! Let the world change.
But the real hero turned out to be a fake cowboy who was nothing but a front man for a corporate/political machine that had finally consummated the marriage of politics and marketing. The powers behind Reagan understood that at least 51% of the American people would buy even the emptiest, ugliest crap if you had the right spokesman and the right pitch. So they had their avuncular "cowboy" out there selling trickle-down economics, Star Wars defense systems, tax cuts and budget deficits, secret arms sales to declared enemies (Iran), and shameless, illegal war against peasants who dared to overthrow a dictator and try to govern themselves (Nicaragua).
As long as the fake cowboy kept chuckling and clearing brush, it kept working.
It worked so well, in fact, that they did it all over again with GWB. But Fake Cowboy 2.0 and his controllers have been such an unmitigated disaster that even that 51% who stay up late at night ordering commemorative coins and sending money to Nigerian princes aren't fooled any more.
But they'll keep trying. Sarah Palin: Fake Cowgirl 1.0.
The point (you've gotta be wondering by now) is this: Obama was elected not because of clever marketing and web-based fund raising (though these were certainly crucial), but because he embodies the most basic, ancient requirements of a true leader. He inspires admiration, trust, and the desire to be led by him. He's clearly a superior human being without a superior attitude. He's the kind of guy who could outrun you by far but slows down so he won't make you look bad (ask Joe Lieberman).
I admit it. I'm 46 years old and Barack Obama is the first American leader I've seen who makes me want to follow.
