We need to live more like birds and less like dogs. Most birds are social animals, like dogs, but with a key difference, being that, unlike many mammalian species, avians are generally free of group hierarchy.
Of course, this may only be a general rule for birds that can fly. After all, chickens, for example, are so hierarchical in the way they interact, we even cite them for their power dynamics in the phrase, ‘pecking order’.
So, some bird species free themselves from hierarchical social interaction through their ability to fly. ‘Free as a bird’ means being free to fly away from others when we choose to. Being land bound prevents individuals from just upping sticks and finding independence when desired. What binds us, traps us and enslaves us is our immobility. In fact, slavery, bondage and other forms of curtailing freedom of movement such as serfdom, feudalism, immigration control, home addresses, mobile phones, property, schools, bank accounts, mortgages, towns and cities (the list is endless, when you start to think about it) are all ways of keeping us in our place. And, like chickens and dogs, once we lose freedom of movement, for one reason or another, we find ourselves fixed somewhere within a social hierarchy, a pecking order.
Once there’s a pecking order, we’re in hell because the whole of our purpose in life becomes fixated on how to ascend, how to avoid descent, or just how to stay where they are in the social order. Of course, societies that fossilise their class structures, make the social mobility thing harder and harder. Those at the top of the pecking order have the power and the vested interest to ensure society becomes more static, as far as social mobility is concerned. So that goes on too and adds to the caustic mix.
How can we all become more bird brained?
There’s an important point to be made here. What’s interesting about, say, pigeons, is that they seem to maintain individual freedom but not at the expense of social fragmentation of the flock. The way birds bind together as individuals does seem to demonstrate that there is a way animals can form social groups without losing some sense of self-determination. I’d suggest this is possible because these sorts of group organisations maintain very little, if any, hierarchical structure and this, in turn, is because the pecking order can’t ever take hold, because of mobility. Let’s face it, if the chicken at the bottom of the pecking order could fly away, it would. The whole, horrible thing would disintegrate within hours if not minutes.
The chicken is the saddest and tastiest travesty of evolution. Well, along with turkeys and other poultry products.
‘Freedom’ really means, for all practical intents and purposes, freedom from others having control over our lives. Freedom of movement is what liberty is all about. Being free means we can, if we choose, get away. We can enjoy the benefits that come from being with others of our kind, without the down side of having to enslave ourselves. Slavery is the restriction of movement.
Why don’t we try living more like cats? After all, cats manage to avoid hierarchy and maintain individuality and self-determination. They can’t fly, but they come and go as they please. Well, we could try that. But cats, unlike primates, are not particularly social animals. Humans are not generally and naturally lone wolves. True, some individuals can and do chose the hermetic way of life. But it requires a combination of self-discipline and/or grave disappointment if not trauma to get things going in that direction.
So, birds that can fly have the option to join others as and when it suits them. In the evening they join up to sleep. In the morning they sing in ineffective ways to attract mates or define territory (without possession) and then they fly off and do their own thing all day before returning to roost with their kind. Cool.
It’s a nice way to be, because no one bird tries to lord it over another. The act of ‘lording it’ simply couldn’t happen in bird world. There are no Adolf Hitler birds out there because no individuals could be coerced or cajoled into following such a toxic and destructive individual. Leaders and drones just don’t exist in bird world. The idea of following another does not compute in a bird brain.
Well, unlike birds we can’t fly away too easily. But we can increase our mobility potential. That’s one way we can be more birdlike. We can also free ourselves mentally.
It’s a spectrum. The more things we have, the more we are possessed. A house is not something we have but something that has us. The less we possess, the less we are possessed. This awareness and a shift in thinking is not original and it’s not rocket science. Yet, most of us fail to see or draw upon this wisdom and spend our lives enslaved by what we have and what we want. We spend our lives burying ourselves in crap as if more were more and less were less.
A bird has a direct and one step connection with its food or energy source. A kingfisher plunges into the river and picks out a fish. The procedure of energy exchange is efficient and effective. Most of the day is spent hanging around feeling satiated.
A human has an incredible number of steps to take before it gets its sustenance. The apple on a tree in New Zealand has to be farmed (itself a human activity requiring enormous resources and energy inputs). It is picked by hand or a machine, washed, transported at great expense and energy, put in a plane, flown thousands of miles to another country that only accepts apples from New Zealand after years of trade negotiations. The apple then undergoes further complex stages of transportation involving enormous numbers of other humans to get it on a shelf in a shop. The consumer of the apple has to spend hours every day working to get something called money, a standardised form of exchange, before he or she can purchase the apple from the shop, put it in a plastic bag, then a car, drive it home to unpack it, put it in a bowl where it will sit for several days before going off.
And this is just an apple. Imagine the parcel tracker lists for all the stuff trundling around the planet right now. Far far more energy is being expended by our species as a whole than is being consumed by each individual. It’s nuts. The human being is the most inefficient energy exchange system in the known universe. I’m not even sure how, according to the laws of physics, the state of affairs we have created for ourselves is even possible, let alone sustainable.
Instead of sitting by the river bank for most of the day idle and full of fish, we spend hours and hours a day, days and days of our lives in slavery desperately trying to ensure we are able to exchange our labour for the means to buy our next meal. How did this happen? How did this come about?
Well, I think the answer lies in the first half of this essay. It comes down to how we organise ourselves, our group or social structures. Social hierarchy, and the restrictions this brings on individual mobility, is the root cause of the problem for us all and lies behind the experience of being human which is, for the vast majority, pretty unpleasant and mercifully finite.