Reading hours have been eclipsed by a mini-series on the Discovery Channel called, I think, "Klondike," based, as they say, "on actual events." Yes, although loosely, for the women are beautiful and romance flourishes among the mud fields and brutal murders. There is a continuous theme, though, based not so much on actual events but on Jack London's books (Jack is a side character in the series, lightly disguised) which show how thin a veil civilization is. As many characters state, "nature in bent on bringing us down to her level," a low level indeed in the harsh land of gold-crazed prospectors in 1890's Yukon gold rush.
Such extreme situations have always fascinated me - what do people do in a group when life is nearly intolerable? We have hundreds of such accounts - from the concentration camps to shipwrecks to rugged frontier life. Many times, people behave exactly as one might think - in a desperate, selfish way so that they might survive regardless of cultural or religious rules. It is, as London made famous, the Call of the Wild - which also coincided with the popularity of Social Darwinism of the time, as well as eugenics. The superior rise to the top, and in extreme situations, very quickly, "superior" meaning "most suited for survival." In the book we all had to read in high school, The Lord of the Flies, society becomes just that - the strong dominate, or even kill off, the weak. But is this true?
In survival accounts, everything happens. The Shackleton expedition, in the famous disastrous voyage to Antarctica in the early 20th century, shows how a whole group led by a certain type of man (Shackleton), can remain 'civilized' - that is, concerned with the well-being of others even as their own lives are threatened. In other cases - the Jamestown colony being one - it was found that the people resorted to theft, murder, and cannibalism - not just of the dead who died naturally, but of the dead killed off exactly to provide nourishment. This had happened in a few notorious cases of shipwreck as well, although usually the person killed for food was done in by lot, certainly a more egalitarian and civilized method than the man at Jamestown who killed his wife to fill a stew pot. In the Andean flight wreck, where in the 1970's a soccer team's plane crashed in the Andes, they had to survive in freezing temperatures for several months, kept alive by eating those who died in the crash - men first, in regard to a gentlemanly decorum (and all of those who survived said that they had had transcendental experiences of God during the ordeal, making it a positive event by in large). The noted writer Laurens Van der Post recalled his two years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma, stating with wonder that all the men were self-sacrificing to the others, so much so that they did not hate the Japanese for their brutality, but felt sorry for them for their fall from humanity.
And yet - many civilizations in NICE areas were brutal. While pre-colonial Hawaii is often idolized and lamented - and what the colonialists did was often terrible - the chiefdoms of the Islands were in many ways brutal theocracies that put the Ayatollah to shame. The Aztecs lived in a pretty nice area themselves, and if we are honest must admit that they were worse than their Spanish conquerors - so much so that it was the Indian subjects of the Aztecs themselves who provided the bulk of the army to subdue them. Meanwhile, the Eskimos, who lived to the north of the Klondike in the most brutal land of all, lived fairly quiet - and social -lives.
Much has to do with levels of society - larger ones usually have hierarchies which choose winners and losers - and much to do with leadership. The Chinese wrote of kings who followed the will of heaven - people who were lauded for their fairness - and of tyrants, who created dreadful societies of fear and greed. Their idea was that a leader could channel the divine will towards harmony, or he could refute it, and in that lay all the difference.
In the Klondike, as with many frontier areas, there was little to no leadership, and many of the men (for they were mostly men) were adventurous types or downright criminals who had little respect for civilized niceties - even as the surrounding native populations maintained their own ordered societies in the same natural environment. Jack London, it would seem, was wrong - the brutality of nature did not make men brutal. Rather, people made themselves brutal, or were forced into brutality by social (not natural) circumstances. It is sometimes hard to believe the decorum people have maintained in horrible circumstances, and much easier to imagine a dog-eat-dog mentality in, say, a lifeboat with limited supplies. And yet such examples are many. It is also hard to imagine a contentious and violent society in the midst of affluence, but we have experienced it, at least to a certain degree, in our own. In our own society where leadership is limited, it seems that we must be held together by a great idea or body of ideas. Is our discontent due to a failure to embrace such ideas? And are some purposefully spreading discord for their own selfish or neurotic needs? Or are we really about as content as one can expect, given life, and our discord is only purposefully magnified to sell news?
In the Klondike, I imagine that one had to be tough, although one could (and probably many did) balance that with a kinder nature when toughness wasn't necessary. For most of us in the affluent West, our reality seems more likely to rest on our perception - and perception can be changed, just like that; and it seems that each of us, for lack of a king, must find his own way - by his own will - to grasp the will of heaven. FK
Such extreme situations have always fascinated me - what do people do in a group when life is nearly intolerable? We have hundreds of such accounts - from the concentration camps to shipwrecks to rugged frontier life. Many times, people behave exactly as one might think - in a desperate, selfish way so that they might survive regardless of cultural or religious rules. It is, as London made famous, the Call of the Wild - which also coincided with the popularity of Social Darwinism of the time, as well as eugenics. The superior rise to the top, and in extreme situations, very quickly, "superior" meaning "most suited for survival." In the book we all had to read in high school, The Lord of the Flies, society becomes just that - the strong dominate, or even kill off, the weak. But is this true?
In survival accounts, everything happens. The Shackleton expedition, in the famous disastrous voyage to Antarctica in the early 20th century, shows how a whole group led by a certain type of man (Shackleton), can remain 'civilized' - that is, concerned with the well-being of others even as their own lives are threatened. In other cases - the Jamestown colony being one - it was found that the people resorted to theft, murder, and cannibalism - not just of the dead who died naturally, but of the dead killed off exactly to provide nourishment. This had happened in a few notorious cases of shipwreck as well, although usually the person killed for food was done in by lot, certainly a more egalitarian and civilized method than the man at Jamestown who killed his wife to fill a stew pot. In the Andean flight wreck, where in the 1970's a soccer team's plane crashed in the Andes, they had to survive in freezing temperatures for several months, kept alive by eating those who died in the crash - men first, in regard to a gentlemanly decorum (and all of those who survived said that they had had transcendental experiences of God during the ordeal, making it a positive event by in large). The noted writer Laurens Van der Post recalled his two years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma, stating with wonder that all the men were self-sacrificing to the others, so much so that they did not hate the Japanese for their brutality, but felt sorry for them for their fall from humanity.
And yet - many civilizations in NICE areas were brutal. While pre-colonial Hawaii is often idolized and lamented - and what the colonialists did was often terrible - the chiefdoms of the Islands were in many ways brutal theocracies that put the Ayatollah to shame. The Aztecs lived in a pretty nice area themselves, and if we are honest must admit that they were worse than their Spanish conquerors - so much so that it was the Indian subjects of the Aztecs themselves who provided the bulk of the army to subdue them. Meanwhile, the Eskimos, who lived to the north of the Klondike in the most brutal land of all, lived fairly quiet - and social -lives.
Much has to do with levels of society - larger ones usually have hierarchies which choose winners and losers - and much to do with leadership. The Chinese wrote of kings who followed the will of heaven - people who were lauded for their fairness - and of tyrants, who created dreadful societies of fear and greed. Their idea was that a leader could channel the divine will towards harmony, or he could refute it, and in that lay all the difference.
In the Klondike, as with many frontier areas, there was little to no leadership, and many of the men (for they were mostly men) were adventurous types or downright criminals who had little respect for civilized niceties - even as the surrounding native populations maintained their own ordered societies in the same natural environment. Jack London, it would seem, was wrong - the brutality of nature did not make men brutal. Rather, people made themselves brutal, or were forced into brutality by social (not natural) circumstances. It is sometimes hard to believe the decorum people have maintained in horrible circumstances, and much easier to imagine a dog-eat-dog mentality in, say, a lifeboat with limited supplies. And yet such examples are many. It is also hard to imagine a contentious and violent society in the midst of affluence, but we have experienced it, at least to a certain degree, in our own. In our own society where leadership is limited, it seems that we must be held together by a great idea or body of ideas. Is our discontent due to a failure to embrace such ideas? And are some purposefully spreading discord for their own selfish or neurotic needs? Or are we really about as content as one can expect, given life, and our discord is only purposefully magnified to sell news?
In the Klondike, I imagine that one had to be tough, although one could (and probably many did) balance that with a kinder nature when toughness wasn't necessary. For most of us in the affluent West, our reality seems more likely to rest on our perception - and perception can be changed, just like that; and it seems that each of us, for lack of a king, must find his own way - by his own will - to grasp the will of heaven. FK
RSS Feed