By Fabian Lyngdoh
It seems that there is universal lawlessness in human societies everywhere and there is crises and turmoil across the world. The terrorists, rapists and criminals of all kinds are just behind the corner waiting for victims and opportunities to unleash havoc, and the ones arrested would still be roaming free.The government we elect to protect us has failed. The balance between individual freedom and collective order is in disarray, and the general conscience of society seems to have become indifferent to crimes.
How could such things happen in spite of the fact that human society has reached the apex of its rational development? Probably the perfection of the modern civilized society we believe to exist is only imaginary anddemocracy as a political system is already greying and has reached its utmost limit of validity. Human society rests on the balance between individual freedom and collective order, andwhichever social system that fails to maintain this balance, loses its validity.
The supreme and ultimate human collective authority in society which in this context we may call the‘Leviathan’is the authority which keeps the society together and itemerged from the general will of the individuals. The government of any state is only one aspect of the various manifestations of the Leviathan whichis greater than the state and government. It is the Leviathan that had transformed the structures of many states, toppled many a government and had beheaded many kings and dictators. This ultimate authority resides not in an institution, but it is lying dormant in the minds and wills of the people in general, from whose ad hoc approval or tolerance, the government derives its authority.But human history has shown that the seesaw between individual freedom and the collective order is not always in equilibrium. It always tendedto be lopsided towards one or the other,shifting the fulcrum of justice far beyond tolerance,and leading tothe decay and disintegration of each cycle of civilization.
In the age of savagery there wasa global economy without political boundary,and man’s existential relationship was more with nature than with other men.Private property of any kind had not existed, andthe earth and all the things in it were jointly owned by man and beasts. Man had to negotiate for his existence with the dinosaurs and the dragons. That was the age of unrestraint individual freedom when life as Thomas Hobbes said was poor, nasty, brutish, and short.Gradually by unconscious general concern, collective order arosefrom the chaos as a counter balance,and crude social living and polity began to evolve.
Then came the barbaric age when collective order acquired momentum and by the gradual toning down of unrestraint individual freedom, the community state emerged. Human community started conquering the beasts and human beings claimed ownership of the land and all things in it as a community. It was a primitive form of democracy among clan communities represented by clan heads. But unrestraint individual freedom under the protection of clan institutions still raised itsugly head leading to the need for a centralized authority.
With the emergence of private ownership of land, monarchy and feudalism evolved. Ownership of land as the main source of economy strongly concentrated in the hands of kings and nobles.The state acquired momentum and took form in the person of an absolute ruler or a group of privileged aristocrats as standing distinct from the vast majority. Collective order, which in the first place had arisen out of unconscious general concern, to overcome unrestrained individual freedom led to its embodimentin the persons of the kings and nobles,and the vast majority was reduced to a status so inferior that their existence depended on the good will and mercy of their kings.Centralized individual authoritybecame a contradiction to the ideal of individual freedom. This condition of human existence induced tension in society and reactions aroseagainst the authority of the king to redress the imbalance. The king, in turn changed from a monarch who was supposed to maintain the social order to a deadly tyrant who maintained his own authority even against the collective order. Such critical situation sent signal to the dormant Leviathan to move in operation, and violent revolutions eruptedto put down the tyranny of kings and to restore the balance which led to the beheading of kings and queens and the establishment of the rule of the people as an ideal condition of justicewhere individual freedom and the collective order can tolerably exist side by side.
The concept of the ‘rule of the people’, led to the emergence of modern democracy. Economic opportunities of capitalism and industry are opened to all who had the means, the skills and the courage to take risk, just as the land was opened to all in the barbaric period.But ultimately,the concept of ‘rule of the people’ led to the ‘rule of a system’. Authority of the collective order manifests no more in human persons but in a despotic-democratic system. Every individual acquired freedom but enslaved to a non-human dictatorial system where the collective authority itself is used to advance individual freedom beyond a point of tolerance, and culminating in a social situation of the masters and slaves, the haves and the have-nots.
Then the age of a post-industrial society arrived with the extremely powerful private ownership – the patent regime and MOU’s economy. Opportunities of capitalism is no more opened to all but came to be concentrated in the hands of the mighty multi-national corporations (M.N.C’s). This is a recapitulation of the age of savagerywhereeconomic opportunity was jointly owned by man and beasts,and a second stage of globalization is dawned.Today man again has to jointly own the resources of nature with the beasts and to negotiate for his own existence with the multi-national-corporationswhich are modern dinosaurs and dragons. The fate of the small players who cannot form a pact with the dragons is sealed. Humanity is divided into two camps: the miniscule minority of empowered producers and the vast majority of bonded consumers.
A new form of revolution is on the way manifesting in the gradual decay of moral conscience which paves the way to the weakening control of collective order. As the general norm today is that everyone should have the right and freedom to do his own will, the ‘power of the people’ becomes more and more indeterminate and hanging in the air. Terrorism, extremism, wide spread neurotic and psychopathic behaviour and modern spiritualism and dubious mysticism are all indications of the reaction of individual freedom against the collective order.
Today there is a tendency for the emergence of autocratic rulers in various nations of the world. There are two main factors that paved the way to this phenomenon.The first is the emergence of unrestraint individual freedom in a greying democracy.Initially,an autocratic ruler arose with good intentionto maintain the balance between individual freedom and collective order in a society that is rife withuniversal lawlessness, crises and turmoil. But the ruler would gradually be transformed into a tyrant in the process of putting down rebels against his autocratic rule. The second factor is that various political actors in a democracy, most of the times stand as hurdles to the aggressive attempts by the multi-national corporations to manipulate economic globalization. The MNCs and autocratic rulers make a good team for exploiting the people and natural resources of the world to the core.Besides the means of production, the MNCs also control political powers to dictate international policies. Just as the dragon, entered into the temples of worship in olden days, the labels of these M.N.C’s enter into the temples of law in the modern day society. Means of production and state power strongly converge in the hands of the modern deified dragons and their high priests, the political bosses. The MNCs support the autocratic ruler to remain in position by whatever means, including weapons of mass destruction, and the autocratic ruler would mow the grass for the MNCs to tread upon. An autocratic ruler equips himself with nuclear weapons not for protecting his country and the people from foreign powers, but to fight against foreign powers that might assist some faction in his own country to dislodge him from the seat of authority, because for him it is not the people, but he alone constitutes the State.The cycle of social change would not stop here, but it would go on repeating for the sake of balancing individual freedom and the collective order in ever changing conditions of human existence.