The Consumer vs. the Citizen, conclusion
THE JEFFERSONIAN CITIZEN
Thomas Jefferson’s definitions of citizenship and freedom were deeply informed by the Epicurean tradition of Natural Law, which he adapted to suit to the frontier perspective of the Anglo-Europeans who invaded Native America. Believing that “following nature” led to personal and collective happiness, Epicurus said: “If you do not reconcile your behavior with the goal of nature, but instead use some other criterion in matters of choice and avoidance, then there will be a conflict between theory and practice.” Jefferson’s political philosophy is rooted in this admonishment.
Jefferson reconciled the American Revolution with “the goal of nature,” when he said the rebels “assume[d] among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them” in the Declaration. The Revolution obeyed the laws of nature, and was an expression of the will of “Nature’s God,” a non-Biblical deity the Declaration announced the appearance of.
Jefferson developed his natural law political philosophy throughout his career. For him, nature was a physio-spiritual totality (“Nature’s God”) that actively sided with the citizens of the emerging democratic republic. Nature was the Atlantic Ocean that separated Old and New Worlds, allowing the rebels an opportunity to escape feudalism and theocracy. It was the forests that guerilla leaders like Ethan Allen used as a shield and weapon against the British. Nature was the New World, which he understood as the place where humanity would perfect itself. It was the cornucopia of marine, mineral, woodland and agricultural resources the invaders found “free for the taking,” the basis of life, liberty and happiness “for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation”.
During the War of 1812, while Francis Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner and William Cullen Bryant’s Thanatopsis were first expressing the character of a new national identity, Jefferson told his son-in-law, a congressman, that “freedom is the gift of nature.” (Compare w/Mitt Romney’s theocratic belief.) The goal of nature, he believed, was to liberate humanity.
To understand the laws of nature, Jefferson devoted himself to science, and (among 100′s of other things) sent Lewis & Clark to explore and map Native America. He believed that “reason is the only oracle given you by heaven” and used it to discover how natural laws operate in our souls and in our form of government:
Jefferson said that the same “laws of nature and of Nature’s God” that brought order to the solar system also brought to order to state and federal powers within the United States. He celebrated (what he found to be) the correspondence between the sacred design of nature and the political design of his nation.
When he defined the ideal American citizen, he chose the small family farmer, who lived in constant contact with nature’s vital energies and processes:
They were the best citizens, and—because their thoughts and behaviors were reconciled with the goals of nature—they were the favorite’s of “Nature’s God”:
LOSS OF THE JEFFERSONIAN CITIZEN
Several problems arose with his natural law political philosophy, however. First, he assumed that there would be no violence committed against Native Americans as Anglo-Americans travelled westward to claim and establish their estates. Secondly, he accepted the racist theory that viewed the enslavement of Africans by Anglo-Americans as a fact of natural law, of the natural “superiority” of whites over blacks; painfully aware of how racism contradicted the natural law political philosophy of the Declaration, he elsewhere pilloried this view:
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
Finally, after the War of 1812, Jefferson realized that if it was to be economically secure, the US would have to develop industries to manufacture products that they depended on Europe for. He understood that his endorsement of industrialism contradicted his earlier hope that the US would be an agrarian civilization, and he developed a gloomier view of America’s future.
Intending to “protect the public industry from the parasite institutions now consuming it” “by diffusing sound principles of political economy,” he published his translation of the Comte Destutt de Tracy‘s Treatise on Political Economy in 1817. Tracy grimly surmised that
Jefferson hoped that by publishing de Tracy’s thesis, Americans would guard against the negative socio-economic consequences of industrialism, and prevent the rise of a ruthless plutocracy. Like his hope about non-violent western expansion, this hope was unrealized.
Pression described the terminal moment in the growth of a colonial nation when the infinite resource of “free” lands became finite and the feudal socio-economic patterns of the Old World re-established themselves. When “free” land disappeared, so would free people. Pression was America’s fatal illness.
Abiding by this thesis (as it was re-articulated by F. J. Turner in The Significance of the Frontier in American History), President Theodore Roosevelt enacted federal regulations to govern industries, instituted the National Forest Service and set aside vast tracts of public lands, constructed the Panama Canal, and began overseas military operations in order to secure natural resources.
Teddy established the imperialist strategies and practices that we, as the “lone” world superpower with a global military presence, are very familiar with today. And he did it, ironically enough, to save “Jeffersonian democracy.”
DAWN OF THE BIOCITIZEN
Jeffersonian democracy did once exist, and still exists, but not on the national level; it was, and is, experienced locally, on the manageable levels of community and region. With its natural law definitions of citizenship, equality and freedom, Jeffersonian democracy can not be achieved through authoritarian force of violence. Nor can it be achieved via an economy that destroys nature. No political structure, democratic or despotic, can survive the destruction of nature, for—as Jefferson correctly adduced—nature is the physio-spiritual totality from which nations are born and continue living.
George Bush was forced to tell Americans to go shopping after 9/11 because we are not a Jeffersonian democracy; we have “morphed into a nation of consumers and investors, rather than citizens.” It is becoming increasingly obvious that our educational systems have failed us because they serve industrialism—and because we have forgotten our origins as a people who receive(d) freedom as a gift from nature. We witnessed Alan Greenspan say straight out that the Iraq War was fought to keep oil cheap, so we could live like we have been living: 6% of the world’s population using 25% of its resources. As Jefferson foresaw, we have become technoserfs in an age of corporate feudalism.
Our nation has no middle class, at least as that term was formerly understood; but we live this fantasy—thanks to Orwellian mainstream media—that we are living in a “democracy,” a society of equals. The greatest thrashing of this fantasy was delivered by the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein who—after his economy-destroying firm received a bailout at the expense of taxpayers—said he was “doing God’s work.”
With this statement, and the absolute lack of justice that followed it (Goldman Sachs runs the US Treasury Department now), a coroner’s sheet was drawn over the era of citizens as Jefferson imagined them—and so dawned the era of the biocitizen.
IF NO REVOLUTION, THEN EVOLUTION
We know our economy is corrupt, that it has destroyed the political system our parents handed us, and that it sends out soldiers and mercenaries to steal resources from other peoples. We know, too, that these people increasingly loath our presence, and our talk—made ludicrous by the Neocons who puppeteered President Bush—about freedom and equality. They have the power to repel us, and already are.
The economic renewal and the cultural renaissance that is beginning is based on ecology—i.e., the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Think of it this way: Jefferson conceived his definition of citizen before the era of industrial capitalism; we re-conceive his definition with the lessons we are learning in our era of anthropogenic global warming and the end of cheap oil: both signal the end of industrial capitalism as we know it. Those who survive the inclement death and rebirth process will not be the richest or the most violent. They will “follow nature” and cooperatively adapt to new environmental conditions. The same battle Jefferson fought, against the British and against the slavemaster in himself, we’ll fight; a fight over the concept of “property” between those job-creating bio-industrialists who patent and slavetrade life, and biocitizens who know that, as Jefferson put it, “The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on” and, knowing that, extend the democratic ethic to include the bios.
The revolution that would justly topple a George Bush or a Lloyd Blankfein seems like it will never happen, but the evolution that is toppling them is already happening.
We are at a point in human history where those who do not reconcile their behavior to the goal of nature will have no time to practice, much less theorize about anything. For example, the fires that recently swept Russia, and the floods that swallowed Pakistan, did not stop to ask how rich or politically connected a person was, nor did the salmonella enteritis that sickened Americans who ate factory farm eggs.
Evolution requires no theory or practice. Ask any Monsanto-created superweed. Falsely taught that we can control nature, and that the Oil Crusades spread democracy, you are perhaps awaiting a new wisdom, a way of knowing and behaving that makes sense, has virtue and is reconciled with the goal of nature. Take heart: step by step, centimeter by centimeter, hour by hour you can stop being a consumer.
Evolve: learn and practice new ways of living as a citizen of the bios.
think outside
Related posts:
