Original version published in GREENFUSE #98, November 2008

(This essay/book review, is one of the last things I wrote for the regional monthly newspaper Greenfuse, just before the election of Barak Obama. As usual, the win of a progressive politician resulted in a quietly frustrated acquiescence to the status quo of politics, which in turn neutered my previously outraged dissent and commentary- looks like this may change.)

Our lives are caught up in current events, in this season all attention is drawn towards the bouncing ball of politics speeding past the sand traps and water hazards of foreign policy, and rolling to a rest in the weeds of economic collapse as history plays through.

History is the critical element of our ephemeral memes – (2014 Update: This word is now used to describe those ubiquitous pictorial elements of social media- but originally described the mental equivalent of our biological genes that enable culture and civilization through tradition, myth, story, song, and metaphor.) The complex transmission of experience and knowledge, mediated forward from the past, that forms all that we are, what and how we believe.

Learning how to learn, the educational model of the past valued the inquiry, and analysis that conditioned the muscles of intellect for the heavy lifting of thought. Back when philosophy mattered; and the lessons of history were at least considered, books were read, critical thinking was esteemed, and now, the past is forgotten.

A casual discovery of hidden nuggets of thought printed on age stable rag paper inspires in me a treasure hunt for lessons from the past. One of my treasured gems is BREAKDOWN- The collapse of traditional civilization.  Written by Robert Briffault in 1932. Born in 1876 France, to a Scottish mother, He emigrated with her to New Zealand following his father’s death, where he trained as a surgeon. Entering medical practice in 1905, he saw service on the western front during the “Great War” and then settling in England, becoming historian, social anthropologist, and novelist.

His EUROPA, a 1935 best seller in the U.S. is a tour de force of pan European character studies, tracing the path of his protagonist through all levels of society, as all blithely head towards the disaster of the war he had personally experienced. Briffault died in 1948 after yet another world war, no doubt more convinced that his thesis expounded in BREAKDOWN was accurate.

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel of political/social analysis. Like many books from the past, this time capsule of thought reminds us that we are not living in an isolated or unique span of chaos and quandary. 76 years out, we are still enmeshed in throes of a changing humanity that demands our consideration.

Briffault’s opinionated, eloquent book is a study of our culture of tradition, which he reasons must inevitably cause a breakdown of civilization, as we know it. Beginning with the myth of civilizations social organization, exposed as a myth, because it has never been seriously attempted. Traditional social organization has not been the outcome of the will or desire of “mankind,” but rather a result forcibly imposed by “armed bandits, priests, appropriators of land, and other sources of subsistence and wealth…subjecting the bulk of mankind to their domination.” Squarely laying blame on ruling classes, Briffault does differentiate the motives of individuals versus those of collective or corporate groupings, especially those consolidated as established traditional institutions, i.e. “ a banker may well be a philanthropist and idealist; a bank cannot. A statesman may be inspired by the highest ideals; for a sovereign state to surrender one title of its concrete interests as a sovereign state is not possible.”

A reference to “modern medievalism” points out; though we are seemingly stuck in an apprehension of modernity, every aspect of our current (as current in the 1930’s, as it is today) traditional civilization is based on the development of power and control codified in a barbarous post Roman Europe, where the church created kings, and aristocracy was born. He strongly emphasizes that “The Power of tradition to enlarge and increase intelligence is conditioned upon the provision that what is transmits shall not be accepted on the authority of tradition…the danger does not lie in traditional knowledge, but in endowing tradition itself with valid authority.” He describes a rigidity of thought, the “mental decay” that occurs when a nation clings to tradition, because it is traditional to do so. And notes ominously that in the England of his time “facts, ideas, thoughts, controversies are eliminated by not speaking of them.”

His observations on the failures of democracy resonate when he tells us; “The obliteration of the criteria of thought makes democracy impossible. When opinions founded on valid grounds and opinions founded on none are accounted equally entitled to respect, the scales being heavily weighted in favor of the later, when sanity and insanity are set on the same level, democracy built upon this basis can only be a madhouse let loose. Social order cannot be built upon mental chaos. Democracy has proved itself impracticable, absurd, and intolerable. No other result could be expected.”

It is difficult to disagree with his assessment that “Social and political efficiency cannot be extracted out of mental deficiency.” With a nod to the “Russian experiment” the author seems more interested in the evolution of a “new humanity” in which the human mind is no longer deflected by predatory interests or mobilized in defense of imaginary criteria of thought.

The concluding chapter “Between two worlds, tells us that to be virtuously and nobly indignant is not enough; the then present time (and perhaps our as well?) called for two virtues above all others: moral courage and intellectual honesty, because “Where he wills it or no, the life of a social man is the reflection of social aims. He cannot dissociate himself from humanity’s need for justice and reason without surrendering some of his own vital needs.”

With a broad sweep of historical reference, reasoned argument, and cautiously optimistic idealism, Briffault seems eager for the new opportunities that crumbling traditions offer. To my mind he proves that the inevitable decay of the authority of tradition is necessary to human progress. This rich read offers an invaluable perspective on that awkward period between the wars, in the midst of the era that changed everything, and made us what we are.

In passing Briffault mentions the “some seven million citizens of the United States are on the brink of starvation” bringing home the intensity of those depression years, and the vulnerability of our social systems. The recent collapse of Washington Mutual Bank brought to mind a trip through arid Eastern Washington State I made in the late ‘80’s. Passing acre after acre of stubbly wheat land- with the post war boom that created wealthy wheat farmers, I can only assume WAMU traces its wheat stalk corporate logo to that era of prosperity. I had picked up a soil conservation district bumper sticker at an Idaho county fair, but didn’t get its full impact until we drove into a massive dust storm. Veering to the shoulder with zero visibility, we waited, wondering how long we could breathe through the gritty vents. Even after a generation of soil conservation education, contour plowing, and crop rotations, something was terribly wrong. The huge volume of airborne topsoil finally thinned enough to make our way slowly west, but not before I recalled that perfect storm of ecological abuse, greed driven economic collapse, and climate that combined to bring us the dust bowl disaster of the 1930’s. Fueled by the speculative market of the ‘20’s, investors moved west into the virgin grasslands of the Great Basin. For only 25% down, on $15. an acre real estate, ambitious plowing could bring in 20 bushels of wheat an acre. At a dollar a bushel, the land could be paid off in one season, and the gravy train began as “suitcase farmers,” the speculators, who with tenant farmers and sharecroppers “broke out” every bit of land they could; nearly two million acres by 1929, destroying natural resilience and making the prairie say ‘money’ instead of grass.  Generous rains in 1931 doubled the harvests, just as economic collapse soured demand. Wheat lost 75% of its value and languished in overfilled silos. Then the drought came, and no crop was possible. As disaster sunk in, dust storms made day into night, and dark drifts piled high like snow.

History offers with sober observation an appreciation of basic facts, for instance the fact that there is no valid “law” of economics. The practice of economists is merely the following of a tradition, born of a quest for apparently fleeting control. And the fact is, early 20th century intellect could not fully recognize that “nature bats last.”

The cyclone of paper collapsing on Wall street may well trickle down in a scarcity of credit this spring, when farmers traditionally take out loans for planting costs.

Moral courage, and intellectual honesty are still the only option a generation later, the only cure for our memetic damage.

And then there was this.

© 2014 Joshua Golden/Partners in Time