# We start with different models of human nature.

# We start with different models of human nature. Are we angels in training or the spawn of satan? Salt of the earth or scum? How we see our fellows is just as much a product of our ideology as it is of our personal experience. I’m sure you’re familiar with many of the stories of human weakness, greed, stupidity and sin that make up the grand Story of distrust. Did you eat too much chocolate over the holidays? Maybe it was because you like chocolate. Or because you’re weak. Or because you’re sinful and can’t resist temptation. Or maybe you have no trouble resisting junk food and have nothing but contempt for those who don’t. Christianity constantly reminds us not to trust our own minds and bodies, and that only god’s strong hand can impose order on our terrifyingly unruly nature. Some techno types insist that most people are ignorant, intellectually careless, and easily conned. Sexist ideology regards women with contempt, and also the men who don’t adopt a Rambo style.

We can draw different conclusions from similar experience of our limitations. As Metzgar describes it, many blue collar workers understand that everyone makes mistakes, and conclude that we need to accept and help each other, while taking advantage of the bosses’ mistakes. The suckup story, in contrast, holds that most people are weak, so we have to depend on strong bosses, and uphold their power for our own good. As noted, tricksters figure that everyone’s stupid, bosses included, and anyone can be conned.

Sometimes we expect too much of ourselves and each other, e.g. that we fit naturally into the servant categories Halliburton requires of us (male, female, black, white, worker, consumer, student, teacher, warrior, victim, et cetera). At the same time we may have unrealistically high expectations of people in the hierarchies, that they will put our welfare before their own. We like to talk nasty about politicians and employers in general --the generic slogans roll easily off our lips-- but when we speak of our own overseers, tones of reverence and affection start to creep, slither, ooze in.

There’s a contrasting tradition that human beings are blank slates until taught to be good or bad, suggesting we have the potential to develop good people and societies. Around the same time, scientific advances began to give us an idea that we could find order in the seeming confusion of the world. And then there are evolving ideas of self-interest that I have touched on here.

Sometimes our very notions of trust are themselves impractical. I hear remarks, mantras really, like, “Gotcher back,” or “I’m there for you,” offered by folks with little intention or ability to help anyone else. They do however value the feeling of trust and being trusted. Others think of trust as something that should be unconditional and unlimited, a parent-like commitment; no wonder they so often feel betrayed.

How can I trust you? Different understandings of human nature produce different answers-- and different politics.

Ireland describes the complex ways experience, ideology and self-interest interact. Pedro farmed and ran a food-processing plant in Brazil. When a landlord evicted Pedro and other farmers, he led the farmers’ struggle for their land. Eventually, however, Pedro gave up and took a small settlement. Ireland summarizes Pedro’s thinking, as he explained it over the course of many conversations:

On the one hand, threatening and looming ever larger is the mundo desmantelado (literally, the dismantled world). If there is any one figure who presides over that world, symbolizing it for him and investing its sensed advance with gut-wrenching dismay, it is his own mother. Corrupted by the ways of the town, as he sees it now, she abandoned her children and left Pedro’s father for another man. But though he speaks bitterly of her, Pedro does not count her uniquely or eccentrically evil and even pities her in her old age. She has simply become the personal paragon of the vast majority of people who are cheio de mundice (full of worldliness), taken over by the pursuit of self-interest.
Sometimes, when he populates the mundo desmantelado, Pedro sounds as radical as the communitarian clergy. That world is dominated by the rich who, for individual gain, have abandoned their responsibilities to the naÿao de los pobres (the nation of the poor). Lawyers, judges, big landowners, city bureaucrats, sugar-mill proprietors, politicians of the government party, all are singled out for special criticism. Lawyers are the frontline of the attack against the naÿao de los pobres: even those who seem on the side of the poor are out to make money from their troubles that only the government might resolve if the minority of good politicians could gain control of it.
That will be difficult to achieve, however, because most of the poor are themselves cheio de mundice and, as such, contribute to the making of the mundo desmantelado. They 'follow the wrong path' and dismantle moral order. 'If there’s a mass on Saturday night in the church, few will go. But if there’s a dance at Pasmado then the road will be packed even if it’s a rainy night and people have to go on foot.' Or 'they flock to the beach which is full of half-nude women.' . . . the pursuit of self-interest leads the poor to 'take issue against the naÿao de los pobres.' Without any sense of, or care for, the ability of the small businessmen like himself to pay, the poor demand higher wages and better conditions. The rapid consequence is that the small businessman has to close his doors, big business takes over, the poor lose unemployment and participation in a locally controlled economic order. Having abandoned the moral sense and the rules that are necessary to keep families, communities, and nations together, they fall into the hands of the equally corrupt lawyers and landowners . . . (177-9).


# Some of us walk around in disguise, or hide in dark corners. I’ve mentioned before the folks who spend much of their time hiding from unwanted attention. Probably most of us hope to fly under the radar of nosy relatives, micromanager bosses, highway cops, the IRS. But a few people have so little trust they don’t want to be noticed by anyone. Their overwhelming urge is to be left alone. They figure they can survive best in the dark crevices of society. They regard with horror any public disturbance that would cause the authorities to cast a light in their direction. They may in fact need more help than most, but have situated themselves on the object end of the political process.

More commonly, we create public personas to mask our real selves. We hesitate to jeopardize these flimsy costumes by any but the most conventional political commitments. We leave nothing substantial for others to connect with.


# In a top-down but mobile society, we have little leverage with our neighbors. Societies invest a lot in training young people to follow the rules, through parental punishments, schools, hellfire sermons, insult games and the like. In my society, though, compliance is directed mostly upwards, as obedience to superiors, rather than sideways, as cooperation with our peers. If I cross someone in power, and I can lose my job, my home, my freedom. But you can mess me up and there’s only so much I can do about it. I got no police. I can’t fire you. Maybe I’ll appeal to your better nature, try to make you feel guilty. Short of going to the law or the neighborhood gangster, we can try to keep other folks in line by wrecking their reputations, cutting them out of relationships of mutual assistance, beating them up, or burning down their homes and businesses (see Scott’s discussion, 1990 pp. 142-4). These are all very blunt instruments, can be very expensive, don’t repair damage already done, and sabotage the project of solidarity.


# Some people making a living by sowing distrust. Above I also wrote about the trickster, the self-conscious opportunist. A typical trickster is foolish, but knows others are, too, including the high and mighty. So he looks for others’ mistakes and sets out to exploit them. He’ll set traps and snares to trip the unwary. He understands the system is unjust, but figures that’s because people are so corrupt and stupid. For this kind of person, seeking justice would be the ultimate foolishness. It doesn’t exist and can’t be nurtured, taught, or painstakingly put together. But the trickster doesn’t really need a just world, anyway; he can survive quite well, thank you, just by being a little less foolish than his foolish neighbors.

It’s like that old joke of two hikers in the forest. They startle a bear, and the bear comes after them. They run like crazy, but the bear is gaining on them. “What are we gonna do?” shouts Joe. “We can’t outrun this bear.” “I don’t have to outrun the bear,” Lisa yells back. “I just have to outrun you.” There you have the essence of tricksterism. Trickster tales delight when it’s giants, gods, kings and rockefellers who the trickster scams, when Jack makes off with the treasure and the king’s daughter, when the mouse deer cons the tiger into eating shit, when the wise-talking gangster eludes once again the long arm of the law. In real life, though, mostly we just scam each other.

I remember meeting a smart and articulate young woman who was pretty clear about her strategy. This was in one of the adult ed classes. She told me about a nurses’ aide program she was in at the same time. For some reason the instructor who ran the program understood her first priority to be weeding out half the entering class, by arbitrary, unintelligible testing and special breaks for favorites. The nursing students, mostly middle-aged, very low income women, having gotten a second, slim chance to rebuild their lives, were in an uproar over this unofficial policy.

My student and I talked over the options, everything from complaining on the evaluations to petitions to Higher Authority to a student strike. This student, let’s call her Betsy, firmly rejected any group action. First of all, she told me, the class did need to be pruned; some of her classmates wouldn’t be able to cut it even with a fair teacher. Second, they would never stick together; they would betray each other at the first opportunity. On the other hand, institutions always protect their own, even monsters like this teacher. Third, even being honest in the standard evaluation process risked retaliation. So Betsy calculated that it would be smarter for her to stand back and let others raise a stink. Whatever group I’m in, I just nod and smile, she told me. If the administrators get worried, they’ll come and ask my opinion. Betsy didn’t say, they can trust me because I’m not a troublemaker, but she would have if that were not already quite clear. In fact, Betsy took on a counselor role to both sides, as the judicious, above-the-fray observer. Quite a skillful person, in her own way. She figured that, after all the wrangling, the rebels might could win some minor reform. Either way, they would be on the outs with this rotten teacher, and Betsy could step in as one of the favorites.

In truth, there weren’t easy options for these students. The school’s administrator sat in on the sessions with the outside evaluators, so the fear of retaliation was not groundless. The director of the placement program which had recruited these nursing students in the first place, felt insecure in her own position, and wouldn’t lift a finger to challenge the school. As far as I know, much of that class eventually dropped out of the program, as planned, and that disgusting instructor is still playing god with people’s lives.

Betsy had been in the military. Perhaps she’d honed her suck-up skills there, but I bet that’s not where she first learned them. I asked her why she left the service, but got only the vaguest answer.

I had no information from other players in this fight, so I don’t know what could have gone differently had Betsy not been such an opportunist. But her strategy of disunity, scavenging and sucking up is probably common. I’ve been in many a meeting, for instance, where folks will raise tough questions, and commit to bringing them up with the bosses-- and then sit silent as their designated spokespersons confront the bosses alone. We just have to outrun you.

As we know, some folks are not content to take advantage of others’ misfortune, they actively help their masters cause those misfortunes. Snitches, thugs, trustees, they are subcontractors reinforcing the whole predatory system. When I was a teen I got a job picking tobacco. All the new kids got ‘nishiated the first week-- tossed around a little, dragged through the mud. Not much violence --these were suburban boys in kinder times-- but the point was made: this is a hierarchy, and I was at the bottom. I had no one to help me. I resolved right away to join the group in beating up as many new kids as I could, as hard as I could. Maybe I thought this way I could shed the feeling of helplessness.

Scapegoaters try to vault into the ruling circles, unifying groups around themselves by defining and demonizing others as outsiders. That’s what religious crusades are all about, and the Osama model has many imitators in my country. When we take a few steps forward in protecting, say, women and African Americans, the scapegoaters simply substitute gay people and immigrants. These are not random targets, of course; the structures of sexism and racism have evolved in specific ways. But for many fearful folks, the goal, the terrifying need, is unity, and they’ll win it by persecuting heretics and heathens. They can’t imagine that people can cooperate on any other basis; without lynching rituals, all is chaos.

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The internal enemy can be a useful proxy target, a stand-in, for attacks between powerful conflicting elements in a society. Conflicting groups can direct their attacks safely against the proxy target, without having to engage each other directly. Normally, a society does not choose genuinely powerful internal enemies to function as scapegoat targets (Victor 198).
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Once a group comes under attack, the rest of us may experience a very strong impulse to blame the victims. We may join the attacks to avoid attack ourselves, for sure, but also because the crimes we see and commit are so horrific, it helps us to believe the victims were at fault. (It’s also our little incantation to keep away the boogey-man: if the victims simply got what they deserved, we innocents don’t have to worry. Thus we hear the extreme vehemence with which some people blame our economic problems on greedy workers and homeowners. As long as the problems are due to individuals’ moral failures, they can never touch such superior beings as ourselves.)