contractual society

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The Frankston Times and #wrapper">The Age have both this week published articles dealing with the problem of homelessness, and in particular the problem of "rough sleepers" - those sleeping on our streets and reserves.

There are rough sleepers in Frankston, and recently there have been anecdotal reports that these people are being preyed upon by small groups of thieves and sexual predators. This article discusses the problem of rough sleepers and a possible way we can help protect these people in Frankston.

This article was orginally published in the Independent Australia.

Imagine that you had a place to call home. A place to which you had an undeniable birth right. A place to which no matter where you roamed you could always return and be welcome. A place where familiar faces would always greet you with open arms.

Imagine then that this place also provided with a little effort all your food and other needs. Imagine also, that this place was a garden paradise, cultivated by your family for generations a cultivation to which you also could contribute.

Imagine that this is then suddenly all taken away. The friendly faces of loving and caring friends and family are replaced by the cold faces of a desperate, greedy and violent people. You, and your community, are forcibly removed. Abused and killed in the process.

Over the ensuing years you watch as, midst much ugly dispute, the garden paradise is divided up and transformed. In some places the transformation is slow; in others it is rapid and dramatic.  The landscape is dug up, aided by machines that belch filth and which leave enormous permanent scars.

The land that was once a mother to you and your people is changed forever. The society which nurtured you and your people permanently changed — if not extinguished.

Based on the accounts of Bill Gammage and available historical records, this is the crime European settlers have perpetrated on the Australian landscape and on its Indigenous people.

Gammage’s fundamental point was the ‘sophisticated, successful and sensitive farming regime integrated across the Australian landmass’ – described by him as ‘a majestic achievement’ – ended with European settlement. And it is this crime that is, perhaps, still denied by many. 

Not only was it a crime, but it hints at the errors of our society.

Australians now are not born with a home as an undeniable birth right.

They do not inherit the security and comfort of knowing that, come what may, there will always be a place where they are welcomed. Instead they are born dispossessed. Born into a country which has been neatly parcelled out to private owners.

A home for most Australians now is something insecure, something that takes many a lifetime to attain, and for some is never attained. Something that can coldly and callously be taken away when one is most vulnerable, due perhaps to the loss of a job or an inability to work due to personal injury or distress.

Banks can repossess if payments are not made — and even if this never happens, all those with a mortgage must live under the oppressive anxiety of this threat.

And even once a home is owned it is not safe. If one struggles to pay council rates, the home can be forfeited.

Again the essential trait of our society comes forth. Just when one is most vulnerable, our society allows them to be kicked while down. Once homeless, for tens of thousands of Australians, there is nowhere to go.

‘Authorities’ do not tolerate them on the streets, or in the parks. Even if they manage to live in these places they are subject to violence and sexual abuse.  

How Australia has changed since European settlement! How it has progressed!

And now we find it is not just Australia, but the same pattern is occurring across the world. The masses are dispossessed whilst a small elite gain wealth and power, in the end corrupting the very institutions intended to check their power.

The Ancien Régime, the aristocracy, is re-establishing itself. We return to an age whereby common people are serfs – people without rights, who live in constant insecurity, slaves to their masters who possess everything, if not the people themselves.  

Once again ‘commoners’ must begin the fight for basic human rights. These are the right to trial for protection against arbitrary imprisonment. These rights have been stripped back under the guise of anti-terrorist laws, along with mass surveillance. And it turns out really to be a means of protecting the privileges of the elite against even non-violent protest (even conservatives are worried about this).   

Then, if a people like the Crimeans find themselves as pawns caught between two covetous global  powers – both of which seek only to exploit both people and resources – and have to choose one side over the other in a legitimate referendum, propaganda machines are invoked, one power accusing the other.

This is the society we now live in.  This is modern Australia, as it is the modern world.

And it is not the first time we have been here. Writing during an earlier time of inequality (if it in fact is distinct from the processes active now) Rousseau declared:

 “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

Whilst many aspects of his 1754 Discourse on Inequality may be questioned, perhaps there is some truth to the statement above?

Is there a solution?

So what can be done? At very least we should allow the most dispossessed, the homeless, to be visible and to protect themselves as best they can.

This can be easily done by allowing homeless people legitimate access to public land to erect tents or swags, and communities of tents, should they so choose. Thus protected from discrimination by ‘authorities’ they may be able to establish protective relationships between themselves.

It is quite possible, likely even, that tent cities – perhaps even slums - may arise, but this itself is necessary if we are to make the problems of homelessness visible to people and government. Such visibility might be the first step towards better solutions.

Would such communities be an improvement? I believe they would be. The Occupy tent encampment in Melbourne was just such a ‘tent’ city. And it was occupied by at least some genuine homeless, and many marginalised in other ways.

Occupy's tent city, October 2011, Melbourne (courtesy Graham Miln)

The Occupy community was highly organised. It was kept clean and elections were held for organisers in the community so as to ensure pathways were kept clear.

Others participated in 24 hour ‘security’ patrols (in shifts) around the perimeter. This was necessary because the biggest problems arose not within the camp, but from everyday people passing by who would occasionally try and thump a few of the occupiers.

The response of occupiers to the one incident of internal violence I witnessed in the camp has led me to believe that evictions can be dealt with non-violently simply by a crowd of people standing around the perpetrator and shouting “shame” repeatedly until he or she leaves.

Coal seam gas protestors in Australia’s Northern Rivers region were recently living in a large tent camp (on a private property) quite happily and comfortably. Why cannot our poor be able to do this?

Bentley Blockade camp, NSW

It is entirely possible that living in a tent city may actually offer the homeless better and safer conditions than in built accommodation especially given accusations that the homeless are being exploited by unscrupulous landlords.

In any case, tent encampments are not unprecedented in Australia. They were certainly common during the 1929 Great Depression.  In fact, in early days, most Australian cities and towns were tent cities.

And apart from reducing vulnerability, legitimate homeless camps may also offer many other benefits in relation to delivering needed services and other assistance.

If allowed, homeless camps would not be unique to Australia as a developed nation.

As many early immigrants to Australia were haunted by the squalor of cramped London living, most Australian cities were designed with vast parkland areas. These offer more than enough space to accommodate our homeless whilst not excluding other uses.

The only barrier seems to be the sensibilities of the modern gentry and local authorities.

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Hobbes’ declaration that life is “Nasty, brutish and short” is often quoted today  (although , completely out of context, it was not unconditionally so) and modern economists may decry the “scarcity of resources”, but this is only one view of the world, and one that has been formed relatively recently in Western history – perhaps it is no coincidence that this attitude developed along with philosophies of self interest and social theories of “survival of the fittest” (this is no criticism of Darwin’s theories, just their misapplication to human affairs, as promoted by Herbert Spencer).

However, there is another view of the world. That is of one of abundance and bounty. The fruit tree bears far more than is needed to reproduce itself. There is almost nothing we cannot eat: many plants, the flesh of animals (also abundant in natural environments), their milk, their eggs, the sap of trees like maples, the honey of bees, the fish, crustaceans, frogs and seaweeds of the rivers and oceans, the mushrooms and fungi of the forest. It seems there is no reason for anyone to go hungry. Even less so with a little tender cultivation. In fact, it seems that mostly what is needed to prevent hunger is access to land, knowledge of plants and animals, some basic hunter gatherer skills, and protection of the natural environment.

However, we believe to improve on nature with our elaborate artificial constructions.  But we what we bring to the world is mostly decay.  Everything we (people) make decays, but in nature there is no decay, just transformation. The seed of grain we plant is, for all intents and purposes, eternal.   Seeds reproduce themselves, not only infinitely in abundance, but infinitely through time.  True, there may be slight changes by breeding and other forces, but again this is more transformation than destruction.  Carrots may be larger and sweeter than they once were, but they are still carrots. Species may become extinct through external forces, but the idea that they – out of themselves – would decay and cease to reproduce is preposterous. Yet, what do we develop? Nothing less than something abhorred by nature: sterile seeds, that cannot and do not reproduce (although apparently not yet in commercial food crops).

What about human relations? Let us imagine what these could be like, in their best ideal form. What about close communities where people care for each other, share with each other and help each other out, whether incapable of providing for oneself or just plain lazy (primitive societies often provided even for these people, without question). What need then of having many children out of fear of not being cared for in your old age? Certainly people will still do selfish and stupid things, but with compassion, tolerance and understanding such problems should be easily corrected.

But what do we have instead? A system whereby people do not look after each other directly, others are paid professionally to do this (and often they are the lowest paid, a reflection of society’s values?). Instead we are freed of concern for our fellow man, beyond our own immediate families, as our fellow man is free from us. We are all encouraged to pursue our own self interest, to take gains and advantages wherever we can get them, and to consider such gains exclusively your own. Is it no wonder that nature has thus been divided up, owned in effect by a few through their agents – their corporations (the most impersonal construct imaginable) - and this fiercely defended against the claims of those who have less or nothing? What sort of a ‘society’ has this resulted in anyway? A world where one half has too much food and the other half starves. Can it really be called ‘human’? Or would ‘inhuman’ be more apt?

Do our sporting endeavours reflect our social attitudes? Now I am not entirely against team sports, but perhaps there are some elements of this that need consideration. A friendly game seems to do no harm, particularly where the teams are somewhat arbitrarily composed, and the game is played mostly for the pleasure of playing. But where one side goes out with a determination not so much to enjoy the challenges of the game, but focused on the defeat of another team – even more so when their career and salary depend on success - then this is perhaps a reflection of deeper and darker social constructs. Particularly when you have vast numbers of followers, who are not players, but  gather largely based around a kind of tribalism, perhaps again as a form of protection in a hostile world, through some sense of  a shared group identity?  But perhaps also deriving some pleasure from the power and prowess demonstrated by players over others?  Or perhaps to share in their glory? Team sports on the scale we have today seem to be a recent phenomenon in Western culture, coinciding with industrialism and its ideals.

Yet, there are two sides to sport. On one side is team sports, where one team vanquishes another. The other side to sport – a side that featured prominently in ancient Greece -  is individual sports, such as discus, which were perhaps more about individuals seeking perfection. In such a situation individualism is appropriate as such perfection need not come at the expense of another, but rather mastery of oneself (self discipline) and one’s body.  Such individualism restricts nobody in how perfect they can become, and all who wish to participate can achieve a high level of perfection.

In fact, this may give a hint as to where society has really gone wrong. Rather than focussing people on the perfection of themselves – as caring individuals, who do not act selfishly and who share and care for others - our society has gone the other way. People are encouraged to give in to their most selfish and gluttonish tendencies, to be the greatest, to not put others before themselves, but themselves before others.  This is a far easier path to walk, as it requires no self-discipline. But as only few can succeed at this game of ‘who is greatest’, the vast majority of the people will be disappointed, and possibly depressed. Others, who suspect deep down that the game is not worth playing, may end up not only entirely confused by the behaviours around them, but also misunderstood.
It seems Hobbes also understood this inclination as he declared:

“So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.”

But is it really the nature of man to be so? Or can we be - or at least aspire to be - better than this?