Inventing the Individual is a captivating look at the spiritual, psychological, and social emergence of the modern idea of the individual. More on that in other posts. Today, let’s look at an event from a millennia ago that sounds like a blog post about Seattle’s celebrated and defamed Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. During the protests and uprisings following George Floyd’s murder, a spontaneous (or maybe not) group of homeless folks and social activists occupied a section of Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood and effectively created their own socio-political entity. As you can imagine, the residents and business owners as well as other Seattleites had a lot of questions about that. What neither they nor the occupiers might have known was that all this has happened before.
Accounts of peasant uprisings in the late tenth century have a markedly different flavour from the accounts of revolts by slaves in the ancient world. Take the following description of an uprising in Normandy in 997: For in all the various regions of the Norman land, the peasantry assembled in numerous bodies, and unanimously resolved to live henceforth according to their own fancy [wills?], declaring that, despising what the established law had laid down touching their share of wood and water to be enjoyed by the people, they would govern themselves by their own laws; and to enact and confirm these, each troop of these persons elected two deputies, who were all to assemble at a certain place in the centre of the country, and there to pass these laws.
Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual (p. 176). Harvard Press.
Seidentop goes on to note the author’s contempt for these uncouth rustics and relief when they were beat back to their proper stations. The distinction made between peasants and slave is important because it represents the development of the modern individual. No doubt, slaves revolted and wanted freedom in ancient times, but Siedentop’s argument is that as Christianity was kneaded into culture like leaven over centuries it qualitatively changed our view of self.
That’s what made this revolt distinct. The peasants had enough of their peasant-lives of chronic, acute lack, indignities, forced dependence, and servitude to the noble classes. That’s not new, but the milieu in which this happened gave it distinct characteristics. For example, their collective agency as a body politic of individuals whose social station could not be determined simply by birth. That change marks a significant development in the evolution of the idea of personhood.
Obviously, class revolt is a very old human instinct. For good or ill, from envy or righteous indignation the poor eventually get pissed-off and revolt. We can excuse them, support them, realign economies for them, condemn them, or arrest them. However, we cannot act like we’re shocked and pretend it’s a new phenomenon that somehow means the end is near. Instead, we should listen to them. If one is suspect of giving politicians carte-blanche to reimagine the economy, as I am, we should acknowledge two things. First, the politicos have always had their fingers on the scales of the economy and always will. People who do well should acknowledge that reality. Secondly, and more personally, we could each reimagine our own economic structures at work, church, and home. Macro measures are needed, but we can all manage our micro-economics with a view to the poor immediately. No elections or debates are needed for that.
