A conversation with an old acquaintance earlier this week sparked a series of meditations on some strangely connected topics. We were talking about the “lawlessness” of the internet, with its disjointed structure and relative lack of overriding governance. Hackers, thieves, and disreputable people roam the web, making it a modern day wild (wild) west. The two features that truly popularized the internet, porn and ripped music, reveal how lawlessness has characterized the internet phenomenon since its popular beginnings.
Yet, how long will this last? Is the wild wild web, just like its 19th century predecessor, an ephemeral phenomenon? Even now issues of government oversight and internet neutrality seem to hint at the solidifying trajectory of the web. Governments such as China, Iran and Singapore seek authoritarian control over how the internet is used, and by whom. At the same time in the US and other capitalist countries regional and national internet service providers are lobbying for more control over access and marketability of the web. While these two efforts might have divergent goals and motives, they essentially signal the effort to control and manipulate this heretofore relatively open space (notwithstanding the obvious inherent private, elitest nature of access that cannot escape noting). I believe that there is still amazing potential for the internet to evolve into a tool that continues to help inform, educate, and facilitate socio-political equality. However, I fear that there is also the very real threat that this wild frontier will be destroyed by an overbearing urge to control.
On a seemingly divergent note- but one that shares a similar theme- I recently finished Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, a revisionist historian’s (Dee Brown) look at the taming of the wild west from a Native American (or Native Indian, or just plain Indian, depending on who you are talking to) perspective. This book, first published in the 1970s, covers the American government’s conquest over the native peoples who originally inhabited this land. Proceeding both in chronological order and (roughly) by tribe, it is in essence the same story of greed-induced deceit, unimaginable cruelty, and devastating tragedy told in more than a dozen different contexts.
Putting aside the remarkably saddening picture the book paints of the interaction between whites and natives, an important lesson gleaned is the role socio-cultural perspective plays on interaction between different groups. In this story the idea of ownership and productivity play an incredibly important part in the conflict. These two pinnacles of capitalist idealogy serve as the backbone of misunderstanding between inhabitant and invader. From the native perspective, land was something that could not be bought or sold at any price. It did not belong to anyone in the sense that it could be bartered with or commodified. Inhabitants had a responsibility to the land, to ensure that it continued to sustain those who depended on it. This turned out to be a much more ecologically forward-looking perspective than that of the white settlers and government officials who came to dispossess these native inhabitants. What US government and white prospectors, farmers and merchants saw was the misuse of valuable natural resources by an ignorant group of people. Progress, the watchword of the 19th century industrialization era, dictated that land that wasn’t maximized for humans’ short-term benefits was ipso facto a waste. From the perspective of these Anglo invaders, the land’s bountiful resources were there to be exploited, and the land itself destined to be possessed, bought and sold.
Whites’ perspective on land and land use, along with their own greed for wealth, informed their opinions of the native tribes, who they saw as lazy, ignorant and undeserving of the land. The pressure to attain this land and properly utilize it necessitated the formulation of a doctrine, embodied in the 19th cenury idea of Manifest Destiny, which lent justification to the dispossession of Indian land by Anglos. The psychology needed to accompany these devastating and inhumane acts sprang from the differences in understanding of the relationship between civilization and nature. Hence, at the same time during which the worst of these atrocities were being committed by the US government, the development of the stereotype of Indian savagery also came into focus. This perspective can best be summed up in the words, later popularized, by US Army General Philip Sheriden to his Comanche prisoners: “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead” (Brown, 170. Interestingly, the idea of the “noble savage” only came about after this period when native tribes no longer posed any real threat and the memory of the “wild west” began to be romanticized by nostalgic whites).
The psychology of domination in the mid to late 19th century American West draws many similarities to imperial and colonial ideology exhibited by Europeans throughout much of the rest of the world at the same time. This was especially the case in Africa, where the conquest of the entire continent was taking place, and the introduction of Europeans and European culture was just beginning to impact indigenous tribes. In many ways, I believe Africa served as the European “wild west,” a vast expanse of “uninhabited” land, potentially rich in natural resources and needing only to be cleaned out and cleaned up. Religious conversion and salvation also played an important role in both conquests, and helped form the ideology of superiority needed to justify the conquest. Ultimately, the colonial psychology, much like the psychology of Manifest Destiny, eventually condoned incredible atrocity- today we would call it genocide- against native cultures, some of whom were driven to near extinction.
Looking back at the stories of 19th century imperial and colonial conquest helps bring perspective to today, where we continue to wrestle with issues of cross-cultural conflict. At the end of my diatribes I often ask myself where I fit into this picture. Am I working to deconstruct or perpetuate the present-day heirs of these ideologies, neo-imperialism and ethnocentrism? Does my well-intentioned belief in the positive power of technology and the internet merely mimic the well-intentioned beliefs of former religious and secular zealots who, through the imposition of their world views, destroyed the social and cultural fabric of many an unfortunate indigenous group? What am I doing but perpetuating Progress with a capital ‘P,’ facilitating the entry of previously unaffected people into a consumerist society, where their thoughts will be increasingly distorted by a degredated Euro/Ameri-centric capitalist frame. Do I want to perpetuate the tragedy of the American Indian, who have long exhibited the scars of forced assimilation and continue to be the foremost forgotten victims of American success? I believe there are some important differences, yet I acknowledge that there is a slippery slope when it comes to righting legacies of injustice in a modern world. Having a personal connection to the plight of the American Indian, and a significant interest in the search for post-colonial equality and justice, I find the crisscrossing of historical and sociological narratives that inform these situations distinctly interesting. Three different stories of wild frontiers- American, African and virtual- coalesce disjointedly in a disjointed world.
