FREEDOM

For millennia, some cultures have refused to be ruled or controlled by others. The implications today are profound.

There are two ways in which human groups have traditionally maintained their freedom: being well-armed and hard to attack, or being mobile and hard to catch. The ancient Celts built palisades and berms around their towns because, as agriculturalists, they had to stand and defend their lands. Hunter-gatherers, though, could rely on stealth and mobility to stay out of reach of more powerful groups because they weren’t tied to any one place. Some bands of Western Apache remained free of Western authority almost until the end of the 19^th century, continually disappearing into rough country faster than U.S. cavalry could catch them. In material terms, the Apache were exceedingly poor, but they were rich in every other human sense. They lived in close communities, they placed a high value on individuals, and they were largely egalitarian. (Its hard to accumulate much wealth when you are on the run.) Most importantly, though, they were completely self-defining. Until the last Apache were confined to a reservation in 1886, no one told the Apache who they were or how they ought to live. Apache decided that for themselves.

In order to achieve this extraordinary freedom, the Apache placed a high value on the ability to blend in with their surroundings, to survive with a minimum of gear and to run long distances. One could almost say that their cultural identity was centered around being hard to catch. Warriors were expected to be able to cover seventy miles a day on foot, comparable to a man on horseback. Children slept with small bags of food tied around their waists in case they had to flee an attack in the middle of the night. As a result, the Apache remained free for hundreds of years longer than the wealthier and more sophisticated Pueblo communities, which sometimes surrendered to Spanish conquistadores within days.

The tactics of mobility and concealment still work. Despite American advantages of thermal optics, air power and massive fire superiority, Taliban forces in Afghanistan were too mobile for U.S. forces to corner and wipe out. The Taliban attacked at dusk or dawn, when it was too dark to see with the naked eye and too light to use night vision. They hit hard and dispersed before American aircraft showed up. And they carried almost nothing on them, covering ground three or four times faster than American infantry. Such insurgent skills are so effective that they are often emulated by American special forces. In Vietnam, for example, American long-range patrols were dropped behind enemy lines and operated for days or weeks unsupported. One man who was in such a group told me that at night, he and his group slept with their heads together and their feet pointed outwards, like the spokes of a wagon wheel. That way, he said, if they were attacked, at least one man would be facing the enemy when they all sat up.

Small-group tactics like this emulate the hunting and fighting skills that allowed humans to survive until the advent of agriculture eight or ten thousand years ago. Then, things started to change quickly. The great city of Ur, in modern-day Iraq, had massive fortifications and a standing army of 40,000 men. The people of Ur were free in the sense that no one could attack them, but they lived in an extremely conformist, hierarchical society. People they’d never met, and who had far more wealth and power than they ever would, ran their lives. Virtually the entire population of the planet now lives like that, including us.

Both systems have enormous advantages, and the invention of democracy went a long way towards making mass society more egalitarian and fair. But it must be said that ancient human values of self-reliance, individualism and community are far better replicated in small mobile societies than in mass sedentary ones. One reason is that at the smaller scale, one person can make a huge difference. A great hunter or warrior can be a game-changer like having a basketball player who can drop three-point shots at will. As a result, almost every member has access to public honor; there is no such thing as high-born and low-born, rich or poor, powerful or weak. The individual is self-determining. The inherent dignity of that cannot be overstated.

That kind of small-scale, merit-based system requires leadership to be almost performatively self-sacrificing and courageous. In my book, Freedom, I studied the traits that underdog groups - Irish insurgents of 1916, Montenegrin freedom fighters of the 1600s, even the American labor movement of the 1920s - had in common, and valorous leadership was all but universal. In fact, personal courage was a requirement of any leadership position; why would you die for someone who was not willing to die for you? In many cases, insurgent and rebel leaders were so brave that they have to be dragged out of the line of fire by their own men. When I was with Ahmed Shah Massaoud, leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, he was locked in a brutal fight with superior Taliban forces. It was the fall of 2000, and Afghanistan was completely off the American radar. Massoud decided to launch an offensive to capture a strategic Taliban position, and he personally scouted an infiltration route through no-man’s land. But Taliban gunners spotted him while he was in there and opened fire. He was almost killed.

The disdain that courage-based groups have for hierarchical ones like ours is ancient and almost without limit. I do not have a mill and willow trees, I have a horse and whip, I will kill you and go, Yomut tribesmen of the Eastern Steppe were fond of singing about their agrarian neighbors. And the corresponding inferiority complex in sedentary societies can be found in the Bible’s seminal story of fratricide. Cain was the firstborn son of a farmer who inherited the family land, which means that Abel was relegated to tending his flocks in the hills. And yet, Cain believed that Abel was closer to God and killed him in a jealous rage.

The vestige of this insecurity can seen in our admiration for groups - even criminal ones - that seem to be autonomous and courage-based. Motorcycle gangs, special forces and many native American tribes are slotted for this role. Not coincidentally, mobile communities tend to be broadly egalitarian, because wealth cannot be accumulated, and this is also very appealing. Even democracies are highly-stratified and demand a huge amount of conformity from its members, which is anathema to our sense of individuality and self-worth . The American myth of rugged individualism - which claims to place strong men and women outside group norms - was never true even in tribal societies, much less in industrialized ones, but it’s essential to people who quietly bridle at the conformity of their lives.

The tension between how we see ourselves and how we fit into society naturally plays out in our politics. Both Left and Right insist on an extreme valuing of the individual while modern society crushes those values at almost every turn. Mass housing, cookie-cutter suburbs, big box stores, rampant rates of addiction and highly-repetitive jobs are our reality, but political voices must pretend we all masters of our fate and owe almost nothing to the collective good. Nonsense. The myths we need in order to survive our society, psychologically, require us to think of that society as a kind of enemy. Surely, this is one of the first times in history that people have seen their own group in this light.

The other way this plays out is in foreign affairs. Because of our complete domination of the modern battlefield, anyone we choose to fight - including Iran - will have to resort to small-unit tactics in order to survive. Their fighters will be replicating the tactics of high mobility and enormous courage that have allowed weaker groups to prevail over more powerful ones for thousands of years. The tactics used against American forces in Vietnam and Afghanistan are obvious examples. Not only do these tactics work, but they elevate the insurgent to a figure that even American soldiers come to admire. “Can you imagine being hit with an A-10 gun run and then popping up and shooting at us some more?” one soldier observed incredulously when I was imbedded in eastern Afghanistan in 2008.

That incredulity has always signaled a strategic problem for world powers. In the 6th Century BCE, King Darius I of Persia led the most powerful army of antiquity against the Scythians, a nomadic raiding culture at the edge of his empire. In military terms the Scythians didn’t have a chance, but they didn’t seem to care. As the two armies faced each other across the battlefield, the Scythian warriors noticed hares in the underbrush and started hunting them. This act of insouciance before the slaughter so unnerved Darius that he withdrew his army from the fight.

Empires have been withdrawing from fights with such groups for thousands of years. If a country like Iran can convert its forces from a top-down hierarchy to a lateral network of small, loyal groups, all it has to do is not lose and it will win. The Taliban managed to not lose for almost a generation and now run Afghanistan. They turned our greatest strengths into weaknesses. We had the mill and willow trees. And yet they just killed us and left.