Yer Minga

In the old Spanish blog, one of my most popular posts was an interview I did with an unusually articulate grey-cheeked parakeet, in which the bird in question patiently explained what he saw as the flaws in human social organization, and recommended a social outlook more like his own, on the basis that widespread adoption, by humans, of this alternative system and philosophy (in which communal nest-building played a prominent part) would dramatically reduce intraspecific conflict, as well as freeing up valuable time and energy for more productive and interesting pursuits, such as chirping, or looking sleek and dapper. For this blog I no longer have a parakeet, so I will instead go for a Pre-Columbian Granite-faced Person (PCGFP). We have them here in Ecuador, you see, so it's convenient.

ME: Making big stone faces on Easter Island wasn't a great idea, was it?
PCGFP: On reflection, no. I think we got a bit carried away there. It was like one day someone said "Hey, let's consume all our limited resources in the construction and transport of pointless stone figures with no legs and oversized heads," and everyone goes "yeah, sounds like a great idea", and then next thing we knew we were all, like, dead.
ME: What lesson would you, on reflection, draw from this experience?
PCGFP: Apart from don't make stone faces?
ME: Apart from don't make stone faces.
PCGFP: And there's never a Pachamama around when you need one?
ME: And there's never a Pachamama around when you need one.
PCGFP: And then three come at once.
ME: Never fails.
PCGFP: Well, speaking as a granite-faced person living in a remote Ecuadorian Community, I would say that in spite of all the mistakes and cock-ups, like losing to the Spanish and Atahualpa's treasure ending up at the bottom of a lake, there is one positive thing we've salvaged: the minga is still a viable social custom.
ME: What's that? I mean, apart from a few neighbours filling in a hole in the road near my house with rocks, so as to discourage the local Aedes aegypti from breeding there, and when I join in, making hurtful comments about my complexion?
PCGFP: You should develop a thicker skin. Oh, I see you did. Well, the defining features of the minga are: localism; a pre-existing community; temporal specificity; a task to be performed of obvious communal value; an absence of pecuniary incentive; and voluntary involvement.
ME: In other words, something needs fixing, and a bunch of people muck in and do the job.
PCGFP: Exactly. The tradition of voluntaryism is not limited to your English Levellers and Friendly Societies. It is found everywhere that stable self-governing communities have been allowed to function without statist interference.
ME: You mean villages.
PCGFP: Villages.
ME: With busybodies in them.
PCGFP: Not necessarily. Well, all right then. There tends to be a woman with a bunch of nettles ordering you to strip off. This is true.
ME (breathing heavily): Does she perchance wear a black PVC corsage with matching suspenders, fishnet stockings and stilettos?
PCGFP: No such luck, I'm afraid.

ME: Never mind. So what exactly are you recommending?
PCGFP: Realism. The understanding that voluntary social involvement, and thus the fragmentation of power structures, is functional to the sense of shared community, and that the alternative to this, in the long run, is statism, the remote concentration of power, fiscal tyranny, social atomization, loneliness, and Twitter.
ME: You can be lonely in a village, too.
PCGFP: Of course. Lonely and hounded. Depends on the culture. Your culture, ultimately. Do you have any?
ME: I used to. Then I think I mislaid it.
PCGFP: Then I'm sorry to tell you your prognosis is not very bright.