DAVID Graeber (1961-2020), one of the very few Anarchists to have made an attempt to spread anti-authoritarian ideas within liberal-leftist academia, once discussed the intriguing practices of the Piaroa tribe in modern-day Venezuela. Maintaining a completely egalitarian society based on personal and collective autonomy, the Piaroa place enormous value on the principle of co-operation and this is achieved without the presence of any form of hierarchy. More crucially, the tribe maintains its internal strength and independence by attributing all forms of death to external factors. As Graeber explains, whilst murder is completely unknown among the Piaroa stability is reinforced on the basis that

“they inhabit a cosmos of endless invisible war, in which wizards are engaged in fending off the attacks of insane, predatory gods and all deaths are caused by spiritual murder and have to be avenged by the magical massacre of whole (distant, unknown) communities.”

Whilst it would be easy to make fun of the Piaroa and dismiss them as ‘primitive’ and ‘superstitious,’ perhaps in the way that The Village (2004) portrayed the elders of an isolated American settlement inventing stories about creatures ‘beyond the woods’ to safeguard the longevity of their own fictitious community, the Piaroa belief-system results in the empowerment of the entire tribe and the social benefits speak for themselves.

I always find it curious that tribalism is presented as ‘backward’ or ‘non-progressive’ when, in actual fact, the contrived mythology that sustains the modern world is designed to perpetuate dependence. When an individual is shut away in his or her house, for example, shooting at imaginary creatures on a computer screen, it seems little different to the Piaroa and their supernatural war against an invisible army of assailants. However, there is a crucial difference here in that whilst someone is engaging with the pixelated figures on a PlayStation, someone else is busy maintaining order. Indeed, whilst the Piaroa are masters of their own destiny and use their mythology to ensure freedom and self-determination, the Western ‘gamer’ is displaying a total abrogation of power and responsibility in the sense that out there in the real world somebody else is determining the political, social and economic boundaries on their behalf. A similar example of this destructive ‘escapism’ is found in the contemporary obsession to engage with fictitious characters in a soap-opera, which therefore becomes a surrogate community for those among whom authentic community has effectively collapsed.

This is the fundamental difference between so-called ‘representative democracy’ and the mutual participation in which an entire community is sharing in the collective experience of freedom and unity.