The ‘We’ and the ‘I’; A Constant Environmental Tension in Civilization
by
John M Frazier
© 2026
We speak in this affected age as though society was an option we choose, as though it mattered little to survival whether we are an alienated ‘I’ or not. That, according to Ibn Khaldün, a Fourteenth Century Tunisian historian, is how civilizations decay and become ripe for takeover. They lose their asabiyyah, their solidarity, due to the environmental influence of ease and luxury. They move from the ‘we’ of mother and child, of family, of clan, of tribe to the alienated ‘I’ of the contractual body politic.
The body politic may share chauvinist values but it is not a team. It is an ‘I’ in a contractual relation. Make no mistake, that is my construct, the ‘we’ to the ‘I’, not Ibn Khaldün or anyone else's.
I base my contention on separation anxiety, the emotional upset that occurs when a child is separated from its mother. That is incontrovertible evidence that there is a mother/child ‘we’ in process. Developmentally, it exists in toddlers and peaks in adolescents after considerable drama when the ‘we’ moves from material to abstract. It does in that state become transferable to clan and to tribe as a ‘we’, asabiyyah.
The next step in civilization comes when there is enough surplus food to afford the luxury of the alienated ‘I’. The body politic of the state is a contractual relationship among such ‘I’s’. It is not a ‘we’ at all and the existence of the ‘I’ depends on environmental factors, on surplus food, on the robustness of its economy. Historically, and Ibn Khaldün provides evidence, it becomes obvious that, effectively, there is little chance of and much effort in losing the ‘I’ and becoming an organic ‘we’ again. The lag in accomplishing that is an open door to physical aggression as Ibn Khaldün notes in his cycles of civilization.
Do Well and Be Well
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