#32 Becoming Unlimited

“The state will treat people like a farmer treats cows, but soon the cows will have wings.” James Davidson, William Rees-Mogg.

A few days ago, a friend excited me with the book The Sovereign Individual. Written in 1999, the book predicted with startling accuracy how the information age would impact society. Instead of being bound by geographic, cultural or economic boundaries, the individual will be able to live, work and play anywhere.

But what does this mean in a real sense?

• Cultural Shift: Sexuality is now a preference rather than a biological expression. One can be born Chinese, for instance, but choose an Arabic way of life, even adopting Islam. One’s community is no longer strictly geographic, it is ideological – using the internet to find people who think like us.
• Economic Shift: When the ANC took power in 1994, many people fled to other countries, anticipating South Africa’s decline. Some came back to enjoy the country geographically but left their wealth abroad. Today, an ordinary individual can do the same – work on the internet (in another country, as it were), while remaining in a different country.
• Lifestyle Shift: I recently joined a Whatsapp group of people cycling the African continent. Some have been at it for over a year, often spending weeks or months in different regions to experience their culture. Technology makes all of this possible.

But all this leads to deeper existential questions about the pursuit of these personal freedoms. Like ships undocking from traditions and places of origin, what will happen if we stray too far into the open ocean? How will we deal with deeply personal questions like “Who am I?”

The Personal Identity Crisis

Most people draw their sense of identity from traditions.

I found out recently that I am the 6th generation to bear the surname, Sindane. Likewise, a friend called me to share, with pride, similar genealogical knowledge – that their ancestors were known to eat with lions in mountain caves, which is what their surname means. Another friend traced their genealogy to the early Afrikaaner settlers and discovered that he is mixed-race (rather than “white”) – perhaps not coloured because that is more a cultural expression than it is a mixture of ethnicity – more on this later.

Above is a video of a 21-year-old MP who opened her speech with a haka, signalling her passionate intent to fight for the rights of indigenous people in a way that everybody in her context would understand. Of course, this was an expression of personal and collective identity, only possible through an appreciation of one’s traditions. In her Haka, she made not only her identity but her allegiance to her nation clear.

Where will the sovereign individuals, unhinged from tradition, draw such powers?

One answer is that new traditions will emerge. Black-American English is now considered a dialect or, as some argue, a language – Ebonics. Jamaican English is wild but also draws from the same English well. English itself has changed over the years to become what we know today. Therefore, the sovereign individual, one might argue, must not worry about their identity because a new one will emerge organically.

A more conservative view argues that culture is a preservation of the best among our ancestors. The reason Christianity, Islam, Buddhism (or any old religion) exists is that there are timeless truths embedded not only in their teachings but preserved in a way that makes their adoption and application easy. From this perspective, abandoning traditions is tantamount to jumping off a cliff and hoping to grow wings on the way down.

Either way, the sovereign individual faces existential questions in the pursuit of personal freedom

The Freedom to Choose The Prison

Ultimately, individual sovereignty is the pursuit and exercise of freedom, which is often mistaken as doing whatever one wants.

Suppose you wanted to buy a pair of jeans and went to a clothing store. The range of one’s choices would be constrained by the variety of jeans in the stores. Meaning “whatever one wants” would not only be inherently constrained but predetermined by the choices made by the shop owner to stock up on the range.

Seen this way, one’s choices are themselves constrained. Freedom is not in the choice of jeans one chooses, but in choosing to buy jeans in the first place – instead of, say, corduroy trousers. Freedom is in choosing the prison, but not what happens inside.

The sovereign individual holds the keys to the prison as well

For clarity, I want to introduce three degrees of personal freedom.

1. The Predetermined individual: This individual exists within a predetermined context, whether cultural, ideological or geographical. This individual only seeks to survive within that context but does not question its boundaries in any way or form. Like a fish in water, often the individual does not know that there is a different context.
2. The Self-Determined Individual: This individual chooses the context they want to exist in. Many people leave their countries to settle in more conducive economic and political environments. They nevertheless exist within a context, albeit chosen.
3. The Sovereign Individual: The sovereign individual seeks to exist outside any context. Like tourists, they visit various contexts for personal gains, be it leisure, economic or cultural. But they are not domiciled anywhere – as it were, the sovereign individual holds the keys to the prison.

While cycling around the country, a gentleman in Knysna asked where I was from. Now more than twenty days on the journey, and having slept in every context – from rural settlements to the home of a super-rich family – I said I am from nowhere. I am South African.

“No brother,” He said adamantly, “…as in where are you really from? Where is home?” I insisted that I could decide to live in Kynsa, in which case I become a resident. Again he rebuffed my answer and of course, I knew what he meant. But I had ascended, as it were, into the realm of the sovereign individual, unconstrained by questions of origin and belonging.

Where do you belong?

Belonging is central to a sense of who we are.

One need only speak to a person who does not know their parents or one who was adopted. There seems to be a deep need to know where we are from and where we belong – where we fit into the scheme of society. Is this a social construct or a fundamental part of how we are made?

200,000 people have signed up for a one-way trip to Mars to start a new civilization with Elon Musk. Is it possible that far down the line, their origin story will be more mythical than factual – something along the lines of, “Then there was light?” Is it possible that Elon will no longer be an engineer, but kind of Noah who, anticipating the end of the world, built an intergalactic arc to make humanity multi-planetary?

It seems to me that our sense of belonging comes from the stories we accept rather than the facts of the matter. After all, facts get lost in time but stories persist, mostly as powerful imagery and metaphors, safely preserving the core principles that were realised from the facts. It seems to me that who we think we are is nothing but a story.

In light of this, one can write whichever story they want, which is the basis of individual sovereignty.

Until next week.
Vusi Sindane