Why Do Farmers and Nomads Fight?

I was in a meeting last week with people arguing about certain specific legal issues in the Open Source world.  It was clear to me the argument was not easy to resolve because the parties came from opposing world-views.  Not being afraid to discuss “Weltanschauung” in this blog, drawing from many philosophical, anthropological, and religious ideas, I thought to blog about the fight between the farmers and the nomads — as an analogy for current debates in the areas of open information as it relates to Open Source and open knowledge-sharing as a value.  Enjoy the ride.

In almost every culture and continent on this planet, some version of this story took place:  Nomadic people took their flock from one grazing ground to another.  They run into other nomads, and prepared to fight over the grazing grounds, natural springs,  and shady places to pitch tents.  They all agreed that mother Earth was a shared resource — they disagreed who gets to be on this part of it at this moment of time.

But one day the  tribe faces into a different battle — with farmers.  Farmers put up fences around their land to defend it against the nomadic shepherds.  This confused the nomads.  The farmers asserted that this plot of land was theirs by right of ownership.  The nomads laughed saying that everyone knows that mother Earth belongs to everyone.  When the farmers took their scythe and sickle in hand, the laughing stopped.

It is understood that nomads wore wool shorn from their sheep, whereas farmers wore linen from the flax they grew on their land.  It was easy to tell them apart.  The looked and spoke differently.  Ancient stories tell of the duality in conflict.  Modern history (US, East African, Mongolian, the Caucuses, and Australian, among many others) speaks of similar conflicts between the groups, sometimes resolved by war or land purchases (conquests) at pennies for the acre from nomadic cultures.

Nomads speak of freedom, but not about establishment.  Farmers speak of investing in the long-term, reciprocity, but not much about adaptability. Itinerant people add rhizomatic roots to the cultural landscape.  But are usually not welcomed by citizens, who are associated with progress.   Nomads still are around — some in tents in Mongolia and the Levant, others in RVs and Harley’s in the Midwest.  They speak and dress differently than suburban homeowners.

Did I loose you at the rhizomes?  Think of the way trees grow as opposed to the way grass spreads.  Trees grow from a central trunk — much like Knowledge 1.0,  and a structured society.  Grass spreads though seeds which create rhizome roots (they grow horizontally) — like Knowledge 2.0 and social media.

Nomadic people spread culture and trade as they traveled.  Farmers established fixed marketplaces and broadcast systems.  Farmers create corporations, nomads create consortia.  And history tends to favor the farmers as the eventual winners in this fight.

This duality plays out in Open Source too.  Some Open Source advocates believe that mother Earth is a free and shared resource full of ideas — and to them, “owning an idea” (asserting a Patent right) is a laughable concept, or worse, evil.  They will speak of freedom and sharing more than ownership and property .  They encourage the technology rhizomes that spread code from place to place.  Others believe that inventive ideas are  owned and should be protected by law so that others don’t steal them.  Their argument:  why would a farmer plow, seed, and irrigate a field (at great expense) if he knows that once it grows crops any nomad will just take it without consideration or payment?  And the counterargument is that ideas are not like crops at all.  They are concepts, not percepts (things you conceive, not perceive; ideas, not objects).

Am I loosing you again?

Let me explain by a story told by a charming religious personality of the hippie era Shlomo Carlebach (I have friends who were close to him).  He would say:

If I had an apple, and then gave you the apple, then you’d have the apple, but I would be left with none.  But if I have a small flame, and share the flame with you, then we both have a flame.

His hippie followers would sigh in admiration for this deep thought.  He would then continue explaining how love, smiles, goodwill, knowledge, and stories are like flames.  They don’t run out, and are therefore more valuable than material goods.  Like the mantra of the TED Talk videos — they are ideas worth spreading .

Protecting apples and farm boundaries from those who will take them away from you makes sense.  Protecting stories, smile, and knowledge makes less sense.  Sharing them gives them life — and this is usually what you want to do.

Computer code and trade secrets fall into an interesting category.  Are they objects that are owned or concepts that live though sharing?  Most people I work with these days have a very clear answer to this.  Some are clearly Yes, some are clearly No.  Farmers and nomads.

Your answer may be based on one of two biases.  If you are the current owner, you may be biased to claim that these are objects that you should continue to own.  If you wish to have the item, but are not the current owner, you may be biased to claim they are shared concepts.  This pragmatic bias is fueled by desire to have.  But Open Source advocates assert that the motivation for spreading knowledge is not selfish, but improves the overall good.  It the Commons that they wish to protect from its tragedy.  (Now that’s idea worth sharing — read about the tragedy of the commons, or the communal wine problem)

Open Source, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0, Open Data and Open Government seem to be the classic revolution of the nomads over the farmers.  Sure, it’s easy to say we need both — but really think about how hard this is to sustain.  A slightly harder pill to swallow is that the farmers will win, as they usually do.  An even harder assertion to support is that the nomads will win — despite their fundamental lack of organizational abilities (just see how many competing open “standards” there are out there).

This post is not intended to predict the result of the conflict.  Rather to give human context to the battle lines and reassure the reader that the battle related to trade secret protection, patent-free software, privacy-less Internet sites, and wiki-leaks is an old battle indeed.  Is information own-able and protect-able?  Should it be?  The modern Internet gives information-nomads new tools to fight this revolution, perhaps to unpredictable success.

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Tagged as: behaviors, community, culture, Open Source, social media