A territory is a defended space. In
the broadest sense, there are three kinds of human territory: tribal, family,
and personal. It is rare for people
to be driven to physical fighting in defense of these ‘owned’ spaces, but fight
they will, if pushed to the limit. The invading army encroaching on national
territory, the gang moving into a rival district, the trespasser climbing into
an orchard, the burglar breaking into a house, the bully pushing to the front
of a queue, the driver trying to steal a parking space, all of these intruders
are liable to be met with resistance varying from the vigorous to the savagely
violent. Even if the law is on the side of the intruder, the urge to protect a
territory may be so strong that otherwise peaceful citizens abandon all their
usual controls and inhibitions. Attempts to evict families from their homes, no
matter how socially valid the reasons, can lead to siege conditions reminiscent
of the defense of a medieval fortress. The fact that these
upheavals are so rare is a measure of the success of Territorial Signals as a
system of dispute prevention. It is sometimes cynically stated that ‘all property
is theft’, but in reality it is the opposite. Property, as owned space which is
displayed as owned space, is a special kind of sharing system which reduces
fighting much more that it causes it. Man is a co-operative species, but he is
also competitive, and his struggle for dominance has to be structured in some
way if chaos is to be avoided. The establishment of territorial rights is one
such structure. It limits dominance geographically. I am dominant in my
territory and you are dominant in yours. In other words, dominance is shared
out spatially, and we all have some. Even if I am weak and unintelligent and
you can dominate me when we meet on neutral ground, I can still enjoy a
thoroughly dominant role as soon as I retreat to my private base. Be it ever so
humble, there is no place like a home territory. Of course, I can still
be intimidated by a particularly dominant individual who enters my home base,
but his encroachment will be dangerous for him and he will think twice about
it, because he will know that here my urge to resist will be dramatically
magnified and my usual subservience banished. Insulted at the heart of my own
territory, I may easily explode into battle—either symbolic or real—with a
result that may be damaging to both of us. In order for this to
work, each territory has to be plainly advertised as such. Just as a dog cocks
its leg to deposit its personal scent on the trees in its locality, so the
human animal cocks its leg symbolically all over his home base. But because we
are predominantly visual animals we employ mostly visual signals, and it is
worth asking how we do this at the three levels: tribal, family and personal. First: the Tribal
Territory. We evolved as tribal animals, living in comparatively small groups,
probably of less than a hundred, and we existed like that for millions of
years. It is our basic social unit, a group in which everyone knows everyone
else. Essentially, the tribal territory consisted of a home base surrounded by
extended hunting grounds. Any neighboring tribe intruding on our social space
would be repelled and driven away. As
these early tribes swelled into agricultural super-tribes, and eventually into
industrial nations, their territorial defense systems became increasingly
elaborate. The tiny, ancient home base of the hunting tribe became the great
capital city, the primitive war-paint became the flags, emblems, uniforms and
regalia of the specialized military, and the war-chants became national
anthems, marching songs and bugle calls. Territorial boundary-lines hardened
into fixed borders, often conspicuously patrolled and punctuated with defensive
structures—forts and lookout posts, checkpoints and great walls, and today,
customs barriers. Today each nation
flies its own flag, a symbolic embodiment of its territorial status. But
patriotism is not enough. The ancient tribal hunter lurking inside each citizen
finds himself unsatisfied by membership of such a vast conglomeration of
individuals, most of whom are totally unknown to him personally. He does his
best to feel that he shares a common territorial defense with them all, but the
scale of the operation has become inhuman. It is hard to feel a sense of
belonging with a tribe of fifty million or more. His answer is to form
sub-groups, nearer to his ancient pattern, smaller and more personally known to
him—the local club, the teenage gang, the union, the specialist society, the
sports association, the political party, the college fraternity, the social
clique, the protest group, and the rest. Rare indeed is the individual who does
not belong to at least one of these splinter groups, and take from it a sense
of tribal allegiance and brotherhood. Typical of all these groups is the development
of Territorial Signals—badges, costumes, headquarters, banners, slogans, and
all the other displays of group identity. This is where the action is, in terms
of tribal territorialism, and only when a major war breaks out does the
emphasis shift upwards to the higher group level of the nation. |
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