Communal and self delusions..

According to some historians, after militarily subduing a society, the Inca would remove a number of the children from within a village to their own more established territories. The children were then raised as Inca by Inca before they were returned to their home territories as adults and Inca. This form of mass cultural genocide obliterated many of the cultures that existed prior to Inca rule. It also expanded the solidarity experienced by members of the Inca Empire.

The Inca used cultural hegemony as a means of unification. In controlling the past of the Empire’s individual citizens, old and new, the Inca controlled the present. They limited the memories of their newly conquered peoples to a history that they shared and interpreted.

Local histories and languages, perceived as potential barriers to the creation of the extended Inca community, were eliminated. Unity was enforced through uniformity of experience. Group memory was perpetuated through a historical hegemony and the limitation and manipulation of available media.

This is the greatest accomplishment of any single society—making its citizens complicit in its conception of community and culture. Individuals may disagree or resist the community’s leaders or customs, but even this opposition is defined in reference to the community. Each person needs a people in order to demonstrate what makes him or her unique as well as common. In pre-selecting the means of self-expression and communal comprehension, the Inca artificially constrained individual choice. They eliminated all opposition by not even mentioning it.

It’s a scary story, the rise of the Inca, especially interpreted (as all things must be) in light of our modern cultural hegemonies. Huge nations like the United States, and large corporations like Wal-Mart’s or Nike, package and sell their cultures to the globe. Their cultural ideas, morals, and beliefs are subtle suggestions in their movies, products, services, books, magazines and other media. One psychologist compared the options presented in our modern capitalist system to that of a parent permitting a child the choice of a red or blue T-shirt. The decision at first appears to be the child’s, but the control of the choice truly belongs to the parent (only a T-shirt, only in red or blue—no other color or clothing is made available and a decision “must” be made.)

This is both the scourge and the brilliance of capitalism or any hegemony really; create the illusion of choice for the individual consumer or citizen but control the context of the decision. Define the terms of all available social contracts.

There is not necessarily initial criminal intent in capitalism. No society or system can offer alternatives without adapting alternative choices that “make sense” within its own cultural context. One reason capitalism works so well is its adaptability. Capitalism is something that has to sell itself to people in order to perpetuate; people adopt capitalism and capitalism survives (to an extent) because capitalism makes itself understandable—capitalism “sells” itself.

The Inca faltered and failed as a hegemon in part due to indifference, the inbuilt Incan indifference to the at one time separate and distinct societies of its conquered peoples. Incan indifference to alternatives led a complete lack of concern or even recognition for different cultures, communities, or systems.

This is part of what permitted the Spanish conquistadors to blindside the Incan. The Inca were so completely unaware and unconcerned by external concepts of community or Empire that they never expected or even recognised the possible existence of alternative ways of being.

In the face of such hegemonic naïveté, the Spanish may well have been considered gods by the Incan social leaders; to a society so self-involved and unaware, the sudden appearance of a completely new community and social system can probably best be explained internally as some sort of divine intervention. If all that exists up to that point was internally manufactured or interpreted, anything external must be imposed by an outside force that is miraculously independent of the hitherto cultural hegemon.

The Inca were too successful in their hegemony; their self-absorption made them vulnerable. Hegemonies and empires inevitably collapse not always because they are resistant to change but often because they simply don’t see change coming. Such societies are guilty of the same complacency experienced by over-confident and thriving individuals; it is the blind complacency found in the self-delusion of the prima donna, innocently arrogant and perfect for her moment in the spotlight.