Barbarians in a Democracy
by David Huebner

I left Los Angeles for the mountains of the Eastern Sierra in 1997. After growing up on freeways, and four lane residential streets littered with strip malls and franchise brand names, I wanted something real. I found it in the silence, and rough life of working at Rock Creek Lodge, eight miles up the road from Tom's Place. When I first drove into the town of Mammoth, I found nothing but a mirror of my previous L.A. suburb miraculously placed in an impressive wilderness location. I avoided the town, hiding reclusively in Rock Creek Canyon. In my mind, the community essence of Mammoth was being obliterated by wide streets, huge parking lots, and giant strip malls that lacked any sense of a small mountain town.

I spent a winter in Telluride, Colorado, and experienced an involving, liberal community that thrived in the face of a major housing crisis and the corporate development interests of Telluride Ski and Golf Company. Music and art flowed freely along the streets, in the numerous bars, and a culture seemed to leap out at you. But I could barely afford to eat all winter, as half my monthly earnings went to rent, and I worked 7 days a week, sometimes till 3:30 a.m. to get up at 6:00 a.m. and start again. I left because although the community was very stimulating, it was far beyond my income capabilities and desires.

I realized then what was important to me as a mountain resident. The quality and atmosphere of my town was secondary to the state of mind I was forced to be in to survive there. I loved the aspects of the community of Telluride, but I hated my survivalist lifestyle. If I had to be rushing from the lifts to the job, to bed at midnight or later, to get up and rush off at first light to do it again, I'd just as soon live somewhere else where I could take my time, and not have to earn so much money. I fondly recalled the rents of Mammoth, and relayed these nearly mythical numbers to my friends who couldn't fathom a two bedroom place for less than $700 a month, let alone less than the $1,200-$1,400 standard of that year in Telluride.

Eventually I moved not only from Telluride, but from Rock Creek Lodge, and found myself spending a winter in the town I've always avoided. Working at the health food store, I met bunches of local people. I saw high-level corporate spenders, and new second home owners excited about the airport; I saw dirt bag transients unable to afford the organic food they wanted, and I saw the average local who seemed to be surviving by always working. I saw all these different kinds of people with different views, but I rarely seemed to catch any meaningful representation of this diversity in either our local media, or local political decisions.

I started going to the occasional city council meeting in Mammoth and Bishop, generally in support of wilderness issues. I saw from the very beginning that the folks making the decisions were not making them with an eye towards quality of life, over quantity of money; they were not making decisions based on ecologically sound economics, but were instead denying that the ecological quality of an area had anything to do with good economics; simply: they were playing the hand of corporate America. I saw clearly that I was a barbarian not only in Los Angeles, but in the mountain communities of the Eastside's towns. There were many of us it seemed, steadily knocking against the walls of our society, so I was not disturbed. Recently, though, local and national politicians are deciding that the barbarians voice, their knocking, is not worth listening to, not worth heeding.

In the words of Brooke Williams, from the essay "The Barbarian Link" published in Wilderness Tapestry (1992), I am one of the new barbarians who

"are outsiders in the sense that physically they would rather be under stars than roofs. Emotionally, they are on the outside of modern society because they react to rock and sky rather than money and comfort. They have a two-way relationship with the earth and are not content to sit on a flat rock and let nature speak to them. It is an active relationship, a dance wherein the combination of person and planet, pulsing muscles, stretching joints, fully inflated lungs, and skin moistened slightly by sweat are catalysts often causing extraordinary events."

The term barbarian generally conjures up images of burly, half primitive gorillas raging into the golden streets of Rome or some such Empire to bring down "civilization" with a knobby club. What in fact is the barbarians' true place in the history of civilization? Williams refers to Walter J. Ong's book The Barbarian Within (1962), and his conclusions that barbarians have in fact been a necessary element in the advancement of civilized society. Walter mentions, "All cultures need improvement, and need it rather badly and the operations of barbarians on a culture, whatever the immediate effects, can result in a sorting out of what is valuable from what is not."

His conclusions seem to coincide with the general principles of a democratic government. If all the people can be involved then society is stronger and more stable because of it. Yet this fundamental element of accurate representation seems to be missing when I read statements by a local town council member that decries the opposition as not deserving of a line of type in the national media. These are folks who write weekly letters, and fill rooms at the city council meetings. This fundamental function of democracy is also missing when George W. Bush ignores the credibility of millions of people worldwide protesting for a peaceful resolution to the Iraq disarmament crisis. This fundamental element of democracy is missing in the Patriot Act, and the Department of Homeland Security which allow unprecedented prying by the federal government into the private lives of its citizens. Democracy is designed to keep the barbarians happy by somewhat representing them, rather than waiting for them to come knocking the doors down. Clearly, our current politicians are forgetting their democratic duties, not to mention the power wielded by the people.

The legendary non-violent leader Mohandas Ghandi wrote: "I believe, and everybody must grant that no Government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the Government will come to a standstill." India's independence from British rule is testament to the power Ghandi found in the hands of the people. According to Ghandi, the people do not fall under the rule of their Government by accident or war, but actually must consent to keep them in power; that Government functions entirely on the consent of the people.

This counterpoint of the politician balancing accurate representation with public consent is the difficulty of modern democracy. And although as barbarians, we may speak an entirely different language than the rest, it is inherent that it be heard, translated if need be, and accepted as vital to our culture and civilization if that democracy is to continue. The barbarian may be an outsider in the old sense, but in present day America, barbarians freely mingle with the more "civilized" population: owning businesses, holding hard-working jobs, raising kids and voting.

As a new barbarian lost in the confines of Mammoth Lakes, I strongly resist the attempts made by the Town Council, the Bush Administration, and those that support them, that my interests, my voice be silenced, my concerns marginalized. They claim I am uninformed, that I do not represent the majority opinion, and that all I say can be brushed away easily as nay-saying, dooms-day gibberish. They laugh when we show up at the meetings. They claim what all empires have always claimed of the barbarians: they are worthless.

Historical analysis shows quite the opposite, and both local and national governments of this country would do well to listen to what it is that the barbarians are saying, where they're getting their information, and why. Otherwise, they might one day wake up to find the knobby clubs of the "minority" wreaking havoc on the golden halls of their "majority".

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