The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (Robert Ardrey's Nature of Man series Book 2) by Robert Ardrey

Author:Robert Ardrey [Ardrey, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780988604322
Publisher: StoryDesign LTD.
Published: 2014-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Italy was a noyau even in the time of the Empire. Rome with firm hand and clear eye ruled provinces at the end of the known world, disposed law, order, stability, and a measure of justice, established memories and purposes to endure the millennia. But it could not thus rule its own peninsula. Italy remained a patchwork of jealousies, feuds, ambitions, rivalries, and headless horsemen. Rome, a small city-state, was lucky to make Italian alliances lasting a generation. A society founded on family territories, innumerable peripheries, and an unholy complexity of inner antagonisms is a society of remarkable staying power. It is flexible. Lacking heart or head, it is difficult to kill. It may lose a portion of its body this century and get it back the next; in the meantime the absence of an arm or leg goes virtually unnoticed. It is healthy. I have only one Italian within my acquaintance suffering from ulcers, and he spent too many years in America; although daily life borders on the apoplectic, few die of cerebral hemorrhage.

Noise, naturally, is a prominent characteristic of a noyau. You can hear one from a long way off. There is not only the screeching, the yowling, and the hammered insults of the peripheries, but decibels rise like chimney smoke from the heartland too. As a bird must sing from his accustomed twig to announce his propertied existence, so the Italian must turn up his radio or his television set to maximum volume or quarrel with his wife in such tones as to leave no neighbor in doubt that the master is home and in charge of the situation. If an Italian drove his car quietly or failed to rev up his engine at four in the morning, it would be a public humiliation, an announcement that he did not own a car.

Life in a noyau, for all its din of battle, is markedly lacking in danger. There are the normal bloody rendezvous, of course, for Italians are not inhuman. But life, despite the corpses floating down the Tiber or Po, is dedicated to stimulation, not assassination. I have lived for five years in a part of Rome famed for its cutthroats; New York’s upper East Side is more dangerous. I have windows overlooking one of the rowdiest piazzas in town, and no Elizabethan tavern ever supported discussions more passionate; I have yet to witness a bloodied nose. A successful noyau, like any successful gullery, has its rules and regulations which all understand. Should a society of inward antagonism produce nothing but decimation, little could be said for its survival value.

All forces in a true nation work for compromise and inner peace; all forces in a true noyau for division and emotional mayhem. If in Britain two drivers lightly touch their bumpers, both will say “So sorry” and drive on. In Italy there is no worse moment than when, late for an appointment, you hear a featherlike touch against your taxi’s bumper. You are finished. Your drivers

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