Page 33 - The Drucker Lectures

14 [ The Drucker Lectures

But there seem to me to be implicit in the fact that it is a
myth certain absolute prerequisites for a true interpretation of
the myth of the state. First, the organized group is undoubtedly
a reality, not a fiction, an elementary experience, not something
deduced, derived, or secondary. Man is by nature a social ani-
mal, a “zoon politikon” [Aristotle’s term for a social or political
creature]. He does not exist except in the group. Any interpreta-
tion of the myth that does not accept this seems to me prima facie
invalid and untrue, and likely to lead to untold harm.
But secondly, the very fact that we have a myth of the state—
that is, that we can rationalize our experience—also shows that
man is not all political animal, and that his existence is not de-
scribed or circumscribed by his belonging to the group. Ants
and bees are as much social animals as man. An ant or a bee can
even overthrow the ruler of the swarm and establish his own
rulership. But only man can change the basic order of the group
itself, only man has the myth of the state. Hence man is also and
always not a political animal that exists in the group; he also and
always exists outside the group as an individual.
Finally, the myth of the state expresses always the nonbe-
longing, the nonallegiance to all the other groups. It establishes
a group ritual, it leads to group action, but at the same time it
excludes from group ritual and opposes group action. Yet the
very fact that it is universal myth expressing an experience com-
mon to all men—black, brown, and white, American, Russian,
or Hottentot—shows conclusively that, as in all other essential
experiences of human existence, we are alike in our political
experience.
No myth of the state, I submit, could be a true myth or be
truly interpreted unless it expressed the fact of separation of
group from group. But no myth of the state could be a true one
unless it also expressed our common humanity. In fine, the myth
of the state, to be a true myth, truly interpreted, has to express