If we believe in the fundamental goodness of man, we are doomed.
– Dr. Robert Hare
We may as well start with some very bad news, and get it out of the way. We humans are naturally violent, acquisitive, greedy, negligent, aggressive, destructive, petty, mean, self-centered, and sometimes abysmally foolish. And now for the very good news: it’s also in our nature to be peaceful, giving, generous, caring, gentle, creative, broad-minded, kind, altruistic, and sometimes profoundly wise. We are domineering, yet we long for equality.
Mother Culture of the so-called progressive worldview vigorously disagrees. As a reaction to the often-knee jerk blaming of human nature for the failings of civilization, many of us moderns bought the other side of the coin. Haven’t we been told by the various gurus of enlightened 21st century thinking that human nature is “basically good”? Like some anxiety management self-help circle, we indulge in endless mutual assurances that I am ok and you are ok. But the façade of “goodness” crumbles rather quickly under the critical gaze of those who lose faith in the ready blandishments. “There are more and more factors beginning to push us out of the comfortable pew where we mostly once worshiped our species, our ‘leaders’, our civilization, our perception of unlimited human capacity and entitlement and manifest destiny.” Indeed. And along with the worship of our species goes the often uncritical defense of the species’ nature. These particular worshipers fish around for evidence that our primate cousins are gentle giants, that our paleolithic ancestors lived non-violent lives, that hunting and omnivory was really somehow imposed upon us mild-mannered fruit-eaters, and that human aggression is really learned — not innate — and can be erased with another kind of learning.
When people argue on behalf of benevolent human nature, the argument often takes this informal shape: It is quite evident that most of us behave in fairly innocuous ways most of the time. But look at all the horrible things people have done – now a list of genocides, tortures, and other ghastly deeds emerges – that is not us, is it? The Hitlers of this world are caused by… culture, stress, poor upbringing, perhaps even innate pathologies. But that’s not us! See, most humans are basically good. Such an argument is based on a fallacy. It’s not either/or: either we are basically good, or we are genocidal maniacs and perverts. There is a third possibility: that we are both good and bad in fundamental common measure. And this point of view, called by some social scientists “the ambivalence model of human nature” is the keystone of my own understanding. I used to believe otherwise. I once defended vigorously the “basically good” point of view. But events in my own life — in my own behavior! — eventually prompted me to take a harder look.
I now accept a different argument. This one is rooted in the evidence of primitive tribes. Their profound egalitarianism, radical sharing, steady emphasis on social harmony, and the rarity of serious armed conflict rightly astounds the modern mind. But it would be a romantic misdirection to claim that greed, violence or power abuse is absent among them. Studies clearly indicate that hiding one’s kill from others, shirking common work, eagerness to inflict severe damage on neighbors, and upstartism has been documented time and again even among remote or newly contacted tribes. Significant levels of violence — mostly among males competing for females, and in skirmishes between bands — have been recorded in most primitive societies.
What is the evidence from our far-ancient ancestors and other primates? An erectus find displays the remains of a human being who had been scalped and his eyes gouged out. There is evidence of interhuman violence, including human sacrifice, in cave art and Upper Paleolithic remains. And a massacre from about 12,000 years ago shows half of a small settlement dispatched by human weapons. Chimpanzees have been observed to terrorize and kill other chimps. It has finally been understood that intraspecific violence is common among animals, including our closest primate relatives. We are no different.
It is the propensity for killing that allows both chimps and humans to be such good hunters. Bonobos were said by eager romanticizers a while back “to have lost the desire to kill.” But careful study shows bonobo females organizing themselves into precise, coordinated, swift and deadly hunting bands as they go after monkeys. It is hard to believe we would have evolved into fierce predators had there been no biological basis for it.
And then there is cannibalism. Well documented among the erectus, Neanderthals, and sapiens, it presents a picture of our nature many of us would prefer not to know. But the evidence cannot be ignored. Both long-ago ancestors and more recent tribal peoples hunted fellow humans as prey. Eating one’s fellows out of dire hunger, reproductive reasons, and cage confinement is not uncommon in the animal kingdom. But gastronomic cannibalism, the hunting of one’s own kind in plentiful times for food is far more unusual. We stand in the company of bull frogs, scorpions, king cobras, sharks, and our primate cousins, the common chimps. Isn’t that alone something to gag on?
Benevolent, us?! Trees are benevolent beings. We are not. Besides, any animal species has it in their power to wreak a lot of damage on earth by overbreeding, overtrampling, overkilling and overconsuming. This is true from bacteria all the way to mammals. It is true of us.
The dark and light nature of our species was vividly portrayed by that classic of a film, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Dr. Jekyll, a noble humanitarian, develops an elixir that — he hopes — will improve upon human nature. He tests his potion on himself and morphs into the hairy, coarse, nasty Mr. Hyde who goes off on a rampage. The story ends badly. To be rid of Hyde, the world must be rid of Jekyll. The Jekyll/Hyde metaphor is a powerful reminder of the underlying light-and-shadow that lives in ambivalent, dappled symbiosis in all of us.
Where once humans were blamed for the imperfection of civilization, turning it upside down blames civilization for the imperfection of humans. “It is the psychotic demands of civilization that have created these very troubling forms of social disintegration along with the weakness that haunts individuals in their complicit acquiescence, in their enslavement to these urban walls and the psychopathologies they generate.” Human evils are symptoms of stress-related mental illness caused by our culture. If that is true — and the project of Enlightenment has believed it to be so — then all we need is shucking off the burden, healing, and plenty of freedom. More freedom! How sweet it rang in the French revolution. How sweet the sound in all the propaganda for modernity. But if human nature is dark and light, then more freedom for Jekyll will always and inevitably lead to more freedom for Hyde… and that seems like a singularly bad idea.
November 12, 2011 at 12:32 pm
There’s little I can disagree with here, but what might be a missing factor is the possibility of looking at good and evil in some other way that obliterates the dualism within it and lets us get beyond the polarization.
In a mash-up of deKooning and Jung, I became aware of looking at the Crucifixion as a martyrdom to duality. Stretched out on a cross with good to the right and evil on the sinister, Jesus died to that conception of duality. The “good” thief and the “bad” thief shared his same fate. Together this image could have put an end to the futility of seeing life as hopelessly buried in this linear polarity.
Good and evil is not even a particularly useful distinction to make. Everyone is complicit, no one is innocent, so where is the good? Everyone is subject to their conditioning and chance, it’s a miracle we aren’t all serial-killers! So where is the evil?
It’s a focus on the accounting instead of a way to integrate our lives. It provides great reservoirs of justification for whatever we may want to do: “They are bad, I am good!”
As with the rest of striving, it is resolved by letting it go. Only then can we free attention for something else.
We need ways off the carousel.
November 12, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Antonio said: “It provides great reservoirs of justification for whatever we may want to do: “They are bad, I am good!””
But that is not what I am saying, Antonio. I am saying, “they are good and bad, I am good and bad!” Isn’t this one way to transcend the duality?
November 12, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Yes, certainly! I don’t disagree at all! I guess I commented the way I did to put more emphasis on that aspect and where that might lead. As I began, I found little to disagree with in the post.
All this also clogs the signal with noise.
Yes, that is the way, well, here I guess I would disagree with the term transcend, though not with your intent!
Expecting to transcend – this from someone who is a sucker for it, always have! – is to see life as something to overcome instead of to inhabit. It’s an example of striving instead of being. By letting go of a segregating distinction like good and evil, we don’t surpass good and evil, we just focus our attention in a different way.
This seems like a “good” idea, for two reasons, first it robs the distinction of its power over us, and secondly it reverts the focus of our attention from pathways that are deeply rutted and bound up with futility.
There’s no guarantee that this will change us or our situation in any way we might now recognize as helpful, but without doing this we remain fixated on the projections of our current delusions all the way to the bottom of the crash.
November 12, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Ah! So not to transcend, but to see the polarities as part of a whole, and accept? Did not mean to suggest “overcome” but rather “look well, look with honesty and clarity.”
My attention sees both light and shadow in the room…
November 12, 2011 at 3:17 pm
“My attention see both light and shadow in the room…” and within me. Yes.
There’s no convention, that I know of when talking about action without striving. So I end up being persnickety about vocabulary and it can seem clumsy to plod along marking out exceptions and alternative assumptions, but I can’t see any other way to avoid falling back into the old ruts. They are so deep and inviting!
November 12, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Unless I am much mistaken, tree aggression, selfishness, and neglect-equivalents are fairly well documented. Oak leaves poisoning the soil against other plants. Cedars and balsam firs fighting insects to the death with pleasantly scented (to us) resins and oils. If intra-species rather than interspecies aggression/neglect is the issue, then what about trees shading out offspring that take root too near the parent tree?
Now, I have a higher opinion of most trees than of most human beings, but this may be due to my personal prejudices and vast ignorance. Perhaps tree wars take place too slowly for us to see?
All this is by way of undercutting your argument that trees are benevolent beings. Benevolent to whom? Does not all that lives have hunger for nutrients, amounting at times to apparent greed when reproduction is at stake?
And if trees are difficult to rate according to their ethical properties, how much more the endlessly plastic human being? Neither the clean-edged razor of Good/Evil nor the jagged-tooth saw of Good-and-Evil can cut us out a complete picture of the fabric of life. Human traits and states are good, evil, neutral, coarsely mixed, or finely blended only in a field setting or context.
Cowardice that is good when prevention of crime is wanted, becomes a liability in war. Treachery can be bad in times of peace and in war. Yet if treachery is the only means to escape enslavement and captivity, wherefore is it considered bad or evil? By the slavemaster?
Inborn traits are similarly ambiguous. Obsessive compulsiveness that benefits close, concentrated work can hinder swift decisive action. Novelty seeking that takes bold risks to find new lands or new food sources in hard times can be the source of sour mischief or destructive disruption under peaceful, stable circumstances.
If nature is the warp and nurture the weft, then culture and hormones can be the basis for a rough-and-ready analysis, a crude image of recognizable human behaviors. But this simple Cartesian Grid has only a limited application to the problem of patterning the ethical character of individuals. Even the warp and weft metaphor may not apply. Suppose the person to be more like felt than woven fabric, then the individual fibers, hard nodes and thickness of the tangled mat are the elements to consider.
A more useful trope is the identification of trees. By their fruits ye shall know them, yes–but also by their buds, blossoms, bark, leaf edges, leaf venation, limb orientation, root structure and fall coloration, if any. A person who is entire, ovate, pennate, opposite and cordoid at base is quite distinct from one who is double-serrate, acuminate, reticulate, tripennate, alternating. Yes? And the good or evil or innocuousness of either depends on the aims and circumstances of the person making the character assessment.
This mood piece, while an excellent mediation for this darkest time of year, is too narrow an approach to answers. For one thing, it begs the question of whether good and evil even exist. Nor does it define what evil and good are in the context of the argument. A wider-angle philosophical view is wanted.
Some people have declared that the whole of life is but a shadow play or game. Evil and good are irrelevant in the end–mere accidents of the game, more or less imperfect projections of the truth.
Others–say, a Pythoness or great chieftain–might perceive all human beings merely as pigments, some darker or lighter than the others, but all useful in the composition of a thing of beauty that a human society can be.
Pattern perception of a very high order and broad degree of apprehension is possible. Some human beings have this innately, others attain it via practice, training, or under acute stress.
Pattern perception can be enhanced by cortexual inhibitors (drugs, breathing, martial arts) and varies in excellence throughout the general population.
For the ability to perceive at a glance, or from scant evidence, the inner character of a given person (and/or contextual situation) anecdotal evidence is very strong and widely distributed across cultures and time. Paranormal abilities are often associated with spiritual practice, nature immersion, or other intensive human development techniques.
There is some scientific evidence as well. However, many science processes, relying on controlled environments, isolation of factors (often ignoring synergistic effects, difficult to test for) and repeated replication of results are ill-suited to the unique path heuristics of experiential knowledge accumulation that is needed for assessing and judging character, in one context or another.
There is a field beyond good and evil, as Rumi says; he invites us to meet him there.
November 12, 2011 at 8:13 pm
There is almost nothing of intellectual honesty in this this man you’ve set up.
November 12, 2011 at 8:13 pm
“straw-man”
November 12, 2011 at 8:37 pm
interesting post, lg (btw, is this pen name derived from daniel quinn’s ISHMAEL?).
i’ve come to similar conclusions regarding the relative benevolence of plants vs. predatory species like us. tis truly bizarre to live and be conscious of the ambivalent nature of our lives. i find it a bit creepy, scary, nightmarish, twilight zonesque, this consciousness of the savage, brutal side of it, of ourselves, our lives. especially when i consider something like the collapse of civilization and human population almost sure to occur this century, and all the pain, grief, suffering, and loss that will be experienced by sheople much like us, if not we ourselves. it’s thoughts like these that make me wish to overcome fear of death and dying, so that i might take command of my own fate rather than become a victim of destiny.
what scares me the most is the thought that perhaps hell is real and i’m already in it (perhaps u are too) and that death will turn out to be a mirage that offers no respite from torment and tragedy for the spirit. but who knows? at least for the time being, before collapse becomes severe, life is, as u say, a combination of pleasure/pain that is at least tolerable.
November 12, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Human evils are symptoms of stress-related mental illness caused by our culture. If that is true — and the project of Enlightenment has believed it to be so — then all we need is shucking off the burden, healing, and plenty of freedom. More freedom! How sweet it rang in the French revolution. How sweet the sound in all the propaganda for modernity.
Vera, how can you in good faith, and with intellectual honesty, suggest that the Enlightenment and the FR are examples of an attempt to shuck off the burden of civilization? This is completely disingenuous of you, and you are smart enough to know it. So … back at you, my dear friend.
sandy
November 13, 2011 at 9:15 am
Aw, Sandy, you know better than to run in yelling straw man and running off again?
Would you be so kind and explain?
If my piece gives you the impression I am saying that Enlightenment and FR were examples of an attempt to shuck off civ, then my writing was unclear. What I was trying to say and mean is this: while civ does damage to human psyche, a fact that Freud already knew, and I would not try to argue against, the harm that humans do goes far deeper than that. Humans did harm to each other and the land long before civ was a glimmer in some despot’s eye.
The question that blaming civ rises is this: if we do shuck it, will we become different people, who no longer wreak harm on each other and the land? Enlightenment thought if we became rational, a new human would come forth. Marx thought that if only we would get control of our means of production, a new human would come forth. And nowadays, some people think if only we shuck off civ, a new human will come forth. A mirage!
November 13, 2011 at 9:22 am
Terry, welcome! Yes, my pen name is so derived. I am an unabashed fan of the ol’ wise gorrilla.
He is one of the guides on the underground railroad leading out of Babylon…
Yes, some of us look at “us” and no longer pretend the brutality isn’t there. And I don’t think you are the first one to suggest that hell is right here on Earth, and we humans — and particularly we civilized humans — work hard to make it so. I am so glad that what I said resonates with you… especially after Sandy running in with the spear thrower.
November 13, 2011 at 9:28 am
Good point! The mirage of perfectibility is the mirror of pragmatic bargains with the devil.
It is part of this sense we carry on with that we will only act with a guarantee!
We adapt to remove ourselves from a set of traps we have encountered that we have survived – otherwise we wouldn’t be here to adapt at all! – and we use that partial understanding to look another way. This is unavoidable. What we can avoid is casting ourselves willy-nilly into the same traps with just a different color to them.
No new human will arise because we make an external change, whether it be buying the right cosmetics or defeating civilization. These are the same trap.
It’s all around us. Look! Injustice! Let’s start a new War on THIS Injustice!
How’s that been working out?
November 13, 2011 at 9:31 am
My last comment got knocked out of order by your last comment!
I was responding to #11…
Just to clarify what it referred to…
November 13, 2011 at 9:35 am
Vera – I am not running away. My short answer is that there is no longer any path through the chaos. The transformation that erupted with Ag and then Civ, Law, Syllogistic reasoning, Science, Rationalism, Enlightenment, Industrialization, Global capitalism (the full objectification and commodification of everything) and all of the companion hierarchies and institutions that accompanied it, have left us with no wiggle room. We are fucked!! Certainly, there will be pockets of “thoughtful” and prepared humans to survive, but it will be ugly… Hobbes’ War of all against all. Of that I have few doubts. But the biggest change was a change in our consciousness of the world, the very feeling of that proprioceptively and sensually, and of how we fit into it. And that consciousness cannot be recovered en masse, probably not even for the individual. However, there are extant indigenous tribes that still feel some of that connection. Perhaps they will be the survivors, if we do not exterminate them in the interim. Fat chance. There are no political, psychological, or social solutions. Whatever happens after collapse, the psychology of the human race has been altered, and we must live with that alienation, fear, and violence, I am afraid. That is my answer sitting at a bar after a few beers at 10:30 Sunday night in Central Siberia, with a balmy temp outside of minus 6 degrees, Celsius. best, as always, sandy
November 13, 2011 at 9:38 am
What spear thrower??;-)
November 13, 2011 at 9:39 am
Gkayb, this humble blog cannot do justice to your ethical musings. Btw, that is a beautifully written piece. Almost makes me wish I was still more of a philosopher…
Your points about the trees are well made… none of us is perfect, eh? I was just saying that when it comes to the effect on the land, trees are benevolent beings compared to humans. Tree wars?! That’s an amazing thought. Certainly the oak trees that colonized Europe after the ice age pushed out other species… But I don’t think I would go that far… a war means devastation; trees do not leave devastation overall, but make the planet livable. We… not so much.
As for good and evil, I use it in completely practical ways, sidestepping philosophers’ quibbles. I know with a great deal of clarity that that apple over there is good, and this apple over her is not. And there is *always* context.
As for the finer points of that context, I myself am inclined to assume that treachery or physical harm (for example) is a bad sort of thing, but given certain contexts, it is the least evil and may need to be chosen. And I think if surgeons were to remember this, the world would be safer for patients.
I am hoping that seeing us humans as we are, not as we wish or pretend to be, leads to the field Rumi spoke about. Perhaps?
November 13, 2011 at 9:39 am
Right on Antonio… no cosmetics will cover these new warts!!
November 13, 2011 at 10:00 am
Hey… Antonio in Rhode Island, leavergirl in Colorado, and Sandy in Siberia all on at the same time. Na zdravye!
November 13, 2011 at 10:03 am
Man… that damn spear thrower your gravatar is holding, don’t be coy now… tee-hee….
November 13, 2011 at 10:03 am
Vera – I lived in Denver for 22 years. OMG!! I will be in town, peddling my first novel in December (8-20); Veronika: The Siberian’s Tale. What a small world. If you are in Denver, I would love to have coffee.
November 13, 2011 at 10:04 am
Yikes! to #19
and, That’s just what I was going to say to #20!
November 13, 2011 at 10:05 am
Мы Будим (“We will” – its a better toast)
November 13, 2011 at 10:11 am
Nah, they ain’t spears. He’s collecting firewood for a banya;-)
November 13, 2011 at 10:30 am
You nailed it Leavergirl…i couldn’t have said it better…hell, i couldn’t have said it as well as you did! This is an important contribution to the building of whatever is to come that might help us recover some balance on this crazy Game Planet.
November 13, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Oh, certainly, self-knowledge and de-conditioned perception of others are strong steps along the path to the field beyond. But what I meant to suggest is that one of the possible futures that could succeed all the changes and stresses now occurring (post-oil, economic, population overshoot, hunger, labor, climate, political, etc) is a widespread and semi-permanent evolution of human character –based upon an awakening and mastery of already existing human potential to perceive self, other and situational context that parallels known abilities in other animals.
For instance, the way trained dogs can smell disease or see the impulse of intended movement in the arm of a man who is going for his gun, even before he has moved the arm.
Suppose under still greater stresses to come our perceptions become much more acute and accurate–how profoundly will that change the way society functions?
Some evidence from brain research shows a difference in the brain structures (synapses) of children raised in urban settings vs. those raised in more natural settings.
To the extent that we pattern our brains on natural systems (forest, plains, other mature and stable ecologies) vs. high-speed urban industrial systems, what will change in human relations to self, other, and the land?
What if the safety, sameness, regularity, and rigid stability of tribal culture is good for humans only when they are being reared from infancy to early youth? What if people are booted out of the tribal nest at age 15 and sent into a very different post-oil industrial city where they must learn how to fit into a complex, barely balanced, and exciting tangle of cross-cultural political and economic alliances and coalitions?
What if patterning our brains on natural systems enables us to develop and sustain more just, equitable and decently operating social ecologies as well?
Hobbes, an amateur philosopher, has been discredited by anthopology and archaeology in his sweeping generalization about life in pre-writing cultures or “state of nature” humanity being nasty, brutish and short. Plato’s Republic depends on a lie to function. Kant’s ethical imperatives clash mightily with Nietschze’s will to power. Nobody has the whole picture yet!
But humans can learn and learn and keep learning. It is too soon to despair and too late to pretend that we know it all.
So, the mass melee of mutual malice that kulturcritic propounds may be merely a mirage. An inverted reflection of the dying dirty city is a dangerous and untrustworthy mark to aim for. There are better places to go. There are known ways to get there. Knowledge and clear, clean perception are likely to be of more use in this quest than moody, testostery termagantry. In my opinion, of course.
November 13, 2011 at 6:36 pm
Interesting… I am torn as to what to say. I both agree and disagree. On one hand, I am totally convinced that it all hinges on human character. But at the same time, I don’t think evolution can be willed (who would train us?), and the hour is late anyway. I think the sensible way to proceed is to take the path Quinn talks about; the tribal way assumed nothing about human improvement. Its culture evolved around humans as they are, pock marks and all. That is the genius of it.
At the same time, I hope that we can evolve to something saner and wiser than today. If we survive, no doubt we will.
As for tribal rigidity… is rigidity a precondition to being tribal? Or is it just that the tribes known to us live(d) in more simple and set ways but neo-tribes need not? In fact, probably could not. The world that is coming will be nothing like the Earth that fostered the early tribespeople…
I am intrigued, but am not sure what you mean. ‘Splain?
November 13, 2011 at 9:56 pm
“Some evidence from brain research shows a difference in the brain structures (synapses) of children raised in urban settings vs. those raised in more natural settings… What if patterning our brains on natural systems enables us to develop and sustain more just, equitable and decently operating social ecologies as well?”
Look at Paul Shepard, Madness and Civilization, he will ‘splain’ it, Vera.
“the mass melee of mutual malice that kulturcritic propounds may be merely a mirage. An inverted reflection of the dying dirty city is a dangerous and untrustworthy mark to aim for.”
gkayb – Personally, I would recommend finding a less dangerous and more trustworthy place to live and explore your musings. You never know when someone is going to have one of those moody testosterone explosions that could inadvertently interfere with one’s “clear, clean perceptions.”
November 13, 2011 at 10:21 pm
“And if trees are difficult to rate according to their ethical properties, how much more the endlessly plastic human being? Neither the clean-edged razor of Good/Evil nor the jagged-tooth saw of Good-and-Evil can cut us out a complete picture of the fabric of life. Human traits and states are good, evil, neutral, coarsely mixed, or finely blended only in a field setting or context.”
It seems to me that many here are comfortable making ethical proclamations and assessing value (good or evil) with respect to the conduct of pre-literate humanity as well as non-human nature. The presumption that our modes of reasoning, deduction, expression, and hence, our evaluations — grounded in a logistic that emerged only after the rise of cities, and was refined over centuries by Aristotle and subsequent developments in western thought and science — to presume these analyses apply to non-human nature or to pre-civilized humanity, is patently absurd. Yet, it is par for the course in our relatively modern, frantic and pathological desire to claim mastery over the entire field of experience, to break and subdue nature, and lord power over other men. It is ethnocentric and anthropocentric in the extreme; it provides us with a feeling of superiority. It is the beast we have become, projected backwards and outwards, until the entire cosmos is complicit in our schemes. It is an excuse for false bravado while denying personal and cultural responsibility for action… after all, it is in the fundamental nature of (man/animal/nature/the universe).
November 14, 2011 at 12:18 am
“Where once humans were blamed for the imperfection of civilization, turning it upside down blames civilization for the imperfection of humans.”
By the way, Vera. I am not saying that humans were not responsible for civilization and its imperfections. They were, and it compounds our ruinous state with each passing millennium. The real question is WHY? Why did human beings, who survived (perhaps thrived) for hundreds of thousands of years, go down that path? Obviously agriculture (not horticulture) is implicated in the answer. But what change in consciousness must have accompanied embarking on such a different trajectory leading to our present circumstances. The answer, I suspect is more complicated, and perhaps less available for analysis than we would like. There may have been some lunacy involved, but evil intent, I think not.
November 14, 2011 at 8:21 am
“There may have been some lunacy involved, but evil intent, I think not.”
That’s a mouthful! This seems to cover the basic premise that I think was the foundation of the original post. However poor a champion Hare might be, the point is that chasing after evil and championing good, however we parse it does not take us anywhere but back where we started. Evil intent is a projection. From the inside it’s always justified righteousness, closer to “lunacy” than evil. That’s even before we get into the tangles surrounding intent itself!
Your icon carries straight sticks, intent is more of a boomerang, or at least a bent arrow….
November 14, 2011 at 10:31 am
So Sandy, you think that what gkayb means is to raise kids in nature before they deal with the urban complexity? Maybe so… not such a bad idea at all. I think the way Americans in particular are completely cut off from the land is pathetic, and surely has its negative influence on the state of the country.
And so do you, when the practicalities of the matter trump rhetoric.
That is the tree we both bark up, isn’t it. Why, why? The Holy Grail. Maybe if we know the why we can turn around… In my view of things, for what it’s worth, is that all modes of subsistence (ie getting food) are implicated in the beginning. Horticulture is not immune.
As for evil intent… do you think that the present predatory, crisis-ridden economic situation has some evil intent in it? I personally do. Why else do we want for these banksters to face justice for the harm they have done, are doing? And if so, then why exempt civ as a whole from the possibility of evil intent?
November 14, 2011 at 8:20 pm
“As for evil intent… do you think that the present predatory, crisis-ridden economic situation has some evil intent in it? I personally do. Why else do we want for these banksters to face justice for the harm they have done, are doing? And if so, then why exempt civ as a whole from the possibility of evil intent?”
Of course the present situation is riddled with evil intent. I exempt nothing the institutions or masters of empire do from having evil intent. Perhaps you misunderstood my meaning; I do not think/know/believe there was initially evil intent in some of the naive transitional moves that led eventually to city walls, standing armies and hierarchical institutions of management and control. But, I also believe that if we know what initially led us down this path, it will not make going back any more feasible. Perhaps forward, but it will be a different world in any event. Not what was before civ and not the civ we had.
November 14, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Then I did misunderstand. But if you see the evil intent now, why assume way back when, it was different? What makes you think the early days of transitioning to civ were naive?
No, true enough, and I am not looking for a path back. I am hoping for a metamorphosis.
gkayb, I keep thinking that perhaps you meant more than simply raising kids differently… though I think the point is well made. What about all the rest of us?
November 14, 2011 at 8:57 pm
And what would make your hoped for metamorphosis any more or less intentionally evil than the assumedly less self-conscious transformation that occurred so many millennia ago with the birth of agriculture (assuming Ag was the tipping point)?
November 14, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Well, that’s the crux, isn’t it? To do it well… in any case, I am not seeing intentional evil in those wishing this uncivilized civ would get done with it already…
In any case, you are not answering my question, you sly fox…
November 15, 2011 at 12:40 am
I believe the ‘first steps’ were unwittingly made; perhaps some lone younger scouts from the tribal encampment searching for a new location for the group to relocate to; perhaps they were out for an extended period and they stumbled upon a field of wild barely at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, and things just happened, and snowballed. Or perhaps some early shepherds were out grazing their sheep, and because of overgrazing of the land, there was a chemical released into the stubble of the grass that the sheep ingested, but because they have a four-part stomach the sheep did not get sick, but the sheep were consumed by the shepherds and the poison released into the meat of the sheep affected the shepherds brain chemistry, and voila.
Anyway, I am just playing fantasy games here. But, I am sure, the Koch brothers, or Lou Blankfein would judge you desire to put an end to this civilization as EVIL, pure and simple, even intentionally. Although, I personally would applaud it.
November 15, 2011 at 9:43 am
Well, personal experience tells me that the metamorphosis you speak of seems the most worthy goal of going through these times. Applies of course on both collective and individual levels. Lately I feel sort of like a human science experiment, trying to turn the ‘hard ship’ into eventual breakthrough. It does mature ya’, if you let it, depending what one goes through and how you ride it, how much you can steer the ship and such. The fact that i am convinced that “we have to do better on a fundamental level, and we can” is a crucial inspiration. I really think the good news in all this insanity and breakdown is that it’s showing people what a Trance everyone is in, and that it’s not the only way, or even one of the “best” (most accurate) ways, to see and co-create the Kosmos. What’s more important than this?
November 16, 2011 at 11:09 am
Wilderness/natural systems exposure for children is only one part of the technology of changing human consciousness. Very many techniques exist, a large proportion of them encoded in the case-hardened arils of religions and other wisdom traditions.
But what I was trying to say is that it is too early to rule out the possibility that a combination of high stresses could trigger in human beings either:
1) an evolutionary quantum leap to another level of interpersonal and intrapersonal awareness, i.e. what we now view as extrasensory perceptions and capabilities;
2) the activation of existing abilities in the human brain that permit high-speed, accurate perceptions of real circumstances, and a corresponding ability to make group survival decisions not mediated by personal benefit (happens in war and natural disasters); or
3) an unpredictable opening of other latent abilities that we can no more imagine than a cave-blind fish can imagine being an eagle flying and seeing in sunlight–i.e., development of new organs of perception that will inform and re-form human relations.
What if we developed, or regained the capacity for a non-lethal submission signal that many animals have and which we lack, allowing us to indulge in the sweet, self-pleasing gratifications of rage and murder?
At present, having no innate hormonal trigger to shut down the excessive arousal of the fight or flight hormones when dominance is established short of death, we are loose cannons on Earth’s deck. Especially males. Females often have a tend-and-befriend oxytocin-mediated response to stress that a great many males lack.
But suppose a new reflex action, mediated by a new hormone–call it, say, Paxxy, for a pan-gender good feeling that results when a dominance threat is successfully resolved without bloodshed and the tribal unity is preserved–somewhat like the laughter response to a resolved threat, but which binds the tribe in a fellowship-feeling.
Even killer males create “bands of brothers” under stress that is probably oxytocin-based and is said to be sweeter than the love of women. That is probably because what most men call love is merely sex-feeling, or testosterone-mediated desire coupled with vasopressin-mediated desire to control, isolate, and “possess” the breeding female(s).
Oxytocin-bonding is less facile of creation between women and men, requiring time and many exchanges of subtle signals that have only recently been studied and documented. But I suppose you are all aware that military forces are researching oxytocin sprays and perfumes to use in interrogation and spy scenarios to make women trust the men who wish to use and abuse them.
As to my moving somewhere that no testosterone-poisoned murderer can get at me, why I would have to move to another star system. There is–at present–no such place on earth. I shall have to outlive this social construct and wait for a more civilized one to come along.
Unless, as I said above, more people, especially males, avail themselves of the existing technologies for freeing oneself from the slavery and compulsion of hormonal states. Doing good without receiving credit and praise, doing good for others even when it seems hopeless–these are not necessarily exclusively female traits. Men can learn to perform such deeds even though it feels unnatural and stupid. By and large, men had much rather be able to dominate and order and command than serve. What was Milton’s line for Satan? Better to command in Hell than serve in Heaven?
But service does more than Milton can to modify the miffs of man.
November 16, 2011 at 7:12 pm
I am sorry, GKAYB lost my interest when he opened with the TECHNOLOGY of wilderness and natural systems. Forgive me but I cannot stop laughing at that comment. sandy
November 16, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Intriguing and smart-seeming comment, gkayb. i think your #2 is the main thing we can come closest to counting on happening in sufficient numbers early enough on. At least it seems clearly plausible, and had better be so or we can forget about much of a future! Good thoughts. 1 and 3 i see as future possibilties, but not as soon or as sudden or as widespread as many New Agers seem more confident of and put hope in, Couple questions. Could you clarify what you mean by the “non-lethal submission signal; how much joke vs sincere suggestion? I like the sound of that “Paxxy” stuff…where would it come from though? You mean it finally gets discovered due to previous latency, or we actually evolve a new hormone en masse?
November 16, 2011 at 11:14 pm
Sandy, since gkayb didn’t sound to me like she or he was referring to the “technology of wilderness and natural systems”, and seems to be pretty clearly talking about youth being exposed to nature as a valid (psycho-)”technology”, which i believe has been well-established, ya got methinking that from some of your reactions to comments, you simply don’t seem to read ones which strike you the wrong way carefully enough to get the actual meaning intended or give benefit of doubt, and as a result end up taking the writer out of context and perhaps in so doing dismiss them unfairly. I wonder if you’ve ever gotten this feedback before? And i wonder if you are open to constructive criticism such as this which seems to me would make you a much more credible critic. Which i’d like to see for you. And after all, it is for some a relatively easy habit to change, mainly just paying more attention vs changing your views or feeling like your impressive knowledge is under fire or else you are. I have to work on that all the time, but it gets better, eh?
November 16, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Jay D – I do appreciate your concern and your constructive feedback. Point taken. However, I have serious misgivings with any reference to “technology” or “systems” as a solution to our current situation; and it is especially amusing to hear someone describe “wilderness” as part of a “technology” for transforming consciousness. I’m also not real keen on discussions of “evolutionary quantum leaps” or other Krishnamurti-esque suggestions. Fantasizing is what got us into this mess in the first place, let’s not continue deluding ourselves, and confounding the crises. And it does seem to me that gkayb relies extensively on the language and use of technology, as when he talks about availing ourselves of technology to reduce our testosterone levels. Brave New World… here we come. Talk about enslavement. just my opinion. BTW
November 16, 2011 at 11:46 pm
JD – p.s. I see my role as a critic to question people’s presuppositions, and my method is direct, not often circuitous or even subtle. I prefer the getting-in-your-face style of the Wall Street occupiers.
November 17, 2011 at 10:50 am
Sandy, that’s pretty much how i read your orientation, so thank you for verifying that and being open to my suggestion. i’d just re-iterate that even your approach would seem to be even better served by a closer read of stuff you’re about to shoot down with words. Kind of like aiming at a moving target, it really takes a more intense focus than an apparently casual style comes across (thinking of “crack-shots” in movies such as spaghetti westerns); pretty cool, but..? IMO, O.C.. E.g., you do seem to be a bit closer to gkayb’s apparent meaning, yet understandably can’t stand the association of technology with wilderness. I hear that, but again, it’s not wilderness that is the technology in question as i read it (feel free to help out here, gkayb), but the process of exposure to a radically different situation. Which helps re-wire the brain, etc., and as such is valid as a “psychotechnology”.
As for the “Krisnamurti-esque suggestions” you don’t like, well, it’s been a long time since i studied his stuff, but it was influential to me at a formative stage, so i’m not with ya there (not that he was perfect). Maybe Antonio can shed more light here.
November 17, 2011 at 11:58 am
Writing in a decidedly “esque” manner, my view is that what Krishnamurti and Bohm were talking about was not some technique for creating a new age of any stripe. It’s a way of interrogating our sense of reality in ways that take power away from unexamined conditioning and allow us to build up our strength. Any “quantum effects,” as I see them, would be within the people involved not the world at large.
What’s so refreshing is that none of it is a cult of personality and it does not profit anyone, hence their obscurity, I would guess.
Whether these practices will stand anyone well when the big bad testosterone guy comes after us, I don’t know. But I would guess that it couldn’t be worse than just accepting the reactions our present unexamined conditioning would have us take.
November 17, 2011 at 1:26 pm
On the hypothetical Paxxy hormone, I was suggesting that it might evolve over time, not arise from latency. I suspect that the change-driven change in human brain size broke the instinctual (i.e. hormonally reinforced) capacity to cool off when an opponent signals acknowlegement of defeat. The brakes on our brains got burnt out when we became such smart-alecks!
Or maybe it was already broken before that point in evolution. As Vera points out even bonobos have a capacity for hunt/kill of monkeys. I do not know if any simians have an automatic, wired-in, hostility step-down response to a submission signal such as is found in dogs/puppies and other four-leggeds. Clearly, we as homo sapiens lack it.
Any latency of such an instinct might be worth researching. But human research of that sort would be almost impossible to design, fund and test, except perhaps by personal stories elicited from survivors of war and rape–asking them what really works to defuse hostile and harmful actions.
Or compiling the stories of living murderers to comb out what behavioral signals are successful in derailing them and what their cognitive/emotional states are in the act of killing.
As you say, it is not something to count on in the immediate future. I only mention the possibility that rapid and unpredictable change could support the evolutionary survival of humans who learn not to kill their own kin–and who define kin as other humans.
November 17, 2011 at 2:28 pm
On tribal rigidity, perhaps that is not the right word. I meant by it to refer to the phenomenon of “small-town” limitations and expectations that tend to arise and harden so that people fear becoming stultified and dismissed by their own people. Tall poppy syndrome. Prophets are never known in their own country; people desperate to escape small-town scorn or racism or hate of homosexual orientation. Many other examples come to mind, yes?
This ‘smallness’ or rigidity or homogeneity is part and parcel of the safety of belonging to the tribal group. It is probably necessary to the growing mind. But it is also like the eggshell or seed case that must be softened, broken and discarded for growth to full human stature.
Affinities with other groups, more tolerance of differences, flexibility and permeability of ‘belongingness’ are needed to allow us as humans to escape our own self-righteousness and develop a mutually beneficial social ecology. Those who learn best how to detach from their conditioning and hormonal and experiential imprints are the ones who will teach us.
People living in groups who have a purpose of giving service to others often find that they are more quickly able to shuck off their conditioned responses.
First, we take the focus off ourselves and put the light of our attention on the needs of the ones we are serving. Second, because imitation of behavior is a natural way for us to learn, those who model successful service give us a mark to aim for. It is the same as when a theatre group or athletic group all combine in enhancing one another’s abilities. Outer focus, inner work, allows us to rub off the sharp edges of our needy deficits and projections so that we become –wait for it– well-rounded individuals.
And mature, well-rounded individuals tend to make the best friends. Societies composed of such persons can function smoothly, efficiently and effectively. Examples in the USA of this type of society include pre-schism Quakers, the Shakers, and the Moravians.
Also, oppressed groups have used an over-arching pan-group inclusivity to counteract hegemonic cultural dominance constraints on their freedom.
Irish people who might have fought like wildcats at home with their next-county neighbors supported them with access to jobs, housing, etc. when they were both lost in the wilds of London or New York. Consider how Black and Jewish ghettos, Chinese, East Indian, and other Asian cultures have cohered for mutual support. The widespread success of crime syndicates is founded on in-group loyalty behaviors.
These internal societies are not proof against all pressures, but what society is? My point is that they have either rigidities of ritual/form/physiology or of shared experience that encapsulate and isolate their members for good and ill. Full humanity requires us to be able to extend, amend, and sometimes transcend our group identities. Again, in my opinion.
What does Quinn say that bears on this point?
November 20, 2011 at 11:09 am
Well, ya know… pivo and testosterone is a volatile combination!
“interrogating our sense of reality in ways that take power away from unexamined conditioning”
Seems to me that Quinn with his maieutic approach was doing the same sort of thing, just in the old socratic way. More paths, more people are able to walk them…
Gkayb: “I do not know if any simians have an automatic, wired-in, hostility step-down response to a submission signal such as is found in dogs/puppies and other four-leggeds. Clearly, we as homo sapiens lack it.”
There are some impressive stories from people using NVC against an enraged, violent person. I have a feeling that we are culturally inclined to stoke conflict rather than the other way around… but that is only as old as civ, I figure. Well, I speculate. Civ is built on such patterns of human behavior.
Yes, the tall poppy syndrome is what people fear regarding tribalism. How to deal? I myself long for more clannishness in my life, since as an immigrant to America I lost most of the access to my own extended family and culture. There’s got to be a balance we have lost. I detest anonymous urban cosmopolitanism that has been forced upon most of the world. I don’t think Quinn really addresses this — anyone remember different? — but then his “new tribalism” assumes being subsumed by this culture… and there I part company with him. The Shakers and others you mention, along with the Amish parted with the culture, to a significant extent.
My own thinking is to give up on the old tribal/clan idea that we must all share an enforced ideology, and use that for unity. That seems to be the path taken not only by the old clans, but also 20th century revolutionaries… and ill did it serve their cause.
We do need in-group loyalty, right? Just not based on fricking ideas, then bashing everyone who believes different…
November 20, 2011 at 11:15 am
“I only mention the possibility that rapid and unpredictable change could support the evolutionary survival of humans who learn not to kill their own kin–and who define kin as other humans.”
Food for thought. Although, I think that many animals kill over mates and territory. Including our relatives. I am not looking forward to humanity that has forsaken violence altogether… it seems to me to go against biology. I am looking forward to humanity forsaking domination. Doable? It’s been done.
November 20, 2011 at 11:45 am
Sandy, I share your misgivings about referring to “technology” when we really mean… well, something other, something more organic. Like the moniker Open Space Technology. Ugh. People get stuck… we have used machine-mimicking idioms for so long…
November 20, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Actually… Quinn does address the tribal danger in a way. He promotes the meme that “there is no one Right Way to live.” In other words, if a tribe knows how to live with dissidence, regarding neighbors or among one’s own, then there is no need to cut down the tall poppy, nah?
November 23, 2011 at 11:55 am
Gkayb, yes, you provide a lot of food for thought and key concepts. This is basically my approach, as i understand you, but you say stuff i’d have to probe more if i were talking with you (harder in such loosely inter-connected writing), to see how deep this understanding really goes for you. Where are you on your actual journey with it?
About the use of the offensive “T”-word…i don’t choose it either in that context, but it’s clearly counter-productive to discussion to “laugh” at each other’s non-humorous uses, seems to me, which clearly comes across to most as outright scorn…part of what we shed if we’re serious about more unity AND diversity.. Because.without that applied respect for differences as a core value, it’s all just “in theory”, and not a very useful one at that, seems to me. Otherwise, well, what’s a realistic scenario of how we can have it both ways in actual practice?
November 23, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Go get a life
December 2, 2011 at 11:09 am
The 10th edition Merriam Webster definition of technology may come as a surprise to some people who read this blog. I recommend looking it up and contemplating it before rejecting my usage of the word. By paying particular attention to the Greek root of the word, you will better understand my intended usage in reference to natural and cultural systems.
Jay D, I do not understand either of your questions and am at a loss how to answer them. I do appreciate your evident wish to communicate in a way that increases understanding.
December 2, 2011 at 11:35 am
My experience of other cultures is not as wide as yours, but even so, I am not sure that “anonymous urban cosmopolitanism” is the norm even in big cities. My understanding is that urban centers have a neighborhood structure that either supports, opposes, or is neutral towards coherent cultural structures–honeycombs of space clashing, mashing, or meshing with honeycombs of history.
I think, so far as I have worked it out, that in-group mutual trust is of more primary importance than in-group loyalty. Loyalty as a mental construct has connotations (for me) of the political and of the dominance elements of human behavior. Loyalty is to causes, ideas and sovereigns. Trust is held between individuals.
December 2, 2011 at 7:54 pm
gkayb: Well, people who like cities talk about them differently than those who don’t. I happen not to like them, and the sort of relationships that exist among neighbors there are not something I find congenial. Even though I grew up in a European city that was less anonymous than what I have experienced in America.
When Mumford talks about the old-fashioned town quarter, it sounds more like living in a village immediately connected with other villages. But those sort of neighborhoods no longer exist in most places.
Yes, loyalty comes from “lex” and has authoritarian as well as medieval mutual-obligation connotations. In one sense, it means being faithful, true… can there be trust among people without people being true? I guess definitions mean less to me than the overall connected meaning.
Oops, moving the rest to Doomer no more.