I'm posting the following material on this board on the counsel of gotmilk (nee Doug A K). He and I exchanged a few ideas which he felt would be best discussed in a public forum. I agree with Doug's view and appreciate his suggestion that this board might welcome such a discussion.
What follows is intended as a lead-in to developing a concept for improving the way humans govern themselves. That may sound arrogant, but I don't believe any segment of our society has a monopoly on ideas. Improvement may benefit our posterity more than ourselves but it's still an effort we should make.
We (humans) have stumbled from one form of servitude to another, throughout the history of civilization. It's time we tried to understand why we keep falling into the same traps, and use the knowledge to formulate a better structure than currently exists.
To start the process, I'm going to take a look at the issue of "goodness". Since childhood, I've believed humans were "naturally good"; that "goodness" was innate in the human makeup. With the passage of time, I've come to believe that view was incorrect.
Here's one way to look at the issue of goodness ...
Self-preservation is the first law of nature. Before humans reached the cave-man state they did what they had to do to survive. They existed like other animals. They killed for food and they killed those who threatened them. For them, killing was not a moral issue it was a matter of survival.
It is likely that these beings existed in herds, that they hunted and sheltered together, instinctively. If so, they might have lived like what we refer to as cave-men. However, those beings did not become "human" until they began to change their animalistic behavior. The ability to make such a change defines what we call humans.
Assuming cave-men lived in groups, it is reasonable to imagine that the most effective survivors of the group were the strongest members. We can also imagine that the strongest could and did take from the weakest. It is equally likely that the weaker took whatever they could from the stronger, even if it was only "leavings", to satisfy their needs.
But, need is relative. It depends on many factors. In the case of cave-men, it depended on the availability of food, an individual's size and/or appetite, the need to provide for mates and offspring, need to store reserves, and many other factors. It is not hard to imagine that, however primeval, different members of the group had different needs.
When these beings started to change their animalistic behavior, when they began to "think", there is a high likelihood that their thoughts related to their needs. At some point, those thoughts expanded to include opinions or judgments about the needs of other individuals in the group. The concepts of "good" and "bad" must have developed in this way.
At some point in the existence of cave-men, the weaker members of the community recognized that, since they did not have the strength to take from the stronger members by themselves, they needed the help of others if they were to survive. It would not have been difficult for the weaker members to recognize other members of the group who also suffered by their weakness. In some way, these weaker members banded together to limit the domination of the stronger. This is the beginning of "civilization".
What is not stated, but must be recognized, is that the stronger members were members of the same group. They did not stand idly by and allow the weaker members to take from them. They participated in the formation of a solution. They used their strength to protect as much of what was "theirs" as they could. It is here that we have the foundation of the concept of "ownership", and, by extension, the concept of "greed". Ownership was claimed by the strong and the attribution of greed was laid by the weak. This is the most important, but least acknowledged, aspect of the relationships which led to the origin and structure of civilization.
If this is a reasonable estimate of the origin of civilization, several things stand out:
1) Morality, or the concept of "good and bad", can not exist in
the absence of intelligent thought. The squirrel, when he
stores nuts for the winter, does not ask himself if he'd be
wrong to store one more. If he finds another and feels the
need for it, he takes it. For animals, there is no issue of
good or bad, and the concept of "greed" does not exist. A
moral sense is a mark of intelligence.
2) The driving force for the organization of society is the need
to restrain the strongest members of the group. If the weaker
members of the group do not feel threatened by the stronger,
there is no need to organize.
3) The threat the weaker members of the original society felt had
to result from deprivation of the resources needed for
existence (probably food). If the stronger were perceived as
taking more than they "needed" while the weaker suffered, that
condition must have been characterized as "bad".
4) The mechanism society uses to restrict bad behavior is force.
By definition, a weaker member can not control a stronger one.
But, several weaker members, in unison, have enough power to
control even the strongest. In this sense, civilization is a
banding together of the members of a group to gain the
strength needed to control members exhibiting "bad" behavior.
5) When discussing these relationships, we tend to use
sophisticated terms to differentiate forms of undesirable
behavior. Thus, we call the taking of more than one needs
"greed". This tempts us to say civilization developed to
limit greed. However, the initial banding together mentioned
above must surely have been to ensure the survival of the
weaker members of the group, not to penalize the stronger.
6) The role of civilization as a means of controlling excessive
strength or power evolved over time. The evolution was
characterized by increasing sophistication in the
manifestations of power and its control.
Looked at this way, the concepts of good and bad can not exist for a single individual. They can only exist in terms of others. I was wrong to believe that humans are naturally good. At birth, they are neither. It's true some children are born with what is called a "bad" nature, but that is a judgment rendered by others. The infant, itself, has no concept of "good" or "bad".
For each of us, the idea of good and bad grows as we develop. Initially, we see those who gratify our wishes as good and those who deny us what we want as bad. But we soon realize good and bad are much more complex than that. We exist in a constant and ever-changing mixture of good and bad, starting with our parents who supply our needs (good) and control us (bad). The choices we make flow from our understanding of that mixture, influenced by our individual characteristics. The less powerful among us may consider actions good that are abhorrent to the more powerful, but they are neither good nor bad unless they affect others and their goodness or badness depend on the effect they have on others.
That, it seems to me, is the essence of good and bad. It is also a fairly obvious statement of the human condition. It is certainly not profound.
The point is, though, that what we call greed is as natural a part of the human as breathing. It may be natural, but, unfettered, it produces the evils that beset us. (I use "greed" as shorthand for an entire set of objectionable traits like the lust for power, and so forth).
As I suggested above, the evolution of human society has been marked by increasing sophistication in the way the "greedy", whether kings, or tsars, or emperors, or presidents, or senators, or representatives, or CEOs of corporations have exercised their power to subjugate and control the weaker or less aggressive of us. The pervasiveness of the tools they use has multiplied at an alarming rate in the past 100 years.
The only conclusion we can draw is that we can not trust our leaders. They are the people most inclined to enslave us.
If we are to combat this phenomenon ... and we must ... we have to understand that what those we condemn do is nothing more or less than we might do ourselves if our personal circumstances were different. Hence, we must recognize our own weaknesses and find a way to harness them (Oh, yes, we can).
You will understand that this is just a start at laying the groundwork for formulating an alternative to what we have.
Fred |
