An acquaintance asked me (in relation to the need to harness human
nature by making probity an asset in our natural attempt to pursue our
own interest),
'where does human nature come from'.
Oh, my goodness, what an immense vista this question opens. Although I
doubt anyone can answer the question with certainty, here is the best I
can do after a lifetime of thought on the matter:
I'm 84 years old. Questions of right and wrong, good and bad, and so
forth, have dominated my mind throughout my life. I can remember
walking to and from grade school with my best friend, discussing these
topics. I have no way of knowing whether I'm more susceptible to such
thoughts than others. All I know is that they've always been important
to me.
If one wants to consider such matters, our society gives us a wealth of
material to ponder. The difficulty is that the field is so vast, and
the inter-dependencies so complex, that selecting and analyzing
circumstances that depict our nature, even examples we can call 'good'
or 'bad' is challenging.
As I've tried to think about the world in which I've lived, the goal of
my examination has been to consider our nature and ways to harness it.
Over time, I've been forced to hone and whittle my ideas, seeking a
basic concept that might be helpful. If I've found one, it is that we
must understand our nature before we can develop institutions that
capitalize on our strengths and control our weaknesses.
In thinking about the topic of good and evil, which is a part of our
nature, I found something that was, to me, startling. I found there's a
sensible reason why the strong take advantage of the weak (a
circumstance I characterize as 'bad'). To me, the idea is very
powerful. It may be the first step in understanding why civilization
developed as it did. You may consider this idea 'common knowledge', and
it may be so, but, to me, it was a revelation. I will describe it from
the perspective of 'goodness'.
We all have an idea of goodness, but there is no objective measure of
good. Each of us measures goodness in our own way. You may think
something is good while someone else may think the same thing is bad. I
started out believing people are naturally good, but drifted to a more
neutral notion as I grew older. Here's why:
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, perhaps, 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. That banding together was the
start of what we call 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 finding a
solution, using their strength to assert 'ownership' to protect as much
of what was 'theirs' as they could.
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 t. Civilization sprung from the need of the weak to
curtail the power of the strong.
If this is a reasonable estimate of the origin of civilization, several things stand out:
- The driving force for civilization
(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.
- 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.
- 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'.
- 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.
- When
discussing these relationships, we 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 of the
weak must surely have been to limit the power of the stronger members of
the group, not to penalize them but to ensure the survival of the
weaker members.
- The evolution of
the power of the stronger members has been characterized by increasing
sophistication in the way leaders (i.e., the strongest) exercised their
power, as described in a passage in "The Story of Civilization", by Will
Durant: "Slowly
the increasing complexity of tools and trades subjected the unskilled
or weak to the skilled or strong; every invention was a new weapon in
the hands of the strong, and further strengthened them in their mastery
and use of the weak."
- The
civilizing influence of the weak in countering the excesses of the
strong is always reactive. The weak must identify the strong (and the effects of their strength) before they can band together to limit the power of the stronger members of society.
Over time, as the level of sophistication increased, the strong issued
edicts and established rites that provided a color of right for their
actions. In modern times, in a notable application of the art of
sophistry, they developed political institutions that appear to empower the weak while in fact increasing the mastery of the strong.
One conclusion we can draw from this is that we must question the
institutions put in place by our leaders. They are the people most
inclined to enslave us.
~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~
One of the most powerful tools the strong use to influence the weak is our
'will-to-believe'.
The significance of the will-to-believe is not readily apparent, yet it
ranks close to the will-to-survive in its influence on our lives. The
will-to-believe is not a doctrine, it is a human trait. It is a part of
what we are. Since we can't know everything, we believe what we are
told about matters beyond our ken. Current instances abound, but more
remote examples illustrate the force of this trait with greater clarity,
thus:
- If we are that told our emperor descends from the sun god, we believe it.
- If we are told to dance in a certain way to please the rain god, we dance.
- If
we are told our king rules by divine right, we accept that doctrine.
Not all of us, perhaps, but enough of us that the force of our combined
belief is palpable.
Why do we believe these things? We don't believe them because they are self-evident,
we believe them because they are not.
We believe such things because they are given to us as explanations for
some of the inexplicable phenomena that surround us. We do not
understand the phenomena ourselves, but we are willing to assume others
more gifted than ourselves do understand matters that baffle us. We
accept their assertions, in part, because we haven't the knowledge to
refute them.
You may not, in 2013, believe in an emperors' divinity, or the power of
the rain dance, or the divine right of kings. But you do know that such
ideas had a profound influence when they were in vogue. To understand
why they were so influential, you must imagine yourself living when
these ideas were accepted dogma.
If you had lived in the American Southwest 600 years ago, would you have
danced for the rain god? Were you a Japanese citizen in 900 A.D.,
would you have worshiped your emperor? Were you a Parisian in the 14th
century, would you have endorsed the divine right of kings? In each
case, almost certainly so.
More than dance or worship or endorse,
you would have believed.
You would have 'known' the customs and beliefs of your time were right
and proper. If your dance failed to bring forth rain, you would have
been sure, not that your belief was wrong, but that you and your people
had failed to please the rain god.
The strength of a belief is not dependent upon the soundness of the
precept but on the intensity of the will-to-believe. While one may
quibble with the label 'a will-to-believe', I've been unable to find a
better term to explain the driving force behind Sinn Fein, Nazis, witch
hunters, Kamikaze pilots, followers of the Reverend Jones, Palestinians,
and those imbued with religious fervor.
The will-to-believe is not only powerful, it is strange. It tends to be
accompanied by an absolute certainty that which is believed is also
true. We start exercising our will-to-believe to fill the gap formed by
our lack of knowledge, and
then leap directly from ignorance to absolute certainty.
It is even stranger that this progression from lack of knowledge
continues on through absolute certainty to destructiveness. For it
would be hard to imagine greater destructive force than that wielded by
Sinn Feiners, Nazis, witch hunters, Kamikaze pilots, Reverend Jones,
Palestinians, and those permeated with religious fervor. The result of
their terrible certainty is havoc and death; the destruction of
themselves and the destruction of others. In fact, the most destructive
words in any language are:
I BELIEVE!!!
In modern society, this trait inhibits our ability to question our
leaders. In the United States, we want to believe we live under
government "of the people, by the people, for the people". We've been
told we have the greatest government on earth for so long, in so many
ways, by so many people, that we want to believe it. We do not want to
examine the institutions that control our government.
In America, political parties control the choice of candidates the
people may vote for in our so-called 'free elections'. When the people
vote for candidates chosen by political parties, control of the
government is vested, not in the voters, but in the parties that chose
the candidates.
A party-based political system is the antithesis of democracy. It
expresses our status as subjects of those who defined our options -
those who control the political parties. As long as political parties
select the candidates for public office, the people are helpless because
'those who control the options control the outcome'.
The ability to choose from options provided by political parties does
not give us control of our government, but, because we have a
will-to-believe we have the best government on earth, we blind ourselves
to our own subjugation.
~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~
On a personal rather than a society-wide level, insofar as the concept
of natural human goodness is concerned, the concepts of good and bad
can't exist for a single individual. They can only exist in terms of
others. We exist in a constant and ever-changing mixture of good and
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 depends on the effect they have on others.
A Japanese friend once told me, "Evil heart is something we learn after
we are born", and I agree. Good heart is, too. 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.
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). But we soon realize good and bad are much more complex than
that. 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 also describes human nature. It is certainly not profound.
~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~
The significant revelation of this line of thought is that it is natural
for the most powerful members of society to put their own interest
above the interests of others. The tendency of the strong to dominate
the weak is as natural a part of the human as breathing. We are unwise
to expect leaders to act differently. Failure to understand that simple
precept leaves us ill-equipped to improve society.
Since leaders are an important part of society, we must devise a means
of selecting leaders that benefits all of us. The institutions we use
to select our leaders must be designed to recognize and protect us from
the natural imperfections of the human spirit. Hence, we must recognize
our own weaknesses and harness them. In other words, our political
institutions must be designed to temper our 'bad' traits with our 'good'
ones.
A well-designed political institution will recognize that some people
are better advocates of the public interest than others. It will be
designed, not to divide the public into blocs but to find the best
advocates of the common interest and raise them to leadership positions
as the people's representatives. To meet that challenge, given the
range of public issues and the way each individual's interest in
political matters varies over time, an effective electoral process must
examine the entire electorate during each election cycle, seeking the
people's best advocates. It must let every voter influence the outcome
of each election to the best of their desire and ability, and it must
ensure that those selected as representatives are disposed to serve the
public interest.
The political process must encourage the absorption of diverse
interests, reducing them to their essential element: their effect on
the entire community. It should have no platforms, no ideology. The
only question is, which members of the community are the most attuned to
the needs of society and have the qualities required to advocate the
common good.
Such an institution can best be developed by atomizing the electorate
into thousands, or, in larger communities, millions of randomly chosen
very small groups. Each group advances the best advocate of the group's
interests who are then randomly assigned to very small groups made up
of the selectees from other groups. The process continues until a
desired number of public officials are chosen. Each tiny group provides
a slight bias toward the common interest. As the levels advance, the
cumulative effect of this small bias overwhelms special interests
seeking their private gain. It leads, inexorably, to the selection of
representatives who advocate the interests of the entire community.
You will understand that this is just a start at laying the groundwork
for formulating an alternative to the system we currently endure. We
can only hope to attain such a political structure when the thoughtful
people among us add their insights to harness our nature for the benefit
of all.
Fred Gohlke
04/03/13
