tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67738767135916543582024-03-13T10:34:17.095-07:00Earth Justice My Mission:
To improve our understanding of human nature in a way that helps to further human flourishing.
My Vision:
A world where human flourishing harmonizes with Earth's Life Systems
earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.comBlogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-36711984174649894562022-04-01T17:21:00.000-07:002022-04-01T17:21:16.908-07:00Lies: The Oldest Weapon of Mass Destruction<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">On February 24, 2022 the Russian army, under the orders of Vladimir Putin, invaded Ukraine in the absence of any obvious provocation. This “special military operation” that Putin insists on calling it, has led to the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians, destroyed entire cities and caused more than four million refugees to flee to other countries. So far this atrocity has not diminished Putin’s popularity inside Russia, and that is for one basic reason: tyrants like Putin, stay in power through their ability to spread lies. If the Russian people had access to an independent press and were made aware of the brutality of the Russian invasion they would be more likely to reject Putin. But by shutting down the independent media Putin has created a truly “captive” audience that now sees nothing but his lies. The very phrase “special military operation” is a deception, evidenced by the harsh fifteen year prison sentence that awaits anyone in Russia who dares call it a “war”. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-bcf3542e-7fff-4d6d-331e-444ae47b2fba"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Putin’s reason for waging a “war” against Ukraine is based on the lie that The Soviet Union was once a mighty Empire. “Make Russia Great Again!” Putin’s war actually started in 2014 when he invaded Crimea and helped manufacture a Russian separatist movement in the Donbas. Part of this “war” also involved massive flows of misinformation from Russian trolls and hackers to the West, starting in Ukraine, and then the rest of Europe. This led to the amplification of extremist right wing groups all over Europe, to Brexit, and in America, to Trump’s election. Whether or not Putin’s help actually got Trump elected, it is indisputable that the Trump campaign learned a lot from Russian disinformation tactics. They eagerly incorporated the same conspiracy theories and techniques for spreading lies that had been spearheaded by the Russians. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an important moment in history that needs to be heeded. I’m a philosopher and it’s my job to point out to you why the two worst leaders in recent world history have come to power and wreaked death and destruction because of their lies and their lying. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Generally in a democracy, a good leader will represent the majority of the people, but sometimes we get opportunistic leaders who go out of their way to represent not the majority, but instead a specific minority, a minority who feel the most aggrieved, the greatest indignation, over losing their former status and influence. The reason this kind of leader reaches out to such a minority group, is because the kind of people who nurse their grievances are easy prey. People who are consumed with hatred and resentment will be happy to believe lies that support their resentments. And, It’s easy enough to produce these lies on demand, because to tell people what they want to hear is always easier than telling them the truth. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Donald Trump campaigned and governed on a platform of lies, from the Birtherism of the Tea Party, to his sharing conspiracy theories about global warming and the covid pandemic, to his use of lies about election fraud to try to overturn the 2020 election.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> On January sixth 2021 the entire world witnessed Trump’s sustained use of “election fraud” lies to spearhead the first violent attempt to overturn a legitimate election in U.S. history. Trump did not have a total monopoly on the U.S. media, but he did have a captive audience that was receptive to his lies, and that is what made January sixth possible.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Allowing politicians to use lies as weapons to gain tyrannical power is a very bad idea. Fortunately, the weaponization of lies can still be stopped if we do something about it now. Putin is able to make very effective use of lies only because he has monopoly power in Russia. By eliminating a free press, Putin easily magnifies the power of his lies.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">America is now in a crisis, held hostage by Trump’s “stolen election” lies. As long as one of the main political parties is supporting Trump’s leadership, they are supporting his corrupt modus operandi - the weaponization of lies. And this directly threatens American democracy by driving extreme polarization and by destroying the people’s trust in a peaceful transfer of power. Lies pave the way for totalitarianism. This is obvious in the case of Putin. Unfortunately, it is less obvious with U.S. politics, because the erosion of democracy seems to be happening in slow motion. Make no mistake, we will see U.S. democracy fail if we don’t stop the proliferation and use of this weapon of mass destruction now.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-67799418958040897322021-11-24T11:54:00.004-08:002021-12-31T11:32:40.849-08:00A Warning for Canadians<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last January sixth in Washington DC a political earthquake shook the entire world. That day, a violent insurrection, stoked by losing Presidential candidate Trump brought together white nationalist militias, QAnon conspiracy theorists and lots of “just regular folks”, all turbo-charged by Trump’s lies about a stolen election. People were killed, many police were injured while defending the Capital, and the seat of American government was attacked and defiled, delaying, but thankfully, not stopping the Congress from approving the new president. What happened on January 6 of this year was that, for the first time in history, America’s tradition of the peaceful transfer of power was breached. The very pillars of American democracy were attacked and damaged by what was done that day. Among the lasting damage is the fact that there is now a widespread and growing mistrust of the electoral process in the United States.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-df9e7c6a-7fff-af22-a9f5-c2b7073dd46d"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A country can reach a tipping point when enough people, say, 25% change their minds and their behavior concerning something socially significant. If just 25% of Americans support violent political solutions, for whatever reason, and therefore reject democracy, it could be enough to flip the U.S. into an autocracy. If enough people believe Trump’s lies about the election being “rigged”, the trust that candidates win or lose fairly, or even that they ought to win fairly, dissolves into thin air. This means that no matter who wins the next Presidential election the results will be disputed and there’s a good chance of violence and chaos in the streets of America in 2024. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we in Canada want to ensure that this road to violence is not replicated here we need to better understand what is driving this phenomenon. One of the most important reasons that this is happening is former President Trump and his dissemination of Conspiracy theories. Recall that just before Trump ran for President he helped popularize “Birtherism” a racist conspiracy theory that claims that former President Obama was born in Kenya, and is thus not a legitimate President. During his Presidency Trump disseminated many conspiracy theories, the most notorious of which were the claims that global warming is a Chinese hoax, that Covid is a hoax, and that the 2020 Presidential election, which he lost, was rigged against him.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are lots of conspiracy theories floating around on the internet. What’s new and alarming about the one I first mentioned, QAnon, is that it has already lead to multiple shootings and violent incidents involving weapons. QAnon followers, who all consider Donald Trump to be their savior, were present and prominent on January sixth. What is different about QAnon is the massive level of participation from “just regular folks”. If it is a cult, it is one that does not have a powerful leader that controls what everyone does and says. Instead it works from the bottom up, as all the participants share their findings with each other, while above them, popular “influencers” with bigger followings spread the message over the internet. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If it is a conspiracy theory, it isn’t a theory that can be easily summarized, nor one that has a stable meaning. It’s a conspiracy theory that grows like an amoeba, searching out and engulfing new conspiracy theories as it grows and mutates. It’s growth is so powerful that it has given new life to old conspiracy theories like Flat Earth and the “Blood Libel” as the ever-growing body of QAnon followers get introduced to them. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> QAnon followers follow a prophet who calls himself “Q”, which is short for “Q Clearance patriot”. Q claimed to be working with members of the Trump administration, and he published his “Q drops” on the explicitly racist message boards: 4chan, 8chan, and 8kun. Since 2017 Q has issued thousands of cryptic sayings over the internet. But he stopped issuing his prophecies right after the January sixth Insurrection occurred. Perhaps he had second thoughts about how his movement was turning out. At any rate he hasn’t returned to say he’s had a change of mind, as of yet. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Q is not the only online problem. But this online hate has a lot to do with conspiracy theories, a lot to do with them. In the prelude to the second world war, the German Nazi party popularized conspiracy theories about the Jews - that Jews were outsiders who were trying to control the world through the banking system. A conspiracy theory is usually a story about dangerous people who are secretly controlling things. Anyone who comes to believe these stories will then come to see the designated people (often: Jews, dark skinned people, Muslims, or liberals) as evil. QAnon followers actually believe that liberal politicians and Hollywood actors are secretly abusing children, even killing them and harvesting their blood for nefarious purposes. This is a modern version of an old medieval anti-semitic conspiracy called the “Blood Libel”. You can imagine how this can easily lead to dehumanization of the target group, and that’s exactly what happened in Nazi Germany. Jews were portrayed extremely negatively in the party controlled media, and the ground was then paved for expelling Jews from civic organizations, schools, universities, etc; the next step was open persecution, and the last was the death camps.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is the problem with hate messaging and online conspiracy theories. First they depersonalize and dehumanize the target group by portraying them as evil or subhuman. Then they spread disinformation - lies about the target group. These lies spread fast and wide because they play on believers’ fear and prejudice, motivating still stronger feelings; and social media are, sadly, deliberately designed to pick up on these feelings and magnify them through the magic of their money making algorithms. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it’s not the hatred by itself that is the problem, it’s the way that so many people can be manipulated through their own fears into willingly spreading misinformation. We can always keep our negative feelings to ourselves, but the more that we see another group as evil and inhuman, the more motivated we will be to believe lies about them that confirm our prejudices. The social media algorithms are then designed to pick up on our strongest feelings and egg them on, funnelling more and more of the same divisive content our way. That this is a huge ongoing problem can be seen from the events of January sixth. That’s why Trump was kicked off of Facebook and Twitter immediately after the attack. Because of his legion of social media followers, Trump was literally the biggest spreader of disinformation in the world. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem here in Canada is twofold. In spite of the fact that no major Canadian politician has followed in Trump’s footsteps and started disseminating conspiracy theories, there is no internet barrier to conspiracy theories, so they can take hold here, as they have already for a significant minority in the United States. As Canadians, what we do have going for us is a more equitable social safety net, especially with universal medicare. It’s the ones who are desperate or on the edge of despair who tend to gravitate to conspiracy theories, and there’s more of these people in the U.S., because of their inadequate safety net. Secondly, the likelihood of an Authoritarian takeover of the U.S. is now much greater than it has ever been before. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Major American media companies such as Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting are politically allied with Trump, they are implicated in spreading propaganda and lies that are fuelling growth in conspiracy theories and directly undermining democratic norms. This is creating a self-sustaining trend where every day more Americans seem to be drawn to conspiracy theories and to the related idea that violence is a viable strategy. With enough people OK with violence, the stage is set for an authoritarian takeover (history shows you don’t need a majority to make this happen). I believe the chances are good that this will happen in the U.S. in the near future. And if it does, Canadians will be in peril. We have a problem on our doorstep and if we don’t do something here to guard against it, it could destroy our country too.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-6502518312386314912020-03-08T22:19:00.002-07:002022-01-21T15:45:19.948-08:00What was the Original Rule?If I were to posit one question that sums up my philosophical inquiry it would be this: “What makes humans different from animals?” For me, it is the single most important question to ask. Philosophy in its Western form comprises three main parts, which are conveyed to us by the three Greek words: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics. In my opinion, (and it’s probably a minority opinion), <b>Ethics</b> is the most important of these three, precisely because it is at the heart of what makes humans distinct from animals. But the subject of ethics is most troublesome to grapple with. Where does ethics or morality come from? This was never an easy question, but nowadays it seems so much more complicated to answer, because our society has so many overlapping jurisdictions. This is why it is hard to know whether a particular rule is a moral rule, an obligation, or merely a convention. For instance, the Mosaic rule against making images of a deity - considered a moral rule by many Jews, Christians, and Muslims, is obviously not so for a Hindu or other polytheistic adherent. Some extremist adherents of monotheism would like to see this rule become universal by force. Blowing up religious statues and destroying places of worship full of worshippers becomes their chosen way. This too raises the question of morality, and perhaps the question of the origin of morality can shed light here as well.<br />
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My thought is that a lot of petty philosophical squabbling over the existence and universality of morality has to do with disputes over these multiple overlapping jurisdictions among: legal systems, educational systems, civic institutions, religions, ethnic systems, language, and philosophical systems. Where does morality begin and all these other systems end? I propose an informal division between morality and ethics, mainly to help simplify the question of origins. I realize that many philosophers legitimately see “morality” and “ethics” as synonyms for each other, in the same way as I indicated at the beginning of this piece. I’m not arguing that we should always define ethics and morality as two separate things . I’m saying that we can simplify the question of origins by delegating the more complicated job of navigating those overlapping jurisdictions to the subject of ethics. It is more of a methodological way of clearing out some of the unnecessary modern baggage in order to better pursue the questions of origins unencumbered.<br />
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Similar to what <b>Bernard Gert</b> has argued, let’s call <b>the moral rules</b>, simple, explicit, publicly known rules that forbid certain specific behaviours. These rules can easily be summarized: don’t lie, steal, cheat, break your promises, commit adultery, or cause harm to self or others. The beauty of this, as Gert pointed out, is that it refers us to a small subset of easy to recognize behaviours that we are not to do. These rules say nothing at all about the innumerable behaviours that are permitted, and this is their strength. The moral rules are distinct because they are publicly known, easy to remember, and easier to follow than a set of “to do’s” - (which are invariably more ambiguous and harder to follow.)<br />
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Simple, easy to understand, and easy to follow - but it is also important to realize that morality seems to mean more than just a set of rules about what not to do. Morality also seems to be about “doing the right thing.” This, though, is the broader, more difficult part. Let’s call the broader, more sophisticated part of morality that covers “what to do” - <b>Ethics</b>.<br />
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The moral rules are a short set of rules that are easy to understand and follow; whereas,principles of good living and the acquisition of virtuous habits and dispositions are not so easy to understand or to follow. Ethical rules of living are essentially summaries, principles, and ideals that serve as general guidelines rather than rigid requirements. They correspond to ways of living and acting that we want to encourage in general for the good of our community. Ethics, then, corresponds to general ethical theories about what constitutes the good life and the public good.<br />
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I like Bernard Gert’s simplification of the moral system, you can find it described in the most detail in his last book, <b><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Morality-Nature-Justification-Bernard-Gert/dp/0195176898/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=gert%2C+morality&qid=1582839867&s=books&sr=1-1">Morality: Its Nature and Justification</a></b>. But I find that in philosophy as a whole, the understanding of the state of nature has regressed, rather than progressed. It seems obvious to me that presently, we have a sufficient scientific understanding of our non-human precursors to construct a more realistic theory of our distinct human nature, a job which ought to be delegated to a <b>philosophical anthropology</b>. This was not done in the most influential moral theory of the twentieth century, that of <b>John Rawls</b>, especially in, <b><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Theory-Justice-Revised-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2AVYM2BJ0IUZ9&keywords=john+rawls+theory+of+justice&qid=1582840013&s=books&sprefix=rawls%2C+a+theory+%2Cstripbooks%2C232&sr=1-1">A Theory of Justice.</a></b> For Rawls, it seems, the justification of an ethical system is more important than understanding the nature and origins of ethics. This, I think, comes from the modern tendency to try and incorporate all of the competing jurisdictions into a single system. The danger here is that by embracing complexity too soon, one loses sight of what is essential.<br />
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It is plain to me that morality must have started with something simple, and what I call the ethical part, and the overlapping jurisdictions came much later, and can be dealt with separately from the question of origins. This is not to say that they can always be kept separate, and thus the need for overarching ethical theories.<br />
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My reasoning for thinking that the origins of morality have got to be simple, is that it had to be simple in order for it to stick. In our human beginnings, anything complicated would not have survived; something basic, something simple, easy to remember and publicly understood. My guess is that it would be a single rule, and that rule would be a “<b>do not</b>”; there would have been little or no thought or deliberation involved; once this one rule caught on and showed it’s promise, other rules would follow. So, the important thing is to get this one rule right; forget the competing jurisdictions, the subtleties, the complications and the differing social contexts for now - they come much later and they don’t further our understanding of origins.<br />
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To get a better idea of what that rule said, we would need to do some <b>groundwork</b>. This groundwork requires a lot of digging around and excavating, but fortunately most of that has already been taken care of by paleontologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and primatologists. For a hundred years or more, the paleontologists have dug up the stones and bones of our ancestors, while the ethologists have spent countless hours in the wild observing the behaviour of our closest primate relatives.<br />
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In order to figure out why that one rule would have made such an important difference for human evolution, let’s start with a better understanding of biology, and in particular with <b>Ethology</b>, the study of animal behavour. Really, it’s not that difficult, for there are some basic differences between humans and all other animals that show up - once you know what to look for.<br />
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I would start with a real stand-out. Humans are one of the few types of mammals that are <b>bi-parental</b>. Most mammals are female uni-parental. There is something defining about mammals and mothering, isn’t there? None of our closest primate relatives are bi-parental. Few ape males participate in caring for the little ones, and except for gorillas and gibbons, ape “fathers” do not recognize their children. How are we related to the apes? Our closest ape relatives are chimpanzees, and our last common ancestor with chimps lived six million years ago. The common ancestors to chimps, humans and gorillas lived about ten million years ago, so gorillas are more distant relations. Closer to us than chimpanzees were <b>Australopithecus</b>, a species that became extinct about half a million years ago.<br />
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If we go far back enough in human prehistory, say, to about two million years, probably about the time that our species evolved from australopithecus, the fossil record shows the start of a quickening trend: from this point on stone tools become more and more evident. Over hundreds of thousands of years fossilized hominid skulls begin to show larger brain size and smaller jaw size. <b>Larger brains</b> mean the need for more energy, and smaller jaws means the smaller likelihood that that energy was coming from plant material. You see, brains are big energy users, kind of like the banks of servers needed for cloud computing. Smaller jaws and molars mean a diet with more meat, which could supply the needed energy in the form of animal fat and protein. Stone tools mean better ways to hunt and prepare food, especially cutting meat from carcasses. Together, wooden and stone tools would make both hunting and gathering more efficient.<br />
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So why are humans bi-parental, when except for gibbons, most apes are not? I’ve been leading up to this second stand-out - human brains are much larger than the brains of any other primate. Yep, we are way way smarter, but that isn’t the point. The point is that the larger brain is a problem for human females. They’re the ones that have to give birth to babies with comparatively gigantic heads, they’re the ones that have to get enough nourishment to nurse for two years, and they’re the ones that have to feed, and carry around largely helpless infants for a ridiculously long time compared to any other primate.<br />
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Yes, the larger brain gives humans an advantage, and also the longer childhood period of neuroplasticity and dependency allows humans to be smarter and learn more things. But all of these advantages impose an impossible burden on human females. So, way back then something had to give - male humans had to start sharing some of that burden - kind of like the way male birds share the burden of protecting and feeding their nestlings. But we are trying to keep this explanation simple, so we will not assume that human biparenting started because some nice guys decided that they wanted to be fair to women, and then it went viral! That could be the premise of a bad joke, but it does not make for a good explanation.<br />
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How did humans become bi-parental? Let’s look at the single exception to uni-parenting in apes - the gibbons. Gibbons are small apes, more distantly related to humans than gorillas and chimps; they live in the jungles of southeast Asia. Even more so than orangutans, they keep to the trees; they live and move strictly in the mid to upper story of the rain-forest. With their powerful long arms and shoulders they are nature’s greatest acrobats, swinging from branch to branch and tree to tree. They have few predators, so they live in nuclear families, a pair-bonded adult male and female with offspring. The key is that, in that paradisaical arboreal environment, the problem of predation has been minimized. Without pressure from predators, like big cats, gibbons don’t need to live in multi-family groups.<br />
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During the day African apes use the ground to move from one patch of trees to another. This trend can be seen most clearly in the Gorilla, whose larger size isn’t suited for living and moving in the upper stories of trees, like the gibbons. Gorillas live in large multi-female groups with a single adult male “silverback” who fathers all the children, and the huge size and power of the alpha male protects against predators and keeps all other male competitors at bay.<br />
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Chimpanzees, our closest animal relatives, (we share about 98% of their DNA) live in groups of roughly thirty multi-adult mixed male, female with offspring, where there is no pair bonding between adults. The chimpanzees and the bonobos, their look-alike relatives, are some of the most sexually promiscuous mammals on earth. With chimps, a single alpha male will try, but not always succeed, to monopolize all the fertile females, and it helps that they come into oestrus at different times. With Bonobos it is, literally, anything goes, excepting incest.<br />
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My point here is that the multi-male and female group life of the African apes does not encourage<b> pair-bonding</b>. The basic fact on the ground is that ground dwelling mammals need to live in large multi-family groups because of predation, and because of the constant mixing, the proximity of adult males and females, pair bonding is discouraged and male dominance hierarchies are the rule.<br />
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When we look at what’s next in the line of human ancestors - the Australopithecus - we see a furtherance of the trend of ground dwelling. Australopithecus, as far as we know, were the first primate to have consistently walked upright, on two feet like humans, rather than using their hind legs and knuckles to move on the ground, as do the gorillas and chimps. Australopithecus brain size and shoulder physiognomy is more like apes than humans, whereas their legs are more like humans, so they probably slept in the trees, but spent a lot of time moving on the ground during the day. Like the apes, but probably more like gorillas, they had a large difference in body and canine tooth size between male and female, (called <b>sexual dimorphism</b> and correlated with male sexual competition) so we can surmise that they lived in groups of females and offspring with a single adult male.<br />
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The first known member of the human species, called <b>Homo Habilis</b>, appears in the fossil record about two million years ago. The brain of habilis is small and only a bit larger than chimpanzees and Australopithecus. But for the first time in the record, stone tools are found associated with the remains of this extinct species of hominin.<br />
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The bones and skull of <b>Homo Erectus</b>, which appear in the fossil record during the period from one and a half million years to about fifty thousand years ago, are more recognizably human-like than homo habilis. Some variants have our height, and all Erectus have more human-type shoulders. These early humans did not sleep in trees, in fact, they appear to be the first species to control fire, and to do a whole lot more walking than previously, because they became the first hominin to migrate out of Africa and into the rest of the world.<br />
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In the fossil record, the trend in our species was an acceleration in the evolution of brain size, together with a long, lagging trend in the evolution and sophistication of stone tools. What I make of this is that the original invention of stone knives had a more immediate and powerful effect on human physical evolution and increasing brain size, than increasing brain size had on tool evolution, at least for most of the first two million years of our specie’s existence. We can talk till the cows come home about which causes which, but it seems obvious that there are feedback loops in biological and cultural evolution that can work both ways. As it seems, eventually our brains caught up, and when that happened, the evolution of technology overtook our physical evolution. You are reading this today because in a very short period of time -ten thousand years - technological change has surpassed physical change.<br />
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Way back in the Paleolithic, the invention of stone knives may have been the most significant change in human history. This stone age technology was a twofer - it gave humans both greater access to meat and it radically changed the sexual and social dynamics by destabilizing the previous <b>polygynous systems</b>. Knives could be used for both food preparation and as weapons. This ultimately made brains and the evolution of brain power more important than brawn. As a result sexual dimorphism diminished with homo erectus, setting the pattern for subsequent human evolution.<br />
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It appears to be all about food more than anything else. In the animal kingdom, polygynous males almost never care for infants, or share food with nursing females. There is no need to, because the period of infant dependence for most animals is short, and body to brain ratio does not compare to humans. If you think about the elements that went into human bi-parentalism, the importance of maintaining a reliable supply of fat and protein stands out. Humans are omnivorous, and the size of their brains and the longer period of dependency means the importance of <b>meat</b> as a source of nutrition for nursing mothers. Gorillas are vegetarians and they spend a huge amount of time eating and digesting their food. They can afford to be female uni-parental because nursing and infant dependency has a shorter duration, and that is because they are not feeding the growth of bigger brains in their offspring, as are humans.<br />
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The comparative loss of body hair in humans, the human practice of pair-bonding (non-existent in ground dwelling apes), the absence of oestrus and the year-round sexual receptivity of human females, together, suggest <b>Monogamy</b>. Oxytocin release which is triggered by skin to skin contact would have increased feelings of love and loyalty, leading to pair-bonding. Females could have, in exchange for their loyalty, gained a regular supply of meat that was otherwise unavailable to them due to their reduced mobility when nursing and pregnant. Males in a pair-bonded relationship could have greater certainty that offspring were theirs, and could also spend much less energy competing against other males.<br />
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We can think of it all coming together this way: one thing - monogamy - is the key to a better diet for pregnant and nursing human females, enhanced cooperation between male and female humans, bigger human groups, unique, human forms of sharing, and the well-being and flourishing of children. Monogamy, in effect, sets the stage for ethical living, by diminishing and equalizing male sexual competition, and by making it possible for a male human to consistently help to support and maintain his family.<br />
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Monogamy then becomes the key to the origin of <b>kinship</b>, to the enhanced cooperation between families related by <b>marriage</b>, and to the practice of <b>alloparenting</b>, where nursing mothers are assisted in care by help from grandmothers and others. Monogamy sets the stage for the sexual division of labour, as nursing and pregnant females have diminished mobility, whereas the male has greater mobility, and, with the help of weapons and knives, is better able to hunt collectively and share meat with his female partner.<br />
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Human multi-family groups could get bigger through kin alliances based on monogamous marriage, in effect, neutralizing the otherwise, divisive fissionary reality of a larger group, thereby gaining the superiority of size in inter-group competition.<br />
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Most probably the physical part came before the social part. The pair-bonding and sharing of meat came before the social institutions of marriage and kinship. The physical created the conditions for the social. The pair-bonding created the motivation to share food and ensure paternity. The invention of stone knives created both the means to share meat and the means to undermine the ape dominance hierarchy.<br />
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With the invention of stone knives we have the first inklings of what I like to call “<b>Hobbes' Sword</b>”. The 16 century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in his great work “Leviathan”, famously complained that agreements are good for nothing if they aren’t backed by a “sword”. Unfortunately Hobbes lacked the twentieth century scientific knowledge to see that monogamy, not monarchy was the basis for morality. For as much as the drier ice-age environment was pushing ancient humans towards an omnivorous diet and towards alloparenting, to make monogamy the rule rather than the exception required much more than a big environmental change and the invention of stone knives - it required a unique and deliberate form of collective action, which Hobbes alludes to in his idea of the “<b>Social Contract</b>”.<br />
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As a rule, in polygynous animal systems, the alpha male does not share in parenting. Monogamy, as opposed to polygyny, increases sharing, both within and between families, and this sharing between families increases the ability of multi-family groups to survive over time. Evidence from contemporary hunter gatherers shows that monogamy is well suited for hunter gatherer societies when these societies are nomadic and cannot count on abundance or surplus. We can safely assume that nomadic hunter gathering was the only human lifestyle for more than a million years, whereas agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals is only about twelve thousand years old. That means that for most of the span of human existence monogamous systems have prevailed.<br />
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But we still haven’t completely answered the question of what led to human bi-parentalism, and it gets to the essence of what makes humans unique. We humans are not alone in being bi-parental. A majority of bird species are bi-parental, wolves and gibbons are bi-parental. But, amongst the animals, we are unique in having marriage and kinship relations; we are unique in the quantity and quality of our mutual cooperation; we are unique in the degree to which we share; and, most importantly, we are unique in our collective ability to follow and enforce rules, because none of the former distinctions are possible without this collective ability.<br />
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Because of natural selection, life is diverse and adapted to different kinds of environments on earth. As earth’s climate, and continents changed over billions of years, life became more diverse and living ecosystems grew larger and more complex. Thus, throughout this vast span of time many life forms became extinct and many new life-forms developed.<br />
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We can think of human moral systems as, in effect, an artificial human made alternative to biological natural selection. For their short span of existence (2 million years) the human species has uniquely succeeded in partially replacing natural selection with <b>Normative Systems</b>. Normative systems are systems based on rules that we share in common. Gradually, at first our normative systems improved our chances of survival, and human population expanded. Up until today, our rule-bound systems have been wildly successful, enabling humans to spread and prosper world-wide.<br />
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This is why I disagree with other thinkers who say language is the system that differentiates humans from animals. Language is a system of sharing words, meaning, and grammar among a group of people. This kind of sharing would not have originated from a polygynous mating system. Human society had to be monogamous first, for the development of language to be possible. Language is a form of equitable sharing that originated from the reproductive equity of a monogamous system.<br />
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But, in order for this to be true, the first rule that I posited could not have existed as a sentence in a language. My thought is that at first it could have been non-verbal, corresponding to gestures, feelings, and vocalizations. It is in fact possible to be in love with another human being without using a word. One can show a lot about one’s feelings and determination without using words. It is possible to agree with others without using words. We can know that something is wrong and that something needs to be done without words. And in fact, there is an actual case of a primate, other than human, that successfully controls male domination by threats and vocalizations, without the use of words. Female bonobos, one of our closest animal relatives, collectively control male dominant behaviours in this unique way.<br />
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Monogamy is the key to the human good life, the flourishing and well-being of children. When monogamy prevails, more males get a chance to mate than in a polygynous system. Pregnant and nursing females are better fed, and children are more likely to survive and be capable of reproducing in adulthood. However, this more egalitarian system cannot survive in nature, because it is sabotaged by bigger, stronger dominant males. That’s how things always get settled in the animal kingdom, except, in our case, technology intervened. With easily accessible razor sharp knives, the struggle for dominance became inherently unstable. At some point our ancestors discovered that this instability could only be solved by the collective acceptance of a rule. I’m suggesting that that rule was: “<b>Do not commit adultery.</b>” Groups that committed to this rule suffered less violence and sexual competition. With this rule men and women could turn their efforts to supporting larger families and more productive activities. But, in order for the rule to work originally, it had to be followed and enforced by everyone, and there needed to be constant monitoring and enforcement; and there needed to be a way that consistent rule-breakers could be banished or executed; otherwise those who got away without being stopped, eventually got away with murder, as they escalated their power grab in order to enforce an alpha male dominance hierarchy. Let’s call this powerful system of collective behavioral control - <b>The Moral System.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>Darwin’s theory of evolution posits that adaptive hereditary traits that increase an organism’s reproductive success are what drive the evolution of biological species. By creating that one moral rule about adultery, humans got a better handle on reproductive success. By following and enforcing monogamy, hunter gatherers were better ensuring the survival of the multi-family group as a whole as well as increasing the potential of every family in the group to have more children.<br />
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We should consider a monogamous social system as the egalitarian distribution of shared reproductive possibilities in human groups, as, in effect, a proto-version of the golden rule. By regulating human sexual behaviour - first by prohibiting adultery as well as incest, these moral rules probably formed the basis for kinship networks. These networks, in turn, led to greater group survival, larger group size, and better cooperation amongst groups.<br />
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The moral system is the first and most fundamental of normative systems. The moral rules of a moral system are simple but seem to those inside the moral system to be “written in stone” and unchangeable. By looking at moral systems from the “outside” we can see evidence that over generations, or centuries, these rules do change. Nowadays we no longer stone people for committing adultery, for instance. However, we can also see evidence that these rules “stay with us” in the form of biased perception, intuitive judgements, and gut feelings.<br />
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Consider the account of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. The story of Adam and Eve specifically points to sex as the first example of moral knowledge. Becoming morally knowledgeable entails Adam and Eve knowing that they need to cover their genitals in public. This rule, in a general sense, can plausibly be viewed as an extension of the rule against adultery. And, as if to corroborate this connection, in the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as extending the rule against adultery even further to a prohibition of daydreaming about it!<br />
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Obviously adultery is not considered as serious today as it once was. In modern society physical punishment for adultery is frowned on. These days, it’s more about our need for keeping a good reputation - avoiding being in a position where we are looked down on as the subject of others' disapproval. Or, maybe not even that, for, in France, adultery is so widespread it seems to be the norm rather than what is considered forbidden. Modern America, however, testifies to the moral power of this ancient prohibition, in the strong widespread emotional reaction to the public revelations of adulterous behaviour on the part of both Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Thus, there remains a strong residual feeling about the phenomenon.<br />
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Nowadays people often wonder why morality seems to be so hung up on sex. But, in every society, we have rules about covering the human body, prohibitions of rape, sexual abuse, child-pornography, homosexuality - let’s face it, it is impossible for anyone to remain neutral and non-judgemental when it comes to alleged sexual misconduct. Note how we universally expect legitimate human sex to occur in private. In the animal kingdom it is the opposite. In the state of nature it’s done out in the open, except when it is surreptitiously practised by sub-dominants out of the prying eyes of the dominant male.<br />
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Our human need for privacy, the powerful negative emotions we experience in the face of sexual misconduct, the universality of sexual behaviour as an object of moral rules, and most importantly, the necessity of sexual reproduction for the ongoing survival of humans - all these conditions point to the origin of morality in a rule about sexual conduct. Sexual reproduction is central to much of ongoing life. What makes us different from all other animals, is that we have used rules that maximize sexual reproduction at the same time as they radically diminish male sexual competition. Today we can see the evidence, in the absence of armaments in male humans. Men don’t have horns, claws, or larger canines because they don’t need to fight for a female. Getting a mate is often an agreement between families, or in modern industrial society, an agreement between the couple themselves. That is unheard of in most social animals.<br />
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According to Steven Pinker, we now have a much less violent society than our ancient ancestors did. An interesting fact is that murder, per capita, is much more prevalent in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, and in those societies the main object of disputes that lead to murder were reported to be a man killing another over a woman. These hunter-gatherer groups don’t have a lot of overlapping jurisdictions, so they are left with the bare moral system. The fact is, that a certain underlying amount of violence is probably necessary in order for the simplest type of moral system to work.<br />
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All along I have been saying that the reasons for humans to develop moral systems were based on physical reality: the human female’s need for a consistently better quality of nutrition, as well as the need for the collective regulation of sex in the face of social instability brought on by a new technology. Without collective regulation, the default sexual behaviour reverts to polygyny, which makes nomadic hunter gathering unviable, both because females and their offspring are not adequately fed or protected, and because group size diminishes too much in times of famine, due to the absence of sharing between families in polygynous systems, leading to extinction. Moreover, polygyny in humans is inherently unstable, because it greatly increases the stakes in sexual competition, in a situation where any adult male can use a knife or other weapon in order to dispatch the alpha male. The solution was a collectively operated moral system where males who wouldn't stop cheating and trying to take more than their share were long ago taken out of the gene pool by the collective. Modern counter-evidence, such as Mormon polygamy, does not negate this theory for two main reasons. First, most cases of contemporary and historical polygamy date to the origins of agriculture, domestication, and sedentary human life, so it could very well have been largely absent for the much longer span of human development that occurred before agriculture. Second, in human society, polygamy is always parasitic on a greater society that is largely monogamous. These clusters of polygamy are kept stable by the surrounding monogamous society’s capacity to absorb the hordes of superfluous adult males that would otherwise become potential rivals in the polygamous system.<br />
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I come back to my main point that the reasons for developing morality had to do with food and sex, certainly not in ethical deliberation about “the good life”. In Rawls’ “<b>original position</b>” we are to imagine the highly artificial situation of people getting together to decide on a system of justice. It becomes even more artificial when he asks us to imagine ourselves forgetting our status and position in society in order to facilitate that agreement.<br />
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In the beginning people were not deciding on a new system. People were trying to survive and reproduce. Monogamy was a huge step in the right direction, but to get there humans had to cross the fitness valley of polygyny. The easiest way to cross this valley was collective agreement. Agree to follow a rule, and agree to enforce the rule. Without the agreement, or without the enforcement, and the situation becomes unstable which leads to extinction. With the agreement, a good life of human flourishing becomes possible. Hence ethics follows on the heels of morality. Ethics, the moral principles of living a good life and outlining what is good and what is bad - was there at the beginning, not as a philosophy, or a set of principles, but as a way of life that was only made possible by following and enforcing that one original moral rule.earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-84860658768356464622020-01-29T10:16:00.000-08:002020-01-29T10:16:04.936-08:00The Two Kinds of Fundamentalists<div>
You can't hide from God. That's what the Bible says. God sees everything and knows everything. We humans lack that perspective. It isn't possible for anyone of us to see everything and know everything. But that doesn't stop us from feeling certain that what we know is true. Indeed, it's probable that if we didn't feel that way we would never commit ourselves to anything.</div>
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In order to engage in an argument I have to respect my opponent. I have to be willing to listen to their side in order to answer or question their claims. But by participating in an argument I am taking the risk that I could be shown to be wrong. It's only by risking being wrong that we can be open to discovering the truth. Unless each party to an argument is willing to be convinced by the other it's just people talking past each other or one person attempting to bully the other.</div>
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Recent history is full of examples of people who believed that they, like God, couldn't possibly be wrong. When these people gained power they always destroy open society. Communism and fascism were political systems that imposed their perspective on everyone by force. The communists believed that they had a monopoly on truth and so they forbade political and moral dissent. They knew they were right and they refused to risk being wrong. Every professional and “elected” representative had to be a member of the communist party. The representatives didn't debate the proposals of the communist leaders, they simply rubber stamped them. The legal system always ruled in favour of the communist state because it was always right.</div>
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People who now take the “God's eye” perspective are called Fundamentalists. And like the communists and fascists, they try to stack the deck in their favour whenever they gain power. I agree with George Soros that there are two kinds of modern Fundamentalists. Religious Fundamentalists and Market Fundamentalists. Most people believe that they themselves are right, but what distinguishes Fundamentalists is their refusal to risk being wrong in a fair argument.</div>
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For instance, there is no evidence that would convince a Christian Fundamentalist of the truth of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Fundamentalists pretend to engage in argument with evolutionary biologists but behind the scenes they try to stack the deck by taking over school boards, by getting state governments to ban the teaching of evolution and by intimidating publishers from including the subject of evolution in high school biology textbooks.</div>
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Market Fundamentalists believe that free markets are always more beneficial than government regulated markets. There is no evidence that would ever convince them that they are wrong - not the rising income gap between the rich and poor, not the demise of the middle class, not the “dirty thirties”, not the recent sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and especially not the spectre of global warming. </div>
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Market Fundamentalists have managed to stack the deck by perverting the legal and political system. In fact, a good portion of U.S. Republicans still believe that global warming is a hoax. The U.S. Supreme Court has, in “Citizens United”, allowed Corporate power to stack the deck in all future elections. These two kinds of fundamentalism are what is fuelling and maintaining Trump’s unwavering support in the face of overwhelming evidence of his malfeasance. </div>
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See a pattern here? Fundamentalists and extremists can never allow themselves to be wrong. They are always the most motivated to seize power because they want to prevent the facts, the evidence, and the people from having their say. It’s not wrong to believe in God or in Capitalism, but it is wrong to refuse to hear evidence or prevent those you disagree with from having a say. We can let God be perfect, but humans remain fallible no matter how certain they are that they have the truth</div>
earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-74528223507562179402019-12-20T08:58:00.005-08:002020-09-24T10:49:26.898-07:00"Truth" - The MovieCharles Justice, Truth Investigator. I’m a <b>PA</b>, a<b> Philosophical Anthropologist</b> and I study Truth full time so the rest of you don’t have to. “Truth” - What is it? How does it work? Where did it come from? - Lately I’ve been particularly motivated to answer these questions because of the events and circumstances surrounding the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.<br />
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Exhibit A:<br />
Kovitch and Rosenstiel, 2014, <i>The Elements of Journalism</i>, third edition:<br />
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"<b>The desire that information be truthful is elemental…. the evidence suggests its innate...Out of necessity, citizens and societies depend on accurate and reliable accounts of events.</b> They develop procedures and processes to arrive at what might be called “functional truth”. Police track down and arrest suspects based on facts. Judges hold trials. Juries render verdicts. Industries are regulated, taxes are collected, and laws are made. We teach our children rules, history, physics, and biology. All of these truths - even the laws of science - are subject to revision, but we operate by them in the meantime because they are necessary and they work."<br />
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Exhibit B: November 21, 2019: Fiona Hill, Russian expert, formerly working for the NSC, (National Security Council), Congressional Trump Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry. “The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today, <b>our nation is being torn apart. Truth is being questioned.</b>”<br />
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Exhibit C: November 21, 2019, <i>Washington Post</i> op-ed column by Dana Millbank - “Republicans have a new enemy: Truth itself.”<br />
“President Trump’s defense in the impeachment proceedings… is <b>a bid to discredit the truth itself</b>”<br />
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Exhibit D: November 14, 2019, <i>New York Times</i> op-ed column by Charles Blow, “This is not a game.”<br />
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"Trump from the very beginning, has been overwhelming the public with lies and dissembling, while at the same time attacking society’s truth-seekers — journalists, investigators and jurists. Republicans in Washington, instead of pushing back and standing on principle, have simply followed suit."<br />
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And Blow concludes by saying:<br />
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"People choosing to live in a Trump/Fox/Limbaugh world are unlikely to be altered by the truth because they are less likely to be exposed to the truth, the fullness of it, the unassailability of it.<br />
In the end, this is not a game. This is a tragedy. This is a mourning. This is an awakening. <b>This is the moment where truth has to matter more than all else.</b> That is the bar America has to clear."<br />
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Apparently good journalists care deeply about the truth, and have a good sense of why it’s needed in society. I wish I could say the same for my colleagues in philosophy, but unfortunately I cannot. And, speaking in the light of Trump’s coming Impeachment trial, I must say I am deeply troubled.<br />
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In the famous TV comedy series “Seinfeld”, Jerry and his friend George propose the idea of a comedy show, apparently - “about “nothing” - to a bored TV executive. It quickly becomes obvious that this is a wink and a nod to the Seinfeld show itself, a “show about nothing.” I sometimes think that contemporary and twentieth century Anglo-American analytic philosophy is “Seinfeld Philosophy” - basically philosophy about nothing. The reason I make this harsh judgement is that all too often analytic philosophy takes what should be a serious philosophical subject and trivializes it by essentially assuming away its existential significance. We are left with problems of logic and meaning instead of problems of living. The concept of “truth” is, sadly, a good example of this.<br />
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It is a famous characteristic of Canadians that we say “sorry” a lot. I’m simply continuing this tradition in saying that as a Canadian Philosopher, I am exceedingly sorry about what Philosophy has done to the concept of “truth”. In effect Contemporary Philosophy, following in the footsteps of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, has succeeded in emasculating itself and depriving itself of the means to explain what “truth” is and how it functions. This did not have to be.<br />
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Exhibit E:<br />
Derek Jarman’s 1993 film “Wittgenstein”, the scene is a small seminar room in Cambridge sometime in the 1930’s. Wittgenstein, in response to Bertrand Russell’s question is shouting: “Philosophical problems are a byproduct of misunderstanding language.” Russell calls him out in response: “Wittgenstein, you are trivializing philosophy.”<br />
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In fact, I maintain that it was Bertrand Russell who first began the trivializing process, by spearheading philosophy’s turn to linguistics at the beginning of the last century.<br />
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As a PA, I’ve done a little sleuthing and come up with a plausible story that explains philosophy’s getting sidetracked about truth from the very beginning, and how “truth” ended up getting miniaturized and trivialized by modern philosophers. In the mean- time I think I’ve also uncovered the real nature of truth, the truth about “truth”. The incapacity of philosophy to come up with a serious explanation for truth goes deep, right to the very beginnings of philosophy, for what we get instead of any explanation of truth’s nature, is nothing more than one definition after another.<br />
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Every philosophical question effectively starts with Plato and there is a good reason for this - Plato is the first philosopher to cover all the ground. Every problem dealt with in contemporary philosophy has its start in Plato’s dialogues, and “truth” is no exception. What is significant though, is that, Plato treats the concept of “truth” like a hot potato. He briefly defines “truth” in the dialogues Cratylus and The Sophist, but he comes to admit that we cannot figure out how we actually distinguish truths from falsehoods. But that’s not to worry, because no other philosopher since has managed either. However Plato, being the literary genius he was, presented something less rational but far more effective - an account that has really set the whole tone for our understanding of “Truth”, with a capital “T”, for all time - Plato tells a parable, and boy, is it a doozy!<br />
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Plato, truly a giant in Philosophy, couldn’t really figure out a rational explanation for how we come to the truth. In the single most famous image in philosophical history, Plato imagines a dark smokey cave full of ignorant prisoners. He asks us to imagine, if one day, one of the prisoners is dragged out of the cave into the light of day. The escaped prisoner, would at first be blinded by the light, because he would have been habituated to the darkness of the cave. But then it would slowly “dawn” on him that what he sees now, in the light of day, is reality, and what he previously saw, in the cave, were only “images” and “shadows”. This powerful vision of Plato’s has pervaded the entire corpus of Western Philosophy, and planted an unconscious bias towards authoritarianism. The Truth flows one way, from the inexhaustible illumination of the Sun to the escaped prisoner - from the divine to the profane. The transmission of truth is top down, just as it would be in a cult: observations that support the theories are praised as “clear and distinct ideas”, whereas the facts that contradict the leader’s conspiracy theories become “shadows” and false “images”.<br />
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In case you can’t understand what all the fuss is about Plato’s parable, you might consider the pedigree of saying “that’s brilliant!” or “He finally saw the light.” or “the doors of perception were opened”, because they all allude to that same parable.<br />
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Plato’s “brilliant” student Aristotle came up with a very pedantic definition of truth, which he cribbed from Plato’s dialogues, but which appears to be a proto-version of every modern definition of the correspondence theory:<br />
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“To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true” - Metaphysics 1011b25<br />
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I don't know about you, but I get a distinct sense of dissatisfaction from Aristotle's definition, and it is the same bad taste that I get from reading modern deflationist and minimalist accounts as well. <br />
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In my opinion, the fact that Plato tells a parable, rather than giving a rational explanation for the nature of truth has big ramifications for the history of philosophy: more than a thousand years of Christian theology based on the theories of Plato and his student Aristotle, and absolutely no progress uncovering the nature of truth in that same time period. Yes there have been many accounts of the “definition” of “truth”, different definitions of “truth bearers” and types of correspondence, but no theory of how truth works, because, other than Nietzsche, no other philosopher has gone beyond defining what truth “means”.<br />
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Cut to the year 1873, one year after Bertrand Russell’s birth, when the German Philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche wrote an essay called “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”. Kind of a strange title for an essay on truth, but we’ll get to that later. The essay seems to start out as an adolescent rant, mocking the entire human race for making up the idea of “truth” and then for having the impudence to actually believe that it exists out there, independently of us.<br />
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Nietzsche, in spite of his childishness, is very perceptive, perhaps the most perceptive philosopher ever. What is so fascinating for me, is how well he grasps the normative aspect of truth, and also anticipates deflationism’s emphasis on truth as a form of expression.<br />
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Neitzsche defines truth as: “A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and, anthropomorphisms…. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions - they are metaphors….”<br />
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"From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as “red,” another as “cold,” and a third as “mute,” there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes."<br />
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Here he is suggesting that we get our obligation for truthfulness from the fact that using language obliges us to use words to refer to universal properties. But, he points out, these “universal properties” don’t exist in reality.<br />
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"A uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth. For the contrast between truth and lie arises there for the first time. The liar…(uses words)...in order to make something which is unreal appear real."<br />
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Nietzsche was a philosophical genius ahead of his time. But he shared the view of so many twentieth century philosophers that the normativity of truth comes from the normativity of language. I’m going to argue that the root of philosophy’s trivialization comes from this assumption, that is here summarized by Nietzsche’s observation: “A uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth”. I’d like to suggest, instead, that philosophy can regain its potency by coming around to the idea that language both originates from and gets its normativity from the moral system, which I understand to be the basis for all normativity.)<br />
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"We shall not yet know where the drive for truth comes from, for so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd, and in a manner binding on everyone. Precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth."<br />
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Nietzsche is here, in the above quote, showing his perceptiveness about how truth is a form of self-imposed behavioural regulation, but also, unfortunately, his cynicism, eg. “the duty to lie according to a fixed convention” and his Platonic rejection of “common” morality for some supposedly higher individualistic standard. In Plato’s parable, the sun represents divine truth and the prisoner has to be dragged out of the cave and given some time to, in effect, jettison the fake human “truths” and embrace the divine “Truth” that transcends all human activity and knowledge. Then he, i.e. Socrates, Plato, etc. has the unenviable job of going back into the cave and persuading its denizens that there is a better world awaiting them up above. Nietzsche rejects the descent back into the cave in favour of idolizing the creative genius on the mountain top. Cut to Ayn Rand, Donald Trump and the Republican party.<br />
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Unlike Russell and Wittgenstein, but like Plato, Nietzsche is bewitching in a much more dangerous way. He sees through the lies and artifice of bourgeoisie society but thinks that we could do better by abandoning morality altogether and embracing the leadership of strong and creative individuals. Worshipping power and despising weakness, in other words - fascism - seems to be where Nietzsche was heading. It is no coincidence that his American posthumous disciple, Ayn Rand, bestselling author of “Atlas Shrugged”, a book which glorifies unchecked power and ridicules helping the weak and disadvantaged, would be so influential in today’s Republican party.<br />
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On the other side of the Atlantic, Post-Modernist philosophy of Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault gets some of its worst traits from Nietzsche’s influence, namely adopting the twin beliefs that truth is relative, and that social reality can be reduced to accounts of dominance. Even Freud, with his crude hydraulic model of the unconscious and his over-emphasis on sex, has a better grasp of human nature than that.<br />
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With Plato’s mythological starting point and Nietzsche’s mocking fin de siecle deconstruction, things are not looking good for “truth”. And the plight of “truth” only worsens as the twentieth century gets underway, because two of the century’s greatest philosophers were about to make it even harder to understand truth by permanently consigning it to the philosophy of language. We get, as a result a Tower of Babel of truth "theories": correspondence, coherence, redundancy, disquotationalism, and deflationism - all making truth less and less significant, and hence the reigning term - “deflationism”.<br />
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Here is a quick guide to philosophical "theories" of Truth:<br />
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<b> Correspondence</b> - what we say is true if it corresponds to what happened, and false if not.<br />
<b>Coherence</b> - truth is the end result of exhaustive inquiry.<br />
<b>Disquotationalism</b> - Assume two kinds of formal language: an object language that does not contain self-referential sentences, and a meta-language that contains the predicate “true,” that refers to sentences in the object language. Then “Snow is white” is true if, and only if, snow is white, and so on for all other similar sentences.<br />
<b>Deflationism</b>, etc. - truth in ordinary language, is simply a way of endorsing an assertion. Truth in logic is a way of generalizing over blind assertions.<br />
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Disquotationalism, is based on Alfred Tarski’s theory of truth, a logically sound theory based on the idea of formalized, (not real) languages. What it does that other theories of truth do not do, is avoid the paradoxes of truth. Lots of philosophers do not like the “liar paradox” because it subjects ordinary language to self-contradiction. Example: “This sentence is not true.” That sentence is false if it is true, and true if it is false; and we can’t have that. But the price of adopting Tarski’s theory is to avoid using ordinary language in favour of using set theory and logic when speaking of truth, and this leads to the ultimate in trivia. I can’t tell you how many books and articles I have read and reread the phrase “Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white.”<br />
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The twentieth century is notable for the sheer volume of books and articles on philosophical "theories" of truth. These philosophical theories are not really theories at all. The correspondence “theory” is really a metaphor, mind you, an extremely powerful and convincing one. Truth corresponds to reality analogous to the way that our perception of what is in front of us corresponds to what is in front of us. That’s it. For true utterances there is no reality to this correspondence because it is nothing more than a metaphor based on perception.<br />
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The coherence "theory" of truth is a metaphor for the way we idealize inquiry. “They’ll get to the bottom of it, won’t they?” “We will soon find the answers, of course.” “Eventually all the pieces will fit together to make a complete picture of what really happened.” That last sentence combines features of both coherence and correspondence. As Nietzsche, so perceptively points out - these are all metaphors.<br />
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Of course correspondence and coherence are metaphors, they correspond to what we ordinarily mean when we use the word “truth”. But a real theory of truth needs to go beyond what we ordinarily mean by “truth”, and see what the concept is actually doing in social life; and as long as you are focussing on language use, rather than the more general field of human behaviour, you cannot do that. As a PA, I will always insist that truth is central to human existence, and I will continue to point out the scandal that contemporary philosophers of language simply tie their own hands, so that they are incapable of understanding this.<br />
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Deflationism? Another metaphor. But this time the metaphor is reduction. Just as physics reduces to the motions of particles, truth, depending on whether you are referring to logic or ordinary language, reduces to logical operations or to feelings. Why this reduction? What motivated this turn to minimizing the importance of truth? At the beginning of the last century Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead attempted to reduce all of mathematics to logic with the publication of the unreadable “Principia Mathematica”. But the larger project of reduction was halted in its tracks by Russell’s uncovering of paradoxes in set theory, and then given the final coup de grace by Godel’s definitive proof of the incompleteness of arithmetic and by extension, all of mathematics.<br />
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Russell, who got it exactly right about the insanity of World War I, and was arrested for saying so in 1916, got it wrong on truth. We can see why if we peruse his mercifully short chapter on truth, in his admirably written “The Problems of Philosophy”, first published in 1912. Russell writes:<br />
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"Since erroneous beliefs are often held just as strongly as true beliefs it becomes a difficult question how they are to be distinguished from true beliefs. How are we to know, in a given case, that our belief is erroneous? This is a question of the greatest difficulty. There is however, a preliminary question which is rather less difficult and that is: <b>what do we mean by truth and falsehood?</b>”<br />
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That quote from “The Problems of Philosophy” is notable for two reasons: first, the point about it being “of the greatest difficulty” to distinguish between truth and falsehood, is a deliberate allusion to the discussion of knowledge in Plato’s dialogue “Theaetetus”. Second, the question of “meaning” is exactly what leads to Wittgenstein’s trivialization of philosophy; so, I’m afraid, Russell was in on it too!<br />
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The linguistic turn towards “meaning” was a true philosophical error that led to philosophical impotence. And this has real consequences, as we see today. I think a more productive question Russell could have asked would have been: “<b>What sort of work is truth doing in society?</b>”<br />
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Philosophy has come to trivialize truth by treating it solely as a “predicate”, i.e. a grammatical device. But truth is an ideal, it is obviously more than a grammatical device. Our commitment to the goal of truth is part of a self-organized system of behavioural regulation. And, this is completely overlooked if we insist, with Wittgenstein, that philosophical problems concerning truth are problems of misunderstanding language.<br />
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To put it in the simplest terms, as long as you are examining the meaning of concepts such as “truth” you are forced to use common metaphors. If you want to know the nature of truth you need to look at what work truth is doing in human society, and that means looking at all of our behaviour, rather than only what we think we mean by using the word. Journalists understand this, but philosophers don’t. Contemporary philosophers have been bewitched, not by language, but by Russell and Wittgenstein and their myriad followers.<br />
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It’s not a surprise. Remember how philosophy was lulled and deceived by the Father of philosophy - Plato - precisely on the question of truth. Like father, like sons! And Wittgenstein who promises to “free the fly from the bottle” and clear up all philosophical problems, succeeds only in collecting more flies, by expanding “necessary and sufficient conditions” into the broader, less confining notions - “family resemblances” and “language games” - admittedly fascinating concepts, but, in reality, simply more labyrinthian ways to get lost in a maze of “meanings” and definitions.<br />
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Philosophical problems are in our language, not in our world! This idea of Wittgenstein is at the root of the mindless triviality of most modern philosophy. That is how truth has been deflated and minimized in modern philosophy. Apparently "Truth" doesn't add anything to the world, it doesn't do any work, except in logic. Deflationists are blandly making the absurd claim that there is nothing much to "truth", that it doesn't add anything or do any work, unless we are blindly generalizing about multiple statements, as in "Everything that Mueller said was true."<br />
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Now the problem becomes how can philosophy explain the discrepancy between our common view, shared by journalists, that truth is centrally important, and the deflationists’ view that there is no “there” there.<br />
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According to the current reigning philosopher on “truth”, Paul Horwich, truth is not susceptible to conceptual or scientific analysis. All this time, though, we see that contemporary analytic philosophy, (with the notable exception of Paul Grice), has been taking for granted that people are expected to tell the truth in ordinary conversation. Contra Horwich, this is the fact that needs to be explained. And if we can explain this, then we can get a substantial theory of truth, rather than just definitions, i.e., rather than “the usual metaphors” as Nietzsche so perceptively puts it.<br />
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As a PA I want to emphasize that it is important to realize that calling the various definitions of truths “metaphors” is not a rejection of the importance or centrality of truth. Once we leave the philosophy of language (PL) behind, it becomes easier to understand the nature of truth. PL, by focusing on language, effectively prevents any substantive understanding.<br />
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Humans are responsible animals. We hold each other to account. It is our collective commitment to truth that helps make morality work in the face of lying and fraud. Lying is an action, it is a direct way of evading responsibility. <b>Truth is an ideal that we always understand indirectly, that is, through metaphors</b>. We commit to being truthful, which entails telling the truth, avoiding lying, and not tolerating lying in others. These are things we learn to do growing up in a society. Truth is an ideal that we commit to as part of a system of behavioural regulation - a normative system. In this way, truth has a very powerful effect, recognized in common, as holding up society.<br />
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Truth is not an actual thing or a relation, although we often imagine it this way; and there is nothing wrong with imagining truth as real, in fact we ought to, because it is an ideal that we commit to, and the form that commitment takes is our collective honouring what we take to be the truth and rejection of what we take to be lying. Collectively, we can be wrong about what we take to be the truth or falsehood, and this may have been what Nietzsche was objecting to; but our collective commitment to truth, though fallible, in general, works to make society possible. The work done, is in the regulation of human behaviour - this is what our commitment to truth is doing. We punish and sometimes even shun liars because lying is a way of evading responsibility for committing wrongs, and if too many people are allowed to get away with wrongs, then society stops working. The discovery of scientific “truths” comes a hundred thousand years after that initial collective creation, it is ultimately derived from the moral system, but scientific discovery is not essential to the original moral necessity for truth.<br />
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Remember journalist Charles Blow: “<b>This is the moment where truth has to matter more than all else.</b>” If Trump and his henchmen can lie their way out of any oversight by the other branches of American government, democracy and the rule of law may fail permanently in the United States. When “<b>truth is questioned</b>” and all you have is competing conspiracy theories, democracy is in serious trouble - it may, in fact, be on life-support. And, that is why the <b>truth matters</b>.earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-30691075758849191892019-08-10T11:26:00.000-07:002019-11-20T13:42:44.244-08:00Language, Truth, and The Just Society<br />
The philosophical problem common to both Plato and Rawls was how to form a just society. Plato’s solution was to institute a sustainable authoritarian state with the help of a “philosopher king”. John Rawls’ more modern idea was to build a social consensus around the form of the just society, by imagining an initial bargaining position, where, each participant, under a “veil of ignorance”, has “forgotten” their own socio-economic status. The idea being, that by abstracting out socio-economic status, the participants in this imaginary constitutional convention are more likely to agree to principles of equality and justice for all, that, just by coincidence, would resemble the modern welfare state.<br />
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As a thought experiment, I suppose that is a fine thing to do, but I think the key to understanding what makes a just society is understanding the difference between humans and all other animals; and, (spoiler alert!) that difference has to do with our ability to create and maintain normative systems like morality, language, and truth.<br />
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We can think of human society as a kind of kluge - a contraption built in a haphazard way by using whatever bits and pieces of things are immediately at hand; over the long haul the environment often intervenes, creating inequalities, and we come up with further modifications in order to continually deal with the centrifugal pressures threatening to pull us apart. Looking back, we can see that the development of all human institutions - kinship, moral systems, language, myths, religion, government, money, legal systems, and educational systems - all show this gradual and haphazard growth process.<br />
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What frames it all is that every element of human culture comes from our primal ability to agree to form and follow rules of behaviour, where we also expect others to do the same. We can call this framing, “normativity”<br />
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In our closest animal cousins, the primates, there is no evidence for a shared system of rules and meanings that can override dominance. In the Darwinian state of nature, individuals have no incentive to share information with others unless it strictly benefits them to do so. Without a normative system in place already, language would probably never have developed. A normative system overrides self-interest and encourages altruism by successfully punishing cheaters. It is much more likely that a communication system such as language, with shared meanings, rules, and detachable units, arose after we first established an initial normative system. I describe this initial normative system <a href="https://philosopherjustice.blogspot.com/2019/07/monogamy-genesis-of-human-nature.html">here</a> . In this essay I want to demonstrate how language depends on the additional normativity of truth to get off the ground.<br />
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In a fascinating book called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Handicap-Principle-Missing-Darwins-Puzzle/dp/0195129148/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=zahavi%2C+the+handicap+principle&qid=1563981921&s=books&sr=1-1">The Handicap Principle</a>, Israeli zoologist Amotz Zahavi, points out that unlike animal vocalization, which is tightly linked to an animal’s abilities and physical state, “human language has no component that guarantees its reliability and prevents cheating.” Language is a cheap egalitarian way to get messages across, unlike animal vocalization, where, as Zahavi puts it, reliability is hard to fake. (The smaller the lion, the more feeble the roar; the bigger the lion, the louder the roar.)<br />
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In animal communication, the signal is closely tied to the animal’s physical state because the more effective the signal is in establishing and maintaining dominance, the more likely that animal will be reproductively successful. That is why truth is not needed in animal communication. “All these signals amplify the ability of the observer to spot superiority or defects in the animals that carry them.” Weaker or inferior animals are not able to fake these signals because they are somehow deficient in the physical characteristics that are needed to produce the reliable signal.<br />
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Thus, I argue, the need for truth comes into the picture with the first appearance of language. Because we share, we humans need truth, whereas non-human animals don’t. Language is fundamentally based on sharing. It involves shared meanings, shared rules, and detachable and manipulable symbols that can be combined in numerous ways to construct novel sentences with unanticipated meanings. But unlike animal vocalization, the ease of communication with language makes it correspondingly easy to deceive others. By inventing language we opened a Pandora’s box of deception and misconception, and, in order to preserve reliability our ancestors had to add on an new regulatory system; today we are all still intimately involved in this system - we call it - "truth".<br />
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When we communicate we also share a universal commitment to tell the truth and counter lies and misinformation. With the development of language, humans took over the task of ensuring reliability from a largely unconscious nature.<br />
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Imagine a universal team sport, a game that everyone in human society is part of, a game where once you learn how to play it, you are in for life - that is what truth is. Truth isn't a thing, a property, or a relation. Truth is a system of regulating behaviour - a normative system.<br />
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In one sense truth isn’t a game, because we can’t opt out of playing without opting out of society. The way truth works is as if it were a referee that everybody, together, unconsciously imagines - a shared understanding of an idealized correspondence between our beliefs or utterances and an imagined, mind-independent, objective reality. Those who defy the "referee"deliberately, are called liars; they receive warnings and can be penalized for continuing to lie. Those who have no allegiance to the game, and who only pretend to follow the "referee” when it's convenient, are called psychopaths, and, once discovered by the rest of us, they need to be kicked out. This is an essential part of maintaining any human society, because when we don’t recognize or do anything about psychopaths, the pool of trust is in danger of being emptied, and it becomes “game-over” for all of us.<br />
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Truth works because we believe in it and respect it as an impartial referee. It’s a beautiful thing just like a well-played game is a beautiful thing. Even though it’s a fallible system that somewhat belies our faith in it, the fact that it takes all the participants, their dedication, and their commitment to the truth to make it possible, also makes it work better.<br />
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We can adhere to telling the truth and come to value and defend it when we all expect everyone else to do the same. Furthermore, we can have strongly felt judgements about liars which will serve as motivation to help each one of us to be part of the collective enforcement of moral and epistemological norms. Every culture has collective ways of punishing lying and immorality, from shaming, inducing guilt, and ridiculing, to more serious sanctions like shunning, and expulsion. In many cases, moral emotions are the indispensable motivators for detection and enforcement of cheating.<br />
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I’m going to argue that games, normative systems, and language all share some of the non-Darwinian qualities of a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Governing-Commons-Evolution-Institutions-Collective/dp/1107569788/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ostrom%2C+governing+the+commons&qid=1563982041&s=books&sr=1-1">Common Pool Resource</a>, and if we can understand what a common pool resource is, then we can understand the basics of what human behaviour is. I put it to you, dear reader, that the concept of a common pool resource, or CPR for short, developed by the Nobel Prize Winning American Institutional Economist, Elinor Ostrom, is a key concept for understanding normative systems. I maintain that it is the basic underlying substructure of all human behaviour and what really distinguishes us from the rest of the animals.<br />
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Where common property is on a small-community-scale, everyone needs to be the eyes, ears, and bodies on the ground, in order to detect and prevent overfishing, hogging water from a reservoir, overgrazing, or any other overuse of communal resources; and, in a common pool resource, each and every member both follows the rules and enforces the rules. Being on the same “team”, in effect is a group identity that goes with being a part-owner of a communal resource. The double function of adherence/enforcement exists in all CPR’s and normative systems. As Ostrom reports, the most stable and workable CPR’s are the ones where commitment to follow the rules is at the same time a commitment to enforce the rules. It’s when this double commitment is absent that you get the so-called “tragedy of the commons”, a situation where the commons is degraded by over-use.<br />
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Ostrom also found that common pool resources that survived over generations all demonstrated a powerful sense of collective identity amongst the CPR owners. We can see how this works by thinking about how introducing teams to a sport energizes the game. “Team identity” - identifying with team players,wearing the same colours, sharing similar tasks and objectives, feeling strong emotional bonds with teammates - is a powerful motivator that makes each player give their all.<br />
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A game is played through when the players respect the rules and abide by the referees calls. In the same way a common pool resource is maintained because its common owners believe in and abide by its rules, individually and collectively enforcing the rules at all times.<br />
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Truth works in the same way as do norms and common pool resources. It works because everyone believes in it, everyone commits to it, and everyone judges that those who don’t are morally deficient. This explains why lying is more complex than telling the truth. Truthfulness is presupposed in almost all conversations; if truth is part of the background, then it is lying that requires the extra effort. Sure enough, lying can be detected by a machine, because it takes extra psychic and physical energy to pull off a lie, whereas telling the truth is simply our default mode of communication.<br />
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There is a philosophical “theory” of truth called “Deflationism”, which gets its appeal by presupposing this point, claiming that “truth” is nothing more than a logical device, when it takes for granted the fact that it is already assumed to be the default mode of communication before we even utter a word. A real theory of truth should explain this fact, not take it for granted.<br />
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In a team sport such as hockey, when a player breaks a rule, he or she is called out and penalized by the referee. All the players know the rules and abide by the referee’s calls, or they don’t get to play. In contrast, and this is an extremely important point, there is no real physical referee in normative systems, yet we seem to function pretty well most of the time by internalizing the rules and checking ourselves against everyone else. All humans have the amazing ability to “internalize” rules - to impartially follow and enforce rules by unconsciously imagining some proxy for a referee, like an “impartial observer” or the “rules of grammar”.<br />
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Humans are different from all other animals because we have normative systems like morality and truth. These systems run on shared understandings and common expectations. When trust fails, when expectations fail, normative systems fail. Like a common pool of resources, they must be maintained by frequent checking for rule-breakers, and by procedures for punishing or ultimately, expelling them. And, normative systems share both with self-organized systems and common pool resources, the reality of universal participation and the absence of top down coordination. The crucial difference between normative and non-normative systems like human conventions, is that normative systems like morality don’t support self-interest with positive reinforcement; normative systems work to yoke self-interest to the collective interest. Normative systems, like truth, are fallible, improvable, and they are not based on Darwinian self-interest. And that, in a nutshell, is what creates the basic foundation of a just society.earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-17234420039101212192019-07-20T15:28:00.001-07:002019-07-26T10:46:27.140-07:00Monogamy and the Genesis of Human NatureThere is no institution of marriage in nature. Marriage is a human institution, but it is not simply an agreement between two people, it is a collective agreement between everyone in society. The presence of others as witnesses to the marriage demonstrates this. It’s the social agreement that makes it real, that creates real effects. If this were not so, then there would be no point in a marriage ceremony.<br />
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Swans and geese can live monogamously, but they are not in a state of marriage, because their relationship is based on biology, not on acceptance by feathered friends and relatives.<br />
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Chimpanzees, our closest living primate relatives, are promiscuous and ruled by an alpha male and his coalition. There is almost no ‘sexual dimorphism’ - no size difference - between male and female chimps.<br />
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Sexual dimorphism is quite pronounced in gorillas, where the huge silverback alpha male rules a harem of much smaller females. Polygyny (polygamy) in animals seems to be associated with more striking sexual dimorphism.<br />
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By examining archaeological evidence, we can surmise that some of our ancient ancestors were not monogamous and some were. Australopithecus, the first ancestor to walk on two feet had less sexual dimorphism than gorillas, but much more than humans and chimps. But, homo erectus, who evolved millions of years after australopithecus, had much less dimorphism. In fact, homo erectus had very similar sexual dimorphism to humans: more size difference between the sexes than chimpanzees, but less difference than gorillas or australopithecus.<br />
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Bernard Chapais, Anthropologist at University of Montreal, in his book, <i>Primeval Kinship</i>, speculates that approximately two and a half million years ago polygyny became an unstable system when homo habilis, the ancestor of homo erectus, invented stone knives and tools . Stone-age technology enabled the more nerdish homo erectus the easy means of bypassing superior muscle power by developing superior knife and spear tactics. For the first time, physical strength could be defeated by technology and brain power. This made a polygynous system, where physically stronger males monopolized females, an unstable arrangement.<br />
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Homo erectus was the first primate to walk out of Africa and the first to control fire. I believe that the collective agreement to institute monogamy is the key to these social advances perhaps the key to understanding human nature.<br />
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Monogamy in many animal species is associated with greater male participation in rearing the young, and for this and for other important reasons, I believe that becoming monogamous was the defining turning point for the human species. First, male participation helped make longer human childhoods more viable; second, monogamy greatly facilitated the sexual division of labour by making it possible for each male to provision nutritionally vital animal fat and protein for his pregnant mate and their growing offspring - something that would have been far less likely in a polygynous system; and, third, monogamy encouraged bigger and more successful human cooperative groups, by improving reliability of paternity and incorporating inlaws.<br />
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If, indeed, monogamy led to human culture, the change to monogamy did not occur because humans wanted to have culture, or because they somehow anticipated the unseen benefits of a monogamous system. Humans agreed to monogamy in order to facilitate pair-bonding. That stuff about ‘fatherhood’, ‘in-laws’, prolonged childhood, bigger brains, and language did not even exist in people’s imaginations at the time. It was all about dealing with jealousy and sexual possession. It was about desire. It was not desire to rise above nature, it was just natural desire.<br />
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Nevertheless, the effects of monogamy were revolutionary. The two million years that humans were monogamous hunter-gatherers were the crucible for human evolution. This is the time period when hominid brains grew significantly larger, and jaws and teeth grew smaller. As brains got bigger, female humans needed to give birth to babies with bigger heads, but there was only so much exit room; something had to give; that something was head size, and as a consequence, developmental readiness in human infants was significantly delayed.<br />
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Human babies are totally helpless, and their nervous systems are undeveloped compared to other animals at birth. Our period of infancy and childhood, where we require much attention and provisioning, and are incapable of surviving on our own, is significantly longer than any other animal. It was made possible by the sexual division of labour. Females gather and prepare meals. Males hunt and fight. That’s what makes a longer childhood and bigger brains possible.<br />
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But note that the division of labour, in turn, is made possible by monogamy. You can’t have a division of labour in a household if you don’t share. One of the things that monogamy does is to increase the amount shared between male and female partners. Bernard Chapais and others have pointed out how many benefits come from monogamy. Recognition of paternity becomes more plausible. An adult male has more incentive to provision his mate and offspring. I believe that monogamy set off a multiplier effect that ultimately led to human language and culture.<br />
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Here’s how it would have worked. I might want to be monogamous, but as long as someone else in the group can kill me or take my partner, I can’t realize my preferences. Suppose everyone was sick and tired of fighting and killing over females; we decided that from now on everyone gets to be paired up and anyone who tries to take more than their share is punished; for this to work, we not only need to detect cheating, we need to publicize and vigorously punish it; any group that neglects detection and punishment soon ends up with more violence and instability; whereas groups that pay attention to detecting and punishing cheaters are able to maintain a monogamous system and reap the benefits. From this it follows that every element of human culture comes from our primal ability to agree to form and follow rules of behaviour, where we expect others to do the same. To put it in general terms: <i>the path to differentiation between humans and animals came from our ability to create and sustain a social reality by collectively regulating our behaviour, rather than solely depending on dominance.</i><br />
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Monogamy means the collective recognition of pair-bonding, which is, in important ways, analogous to our common notions of reciprocity and fairness, and the principle of the golden rule - “do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.” Furthermore it requires the institution of rough equality and it unlocks the possibility of equality between the sexes.<br />
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A question the reader may be asking at this point is: if what I am saying is valid, how come we have so much "polygamy" in the world? Note that polygyny in humans is not universal, but it exists mostly in traditional agricultural societies, where landowners or animal herders are sometimes able to amass surplus wealth.<br />
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In hunting and gathering societies, which are largely nomadic, people can only keep as many possessions as they can carry on their bodies. Therefore surplus wealth is unlikely, and thus polygyny in hunter-gatherers is practiced, if at all, by a small minority.<br />
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Indeed, because polygyny means that women are monopolized by a single male, where polygyny is widespread there are going to be men who lack a mate and who may be willing to fight in order to get one. This would weaken any hunting and gathering band, making them more vulnerable to social disruption. It would make sense that groups that enforced monogamy would be more likely to survive, because they would share equitably and be more effective cooperators.<br />
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With humans, it has always been the case that individuals, and even nuclear families, cannot survive without being part of a larger group. Most hunter-gatherer bands comprise groups of thirty to ninety people. Too few and they can’t survive over generations, too many and dissension and violence split the group up.<br />
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It cannot be a coincidence that today’s hunter and gatherers all have a similar egalitarian ideology that encourages sharing and discourages boasting, inequality, greediness, selfishness, public aggression and bullying, as documented by anthropologists Boehm, Lee, and others. It is not likely that this ideology just happened to develop, since it is common to nomadic hunter gatherers no matter what part of the world they are from. It is more likely that this suppression of these <i>public male dominance behaviours</i> developed universally, because it was necessary for group survival.<br />
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One thing that is unique about monogamy is how effective it is as a way to channel male behaviour outside the immediate family. As the primatologist, Frans De Waal has argued, by separating sexual competition from other forms of competition, monogamy allowed a greater proportion of males to flourish and to benefit their families and societies.<br />
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Of course, we may be aware of how monogamy breaks down through divorce, abandonment, affairs, etc. The point is that it exists in all human societies, even though our natural feelings may influence us to violate it.<br />
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Every element of human culture comes from our primal ability to agree to form and follow rules of behaviour, especially when we expect others to do the same.<br />
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The anchor for human society is monogamy, because it is the first sustainable institution that incorporates collective agreement to regulate behaviour and to honour those limits through a rough equality. By deciding on monogamy, our ancestors made equality possible, and by developing social methods of control: shaming, ridicule, shunning, and banning, our ancestors created a method of maintaining monogamy in the face of centrifugal natural desires.<br />
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While some would argue that human language is the ‘ur’ institution, I believe I can make a plausible case that monogamy preceded language and actually makes language possible. If all human institutions arise from collective agreement to regulate social behaviour, then it makes perfect sense that it was the agreement to institute monogamy that formed the basic template for all succeeding human institutions, including language.<br />
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In language we have developed representations of reality called ‘words’. These representations can be created and assembled by individuals and then shared. This sharing implies a rough equality, in that in order to understand what is said, it is agreed by everyone that specific words refer to specific things or classes of things. Grammar and syntax - the structure of languages - could have developed from step by step collective agreements about how words can be combined to refer to various aspects of the world.<br />
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Before monogamy was instituted, dominance hierarchies precluded equality and equal sharing. There would have been less incentive to share information, so less incentive for a group to agree to common meanings, and, to follow rules of grammar in combining words and phrases.<br />
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On a deep level, speaking and listening to others speak requires trust. The moment I detect that someone is trying to take advantage of me is the moment that I stop trusting them. I share information with others as long as I believe that they are not going to harm me. This trust is made possible when we believe that everyone else is following rules and not taking advantage.<br />
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To sum up: two million years of human evolution equals two million years of human monogamy. Part of our evidence for this thesis is the diminished sexual dimorphism in humans and homo erectus, suggesting that erectus and sapiens eschewed chimpanzee type promiscuity and gorilla type polygyny. Then there is the fact that monogamy is prevalent in all nomadic hunter-gatherer societies and in almost all modern ones.<br />
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Monogamy is not a human instinct, nor is it a default behaviour that we can fall back on; it is a system of behaviour that requires high maintenance in order to be sustainable, and yet we have managed to make it the prevalent mode of conduct over the vast span of human existence.<br />
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By stripping away the effects of wealth and surplus on behaviour, we get, in nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples, a minimalist set of conditions, the bare bones required to sustain human society. These behaviours involve collective social controls on male domination outside the family, owing partly to the fact that our survival depends on living together in groups that include more than a single family. By maintaining a rough equality, hunter-gatherer monogamy made greater trust and social cooperation possible, and led to all the advantages of human culture, including and especially the gift of language.earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-48862044744965991392019-06-20T10:13:00.003-07:002019-07-25T10:36:51.433-07:00The "Yard" of TheseusWe have a yard that gently slopes down from our little yellow house. The yard is about thirty by thirty feet. It is surrounded on three sides by a six foot tall cedar board fence. Near one corner, is a pathetic vertically-challenged compost heap. In the other corner there is a scruffy spruce that we had topped off a couple of years ago. Beside the spruce, at the very back of the yard stands a tall, slender aspen, and elsewhere in the yard there is a plum tree, and a siberian pear tree. In the middle is a shaggy uneven lawn with a couple of piles of dead brush. Multiple types of berry bush form most of the perimeter.<br />
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Is our yard a system? If we define “system” as, “a way of doing things”, then it is. We have a way of doing things in our yard, which could be summarized as professional-level procrastination. (Sorry for the big words here.) The yard is bounded by a wood house and a wood fence. Our way of doing things in our yard doesn’t spill out into the neighbouring yards, unless you count the time I asked the neighbour if she would throw her lawn clippings over the fence and into my compost.<br />
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Birds visit our yard. They like the fact that we have bushes to hide in and tree branches to hang out in, and an uneven lawn just full of fat worms. Cats silently sneak into our yard - they like the birds and the little fish pond.<br />
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Prince Rupert is a small town set smack in the middle of a far-flung wilderness coastline. Deer roam the town virtually undisturbed. Those deer used to get into our yard before we put up the fence. For years now, we have had a way of doing things in our yard which does not involve deer. This has changed the system.<br />
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Our yard changed when deer and dogs could no longer get in. Some plants that had been over browsed got a second chance, but I have to admit that the lawn misses the deer manure. Our yard is a system, a way of doing things that exists, because we exist, our house exists, the fence around the yard exists, and the town of Prince Rupert exists. Take away any of these inner, outer, or perimeter things, and the yard would change, perhaps even disappear.<br />
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Systems are ways of doing things. They matter because they make it possible for us to exist. The solar system, for instance. If something significant were to happen to the solar system it might cause us to cease to exist. We really need to be part of that system!<br />
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Earth has the only life systems that we know of. Good thing we’re part of it; and I’d really like it if we could stay part of it; I know I’m going to die someday, but I mean that it would be good for humans to continue to exist, and it would be good for all the rest of living things to continue to exist.<br />
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If we see the universe as just made up of matter and energy, we are not really getting what’s significant. It is what things do that’s important. Living systems do two more things than non-living physical systems. Living systems maintain themselves and alter their environment. If life had not existed over billions of years, then the Earth’s atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen would not be there. Earth would be like Mars, with no water and a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide.<br />
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Think about it - nature needed billions of years to create humans because we could not have existed without oxygen and the ability to walk on two feet. Unlike all other forms of life, we alone are continually inquiring - to understand what’s out there, as well as what’s in there - that is, what makes us human.<br />
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Like humans, the social insects create “artificial systems”. They are called hives, nests, and mounds. But human systems are unique in living systems because they are rule-based ways of doing things. Plants, insects, and animals act more from instincts, or hormones or pheromones. They don’t follow, share, or teach rules. Animals don’t enforce rules, or punish rule-breakers. Only humans have normative systems that are based on following and enforcing rules.<br />
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When we talk about “Laws of Nature” and “Natural Law” we are actually projecting our way of doing things onto the rest of nature. Law, legal systems, systems of rules, are what differentiates us from the rest of nature, and suggesting that non-human nature is somehow law-abiding, is nothing more than an attempt to sneak us back into the garden. There’s a reason that the Biblical God kicked us out of there, and it was because we figured out how to be different from the rest of creation by creating our own rules.<br />
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In University I took a course in Metaphysics, and on the final exam, and after a night spent studying rather than sleeping I thought I was a goner. But then, out of the fog of fatigue and half-consciousness, “The Ship of Theseus” suddenly loomed into view as one of the exam questions. In my dreary dream-like state I somehow managed to dash off an instant interpretation that, seen in retrospect, seemed to have made a lot of sense. Thinking back on my answer, which I presently have no access to, other than in my memory, I realize that “The Ship of Theseus” is the perfect opportunity for elaborating a systems view of metaphysics.<br />
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“The Ship of Theseus” is a metaphysical problem concerning change and identity that was created and worked over by the ancient Greeks, but ever since has been a perennial philosophy favourite. I know the word “metaphysics” can scare off the reader, but take note, because you, the reader, have already been hoodwinked. That’s right, I’ve already sketched an outline of this very metaphysical problem when I described our yard.<br />
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The problem of identity is particularly important in both metaphysics and in systems theory. There are three reasons for this. Things change, systems change the way they function, and the identity of the system depends on our perspective. Once we get a grip on all three of these we have all the elements we need to construct a metaphysics of systems theory.<br />
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All systems have parts. A system can continue to be the same system, even if the parts change, as long as none of the new parts change the way the system functions. Or to put it another way - if things are still done the same way, then it is the same system.<br />
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When the ancient Greeks wrote about the ship of Theseus it was already a very old ship. So the question was, was the old ship the same ship as the original ship? Suppose one plank had become rotten and had to be replaced. We can easily see that it is still the same ship. And presumably it’s the same ship if some more planks were replaced. But what if all of the planks were replaced so that there is not one single bit of wood remaining from the original ship? Is it still the same ship? Or, what if someone had organized a multi-generational project for the massive job of collection, storage, and rebuilding, by saving every single discarded plank from the old ship, and rebuilding the ship with the exact original planking? Would that be the same ship?<br />
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Think of that ship, and everything else as systems. A system is a way of doing things. We each have our own systems, our own ways of doing things. If you can change the parts of a system without changing how it does things, it's still the same system. Replacing the planks in the ship doesn't change it into a different ship unless it changes its functioning. If the ship functions differently, if it can't carry as much cargo, if it can no longer sail quickly, if it founders and sinks, or if it is moored and converted into a seafood restaurant, then it is a different system.<br />
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Some systems work the way they do, entirely independently of humans. How, then, can one claim that identity is relative to perspective? What something is depends, in part, on what view we are taking of it. Looking at the yard again, we can see that the yard as a system is affected by bigger systems: town, country, climate system, biosystem, solar system. What is significant to our yard is when and how these other systems change what the yard can do. It won’t be the same yard if we die or move away. It won’t be the same yard if the town radically expanded or contracted. What makes a change significant is if it forces us to change what we do.<br />
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It's what a system does that is important. A change is not significant if it doesn't change what a system does. That is my solution to the problem of “The Ship of Theseus”. If we alter our physical environment too radically we might undermine our own ability to survive. It's important to know what the systems out there can do, as well as what the systems inside us can do. It is important to know what we are doing that can affect them. It is important to know the limits of all of our systems so that we avoid self-destruction. That is what's important about identity.</div>
earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-67070169072809212772019-03-25T14:33:00.001-07:002020-05-19T10:35:07.938-07:00Here Comes the Sun: Plato's marriage of mythos and logos<br />
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What we know as Western Philosophy started about twenty-six centuries ago, right at the boundary between the two rival ancient empires of Greece and Persia. The first philosophers came from the Greek colony of Miletus on the coast of Asia Minor. The originality of their philosophy came from seeking to understand the world, strictly via natural explanations. What is a “natural explanation”? Miletus, was situated on the border between two empires for a natural reason. The Greek Empire was a maritime Empire, like the Phoenicians, so its colonies were situated on Islands or near rivers on the Mediterranean coast, whereas the Persian Empire was a land based Empire, so the Mediterranean coast formed a natural boundary between the two.<br />
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Perhaps it was also the invention of writing, which creates a public record, and encourages objectivity, that led the Milesian philosophers to eschew the old form of explanation which up till then, had been religious mythology. Before philosophy, impressive natural phenomena such as our planetary system and the weather, were solely understood as coming from, and explained by, the gods and their supernatural powers. <br />
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But the funny thing is, the Philosophers and their natural explanations would probably have been forgotten in the mists of time if it wasn’t for a particular Athenian philosopher who, two hundred years afterwards, re-introduced myth back into philosophy. The Greek philosopher Plato is justifiably known as the greatest Western philosopher. Unlike virtually every other ancient philosopher, we have every one of Plato’s works in full. That makes him also, the world’s most successful philosopher. I believe that a big reason for Plato’s success was his construction of a powerful image that unconsciously suggests the superiority of both monarchy and monotheism. Through his particular combination of dialogue and story, Plato gave monotheism a new lease on life, when, except for an obscure desert tribe, it had lain moribund since its origins in Egypt; and it was that, together with his simple didactic writing style, that helped encourage philosophy to grow and flourish in, what would have otherwise been a hostile world.<br />
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Plato’s dialogues, a form of argument that goes back and forth between discussants, are justly famous as didactic devices. Ideally a dialogue teaches both sides of an argument, and indeed, many of Plato’s dialogues end in an impasse between the sides, called an aporia. The form of writing called “dialogues” has no greater exponent than Plato. Countless philosophy and theology students over the last two millennia have read, enjoyed, and learned from them. But they have also been fooled by the excellence of his philosophy to ignore the unconscious power of the little stories that just seem to innocently crop up here and there within the main dialogues.<br />
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Philosophy is best known for its use of rational explanations - the Greeks called this logos. Religions are based around stories about God and the gods, which the Greeks called mythos. It was two hundred years after the Milesians invented philosophy, that the Greek philosopher Plato managed to re-introduce myth back into philosophy, with a stunning effect that still has reverberations today. <br />
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Other than brief definitions of the meaning of "truth", Plato never gives an explanation of the nature of truth, admittedly, something which is also missing from the vast majority of subsequent philosophical accounts. Nonetheless, truth is a very important concept for Plato, as can be seen in the fact that almost every dialogue he wrote is about his teacher Socrates’ pursuit of truth.<br />
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It is in Plato's most famous dialogue, <i>The Republic,</i> that he created a powerful image to symbolize the life of Socrates and his pursuit of truth - <i>The Parable of the Cave</i><i>. </i>When you hear talk of “The Truth”, as if truth is one answer to one question, and somehow the “enlightened one,” has received “The Truth”, ultimately, from a singular source, Aka - “The Light”- this goes straight back to Plato’s <i>Parable of the Cave</i>, written twenty-four centuries ago. Here it is, in a nutshell:<br />
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Imagine a group of prisoners kept in a cave their entire lives, chained to a wall, so that they can only see shadows cast by the fire. Now imagine one of the prisoners escaping the chains and the cave, ascending to an opening in the ground. The first thing that happens when he gets out is that he is temporarily blinded by the sun. Slowly it "dawns" on him that, what, in the cave, he took for real things, are just shadows compared to what he can see in the light of day. Now the prisoner realizes that the sun is the real inexhaustible source of illumination and life. Suppose further, that the former prisoner is inspired to go back down into the cave and tell the other prisoners the truth about what’s really out there. When he first descends he can’t see in the dark. He ends up blindly fumbling around, and has a difficult time convincing the rest of the prisoners, who can see better than he in the dark, that there is a brilliant reality outside.<br />
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Consider this: someone discovers an amazing “truth”. He tries to tell others of his great discovery but no one will listen. Would that have sounded familiar, even if you’ve never heard of Plato or his parable? <i>The Parable of the Cave</i> is one of the founding myths of western civilization. It appears to be buried deep in our collective consciousness.The power and longevity of that myth is what is behind saying: “I’ve seen the light”; behind calling an idea or a person “brilliant”; behind the famous prologue of the fourth <i>New Testament</i> gospel, John I, 5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it;” behind Jesus’s declaration in John: “I am the way, the truth, and the life;” and behind Blake’s famous image of the “doors of perception”.<br />
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I can imagine being challenged here: "Where is your evidence?” It just seems obvious to me that the author of the <i>Gospel of John</i> was familiar with Plato’s <i>Parable</i>, because he is using the imagery of light, darkness, and ascent in the same way. <i>The New Testament</i> Gospels were originally written in Greek, four hundred years after Plato wrote <i>The Republic</i>. There was, at the time of the written gospels, a large group of early Christians called “gnostics” who seemed to have been directly influenced by Plato’s mythological writings, in this case, not just the P<i>arable of the Cave</i>, but also the “Myth of Er”, that comes right at the end of <i>The Republic</i>, and the myth of “the Demiurge” in the dialogue - <i>Timaeus</i>. <br />
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Note that the P<i>arable of the Cave </i>is not Plato’s theory of truth, because it is not an argument - there is no logos here. This is the type of story Plato himself, in the same book, <i>The Republic</i>, calls a “Noble Lie”; and, as a myth it does its work, not by reasoned argument, but via the unconscious. This myth powerfully equates truth with light and darkness with ignorance. It suggests that "The Truth" comes from a single source -the sun - a source which seemed immutable, infinite, and the origin of all life and knowledge. Without even thinking we come to associate the idea of hierarchy and authority with the sun, and this image provides the perfect blank canvas for many future justifications of monotheism and political elitism. Here you have monotheistic theology and monotheistic epistemology all in one package, and basically burned into our collective consciousness by the sheer power of Plato’s imagery.<br />
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You may be thinking, how could <i>The Parable of the Cave</i> be so powerful an influence, it's just a story? One could say, it was just the right idea, at the right time. You see, over time it becomes harder and harder to believe in the literal truth of supernatural explanations. According to the account in <i>Genesis</i> in the Hebrew Bible, God creates humans from dust, and sometime later gets angry because they are having sex with giants, and decides to drown the lot of them (except for one particularly pious patriarch and his family); and sometime later curses the surviving humans with mutually unintelligible languages, so that they can’t finish building a tower that seems, to God, to be too high; and it’s not much better in any other myth of origin. Surely, one wants a more mature, a more ideal picture of God - a God who is Perfect, The All Knowing Source of all Illumination and Knowledge, Infinite in Power, Immutable, etc., etc... <br />
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If religion is going to get big and institutional, it needs a system of ultimate justification that can impress larger groups of people, groups that may be large enough to include people from different cultures. If forms of government are to be stable, it stands to reason that you need some kind of ultimate justification for the government’s authority. Something like the divine right of kings, that connects a human institution - monarchy - to a <i>theology</i> - an understanding of divinity. And Plato obliges by supplying all the basic ingredients, partly out of foresight, but mainly because he wanted to construct a Mighty Bulwark against the pluralism and relativism of his Greek opponents, the Sophists and the Poets. <br />
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And what is Plato’s famous “divided line” from <i>The Republic</i>, but a schema of the shamanic world tree? The one with its roots in the underworld, it’s middle in this world, and it’s upper reaches piercing the heavens. The shaman is said to perform his rituals in a darkened yurt, with a fire in the middle, and a smoke-hole in the top-center. A pole, used to symbolize the world tree, runs from the ground through the smoke-hole, and up above the yurt, and the shaman, after a drum induced, or drug induced trance, is said to ascend the world tree and visit all of the three, or five, or seven “worlds” that the inscribed divisions on the pole might correspond to. Eventually the shaman emerges from trance and speaks of his adventures to his audience in the darkened yurt, recounting the knowledge he’s gained in the other worlds.<br />
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Is it a coincidence that both the “the cave” and the “divided line” have parallels to ancient shamanism? Plato was obviously aware of the Greek Oracles, as well as the mystery religions, both of which probably had elements in common with shamanism.<br />
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It’s notable too, that Plato’s <i>Parable</i> has a lot of vertical action going on, namely, going up out of the cave into the bright sunshine, then going back down into the darkness of the cave. This is also a schematic of Resurrection, but in reverse: going from death to life, then back to death again. Note how it mirrors the path of the sun, which is "born" in the morning and "dies" at night. It is no coincidence that Socrates death and Plato’s resurrection of Socrates status as the great philosopher, are there in the background of this myth, four hundred years before Jesus. Socrates was not a popular philosopher in Athens. Plato, through his dialogues has made his teacher famous for all time. In doing so with such imagination and vigor, I believe he rescued philosophy itself from oblivion. <br />
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Remember, all of Plato’s works survive today, twenty-four centuries later; some of the works of Aristotle have survived; but, very little of the works of any other ancient philosophers have survived. Plato obviously did something right, and we can all learn from him.<br />
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What Plato did, by inserting mythological stories into his dialogues, was to attract maximum attention to his philosophy, making it more memorable, and above all, with his parable of the cave, making monotheism and monarchy seem more natural and attractive. After Plato’s death, a long line of religious and secular authorities recognized his superiority over other philosophers and used his ideas to advantage: Plotinus, "John", the anonymous writer of the fourth gospel, Augustine, and others. For all we know, all the rest of philosophy, and the very idea of universal natural explanations, which eventually became what we know today as science, may only have survived because it first rode on Plato’s coattails.</div>
earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-76067951111276768902018-11-23T11:49:00.000-08:002019-06-02T11:39:39.015-07:00Propaganda<br />
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According to Wikipedia, propaganda is:<br />
"...information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to produce an emotional rather than a rational response..."<br />
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This may sound like a good definition, but it casts a pretty wide net. Firstly, objectivity is a worthy ideal, but it comes largely in degrees, and is never more than approximated in our day to day communication. In point of fact, all communication is used to influence, to further agendas, and all types of communication present facts selectively. This is true, not for nefarious reasons, but because we always have purposes in communicating, and in the act of fulfilling these purposes we are intentionally influencing people, presenting facts selectively, and furthering some agenda. Where this is a bad thing is when someone sets out deliberately to deceive people in order to get them to accept a version of reality that benefits a particular group of people, in opposition to the wider, public good. <br />
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However, propaganda can be used for good effect, it can be used by democratic governments to increase civic involvement, to make their citizens feel good about being citizens, leading to greater overall cooperation. “Uncle Sam Needs You!” That sort of thing. So, where did the word “propaganda” originate from? It came from seventeenth century Catholicism, which had an organization called “the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith” which was charged with spreading the faith to heathen countries.<br />
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To early seventeenth century Europeans, “propaganda” meant propagating the faith; that was seen as an unquestionably good thing . Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and now the common point of view is that propaganda is something dark and negative. To simplify: with Martin Luther, the Catholics had a serious competitor and his propaganda was not welcome in Catholic countries, nor, it may be said, was Roman Catholic propaganda welcome in Protestant countries. After a few hundred years of religious wars the dilemma of propaganda has seemed to reach a kind of impasse - what one says is the truth the other calls propaganda.<br />
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Let us now see if we can get any further looking at the concept of propaganda as it is used in secular politics. Today, in Canada and the United States, we live in countries with democratic political systems. We like to think of democracies as stable well-managed political systems that represent the public interest in a fair process of deliberation. But what if the democratic deliberative process itself is hijacked by a particular group? This possibility is the dilemma of propaganda in modern democratic systems.<br />
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It seems to me, and I’m following the lead of philosopher Jason Stanley, in his book <i>How Propaganda Works</i>, that the way out of this dilemma is to accept that the most important moral dividing line to observe is between propaganda that supports democracy and propaganda that undermines democracy.<br />
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In speaking about propaganda there is a theme that we cannot evade talking about - the problem of rising inequality. It’s important to understand why it is important. Democracy is about representation. When one person or group dominates a political system, there is only narrow representation. The interests of the majority can be ignored and dismissed while the institutions of the state are corrupted to serve the interests of the few. That is why inequality erodes democratic institutions.<br />
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Thus, it is no surprise that propaganda has become more demagogic and deceptive as inequality has increased in North America and other places around the world. The bigger the difference between rich and poor, the more likely the rich will try to seize power in order to prevent the rest of the population from threatening their wealth and status. And since the wealthy cannot seize power in a democratic system by being honest about wanting to protect their status, they will be inexorably tempted to use deception and demagoguery.<br />
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Note, that entrenched inequality is not a threat to authoritarian or political systems because their very reason for existing is to further inequality. In fact, it is a major way that authoritarian political systems prop themselves up and keep themselves going. Authoritarian systems are set up to favour one group over all other groups in society. Propaganda that serves to conceal this fact is the default mode of communication for authoritarian states; it is the everyday means by which any authoritarian regime communicates with its populace.<br />
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As Stanley argues, propaganda is more of an issue in democratic systems because the bad kind is a direct threat to democracy. He points out that the bad propaganda or “demagoguery”, was first described by Plato, in his book, The Republic, written twenty-four hundred years ago, it is a message that on the surface appears to be supporting democracy but the real intention is to subvert the democratic system.<br />
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For instance vote suppression, widespread in Southern states, is deceptively claimed to be protecting the voting system against “voter fraud” in the absence of evidence of any widespread voter fraud. It is marketed as a way of protecting democracy when it’s real intended effect is to disenfranchise ethnic or low income groups from exercising their right to vote.<br />
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The current Trump Presidency is in a class all by itself when it comes to examples of demagoguery. For instance Trump’s focus on immigration and the immigrant caravans from Central America, weeks before the 2018 midterm election, was intended to heighten passions and inflame tensions in order to motivate his followers to get out and vote. The result was that more Republicans got out to vote in the midterms than might have otherwise if Trump had not stoked racial fears. Getting more people to vote seems to support democracy doesn’t it?<br />
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As Stanley emphasizes, using racial prejudice to motivate voters in elections harms the deliberative process in democracies, because it makes it more difficult to have rational discussions about immigration, social welfare and other important issues when certain groups are targeted as less worthy of consideration. We only have to look at the amount of child poverty, poor educational results, poor access to medicine for low income groups, diminished life expectancies, and poor post-partum survival statistics to realize that America is an outlier on major measures of public health, given its per capita GNP. To stoke fears about immigrants is really about playing to people’s prejudice, and what it does is make it far harder for anyone to deal constructively with issues like immigration, public health, and social welfare.<br />
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During the 1920’s and 1930’s the Nazis also pushed immigration as a hot-button issue and stoked racial prejudice against Jews, Eastern Europeans and Gypsies But notice, if you look at what historians view as the major problems hounding the German Weimar Republic: for instance, hyperinflation, widespread poverty after WWI, crippling reparation payments, The Great Depression - the so-called problem of immigration is notable by its absence. In effect, fears about immigrants appears to have been a delusive fear not based on reality. In hindsight we can see that Hitler used racial fears about “outsiders” to manipulate the electorate and keep them oblivious to the dangers of his totalitarian rule.<br />
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Since the invention and widespread use of the internet and social networks on the internet we are seeing the rise of a new danger. We saw it first come to prominence in the U.S. Presidential election of 2016, when Vladimir Putin outsourced computer hacking and trolling to shadowy individuals and organizations dedicated to one of Putin’s prime goals - that of weakening the Western Alliance. It is also a homegrown phenomenon in the U.S. perfected by Steve Bannon and Breitbart News, where propaganda is effectively outsourced to private individuals and groups om social media to sow hatred and prejudice.<br />
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Something just as alarming is the mushrooming of conspiracy theories on youtube and on the internet, also specialised in by the Kremlin via it’s T.V. mouthpiece: Russia Today. Trump himself is no stranger to this form of propaganda; during the Obama Presidency he actively promoted a discredited conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya. Conspiracy theories like Birtherism and the 9/11 “Truther” conspiracy are like hidden corrosives to the democratic system. The more people believe them the less they trust the government and the media, and the safer they feel inside of a bubble of fellow “truthers”. This makes them all the more susceptible to the next conspiracy theory or, and this is more dangerous, it makes them susceptible to trusting someone like Trump who seemingly creates his own reality and “alternative facts” whenever he likes.earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-41867342291109027692018-10-25T15:12:00.001-07:002019-06-02T11:46:33.350-07:00Civility Civility is a common pool resource. A common pool resource is a resource that is shared in common by a group of people. It is protected and preserved through an agreement with easy to follow rules that everyone agrees to follow and to enforce together. Everyone both practices and benefits from civility, but there is no one person or group in charge of enforcing it, because everyone already participates in enforcement.<br />
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Suppose that some one in a group starts taking more from a common resource than is allowed. What does this do to the resource? If the rule-breaker is not stopped by the rest of the group he or she will inspire imitators, and soon people will cheat and undermine the agreement; then people can see that a minority is taking more for themselves, so more people abandon the agreement; soon the common resource is depleted and becomes less available, or it goes extinct. This process is often called the tragedy of the commons. But commons have some history of being wisely regulated by group agreements, as the Nobel Prize economist Elinor Ostrom has shown.<br />
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Civility is a common pool resource. Civility allows the people of any group to get along with each other. It makes civilization possible. Civility allows us to have all these interactions between strangers, between coworkers, between different levels of hierarchies, between employees and members of the public at large, all in ways that avoid intimidation and violence.<br />
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When civility breaks down, it destroys cooperation; and it needs to be quickly repaired or else it can corrode society from the inside because it creates a poisonous atmosphere where no one appears trustworthy, more people become hostile, and the level of violence increases. Needless to say, the absence of civility hurts productivity in many different ways.<br />
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When our leaders display incivility it is one of the worst kinds of erosion of a public good. The leader sets an example. If he or she is allowed to get away with incivility, many others will be inspired to do the same, radically lowering the level of civility in all of society.<br />
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What about protest movements? Aren't these a form of incivility? In the sixties, the civil rights movement was protesting against institutional discrimination and the absence of civil rights for blacks. A movement like Civil Rights can seem disruptive to a significant number of people because they themselves may have benefited from the discrimination in the first place. If the rules as they are enforced are manifestly unfair, the apparent civility may be a sham, existing only by virtue of physical force and intimidation.<br />
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In contrast, attacks on political correctness, although seemingly legitimate complaints, are not objections to unfair rules, they can often be attempts to restigmatize and remarginalize previously disadvantaged groups. These attacks are contributions to a larger agenda of strengthening formerly dominant groups by attacking the weak and formerly oppressed groups - the modus operandi of Fascism.</div>
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Civility is a common pool resource. it makes it possible for the participants of every human group to share information, to arbitrate disputes, to have fair exchange, and to facilitate mutual help in times of need. We are in trouble when we start to lose civility. Remember, it is a common pool resource. What that means in practice is that the pool of civility can be depleted if enough people trample on the rules. When civility is gone it then becomes far more difficult for a group to regain it than it would have been to maintain it in the first place, and that is because it is a common pool resource.</div>
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earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-57530724940441160802018-01-25T22:56:00.002-08:002019-12-16T10:03:44.347-08:00George Soros on IT Monopolies, 2018George Soros, Davos 2018 on IT Monopolies:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">"I want to spend the bulk of my remaining time on another global problem: the rise and monopolistic behavior of the giant IT platform companies. These companies have often played an innovative and liberating role. But as Facebook and Google have grown into ever more powerful monopolies, they have become obstacles to innovation, and they have caused a variety of problems of which we are only now beginning to become aware.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">The distinguishing feature of internet platform companies is that they are networks and they enjoy rising marginal returns; that accounts for their phenomenal growth. The network effect is truly unprecedented and transformative, but it is also unsustainable. It took Facebook eight and a half years to reach a billion users and half that time to reach the second billion. At this rate, Facebook will run out of people to convert in less than 3 years.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">Facebook and Google effectively control over half of all internet advertising revenue. To maintain their dominance, they need to expand their networks and increase their share of users’ attention. Currently they do this by providing users with a convenient platform. The more time users spend on the platform, the more valuable they become to the companies.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">Content providers also contribute to the profitability of social media companies because they cannot avoid using the platforms and they have to accept whatever terms they are offered.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">The exceptional profitability of these companies is largely a function of their avoiding responsibility for-- </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">and</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;"> avoiding paying for-- the content on their platforms.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">They claim they are merely distributing information. But the fact that they are near- monopoly distributors makes them public utilities and should subject them to more stringent regulations, aimed at preserving competition, innovation, and fair and open universal access.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">The business model of social media companies is based on advertising. Their true customers are the advertisers. But gradually a new business model is emerging, based not only on advertising but on selling products and services directly to users. They exploit the data they control, bundle the services they offer and use discriminatory pricing to keep for themselves more of the benefits that otherwise they would have to share with consumers. This enhances their profitability even further – but the bundling of services and discriminatory pricing undermine the efficiency of the market economy.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">their own commercial</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;"> purposes. They deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide. This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents. There is a similarity between internet platforms and gambling companies. Casinos have developed techniques to hook gamblers to the point where they gamble away all their money, even money they don’t have.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">Something very harmful and maybe irreversible is happening to human attention in our digital age. Not just </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">distraction</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;"> or </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">addiction</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">; social media companies are inducing people to give up their </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">autonomy</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">. The power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies. It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called “the freedom of mind.” There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it. This may have far-reaching political consequences. People without the freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. This danger does not loom only in the </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">future</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">; it already played an important role in the 2016 US presidential elections.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">But there is an even more alarming prospect on the horizon. There could be an alliance between authoritarian states and these large, data-rich IT monopolies that would bring together nascent systems of </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">corporate</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;"> surveillance with an already developed system of </span><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">state-sponsored</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;"> surveillance. This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">The countries in which such unholy marriages are likely to occur first are Russia and China. The Chinese IT companies in particular are fully equal to the American ones. They also enjoy the full support and protection of the Xi Jingping regime. The government of China is strong enough to protect its national champions, at least within its borders. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">US-based IT monopolies are already tempted to compromise themselves in order to gain entrance to these vast and fast growing markets. The dictatorial leaders in these countries may be only too happy to collaborate with them since they want to improve their methods of control over their own populations and expand their power and influence in the United States and the rest of the world."</span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-13175184550991116502017-07-15T13:12:00.000-07:002017-07-15T13:12:43.326-07:00In Memoriam: Liu Xiaobo 1955 -2017<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">The following translation was retrieved from the New York Review of Books </span><a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22210" style="background-color: white; color: #336699; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Web site</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #880000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.4em;">I. Foreword</span><br />
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A hundred years have passed since the writing of China's first constitution. 2008 also marks the sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the thirtieth anniversary of the appearance of Democracy Wall in Beijing, and the tenth of China's signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We are approaching the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre of pro-democracy student protesters. The Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles across these same years, now include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.</div>
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By departing from these values, the Chinese government's approach to "modernization" has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse. So we ask: Where is China headed in the twenty-first century? Will it continue with "modernization" under authoritarian rule, or will it embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilized nations, and build a democratic system? There can be no avoiding these questions.</div>
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The shock of the Western impact upon China in the nineteenth century laid bare a decadent authoritarian system and marked the beginning of what is often called "the greatest changes in thousands of years" for China. A "self-strengthening movement" followed, but this aimed simply at appropriating the technology to build gunboats and other Western material objects. China's humiliating naval defeat at the hands of Japan in 1895 only confirmed the obsolescence of China's system of government. The first attempts at modern political change came with the ill-fated summer of reforms in 1898, but these were cruelly crushed by ultraconservatives at China's imperial court. With the revolution of 1911, which inaugurated Asia's first republic, the authoritarian imperial system that had lasted for centuries was finally supposed to have been laid to rest. But social conflict inside our country and external pressures were to prevent it; China fell into a patchwork of warlord fiefdoms and the new republic became a fleeting dream.</div>
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The failure of both "self-strengthening" and political renovation caused many of our forebears to reflect deeply on whether a "cultural illness" was afflicting our country. This mood gave rise, during the May Fourth Movement of the late 1910s, to the championing of "science and democracy." Yet that effort, too, foundered as warlord chaos persisted and the Japanese invasion [beginning in Manchuria in 1931] brought national crisis.</div>
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Victory over Japan in 1945 offered one more chance for China to move toward modern government, but the Communist defeat of the Nationalists in the civil war thrust the nation into the abyss of totalitarianism. The "new China" that emerged in 1949 proclaimed that "the people are sovereign" but in fact set up a system in which "the Party is all-powerful." The Communist Party of China seized control of all organs of the state and all political, economic, and social resources, and, using these, has produced a long trail of human rights disasters, including, among many others, the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969), the June Fourth [Tiananmen Square] Massacre (1989), and the current repression of all unauthorized religions and the suppression of the <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">weiquan</i> rights movement [a movement that aims to defend citizens’ rights promulgated in the Chinese Constitution and to fight for human rights recognized by international conventions that the Chinese government has signed]. During all this, the Chinese people have paid a gargantuan price. Tens of millions have lost their lives, and several generations have seen their freedom, their happiness, and their human dignity cruelly trampled.</div>
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During the last two decades of the twentieth century the government policy of “Reform and Opening” gave the Chinese people relief from the pervasive poverty and totalitarianism of the Mao Zedong era, and brought substantial increases in the wealth and living standards of many Chinese as well as a partial restoration of economic freedom and economic rights. Civil society began to grow, and popular calls for more rights and more political freedom have grown apace. As the ruling elite itself moved toward private ownership and the market economy, it began to shift from an outright rejection of “rights” to a partial acknowledgment of them.</div>
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In 1998 the Chinese government signed two important international human rights conventions; in 2004 it amended its constitution to include the phrase “respect and protect human rights”; and this year, 2008, it has promised to promote a “national human rights action plan.” Unfortunately most of this political progress has extended no further than the paper on which it is written. The political reality, which is plain for anyone to see, is that China has many laws but no rule of law; it has a constitution but no constitutional government. The ruling elite continues to cling to its authoritarian power and fights off any move toward political change.</div>
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The stultifying results are endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of the natural environment as well as of the human and historical environments, and the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially, in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.</div>
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As these conflicts and crises grow ever more intense, and as the ruling elite continues with impunity to crush and to strip away the rights of citizens to freedom, to property, and to the pursuit of happiness, we see the powerless in our society—the vulnerable groups, the people who have been suppressed and monitored, who have suffered cruelty and even torture, and who have had no adequate avenues for their protests, no courts to hear their pleas—becoming more militant and raising the possibility of a violent conflict of disastrous proportions. The decline of the current system has reached the point where change is no longer optional.</div>
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II. Our Fundamental Principles</h4>
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This is a historic moment for China, and our future hangs in the balance. In reviewing the political modernization process of the past hundred years or more, we reiterate and endorse basic universal values as follows:</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Freedom</i>. Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Human rights.</i> Human rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people. The succession of political disasters in China’s recent history is a direct consequence of the ruling regime’s disregard for human rights.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Equality.</i> The integrity, dignity, and freedom of every person—regardless of social station, occupation, sex, economic condition, ethnicity, skin color, religion, or political belief—are the same as those of any other. Principles of equality before the law and equality of social, economic, cultural, civil, and political rights must be upheld.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Republicanism.</i> Republicanism, which holds that power should be balanced among different branches of government and competing interests should be served, resembles the traditional Chinese political ideal of “fairness in all under heaven.” It allows different interest groups and social assemblies, and people with a variety of cultures and beliefs, to exercise democratic self-government and to deliberate in order to reach peaceful resolution of public questions on a basis of equal access to government and free and fair competition.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Democracy.</i> The most fundamental principles of democracy are that the people are sovereign and the people select their government. Democracy has these characteristics: (1) Political power begins with the people and the legitimacy of a regime derives from the people. (2) Political power is exercised through choices that the people make. (3) The holders of major official posts in government at all levels are determined through periodic competitive elections. (4) While honoring the will of the majority, the fundamental dignity, freedom, and human rights of minorities are protected. In short, democracy is a modern means for achieving government truly “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Constitutional rule.</i> Constitutional rule is rule through a legal system and legal regulations to implement principles that are spelled out in a constitution. It means protecting the freedom and the rights of citizens, limiting and defining the scope of legitimate government power, and providing the administrative apparatus necessary to serve these ends.</div>
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III. What We Advocate</h4>
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Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in China, too, the era of emperors and overlords is on the way out. The time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states. For China the path that leads out of our current predicament is to divest ourselves of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an “enlightened overlord” or an “honest official” and to turn instead toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law, and toward fostering the consciousness of modern citizens who see rights as fundamental and participation as a duty. Accordingly, and in a spirit of this duty as responsible and constructive citizens, we offer the following recommendations on national governance, citizens’ rights, and social development:</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">1. A New Constitution.</i> We should recast our present constitution, rescinding its provisions that contradict the principle that sovereignty resides with the people and turning it into a document that genuinely guarantees human rights, authorizes the exercise of public power, and serves as the legal underpinning of China’s democratization. The constitution must be the highest law in the land, beyond violation by any individual, group, or political party.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2. Separation of Powers.</i> We should construct a modern government in which the separation of legislative, judicial, and executive power is guaranteed. We need an Administrative Law that defines the scope of government responsibility and prevents abuse of administrative power. Government should be responsible to taxpayers. Division of power between provincial governments and the central government should adhere to the principle that central powers are only those specifically granted by the constitution and all other powers belong to the local governments.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">3. Legislative Democracy</i>. Members of legislative bodies at all levels should be chosen by direct election, and legislative democracy should observe just and impartial principles.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">4. An Independent Judiciary.</i> The rule of law must be above the interests of any particular political party and judges must be independent. We need to establish a constitutional supreme court and institute procedures for constitutional review. As soon as possible, we should abolish all of the Committees on Political and Legal Affairs that now allow Communist Party officials at every level to decide politically sensitive cases in advance and out of court. We should strictly forbid the use of public offices for private purposes.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">5. Public Control of Public Servants.</i> The military should be made answerable to the national government, not to a political party, and should be made more professional. Military personnel should swear allegiance to the constitution and remain nonpartisan. Political party organizations must be prohibited in the military. All public officials including police should serve as nonpartisans, and the current practice of favoring one political party in the hiring of public servants must end.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">6. Guarantee of Human Rights.</i> There must be strict guarantees of human rights and respect for human dignity. There should be a Human Rights Committee, responsible to the highest legislative body, that will prevent the government from abusing public power in violation of human rights. A democratic and constitutional China especially must guarantee the personal freedom of citizens. No one should suffer illegal arrest, detention, arraignment, interrogation, or punishment. The system of “Reeducation through Labor” must be abolished.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">7. Election of Public Officials.</i> There should be a comprehensive system of democratic elections based on “one person, one vote.” The direct election of administrative heads at the levels of county, city, province, and nation should be systematically implemented. The rights to hold periodic free elections and to participate in them as a citizen are inalienable.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">8. Rural–Urban Equality.</i> The two-tier household registry system must be abolished. This system favors urban residents and harms rural residents. We should establish instead a system that gives every citizen the same constitutional rights and the same freedom to choose where to live.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">9. Freedom to Form Groups.</i> The right of citizens to form groups must be guaranteed. The current system for registering nongovernment groups, which requires a group to be “approved,” should be replaced by a system in which a group simply registers itself. The formation of political parties should be governed by the constitution and the laws, which means that we must abolish the special privilege of one party to monopolize power and must guarantee principles of free and fair competition among political parties.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">10. Freedom to Assemble.</i> The constitution provides that peaceful assembly, demonstration, protest, and freedom of expression are fundamental rights of a citizen. The ruling party and the government must not be permitted to subject these to illegal interference or unconstitutional obstruction.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">11. Freedom of Expression.</i> We should make freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom universal, thereby guaranteeing that citizens can be informed and can exercise their right of political supervision. These freedoms should be upheld by a Press Law that abolishes political restrictions on the press. The provision in the current Criminal Law that refers to “the crime of incitement to subvert state power” must be abolished. We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">12. Freedom of Religion.</i> We must guarantee freedom of religion and belief, and institute a separation of religion and state. There must be no governmental interference in peaceful religious activities. We should abolish any laws, regulations, or local rules that limit or suppress the religious freedom of citizens. We should abolish the current system that requires religious groups (and their places of worship) to get official approval in advance and substitute for it a system in which registry is optional and, for those who choose to register, automatic.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">13. Civic Education</i>. In our schools we should abolish political curriculums and examinations that are designed to indoctrinate students in state ideology and to instill support for the rule of one party. We should replace them with civic education that advances universal values and citizens’ rights, fosters civic consciousness, and promotes civic virtues that serve society.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">14. Protection of Private Property.</i> We should establish and protect the right to private property and promote an economic system of free and fair markets. We should do away with government monopolies in commerce and industry and guarantee the freedom to start new enterprises. We should establish a Committee on State-Owned Property, reporting to the national legislature, that will monitor the transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership in a fair, competitive, and orderly manner. We should institute a land reform that promotes private ownership of land, guarantees the right to buy and sell land, and allows the true value of private property to be adequately reflected in the market.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">15. Financial and Tax Reform</i>. We should establish a democratically regulated and accountable system of public finance that ensures the protection of taxpayer rights and that operates through legal procedures. We need a system by which public revenues that belong to a certain level of government—central, provincial, county or local—are controlled at that level. We need major tax reform that will abolish any unfair taxes, simplify the tax system, and spread the tax burden fairly. Government officials should not be able to raise taxes, or institute new ones, without public deliberation and the approval of a democratic assembly. We should reform the ownership system in order to encourage competition among a wider variety of market participants.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">16. Social Security</i>. We should establish a fair and adequate social security system that covers all citizens and ensures basic access to education, health care, retirement security, and employment.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">17. Protection of the Environment.</i> We need to protect the natural environment and to promote development in a way that is sustainable and responsible to our descendants and to the rest of humanity. This means insisting that the state and its officials at all levels not only do what they must do to achieve these goals, but also accept the supervision and participation of nongovernmental organizations.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">18. A Federated Republic.</i> A democratic China should seek to act as a responsible major power contributing toward peace and development in the Asian Pacific region by approaching others in a spirit of equality and fairness. In Hong Kong and Macao, we should support the freedoms that already exist. With respect to Taiwan, we should declare our commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and then, negotiating as equals and ready to compromise, seek a formula for peaceful unification. We should approach disputes in the national-minority areas of China with an open mind, seeking ways to find a workable framework within which all ethnic and religious groups can flourish. We should aim ultimately at a federation of democratic communities of China.</div>
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<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">19. Truth in Reconciliation.</i> We should restore the reputations of all people, including their family members, who suffered political stigma in the political campaigns of the past or who have been labeled as criminals because of their thought, speech, or faith. The state should pay reparations to these people. All political prisoners and prisoners of conscience must be released. There should be a Truth Investigation Commission charged with finding the facts about past injustices and atrocities, determining responsibility for them, upholding justice, and, on these bases, seeking social reconciliation.</div>
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China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the UN Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights. Unfortunately, we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization. This must change, truly it must. The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer.</div>
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Accordingly, we dare to put civic spirit into practice by announcing Charter 08. We hope that our fellow citizens who feel a similar sense of crisis, responsibility, and mission, whether they are inside the government or not, and regardless of their social status, will set aside small differences to embrace the broad goals of this citizens’ movement. Together we can work for major changes in Chinese society and for the rapid establishment of a free, democratic, and constitutional country. We can bring to reality the goals and ideals that our people have incessantly been seeking for more than a hundred years, and can bring a brilliant new chapter to Chinese civilization.</div>
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—<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Translated from the Chinese by Perry Link</i></div>
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earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-53125843310409184362017-06-19T11:59:00.000-07:002019-06-02T11:48:27.475-07:00Drumming and Normativity<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps the first sound we ever hear is our mother's heartbeat, and the last thing we hear may be our own. The heartbeat's tempo, regularity, and its steady repetition is what sets the pace for all of the many things that we do in our lives. That beat becomes slow and steady when we fall asleep, but in times of stress the heart beats faster to facilitate the incredible bursts of energy that may be required to get us out of danger.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Analogous to the way that the heart pumps blood to the muscles and makes action possible, we can say that the drum beat drives the music forward. The softer, the quieter the drums, the more laid back the music. The louder and more insistent the drums the higher the energy becomes. The drums and percussion are the instruments most felt by the entire body. We instinctively move to the beat of a drum, we can't help it. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But the heart, together with all the other organs in the body, is a team player. So too, the drums. In drumming, control is everything. As a drummer I have the power to command and overwhelm the entire band, but, if I exercise that power and drown them out I become persona non grata.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I were a chimpanzee like Jane Goodall’s “Mike”, who became the alpha dominant by capitalizing on the noise and confusion caused by his clanging and banging empty fifty gallon oil drums together, then I could dominate all the apes around me with my awesome drum set. But humans usually don’t tolerate that kind of domination. I would get absolutely nowhere with any band I can think of, unless I exercised restraint.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is something about percussion that mirrors normativity itself. The huge Silverback Gorilla who beats his chest, the alpha male chimpanzee who slams a tree branch against the ground - these close relatives of ours maintain their absolute dominance by bluffing with loud percussive sounds that signal their power and ambition without the necessity of having to fight it out. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We can reproduce a similar kind of compulsion and power with percussion instruments. The thunder of Tympanies, the deep and explosive sound of Gongs, the clarity and sustaining sound of a huge Bell - they all have the power to break us out of our trajectories, to refocus our attention, to summon us.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Humans, unlike the apes and other animals, work together through agreement and cooperation and resist overt domination. This is reflected in music, especially in the relation between the percussion section and the rest of the band. Like the heartbeat the drummer sets the pace, but he’s got to be in sync with the other players. The drumbeat drives the music forward, but the drummer has to fit-in with everybody else, constraining his volume, keeping the tempo steady, but continually facilitating and reflecting the energy level of the other musicians at the same time. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Birds have beautiful, but mostly solitary songs, wolves howl together, elephants trumpet, but animals never achieve a cumulative body of knowledge and culture the way humans do. I believe that the key to this difference is in normativity, our collective adherence to rules. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Music is a collective human phenomenon. It’s possible to play music by yourself, but it really requires a collectivity to get it off the ground - to compose music, to build up a repertoire of songs, to form styles and traditions, to produce musical instruments, to train musicians, to build audiences and to make musical performance possible.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Music itself, like all other human pursuits, is rule-governed. It is the rules of music, the scales, harmonies, time signatures, tempos, and controlled dynamics that allow for such creativity and cooperation. But wait, there’s more! There is another way that music reflects human life, and is the reason why music is so emotionally appealing. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Music reflects the ceaseless changing activity that comprises life. Think of what a Beethoven Symphony and ongoing life have in common. Things happen, events unfold, sometimes slowly, other times quickly; there are different themes that are introduced by different individuals; some of these themes drop out, but some get stronger as more people join in. Things happen, and different things coalesce; they can change dramatically, they can evolve in expected or unexpected ways; themes that had dropped out previously can reappear and join in with the chorus. The music can build and build, creating a tension and then release as the musical phrasing reaches a climax and frames an ending.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not all music is as complex as a Beethoven symphony, but it is easy to see how tempos, patterns, changes, progressions, transformations, and repetitions in music can evoke our experience of everyday life. Music may be rule-governed, but it’s largely the way that music moves our bodies and interacts with and mirrors our feelings that forms the basis of its appeal.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Getting back to drumming, there’s a strong connection between certain time signatures such as 2/4 and walking. Left right, left right, maps onto one two, one two, which is why drumming is so prominent in marches. When two people walk together they often walk in unison. It’s often done unconsciously, in fact it is a neurological phenomenon called “entrainment”. This can be seen in a more deliberate fashion, in military marches, and it is definitely facilitated by drumming. Entrainment can have a powerful emotional effect on us, partly because when it is happening we perceive the group acting as a single organism. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drumming can also induce trance, sometimes because of the monotony of some repetitive beats and sometimes because, when one hears two complex beats simultaneously, one can either hear the two beats in combination, which is the usual way, or, more interestingly, one’s focus can be suspended between the two beats, unable to choose one over the other - at which point one enters a trance. How do I know this? Because I have inadvertantly put myself into a trance practicing drumming exercises.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note the paradoxical consequence that drumming can either induce entrainment and a powerful sense of unity or, alternately, the disassociation of trance. My sense is that both these phenomena have to do with the connection of drumming with normativity. To begin with, the stark simplicity of drumming is a lot like the binary opposition in normative concepts such as good/bad and right/wrong. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The simplicity of drumming, it’s sharp definition and repetitiveness, frames the music into a regular series of parts which we call “the beat”, each with a brief rise in tension, then a climax and dissipation. This framework repeats itself over and over throughout many songs. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to say that normativity frames all human social activity, in the sense that in any common activity we feel compelled to act in certain ways, independently of our particular desires. The Contemporary Philosopher John Searle refers to this as the fact that only humans have “desire-independent reasons.” </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We keep our promises, fulfill our obligations, and do our duty, basically because we live in society and we want to keep living in society. There is something compelling when we feel an “ought”, that we feel we ought to do something, or when we see a wrong, and feel strongly that it should be publicized and punished. Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher of the enlightenment brought out the specifically universal quality of morality in his concept of “the categorical imperative,” that is, that moral rules apply to everyone, that we cannot absent ourselves from this kind of rule without being excluded from society. This also shows that contrary to Utilitarianism, morality is irreducibly social and cannot consist of simply adding up individual people’s needs and preferences.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Because Kant wanted to make human reason autonomous and base everything on this autonomy he excluded emotion from his system. That was an unfortunate mistake, because it reflects a basic misunderstanding of the nature of normativity.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Kant’s autonomy turns out to be a mirage because reason by itself has no compulsion whatsoever. It needs emotion to supply a sense of direction, an ought. But, of course, any emotion is caught up in some immediate and particular circumstance. We are angry or sad about a particular situation. How can morality make a claim to being universal if it has to involve emotions that are about particular situations? The answer lies in the way that collective commitment is necessary for morality to get off the ground.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One thing that is absent from both Kant and the Utilitarians is the importance of enforcement. But, the 17 Century British philosopher Hobbes saw it. In his great work </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leviathan, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hobbes stated: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Part of normativity, the part which Kant emphasized, is its universal inclusion - everybody commits to moral rules and no-one is excluded unless everyone agrees that they should be. That universality is important, but it is only half the story. Besides our collective commitment to follow the moral rules the moral force also resides in our collective commitment to enforce the rules, with the possibility of different degrees of exclusion, with the ultimate degree being execution. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-f600776f-c1af-5fb6-dd95-3ccc5623b74f"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The categorical imperative is really a social commitment to hold to and enforce universal standards of conduct. By this commitment we have replaced sheer animal dominance with morality and the rule of law. I am reminded of this every time I play the drums in a band. Each band member, by committing to play in this particular band, constrains his or her playing to be in sync with the rest of the band. This is how music is kept alive, how it is created and re-created. If any other group of animals could collectively recreate a piece of music, it would be strong evidence of rule-governance - of normativity in another species. </span></div>
earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-70159694284828454422017-04-24T12:01:00.001-07:002021-10-04T10:34:20.240-07:00Prologue to "The Normative System"<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Universe is the first and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oldest system</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. All other systems are contained within it and subject to its universal framework, bound by the forces of gravity and electromagnetic energy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are Systems? Let’s call them: “ways of doing things.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> At the end of the seventeenth Century Isaac Newton showed, in his derivation of the laws of motion, that gravitational force impacts the motion of all physical objects. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the beginning of the twentieth Century Albert Einstein, in his theories of Special and General Relativity, showed how the dual forces of electromagnetic energy and gravity determine the very geometry of space and time. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The force of gravity defines the boundary of the Universe. Outside that boundary there is no matter, there are no lines of force, no geometrical space, no locations, no energy, no movement, and no development. There is no outside. Everything is inside. Everything is either a system or a part of a system.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All systems do things. Doing things takes energy, so all systems use energy. There is a fixed amount of energy in the Universe. According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All systems use energy to do things and in so doing they make that energy less available to other systems. This is the second law of thermodynamics. Once energy has been utilized it cannot be re-utilized to the same degree. Each time it is used it becomes degraded. For example, in a living-system plants extract energy from the sun, and animals extract the chemical energy from eating plants, or from eating other animals. Animals have to work physically harder to get the same amount of energy that plants can get just by staying in one place and soaking up the sun. That is the second law of thermodynamics at work.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All systems develop and change over time. All systems are born, they do things, and then they die, and stop doing things. This is obviously true of living organisms, but it is also true of our solar system and the Universe, but on vastly larger time-scales. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Systems form a natural hierarchy. All systems are physical; living systems are purposive physical systems; Human systems are normative purposive physical systems. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have divided systems into three nested categories: All systems are physical systems, subject to the fundamental forces of the Universe. Living systems are purposive physical systems. Human systems are normative, purposive physical systems. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All systems are physical, that is, they exist within the Universe. There is no outside. What we refer to as “spiritual” is a human system of perception that relies on our culture and imagination and is therefore based on physical occurrences. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Living systems are purposive physical systems - they maintain and replicate themselves. A flame resembles a living system because it gives off heat and changes it shape. A flame just goes out when it runs out of fuel. The flame is a partially self-maintaining physical system but it does not act from purpose. In contrast, a living system will go look for more food before it runs out of energy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What makes human systems different from other living systems? Humans have rules that they collectively agree to. These rules create a social reality that only exists because of collective human acceptance. I call this creation of social reality </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Normativity. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The fundamental fact about normativity is that it is an artificial creation of a boundary. One between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness, and, between meeting or not meeting countless standards of behaviour. The boundary is not there in reality like the shoreline. It is one that is created by the agreement of a group of human beings. In order to create this boundary humans must be able to agree on a difference, and actively maintain that difference by including some behaviours and excluding others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Normativity is a system that frames all human social activity. The first humans began the human experiment when they agreed to live under a moral system. Just as the Universe creates the structure of physical reality through its own gravitational and electromagnetic forces, by drawing a line between good and evil our human ancestors created the basis for all succeeding human systems, systems that eventually led to language and the myriad of cultural forms that we participate in today.</span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-83660381962900688192017-04-01T11:45:00.002-07:002019-06-02T12:19:38.429-07:00The Human System<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have an ongoing joke with my wife Candace about my “system”. It’s the way I like to heat the rooms of our little house in the winter, and it involves turning in-room heaters on or off and opening or closing certain doors at various strategic times. Candace smiles at the arcaneness of my “system”. Here, where I am referring to my “system,” I mean “a way of doing things” that I repeat each day when the outside environment calls for it. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can call the local weather a "system" in another way. It is certainly a regular way of doing things, but, unlike my opening and closing doors, it is not a goal-directed process. It is a natural, self-organized, physical process that begins in the Pacific Ocean and sweeps across parts of North America, eventually dissipating over the Atlantic. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are many other regional weather systems around the Earth, and these together make up an evolving Global Climate System that is presently warming, but that last wrapped most of the Northern Hemisphere in ice sixty thousand years ago and then melted away over tens of thousands of years. The global Climate System has profound effects on Earth’s surface geology, and on the evolution of living ecosystems.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s how I see things: The Universe is a system, and it’s a hierarchy of systems all the way down to the finest detail. Here on Earth we are a part of the Solar System, which is, of course, a ridiculously tiny part of the Universe. But we are in an orbit around the Sun that has afforded the Earth a temperature range that has kept most of its water in a liquid state for four billion years, and this is what has made the continued existence of life possible.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We humans are part of the Earth’s biosphere, or Life-system. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Living systems are different from non-living physical systems because living systems purposely maintain themselves and reproduce, spreading until they reach every corner of our planet. Since life took over it has been the determining factor in furnishing Earth’s global atmosphere of oxygen, carbon-dioxide, and nitrogen, it has, through preserving the oceans, kept the Earth itself alive and volcanically active over billions of years. How is this possible?</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Living things are so coupled to the Earth that ecosystems have changed both the atmosphere and the climate over aeons. Indeed, the presence of life itself is also part of the reason that life has had almost four billion years to evolve from bacteria to humans. Our very oceans have existed for this long time because photosynthetic bacteria and green algae have produced enough oxygen that it has, in the form of high-altitude ozone, shielded the oceans from too much of the Sun’s ultraviolet light. Without ozone, over billions of years, the excess ultraviolet would have split enough water molecules to empty the Earth’s oceans. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If you find this hard to believe, consider Mars: Mars does not have a Life System, and so far, we see no evidence of there ever being one. There is no water there now, not even a puddle, and very little atmosphere, but they say, that there used to be water there... Life cannot maintain itself without water; Water cannot maintain itself without life. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Universe is systems all the way down. Life is a planet-wide system. Humans are biological organisms, which means that each individual human is a single biological system made of skin, bones, muscles, specialized organs and consciousness. All biological organisms, including humans, are systems entirely made of cells, and each cell is a tiny system of molecules, membranes, and organelles, containing within its nucleus a genetic system that can direct the building of any cell in the body from scratch. </span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The very long, from our perspective, timeline of natural systems, such as the Earth’s global climate, demonstrates this rule of thumb: the bigger the system, the longer the time frame that’s involved in that system. Human systems occupy a middle ground, between microscopic systems that grow and die in minutes or days, and planetary, star, and galaxy systems that grow and die in the space of billions of years.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But here's an exception to my rule - hydrogen atoms. In relation to humans they are submicroscopic systems. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And as for age they are the oldest of all, the same age as the Universe. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Our bodies are made up of molecular systems that contain a significant proportion of hydrogen atoms in relation to other elements. And wait - there's more! Just about every atom in the Universe is either Hydrogen or it was made from Hydrogen by nuclear reactions deep inside of countless stars. They make up the most plentiful thing in the Universe and they just happen to be the oldest systems around. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Each one of those tiny systems is the basic building block for all other systems. Each hydrogen atom is directly connected by origin to the birth of the Universe. This is what it means, in systems theory, to say that everything is connected. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let's go back to my rule of thumb: The bigger the system the longer the time-frame. I keep saying that humans occupy the middle ground. The reason is because it took the universe fourteen billion years to produce us. We are young, we are infants compared to almost everything else but our own artifacts. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Some say humans evolved one half million years ago. I mark the dividing line at two million years, with the first evidence of Homo Erectus. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Homo Erectus is more than just an ape man. Hominins - that’s our evolutionary precursors - start to look more like modern humans with Homo Erectus. And in the time space of one and a half million years after Erectus appears in the fossil record, humans evolved bigger brains, longer childhoods - thus greater potential for learning - and at first the ability to shape and fashion specialized stone tools, then to control fire, to cook food, and to migrate over the rest of the Earth. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Should we claim for human systems the possibilities inherent in billions of years when we have only been around for scarce two million? Can we grow as big or bigger than the Earth’s life-system? I believe that these two questions are really the same question. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact that the human race is only</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> two million</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years old, and it took </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">four billion </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">years for the Earth’s Life-system to reach that point, indicates nothing robust about humans. We are delicate, precarious beings. We couldn’t have evolved eight</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> million</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years ago, let alone </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">four billion</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years ago. Imagine a world without flowers, which evolved 160 million years ago, or mammals, who celebrate their 250 millionth birthday today. We are contained in the Earth’s biosphere and cannot escape it because we utterly depend on it for our survival. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is the human system, that we believe that it could surpass the Earth’s Life-system? Is it our technological systems that would make this possible? The evidence of the last three hundred years decisively contradicts this hope. We are now in the midst of an Extinction -Event, something that happens about once every hundred million years. Scientists call this latest event The Anthropocene age, for the unmistakable fact that humans are causing this latest collapse in biodiversity. And we are causing it because our advanced technologies give us access to fossil fuels.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When it comes to systems, size matters. Large systems can utilize more energy and have more powerful effects. The Pacific Ocean has a greater effect on the Earth’s weather patterns than the Atlantic Ocean. The Earth’s plate tectonic system has an even greater effect through its access to the tremendous heat in Earth’s Core and Mantle, changing the shape of the continents and the seas over a time frame of hundreds of millions of years. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The human system cannot grow beyond the bounds of Earth’s Life-system. We cannot grow bigger than a system that we totally depend on without fatally undermining ourselves in the process. In point of fact, one could ask, how is it even possible to do this? How can humans, who must derive their nourishment from the biosphere, surpass the biosphere?</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The human system has tapped into The Earth’s tectonic system to extract energy from fossilised carbon. We have grown in numbers and power as a result. We are using up the energy that was stored in the Earth for </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hundreds of millions </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of years in the space of only </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">three hundred years. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is because we have tapped into an ancient form of accumulated energy from the Earth that we humans have been able to build global systems in the past three hundred years: systems of transportation, economic systems, communication systems, legal systems, administrative systems. When we start decreasing our use of fossil fuels our systems will have to get smaller too. With less access to energy what the system can do will be less. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The best scenario I see is to gradually stop the extraction of fossil carbon and replace it with a more decentralized system of renewables. Society will then have to run on a smaller scale because we will lack the concentrated energy of fossil fuels.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Or we can opt out of a future for humanity altogether. We can continue to burn more and more fossil fuels and allow our systems to grow bigger and bigger, until the entire human system, in all its power and glory, smashes into the wall and breaks apart into countless shards.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Global Warming is a sign that we have already grown too big and gone too far, but why not push the envelope that much further, and risk our very future for the sake of greater financial rewards and bigger and faster cars? </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Size matters. The Earth cannot sustain a population size of seven billion humans or larger. We have reached this size by using fossil fuels. This increased usage of energy is changing the Earth’s Climate System. Remember, this system usually works on a time scale of tens of thousands of years or more. Human civilization is less than ten thousand years old. The use and extraction of fossil fuels only started in earnest about three hundred years ago. The Climate is warming in the space of</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> one hundred years</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Each </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">new year</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> brings more and bigger Floods, Forest Fires, Droughts, Hurricanes; it is like something out of the Bible.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With energy comes power, and power allows us to do more things. Having more power means having a bigger effect on other systems. Eventually the effect of this power will alter the behaviour of the larger system in a way that undermines our survival as a species, because we cannot escape being dependent on the larger system. When the Global Climate System works against us our human systems can quickly become overwhelmed. When we have grown big enough to effect this system, we cannot escape the effects of altering it. These effects will not be benign. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Humans have been living in ignorance of these larger systems for two million years, with differing consequences. When the Climate cooled, as it did a hundred thousand years ago, human systems shrunk dramatically. When the Climate has been favorable, as it has been for the last ten thousand years, humans have prospered and human systems have grown exponentially. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Each system has an optimum size. Too small and it loses too much access to energy. Too large, and it undermines its own existence. A star that grows too large destroys itself in a massive supernova. A Galaxy that is too large becomes full of black holes. A living population of organisms that grows too large, runs out of food and drowns in its own waste. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our Solar system is four and a half billion years old, roughly a quarter of the age of the Universe. The Earth’s Life-system is somewhat younger, at roughly four billion years old. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> At approximately two million years old humans are a young species. Many species have been around longer than us - most species of birds and insects, for instance. The human system is young. But it has the distinction of being the first system that can identify and understand all or almost all other systems.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Some human systems are very young. Language as a general system of communication could be anywhere from one hundred thousand years to five hundred thousand years old. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Writing, as a communication system is about three thousand years old. Printing, in the West, is about five hundred years old. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The internet is less than half a century old. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> On a smaller scale, human systems, such as particular languages, nations, and cities, have lasted for hundreds to close to thousands of years, families last from several to thousands of generations. Economic systems grow and die over the space of hundreds of years. Some institutions like marriage, have lasted thousands of years. All these human systems grow and die, change and evolve, competing and sharing with other human systems.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Most non-human systems that we can observe are far older than any human system. The geographic features that we live in can be anywhere from </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tens of thousand</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s to </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tens of millions</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of years old or more. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the area that I live in, Northwestern BC, the geography was mostly the result of an ice-cap that covered the northern half of North America for most of the last </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hundred thousand</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years. And for the first </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">eighty-five thousand </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of those years, there were no human footprints here. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The scale of many natural systems dwarfs the scale of human systems. The only place that this is not true is in our imaginative systems. We imagine that we are important because that’s how imagination works. It always starts with our own experiences and generalizes from that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One knows a system by observing its behaviour and its boundaries. In order to better understand the Human System, we ought to know as much as possible about when it began and how it began. Then we can better distinguish it from other kinds of living systems. </span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-64022580284211090162017-03-06T15:06:00.003-08:002019-11-28T12:03:23.390-08:00The Meaning of Hobbes' Sword - Part I<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What makes human systems different from other living systems? Humans alone have rules that are collectively agreed to. These rules create a social reality that can only be maintained by collective human acceptance. I call this social reality - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Normativity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-6c03d56f-a5df-1664-faa0-2f54bb54a10a" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My passion is to seek to understand the nature and origin of normativity. My intuition is that all forms of normativity, including language, originate from its most basic form - morality. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The fundamental fact about normativity is that it is a drawing of a boundary. A line between good and evil, right and wrong, or true and false. This boundary is not already there in reality like the boundary between water and land; It is one that is created by the agreement of a group of human beings. In order to sustain this boundary humans must be able to agree on a difference, and actively maintain that difference by regulating their own behaviour.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We accept certain behaviours, so we include them. We reject other behaviours and so we exclude them. We can look at every incidence of normativity in this way. All uses of rules follow this pattern. Some behaviours are included and other behaviours are excluded. And those who keep doing excluded things become excluded themselves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can’t be a Scientist unless you follow the rules and methods of Science. You can’t do math if you don’t learn the rules. You can’t play a game if you just make up your own rules. You can’t speak a language if you don’t know the words and follow its grammar. You can’t be a member of society if you persist in wrongdoing. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #434343; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When we observe wrongdoing we normally want to stop it from happening, and so we often tell others about the wrong. And when we do, it helps us to maintain the distinction and continue to follow the rules ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the other hand,when we see many people breaking the rules, we are much more likely to break the rules ourselves. We lose the motivation to maintain the distinction, because it is not being maintained by the rest of the group. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I anticipate that some people who read this will disagree with me. They may argue that morality is objective and does not depend on how many people in a group follow the rules. Others may ask what do I mean, everyone commits to morality, and everyone participates in monitoring and sanctioning others? Morality is imposed by tradition, or absolute authority, or perhaps they may see it as an ideological fabrication. My argument, that it is a social contract, may not seem self-evident. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But consider this example: language is like morality because it is also a kind of normativity. In order to learn a language we have to commit to speaking it. When we make mistakes we are corrected by others. If we already speak the language, when others make errors in grammar or pronunciation, we correct them. If I misspell “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">conscuusness”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you will be irritated by my error and want to correct me. I myself am having a hard time right now not going back and correcting that error. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not about to go back and correct that error because I’m trying to make a point here. Normativity is about commitment. The reason that this is not self-evident is because we’ve already made the commitment a long time ago when we were growing up. Each one of us committed to speaking a language. Each one of us committed to living in a moral system. And if we didn’t do the latter, we are probably in jail now or headed for jail. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s the thing: language is a self-organized human system. There is no one in charge of language. There is no authority out there dictating grammatical rules and rules of pronunciation. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There are seven billion speakers, who all follow rules of grammar and pronunciation, and our world is divided into many groups of speakers speaking variations on these rules, due to variations in geography, cultures, and unique histories. The rules of language change over time and location. This change happens slowly, but it is inexorable, it cannot be stopped by any human authority. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now consider morality as a human system. If morality is a system like language, then it is a self-organized system also. There is no one in charge. There is no guy with a sword outside making sure that we don’t do anything wrong.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We all must commit to living in a moral system - we have a name for this commitment process: it’s called, “growing up.” We think of ourselves and most others we know, as “good”. We think of wrongdoers as “bad”. We are all motivated to look for and correct wrongdoing and if it’s really serious wrongdoing, to call the police. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This motivation is a kind of “force,” the force that’s captured in the concept of “ought”, that is, what we ought or ought not to do. We look out for wrongdoing because that’s what everyone ought to do. It’s a more basic and powerful form of the way that we look out for mistakes in grammar and pronunciation and insist on pointing them out to the people who commit them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We can communicate because we all commit to following grammatical rules; we can live together peacefully because we all commit to following moral rules; but if enough people refused to commit to moral rules society would break down; it’s as simple as that. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In the Seventeenth Century, in his great work, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leviathan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> decided to pen down an answer to the question: How come humans follow the rules?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> People can make agreements, but how can these agreements hold together? Hobbes reasoned, correctly, that rules are ultimately backed by force. “Covenants without a sword are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.” he writes in </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leviathan</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, demonstrating that he recognized that rule following cannot simply exist by reason alone. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hobbes also brought up an idea that had been thought of and then discarded by the ancient Greeks: To be without rules would be as if humans were in a “state of nature”; so humans, if they were able to, would naturally come to some agreement about the rules in order to get themselves out of the “state of nature.” </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But, and here’s the thing, the very key to the problem of origins - how would people who don’t have any rules agree to having rules? Hobbes's theory was that such a “covenant,” an agreement we call a “social contract,” was only possible with a “sword,” i.e. someone with a monopoly of power to back the agreement. In other words, Hobbes tries to solve the problem of how morality originated by imagining that a social contract would have to impose a political solution; and because of the times of civil war that Hobbes lived in, he thought that the political solution should be an absolute monarchy. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hobbes realized that no social contract could arise out of a state of nature without a realistic threat of force. That's because you cannot depend on people’s good will unless you have morality in place already. In order to get around this dilemma Hobbes argued, in effect, that there needed to be a political solution to a moral problem. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Politics is a way of establishing authority, but morality is more fundamental because it is about establishing collective commitment. Collective moral commitment, or, in other words - normativity - is ultimately what makes human society possible. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Living, as he did, in seventeenth century England, Hobbes had only the sketchiest knowledge about the kinds of groups that the first humans lived in. From what we observe of nomadic hunting and gathering groups they are small, making up from thirty to one hundred people, they are usually made up of both related and unrelated nuclear families, they have very little in the way of political or social institutions other than the family and ethnicity. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We are told by anthropologists that nomadic hunting and gathering groups all share in common a collective intolerance of excessive egotism, boasting, authoritarianism, and bullying. And it would seem that everyone within the group shares the same moral system.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Why do we have feelings of guilt, shame, and embarrassment? For one thing, all of these feelings help to temper our egotism. These feelings also indicate our recognition and discomfort at our own faux pas. Some people don’t have enough of these “social” feelings. They are called psychopaths. These people act without any internal checks to wrongdoing, except fear of getting caught.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A good example of a psychopath is the present leader of the Philippines, Dutarte. You can watch him speak on youtube videos. Notice the sheer absence of guilt, shame, and embarrassment in this man’s speaking style, especially when he is talking about absolutely horrifying actions. What some people mistakenly take to be rock solid confidence is actually pure psychopathy. This man does not have a conscience. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Morality is necessarily collective both in how it involves shared perception and shared obligations. In the beginning morality must have been enforced by the group as a whole. Does not morality give the group the power to punish and exclude any individual in the group?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From a “management design” perspective moral systems are designed to get rid of psychopaths, and discourage people from crossing the line into unconstrained egotism. The theory that psychopaths have been mostly selected out the human gene pool, was first argued by Anthropologist, Christopher Boehm, in his book, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moral Origins</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Morality is something that we share with everyone in our group, and it is something that we each internalize. The perception of right and wrong is shared. We commit ourselves to perceiving actions as either right or wrong just as everyone else does, and we expect everyone else to feel the same way, and that they too will avoid doing wrong. The group is collectively committed to detecting and punishing wrongdoing, and the worse the crime, the more people in the group are involved together in its detection and punishment. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By involving the commitment of the entire group, morality developed as a regulatory system that, in part, protected the group from outsiders, but more importantly, from wrongdoers within the group. “Peace and Order” were the collective goals; actions to detect and sanction wrongdoing were part of everyone’s responsibility. The moral system worked to further these goals because everyone committed to following the rules and enforcing sanctions. The collective commitment of the whole group to detect and punish any wrongdoing was, in effect, Hobbes’ sword. It was the threat of physical violence, exclusion or assassination, made good by the collective membership of the group. In a group of thirty to one hundred people that was realizable and effective.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We may not recognize this, or we may take this for granted today because we now live in huge and complex societies, where membership in groups is often porous and overlapping. In the more complex industrial societies there is an intricate division of labour: there are professional lawmakers, judges, policemen, gaolers, teachers, lawyers, religious leaders, opinion leaders, philosophers, and countless more specialized professions. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We no longer collectively throw stones at wrongdoers. But that doesn’t seem to stop any, or all of us, from continuing to perceive, judge, and share our judgements about right and wrong behaviour with those around us. These impulses to get involved in perceiving, judging, and sanctioning actions morally, hark back to our very origins. </span></div>
earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-32840547155182355132017-03-06T15:04:00.000-08:002019-11-29T09:57:08.124-08:00The Meaning of Hobbes' Sword - Part II<b id="docs-internal-guid-e8280594-a5dc-c490-4e07-5e12d78da453" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Morality</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> requires clear boundaries, fair and equitable rules, and active participation of group members in monitoring and enforcement, it resembles in some ways the conditions that make for successful long-term management of a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Common Pool Resource.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A C</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>ommon Pool Resource</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, sometimes called a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CPR</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, is a resource such as a body of water, irrigation channel, fishery, alpine meadow, etc., which is held in common. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Common Pool Resources</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are akin to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Public Goods</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> such as public roads, in that, if they are available, they are available to everyone. The thing about a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>CPR</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that is different from a public good is that when one takes away from the pool, there is less in the pool. With public goods this is not the case. If I drive on a road, I don’t make the road less available to others. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Moral System</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> can be seen as a kind of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social Capital</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; something that’s necessary for human society to get off the ground; something that, once put in place, allows for trust cooperation and social stability. But, morality, unlike physical capital, is a living system that can die if it isn’t maintained and nurtured. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What morality has in common with CPR's is that people who break moral rules undermine the viability of morality, and the larger the proportion of rule-breakers, the more catastrophic it is for a moral system. Just as with CPRs in order for it to work, it needs everybody to share in rule following, monitoring, and sanctioning against any rule-breaking. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Morality is a common pool resource. Here’s why: no human group exists without morality; morality cannot get off the ground without universal support within the group; and once morality does get off the ground, it benefits everybody. All other normative systems are, by the same argument,CPRs too. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I call morality a Common Pool Resource. This is not the way Hobbes understood morality, nor the Utilitarian ethical theorists who were influenced by Hobbes, nor the modern “game theorists” who claim to derive morality from some form of Darwinian natural selection. In fact, philosophers, evolutionary psychologists and behavioral economists have been looking for the origins of morality in all the wrong places - in individual actions, in individual reasons, or in simple aggregates of individuals.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Furthermore,most contemporary philosophers have no idea that an American Economist by the name of Elinor Ostrom received a Nobel Prize for working out the conditions for the origin of morality. (Nor for that matter, did the Swedish Nobel Prize Committee, because they awarded it to her for Economics, not Moral Philosophy. Elinor Ostrom was an Institutional Economist who studied the management of Common Pool Resources. She died in 2012.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I was reminded of this, while reading </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does Altruism Exist</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by David Sloan Wilson. According to Wilson, “Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for showing that groups of people are capable of managing their own resources,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but only if they possess certain design features</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Up to the time of Ostrom’s research the dominant view of Common Pool Resources were that they could not be managed without central government control, which, no surprise, is Hobbes’s solution, or, and this is the more modern solution, they could be broken up and sold to private individuals. In contrast, collective property rights were thought to be inevitably subject to the “Tragedy of the Commons” - meaning that there was too much individual incentive to overgraze, overfish, or overuse the common resource, inevitably leading to its tragic demise. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> According to the dominant thinking of our day, only private ownership of a resource creates the right incentives to conserve them. (This was, of course, contingent on the owner not deciding that the resource was worth more in cash value if it were sold off and then consumed, rather than conserved for future growth.) </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Ostrom pointed out in her research, there are a number of examples of pre-industrial cultures from around the world, maintaining and sustaining common pool resources for hundreds, or sometimes as much as a thousand years without relying on a central authority or the institution of private property.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> What is significant in Ostrom’s findings is that she found that all successfully managed common pool resources followed a certain pattern of collective agreement. These she has summarized into “eight design principles” in her book summarizing her career: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> GoverningThe Commons.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the purposes of this article, we need only list the first five of these. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other three have to do with the dynamics and difficulties of larger groups and with competing groups of stakeholders. These seem less relevant to the situation that may have been present at the origin of moral systems, when technology was, literally, stone age, groups were smaller than one hundred people, and a surplus stock of resources was nonexistent, or at best, highly intermittent. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have taken my account from Ostrom’s book, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Governing the Commons</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Here I have paraphrased Ostrom’s first five design principles for successfully managed common pool resources:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Successful Design Principles for CPRs</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Clear boundaries and a strong sense of group identity around utilizing the resource. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good fitting rules that are fair and equitable and easy to enforce</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a workable collective choice mechanism for changing the rules.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Group members all participate in monitoring </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sanctions for rule-breaking are consistently applied but they are graduated. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> According to Ostrom: “The central question in this study is how a group of principles who are in an independent situation can organize and govern themselves to obtain continuing joint benefits, when all face temptations to free-ride, shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this paragraph Ostrom outlines the central question for collective choice problems; but, more importantly for the purposes of this article, it is also the very foundation of any moral system. In short, how could the first human group obtain continuing joint benefits from implementing a moral system, "when all face temptations to free-ride, shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The traditional approach to this “central question” follows Hobbes’s analysis and posits an external enforcer to get the job done. But Ostrom, having seen CPR’s successfully deal with this problem without centralized control, points out that: “External coercion is at times a sleight-of-hand solution, because the theorist does not address what </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">motivates the external enforcer to monitor behavior and impose sanctions.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The difference in successful CPRs is that: “....commitment and monitoring are strategically linked.” If everyone agrees to follow the same rules, this reduces the costs of monitoring. When the common resource owners participate in monitoring the behaviour of other owners, they strengthen their own commitment to follow the rules and they raise the costs of breaking the rules for others.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I began Part II by outlining a plausible list of the requirements for morality to get off the ground. My purpose was not to justify these requirements as the basic and only requirements, but to demonstrate that a plausible description of what a moral system does can be closely matched up to the first five of Elinor Ostrom’s eight design principles for successful CPRs. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s take a closer look at those design principles. First, a group needs to draw a clear boundary between itself and other groups. In other words, the people in the group need to have a strong group identity. In North American Hockey, Vancouver Canucks fans will tell you that the Canucks are not anything like the Anaheim Ducks. - two totally different teams. Sports teams and their fans have very strong identities. No doubt this strong sense of identity helps the teams perform better, and the fans support their teams better. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note also that there is a darker, negative side to strong group identity - it can lead to genocide, witch-burnings and lynchings - because part of what it means to have a strong group identity, is that, whenever you and your group feels threatened you will have powerful reasons to differentiate from people who come from another place and look and act differently; and then it’s not much of a leap to channel your anxiety into scapegoating and persecuting those “outsiders.” </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second, there must be good fitting rules that are fair and equitable. Remember Kant's</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> famous “Categorical Imperative?”: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law."</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or his “humanity formulation” of the Imperative:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end."</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In these maxims, Kant was attempting to summarize the human moral system in a single sentence that could conceivably guide all of our actions. This is a heroic attempt but far too ambitious. To put it in modern terms, from a “design perspective,” fair and equitable rules are rules that don’t privilege or prejudice individuals or groups. We want rules to not impose unnecessary costs or burdens and we want rules not to selectively or disproportionately reward certain people. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rules that are perceived as fair and equitable are more likely to be followed than if they are perceived as unfair. The collective owners of a CPR are more likely to commit to rules that they think will not unfairly burden them or unfairly reward others. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thirdly, there needs to be a workable collective choice mechanism in place if the rules need to be changed. Back again to Hobbes. Hobbes lived through the English Civil War. For significant periods he was exiled from England, and had to live on the Continent. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the Protestants won they imposed their system on the Catholics. But a Catholic on the throne was a counter-threat to reimpose Catholicism. One does not have to be Hobbes to see that this could be a recurring legitimacy problem. At the time, in seventeenth century Europe, outside of the Netherlands, the only solution appeared to be one state, one religion. No one in Europe thought to look at the Ottoman Empire, which tolerated multiple Religions, (but only if they kept to their own enclaves.) Because Europeans couldn’t see past Europe, the only way to legitimize a religion appeared to be either by Civil War or Coup D’Etat. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is to say that constructing a feasible procedure to allow everyone to agree to a change of rules helps immeasurably to preserve order and stability. They could have avoided the bloodshed of the Thirty Years War if they had realized that. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fourthly, monitoring must be shared amongst all users of the CPR. If costs of monitoring are too high people won’t do it. Then infractions increase and the pool gets emptied. In contrast, If the rules make it easy to monitor, more people will do it and infractions are decreased. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fifthly, sanctions must be administered for infractions, but on a sliding scale. A CPR or a moral system cannot be rigid, because environmental conditions and unforseen circumstances frequently come into play. People may be breaking the rules out of desperation to keep themselves or their families from starving. Punishments in this case, should be less severe. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We’re talking management design features here. If the system is too soft, it gives no support, and allows rule-breaking to escalate. If the system is too rigid it will not be flexible enough to deal with changes in circumstances. There has to be a backbone but there also has to be some “give.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“.....commitment and monitoring are strategically linked.” This is the key to why Hobbes is wrong and Elinor Olstrom is right. CPRs require constant monitoring, the collective owners are able to commit to monitoring if the rules are fair and equitable; the whole system works well if there are procedures in place, such as consensus, or majority rule, for facilitating agreements about making or changing the rules when changing circumstances warrant. The commitment of the owners is also to a strong sense of identity with clear boundaries around the CPR. The owners commit to following and monitoring rules, to sanctioning rule- breaking, and to a strong sense of group identity. It is the continuing commitment of all the members that supports the whole system: its boundaries, its rules and procedures, and its separation of behaviours into included and excluded. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In a small group of thirty to ninety people, everyone knew everyone else on sight; there was no anonymity as there is in our society. Monitoring is a very different ballgame in modern society because the number of people involved is so much greater and the complexity of the system is greater. That’s why our moral systems appear to us to be far more complex, nuanced, and less visible. Morality is internalized, but also spread out amongst different interlocking groups and professions within society. A lot of work is done by the police and legal system, local and mass media, educational system, government legislators, mental health professions, clergy, etc. There is nothing tidy about it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is one famous critic of Social Contract Theory. Notice how he hangs his whole argument on the supposed fact that rule following and following authority are both based on the same foundations. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.56; margin-bottom: 17pt; margin-left: 30pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What necessity, therefore, is there to found the duty of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">allegiance</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or obedience to magistrates on that of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fidelity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or a regard to promises, and to suppose, that it is the consent of each individual, which subjects him to government; when it appears, that both allegiance and fidelity stand precisely on the same foundation, and are both submitted to by mankind, on account of the apparent interests and necessities of human society? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.56; margin-bottom: 17pt; margin-left: 30pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">David Hume “Of The Original Contract”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Morality is not the same as Politics. Unfortunately, both critics and adherents of Social Contract Theory, simply repeat Hobbes’s mistake of imposing a political solution on a moral problem. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Allegiance</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, if it is not just the allegiance of subordinates to a dominant, is based on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fidelity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - the fidelity that each human has to the moral system itself. Without a moral system to begin with, allegiance to a rule-governed political system would be impossible and we would find ourselves in the equivalent of De Waal’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chimpanzee Politics</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which is to say, where the only allegiance is to the Ape dominance hierarchy. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of all forms of normativity, morality packs the most “punch.” A lot of our most primitive and powerful emotions are driven by our moral concerns. Compared to them, other forms of normativity can seem much weaker. That is one of the reasons that I think that all forms of normativity come from an original moral system. Here is another reason: commitment to a moral system is developmental and occurs mostly in childhood. When we reach a certain level of maturity we are considered to be true moral agents, and no longer dependents.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The length of time it takes to be considered an adult, with all the responsibilities this entails, is much longer than the time it takes children to successfully speak a language. Children master their first language by the time they are six years old, but it takes three times that age to be considered a legal adult in many societies. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One of the major differences between humans and our closest primate relatives is our larger brains and longer childhoods. We are far more behaviourally flexible than other animals and we have a significantly longer post-natal period of neuroplasticity. The longer childhood gives us a tremendous capacity to learn compared to any other animal. Developing a moral system early on in our evolution, could have made longer childhoods and bigger brains possible, and these in turn would have encouraged the continued use of the morality in a self-reinforcing positive feedback system. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moral systems afforded social stability, and group cooperation. This led to longer, safer, childhoods and more children growing up to be adults. Higher ranking chimpanzees can kill the infants of lower ranking chimpanzees - in most human societies, this is not tolerated. More children survive in human societies because of our greater ability to cooperate. This ability to cooperate relies on morality to get off the ground. </span></div>
<br />earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-55795290345514647162016-12-10T16:08:00.000-08:002016-12-12T20:18:53.930-08:00The Social Experiment<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“You are about to enter a new dimension. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Twilight Zone</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, that’s not quite it, is it? It’s more like a social experiment. </span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“You are about to become part of a gigantic social experiment. It is an experiment that encompasses the entire U.S.A. as well as having effects on the Global Economic and Political Systems. It is an experiment that will use the ideas of Ayn Rand to Minimize all constraints on Capitalism in America as well as minimizing or eliminating the American social safety net.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Donald Trump’s election as the forty-fifth President of the United States has now created a political situation where the Republican party, under Trump, will be in control of all three branches of government - the Legislative, the Legal System, and the Executive. It is no coincidence that Trump, who resembles Howard Roark and John Galt, the alpha male heroes of Ayn Rand’s two novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, was elected at the same time that Paul Ryan, a longtime fan of Rands, who was basically inspired by reading her novels to get into politics, has become the Republican Majority Leader in the US Congress. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For years Libertarians and the followers of Ayn Rand have only dreamed of an America where her extremist views would be put into practice. Now that dream has turned into a reality. We are about to witness and be part of a brave new Social Experiment. One in which we will have Capitalism shorn of all constraints, all safety and environmental regulations, minimum wages, etc. A social experiment where the American social safety net will be drastically minimized or eliminated. A social experiment where the legal system will consistently favour Capital over human rights. A social experiment where Science and other forms of knowledge will become political and seriously compromised. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Science has rigorous standards of evidence and replication. In Science, if a replicatible experiment disconfirms a theory, that theory may have to be abandoned. It should be the same for a political experiment, but not all previous social experiments have worked out this way. Only the Allies’ victory in WW II was enough to “disprove” Fascism, and only the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union was enough to “disprove” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Communism. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In a working democratic system, if a political approach has been tried and failed to deliver, the representatives of that approach can be voted out of office during an election. This should be the case in the US. If, after two or four years, Americans see that the Social Experiment has been a failure they should be able to vote Republicans out of office. My guess is that this is not actually going to happen, and it won’t happen because of something called - “Authoritarianism”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Trump’s most motivated followers were Authoritarians: people who value authority over everything else. They saw, in Trump, a “Leader”, someone who would fix everything for them. They were not necessarily “Libertarians” - people who claim to value liberty above all else and who often gravitate to Ayn Rand’s views about a minimal state. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But if you delve into Rand’s novels it becomes clear that the type of model she has in mind for leadership is the alpha male type, typified by Donald Trump. Loud, brash, bullying, and out to break any rules and step on anybody who gets in his way. The problem with rules, regulations, and scientific knowledge is that they become impediments to the alpha male. They make it harder for him to get what he wants, to do his job as a Supreme Leader. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What I believe is most likely to happen is that the arms of the US government will be utilized for authoritarian purposes: to restrict freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and restrict voting rights. There is too much at stake to allow the American people to “disprove” the coming Social Experiment. For starters, all scientific evidence, in the form of economic and demographic statistics that contradicts conservative Randian ideology will be eliminated or “re-interpreted” so that it can confirm our “Brave New World”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We are already seeing this happen a month before Trump’s inauguration, as part of his transition team conducts a witch-hunt for EPA bureaucrats and scientists. Rest assured, like so many other Social Experiments, the authors of this one will do everything in their power, and it is now considerable, to keep this Experiment going permanently. </span></div>
earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-85911127159204972252016-11-18T15:29:00.000-08:002016-12-10T10:58:17.579-08:00Trump - Alpha Male<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-88bc7284-79c3-5668-b79b-a8c0beae54e5" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the early hours of Wednesday November 9, 2016, after a lengthy and remarkably vicious election campaign, Donald Trump was declared elected as the forty-fifth President of the United States. It is not an exaggeration to say that this event shook the whole world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Trump broke all the previous rules for running for office. He lied openly, he insulted and degraded women and ethnic minorities, he talked about building a wall to keep out Mexicans; he talked about deporting millions of illegal immigrants; he called for a total ban on the immigration of Muslims; he encouraged violence against demonstrators, and he encouraged the idea of jailing his opponent Hillary Clinton. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Trump also broke technical rules: his winning campaign used less attack ads, it did not rely on pollsters, it had a drastically smaller ground campaign than the losing campaign, and it spent a fraction of what the losing campaign spent. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">During the Republican Primaries, reporters described how Trump’s ability to dominate the debates was as if he deprived the other candidates of oxygen when it came time for them to speak. Trump was also able to dominate the news media from the first day to the last, by churning out incendiary quotes that fired up his base and outraged the rest of the world. Some commentators spoke of his talent for relentless publicity, which they said was honed by years of his experience with his signature reality show - ‘The Apprentice’.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I was interested to see that Jane Goodall, who spent years observing chimpanzees in the wild, compared Trump’s campaign to the the way that a particular chimpanzee, she named Mike, had risen to become an alpha male. Mike discovered that he could take empty oil-drums and bang them together to make an awful racket. The resultant noise intimidated the entire troop, allowing him to assume the rank of alpha male. Goodall felt that there was a remarkable similarity between the two campaigns. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Many wild animals, especially mammals, and especially apes, our closest biological relatives, have natural dominance hierarchies led by an alpha or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">most dominant male</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. These hierarchies afford a measure of stability and order in animal societies because once rank is decided, with an alpha in the top position, there is less fighting and violence between group members. Once installed, an alpha male can control others by bluff and posture without having to risk fighting, and this will work as long and until a challenger or group of challengers comes along that match or surpass him in strength. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In humans, it’s interesting to speculate about how strong the dominance hierarchy is. There are hierarchies all around us, in the military, the police, government bureaucracies, academia, in the medical sector, in corporations, and in families. But, except for gangs and organized crime, human hierarchies avoid violence much more than apes. In very few, if any organizations that I’m aware of, do the contenders have to physically fight it out for the top position. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nevertheless we are all aware on some level about what dominance is, and most of us fall into line when we are with someone who is more dominant. The signs are there, but, in humans they are often subtle. Unlike other animals, human dominance is mostly rule-governed, by which I mean that in all societies there are strong rules condemning violence, rules against stealing, adultery,etc. and rules concerning attaining and maintaining roles and positions. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I think that Jane Goodall is onto something with her comparison of Trump with Mike the alpha chimp. Trump’s “pre-campaign” was publicizing and amplifying the ‘Birther’ movement. This was a group of Americans, a substantial subset of the Republican party, who questioned the official version of President Obama’s life history, often insinuating that he was born in Kenya. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Two things happened out of this. Trump’s Birther campaign successfully moved President Obama to publish his birth certificate. And then President Obama mocked Trump during an annual press gathering, in Trump’s presence. According to the CBS</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: red; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Documentary 60 Minutes, it was largely as a reaction to this slight that Donald Trump decided to run for President. My thought is that Trump’s original decision to push Birtherism was really the first step in his campaign. ( First find your supporters, then challenge the rival for supremacy.) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Trump’s followers celebrated the fact that he was “politically incorrect”, The fact that evidence emerged that Trump sexually molested women over the years, which in an ordinary election, and with an ordinary candidate, would have permanently barred them from being President, had only a modest effect on Trump’s campaign. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The whole campaign makes much more sense from the perspective of alpha male competition. From the very beginnings of Barack Obama’s Presidency, the Republicans, who controlled both the Congress and the Senate, refused to acknowledge his legitimacy to fill the office of President. Government was continually in gridlock because the Republican majorities refused to cooperate.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> It is common knowledge that ranking Republicans set their supreme goal to that of ensuring that Obama would only be a one term President. To that end they were willing to undermine and weaken Obama’s efforts to recover the U.S. economy from the economic meltdown that had preceded his election. Their concept of “public service” was plain and simple - the destruction of the Obama Presidency. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This concept may seem nihilistic to some of us, but to the Republican rank and file that comprised the Birther Movement, it makes all the sense in the world. A black President was simply unacceptable, so to do everything in their power to undermine and thwart the Obama Administration was doing a public service for “White America”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It may be a plausible theory that the anger of white voters had to do with the high inequality in society brought on by globalization. But if that is the case, why was the anger specifically brought on by Obama’s election? Obama appeared to do all that he could to alleviate the damage of the 2008 financial catastrophe, a catastrophe that unfolded during his election campaign, during the last months of the Bush Presidency. But Obama was thwarted on almost every turn by the Republicans in the House and Senate. The Tea party, which surely represents angry white voters if anything does, rose to power after Obama’s election, during the midterms.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The behaviour of the Republican party in seeking to delegitimize Obama’s Presidency is the key to Trump’s election. The anger of uneducated whites is economic anger channeled together with racial anger that was stoked by relentless propaganda. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This past election campaign broke the rules in every way because it was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">about</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">breaking the rules. On a deep unconscious level, this was not a contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, it was a contest between Donald Trump and Barack Obama. Just look at the immediate consequences: the Republican party now has control of all three branches of government. They now have the power to reverse every one of Obama’s signature achievements. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Unfortunately there is a problem with giving an alpha male the keys to a political office. Human politics differs from Chimpanzee Politics in one main way - human systems are more rule-governed. When we commit to a democratic system we expect our representatives to commit to standards of communicative validity. Trump broke all the rules of communication; he was often insincere, he lied constantly, often unconsciously; he encouraged violence and hatred.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is a man, who shows almost no commitment to rational discourse. He didn’t have to in order to win over his enthusiastic supporters, and every time he showed his disrespect for minorities, his disrespect for the truth, and his disrespect for civilized conduct he won more support from white voters.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The government of the United States is a rule-governed system. But rules can only work if they are followed. If one half the population refuses to honour the rules then it becomes a system with only one rule: “might makes right” Donald’s sexual behaviour, his refusal to apologize, his refusal to admit he is ever wrong, his risk-taking, his unpredictability, his breaking the rules, his dominating the news media - every one of these traits reinforced his status as alpha male. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> For an alpha male, it’s all about breaking the rules, because in their world there is only one rule: “might makes right.” Rules and morality are what make us human. When we jettison these in favour of one “leader” we go back to the jungle. </span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-2628622412076156682016-06-08T19:28:00.000-07:002019-08-04T10:26:02.261-07:00What is "The State of Nature" ?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Are we, in fact, uniquely separate from the other animals? Common sense, religion and mythology all say that we are, but modern biology and evolutionary psychology beg to differ. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, we too, must have evolved by natural selection, which means, it seems, that the differences between humans and our closest ancestors are only a matter of degree. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trouble is, our closest ancestors are not with us anymore. We only know of them because archaeologists have uncovered their bones in Africa, Asia, and Europe. We have to go back six million years ago, to the time when our ancestors left the African forest and split from the common descendant </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">to find modern living examples</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">, chimpanzees and bonobos, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> our closest living animal relatives</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Modern human DNA is ninety-eight percent the same as chimps and we are separated by six million years of evolution. In that time, We started to walk upright, we invented stone knives, our bodies became taller and more gracile, we lost most of our body hair, our sexual habits changed, we were able to make and control fire, to cook food, and we developed language. More was to come. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Humans live in groups, like apes, we collectively defend the group like apes, and we have dominance hierarchies, like apes. But our groups are much bigger, our dominance hierarchies are far more complex, rule governed, and less violent, we have accumulated knowledge about building and using tools and they have not, we have moral systems and they have not, we have language and they do not, we have pair-bonding and monogamy and they mostly do not, and we have kinship systems and extended bonds of fatherhood and they do not. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most uneducated, or those with no more than a high-school education will have no trouble seeing a qualitative difference between humans and animals. The trouble begins when you receive a University education. Because we know we evolved from the apes, we then assume that evolution occurred gradually, and could not have led to any large qualitative changes in such a short amount of time. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In other words, if one accepts the theory of evolution, it appears that we couldn’t have left the state of nature behind. Are we then, in fact, still in it? Of course, it can also depend on how you define “nature” and the “state of nature”. So let’s look at “the state of nature”. What exactly does this concept mean? The answer depends mostly on which philosopher is using it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first modern philosopher to use it was the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes lived during the English Civil War and he saw the social upheavals and destruction it caused first hand. He was anxious for his homeland to avoid these calamities in the future so he sought, in his philosophy, to establish a rock solid foundation for a political system that he thought would guarantee peace, order and good government. These wars were between different religious groups: Protestants and Catholics. It was assumed in Hobbes time, that if there wasn't one unified religious body over all states then the only feasible alternative was for each state to be identified with a single religion. This suggested the necessity of a single head. A monarch who determined the religious system as well as the government. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order to advance his justification for absolute monarchy, Hobbes introduced the idea of the state of nature. What would it be like before humans had governments?, asked Hobbes. His answer looks a lot like what happens during a civil war. He thinks our lives would have been “nasty brutish, and short” and it would basically degenerate into a war of all against all. Sure people could make agreements, but what was to guarantee that those agreements would be honoured or enforced? As Hobbes said, in his book Leviathan, "Covenents without the sword are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all." </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Note, that Hobbes does not have a very accurate picture of nature. Pre-Darwin, it was thought that humans were a special creation of God's. So the Hobbsian state of nature is not animal precursors to human, but humans in a natural state, where life is apparently, "nasty, brutish, and short." But he does pick up on the fact that agreements that are not backed by the real possibility of enforcement, are not sustainable. This is the key idea. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later English and Continental Philosophers: Locke, Rousseau, and Kant - will use the idea of the state of nature and covenants to form their own moral theories. And then in the twentieth Century, the American philosopher John Rawls, will bring back Hobbes’s ideas of the state of nature and the social contract to form a new justification of the modern welfare state, but he will do it in a much more abstract hypothetical form.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The English philosopher John Locke, (1632-1704) who seems pretty excited about how humans can better themselves by their own labour, a system of property rights, and a market economy , is the inspiration for Thomas Jefferson's opening words for the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “ We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Locke, in the state of nature everyone is equal, and there is morality and human rights, but these moral rights cannot be operationalized without a government and legal system to protect life, liberty, and property, hence the form and content of the U.S. Constitution and the absence of the word “slave”. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rousseau ( 1712-1778), a French philosopher who famously or infamously, inspired the French Revolution was inspired himself by tales of North-American Indians. His idea of the state of nature was where humans were free, mostly solitary, with limited wants, and minimal social strife. Not a bad place to be actually. In fact it seemed to Rousseau to be preferable to European society with it’s gross inequality and hypocrisy. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Rawls (1921-2002), in probably the most famous work of twentieth century philosophy: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A Theory of Justice,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> uses the state of nature, purely as an abstract hypothetical device to illustrate what moral and political system people would likely agree to, if they were ignorant of their own position in social and economic hierarchies. That state of nature is really just a state of ignorance, a device for smoothing the way towards political agreement. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OK, I get the idea here. The state of nature is a state of simplicity. Everyone is equal. There are no differences in status, no accumulation of wealth, no difference in political power. Some say it would be bad, some say it would be good, and some say it never really existed, it’s just an idea. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, it obviously existed, but we don’t really know what was happening at the point when humans became humans, because there are no eye- witness reports from two million years ago. Neither writing nor language existed at this time, so all we have as evidence is stones and bones.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still, one thing we do have that those European philosophers didn’t have is a much better picture of nature, thanks to Charles Darwin. According to the theory of evolution, we are descended from the apes, which means that the state of nature is radically different from how these Western philosophers imagined it. And, thanks to all those biologists and ethologists out there who study animal behaviour in the wild, we now know a lot more about what the state of nature would have been like when humans first appeared on the scene. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jane Goodall spent years observing wild chimpanzees in Tanzania and Frans de Waal spent years observing captive chimpanzees in a large natural-like setting in a Dutch zoo. According to both of them, there is no equality in ape society, there are rigid dominance hierarchies, and what’s worse there is definitely politics in ape society. Certain individuals rule the roost, certain factions dominate the rest and mercilessly crush all dissent. Hobbes got it wrong, it’s the state of nature where the absolute sovereign rules absolutely. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hobbes was right that absolute monarchy can bring about peace and harmony, but wrong about where this happens. In chimpanzees and gorillas, relative peace and order is brought about by the unchallenged rule of the alpha, or most dominant male. Unfortunately the alpha’s rule only goes unchallenged if he doesn’t have a bigger, stronger, challenger; but eventually he will. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think that with the help of evolutionary theory and field biologists, we have gotten a pretty good idea of the state of nature. All social mammals have dominance hierarchies, and they are based on competition for size, strength, and ability to intimidate. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature is not a war of all against all, it’s a place where group members cooperate by fitting in with rigid pecking orders. Conflict is over who gets to be first. Once that is settled the conflict ends and peace reigns for a time. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what would it be like for a social contract theory to be based on a more realistic state of nature? For one, we would want to know how we got from the rigid social hierarchies of apes to the more flexible, rule-bound, and less obvious dominance hierarchies of human beings. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, if we look at the societies which today, we believe most closely resemble stone age humans, that would be nomadic hunting-gathering societies. These would be small groups of between thirty and a hundred individuals. Hunter-gatherers have the most egalitarian societies in the world. If they have leaders, they usually only have power to persuade, and they do not in any way resemble an alpha male ape or Hobbes’s absolute monarch.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s where Locke and Rousseau got their ideas about equality in the state of nature: They both read reports about Indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes in North America. The problem is that we no longer see hunter-gatherers as “primitive”. We consider them as human as anyone else. Therefore they do not represent the state of nature, they represent human nature.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s your simplicity: small groups of hunter-gatherers, no economic surplus, no wealth except for knowledge and experience; no political system - other than agreement by consensus; no permanent leaders; nomadic, so no permanent</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">habitation. But that’s not the state of nature. That was human nature for two million years until plants and animals were first domesticated ten thousand years ago. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To recap: through ethological studies in the field, we have a much better idea of what the state of nature for beings such as the first humans, was really like. It was a Hobbesian Absolute monarchy with an alpha male on top, but it was decidedly not based on a covenant. So, how did we get to a covenant? How did we go from ape-men to egalitarian hunter-gatherers?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can agree with John Rawls himself, that there was no actual “original condition” with a “veil of ignorance”, nor were there men in powdered wigs discussing representative government. But this original agreement could have happened long before we even developed language. Just as no non-human animal has a syntactical language, we can safely assume that there is no syntactical language in the state of nature. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact that male chimpanzees cooperate together to defend their group against predators and enemies, and that they sometimes hunt cooperatively, shows that apes are capable of making collective agreements without language. The star example of this is the bonobo, close cousin to chimpanzees, who diverged from chimps about two million years ago. Female bonobos join together and collectively prevent males from dominating. Here we have pretty strong evidence that male dominant behaviour can be suppressed by collective action, and without the need for language. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Evolutionary psychologists keep themselves very busy studying game theory and population genetics, trying to figure out how we could have become so darned altruistic, or as they like to put it: how we developed indirect reciprocity. Darwinian evolution works mostly by differences in reproductive ability, which appears to be incompatible with altruism, because the more you sacrifice your own interests for others the more likely you will be taken advantage of and out-competed by more selfish individuals. Darwin had suggested that more altruistic groups could out compete groups of selfish individuals, but, in the latter half of the twentieth Century, Biologists such as John Maynard-Smith and George C. Williams cast doubt on that hypothesis, and now it’s an ongoing controversy whether group selection can actually work. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Be that as it may, I have problems with evolutionary psychologists equating morality with altruism. It seems to me that morality is a kind of package deal. It requires collective agreement to get it going in the first place, and it requires collective enforcement to keep it going. It was Hobbes who pointed out that covenants not backed by the sword were useless. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once a moral system is in place, it affords mutual trust, and encourages altruism. People who act selfishly are punished by collective judgement, even if no actual physical punishment is meted out. No one wants to be held in low esteem by everyone else in the group. We all want to be trusted. Plus we expect that everyone else in the group will act in a trustworthy fashion, and we are disappointed and even angered when anyone breaks this expectation.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> An alpha male keeps the peace in group of apes but he also gets whatever he wants at the expense of everyone else, which is the problem with the rule of the stronger. The only way that we can expect anything different is if we collectively agree to constrain this kind of behaviour. Humans have infinite ways of influencing each other’s behaviour but a big part of it is the suppression, channeling, and or elimination of alpha dominant behaviour by a seemingly infinite number of psychological and social means.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shame, embarrassment, guilt, and remorse, all involve both self reference and expectations of what others would think of us. Other techniques, such as mocking, ridiculing, haranguing, ignoring, and shunning, occur in a group context. Even if these social and psychological techniques do not work, as in the case of psychopaths, we have back-ups for dealing with them, like banishment, and execution. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mostly our individual and collective expectations keep selfish behaviour to a minimum and encourage caring and altruism. The moral force of our judgement can control what we allow ourselves to do and what we expect of others. Usually this suffices, but when it doesn’t, we fall back on using Hobbes’s sword. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike de Waal, or many of the evolutionary psychologists, I don’t see altruism or reciprocity as the building blocks of morality. Instead, these are the welcome consequences of a moral system. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I see the goal of morality in the protection and the preservation of the group. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> That’s why it can be our moral duty to cause harm to others - to punish or prevent behaviour that could potentially harm the group - or, to sacrifice our lives in warfare - in order to protect the group. That is also the source of the dark side of morality. Moral certainty can directly lead to terrible atrocities such as lynching, slavery, witch hunts, terrorism, and genocide. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apes don’t have a moral system, but they have restraints on behaviour, which are meted out by a dominance hierarchy system, which, in its way, helps to protect and preserve the group. Humans have this too, but where humans are different is in the deliberate imposition of a moral system that overrides the dominance system. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is this overriding of a natural self-organizing system that allowed humans to exit the state of nature. Humans, unlike animals, took control of our destiny at a specific point in time because, by agreeing to a moral system, we agreed to selectively remove the most likely potential alpha males out of the gene pool. In so doing we may have gone from natural selection to artificial selection in one step. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jane Goodall once observed a female chimpanzee, over time, repeatedly killing and eating the infant offspring of another female in the group. The killer was not ostracized or punished. It turns out that the killer was more dominant than the mother.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We would probably agree that if the killer was a human, that killer should be punished and excluded from the group, regardless of her social status. In fact, as soon as people found out about the foul nature of her deed her social status would be destroyed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Female bonobos use collective agreement to constrain male dominant behaviour, but they do not have a moral system. They did not take that step, and they remain in the state of nature. What female bonobos did was to selectively control male dominance but not female dominance. Female dominance in apes is relatively benign (the above example notwithstanding) because females, lacking testosterone, don’t engage in violent conflict over who should be on top. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By collectively creating a moral system our ancestors got us out of the state of nature. This created an atmosphere of trust that facilitated many of the things that we value about ourselves: our cooperativeness, our willingness to help and to sacrifice for each other and our commitment to following rules, rules that can level the playing field for everyone within the group. </span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-67273871410017487452016-06-08T19:08:00.000-07:002020-05-28T15:32:32.486-07:00Did Love Have to do with It? How We Left the State of Nature.<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The contemporary American philosopher, John Searle likes to say that what differentiates humans from animals is that humans act on “desire-independent reasons” This is basically a reframing of the eighteenth century German philosopher Immanual Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative. Which is to say that we each follow moral rules because we believe that everyone, including ourselves, ought to follow them, even if these rules constrain the pursuit of our own interests. And, in fact, we judge excuses for immoral behaviour based on self-interest as egregious and self-evidently invalid.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-a91284a4-32e7-8d57-23ed-5e16a31f7826" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In this sense, no wild animal has a moral system, because no wild animal knowingly acts against its own interests, nor would most of us judge any animal in the same way we judge humans.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> That we expect everyone else to follow the same moral rules shows that this is actually a form of agreement. I agree to act morally, because everyone else agrees as well. If one, or a few people break moral rules, we punish them, but, if enough people break a moral rule enough times, we may come to assume that this agreement no longer exists. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A big part of what it is to be human is to grow up and be socialized into human society where we commit ourselves to following moral rules. We can choose not to follow these rules, but to do so invites conflict, incarceration, or worse. The whole system works well, as long as the vast majority follow the rules and rule-breakers are caught and punished. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can call it an agreement because we have a choice, but it is a choice of whether or not each one of us wants to remain in human society. The ultimate reason why the overwhelming majority of us respect and follow the reigning moral rules is because we do not want to be excluded. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everywhere we look there are rules of conduct. Some are not considered moral rules, but are considered conventions, like driving on one side of the road only, or keeping your dog on a leash. Compared to moral rules, It is much more likely that we will violate these conventional rules if it is in our interest to do so.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moral rules are different because they carry weight. We cannot help being emotionally involved in them if someone has broken them. When people try to justify why moral rules are there, they usually bring in the big guns like “God” or some version of “objective knowledge” because of this weight. The stronger the suspense, the more we search for explanatory bedrock. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The weight of morality comes from the strength of our desire to be part of the group and our fear of being excluded by the group, as well as our rejection of those who undermine or threaten the group. Our strongest feelings center on our powerful attachments to others. Anything that threatens these attachments threatens our identity. Human existence is a constant tension between being alone and separate from others and being </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 25.76px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a part of something larger.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Love, death, and boundaries - these issues are involved in everything we do. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’m interested in how these rules reflect human nature. Why did we agree to abide by moral rules when no other group of animals have? No doubt there is a legend or myth about this and it might go something like this: </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 76.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the state of nature, long before we domesticated plants and animals, the biggest, strongest, toughest, and meanest guy around ruled the roost. As long as everyone else submitted, he kept the peace. But one day someone invented the stone knife and he shared his knowledge with others. Soon everyone had to have one. They worked great for cutting up meat, but soon people found out that they were also great weapons, and they let people who were not so big and strong kill the stronger in his sleep. Since females were monopolized by the most dominant male, this meant that killing the alpha male led to better access to females, and so many were tempted, and many succeeded. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 85.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This degenerated into a war of all against all, as the alpha could no longer stand his ground, nor keep the peace. It was no longer possible to keep a harem of females, if one was besieged by knife wielding men with elevated testosterone levels. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 40.5pt; margin-right: 85.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> People tried different solutions, but in the end only one solution worked. Luckily it was a simple solution, which involved every adult male pairing up with an adult female. No more monopolizing females, no more harems. This got rid of a major source of conflict. But, it could only work if the entire group committed to preventing another alpha male from emerging from within the group and taking over, and this required constant vigilance and the obligation to punish and exclude rule-breakers. Groups that failed to do this ended up going back to the war of all against all. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 40.5pt; margin-right: 85.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Thus, the collective enforcement of monogamy had the revolutionary effect of levelling the social hierarchy in stone age society. Once monogamy was established the group was more likely to grow bigger and survive, where, groups with an alpha male would be smaller and have less resilience. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 40.5pt; margin-right: 85.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no doubt that the situation became much less egalitarian once humans had learned how to domesticate plants and animals, and could thereby gain a surplus. But, to this day, small nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, the kind of people who most resemble our stone age ancestors, will not tolerate public aggression or bullying in their societies and rule breakers can be dealt with severely, sometimes by execution. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, what about the state of nature? Monogamy is actually rare in apes. Gibbons are monogamous, but they do not live in larger groups than a nuclear family. It is hard to see how apes who live in groups could ever be monogamous, because they are far too promiscuous. Bonobos, another type of ape, which are very closely related to Chimpanzees, are female dominant, and they have managed to get rid of the alpha male entirely, but they are probably the most promiscuous animal in the world. Humans, on the other hand, have rules about sexual behaviour, lots and lots of rules. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But why should we have moral rules about sexual behaviour? Why can’t moral rules just be about avoiding harming others? No matter how liberated we are, it always seems as if some party-pooper comes along and condemns certain kinds of sexual behaviour. They will often resist changes in skirt length, insist on prohibiting women wearing pants, or worse, insist that women wear clothing that covers everything including their face. To them, it is not at all a matter of convention, it is a moral issue. But to most of us in modern democratic society, what a women wants to wear should be up to her. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This illustrates, for some, the uncomfortable fact that moral standards differ from one society to another. Some believe that one moral system, presumably revealed by God to a certain special person, is the only legitimate moral system, and all the rest are imposters. This kind of belief usually does not end well. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> All the rest of us have to put up with the fact that there is not one objective set of moral rules, but many competing sets, with competing theories to justify them. This has given a lot of philosophers sleepless nights, worrying about “moral relativism”. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But why is sexual behaviour so central to morality in the first place? For instance, I think that most of us would agree that sex with minors is wrong, that rape is wrong, that incest is wrong, that uncovering our genitals in public is wrong, that adultery is wrong, and that the sex act in public is wrong. Although groups, such as nudists, and Fundamentalist Mormons might dispute this, the existence of these minorities does not undermine morality in general. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question is, why do these prohibitions around sex garner nearly universal agreement? My answer is not going to satisfy everyone, especially not moral philosophers, but I think if we stop to consider it, it will make sense of a lot of disparate information. Limits on sexual behaviour are universal in all moral systems, because the kinds of behaviours that are prohibited tend to severely undermine social stability, putting the group at greater risk. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can safely assume that no human society can exist for long without a moral system in place because we can find no counter-examples. If limits on sexual behaviour exist in all societies, you can bet that any particular society that got rid of too many of these limits would find itself in deep trouble, and would eventually fail. Why is this so? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s go back to the state of nature for a moment. Do apes who live in groups have any of these limits? For bonobos, chimps, and gorillas, sex is fine out in the open, but for chimps and gorillas it’s not OK for subdominant males to openly mate with fertile females. Bonobos get away with sexual freedom because they’ve gotten rid of male dominance altogether, but they actually use sex to reduce conflict, pretty much all the time. This is a unique solution that would not work for humans because we still have male dominance. The fact is, for humans, disputes about sex are often disputes about dominance, and this kind of dispute has a tendency to be very disruptive and can easily get out of hand. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Our solution, is not to get rid of dominance, but to put collective controls on it, to make it rule-governed. That is, we imposed a set of rules that override the pre-existing dominance hierarchy system. That is why we differ from animals.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By agreeing to put social controls on male dominance, our stone-age ancestors created the first moral system. Unlike animals that live in groups that are self-organized according to a dominance hierarchy system, humans purposefully overrode this system by agreeing to prohibit certain kinds of behaviour. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rules apply to everyone included in a group or to everyone that fits a specific category. The “rule” in animal societies is: bigger and stronger dominates the weaker. This “rule” affords social stability, it is nature’s “moral system”. And I put this in scare quotes, because it isn’t a real moral system, but more like a condition that every animal accepts, and that can only change when one individual challenges and defeats a higher ranking individual. Whereas with humans the rules apply to everyone, even the most dominant. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Primatologist, Frans de Waal puts it, humans were able to divorce sexual competition from all other forms of competition through the introduction of a monogamous system. This is the origin of “desire-independent reasons”. It is my thesis that monogamy was the first and simplest rule-governed system; and, it forms the template for all subsequent systems of rules, including language. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, what is this template? It is essentially a recurring agreement about the rules that cover everyone in a group.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In it’s simplest form it is a dichotomy. The dichotomy between good and bad, right and wrong, black and white. A dichotomy is a way of separating or excluding one thing from another. In morality, rules are set out to define the group and exclude moral outsiders. We each agree to this dichotomy because we want to be part of the group and we want to exclude those who don’t play by the rules. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The amazing thing about human society is that there are so many different overlapping kinds of rules. Hence the need, nowadays, to go beyond black and white to all kinds of greys and colours. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rules are so omnipresent in human society that we simply take them for granted. They form the tacit, unfocused background to our activities until we inadvertently violate one, or come against some legal or social barrier. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I maintain that all rules are derived from the first moral rules. Rules that divided outsiders from insiders, rules meant to protect the group. All moral force, all normativity derives from the inherent social and psychological tension between being included or being excluded.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> No wonder our adolescence can be so fraught with anxiety. Adolescence is when we learn whether to go or to stay, and what it feels like to be part of the group versus what it feels like to be excluded. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A wonderful illustration of this dichotomy is the myth of the Garden of Eden. The forbidden fruit is from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once Adam and Eve eat of this forbidden fruit they both feel ashamed, because they realize that it is wrong to be naked in public. So, they cover themselves and hide. But then, God recognizes the significance of their decision and expels them from the garden. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Humans left the state of nature when they chose to follow moral rules and exclude those who didn’t. This is why we are more than just animals. And God’s forcing Adam and Eve to leave the garden reflects our own moral exclusion of rule-breakers. This is not original sin, this is what makes us human. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems to me that the author of the book of genesis got right to the essence of human nature in this masterful myth of origin. Just as the evidence of evolution is all around us if we would only see, the evidence of our moral origins in the social contract, exists in the infinite number and variety of rules in human society. </span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-37391804385577254222016-05-10T23:24:00.000-07:002019-02-23T13:05:30.569-08:00From Life to Humans in Ten Commitments<span id="docs-internal-guid-f1d85665-9e6a-165b-0b66-fa5d2d82f3c5"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When life first formed, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a little less than</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> four billion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years ago, it only formed because it first made </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The First Commitment - To Multiply</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This may remind you of a certain book, but unlike the account in the Bible, this form of life we now call </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Bacteria</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Bacteria and their allies are single celled organisms that multiply and multiply and multiply by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Splitting</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> into identical copies of themselves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One and a half billion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years ago is our next milestone, when plants and animals become separate creatures and both abandon splitting in favour of </span><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Second </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Commitment</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Sexual Reproduction</span></b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Lets call this the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sexual Reproductive System</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,later to become - “the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As for us animals, unlike most plants, we </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">committed to <b>The Third Commitment:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to eating </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Food</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and this leads to both the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Digestive System</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Predator/Prey System.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Food is important to this story and we will visit it again when we get to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cooking.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But, for now, let’s note that ever since it came into being, the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Predator/Prey System</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is one of the main drivers of evolutionary change. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nothing much happens for one and a quarter billion years, (only a couple of mass extinction events, and the arrival of </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">dinosaurs...</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) and then </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">250 million</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years ago smallish creatures that we call the first <b>Mammals</b> arrive. The mothers of these furry little critters stop laying eggs and instead give birth live. These mothers </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">give birth to <b>The Fourth Commitment</b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> </b>to the <b>Care, Protection, and feeding of their infants</b>. Baby mammals are warm and cuddly and they cry when they are in distress. Baby snakes and lizards are not so cuddly and they are silent, because nobody is going to protect them once they’re out of the <b>Egg</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Maternal Caring System</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a very important player in this story as I hope to make apparent to you. Mammal mothers have mammary glands that produce milk. The hormones that are involved in the release of milk - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Prolactin </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Oxytocin</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are triggered by close physical contact between mother and baby. These hormones contribute to the sense of pleasure and attachment between babe and mom. </span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The close contact, the period of helpless infancy, the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Attachment Bond </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">between mother and child - these are all important, because they will help facilitate development outside the womb, making possible larger brains, greater learning capacity, and more behavioural flexibility than would ever be possible by a creature that comes out of an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">egg</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Fifth Committment</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> mammals, as well as some other kinds of animals committed to - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Living in a Group</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Growing up and living in a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">group</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> helps protect individuals from predators, and, just like having a mother, it makes longer i</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nfancy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and more social learning possible.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">65 million</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years ago a group of mammals called </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>P</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>rimates</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> made the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Sixth Commitment</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Living in</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>T</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>rees</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Why live in trees? To get away from predators and to facilitate access to fruits and other good things. By living in trees, primates, such as monkeys, evolved better hand-eye coordination compared to other mammals, and this will be important when we get to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tools.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">20 million</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years ago </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Apes</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have evolved from monkeys. Apes are bigger and stronger than monkeys. Male apes are able to cooperate enough to successfully maintain </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Seventh Commitment</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Collective Defence </b></span><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of the G</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">roup</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">against predators, such as boa constrictors big cats, and male outsiders. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">About </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">six million </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">years ago our ancestors broke with the trees and made The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Eighth Commitment - Walking or: Standing on Their Own</b> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Two Feet</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Being primates they had already benefited from improved hand-eye coordination, so it wasn’t long before they learned to walk long distances, and then to make <b>Stone Tools</b>, such as knives and axes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, you may or may not have noticed that for the last 250 million years, all this time that mothers were caring for their infants, there is little or no evidence of fathers’ </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">commitment</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to care. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>million </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">years ago this would all change when the first humans came on the scene. And here’s why:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you remember those maternal hormones that worked so well to create a mother child bond - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Prolactin</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>O</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>xytocin</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? These are produced in male bodies as well, because males and females share most of the same genetic material. And you may have noticed that humans don’t have nearly as much body hair as apes. In fact, without clothes we look pretty naked.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Anyway, my point is that skin-to-skin contact can lead to the release of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oxytocin</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in both males and females and this can facilitate falling in love and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Pair Bonding, </b>which is otherwise </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> rare in primates, and doesn’t happen when apes live in groups. Pair bonding in Chimpanzees is usually prevented by the d</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ominant</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> m</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ale</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who will try to m</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">onopolize</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> all the f</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">emale</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s when they are in estrus.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Homo Erectus</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, our hominin precursors, looked a lot more like us then previous </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>H</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>ominins</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It was during their two million year stay on Earth that they were the first to control </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>F</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>ire</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and the first to walk out of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Africa</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember those </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">stone tools</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> we talked about. They were first used for preparing food, just as knives are today. They were also used as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>W</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>eapon</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>s. </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> And here’s where it gets interesting. We note, that in human history, when better weapons are first developed they sometimes have a powerful effect on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>S</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>ocial Systems</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Stone knives would have had a </span><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">L</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">evellin</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">g</span></b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> influence, undermining the rule of the strongest male. They would also have led to social disruption, because now there would be a continual free fight over women. Previously the dominant male would have controlled this problem, but stone knives may have eliminated his role.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Easy access to knives would have made it a free-for-all until the group as a whole agreed to a system that limited violence and provided stability. That agreement was the basis for human nature.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Two million years ago agreements were not about peace, order, and good government. The agreement had to be simple, it had to be comprehensive, with no exceptions. Our ancestors had the right hormones to facilitate pair-bonding, but they didn’t have the right social systems until the </span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">n</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>vention</b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of stone knives forced their hands.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Because the dominant male kept order, that function needed to be filled by something else. That function, of allocating women and resources,and controlling violent public behaviour, had to be replaced by a special type of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">collective commitment.<b> </b>Thus the<b> Ninth Commitment - </b>the commitment to <b>Monogamy and Morality. </b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, in almost every human society the vast majority of men and women live in </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">monogamous relationships</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which means that somehow, and I think it was two million years ago, we established </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">monogamous social systems</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Thus males and females </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">committed</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to living in and supporting long-term relationships. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Animals do most things from self-interest. Humans choose to follow </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rules</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that can directly oppose their own self-interest. This is most obvious in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">morality</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In morality we have lists of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>D</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>os and Don't</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>s</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. We all internalize these rules and we often enthusiastically judge those who break them. Justifying your behaviour by saying that you acted in your own interest doesn’t cut it morally. Everyone is on the lookout for people who violate moral rules, and if they are caught, they are punished by various means. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We all can and do feel judgemental about people who have affairs. We realize that they are doing it out of powerful desires, but judge these people for not constraining their desires. The fact is that if people didn't actively constrain themselves, monogamy would be a joke. The only thing natural about monogamy is that it reflects the pair-bond, the deep mutual attachment that can form when two people fall in love. But the trouble is that, in many cases, love doesn't last, and it can be overridden by new attractions. That's why the group had to come together and make a collective commitment, simultaneously creating the social institution of monogamy and the first moral system. My guess is that initially it was simply an agreement to control violence, and allow for pair-bonding and social stability, and the initiators had no idea of the positive consequences that would ensue. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In a single stroke monogamy would have led to fathers being more assured of the paternity of their children, the inclusion of in-laws, and thus, the effective enlargement of groups; the division of labour between males and females, and the sharing of resources amongst the nuclear family. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In effect, monogamy led to camp fires, cooking, and fatherhood. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At some unknown time, perhaps 100,000 years ago, by increasing social stability and encouraging sharing, monogamy made </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Language, The Tenth Commitment</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> possible.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Female mammals committed to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>maternal care</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; most mammals committed to living in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>groups</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; male baboons and apes committed to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>collective protection</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the group; humans first committed to a</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> monogamous social system</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and then committed to using </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>language.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The trend in all of these commitments is towards the facilitation of longer childhoods, greater learning flexibility, bigger brains, and more effective and complex forms of cooperation. Humans have the longest period of childhood, the greatest ability to learn new things, and are by far the most cooperative. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: purple;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Remember the</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>camp fire:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Sharing stories, sharing food, singing songs together, facing the darkness together</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Almost everything we do as humans involves sharing: talking, singing, eating, playing, working, building, caring, and loving. This is what separates us from the animals. </span></span></div>
<br />earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-87053053430650241902016-03-13T10:37:00.000-07:002016-03-13T10:37:31.193-07:00Earth/House/SystemI'm reading a book by Phillip Ball, called: Water, Matrix of Life. If you want to know more about water, it's fascinating and well written. I particularly like this quote of his: “Water is the agent of geological, environmental and global change. It confers fecundity on parched regions, while it's passing turns grasslands into deserts.”<br />
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Water does all this and more. But water is incredibly effective at what it does because water is a team player. Apparently there's water on the moon in the form of patches of ice, but it's inert, it doesn't do anything because it lacks the other team players. Let's introduce these other team members.<br />
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Water is a compound not an element although the Greeks and the Chinese thought it was one of the “four elements” - Earth, Air, Water and Fire. Let's run with this idea but let's assume that fire can mean all types of energy, especially the Sun. Let's use a bigger name for Air. We'll call it the Atmosphere. Let's say that “Earth” means the planet and not just a hunk of rock. Now let's add a fifth element, and call it “Life”.<br />
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Put these five elements together and they will interact spontaneously. And these interactions form the great geophysical systems of the Earth.<br />
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The Earth's surface has mountains and basins. It's lowest points are where most of the water is – in the oceans. The Earth's gravitational field is strong enough to hold all the gases: the oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapour that make up the atmosphere.<br />
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Think of Earth as a house without a switch because it runs itself. It's roof is the atmosphere. It lets vital energy from the Sun in and gives us a bit of insulation at night. Too much insulation is not good, as we see with the planet Venus, with its surface temperature of 460 *Celsius.<br />
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The Earth's got plumbing, heating, ventilation and power, mostly run by one system: the weather. But it's also got backup power from internal heat which causes plate tectonics to reconfigure the seas and continents every hundred million years or so.<br />
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It's not like a house that was designed and built, because it repairs itself. Tell me, what house that we have built repairs itself, or has lasted as long as Earth has?<br />
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As a plumbing and heating system and power system the weather is partly predictable and partly unpredictable. Sometimes we get too much water sometimes not enough. Sometimes it gets too hot, sometimes it's just right.<br />
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The weather operates under the usual physical laws. The Earth's spin causes winds to curve in the direction of rotation making cyclonic wind patterns counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.<br />
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The Sun's radiation heats water on Earth's surface and causes water molecules to change from liquid to gas. The water vapour can rise into the atmosphere because it contains heat from the sun.<br />
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Weather is partly predictable, we recognize the seasons, but also unpredictable, we don't know what the weather will be like a month from this day. The weather is a self-organizing system. Weather systems can last up to a week and travel thousands of kilometres.<br />
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Let's call a system: a group of parts that interact together to form a whole that is separated from the external world by a boundary.<br />
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Let's divide the world of systems into three: machines, institutions, and self-organizing systems.<br />
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Self organizing systems are systems of parts that interact via simple physical laws. The parts of the Solar system - the sun and the planets, interact by the laws of motion and gravity to form a balanced system that has maintained itself over time.<br />
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All machines are mechanical systems designed and built by humans for various goals. A house is a mechanical system that transfers heat and energy from outside and holds it inside. Houses and other machines have switches on them. When the switch is turned on, the machines start to work and when it's turned off they stop working.<br />
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What is a self-organizing system? Think of a flock of sandpipers flying low over the water – the precision and coherence of their flight. The flock swoops and glides as a unified whole as if it acts with one mind.<br />
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But each bird is acting on its own and the subtle alterations in flight that each bird makes in response to its neighbours creates an emergent unity.<br />
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Unlike machines, self-organizing systems are not deterministic. These systems have properties that emerge from the interaction of all the parts that cannot be predicted from the nature of the parts alone.<br />
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You cannot predict the weather beyond a week; Human behaviour is both predictable and unpredictable. Weather systems and large-scale human societies exhibit complex behaviour that is the hallmark of self-organizing systems.earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6773876713591654358.post-73837740406027967582016-03-11T10:03:00.001-08:002017-06-16T10:28:36.353-07:00Music and Morality<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is said that Pythagoras, the founder of an ancient mystery cult, and arguably, the father of both mathematics and music theory, took his own life, out of guilt for discovering irrational numbers. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-16ba32b3-66d4-27f5-b754-268094f4a205" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pythagoras had discovered universal truths about music, by first observing that dividing a vibrating string into different proportions yielded the entire series of harmonics for the notes of the diatonic musical scale. The pitch of a musical note corresponds to an exact mathematical proportion between the length of the string being played and the length of the segment of the string created by touching a node. Thus, touching nodes positioned at various intervals on the string creates pitches that correspond with all the notes of the scale. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pythagoras had discovered a connection between the quality of experience and the reality of numbers. The more perfect the actual mathematical proportion of the node to the entire length, the more harmonious and satisfying our experience when the two notes are sounded together. We call that satisfying relationship - harmony, and the feeling of dissatisfaction - dissonance.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The interesting thing about music is its dynamics. It gets its power from the way that it plays with our expectations and feelings, building tension and release via elements of tempo, rhythm, dynamic volume, the degree of dissonance and harmony, and the movement of a tonal centre further or closer to the key signature. Put in the context of a song, some dissonance is necessary in order to produce tension and make the music more compelling. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The judgement of quality in musical experience appears to be both due to subjective impressions and to objective reality. Individual musicians who do not adhere to the standards of pitch, tonality, tempo, dynamics, etc., are judged to be bad musicians. It would seem that there exists something universal about musical standards that leads to a better quality of music when these standards are closely adhered to. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Music also gives rise to powerful sensations of mood. Music embodies human nature, in its understanding of life’s goals and hardships. The experience of music is considered so desirable that the most popular musical pieces are constantly being</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> re-created</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by musical groups.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Musicians </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">re-create</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> songs, producing music by collective adherence to standards. I want to argue that in moral systems there is something similar going on - the group </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">re-creates</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> society every time it collectively acknowledges and enforces moral standards. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The issue is this: we expect others to act morally and not take advantage or abuse their power but we always have to do more than this. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because, if we do not collectively exclude those who consistently disrespect moral law, they will undermine and ultimately destroy society from within. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moral standards are ultimately about differentiating people who support the group from people who undermine the group. People who commit wrongs can be said to fail the moral standards. They are excluded from the group temporarily, through forms of punishment, or permanently via banning or executing. In the past, those who refused to play by the rules were eventually selected out of the gene pool by the rest of the group. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By accepting universal standards for our social conduct we are also implying that there is something objective about reality that leads to some forms of conduct being better and some forms of conduct being worse than others. But at the same time, there is something irreducibly subjective about morality because it is such a powerful motivator for judgement and action.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In today’s world we take a jaundiced view of “morality”. People believe in the value of privacy to override almost everything else, and they see religious extremists insisting on strict “moral” codes of conduct as dangerously divisive. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But notice that moral standards can sometimes trump religious standards. Priests, cardinals, even popes can be held accountable for moral failings. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My intuition is that moral systems long pre-dated religion, but I wouldn’t be surprised if music is also of ancient pedigree, perhaps originating about the same time as morality, because they both have similar structures, but vastly different functions. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Music, like morality has standards that are exclusive. Bands can be very picky who they let in to become band members, and this often has to do with the prospect’s ability to reliably adhere to musical standards. Adhering to high standards is what distinguishes a good band from a mediocre band. Generally speaking, the higher the musical standards that a band or orchestra can achieve, the better the quality of experience supplied to the audience and greater the number of people drawn into their music’s orbit. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Musical scales, melodies, favourite harmonies, and songs can vary from one culture to another, but in every case, musicians have to play in tune, with appropriate instruments, in the same tempo, and the same key as the other musicians. In order to play music together they must follow the same musical standards. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The singer who sings off key undermines the song and harms the collective musical experience; and, if she consistently sings off key she can be kicked out of the band. Both the audience and the musicians together uphold standards of excellence that pertain to the quality of the musical experience.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fortunately, there’s lots of room in modern society for musicians of different age, abilities, and tastes to form bands and play music, sometimes in public, sometimes not. It doesn’t undermine society for this to be the case.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But we make a mistake if we think that the fact that there are so many different groups and cultures with different rules of conduct - different moralities, if you will, means that there are no universal moral principles that we all should adhere to. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Living in groups demands much more from us than playing music in a group. For one thing, with music we always have the option of not playing music. Nor do we have to play music with other musicians, nor even to an audience. But moral choices are always about social situations. We do not have the option of opting out, unless we leave the group, and this was probably not an option when morality first originated. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both music and morality show the importance of cooperation in human conduct. Music draws in other musicians, singers, dancers, innkeepers, as well as an audience, but morality makes human cooperation possible in the first place. Music draws people together and its </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">re-creation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> makes life more meaningful and enjoyable. Morality is ultimately what makes it possible for people to live together. That’s what I mean by the “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">re-creation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of society”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> II </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unity, diversity, coherence, dissonance, harmony, and universal rules. All these elements can be loosely conceived as the basis for both music and morality. We can see that dissonance, while sometimes unpleasant, is actually an essential part of the musical experience because of its contribution to musical tension and sense of movement. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Conflict and disagreement, as unwanted and unpleasant as they can be, are probably essential in human groups too, as a challenging impetus that leads to better fairer agreements that are more satisfying and sustainable over the long haul.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If all we ever did was just to get along with everyone else we would never have gotten out of the state of nature. By having to deal with conflict we got better at living together. Animals deal with conflicts with dominance hierarchies. The bigger and stronger animal has more say. Humans have added a crucial innovation - rules that apply to everyone, backed up by negative consequences that are collectively instituted against rule breakers. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The thing about rules, which is different from nature, is that rules are not self-organizing. They are based on prior agreements about how to behave. In nature any “rule” is more automatic, instinctual and genetically wired-in, or, it’s part of a developmental process.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature is self-organized in this important sense: there is no viewpoint that understands the whole. In self-organized systems, the parts of the system, if they have awareness, only have awareness of their immediate environment. There is no consciousness in charge of everything. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These kinds of systems are ubiquitous in nature. Think of the organ systems in our own bodies. Each of our bodies is said to be made up of thirty-seven trillion individual cells, all interacting in multiple organ systems. None of these individual cells have awareness of what their particular system is doing. We are certainly not aware of the vast majority of things going on with the thirty-seven trillion cells in our own bodies, although our minds exert control over our actions and our brains exert unconscious control over our body systems. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Music is not self-organized. Musicians have to learn how to play instruments, how to play in key, and according to musical scales, and to remember melody and chord changes. Conductors and band leaders need to be aware of how all the playing fits together to </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">re-create</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a piece of music. Musicians and audiences have all learned how to hear a piece of music as a whole, rather than just as a random series of sounds. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order for a song to be composed, the composer must be able to conceive of the song as a whole, not just the individual parts. In nature there is no composer, so natural systems tend to be self-organized and the parts only need to be aware of their immediate surroundings. Rules pull us out of the state of nature, by substituting conscious organization for self-organization.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We see self-organization when the scale of human activity gets so large, that no-one has a handle on it or can predict where it’s going. This is certainly true of business cycles, where economists often cannot predict what will happen next. It’s instructive to consider that the actors in business cycles, are often tagged as either “bulls” or “bears” because of their herd impulse to buy or sell. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is also true of language. Language involves so many speakers, so many words and grammatical rules, that it also is a self-organized system. No single speaker is aware of all the uses and changes in pronunciation and meaning that are constantly occurring in any language. Nor do we normally have any awareness of a system-wide goal. There is no one who understands the whole thing, not even Noam Chomsky. There seem to be an infinite number of different goals involved in the use of language, although cooperation and sharing information seems to be the main ones. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is very powerful evidence that humans are distinct from all other living things, and that evidence is in our ubiquitous use of rules. When we agree together to follow rules we are also demonstrating our understanding of and commitment to system-wide goals. This is where music and morality meet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In hindsight, it turns out that irrational numbers got a bad rap. They are actually quite useful, and they haven’t led to the erosion of mathematics from within, as, I guess, tragically, Pythagoras was so concerned about. In human society everything depends on adherence to rules and standards. Both music and morality can only survive if the collectivity has the means and ultimately the will to exclude rule-breakers. </span>earthjustice.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06285940024413114186noreply@blogger.com0