After celebrating the 234th Anniversary of the birth of the United States of America with barbecues and fireworks, as we pass this milestone how we can be so blasé, sanguine and complacent and remain completely oblivious to the fact that we are engaged in the most desperate struggle to ensure the survival of the American way of life, that what is at stake at this the most potent and perilous moment in the history of this nation ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to proposition that all men are created equal’ is the premise on which this nation was founded, that wealth and prosperity can be created in a free enterprise system.
More, that family life can function and be sustained in a social system in which a wife and mother has equal access to education and the means to make a living, that children can be socialized without being brutalized to the values and attitudes required for societal order and progress, that order and stability can be preserved in the absence of Draconian penalties.
What has been proved in the past Twelve Thousand years is that human beings can be driven up the steep incline towards civilization, what remain in doubt, in serious doubt given the predicament in which this nation finds itself, is whether any nation can avoid descending into chaos and anomie when coercion in any form, overt or covert, can no longer be utilized to motivate the other.
From my perspective, perhaps I am still crazy after all these years; the danger is so great that to my eyes we face a situation as potentially dangerous as the people of the United Kingdom confronted at the height of the Battle of Britain; and sadly, we face this threat to the destruction of the American way of life without the services and leadership of a Winston Churchill, a Margaret Thatcher, or even a Golda Meir.
What we have is a petulant, whining, spineless idiot with impeccable academic qualifications and a high intelligent quotient who seems to wilting under the heat and pressure and secretly fervently wishes he had stayed out of the kitchen, whose inexperience seems more and more apparent rendering him incapable of dealing with a problem of this magnitude and complexity; and, most dauntingly who seems to have completely surrendered and given up, who on the campaign trail again and again lead a chorus that chanted “Yes we can” but now in pronouncements and policies reveals that all he has the intellectual capacity and moral will to change in the real world is his address from the Capitol Building to the White House; and, while pathetically wringing his hands admits in his overall demeanor and body language that his slogan should have been “No we can’t.”
I continue to entertain the home that Americans not only have the courage, resiliency and willingness to sacrifice necessary to overcome this threat to their way of life, but if this does not exist they will find it from somewhere within; or else the world faces the near certainty that freedom and democracy will perish and be erased from the face of Planet Earth; and, we will enter a new era of Absolutism which will be dominated by the tyranny and ruthlessness of Communist China, by those who perpetuated the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and more recently the assault on, and repression of freedom of dissent in Tiananmen Square, a right that we take for granted.
Today, Americans face the acid test; they must discover whether they can produce goods and services profitably without coercion, whether they can socialize and educate their kids without resorting to the rod; and, whether they are really committed to creating a government of the people, by the people, for the people?
And the enemy they face is not an external foe; the enemy is within each and every one of us, it is the design for human existence shaped by human history and experience.
Americans on the shores of Tripoli, on Guadalcanal, on the beaches of Normandy, in the obscure trenches of the Cold War, during the blockade of Berlin, during the Cuban Missile Crisis and in the jungles of Vietnam have proved they can resist tyranny; now they face the most dangerous foe possible, the enemy within each and every one of us, it is time for the change, it is time to change the man or woman in our mirrors.
What I am going to do is what I do best describe the problem accurately the necessary prerequisite to its solution.
The conflict we have been fighting since the beginning of time is not between good and evil; it is between the rational and the irrational; in fact the problem posed as between good and evil makes it impossible to resolve.
To create understanding and comprehension of the above conundrum requires asking and answering the question, what adaptation would result in a being that was capable of intelligence, of creating and appreciating art, literature, philosophy and of devising weapons of destruction; while also being capable of surviving the ‘state of nature?’
Survival in the ‘state of nature’ required a being who could endure the stresses and strains of a world which had not yet attained its ecological balance, who could survive among creatures whom because of their size and power were much better physically equipped for garnering existing energy resources.
The answer on Planet Earth, one answer to this evolutionary dilemma, I am sure there are others, was a psyche divided into two compartments, the conscious and subconscious – an adaptation which has produced down the ages the duality and dichotomies which have pervaded and poisoned human existence the fundamental of these being the conflict between the rational and irrational; thus was created a being with a capacity for learning, for actions mediated by intelligence and limited by the dictates of conscience; or, for actions driven by impulse and by emotion.
What is not fully appreciated is the awesome immensity, scope and functionality of the adaptation that divided the human psyche into two compartments, a development which I suggest resulted in the selective ‘blindness’ of members of the human race, that makes it impossible for them to know what they are doing in certain areas of existence, one which in human beings created an well nigh unlimited capacity for self delusion.
The observation might be made that an individual confronting an experience eliciting intense fear or pain e.g. the interval of time that begins moments before an individual crashes head on into a telephone pole and ends when that collision occurs, such an unfortunate human being does not consciously decide to consign this extremely harrowing interval of time to his subconscious, this occurs involuntarily.
Moreover, it has been the experience that some individuals are capable of burying so deeply in the subconscious compartments of their minds memories of experiences that they can pass lie detector tests that attempt to illicit information about activities about wrongdoing they have engaged in but are capable of completely forgetting ever happened.
The subconscious compartment of the human psyche was essential to surviving the One Hundred Thousand years members of the newly emergent species Homo sapiens of the genus hominid spent in the ‘state of nature.’
The adaptation, the critical adaptation, of dividing the psyche of the human animal into two compartments combined with the fact that the human organism is unique because of an absence of instincts to create an organism who could learn, change and adapt but one that could also develop powerful habits:
Absence of instincts: An instinct is a relatively complex behavior pattern biologically fixed for a species. Nest-building techniques among birds are a familiar example: they vary between species but not within species. If man possessed such biologically fixed behavior patterns, they would limit his learning and his socialization; variation and change would then be impossible.
Man has biological drives rather than instincts. A drive such as hunger or sex, is an organic tension that is felt as discomfort or impulse but does not direct behavior to specific goals or in specific ways. A drive impels activity but does not determine it in detail. That man is activated by drives rather than by biologically fixed behavior patterns makes his needs amenable to social direction.
The absence of biological instincts makes socialization possible. Other aspects of man’s biological nature make socialization imperative. (Broom 84)
What I am hypothesizing based on the available facts about human nature is that man was, and is capable, of learning the attitudes and patterns of behavior required for survival in the ‘state of nature’ into which he initially emerged; and, as well, he has the capacity to become a civilized human being.
But he did not evolve in a civilized environment but in the ‘state of nature’ and learned the attitudes and patterns of behavior required for survival in that milieu, the strongest men whom we must assume were most influential in shaping opinions, beliefs, attitudes and therefore culture were daily engaged in the drama of predation in which the prey gave its all including its life to satisfy the needs for energy resources of the predator.
Two other components of this experience we can be sure of, that early man had to protect the hunting grounds of the tribe and repel or kill any member of another tribe who encroached into the area of land required to support the tribe.
Also, to prevent the tribe being burdened by too many defectives the result of in breeding, early men had to kidnap women from other tribes, have sex with them until they conceived and so could not return to their own tribe.
Early man lived in bands of predators competing with other collections of predators for existing energy resources, competing bands might be composed of human beings, or lions, or tigers, or wolves, but what is clear is that the more intense the emotions elicited by experience the more powerful and difficult to extinguish are the habits learned; and, the ‘state of nature’ must have been the most intense learning experience member of the species Homo sapiens has ever been subjected to.
The duality inherent in the human condition had its genesis in the fact that the human mind was divided into two compartments, the intrinsic nature of human culture was DETERMINED by the fact that for the first Hundred Thousand years of human existence they lived in a ‘state of nature’ and became habituated to a certain design for human existence, one whose world view was that might was right, whose ethos was competition, which relied on coercion to motivate the other, whose dominant roles were territorial predator and hapless prey.
That period of time, a period of time unimaginable to a human being whose life expectancy is seventy seven year, caused the culture to develop a life of its own, so ubiquitous was it, so pervasive was it, so deeply embedded in social interaction, so habituated was its agents to the mindset ‘might is right’ so that this came to be self perpetuating since it was reflected in the actions of every human being.
No more powerful demonstration and proof of this exists than the nature of the culture and social system that was produced after human beings discovered how to domesticate certain grasses and animals the humble beginnings of agriculture and began to create settlements many of these sited on the deltas of large rivers where areas of deep alluvial soil where particularly conducive to growth of crops.
For the succeeding twelve thousand years Absolutist regimes proliferated and endured, regimes in which an absolute ruler had unlimited power of life and death over his subjects, an unmistakable extension of the situation in the ‘state of nature’ wherein the wants and needs of the predator was satisfied by the prey at the cost of its life.
Two thousand years ago, after ten thousand years of Absolutism during which the culture that held that ‘might was right,’ whose ethos was competition, which relied on coercion to motivate the other, whose dominant roles were territorial predator and hapless prey was reinforced, grew more sophisticated and held sway around the globe; a gentler world view with the diametrically opposed world view that ‘right is might’ began to make its presence felt as the human race discovered values and ethics.
But when humanity belatedly developed ethics, the notion that ‘might was right’ was so deeply entrenched in human affairs that human beings were little more than puppets on the strings of a design for human existence that was by then unalterably malignant, inordinately corrupt and completely depraved.
So an accommodation occurred, an unconscious accommodation occurred, in concept individuals embraced the gentler, more moral way of life; even as in precept they continued to be agents of coercion determined culture - where the conflict had been external as the mighty perennially prevailed, this discord was internalized it began to be waged in the psyche of every human being.
Why was, and is the notion that ‘might is right,’ so seductively powerful and enduring when it can never be rationalized, justified or be considerate equitable?
Because in social interaction in which this world view prevails all the territorial predator has to exhibit and demonstrate is that which makes them powerful, whether that might be physical strength, economic, political or social power, to create a situation in which the other, the weaker actor in the drama of predation MUST do whatever is required to satisfy their needs, wants or desires no matter how this tramples on the rights or personal autonomy of that other.
It is popular and enduring because it deprives one actor in the social interaction of the right to chose.
It is this characteristic that was, and is, the basis for prostitution, chattel slavery and feudal societies; it is this that makes the accumulation of power of any kind an irresistible compulsion for human beings; it is this predatory attitude however subtly camouflaged that has produced all of the poverty, misery and suffering that has been inflicted on the wretched of the earth as the strong has deliberately and consistently denied the weak those attitudes and aptitudes that would have caused them to transcend the condition of being easy prey.
It is this dichotomy and ambivalence that exists to some degree in every single human being, all want their personal autonomy to be sacrosanct, while the other MUST do whatever is required to satisfy their wants, needs and desires.
Today we speak of dictatorships of the Right or the Left, what this diplomatic terminology conceals is the unalterable, undeniable fact that most nations of Planet Earth continue to be governed by Absolutist regimes; and the vast majority of human beings have not begun the arduous journey from subject to citizen, even in many so called democratic states.
This is the enemy within that confronts every citizen of these United States of America, for a real, functioning democracy is impossible unless a bare majority of citizens has embraced in precept the Golden Rule, unless they are willing to do to the other as they would have done to them, unless they are willing to protect and defend the personal autonomy of the other as they would their own.
On the social site Facebook I paraphrased the man called Jesus and said, “Let not your hearts be troubled for this is the year of the change,” this is the change I was speaking of, because this is the only change that can make a difference in the lives of human beings, this is the only change that can create a future replete and redolent with peace and prosperity for the human species, this is the only change that will allow us to survive the weapons of mass destruction we have devised.
We must leave the ‘state of nature’ behind, we must reject and renounce the ideology ‘might is right’ and embrace the world view that ‘right is might’ in precept.
When we say that man is determined that he never has been free, what do we mean?
When Constantine had his religious experience, when it is claimed he saw a sign in the sky that he interpreted as saying under the sign of the cross he would conquer; and, he became the patron of the early Christian Church, this ostensibly signaled a great victory for proponents of the world view ‘right is might;’ but did it?
Today, that Church is the single most powerful institution perpetuating the status quo that ‘might is right’ among the populations of Western Civilizations.
It holds that the One Hundred Thousand of evolution that is critical to understanding and confronting the fact that human culture was determined and how it was determined never happened; that man and the earth and the stars in the heavens were created in seven days by an Omnipotent God.
It holds that everlasting life will be the reward of those who are possessed by the Holy Ghost, when in fact only telling the truth can make us free; when only the practice of this discipline can create the objectivity in human beings that will allow us to create the accurate descriptions of the existing social reality, the necessary prerequisite to finding solutions to the urgent, pressing social problems that beset us.
It uses the untold wealth generated by collecting tithes down the centuries to protect and insulate its priests from responsibility for their worldwide sexual abuse of minor male children, causing all those who donate such tithes to be accessories before or after the fact, in respect of these atrocities.
Or more recently, we may reflect on the events that occurred after the desegregation of the Public School system in the USA, ostensibly another great victory for those who embraced the notion that ‘right is might;’ but, white parents did not want black teachers to be able to discipline their children so they caused corporal punishment to be removed from the Public School system precipitating the incipient chaos and disorder in which the education system now languishes:
Chris Hedges documents in his watershed article “America the Illiterate” an appalling condition:
There are over 42 million American adults, 20 per cent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at fourth-or fifth grade level. Nearly a third of the nation's population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.
For every arduous, painstaking step forward we slide two steps backward into the ‘state of nature,’ a situation that cannot be changed or remedied until the human species embarks upon the most fundamental change we could contemplate, the rejection and complete renunciation of the notion that ‘might is right,’ in precept; and, cause all of our actions to demonstrate our commitment to the notion that ‘right is might.’
The real question that confronts every member of the species Homo sapiens in this the first decade of the Twenty First Century is whether or not a bare majority of us in any social system are capable of becoming moral beings?
In the classic conception of drama – as in the theoretical phase of a scientific study – the will of the actors was confined in the shackles of determinism. The outcome at the final curtain was predetermined by the opening up of the drama in the first act, accounting for all the conditions and causes of later developments. The protagonist carried his ultimate fate in his soul, while he was groping for his destiny. In life, while the drama is still unfolding – as in the practical phase of a study, when policy inferences are drawn from value premises as well as from premises based on empirical evidence – the will is instead assumed to be free, within limits, to choose between alternative courses of action. History, then, is not taken to be predetermined, but within the power of man to shape. And the drama thus conceived is not necessarily tragedy. (Myrdal 35)
Bibliography
Sociology, A Text with Adapted Readings, Fourth Edition by Leonard Broom and Philip Selznick, A Harper International Edition.
Asian Drama, An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations by Gunnar Myrdal, Second Printing Pantheon a Division of Random House.
