August 13, 2018--The Nature of Human Nature

In the never-ending effort to understand what it means to be human is there a "nature" that is hard-baked into all of us that helps define our distinctive "humanness"? Assuming there is a distinctiveness. 

Are we human (separate from all other animals, including from the Great Apes to whom we are close relatives) because, as it used to be felt, we (Homo habilis) uniquely have the ability to make and use tools? Subsequently, we have learned that a number of other animals also make tools) or because we are self-aware (some other mammals appear to be as well) or because we alone were made in God's image (you're on your own with this one).

Raging still is the debate as to what constitutes that aspect of humanness that is largely the result of our capacity to respond to and develop because of our ability to be shaped by the effects of nurture and culture.

In this then, how much is nurture and how much nature? Some who study these matters claim it might be as much as 50-50.

Darwin obviously had much to say about this. Though he was skeptical about what we today refer to as "cultural evolution"--he would say we and all other species pass along to progeny such things as eye color and various instincts--among thousand of other adaptions the in-born mammalian ability to suckle. 

On the other hand, in contrast to the social evolutionists, he claims we do not genetically pass along our propensity to be, say, self-sacrificing. In fact, doesn't our propensity to be self-sacrificing go against the notion that our development over millennia contradicts the basic Darwinian insight that our nature is the result of adapting to numerous mutations that were selected because they contributed to our ability to survive? His survival of the fittest.

But if in this regard, since there is considerable evidence that self-sacrifice, including a willingness or even instinct to give up one's life for the sake of the survival of other humans, is there, as some researchers claim, a "benevolence" gene?

While we are at it, is there a universal "God" gene? Or if you prefer, a "belief" gene? If there has never been an example of any human society without its own origin story, it's own larger belief system isn't this propensity to believe a part of what it means to be human? If so, is this, again, culturally or genetically imprinted? 

And then, what about art? Is is more a pleasure than an instinct? A debate about this also rages.

If this latter debate interests you, as I recently did, pick up and read neuroscientist Anjan Chatterjee's The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved Beauty and Enjoy Art.

Though he comes down on the side that claims the appeal of what human's consider beauty is not instinctive, not hard-wired in our DNA, he comes close to making that case.

No more persuasive to the genetic side of the argument, though, are the early human artifacts he cites that archeologists have been unearthing during the past two centuries, including some hundreds of thousands of years old.

Here is a sampling--

First, from as many as 30,000 years ago, from the Paleolithic Period, the Old Stone Age, are the Venus figures, mother goddesses, that most now consider part of a fertility cult. The best known is the 4.4 inch Venus Of Willendorf, named for the village in Lower Austria where it was found. It now resides in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna. 

Thirty-five years ago I made a pilgrimage to see it in an obscure corner of the museum. Being alone with it, spending an hour in its presence fired a lifetime interest in evolution and human nature.

From the Golan Heights, found at the Berekhat Ram dig in the early 1980s, is another seeming Venus figure. Just 1.4 inches, it appears to be a "pebble" that was shaped and incised by an early human (Homo erectus). It is again a fertility figure or mother goddess. It is on view in Jerusalem at the Israel Museum. Some considerate it to be the oldest existing work of human art.

Then there is the much older, 400,000 year-old Tan-Tan figure that was discovered in Morocco in 1999. As many claim it was shaped by an archaic human hand as others who say it was formed by natural, geological processes such as erosion. Take a look and come to your own concusion. 

It would not surprise me if it turned out to be another Venus figure as I come down on the side of those who contend there is an aesthetic gene. 

There is too much "art" in the world, found among all peoples in all places across too many millennia for there not to be. The usual Darwinian resistance to this view is not sufficiently persuasive for me to agree it is a simple pleasure without sufficient human survival adaptive purposes. Among so many, I would not want to live in an artless world. Thus, the extraordinary proliferation of art alone suggests it is adaptive enough!

January 18, 2018--Ab-Normalizing

A number of friends have been accusing me of "normalizing" Donald Trump and thereby enhancing his legitimacy both as a person and president. By doing this, they say, I am tacitly accepting his election.

Though I am not quite sure I understand all that they mean, I do know they are angry with me because they feel I am treating him as if he were a normal person, rather than the embodiment of evil. That by doing so I am elevating his status as a human being and thereby contributing to enhancing his power. They would rather me consider him abnormal, an aberration not worthy of serious regard much less acknowledging his humanity.

I am sure there is some truth in these friends' disappointment in me.

But I also know there is significant danger in not acknowledging  Donald Trump's connection to the human race. To not have to deal with who he in all his maddening complexity. Dehumanizing him makes it easier to reject his very being. To be able to simply write him off. And thus delegitimatize him as president and as a human being in ways similar to how he attempted to denigrate Barak Obama.

I think we know enough about human nature to agree that few of us live in a pure state. We are all a mix of contradictions that coexist within us. Most of us, under the right conditions, are capable of acts of self-sacrifice as well as unspeakable violence. There is a struggle within us, Lincoln noted, between "the better angels of our nature" and the dark forces that pull us in the opposite direction

Aeschylus and Shakespeare would be eager to chime in. 

To bring us to a better place, to move beyond dealing in caricatures, we would do well to resist inappropriate normalizing while equally avoiding the impulse to ab-normalize. To impute evil motives to those with whom we disagree and against whom we struggle. To do the opposite of normalization.  

In the current political climate, this will require setting aside some of our anger and fear so we can better understand, with all their own human contradictions, why those who support of Donald Trump are so fervent. 

By now many of my friends feel they understand enough. Even too much. But to them it's simple--he and his supporters are racists and misogynists. Ask no more. Say no more.

I get that but think there is more to consider, including perhaps things about which we can find ways to talk. This is urgent as our fate as a democracy may depend on being able to do that.

Lincoln's First Inauguration 

November 7, 2016--Post-Fact America

I know at least ten people who report they have lost close friends this election cycle. In every case because their political differences were so unbridgeable and their disagreements so visceral and nasty that they have stopped talking to each other and believe they will never reconcile.

Particularly disturbing, they claim they couldn't agree about any facts. In spite of quoting Daniel Patrick Moynahan's oft-quoted axiom about how we're entitled to our own opinions but not our own facts.

Many I've spoken with still insist that their former friends insist on having their own facts. This in spite of fact-checked evidence that some things are truer than others and sometimes what are asserted to be facts are essentially made-up. Still, most continue to cling to and cite these untruths as facts.

And on the other side, my friends' side, those with a confessional inclination reveal that they too are not exempt from not always distinguishing fiction from fact. That they as well have their own facts and don't care that much if they are true or not. They're so angry about the issues, the candidates, the campaigns, and their friends' smug obtuseness that they care only about winning and dominating anyone who disagrees. Even life-long pals.

I should also confess to at times feeling frustrated in pretty much the same way and have been prone to spin what I know to be a half or untruth. I'm not proud of this, but there you go.

What's going on?

Insight comes from Farhad Manjoo's excellent book, True Enough: Living in a Post-Fact Society. A column referring to it by Manjoo can be found in his recent New York Times "State of the Art" column.

He speaks about how with the advent of the internet it was anticipated that there would be an easily accessible proliferation of mainstream and independent reporting so that anyone interested could be unfettered in the pursuit of factual information and ultimately the truth. This would not of course preclude disagreement, even of a fundamental sort, but it would assure that the facts would get out and perhaps be agreed about.

Manjoo writes--

The internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. Polls show that many of us have burrowed into our own echo chambers of information. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 81 percent of respondents said that partisans not only differed about policies, but also about "basic facts." 

For years, technologists and other utopians have argued that online news would be a boon to democracy. That has not been the case. . . . 

If you study the dynamics of how information moves online today, pretty much everything conspires against truth.

More interesting and confounding, he also suggests that it may be human nature itself that is the problem--that even those who consider themselves rational and independent-minded often seek the intellectual shelter of what I have here at times labeled "confirmation bias"--our inclination to filter out information, facts, that contradict our already-secure beliefs. Beliefs, not facts.

Again from Manjoo--

A wider variety of news sources was supposed to be the bulwark of a rational age--"the marketplace of ideas," the boosters called it. 

But that's not how any of this works. Psychologists and other social scientists have repeatedly shown that when confronted with diverse information choices, people rarely act [in rational, civic-minded ways]. Instead, we are roiled by preconceptions and biases, and we usually do what feels easiest--we gorge on information that confirms our ideas, and we shun what does not. 

This dynamic becomes especially problematic in a news landscape of near-infinite choice. Whether navigating Facebook, Google, or The New York Time's smartphone app, you are given ultimate control--if you see something you don't like, you can easily tap away to something more pleasing. Then we all share what we have found with our like-minded social networks, creating closed-off, shoulder-patting circles online. 

If true, and it sounds to be so to me, how do we proceed?

We can dig deeper into our intellectual and ideological foxholes, seeking the security of "certainty" or we can take a more uncomfortable and challenging step and do some self-examining in the hope that we can figure out how to get comfortable with ambiguity and even contrary ideas and opinions.

After this ugly election season, where too many on both sides did not distinguish themselves, to begin the understanding and healing process is essential.

I especially call on my fellow progressives to take the lead in this. We pride ourselves as being rational, evidence-based thinkers and actors. Liberal minded liberals. It is time to put that on display by stepping up to the challenge. It may not work--to our long-term peril--but it is time to stop pointing disdainful fingers.

Hillary Clinton will be elected tomorrow. By a wide margin.

For more than 30 years she has at times been viscously assailed. Thus, she is the perfect person to put aside her understandable suspicions and anger and transcendently fess up to her own biases and by example, and through the bully pulpit, begin this needed national process and thereby make America great again.

Because we were and are great when we are open-minded, inclusive, and generous.

August 6, 2014--The Nature of Human Nature

"I know the answer," Rona said, "But still it upsets me when I think about how peaceful mornings are here--how there is nothing but the sun over the bay and the sounds of the tide rushing--while in so many other parts of the world the day begins with terror and violence. Like, right now, in the Middle East, Gaza, and Israel. I know, I know . . ." she trailed off.

"More evidence of how life is unfair and how fortunate and blessed we are," I offered, "And not just us. At the risk of sounding like a chauvinist pollyanna, no matter one's circumstances in America, things are so much better for virtually everyone."

"It's not only about unfairness. If it were, at least theoretically, something could be done about it. To bring about more fairness and peace. But . . ." she drifted off again not knowing what to make of this or how to reconcile her place on the fortunate side of things.

"So what else is involved that clearly has you upset?" I asked, thinking it would be better to try to talk about this than find a way to change the subject.

"Why all the violence? So much of it seeming to be for its own sake. And often brutally excessive. Way beyond what is required to protect oneself, one's family, or even one's nation."

"I have a theory."

"I hope it has a happy ending because I'm feeling terrible about the world's current circumstances."

"I'm not sure about that. It's too soon to know how things will turn out."

"Tell me anyway."

"It's about human evolution."

"Oh that, but, please, go on."

"Humans, homo sapiens, emerged about 200,000 years ago. In geological and biological terms, not very long ago. And for about the next 193,000 years we lived tribally, nomadically widely dispersed across Africa, what is now the Middle East, and also into today's Asia and Europe. We were mainly hunters and gatherers and men--and I mean men--needed to be able to protect themselves from dangerous beasts and other tribes who threatened their territory. It was raw, 'red-in-tooth-and-claw' survival of the fittest. A dangerous time that rewarded the most successfully aggressive and violent."

"I know all this," she was impatient with me, "So according to you what happened next?"

"It wasn't until about 7,000 years ago that the first city was established, when humans learned how to grow and cultivate crops and raise domestic animals so they they could gather in one place and no longer need to live as nomads."

"Ironically, the first cities, true, were in the same region where today there is so much warfare and violence."

"Yes," I said, "Arguably the first was Uruk in Babylonia, present-day Iraq, along the Euphrates. Between 5,000 and 3,000 BC up to 80,000 peopled lived there but, in evolutionary terms, these first city dwellers were very much like their hunter-gather ancestors. Just as aggressive, just as potentially violent."

"I sense where you're going with this."

"That was only 7,000 years ago. A very brief moment in time in the history of life. Living in settled communities and cities soon did not require the same human capacity and propensity for aggression and violence that our distant ancestors needed for survival.

"And, here's the heart of the problem," I continued my little lecture,"over the next seven millennia, until today, social evolution outpaced biological evolution so that while current homo sapiens are still biologically very much like our more ancient relatives, the way we live has changed dramatically. And making it worse, military technology has also evolved at a very rapid pace, far outstripping our basic self-protection needs. This make things infinitely more dangerous."

"By your theory, then, we no longer need to be so violent. We have culture and law and religions and governments and codes of behavior that would allow us to live more peacefully if we weren't still so bound and driven by our early-human DNA. And don't some researchers say that man, humans, have what they loosely call the 'benevolence gene'?"

"Exactly. But that propensity for generosity and even self-sacrifice is still overwhelmed by the aggressive ones that were so necessary long ago."

"So, in your view, what's going to happen?"

"I hope there will be enough change in our biological makeup over the next hundred years so we don't, while waiting for that, destroy the human race."

"Are you optimistic?" Rona asked.

"Look as those clouds," I said. "What a beautiful and peaceful place this is. Aren't we fortunate."

Rona knew that I wanted to change the subject. And let me.

July 14, 2014--Vixens

I have no idea how we go to talking about plurals.

Sometimes, always at the best dinner parties (and this one was the best) conversations wander. In this case from world religions to education reform to caring for aging mothers.

But with a stretch, all three are related.

In most belief systems one is taught to honor parents and care for them in old age while looking back on how mothers were our first educators. And if one's mother, as in my case, was also professionally a teacher, well, you see, subjects can wander but they are usually free-associatively connected.

But how we got to plurals is another matter.

I think it began when a guest mentioned that earlier in the day he had seen a fox sniffing across our hosts' rolling lawn. "Two, in fact," he said, "Two foxes."

I don't know what possessed me to suggest, "Not foxes," I smiled, "but two fox."

He looked at me skeptically. He is well educated and knowledgable about many things, including the arcane. "I think," he said gently (he's from Kentucky where disagreements can range from dangerous to gentlemanly), "I think the plural is foxes." I was happy to see that he continued to smile.

I say this about disagreements because earlier in the evening someone had reminded me that officials in Kentucky may still be asked if they ever engaged in a dual. And with a tall glass of superb bourbon in my system, knowing that, I was taking no chances.

"I'm glad no one here is bonded to a smart phone," another guest said, "We'd be tempted to look it up and that would be the end of this interesting discussion." I wasn't sure if he was teasing me. That's Kentuckian too--teasing so subtly that it's hard to know.

"Sometimes I like to wallow in uncertainty," I said, attempting to sound metaphysical since one of the dinner guests, a great person, is a leading authority on the metaphysical and mystical. Not the same thing, she and I had earlier agreed.

"I think the foxes I saw," he emphasized the plural, "were a mother and a baby."

"You mean a vixen and her kit, cub, or pup," someone else suggested.

"A what?" I blurted, the bourbon circulating.

"Vixen."

"Vixen?"

"Yes, that's the name for female foxes." That plural again.

"And so fox babies are called kits, cubs, or pups?" I managed to work in my version of the plural, the singular, suggesting it is also the plural--like moose.

"That's right," he said with a sense of triumph. "Just like male ferrets are hobs, females jills, and babies are also kits--like foxes.

His wife showed some signs of impatience but Rona, totally intrigued, asked, "So you too must do crossword puzzles?"

"In fact, he's addicted to them," his wife said.

"Keeps the mind young," he said. Which his is.

And so it went until my dinner partner and I returned to talking about how Joseph Campbell had influenced our lives through his lectures and writings about world religions, seeking, searching for, and ferreting out (sorry) their histories and interconnections.

"And there's Jessie Weston," I said.

"From Ritual to Romance," she said, "I too love that book. It had a profound influence on me in college. About pagan influences on Christianity. If we read it now we might find it a little simplistic but back then . . ."

"For me that was a hundred years ago," I said.

"Maybe only half that," she said, making me immediately feel better. Which she is quite expert at.

Early the next morning, without needing to make a quip about not wanting to be connected to too much connectivity, I googled "names of male, female, and baby animals?"

When Rona woke, after coffee and listening to the recently-deceased Paul Horn on Pandora, I could no longer contain my enthusiasm about what I had been learning.

"Did you ever wonder," I asked, why in so many languages people have assigned specific names to male and female animals?"

Rona squinted at me, still in a state on endorphins from Horn's new-age sound. I raced on, "Take hawks for example. We have lots of them circling here. Males are called tiercels, females hens, and babies eyas."

"E-what's?"

"Eyas, if I'm pronouncing it correctly."

She shrugged. "And squirrels," I said, "also many here--are unlikely called bucks, does, and kits."

"Squirrels and deer have the same names? Sounds crazy." I was pleased to see that Rona was starting to get into it. "At least they don't call squirrel kits fawns."

"You see what I mean?"

"What you mean? No, I don't."

"How all this is really unnecessary. Why not just call a male ferret that--a male ferret--and not a, what was it?"

"A hob." It was now Rona's turn to smile. "I'll bet it's in Sunday's crossword puzzle."

"For humans it's just men or males or women or females. And all babies are children and maybe kids."

"Like goats," Rona said. "Kids," she added in case I missed her jab.

"And billies," I said, "Also a name for goat babies."

"Maybe there are all these names to torment crossword-puzzlers."

"Or just, in language-building terms, out of a sense of play."

"Could be because we're animals too. And many animals just seem to want to have fun."