TOWARD ACCEPTING THE UNNATURAL

For readers who have not kept up with this blog of late, it is presently reviewing a foundational construct offered by the conservative writer, Jonah Goldberg.[1]  That construct includes an explanation of the creation of the Miracle – the economic upheaval that has resulted in the world’s economic boom of the last, nearly three hundred years.

The last posting shared Goldberg’s view of the pre-1700s’ ideas that governments used to justify their positions of power.  Basically, the justifications were rationalizations that placed veneers over exploitive relationships between governmental leadership (and the upper class it represented) and the rest of the population that commonly lived in poverty.

          But at some basic level, this arrangement reflected the natural dispositions of people.  Natural humans are not democratic people, nor are they law-abiding people – so Goldberg claims and with which this writer tends to agree.  Taking natural “man/woman” to his/her nature, when he/she wants something that someone else has, he/she will simply take it.  How?  Usually by force, trickery, or some other underhanded strategy.  This has several negative consequences.

          One, it creates losers.  The basic act of stealing has a win-lose outcome.  For every winner, there is a loser.  Two, along with a natural motivation to steal, there is a natural sense of being treated unjustly when one is victimized – a loss, in this way, causes anger in that it offends one’s natural sense of dignity, not to mention one’s viability.  This is, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, an un(in)alienable right in the natural state of being. 

At some level, humans must be convinced an element of justice is involved with such a theft or he/she will probably want some revenge.  When the theft, left unjustified, is the result of governmental policy, this is not the formula for domestic peace.  And domestic upheaval has no positive results for either the general population or the dominant class, it only leads to more repressive policies.

The only apparent solution is a rationalization.  And up to 1700s, most successful governmental arrangements hit upon an explanation – a rationalization – for the political or exploitive arrangement that was in place and that made sense to people.  In Europe, that was the “natural rights of kings” explanation that, in turn, had the advantage of being derived from the theology of Christianity, especially that of the Roman Catholic Church.

That church instituted and maintained a hierarchal structure which lent itself to supporting such a structure for governmental rule.  It promoted the idea that what happens on earth reflects what God wants.  If so and so family held unto the monarchy, the local noble-ship, etc., then that is what God wanted.  The Protestant Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century, undermined this basic rationalization.

While a lot of the Reformation’s motivating steam emanated from nationalistic fervor (a tribalistic emotion), its effect shifted the focus toward the individual.  Relatively, all of sudden, the individual was to determine for him/herself what God had in mind.  He/she was to read the Bible for him/herself and interpret God’s intent (a practice practically forbidden by the Catholic Church).  The change caused serious reevaluation of the ongoing rationalization.  It encouraged the populous toward questioning its explanation.

A newer rationalization was forming and taking hold.  Goldberg points out that the newer construct emerging from this environment was liberalism.  Not left of center, political liberalism, but philosophic liberalism that promoted liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law.  In an extreme form, this view can be what this blog has called the natural rights construct.  Goldberg associates this newer view with the writings of John Locke.

Economically, one can see the natural, intellectual product of such thinking; that being capitalism.  They – liberalism and capitalism – while one can speak of them separately, are “joined at the hip” – one, liberalism, offers the rationalization and the other, capitalism, has produced the wealth that sustains the rationalization’s legitimacy. 

Together, they – these ideas and adjoining practices – created the Miracle.  But one should not lose sight, while this rationalization reflects the natural human, in that it caters to one’s sense of self-importance, its demands – demanding that one lives by rules and laws – are unnatural.  Individuals need to be convinced of their value.

Aha, the role for civics education is revealed.  That education, be it done by parents, churches, other civic institutions, and/or by school systems, needs to be instilled among the youth, for this rationalization to work.  Those students need to accept its prudence and ultimate value to the individual, to his/her family, to his/her tribe, or to his/her neck of the woods.

Before moving on, Goldberg points out another institution – that of money.  The invention of money allowed for efficient trade.  It joined the interests of those who otherwise have nothing to share.  It allows exchange between those who would otherwise be antagonistic.  It lubricates a sense of “us” beyond what would naturally be its extent.  It also sets up a win-win system of exchange.  Money allows a global definition of common interest.  These are no small accomplishments.

And this leads to one more element, the bourgeois revolution that further undermined the hierarchical model of governance.  That revolution reflected the move toward individualism and furthered it.  It meant that the businessperson taking into his/her own hands, his/her own fate.  Putting at stake hard earned capital and investing – gambling – it to seek profits, the individual put him/herself in charge of his/her future – heady stuff.

Goldberg writes, “Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of peoples’ lives.  It has only a single flaw:  It doesn’t feel like it.”[2] It feels like people are on their own and responsible especially if the outcome is success.  It helps generate a newer rationalization, but that rationalization lacks important elements.  For one, it lacks total truth – all rationalizations do – but it also lacks an element most rationalizations have and that is essential to its broader acceptance; it lacks a story.

This blog will soon criticize (pointing out its strengths and weaknesses) Goldberg’s foundational construct, but for now, a summary is in order.  What seems most important in his view includes:

·        one, that humans by nature are selfish beings who naturally feel they are meant to just take what they want;

·        two, this initial bias is limited slightly by a “coalition instinct” that encourages feelings of loyalty and being disposed to reciprocal arrangements but only with people like themselves – members of their tribe;

·        three, that by the 1700, Western European nations had been introduced to developments that encouraged individualism such as the popularity of liberalism, capitalist economic processes, and accompanying accumulation of property;

·        four, the development of modern systems of money provided efficiencies to trade; and

·        five, the scientific revolution, within the context of the Enlightenment, undermined supernaturalism, what many began to consider superstitious beliefs.

To allow for humans to take advantage of the efficiencies that broader social landscapes offer in conducting trade – going beyond the tribe or redefining the tribe to include more peoples – humans needed to be taught how and why one should be more inclusive. 

This is a primary function that civics education needs to fulfill for a society to advance and be peaceful.  Next posting will further explain Goldberg’s treatment of the concept, tribalism, and set the blog toward being able to evaluate his construct.

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[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018).

[2] Ibid., 11-12 (Kindle edition, emphasis in the original).

PIRACY OF THE HIGHEST ORDER

In the last posting, this blog left the reader with a bit of a mystery:  what caused the Western world to turn its economic fate by developing a system of production and distribution that in turn upgraded its populations’ wellbeing to unprecedented heights?  This began during the 1700s.  The writer, Jonah Goldberg, describes this turn as a Miracle.[1]  What does he mean?

          He begins by further pointing out that up until the 1700s, humans, worldwide, lived on a daily income of about one to three dollars.  Since, as the reader can observe around him or her, that amount has changed drastically for vast amounts of people throughout the Western world and many other places as well.  Goldberg calls this turn in human existence as “the most important ‘hockey stick’ chart in all of human history.”[2]

          Today, there seems to be more concern over abundance than scarcity.  And the elements of this development are telling; they give one an understanding of why the Miracle took place.  Of course, the scientific revolution – a new procedural regime of how to determine reality – and accumulation of private property played their parts in the Miracle, but more was involved.  According to Goldberg it was ideas that spurred the big change.  He calls the sum of these ideas the Lockean Revolution.

          The followers of this blog might sense a critique emerging as to this view.  It has been critical of ascribing a purely Lockean interpretation of, for example, the emergence of American democracy and with it, its economy; but for the sake of giving Goldberg his due, this posting will play along with his interpretation. 

And that includes the argument that Locke’s sense of individual sovereignty took hold in the late 1700s and that that led to a sense that rights come from God (or nature) and not from governments.  This has, in turn, certain consequences.

          One, people began to see that each person has a right to own the fruits of his/her labor.  Two, each person should be held as an equal before the law and such factors as one’s faith (one should remember that in those years, Europe was experiencing extended religious conflict) or one’s class (nobility in Europe was also under attack) should have no effect.  All in all, people in general were or were becoming susceptible to accepting these newer ideas.  A lot more needed to happen before general acceptance took hold, but that process had started.

          With that context, Goldberg then gives a general explanation of how governments operated up to those years.  First, governments were instituted to protect and advance the interests of the “top 1%.”  Back during the Roman Empire, one can find St. Augustine writing in this vein:

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?  For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?  The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on.  If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity.  Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized.  For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”[3]

Yes, common people were fed different rationalizations to allow them to accept this basic, exploitive relationship between them and the ruling class. 

Goldberg totally agrees with St. Augustine and he shares how the prince (government leaders) have sold a justification of their rule so as to tamper any umbrage by the citizenry.  It is through these rationalizations that they hold power.  One such explanation was the divine rights of kings explanation.  Bottom line to these constructs were to justify placing the interests of the ruling class above – way above – the interests of the commoners. 

Goldberg inserts, at this point, that one can see how this is allowed to work – there is something about human nature that leads to a general acceptance to these rationalizations.  Normal people, for centuries, accepted (and accept in various countries today) tyranny, monarchy, or other forms of authoritarianism.  He bases this belief on a biological fact:  humans, among the various populations of the world, share the same basic genetic makeup and have done so during all of the relevant history in which these realities have taken place. 

In other words, current people are genetically the same as those who ushered in the Lockean Revolution.  They are the same as those who ushered in civilization in Mesopotamia or today live in preliterate societies.  Point is:  genetic differences do not explain the Miracle or the thinking that led to it.

And that genetic framework does have certain biases built in that, if known and understood, leads one to see why this acceptance of unequal treatment – the rationalizations – are acceptable in a nuanced way.  And this in turn, allows one to see the role tribalism plays. 

First, humans have a strong “coalition instinct.”  They want to form and keep alliances that can be readily justified by feelings of loyalty and acceptance of reciprocal arrangements.  Second, there is an important limitation to this bias.  Nature limits this instinct to the immediate environment, to those who are familiar, to those who look like they do.  That is, it is tribal.  Here, the work of the American neuroendocrinologist, Robert Sapolski, supports Goldberg.  As this blog has previously shared Sapolski’s view (through a third source), here is a summary:

We have evolved to support our immediate social groups, a tendency that can be easily manipulated into discriminatory behavior, especially at younger ages.  The good news, according to Sapolsky, is that there are always individuals who resist the temptation to discriminate and won’t conform to harmful acts based on othering or hierarchy.[4]

So, the support for Goldberg is nuanced – more on this later.

          The point here is that this “us-them” tendency helps those who want to establish exploitive rule; they are given a powerful point of political leverage.  In the extreme, one can note this leverage was used by the Nazis to take over the German government in the early 1930s.  There have been other examples.

          Goldberg agrees with humans’ ability to hold in check this tribal tendency and that that ability and its exercise allowed the Miracle to take place.  This posting will end with what Goldberg points out in terms of this check:

The secret of the Miracle – and of modernity itself – stems from our ability to hold this tendency [us-them thinking] in check.  It is natural to give preferences to family and friends – members of the tribe – and to see strangers as the Enemy, the dangerous Other.  Nearly all higher forms of social organization expand the definition of “us” to permit larger forms of cooperation.  Religion teaches that coreligionists are allies, even when they are strangers.  The nation-state tells us that fellow citizens are part of the glorious us.  Even modern racism plays this role, as does communism, fascism, and nearly every other modern-ism.[5]

Citing fascism indicates the complexity here, the check can be targeted for political reasons and/or for mangled ideological reasoning. 

Those in power or vying for power can be very imaginative in their strategies to attain and hold power.  The rationalizations can run the gamut of possibilities.  The next posting will continue this report of Goldberg’s interpretation.

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[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018).

[2] Ibid., 7 (Kindle edition).

[3] “St. Augustine States That Kingdoms without Justice Are Mere Robberies, and Robberies Are Like Small Kingdoms; but Large Empires Are Piracy Writ Large (5^th C),” Online Library of Liberty, n. d., accessed June 3, 2019, https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/200 .

[4] C. Brandon Ogbunu, “Why Do People Do Bad Things?,” Greater Good Magazine, December 1, 2017, accessed March 14, 2019, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_people_do_bad_things .  Emphasis added.  Of note is Robert Sapolski’s book, Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave:  The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2017).  This writer highly recommends this book.

[5] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy, 10 (Kindle edition).