From (by) RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net (email me there please)…
This is a sub-site to main site at www.rocketslinger.com …
This web page last updated
20 July 2025
Tribalism, Do-Gooder Derogation, and the Killings of Jesus,
Gandhi, and MLK Jr.
Abstract
This sub-page to www.ResearchGate.net (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393845026_Tribalism_Do-Gooder_Derogation_and_the_Killings_of_Jesus_Gandhi_and_MLK_Jr
) is duplicated at www.rocketslinger.com also (at http://www.rocketslinger.com/SocioBio1/ ). This is purely speculation and internet (and
books) research here. No original
psychological experiments were conducted here.
The core elements of this
paper describe what is known (mixed with SOME speculations about what might be
true) about tribalism, and then the same for do-gooder derogation. Descriptions here focus on sociobiology, AKA
evolutionary psychology, more so than cultural evolution; however, cultural
evolution isn’t totally ignored here.
Concerning do-gooder derogation, also sometimes known as anti-social
punishment, anthropologists have documented this in the form of tribes
criticizing the successful hunter who brings home nutritious animal meat to the
tribe. This (speculatively) is here
explained as the tribe “not wanting the Big Hunter Hero getting to be too big
for his britches”, and starting to believe that he should father a
disproportionate portion of the tribe’s babies!
In modern times, “hunter heroes” have been displaced by “heroes” of
politics, military “arts”, business, religion, arts, sports, and even, rarely,
of engineering and sciences (sadly, the latter?
Not nearly often enough!). Males,
for obvious biological reasons, can be more reproductively “genetically greedy”
than females can be, and this is touched upon, also.
When we combine tribalism
with do-gooder derogation, ugly things can happen, especially when the
ethically-morally stellar humans DARE to challenge tribalism, “my tribe right
or wrong”, and worst of all, “my tribe’s violence good; your tribe’s violence
bad”. These outspoken, exemplary humans
have been killed for their troubles! The
killings of Jesus, Gandhi, and MLK Jr. are discussed as historical examples.
“What can we do about it”
is also discussed, but this abstract is now long enough.
Contents
Preamble, and Bits of Boilerplate
Personal Introduction
and “Misc.” Notes
Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Do-Gooder Derogation
Yes, The Hunter-Hero Just Might Steal “Our” Women
But Let’s Not Get Carried Away
One More Scary Aspect of Human Reproductive Behavior
Historical Examples:
The Killings of Jesus, Gandhi, and MLK Jr.
How Do We Fix It, AKA HDWFI, Introduction
HDWFI, More Practically, With Less Sci-Fi
As before, as with other
sub-pages of www.rocketslinger.com, the intent here is to
“defensively publish” miscellaneous ideas, to make them available to everyone
“for free” (sometimes called “throwing it into the public domain”), and to
prevent “patent trolling” of (mostly) simple, basic ideas. This comment is almost totally (perhaps not
COMPLETELY) irrelevant this time around.
Other than suggestions for “what to do about it”, I can’t see how
patents can possibly apply… Perhaps only
in our wildest nightmares! I have heard
it said that “one can patent a ham sandwich”, though, so perhaps for the truly
wise, all bets are off!
Dear reader,
excuse me as I will often slip out of stilted formal modes of writing here. I have no boss or
bosses to please with these “hobby” writings of mine, so I’ll do it my
way! I’ll often use a more informal style from here on in,
using “I”, “we”, “you”, etc. “We” is you
and me. “You” are an anthropologist,
psychologist, or other party interested in what’s described here. Note that this paper is a radical departure
from the norm, for me, since most of my past papers have concerned propulsion,
space exploration, and space exploitation.
PS, if some of my speculations are
wrong (based on mistaken assumptions), please email me at RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net, and note that I’m open
to co-authoring articles, even if they are short, as in, corrections or updates
to this paper, for example. If you send
comments, please specify whether or not you’re open to having your name
mentioned (up to and including being named as a co-author) in any possible follow-up
article(s). And
whether or not I may quote you at length, even if anonymously. I’m into calm, cool, and collected,
data-driven discussions, though, so please, for me, no hysterical
shouting! And please don’t threaten me
with your non-violence! (Also note that
no less-empowered beings such as children or animals were harmed in the process
of generating this paper. If
more-empowered but hypocritical beings will get their egos harmed here, by
“truth hurts” dynamics, then I would urge them to squelch an ultimate root of
pain, which is hypocrisy.)
First, there was “The
Google, Which Knows All Things”, and now there is AI also. My favorite AI is “Perplexity”, which I used
to help me with researching this paper (but which didn’t help me actually write,
edit, or critique this paper). Blame me
for my errors, please, and NOT Perplexity!
Between “Google” searches and AI, though, even fairly complex or
detailed questions can be quickly answered.
So rather than cluttering up this paper with such rabbit-holes (of long collections
of links) concerning topics which get to be a bit tangential, I will ask you,
dear reader, to pursue such things, while I will sometimes simply provide some
search-string suggestions, and little else (if even that much). When the topic(s) get to be too tangential, I
will sometimes make bold-and-bald statements (or assumptions) without
supporting links, and you can research such statements for yourself. It’s VERY easy to do, these days!
From my title and
abstract, you can already see that if this paper is data-driven and-or
“scientific”, it isn’t much so, in the same sense as, say, physics, metallurgy,
or chemistry is. It is “soft science”,
and even, perhaps, at times, a bit of a polemic. I’m trying my best to stay away from that,
and keep it more towards being data-driven.
Religion?
No! Jesus is mentioned, yes, and
Gandhi and MLK Jr. were religious leaders also.
I intend to NOT mention or discuss metaphysics (AKA the “Beyond the
Beyond”) at ALL, here. This isn’t that
kind of paper! However, to discuss the
topics here honestly and fully, I will need to describe some quite negative
(“dark” or even evil) aspects of human behavior.
During a lull or lapse in
my employment as an electrical engineer, I once studied to become a school
teacher. During that effort and time, I
clarified certain matters in my mind, and (when required to perform public
speaking for the class) described something relevant here. This is as follows: In school (certainly in grade school and high
school, and most of college), negative aspects of human behavior are never
systematically taught. We’re taught
history, which can show negative human behavior if we’re paying attention and
use our imagination, and we’re taught literature (fiction), which can do the
same. But the dark sides of human nature
are rarely taught “in the raw”, as I wish that they would be. How can we fix it if we don’t forthrightly
address it?
Anyway, “we are all
sinners” can’t be taught in the public schools, for obvious reasons, and
because liberals would object. “We are
all sociobiologically programmed by evolution, with instincts towards behaviors
that are sometimes good, and sometimes bad” can’t be
taught either, because it would anger conservatives, especially religious (often
creationist) conservatives. So between
the two of them, “dark” human behavioral instincts can’t be systematically
taught at all.
If you (dear reader) doubt
my words about “dark” human behaviors (and tribalism and do-gooder derogation),
then spend some time on unmoderated or very lightly moderated internet forums,
especially concerning politics. 4chan,
Gab, Ruqqus, Aether,
Usenet, and Reason.com are examples of such hardly-moderated-at-all sites. The ones that I have visited have been overrun
by conservatives who “persuade” others with endless low-brow insults, dog-piles
of “you don’t belong here”, and even suggestions that politically “wrong”
commenters should commit suicide!
And now I hang my head in shame, and
admit that I occasionally will comment at such sites. Yes, I know, sleep with dogs, and you get
fleas! And it is almost always a waste
of time… The leopard doesn’t change its
spots, and Perfected People don’t change their minds, either. But I’m often reminded, at these kinds of
sites, reading the hateful, low-brow comments, about a central thesis of this
paper… The morally-ethically advanced
people who argue in a benevolent and data-driven manner are some of today’s
“Heroic Hunters” who (try to) bring home the red meat (of truth and wisdom) to
the tribe. As do-gooders, they are
resented by the tribe, for their troubles, for being correct! The tribal ape-men of today are afraid that
if they allow you to win an argument, that is an admission of their
inferiority, and then, next thing you know, you’ll be stealing their wives and
girlfriends! That is, of course, absurd
on a modern, mostly anonymous comment board, but today’s tribalistic
ape-men? They (surprise!) “think” with their tribalistic ape-men brains! So reassure them, at these chat sites, with
this view, and point out to them that you’re NOT trying to steal their
Significant Others! That just MIGHT
work! See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/201706/why-some-people-resent-do-gooders From
the conclusion there: “These
findings suggest that we don’t need to downplay personal triumphs to avoid
negative social consequences, as long as we make it clear that we don’t look
down on others as a result.”
End out-take.
Good advice! I’ll take it! But I have been known to do that (downplay my
personal non-tribalistic triumphs) sarcastically, which is why I should
probably hang my head in shame.
I’m sorry if these
somewhat-random notes may seem to be chaotic, and-or only slightly related to
the main topics at hand. I want to get
them out of the way, though, before the “main course”, and also, to “set the
tone” first.
Along these lines, I will
confess to perhaps-irrational biases.
For instance, I am biased against writers who I know have committed
suicide. I will either chose to not read
their writings, for fear of being contaminated by negative and-or
self-destructive views, or I will read their writings while staying “on guard”
against the same. Along these lines, for
example, see studies that have shown that poets who are all wrapped up in
themselves, writing a lot about “me”, “myself”, and “I”, have been shown to be
more suicidal (driven perhaps by too much self-pity) than poets who are less
self-focused. Sylvia Plath comes to
mind. See Stirman,
S. W., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2001). “Word use in the poetry of
suicidal and nonsuicidal poets”. Psychosomatic
Medicine, 63(4), 517-522.
Dear reader, just as I
like to be warned about reading things that may “contaminate” my mind and-or
spirit, you may want to see “where I am coming from” (hippie-style talk from
the old days, I suppose) before reading further. I do NOT want to contaminate your mind! It’s a futile effort (for us to significantly
change the minds of others) anyway, mostly, if our world views are 180 degrees
opposed, as far as what my experience has taught me. Our world views and personalities are largely
firmed up by age 5, is what I have read.
See https://files.firstthingsfirst.org/why-early-childhood-matters/the-first-five-years .
Accordingly, I want to
list for you (to help to set the tone or the mood here before the main body of
this paper), quotes and books that I have read, that have influenced me, and
are also (mostly) relevant to discussions below. This will help you to decide whether my mind
is contaminated (whether you can safely read my writings), or not. Proceed...
“BEHAVE The Biology of
Humans at Our Best and Worst”, by Robert M. Sapolsky. Centered around
pages 496-497 (in the soft-cover version of 2018), there’s some interesting and
relevant details about human behavior.
Much of it is from experimental “economics games” with humans (further
distantly, even capuchin monkeys show some of the basics, behavior-wise, here
as well). https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/0143110918/ref=asc_df_0143110918/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312064598816&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13654540330964297268&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027644&hvtargid=pla-469024892366&psc=1 This book
first brought to my attention, “anti-social punishment”, which is now more
often called “do-gooder derogation”.
Early 20th century clergyman Harry
Emerson Fosdick showed himself to be a man of wisdom and benevolence (and
tolerance and humility as well). http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5070/ and https://peaceloveshenanigans.tumblr.com/post/3419714173/there-are-many-opinions-in-the-field-of-modern. Here, look at this, of his: “There are many opinions in the field of modern controversy concerning
which I am not sure whether they are right or wrong, but there is one thing I
am sure of: courtesy and kindliness and tolerance and humility and fairness are
right. Opinions may be mistaken; love
never is.”
And this one here from Martin Luther King Jr. is
MOST excellent! https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/martin_luther_king_jr_101472 for the shortened version:
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding
deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only
light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies
violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of
destruction. So when Jesus says ‘Love
your enemies,’ he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable
admonition. Have we not come to such an
impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else? The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting
hate, wars producing wars–must be broken, or we shall
be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
Humility is a MUCH underappreciated virtue! See this:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/27/army-has-introduced-new-leadership-value-heres-why-it-matters.html Even in a supposedly “proud” profession, wise leaders
treasure humility!
More books that I recommend: Peter McWilliams “Ain’t Nobody’s Business…” https://www.amazon.com/Aint-Nobodys-Business-You-Consensual/dp/192976717X
, written by a gay man. It’s a secular
book, but has a LOT of content about religious influences on USA history and
culture. Funny and erudite, with LOTS of
good quotes from many-many sources!
EXCELLENT book! We pretend to be
secular, but our root values are still religion-derived, and accordingly, often
irrational (not data-driven).
Jonathan Haidt, “The
Righteous Mind”, https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777 . Haidt self-IDs
openly as a liberal atheist, but (in a data-driven, tolerant, honest, even-handed,
and broad-minded manner) examines different (liberal v/s conservative) ways of
thinking. He clearly advocates open,
tolerant, and civil discussions about everything. We CAN discuss things, and NOT yell at each
other, and-or past each other! It IS
possible! Also what impressed me is that
Haidt often quoted ancient religious leaders and
philosophers, who he described as the “psychologists” (students of the human
mind) of their times and places.
Less-so a “benevolent wise person” book and more-so
a “general knowledge” book is this; “The Evolution of Everything”, Matt Ridley,
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Everything-How-Ideas-Emerge/dp/0062296000/ref=asc_df_0062296000/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312741934517&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1463665821932812954&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027638&hvtargid=pla-432981011169&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=64940825031&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312741934517&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1463665821932812954&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027638&hvtargid=pla-432981011169 This is
especially relevant as we consider sociobiological evolution, sure, but also
VERY importantly, CULTURAL evolution as well!
I read this book cover to cover, and don’t recall a specific political
view being pushed. The Amazon
description above, however, seems (to me) to say that this book favors
decentralized power, inherently, in that “evolution” here is grassroots bottom-up
rather than a top-down or designed, engineered “solution” to problems; that is
(you could say), this book may have a “libertarian” slant. But then again, so do I,
if I am honest!
The following books by Sam Harris are at least
somewhat relevant. "The Moral
Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" and "Waking
Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion". He’s an American author, Ph
D. neuroscientist, and prominent atheist who has spent significant time on
meditation retreats and is a major advocate for meditation, particularly
mindfulness practices. He refutes the
popular ideas that moral values are totally subjective, and can NOT be
“scientific” or “data-driven”. I prefer
“data-driven” in this context; I wish that he had used “data-driven” more so
than “scientific”. “Scientific”, to me,
implies experimental verification when possible, such as double-blind
experiments, ideally. A common-sense
view (as held by Sam Harris, and I agree) is that suffering v/s thriving CAN be
observed in a data-driven manner.
However, I and most of us (I would assume) don’t think that deliberate
imposition of otherwise-unneeded significant suffering is a morally-ethically
acceptable method of pure data-gathering, especially when there is PLENTY of
already-existing suffering all around us, that we can observe freely.
I consider the above books to be relevant here,
because some undesirable combinations of outcomes from excessive tribalism and
do-gooder derogation cause a LOT of easily observable, senseless suffering. Therefore, these outcomes are immoral… And that is NOT just a subjective opinion of
mine; it is data-driven!
I’m also fond of several books by Steven Pinker,
who would apparently agree very much so, with Sam Harris. You can sort of tell just by the following
Pinker title, “Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism,
and Progress”. Another good Pinker
book is “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”. There are more, some of which I haven’t read.
See also “The Undoing Project: A Friendship That
Changed Our Minds”, by Michael Lewis . This is a dual biography of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who
(often together) revolutionized psychology and economics by demonstrating that
humans are subject to numerous irrational biases and heuristics, challenging
the traditional economic assumption that people (including investors and
consumers) are fully rational decision-makers.
See https://www.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-Minds/dp/0393254593 .
Look up Daniel Kahneman,
and you will also find his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow". These
books are relevant here, in that we’d be better off if we understood human
thinking and behavior better, whatever the nature of human thinking may be,
rational or irrational. We owe a debt of
gratitude to psychologists who can experimentally (and theoretically) “suss
out” such things. They are indeed
“Hunter Heroes”, bringing the “red meats” of truth and understanding home to
the human tribe!
See also Peter McWilliams’s book, “Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual
Crimes in a Free Society”. This is a
pleasure to read! For one thing, it is
chock-full of funny but relevant quotes, and
illustrations as well. Even though this
isn’t at ALL a “religious” book, about 1/3 of it shows that in the USA at
least, many-many counterproductive and anti-freedom laws originate from
religion, and discusses these religious roots (for good and for bad) of our
laws. It is relevant here because our
laws and policies aren’t nearly as data-driven as we’d like to think that they
are.
M. Scott Peck was a popular Christian psychiatrist
who started writing with his book, “The Road Less Travelled”, in 1978. Later, he wrote “People of the Lie: The
Hope for Healing Human Evil”. I
learned a lot from these two books. In
my opinion, his later books were of lower quality. I have other reservations about M. Scott
Peck, which I plan to write about further below. But these books are relevant here because
being immersed in or acting in evil ways is, in my opinion for sure, irrational
and an illness, and deserves to be healed, if at all possible. Excesses of tribalism and do-gooder
derogation fit right in here (with “evil”), along with psychopathy of other
sorts.
I could add many other books (and quotes), but
here’s my “short list”, which I hope isn’t too terribly long. Any more books that I could gladly add would
start to be only fleetingly relevant to this document, though, I think. It’s time to move on…
Most of us in western societies at
this time and space have a good grip on tribalism in the broader sense, I
think. Tribes became nations, but the
underlying human nature remained mostly unchanged… Nationalism really is tribalism on steroids,
as many people have noticed and remarked.
Now tribalism also includes sectarianism in religion, language, culture
(how we eat, dress, and dance, what music we like, etc.), racial and ethnic
groups, vaxxers v/s anti-vaxxers
(wow, ouch!), and of course, let’s not forget, politics! So I can keep this one short.
In terms of sociobiology, it’s easy to
understand that both biological and cultural evolution have formed (or
influenced) us to adhere to tribal norms.
It’s quite hard to survive as a “human lone wolf”, and this has been
true for hundreds of thousands, millions even, of years. We (along with most primates) are highly
social animals. Don’t anger the tribe,
or else! Getting kicked out of the tribe
can put you in great danger!
It is true, though, that there has
always been a tension between war and peace between human tribes. We need peace with the neighboring tribe so
that we can exchange culture, goods, and mates (genes), to avoid stagnation,
both genetically and culturally. During
times of ecological stress, though, when food is scarce, the pressures to
engage in conflict and war build up.
Would you rather starve, or make war?
Once upon a time, the “war” side of tribalism didn’t endanger the
survival of the whole human race like it does today, in these newer days of
nuclear weapons. SOME aspects of
tribalism (and other apparently sociobiologically programmed attitudes and
behaviors) are NOT a good idea today!
But let’s not digress…
Reason.com had a good
(somewhat funny, too) article about tribalism.
See https://reason.com/2025/04/12/your-tribalism-is-dumb/ , which in turn concludes
with “This essay was adapted from Andrew Heaton's book, Tribalism is Dumb: Where It Came from,
How It Got So Bad, and What to Do about It, by permission of Last House Standing Books.” This is as good a summary of tribalism
as any, I think.
So dear reader, I don’t
want to insult your intelligence by belaboring tribalism much further. It is VERY easy to study, in your daily news
and your other Earthly affairs, as well as academically. I just want to mention one last thing, and
that is how the writer Kurt Vonnegut made gentle fun of tribalism by writing
about being a “Hoosier”, which is a person from Indiana, and how this regional
pride was a bit absurd. See https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7104475-hazel-s-obsession-with-hoosiers-around-the-world-was-a-textbook for an example Vonnegut
quote about this.
Anyway, when I like to be
silly, which is often, I try to one-up Vonnegut by telling people that I am
VERY proud to be a humanoid, a primate, a mammal, a vertebrate, or an Earthly
life-form, depending on my mood on a given day!
Now do-gooder derogation is a LOT less
familiar to most people today, then tribalism is. So I want to present sources and ideas at
length, here. “Do Gooder
Derogation”, AKA “Antisocial Punishment” is counter-intuitive! Here, I’ll try to make it short: From https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201016-why-some-people-are-cruel-to-others ... An
out-take from there is as follows:
“This phenomenon
is called ‘do-gooder derogation’. It can be found around the world. In
hunter-gatherer societies, successful hunters are criticised for catching a big animal
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617752642 ; (editorial insert, “Why Hate the
Good Guy? Antisocial Punishment of High Cooperators Is Greater When People
Compete To Be Chosen”, AKA https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324854881_Why_Hate_the_Good_Guy_Antisocial_Punishment_of_High_Cooperators_Is_Greater_When_People_Compete_To_Be_Chosen ) even though their catch means everyone
gets more meat.”
End out-take.
To me, sociobiology is often intuitive.
At first glance, the hunter-gatherer tendency (instinctually driven?) to
immediately “take down a peg or two” the hunter-hero who just bagged a good
kill of “red meat” to help feed me? This
is counter-intuitive! But take a deeper,
more thoughtful look at it: If we make a BIG hero out of the hunter-hero, he
might steal all of “our” women, and make all of our babies! So the tribal shaman will remind the
hunter-hero, and the tribe, that it is the shaman that knows how to beat the
drums just exactly the right way, who drives away the sun-god-eating (eclipse)
demons, and makes the demons un-eat the sun-god! And the tribal artist will remind everyone
that it is he (maybe often she) who knows the right way to carve the mammoth
tusk, to make a magical fertility icon-figurine, and keep the tribe
fertile. We are ALL heroes around here,
and NOT just the hunter-hero! So the
hunter-hero needs to be reminded of that, so that he’ll not steal ALL of “our”
women!
The knuckle-dragging troglodytes among
us, on the internet, even when we know darned well that most of the commenters
are anonymous, go into an instinctually-driven mode of “punish the people who
are wise, benevolent, and correct”, and make them look bad! “Else they might steal my wife or girlfriend,
and make my babies”! It is knee-jerk
stupidity, on a largely-anonymous chat board, but there it is! If you follow me, you can perhaps see that “wise,
benevolent, and correct” people are at least metaphorically “bringing home the
meat” to the tribe. Or at the very
least, they are claiming to be doing that, merely by expressing their opinions,
or are relaying the data that they have observed! And we can NOT STAND for do-gooders, even
when they try to stay humble!
My imported link further above appears
to be almost broken at times, or very unwieldy.
By Aleta Pleasant and Pat
Barclay.
First Published https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617752642 … So here is a copy of the abstract:
“When choosing
social partners, people prefer good cooperators (all else being equal). Given
this preference, people wishing to be chosen can either increase their own
cooperation to become more desirable or suppress others’ cooperation to make
them less desirable. Previous research shows that very cooperative people
sometimes get punished (“antisocial punishment”) or criticized (“do-gooder
derogation”) in many cultures. Here, we used a public-goods game with punishment
to test whether antisocial punishment is used as a means of competing to be
chosen by suppressing others’ cooperation. As predicted, there was more
antisocial punishment when participants were competing to be chosen for a
subsequent cooperative task (a trust game) than without a subsequent task. This
difference in antisocial punishment cannot be explained by differences in
contributions, moralistic punishment, or confusion. This suggests that
antisocial punishment is a social strategy that low cooperators use to avoid
looking bad when high cooperators escalate cooperation.”
Please excuse my perhaps-awkward order
here, but I want to quickly send readers to well-documented sources right away,
for anyone who doubts that I’m serious, and well-justified, in what I will
write further below. So, sources and
links up front!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/201706/why-some-people-resent-do-gooders is an excellent place to start!
A VERY good high-level summary!
Follow links from there for more details. That’s where I got some of my links that I’ll
refer to below.
See “Antisocial Punishment Across Societies”, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5868/1362 ... Don’t you go making me look
bad, by being a better person than I am!
This is why Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., etc., got
themselves killed! This is an academic
link here, and some of the other links (below) refer to it in turn.
This same “anti-social punishment” (AKA do-gooder derogation) thing is
referred to here… https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201016-why-some-people-are-cruel-to-others
… This is another excellent summary,
with many embedded links to the academic literature.
The over-arching rubric includes “my tribe good, your tribe bad”, or,
in more detail, “my tribe’s violence good, your tribe’s violence bad”, and it
is, sad to say, apparently programmed into our brains, by evolution. “My tribe bad, your tribe good” got you
kicked out of your tribe VERY quickly, so those genes often got
eliminated! (Sloppy way of saying it, I
know, but there it is).
What else fits in here is summarized
in the following links: https://www.salon.com/2021/08/08/a-terrifying-new-theory-fake-news-and-conspiracy-theories-as-an-evolutionary-strategy/
A terrifying new theory: Fake news and conspiracy theories as an evolutionary
strategy.
Social scientist Michael Bang Petersen on why people believe outrageous
lies — as a tool in violent group conflict.
And another take on the same thing…
I don’t think that the above is entirely to be fairly blamed on
tribalism alone, since tribalism can include peace (and trade) between tribes. I think that it can be more fairly blamed on
tribalism and do-gooder derogation combined.
The more-ethical and more-moral members of the tribe who speak out for
peace will be shouted down, if they are brave enough to speak up for peace in
the first place. More about that later…
Popular culture, “old sayings”, and
history contain the same lessons. “No
good deed goes unpunished.” Also “nice
guys finish last”. Jesus and the Sermon
on the Mount: “The righteous will be persecuted”. https://bible.org/seriespage/8-blessed-are-persecuted-matthew-510-12 ...
There’s plenty more on that out there!
The Google knows all!
And let’s not forget “Courage the
Cowardly Dog”! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courage_the_Cowardly_Dog
Out-take from there, “…a grumpy, selfish and greedy farmer who regularly
mistreats Courage
out of jealousy and refers to him as "stupid dog". “Stupid dog, you make me look bad” (for doing
the right thing) was a commonly repeated refrain!
Don’t tell the Emperor that He has no
clothes! I am already a Perfect
One! Me AND my tribe are Already
Perfect! Any messengers bringing any
news to the contrary? Let’s shoot and
kill the messengers! This is a sad, sad,
and VERY old tale… Jesus telling the
hypocrites that they always kill the prophets…
From http://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/MATT+23.html “Therefore I am
sending you prophets and wise men and teachers.
Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your
synagogues and pursue from town to town.”
See just HOW old and sad it is?
In conclusion, “nice guys finish last”, in view of human history and
the deaths of Jesus,
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., etc., the better statement might be “nice guys get
killed”! This is the more honest and
complete version of the statement! Also
this: The “do-gooder derogation”
instinct (programmed emotion) could accurately be called the Jesus-killer ( Mahatma Gandhi-killer, Martin Luther King Jr.-killer,
etc.) instinct.
I know that treating women as “meat”
or a “reproductive resource” isn’t very nice, to say the least, but in the name
of awareness, we have to forthrightly discuss male impulses, especially
historically, when trying to figure out from whence we came, biologically as
well as culturally. Hence, the
below… Do we need to shield this from
being viewed by the children? I don’t
know…
Our sociobiologal
roots (and our cultures) have accumulated a lot of wisdom. Are we wrong to fear that the hunter-hero (or
the rich person, the sports or movies super-hero, or the wise, benevolent, and
correct) person might steal all of “our” women?
No! Think JFK, Tiger Woods,
Donald Trump sleeping with a porn star, Bill Clinton, and many, many more. Think of Genghis Khan and his 972 (or so) offspring. Did y’all know that about 1 in 10 men in
certain areas of Asia, have the “Y” chromosome of
Genghis Khan? And 1 in 200 planet-wide? Use this
search-string in quotes: “1 in 200 men direct descendants of Genghis Khan”, or,
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan ...
Monopolies (or near-monopolies) on the harems of women leads to constant
fighting, elephant-seal-style. Let’s all
fight over “our” harems! Every
reproducing male will know all about how to grab the women, and no one will
know how to be a good father any more! It’s not the direction towards which I’d like
to see humans evolve, biologically, culturally, or otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_boys_(Mormon_fundamentalism) and especially https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/14/usa.julianborger , concerning fundamentalist, polygamous
Mormons discarding their excess young men, are good links to explore, to
illustrate my just-above-made point.
Examples (of monopolizing the women)
abound. For David Koresh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koresh and Mormon fundamentalists and “blood
atonement” and Ervil LeBaron
and his harem, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ervil_LeBaron.
I’m sure that we could find more.
Sad to say, even some of our religious
and-or moral-ethical heroes had “feet of clay” here as well. Martin Luther King Junior? Yes, apparently! See https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-tapes-allege-mlk-watched-rape-2019-5 for example... I may or may not have
picked a very good link here. There’s
more out there… And M. Scott Peck is a
personal hero of mine. He wrote that
shrinks sleeping with their patients was a bad idea… Yet apparently he was a
hypocrite! https://www.amazon.com/Road-Travelled-Revealing-Biography-Scott/dp/1844135764 and https://couchtrip.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/the-road-less-travelled/ and maybe
more good links (this is at a quick Google-glance; I have read more about this,
and may not have the best links here).
OK, one more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/oct/05/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries
“Pop psychiatrist who ignored his bestselling advice on adultery”.
OK, just ONE more, then! https://buffalonews.com/lifestyles/biography-going-beneath-the-veneer-of-m-scott-peck/article_21705172-664a-5365-8e8a-cea293ce3bf4.html ... This latter one is the best for a short
summary, I think. IF YOU ARE A
MORAL-ETHICAL LEADER, PLEASE TRY TO ACT LIKE ONE!!!
So the hunter-gatherers were partly
correct in fearing the “do gooders” and other
heroes. Don’t forget Jesus and his
warnings about “wolves in sheep’s clothing”.
As soon as anyone (or a category of people) is put up
on the pedestal… Politicians, Boy Scout leaders, military officers,
poets, teachers, religious leaders (think Catholic priests), best-selling
self-help authors… Whatever category of people is “in vogue” and-or powerful…
As soon as such a group is well-thought-of, people WILL join that group, for
the WRONG (self-seeking) reasons!
OK, a few more. https://lancasteronline.com/news/sick-tales-of-torture-and-brutality/article_2a7b727e-9d82-5aae-930c-1e0a5dcf9839.html
Sick tales of torture and brutality John
M. Spidaliere May 30, 2003 Updated Sep 11, 2013 “Before
the war, the ministry was run by Uday Hussein, the
eldest son of Saddam Hussein, who used his position to support his decadent
lifestyle and satisfy his lust for violence and sex.”
“Uday had a cruel reputation for crashing
weddings and either stealing the bride or any guest that intrigued him to rape
and in some cases murder them, Eberly said.”
Caligula: https://historycollection.com/12-historically-important-perverts/6/
As to deviancy, among the
sundry depravities attributed to Caligula, sex with his sisters was just a
start – as contemporaries put it: “He lived in habitual incest with all his
sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while
his wife reclined above“. At dinner parties, he was in the habit of ordering
the wives of guests to accompany him to his bedroom, and after having sex with
them, would return to the party and rate their performance, berating the
cuckolded husbands if their wives had been lacking.
So then “prima nocta”
is disputed… Was it real, or not
real? Historians disagree. https://www.dictionary.com/e/historical-current-events/prima-nocta/ … From the above (Caligula etc.), we
might suspect that it happened from time to time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_du_seigneur …
Now also https://historydaily.org/remember-youre-mortal ... “In Ancient Rome, a Slave Would Whisper 'Remember You're Mortal' in the
Ears of Victorious Generals On Their Homecoming
Parade”… Now THAT was a GOOD result of
ancient hunter-gatherer wisdom! Go ahead
and DO take down a peg or two, those who might otherwise steal all of “your” women! Impeach Bill Clinton and-or Donald Trump now
and then!
So we may have sociobiologically
programmed instincts to “take down a few pegs” the Hunter-Hero and his modern
descendants (of other walks of life).
Sure, he just MIGHT carry away “our” women! But let’s not ourselves get carried away here,
by our probably-instinctually-driven do-gooder derogation passions! Dangers lurk here!
At the logical extreme, the people who are better (wiser, more
benevolent) than we are? We KILL them
for it! Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin
Luther King Jr., etc., got themselves killed for that! All of them were killed for calling us on
(challenging us for) “my tribe good, yours bad”, and “my violence good, your
violence bad”. So… Let’s KILL those who make us look bad! By being better humans than we are! That’s WRONG!
Period!
From way back when, to this day, chimps (and ape-men) have warred on
each other over territory, and so have our fully-human ancestors. Times get rough, food and territory gets
scarce, so we killed each other. That
was OK in hunter-gatherer days, at least so far as it goes, in that it didn’t
endanger the survival of the human race.
WE HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS NOW!!! We
must cut this crap OUT! Jesus, Mahatma
Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and others, were RIGHT about this, and the
ultra-nationalists and ultra-tribalists are
WRONG! We humans are ALL humans, and
need to respect each other as such! Full
stop! (Even scapegoated so-called
illegal sub-humans from the wrong sides of the lines in the sand, are humans
also; please try to keep that in mind).
“The Jews killed Jesus” say those of shallow understanding. A BETTER, more detailed understanding would
be, “First we grew fish brains, and the instincts and emotions than went with
them. Then ditto lizard brains, then
monkeys, then apes, and human hunter-gatherer brains, instincts, and
emotions. As culture-bearing, supposedly
fully thinking beings, by now we should have made that post-hunter-gatherer mental,
ethical, and moral leap. Jesus (and
etc.) was (were) killed by those who couldn’t or wouldn’t make that final
leap.”
The ethically advanced ones among us
know that always immediately (in “standard operating mode”) taking away the
other guy’s dignity doesn’t add to our own dignity. The search for dignity is NOT generally a
zero-sum game! Yet balanced against
that, we do no one any favors when we refuse to criticize people who are wrong! Jesus called them vipers and sons of
vipers! See https://biblehub.com/matthew/23-33.htm and see https://tricycle.org/magazine/arent-we-right-be-angry/ , but enough on those digressions for
now.
From https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201016-why-some-people-are-cruel-to-others : “Yet there is a hidden upside of
do-gooder derogation. Once we have pulled down the do-gooder, we are more open to their message. ” End quote. (Last link there = https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550611415695 and it has been a clunky link, for
me, at times). It’s not a HUGE amount of
good news, but at least SOME good news.
AFTER we have killed Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and they are DEAD men,
and can NOT possibly steal “our” women any more, THEN we are free to FINALLY
listen safely to their messages!
Well anyway, modern-day
hunter-gatherers, find the limits to your anger! Don’t use those nukes! If despotism takes over the world tomorrow,
then future generations can always re-discover or re-invent freedom! But NOT if we’re all dead! (“Better red than dead”, I say)
Now the below I must pointedly preface
with PLEASE Don’t Confuse “Is” With
“Should Be”… This topic concerns
abuse of children and infants by non-biological parents, often male parents or
step-parents.
Very conservative
(Biblical-literalist-types) will accuse evolution-believing
(sociobiology-believing) persons of excusing humans for “just acting like
beasts”. If we are mere beasts, then we
have an excuse for acting like beasts!
Well, the good will be good, and find “excuses” for being good, looking
into “Holy Books”, or sociobiology, or any other “thing”, ideology, etc. And the evil will be evil, and do the exact same
self-justifying things! Do what they
want to do, and figure out the justification(s) later!
Well anyway, I wanted to briefly
mention “infanticide and sociobiology”.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_(zoology) for some basics. Male animals (lions, monkeys, etc.) will kill
the youngest, when they take over a group (pride, troop, tribe, what have you),
to make space for spreading THEIR genes, instead of the previous father(s)!
Does this make it RIGHT that humans
should behave similarly? The beasts do
it, so we can (should), too? Clearly
not! This is absurd! But here comes my fundamental point: To NOT discuss (to ignore) this (or any
other) negative programmed behavioral tendency, is to lose an opportunity to be
aware, and to be on guard! As Jesus
said, “The truth will set you free”!
Deliberate ignorance is (just about absolutely) ALWAYS a hazard!
Let me quote from the above-cited Wikipedia link, “Humans and
infanticide” section: “Family structure is the most important risk
factor in child abuse and infanticide. Children who live with both their natural
(biological) parents are at low risk for abuse. The risk increases greatly when children live
with step-parents or with a single parent. Children living without either parent (foster
children) are 10 times more likely to be abused than children who live with
both biological parents. Children who
live with a single parent that has a live-in partner are at the highest risk:
they are 20 times more likely to be victims of child abuse than children living
with both biological parents.”
So there you have it! Whether we
like to admit it or not, many of us DO act like beasts! ONE of the practical take-ways (in terms of
public policy) is that we should only VERY reluctantly, in the WORST cases,
take children away from both biological parents, and hand them over to unrelated
foster parents. Hand them over to close
biological relatives if possible. This
makes sociobiological sense. And… Teach your youngsters to reproduce in a careful,
responsible manner! Having 5 children by
4 different fathers is NOT a good choice!
It is BEGGING for trouble! But
yes, just as “wearing that dress” doesn’t excuse the rapist, having too many
fathers for your children doesn’t excuse infanticide,
or child abuse, either!
I’m not sure what other important policy take-aways
are here on this topic… I hope that I
have hit the most important ones. Here
are some related side topics: “Exposing
infants” (human infanticide) historically:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide. And then there’s the fact that
older cultures (WAY before modern sociobiology) intuitively understood these
things. “Blood is thicker than
water”. Witness the “evil stepmother”
tales! See https://psych2go.net/the-cinderella-effect-evolutionarily-inclined-abusive-stepparents/ and https://www.proquest.com/openview/6364c0b52fdc66fa5345d0650ff96ecd/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y for examples.
God and Nature bless you all, non-abusive, loving step-parents, foster
parents, and adoptive parents! WHATEVER
your religious or political beliefs may be, may Nature/God BLESS you & your
efforts! I’m not intending to slam you
in the least! “I’m just sayin’…” Let’s
beware of all dangers, and NOT be pro-ignorance! There is a “beast within us”, and from time
to time, we need to squelch it, good and hard!
“The beast within us” wants to survive and reproduce, and avoid pain,
and seek pleasure (enjoy life). All
these things, in their place, can be GOOD!
But when said beast wants to ALWAYS blame the other tribe, start fights,
commit infanticide or abuse, etc., it’s time to
squelch the beast! “The beast”
(programmed behavior tendencies) is both good and bad. To keep on evolving into Higher Beings,
culturally, evolutionarily, and ethically-morally-spiritually, we need to use
our free will, our conscious minds, our consciences and spirits. We need to push willfully in the right
directions, with benevolence (the weaker term) or Love (the stronger
term). Ignorance generally doesn’t
help. But ignorance should be lovingly
educated away, especially by our good examples of knowledge AND behavior, rather
than using “ignorant” as a term in insults or derogation. THAT is what I am saying!
By now I’ve already blown most of my
punch lines, but I think it appropriate to look at these three cases of
tribalism being combined with do-gooder derogation, and ending up with “killing
the prophets”. In all three cases,
morally exemplary but outspoken members of a given “tribe” criticized their own
tribes for their hatreds of other tribes, hypocrisy, and wrong-doing. For their exertions, these three “prophets”
were killed.
Jesus: Most Biblical scholars, it
seems, agree that Jesus’s “Parable of the Good Samaritan” was an anti-tribalism
statement. “Tribally proper” Jews in
that time and day didn’t approve of Samaritan versions of Jewish beliefs and
rituals. Yet here was a Samaritan
(unlike Jews in this particular parable) who did “God’s work” (being benevolent
and helpful) even though the Samaritans were of the “wrong tribe”. For a grab-bag of links, see https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/good-samaritan-0011611 , https://theconversation.com/we-praise-people-as-good-samaritans-but-theres-a-complex-history-behind-the-phrase-188036 , https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/46n87l/the_parable_of_the_good_samaritan_is_misunderstood/ , https://torrancechurch.org/our-blog/a-comprehensive-analysis-of-the-parable-of-the-good-samaritan/ , https://byfaithonline.com/right-response-to-tribalism/ , https://www.worldvision.org/christian-faith-news-stories/good-samaritan-roadmap-toward-racial-justice , https://www.gty.org/sermons/90-466/the-most-misunderstood-parable , and more! AI can find them as easily for you as it
(“Perplexity”) found them for me!
If that’s not enough to
demonstrate Jesus’s non-tribalism, then see the following: Jesus praised, supported, or highlighted the
faith and virtue of non-Jewish outsiders or “undesirables,” as examples against
tribal exclusivity:
The Faith of the Roman
Centurion: Matthew 8:5–13; Luke
7:1–10
Jesus praises a Roman centurion for his faith.
The Grateful Samaritan Leper: Luke 17:11–19
Of ten men healed of leprosy,
only the Samaritan—that despised out-group—returns to thank Jesus,
prompting Jesus to point out that it was the outsider who showed gratitude and
faith.
The Woman Caught in Adultery (An “Undesirable”): John 8:3–11
Jesus defends a woman accused of adultery from being stoned.
The Syrophoenician (Canaanite)
Woman: Matthew 15:21–28; Mark
7:24–30 Jesus at first appears to rebuff a Gentile
woman but moves on to praise her faith.
Calling a Tax Collector Matthew 9:9–13; Mark
2:13–17; Luke 5:27–32
Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector (considered a traitor and sinner),
to be his disciple and dines with other tax collectors and “sinners”.
Each of these stories shows
Jesus valuing faith, gratitude, repentance, and humility above
ethnicity, tribal status, or social standing—explicitly commending “outsiders”
and undesirable types as models of faith and good conduct.
For his troublemaking, and
for making the hypocritical tribalists look bad,
Jesus was killed. I scarcely believe
that I need to belabor that point.
Gandhi: Mohandas (AKA “Mahatma”)
Gandhi firmly advocated peace and tolerance between Hindus and Muslims, and
also condemned the “caste” system of Indian Hindus. For example, he pointedly hauled his own
“night soil” out to the fields, even though this was considered to be a job for
the lower castes. For his troubles, he
was killed by an offended Hindu ultra-nationalist (AKA, a Hindu ultra-tribalist).
To learn more, see . “Gandhi: An Autobiography – The
Story of My Experiments with Truth”, by Gandhi. Also “The
Life of Mahatma Gandhi”, by Louis
Fischer. Also “Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in
Post-Truth Times”, by many and various assorted authors. Also see “Gandhi’s Approach to Caste and Untouchability: A Reappraisal”
(Janata Weekly).
MLK Jr.: MLK is well-known for
having advocated peace and respect between USA blacks and whites (and worldwide
as well, I would imagine, but of course, he lived and worked in the USA). He also called out white America’s hypocrisy
with respect to paying homage to all of the Noble Words in the USA Constitution
and Declaration of Independence, and in the Bible as well, but NOT living up to
these Noble Words, hardly at all. Just
like Jesus and Gandhi, MLK Jr. was killed for “making us look bad”, by an
ultra-nationalist or ultra-tribalist.
For support of the above
assertions, and-or to learn more, see “Why We Can’t Wait”, by Martin
Luther King Jr..
This includes the famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Also see “Strength to Love” (by Martin
Luther King Jr.). Also
“The
Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.” (Clayborne Carson, editor).
Finally, see “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings
and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.” OK then, REALLY finally, see “Stride Toward
Freedom: The Montgomery Story”, by M.L. King.
OK, that’s my short list
of the most prominent three “Hunter Heroes” who (for their troubles of bringing
home the “red meats” of truth and benevolence to excessively tribalistic
humans) suffered do-gooder derogation unto their deaths! Note that they all three advocated
non-violence. There was Jesus with
“turning the other cheek” at Matthew 5:39.
Gandhi said, "Non-violence is infinitely superior to violence;
forgiveness is more manly than punishment." MLK Jr. said that "violence brings only
temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it
solves, never brings permanent peace."
He also said "The choice is not between violence and nonviolence
but between nonviolence and nonexistence”, which is very apt in an age of
nuclear weapons. Isaac Asimov isn’t in
the same category of those killed for being righteous, but I like his quotes,
which were "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”, and "While
seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself." Also, General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Though
force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and
cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”
I must add that there’s an
academic book which gathers statistics and anecdotes to show that in modern
times, non-violent resistance has been more effective than violent resistance,
in bringing about long-lasting “regime change”.
Honestly, I found the book (as a casual reader) to be a bit dry and
boring. But it says and documents what
it says! It is "Why Civil Resistance
Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict" by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan. This groundbreaking academic study analyzes
statistics and case studies from 1900 to 2006, demonstrating that nonviolent
resistance campaigns were more than twice as effective as violent ones in
achieving major regime change and leading to democratic outcomes.
OK, one more important
note to add, before we approach a conclusion for this section. This, I consider to be vitally essential! It is that we don’t need to be Jesus or
Gandhi or MLK Jr. to help save the world, or to suffer for our
righteousness! There have doubtlessly
been millions more who have escaped from the bright lights (from being
historically noticed). Please don’t think
that the “ultimate” do-gooders who get killed for doing good,
are (were, historically) the only ones punished for being righteous! Don’t just think of only Jesus, Mahatma
Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. …
To wit, think also, even today, of those benevolent
beings punished for assisting so-called “illegal aliens” (“illegal sub-humans”
in the minds of their haters). I’ll just
show some links and leave it at that… https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/world/europe/greece-migrants.html He Saved 31 People at Sea. Then Got a 142-Year Prison Sentence. Hanad Abdi
Mohammad is the hero here, and law enforcement and their anti-immigrant hateful
supporters are the villains. AI
“Perplexity” tells me that he still seems to remain in jail, as of early 2023 (per
old AI training data). And it (injustice
to immigrants) happens in the USA as well!
https://reason.com/2019/01/15/trial-begins-for-aid-workers-accused-of/ Trial
Begins for Aid Workers Accused of Leaving Food, Water in Desert for Migrants Also see https://reason.com/2017/11/12/how-immigration-crackdowns-scr/ How Immigration
Crackdowns Screw Up Americans' Lives.
Just an almost lawyerly note here; it’s less
important than the above note… Note that
being punished for being righteous makes one “blessed”, according to Jesus’s 8th
beatitude; “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt.5:10) Well I just don’t know anything about “the
kingdom of heaven”, if that is understood to be life in the Beyond the
Beyond. I just don’t know. Getting “derogated” or killed for your righteousness
doesn’t seem to be very “blessed” (for the righteous ones) in the here and
now. So lawyer-like, I would “pick nits”
with this one, and re-state it for the here and now, with emphasis: “Blessed are the societies of those who are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake, for these
societies will benefit when they finally get around to listening to the
messages imparted by the righteous ones.”
As I previously remarked, it is dangerous… Even the ancient hunter-gatherers instinctually
learned or knew this… To
honor a prophet or a Hunter-Hero while the Hero was still alive. Said Hero might steal all of “our” women!
OK then finally-finally for this section, keep in
mind that some people talk about “the endless cycle of violence”. Some also say that an “endless cycle of violence” can only be broken when someone,
somewhere, absorbs a blow, and does NOT strike back!
I would like to tell you a story. Or perhaps a story about me
perhaps writing a story, if you will.
Read on…
Fiddlin’ Around with the Hatfields
& the McCoys…
Y’all ever hear of that them thar
Hatfields and McCoys? There in down-home Appalachia?
You’ve read your “alternate history” books,
yes? Harry Turtledove,
etc.? I’ve been thinking of
writing fiction like that…
So here, check out this summary: The Hatfields and
the McCoys get in a spat, just like in our
timeline… Except that they don’t shoot
and kill each other, they challenge each other to a down-home, ol’-time country
hoe-down fiddle contest. Each family
puts up their finest 8 or 10 fiddlers, to go at it, spelling one another (per
each family team) through vacations, eating, sleeping, and potty
breaks, so that the fiddling contest can go on and on and on… This is the song that never ends, my friends,
and it goes on and on… Till the losing
side gives up, or it goes on… FOREVER!
So I’m first-off, looking for a good working title…
I’m thinking…
…
…
…
I’m a-thinkin’…
…
…
…
I’m still a-thinkin’…
…
…
…
I’m thinking that “The Endless Cycle of Violins”
might work!
So if this paper were a purely
academic or data-driven document, with no “polemic” or advocacy element, the
above heading would clearly be out of line.
I’ll hang my head in shame if it will help my cause! But it sure seems to me that “killing the
prophets” (the benevolent ones at the very least) has never been a good idea,
and isn’t a good idea now, either. From
here on in, I want to smear together “how do we fix it” from a standpoint of gathering
more data and theories, v/s also fixing the problems in human behavior,
“society”, and politics. That’s offhand
just not how my brain works (to split out data-gathering v/s policies). Instead, I will break it down into dystopian
science-fiction-type ideas v/s utopian or semi-utopian ideas, and then
hopefully-more-practical ideas. I will
be the first to admit that “utopian” v/s “dystopian” is a subjective “value
judgment”, to a large extent.
“Channeling” the mentioned-here-before writer, Sam Harris, I would add
that this “morality” (just like others) CAN be well defined in terms of
“thriving” v/s suffering.
OK, then HDWFI is How Do We Fix It, broken into
three different headings…
We could perhaps genetically
re-engineer human nature to do away with the negative aspects of tribalism and
do-gooder derogation (if we had far, FAR more knowledge of genetics than we
have today). Ditto
“evil” of other flavors as well.
Or we could put spying and brain-control and-or body-control cyborg
devices into humans, possibly including shock collars or self-destruct
mechanisms, to include imposed behavior tendencies towards suicide for the
“undesirables”. Sort of like cellular
apoptosis, but at the social level.
Some of these ideas are less
far-fetched than one might casually think.
See remote-radio-controlled rats, which date back to
some time ago (2002) by now. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_rat#:~:text=A%20remotely%20guided%20rat%2C%20popularly%20called%20a%20ratbot,State%20University%20of%20New%20York%20Downstate%20Medical%20Center.
Similar things have been done with insects, but I’ll leave you to
research that, dear reader.
Now this is too strange! The very same day as I am writing the above,
I run into this! https://reason.com/podcast/2025/07/16/how-a-government-mind-control-experiment-backfired/ .
It seems that when we move from researchers mind-controlling rats, to governments mind-controlling (or trying to mind-control)
humans, things can get far worse! This
link leads to “Project Mind Control:
Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA”, a book by John Lisle . I’ve not read the book, so I have no more
comments about it.
To me, these ideas reek of evil and horror (subtle
or not, with or without blood and guts on-screen). Think perhaps also of the movie “Minority
Report”; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film) , but perhaps worse. I’ve not seen this movie, so I’m not really
sure exactly how well it fits into the topics here, to be honest.
On a slightly-more-practical level, what happens
if-when we genetically (or otherwise) top-down “engineer” us humans to no
longer be capable of “evil” or violence?
Then what happens if-when the violent mutant arises, and no one can
fight back? Or the violent space aliens
or machines arise or invade, and no one can fight back? I can’t think offhand of science fiction that
very directly addresses these questions.
Not being well versed in science fiction, the best I could do would be
to point way back in time, to H. G. Well’s 1895 novel The Time
Machine . There, cannibalistic, violent Morlocks reign
terror over the gentle but effete Eloi. All
that we’d have to explicitly add here, is that the Eloi genetically engineered
themselves to remove their own violent capabilities, and with them, their
capabilities to defend themselves, as well.
Then the Morlocks arose as mutants.
Now, we would have demonstrated the ideas that I have in mind.
There’s also the Stanley Kubrick movie, "A
Clockwork Orange", in which “ultraviolent” anti-hero Alex DeLarge is jailed, and anti-violence mind-control is
imposed on him, by the state. The prison
chaplain is concerned about the ethics of such things, remarking that “When a
man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."
In other words, moral-ethical virtue can only be moral-ethical virtue
when it is freely chosen, not imposed.
Color me shocked, but no shock collars for me,
please! This may be just my value
judgments, but the ideas above horrify me.
Most especially, the idea of taking cellular apoptosis (cellular suicide
“for the good of the body”) and imposing it at the social (state) level, urging
suicide or amplifying such urges on “free” individuals, for “purifying” or
“improving” society, reeks of PUREST EVIL to me! No, I haven’t seen or read that in science
fiction. Some might say that trying to
improve society through such methods is to “Seek God’s ends by using the tools
of the Evil One”. OK, yes, I promised
not to invoke metaphysics or the “Beyond the Beyond” here. Lawyer-like, I will “weasel out” and point
out that I wrote, “Some might say that…”. I didn’t directly say it!
Martin Luther King, Jr. had this to say: "You cannot use immoral means to achieve
moral ends." Further, he expanded, “All
reality hinges on moral foundations. Even the whole universe has spiritual undergirdings. Most of the people and nations in the world
are merely thermometers that record the temperatures of majority opinion, not
thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society. We must not
believe, as some people have said, that the ends justify the means, for if the
means are not pure, the ends will not be pure.”
That’s my best short-and-not-so-sweet summary of more-purely
dystopian ideas here. I’d just as soon
move on…
“Channeling” the popular mind at
large, I suspect that some will or would regard some of the following ideas to
be somewhat dystopian as well, although I’m not sure. I should hope that at least the following
ideas are less dystopian than the further-above ideas.
Genetically engineering
humans to prevent diseases smears together with eventually using genetic
engineering for “improvements” as well. Also, we can smear together gene-editing
for diseases and for physical reasons with gene-editing for behavioral
reasons. The ethical and moral concerns,
it seems to me, are all the same, or highly similar. If we start out with curing diseases, and
then SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY moving towards “improvements”, and ALWAYS with the
consent of the parents, then hopefully things will work out well. Pointedly, I would say that parents almost
always love their children more than “society” (or the state) does. Now I think that we are miles and miles
(lightyears?) away from understanding much about behavior-related genes, let
alone trying to excise tribalism and do-gooder derogation, or “evil” in
general. We’ll not have to worry about
such things for a LONG time, I think. But
I could be wrong.
See https://reason.com/2019/04/04/gene-edited-kids-can-be-safely-released/ by Ronald Bailey, as a VERY highly relevant
article, and earlier columns by the same, in reverse chronological order,
https://reason.com/2025/07/17/3-parent-babies-born-healthy-in-the-u-k/?comments=true#comments and
https://reason.com/2018/06/06/freaking-out-over-designer-babies-again/ and
https://reason.com/2017/03/03/of-artificial-mice-and-men-embryos/?itm_source=parsely-api and
https://reason.com/2017/05/17/skin-cells-into-babies-bioethicists-frea/?itm_source=parsely-api, and
https://reason.com/2017/10/15/its-ok-to-edit-your-kids-genes/ and https://reason.com/2016/02/12/of-course-its-ethical-to-make-three-pare/ and
https://reason.com/2016/05/01/mom-and-dad-and-mom-know-best/ and
https://reason.com/2016/09/28/first-three-parent-baby-born-in-mexico/?itm_source=parsely-api and
https://reason.com/2015/02/04/three-parent-babies-approved-by-british/?itm_source=parsely-api and
https://reason.com/2014/02/25/immoral-scaremongering-about-designer-ba/?itm_source=parsely-api and
https://reason.com/2014/08/26/who-cares-if-a-baby-has-three-parents-so/?itm_source=parsely-api and
https://reason.com/2009/08/27/hooray-for-frankenbabies-slidi/ and
https://reason.com/2008/02/06/a-drift-towards-gm-babies-can/?itm_source=parsely-api and
https://reason.com/2001/05/23/techno-baby-steps/?itm_source=parsely-api OK now
we’re done!
Well,
I am almost done! Same web site, different writer, see https://reason.com/2008/06/06/heather-has-two-mommies-and-a/?itm_source=parsely-api also; this one is rather short.
I agree with this (main) writer (Ronald Bailey). You (dear reader) can obviously learn more
about the facts, details, and ideas there (at these links). Why not let parents chose, especially, for
starters, to cure diseases? See a list
of such diseases here: https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/search-result . Worry
about the rest (in the further-off future) much-much later. In that further-off future, if-when it
happens (becomes possible), why not also allow parents to have “edited out”,
genes that militate towards some very undesirable behaviors? With the caveats as listed before, and with
yet one more caveat that I can think of:
“Society” DOES have interests here, and at least SOME regulation is
justified! Suppose that in the future,
“DIY” (Do It Yourself) biohackers will have a lot more affordable tools
available. We will NOT want some
rebellious teenagers creating “man-bear-pig” hybrid babies in their garage, for
“chuckles and grins”, nor will we want them, on a lark, to create babies with behavioral-instinctual
urges, vampire-like, to bite and suck blood!
As is usually the case, we need BALANCE here.
Moving away from genetic engineering and towards
data-gathering, can we demonstrate that tribalism and “do-gooder derogation”
indeed have the sociobiological roots that I hypothesize that they have? I’m not sure if that (proving the hypothesis)
has much practical value, but suspect that even “pure knowledge” has its
uses. I am calling all “genius”
psychologists (such as more recent versions of the here-mentioned Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky) to see
what they can do for us here!
For all of you genius psychologists out there, I
sympathize with you about the strict “ethics requirements” that you face in
designing your experiments. I looked for
links (to include editorials) about what I have to say next, and could find
nothing, sad to say, so here goes: I
sympathize with you when I compare your strict overseers with what is done with
“reality show” participants, where the “reality show” designers face little to
no oversight or regulation! This shows
“society’s revealed preferences” in that amusing us far, far outranks gathering
knowledge to teach us with! This is sad,
so I suggest that you might want to “sneak in the back door” when reality shows
are designed, and have them add some “controls” and-or experimental designs,
and you might be in “fat city”! Saves
you money, time, and troubles!
I don’t know if this is a reliable link or not
(from my knowledge of the news I think it’s accurate), but see https://allthatsinteresting.com/reality-tv-show-murder . Are
“reality” shows more regulated or self-regulated by now? I don’t know, for sure, about that either…
Along these (further above) lines, and science
fiction, note that computers and AI can now emulate (or predict) human behavior more
accurately than ever before. https://studyfinds.org/ai-thinks-like-humans-unprecedented-accuracy/ “New
‘Mind-Reading’ AI Predicts What Humans Will Do Next, And It’s
Shockingly Accurate.” From
there, “When tested, Centaur completely crushed the competition. In
head-to-head comparisons with specialized cognitive models that scientists
spent decades perfecting, Centaur won in almost every single experiment.” Chase down source material as follows; “A
foundation model to predict and capture human cognition” was published in Nature on July 2, 2025.
See also https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393327876_A_foundation_model_to_predict_and_capture_human_cognition (same thing).
Sci-fi (perhaps only semi-sci-fi) possibilities may
open up as follows:
‘1) Such an
AI (or AIs plural, and-or computers in general) may be integrated into computerized
data concerning genes, protein folding, etc., and knowledge, as such knowledge
grows, about genetic influences on human emotions and instincts, and we can
solve (among others) questions about where tribalism and “do-gooder derogation”
come from! And of course, what are the
effects of such behavioral tendencies, and maybe even, how do they interact
with the environment and upbringing of humans.
We can’t directly, ethically experiment with such things, I think, but
we can certainly experiment with simulations.
We could perhaps create a “gang” of many-many
“instantiations” of AI-simulated humans, with different assumptions and models
built in, and “winnowing out” the agents or instantiations of pseudo-humans
that turn out to be inaccurate (which don’t conform to human “realities”, such
as they may be). Some people, these
days, leave behind digital representations of themselves, to interact with
their loved ones who are left behind.
Such “digital dead people”, if recorded in enough detail (and with the
permissions of their estates) might also be added to the armies of the
“simulated humans” in the here-envisioned computer farms. Thus, we could simulate human “society” in
various times and places, just as we simulate weather patterns today. The simulations could be “honed” on real,
actual human history. Modern (pending) political
and economic policies could be pre-optimized by running “social simulations”.
The above scenario was (roughly) described in Isaac
Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, consisting of “Foundation”, “Foundation and
Empire”, and “Second Foundation”, published 1951-52-53. Here, our hero “Hari Seldon”
invents “psychohistory,” a fictional science to statistically predict the
future evolution of large populations.
Asimov’s speculations may be closer to us than we think! I suspect that the GIANT “fly in the
ointment” will be, if the simulations say that we
should implement “policies XYZ”, and the voters and the politicians don’t LIKE
the recommendations, we/they will find endless excuses not to implement
them! “It depends on whose ox gets
gored”, as usual! But we can always
hope!
‘2) Now please bear with me as I work my
way into this one. Modern brain science
can now clearly show differences in brains on a spectrum from altruists to
psychopaths. On the altruist end, we
have a larger right amygdala, and good (sensitive)
response to facially-expressed fear in others.
Psychopaths show the opposite. Altruists show increased overall
intracranial volume and greater blood flow in the right amygdala and right
lateral prefrontal cortex when viewing fearful faces. Brain scans (and modern versions of “lie
detectors”) can measure these things, and more.
There’s plenty more “out there” and The Google (Which Knows All Things)
and AI can help you find it. So I’ll
skip the links this time.
So suppose this knowledge and technology continues
to improve. We could measure the
tendencies towards morally and ethically (even “spiritually”) advanced
behaviors. Let’s call such a device an
“SAQ meter”, meaning a “Spiritual Advancement Quotient meter”, to vaguely
invoke similarity to “IQ”. This idea
will fall at various points along the dystopia to utopia spectrum, depending on
one’s views, and on some other factors.
Is the SAQ meter accurate, reliable (repeatable),
robust, and affordable? Can it be used
without an army of PhD scientists, and without too much subjectivity in reading
it? Will we use it only on subjects who
consent, or otherwise? Who will use it,
for what purposes? All of these things
matter… This should be fairly obvious, I
think.
Let’s skip the dystopia, and assume that “it’s all
good” from the above list. Now, when you
pick a girlfriend, boyfriend, other kind of friend, husband, wife, doctor,
business partner, therapist, religious leader or adviser, child care provider,
or other partner where trust and reliability is essential, you can ask them for
their SAQ readings. They are free to
obtain and provide the readings, or not.
And you’re free to make your free-will choices as well. I see mostly “upsides” here. Others may have a different opinion, and
that’s OK by me. But please just keep
your excessively obtrusive laws away from me and my affairs! That’s really all I have to say in these “SAQ
meter” categories.
The one special category of “SAQ meter” use that I
would like to discuss in more detail is using SAQ meter readings to select… Our
politicians! Once again, I would assume
that we’d be free to ask (or to have public media people ask on our behalf),
and they’ll be free to respond yea or nay, and we can make election decisions
accordingly. What happens now? Undesirable politicians (“wolves in sheep’s
clothing”) who were formerly hiding certain unsavory aspects of themselves, will be revealed. Excesses of tribalism, do-gooder derogation,
and other evils will be “weeded out”. Right?
Well, not so fast!
Now I hang my head in shame, and for a comparison, I mention that
government laws have provided (mandated) that restaurants and other food
providers should give me caloric-content labels, for my own good. But I use these labels, often, to pick the
highest-calorie items, because I know that they taste best! Similarly, selfish tribalists,
hypocrites, and self-righteous voters will want to use the SAQ meter readings
to elect the exact same kinds of politicians that they’ve always elected! The utility of SAQ meters here may be
marginal at best, unless government forcibly excludes SAQ-meter-failing
candidates. That, I, for one, wouldn’t
recommend. This might seriously risk
civil war (or uncivil war, if we were to use more accurate words, since wars
are always uncivil). Not much
imagination is needed to “see” a test-failing demagogue ranting and raving
against the SAQ meter, and those who administer the tests, and their tribes,
too! “They stole my election!” The “SAQ meter” won’t be a “Magic Device”
with which to cure tribal or other hatreds…
It might provide us with some more data, is all. How we use the data is up to us.
I don’t mean to offend, but truth can hurt. To really drive home the above point, think
of the main “political tribes” in the USA today, liberals and
conservatives. Just to
somewhat arbitrarily pick what are “hot button” items for these two tribes, and
so that we can viscerally “feel” what is at stake, let’s take a look at
abortion, and at gun ownership.
I hope that this isn’t too “in your face”, but this
is somewhat like what we have today:
“Team R” politician: “The debt is too large, and government is too
powerful. If you elect ME, I will FIX
that budget-balance problem SOON! But,
first things first! THOSE PEOPLE OVER
THERE ARE GETTING ABORTIONS!!! We must
make the liberals CRY for their sins!
AFTER we fix that RIGHT AWAY, we’ll get you your budget balanced and low
taxes!”
“Team D” politician: “The debt is too large, and I’ll get that
fixed soon, I promise you, if you elect ME!
First, the more important stuff, though:
THOSE PEOPLE OVER THERE ARE OWNING GUNS!!! We must PROTECT the American People from guns
and gun-nuts!!! AFTER we fix that RIGHT
AWAY, we’ll get our budgets balanced!”
These are appeals to our tribalism and our needs
for scapegoats, and they are “why we can’t have nice things”. We’re not willing to give up our
self-righteous, smug feelings of superiority over the other tribe(s). Each tribe allowing personal freedoms to the
other(s) would be a good compromise, a good place to start, it seems to me.
Now does it really matter where the policy
recommendations come from? What policies
shall we implement, per the candidates (and their policies) or the naked
policies themselves, recommended by whoever-it-is. Is it the SAQ meters and the
test-givers? Or, as further above, is it
the policy recommendations of the massive computer-farm human-society
emulator? Let’s just call it the HSE,
the Human Society Emulator. Suppose that
either the SAQ meters (through their candidate recommendations) or the HSE
recommend(s) individual freedoms to both gun owners and to those who want
and-or need abortions. Does that change
ANYTHING? Or will tribalist
voters and tribalist politicians still be tribalist voters and tribalist politicians?
I don’t see that we have a “fix” here at all!
Unless we hand over to the machines, to the SAQ
meters and-or to the HSE, the keys to our cars, houses, and public spaces, and
perhaps also to our bodies and minds…
I’m not in favor of that! Let’s
try other “fixes” first! Another “fix”,
just in case “the cure is worse than the disease”, is to do nothing,
indefinitely, and NEVER let the machines take over! Maybe we humans can learn for ourselves, after
we wallow in our own collectively self-chosen suffering for long enough!
Parenthetically, before concluding this section,
let me squeeze in that the above two ideas might be vaguely related to
“electing Jesus and-or Gandhi and-or MLK Jr. to political office”. This is especially so for idea #2, of using
the SAQ meter to elect “Christ figures”.
From what we know or think that we know, these three people weren’t (or
wouldn’t be) interested in political power in the first place. In the second place, we (as we are now)
wouldn’t listen to them even if they were put into office! Morally and ethically advanced people know
that public politics involves state coercion (with roots in force or violence,
or threats of the same), and is an inferior “solution”. Use force or threats to force people to do
what you want, and they’ll often stop obeying, as soon as the coercion
stops. Use persuasion instead, and they
just might remain persuaded for life!
In this section, let’s briefly review
what could be variously described as laissez-faire, bottom-up, organically evolved,
and-or emergent-order approaches. This
is frankly the approach that I favor, in view of all of the above discussions
about problems with other approaches.
But of course, this is just my opinion.
Let’s start with some analogies or illustrations, throw in some relevant
quotes, talk about a little bit more about relevant science fiction, and
discuss organically “assimilating evil”, or “internally integrating but mostly
squelching evil” (for lack of better terms for now). Read on…
For emergent or spontaneous order, many people have
remarked that herds of animals, flocks of birds, and schools of fish (without
top-down leaders, by following simple rules) move gracefully as one. See also “Simple Rules for a Complex
World” by Richard A. Epstein , see https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1135298.Simple_Rules_for_a_Complex_World ... I would
point in this general direction for “fixing” human evils. Also, my favorite analogies are as
follows: The human brain (or other animal
brain) doesn’t tell each and every mitochondrion how many sugar molecules to
shove into the Krebs cycle… That
wouldn’t work, for lack of bandwidth.
The brain only issues far-more-general commands. And no central authority tells the bunnies
how many blades of grass to eat, nor the wolves, how many bunnies to eat, and yet
ecospheres are beautiful, complex, and efficient at filling our world with
life. Human economies work best under
lightly-regulated free markets, rather than too-expansive, inflexible central
control.
The “hippie era” (roughly the sixties and early
seventies), I believe, gave us these ideas or catch-phrases: “Think globally, act locally”, and “be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem”. OK, also, “Make love, not war!”
Many diverse people have remarked that social
approval v/s disapproval, for us highly-social human animals, is very
powerful. Such approval v/s disapproval
is often quite enough, and there’s no need for constantly, reflectively
resorting to more-explicit punishment and government punishment. Go lightly on the punishment, please! "Beware of all those in whom the urge to
punish is strong." - Friedrich Nietzsche “Mistrust all those in whom the desire to punish is imperative.” Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe "Let he who is without sin, throw the
first stone." - Jesus
Go lightly even on the social criticism, especially
if it’s not needed! “How can you say to
your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while there is still a
beam in your own eye? “You
hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will
see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” - Jesus
So throwing together the immediately-above and
further-above ideas, I will now bring in some more relevant quotes… Some of which lead to where
I want to go next.
Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, THE GULAG
ARCHIPELAGO:
“It was granted me to carry away from my prison
years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential
experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I
had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and
an oppressor. In my most evil moments I
was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well
supplied with systematic arguments. And
it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within
myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line
separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between
political parties either… but right through every human heart… and through all
human hearts. This line shifts. Inside
us, it oscillates with the years. And
even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is
retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil.
“Since then I have come to understand the truth of
all the religions of the world: they struggle with the evil inside a human
being….. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it
is possible to constrict it within each person.
“And since that time I have come to understand the
falsehood of all the revolutions in history: They destroy only those carriers
of evil contemporary with them…. And they then take to themselves as their
heritage the actual evil itself….”
My comments on the above:
Alex talks about a LOT of things above, there, and
it is all worth a very careful read. The line between good and evil being in
each person’s heart is critical; else the inherently arrogant ones amongst us,
whose DNA or karma or some such strange thing disposes us towards certain lies,
will start spouting (or even just inwardly believing, which is bad enough)
things like “Only Christians go to Heaven”… Which then mutates into “Only
Baptists go to Heaven”, then “Only the Baptists in MY exact church go to
Heaven”, and finally to our intended-from-the-git-go
target, “God shines on Me and Me alone”. I think I
need not bother to add anything about what kinds of actions may result from
this kind of thinking.
But please do notice that Alex makes broad-minded,
non-tribalistic statements in there, and mentions that evil can be constricted
(often with the help of religion) within every human heart. Lawyer-like, please let me add that these are
Alex’s words and ideas, but they may be a tiny bit hacked up (they came to me
through a long chain), with intervening words stripped out, from time to
time. I mean no harm, and I commend
Alex!
If I understand correctly, George Orwell first said
(or wrote): "The essence of being
human is that one does not seek perfection. That one is sometimes willing to commit sins
for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where
it makes friendly intercourse impossible, that one is prepared in the end to be
defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening
one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt there is much in that loyalty that is
morally reprehensible, but it is also the essence of being human. Bureaucrats and the like dream of systems
so perfect that no one will need to be good.” (emphasis
added)
A (later?) T.S. Eliot shortened version of the above
was: "In our age, there is no such
thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics
itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
Bureaucrats dream of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good."
My take on it is that “systems” (or SAQ meters or HSEs,
AKA Human Society Emulators) won’t “fix” human evil for us. Only when all (or the vast, vast majority) of
us chose “good”, as best as we can see it, of our own free will, will “evil” be
solved… for good! It’s a big ask, a HUGE
ask, but I don’t see any magic shortcuts!
Sorry!
We can PRETEND to NOT decide… Our Hunter-Hero or our Leader (of any sort),
or our Holy Book(s), or our rules or “system” or SAQ meter or HSE has decided
for us, we say. But WHO chose WHO or
WHAT to obey? And how
exactly to interpret the “commands”?
“If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice”… So sang the Canadian band “Rush”. It’s really-actually NOT possible to anywhere
near completely give up free-will choices, or responsibility for our choices.
Top-down fixes and 3-word slogans or even 13-word
slogans won’t bail us out, here, I suspect.
So here’s my fix, my slogan:
“Never trust anyone who proposes fixing the world’s troubles with a
13-word slogan.” Now that’s 13 to 14
words, depending on how you count them…
Is “13-word” one word, or two?
Can I be trusted, or not!
Go! You have 2.5 minutes!
Ralph Waldo Emerson has a relevant quote; “Republics
abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave
modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the
population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and
that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you
can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish
legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not
lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of
government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the
population which permits it. The
law is only a memorandum.” (Emphasis
mine.)
To illustrate the above, suppose that Government
goes too far, and mandates no-meat diets, which many people disagree with, just
like the wars on drugs and wars on immigrants and trade wars on foreign
tariff-free goods (and more?) today…
Then there will be underground, makeshift,
amateurish animal-killing-and-butchering shops, where the animals will be
treated far less humanely than they are today! (Thank You
Do-Gooders!!!)
You will not be able to let Fluffy or Fido wander
through the bushes in your own back yard, for fear of meat-hungry lawbreaking
pet-snatchers!
(But, Meat-Hungry Lawbreaking Pet-Snatchers would
make a MOST EXCELLENT name for a garage band!)
I don’t mean to make fun of vegetarians or vegans;
this is just an example. Vegetarians are
often mentioned in the academic literature concerning “do-gooder
derogation”. Even if they judge no one,
they are often judged (apparently for not conforming, or being “cool” like you
and me, who are the GOOD meat-eating tribal members). And my line “(Thank You Do-Gooders!!!)” above
is directed at the (theoretical) excessive law-makers, who in this case,
wouldn’t be listening to the clear wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Finally also note that SOME state governments in
the USA have been trying to outlaw the sale of (“cruelty free”) lab-cultured
meat, in order to protect real-meat-producing farmers and ranchers. Now THESE law-makers DESERVE to be
derogated! (Look that up for yourself;
it’s easy to find.)
There’s another relevant Ralph Waldo Emerson quote here,
if we go slightly back to “thinking globally and acting locally”, and being
“part of the solution”. The quote is “All
men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.”
The same idea as above was put into a
more modern, humorous, and ALMOST in-your-face quote by PJ O’Rourke, who said
that “Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the
dishes.”
It is FAR easier to tell other what to do (what their policies should
be), rather than doing it ourselves! Meanwhile,
no one (hardly anyone at least sometimes) is “helping Mom with the
dishes”… Being “woke” and CRT (“Critical
Race Theory”) are recent popular culture-politics fighting topics. In these cases, working peacefully with, and
making friends with, people of other races (religions, political parties,
etc.), and teaching all children (whenever you get a chance, and usually by
example) to love all of their fellow humans, the trees, the bunny rabbits, and
the Earth, and the human future, yada-yada…
This is BORING! Akin to washing
dishes! Well, let’s all please STOP that
self-righteous bickering! Let’s all get
off of our butts, stop being arrogant know-it-all windbags, and go do some
dishes!
Now please bear with me as I work our way into
these next few items. We’ll reach
clarity, hopefully, soon enough! We have
to be careful to have a complex-enough, and flexible-enough, definition of
“evil”. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything
should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Many people might call poisons “evil”, for
example. Yes, they can be used that way,
for sure! However, it’s all
dose-dependent. Too much water or too
little, too much table salt or too little, and you die! The same is true for many medicines, foods,
and trace nutrients. We need to optimize
the doses, is all.
In the popular mind, ionizing radiation and
radioactive wastes are VERY “evil” poisons.
Yet here, too, we need (or can use) the best dose! It may be “hard to swallow” if you’re not
familiar with it, but look up “radiation hormesis”. “Hormesis” applies
to many other kinds of poisons. Look up
also the “hygiene hypothesis” at, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis . So the
ancients were correct in recommending “moderation in all things”, which
includes poisons, dirt, and parasites.
Don’t be “nasty nice”! I am using
“nasty nice” in a different way than most people use it lately, it seems. I mean it in a hyper-cleanliness and
hyper-orderliness, germophobic sense. (Well, there’s almost
always the exceptions to the rule…
Being “nasty nice” around the immune-system-compromised
people is actually, genuinely nice.)
Also look up “helminthic therapy”, in which people with auto-immune
problems can be helped by having the patients carry intestinal parasites. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy .
Putting all of the above together, we must conclude
as follows: On radioactive wastes (and
ionizing radiation), see “radiation hormesis”, and
see a USA government study of a Taiwan incident (accidental experiment on
humans) at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/ … Low-dose radioactivity is actually
GOOD for you! Seriously!!!
On “helminthic therapy”, AKA gut parasite worms are
GOOD for you, too, sometimes, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20054982 (by the USA government again) or others …
Well anyway, WHAT is a summary of what I am
saying? I thought I heard you asking
about that, through my tri-cornered aluminum-foil mind-reading hat, as I am
sitting here…
HERE is your summary: Hollyweird is WAY off base, with their horror
movies! A Giant Gut-Parasitical Radioactive Teenage Mutant Ninja Tapeworm would
be GOOD for us!!! Bring it ON, ah
says!!!
Parenthetically, I would add, about my mind-reading
hat, that I also have a similar anti-matter hat, which fends off that which
does not matter!
No seriously, I want to move towards the ideas of
“assimilating or integrating evil.” I
think that many-many people know, by now, that we humans (as well as other
animals) are assemblages (especially if we include the contents of our
digestive systems) of us plus bacteria, fungi, and viruses. We humans (as well as other animals) are
assemblages (if we include the contents of our digestive systems) of us plus
bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Many
viruses are bacteriophages which help humans if they harm the harmful
bacteria. These 3 kinds of microbes
(plus sometimes intestinal fauna such as protists and
worms) constitute an entire small ecosystem, which needs to have a good balance
for human health, sometimes including human mental health. It’s not easy to pick any such species and
clearly, correctly identify it as “good” or “evil”. The human-health nature of these microbes
often depends on context — a normally beneficial microbe can turn pathogenic if
the balance is disrupted. Note that it’s
not just a one-way influence-path… The
cat protozoan parasite “Toxoplasma gondii (AKA T. gondii) can alter behavior in both animals and humans.
If I were the Star Trek “Borg Collective”, I would
tell these microbes that “they have been assimilated”! For better, mostly, but sometimes for worse,
for humans.
If we move further back in evolutionary time,
especially to the beginnings of eukaryotes and when they first started to form
multi-cellular animals, we find that we humans (and other animals) are the end
result of even more intimate assimilations, to include genetic
assimilation. It’s hard to say what
percentage of such assimilation derives from parasites v/s symbionts. The mitochondria, one could quite firmly assume,
were symbionts.
About 200 to 300 human nuclear genes seem to
originate directly back to mitochondrial (bacterial) ancestors. This is less than one percent of the human
nuclear genome. Other mitochondria
genes, of course, stay in the mitochondria…
Which are still part of us! Small fragments of parasitic DNA, such as
from viruses, transposons (“jumping genes”), and even (rarely) from some
multicellular parasites, have been assimilated into the human genome over
evolutionary time. These are sometimes
called “junk DNA”, but they influence genome architecture and regulation. I don’t think that much “junk DNA” can be
dismissed or casually deleted, risk-free.
“Junk genes” may also serve as reservoirs of resources from which
evolution builds future adaptive traits, the same as a human engineer might
scrounge for useful structural materials out of a trash heap or junkyard.
A tangential but illustrative note is that one can
look at birds which fly v/s flightless birds, and see how far back in
evolutionary time they became flightless.
Long-time-flightless birds carry more “junk DNA”, because they are no
longer as severely mass-restricted, and can easily afford (unlike flying birds)
to carry the extra mass of the “junk DNA”.
Unless humans want to evolve bodily-integrated wings, I don’t see much
“percentage to be had” in “going after” our junk DNA, via genetic engineering.
Somewhat less tangentially (especially in view of
where I want to take this paper towards), note that there are repeated themes
in nature, in… Space, time, and
dimension! Electrons are small masses
that orbit around a large-mass central nucleus, just as satellites and moons
orbit planets. Electron locations are
indeterminate, “smeared out” in their orbits, by quantum physics. On the other hand, moons and satellites have
VERY firmly established locations and velocities, with respect to the central
mass, at least. Themes are repeated, but
often change drastically.
In evolutionary “deep time”, no “higher” animals
have assimilated each other, bodily, other than by eating each other. Squirrel bodies haven’t been assimilated into
human bodies, like mitochondria were assimilated long-long ago. The closest
that I can come to this is a human riding a horse. Horse-riding, though, is from recent cultural,
not biological, evolution.
I mention that “the rules are sometimes repeated,
but they also change drastically” over different scales, so as to illustrate
that, when we look to biological nature for inspiration, we have to be
careful! Apoptosis (cellular programmed
death or suicide) in the name of the greater good for the multicellular
organism is fine by me. Doing the same
for individual humans in human society?
I would LOUDLY warn, beg, and plead that we do NOT go this way!
So finally, here is why all of the above was
discussed: We should “assimilate evil”,
but on a different scale, using organic or bottom-up evolution, most certainly
prominently featuring cultural evolution.
No surgically implanted “evil modules” or circuits need to be embedded
into our brains. We already have those,
most especially featuring “mirror neurons” in our brains, which help us to
understand others, to “put ourselves into their shoes”, including the shoes of
psychopaths and evil persons. Cultural evolution
includes science, education, self-education, and how we all act in our
individual lives. Religion is part of
culture, too, and it can CLEARLY help, here, as long as the negative aspects of
tribalism and do-gooder derogation are firmly restrained by individuals, using
their own free will. Recall the long Alexander
Solzhenitsyn quote that I patched in far above?
From there, a sub-portion of the quote says that “Since then I have come
to understand the truth of
all the religions of the world: they struggle with the evil inside a human being….. It
is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict
it within each person.” (Emphasis
mine).
So Solzhenitsyn would agree with me that we should
“assimilate evil” in a sensible fashion!
Assimilate or integrate it using your mirror neurons (in your brain, of
course) to understand evil, as assisted by the benevolent sides of human
cultures, and try to recall, force and threats of force aren’t usually optimal
forces for fighting evil. They are or
should be a LAST resort!
I advocate that evil
should be incorporated (integrated, assimilated) in a physically invisible
manner, “in our heads” and in written and spoken culture only. Well sure, movies and educational tools,
too. But please don’t torture the
students in the name of “teaching” them about evil!
When discussing cultural influences on
human behavior, it is important to keep in mind what E. O. Wilson (a pioneer of
sociobiology) wrote about. Here is a
quote from him: “The genes hold culture
on a leash. The leash is very long but inevitably values will be constrained in
accordance with their effects on the human gene pool. The brain is a product of
evolution. Human behavior—like the deepest capacities for emotional response
which drive and guide it—is the circuitous technique by which human genetic
material has been and will be kept intact.”
So then, human cultures have wide
“free reign”, over a lot of space, like a dog on a long-long leash. But biology and sociobiology hold the leash,
preventing cultures from going into far-fetched places. For example, in no cases does every member of
a culture walk “like a chicken” wherever they go, all day long. Or down on all four limbs, either. These things are physically possible, but
very biomechanically inefficient… So it
doesn’t happen. This one should be
obvious.
Also (more aligned with central themes
of this paper), in no culture (past or present) do healthy, fertile couples
forgo sex between themselves, and willingly assign biological fatherhood to
randomly selected males. This is
physically possible, but stretches the bounds of our “leash” here, WAY beyond
the breaking point! So we need to ask,
“Can we REALLY take our culture to over THERE?”. And of course, also keep in mind (see the Ralph
Waldo Emerson quotes in this paper), cultures can’t very effectively be
commanded “top down” style, to “go over there”, even if “over there” is within
the range of the “leash” here. Organic
or “natural” cultural evolution is best.
This is also called freedom!
Trying to surgically remove or “wall out” evil
entirely, or fighting “wars to end all wars”, are mistakes! Recall far above, my mangled sci-fi ideas
concerning the Morlocks v/s the Eloi, in that even if we COULD remove evil, it
could re-evolve or invade from elsewhere.
Now we will be pacified and helpless, not even understanding evil, let
alone being able to fight back against it.
The “wounded healer” must be able to understand (and articulate?) the
evil that brought him or her low, in order to heal most effectively, USING
those “evil” wounds! If
the wounds (or their sources) are removed or “walled off”, the healing may be
crippled. The movie “Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) may be relevant.
Now I want to introduce some metaphors about the "That
which does not kill us makes us stronger" quote from Friedrich
Nietzsche. Sure, it can be taken too
far. I won’t cripple myself, take (too
much) poison, or snort cocaine, in hope of making myself stronger. But “evil”, opposing forces, or difficulties
CAN make us stronger, for sure! In my
metaphors, keep in mind that what is good and what is bad, in the metaphors,
is, indeed, subjective.
Big, tall, rugged mountains are fun to climb (or
otherwise ascend), to put large telescopes onto, and to look at. Farmers don’t like them when looking for flat
land to easily raise crops on. But here,
let’s call them “good”. Now I’m too lazy
(here) to find citations for you, but I have read that the Himalayas are supremely
tall… Because they get rained on by
monsoons, in India! Rains cause erosion,
so this is counterintuitive. In reality,
the “evil rains” here do cause erosion, yes, but they partially relieve the
weight (mass) of the Tibetan Plateau.
Since the rains wear down the mountains, the masses of the mountains do
NOT bear down so much on the way-down-underlying, soft mantle of the Earth,
which therefore doesn’t slump too much.
The mountains can rise. Further
east, there is less rain, and the mountains (and the Tibetan Plateau) DO slump
down into the mantle. If you want tall
mountains, do NOT remove the “evil” rains that erode them!
Lumberjacks like big, tall trees that don’t topple
over. So do birds that nest in
them. Bunny rabbits and raccoons and others
like for at least some young trees to fall over, get covered by vines, and
cluttered with weeds and brambles, and become briar patches. Then, smaller animals will have room in which
to escape from larger predators! But
here, let’s call big, strong, tall trees “good”. Now did you know that in the “Biosphere II”
artificial biome… The Earth itself being “Biosphere
I”… The experiment revealed that some
species of trees grow weakly, spindly, and do NOT grow straight and tall… For lack of the “evil” strong gusts of
wind! Our bones and bodies weaken when
NOT challenged by gravity, we know, as well, especially if astronauts don’t get
enough exercise. So in some sense, we
may need “evil” challenges for similar reasons.
But please don’t deliberately “be evil” (“The
Google” used to tell us this, “don’t be evil”) so that good things can come
from it! I have no famous quotes about
this, but I think about the “Joker” in Batman movies, concerning this. Good can be pulled out of the ashes left
after evil things happen, but we don’t NEED deliberately inflicted evil for
this purpose. There’s no foreseeable future
shortage of evil. If humans all become
good, we’ll still presumably have disease, death, accidents, volcanoes,
earthquakes, storms, floods, and more. So
please don’t send us clouds, just so that we may find the silver linings. Just send some sterling silver!
A writer named Corrie ten Boom wrote about her (and
her sister Betsie’s) experiences in a WW II NAZI concentration camp; see “The
Hiding Place”. She wrote that they
were badly bothered by lice and fleas, but the presence of these parasites kept
the guards away, so the flea-pestered prisoners were less often abused by the
guards. So there’s yet another example
of unexpected benefits that can come from evils.
At a more-global level, there may have been some
social benefits from all of the obvious suffering caused by the NAZIs and WW
II. News and pictures finally came home
to the USA concerning the death camps, and Americans were shocked! Americans were swift to condemn NAZI
racism. But then Americans had to
confront their own racism against blacks.
Black blood and white blood (for transfusions) were kept separated during
WW II, even though doctors knew better.
American black soldiers came home and sometimes spoke out to try to
protect fellow blacks from abuse, thinking that their war hero (veteran) status
would protect them from “do-gooder derogation” and themselves getting
abused. Their veteran status didn’t help
them, sad to say. So finally, the USA
had to confront its hypocrisy about racism.
If you want to write time-traveler sci-fi about a
person who travelled back in time to kill Hitler, you might consider having
your hero decide NOT to do it, so that the timeline would stay undisturbed, and
American black people would still benefit from a faster demise of racism, this
way that it actually happened.
The more that we understand
evil, the better. This is ALMOST always true, with at least one
caveat! I strongly suspect that to
“ultimately” understand evil, we have to BE evil, and that’s not a good
idea! Consider this: Flounders (fish) at sea swim upright in their
youths (even since hatching from eggs), with an eyeball on each side of their
faces. In their teenage years, as they
look in the mirror, they are horrified to watch one eyeball slowly migrate from
one side of their face to the other! And
you thought teenage zits were bad!
So my questions for you, dear reader, are, what are the growing pains of a flounder like? And do you think that we can REALLY “ultimately”
understand that, without BEING flounders?
A last-listed-here sci-fi scenario considers, what
might happen with the “wounded healer” dynamic at broader or wider scales? Can one society (or an entire species of
intelligent beings) learn from their own sufferings from evil, and then
(without surgically or mechanistically excising their own evils and-or
knowledge of evil) take their “organic” or bottom-up, evolved anti-evil
learning, and their internally-constricted knowledge of evil, and go off and
help to advance less-evolved intelligent species? Help them overtly, or in secret?
In the science fiction (a 4-book series) of “Etza B. Happenin”, the above
scenario (in the “secretly” version) considers a future in which humans
“graduate” from their collectively self-chosen sufferings, and join the
GalConFed (Galactic Confederation) to help the GalConFed to reach out and
secretly help other less-advanced species.
See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088TTMLJ6?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1752877398&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin . And now
for full disclosure: “Etza B. Happenin” and I are the
one and the same.
I do believe that science fiction, just like
fiction in general, can help us as we wrestle with Big Questions.
Let’s please look for more methods for gathering accurate data on
tribalism and do-gooder derogation, and WHY they exist. Knowledge is almost always good! I expect little if any disagreement on
that… That’s almost “boilerplate”. Research papers almost always say these “we need
more research and knowledge” kinds of things.
Perhaps more controversially, I advocate that if we or “society” should
try to “fix” troubles caused by tribalism and by do-gooder derogation, then we
should try to do it “organically” or in a “bottom-up” fashion, while minimizing
coercion and punishment. Please use
persuasion far more so rather than coercion.
Persuasion works better in the long run.
And now I quit!
Back to main site at www.rocketslinger.com … Send comments or corrections to RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net please…
A Grab
Bag of Associated Links… The following list of links
weren’t referenced in the body of the paper above. They are main-topics-associated, sometimes
strongly, and sometimes weakly (or are associated with topics which I addressed
only tangentially). They’re included
here “just FYI” for readers who might be interested. Note that several of the below links include
“Cory Clark” as an author. She shows
that political tribalism also (sad to say) infects modern science as well as academia. This paper here is plenty long enough already,
so I’ll say no more about that. Other
than, see https://www.coryjclark.com/ .
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261138094_Justine_Effect_Punishment_of_the_Unduly_Self-Sacrificing_Cooperative_Individuals , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342514387_Altruism_does_not_always_lead_to_a_good_reputation_A_normative_explanation , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283020607_It_pays_to_be_nice_but_not_really_nice_Asymmetric_reputations_from_prosociality_across_7_countries , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331823894_Tribalism_is_Human_Nature , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337273058_Tribal_bias_from_the_wild_to_the_laboratory , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351736016_Biased_Science_Makes_Bad_Policy , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372746932_Use_It_and_Lose_It_Exerting_Scientific_Authority_for_Political_Ends_Undermines_Scientific_Authority , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360555426_Tribalism_is_a_double-edged_sword ,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393004328_Morally_Offensive_Scientific_Findings_Activate_Cognitive_Chicanery and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358504653_The_Road_Less_Travelled_Understanding_Adversaries_Is_Hard_but_Smarter_than_Ignoring_Them
References
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