My Problem?

I see good and evil. The good is beautiful, the evil ugly. (One knows it when one sees it?) Good is not the problem of course, but evil and the people that do it. A friend who doesn’t have this problem finds our whole species a sometimes entertaining mistake. But for me, seeing evil makes me angry and unavoidably sad. We humans are all deeply interconnected, in time and space with each other, the earth and all creation. To not see this is dumb. The human race could be a wonderful thing if there weren’t so many people, especially powerful people, doing dumb things.

Not all people doing dumb things are evil. They may simply be misguided, not aware of their own self-interest.

The evil ones are the rich and powerful who intentionally do harm to others as they seek what they mistakenly see as their self interest. They are selfish and dumb. As humankind has “conquered the world,” the powerful have monopolized the means of production of everything, including the way many of their victims think. That our political systems have bent to the rich and powerful makes evil – and it’s hard to avoid saying this – seem triumphant. As a boomer in his 8th decade – one who dreamed of changing the world, making it beautiful – this is deeply disappointing. This is my problem. And as I see it, also the problem of the American version of constitutional democracy left us by those Confounding Fathers.

Trump Agonistics

 "They say and do not." But the kingdom of God is not in word, but in Power. He talketh of prayer, of repentance, of faith, and of the new birth; but he knows but only to talk of them. I have been in his family, and have observed him both at home and abroad; and I know what I say of him is the truth. His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savour. There is there neither prayer nor sign of repentance for sin; yea, the brute in his kind serves God far better than he. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion, to all that know him; it can hardly have a good word in all that end of the town where he dwells, through him. Thus say the common people that know him, A saint abroad, and a devil at home. His poor family finds it so; he is such a churl, such a railer at and so unreasonable with his servants, that they neither know how to do for or speak to him. Men that have any dealings with him say it is better to deal with a Turk than with him; for fairer dealing they shall have at their hands. This Talkative (if it be possible) will go beyond them, defraud, beguile, and overreach them. Besides, he brings up his sons to follow his steps; and if he findeth in any of them a foolish timorousness, (for so he calls the first appearance of a tender conscience,) he calls them fools and blockheads, and by no means will employ them in much, or speak to their commendations before others. For my part, I am of opinion, that he has, by his wicked life, caused many to stumble and fall; and will be, if God prevent not, the ruin of many more.... Paul calleth some men, yea, and those great talkers, too, sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress

 

Came across this while reading Bunyan. Not sure how I got into it but it's difficult to put down. The Pilgrims Progress is deep at the source of the evangelical stream of Christianity. Bunyan eschews human law, secular morality and government in favor of the Bible as written. He urges ignoring the visible in favor of the invisible, i.e., the Biblical God. Trump finds his support base among those immersed in this Pilgrim stream. And he's all Talkative.

Reflections on Annaka Harris' "Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind"

Annaka Harris' fascinating book makes the case that consciousness may be an inherent property of all matter and for the possibility of modern theories of panpsychism.  However, she suggests that the concept of the self is an illusion and cannot define consciousness.  Consciousness may well be — I believe is — a fundamental property of the universe.  But I do not believe that the concept of the self is an illusion.  Rather the self is a construct arising from the complex information processing in our brain that allows experiencing.  Harris follows Thomas Nagel in defining consciousness as "being like something," i.e. having subjective experiences.  But seems to me that there can be no “being like something“ without a self to be like.  (A rock has no self.)  Consciousness may be everywhere and in everything but to become an experience, it needs language — to tell its story — and gives birth to culture.  Culture is perhaps the most powerful result of consciousness.  Culture includes science, politics and social ordering and is the basis of civilization.   

Harris also discusses the "combination problem" of panpsychism raised by David Chalmers.  (How could the many little bits of consciousnesses attached to everything come together to form one consciousness like ours?)  But there is no combination problem in a fundamental approach to panpsychism because consciousness is simply a potential or tag-along property of matter, perhaps available to or forming a higher level self.  (Might a star — possessing vast complexity — have an experience of self, of being a star?)  When connected to processing capable of forming a self, that bit of consciousness “pinches off” from the sea of consciousness (and perhaps from a higher order of complexity).  (See my The Cosmic Design and the Designer.) 

No Equivalency

In the aftermath of January 6, most Americans have condemned the violence perpetrated by the insurrectionists in our nation’s capital. Some 57% even blame Trump. But many white Americans seem to feel uneasy about taking a stand against seditious violence by white extremists without also throwing in the violence we saw last year in the events surrounding Black Lives Matter protests and during Trump’s 2017 inauguration. So these conflicted whites must add that they oppose all violence to achieve political ends.

Now, there was violence during the Trump inaugural, in the aftermath of police killings of unarmed Blacks and during the events prompted by Trump’s waving a bible in front of St. John's Episcopal Church on June 1, 2020. Some of the worst was committed by white anti-fascists. The violence during the mostly peaceful protests of police behavior – especially burning down a Minneapolis police station – served no useful purpose and hurt communities that still deserve security. (Two of the four indicted in August for the Minneapolis incident are white.) But the rage expressed by the Black Lives Matter protests must be understood as the pent up reaction to white violence directed at Blacks going back to the days of lynching and often perpetrated or condoned by public officials and police. One can say violence out of even righteous rage is wrong. But it is not in the same category as what happened last week.

There is no equivalency – moral or legal – between any recent past incidents of protest violence and that carried out at the request of the President of the United States against the US Congress. Just saying this should make it clear. After railing against “criminals” including members of Congress, other Republicans, the press and social media that block his dog-whistle tweets – and threatening the Vice President to “do the right thing” – the President of the United States sent white thugs, extremists and fanatics to intimidate the US Congress through what Rudy Giuliani had just called a “trial by combat.”  And the white crowd that invaded the Capital targeted the very government that provides them, more than others, their race privilege and economic support.  

Yes, political violence in a democracy is always wrong. But there is no way that what happened on January 6 is anything less than treason and the attempted overthrow of the US Constitution. That is in a class by itself and needs to be understood as such without the white caveats.

Can Liberal Democracy Survive?

As authoritarian, repressive and nationalistic political leaders and parties proliferate and the Western democracies waver in the face of the globalization and climate change, it’s reasonable to ask if liberal democracy can survive. Indeed, globalization and its discontents – diminished prospects, resentment, and blame casting – have become a potent political force undermining mutual tolerance, optimism and willingness to compromise without which democracy falters. The non-democratic regimes – China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea – see blood in the water and seek to hasten the decline. Others – Hungary, Poland, Turkey – sense the winds and seek to entrench themselves in power through superficially democratic means.

Liberal democracy: an open society with constitutional government based on popular consent, allocation of political power through multi-party elections, separation of powers, rule of law, market economy with private property, and equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedom for all regardless of belief, self-identity, race, religion, gender or ethnicity.

Liberal democracy and evolution: Darwinian evolution works through adaption of species to their environment through natural selection, that is, through random mutations, some of which allow individual organisms to reproduce more successfully than others. In this way, a species may evolve over time into something new. Some fail to survive because of environmental changes too rapid to allow time for successful mutations to arise – the Cretaceous impact that wiped out the dinosaurs – or because they become too tied to an environment which then disappears – as happening to lemur species in Madagascar as rain forests fall victim to man.

Although we are social creatures, human nature is highly individualistic. We strive as individuals to survive and thrive in our environment. A liberal democratic society can be thought of as a species that permits the fullest range of random “mutations” as unique individuals are allowed to live and innovate as their individual nature and capabilities allow. Such a society is more likely to successfully meet the challenges of its environment and thrive than one which seeks to limit or control individual variability. Liberal democracy confers evolutionary advantage.

Globalization is an ideology: For decades, liberal democracy has been in the hands of capitalist, rent-seeking elites pushing their self-serving ideology of supra-national, borderless free trade. In the U.S., this has been at the expense of the working class and increased inequality. Those left behind by globalization make up the natural breeding ground of support for the populist, nativist politics used by rightist parties seeking to entrench themselves in power through subverting democratic practices.

But there is nothing sacrosanct about globalization. There is no reason why a polity could not decide to place limits on international capitalism within its borders. It might well value policies in support of domestic labor and domestic production even if it led to higher prices. These could be offset through creation of better paid union jobs, addressing economic inequality with higher minimum wages and perhaps guaranteed minimum incomes, higher taxes on the wealthy and big corporations and rebuilding industry and extending infrastructure green.

Building it back better: Liberal democracy’s evolutionary advantage lies in openness to random change, i.e. economic, technological, cultural and social innovation. To reach its potential, innovation needs enabling infrastructure and a population with full access to public primary and secondary education and opportunities for university and technical and vocational training. It requires mass communication and transport systems available everywhere and at every level. In the U.S., government played a large role here through providing postal services, building roads and supporting rail systems. These could be brought into the 21^st Century by bringing free broadband Internet to every home, small business, library and school. Efficient mass transport networks in cities and through small towns and rural areas would allow decentralization of economic activity without requiring more cars. The Postal Service – with its presence everywhere – provides outlets for delivering not only mail and goods at reasonable cost but also direct government services for individuals and businesses. Government spending to connect and empower small businesses and green industry and innovators would be productive even if it increased debt.

Liberal democracy has considerable advantages over control systems. If the human species – facing our self-created singularity – has a future, it will be in the hands of something like liberal democracy. Survival demands the fullest range of mutation and adaption of which humans are capable. This can be a future in which the United States plays a leading role. Our democracy can fail only at our hands.

Language, Hunting and Bezos

Language makes us human and different from all other of earth's creatures. With it, we can think, plan and act. Other animals communicate with each other through various means (bees do it through dance). But only we have words and grammars, with which we can great structures of meaning. With language comes society, culture, science, technology, and history.

But from whence comes language? Perhaps from group hunting. Social carnivores such as wolves and lions do not have language but still coordinate hunting. Between early learning – cubs practicing innate skills and watching adults – and basic vocalizations, they can surround prey and attack in unison. Some whales coordinate their approach to circle their prey and drive them into a concentration that allows a dense feeding ball. But these creatures come with their weapons built in, fangs, teeth and claws or huge mouths.

Primitive humans did not have built-in weapons or thick hides. Out on the savanna, they were easy prey for other carnivores and would be poor hunters against anything big enough to satisfy the group’s hunger. They needed to make artificial weapons and, working together, use them to kill their prey.

At some point in human evolution, some series of chance mutations increased the brain’s capacity to process and organize information sufficiently enough to move beyond simple grunts and other calls towards a structured use of vocalizations. This would have provided a huge evolutionary advantage. Humans could begin to coordinate more elaborate approaches to prey animals.

Language – as it became more elaborate – would serve many other purposes, such as passing on learning about making weapons and which plants were good to eat and where to find them. But it may have been most useful at first in hunting. Homo sapiens even hunted the huge mammoths into extinction. The first leaders in human society may have been those most capable of using language to coordinate hunting.

Language allows the possibility of free-flowing thought. With words and grammar, individuals can recall the past, examine the present, probe accumulated human experience, and imagine a future to be pursued to advantage. Throughout human history, those that do this best made the best “hunters” and captured the biggest “prey.” They drove human development by finding new ways to exploit others and the found environment. As society superseded family, they also thought of monopolizing what they “captured” to turn temporary advantage into permanent advantage. Great war leaders might seek to become kings, great inventors owners of ever expanding conglomerates. Jeff Bezos seeks to own the core exchange mechanism of 21^st Century economy.

The drive to seek and maintain profit has provided a positive dynamic in human civilization. We cannot and should not seek to prevent the hunters from seeking new prey. Bezos and Amazon clearly show the advantages of the e-approach to economic exchange and it has become very useful during the current COVID-19 crisis. Bezos has even prodded old line hunters like Walmart into more effective ways. But allowing the best hunters free reign only works for the group when they share the meat.

A number of “tech giants” have now become the focus of attention for their efforts to monopolize their hunting style and for using it mostly for their own gain. It is reasonable for the rest of us – who also do our part to maintain the social and economic order – to look to limiting their ability to seek only self-enrichment. This doesn’t mean doing away with successful hunters – even if we could – but helping them share better through truly progressive taxation, less exploitative practices and perhaps breaking up their enterprises to create room for more hunters.

The Profit Motive

There can be no doubt that the profit motive provides a positive dynamic in human society. It is essentially the drive for Darwinian survival expressed in the economic realm. One can argue that the tremendous global changes brought about in the past few centuries have not been unambiguously good for us and the planet. But it’s also true that the profit motive has lifted human life to an entirely different plane. It provides for the sustenance and comfort of billions and has allowed mankind to reach for the stars. It also seems that there is not a clearly better way to run an economy. Inventors, makers and sellers trying to get buyers to pass them money for whatever it is that they are offering does, in theory and largely in practice, effectively and rationally organize economic exchanges. It seems much more likely that free markets of willing sellers and buyers works better than any one actor or group of actors trying to mandate or direct such exchanges.

But.

Darwinian adaptation is blind. It does not automatically lead to the greatest good for the greatest number. It aims instead at the continued viability and growth of the individual organism. The other members of the species or the ecological community may find themselves not much advantaged by the successful organism and may in fact be harmed or out-competed. The profit motive in human society operates in the same way and does not, by itself, work towards the greatest good for the greatest number. Over time, markets become encrusted with the Darwinian “winners” whatever else has happened to the others sharing the economy. Inequalities will increase and society will move ever further from distributive justice. (According to John Rawls, a just society is one in which we would be satisfied being born into if we did not know where in that society we would appear.)

Pure markets – where the profit-seeking winners take all – are rarely truly free. More to the point, no innovator or entrepreneur has created all the inputs and structures that make his or her business possible. Every individual “creation” of something profitable rests on the social, cultural, political, economic and built capital that was already there. So it seems fair to place some requirements and limits on successful enterprises and even certain incentives to nudge enterprises towards adding to social value as well as their own.

Some examples:

1. Progressive income taxes on individual and corporate wealth and income (from whatever source).

2. Inheritance taxes on every generation and similar turnover.

3. Various forms of government action to tilt income distribution back towards even such as livable minimum wage and unemployment assistance levels, some form of universal health care, cash payments to children born to parents below a certain income level, high quality and affordable primary and secondary education and vocational training and/or university.

4. Occasional and limited government actions and policies to avoid or ameliorate the broad social and economic impacts of economic disturbances.

5. Occasional, limited and restricted government support to promising and socially or economically beneficial technologies or enterprises.

None of this would entail abandoning the profit motive (or capitalism) but would instead go in the direction of perfecting its results.