Determinism and Reification: The Twin Pillars of
the Amoral Society
G. Gutenschwager, PhD [1]
Ο δρόμος
προς την αρετή ήταν δύσβατος για τον Ηρακλή
Τhe road to virtue was long and difficult for Hercules
Abstract
The history ethics is a troubled one. It is
often plagued by the twin pillars of determinism, and reification.
The first is the belief that all things in the universe, both social and
physical are determined by the laws of God and/or nature and that humans merely
discover these laws. The second refers to
the tendency for human beings to forget the subjective human
origins of all thoughts, beliefs, theories, etc. and to treat them as if they
were objective ‘things’ (res) that then have control over all those
entities, including humans, to which they refer. For thousands of years ruling
systems of thought have based themselves on these deceptive practices. This has
simplified the task of rulers and others who have benefited from these beliefs,
as it has relieved them of any personal moral responsibility for their thoughts
and actions. But it has also served the common people who, along with the
rulers, were relieved from the onerous process of constantly examining their
ontological beliefs, this being especially true if the actual systems of control
in society seemed to leave little opportunity to alter the actual circumstances
of life in any case. The current situation is particularly depressing, given
the widespread absence of any moral awareness in science, especially economic
science, during the widespread crisis gripping the Western world, especially
destructive to the young people who appear to have so little hope for their
future.
What is an
amoral society?
By amoral (value-free) society we mean a society
of people who have no moral sense and who cannot, or do not want to recognize
the difference between good and evil and who may not even be able
to recognize this difference, as an expression of sociopathology. It is a
society of people who are not aware and do not care if they do evil to their
fellow humans or to the environment in which they live. Essentially it is a
society without the emotional and ethical values and moral institutions that
characterize human existence and has come to distinguish humans as a species.
Today's amoral society is the result of many years of war by the economy
against human society (Polanyi 2001). The economy has an overwhelming dominance
in today's society. Given the basic premise that only money matters to humans,
along with the implementation of the ‘free market’ and its infinite growth
ideology, almost all human concepts have now been replaced by commercial values,
as we shall see below.
How has the amoral society come into being?
The how and why we live in an amoral society
today is a long and complicated story. One could say that it started from the
moment when humans acquired private property along with the invention of
agriculture and the domestication of animals, a process that began roughly
10,000 years ago. At that time people began leaving the small communities where
they, themselves, had created a system of social control and organization
following hundreds of thousands of years of biological and anthropological
evolution. In those prehistoric communities social organization was based on
the recognition of the dependence of
each person on the others in the group, as well as on nature, understood
as necessary for survival. This recognition was (and is) expressed as a
sense of morality, something that unfortunately has been slowly eroded as a
result of the increasing size of the population and inevitable increasing
complexity of society, accompanied by an increase in anonymity. In addition to
this, the rise of private property gave a different ethos to society generally
(Engels 2010 [1884]). Riane Eisler (1987) has also suggested that invasions by
male dominated herders into the early agricultural societies of ‘Old Europe’
and the Middle East destroyed the egalitarian social order that had apparently
survived the transformation from the earlier hunter and gathering societies
that had preceded them. She cites Minoan Cretan society as the best example of
these still egalitarian forms, forms which were gradually eroded by the
invasions of the Mycenaeans, with the volcanic eruption and tidal wave on the
island on Santorini also apparently playing a role. The philosopher Aristotle tried to address
this problem when he wrote about 'Ethics' and 'Politics'. At same time, art,
especially theater, helped the ancient Greeks to understand the importance of
ethical and cultural dilemmas, which demonstrates that the issue was still part
of the larger social discussion at that time.
The role of religion in the evolution of moral
consciousness
The
dialectical spirit of philosophy and art in ancient Greece appears to have been
lost with the rise of monotheistic religion. That is, the church gave its own
interpretation of morality, albeit in a very dogmatic way, with a code that has
been important, at least for those, either within or outside the church, who
have been guided by it. Under the new doctrine of religion people were
asked to believe that moral rules come from extraterrestrial sources and that
they should follow them without debate, without doubt: "Blessed are those
who have not seen and yet have believed". At the same time, the price of
sin, i.e., eternal damnation, was a heavy burden for the poor human being.
Perhaps for this reason confession was added in order to ease this burden. The
system of religious moral principles was quite good for its time and even for
today, for that matter, if and whenever people actually adhere to it.
Unfortunately, however, the church did not recognize, and to a large degree
prevented the development of human knowledge, especially with regard to nature,
but also concerning the organization of society, and along with that the
evolution of moral needs. But, perhaps more important is the fact that moral
consciousness and discipline are diminished when humans lose the sense that
they are participating in the creation of the system of controls over
their personal and collective or social life.
As a perhaps unintended consequence of this highly
centralized definition of morality through organized religion was from time to
time the problem of corruption, a problem that is likely to occur whenever
there is a lack of democracy in the social hierarchy and generally when
excessive power is exerted over society, even in the name of religion. This
corruption in the Church was sufficiently pronounced in the early 16th
century, that it produced a movement for reform, with the resulting Lutheran
schism and the birth of Protestantism throughout northern Europe. Among the
Protestants, morality was (and is) a matter between the individual and his or
her God, not unlike the ancient Gnostics, before Paul, together with the
leaders of the Eastern Roman Empire, organized the church hierarchy for better
control of the populace (Koutoulas 1997).
This direct relationship between humans and
their God required a different moral system, not one based on honor and shame
with its necessary social monitoring. It required a more esoteric sense of good
and evil. It required a sense of guilt. The feeling of guilt must be
embedded in early childhood during the first years of socialization, so that it
will remain forever in the subconscious and last throughout one’s life. It is for this reason, plus the fact that the
environment in the North is so much more unforgiving, that individual
discipline appears to be very important in northern Europe. Unfortunately, however, when the burden of
guilt becomes unbearable, people have a tendency to unload it onto anyone else
they can, both near and far, a practice that is often accompanied by the hope
that they themselves would then appear more righteous. Also, this often results
in a tendency to authoritarianism and to a strong need to seek revenge for any
breach in the rules by others, or even oneself, for that matter, a problem that
apparently irritated Nietzsche all of his life! On the other hand, in such
circumstances people are much more willing to trust their fellow human beings,
something which promotes more coherence and cooperation in large-scale
societies. For this reason the subsequent evolution of religious morality was
somewhat different in the North, although the rise of amoral science would,
along with its quantitative siblings, the monetary ethos and the belief in
infinite economic growth, ultimately produce some of the same negative effects
as in the South.
What are the findings of anthropology?
It
appears from the work of anthropology that the emotional instinct of morality
has become genetically embedded in humans and the higher apes who live in
groups with a consciousness that their survival depends on that group (Hauser
2006, Boehm 2012). On a practical level, moral control in small groups depends
upon the almost complete knowledge that everyone has concerning the behavior of
others within the group, along with the pressure that can be exercised by the
group on the delinquent person, for example, interruption of communication with
the offender (shunning), or expulsion from the group, or, in extreme cases such
as a murder, their execution. These techniques have been used successfully, for
example, in relation to common problems such as stealing and freeloading, as a
necessary means of maintaining the integrity of the group.
As mentioned above, the lack of participation
that characterized the social world after the invention of agriculture and
the domestication animals, along with the resulting growth of population,
reduced individual involvement in social control. Religion transferred this
control to a metaphysical level, with the hierarchy of the church as the author
and enforcer of the rules. That is, moral consciousness remained, but decisions
about what is moral versus immoral behavior was taken from the collective hands
of the people directly involved.
Meanwhile, one of most serious, though apparently somewhat rare, moral problems
that the hunters and gatherers in small communities had (and have) to deal with
are the tyrants, the powerful ‘alpha males’, who sought to intimidate and
control their fellow humans (Boehm 2012). These types appear to be increasingly
common in the secondary schools of today’s crisis-ridden society, where they
are labeled with the term 'bullies'. This is something that, since even before
the ancient Romans up to and including the present day, characterizes only
certain types of men. With the development of agriculture, the acquisition of
private property and the growing inequality among people, the number of bullies
began to increase, with the inevitable result that they, themselves, would designate
what was good and bad. The hunters and gatherers had the means to control these
types, typically by organizing the more egalitarian majority in order to rein
in the bullies. Over the last 8000 years, however, this form of bullying
behavior has been extended to a larger and larger scale, up to and including
the international level, where it has been transformed into imperialism. This
anthropologically recent, though still sufficiently lengthy history of bullying
has given the impression that predatory aggression is innate in man, when in
fact it may for the most part be an (unintended?) consequence of a new
environment created by him. Here, again,
participation by the common people in creating the social order is absent, in
spite of the myth of participatory democracy that is propagated from time to
time. Naturally, in this case the sense of morality is even more diluted, even while the people themselves continue to be dependent on one another!
As a result of this recent history there is now
a tradition in the West that wants us to believe that all humans, especially
men, are characterized by what Nietzsche has called the "Will to Power”.
This is something that Marshall Sahlins (2008), in his book, The Western
Illusion of Human Nature, suggests is a tradition that leads us to believe
that bullies, tyrants, oligarchs, dictators, etc., should be regarded as
something natural, something inherent in our biology. Again, according to
Sahlins, this illusion has been expressed by many philosophers and historians
including Thucydides, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and many others, as well as by
many positivist social scientists. If, however, we consider this concept of
"Will to Power" in the context of the hierarchy of needs theorized by
Abraham Maslow (1970) -- a conceptual framework unavailable to Nietzsche during
his time -- it might be more appropriate to call it the 'Will to
Self-Actualization', i.e., the need to become everything one is capable of
becoming from perfect mother or father, to poet, athlete, musician, carpenter,
or whatever. Thus we would be able to appreciate that self-actualization in the
form of a ‘will to power’ characterizes only a few people, especially if we
emphasize the difference between predatory and defensive aggression (Peterson
and Shane 2004). Indeed, otherwise it would not be so easy for tyrants to seize
power. The will to power is, therefore,
apparently rare and is to be found mainly in individuals who suffer from
psychological disorders. Most people find self-fulfillment in entirely
different ways and not through a need to dominate their fellow humans. This
‘naturalizing’ of bullying, in other words, serves more as propaganda than as
science, much as (Social) Darwinism has served the interests of the free market
system.
Within this historical context Nietzsche (2003
[1913]) named the original system of social control in small communities, the morality
of outcomes (of actions), the consequences of which were almost
always evident in these societies. The Protestant control system using guilt he
labeled the morality of intentions, something more suitable in a larger
society where the effects of actions are not so obvious. However, with the
evolution of mass society we can also now see the need for a morality of
unintended consequences. That is, it is not enough to have and to carry out
good intentions, something that Aristotle had also proposed, but we must
observe and judge all the consequences of our actions. As an obligation, this
is nearly impossible because of the complexity of mass society and the
difficulty of knowing all the consequences of our actions, to say nothing about
the difficulty of individuals in social systems controlled by bullies to enjoy
any kind of freedom even to judge their deeds, let alone control them. Here science,
especially social science could and should play an important role in revealing
these unintended consequences. The frustration and ultimately nihilism of
Nietzsche, particularly in relation to the philosophers, was based at least in
part, on the inability of a mechanistic and deterministic science during his
time (and ours) to fulfill this obligation.
Science, in order to play a significant role in the study and evolution
of morality, would need to recognize the socio-political theater, the
sociodrama (Burke 1959, 1965, 1968a, 1968b,1969a, 1969b, 1973), (Duncan 1968,
1969), (Lentricchia 1983), (Rueckert 1969), which is an equally important
essence of human reality, along with the various mechanistic phases that
are observed from time to time.
What role has the culture of science played in
creating the amoral society?
The problem is that science and ethics are
residents of two completely different worlds, as C.P. Snow (2013 [1959]) argued
more than fifty years ago. Science is based upon the five known senses. Thus it
ignores and often trivializes the moral sense as an obstacle to proper
(rational) thinking, necessary for science. Morality and emotions belong to our
biological past and thus are to be found more in the human subconscious. Ironically,
however, emotions and ethics as phenomena are well known to business and
political leaders who use them to implant in individuals the thoughts and
actions needed to keep them in power. Here they use art, especially the
narrative and the theater where heroes and villains symbolize appropriate
versus inappropriate thoughts and behaviors. The irony is that within the
sociodrama, which is an essential dimension of social life, science becomes an
excellent device for the ruling
class because it carries great authority and great respect -- if a scientist,
who is the hero of the current sociodrama, says it, then it must be true!
The current phase of this story starts from the
time that science began to replace religion as a source of genuine knowledge.
This was an intellectual and moral revolution that was long and
painful. Its most famous early victims were Galileo and Giordano Bruno, who
gave his life for his faith, (not to mention Hypatia and other ‘pagan’ victims
a thousand years earlier). One result of this conflict between science and
religion has been that science, until now at least, has been indifferent to the
broader philosophical framework of ancient Greek science and has left
its spiritual and emotional dimensions to the increasingly diminishing influence
of religion and to otherwise 'peripheral' academic philosophers. Science, since
that time, has been required to be ‘value-free’, that is, free from (and not
'contaminated' by) moral concerns. It has had to be objective and rational,
investigating the laws of nature from a location outside that
nature (and outside of society). As an example of the effect of such
attitudes we offer the thoughts of J. Robert Oppenheimer one of the scientists
who helped create the atomic bomb:
When
you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue
about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technological success.
That’s the way it was with the atomic bomb (Jacobs 2014),
and,
We didn’t know
beans about the military situation in Japan. We didn’t know whether they could
be caused to surrender by other means or whether the invasion was inevitable
(U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1954)
Gar Alperovitz (1994), among many others, has
documented in great detail the knowledge about what was going on at that time,
for anyone of Oppenheimer’s status who might have been interested!
Apart from its rational but necessarily amoral
methodology, most scientists believe in the deterministic approach of
Newton and Descartes (and, therefore, of Adam Smith, of course). Determinism is
the belief that all events in the universe are determined by 'natural' laws
that apply everywhere and at all times. Newton believed that these laws came
from God, while many, if not most, scientists today do not give much importance
to religion or to philosophy, and simply believe that these laws are endogenous
in the universe and that scientists are only discovering them. From this
standpoint there are two advantages for the scientists. First, this gives more
authority to these laws and, secondly, it exempts scientists from any sense of
moral responsibility for what they say and do as scientists: if these laws come
from God or from nature, the scientist is merely an intermediary, a messenger,
not their creator.
This
deterministic approach appears to be in conflict with the dialectical approach
of Heraclitus, which would argue that there are no ecumenical laws in the
universe, because the universe is constantly changing due to the conflict among
its various elements: "War [conflict] is the father of everything,"
as he proclaimed, or "thesis - antithesis - synthesis", as Hegel
said. Marx, in his doctoral thesis, examined the opposition between determinism
and the dialectic, as it was expressed in the conflict of ideas between
Democritus and Epicurus. The latter supported the dialectic, as did Marx, of
course.
In
addition, this may have something to do with a basic human psychological
tendency: most people prefer a more
deterministic world rather than a more relativistic one. They do not want to
have to think all the time about whether their perceived reality is true or
not, or whether it works properly or not, a weakness that postmodernism has
much dwelt upon, especially in its nihilistic mode. Meanwhile, this
deterministic bias appears to include most scientists, as described by Thomas
Kuhn (1970) in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
People do not often seek to change their basic ontological beliefs, because
this would require that they dig into their subconscious, something very
arduous for most people. Heraclitus’ maxim that everything flows and changes,
remains just that, a saying. Most people prefer to forget Heraclitus’ essential
meaning, which is why they submit themselves to bullies so often. As Nietzsche
said, these people “. . . in their desire for truth . . . prefer a handful of
certainty over a whole cartful of beautiful possibilities”!
On the
other hand humanists and phenomenological social scientists believe that humans
and the social reality that surrounds them are socially constructed and thus
have both a subjective and an objective aspect (Gutenschwager 2004). The
subjective aspect includes the thoughts, theories, images, beliefs, along with
the ethical principles, etc., that humans, both individually and collectively
have about reality. The objective aspect includes what actually exists in the
environment, using whatever means can be used by science or others to observe
and measure it. Positivist science does not recognize to any great extent the
subjective dimension; or rather it tries to neutralize it in the interest of
rational and value-free (amoral) objectivity. Thus, it has created a way of
thinking, a philosophy that avoids the dilemma about the role of humans and
their morality in the construction of the social world. It is a philosophy that
allows positivist social scientists, in particular, to create the world in
their own image, so to speak.
This
also brings up the abiding problem of reification, or the tendency
of people to forget the human origin of all the ideas, theories,
concepts, and beliefs that they have about the natural and social universe.
The word 'reification' has roots in the Latin word 'res' (thing), and
it is the process of taking a human idea, a thought, an abstract concept, and converting
it into an objective ‘thing’, outside and for the most part above and beyond
human involvement. The phenomenon that often accompanies this illusion, of
course, is then to allow this ‘thing’ to control one’s life as if it were an
immutable law of nature or of God. All of this is irrespective of any evidence
that might be accumulated to prove the truth of the ‘thing’ within the
context of one’s belief system or paradigm, as described by Thomas Kuhn in
his book. This is something that is especially troublesome in the social world
when reified scientific ideas are implemented, with their too often unintended
consequences.
Thus,
some biologists, and many others, for example, believe that the vast majority
of what humans believe and do, including egoism and aggressiveness, etc., is
inherent and genetically determined, i.e., is the product of the ‘survival of
the fittest’. This term has been mistakenly interpreted and used by Social
Darwinists, in particular, in order to legitimize the behavior of bullies. They
have, deliberately, it would appear, distorted the meaning of the English word
'fit'. This word can mean 'good physical condition', though not necessarily
'large and powerful'. But it can also
mean 'appropriate or suitable'. Darwin,
of course, would have implied the second meaning, i.e., if an organism were
compatible or suitable in a changing environment it would survive, regardless
of its strength, size or what have you (e.g., the dinosaurs).
On the
other hand, positivist social scientists, including mainstream economists,
believe (as do physicists for nature) that the objective (social) reality is a
(Newtonian) mechanism. Thus in both the Darwinian and Newtonian framework human
intention plays no important role. What would be the point of moral
consciousness in a deterministic (social) universe? Humans, including
political leaders, and especially the powerful bullies among them, along with
most scientists in their work would appear to have no need for morality. In fact, under this deterministic system of
belief, they could not take any moral responsibility for what they do and
think, in any case!
What role has the culture of economics played in creating the amoral
society?
The next
step in the evolution of science was the attempt by Adam Smith in his book, The Wealth if Nations, as well as other
positivist social scientists and philosophers in the later part of the 18th
and throughout the 19th and 20th century to bring the scientific revolution to
the social sciences by using the same principles as those used in the natural
sciences. Their purpose was to confer the same authority on the social sciences
that has been enjoyed by the natural sciences (with the same status and
compensation, of course). Thus they have viewed society within the same
mechanistic framework that physicists have viewed nature, without asking
whether the consciousness that characterizes human beings would make any
qualitative difference in the organization of society in relation to the
organization of nature.
In spite
this mechanistic view, Adam Smith and his followers still felt the need to
script, theoretically at least, some kind of consciousness in humans and some
kind of explanatory model that would incorporate the obvious appearance of
social organization. During the time of Smith the socioeconomic order was in
the process of transforming from feudalism into mercantilism and industrial
capitalism, a change he, himself, supported, of course. In this context Smith
proposed rationalism (along with an implicit greediness) as the mode of
consciousness, and for social cohesion, the mathematics of physics. Physics
included no form of consciousness (at least not then), which forced Smith to
formulate additional dimensions for ‘economic man’. Hence, he turned to
Democritus for the idea of individualism, i.e., the atom, as used by Newton and
Descartes in their deterministic physics.
In this
context Smith defined individual consciousness and behavior as rationalism,
complemented by the idea of motivation, which he defined as a search for
personal satisfaction. All of this was fine up to this point, but how would he
measure these concepts: science requires quantitative data. It will not
surprise anyone if we say that he found money to be the perfect symbol
of satisfaction. It is absolutely
quantitative, everyone seems to want it, and most people believe that it will
bring great satisfaction and happiness. This may be partly true, but only along
with the ‘golden (not necessarily mathematical) mean’ of Aristotle, something
within the ancient philosophical tradition largely overlooked by most
scientists, for reasons explained above. Also completely ignored here are the
thoughts of Epicurean and all other spiritual philosophies that give emphasis
to the non-materialistic dimensions of human satisfaction and happiness,
once basic survival needs have been met, of course.
Meanwhile,
in order to fulfill one’s needs for satisfaction and happiness in the social
world of the free market, where everyone else is doing the same thing,
one has to be predatory, cunning, and generally amoral, like everyone
else. Here is a very serious problem. While Smith called his new system
the ‘free market’ so that people would believe that they were, indeed, free,
they were, and are in truth, enslaved in a new form of thinking and behavior,
that of predatory individualism within an amoral society. Even worse,
over time, as the oligarchic and plutocratic system evolved, it is the powerful
and wealthy bullies who actually define the living conditions of the people,
who then must either succumb to them or die of hunger! It would appear that the
only real freedom modern 'rational' humans have is the freedom from moral
constraints!
The
self-assigned role of Adam Smith was to transfer power to a new ruling class,
from the church and the landed nobility in a largely rural society to the merchants
and industrialists in an emerging urban society. This was the well-known
transformation from a feudalist to a mercantilist and then a capitalist
society, something that had begun many years before during the Renaissance in
Italy. This transformation was also accompanied by a transfer of intellectual
authority from religion to science, without which the economic transformation,
itself, could not have transpired, given the importance of technology to
economic growth.
Unfortunately
however, Smith’s ideology and theory were built on only half truths,
Unfortunately because his ontological assumptions have not been reexamined
since they were put forth more than 200 years ago, given the absence of any
philosophical dimension to economic science. His truths are well known, for
example: a) investing surplus rather than (conspicuously) consuming it brings
development; b) science and technology are indispensible to growth because of
their ability to increase productivity; c) economic development improves material well
being. But his untruths are equally significant: a) unlimited economic growth
is not possible because of the tendency to over-accumulate capital (as we see
today), and because of the damage it does to the physical environment, to say
nothing of the people; b) ever increasing acquisition of material possessions
does not ultimately produce happiness, as we now see in our alienated consumer
society; c) ever increasing personal wealth does not engender respect, but
rather envy and a sense of injustice; d) the improvement in material well being
is not universal but is rather acquired at the expense of the many for the
benefit of the few; e) individualism and self interest do not produce the best
overall system, in spite of elegant mathematical proofs to the contrary;
finally, f) the (unexamined) traditional moral values of economics are not very
constructive, consisting of greed, envy and fear, based as they are on
predatory individualism.
While
this system did succeed in liberating people from the former feudal system of
serfdom, they are now trapped in a new kind of slavery, chasing after money and
goods at the expense of all other human moral and spiritual values. Of course
there has been enormous technological progress over the past 200 years, a
progress enjoyed by the people of the first world, though, unfortunately, too
often at the expense of those in the third world, to say nothing of the natural
environment. And for a while the cornucopia of consumer goods coming from
predatory individualism seemed to deserve the sacrifice of other values. Now,
however, that the super-cunning bankers and brokers reveal, as they have done
so many times in the past, the true face of the ‘free market’, people are
becoming increasingly disappointed, without any idea of where to look for new
inspiration.
Indeed,
as Capra (1982) has so aptly illustrated, we are now at a turning point where
we must examine our ontological assumptions and begin to search for a new
socio-economic system -- a very difficult thing! This applies especially to
economists who continue to argue about whether the market should be ‘free’ or
controlled by government intervention -- as if there hadn’t been massive
government intervention to establish and maintain the 'free market' from the
first moment of its existence, as described by Karl Polanyi (2001[1944]). At
some point economists (and all scientists) must begin to perceive society as a mental,
spiritual and emotional whole and not as a deterministic mechanism
consisting of autonomous units. One cannot (metaphorically) lop off a piece of
the human brain while ignoring the rest of that brain along with its heart, its
body, its society, its culture and its history and call it ‘economic man’, and
then build a whole science upon that mutilated (and reified) thing. We must all
understand that any economic policy is at the same time also a social and
moral policy and that to transform everything into commodities while
ignoring the enormous toll on both humans and the environment is pure
misanthropy. They don’t call economics
the dismal science for nothing; - but it’s long past the time for a new start!
What effects does the amoral society have on its
youth?
Those
who more than anything must pay the price for all of this, of course, are the
young people. The entire socio-economic and political theater bombards children
with the need to buy the latest technological ‘gadgets’. The heroes of the
consumerist sociodrama projected by the mass media relate only to wealth and
consumption. For the children whose parents can buy them whatever they ask for
there is cultivated a feeling that they should be very proud, and believe that
they are on top of the social world. But when money (yet again) replaces other
human values, the emotional vacuum remains and the frustration is expressed in
a variety of ways. These children, along with the other children who can not
have the technological goodies, are angry with their parents and with the
entire society, a society that does not allow them to participate in the
‘consumer paradise’. This is especially true when the young see the corruption
that enables the political and business bullies to enjoy all these goods. If we
add to this that they are unlikely to ever find a place in society that will
allow them to participate in this ‘paradise’ in the future, one can easily
understand the anger and disrespect that the youth have for adults, for their
teachers, parents, politicians, etc.
Meanwhile,
all the other messages that young people receive are from negative to
nihilistic, including those about wars, crimes, frauds, thefts, divorces,
suicides, scandals etc., etc. Television, movies and computer games portray
mostly sinister police adventures, violence and corrupt behavior. The goal of
the master ‘predators’ is to numb and dumb down the people with desperation,
while also providing them with ‘bread and circuses’, and the less the bread,
the more the (increasingly violent) circuses. The only good thing is that in
real life the athlete-gladiators are not (yet) actually killing each other, as
they did in Ancient Rome, the grim prototype for today’s decadent society. And
for the really desperate, of course, there are always narcotics, a perfect
solution for the master predators in a world where technology, alone, is
expected to continue increasing unemployment rates throughout the the 21st
century and beyond.
And what
about conventional scientists and engineers? They rather appear not to want to
hear about any of this. In particular, scientists and engineers working in the
‘high tech’, the military and the pharmaceutical companies have even less
reason to be concerned. Of course, all this does not mean that we should
abolish rationalism. It is simply that there are other dimensions to humanity
that must be respected along with rationalism. To suppress and ignore these
dimensions prevents even rationality from functioning properly. Both emotions
and morality must work alongside rationalism as parts of the living totality
that is human existence.
What hope
is there for the youth at this historic moment?
The situation is desperate. At least, so it
appears, superficially. Meanwhile, hidden from the media and popular culture,
and from the more conventional academics but available on the Internet are
thousands of scientists and others who are looking for solutions to the current
problems of alienation and lack of moral principles. Heterodox economists,
biologists, physicists, anthropologists, sociologists, archaeologists,
homeopathic and alternative physicians, etc., are all looking for new
approaches to understanding nature, the human body and human society, within a
new context, in particular that of quantum physics and the electric universe.
There, perhaps, are hidden the emotions, the instincts, the human 'vibrations',
the moral principles, and all of the new (ancient?) medicine. This is not to
speak of tens of thousands of global human efforts to create small communities
based upon cooperation. It would be well worth the effort for today’s youth to
investigate and become informed about these efforts, in order to see whether
they might also be able to participate in the creation of a new social system
for the future. It is for their own benefit to learn that there is something beyond
the deterministic science, the predatory individualism and the materialistic
goods that govern our thinking today. There, they may even find the quiet
enjoyment of life, close to nature with their fellow human beings. First of
all, however, they need to understand what is happening and why, in today’s
society. This is necessary in order for anyone, especially the young, to be
able to respond creatively and to claim the right to determine for themselves
the conditions and limits of their happiness (Ray and Anderson 2000). This
would also exempt them from the painful weight of desperate anger and the
accompanying random and unproductive acts of vandalism. (See
co-intelligence.org).
Bibliography
Alperovitz, Gar (1994), 2nd Revised Edition, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam -
The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power.
London: Pluto Press
Boehm, Christopher (2012), Moral Origins; The Evolution of Virtue,
Altruism, and Shame. New York: Basic Books
Burke, Kenneth (1959 [1937], Attitudes
Toward History. Boston: Beacon Press
(1965 [1935], Permanence and Change.
Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co. Ltd.
(1968a), Counterstatement.
Berkeley: University of California Press
(1968b), Language As
Symbolic Action. Berkeley: University of California Press
(1969a), A Grammar of
Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press
(1969b), A Rhetoric of
Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press
(1973), The Philosophy
of Literary Form. Berkeley: University of California Press
Capra, Fritjof (1982), The Turning
Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture. New York: Simon and
Schuster
Eisler, Riane (1987), The Chalice and the Blade; Our History, Our
Future. HarperSanFrancisco
Engels, Friedrich (2010 [1884]), The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Penguin Classics.
Reissue Edition
Hauser, Marc D. (2006), Moral Minds;
The Nature of Right and Wrong. New York: HarperCollins
Jacobs, Alan (2014), “The Two Cultures,
Then and Now”, in Books and Culture: A Christian Review, March-April
Koutoulas, Diamantis (1997), Jesus and
Paul. Athens: Dion Publishers (in Greek)
Kuhn, Thomas (1970), 2nd Edition, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Lentricchia,
Frank (1983), Criticism and Social Change. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press
Maslow, A.H.
(1970), Motivation and Personality. 2nd Edition. New York:
Harper and Row
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2003[1913]), The
Genealogy of Morals. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc.
Peterson, J.B. and M. Shane (2004), “The
Functional Neuroanatomy and Psychopharmacology of Predatory and Defensive
Aggression”, in J. McCord (ed), Beyond Empiricism: Institutions and
Intentions in the Study of Crime. (Advances in Criminology Theory, Vol. 13)
(pp. 107-146). Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction Books
Polanyi, Karl ((2001 [1944]), The
Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston:
Beacon Press
Ray,
Paul H., PhD and Sherry Ruth Anderson, PhD. (2000), The Cultural Creatives; How Fifty Million People Are Changing the
World. New York: Three Rivers Press
Rueckert, William (Ed) (1969), Critical
Responses to Kenneth Burke. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Sahlins, Marshall (2008), The Western
Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy,
Equality, and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and Comparative Notes on
Other Conceptions of the Human Condition. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press
Snow, C.P. (2013 [1959]), The Two
Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books
U.S, Atomic Energy Commission (1954), “In
the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, p. 34
[1]
Emeritus Professor, School of Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis
Scientific Fellow, Department of
Engineering, City and Regional Planning and Regional Development, University of
Thessaly, Volos, Greece
Emeritus Member, World Academy of Art
and Science
READ THE GREEK VERSION ON THE FOLLOWIN LINK/ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΕΚΔΟΣΗ ΣΤΟΝ ΠΑΡΑΚΑΤΩ ΣΥΝΔΕΣΜΟ:
http://endlesslifejourney.blogspot.gr/2015/06/g-gutenschwager-phd.html
READ THE GREEK VERSION ON THE FOLLOWIN LINK/ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΕΚΔΟΣΗ ΣΤΟΝ ΠΑΡΑΚΑΤΩ ΣΥΝΔΕΣΜΟ:
http://endlesslifejourney.blogspot.gr/2015/06/g-gutenschwager-phd.html
No comments:
Post a Comment