Re: Off Topic: Basic Assumptions

[Margaret Tarbet <tarbet@swaa.com>]

Greg wrote:

>  You, on the other hand, see things differently. You seem to be calling 
>people to a higher, more evolved state; one where people will not try to 
>seek only what they perceive to be their own best interest at the moment, 
>but will keep in mind the larger picture of society and even the global 
>community. You seem to believe that such an evolved state is a possibility 
>for humanity; that is may be achievable.

You're close, Greg.  What i believe -- and i hope i can speak for
Laura, Lynn, and even Ed, here, too (i hope they'll correct me if
not!!) -- is that such an 'evolved state' doesn't require darwinian
evolution, but rather only a different sort of socialisation.   All
we have to do is decide to honor different values, and stick to that
decision.

I have no reason to believe that our 'human nature' is as one-sided
as it seems to you (or many others - of course you're not alone), or
that we are constrained by our genetic inheritance to behave badly.
_All_ the evidence is on the side of our being _immensely_ adaptable
creatures, able to conform our behavior to a very wide variety of
social demands.   We can see that in the anthropological record if
not in our personal experience.  Yes, in every society there are
some people who seem naturally selfish, brutal, and uncaring, and
who are perfectly willing to destroy others to gain and retain
power.   But most people aren't that way.   There are also people
who are especially selfless in their behavior.   Most people aren't
that way, either.  The vast majority only want to live and let live.
To be let alone, really.   Most people live rather blameless lives,
on the whole.  And they do so in spite of the deck being stacked
against them.


>  If my assumption about the fundamentally un-evolved, savage nature of 
>humans is by and large correct, it does not bode well for our survival as a 
>species. Our paranoia, savagery, and our refusal to act in our own long 
>term best interest will very likely lead to our own self-destruction.

I believe this is true, not because we are all terrible, but because
too many of the folk in power are terrible, short-sighted, selfish
thinkers.   I think we can see plenty evidence on a small scale now.
I'll offer an anecdote from my personal experience.  

In the mid-80s, i was an engineering manager at Digital, in the pc
group.  This was when Microsoft was trying to build Windows 1.0, and
the Unix folk were scrambling to do X and Motif.   To make the
budget for the pc we were working on, we needed a substitute for the
paper docs set, so we did a hypertext online info system that we
called OUI (Online User Information).   One of the first practical
hypertext systems anywhere, and certainly the first at Digital.  It
was very nice!  (Its underlying language was equal in power to html,
interestingly enough).   My group had our proto up and running in 3
months' time.   Platform independent, networked, small, ran fast
even on a 286 box...blew the socks off of everything else around.
Beautiful wee thing.   

Now the plot thickens.

We were the pc group, definitely a pariah organisation within
Digital.    The VAX organisation was beavering away at doing
DECwindows, and one of the products in that suite was to be,
mirabile dictu, an online info system.  The central docs group had
been working on the general problem for 18 months at that time and
had got essentially nowhere apart from a wishlist.  We created OUI
without reference to their wishlist, but it turned out that we had
all but one of the features they wanted.  For a giggle, we did a
weekend hack that demonstrated how our little system could be ported
to DECwindows without agony, and that a filter could be written to
slurp up the VAX docset.  No worries.  So, gee, since we've already
got the product all but built, and we've shown you how versatile a
design it is, how about we get assigned that piece of the DW action?


Instant immune response!!   The entire VAX org mobilised to shut us
out.  It was _their_ turf.   It didn't matter that their version
would ship a year late (2 years, as it actually turned out), or that
we could have been on v3 by then.   Nope.  Turf was sacred.
Individual careers depended on it.    So Digital shipped an inferior
product late while OUI languished (i heard we eventually gave or
bartered it to Microsoft and it became the seed for Windows Help
1.0, but i'd moved on by then).

Digital made a lot of mistakes like that -- Capitalist-type
mistakes.  Competition rather than cooperation.  Taking care of the
part at the expense of the whole.   Exactly what Drucker has
repeatedly warned against.   

And now Digital is gone.   I have to think the two things aren't
unrelated.

We can take the AA sickout as another example.  The company claimed
it would cost too much - $50M - to honor the contract that says
there's to be only one payscale.   Now the company is claiming that
they lost $150M from the sickout -- three times what they would have
spent playing fair.   So who won?   Only the roach...er, lawyers, it
seems to me.   Will the person(s) responsible for the decision to
play 'chicken' with the pilots lose anything?  Probably not,
Capitalism doesn't work that way, at least not in the US.

We can see this at work in Northern Ireland and in the Lebanon and
in the Balkans.  One group -- the proddy majority in NI, the
Christian/RC minority in the Lebanon, the Serbs in the Balkans  --
reckoned they could continue to hog everything.   The result?
Bloodbath.   Beirut went from being the jewel of the Mediterranian
to a bombed-out ruin reminiscent of postwar Berlin.    Bosnia has
been destroyed and the lives of many innocent people ended or
ruined.    Northern Ireland's a terrible place to live.

We can see the same thing in the Israeli right wing's relationship
to the Palestinians.   They reckon that because they have the power,
they can hog everything. 

We can see it in Clinton and the right-wingers.  He willing to risk
everything for a blow job, they willing to risk everything for more
power.   Tons of public money and time were wasted.  Sick stuff.   


>  If I understand what you are saying, Margaret, you are fighting for an 
>evolution in our nature...that we as a species, as a rare and fragile race, 
>rise above our paranoia, our petty selfishness, our blind savagery and our 
>short-sighted, myopic "me-first" thinking. You see evidence of the savagery 
>all around you, and you see Capitalism, as well as other forms of 
>government, as perpetrators of that savagery. You see Capitalism perhaps as 
>the most insidious danger of all, because it thrives on and reinforces the 
>very evolutionary traits in human nature that may well be instrumental in 
>our own destruction. We annihilate ourselves while the gold coins are 
>spilling out of our pockets.

Not a darwinian evolution, Greg, just a shared determination to
honor different values.

How do our leaders get us to kill other people in war?  By
de-humanising them.   Why don't we kill one another in peacetime?
Because there is a vast web of social pressure, applied from the
cradle:  'don't hit, play nice, share your toys'.   No darwinian
evolution involved -- just different social rules.

Greg, let's say you were faced with _permanently_ losing either your
family and your wealth.  Which would you choose?  I'm sure you
wouldn't hesitate a moment.   But some people would have to think
hard about it.

It's mostly down to socialisation --- the Kwakiutl in the Pacific NW
gained social status from how much wealth they could gave away at
potlatches.  But a man in NYC who underwent a religious conversion
and decided to give his life savings away in the street was locked
up as daft. 

When do some people exhibit hoarding behavior (e.g., going to the
grocery and buying up a ton of toilet paper or canned goods)?   When
they reckon there'll be a scarcity.   No threat of scarcity, no
hoarding.  And not everyone hoards -- some folk feel confident
enough about the future that they feel no need.   But a very few
hoard all the time -- we generally think of them as being at least a
little off-balance, no? 

I've argued that folk who compulsively seek wealth or power at the
expense of others are just as goofed up psychologically as, and a
good deal more harmful than, folk who compulsively eat, compulsively
look for The Perfect Orgasm, or compulsively wash their hands.   The
dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) thought the same thing:
'In truth, however, avarice, lust, etc. are a kind of madness,
although they are not reckoned amongst diseases'  (Ethics, IV, 44).

Because nutty behavior is just normal behavior 'writ large', so to
speak, disordered people typically don't have insight into their
condition.  Psychopaths are particularly good at rationalising their
own behavior and claiming that they're no different to anyone else,
apart from braver and more honest.   They simply don't get it.
Their own desires are the only things that matter to them, no matter
how they dissemble or blow smoke.  They can see that they're causing
harm to others -- and they simply don't care!  They're a danger to
everyone who comes near. 

Naturally someone who has good practical intelligence and no
scruples has a good chance of gaining a lot of power.   And once
such a person gains power, they can declare themselves not only
normal, but _better_ than normal..._ideal_, in fact.  And that's
exactly what they do, albeit mostly in a more subtle way than, e.g.,
Idi Amin did.   As long as they're a little bit cautious, they can
enjoy their sickness for a long time, while harming plenty others
meanwhile in small ways and large.  

And that's what we have now -- pathologically-greedy people have
declared themselves to be not only normal but _ideal_.   Anyone who
isn't pathologically greedy is a loser.   'Greed is good, greed
works'.

So i think you're right, and that your quote from von Horner is
right on.   I don't think we have your 100-500 years, though -- like
Herb Grosch, i think we in the US are going to go past the point of
no simple return in fewer than 10 years.   If we don't take matters
in hand, we'll find ourselves living in a third-world, fascist
police state, the Constitution of no more effect than cosmetics on a
corpse.

As Margaret Mead pointed out, our ability to destroy ourselves isn't
only local anymore.  The same psychopath who could destroy a few
villages in a pre-tech environment can now do in the whole world.
The bankers whose money allowed petty despots in the 14th c. to ruin
the lives of thousands over years can now directly ruin the lives of
tens of millions in a few seconds.

We continue to teeter on the edge of the abyss.   There are plenty
signs that the edge is crumbling, but psychopaths are quite
literally fearless, and are ready to push all of us over to save
themselves.   

Will we have the sense to say 'this is nuts!' and walk away before
we're thrown over the edge?