On Darwin and our Dangerous Times
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
So, you are home, snuggled up with Your Little Honey, and someone breaks in through your door. Or. You are robbed at gunpoint in a parking lot. Or. Someone threatens you with a knife and is about to rape your partner.
We hear such scenarios whenever a discussion occurs surrounding non-violence. They are, essentially, emotional popcorn to chew in the move created by the scene.
Most of us rarely, if ever, encounter violent assault or overt threats of violence. Yet such scenarios are easily spun and far too easily are pictured in our mind's eye. Once there, our heart rate increases, our breathing becomes a tad more shallow, and we begin to think like an animal who wishes to survive. Instead of recourse to reason, negotiation, or other human avenues, we seemingly automatically go to a prehistoric response.
Some may point to Darwin and say, its the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle or some other such lame excuse for throwing out civility. Yet Darwin, when actually talking about human beings rarely applied such terms. In fact, in his The Descent of Man, love and mutual aid are the key survival mechanisms. So, what is going on here?
We are trained to be this way. This is not something inherent. We are not born to be violent. We learn to be violent. The groundwork for violence is in our culture itself and the dominant religious models. Yet, these lessons turn us away from our more natural state, that of communal beings.
Darwin:
Social animals are impelled partly by a wish to aid the members of their
community in a general manner, but more commonly to perform certain
definite actions. Man is impelled by the same general wish to aid his
fellows; but has few or no special instincts. He differs also from the
lower animals in the power of expressing his desires by words, which thus
become a guide to the aid required and bestowed. The motive to give aid is
likewise much modified in man: it no longer consists solely of a blind
instinctive impulse, but is much influenced by the praise or blame of his
fellows. The appreciation and the bestowal of praise and blame both rest
on sympathy; and this emotion, as we have seen, is one of the most
important elements of the social instincts. Sympathy, though gained as an
instinct, is also much strengthened by exercise or habit.
What Darwin is calling "sympathy" more modern researchers might call "empathy" or the ability to feel what others are feeling or experiencing without have actually experienced the same ourselves. I discussed the physiological basis for this in an earlier note regarding "mirror neurons. Unfortunately for us, these neurons aren't particularly selective, hence if we watch a film with strong emotion and violent content we are likely to mirror the feelings expressed in our minds and thus create what Buddhists call "seeds".
Darwin: As all men desire their own happiness, praise or blame is bestowed on actions and
motives, according as they lead to this end; and as happiness is an essential part of the general good, the greatest-happiness principle indirectly serves as a nearly safe standard of right and wrong. As the reasoning powers advance and experience is gained, the remoter effects of certain lines of conduct on the character of the individual, and on the
general good, are perceived; and then the self-regarding virtues come within the scope of public opinion, and receive praise, and their opposites blame. But with the less civilised nations reason often errs, and many bad customs and base superstitions come within the same scope, and are then esteemed as high virtues, and their breach as heavy crimes.
The Descent of Man,(citation from Chapter 21 on-line edition)
My concern here is that civilization itself has turned on us. This is also a thesis of a recent book, The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of spirituality by Joseph Chilton Pearce. So, what was once an intermediary between our mirror neurons and our assumptions about civilized life, has now become something of a block to our growth and certainly a chill on our willingness to care for our neighbors.
One antidote is to create conditions within which we can deepen our already existing sense of prosocial humanitarianism. We do this by practice. Practicing Zazen, Practicing smiling, openness, and joyfulness. This is not really all that difficult. More importantly however, we must be willing to use reason in the face of emotional pleas to action. Will our behavioral choice bring about more good over bad for all concerned? Can the choice be accomplished with the least harm?
Knee-jerk responses rooted in fundamentalism and the reptilian mind are an anathema to civilization. We must be wiser than this.
Be well. "
Good Morning Everyone,
So, you are home, snuggled up with Your Little Honey, and someone breaks in through your door. Or. You are robbed at gunpoint in a parking lot. Or. Someone threatens you with a knife and is about to rape your partner.
We hear such scenarios whenever a discussion occurs surrounding non-violence. They are, essentially, emotional popcorn to chew in the move created by the scene.
Most of us rarely, if ever, encounter violent assault or overt threats of violence. Yet such scenarios are easily spun and far too easily are pictured in our mind's eye. Once there, our heart rate increases, our breathing becomes a tad more shallow, and we begin to think like an animal who wishes to survive. Instead of recourse to reason, negotiation, or other human avenues, we seemingly automatically go to a prehistoric response.
Some may point to Darwin and say, its the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle or some other such lame excuse for throwing out civility. Yet Darwin, when actually talking about human beings rarely applied such terms. In fact, in his The Descent of Man, love and mutual aid are the key survival mechanisms. So, what is going on here?
We are trained to be this way. This is not something inherent. We are not born to be violent. We learn to be violent. The groundwork for violence is in our culture itself and the dominant religious models. Yet, these lessons turn us away from our more natural state, that of communal beings.
Darwin:
Social animals are impelled partly by a wish to aid the members of their
community in a general manner, but more commonly to perform certain
definite actions. Man is impelled by the same general wish to aid his
fellows; but has few or no special instincts. He differs also from the
lower animals in the power of expressing his desires by words, which thus
become a guide to the aid required and bestowed. The motive to give aid is
likewise much modified in man: it no longer consists solely of a blind
instinctive impulse, but is much influenced by the praise or blame of his
fellows. The appreciation and the bestowal of praise and blame both rest
on sympathy; and this emotion, as we have seen, is one of the most
important elements of the social instincts. Sympathy, though gained as an
instinct, is also much strengthened by exercise or habit.
What Darwin is calling "sympathy" more modern researchers might call "empathy" or the ability to feel what others are feeling or experiencing without have actually experienced the same ourselves. I discussed the physiological basis for this in an earlier note regarding "mirror neurons. Unfortunately for us, these neurons aren't particularly selective, hence if we watch a film with strong emotion and violent content we are likely to mirror the feelings expressed in our minds and thus create what Buddhists call "seeds".
Darwin: As all men desire their own happiness, praise or blame is bestowed on actions and
motives, according as they lead to this end; and as happiness is an essential part of the general good, the greatest-happiness principle indirectly serves as a nearly safe standard of right and wrong. As the reasoning powers advance and experience is gained, the remoter effects of certain lines of conduct on the character of the individual, and on the
general good, are perceived; and then the self-regarding virtues come within the scope of public opinion, and receive praise, and their opposites blame. But with the less civilised nations reason often errs, and many bad customs and base superstitions come within the same scope, and are then esteemed as high virtues, and their breach as heavy crimes.
The Descent of Man,(citation from Chapter 21 on-line edition)
My concern here is that civilization itself has turned on us. This is also a thesis of a recent book, The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of spirituality by Joseph Chilton Pearce. So, what was once an intermediary between our mirror neurons and our assumptions about civilized life, has now become something of a block to our growth and certainly a chill on our willingness to care for our neighbors.
One antidote is to create conditions within which we can deepen our already existing sense of prosocial humanitarianism. We do this by practice. Practicing Zazen, Practicing smiling, openness, and joyfulness. This is not really all that difficult. More importantly however, we must be willing to use reason in the face of emotional pleas to action. Will our behavioral choice bring about more good over bad for all concerned? Can the choice be accomplished with the least harm?
Knee-jerk responses rooted in fundamentalism and the reptilian mind are an anathema to civilization. We must be wiser than this.
Be well. "
