The First Thing Is to Admit What We Don't Know

I search for truth in our shared experiences, our disagreements, the good that humankind promotes and the evil that we enact. We are artists and poets, writers and musicians, but destroyers of life. The one thing we never are is boring. It matters not one whit as to whether you believe or don't believe in God, for me it's about examining all of the possibilities. Science offers many answers but not all. Science is continually changing because valid science is born of a hypothesis and proof (See the scientific method). Sometimes the hypothesis cannot be proven. Sometimes the proof reveals a totally unexpected truth.

However, science without contemplation, without moral considerations can lead us into dark places. The medical experiments of Josef Mengele and others were clearly a search for scientific proof gone wrong. The whole science of eugenics was a perversion of science, yet for a time, those who believed in eugenics boldly cited scientific proof to support their beliefs. Is science bad and responsible for the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the United States' own little foray into forced sterilization of some of its citizens, mostly poor and black? Of course not, but such events are an indication that science can be perverted just as any other belief system.

Just as many of the Christian faiths in the U.S. sought to justify slavery, so did science. Negroes were judged inferior. Skulls were measured, brains were studied and the conclusion was that black people were intellectually inferior to whites, an idea that continued to be presented as having a scientific basis in 20th century works such as The Bell Curve. From the early 1920s to the 1970s, some 65,000 men and women were sterilized in this country, many without their knowledge, as part of a government eugenics program to keep so-called undesirables from reproducing. Then there were the scientific experiments known as the Tuskegee syphilis study. The clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, studied the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.

The current worship of nuclear power is a perversion of science. We have the science to create nuclear power plants but it seems highly irrational to play with a substance that creates radioactive waste that is toxic to all life in some misbegotten belief that we can keep it under control. Depending on the half-life of the radiation, it could stay in a person for much longer than a lifetime. The half- life is the amount of time it takes for a radioactive material to decay to one half of its original amount. Some materials have half-lives of more than 1,000 years. I find this no more rational than the religious sects that deny medical treatment to their children because they believe that if they pray hard enough God will heal them.

What is inherent in our nature that makes us need to believe in something so strongly that we exclude reason and compassion from our thought processes? Our belief in science created the first atomic weapon, a weapon capable of wreaking havoc and devastation, a weapon capable of leaving behind lethal radioactive waste with an indefinite shelf life, when reason should have perhaps suggested that just because we could didn't mean that we should. Science has helped us create more efficient ways of killing; we can now kill humans and leave the buildings standing. What an accomplishment!

Am I opposed to science? No. Science has also been used to promote the greater good and I would not condemn all of science for its missteps. However, a belief in science is just as potentially dangerous as an unwavering belief in a man with a beard who lives in the clouds. Looking inwardly isn't about justifying our worst impulses; it's about studying what makes us who we are in order to find our way to being better than we are. Most people act without ever considering why they act. This is why mobs form so easily and get so out of control. Individually, most would not engage in the type of vicious and sadistic behaviors that they will as a group. How do we move beyond this mob instinct?

I think that it is far more complex than simply declaring that all people need to embrace science and reason. Either can be perverted as much as any religious belief because the issue lies within ourselves not the stars (Thanks Will). Certainly there have been magnificent advancements in science that have benefited us all; however, humankind has also used science to develop even more efficient ways of killing one another. Hanging the solution to today's problems solely on science or reason is no more rational than announcing that it's all in God's hands.

For me this is where psychology and philosophy must be added to the mix. Science is a type of knowing, based on proposing a hypothesis and designed experiments test and hopefully prove that theory. But that which makes us human goes beyond the concrete, factual answers that science can provide. What we do with that science is based on a complex working of human nature and science hasn't designed an experiment to take the full measure of what makes us tick.  Perhaps psychology and philosophy lack the straightforward factuality of science but it is their study that continues to reveal the human psyche, bit by bit.

I doubt that I will persuade anyone who finds all of this to be some esoteric discussion based on belief that cannot be proven to consider this seriously but at least let's respect that we have differing perspectives.

Some Thoughts on Being Human

Every generation has bemoaned that we are on the course to self-destruction and I suppose that it is inevitable that one day we will achieve annihilation.

However, until we do, what makes us human is our ability to hope, to strive for something better. We do horrible, despicable things to each other and the planet but still we struggle onward. Even in the midst of our destructive impulses we manage to create works of art that make one breathless, and music that momentarily transports one to a place of infinite pleasure. We create ugliness but we also create beauty. Perhaps that is what makes us human, the dark and the light.

Tolstoy wrote, "Happy familes are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."[ Anna Karenina] I can't help but think that there would be no great art if we were all happy and harmonious; certainly, there would be far less great literature for it's our foibles and failings that fill the billions of pages written over the generations.

My fellow humans fascinate, repulse, and enchant me. I find myself aghast at the horrors that we are capable of perpetrating upon one another. The recent masacre by a mentally unstable young man leaves me choking on a mix of sadness and anger. It appears that his illness was apparent and had been noted by others but no one engaged in any concrete intervention so he was left to listen to the voices in his head and eventually act upon their advice.

However, I also find myself astounded at our creativity. A poem that makes me affirm, "That's exactly how I feel!" Or a singer heard on the radio who makes me pause whatever I may be doing and engage fully in the performance. A Puccini aria sung by Kiri te Kanawa can literally stop me in my tracks and sweep me off to some land that I've never been except in my dreams. Or it can be something as simple as my two-year-old great nephew scribbling with fat crayons thicker than his fingers on a sheet of paper and then proudly sharing his work with me so that I may look and marvel. My reward is the sweetest smile that I've ever seen and my heart aches with love and I'm content.

This being human is a complex state. Our flaws are many but I would not choose to be anything more or less than simply human.

Dame Kiri te Kanawa singing "O Mio Babbino Caro."

Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Nature of Humankind

Somehow, two weeks have passed and I haven't written a single blog entry. I think that my brain has been suffering from an overload of "WTFitis." I watch the news, read Newsweek, and scroll through newspapers and news sites on the Internet, and like Evilene in The Wiz, I just want to scream, "Don't nobody bring me no more bad news!"

Of course, not hearing or reading bad news doesn't make it go away. However, it isn't just the bad news that disturbs me, it's the mindlessness of the general populace that makes me want to slap somebody. As engaging in acts of violence could land me in a jail cell, I've been refocusing my disgust on trying to understand what it is about human nature that can move us to engage in great acts of creativity but can also move us to engage in acts of great cruelty and destruction.

I've been rereading two of my favorite political philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract 1762) and Thomas Hobbes (The Leviathan 1651). Both works focus on an analysis of why government is necessary and the purpose of government. However, they have different takes on why it is that humans spend our time fighting and squabbling among ourselves.

They each speak of the "natural state" [aka state of nature] describing it as humankind without the conventions that we have come to call civilization. Hobbes views humankind in its natural state as focused on individualism to the exclusion of any concern for the well being of others; self-preservation and aggrandizement is the reason for existence. If we occasionally act in an altruistic manner it is motivated by self-interest and not any concern for others. In Hobbesian analysis, we are motivated by self-preservation in all of our actions. We see the possibility of our own misfortune in another's misfortune and offer assistance in anticipation that we may at some point need assistance.

In this natural state, if I want my neighbor's cow, I attempt to take it. Naturally, my neighbor resists. Whichever one of us is stronger or has more friends to help out in the fray, gets the cow. Of course, then the winner has to guard against some stronger person coming along and taking the cow away. It's an ongoing cycle and no one can be truly secure and all our energies are spent on survival. We are therefore in a perpetual state of war. Hobbes defines a state of war as the absence of peace, that is, living in a society where individualism reigns supreme and it's every man and woman for themselves.

Hobbes perceives this natural state as being the essence of human nature and that governments were implemented to save us from our baser impulses. According to Hobbes, without absolute government, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Rousseau takes a more positive view of our natural state. He proposes that humankind in its natural state is essentially good. It is the development of society that has corrupted us. The advancements of civilization, while wondrous, have also corrupted us. Often Rousseau's philosophy is defined as promoting the image of the "noble savage." Humans living relatively solitary lives, motivated only by basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. In this state, there is no competition because there is no desire for power. The individualism that Hobbes sees as innate in human nature is an acquired trait in Rousseau's philosophy. For Rousseau, it's the development of society and all its trappings that has turned humankind into greedy, selfish beings focused on self preservation.

Both Hobbes and Rousseau propose that in this natural state, we have unlimited personal freedom, sort of like Cartman, citizen of South Park, who frequently declares, "I can do what I want!" In Hobbes viewpoint, a powerful central government is needed to check that personal freedom which is motivated only by self-interests. Rousseau argues that the people create government in a desire to promote harmonious interaction. The power of the government comes from the people, who voluntarily cede their personal freedoms to the collective group, not a single authoritative power, in order to promote the common good. For Rousseau, the people are the government, while Hobbes arrives at the conclusion that the people must cede their personal liberties to the control of a strong central government, an absolute government, to protect and promote the common good.

I tend to be Hobbesian in my beliefs about the nature of humankind. I think that self-interests are the norm and concern for humankind is the exception. At the heart of the arguments against any type of social welfare program is always a stated belief by the opposition that it is not the responsibility of those who have to provide for the have-nots. People stand in town halls and shout in trembling voices that their tax dollar should not go towards supporting any program for people that they deem to be undeserving. Those of us who express a belief that we are our brothers and our sisters keepers are dismissed as stupid, naive, un-American purveyors of socialism.

We are in such a constant state of war that many of us have come to believe that war is the norm, and there is no need to call for its end. I am so tired of seeing some sad parents or a sweet young woman with an infant bravely facing the television cameras, reciting the oft repeated litany, "He died doing what he loved. He died serving his country." As long as we continue to glorify dying in war, as if it is a noble loss of life, we will do nothing to put an end to war.

Where I part company with Hobbes is that I don't believe that selfish individualism is an innate quality. I think that Rousseau was on to something; perhaps we learn to elevate self-preservation to a religion because so much in society rewards and thereby reinforces selfishness. If that's true, then like Pandora's box, there is still a flame of hope that we have to fan into a fire. We can become better than we are.

If you are intrigued by the theories of government that influenced the development of the governing philosophies of the United States, click this link for a good place to begin with summaries of the political theories of Hobbes, Rousseau, John Locke, and Charles Montesquieu.