SEISMIC SHIFT IN SOCIAL ORDER

Evolution of behavior has created an innate sense of organization; some refer to as “moral order”. It is genetically embedded in our psyche. Some feel uncomfortable when people acts in a ways that suggest violation of this “natural” order even if the violations are common: female head of a household or a labor union as examples.

The family unit consists of a father, a mother, and children.  Groups of all sizes consist of a leader and followers.  A nation has a king, a president, or a prime minister. The name change but the concept does not vary. What varies is how and who maintains the order. George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, wrote an entire book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, centered on this organizational modal. The conservative mind set relates to authority rule. He used family structure as a modal or metaphor. It is morally wrong not to physically punish children when they misbehave in one modal but in the liberal modal, it is morally wrong to punish children physically when they misbehave. He applied these modals to government.

Strong support for his thesis comes from genetically determined gender differences and rules of conduct. A male is larger and stronger than the female. This seems to be true of mammals but in some other species, the female is the larger and the stronger. The mother has a greater parental investment in a child from conception, through infancy, and through adolescence.  Again, in mammals, this seems true but in other species, this may not be true. The mother maintains discipline over the children but the father maintains order over the female, hence the children as well, by virtue of relative strength. The limits of tolerable infractions in discipline vary considerably as does the degree of enforcement. We base our system of jurisprudence on this concept with the strength of the law substituting for the deterministic strength of the male member of the family. In broader society, tribe, state, or nation, order is maintained through strength of numbers over that of individuals, which introduces another factor; what  the “group” thinks is right or wrong and limits the punishment to what ever the “group” thinks is just. Some in our society refer to moral order as “natural” or “biological order”. Again, great variation exists across the world in term of the limits of behavior and the righteousness of punishment.

However, like beasts, we have emotion, and these emotions have evolved and seem to be modifying more and more everyday. Organization, hierarchy dominance, or peck order, which evolution has indelibly built into our psyche; therefore, remains as the “moral order” even in the modified form. A family is still a father, mother, and children. The king is still the king. Therefore, what is changing is the means of maintaining order. Society is replacing physical punishment with a graduated system of reasoning involving pride and shame; the superimposition of B. F. Skinner defined influences of reward and punishment on a complicate system of genetically guided behavior. The severest punishment for misbehavior by a child, for example, is expulsion from the supper table or “time out” in a corner, etc. The ultimate would be expulsion from the family in contrast to scolding, followed by spanking, followed in turn by expulsion from the family as the last resort. In other word, what we are talking about is just method of establishing and maintaining discipline.

To have your fellow members of society ostracize you from the community would be the severest form of mental punishment but to have your fellow citizen put you in prison would be the ultimate in physical punishment. We all can go through our social history and find numerous forms and systems of pubic shaming ranging from wearing a red letter, to pillaring, and branding. In some societies amputation of a hand for a thief, is an example. We can find numerous example of success from being kind, loving, and rewarding but such examples are seldom “headline” worthy. Justice is all culturally dependant. We can read or hear newspaper articles or on TV almost every day stories decrying the death sentence, which is becoming less and less frequent; the sentence is well defined but the crime for which that punishment is given is not. This shift from bestial physical punishment to mental punishment, in the form of the “shaming example”, is what I have referred to in pasts post on this blog site as our humanization.

The softening of physical punishment is stimulated in us by caring for others. It has a genetic foundation in mothers instinctual nurturing a child until adolescents. Humankind is building social order on empathy and sympathy using the tool of shame and pride. It is the development or evolution of altruism; it is liberalism. It is a reasoned definition of what the word ‘fittest’ means, when we speak of “survival of the fittest”. It is a seismic shift but hardily recognized for what it is.

    

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