This week could change the world, if not forever at least
for a long, long time. The United States has grown to become the largest nation
in the world as well as the richest. Few dispute its placement as the top
nation in the world. We achieved what we have by following bestial tendencies. Look
at the acquisition of territory by wars or purchases: War of 1812, Louisiana Purchase,
Mexican American War, Spanish American War, Panama, Hawaii, and Alaska. We
fought to protect what was ours both in the sense of the business sphere as
well as the territorial sphere. It is
not a gentile history— we “bought” or “fought” for what we wanted without much regard
for others. Some of us want that path to change.
Over the course of the history of the world, the human
condition has been changing. We have become less and less bestial and more and
more human. We have changed our style of living from the equivalent of dogs
fighting over a bone to a nurturing family. Some of us adhere to a moral sense
or code; what some call a “moral order”. There is an authority figure based on strength
followed by obedient wife and children. Of course, other species have different
structures related to “survival of the fittest; they adapted by natural
selection to a social environment that somehow aided them to survive just as we
did. This is a manifestation of universally held hierarchy dominance—peck order.
As human society became more and more complex, over the past
2.5 million years, some among us have imposed a nurturing life style on that
moral order. We have somehow learned to work together; as one scientist who
busied himself observing apes said, he never saw two chimpanzees carrying a log.
Bonobo apes and chimpanzees are our closest relatives. The implication is that working
together to accomplish a task is uniquely human; it is a transition to humanization.
Perhaps it was the first step that put us on the path we call progress. It is what
gave meaning to the political term ‘progressives’. Jonathan Haidt pointed this out
in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why People
Are Divided by Politics and Religion.
Some of us look at humanization as the transitions from
bestial greed to altruism traceable back to resources in the primordial pools
scientist speculate were the sources of life like multiple water springs coalescing
into the flow of the earth’s biota. Altruism has a couple of controversial definitions
especially as it relates to who benefits from benevolence. Obviously, a child
benefits from a mother’s nurturing. A family benefits from a father’s
nurturing. Kin benefit from relatives helping family members. A tribe of mostly,
but not exclusively related people, benefits from the nurturing all members in
the tribe. Finally, total strangers benefit from the altruism of other cities
and nations. This aspect of altruism clearly relates to natural selection for survival.
The second part of the definition of altruism deals with the
idea that it is not altruistic giving unless the giver suffers some consequence
for his or her generosity. It is difficult to understand someone giving their
life for their country without marrying altruism to the concept of loyalty. On
the other hand, innate altruism explains the acceptance of the concept of
welfare, which is equivalent of a taxpayer giving to the unfortunate, or even in
prehistory, strangers giving alms to beggars, or presumably a successful hunter
sharing meat with villagers—two people carrying the same log. I have visited societies
where parents have mutilated their children to provoke sympathy from strangers
(Temple of the Tooth, Kandy Ceylon, ca 1950); without innate altruism in the
donors, even this practice would make no sense. As a mental exercise, place
these parents and donors at the poles on your personal scale of humanity.
I observe the situation is Syria where al Assad, admits it
was wrong to gas people, simple because he is trying to blame the rebels for “committing
the crime” and not take credit for it. Weapons of mass destruction are wrong
because they have removed the element of selection; the concept of killing the
person aimed at verses killing everyone. Killing in self-defense, which is the
only justifiable form of killing, loses it meaning when the killing is indiscriminate:
with gas, everyone is killed; in journalist parlance, this means killing non-combatants.
Killing non-combatants is a heinous crime that should be punished by someone.
Of course, for some killing in any form is a crime that
should be punished. Obama, a progressive president, sees al Assad’s activity as
a crime against humanity and understand that in the sense of moral order the United States is “the” world leader.
The debate going on in the world right now deals with the fundamental question,
do we allow a parent to use a garden hoe, a crude instrument, to chop off the
fingers of their children for “bestial” gain or do we stand up and say no that
is say the world has “progressed” beyond that. Can conservatives who claim the
moral high ground in family structure, marriage, abortion, religiosity, and welfare
now use isolationism to turn on these concepts—isn’t Syria a matter of morality
therefore humanities business.
Congress will decide this week; know one wants war but everyone
wants to slap al Assad on the back of his hand. Will our congressional representatives
let the fear of war stop us from doing the right thing? Will Assad saying he
will retaliate stop us? Will we leap forward on the path of human progression?
Will our selfishness control what we do? We are about to find out!
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