Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes?
Immortalist
Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.
From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being
advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
At first glance, natural selection and the survival of the fittest may
seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live
in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no
advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social
animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human
morality evolved?
In a series of recent articles and a book, “The Happiness Hypothesis,”
Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia,
has been constructing a broad evolutionary view of morality that
traces its connections both to religion and to politics.
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) began his research career by probing the
emotion of disgust. Testing people’s reactions to situations like that
of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become
roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding — when
people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.
Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental
systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware
of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition,
is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the
development of language. The modern system — he calls it moral
judgment — came after language, when people became able to articulate
why something was right or wrong.
The emotional responses of moral intuition occur instantaneously —
they are primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second
decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment,
on the other hand, comes later, as the conscious mind develops a
plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through
moral intuition.
Moral dumbfounding, in Dr. Haidt’s view, occurs when moral judgment
fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral
intuition has decided.
So why has evolution equipped the brain with two moral systems when
just one might seem plenty?
“We have a complex animal mind that only recently evolved language and
language-based reasoning,” Dr. Haidt said. “No way was control of the
organism going to be handed over to this novel faculty.”
He likens the mind’s subterranean moral machinery to an elephant, and
conscious moral reasoning to a small rider on the elephant’s back.
Psychologists and philosophers have long taken a far too narrow view
of morality, he believes, because they have focused on the rider and
largely ignored the elephant.
Dr. Haidt developed a better sense of the elephant after visiting
India at the suggestion of an anthropologist, Richard Shweder. In
Bhubaneswar, in the Indian state of Orissa, Dr. Haidt saw that people
recognized a much wider moral domain than the issues of harm and
justice that are central to Western morality. Indians were concerned
with integrating the community through rituals and committed to
concepts of religious purity as a way to restrain behavior.
On his return from India, Dr. Haidt combed the literature of
anthropology and psychology for ideas about morality throughout the
world. He identified five components of morality that were common to
most cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others
the ties that bind a group together.
Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with
preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and
fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors
developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-
group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or
sanctity.
The five moral systems, in Dr. Haidt’s view, are innate psychological
mechanisms that predispose children to absorb certain virtues. Because
these virtues are learned, morality may vary widely from culture to
culture, while maintaining its central role of restraining
selfishness. In Western societies, the focus is on protecting
individuals by insisting that everyone be treated fairly. Creativity
is high, but society is less orderly. In many other societies,
selfishness is suppressed “through practices, rituals and stories that
help a person play a cooperative role in a larger social entity,” Dr.
Haidt said.
He is aware that many people — including “the politically homogeneous
discipline of psychology” — equate morality with justice, rights and
the welfare of the individual, and dismiss everything else as mere
social convention. But many societies around the world do in fact
behave as if loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity are moral
concepts, Dr. Haidt notes, and this justifies taking a wider view of
the moral domain.
The idea that morality and sacredness are intertwined, he said, may
now be out of fashion but has a venerable pedigree, tracing back to
Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology.
Dr. Haidt believes that religion has played an important role in human
evolution by strengthening and extending the cohesion provided by the
moral systems. “If we didn’t have religious minds we would not have
stepped through the transition to groupishness,” he said. “We’d still
be just small bands roving around.”
Religious behavior may be the result of natural selection, in his
view, shaped at a time when early human groups were competing with one
another. “Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more
successful,” he said.
Dr. Haidt came to recognize the importance of religion by a roundabout
route. “I first found divinity in disgust,” he writes in his book “The
Happiness Hypothesis.”
The emotion of disgust probably evolved when people became meat eaters
and had to learn which foods might be contaminated with bacteria, a
problem not presented by plant foods. Disgust was then extended to
many other categories, he argues, to people who were unclean, to
unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions
and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals.
“Imagine visiting a town,” Dr. Haidt writes, “where people wear no
clothes, never bathe, have sex ‘doggie style’ in public, and eat raw
meat by biting off pieces directly from the carcass.”
He sees the disgust evoked by such a scene as allied to notions of
physical and religious purity. Purity is, in his view, a moral system
that promotes the goals of controlling selfish desires and acting in a
religiously approved way.
Notions of disgust and purity are widespread outside Western cultures.
“Educated liberals are the only group to say, ‘I find that disgusting
but that doesn’t make it wrong,’ ” Dr. Haidt said.
Working with a graduate student, Jesse Graham, Dr. Haidt has detected
a striking political dimension to morality. He and Mr. Graham asked
people to identify their position on a liberal-conservative spectrum
and then complete a questionnaire that assessed the importance
attached to each of the five moral systems. (The test, called the
moral foundations questionnaire, can be taken online, at www.YourMorals.org.)
They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached
great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals —
those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But
liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that
protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity.
Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned
less weight than liberals to the moralities protective of individuals.
Dr. Haidt believes that many political disagreements between liberals
and conservatives may reflect the different emphasis each places on
the five moral categories.
Take attitudes to contemporary art and music. Conservatives fear that
subversive art will undermine authority, violate the in-group’s
traditions and offend canons of purity and sanctity. Liberals, on the
other hand, see contemporary art as protecting equality by assailing
the establishment, especially if the art is by oppressed groups.
Extreme liberals, Dr. Haidt argues, attach almost no importance to the
moral systems that protect the group. Because conservatives do give
some weight to individual protections, they often have a better
understanding of liberal views than liberals do of conservative
attitudes, in his view.
Dr. Haidt, who describes himself as a moderate liberal, says that
societies need people with both types of personality. “A liberal
morality will encourage much greater creativity but will weaken social
structure and deplete social capital,” he said. “I am really glad we
have New York and San Francisco — most of our creativity comes out of
cities like these. But a nation that was just New York and San
Francisco could not survive very long. Conservatives give more to
charity and tend to be more supportive of essential institutions like
the military and law enforcement.”
Other psychologists have mixed views about Dr. Haidt’s ideas.
Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said, “I’m a big fan
of Haidt’s work.” He added that the idea of including purity in the
moral domain could make psychological sense even if purity had no
place in moral reasoning.
But Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said he
disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s view that the task of morality is to
suppress selfishness. Many animals show empathy and altruistic
tendencies but do not have moral systems.
“For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between
individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most
members of the group, hence promotes a give and take,” Dr. de Waal
said.
He said that he also disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s alignment of liberals
with individual rights and conservatives with social cohesiveness.
“It is obvious that liberals emphasize the common good — safety laws
for coal mines, health care for all, support for the poor — that are
not nearly as well recognized by conservatives,” Dr. de Waal said.
That alignment also bothers John T. Jost, a political psychologist at
New York University. Dr. Jost said he admired Dr. Haidt as a “very
interesting and creative social psychologist” and found his work
useful in drawing attention to the strong moral element in political
beliefs.
But the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the first two of
Dr. Haidt’s principles — do no harm and do unto others as you would
have them do unto you — means that those are good candidates to be
moral virtues. The fact that liberals and conservatives disagree on
the other three principles “suggests to me that they are not general
moral virtues but specific ideological commitments or values,” Dr.
Jost said.
In defense of his views, Dr. Haidt said that moral claims could be
valid even if not universally acknowledged.
“It is at least possible,” he said, “that conservatives and
traditional societies have some moral or sociological insights that
secular liberals do not understand.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/science/18mora.html?pagewanted=print
Rupert
based? Has he done empirical work to try to confirm this?
Immortalist
> What exactly is his evidence that these mental systems are genetically
> based? Has he done empirical work to try to confirm this?
Actually I am reading a book that has some evidence and I am trying to
research it, I have a ways to go, here is the "just-so-story" as it
is;
The mind is composed of a large number of mental modules each designed
to solve a specific problem. For example, there is one mechanism for
perceiving three dimensions, another for anger, another for falling in
love. The mind is like a Swiss Army knife; i.e., it has lots of
specialized tools. There is no such thing as general intelligence,
general learning, or any other general ability to solve problems.
http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/463evolpsyIQ.html
...we are endowed with a moral faculty that delivers judgments of
right and wrong based on unconsciously operative and inaccessible
principles of action. The theory posits a universal moral grammar,
built into the brains of all humans. The grammar is a set of
principles that operate on the basis of the causes and consequences of
action. Thus, in the same way that we are endowed with a language
faculty that consists of a universal toolkit for building possible
languages, we are also endowed with a moral faculty that consists of a
universal toolkit for building possible moral systems.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/11/marc-hauser-mor.html
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal
Sense of Right and Wrong - by Marc Hauser
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Minds-Nature-Designed-Universal/dp/0060780703
If across the globe and throughout history, human beings have engaged
in a variety of religious practices and have held a diversity of
religious beliefs and these phenomena have been explained in a variety
of different ways by anthropologists, psychologists, and other
scholars, as well as by religious practitioners themselves, with
varying degrees of success, then perhaps more puzzling, and just in
need of an explanation, is the fact that all human beings have
religion in the first place.
If religion is a by-product of the way our minds evolved to negotiate
the natural and, more importantly, the social world and the
explanation for religious beliefs and behaviours is to be found in the
way all human minds work.
Religious concepts activate various functionally distinct mental
systems, present also in non-religious contexts, and ‘tweak’ the usual
inferences of these systems. They deal with detection and
representation of animacy and agency, social exchange, moral
intuitions, precaution against natural hazards and understanding of
misfortune. Each of these activates distinct neural resources or
families of networks.
The Inferential Instinct: ...a naturalistic account of cultural
representations that describes how evolved conceptual dispositions
make humans likely to acquire certain concepts more easily than
others. The aggregated result of these individual acquisition
processes channels cultures along particular paths, with the result
that some concepts are both relatively stable within a group and
recurrent among different groups.
Our brains have been "designed by evolution" to employ particular
cognitive systems that help us to make sense of "particular aspects of
objects around us and produce specific kinds of inferences about
them." There are, for instance, brain–systems in this sense that deal
with inanimate objects, others that deal with human persons, and yet
others that deal with supernatural agents. Just as our brains have
become by evolution such that they inevitably (and mostly
unconsciously) deploy the complex inferential systems that permit us
to survive and get around in a world of inanimate objects, so they
also have become such that we find ideas about full–access strategic
agents to be plausible because these ideas generate for us rich
inferences about how to behave and what choices to make, and they do
so with particular richness in a social context in which we can
reasonably assume that everyone else shares such ideas.
Scientists themselves thus reverse many traditional attempts to
explain religion away. It is not that we invent the gods because by so
doing we can meet needs otherwise difficult to satisfy, or because
they permit us to explain things otherwise hard to explain, or because
they give us the illusion of comfort in a harsh and comfortless world,
or because they give us persuasive reasons to act morally. It is,
rather, that evolution has equipped us (or most of us) with certain
proclivities or dispositions to explain misfortune, gain scarce social
goods, and act morally (roughly, acting in such a way as
evolutionarily to benefit either ourselves or the tribe).
Moreover, these proclivities dispose us to accept and act upon the
idea that there are gods—or, if you prefer, full–access strategic
agents. Evolution makes all of us likely worshipers in much the same
way that it makes all of us likely language–users. We are innately
predisposed for both, and so such disparate religious traditions as
Christian theology, Islamic law, and Buddhist metaphysics are merely
different forms of baroque ornamentations added on to an evolutionary
edifice.
Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That
Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors
by Pascal Boyer
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465006965/
Dutch
> What exactly is his evidence that these mental systems are genetically
> based? Has he done empirical work to try to confirm this?
I saw a report where researchers watched chimp families over long
periods of time and there were clear signs that family members exchanged
favors, tit for tat, like grooming in exchange for food sharing.
It makes sense that in a social species where cooperation in groups is
an evolutionary advantage that it would be selected for. Aggressive,
antisocial individuals could be shunned and banished by the combined
force of the group, and that actually happens in primate troupes, and
never breed.
shrik...@gmail.com
> Rupert wrote:
> > What exactly is his evidence that these mental systems are genetically
> > based? Has he done empirical work to try to confirm this?
>
> I saw a report where researchers watched chimp families over long
> periods of time and there were clear signs that family members exchanged
> favors, tit for tat, like grooming in exchange for food sharing.
But tit for tat is not, "Do unto others," it is,
"an eye for an eye."
tgde...@earthlink.net
> By NICHOLAS WADE
>
> Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.
> From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being
> advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
>
Someday, we will have a discussion here in which the distinction is
kept between "what is morality" and "what is moral".
Apparently not yet.
-tg
> He said that he also disagreed with Dr. ...
>
> read more »
Dutch
> On Jun 8, 9:47 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> By NICHOLAS WADE
>>
>> Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.
>> From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being
>> advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
>>
>
>
> Someday, we will have a discussion here in which the distinction is
> kept between "what is morality" and "what is moral".
>
> Apparently not yet.
>
> -tg
What is the point you're making? He posted a piece on the
origins of morals. I think it's true, human morals and
ultimately rights evolved from primate social behaviours.
The behaviour of watching each other's back is a successful
evolutionary strategy. tit for tat, both benefit.
The discussion about the nature of those morals and rights
goes on all the time.
tgde...@earthlink.net
> tgdenn...@earthlink.net wrote:
> > On Jun 8, 9:47 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> By NICHOLAS WADE
>
> >> Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.
> >> From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being
> >> advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
>
> > Someday, we will have a discussion here in which the distinction is
> > kept between "what is morality" and "what is moral".
>
> > Apparently not yet.
>
> > -tg
>
> What is the point you're making? He posted a piece on the
> origins of morals. I think it's true, human morals and
> ultimately rights evolved from primate social behaviours.
And you are making the same kind of error, or worse, since now you are
bandying about the term "evolved" as if it has some meaning in this
context.
Let's begin by having you explain what a 'human moral' *is*.
-tg
Sean_M...@yahoo.com
> On Jun 9, 4:00 pm, Dutch <n...@email.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > tgdenn...@earthlink.net wrote:
> > > On Jun 8, 9:47 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >> By NICHOLAS WADE
>
> > >> Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.
> > >> From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being
> > >> advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
>
> > > Someday, we will have a discussion here in which the distinction is
> > > kept between "what is morality" and "what is moral".
>
> > > Apparently not yet.
>
> > > -tg
>
> > What is the point you're making? He posted a piece on the
> > origins of morals. I think it's true, human morals and
> > ultimately rights evolved from primate social behaviours.
>
> And you are making the same kind of error, or worse, since now you are
> bandying about the term "evolved" as if it has some meaning in this
> context.
>
> Let's begin by having you explain what a 'human moral' *is*.
>
Not stomping you to death without fear that this is wrong for one.
This impulse to fear doing this to you is created by a module that
makes up me (along with other modules).
Modules form through cause and effect "domino effects". While some
modules form on the mono generational scale (nurture), many are
genetic (cause and effect on the multi generation scale).
Natural Selection is the idea that all modules don't equally pass on.
Environments (also formed by domino effects) unknowingly ensure only
some modules work at unknowingly converting more food into more of
themselves. ("Environments" mean everything from eg deserts to social
interactions in a group)
Evolution --change of shape, etc over time-- happens through Natural
Selection.
None of that is debated.
----
The author-doctor's specific "theory" (arrangement of above premises)
on why certain impulses got selected --is debatable.
tgde...@earthlink.net
> On Jun 9, 4:26 pm, tgdenn...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jun 9, 4:00 pm, Dutch <n...@email.com> wrote:
>
> > > tgdenn...@earthlink.net wrote:
> > > > On Jun 8, 9:47 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > >> By NICHOLAS WADE
>
> > > >> Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.
> > > >> From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being
> > > >> advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
>
> > > > Someday, we will have a discussion here in which the distinction is
> > > > kept between "what is morality" and "what is moral".
>
> > > > Apparently not yet.
>
> > > > -tg
>
> > > What is the point you're making? He posted a piece on the
> > > origins of morals. I think it's true, human morals and
> > > ultimately rights evolved from primate social behaviours.
>
> > And you are making the same kind of error, or worse, since now you are
> > bandying about the term "evolved" as if it has some meaning in this
> > context.
>
> > Let's begin by having you explain what a 'human moral' *is*.
>
> Not stomping you to death without fear that this is wrong for one.
>
Uh huh. And what would make it 'wrong' for one? You've just defined
an undefined term using a new undefined term.
Not very helpful.
-tg
Dutch
> On Jun 9, 4:00 pm, Dutch <n...@email.com> wrote:
>> tgdenn...@earthlink.net wrote:
>>> On Jun 8, 9:47 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> By NICHOLAS WADE
>>>> Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.
>>>> From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being
>>>> advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
>>> Someday, we will have a discussion here in which the distinction is
>>> kept between "what is morality" and "what is moral".
>>> Apparently not yet.
>>> -tg
>> What is the point you're making? He posted a piece on the
>> origins of morals. I think it's true, human morals and
>> ultimately rights evolved from primate social behaviours.
>
> And you are making the same kind of error, or worse, since now you are
> bandying about the term "evolved" as if it has some meaning in this
> context.
>
> Let's begin by having you explain what a 'human moral' *is*.
>
> -tg
Since you have raised the objections and have not provided
any substance, perhaps it would be better if you answered my
question first, What is the point you are making? That seems
fair, and it would help me.
tgde...@earthlink.net
The point I am making is that you can't explain what the terms
"moral", "morality", "human morals", mean, and so drawing conclusions
about genetics and evolution being determinant factors is meaningless.
To say "X is written into our genes" (or not) one must first be able
to characterize X. What is it that I am *observing* that I can
correlate with and propose a causal narrative about with genetics?
-tg
Sean_M...@yahoo.com
Wow are you a bot?
Behold the outback's new tactic...
Denser, blinder, duller than before.
Sean_M...@yahoo.com
"Not stomping you to death _without fear that this is wrong_ for one.
"
Daniel T.
> To say "X is written into our genes" (or not) one must first be able
> to characterize X. What is it that I am *observing* that I can
> correlate with and propose a causal narrative about with genetics?
I think there is something backwards about the above. First comes the
observation, then the characterization.
But I do agree with you that defining morality is difficult and we
obviously don’t all agree. Despite that, I think we all agree that
whatever morality is, it must have something to do with human
behavior, and human behavior originates in the genes.
Marcus Aurelius
The scientific method of approaching human behavior demands the same
postulate.
Many ancient and modern ethical philosophers have been persecuted and
executed based upon the false pretext that they did not conform to
religious "moral dogma".
Socrates, of course, was executed because he did not conform to the
religious dogma of his time.
Jesus Christ, of course, was executed because he did not conform to
the religious dogma of his time.
Human behavior, inclusive of ethical behavior, is the result of
"heredity and environment."
Day Brown
uses the phrase as if it means revenge, then offers his golden rule as a
superior moral imperative.
But if you then go back and actually read the Torah, the phrase exists
in only 3 places: Exodus 21, vs 24, Leviticus 24 vs 20, and Deuteronomy
19 vs 21. In the first instance, it does not justify revenge, but is, in
fact, the decision of the court as the punishment FOR REVENGE.
The next is where a liar in court gets that which he had intended for
another, and the last is where a stranger among the Jews gets the same
punishment a Jew would, ie, equal justice under the law.
Either Jesus does not, in fact, know the law, or he knows, but lets the
people continue in their misunderstanding so that he can appear more
moral. You pick.
I asked a rabbi once about this, and he said:'We dont like to make
trouble.' Thus, like Jesus, permitted people to remain misinformed of
the real meaning of the law, which was used to justify the murder of 6
million Jews. Go figure.
Day Brown
> Ethical behavior comes from "heredity and environment".
> The scientific method of approaching human behavior demands the same
> postulate.
> Many ancient and modern ethical philosophers have been persecuted and
> executed based upon the false pretext that they did not conform to
> religious "moral dogma".
> Socrates, of course, was executed because he did not conform to the
> religious dogma of his time.
profanation of the Mysteries." RG Wasson, 'The Road to Eleusis' explains
what that was about. The true reason has to do with the directive given
to the Mystai on entering the Telesterion to never divulge what went on
inside.
After Pericles expanded the Telesterion to be the largest indoor
assembly hall of the ancient world, holding 4000, the Komos rites were
held in it for nearly 1000 years, and nobody EVER RATTED.
But Socrates' student, Alcibiades went to Eleusis and stole the sacred
potion, Kykeion, and was throwing parties with it in Athens. Rather like
stealing the communion wine to get drunk on. But Alcibiades was also the
son of the most prominent connected family in town, and the jury didnt
feel it could take them on, so it charged Socrates. Who must have been
clearly aware of how his skepticism and iconoclasm was taken to this
extreme by his student.
Nobody at the trial wanted to expose the secret of Kykeion or the
Eleusinian mysteries, but everyone understood that if the secred recipe
got out it would kill a very profitable religious pilgramage business
that filled all the hotels in town before every ritual.
> Jesus Christ, of course, was executed because he did not conform to
> the religious dogma of his time.
Schoenfield, "The Passover Plot" takes issue. He shows that Jesus
deliberately set out to fulfill Essene prophecy by being taken and then
tortured by the Romans. But there was no need for him to die on the
cross, and he didnt.
If you know anything about the Roman practice of crucifixion, then you
know the body on the cross is the property of the state, and is spozed
to stay there as a warning until it rots. Nobody ever gets taken down by
his friends. The guards were paid off. Which is what Judas did.
The Nag Hammadi texts include the gospel of Judas in which we see that
"the Gospel of Judas appears to interpret Judas's act not as betrayal,
but rather as an act of obedience to the instructions of Jesus."
> Human behavior, inclusive of ethical behavior, is the result of
> "heredity and environment."
Which has always included a fair amount of spin.
Day Brown
neurology shows the reptilian brain in the corpus collosum is hooked up
to a motor control system that responds to pain faster because the
signals are not routed thru the prefrontal lobes.
When your hand or foot 'goes to sleep', you can still move it with the
other neural network. Neurologist Ramachandran shows how, when you burn
a finger, you shake the hand to add in a lot of other signals to swamp
the nerves so it does not feel so painful.
The Fins did fMRI brain scans of their most violent prisoners and found
a constricted neural pathway from the corpus collosum to the prefrontal
lobes. when emotionally excited, they see prefrontal activity nearly
shut down. The dude is running on his reptilian brain. Which has faster
reflexes, but also the less sophisticated visual system. They loose the
color processing of primates so they really do "see red".
This has to do with why brothels are decorated in crimson. the moral
imperatives written in the reptilian brain are not well socialized. So-
inasmuch as the constricted neural pathway is structural, its clearly
"written in our genes", and to assume that such an individual can ever
be as well socialized is false, and dangerous.
http://www.paulekman.com arose out of his work on monkey facial
expressions. Monkeys cant lie, but react with the same expressions we
have to fear, pleasure, surprise, pain, etc. Ekman shows how attempts to
deceive involve prefrontal calculation of the situation and then what
the face should look like to match. But- this takes 200 ms, during which
time the original primate facial response is written on the face. And
even when written over by the voluntary nervous system at the direction
of the prefrontal lobes, there are other muscles, part of the autonomic
nervous system that are not altered.
Some people really can 'read a face' and detect liars. I paid the 50$
for the instruction disk, and recommend it, whatever your instinctive
talent may be, you can improve on it by knowing what to look for. SO-
this is written on our genes as well.
DNA shows Native Europeans descend from agrarian villages of 150-300
over the course of the last 10,000 years. Africans in tribes of 75-150,
with other gene pools in the range. Whatever. The point is that elders,
witches, and shamen raised the kids of incompetent parents for the sake
of genetic diversity in small gene pools. Our antipathy for incest is a
remnant of this; the kids mite be stupid and crazy, but mite also have a
good immune response to cholera, dysentery, plague, malaria, etc.
This is the fundamental reason for liberalism. There's also a need for
the selfish alpha males- who are the warriors that protect the tribe. In
battle, they dont empathize, and dont feel your pain. And after battle,
they aint so good at it either. Their impulsive aggression tends to be
aimed at the beta males who are the same size, and with the intuitive
skill to read faces cited above, know when the alpha will strike out
even before he does. So, they brace themselves.
But in the nuclear family home, if there's no beta handy for a target,
why then the wife and kids will have to do. You cant expect the golden
rule to be written on the genes of the warrior; that'd interfere with
his ability to protect the community.
Course now, we dont need quick reflexes for military defense, so the
warriors are obsolete, and they aint so stupid they dont know. They tend
to self medicate with alcohol and other recreational drugs.
Michael Gordge
> By NICHOLAS WADE
>
> Where do moral rules come from?
Which is like starting to build a sky-scrapper from the tenth floor.
Why dont these idiots ewe find mortal, FIRST explain what they mean by
moral rules? what are morals? who needs morals and why? when that's
been answered - then AND ONLY then can one begin to determine where
the rules of morality come from.
MG
Day Brown
Well, OK. First, there are alpha then beta males; with very different
modes of behavior. Chimp video shows it is the alphas who enter pitched
battle, search for foraging couples, murder him, commit infanticide on
any young she has, kidnap her, and then gang rape her. Virtually all of
the impulsive violence is at the hands of alphas.
Video shows how the betas position themselves between the alphas and the
more vulnerable. Betas are the same size, and can take the hit. But, if
there's no beta, the preferred Alpha target, why then the wife and kids
will have to do.
Bloodwork shows alphaism is handed down on the Y chromosome. Daughters
of alphas abuse and abandon young. Betas, both male and female, adopt
the orphans. But alphas are needed to defend the group and its resource
base from other alpha gangs. However, groups with too few betas dont
have enuf young survive, and when the current generation of alphas get
old, the females are all kidnapped.
With hominids this familiar system is complicated by the dispersal of
betas and females into new territory beyond the range of alphas as with
the case of the Mosou, who live way the fuck up in the Himalaya mtns of
SW China and are ruled by women.
Barford, "The Early Slavs" shows how Slav couples fled Roman slavery to
enter the Transylvanian forest, and hide out in tiny dug in earth bermed
cabins. They lived off of rabbit snares and tiny gardens of turnips. The
thing about turnips is, that when they hear an army is coming, they take
what food they can carry and bury the rest of the tubers under the leaf
litter. You cant do that with grain; it'd rot.
When the soldiers arrive, there's no gold, no food, and no pussy. Whole
armies have been starved out, most notably, Napoleon.
So- some cultures have warfare 24/7, all year around, and need lotsa
alphas. But some are so dispersed there are no rich target zones. Europe
has lotsa herbs that cause sterility and abortion, so its women
controlled how many kids they had, and therefore stabilized the
population below the range of rich target zones in many areas. Cultures
that have more betas use different moral values that focus on more care
in raising fewer kids. Those with alphas need tyrannic draconian control
and have high birth rates cause with a harem, there's always more sons
to replace those lost by disease or violence.
Thus, the message written on the genes depends.
Opearl
> Michael Gordge wrote:
>> On Jun 9, 10:47 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> By NICHOLAS WADE
>>>
>>> Where do moral rules come from?
>>
>> Which is like starting to build a sky-scrapper from the tenth floor.
>>
>> Why dont these idiots ewe find mortal, FIRST explain what they mean by
>> moral rules? what are morals? who needs morals and why? when that's
>> been answered - then AND ONLY then can one begin to determine where
>> the rules of morality come from.
>
> Well, OK. First, there are alpha then beta males; with very different
> modes of behavior. Chimp video shows it is the alphas who enter pitched
> battle, search for foraging couples, murder him, commit infanticide on
> any young she has, kidnap her, and then gang rape her. Virtually all of
> the impulsive violence is at the hands of alphas.
>
> Video shows how the betas position themselves between the alphas and the
> more vulnerable. Betas are the same size, and can take the hit. But, if
> there's no beta, the preferred Alpha target, why then the wife and kids
> will have to do.
'No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: April 13, 2004
Sometimes it takes the great Dustbuster of fate to clear the room of
bullies and bad habits. Freak cyclones helped destroy Kublai Khan's
brutal Mongolian empire, for example, while the Black Death of the
14th century capsized the medieval theocracy and gave the Renaissance
a chance to shine.
Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of
tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and
most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral
transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.
In a study appearing today in the journal PloS Biology (online at
www.plosbiology.org), researchers describe the drastic temperamental and
tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent
members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males
that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon
troop over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed
there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left
behind in the troop, designated the Forest Troop, were the 50 percent of
males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the
females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural
swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy,
and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats,
swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.
Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two
decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died
or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside. (As is the
case for most primates, baboon females spend their lives in their natal home,
while the males leave at puberty to seek their fortunes elsewhere.) The
persistence of communal comity suggests that the resident baboons must
somehow be instructing the immigrants in the unusual customs of the tribe.
"We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal," said Dr. Robert M.
Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford, "but the jerky
new guys are obviously learning, `We don't do things like that around here.'"
Dr. Sapolsky wrote the report with his colleague and wife, Dr. Lisa J. Share.
Dr. Sapolsky, who is renowned for his study of the physiology of stress,
said that the Forest Troop baboons probably felt as good as they acted.
Hormone samples from the monkeys showed far less evidence of stress in
even the lowest-ranking individuals, when contrasted with baboons living
in more rancorous societies.
The researchers were able to compare the behavior and physiology of the
contemporary Forest Troop primates to two control groups: a similar-size
baboon congregation living nearby, called the Talek Troop, and the Forest
Troop itself from 1979 through 1982, the era that might be called Before
Alpha Die-off, or B.A.D.
"It's a really fine, thorough piece of work, with the sort of methodology
and lucky data sets that you can only get from doing long-term field
research," said Dr. Duane Quiatt, a primatologist at the University of
Colorado at Denver and a co-author with Vernon Reynolds of the 1993
book "Primate Behaviour: Information, Social Knowledge and the Evolution
of Culture."
The new work vividly demonstrates that, Putumayo records notwithstanding,
humans hold no patent on multiculturalism. As a growing body of research
indicates, many social animals learn from one another and cultivate regional
variants in skills, conventions and fashions. Some chimpanzees crack open
their nuts with a stone hammer on a stone anvil; others prefer wood hammers
on wood anvils. The chimpanzees of the Tai forest rain-dance; those of the
Gombe tickle themselves. Dr. Jane Goodall reported a fad in one chimpanzee
group: a young female started wiggling her hands, and before long, every
teen chimp was doing likewise.
(Page 2 of 2)
But in the baboon study, the culture being conveyed is less a specific
behavior or skill than a global code of conduct. "You can more accurately
describe it as the social ethos of group," said Dr. Andrew Whiten, a
professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology at the University
of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied chimpanzee culture. "It's an
attitude that's being transmitted."
The report also offers real-world proof of a principle first demonstrated in
captive populations of monkeys: that with the right upbringing, diplomacy is
infectious. Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center
at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in
Atlanta, has shown that if the normally pugilistic rhesus monkeys are reared
with the more conciliatory stumptailed monkeys, the rhesus monkeys learn
the value of tolerance, peacemaking and mutual hip-hugging.
Dr. de Waal, who wrote an essay to accompany the new baboon study,
said in a telephone interview, "The good news for humans is that it looks
like peaceful conditions, once established, can be maintained," he said.
"And if baboons can do it," he said, "why not us? The bad news is that you
might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there."
Jerkiness or worse certainly seems to be a job description for ordinary male
baboons. The average young male, after wheedling his way into a new troop
at around age 7, spends his prime years seeking to fang his way up the
hierarchy; and once he's gained some status, he devotes many a leisure hour
to whimsical displays of power at scant personal cost. He harasses and
attacks females, which weigh half his hundred pounds and lack his
thumb-thick canines, or he terrorizes the low-ranking males he knows cannot
retaliate.
Dr. Barbara Smuts, a primatologist at the University of Michigan who wrote
the 1985 book "Sex and Friendship in Baboons," said that the females in the
troop she studied received a serious bite from a male annually, maybe losing
a strip of flesh or part of an ear in the process. As they age and lose
their strength, however, males may calm down and adopt a new approach to
group living, affiliating with females so devotedly that they keep their
reproductive opportunities going even as their ranking in the male hierarchy
plunges.
For their part, female baboons, which live up to 25 years - compared with
the male's 18 - inherit their rank in the gynocracy from their mothers and
so spend less time fighting for dominance. They do, however, readily battle
females from outside the fold, for they, not the males, are the keepers of
turf and dynasty.
The new-fashioned Forest Troop is no United Nations, or even the average
frat house. Its citizens remain highly aggressive and argumentative, and the
males still obsess over hierarchy. "We're talking about baboons here," said
Dr. Sapolsky.
What most distinguishes this congregation from others is that the males
resist taking out their bad moods on females and underlings. When a
dominant male wants to pick a fight, he finds someone his own size and
rank. As a result, a greater percentage of male-male conflicts in the Forest
Troop occur between closely ranked individuals than is seen in the control
populations, where the bullies seek easier pickings. Moreover, Forest Troop
males of all ranks spend more time grooming and being groomed, and just
generally huddling close to troop mates, than do their counterpart males in
the study.
Interestingly, the male faces in the Forest Troop may have changed over
time, but the relative numbers have not. Ever since the tuberculosis
epidemic killed half the adult males, the ratio has remained skewed, with
twice as many females as males. Yet the researchers have demonstrated
that the troop's sexual complexion alone cannot explain its character.
Examining other troops with a similar preponderance of females, the
Stanford scientists saw no evidence of the Forest Troop's relative amity.
Dr. Sapolsky has no idea how long the good times will last. "I confess
I'm rooting for the troop to stay like this forever, but I worry about how
vulnerable they may be," he said. "All it would take is two or three jerky
adolescent males entering at the same time to tilt the balance and destroy
the culture."
> Bloodwork shows alphaism is handed down on the Y chromosome. Daughters
> of alphas abuse and abandon young. Betas, both male and female, adopt
> the orphans. But alphas are needed to defend the group and its resource
> base from other alpha gangs. However, groups with too few betas dont
> have enuf young survive, and when the current generation of alphas get
> old, the females are all kidnapped.
"Brain Abnormality Linked To Pathology "
by Erica Goode The New York Times, February 15, 2000
"Ask the average social scientist why people become criminals, and the
answer is apt to center on poverty and abuse, not brain structure and
neurochemicals.
But in a new study, appearing in the February issue of the Archives of
General Psychiatry, researchers report that 21 men with antisocial
personality disorder, a psychiatric diagnosis often applied to people
with a history of criminal behavior, and a history of violence had subtle
abnormalities in the structure of the brain's frontal lobe.
The abnormalities, the researchers found, distinguished the men with
the disorder from healthy subjects, as well as from subjects who
abused alcohol or drugs, or who suffered from other psychiatric
disorders like schizophrenia.
When combined with the results of previous studies, write the
researchers, led by Dr. Adrian Raine, Robert Wright Professor of
Psychology at the University of Southern California, the findings
suggest ''that there is a significant brain basis to APD over and above
contributions from the psychosocial environment, and that these
neurobehavioral processes are relevant to understanding violence in
everyday society.''
The official diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association
lists a variety of criteria for a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder,
including 'a failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful
behaviors,' deceitfulness, impulsiveness, reckless disregard for the
safety of self or others, lack of remorse and 'consistent irresponsibility.'
...'
http://www.forensic-psych.com/articles/artGoode.html
> With hominids this familiar system is complicated by the dispersal of
> betas and females into new territory beyond the range of alphas as with
> the case of the Mosou, who live way the fuck up in the Himalaya mtns of
> SW China and are ruled by women.
>
> Barford, "The Early Slavs" shows how Slav couples fled Roman slavery to
> enter the Transylvanian forest, and hide out in tiny dug in earth bermed
> cabins. They lived off of rabbit snares and tiny gardens of turnips. The
> thing about turnips is, that when they hear an army is coming, they take
> what food they can carry and bury the rest of the tubers under the leaf
> litter. You cant do that with grain; it'd rot.
>
> When the soldiers arrive, there's no gold, no food, and no pussy. Whole
> armies have been starved out, most notably, Napoleon.
>
> So- some cultures have warfare 24/7, all year around, and need lotsa
> alphas. But some are so dispersed there are no rich target zones. Europe
> has lotsa herbs that cause sterility and abortion, so its women
> controlled how many kids they had, and therefore stabilized the
> population below the range of rich target zones in many areas. Cultures
> that have more betas use different moral values that focus on more care
> in raising fewer kids. Those with alphas need tyrannic draconian control
> and have high birth rates cause with a harem, there's always more sons
> to replace those lost by disease or violence.
>
> Thus, the message written on the genes depends.
'Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All
civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and
"warfare." Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder.
The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple:
1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic
mass murderers;
2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e. seize control
of their labour power and its fruits);
3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process
(by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and PR men).
Then go back to step one and repeat the process.
Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of
civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally
inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse.
The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain who successfully
brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers-was almost
certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery,
psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths
in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military
hierarchies.
Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or
so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human
beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely
reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers - unless they are brainwashed
with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily
it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.
In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written military history,
to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that military science is
less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming the
instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species. The
true "Revolution in Military Affairs" was not Donald Rumsfeld's move
to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall's discovery
in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line
of fire would use their weapons: "Those (80-85%) who did not fire
did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great
danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they
simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced
with repeated waves of banzai charges" (Grossman, p. 4).
Marshall's discovery and subsequent research, proved that in all
previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers - the 5% who are natural-
born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily- insane imitators-
did almost all the killing. Normal men just went through the motions
and, if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier,
even if that meant giving up their own. The implication: Wars are
ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This
cannot be good for humanity's genetic endowment!)
Marshall's work, brought a Copernican revolution to military science.
In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill for his
country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight was
a (cowardly) aberration. The truth, as it turned out, was that the
normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The
sane majority, would rather die than fight.
The implication, too frightening for even the likes of Marshall and
Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers' behaviour
in battle had been set by psychopaths. That meant that psychopaths
were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that
psychopaths were in control of society's perception of military affairs.
Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in
seemingly sane, normal society.
.....'
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html#
Day Brown
> 'No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture By NATALIE ANGIER
> Published: April 13, 2004
> Sometimes it takes the great Dustbuster of fate to clear the room of
> bullies and bad habits. Freak cyclones helped destroy Kublai Khan's
> brutal Mongolian empire, for example, while the Black Death of the 14th
> century capsized the medieval theocracy and gave the Renaissance a
> chance to shine.
from very obscure sources. Barford, "The Early Slavs" picks them up in
the 5th century, when there was a swathe of abandoned land 100 km wide
all along the Rhine and Danube from repeated slave raiding by the Roman
legions. This grew up into inpenetrable brush like after a clearcut.
It was Slav couples who first moved in here, and to just by the traces
of Roman tools left behind, some were runaway slaves. They'd build a
tiny, half dugout, half earth bermed cabin with a very low profile and
clear an acre of garden. The cabins had large mudbrick/stone ovens that
had a fire at nite when the smoke could not be seen, but then enuf
latent heat to keep the place warm all day.
They also switched from growing grain to turnips. Mostly the armies and
alpha male warriors you refer to could not find them. Barford says they
were spread out no more than one every square kilometer, which was in
dense forest where you could not see in any direction more than 30
meters. It was a lifestyle that spread all thru the more forested parts
of Europe. Then, if they heard an army was coming, they'd gather up the
food they could carry, and bury the rest of the tubers under the leaf
litter. You cant do that with grain. When the soldiers got there, there
was no food, no gold, and no pussy. It didnt matter how big bad and
brave they were; whole armies were starved out, most notably, Napoleon
in Russia.
The history books give you the idea the Slavs had no impact, but then
the scribes were all in the pay of the warrior elites. Only the garbage
dumps never lie. Its clear a lotta these independent yeoman farmers came
to America; the similarity to the Pioneer life is obvious. We also hear,
on the "Prairy Home Companion" of their modesty and dislike for status
symbols so beloved by the warrior elites.
Their descendants are still here, but they are not driven to try to
modify, much less control, the thinking of other people, so they dont
post here. Of course, as we see, the descendants of the warriors are
here as well, and they are not so stupid they dont see the end of the
age of alpha male domination. They commonly pick an enemy they think is
responsible- the Jews, femonazis, oil companies, liberals, communists,
or whatever, cause they dont really get what the change is, that your
post refers to.
I take issue with the notion that civilization is always predatory. The
Hopi and Navajo were not. Nor is there any evidence the first city in
South America, Carcal engaged in warfare. Hodder, "The Leopard's Tale"
reports on Chatal Hoyuk and the rest of a dozen neolithic cities across
south central Turkey 10,000 years ago, that left us no evidence of
warfare among them at all.
New agrarian technologies expanded the resource base, and that produced
peace. Now that the global economy struggles with Hubbard's Peak Oil, it
is a damn moot point whether peace can be maintained. You cite the men
who would not shoot on the line of battle. But now, even women can use a
drone to murder, and taking out innocent women and kids along with the
intended target does not give them PTSD.
Stanley Milgram's studies on obedience should give any American pause
for thot if he thinks we are any different from Nazis. But the most
likely form of predation today is simply the redirection of critical
global resources away from the less developed, and increasingly
unstable, economies to the more civilized, where there is less obvious
corruption and a better return on investment. Like a Greek play, we can
cause all this suffering and death, but it all happens off stage.
I had two young men, about 30, for dinner last nite, where we discussed
some of this. They both know they dont make enuf money to afford to
support a family. And both of them scored at or above the 99th
percentile in academic performance (ACT 33-36). Both are somewhat alpha,
but endowed with the intelligence and sanity to see the changes in the
culture the studies you refer to outline. Unlike so many here, who, as
Nietzsche put it, suffer from "the rancor of impotence", and the need to
identify some enemy.
Both recognize the fundamental problem is reliance on oil, and the need
for some new alternative energy to get the global economy going again.
And until that happens, they'll muddle thru, make enuf to get by, but
make no family plans.