(This post is part of series of posts, indexed here. It is recommended they be read collectively, and in order.)
This post could, perhaps, be considered an addendum to the prior post, exploring the impact of your greatest enemy on the larger society.
Humans, even the introverts, are social animals. We need social connection. Complete social isolation has been shown to have significant negative impact on emotional well-being, and it even causes physical changes within the human brain. (See The Effects of Solitary Confinement on the Brain: Psychology Today)
If you consider the human being from a purely physical design, it seems quite obvious we are intended to function within a social collective - a herd or pack if you will. We are quite poorly designed to survive in this - often harsh - world. Our exterior covering provides little protection from extremes in heat or cold. Our long, gangly, upright structure is less balanced, less durable than most other creatures in the animal kingdom. We have no claws, nor tusks to serve as offensive or defensive weapons, and our hide, when compared to most other creatures, is quite fragile.
For the first few years of our lives, we are utterly helpless. Without someone to care for us, we would die of starvation, or dehydration, or exposure.
Our survival depends heavily on our mental capacity, and our opposable thumbs; our ability to imagine, design, and construct tools and machines which compensate for our frail structure, and which allows us to re-shape our environment to suit us.
Our capacity to do so collectively is truly the secret to our success. We collaborate to create systems far more complex and sophisticated than any one person could ever hope to achieve in a lifetime.
You may readily note the presence of our fundamental survival mechanisms within this:
- Seek Pleasure
- Avoid Pain
- Conserve Energy
Our homes, vehicles, electronic gadgets … All designed for the purpose of increasing our comfort (or decreasing our discomfort if you prefer) and reducing the effort we must personally exert. We can now plant and harvest crops largely from the comfort of an air-conditioned machine. We can travel thousands of miles in less than a day. We have become so efficient in meeting our basic survival needs, there are now entire industries, employing millions of people, devoted entirely to entertainment and leisure.
However, much like the above mechanisms, our fundamental social characteristics can be subverted.
Survival dictates we avoid potential dangers, and seek out potential allies. But how does one identify potential dangers? In simplest terms, "Different is dangerous." and "same is safe."
But what is "same" and what is "different"?
Skin color, hair color, language, accent ... Outward characteristics are perhaps the most immediately available to us.
If you have ever traveled to a foreign country or even a distant city, perhaps you've had a chance encounter with someone who was from your own region, and experienced that moment of connection with them, even though personally, you know them no better than any of the strangers surrounding you. The similarity in speech, clothing style, accent... whatever it may be, is more familiar, and so you experience an immediate rapport.
Conversely, have you ever witnessed a baby's first encounter with a father after he shaved a full beard? The very sudden, very dramatic change in appearance generally leads to tears. Daddy must reestablish his rapport with his child, as he has reverted to 'stranger'.
We gravitate toward that which we deem similar, and away from that which we perceive as 'different'. However, since the function of this behavior is tied to the need for protection against danger (real or perceived), The characteristics which are prioritized for similarity are often altered by our fears. Instead of seeking the 'greater of two goods', we will instead default to the 'lesser of two evils'. We will align with the obvious 'enemy of our enemy', over a potentially neutral friend.
Furthermore, since our own opinions are quite mutable (despite our claims to the contrary), once we have aligned with a group, we will tend to adopt the group tenets ('groupthink', or the 'echo-chamber' phenomenon as they are often called; this, coupled with our tenuous grasp of 'truth', can shape our entire culture, to the point of creating false realities). And once again, as this is a survival mechanism, fear tends to hold greater sway in the preferential weighting of these tenets. We huddle together, and chitter fearfully, or angrily at the perceived threats without.
An extreme example of the effects of this can be seen in the Rwandan genocide, as Hutu people slaughtered neighbors; not just the Tutsi, but also Hutus who held moderate views in regards to the Hutu - Tutsi conflict ('if you are not for us, you are against us').
Another example worth consideration is the Soviet campaign to eliminate the kulaks - essentially peasant farmers who, despite their generally poor-to-middle-class state, were considered enemies to the 'collective', due to their land ownership. The kulaks were imprisoned or murdered, their livestock were destroyed, and their crops were ruined. The result of this ill-conceived action was a famine which killed over five million people.
Fundamentally, this is what is really happening 'under the hood' of what we call 'racisim' or 'sexism' or 'ageism'... It is the underlying mechanism defining discrimination against members of a different religion, or a political party, against blonds or redheads, or blue eyes vs brown eyes.
We layer all kinds of nonsensical and complex concepts on top of this, to attempt to explain or describe this behavior (unconscious bias, privilege, etc...), but it really is not so complicated as that. It is simply a survival mechanism that we are failing to properly manage.
A second key characteristic of our social nature is that of hierarchy. In point of fact, "...all men are..." NOT "...created equal...". Our genetic differences predispose us to excel in certain capacities and underperform in others. Our own personal interest in, and investment of time to study and practice a particular skill further widens the gap. This ability to specialize is fundamental to our extraordinary success as a species. One masterful farmer, using advanced tools created by a skilled craftsman can feed a village, freeing others to construct more comfortable homes and more efficient tools, to innovate and invent better fabrics, indoor plumbing, electric lights, heating and cooling, computers, transportation … It is all possible due to our hierarchical nature.
This particular characteristic is impacted by a couple of the fundamental survival mechanisms.
First, our directive to conserve energy will oft time lead us to surrender authority to those we perceive as more capable (even in some instances when they aren't). This can be observed in the 1960's Milgram experiment. Its effect likely played a role in the death of Kitty Genovese, who was attacked twice, over the span of one half hour, with witnesses having observed the first attack.
Second, our directive to avoid pain, even injury to our ego may lead us to fight unreasonably against those more competent than us (seemingly in contradiction to the directive to conserve energy). This perhaps explains why organizations, such as Twitter, Google, etc... often censor degreed, credible doctors and scientists whose dissenting opinions don't align the current consensus on certain topics. One specific example is a doctor who creates YouTube videos, reviewing data relating to covid. The entirety of many of these videos is him reviewing and highlighting data from published studies, some of which he pulled directly from the CDC and WHO websites. Yet staff from YouTube (who are not doctors, nor scientists) flags each of these videos with a warning that the information is suspect, and then provides a link to a (out of date) CDC web page where you can "get the facts".
Surrounding all of this is the issue of scale. As our population density grows, we find ourselves connecting to, and shifting between an increasing number of herds. The differences and similarities which bind or divide us become increasingly subtle, and increasingly strong.
This issue of scale also introduces the challenges of anonymity, which frequently impacts both how we perceive others, and how we behave.
When we encounter someone we know nothing about, our natural survival instincts will make snap judgments, based on our past experiences (and associated cognitive biases) based on external factors, to determine whether an individual is a pack member, or a threat. Such cursory evaluations of complex creatures like ourselves are rarely accurate. Curiously, while we usually acknowledge that complexity in ourselves, and those to whom we have established close relationships, we fail to acknowledge it in the anonymous. We dehumanize them. And - being "less than human" - we feel no compunction to treat them according to our established social mores.
The opposite circumstance has a curious effect as well. When we are in a state of anonymity - that is when we are not surrounded by members of one of our many herds, we often behave differently. Our herd tends to act as a social conscience, keeping our natural, instinctual, and sometimes vile natures in check. In their absence, we may behave in ways we otherwise would not. The effects of this are frequently visible in social media chat forums.
So, we can be monstrous when we are not surrounded by our flock, and we can be collectively monstrous when we are caught up in the effects of groupthink with our flock.
When one considers in combination with these, the previously mentioned characteristics:
- We view the world not from a position of truth, but from a perceived perspective, through the lens of our unique paradigm.
- Our brain lies to us
- We construct models, based on narratives, which we therefore accept as 'reality'
One can perhaps recognize the potential for disaster on a grand scale. Our own perception of potential threats tends to be adopted by those within the flock who view us as hierarchically 'competent' - a sort of social contagion, which infects the minds of the collective. These perceived, or imagined characteristics become codified by the collective. They become the truth, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. With scale, the overwhelming volume of data and the inherent anonymity can lead to a point where a critical mass is reached. We can observe the creation of a mass illusion, which - due to the individual need to preserve ego - the flock will aggressively protect. Illusion then becomes - for all practical purposes - reality, and the flock experiences mass psychosis, mass hysteria, with all the potential devastation inherent in a stampede of sophisticated, yet deluded creatures.
It is here, at this point of mass surrender to 'the natural man', that we observe seemingly rational, morally principled people engage in heinous, unspeakable acts of violence and denigration; subjugation, enslavement, mass murder, genocide. Neighbor against neighbor, and brother against brother. Our capacity for creation balanced by an equal capacity for destruction.
These last two posts may seem quite frightening, disheartening. That is not my intent.
For, stating the last conversely; our capacity for destruction is balanced by an equal capacity for creation.
I believe as we come to recognize and acknowledge that within each of us, individually, is this duality - that we contain within ourselves both the seeds of a Mother Theresa and a Mao Zedong, that we are equal parts Ghandi and Hitler... as we acknowledge this, then we can recognize the circumstances which enable our darker side, and then devise mechanisms to constrain that probability. We can, through the Art of Reasoning, cast aside the illusions, subdue our 'natural man'. And enable our individual, greater selves to ascend.
