http://www.grassie.net/pdfs/2008_A_Biohistorical_Approach.pdf viewed on 29.10.2010 at 13:53(GMT+10)
“Discussing the phenomena of nationalism, terrorism, and religion. It is wise to take a bio-historical, evolutionary perspective, because I think this will help us best understand and transform many conflicts [and dilemmas] throughout the world.
I am inspired to take this evolutionary approach in part through my encounters with the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit Paleontologist who died in 1955.
He writes:
For our age, to have become conscious of evolution means something very different and much more than having discovered one further fact...
Blind indeed are those who do not see the sweep of a movement whose orb infinitely transcends the natural sciences and has successfully invaded and conquered the surrounding territory – chemistry, physics, sociology, and even mathematics and the history of religions. One after the other all the fields of human knowledge have been shaken and carried away by the same under-water current in the direction of some development. Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
By taking this broad evolutionary approach, we gain the most leverage in both understanding and transforming [our] countries and the world. So [it is good to] begin globally and end locally [wherever on Earth].
Nationalism
Nationalism can be understood as an evolutionary outgrowth of our natural tribal passions and rationalities, which were imprinted in the human psyche and genome over millions of years. Humans are profoundly social animals with a highly evolved capacityto engage in symbolic thought. One of the fundamental challenges in social species is how to ensure cooperation within the group and sacrifice on behalf of the group. The wellbeing and survival of the group depends on this cooperation and sacrifice. In humans, this is accomplished by a mix of evolved primate behaviours, as well as, newer cultural adaptations in the realm of religions, ideologies, and cultures.
It is no simple evolutionary trick to get individuals to cooperate and to sacrifice their own wellbeing, or that of their immediate offspring, for the benefit of the group. And yet, we cannot imagine that a human society would long endure if it could not 1) organize its members to cooperate and 2) in extreme instances, ask individuals to sacrifice their wellbeing for the benefit of the group. The latter is particularly troublesome to evolutionary biologists, because true altruism would contradict Darwin’s theory of natural selection. There are various theories within evolutionary biology that try to explain other-regarding behaviour. They go by names like kin selection and reciprocal altruism. At this stage, we need only consider a few of the proximate mechanism, rather than their ultimate explanations, and think about how these scale up from the level of the tribe to the dynamics of a nation state.
Remember that the dark side of this in-group altruism is that it is often employed in the most brutal manner against outsiders. Humans are clearly capable of great evil, as manifested in warfare, massacres, pillaging, raping, and enslavement, which have been the norm for most of human history and presumably much of our pre-history. This evil is partly a function of our evolved nature.
Of course, humans have natural dispositions towards living in groups. It hardly needs to be said, but no human is self-created. There is no such thing as a fully autonomous individual human. We speak languages we did not invent; we use tools that we did not design; we benefit from a vast library of knowledge that we did not discover; and we are nurtured as infants and children into “individuality” by families and societies that we did not choose.
We note in many species of primates, including humans, there is the phenomenon of the dominant male and occasionally a dominant female, which role also helps to hold the tribe together. This Alpha-Factor is replicated in a number of mammalian species, including wolves, horses, and elephants. This institution of social hierarchy within the group helps provide for cohesiveness. The maintenance of social hierarchy is generally achieved through displays of aggression and displays of altruism. Members of the group appease the BigMan out of fear, but also out of hoped for benefits. The BigMan doles out rewards and punishments in order to reinforce this social hierarchy. He passes on his kingdom to one of his children, thus increasing his “reproductive fitness”, but does so in part at the expense of the community from which he extracts surplus production and surplus reproduction as his “sovereign right”. The Alpha-Factor is not the only form of social organization that humans use to maintain solidarity, and it is certainly supplemented by many other social tools as well, but I believe it is the predominant outward structure of societies for most of human history, especially societies that grow in size and complexity.
As humans moved from small, intimate hunter-gatherer tribes into larger social groups and spanning numerous settlements and geographical regions, it was largely the BigMan model of social organization that succeeded and prevailed. In this form of social organization a dominant human, typically a male, would serve as the leader of the group, extracting surplus production from others, while ensuring social harmony and organizing common defense, as well as, waging wars against neighbors in order to expand the territory, wealth, and population of the tribe, city-state, kingdom, or empire.
The dictator-king would hand out favors to followers and ruthlessly punish transgressors. Machiavelli recognizes as much in The Prince. “Is it better to be loved than feared, or vice versa” asks Machiavelli. He answers both, but if you cannot have both, then “it is much safer to be feared than loved” (XVII, p. 59). In all of this, we can see many parallels between human social relations and our chimpanzee cousins (though less so with our bonobo relatives, who would rather “make love, not war”). Note that in studies of chimpanzee bands and contemporary hunter-gather societies, some 25 to 30 percent of males die a violent death in competition with outsiders (Dyer, 2004, 71-79).
So nationalism is a synthesis of primordial passions and modernity. As local communities decline from the 1800s on, nationalism fills the gap. This was enabled in large part because of new modes of communication, transportation, and production, as well as a race for military superiority over ones’ neighbours. Today, there are many forms of nationalism, but they all involve concepts of a homeland, sacred centres, shared language, common customs, a hostile surrounding, memories of battles, and historical thinking. These combine to create a common motivating mythology that united “the whole people”. Nationalisms are invented traditions and almost always have an ethnic component. There is a Romantic side to nationalism, typically projecting an essentialist organic or “blood” bond between the people.
In modern history, nationalism became a global phenomenon with growing opposition to multi-ethnic empires – rebelling against the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ottoman empire, the Russian empire, the British empire, among others. Nationalism spreads the world round in opposition to colonialism and takes on new forms today in opposition to globalization. Nationalism seeks the preservation of the Vaterland and the Muttersprache. It confers political legitimacy on leaders and imposes obligations on citizens to the state.
While much harm has been done in the name of nationalism, I want to emphasize that group identity is a normal, natural, and necessary part of being human. One can be a nationalist without being xenophobic and chauvinistic. Liberal forms of nationalism offer people meaningful lives in integrated societies, a sense of belonging and pride, which need not be exaggerated and jingoistic. Note that World Cup Football and the Olympic Games are organized around national teams and are in themselves quite wholesome.
Competition, including competition between nations, can be a good thing. The dialectic between competition and cooperation helps to move humanity and evolution forward.
One of the more destructive forms of nationalism is when it is combined with BigMan governance. In these instances, the BigMan and his cronies use nationalism as a form of political legitimation and control. By controlling the power of the State, they are able to manipulate rewards and punishments to entrench themselves through the Alpha-Factor. And like little chimpanzees that we are, most humans are only too happy to fall in line. Big-Man governance, however, disrupts the dialectic of competition and cooperation, so the society stagnates, becomes inefficient, and at war with itself or the outside world.
The only alternative to BigMan governance that humans have invented is in some form of limited government with checks and balances built into the structure of government to restrict the power of the State and the Alpha leaders who would grab control of state power. Remember that the modern concept of national sovereignty, as opposed to the BigMan concept of the sovereign’s rights, is derived from the concept of individual sovereignty. In other words, each individual is ultimately the king or queen of his or her own personhood. Government in this view is a social contract entered into to enhance individual freedoms – the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as stated for instance in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Implied in this social contract theory of legitimate government is the notion that economic activity is not the primary responsibility of the State, but of individuals. The state is to maintain a level playing field for economic interests to compete and cooperate, enforcing laws equally, protecting private property, enforcing contracts, providing for national defense, and when efficient, promoting public goods like transportation or education. Thus, the concept of limited government liberates economic markets and human ingenuity to create a rich ecology of production and innovation within a society. This non-zero sum dynamic is the magic of economic development. New wealth is created.
Note that I used the term “limited government” and not “democracy” per se. Democracy, as Plato already pointed out in The Republic, is simply the tyranny of the majority. The majority is not likely to be virtuous or just. In Socrates’ words, the majority will be governed by base “appetites” and “passions” and not noble virtues and wisdom. In democracies, Socrates argues, the minorities will rebel against the tyranny of the majority. Civil war will ensue. And before you know it, democracy will end in chaos followed by dictatorship (Plato). Universal suffrage may be an important part of limited government, but in itself is only one piece of the puzzle.
I have already argued that the concept of individual sovereignty as formulated by John Locke and others is a fiction that we have invented. Humans are never independent, autonomous individuals – sovereign nations unto themselves. We are always dependent on a web of social relations that form our identities and enhance our survival.
Let us think of individual sovereignty as a useful fiction, one that has productively spawned a discourse about human rights, legitimacy, and justice. This discourse helps make the world a better place. Even if it is not ontologically true, it is pragmatically useful. Let us call this the dialectic between individual rights and social obligations, the dialectic between individualism and communalism, which we can add to the dialectic of competition and cooperation.
By the way, nation-states are not really independent either, though national sovereignty is regularly invoked against interference in the internal affairs of others. Say what you will to justify what you may, but in the end neither the large and powerful, nor the small and less powerful nations of the world can escape what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the inescapable web of mutuality”(King 1963) in which all of us our entangled today through global markets and global communications.
The bio-historical future
At this point I would like to return to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), the French Jesuit priest and palaeontologist, who sought to integrate religious faith and evolution ((1955)1959) ((1957)1960) ((1963)1970). While Teilhard spent his scientific career studying the history of evolution, including human origins, the spiritual question for him was not so much where have we come from, but where are we going.
Teilhard saw evolution as a teleological process of increasing complexification, with ever-deeper relationality as the corollary to this complexity. This evolutionary process gave rise to consciousness and with it increasing freedom. He referred to this process as “centration,” an epic search for the cosmic center. Divergence, convergence, and emergence are the pattern replicated throughout the epic of evolution. This law of recurrence operates at each level of reality. Subatomic particles give rise to atoms; atoms make possible molecules; complex chemistry leads to cellular life; multi-cellular life gives rise to organisms; organisms evolved into vertebrates; vertebrates eventually differentiate into mammals; mammals split-off into primates; primates ascend into humans. Divergence, convergence, and emergence operate in each transition of novel forms in the evolutionary epic. “Reality,” writes Teilhard “repeats on every viewable plane.”
He came to see this dialectic between cooperation and competition, between individualism and communalism, between differentiation and integration as fundamental characteristics of the evolution of the universe. These forces move the evolutionary history forward to greater levels of complexity, beauty, consciousness, and freedom.
New and novel entities emerge in the course of evolution. Our species is certainly an incredibly important novelty from the perspective of evolutionary history.
Teilhard hoped and believed that humans had reached a stage in our own species evolution, in which something new and grand was struggling to come into being. He referred to this new thing as the “noosphere”, a realm of consciousness and spirit that would encircle the Earth. Teilhard called it a “halo of thinking energy”. Many today call Teilhard the prophet of the Internet, but this is only part of his vision. Teilhard believed that it was now time to expand the boundaries of our tribal identities, to move beyond sectarianism and nationalism, and to embrace humanity as a whole. Indeed, humans need to discover their capacity to go beyond a species-centric view of themselves in order to fulfil their evolutionary mandate, which he understood to be the self-conscious “organ” of the planet and the universe. Science was not incidental to this transformation, indeed the tapestry of science was partly our species-specific role, to pay attention to the details, to become mindful, aware, full of awe and reverence.
Teilhard also saw this law of recurrence manifesting itself in human cultural evolution. From diverse nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers to larger agricultural settlements to city-states leading to nations, empires, and now globalisation, which he experienced in nascent forms in the first half of the 20th century. Teilhard believed we were in the process of “the forming of a completely new psychic reality”. He writes “In order to become explicit, it requires that our consciousness, rising above the growing (but still much too limited) circles of family, country and race shall finally discover that the only truly natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth.”
The future depended upon what Teilhard referred to as a “Grand Option”. Would we withdraw into pessimism or strive in optimism? Would we isolate ourselves in sectarianism or evolve in communion with each other and the planet? Evolution’s ascent towards consciousness had reached an impasse and a turning point. There was no guarantee that we would succeed. Teilhard knew only too well that evolution was also full of extinctions and dead-ends.
Teilhard gives us a framework for understanding nationalism, militarism, and religion and many needed transformations in the world today. Our evolutionary job at this moment is to become “the Spirit of the Earth,” to find a way out, to avoid a global catastrophe, prevent unimaginable human suffering, to preserve and enhance ourselves and this planet. It is not primarily about preserving the past, though continuity is certainly a part of the evolutionary drama. It is about evolving into something completely new, a kind of evolutionary leap.
We are now at a unique moment in the natural history of our planet and the cultural evolution of our species. Reframing the challenges of nationalism, militarism, and religion as a global and bio-historical problem takes some of the wind out of the sails of small-minded ethnic and cultural chauvinism, whether in the United States or here in Sri Lanka.
The problems in Sri Lanka today look rather small, in light of the larger arc of global history. And yet Sri Lanka is itself a kind of microcosm of these very challenges, which could make or break the entire world in the decades to come. In that sense, the geopolitical, economic, and strategic opportunity that Sri Lanka has is to chart a new path in the world today, not to fight the old wars of nationalism, but to pioneer a new road to peace and prosperity.”
“One of the functions of religion is to create and sustain moral behaviour. This is done not just in the affirmative, but also in the negative by creating public shame. Certain attitudes and behaviour need to be shameful, because government cannot police every individual, indeed government leaders cannot even police themselves.”
“In an evolutionary view of economics, we cannot simply apply labels like liberal and conservative, socialist and free-market. Economic development is always a mixture of public and private forces. Economic evolution always involves dislocation (what economists call “creative destruction”). There are limits to the economic involvement of the state. Subsidies and price controls are generally a very bad idea, but excise taxes and especially vice taxes may be a good tool, for instance in discouraging wasteful use of fossil fuel. The state should probably not directly run public utilities, rather these natural monopolies should be private corporations that are regulated by the state. Universal health care and universal education are goods to be promoted, but the state is not well equipped to actually manage hospitals and universities. In the view of economics, surely the state is involved in organizing infrastructure investments that would not otherwise be undertaken by the private sector.”
“Remember that there is a kind of dialectic between competition and cooperation. In order to compete more effectively, both internally and externally, Sri Lankans need to cooperate to create the necessary infrastructure. Here is a role for public-private partnership.”
„It seems counter-intuitive, but good governance is not primarily about good people. It is about good structures that provide incentives and restraints to bring out the best in human nature and to limit the worst. There are other institutions necessary for a healthy society, so the structure of government is only one piece of the puzzle of a healthy and prosperous Sri Lanka. One needs independent religious institutions, independent media, an independent business community, independent universities, independent professional societies, independent civil society organizations, strong families and extended families, and more. All of these actors help to restrict the bad sides of our human nature and accentuate the good, thus unleashing at every level of society a healthy dialectic of competition and cooperation which catalyses a non-zero sum dynamic in which the whole is much, much more than the sum of its parts.”
"Strategically I should think it vital for the business community, religious groups, and civil society to get involved in designing and advocating that new constitution right now and not to expect current parliamentarians to lead the way. The best and the brightest are going to need to get involved in thinking beyond short-term political gains and losses in creating a legal framework that will not reify ambiguous group identities. In order to pass the kind of constitution that a unified, peaceful, and prosperous Sri Lanka needs, it will take a great deal of public education and advocacy. This should be a topic for teaching and debate at every university campus.
By the way, the only real political obstacle to adopting a new constitution and launching a peace offensive is the inability of the two major political parties here to set aside their rivalries for a few years in order to work in the national interest instead of their own. This brings us back to the need for religion, morality, and public shame.”
References:
Beinhocker, Eric D. (2006). The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics. Cambridge, Harvard Business Press.
Dyer, Gwynne (1985, 2004). War: The Lethal Custom, Crown Publishers.
King, Martin Luther Jr. (1963). "Letter from the Birmingham Jail".
Madison, James (1795). Political Observations. Letters and Other Writings of James Madison. IV: 491.
Plato, (427?-347? B.C.E.) The Republic, Project Gutenberg.
Teilhard, Pierre ((1955)1959). The Phenomenon of Man. New York, Harper.
Teilhard, Pierre ((1957)1960). The Divine Milieu. New York, Harper.
Teilhard, Pierre ((1963)1970). Activation of Energy.
About author:
William Grassie was a Senior Fulbright Fellow in the Department of Buddhist Studies at the University of Peradeniya (2007-2008). Grassie is founder and emeritus executive director of the Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science www.metanexus.net Grassie received his doctorate in religion from Temple University in 1994 and his BA from Middlebury College in 1979. Grassie has taught in a variety of positions at Temple University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to graduate school, Grassie worked for ten years in international relations and conflict resolution in Washington, D.C; Jerusalem, Israel; Berlin, Germany; and Philadelphia, PA. He is the recipient of a number of academic awards and grants from the American Friends Service Committee, the Roothbert Fellowship, and the John Templeton Foundation.
For more information, go to www.grassie.net
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