Part 4:12J Desperationville/​End Game/​Terminal Alienation

As has now been explained, although the multilevel theory of Eusociality supports the truth that we humans do have unconditionally selfless moral instincts, which is a more honest finding than Evolutionary Psychology’s assertion that we don’t have such unconditionally selfless moral instincts, its assertion that we also have selfish instincts doesn’t ring true to what we all know about the nature of our original instinctive self or soul, which is that it is a completely concerned-with-the-larger-whole-not-yourself, fully cooperative, all-loving, utterly harmonious, totally empathetic, absolutely innocent state. Further, the idea that our selfless moral instincts were derived from vicious warring with other groups similarly doesn’t ring true to what we all know about the nature of our original instinctive self or soul, which is that it is universally loving. The multilevel theory of Eusociality is also a patently dishonest denial of the fact that the human condition is a psychologically upset state. And further still, since Eusociality argues that selfishness has a powerful presence in our instinctive make-up, selfish individualism is, in effect, still being justified as a natural part of our make-up—indeed, as pointed out earlier, the theory of Eusociality could be viewed as more of a selfishness-justifying, right-wing theory than an idealistic selflessness-emphasising, left-wing theory. What all this means for the left-wing, whose essential strategy is to pretend to be supporting truth and ideality (which is how its proponents derive their human-condition-relieving sense of feeling good about themselves) is that while the theory of Eusociality appeared to cater to both the left and right wing as E.O. Wilson hoped (as the heading of an article in The Atlantic about this new theory proclaimed, ‘The Radical Theory of Evolution That Explains Democrats and Republicans’ (Larrie D. Ferreiro, 11 Jun. 2012)), it didn’t actually satisfy the left-wing.

This failure of the multilevel between-group selection theory of Eusociality to satisfy the left-wing meant that in the ever-escalating ‘cultural war’ between the blatant lying of the right-wing and the pseudo idealistic left-wing’s need to mimic the truth without actually confronting it, the latter were left in a desperate situation. Unlike the right-wing who could blatantly lie, the left-wing had to pretend to be on the side of truth and idealism, and the situation had now arisen where, in order to continue to pretend to be ideal, a superficially more honest account of human nature had to be found, but how? The reality for the left-wing was that there was no truly accountable explanation available that would enable them to maintain their position, which meant they were basically stranded in Desperationville.

So, all the pseudo idealistic left-wing could do was try to fabricate some sort of selflessness-emphasising argument and, beyond that, revert to the old vague by-products-of-natural-selection, matrix-of-biological-mechanisms, bluff, illusionary, non-explanation for our unconditionally selfless moral soul that was described in Part 4:12G—and that is exactly what left-wing biologists did. In Part 4:12G, reference was made to the 2011 book Origins of Altruism and Cooperation as being an example of the ‘by-products of natural selection’ argument (the book is actually an assemblage of presentations that were given at a 2009 conference, held at Washington University, on ‘Man the Hunted and the Origin and Nature of Human Sociality, Altruism and Well-Being’). We can now understand why, having been rejected and replaced by, firstly, the theory of Evolutionary Psychology, and then the Multilevel theory of Eusociality, the old Stephen Jay Gould-led argument—that a vague matrix of biological mechanisms operating either outside or alongside genetics made the development of unconditional selflessness possible—was resurrected in 2011.

As was also mentioned in Part 4:12G, in the Preface to Origins of Altruism and Cooperation, the book’s editors—the anthropologist Robert Sussman and the psychiatrist and geneticist Robert Cloninger—wrote that ‘Social scientists and biologists are learning that there is more to cooperation and generosity in both human and nonhuman group-living animals than an investment in one’s own nepotistic patch of DNA. Research in a great diversity of scientific disciplines is revealing that there are many biological and behavioral mechanisms that humans and nonhuman primates use to reinforce pro-social or cooperative behavior. For example, there are specific neurobiological and hormonal mechanisms that support social behavior. There are also psychological, psychiatric, and cultural mechanisms’ (viii of 439). Yes, it was being alleged that a matrix of ‘many biological and behavioral mechanisms’ created ‘pro-social or cooperative behavior’, but the question is how exactly did it do that? Certainly, ‘hormonal’ and ‘neurobiological’ ‘psychological’ and ‘psychiatric’, along with ‘cultural’, influences are involved in the ‘support’ of ‘social behavior’, but that doesn’t explain our social behaviour at all. Yes, a by-product of natural selection, namely the love-indoctrination process, did create our ‘pro-social or cooperative behavior’, and then those love-indoctrinated moral instincts did clash with our emerging conscious mind to create the psychologically upset state of our human condition—at which point all our ‘neurobiological’ ‘psychological’ and ‘psychiatric’ behaviours emerged and then different ‘cultur[es]’ were created to try to manage that upset. Our hormonal system was also obviously affected by, and became involved in, the development of this upset state. Yes, all the ‘hormonal’, ‘neurobiological’, ‘psychological’, ‘psychiatric’ and ‘cultural’ aspects of our make-up are by-products of natural selection and they are all involved in human behaviour—but that doesn’t explain the ‘origins of altruism and cooperation’ at all. The illusion is that the origin of our moral instincts has been explained when it hasn’t—but, again, in the desperation to counter the right-wing’s selfishness-emphasising doctrine such extreme illusion was deemed necessary.

In light of what has now been explained about the unsatisfactory nature of D.S. Wilson and E.O. Wilson’s Multilevel explanation of human behaviour for the left-wing, further consideration can be given to what is said in Origins of Altruism and Cooperation. One of the book’s contributors, the Italian biological philosopher Telmo Pievani, stated in the book that ‘Edward O. Wilson…and his colleague David Sloan Wilson proposed a theory where selection acts at “multiple levels” and upon different “units” (Wilson and Wilson, 2007)’ (p.49). Their ‘hypotheses concerning the central role of cooperation and altruism in primate and human life are reduced to competition arguments, at different levels of selection’ (p.50). In a further reference to the multilevel theory, Sussman and Cloninger referred to biologists who ‘suggest that human beings are “bipolar apes” with conflicting dispositions for waging war (like aggressive chimpanzees) and making love (like sociable bonobos), so that human beings must constantly strive to engage in emotional reconciliation to maintain social harmony’ (p.ix). Presenting their left-wing counter view to this, Sussman and Cloninger then stated that ‘We suggest that human beings are naturally cooperative when healthy and only revert to violence under abnormal conditions, as when stressed, abused, neglected, or mentally ill’ (p.ix). This alternative view is then elaborated on, with Sussman and Cloninger writing that ‘The traits of altruism and cooperation often are assumed to be among humanity’s essential and defining characteristics…Data are presented [in Origins of Altruism and Cooperation] supporting the idea that the normal pattern for most diurnal primates and for humans is to be social. People who develop the need for psychiatric intervention are those who become alienated and antisocial. It is human nature to want to work together and cooperate’ (p.vii). ‘In fact, cooperative sociality is a necessity for well-being in anthropoid primates’ (p.viii).

In a reference to the unconscionable, ‘ethically unpleasant’ idea that our moral instincts are derived from competitive warring with other groups of humans, Pievani stated that ‘what is interesting in this [Wilson and Wilson group selection] model from the point of view of the philosophy of biology is that altruism seems founded on conflict between groups, and the exclusion of outsiders’ (p.49). He pointed out that this ‘group selection…could have ethically unpleasant consequences: parochialism inside the group and aggressiveness against others in a competitive system’ (p.57).

Instead of arguing that our moral nature resulted from warring between groups, as D.S. Wilson and E.O. Wilson claimed, the contributors to Origins of Altruism and Cooperation put forward a more idealistic, left-wing, non-aggressive-and-competitive argument for the origin of our moral nature—this is the fabricated selflessness-emphasising argument that I said the left-wing had to come up with. So rather than arguing that the cooperation arose from between-group warfare, they argued that it arose from having to defend ourselves against predators. Pievani stated that ‘The function of widespread cooperation as defence against predators, instead for the promotion of more coordinated and aggressive hunting, is one of the bridges between the social behaviours seen among living primates and the hypothetical social behaviours in groups of our hominid ancestors [p.51] …If we discover that, for the greater part of our evolutionary history, the defence of ourselves and of our families from predators, and not the contrary, has been the main driver of our survival; that sociality and cooperation have had a function connected to avoid predators, and not to the glorious aim of hunting and dominating environments, we will have to change the major paradigm that has dominated our views of our essential selves from the earliest days of paleoanthropology [p.57] …The “Man the Hunted” paradigm is “positive”, with respect to the opposite “Man the Predator” notion, because it offers much more effective and realistic evolutionary explanations (Hart and Sussman, 2009). Without denying that humans are extremely able in warfare, it removes the idea that egotism is natural and cooperation a cultural epiphenomenon. It also eliminates the concept that cooperation and sociality are marginal contingencies that may be explained merely as anomalies tolerated by an alleged “universal Darwinian algorithm”. And it does away with the idea of a supposed evolutionary determinism of selfishness, frequently used as a support for conservative and class-conscious ways of putting questions in sociological researches and biased questionnaires of evolutionary psychology (Dupré, 2001)…We are born to cooperate as well as to be human [p.58].’ Incidentally, Pievani’s reference to ‘Man the Hunted’ comes from Robert Sussman’s 2005 book, Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution where he first put forward the argument that cooperation arose from having to defend ourselves from predators. In summarising his theory, Sussman, for example, said in 2006, ‘Our intelligence, cooperation and many other features we have as modern humans developed from our attempts to out-smart the predator’ (presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Annual Meeting, 19 Feb. 2006).

Also, in a further reference to their vague matrix of mechanisms, by-products of natural selection argument that only created the illusion that the biological origins of our moral soul had been explained, Pievani wrote that ‘it is the logic itself of our evolutionary explanations that needs to be extended: this is not only a matter of “interactors” belonging to genetic pools but also a matter of the economy of survival, immediate physical benefits, responses to contingent conditions in the surrounding ecological systems, the ability to learn new behaviours, phenotypic and behavioural plasticity and the flexibility of social patterns of interactions—all of them macro-evolutionary independent factors in a hierarchy of evolutionary levels (Eldredge, 1985, 1995, 1999; Gould, 2002) (p.52). He also wrote that ‘This debate can take place in the context of an extended and pluralistic, although still Darwinian, theory of evolution. The multifactorial and integrated approach involved brings together, in a viable and testable way, genealogical, ecological and cultural logics that are not reducible to standard arguments based on competition. This allows us to approach the problem of human behavioural origins without having to adopt “universal laws” for evolution (as in the universal strong Darwinian “algorithm”), but instead by seeking at evolutionary law-like “patterns”, that are repeated schemes of regular events (Eldredge, 1999)’ (p.56). (I might mention to the reader that if you had trouble following what was said in the above extract, don’t worry—I am also hanging in by my mental fingertips and I’m supposed to have some idea of what is being talking about! As I’ve mentioned before, the more desperate the need to fabricate a persuasive argument, the more intellectual and convoluted the writing becomes.)

In summarising their argument, Sussman and Cloninger wrote that ‘The paleontological, behavioral, neurobiological, and psychological evidence provided in this book gives a more optimistic and realistic view of human nature than the more popular, conventional view of humans being naturally and basically aggressive and warlike’ (p.viii).

To respond now to these assertions. Firstly, with regard to the theory that the defence against and avoidance of predators was ‘the main driver’ in making us social, certainly the threat of predators encouraged cooperation, but, once again, that was not going to make us social. It was not going to overcome the fundamental problem of genetic selfishness, which is that wherever selflessness develops it is going to be subverted by selfish opportunists. The fact is, species have been living with the threat of predators since life first emerged and it has never been able to bring about full integration. What we see instead is the eventual development of dominance hierarchy as a means to try to contain the rampant selfish competition and opportunism. The whole reason E.O. Wilson and D.S. Wilson put forward the argument that warring between groups was the eusociality threshold breaker was because there had to be an extreme need for cooperation if selfish opportunism was going to be defeated; there had to be a situation of conflict where groups of cooperators would defeat groups of non-cooperators. Arguing that groups of cooperators survived the threat of predators better than groups of non-cooperators doesn’t create anything like the same selection pressure as actual conflict between groups. Indeed, this ‘defence against predators’ argument neglects the whole driving force behind the development of the between-group warfare argument. And, as for the credibility of the between-group warfare model itself, even if it does create an extreme need for cooperation, it is not a sound argument—for the reasons that were listed when we looked at the theory of Eusociality. Again, the overall reality out there in nature is that efforts to cooperate and integrate have resulted only in the establishment of dominance hierarchy as a means to try to contain the excessive competition that inevitably develops between sexually reproducing individuals—with the exception, of course, of the fully integrated state, which was achieved through love-indoctrination. So, the by-products of natural selection, matrix of mechanisms idea, even when bolstered by the supposed ‘main driver’ of the ‘defence against predators’ argument, provides no real explanation for the origin of our moral soul.

Basically what the left-wing have done is replace the right-wing ‘conventional view of humans being naturally and basically aggressive and warlike’ with a non-aggressive, ‘defence against predators’ argument and attached that to the old matrix of mechanisms argument in the hope that the combined effect would be enough to finally get them across the line in terms of arguing that our unconditionally selfless moral soul has been explained in a non-aggressive, non-selfishness-emphasising way. And that is precisely why it could not, and did not succeed, for despite the addition of the supposed ‘main driver’ of the ‘defence against predators’ thesis, the left-wing selflessness-emphasising, ‘conservative and class-conscious’-defying, ‘more optimistic’ biologists were, at the end of the day, still relying heavily on the old, discredited matrix of mechanisms argument. On the issue of the matrix of mechanism concept, as was pointed out in Part 4:12G, the basic thinking involved in that simplistic, illusionary, duplicitous and desperate, ‘multifactorial’, ‘pluralistic’ approach was along the lines of, ‘Our unconditionally selfless, moral instincts exist and they had to have emerged somehow, and natural selection on its own can’t explain how (the need for defence against predators isn’t a sufficient explanation), so clearly our moral instincts must have been created by a matrix of by-products of natural selection, so that’s all we need to know!’ And, having supposedly (but not actually) ‘succeeded’ in explaining the origin of our moral instincts, and in the process having supposedly (but again not actually) ‘explained’ the origin of our psychotic, ‘alienated and antisocial’ human condition, these left-wing biologists felt they were justified in raising all manner of human-condition-confronting, psychosis-exposing truths. But since the origin of our moral instincts had not actually been explained, and since, unlike the Wilson and Wilson model, no specific arguable explanation had been given for our conflicted ‘psychological’ and ‘psychiatric’ human condition, this ‘Damn it, I’m just going to let the truth out anyway because the situation for humans in the world has become so dire that us left-wing biologists have to start getting some truth up’ attitude was extremely reckless. Upset humans were being confronted with the truth of their corrupted condition without it having first been explained and defended.

This desperate, reckless, ‘just-let-the-truth-out’ attitude in Origins of Altruism and Cooperation is apparent from the very first page of the book, where the dedication reads (the emphasises are as they appear): ‘We dedicate this book to Walter Goldschmidt who reminded us at the conference that: “You talk about cooperation and altruism, but what you really mean is LOVE. We shouldn’t be afraid to use the word LOVE. That is what makes us truly human.”’ As has been explained before, love actually means ‘unconditional selflessness’ and the problem with admitting this truth is that it confronts upset humans with the question of why don’t they behave unconditionally selflessly—so, without understanding of the human condition, it was better to leave the concept of love abstract and undefined. As has been mentioned, the linguist Robin Allott summarised denial-complying, human-condition-psychosis-avoiding mechanistic/​reductionist science’s ‘afraid’ attitude to the concept of love when he wrote, ‘Love has been described as a taboo subject, not serious, not appropriate for scientific study.’

Looking at the content of the book, it is completely true and honest to say that ‘The traits of altruism and cooperation often are assumed to be among humanity’s essential and defining characteristics’, and that ‘human beings are naturally cooperative when healthy and only revert to violence under abnormal conditions, as when stressed, abused, neglected, or mentally ill’, and that ‘People who develop the need for psychiatric intervention are those who become alienated and antisocial. It is human nature to want to work together and cooperate’, and that ‘cooperative sociality is a necessity for well-being in anthropoid primates’, but to confront humans with the truth about their corrupted condition like this while pretending to have provided them with the safe, relieving understanding of that corrupted condition, was to simply add to, not alleviate, the deluded, alienated, psychotic state of humanity. Certainly, R.D. Laing was being even more honest than the contributors to Origins of Altruism and Cooperation about the extent of our alienated condition, but, unlike the contributors to that book, he wasn’t pretending to be presenting an explanation of human nature. R.D. Laing was saying that we needed to look into the human condition, he wasn’t pretending to have looked into it or solved it himself. He wasn’t being delusional. What the contributors to Origins of Altruism and Cooperation are doing is basically just letting out schizophrenic fragments of honesty amongst an intellectual maelstrom of biological dishonesty. It’s desperate, mad, irresponsible behaviour, not truthful, honest, deeply thoughtful, sound behaviour.

These truth-imitating-but-not-genuinely-truth-confronting, pseudo idealistic left-wing biologists weren’t really interested in confronting the human condition at all—far from it. As has been explained before, the whole strategy of the left-wing was to support idealistic causes in order to make yourself feel as though you were free of the human condition so you wouldn’t have to actually confront the human condition. A stark example of the extent to which these left-wing biologists have been committed to avoiding thinking truthfully about the human condition and the origin of our moral soul is how an observation made by Charles Darwin is treated in Origins of Altruism and Cooperation. In The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that ‘The feeling of pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental or filial affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young remaining for a long time with their parents; and this extension may be attributed in part to habit, but chiefly to natural selection’ (1871, ch.4). Darwin was an exceptionally sound, human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding, genuinely honest and thus effective thinker, and he was on the right track with what he said here because, as has been explained, it was the nurturing, love-indoctrination process that gave us our moral instincts. However, while on pages 2 and 5 of Origins of Altruism and Cooperation the contributors to that book did cite this quote from Darwin about the role of nurturing in developing our ‘social instincts’, they failed to follow through on the idea he was raising to arrive at the nurturing, love-indoctrination explanation for our moral soul, opting instead to limit their focus to the ‘pleasure’ aspect of the quote. The answer to the great question they were seeking of the origin of our moral soul was in front of them but they couldn’t—in fact, wouldn’t allow themselves to—see it. It is true that ‘cooperative sociality is a necessity for well-being in anthropoid primates’, but that ‘cooperative sociality’ didn’t arise from having to cooperate to protect ourselves from predators. It arose from the nurturing, love-indoctrination process that, as explained in Part 8:4, primates have been variously able to practice and develop.

In summary, the resurrection of the pluralistic, matrix of mechanisms ‘explanation’ for the origins of our moral soul, bolstered as it supposedly was by the ‘need to cooperate to avoid predation’ argument, is still no more accountable than it was when the matrix of mechanisms concept was first put forward by Stephen Jay Gould and others.

(Another recent (2012) left-wing, cooperation-emphasising hypothesis that has been put forward to explain our moral nature is the Self-Domestication Hypothesis (SDH), by primatologists Brian Hare, Victoria Wobber and Richard Wrangham. However since the SDH is addressed in detail in Part 8:5H where its dishonesty and dangers are exposed, it is sufficient to just make mention of it here.)

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A response to such reckless and dangerous truth-admitting-but-not-explaining dogma of the left-wing, as has just been described, has been for right-wing biologists to desperately try to at least point out the danger of such truth-admitting-but-not-explaining dogma. An example of this is the book Pathological Altruism (published in December 2011), in which the bioengineer Barbara Oakley argues that altruism and empathy can lead to ‘codependency’, ‘burnout’, ‘suicide bombing’, ‘self-righteous political partisanship’ and ‘ineffective social programs’. Yes, to admit but not explain the truth that we humans have an innocent, uncorrupted, ideal, soul-infused moral nature while not providing a bridging understanding of our present extremely corrupted, non-ideal human-condition-afflicted reality, can lead to more innocent people being so bewildered by reality and thus unable to defy it that they do become ‘codependen[t]’ to it, seduced by its lies—which can lead to ‘burn[ing]’ ‘out’ in an effort to idealistically try to reform the corrupt world—or, in the case of the pseudo idealistic, excessively soul-corrupted situation, can lead to brazenly imitating moral idealism to feel good, which very often has led to ‘self-righteous political partisanship’ and ‘ineffective social programs’—and in the case of ‘suicide bombing’, can lead to fanatical insistence on a rigidly ideal world. What’s needed to solve all these problems is the reconciling and ameliorating understanding of the real origin of our moral nature and the reason why we departed from it. Dogma, ‘Pathological Altruism’—the expectation of, even insistence on, idealism without any reconciling explanation for the reality of our corrupted condition—has been the essential problem of the human condition. We humans needed mind-full understanding not more mind-less dogma.

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Desperate, reckless, dogmatic assertions that our human world is not ideal but should be got us nowhere. The whole purpose of science is to demystify and, by so doing, end dogma, not add to it. Equally, for right-wing scientists to put forward patently dishonest accounts of human nature was also improper science. To solve the desperate situation that humanity now finds itself in we needed real insights into the human condition, not more dishonest right-wing biological lies such as the theory of Eusociality, or, alternatively, more artificial and superficial pseudo idealistic, dogmatic expressions of idealism, such as the left-wing pluralistic explanation for our moral nature.