The Futility of Perfection, or the Two Secularisms

The religious and the secular left love perfection and perfectability, in the next world if not in this. I think we should blame the Persians and the Greeks equally for this dualist concept of perfection: Jesus as Apollo and Ahura Mazda, with all that evil neatly bundled into an alter ego called Satan. HaShem certainly wasn't perfect (all that temper).

My take is that there are two different types of liberalism, with different roots, and you can trace them back to the two definitive revolutions of the West, the English revolution (the 1688 compromise, rather than 1642) which in turn inspired the American, and the French revolution of 1789.

The tragedy of the latter is that the earlier attempt at a French revolution -the Fronde of the 1640s - failed and here the Cavaliers won. Louis XIV's autocracy, unlike previous divine right of kings, had a whiff of insecure totalitarian reaction about it. Couple that with Catholicism and a love of Rousseau, when the Revolution happens it takes the form of a Christian heresy. Progress, mediated by the State, replaces Christ mediated by the Church, seeking the perfectibility of man, a blank slate with only a few basic drives on which society can write its writ. It infected the Anglo Saxon world as well, in the form of Utilitarianism, the ideological root of capitalism. Let us call this hard progressivism, it encompasses liberalism with a small as well as capital L (and thus most modern so called conservatism, in thrall to capitalist ideology) as well as socialism.

The other tradition is sceptical, empirical, agnostic rather than atheist, and intuitively understands that perfection is an oxymoron and that paradox is human. It believes in human nature, and is sceptical but not despairing. It reflects the mentality of real science, but unsurprisingly has few intellectual supporters among philosophers: Locke and Adam Smith and even Kant to some degree, definitely Popper, but not even J.S.Mill (in thrall to Utilitarianism). Add Unamuno, Santayana and Montaigne from the continental tradition. It is embodied in both the British and American constitutions, even if the Founding Fathers were intellectually in thrall to hard progressivism (pursuit of happiness, my arse). It works, it picks up the pieces after hard progressivism and religious idolatry have wreaked their havoc, but it is uninspiring.

It reflects the findings of sociobiology in that there is a human nature, there is both original sin and original virtue and they evolved in man’s self interest; it does not reflect them, however, that unlike religious or secular faiths it fails to satisfy two dark residues of our primate ancestry: tribalism, and the fact that religion has clearly evolved as a highly successful meme to inspire group solidarity. Soft liberalism erodes that belief, not only because of scepticism about dubious mythologies, but also because if you realise that religion is a powerful meme for group survival, and that humans are good at mythmaking, surely that makes it hard to believe. It does not however substitute anything else, so nihilism and hedonistic materialism to pass the time.

Whether we like it or not, the capitalist game has another generation or two to run, until all those Chinese and Indian peasants are rich and bored , if it can be made environmentally possible (yes, it probably can). All the alternatives tried for capitalism in the last two hundred years have been even more disastrous. Meanwhile the West can still do something it is good at, which is creativity. If the East becomes materialistic, the West has a spiritual and ethical challenge. The problem now is not love and compassion – there is plenty of that around, in secular society – it is how to inspire, and how to manage our tribalism and the “faith” that underpins it. I fear that freed of Enlightenment shackles a Christian revival would be just as bloody as all the hard progressive -isms.

Two thoughts: the psyche works on stories, and there is a magnificent and mysterious tale in the evolutionary epic, as yet unexploited: only Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke seem to have attempted it. The other is to take a lesson from Buddhism, and cultivate insight to overcome the dark seduction of faith.

The Origins of Virtue

Reviving this blog again, I have some more time to think at present.

I have been reading "On Human Nature" by E.O. Wilson, the granddaddy of sociobiology, and the "Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley, a popularisation of recent work on sociobiology, but a good introduction.

Debates on ethics usually come down to one of two positions as to their origins: given by God, or can be rationally deduced by philosophical argument. This debate has been going on for at least two millenia, and both positions are weak. Forget the Koran, the fact that we now would view Joshua's slaughter of the Canaanites as immoral requires either one of two assumptions, to save God's role : that His views have evolved, or that His message has to be doctored to the social capacity of the people at the time: either way morality has evolved through time. More to the point, an awful lot of peoples thought that they were specially chosen and protected by their gods... As to the rational ethical philosophers, they have fundamental disagreements about human nature which are never resolved. Hobbes thought mankind was essentially nasty (with an atheist nod to St Augustine); Rousseau thought mankind was essentially nice, and corrupted by society (with nods to Plato and Pelagius). The first route leads to Social Darwinism and to eventually to eugenics and the gas chambers; the second to the Gulag and to the idiocies of political correctness.

Yet human beings are cooperative, social beings, who at the same time pursue their self interest. If the latter were pure selfishness, then we would be able to supress those instincts, but all idealistic belief systems have a constant problem with corruption of ideals, and they have been trying for so long there is something inherent; on the other hand, it is clear than even capitalism, dedicated to the pursuit of self interest, only works well in strong co-operative societies. How to reconcile the two?

Two recent approaches are interesting. The first is from biology and anthropology. The great problem for natural selection is the selfish gene problem: how on earth could society function, except between relatives? In fact it is only when you get to the brain power of primates, who have the mental capacity to make shifting alliances and learn how who to trust. Primate groups, especially chimpanzees and baboons, are territorial, quite aggressive, and only partly related genetically (dominant males are the main fathers, but they change over quite frequently, and females are often stolen from neighbouring bands. Like humans, chimps are not very nice)
Anthropology has shown that what are regarded as quite modern behaviours - such as long distance trade - go back to prehistory, and did not need a Hobbesian superstate to enforce the rules.

The second, from economics and mathematics with the aid of modern computers, is game theory. One can intuitively see how individual genes might have a better chance of survival in a cohesive group of unrelated individuals. But how can co-operative behaviour between individuals spread, when they are pursuing their individual self interest - how do you get out of the "prisoners' dilemma" of it always pays you to shaft the other guy, especially if he is naively nice? In fact it can be shown mathematically that a variant of the simple "tit for tat" strategy is a winning one, and stable. Be nice to the other guy as a basic assumption, but if he is nasty back (repeatedly - give him one or two chances) then shaft him hard. In a battle between doves and hawks, the hawks win, although they damage themselves in hawks v hawks; but if doves can turn to hawks when needed, they win, because dove v dove is a superior strategy. In the real world, this requires the ability to distinguish cheats from the honest, and human beings are very good at that, and indeed a large part of the evolution of our brain power seems to have come about for this reason.

Sociobiology in its early days, but there are some tentative conclusions:

1. Basic ethics can be fundamentally derived from an empirical base. There is such a thing as human nature, and there is both original sin (selfishness) and original virtue (co-operation), and they can be reconciled. Both the secular left and the religiously inclined dislike this approach, for different reasons.

2. There is a dark side from our primate inheritance: we are hopelessly tribal (all it takes is a football team allegiance). There are some intelligent animals which are not tribal (dolphins, elephants) but not us. Indeed we have refined tribalism, in the form of ideologies and higher religions, to go beyond geographical tribalism. Christianity's track record is as dark as any. All societies punish murderers (kill within the group) and honour soldiers (kill outside the group)

3.Nevertheless it only goes so far, in deriving ethics, after all successful societies had slavery and human sacrifice in the past. I think (not in these books) that the key to the subsequent and purely cultural evolution of ethics, and the belief systems that enforce them, is the widening of human group identity beyond the 150 or so people which individuals can possibly get to know . This is especially so for the anonymity of the large city (e.g early Christianity was essentially urban,as were enlightenment ideologies)

How can we continue to widen our ethical co-operative behaviour, without going against the grain of our nature? The most successful form to date have been trade, especially in its devolved capitalist form. This does however succeed better in societies which are complex and layered, with lots of autonomous groups, as in western Europe, north America and Japan. It does badly if society is too anarchic (small scale tribal, as in Africa or Middle East: OK for the stone age, but has not moved on) or too top down autocratic (Russia, Latin America; and beware the welfare state). China is gradually becoming a complex layered society, as central autocracy devolves, both politically and economically However the relentless pursuit of money brings other problems, as we know.

Comments?