New Findings on Deep Human History

Posted: June 13, 2008

On April 25, 2008, Science Daily published a report, “Early Populations Evolved Separately for 100,000 Years”, that added significant new findings to existing knowledge about Homo sapiens history prior to the migrations out of Africa starting around sixty thousand years ago. An international team of researchers has analyzed a sample of over 600 complete mitochondrial DNA genomes from populations across Africa. This analysis has found that early human populations in Africa were small and isolated from each other for many tens of thousands of years. This is important because the isolation of small populations is known to speed up the genetic evolutionary process. This finding, when combined with earlier ones, serves to provide more detail and reinforcement of the historical account of deep human history presented in Chapters 4 and 5 of Being Human.

In commenting on the study, Dr. Spencer Wells, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and Director of the Genographic Project, said:

This new study released today illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species’ history. Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, Genographic Advisory Board member, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and Research Professor, Stony Brook University, added:

Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction.

The time line of deep human history presented by the team of genographic researchers, led by Doron Behar, Genographic Associate Researcher, based at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY and Tel Aviv University, can be summarized as follows:

The researchers comment in the article on three critical changes in the behavior of H. sapiens that they hypothesize emerged particularly during the  period of group isolation:
1. Marked changes in the material culture.
2. Development of complex spoken language.
3. Development of abstract thought.

In terms of RD theory all three of these changes would be manifestations of the development of an independent drive to comprehend as discussed in  some detail in Chapter 4 of Being Human.

RD theory would also add that the separation and isolation of these environmentally stressed tribal groups would also be the conditions that would tend to induce tight bonding among all members of each tribal group and the related development of a moral sense, as hypothesized in Being Human in Chapter 5.

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Justice in the Brain: Equity and Efficiency Are Encoded Differently

Posted: June 10, 2008

A fascinating article with the title above appeared in a May 10, 2008 report in ScienceDaily. Researchers at the University of Illinois and CalTech led by Ming Hsu asked their subjects inside a fMRI brain scanning machine, “Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share?” The answers they got clearly bear on RD Theory.

The subjects were asked to make a series of tough decisions about how to allocate food donations to children in a Ugandan orphanage. The subjects were told that each child would start out with a monetary equivalent of 24 meals, an actual gift from the research team to the orphanage. Some meals would, however, have to be cut, that is ‘wasted’, from some children’s allotments. The number of meals wasted and the individual children who would be affected depended on how the subjects selected from trade-off options the researchers presented to them. Every decision option pitted efficiency (the total number of meals given as a proportion of the number originally available) against equity (how equally the burden of ‘wasted’ meals was shared among the children) and ranged from high efficiency with the burden of loss inequitably falling on only a few children, to high equity among children at the cost of more wastage. In RD terms this choice poses trade offs between the ‘waste not’ aspect of thedrive to acquire (dA) resources and the ‘ be fair’ code that goes with the drive to bond (dB). Photographs of the affected children accompanied each option. [This was an essential part of the experiment from our RD standpoint, since dB may well not really go into effect without a face-to-face view of the ‘other’]

The experimental results tend to confirm RD expectations by showing a balance in the subjects’ choices between the two polar opposites with a tilt toward equity. To cite the report, “In these trails, subjects overwhelmingly chose to preserve equity at the expense of efficiency,” Hsu said. “They were all quite inequity averse.”

Hsu further reported that the animation, in conjunction with the fMRI, allowed the researchers to view activity in the brain at critical moments in the decision-making process. After analyzing the data, they found that different brain regions — the insula, putamen and caudate — were activated differently, and at different points in the process. Initially they saw signals in the insula and the putamen. The putamen was responding only to the chosen efficiency, which was how many meals got wasted. The insula, however, responded to how equitably the burden of ‘wasted’ meals was distributed. At the end they saw the activation of the caudate. “The caudate appeared to integrate both equity and efficiency once a decision was made,” he commented.

Hsu explained that the involvement of the insula appears to support the notion that emotion plays a role in a person’s attitude towards inequity since the insula is implicated in the “the awareness of emotions” and the “mediation of fairness.” In terms of RD theory this sounds like the locus of skills that support the drive to bond (dB). While it is by no means clear, the involvement of the putamen regarding efficiency at least raises the question of whether the putamen (in the limbic area) is involved as a skill supporting the drive to acquire (dA). Finally, the activation of the caudate is frequently cited in neuroscience findings as the brain’s way of rewarding the execution of desired or ‘wanted’ behaviors, in this case perhaps the ‘wants’ of both dA and dB.

This fascinating experiment demonstrates how the ingenious experimental designs of cutting-edge neuroscientists and psychologists, using the latest in brain scanning equipment, can throw light on integrative theories, such as the Renewed Darwinian Theory of Behavior!

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Review of Being Human by Michael Pirson

Posted: February 29, 2008

(Michael Pirson is a Research Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and a member of HuMaNet)

Being Human: A Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior by Paul R. Lawrence is nothing short of a revelation to researchers concerned with the current state of affairs. Not that it gives concrete hints at what to do specifically to prevent environmental destruction or social inequities, but rather that it provides something far more important: a rigorous concept of human nature, which informs us in many insightful ways how to build societal institutions to ensure human flourishing in a sustainable manner.

The book is structured in four parts in which the first two parts are dedicated to the formulation of the Renewed Darwinian (RD) Theory and the latter two parts examine the application of the theory with regard to political, economical and societal problems.

In the first part, the author is presenting his own model of human motivation as an introduction. Based on his work in ‘Driven’ (with Nitin Nohria) the four innate motivational drives, the drives 1) to acquire 2) to bond 3) to comprehend, and 4) to defend are presented. He then relates his work to research across the scientific disciplines and proposes an enlarged model of human behavior as a consequence. In this model, checks and balances of the basic motivational drives (akin to a moral compass) become essential to human survival. In the second part Darwin’s theories of human development are revisited and clarified, freed of popular misconceptions. Lawrence uses these theories (theories of natural, sexual and group selection) to interpret human development over historic periods. As the drives to acquire and defend have been present in early human species (and animals), the drives to bond (Homo erectus) and to comprehend (Homo sapiens) have only rather recently developed in human history. These developments can be retraced in the human brain (prefrontal cortex) and are largely credited with giving humans a better fit for survival. Lawrence’s argument is that only with the balanced satisfaction of all four drives can a human being develop and society evolve and flourish. So far, so good. Not all is well with human development as a certain percentage of people (around 1%) has remained undeveloped, namely does not possess a drive to bond but are rather driven by an unchecked drive to acquire, along with the drive to defend. These people are what psychologist call psychopaths (economists free riders), and a striking amount of the harm done throughout human history can be attributed to these people.

After specifying the renewed Darwinian (RD) theory of human behavior as a parsimonious and testable theory, the author proceeds to interpret political, economical, and societal developments with the RD lens. One of the main foci is the problem of free rider leadership. Lawrence presents several examples of psychopaths achieving positions of power causing extensive harm to society. As a solution to the problem of free rider leadership in the political arena he presents a checks and balance systems, which protects society from psychopaths. He views the U.S. constitution as such a system supporting human flourishing by keeping the four drives in balance. With regard to economic developments, Lawrence specifically examines the institution of the corporation. The corporation in his eyes reverses the achievement of institutional checks and balances by prioritizing the drive to acquire, as in the duty to maximize shareholder value, over all other drives. Any resulting imbalance can be further exacerbated when free riders are in charge of such corporations. He further cites research that points to an overrepresentation of psychopaths within current corporations, a hint toward an explanation of the current state of affairs.
In part four, the most interesting part of this intellectual journey, the author lays out his suggestions to put humanity back on track. He outlines clearly, how we can build institutions that allow human beings to satisfy and balance their four motivational drives while being protected against the dangers of free riders. He starts by looking at the balanced self, a balanced family and a balanced community, then moves to the problems of balancing the corporation within the nation state. He then proposes several ways to institute international institutions based on the RD theory, echoing many recommendations of political scientists, to ensure human survival in the long run.

All in all, this book owes its genius not necessarily to the novelty of the presented facts, but rather the coherent presentation of these facts within a concise theory. The book is highly informative, eminently readable and of urgent need. While most social sciences are currently employing different assumptions about human nature there is almost no coherent testable theory. As a result, human nature has remained rather mythical, allowing those sciences with the simplest explanations to gain power. This has contributed to an imbalanced view of human beings in the public policy process, which is largely influenced by economists and their assumptions of economic man.

Therefore “Being Human: A Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior” renders greatly needed service, as it allows proving and disproving assumptions that have long dominated social sciences for better and for worse. As such, the RD theory provides a crucial stepping stone in our endeavor to understand ourselves better, to build the best organizations possible and to understand how we can deal successfully with the current environmental and societal crises.

Therefore this is a work of greatest relevance and demands the attention of everyone concerned with the survival of our species.

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Darwin on Morality

Posted: February 25, 2008

Here are two interesting excerpts from The Descent of Man on morality (I posted some excerpts earlier, which can be read here):

Darwin on Morality and Group Selection: Chapter V, p. 137, Descent of Man.

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members, who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection. At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes, and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus everywhere tend to rise and increase.

Darwin on the Intuitive Theory of Morality: Chapter IV, p. 124, Descent of Man.

Under circumstances of extreme peril, as during a fire, when a man endeavors to save a fellow-creature without a moment’s hesitation, he can hardly feel pleasure; and still less has he time to reflect on the dissatisfaction which he might subsequently experience if he did not make the attempt. Should he afterwards reflect over his own conduct, he would feel that there lies within him an impulsive power widely different from a search after pleasure or happiness; and this seems to be the deeply planted social instinct.

A footnote on the above comment reads in part, “A dim feeling that our impulses do not by any means always arise from any contemporaneous or anticipated pleasure, has, I cannot but think, been one chief cause of the acceptance of the intuitive theory of morality, and of the rejection of the utilitarian or “Greatest happiness” theory.

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Book Review: Humanism in Business

Posted: February 22, 2008

The book named above is still in press with Cambridge University Press. I received an advance draft copy from one of its five editors, Michael Pirson, who approached me after having read a draft of Being Human. [Michael not only read Being Human, he wrote a short review of it that I will post separately.] Michael’s book lives up to its sub-title, “Perspectives on the Development of Responsible Business in Society” by having 23 chapters with 28 authors. It is truly an unusual book whose goal is no less than the launching of a movement dedicated to focusing business on the improvement of the human condition, no longer on the maximization of shareholder wealth. The book’s contributors are members of an informal network called HuMaNet, and they are mostly a mix of business school academics, philosophers, along with NGO and conventional business managers. Of course, no one book will be able to establish a serious social movement but, in my opinion, this book gives their effort a serious start.As the author of Being Human, I am frankly astonished at the amount of overlap of this new book with mine, given such different origins. In contrast to Being Human, which is built on the contributions of all the sciences of human behavior starting with Darwin, the Humanism in Business book is built primarily upon the contributions of leading philosophers throughout human history. In spite of this difference their definition of human nature has significant overlap with that of RD theory. Beyond that, their implications for action directed toward the business community are remarkably parallel to those in Being Human.

I am in a quandary as to how to convey in a few words the evidence of this remarkable overlap. I can say that my first message back to Michael Pirson after finishing the book was, “There cannot be a shadow of a doubt that we are studying the same beast.” Beyond such a declaration I will offer below just a few highlights of this as yet unpublished book so that its relevance to the Being Human story becomes clear.

This volume starts off with an analysis of humanistic thought by citing the work of sages and philosophers across time and place. I will quote from Cherry’s chapter on ‘The Humanist Tradition’’:

“Strands of humanist thought can be seen throughout human history. Just as most human societies have held a wide range of beliefs in gods and supernatural forces, it seems too that most societies have included skeptics who have doubted these gods and sought to explain the world solely in natural terms. Many of these skeptics emphasized that happiness here on earth was more important than speculative notions about life after death. Similarly, human communities have always developed moral codes, and some have justified these codes by appeals to reason, humanity, or community, rather than to gods and the supernatural… In addition to humanist thought that stood outside of, or in opposition to, religion, we also see more or less humanist thinkers within many religions traditions… Humanism has often been portrayed as a Western invention, but in fact humanist ideas have arisen independently in cultures all over the world. The humanist heritage of ancient Greece shaped Western civilization and therefore in central to the development and spread of humanism in the modern world. However, India and China have older humanist histories. These rich humanist traditions reveal that common principles can arise in the most diverse environments, and suggest that the humanist goal of living an ethical and fulfilling life, guided by reason, is an aspiration with universal appeal.”

In a summation that appears tautological but is not, “Humans are humane, guided by reason they care about others as well as about self.” Such a definition is consistent with that of RD theory in its proposition that humans have a drive to bond and to comprehend as well as drives to acquire and defend, with the resultant conflicts worked through by the balancing and reasoning capacity of the prefrontal cortex.

The book proceeds to address how humanism is expressed through the historical development of basic human institutions, political, economic, art, religion and science. They cite the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution as a turning point in humanizing political institutions. Its watchword, ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’ is the very essence of humanism. This parallels the treatment of this issue in Being Human.

At this point the book moves on to its central theme, the relevance of humanism to corporations, the business structures that grew in the 19th century to be the dominant economic institutions worldwide. The book analyzes the almost chance way corporations became defined, both by legal logic and by academic economics, in ways that locked corporate power to property ownership. This definition marginalized the contributions of all other stakeholders to corporate wealth creation. It created the presumption that the single goal of the corporation was the maximization of stockholder wealth. This presumption played out in the rapid growth of corporations to national and international scope in the 19th century. In Europe and in America this created great inequalities in the distribution of wealth along with many other abuses. Marx was moved by a humanist impulse to decry this situation, but, at enormous cost to the world, his explanations and his recommendations proved to be far off target. The book’s overall historic analysis of corporations is again parallel with that offered in Being Human, except the latter book explains the process as being more a result of the Spencerian misunderstanding of Darwin and the existence of free-riders who, without a conscience, led the way in using the corporate form to marginalize contributors other than investors.

The book moves on to examine the gradual development of humanist thought about the corporation in the 21st century. This was expressed in many ways; in the governmental reform and regulatory efforts of both of the Roosevelt administrations, in critiques of neo-classical economics, in philosophical writing about human rights and freedom from coerced choices, in reform movements within corporations themselves and in some of the research and teaching in business schools.

The final chapters of the book report on several recent developments that the authors see as concrete manifestations of a here-and-now humanist movement, alive and well in business practice. They report on the activities of three corporations that have in their own industries become successful exemplars of making the improvement of the human condition the central mission of their corporate life. One chapter focuses on the development within business schools of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS). This is a rapidly growing research network that focuses on the systematic study of how business can improve its performance in human terms. Another chapter focuses on the long-term partnerships that the World Wildlife Federation has forged with several large transnational firms to jointly pursue the goal of complete sustainability in regard to natural resources and climate stabilization. One chapter deals with the great promise of micro-financing as an approach to the grass roots development of emerging economies. Another chapter deals with an amazing development in Latin American barrios that is moving forward by local youths training other local youths in computer science using ‘applied empathy’ methods. This is but one example of ‘social entrepreneurship’. The book discusses a shift in the top governance mechanisms of corporations from total control by shareholders toward the ‘stakeholder’ model of control by means of a balanced representation of all the major stakeholders including not only investors, but also employees, customers, suppliers and the general public.

The last chapter of the book, more than any other, links the theme of humanism to the evolutionary biology approach of Being Human. It was written by Muhammad Yunus, the pioneer of micro-finance and entitled, “Social Business Entrepreneurs Are the Solution.” Some quotes from Yunus’ chapter will best make my point about the linkage:

“Many of the problems in the world remain unresolved because we continue to interpret capitalism too narrowly. In this narrow interpretation, we then create a one-dimensional human being to play the role of entrepreneur. We insulate him from other dimensions of life, such as the religious, the emotional, the political, and the social. He is dedicated to one mission in his business life: maximizing profit. Masses of one-dimensional human beings support him by backing him with their investment money to achieve the same mission. The free market game, we are told, works out beautifully with one-dimensional investors and entrepreneurs. Have we been so mesmerized by the success of the free market that we don’t dare to question it? Have we worked so hard at transforming ourselves absolutely into one-dimensional human beings – as conceptualized in economic theory – to facilitate the smooth functioning of the free market mechanism?

Economic theory postulates that you contribute to society and the world in the best possible manner when you concentrate on squeezing out the maximum for yourself. Once you get your maximum, everybody else will get his or hers too. As we follow this policy, we sometimes begin to doubt whether we are doing the right thing by imitating the entrepreneur created by theory. After all, things don’t look too good around us. We nevertheless quickly brush off such doubts by maintaining that bad things happen as a result of ‘market failures’ – well-functioning markets do not produce unpleasant results, do they? I do not think things are going wrong due to ‘market failure.’ The causes lie much deeper. Let us be brave and admit that they are the result of ‘conceptualization failure.’ More specifically, it is the failure of economic theory to capture the essence of human beings. Everyday human beings are not one-dimensional entities; they are excitingly multi-dimensional… They are [also] people referred to as ‘social entrepreneurs’ in formal parlance. Social entrepreneurship is in fact an integral part of human history. Most people take pleasure in helping others and all religions encourage this quality in human beings… Once a social entrepreneur operates at 100 percent or beyond the cost recovery point, he has actually graduated into another world, the business world with its limitless expansion possibilities. This is a moment worth celebrating… This is the critical moment of significant institutional transformation. The social entrepreneur has migrated from the world of philanthropy to the world of business. To distinguish him from the first two types of entrepreneur listed earlier, we will call him a ‘social business entrepreneur.’ Social business entrepreneurs make the market-place more interesting and competitive… Social business entrepreneurs can become very powerful players in national and international economies… We do not pay attention to them because we are blinded by prevailing theories. If social business entrepreneurs exist in the real world – as it seems they do—it makes no sense that they are not accommodated within current conceptual frameworks. Once we have recognized social business entrepreneurs, the supportive institutions, policies, regulations, norms and rules can be developed to help them enter the mainstream.

In conclusion the book stresses the theme of humanism in business in terms of seeking the goal of sustainability, not only in terms of the earth’s resources, but also in terms of relationships to all the contributors to the creation of wealth. They propose that the corporation needs to be conceived as a community of people who are committed not only to one another’s sustainable well being, but beyond that to the further enrichment of one another’s lives. Call it sustainability plus.

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Book Review: Bringing Up a Moral Child

Posted: February 18, 2008

I very recently came upon a remarkable book by Michael Schulman and Eva Mekler about morality that was well ahead of its times – Bringing Up A Moral Child. Even though it was written in 1985, it clearly sees that children start life with a moral sense. It even makes a distinction between moral reasoning and a moral sense, a feeling for right and wrong. Moral reasoning was studied by psychologists such as Piaget and Kohlberg and emerges, they argue, on a step-by-step basis between the ages of 5 and full maturity. On the other hand, according to Schulman and Mekler, a moral sense can be seen in the behavior of infants well before they can talk. Selected quotations make these points and more:

A moral child is one who strives to be kind and just. Notice that the words kind and just both refer to how our behavior affects other people. Morality, of course, is concerned with how we treat our fellow humans. We call children kind when they strive to help others. We call them just or fair when they treat people without bias of favoritism, when they try to see that everyone, including themselves, is judged according to the same rules, shares burdens equitably, and receives what he or she deserves.

When children are kind and just, we will also find that they behave responsibly toward others and try to keep their promises to them… Moral behavior has two components: Its intention must be good, in the sense that its goal is the well-being of one or more people; and it must be fair or just, in the sense that it considers the rights of others without prejudice or favoritism…

Can people gain pleasure simply by giving someone else pleasure or by alleviating another person’s pain? They most certainly can. Most of us have known this pleasure in our lives, whether through giving to a child, a spouse, a friend, or even a stranger. Giving is a great joy. And, as psychologist Robert Weiss has shown, easing someone’s pain is, in and of itself, an effective positive reinforcer. He found that people work harder and faster on a task when their only payoff is reducing the discomfort of someone they’ve never met before. There have been, to be sure, philosophers (Hobbes) and psychologists (Freud) who have seen human beings as intrinsically self-centered and uncaring, having nary a kind impulse except through the civilizing forces of family and society. But research evidence argues against this dark vision. To cite just one study, a team of psychologists observed twenty-six children, from three to five years old, during thirty hours of free play in a preschool setting. The record shows that during that time the children engaged in approximately 1,200 “altruistic” acts including sharing, cooperating, helping, and comforting…

Human beings have not evolved as solitary creatures. For our early ancestors the survival of an individual depended very much on the survival of his or her group. An intact group was better able to hunt and gather food, build shelter, and defend itself from enemies and predators than individuals on their own. When an individual cared for and protected the members of his group, it made the group more likely to stay together and survive, and, in turn, increased that person’s own chances of staying alive. Inclinations to be kind and just, which promote the welfare of our fellow group members and keep our group intact, have, through natural selection, become an intrinsic part of being human because they have had survival value…

[A] foundation stone of morality is the child’s miraculous ability to react with empathy to someone else’s feelings. Empathy refers to a person’s feeling bad over someone else’s unhappiness and good over another’s joy. Empathy is surprisingly common in children and appears to be an inborn capacity to recognize and “feel” other people’s emotions.

Sometimes in family counseling sessions, when we are talking about teaching morality, a parent will ask, ”But isn’t a moral sense something a child is either born with or not?” This is a question that philosophers have debated for centuries. It cannot be answered with as simple yes or no. Children don’t have to learn to feel empathy when they see others suffering. They are born, in varying degrees, with that ability. But a child can be taught to attend to people’s feelings more closely so that empathy occurs more often and more easily…

The quotes above were all taken from the first chapter of this remarkable book. The rest of the book provides parents and other child caregivers with detailed advice on helping a child develop their own innate sense of right and wrong. This is done, they say, with loving guidance. This socialization process helps the child search for a way to harmonize its own innate values with those of their birth culture. The book offers a host of sample dialogues with young people, from toddlers through adolescents that can help them in finding a moral way to deal with the challenges of each age. These discussions focus on the unintended as well as the intended consequences that are apt to follow any given decision. They help the individual chooser to take responsibility for all these anticipated consequences in selecting the ‘best’ choice of action. By this process they help the learner see that they are not helpless in struggling with the forces of their times, but that they have agency, they can make choices that can make a difference. The last chapter is entitled, “When Morals and Other Values Collide: Helping Your Child Maintain Morals in the ’Real’ World.” This book will be my favorite one to give to new parents.

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Book Review: Supercapitalism

Posted: February 3, 2008

Robert Reich has written an unusually insightful book about the co-evolution of US corporations and the American government in the last sixty years. Its subtitle encapsulates this story as “The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life.” His last chapter starts with a reprise of his argument: Supercapitalism has triumphed as power has shifted to consumers and investors. They now have more choice than ever before, and can switch ever more easily to better deals. And competition among companies to lure and keep them continues to intensify. This means better and cheaper products, and higher returns. Yet as supercapitalism has triumphed, its negative social consequences have also loomed larger. These include widening inequality as most gains from economic growth go to the very top, reduced job security, instability of or loss of community, environmental degradation, violations of human rights abroad, and a plethora of products and services pandering to our basest desires. These consequences are larger in the United States than in other advanced economies because Americas has moved deeper into supercapitalism. Other economies, following closely behind, have begun to experience many of the same things.

Democracy is the appropriate vehicle for responding to such social consequences. That’s where citizen values are supposed to be expressed, where choices are supposed to be made between what we want for ourselves as consumers and investors, and what we want to achieve together. But the same competition that has fueled supercapitalism has spilled over into the political process. Large companies have hired platoons of lobbyists, lawyers, experts, and public relations specialists, and devoted more and more money to electoral campaigns. The result has been to drown out voices and values of citizens. As all of this has transpired, the old institutions through which citizen values had been expressed in the Not Quite Golden Past [roughly from 1945 to 1970] –industry-wide labor unions, local citizen-based groups, “corporate statesmen” responding to all stakeholders, and regulatory agencies– have been largely blown away by the gusts of supercapitalism.

Reich argues that the trend toward supercapitalism started with technological changes that lowered the cost of global transportation, such as cargo containers on container ships, super railways and highways, and the cost of global communication, the Internet that connected low-cost computers. The globalization that followed led to hyper-competition within industries and even between them, as industry boundaries fell, products proliferated and the bigger firms reached for international supply chains and worldwide customers. This has been great for the consumer and the investor part of us, but is has not been good for the citizen part of us that wants social justice, quality education, affordable healthcare and clean environments for all. He does not blame corporate leaders for putting enough money into the Washington scene to dominate the political process. They feel forced to do it to maintain their competitive position in a game where, if one is not a big winner, one will be a big loser. In RD terms, this game puts so much pressure on one’s drives to acquire and defend that it overrides one’s drive to bond with the wider community.

Reich has done a better job of describing these events than he has in prescribing cures. He provides a sample of promising reform policies for federal legislation but he despairs of getting them enacted. He wishes there was a way to get corporate money out of Washington but sees only hopelessly weak efforts to date. He seems totally unaware of the method we described in Chapter 11 of Being Human for the public funding of all federal elections to a fully-competitive level, the ‘Just $6’ approach. He does make it very clear, however, what a great blessing some such system would be for the public. It could restore the balance in Washington between all four drives that the founders intended (see Chapter 8 of Being Human). He does see that even corporate leaders could welcome regulations that gave all competitors a level playing field, so they could save all the money they now feel forced to send in Washington’s direction. With ‘Just $6” in place regulators could be expected to establish the general rule the all corporations would be expected, as the economists say, to ‘internalize’ all the costs they generate instead of ‘externalizing’ them, as they do now, to their human and natural environment. Such rules would not need to stop economic progress, but the pace would be moderated to enable comparable progress on our widely-shared goals.

Tags: Book Review, Drive to Acquire, Drive to Defend | 1 Comment »

Book Review: Art and Intimacy: How The Arts Began

Posted: January 21, 2008

Art and Intimacy: How The Arts Began by Ellen Dissanayake was published in 2000, and, like Constant Battles reviewed below, I can only wish I had come across it earlier. It is an amazing and wondrous book. It is repetitious but the points it makes are so important and difficult for our modern minds to grasp that I, for one, am thankful for its redundancies.

If any readers of RD theory have doubts about the fundamental nature of the human drive to bond (dB) in mutually caring relationships, they only have to read the first two chapters, Mutuality and Belonging. She makes the process of bonding come alive in her descriptions and pictures of the emotion-laden exchanges between mothers and their infants throughout the world.
If any readers of RD theory have doubts about the fundamental nature of the drive of humans to comprehend (dC) and learn how to make sense of the world, they only have to read Chapter 3, Finding and Making Meaning. As the book’s title indicates, it emphasizes art as a mode for making meaning, but it does not belittle religion and science as other modes.

Chapter 4, ‘Hands-on’ Competence, puts a fresh perspective on the drive to acquire (dD). It humanizes this drive as a search for a sense of competence in our dealing with the essentials of the material world with respect, as well as with skill. It shows how the industrial/informational revolutions have distorted and diminished our sense of this competence. The only fault I have with this point is that the author understates, I believe, the potential for people to build a sense of competence from mastering complex machinery, including computers.

The book’s last two chapters unify its message around art by showing how all art forms have served to evoke and increase our sensibilities to our most basic human emotions by Elaborating (the title of Chapter 5) art objects to help humans take seriously the fundamentals of human existence. It’s contribution in this regard will enable me to rewrite the portions of Chapter 9 of Being Human that cover the contributions of the arts to making meaning. I have always felt that this part of the RD theory was inadequately expressed.

I am tempted to quote many parts of this remarkable book but I will limit myself to its last paragraph that is, surprisingly, a quotation from another person.

I cannot do better than to end this chapter with some impassioned words from Robert Hughes, which come from a quite different approach to the arts but echo uncannily the message of this book:

One of the ways you measure the character—indeed, the greatness—of a country is by its public commitment to the arts. Not as a luxury; not as a diplomatic device; not as a social placebo. But as a commitment arising from the belief that the desire to make and experience art is an organic part of human nature, without which our natures are coarsened, impoverished, and denied, and our sense of community with other citizens is weakened. This may sound like rhetoric, but after twenty-six hears of writing in America I know it to be true—I know it in my heart, my sometimes mean and irritable writer’s heart. The arts are the field on which we place our own dreams, thoughts, and desires alongside those of others, so that solitudes can meet, to their joy sometimes, or to their surprise, and sometimes to their disgust. When you boil it all down, that is the social purpose of art: the creation of mutuality, the passage from feeling into shared meaning.

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The Loss of a Great Mind

Posted: January 18, 2008

Yesterday a colleague called my attention to an obituary in The New York Times of January 10, 2008, about Dr. Paul MacLean, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist. This obituary provided me with my first chance to learn of Dr. MacLean’s work. I can now see that his studies of how the brain works, conducted primarily in the 1950s and 1960s, actually laid out the basic foundation for own my work over the last 20-some years. Those familiar with Being Human will see this clearly in the following quotes from his obituary:

[Dr. MacLean developed the] intriguing theory of the “triune brain” to explain its evolution and to try to reconcile rational human behavior with its more primal and violent side… Dr. MacLean termed the brain’s center of emotions the limbic system, and described an area that includes structures called the hippocampus and amygdala… He proposed that the limbic system had evolved in early mammals to control fight-or-flight responses and react to both emotionally pleasurable and painful sensations… The idea of the limbic system leads to a recognition that its presence “represents the history of the evolution of mammals and their distinctive family way of life.”… In addition to identifying the limbic system, he pointed to a more primitive brain called the R-complex, related to reptiles, which controls basic functions like muscle movement and breathing. The third part, the neocortex, controls speech and reasoning and is the most recent evolutionary arrival… All three systems remain in place and in frequent competition; indeed, their conflicts help explain extremes in human behavior… Writing in The New York Times in 1971 and surveying the problem of intolerance and violence worldwide, Dr. MacLean found that “language barriers among nations present great obstacles. But the greatest language barrier lies between man and his animal brains; the neural machinery does not exist for intercommunication in verbal terms.

I am frankly amazed at the uncanny way that my more detailed description of how the brain works is so totally consistent with the basic framework described by Dr. MacLean. Obviously, I must have learned a great deal from his work without even being aware of his existence. Note, for example, that the last sentence quoted above is
parallel with my claim that it is through the emotions and intuitive senses, not through words, that the limbic and neocortex systems communicate with each other. I am greatly indebted to Dr. MacLean and very pleased that I can now acknowledge it.

Tags: Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior | 0 Comment »

Book Review: Constant Battles

Posted: January 2, 2008

I was recently introduced by Richard Wrangham to a book I should have read in 2002 when it was published. It is Constant Battles by Steven LeBlanc, a physical anthropologist colleague of Wrangham’s at Harvard. LeBlanc’s book pulls together the uniformities of the behavior of ancient tribes as revealed at their living and battle sites around the world. The behavior pattern that emerged is well captured by the book’s title. These battles had high mortality rates: they were not the sham battles that some have reported. Even contemporary tribes such as the Hopi, with their well-deserved reputation of peacefulness, have a history of constant battles in the not-too-distant past. My lingering belief in the “myth of the noble savage” has been wiped out by the facts. However, I hasten to add, LeBlanc’s facts also reinforce the point made in Being Human, that tribal people were well bonded in mutual-caring ties within their tribes. The constant fighting was inter-tribal. I will be doing some rewriting of Chapter 5 of Being Human, where this issue is discussed, to take account of LeBlanc’s work.

But LeBlanc’s second point is the bigger one. He assembles evidence that inter-tribal fighting was tightly associated with an imbalance between the carrying capacity of the local eco-system and the size of the local population. In simple terms, when a tribes’ hunger exceeded its local food supply, the desperate tribe fought for the food of its neighbors. Hunter-gatherer tribes around the globe never seemed able to achieve a sustainable balance between their population levels and their local eco-system. Warfare was the consequence. This dramatic finding clearly has significant implications for the 21st century. There can be no doubt that the current worldwide balance between population levels and essential resources is moving toward the negative zone, and the problem of warfare has not yet been solved by any means. Of course, it can be argued that contemporary wars are often caused by ideological or cultural conflicts, and they might well be led by egomaniacal free-riders. But even if LeBlanc’s causes are only partial ones in today’s world, it is very difficult to argue that the search for ecological balance is not essential and urgent for the future of our species.

LeBlanc does offer us some good news. This is the finding that, if the tribes studied were ever able to attain an ecosystem /population balance as the Hopi now have, they became peaceable. There was no evidence of a universal aggression drive. This argues that it is possible for humans, with RD theory’s four drives at work in harness with a powerful cognitive capacity, to achieve a peaceful and comfortable life for all. There are sound reasons to expect that, if humans can now work their way into a sustainable relationship with the earth’s resources and constrain free-riders, a WWIII holocaust can be avoided.

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