Many of us have given up the belief that we have a soul that lives on after
our body dies.
But we all have the basic experience of our mind as the center of our
consciousness.
We know that our bodies are part of the physical world, but we each feel
that our mind
is part of some kind of non-material realm and that our mind is in control of
our body.
However, as we learn more about the brain, it appears that all our thoughts
and feelings
result from electrical and chemical processes in the brain and body.
Your brain receives sensory information about your surroundings which may
trigger
a match with a familiar pattern.
For this pattern matching process, the brain maintains
a large collection of patterns for comparison.
Some of these patterns are genetically hard-wired
and some are memories from previous experience.
When a specific pattern is recognized, this triggers a pattern of action for
the response.
Learning or adaptation may be accomplished as the state of the brain is
modified
when good responses are reinforced and bad responses are inhibited.
The evidence is very strong that human behavior is determined by brain
structure
although this is hard for us to accept.
And the basic structure of our brains has been determined by the process of evolution.
We have evolved with emotions that control our behavior
in order to maximize our survival and reproduction.
That is why we get so much pleasure from food and sex.
These are traits that we share with most animals.
But evolution has given us brains that are more complex than those of other animals.
With human evolution, natural selection has occurred at multiple levels
because we live not just as individuals but also as members of social
groups.
The first social groups were small nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers.
The men were the hunters and the women were the gatherers.
Because of the competition for survival between tribal groups,
evolution gave us emotions that made us conform and cooperate
for the good of our group.
If any individual was not a good team player, the others would not tolerate
this.
They would make him ashamed of his bad behavior, and if he did not reform,
he might be expelled from the tribe or killed.
We have evolved emotional instincts to be accepted and to avoid rejection
and so we try to follow the ethical rules of our social group.
We tend to be altruistic toward other members of our group
and aggressive toward other groups that may threaten us.
These emotional instincts helped our ancestors to survive, and so we
inherited them.
But if we can become aware of them, then we do not have to be controlled by
them.
When we can transcend our selfish, groupish, and aggressive emotional
instincts,
we can work together and accomplish great things for the benefit of human
society.
After tribes of hunter-gatherers evolved the ability to use language,
their capacity for cooperation was greatly enhanced.
Language is both genetic and cultural. Our brains are genetically programmed
to learn whatever language is spoken by those around us.
The original purpose of language was communication and cooperation,
but language has a major infuence on how we think.
Your language gives you a ready-made set of ideas that help you to
understand
the natural world and your social environment.
The development of language is an example of the co-evolution of our
genes
and our culture.
Each hunter-gatherer tribe required a large territority to survive, and
eventually
there were too many tribes and not enough land, so a new way of life was
required.
With the Neolithic Revolution, there was a major transformation of human
society.
Small nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers were molded into larger settled
communities
that were sustained by agriculture. They were able to cultivate wild cereals
and to domesticate various animals.
This transformation is another example of gene-culture co-evolution, since
it required
people to become less aggressive and more cooperative.
In large communities where people were mostly strangers to each other,
the social systems that worked in small tribes could no longer be used.
Religion was an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together
and helping them to create large communities with a shared morality.
People followed moral rules because they believed they were being watched by
the gods.
Bad behavior would be punished by divine retribution -- in this life or the
next.
The development of written language made religion much more effective as
documents
were created to define the shared beliefs and moral rules.
Written language made it possible for cultural evolution to occur at a rapid
pace
-- much faster than genetic evolution.
Accelerating cultural evolution produced various arts and crafts, music,
literature,
science, and technology.
The sciences have given us extensions to language that allow us to
understand
and control the natural world with much greater precision.
Math, science, and technology are actually social activities that expand
human culture.
First you have to learn to communicate in a specialized language for a specific
domain.
Then you can work with others so that your ideas can be shared, confirmed,
refined,
and then put into action.
For over 50 years, we have been using computers to process instructions
written in
the language of mathematics. This produced the high technology that is all
around us.
The internet gives us access to the shared knowledge of the entire world.
Cultural evolution seems to be accelerating faster and faster.
Now that computers can process ordinary natural language we can expect
another
major transformation of human society where we use machines for interacting
with
other people or instead we can just talk to intelligent machines.
Computers have also made it possible to analyze the genetic code of any life
form.
This opens up the possibility of a Brave New World of using genetic
engineering
to design and produce improved versions of human embryos.
As we face these daunting possibilities for the future, it may be good to
review some
of the lessons of history when we tried to apply science to social policies.
In the popular view, the purpose of evolution is continual improvement
to produce more advanced and superior life forms.
There was progress in climbing a ladder of success that culminated in human life.
( Fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, monkeys, apes, humans )
We are superior to all other animals and we are justified in ruling over them.
We can kill other animals for food or for sport or use them for medical experiments.
You may believe that this is morally wrong, but it seems to be supported
by this interpretation of the theory of evolution.
This view of evolution was also used to support racism and slavery.
It was believed that Africans are more advanced than apes
but less advanced than white Europeans.
The human races were ranked by skin color from dark skin at the bottom
to pale skin at the top.
In the 1870s there was an attempt to extend the theory of natural
selection
to the evolution of society. The "survival of the fittest" was taken to mean
that the wealthy deserve their higher status because they are superior.
And the poor deserve their lower status because they are inferior and lazy.
These ideas were based on a total misunderstanding of evolution.
Evolution is simply the adaptation of each life form to its environment
-- not a steady progression of climbing up a ladder of success to greater
superiority.
Our variations in skin color are evolutionary adaptations for the level of
UV light.
Darker skin is better for tropical regions with strong UV light.
Lighter skin is better for northern regions with weak UV light.
Critics of the theory of evolution often ask for an explanation of the fact
that
chimpanzees have failed to evolve into humans. They are well adapted to
their
forest environment and have no need to become more like us.
In 1866 Mendel published his laws of genetics but this was ignored in his
lifetime,
and then rediscovered in 1900.
Geneticists soon began to promote eugenics as a way to improve the
evolutionary
progress of humanity.
The eugenics movement advocated that people who are defective or inferior
should not be allowed to reproduce, and that reproduction should be
increased
for superior people.
The study of evolution shows us that diversity is a strength and genetic
purity
is a weakness. A pure-bred population is fragile and unable to adapt when
the
environment changes or when there are new predators or diseases.
Social Darwinism was used in America to justify forced sterilization of "inferior" people.
Hitler used these ideas to justify euthanasia of disabled people,
and genocide of "inferior" ethnic groups such as the Jews.
Hitler's plan for the "master race" was based on eugenics.
The atrocities of World War II resulted in total rejection of Social Darwinism.
Because of the bad taste left over from Social Darwinism, it has been
difficult
to develop better theories of social evolution.
In the 1960s and 1970s most biologists believed that Darwinian evolution
only acts on competing individuals -- not on competing social groups.
In 1975, Edward O. Wilson published "Sociobiology" which proposed
theories
of social evolution by group level selection -- and he was rejected and
vilified.
Wilson was attacked by the academic establishment and by liberal
activists.
Protesters disrupted his speeches, calling him a fascist and a racist.
But now theories of group selection are coming back into favor
with the development of the new science of evolutionary psychology.
Jonathan Haidt explains group selection in his book "The Righteous Mind" --
We take on group identities and work shoulder to shoulder with strangers
toward common goals so enthusiastically that it seems as if our minds
were designed for teamwork.
Human nature is mostly selfish, but with a groupish overlay that resulted
from the fact that natural selection works at multiple levels
simultaneously.
Individuals compete with individuals, and that competition rewards selfishness.
But at the same time, groups compete with groups, and that competition
favors
groups composed of true team players -- those who are willing to cooperate
and work for the good of the group.
When you belong to a social group, your moral values tend to conform to
the shared values of the group, because your moral intuitions have been
shaped
by positive and negative reinforcements from the group.
People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives
... and they become blind to alternative moral worlds.
Liberals are mainly focused on individual freedom and happiness.
They fight for the rights of the oppressed.
Equality should be insured by government action.
Liberals do not respect authority and tradition.
They think that crime is mostly caused by social problems.
Conservatives believe that people must be constrained by laws, customs,
traditions, and religion, because too much freedom will lead to bad
behavior.
They emphasize self control instead of self expression.
They think that criminals deserve to be punished.
Liberals tend to reject most conservative values. But some of these
values
may in fact be necessary for the functioning of our society. We need to find
some middle ground compromise between the two extremes.
You can't change people's minds by utterly refuting their arguments.
If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions,
they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch
-- a reason to doubt your argument or conclusion.
If you really want to change someone's mind on a moral or political
matter,
you will need to see things from that person's angle as well as your own.
And if you do truly see it the other person's way, you might even find
your own mind opening in response.
Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult
to empathize across a moral divide.
As geology plainly proclaims that each land has undergone great physical
changes,
we might have expected that organic beings would have varied under nature,
in the same way as they generally have varied
under the changed conditions of domestication.
Man, though acting on external characters alone and often capriciously,
can produce within a short period a great result
by adding up mere individual differences in his domestic productions;
and everyone admits that there are at least individual differences
in species under nature.
If then we have under nature variability
and a powerful agent always ready to act and select,
why should we doubt that variations in any way useful to beings,
under their excessively complex relations of life,
would be preserved, accumulated, and inherited ?
Why,
if man can by patience select variations most useful to himself,
should nature fail in selecting variations useful,
under changing conditions of life,
to her living products ?
What limit can be put to this power,
acting during long ages
and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each
creature
-- favoring the good and rejecting the bad ?
I can see no limit to this power,
in slowly and beautifully adapting each form
to the most complex relations of life.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity,
from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful
have been, and are being, evolved.
In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related
to the extinct species of the same region.
It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct
apes
closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee;
and as these two species are now man's nearest allies,
it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors
lived on the African continent than elsewhere.
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely, that man is
descended
from some lowly organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful
to many.
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities,
with sympathy which feels for the most debased,
with benevolence which extends not only to other men
but to the humblest living creature,
with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into
the movements and constitution of the solar system
-- with all these exalted powers
-- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly
origin.
When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into
competition,
if ( other circumstances being equal ) the one tribe included a great number
of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members,
who were always ready to warn each other of danger,
to aid and defend each other,
this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other.
Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex
sentiment
-- originating in the social instincts,
largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason,
self-interest,
and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and
habit.
Wilson is an American biologist, researcher, and theorist.
His biological specialty is the study of ants,
on which he is considered to be the world's leading expert.
Wilson is known for his scientific career, his role as "the father of
sociobiology"
and "the father of biodiversity", his environmental advocacy,
and his secular-humanist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters.
He applied his theories of insect behavior to vertebrates,
and in the last chapter, to humans.
He speculated that evolved and inherited tendencies were responsible
for hierarchical social organisation among humans.
In 1979 he published On Human Nature
-- The role of biology in the evolution of human culture.
In 1981 he published Genes, Mind and Culture : The coevolutionary process
-- A theory of gene-culture coevolution.
In 1998 he published Consilience : The Unity of Knowledge
-- about the unity of the natural and social sciences.
Wade has been a science writer and editor for the journals Nature, from 1967
to 1971,
and Science, from 1972 to 1982.
He joined The New York Times in 1982 and retired in 2012.
Recommendation by Edward O Wilson --
"Before the Dawn is by far the best book I have ever read on humanity's deep
history.
... Wade explains a large part of what is necessary to comprehend the human
condition."
The last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees lived in forests.
Some of them, due to a global climate change between 5 and 10 million years
ago,
left the shrinking forests and moved to open woodland,
and this new ecological niche gave rise to the human lineage.
A change in food availability led to an adaptation for the ability to eat
meat,
and this nutrition facilitated the evolution of a larger brain.
The knuckle-walking of the common ancestor gave way to bipedalism,
which is more efficient over longer distances.
A larger brain in combination with freed-up hands culminated in the
evolution
of Homo habilis and the first use of tools around 2.5 million years ago.
Wade gives evidence to suggest that the ancestral population of modern
humans
was no more than 5,000 to 10,000 individuals in northeast Africa.
A principal force in the shaping of human evolution has been the nature
of human society. The steady increase in brain size probably evolved
in response to the most critical aspect of the environment, the society
in which an individual lived.
Judging whom to trust, forming alliances, keeping score of favors given and
received
-- all were necessities made easier by greater cognitive ability.
The social benefits of more efficient communication had prompted the
evolution
of a novel ability possessed by no other social species, the faculty of
language.
A small minority of the ancestral population left Africa 50,000 years ago.
In the Near East, about 15,000 years ago, people at last accomplished a
decisive
social transition, the founding of the first settled communities. In place
of
the hunter-gatherers' egalitarianism and lack of possessions, people in
settled
societies developed a new social structure with elites, specialization of
roles,
and ownership of property.
This social transition coincided with the development of agriculture,
including the cultivation and domestication of wild cereals and animals.
Greater productivity gave surplus goods that formed a basis for trade.
As communities grew larger, they developed hierarchical social structures
and became city-states about 5,000 years ago.
People are born with innate instincts for learning the language and the
religion
of their community. But in both cases culture supplies the content of what is
learned.
A religion belongs to a community and shapes members social behavior,
both toward one another ( the in-group ) and toward non-believers ( the
out-group )
Compassion and forgiveness are the behaviors owed to one's in-group,
but not necessarily to an out-group, and certainly not to an enemy.
Foes may be demonized or regarded as subhuman, and the moral restraints
owed to members of one's own society need not be extended to them.
In the evolution of human societies, these behaviors were favored by natural
selection,
since they were advantageous in the competition between different social
groups.
Moral judgments appear in consciousness automatically and effortlessly
as the result of moral intuitions.
The moral intuitive system continues to work beneath the level of
consciousness,
delivering its snap judgments to the conscious mind.
The moral reasoning system then takes over, working like a lawyer
or public relations agent to rationalize the moral input it has been given
and to justify an individual's actions to himself and his society
The Israelites were descendents of the Canaanites and derived their
language,
religion, and culture from them. ( Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanite )
The Canaanites and also the Israelites worshiped the gods El and Baal
and made animal sacrifices for the gods.
The worship of Baal was common among the Israelites initially,
but later their leaders discouraged this.
The Bible describes the Israelite captivity in Egypt, the Exodus, the
conquest of Canaan,
and the kingdoms of Saul, David, and Solomon -- All this is probably
mythology.
During the Iron Age ( around 1000 BC ) the Israelites lived in two small
kingdoms,
Israel in the north and Judah in the south.
Around 700 BC, the Assyrian king Sargon II conquered the kingdom of
Israel
and took its people into captivity in Assyria.
Around 600 BC, The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem
and took most of the people of Judah into captivity in Babylon.
About 540 BC, the Persians conquered the Babylonians,
and the Israelites were allowed to return to Palestine.
About 330 BC, Palestine became part of the Hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great.
In 63 BC, the Romans conquered Palestine.
In 70 AD, the Romans crushed the Jewish revolt and destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple.
In 135 AD, the Romans conquered Judah and all of the Jews were killed or exiled.
Jesus was a conventional Jew who spoke Aramaic ( The people no longer spoke Hebrew )
He was a traveling preacher who taught that the traditional Jewish Law must be obeyed.
Jewish Law required a demanding set of rituals and behaviors including
circumcision
and a ban on marrying non-Jews.
Some of the followers of Jesus may have thought that he was the promised
messiah
who would lead a revolt against the Romans and then rule in Jerusalem as king
of Israel.
After Jesus was crucified, the movement was taken over by his brother
James
in Jerusalem.
They believed that Jesus was a human prophet, and was not a god.
He was born of two human parents, not by virgin birth with divine
intervention.
The apostle Paul created a rival religion by claiming that Jesus was divine
and would rule in a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly one.
Paul rejected the Jewish Law and targeted his religion for the Gentiles
(non-Jews)
in the Hellenistic Greek-speaking cities of the Roman empire.
There was a power struggle between the Jesus Movement led by James in
Jerusalem
and the Christ movement led by Paul in the Hellenistic cities.
The Jesus Movement was wiped out in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.
The Christ Movement continued to grow in Rome and in other Hellenized cities.
The Roman emperors tried to use pagan religions for the good of the
empire
but this was not very successful.
The Roman pagan population was decreasing because of abortions,
female infanticide, and non-reproductive sexual practices.
The Christian groups had better treatment of women, greater fertility,
good support for the family, and rapid population growth.
The Christians were winning the competition with the pagans.
Many upper-class Roman women became Christians, and the emperor
Constantine
decided to promote the growth of Christianity in the empire.
In 380, Christianity was made the official state religion of the Roman empire.
Edward O Wilson says of the book --
"Nicholas Wade combines the virtues of truth without fear
and the celebration of genetic diversity as a strength of humanity,
thereby creating a forum appropriate to the twenty-first century."
Ashutosh Jogalekar of Scientific American wrote --
"Extremely well-researched, thoughtfully written and objectively argued . .
.
The real lesson of the book should not be lost on us :
A scientific topic cannot be declared off limits or whitewashed
because its findings can be socially or politically incendiary."
Ever since the first modern humans dispersed from the ancestral homeland
in northeast Africa some 50,000 years ago, the populations on each continent
have evolved largely independently of one another as each adapted to its own
regional environment.
Under these various local pressures, there developed the major races of
mankind,
those of Africans, East Asians, and Europeans, as well as many smaller
groups.
The Neanderthals in Europe were the descendents of an earlier wave of
migration
out of Africa about 500,000 years before. Apparently, they were exterminated
in
the competition with our ancestors -- although we do carry some of their
genes.
During the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, most of Europe and
northern Siberia became uninhabitable. The light-skinned people from the far
north
had to migrate south, moving ahead of the advancing ice fields. As they did
so,
they displaced darker-skinned people who were adapted to a warmer climate.
This is how Europe and East Asia become populated by people with pale skins.
China moved beyond tribalism much sooner than Europe. The plain between the
Yangtze
and Yellow Rivers is well suited for agriculture and the resulting population
growth forced
the tribal systems to be consolidated into states.
The Chinese state has been an efficient, bureaucratized autocracy. China has
never
developed the rule of law. Its emperors, and now the Chinese politburo, make
the law
but are not accountable to it and do not have to obey it themselves.
Europe is divided by mountain ranges and rivers, and within these natural
compartments
emerged differences of religion and language. These impediments made it far
harder to
construct a unified European state.
Europe, feudal and semitribal in 1000 AD, had become a vigorous exponent of
learning
and exploration by 1500 AD. From this basis, Western nations seized the lead
in
geographical expansion, in military preeminence, in economic prosperity and
in science and technology.
In an agricultural society, almost everyone but the nobility lives in poverty.
The Industrial Revolution brought technology that greatly increased
productivity and
and made it possible for many people to have a higher standard of living.
However, the elimination of poverty also requires the proper social institutions.
Bad, extractive social institutions are those in which a small elite extorts
the most it can
from the society's productive resources and keeps almost everything for
itself.
Through its own greed, the elite impoverishes everyone else and prevents
progress.
Good, inclusive institutions are those in which political and economic power
is
widely shared. The rule of law and property rights reward endeavor.
No sector of society is powerful enough to block economic change.
Haidt ( pronounced "height" ) is a social psychologist and Professor of
Ethical Leadership
at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
His academic specialization is the psychology of morality and the moral emotions.
See the web site righteousmind.com for links to interviews and TED talks.
Recommendation by Edward O Wilson --
"A remarkable and original synthesis of social psychology, political analysis,
and moral reasoning that reflects the best of sciences in these fields
and adds evidence that we are innately capable of the decency and
righteousness
needed for societies to survive."
Can we all get along? -- Rodney King after beating by police and following riots in LA
Most Americans nowadays are asking King's question not about race
relations
but about political relations and the collapse of cooperation across party
lines.
This book is about why it's so hard for us to get along
... and why we are so easily divided into hostile groups,
each one certain of its righteousness.
Politics and religion are both expressions of our underlying moral
psychology,
and an understanding of that psychology can help to bring people together.
Brains evaluate everything in terms of potential threat or benefit to the
self,
and then adjust behavior to get more of the good stuff and less of the bad.
Brains make such appraisals thousands of times a day with no need for
conscious reasoning.
Moral judgment is not a purely cerebral affair in which we weigh concerns
about harm, rights, and justice.
It is a kind of rapid, automatic process more akin to the judgments animals
make
as they move through the world, feeling themselves drawn toward or away from
various things.
Our moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously,
long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started,
and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning.
[ First, your moral intuition determines your behavior and then later
you can use conscious reasoning to justify your actions to yourself
and to others. This is called rationalization. ]
Automatic processes run the human mind, just as they have been running
animal minds for 500 million years.
When human beings evolved the capacity for language and reasoning, the
brain
did not rewire itself to hand over the reins to a new and inexperienced
charioteer.
Rather, the Rider ( with conscious language-based reasoning ) evolved
because
it did something useful for the Elephant ( with its inherited emotional drives
).
The Rider can see further into the future and therefore it can help
the Elephant make better decisions in the present.
The Rider is skilled at fabricating explanations for whatever the Elephant
has
just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the
Elephant
wants to do next.
Once human beings developed language and began to use it to gossip
about each other, it became extremely valuable for the Elephant to have
a full-time public relations agent.