Thursday, July 9, 2009

NYT Opinion Wrong

Well, it looks as though my new tactical approach to this blog has opened to me a world of possibility. I recently read through this New York Times opinion piece by none other than the well respected Nicholas Kristof, as I shook my head time and time again. Here is yet another perfect example of trying to fit a square peg in a circular hole.


Ancient scientists and astronomers were hopelessly wrong when they tried to explain the patterns of the planets because they started with the incorrect assumption that the planets, stars, sun, and moon revolved around the earth. Once scientists corrected this, the planetary orbits made perfect sense. Mr. Kristof similarly falls short because he analyzes this problem within the framework of modern society. We need to go back in time many, many millennia.

Mr. Kristof highlights a very interesting phenomenon. Why are we willing to help one person, but not many? Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Unfortunately, he completely neglects to consider where our sense of morality, compassion and empathy comes from. Perhaps he, like most of the world believes that our sense of morality comes from the text of an ancient book written by people who themselves did not realize that the earth revolves around the sun. This is just conjecture on my part, as I do not know of Mr. Kristof's beliefs.

We evolved our moral sense within the social framework of a band of 150 - 200 people. Our goal was to survive and reproduce. The best way to do this was to help the group survive, and to ingratiate ourselves to the others within the group. This was our extended family, and most to the people within it were probably relatives of some degree. The group was our support system and it was all we needed to be concerned with. Live happily and productively within this societal structure. Make others happy, and help them. This leads to better chances for survival, mating, and passing on your genes. Really folks, that what it all boils down to.

Imagine you are living within this group about 30,000 years ago. You are walking through the woods one day and you see a child in distress. What do you do? If you have compassion for the child, you would help however you could. You would then gain favor with the parents and family of that child as a result. Perhaps the next time the father killed a boar, you would be included in the resulting feast to the exclusion of somebody who could have, but did not help. Compassion for individuals wins friends and compatriots. These friends help to secure your place in your group, insuring better chances for survival and reproduction. Your offspring would have a high likelihood of inheriting your compassionate traits, thereby increasing the overall level of compassion within the human race.

Understand that these acts of kindness are not done under these circumstances just to gain favor. Did our ancestors eat food because they understood its nutritive value? No. They ate because they were hungry. The nutritive value was just a nice benefit. How about sex? Were they consciously trying to create children? No. They became sexually aroused and followed their instincts. Did the person who helped the child do so just to gain favor? No. He did so out of an emotional instinct. The family favor was just a benefit, just as were the nutrition from food and the children from sex.

So, what about compassion for victims of genocide or mass famine? Think about it for a second. Back in the day, if you had any first hand knowledge of mass famine or genocide, you would have been one of the victims. There is not much chance to pass on any compassion to your offspring when you are dead. These emotions didn't develop because they wouldn't have been helpful to personal survival. Helping one person reaps rewards. How about helping large groups of people? Well, it just didn't happen. How would you have approached a mass tragedy? We didn't have technology or ability to deal with such things, so appropriate emotional responses never really developed.

I've spoken to this point before and I'll do it again. We no longer live in bands of 150 - 200 people, but our emotions are still stuck in that dynamic. We need to use logical thinking to overcome these emotional deficits. We can only do this once we understand why we have these deficits in the first place.

Mr. Kristof speaks of poor salesmanship on the part of humanitarians. Perhaps he's right, but until humanitarians understand that we will always respond emotionally to the face of a single suffering child, and rarely to the explanations of mass tragedies, the poor salesmanship will continue. Stop throwing big numbers at us and start showing us the single faces of the afflicted, along with their names and a description of their home life and family. That will speak to the emotions our ancestors passed along and it will open our wallets much more effectively.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Explaining Racism

As with all things in science, proper solutions and answers can only be found if the underlying foundation of the original problem is properly understood. For example, an unconscious man is brought quickly into the emergency room of a hospital with clear, severe ankle trauma. The ankle is swollen and is turning black and blue. At this juncture it would be absolutely critical for the attending doctor to know which of these two scenarios played out prior to the ankle problem.

1) He was hiking though nearby backwoods (which are known to be ridden with rattlesnakes), when a sudden sharp pain hit his ankle preceded shortly by a rattling, hissing noise.

2) He was playing a football game after doing too many shots of tequila and was tackled by three drunken friends at once, which resulted in a cracking noise in the ankle area.

All too often, societal ills are diagnosed by people with far too little understanding of the history behind such problems, and therefore do not truly understand the problems and cannot come up with coherent solutions to them.

Take Astronomy for example. Prior to the realization that the earth actually orbits the sun along with the other planets, Astronomers took great pains to construct mathematical models and calculations that explained the movements of the other planets. In their worldview the other planets revolved around the earth, so this was the basis upon which they began their calculations and explanations. It should come as no surprise that the orbits of the planets seemed very, very odd and elaborate models were developed that charted their orbits complete with mini-orbits, twists, loops, and other strange behaviors. All of this was necessary to show why they did not seem to be making a direct path across the sky as one would logically expect. Of course, once Galileo pulled back the curtains to reveal our true place in the universe, everything fell into place mathematically, and scientists were able to move forward with the correct understanding of how the solar system works. Sure, it took a lot of time, patience, and blood to get there, but we got there. Well, almost.

Now consider that we humans are descendants of a common ancestor to all living things. More recently, our ancestors spawned the bipedal great apes. Move further forward in time and you have societal evolution of human beings.

Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists estimate that humans banded together into tribes at some point, with the estimated maximum number of tribe members at about 150 - 200. Once a tribe got too large, it would split into two tribes, each going their own way. Critics of evolution will argue that people have benevolent instincts, and that Darwin claimed that only the most bloodthirsty, aggressive killers would be favored by natural selection. This is simply not true. Evolution favors those with the best ability to survive and reproduce. It doesn't strain the intellect to understand the survival advantage given to societies vs. individuals. Working and playing well with others conveyed a huge advantage, and the aggressive sociopaths were weeded out by organized groups. There is strength in numbers, and people with the best ability to work well in groups gained huge evolutionary advantages from those numbers.

So, you are living within a tribe in ancient Northern Africa, and you suddenly see a group of individuals who are not a part of your group. First off, how do you know they aren't a part of your group? Well, the 150 - 200 maximum limit insured that everybody knew everybody. You thought your hometown was small? In addition, the members of the other groups probably looked a bit different, spoke differently, acted differently, and wore different clothing, if any. So, here we have new visitors who are difficult to understand and do not fit in with your group. What do you do? Well, at the very least, you treat them with severe caution in defense of your own group. You watch them like a hawk, and potentially even kill them just to be on the safe side. At the very least, you let them know under no uncertain terms that they are simply not wanted.

Treating these intruders with compassion would have given no evolutionary advantage. In fact, it would have exposed your own group to an unnecessary and potential threat. Over time, the groups that excluded outsiders gained an advantage over those who did not. The instinct to be wary of those who speak differently, look different and act different was born and reinforced over many millennia.

Do I condone racism? Absolutely not. But I do understand where it comes from, and why it is so pervasive in our world. We have intellectually evolved well beyond the days of small, traveling bands. We have NOT emotionally evolved past this point though, and it is important to realize this. Desires and emotions evolved with the intent of helping our 150 person in-group gain an advantage over any out-groups. Understanding that racist feelings have a natural basis can help us to laugh them off and realize how useless and outdated they are.

I can almost hear the religious folks now pointing out that I am justifying racism. Hopefully they'll lose interest quickly and go back to reading their bible verses. You know, like Genesis 17: 12-13?