Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 10

Darwin vs. Wallace

Griffith points out that “Darwin’s associates, Herbert Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace, persuaded him to substitute the term ‘natural selection’ with the term ‘survival of the fittest’” in this letter from Wallace : http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-5140

He says that this made possible the “Social Darwinism” excuse for our competitive behaviour.

I’m not very well-informed on Darwin, Wallace and Spencer, but from what I have been able to discover via Wikipedia, and a reading of Wallace’s letter, the attribution of such a motive to Wallace seems inappropriate. Spencer was the proponent of Social Darwinism. It was his term which Wallace recommended to Darwin, but Wallace’s stated reason was that too many people interpreted “natural selection” as implying that Darwin was saying that there is a conscious spirit within nature which makes a selection. They didn’t understand that talk of nature “choosing” something was merely metaphorical. “Survival of the fittest” has an inevitability about it which in no way suggests the involvement of an intelligence.

One could argue that that was Spencer’s stated argument, but that subconsciously he wanted something which would enable us to feel more comfortable about our competitive behaviour. The problem with such an interpretation is that Wallace’s articulation of the theory of natural selection which was formulated simultaneously and independently of Darwin’s and presented jointly with it, did not emphasise competition between individuals in the way that Darwin’s did. According to Wikipedia : “Darwin emphasised competition between individuals of the same species to survive and reproduce, whereas Wallace emphasised environmental pressures on varieties and species forcing them to become adapted to their local conditions, leading populations in different locations to diverge.”

Maybe Griffith’s argument would be more consistent if he said that our need to find an excuse for our competitive behaviour is why the sounder articulation of Wallace was supplanted by Darwin’s more “evasive” competition-emphasising version.

Are We Genetically Selfish or Genetically Selfless or Neither?

I feel no compulsion to perpetuate my genes. And I am just as likely if not more likely to do something to help someone I’m not related to than someone I am. So the idea that genetic selfishness is a major factor in my behaviour, as it supposedly is in other animals, seems unsupported.

If other animals are genetically selfish, and we are not, then how did this occur? Griffith has an explanation, but it seems to be more than is really needed.

Our nurturing period is longer than other animals, presumably because our ancestors lived in a food-rich environment which provided them with more leisure time to care for their infants, as Griffith suggests. He claims this led to the development of a hardwired genetic orientation toward loving selflessness.

Why would that be necessary?

In other animals a harsh environment means that they have to begin concentrating early on the battle to survive. There minds have to be focused on this. Only many many generations of relative freedom from the battle to survive, living in a leisurely nurturing environment, provided the space necessary for the brain’s potential to form new pathways not strictly limited to the needs of day-to-day survival. So we developed intelligence and the ability to reason.

Now animals have to blindly follow their instincts. They have no choice. Having an intelligent brain means we don’t have to follow our genetic impulses if we don’t want to. We can breed or not breed. It’s up to us. The brain brings with it other things to do which can be equally, if not more meaningful. To discover something which is helpful to the group, such as a new source of food, may give us a more meaningful kind of heritage than simply breeding. Finding understanding and communicating on a higher level are imperatives which come from the mind which can smoothly coexist with or over-ride a genetic imperative to perpetuate our genes.

Why would a cooperative past for our species require a genetic orientation towards cooperation? Cooperation is what feels best when we are not selfish. It can easily be motivated by the pleasure principle. Now selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the suffering individual. That suffering can be from an injury or physical sickness, it can be from hunger, thirst or cold, it could be from frustration in our attempts to perpetuate our genes, but for we humans, as often as not, the suffering which makes us selfish is neurotic suffering. Neurotic suffering arises from compromised self-acceptance. The most powerful underminer of self-acceptance is idealism which tells us : “You are unacceptable in some way.” Because the kind of behaviour which idealism criticises is generally defensive behaviour, with offence sometimes seeming the best defence, idealism sets up a negative feedback loop which generates more anti-social behaviour.

Of course things like food shortages, harsh living environments and physical disease might compromise our cooperativeness to some degree, but in the absence of idealism-bred neurosis we would have a good chance of maintaining our solidarity in the face of such challenges, because love - open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication - is such a richly rewarding pleasure-giving experience that we would sacrifice much to maintain access to it. At its deepest level it makes us know that we are life itself, so we may feel we will really lose nothing if we have to give our life because of it.

So no genetic orientation to selflessness is needed to explain the human condition. It all began with a single “mistake” which our conscious minds made. That mistake was deciding that it was meaningful to try, by an act of will, to avoid certain behaviours which we called “evil” and pursue other behaviours which we called “good”. We placed conditions on our love of ourselves and others and thus undermined the unconditional love which is the normal healthy state of any intelligent mind.

Idealism can be understood as a conceptual virus which has plagued humanity and in Griffith’s defiant attempts to “confront us” with our “non-ideal state and behaviour” we see it in its most virulent form. We humans have arrived at a desperate place. Conflict, social breakdown, ecological collapse… These are all real. But Griffith’s ideas are not the solution, they are the very distillation of the problem. What he brings us is poison labelled as medicine.

Read Part 11