Human Nature: Biological Inevitability or Cultural Conditioning?

There are many aspects of human existence- like war, morality etc- which are quite often attributed to the nativist school of thought. In contrast to the empiricist or tabula rasa view, this viewpoint holds that human beings are endowed with certain inborn, innate instincts which are hard-wired into the brain and these deeply entrenched features explain why humans wage war or why religion is so ubiquitous across ages and civilizations or why there is one true morality binding upon all of us. These characteristics of human existence, psychological nativists claim, are engendered by human biology and thus are an intractably inherent part of human nature. But in reality, innateness is not what determines the omnipresence of war or religion but cultural and historical conditioning. Put in a different way, the source of these dominant behaviors of human nature stem not from our genetic make-up but rather from the contemporary cultural practices and codes of conduct.

Take the case of war. It is naturally assumed that human beings categorically possess the animal instinct of aggression and hostility owing to the continuous struggle for survival. Why else would there be wars in all ages of human history? But as Margret Mead explains in the essay War not a Biological Necessity that war is not contingent upon factors like human nature or endless struggle for resources or frustration arising out of biologically determined drives. Warfare is more of a practice, a cultural ritual, an invention. If people have an idea about warfare as a way to handle certain circumstances i.e if war is the appropriate form of behavior, then when such circumstances appear, people will inevitably go to war. On the other hand, if people don't have an idea about war as a cultural norm or practice, they would either submit to the enemy or commit suicide themselves or  quietly go about their business or find some way to vent out the anger, but they would never go to war.The point in emphasized in the following paragraphs by Margret Mead.

There is a way of behaving which is known to a given people and labelled as an appropriate form of behaviour; a bold and warlike people like the Sioux or the Maori may label warfare as desirable as well as possible, a mild people like the Pueblo Indians may label warfare as undesirable, but to the minds of both peoples the possibility of warfare is present. Their thoughts, their hopes, their plans are oriented about this idea--that warfare may be selected as the way to meet some situation.

And, conversely, peoples who do not know of duelling will not fight duels, even though their wives are seduced and their daughters ravished; they may on occasion commit murder but they will not fight duels. Cultures which lack the idea of the vendetta will not meet every quarrel in this way. A people can use only the forms it has. So the Balinese have their special way of dealing with a quarrel between two individuals: if the two feel that the causes of quarrel are heavy, they may go and register their quarrel in the temple before the gods, and, making offerings, they may swear never to have anything to do with each other again

Warfare may be an invention, a cultural code of conduct, but is it true of morality as well? Is it not that some people are morally good; people who help others genuinely; people who can't see the pain of others? Jesse Prinz in his book "The Emotional Construction of Morals" proclaims otherwise, making the case that there is no such thing as innate goodness and the moral values of an individual is derived from cultural conditioning and emotional osmosis. The key idea is that we learn the values in very young age in the form of codes of conduct. When we scream, throw things, hurt other kids or make a noisy disturbance,our parents correct these behaviors and they usually do this by emotional conditioning. For example, parents threaten physical punishment( Do You want a slap?), they withdraw love( I am not going to play with you), they cast out( Go away!) etc. These methods cause a negative emotion in the child and thus it gets internalized in the form of morals. As and when children come in contact with society and culture, they imbibe more of the norms and morals present in the society. So later on, if they find homosexuality or polygamy outrageous, it is not because they being good are grossed out by bad things but because the society they lived in never considered it morally good and thus indoctrinated them through emotional osmosis.

Morality, in this sense, is not a standalone feeling of an individual but the collective attitude of a culture. This is why morals vary so much across places and cultures. One group's moral values might be immoral for other groups. For example, today we consider cannibalism bad, but in history, 34% of the cultures practiced cannibalism. In ancient Rome, blood sports, decapitation etc were pursued for recreation. Public torture and execution were performed in many European countries before the 18th century. And the people of these cultures didn't find them morally outrageous because it was culture in the first place which conditioned them. Thus, it would be plausible to say that our moral viewpoint of the world is mutable and insular, impacted solely by the cultures and societies we happen to inhabit.

It is, therefore, evident that the inventions of culture permeate through our lives in such a way that they appear innate to human nature.As it turns out, however, that these traits are not the part of us but of our culture. This gives us hope that if we correctly invent cultural practices and codes, we might overcome many problems in our society which are prematurely associated with hard-wired problems of human nature. Blood sports was such an invention, but we made better invention- the contemporary version of sports- which is not only much more efficient and harmless but also much more thrilling.





 

Why so Serious?

Like so many posts before, this post may also never see the light of day, for after completing them I would have achieved the goal of having vented out my feelings and thus would not have required the world to know about it. But if you, my friends, are reading it, then probably I changed my mind and am ready to face the repercussions of it.

I usually prefer to keep my unworldly thoughts to myself; thoughts that most mortals, if not all, find trivial and irrelevant. Experience has taught me that doing otherwise leads to either me being dubbed abnormal or me being made fun of by others( whom I, with no offense, now call 'mere mortals' and 'biochemical puppets' who have no idea of what they are talking about). Either ways, however, I am at the receiving end. Still, sometimes my thoughts are so irrepressible that they may get the better of me.

Yesterday, while at office, I was submersed in such unworldly thoughts and had no desire to do the mundane formatting issues. And I let that desire come out to one of my colleagues and said something like this: " let the issues come..dekh lenge..let's relax a bit". To which the reply came something like this: "itna cool mat bano..kaam bahut baki hai". Well. I didn't reply but the same day, one of my friends called up and started discussing career prospects with me and then my thoughts and feelings started overflowing.

To put everything in picture, let me start with what I meant by being cool. I meant that let's look at our position in the universe. What are we? We are not even a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things. Our position in the universe is lesser than that of a bacteria on planet Earth. Still, we tend to think we are so important and we know so much. We place so much importance on everything we do. What I meant by being cool is what this picture is saying:


Our anthropomorphic tendencies rule our lives which we all have inherited through Evolution(remember Darwin?). The consequences are numerous: We invented religion, we made Gods in human form, we made rituals to please Gods. we attributed lightening to God's anger, we made Earth the center of universe. For thousands of years, we continued to live in illusion: an illusion that we are somehow important, that the cosmos has planned it all out for us and us only. Still, time and time again, reality has hit us hard in our face. Let's see how:

We found that Earth is not the center of the universe, but Sun is. Then we found that Sun is not the center but just one of the stars among the billions of stars in our galaxy. Then we found that our galaxy alone does not encapsulate our universe but is just one of the pieces among the billions of them. And lately, we found that our universe may not be the only universe but just a bubble in an infinite froth of universes.

Still, we were hopeful that in spite of all this, we still are part of this grand design: that we are made up of the same matter that everything else in the universe is made up of. But like before, we again were wrong. Most of the matter and energy in the universe is dark- not made up of electrons, protons as we all are made up of, but of something altogether different. The particles we are made up of form only 5% of visible universe and damn, we can't see most of the matter in our universe. So much for our importance in the cosmos. Nature reveals itself as if it has no care of us.

Still, we believe that at least on Earth, we see a lot, that we see our beautiful world. Well, just look at the picture below and find how much of the Electromagnetic Spectrum we really see.



Bored of seeing, go to audio frequencies. There also, we hear only tiny fraction of whole range of audio frequencies.

Come to dimensions and you will believe that the three dimensional world we see is that is all. But oops! The universe may have many more dimensions than we seem to perceive of it. Moreover, unlike we may feel, space we see around us is all embedded with time( and yes, time is as real as space itself). We may have the illusion of time going forward, but in reality past, present and future all are present simultaneously just as space is present here and there simultaneously. This means that may be everything that is happening or will happen has already happened. If you want to see Beethoven composing his 5th symphony, just come out of the universe and look at the space-time fabric below. You will find him somewhere in the this fabric: or if you want to see your great great granddaughter, just come out and have a look at this fabric. All is present here.

I quote Albert Einstein: "What does a fish know of the water it swims in?" He asked this question as a way of pointing out that we humans have not a clue of the real nature of the cosmos in which we live. Our eyes lie to us, our cognitive patterns sabotage us. For example, do we see space around ourselves curved? We don't, but in reality Earth has curved space around us just like a heavy ball would curve a rubber sheet. And that is why when I let go of my bag from 7th floor, it falls not because something mysteriously draws it but because the 'bechara' bag follows the curved space(preferably space-time) created by Earth; it is very similar to the fact that on a curved rubber sheet, if one puts a ball around the edge it will move towards the center of the sheet. Many more wonders to tell, but I shall restrain myself here.

Well, we still won't believe that we are nothing. We thought for centuries and still do that God created us, otherwise how else can, a human body or a human brain, out of a trillion cells assemble together out of itself? Somebody must have done it, ain't it? And then to crush all our narcissistic beliefs Charles Darwin came along with the phenomenon of Evolution: The second greatest idea to me after Einstein's Special and General Relativity in whole of the history of human civilization. The idea was that we started from non-living beings which turned into simple life-forms some billion years ago and has been evolving towards complex organisms with time. Well, if you don't believe how an organ as complex as human brain can evolve, just find some documentary by Richard Dawkins on Evolution. He will make you believe in the power of Evolution.

Now, after having written so much about the futility of our efforts to inflate our importance, I don't want to go to the realm of free will, which, if understood in its truest sense, would suck all beauty and magnificence from life and render it utterly meaningless. Would you not hate it if somebody calls you a chemical being walking by, subject to the inputs beyond itself and has no self of itself?

Time and time again, we invented things to place importance on ourselves, oblivious to the real nature of  reality. But reality must dawn upon us sometime. We must not take human affairs too seriously. The point is not of running away from harsh realities of life, but of not living in illusion and therefore, treading life with knowledge and humor. Besides, we all must have a sense of humility, no matter where we are, because even the best of human civilization have little or no idea of reality. I admire greats like Albert Einstein but I also believe:" What Einstein today is, was Aristotle of his age." We have come a long way since Aristotle and we have a long way to go from Einstein.It may even be impossible to have a command over the real scheme of things.(Idea elaborated in my previous blog)

So, I am anything but 'cool'. While I must do things to fill my stomach(like formatting), I must also do things which are in the realm of reality otherwise would I be any better than a herd of swine which follows the basic evolutionary needs and urges all the time, unaware that there are other things as well.

Whether you appreciate or reject my thoughts, I sign off with this quote of Albert Einstein and the link to the video which I found very stimulating and thrilling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y0ky1-qKIc

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms-it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude"