2 weeks Ago
By Tom Thomas “The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away,” William Golding wrote in “Lord of the Flies.” Humans have amazing superpowers. Among these are the ability to create, to collaborate in developing the creation and communicate the knowledge gained.
They are especially powerful because they have such diverse talents, allowing each person to specialize and benefit from other’s specialties. There is a downside with this though and it is a big one. In order to collaborate, communicate and exchange, they need to interact with each other.
In fact, there is some evidence that Homo Sapiens (that would be us) won out over the Neanderthals at least in part because they formed larger social groups, according to “Neanderthals vs Homo sapiens: How social structures affected ancient species’ ability to survive.” But larger social groups increase the opportunity for action that gives the actor an advantage but harms another or the group as a whole . A criminal can steal food, kill a rival or lie to achieve his ends.
A subgroup can overcome a weaker one and appropriate its resources, leading to more power. One can defend oneself, but that is only a break-even strategy. Anti-social behavior has the potential for gain, creating an incentive for its use.
Long ago, Thomas Hobbes described this condition as “a war of every man against every man,” concluding their lives were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” My view of human civilization is a continuous striving to regulate the behavior of societies to eliminate the incentive to pillage rather than produce. There are a variety of partial answers: Family groups can be formed to reproduce and raise their children.
Small communities can regulate behavior by withholding cooperation from transgressors or even expelling them from the group. But as the group gets larger , bad actors are not as easily influenced and a behavioral code with potential punishments must arise. These eventually create laws or commandments to be followed on pain of punishment.
With luck and prosperity, behavior improves and allows more productive associations, a virtuous cycle. People recognize that aggression will not provide a net benefit (resource gain over social, legal and religious cost). This is improved with the certainty that bad action will be punished and good behavior rewarded.
People can trust that they will not be victimized by their fellows and can devote their efforts to productive activities, believing that their creations will remain under their control. Collective action for the group’s benefit becomes possible as people begin to trust their peers’ behavior. But this is not a one-way street.
Societies break down when this trust deteriorates. It can deteriorate when laws are not enforced or enforced with favoritism; when differences in power allow the strong to take advantage of the weak and when consensus evaporates within. Personal attack or lies which manipulate social opinion or the operation of laws or social pressures can accomplish this.
Putting this another way, why should I work or for goodness’ sake invest, when it may be taken from me? Why should I contribute to society when I don’t agree with its goals or when it will benefit countrymen I oppose? Today, sources of societal trust have been attacked. The perception of reality we used to share has been muddied. (“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command,” George Orwell wrote in “1984.”) People and groups are pitted against one another with alternative facts, assertions and rumors. (“We petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves,” Cassius exhorted the assassins in “Julius Caesar.
”) The powerful use their power to acquire resources and more power from those they bully. (“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” Orwell wrote in “Animal Farm”) It is this condition that our Constitution seeks to prevent: by providing checks and balances to limit concentration of power, by aspiring to a state of equal legal protection for all its citizens and by providing legal means to punish bad actors and remove them from power. That is the genius that has guarded us for almost two and a half centuries.
And which we may lose. Tom Thomas lives in Louisville..
