Chris Noble over at The Noble Pundit has functionally agrees with my position on the usefulness of education, but takes issue with my foundational explanation (after saying a bunch of nice stuff about me).
He then continues on to assert that man is inherently evil and that we are so because we are selfish (among other reasons). I disagree.For a long time, I have believed that man was inherently good. We didn't always act on our goodness, but by and large, we were good. I've spent the last three or four days trying to reconcile man's goodness with his actions and have actually, to an extent, readjusted my position. Man isn't born pure and then corrupted. No, man is born in a neutral state (tabula rasa) and everything from there on is acquired by a form of education or conditioning.
The idea that a human mind is born as a "blank slate" onto which anything can be written by the pen of experience was first advanced by one of my favorite philosophers, John Locke. However, modern cognitive psychology does not support such a belief, and Steven Pinker recently published a quite convincing refutation of the theory, titled "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature". (Pinker is also a brilliant linguist; although he is a disciple of Chomsky, he does not appear to share Chomsky's socialist/communist politics. In "The Blank Slate" Pinker condemns the horrendous application of the blank slate concept by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.)
There is no denying that environmental factors influence human psychological development, but that development does not occur in a biological vacuum; human brains are inherently wired for certain behaviors that do not vary under any set of controls (such as language). Pinker elaborates in great detail, and although I do not concur with all of his materialist beliefs I still highly recommend the book. For more on "The Blank Slate", please refer to this entry on Everything2.
Chris then goes on to describe a sort of "social evolution".
One of the underlying assumptions of this position is that the basics of being human - those first things we learn after we're born - are subject to Darwinian evolution. Traits that are good for mankind, like societies, religion, conscience, and laws will expand and evolve. Traits that are bad, like racism, murder, and theft will eventually wither away to near extinction (I'm not crazy enough to believe that they will ever die off entirely).
However, social evolution is quite a controversial subject, and there is no scientific support for Chris' assertions that racism, murder, and theft are bad from a survival standpoint. There are a great many circumstances in which racism, murder, theft, rape, deception, psychosis, and many other despicable behaviors are quite beneficial to an individual and his genes. Consider the animal world that is ungoverned by culture, and you will see instances of all of these. One of the most fascinating problems in artificial intelligence is explaining how culture can work to suppress these clearly beneficial strategies. I have mentioned a few papers on the topic previously, but no one has yet devised a sustainable scenario that explains the suppression of cultural free-riders. (The issue is quite complicated, because those individuals who act to punish free-riders incur a cost to do so that isn't distributed back to the society as a whole -- creating meta-free-riders.)
Chris then goes on to discuss the many benefits of selfishness.
Capitalism has been far and away the closest to the ideal economic system that has ever been devised by mankind. It does more to provide for our needs than any of the other variations of control economies have. Capitalism is based on people selling what other people want. But why do some people sell their time, their labor, or their resources to others?Because they're selfish. They think that whatever the buyer is offering, be it cows and chickens in the ancient barter systems or cash in the modern economy, is worth more than the item that their selling. They want to possess the most possible value because it will give them the best standard of living. They don't care a whit about the other party involved; they're acting on pure selfish, hoarding motives.
He's quite right. As all of my readers should know, I'm an ardent capitalist. However, I think Chris misses the underlying issue: capitalism is the most efficient economic form precisely because humanity is selfish; capitalism balances my selfishness against yours.
However, if no one were selfish, capitalism and competition would be a waste. If everyone could be trusted to function altruistically, the ideal structure for society would be either anarchy (assuming broad information flow) or benevolent dictatorship. A society of altruistic anarchists could certainly out-produce a society of selfish capitalists, but as the old joke goes: "A smart blond and the tooth fairy are walking down the street, and they see a penny. Who picks it up? The tooth fairy, because the smart blond doesn't exist." Immediate families often operate as altruistic anarchies -- and they function quite efficiently -- but the structure doesn't scale, due to selfishness.
So although I agree with Chris that capitalism is the best we can do, that best is predicated on humanity's selfishness and inherent evil.
And freedom is best protected by those who are reasonable and selfish about their freedom. For a reasonable and selfish person will understand that to protect the most individual freedom, it is necessary to have equitable rules for all.Be selfish for the common good.
Freedom would be best protected by an altruistic society, but unfortunately that don't exist and never will -- because we're evil.
I can't agree about altruism (can we agree to disagree, to tote out a cliche?). I consider altruism to be the basis of much evil, such as communism.
Only because it wasn't really altruism. The basis for communism was using force to compel people to behave in what the elite thought to be an altruistic manner. It didn't work, because no one wanted to work hard if the pay was the same no matter what you did. &c. The people weren't behaving altruistically, they were being forced into a false and contorted altruism by the selfish elite.
As I said, an altruistic society is impossible, because individuals are not altruistic.
Nor should they be, in my view. It's an interesting issue, as are most which you raise.
I understand altruism to be the position that one should sacrifice one's own interests to others, best summed up in the adage "it's better to give than to receive." Have you ever noticed the contempt for the recipient that crouches within that bit of sentimental rhubarb?
If everyone acted in such a way so as to maximize the gross benefit produced (regardless of the recipient of that benefit), that would be altruism, and it would be more productive than competitive capitalism. There are often ways that I could be more productive, but I'm not because the added productivity wouldn't benefit me.
A very clear example is trade laws. To maximize economic productivity, we should have entirely free trade. The problem is that although this would increase the net productivity, our share of that increased net might be lower than our share under the status quo. In an altruistic society, we would eliminate the trade barriers, and the recipients of the benefit would share those benefits with us. But that's not human nature.
Capitalism is indeed the mitigator of our evil nature rather than the outpouring of our altruistic nature.
The monetary system is merely an efficient means of providing proof to a stranger that we have indeed put an amount of value into the pot as we claim to have a done that merits his/her providing us with the equivalent value.
In a world full of non-evil people, we would require no proof that we had indeed added value to the world and no proof would be asked of us.
We could simply give services to people as they required them and in turn, we would receive the services we asked for.
The monetary system, as well as being a means of providing proof, also serves as a way of limiting how much we demand/ask other people to do for us but in a truly altruistic world, people would restrain their consumption based on internal principles of modesty and moderation which I suppose would restrain my desire for a 40,000 square foot house and a garage full of Ferraris.
I submit no one is wise enough to determine the greatest good for the greatest number. The only formulation I think comes close are the rights to "life, liberty, and property."
Yes Brett, I agree with you. An altruistic anarchy is ideal in theory, but not possible due to human nature. Given limited information flow, some sort of guided anarchy would probably be ideal -- like fluid democracy, for instance -- but even still selfishness would ruin it.
I agree with Heinlein's ideas in "Starship Troopers" that all social morals are built on survival instinct (which is basically selfishness).
The process of writing on your blank slate is what makes an individual "good" or "evil" to society, and it works by tying together an individual's survival and what is good for society through appropriate forms of discipline (which are designed to cause small amounts of physical or emotional pain). For instance, a child is not born with the knowledge that stealing (taking whatever he wants) is wrong, so his parents must teach him by spanking him when he tries to take another child's toys. Thus he learns through pain that respecting private property is essential to his survival (lack of pain).
The fundemental problem with an altruistic society (basically communism) is that it separates an individual's survival from what he produces, therefore removing his social morals and his motivation to produce.
Capitalism recognizes that individuals produce best/most efficiently for their own survival instinct and harnesses this so that the entire society benefits from it.
Tim
Many of you seem to be missing my point. An altruistic society wouldn't be anything like communism; communisism is a sort of coerced pseudo-altruism.
Tim is right: communism separates an individual from what he produces, thereby eliminating his motivation to produce. But in an altruistic society people wouldn't be motivated to produce by their survival instinct. That's the point.
Yes, it's impossible and goes entirely against human nature.
What I meant in saying an altruistic society is basically communism refers to it's concept/philosophy/foundational idea which is a noble, but extremely naive goal.
Proponents of socialism/communism always claim the failure of communism was the result of a poor implementation, but as we just demonstrated, the flaw is in the basic premise. It cannot work, so you end up with in implementation is a coerced pseudo-altruism. This is why every communist country, without exception, ends up as an authoritarian state as the government whips the people harder and harder to try to make it work.
Communism is a good intention on the road to hell.
Tim
Ah, yes then. We're on the same page, and I misunderstood your agreement with me.
Obviously he's never raised a child--you can't mistake the complete, total, overwhelming narcissism for anything else. Kids have to be taught to care about others; certainly it's easier with some, but they all have to be taught, by example at minimum. Heck, at the beginning they don't even see their primary caregiver (mother, father, whathaveyou) as a separate person, but just as an adjunct of themselves.
I think it is interesting how Chris states "Be selfish for the common good." Webster's dictionary defines selfishness as caring for oneself WITHOUT ANY REGARD FOR OTHERS. So doesn't make his statement an oxymoron? How can I do something for the common good, if I don't have any regard for others? Just a thought...