The implications of human nature for conflict analysis and resolution

Three years ago, I wrote a post on this blog claiming that human nature did not exist. In that post, one of this blog’s most popular and controversial, I said that no one really knows human nature and its being invoked by so many people renders it meaningless. I was wrong because I thought human nature meant what was the same about everyone, and the same in all cultures, and different from what all other animals do.

I have read copiously on psychology and anthropology since then, however, and, fascinated by the study of human nature, realise that my definition of it was wrong; or at least, my definition was different from that of the psychologists. I now have a better definition. Human nature is, basically, what we all have in common, across cultures, based on our evolution. People vary considerably within cultures but each group has certain things in common, because we have a shared ancestry. We all hunt: we do not all hunt the same way, because different environments mean different ways of hunting, but we all hunt. We all sing and dance: taste in music and dance varies wildly, but it is a feature of every culture anthropologists can find.

In fact, there is a long list of human universals by American professor of anthropology Donald Brown that gives us some idea of what we all have inside us. This list, found here, was originally assembled in 1989 and has grown since then. The ideas may not seem revolutionary to you, until you realise that all of these things are common to all human cultures. This understanding can be used to cross cultural boundaries, making it essential for conflict resolution. If we know certain things we can find in any culture, we know practices that are probably recommended or proscribed, and how to negotiate and deal with anyone else more smoothly.

We must separate the myths of human nature from the facts. Steven Pinker, perhaps my favourite scholar on the subject, in his book the Blank Slate, effectively discards the commonly held belief that tribal societies from less complex civilisations (eg. a small group living on the savannah or in the jungle) are less violent than those in more complex societies. The thinking behind this “noble savage” misconception is that, given the damage done by modern warfare, there must be something inherently corrupting about modern life that leads us to kill one another. However, if one looks at the proportion of males killed in war, that of modern society does not even approach that of certain tribal societies such as the Dugum Dani of New Guinea, the Jivaro of Peru and Ecuador and the Yanomamo people of the Amazon. While a tiny fraction of men from the US and Europe were killed in the world wars of the 20th century, that proportion rises to over 20 percent for the Dani and Yanomamo, and over 50 percent for the Jivaro. (Pinker, 39) Furthermore, some 90 percent of hunter gatherer societies engage in warfare and raiding. (ibid.) Returning to a pastoral, hunter gatherer life would not eliminate widescale violence.

The point that I have always emphasised as most important regarding human nature is that, however much we understand it (and many of us do not), we must never use it as an excuse. It may be “human nature” that we cannot sprout wings and fly around the room, but to say that, for instance, nationalism, racism or other forms of collectivism are human nature risks legitimising them. We must not be slaves to our nature but use our ability to think critically to make the right decisions. We are smart and strong enough to resist the pull of our nature if it would lead to morally questionable actions.

Or are we? As I said, we all hunt because humans evolved as hunters. But most of us do not hunt the same way we used to. Some of us hunt criminals or enemies of the state; others collect coins and stamps. To a scholar of human nature, these two acts are both manifestations of the hunting instinct. Desmond Morris, in the Human Animal, a zoologist’s analysis of human life and behaviour, says that war is not an act of aggression, such as the dishonour or anger that might lead a man into a fistfight with another man, but a highly organised hunt. We needed an awareness of geography, an ability to plan and organise, and an ability to kill in order to hunt successfully. These qualities are still around, and so is the killing.

Though we are not slaves to our nature, we operate in quite predictable ways. In the Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo shows how truly flexible we are when confronted with environments that are unfamiliar, systems that exert their will on us, and situations we are not in control of. We are always at risk of influence by others that can make us do violence, and we must be vigilant or risk perverting our values. One can be a mafia boss, ordering the killing of whole families; a prison guard beating people up for not eating their bread; a politician ordering thousands to kill thousands more; and still go home to our families and feel good about ourselves. The line between the angels and the demons of our nature is thin.

The biggest question is, how can we use our knowledge of human nature to minimise violent conflict? If we understand our most basic urges and the trouble they could get us in, we can minimise their destructive effects and perhaps benefit from them. Here are some features of our nature, how they can be destructive, and how we can change our behaviour.

-Behaving predictably. One reason a small act of violence in the form of terrorism can be so effective is that it usually provokes a predictable response. The disproportional retaliations of, for instance, the Bush administration to terrorism played right into the hands of the terrorists. Many popular books on psychology and economics attempt to explain that, while we are ultimately free to choose, we succumb to innumerable pitfalls in our thinking because we are not aware of them.

If you think human behaviour is not predictable, you can test it for yourself. If you are a man, go up to another man bigger than you, surrounded by his friends, also bigger than you, and push him. I bet you that 99% of the time, what you think will happen will happen. If a friend tells you something he believes to be true, say “not only do I disagree, but that was a really stupid thing to say. Do you even know what you’re saying? What’s wrong with you?” Unless you are talking to the Dalai Lama, you are likely to make your friend angry, defensive and more convinced than ever that he or she is right.

Dr Zimbardo says that anyone is susceptible to manipulation, influence by unsavoury characters and contemptible behaviour. The less aware we are being manipulated, or the stronger we think we are to counter it, the more compliant we are likely to be. There are many books on persuasion and influence that can teach us to be aware of evil forces acting on and through us. The best I have read is the Lucifer Effect.

-Categorising and simplifying. We have an urge to put things conveniently away into drawers and pigeonholes in order to save ourselves the trouble of thinking too much. We talk in simple language and simple thinking about the Muslim world or the Arab world, the West, Africa, the black community, Asian values, such and such a civilisation, and so on. Speaking this way is easier, but if we do not recognise the nuances, the enormous variety within these groups, we are liable to make serious mistakes.

I write further on this subject in Why Interculturalism Will Work. You can read it at http://www.scribd.com/doc/15987798/Why-Interculturalism-Will-Work. Suffice it to say, if we simplify the world too much, we risk making the wrong decisions, leading to misunderstandings, disrespect, conflict and war.

-Cognitive dissonance. In a previous post, I described part of this shortcoming as windows and mirrors. Windows are what we use to look at others, and we are very good at seeing their faults. But when it comes to our own, looking in the mirror, we see ourselves–and significantly, the groups we are loyal to–as pristine. This happens because we have an inborn tendency to legitimise everything we do as right and noble, to write off our own weaknesses as not really weaknesses and, put simply, to lie to ourselves about ourselves.

The book Mistakes Were Made (But not by Me) is a book about the damage cognitive dissonance can do. It shows how we can believe, for instance, that we go to war for freedom, kill for peace, terrorise for justice and are never at fault when we are wrong. Sure, some people died in the war I started, but they were probably mostly bad people. Sure, what I am doing is bad for others, but if I didn’t do it, someone else would. Sure, it looks like I’m stealing money from my company’s shareholders, but I work hard and deserve it. Really, I should be taking more, but I’m holding back. What a nice guy I am.

But knowing our limitations is how we can overcome them. Checking cognitive dissonance requires awareness of how and when we do it. If you have any nagging doubts as to whether your actions were morally justified, you might be right. Do not simply write off everything you do as a legitimate means to some greater end. Imagine someone else doing the same thing. Imagine your enemies, if you have any, doing the same actions. Are they still legitimate? Can you understand the point of view of someone who does similar actions?

-Collectivism. Whether or not it is an excuse, collectivism appears to be a big part of our nature. When I say collectivism, I mean treating people in terms of in-groups and out-groups. To a collectivist, there are people in my group that are inherently superior to those outside my group. I care for those in my group like I care for myself–we are human beings deserving respect and dignity. Those outside the group, however are less than human. Our love of team sports, with separate uniforms, chants and rivalries that occasionally erupt in violence are an example of this.

The evolution of this feeling is understandable. We used to live in small bands where those we knew were family. However, our idea of community has changed over time to what Benedict Anderson calls “imagined communities”. Imagined communities are groups that consider themselves to have an essential similarity that makes them equal (and by extension, more important than others), though they may never meet. Soldiers go to war to protect their nations, even though the only thing they are certain to have in common is nationality. Zealots engage in holy wars because followers of their gods are threatened. See this post for more on collectivism and conflict.

If we can harness collectivist sentiment and language, we can use it to mean everyone. After all, our groups do not have to be exclusive. We can be a brotherhood of men, a community of the world, a united human race.

-Proving oneself. Young men, from teenage years to young adulthood, have an urge to prove themselves. That was the age they were most likely to perfect their skill at hunting and find mates. These boys are most likely to want to do violence. In Blood and Belonging, Michael Ignatieff describes the killing that took place in the former Yugoslavia.

[U]ntil I had encountered my quotient of young males intoxicated by the power of the guns on their hips, I had not understood how deeply pleasureable it is to have the power of life and death in your hands. It is a characteristic liberal error to suppose that everyone hates and fears violence. I met lots of young men who loved the ruins, loved the destruction, loved the power that came from the barrels of their guns.

Perhaps liberals have not understood the force of male resentment which has accumulated through the centuries of gradual European pacification. The history of our civilisation is the history of the confiscation of the means of violence by the state. But it is an achievement which an irreducible core of young males has always resented. Liberals have not reckoned with the male loathing of peace and domesticity or with the anger of young males at the modern state’s confiscation of their weapons. One of the hidden rationales behind nationalist revolts is that they tap into this deeper sub-stratum of male resentment at the civility and order of the modern state itself. For it seems obvious that the state’s order is the order of the father, and that nationalism is the rebellion of the sons. How else are we to account for the staggering gratuitousness and bestiality of nationalist violence, its constant overstepping of the bounds of either military logic or legitimate self-defence, unless we give some room in our account for the possibility that nationalism exists to warrant and legitimise the son’s vengeance against the father. (Ignatieff, 187-8)

Boys who are occupied and motivated by other things, however, do not kill. Paul Collier, author of Wars, Guns and Votes, says that in post-conflict situations, one of the highest priorities is jobs for young men. “[T]he reason [such situations] so often revert to conflict is not because elderly women get upset, it’s because young men get upset. Why are they upset? Because they’ve nothing to do.” His suggestion is job creation in construction: it is necessary after the destruction of conflict, and the jobs are not subject to international competition.

Proving oneself is really another way to say reaching one’s potential, just like one can do in a job. At this key age, young people can be coaxed into anything with the right attention and care. That is why, in strong communities, they play sports and video games, do homework, have jobs and volunteer for their community. Suppressing all teenage rebellion in a society that values freedom is impossible. Therefore, our task is to divert the people most at risk of committing acts of violence and give them occupations that, to their genes, are equivalent to hunting, but to the rest of us are productive rather than harmful.

Ignoring the truth, hunting each other, behaving predictably, dividing the world into us and them and simplifying the world away are just a few sides of our nature with implications for analysing and resolving conflict. Exploring the depths of human nature can help us understand, mitigate and reverse the tragic consequences of some of our most basic, and most dangerous urges.

Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities

Collier, Paul: War, Guns and Votes: democracy in dangerous places

Ignatieff, Michael: Blood and Belonging: journeys into the new nationalism

Morris, Desmond: The Human Animal: a personal view of the human species

Pinker, Steven: The Blank Slate: the modern denial of human nature

Tavris, Carol, and Elliot Aronson: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

Zimbardo, Philip: The Lucifer Effect: understanding how good people turn evil

Individualism: the Reappearing Ideal, part 4: Objections

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde

Let us examine some remaining objections to individualism.

“Not everyone wants to be an individual.”

It is likely that people feel that they are purely a member of their group and not an individual in our sense of the word because the person’s culture considers such sentiments virtuous.

But it sounds as though this objection is meant to give the individual a choice as to how to live. This is precisely why individualism is the answer: people’s prerogatives on their lives should be respected. What individualists object to is being forced from birth to belong and conform, taught that this is the only option and the right way for everyone to live; the inability to break one’s bonds to the collective, either in one’s own mind, the eyes of the community or the eyes of others; and to the supremacy of the group at the cost of treating the individual as a mere tool.

“Individualism weakens social ties and discourages contact among groups.”

Individualism does not weaken social links. In my experience, individualists are far more empathic than collectivists. If you do anything that harms the group, including acting differently, thinking for yourself or leaving it, you will be in trouble. Individualists, on the other hand, understand that you could be different and they accept it.

Card carrying members of groups, however, are selfish. Of course, they display selfless behaviour to other members of their group; but this apparent altruism is really a mask for selfishness. The only difference between individualist selfishness and selfishness on behalf of your group is that the concept of the self extends beyond the first person to the whole group. You are still selfish because you want more for your group to the detriment, if need be, of outsiders. This is true of politicians, who want more for their constituencies, parents and their families, trade unionists, community leaders, soldiers, and so on. Collectivists are selfish. We are all selfish.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that collectivists are more selfish. Imagine (as if it never happened) that somewhere Muslims were torturing and killing Christians and Jews (and Hindus and atheists and homosexuals and correligionists of different sects), just for being what they have always been. Collectivist Christians and Jews would speak out against the injustice in defence of their groups. (You probably know that al Qaeda in Iraq lost popularity when it targeted other Muslims for killing. Presumably, killing non Muslims would have been fine.) An individualist would speak out against the injustice of persecuting anyone for their beliefs or ways of life. For an individualist, the feeling of being human overrides our shallow tribalism.

Moreover, individualism is the best way to create links among groups. If you consider yourself a member of your ethnic group (ie. you are an ethnic collectivist), then you will only reach out to another self identified group if you think you have the permission of your group to do so. You have to wait until your leaders have contacted and made peace with outsiders before you are allowed to do the same. But if you see yourself as an individual and everyone else likewise, it doesn’t matter what your group thinks, and it doesn’t matter what group anyone else belongs to because you will evaluate those people as individuals, not as members of groups.

Both selfishness and altruism are wired into our brains from a long time ago. Evolutionary psychology has shown that, long before formal religion and nation states, humans were selfish and selfless when each made sense. As a result, people in collectivist leaning societies will do selfish things and ideology is unlikely to eliminate that.

“Individualism leads to moral breakdown and more crime.”

Now we are criminal psychologists. Places such as Britain and the United States are said to be falling apart (a dog whistle word for rising crime rates) because of individualism. But a look at statistics shows that crime and violence rates have risen in tandem with multiculturalism and ethnic grouping (and peaked more than a decade ago). When England was more individualistic, it was more peaceful. Now it is riddled with ethnic and religious groups fighting each other for a piece of the pie.

We should look harder for the roots of delinquent behaviour. Researchers suggest it has little or no relation to the society’s place on the individual-collective continuum. Instead, anti social behaviour seems to be more closely related to education and income levels. A lower class parent is more likely to rely on physical punishment to discipline aggression and defiance, which models the very behaviour it attempts to suppress. They also live stressful lives that leave them little time to spend monitoring their children’s activities and choice of friends. So, while the individual should always take responsibility for him or herself, children from poor families are far more likely to run to crime than their more wealthy contemporaries. But this has nothing to do with individualism.

“Responsibility to the community is what holds back our worst behaviour.”

This is the argument that, without loyalty to a community or nation or religion, our morals would fly out the window. We would wind up robbing stores, raping women and killing each other just for fun because we do not care what others think. Or at the very least, it would be like in the Simpsons when everyone embraced their individuality and spit off the overpass on cars passing below.

There is something of a “blank slate” argument at work here. The idea is that the community or other entity is the only shaper of our behaviour and human nature could not restrain our actions. The truth is, it can. We have a selfish side AND a selfless side; we have a side that is concerned with fun AND a side concerned with reputation; we have a side that wants to escape from the community AND a side that wants to be a part of it. Our brain is nothing if not complex. We do not simply lose all allegiance to other people when we decide that we do not owe them anything unconditionally. We do not attack people because we think of ourselves as an end and not a means. But communitarian ideas like duty and honour could lead us to attack other groups.

Our worst behaviour comes not when we act alone but when we have the backing of the community. It is only the legitimacy we get from our group’s agreement and cooperation that can make us think we are right to go to war. Individualist violence kills a few; collectivist violence can destroy everything.

“It is not collectivism that is bad: certain groups are bad.”

This is the Balkan argument. Our group is virtuous, brave, just, and whatever other compliment one can use to stroke oneself; their group is foul and irrational and fanatical and lying and cheating and… well, I’m sure I can think of more. This thinking lays the foundation for racism. I hate to inform you, people who believe in bad groups, but YOUR group is bad too. No group is above reproach, not for its history, its present state or its potential for evil. And no group has got it all right, whatever its leaders have told you.

As the people most likely to think this way are the ones least likely to know the people they are talking about, the cure for this thinking is living among other groups of people. You will see that groups are not evil but misguided, and their members do not conform to all your stereotypes and might be very well intentioned.

Are some groups worse than others? What would a typical nationalist consider their group better than others for? I am proud that we have such a glorious history. Shouldn’t we be questioning all our history books? It is better because it is so beautiful. I have never been to a country that was not beautiful. Our culture is more virtuous than others’. Nonsense. All cultures naturally justify themselves. If you spend long enough anywhere you will know how to see things from the points of view of members of the group, and you realise how everything makes sense.

“Collectivism is human nature.”

The idea that, just because something is natural, it is necessarily better is wrong. Likewise, we seem to have the idea that what is right is what is natural. Some psychologists have suggested that rape is human nature as well. Should we take it up as a sport?

Besides, I am not convinced that collectivism in its modern form is natural. As I said earlier, it is quite possible that at a level of a hundred and fifty or fewer people, collectivism is the norm. Altruism toward others in our ethnic group probably evolved to help replicate shared genes. There is much evidence for this claim: to look at history, we see endless examples on all levels of dividing ourselves into in groups and out groups, with sympathy towards one’s own side and ruthlessness towards the enemy. But what is natural about affiliation with correligionists, fellow nationals and so on, whom we will never meet? If we are not genetically related, or so distantly so as to be effectively unrelated, what demands our loyalty?

Humans brains afford countless possibilities. We have instincts of tribalism and violence and evil, and we have instincts of giving, caring, sharing, reason and sympathy. Saying that collectivism is human nature means relinquishing our other, equally real, equally natural capabilities to counteract that side of our nature. If you are doing everything you think your nature tells you, you are giving up part of your brain. To evaluate the sides of your nature and choose wisely is freedom.

“What if there is a war?”

War is collective fighting collective. If both societies are individualist, they will not indiscriminately kill people just because they wear the blue hats instead of the red ones, like collectivists do. If one is individualist and the other is collectivist, it will clearly be the latter attacking the former, and it will be an interesting war. If the society is anarchist, as an individualist society could be, there would be no point in attacking it. You may consider Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux for a better argument than I can make myself as to why this is the case.

But if the individualist society somehow conceded to a war, I do not see how it would be difficult to get people together to fight. Conscription would still be wrong, because conscription is forcing people into slavery in favour of the collective. But you would still have people who see it in their self interest to band together to fight. The most ideologically individualist countries beat the ideological collectivists in the Second World War and the Cold War. When bombs started falling, or were simply seen to be ready to fall, people did not need to think of their country and their society: they thought of their selves, their families, their friends and their freedoms. That was enough.

Though war would not happen if societies were individualist, it would not be too difficult to organise individualists to defend what they believe in.

“What about other collective problems?”

Individualism does not mean that everyone has to do different things. Individuals are better positioned to see the effects of their actions on others, because being treated as an individual leads you to treat others the same. There is nothing stopping people from grouping under a banner of common interest to stop collective problems, such as climate change. In fact, the individualist cultures are where this happens the most. Count the number of non governmental organisations in North America and Europe and contrast them with the numbers in the Middle East, East Asia, Russia, and so on. Of course, some people will not care about such problems and will not work to solve them. My argument is, if working through their consciences to educate and coax them does not work, we should not force them to do anything.

“We need something to believe in that is greater than us.”

I agree, and that is why so many people have dedicated themselves to improving humanity. Unfortunately, many people do not think as far as humanity and only want to further the narrow interests of their tribe and its gods. Doing whatever your government expects of you most likely does not help humankind. Doing things you decide on your own to help your community and your world help you. But we should not feel pressured into service just because we belong. When we are looking for something bigger than ourselves, think much bigger.

I do not know whether to reproach or pity those who consider themselves too weak to make the leap to individualism. Being part of an apparently monolithic group, the feeling of belonging, is sometimes like a warm fire in a big house when it is snowing outside. But the snow is invigorating. It helps you see the world outside your comfortable home clearly. The final post in this series is about how to become an individual.

Individualism: the Reappearing Ideal, part 3: Collectivism causes war

“God and Country are an unbeatable team: they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.” – Luis Bunuel

Pride, group centeredness and hero worship are symptoms of collectivism. They make us think of our group as superior and other groups as inferior. We could think of other groups as simply tools for our betterment, which leads to colonialism, or as being in our way, which ends in genocide. And if you think “no, not my group”, you are wrong. Your group has done it too and is just as capable as any other to do it again. Collectivism kills. Let us start with the antiquated notion of responsibility.

Finding the killers

Are soldiers murderers? If not, then who is a murderer? Most people who kill anything think that they are doing good. What makes soldiers different? If soldiers were more widely considered killers, fewer of them would go to war. Unfortunately, their benefits as veterans would be worse.

However, I must conclude that no, soldiers are not the same as murderers. To avoid entering into a comparative analysis, I will simply say that, when everyone around you tells you you are fighting for the greater good, it is distinct from the malicious intent to kill. Soldiers who violate laws of war must be punished, and most importantly, they must be told they will be punished. As important as holding soldiers accountable, their commanders must encourage the best behaviour and set the example. When no one holds anyone accountable, we get Abu Ghraib.

Leaders are almost entirely responsible for the creation of war. Because the leaders legitimise all the killing soldiers do, as the ones who invent the causes we are fighting for, conscript citizens against their will, promise men public adulation for their heroism, fabricate evidence that the enemy is evil, and jail or kill soldiers for deserting, they bear responsibility.

And yet, we could not have war without collectivism. If we questioned what our leaders told us and sought out the truth, and if we evaluated the right or wrong of war in terms of its effects on individuals instead of collectives, no one would initiate war. No one would want to invade other people’s lands and kill them in the name of the flag.

People in all countries continue to consume patriotism as if it were opium, except that they believe patriotism makes them virtuous. Patriotism among thinking people can lead to peace, as when one calculates that his or her country would be better off if it did not go to war. But these people are few and far between.

That is why I do not recognise any difference between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is simply a euphemism for nationalism (and for which “tribalism” is a cacophemism). With the right pulling of the strings, today’s patriot is tomorrow’s militant nationalist. And both of them are just a short leap away from militarism.

Nationalists will usually declare themselves willing to shed blood, including that of their compatriots, to keep their country intact. Separatism is anathema to patriotism because, as we know from part 2, nationalist and some religious fervour comes from ties to the land. This is our land and we will kill anyone who tries to separate it.

The violence of conformity

But land is just one part of the big picture. Conformity is a big part of dangerous collectivism. Individualism does not require or expect conformity, because individualists recognise that, not only are we all different, but that being different is good. When we are encouraged to have different opinions, through reading widely and learning to question what we read, talking to all kinds of people from different cultures and experiences, going to different places and living different lives, we learn to be different and to thrive on it. Individualists are different from each other.

Collectivists, on the other hand, value conformity. Conformity requires destroying individuality and diversity. And it is so widespread because collectivism is self replicating, expecting everyone to conform. It is far easier for a government to pass collectivist legislation than to take measures toward individualism. Witness the Republican Party’s attempt to criminalise flag burning. Any politician or party putting forward a bill like this looks like a solid patriot, whereas anyone voting against it must hate his country. Individualism is harder to spread because it cannot be forced on anyone.

So how does conformity lead to war? Conformity is rarely called conformity. It takes on names such as “unity”, “love” (eg. of one’s country or of god), “patriotism”, “loyalty” and so on. “Support the troops” means support the war. The war is conflated with the country to drum up support. If you love your country, you must support the war. They are baiting you to demonstrate your patriotism.

“Solidarity” is a particularly suspect term. Solidarity means, simply, join us, the winning side, or you are our enemy. Is there any word more dangerous to the individual? Solidarity is easily found in families (not all, of course), so leaders try to recreate the family on whichever scale meets their goals (eg. all of China, Sunni Islam) through words like brotherhood or brethren or motherland among everyone they want in the group. According to psychologist Steven Pinker, experiments show that “people are more convinced by a political speech if the speaker appeals to their hearts and minds with kinship metaphors.” (Pinker, 247) Emotive words have led us to the point where those in power can manipulate us with a tug of the strings.

Which strings, and when? The most dangerous form of collectivism is nationalism, and the most dangerous symptom of collectivism is war. Some of the rhetoric of the power hungry appeals to our innate sense of dignity and desire for recognition: the supreme sacrifice; hero/martyr/glorious dead who died for his country; honour, duty, self sacrifice, loyalty—who says these are good things?

Eliminating the middle

So we become sheep. There are only two flocks allowed: us and them. If we were encouraged, or even just allowed, to think for ourselves, we would appear on all points of the spectrum. Some people would follow blindly, some people would dissent blindly; some would support the war with reservations, others would disagree with reservations; some would never make their minds up and others would not even know there was a war on. And if they were individualists, they would be against all violence in the name of their group against another group. But in the land of collectivism, there is no room for people in the middle, and there is no room for anti violence.

Why do you think Hizbollah, Chinese Uighur separatists, al Qaeda and the Tamil Tigers attack targets with militaries that far outweigh them? Because if they can provoke the enemy into overreaction, they can eliminate the opinions of the moderates. They can hold up dead people and say, this is all because of them, when of course the terrorists are the provocateurs. And if any moderates remain, the terrorist groups kill them, especially if they are from the same group.

So now we have polarised morality. You are either with us or against us. There is no more middle. Leaders justify war in the name of some of the following: security, freedom, peace, culture, monarchy, country, god. What if the soldiers did not believe in the vague ideas they were fighting for? There would be no war.

When coupled with media that creates perceived external threats, these words legitimise military spending in the trillions. Military spending is good for politicians, who win support from the military, and get to present themselves as tough. How someone who gets someone else to fight for him is tough, I do not know. Perhaps we imagine that, when a hundred thousand troops swarm into Iraq, George Bush is at the head of them. And of course, people who are against military spending are shouted down as cowardly or unpatriotic.

Does my claim that all war would be eliminated by eliminating collectivism seem sweeping? The fact is, it is the only necessary condition for war. Everything else is secondary. If we get into a fistfight it is personal. If we pick up a gun to defend “our country” or culture or religion or whatever, it is because we feel undying, unquestionable loyalty to our associations. People with absolute opinions that do not question their values and never compromise are the ones who fight wars, commit suicide bombings and perpetuate all racism. Group thinking is at the root of all group on group violence. The result of a football match was the trigger and ostensible cause of a war that broke out between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. 4000 were killed and 100,000 displaced. Collectivist belief anywhere can spill over to anywhere else.

The elusive “just war”

Whenever we are told we should support war, it is almost always framed somehow in terms of World War Two. Imagine, say the war’s apologists, if we had not intervened to stop Hitler: the Third Reich would dominate the earth, the world would be totalitarian and everyone would be dead.

Leaving aside this dubious historiography, these people are appealing to the “fallen heroes” clause in your social contract. “Our forefathers”, goes the line, “fought and died for this country. Therefore, we must do the same”; or at least, we must do everything we can to honour them. Why do you want to do what our forefathers did? (Is it an insult to question this dogma?) What if your forefathers had owned slaves? Should you honour their memory?

No, what invoking the fallen heroes clause means is that we should consider all the things these people went to war for virtuous. Yet, let us examine what we already know.

1. Wars are almost always started by elites. Sometimes they simply use nationalism to appeal for our support but, increasingly, they make war out to be just. The just war, the good war, that is why we fight.
2. Just wars do not always live up to their purposes. When we are trying to stop “evil”, we kill, torture, rape and so on. War is hell, and it turns most of its participants into demons. Our history books do not preserve our forefathers as truthfully as they could.
3. The elites use the outcome of the war to raise collective sentiment. If we lost, it is because they fought dirty. If we won, it is because we are the best.
4. Elites approve the history books, and rarely let ones that tell the whole story through. We cannot have our children learning the truth. They must learn to serve their country, not to question it.
5. We grow up believing the version of history that makes our group look superior and provides rationale for any further just wars. We fought World War Two to stop evil; we went to Vietnam and Iraq (and wherever else) to free those people; the Six Days War was proof that we are god’s chosen people; our wars of unification were justified because we are a happy country now; the wars to spread our religion were justified because we were doing god’s will; our colonial wars were right because those people are better off now; and so on as you turn the pages of your textbooks.

Collectivism turns a group’s intentions into the just war. All our wars, in fact, are just wars. It turns our enemies’ perceived aggressions into unjustifiable, unforgivable evil. The whole idea of “evil” would not even exist (outside the minds of the criminally insane) if not for the othering of the enemy.

Psychologists have continually shown how, under the right conditions, those of admirable morals can turn evil. Under the supervision of an authority figure, or under the right “othering” of the other, normal people will turn “evil”. The Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment are the best known examples. And wartime is no exception. The accepted idea that most soldiers do not fire their guns during a battle is highly dubious. (Pinker, 321) We all run the risk of falling into the trap of shooting first to avoid being shot. Even though I do not want to kill you, I might do so to avoid your shooting me. And we realise that there is safety in numbers, so if we have the chance, we will retreat into our group. But as collectivist thinkers,

“there is also danger in numbers, because neighbors may fear they are becoming outnumbered and form alliances in their turn to contain the growing menace. Since one man’s containment is another man’s encirclement, this can send the spiral of danger upward. Human sociality is the original “entangling alliance,” in which two parties with no prior animus can find themselves at war when the ally of one attacks the ally of the other. It is the reason I discuss homicide and war in a single chapter. In a species whose members form bonds of loyalty, the first can easily turn into the second.” (Pinker, 322-3)

The wars that spurred the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s are excellent examples of these acts at work. The state was crumbling, both as a source of security and a source of identity.

The answer, I think, is to open people’s minds to new ideas. One thing I love about the new media like Facebook is the way people’s “identities”, in the traditional sense of loyalty to country and religion, are diluted. People are joining different groups and having new conversations and loyalties are divided among more and more groups. They are beginning to realise that they belong to other groups than their countries and so on, and that they have things in common with people their parents may have hated.

Education should lead to critical thinking so that we can question the lies in the history books we read. We should learn more languages and cultures so we can learn from a young age to communicate with people who think differently. We should be instilled with a feeling of curiosity about the world, and a love for the whole world that goes beyond just a love for our parochial groups. And we should treat ourselves and each other as individuals, not as members of homogeneous groups.

In the US, people still mourn the Sept 11^th, 2001 terrorist attacks. If your relative was killed, I understand and I sympathise. If not, why would we care? What do those people have to do with us? Nothing. They just inhabit a country that we, coincidentally, share. Those who called themselves the enemies of the United States were glad they had hurt the country. They did not hurt the country: they killed 3000 innocent people. You cannot hurt a country because a country is not alive or feeling. A country or nation is just an idea.

Likewise, during the Sichuan earthquake, everyone in China was broken up about the deaths of tens of thousands of people they had no real connection to: people they had never and would never meet, people with whom they only thing they had in common was the label “Chinese”. While Chinese people were congratulating themselves for their handling of the Sichuan earthquake (which, if the state controlled press is to be believed, was admirable), there was a cyclone in Myanmar, right next door to Sichuan, that killed roughly the same number of people. Did Chinese people send money and sympathy and aid workers and celebrities for the people? No. Nothing.

Expanding the circle

Peter Singer describes our moral sense as an expanding circle. He says that, from initially caring only about our family or tribe, we have come, over time, to think of ourselves as members of a larger family, be that a nation or what have you. We choose—in fact, go out of our way—to sympathise with people inside our circle, and treat those outside our circle as worthless. Life is precious inside the circle; outside, it is cheap.

Collectivism limits us to our circle. It traps us inside the circle chosen for us. This kind of selfish regard for one’s own side reduces our ability to understand and care about others. The same thinking prevents us from understanding those outside our circle and leads us away from interest in them. We do not try to learn from others because we assume there is nothing we can learn. We do not care about them because they are less important than we are. My group has problems that should come before theirs.

What I suggest is to expand one’s own circle to include everyone in the world. Questions should not be, how does this action or policy affect my group, but how does it affect everyone? If it is good for everyone, it is a good policy. (Incidentally, Peter Singer has extended his circle to animals and is a major animal rights activist.)

The problem of moderates

Most of the educated people I have met would say “I agree that extreme collectivism causes problems, but so does individualism. The best mix is somewhere in the middle. I am loyal to my country, my religion, my clubs, and I retain some individualist tendencies as well.” I would like to take apart this straw man by showing its logical and moral flaws.

The first problem I have with this argument is the widespread logical fallacy that moderation is always correct and extremes, by extension, are incorrect. Let me put it this way. “I think that rape is mostly bad, but I would not want to eliminate rape. The best mix is somewhere in the middle.” The “moderates” on the subject of rape may find themselves in the minority. I do not consider collectivist-legitimised violence any more moral than rape.

Second, individualism causes problems? Such as? This is an assumption of anyone who considers themselves collectivists: I think my way is right, so other ways must be wrong. I will address objections to individualism in the next post in this series.

Third, the real problem with moderate collectivists is that their existence legitimises the extremists. In a war, for instance, extreme collectivists are the ones pushing for escalation, while the individualists call for peace. The moderates might say they are generally against war, but this one is good for my country, or it is in the name of my god, so it is a good war. They might say, well, I don’t really like war, but if my country is in a war I want it to win. They may tolerate extremism in their peers instead of speaking out against it, possibly because their principles are less clear on the subject.

Moderate Sri Lankan Tamils, for instance, will almost all say they support the goals of the Tigers of Tamil Eelam, but on the moral questions about their methods, their praise is reserved. Because they feel an ethnic bond with the Tigers, they will not condemn outright the suicide bombings [what else have they done? Military campaign, kidnapping?] and targeting of civilian Sri Lankans. Moreover, without the blindness brought on by “my group, right or wrong”, they would be able to see that the Tigers are largely responsible for the repression and violence wrought on Eelam by the Sinhalese controlled state to other Tamils. If there were no moderates, the extremists would be aberrants, criminals, outcasts and psychopaths.

There are certain things that simply would not happen if not for collectivism.

-War. There would be no tribal goals worth killing and dying for.

-Genocide. No one would ever want to wipe out an ethnic group.

-Terrorism. You would not kill members of a group in order to influence the group as a whole. Suicide bombing and kamikaze killing would be unlikely as well, as killing oneself is not highly prized by critically thinking individualists.

-Racism. We are individual humans, not members of races, and we deserve evaluating as such. Individualists realise this.

-Religious persecution. No one would try to make you think the way they do, because everyone would be entitled and expected to think differently. The same goes for Khmer Rouge style social experiments.

-Feuds over history. Serbs and Croats would not quote numbers of how many of their people were killed by the fascist other side in World War Two. Armenians would cease to be angry about the Armenian genocide, since it happened 90 years ago, and Turks would no longer try to deny it out of obligation of being Turkish.

-Calls for sacrifice. This is not to say that there will be no sacrifice—far from it. We will still give to charity because we feel empathy and act accordingly. We will still give to friends, family and people in need. We will not, however give only to those in our groups but to anyone who needs it. We will not be cajoled or forced to sacrifice in the name of some purpose higher than ourselves. If you think there should be more sacrifice, feel free to lead the way.

-Suppression of freedom of expression. No more book burning, no more book banning, no more bounties on the heads of people who write fictional tales about religions.

-Female genital mutilation. As I said, I am a cultural relativist, and as such do not blame those who commit this act for what they do. All cultures evolve and if cultures were individuals they would all have guilty consciences. Nonetheless, anyone observing from the outside (the World Health Organisation, for instance) can see that female genital mutilation is, on the whole, dangerous for anyone who undergoes it. The reason it would not happen in an individualist society is that you would be given the choice. There would be no pressure to submit to a coming of age ritual that is performed largely because it always has been performed. Traditions would be kept if they make sense on a rational individual level and discarded if individuals dissented. (link to traditions post)

And if you disagree, find me someone who has committed any of the above who was an individualist and I will stand corrected.

Before ending this post, please remember that there is a difference between an individualist who commits crimes and committing crimes in the name of individualism. Individuals have been murdered by people who were (or who thought they were) protecting their rights as individuals; the number of those killed, repressed or discriminated against in the name of a group is too large to print.

Pinker, Steven: the Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature.

Why globalisation has not ended conflict

When the Iron Curtain collapsed across Europe and the flags of peace, freedom and democracy were waved, many people around the world thought these changes would be permanent. We were told that this was to be a new era of capitalism and prosperity, democracy and freedom, brotherhood and equality, peace and happiness. This was the end of history.

Except that it wasn’t. Certain things flourished. Capitalism will come to anywhere the elites can profit from it, and it will usually trickle down when the masses demand it to. Democracy and freedom were won in the early post Cold War years but both appear to be slipping away again. And peace, far from springing up from the ground, may be even further away than ever.

Globalisation, which helped topple communism and spread wealth to the post communist world, was supposed to have eliminated conflict by making us all interconnected. Trade has spread and deepened everywhere, creating middle classes that governments need to answer to. Countries would sacrifice wealth if they went to war, because it is now far more profitable to trade with each other than build empires. But we do still have war, don’t we? Why is that?

Globalisation has increased the costs of violent conflict but not removed the causes. The causes have always been multiple but now there are too many to count. And the biggest causes of conflict are more prominent today than ever. One is upheaval: big changes. Every person and every culture reacts differently to big changes; and change is fast and furious nowadays. Globalisation charges ahead, and brings with it climate change, inequality of wealth, the spread of ideas, migration and terrorism. And of course, each of these big changes begets more unexpected, unsolicited and, to many, unwanted change. Anything can happen after changes like this, including war.

A second cause of conflict that has increased is racism. Whether we realise it or not, we are still learning that we are different and better than each other. We learn ethnocentrism, intolerance and racism in school, in mass media, from politicians, from parents and from each other. We live in a world that still prizes loyalty to the collective: protect the group at any human cost. These problems still existed during the Cold War, but they were less complicated than they are today. Now, we are searching for meaning outside the left right divide and many do not know where to turn. They turn to their immediate groups. They find that their groups are superior. But again, things are more complicated: there are more groups and loyalties and each is fighting with every other one.

During the Cold War, there were three sides—side A (capitalist), side B (communist) and side abstaining (non aligned). Now, diplomacy is so difficult because sides are so mixed. In the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, for instance, according to the Economist, “The peacemakers barely know where to start. The old divisions, not just between Israelis and Arabs but also between rival Palestinian factions and their bickering foreign backers, have got deeper. Political rows are already muddling the urgent task of getting aid to Gaza, let alone efforts to secure the fragile ceasefire, rebuild the territory and forge a broader Arab-Israeli peace.” Everyone is arguing with everyone else.

And yet, globalisation has calmed one form of violence. Most war nowadays is civil war, or intrastate conflict. Before and perhaps during the Cold War, it was between countries, or interstate. Globalisation has made liberal democracy the norm in half the world, and though one can argue no end how liberal and democratic these places are, the major benefit has been a reduction in interstate violence. The question is, what will it take to eliminate war?

War, unfortunately, seems to go deep into our nature and satisfy a certain lust for blood. As much as we hate to admit it, many or most or all humans have a propensity for violence (to inflict or watch it), competition (which of course means winning any contest one can win at), a culture that prompts and rewards violence, distraction from more complicated issues, punishment, revenge and cruelty. My guess is that violence among humans will never end, not while we are the humans we recognise today. But war is one kind of violence. What will it take to eliminate war?

For my answer to that question, I will take you into the roots of discrimination, war and the search for meaning in a series of posts by examining the most important philosophical debate in history: individualism versus collectivism.

September 11th’s legacy: success for the terrorists, failure for the rest

Before you read this post, consider the following question: what do you think terrorists want to achieve with their actions?

Is the world a more dangerous place after 9/11? Perhaps. Now there are wars in Afghanistan (good idea) and Iraq (bad idea), which have increased (and will continue to increase) the polarisation between extremist muslims and liberal democratic governments. There will be more violence to come. But does that mean that citizens in the West should be afraid?

Whether or not they should be, they are. The CBC called the United States “a nation still bleeding from the wounds it suffered five years ago… and millions of Americans still live in fear.” Who is bleeding? American soldiers, prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the families of the 9/11 victims. That’s it. The rest of the people have nothing to worry about. Yeah, there could be another terrorist attack, but there has only been one in the US in five years. Why are we so afraid of terrorism when all but the most irrational of us know we’re more likely to die of cancer, AIDS, car crashes, gunshots, heart attacks and anything else you can think of?

Now the Canadian and American governments are working hard to restrict everyone’s access to airlines, slowing down traffic across the border and using billions of dollars of public money in order to provide the illusion of security. Taking away our freedoms and money are backward ideas designed either to scare us more or make us safer from terrorist attacks, but there is no evidence we’re any safer. If you don’t think it’s all an illusion, answer me this: do you really think you couldn’t find a way to kill a bunch of people and scare everyone? Of course you could.

So we’re not much safer, in spite of all the freedoms taken away, all the money spent, all the racist suspicion and all the killing. Do you have an answer yet for my initial question? What do terrorists want to achieve? Terror! Well, congratulations Mr bin Laden et al., you are successful.