Democracy is Peaceful
The recent Palestinian election should put to rest notions that
"democracies do not go to war," or that "democracies are reluctant to go
to war." In Palestine, the militant Hamas faction was elected. In Iraq,
the Shi'ites were elected to be the new government. None of those Arabs
have any love for Israelis or Americans, even if they tolerate Americans
as it suits their purposes. The big winner in those recent elections was
resurgent anti-Western militancy, as expressed by Iranian government.
To the extent that democracy actually works, the economic, political and
social relations within a democratic organization reflect the "will of the
people." That is what we mean by democracy, so it should be no surprise
that Israelis who dislike militant Palestinians vote for a government that
deals accordingly with that group. Similarly, Hindus and Muslims have
governments and social organizations reflecting their peculiar views of
themselves and the world, which have been at odds for over 50 years.
In other words, if a cultural group believes X, Y and Z, they believe X, Y
and Z. Morever, they are likely to act on those beliefs. So, where's the
surprise if they do so? Explicitly: the democratic method of expressing or
implementing beliefs does not change them. Thus, claims that democracies
are always or usually like this or that usually have no basis in fact.
Democracies are like their electors.
God will Provide
We all have our fears and nervous reactions. When I was young and able, I
used to hike in wilderness areas. It was a thrilling experience,
especially when I saw a deer or a flower going about their business. Being
Homo sapiens, I was especially
thrilled - shaking in my boots - when I happened on a bear or came near
some rattlesnakes. At night, I feared all sorts of shadows and movements
"out there," in the wilds. I came to understand what our ancestors might
have felt and thought about living in an untamed world.
In a world of fear and paranoia, of adrenalin running all the time, one
seeks soothing order. One wants to feel secure. This leads to the offering
of explanations for what one sees. (Explanations defang surprise attacks.)
More importantly, the struggle to survive leads to personalizing the
things and conditions of the natural world, which makes possible the
externalization of feelings. In other words, for people without formal
education or scientific methods, one way of theorizing about the natural
world is to personify it, which is to analogize active things to human
behavior. Thus, there are bear spirits, deer spirits, flower spirits and
various weather (rain, clouds, snow, warmth, wind, etc) spirits. In the
absence of mathematical analysis and logical propositions, people say
'bears act like this.' This is a perfectly human thing to do, to
generalize from what is observed and understood (people's behavior) to
that which is observed but not understood (natural world).
Our early civilized ancestors inherited a welter of demons, forces,
bugaboos and other spirits invented over the millennia to explain the
natural world and thereby soothe the nerves. Starting about 5,000 years
ago, it became increasingly clear that there could not be multiple
explanations for, say, bear behavior. Bears are bears. So, the various
spirits of bears, eagles, snakes, trees and all the rest were gradually
condensed into the bear (and
other) spirits. Sometime after the adoption of agriculture, the fearful
creatures of the wild became less fearful, probably because we humans had
less direct contact with them once we stopped hunting and started
husbandry. But, the idea of animism was not lost, as farmers are
incredibly dependent on the weather. Thus, the various spirits were
transformed into sun, moon, rain and earth gods.
Once the concrete anima of animals and plants were reclaimed as the more
ethereal spirits of air, water, fire and earth, eventually people
recognized that spirits are spirits. This eventually led to the monotheism
discovered by Ahknaton and others some 3000 years ago. I think the
critical intermediary steps to monotheism were the various anthropomorphic
gods, Zeus and the other Olympians. The Egyptian Horus and all the other
gods were an explicit "formulation" of an anthropic analogy in use for
many millennia. That is, animism models nature on human life, imputing
human motives and patterns to plants, animals and things. Animism is to
understand the world, starting with what is known best, oneself. The
Olympian gods are the eventual result of implicit use of that anthropic
analogy: it is to posit that the larger world works according to what one
knows best, oneself. I think the ancients probably did not recognize that
their invention of the Olympians was the logical combination and
generalization of their ancestor's beliefs. In this sense, human
development was like psychoanalysis, in which, little by little, the inner
self is brought out into the external world for objective review.
Anthropomorphic gods were trashed when it was finally realized that
spirits are spirits, who do not necessarily behave as do humans. This led
to the monotheistic god which surpasses humans in every way, and which is
inscrutable. Nonetheless, such a god is lacking comfort for mere mortals,
so mortal humans cling on to their anthropomorphic deities. Thus, we have
Buddha, Jesus, Mary, Mohammed and several others. People have a
psychological need for a sympathetic mentor.
Science Knows All
About 500 years ago, accidentally in Europe, it was at last discovered
that spirits and gods do not make any sense. Today, it is clear that
anthropomorphic deities are just that. The generalization to some
universal God makes no sense whatever, or such a creature has nothing
whatever to do with our puny, ordinary lives.
Thus, we invented science. Science is the recent recognition of our
projection of ourselves onto the Universe, as well as our desire to
discover the way things really
work. These are the left overs of our ancient existence at the mercy of
predators and the weather. Our built-in paranoia has generalized itself
into a search for reasons why our fears are justified.
Given the history of our learning, can we be assured that the scientific
method is the final answer to our prayers? I cannot imagine how it could
be otherwise, since science starts with our experience, which is also
where our imaginations started thousands of years ago. What else is there?
Of course, I am trapped in what we are now. The ancient Greco-Romans did
not dsipense with Olympians and discover modern science, although they
came close on several occasions. It looks like cultures develop at an
uncontrolled pace; they just were not ready. The Chinese invented many of
our modern uses thousands of years ago; e.g.,paper, printing, paper money
and the civil service. Their use of gunpowder led to the invention of the
rocket for both peaceful and military uses. The Greeks invented something
like the battle tank. Despite all that, according to a program about
Bathrooms on the History Channel, toliet paper was invented in the United
States during the Jackson Administration and was not developed into its
modern form until after the Civil War. An English fellow, Thomas Crapper,
invented the modern toilet in the 1870s. The key component was the curved
(u-shaped) outlet pipe.
What's the point? Despite our high-minded generalizations, our application
of science has been, at best, spotty until the last few decades. It is
only since World War II that people are applying the scientific philosophy
to their way of life en masse. This is very likely to have a huge impact
on culture which we do not yet see. The hangers-on from the past -
animism, superstition and religion - will probably never disappear, as
they are imbedded in the peculiar ways we go about our lives. Even the
most scientific among us are fearful of those fleeting shadows out there,
at night. And, our peculiar way of going about engineering and science -
for example, still blessing the fishing fleet and whooping it up during
Saturnaila and Mardi Gras - brings some emotional relief and satisfaction
from the dreary everyday world. So, we don't know how science and
technology will impact our lives, because we are only at the beginning of
the era of their belief and use. I think it certain, however, that human
lives and culture will be changed radically over the next several hundred
years, just as they were during the development of Ancient civilizations
(from Agriculture to Rome and China).
What next?
I don't know. Just as it was probably not obvious to even the smartest
people that Olympians were projections, the fallacies of our cultures are
not obvious to us.
Retrospectively, it seems so obvious that Zeus and Horus are just
glorified human actors. Anthropologists endure years of training so that
they can take seriously the stories and claims of primitive tribes about
the spirits of trees and monkeys. Would an advanced Extraterrestial look
upon us in the same light?
13:22:57 - Thursday, 03/02/2006