Café Philos: an internet café

I pulled up an old article published on the web by Discover Magazine this morning and read, "Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser's new theory says evolution hardwired us to know right from wrong." Yet, that's not quite what Marc Hauser is saying.

Instead, it would be more correct to say, Hauser is asserting something along these lines: Our concept that there is such a thing as right and wrong is hardwired into us by our evolution. We have a sort of universal "moral grammar", but not a universal "moral language". For instance: The notion it is wrong to harm an innocent person is universal, but specific notions of who is innocent and who is not innocent are far from being universal.

Yet, most certainly, Hauser is not saying right and wrong exist independent of us. In Hauser's world, man is the measure of right and wrong -- not some metaphysical standard of right and wrong.

Oddly enough, saying "man is the measure of right and wrong" does not preclude a god having something to do with that measure. For, if I were religious, I could always say something like, "God inscribed a universal moral grammar upon the human heart."

Of course, were I both religious and uncomprehending, I could say something like, "God inscribed morality upon the human heart." But that implies there is only one true morality -- and implying that is just as silly as asserting there is only one true human language.

Another way of illustrating the distinction between moral grammar and moral language would be to say morality is hardwired into us much like tool use is hardwired into us. Humans naturally create and use tools. But the specific kinds of tools humans use can vary from culture to culture. And how tools are used can even vary from person to person. So, too, morality is hardwired into us on one level, yet is determined by our culture on another level, and on yet a third level is individual.

When I think of dating, I think of courtship. Every few years, one or another of the big magazines is sure to run a cover story asking, "Is Courtship Dead?". The magazine will claim that's a serious question and to prove it's a serious question, they will point to some recent poll in which 67% of the respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 adamantly declare courtship means nothing to them. It's something their grandparents might have done in their day, but today's hip 18 - 24 year old has no use for it, etc. etc. etc.

You might recall from your studies of social history that "radical thinkers" in every generation within the last 150 years have declared courtship dead. Courtship is always being declared dead by people. Yet, every generation courts. Why is that?

"Why is that?" would have been a hard question to answer accurately back in the good old days. In this case, the good old days are the 1970's when everyone in academia seemed to believe that humans were born with a "blank slate". That is, the predominant paradigm in nearly every field back then was that humans were born with no innate behaviors -- nor even any predispositions to behaviors -- and that all significant human behavior could be explained as learned behavior.

On the other hand, today, it's very well known that humans are genetically predisposed to some behaviors. Contra the old 1970's paradigm, not everything humans do is entirely learned (although learning does play a role in most everything). Most likely, courtship has never died out -- despite all its obituaries -- primarily because we humans are genetically predisposed to court.

More specifically, it seems courtships follow a certain general pattern, and that pattern is what we're genetically predisposed to follow. For instance, a graduate student in anthropology discovered that women are more likely than men to initiate successful courtships -- at least in bars. One of his methods was to attend campus town bars where he could record the exchanges between mostly undergraduate men and women. He found that women initiate courtships nonverbally, with their eyes. In other words, they offer "come on looks" to men who interest them. The grad student noticed that courtships initiated by women were more successful than those initiated by men. Success in this case was measured by whether the people engaged in the courtship left the bar in each other's company. What the graduate student discovered was part of the general pattern of human courtship.

A while back, I read of two psychologists who had concluded that dysfunctional courtships -- courtships that do not follow, or that slight, the general pattern of human courting -- almost invariably result in dysfunctional relationships and marriages. If that's true, the importance of courtship in humans is clear.

I have a strong hunch, but based only on anecdotal evidence, that when dysfunctional courtships result in sex, one, the other, or both partners is very apt to feel exploited, abused and even humiliated by the sex. From what I've seen, it seems courtships prepare us emotionally and psychologically for sexual intimacy. Without a good courtship, we are not prepared for that level of intimacy, and our feelings afterwards often show it.

So far as I know, there is nothing in our genes that prescribe we must be married to have a healthy sex life. But if the anthropologists, biologists and psychologists are right, then our genes might indeed prescribe we must have a healthy courtship to have a healthy sex life.

Last, I think courses taught in the public schools on human sexuality should include a section on courtship. If dysfunctional courtships lead to dysfunctional relationships and marriages, it might be wise to teach kids what the value of courting is and something about how to go about it.

Wondering what the human prospect is these days? You might get some factual insights on that by visiting Trinifar this week.

Trinifar has put together some beautiful graphs showing major ecological, demographic and economic trends in a post on "visualizing sustainability". He then briefly explains each graph in clear, non-technical terms.

Especially worth noting I think are the estimates that the world population of humans will reach 9 billion by 2050, while the maximum sustainable population is estimated between one and three billion. If anything even remotely like that occurs (and something remotely like that seems very likely) some environmental resources will be exhausted by the excess population, perhaps leading to a reduction in the number of people who can live on the earth in a sustainable fashion. That's just about the mildest effect such a disaster will have on the human prospect.

The effect of too many people and too few resources that concerns me most is political and spiritual. Huge numbers of people competing for diminishing resources is quite likely to lead to repressive societies. Then what happens? Will humanities' potential for authentic happiness ever be realized? Will most of us be able to appreciably develop our talents and skills, or stay true to ourselves? Or will only the tiny elite that controls the world's resources have decent lives?

I am reasonably confident that in the long run, the human spirit will rebound. But the long run could take centuries to be realized.

If you have not heard of the latest jaw-dropping buffoonery from the Old Guard of the Religious Right, you surely will want to check out Brendan's article on it here, which he's published on his blog, Off the Beaten Path.

As usual, Brendan not only reports on what's going on with the Old Guard, but provides an exceptional commentary on what it implies about them, along with a factual and damning criticism.

I'm thankful that I don't always agree with Brendan. If I always agreed with him, it would be less pleasurable to read him. But this time around, I am compelled to agree that the Old Guard of the Religious Right is morally sick. I think Brendan does a very good job substantiating that claim in his article.

The moral sickness of the Old Guard should concern us all. There are millions of evangelicals in this country and many of them follow the Old Guard. Evangelicals are not going to disappear from America any time soon. So, it behooves us to take an interest in their moral health. We are, after all, all in this society together, and such a large faction of society cannot be morally ill without it in some ways affecting us all.

According to the ancient Sumerians, the world's first city was Eridu. A photograph of it's ruins is to the left.

Looking at the photograph, it is difficult to imagine that the land around Eridu was once fertile. Yet, Eridu at one time was surrounded by lush farmlands. What happened?

Ecologically unsubstainable irrigation practices turned the farmlands into the barren desert you see today. So ended the first city.

The ancients had no science to alert them to the danger of the ecological collapse they were creating for themselves by their faulty irrigation methods. That's not the case today, when science can and does alert us to the dangers we are creating for ourselves. But will we pay heed to the science in time?

"The Bible contains no reference to earth in terms of the conservation ethic. Wild life and wilderness are apart from man and inferior. The Christian, and Jew, had no relation to the earth, the air, the waters, or the wild life. He could without fear poison the waters, pollute the air, level the forests, and despoil the land. The Bible and Christianity conditioned men to be vandals, converting everything from alligator skins to mountain ranges to blue waters into dollars. Men took the wealth and left only the ashes."

Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas





For more on this subject go here.

("The World Trade Organization proposes to privatize all the world's water...[to]...promote trade." --- news article)

Me, I want to own Lake Michigan
And sell its tears to Chicago,
Or ship it to replenish the Oglala
And make the American desert bloom

Or maybe by aqueducts
Drain it into Texas
Where the world's six billion will come
Invited by Rush Limbaugh, host,
To live on a half-acre each
(Or is it a quarter now?)
In Tex-Utopia:
A suburb of Dallas
With splendid bluegrass lawns.

I know where to get
The concrete for the channels
But I haven't figured out
What to do with the Michigan fish:
They stink without water, you see.
And the problem is,
When I get to Texas
Will I still smell them?